The start of the year saw us working on the new garden shed. This was to house the electrical meters and invertors associated with the wind turbine and was to replace a very shabby wooden shed. The new shed has a brick base, ship lap walls and a tiled roof. The shed is all Martin's design and apart from the brick base is all our own work.
March found us fixing the ship lap to the walls of the shed in heavy rain. The rain was so prolonged that the pond next door over flowed and threatened to flood the house next door. But that was the last rain we were to see until August.
In the dry weather we made extensive use of the rain water harvested into a large underground tank. But even that wasn't to be enough and it soon ran dry, the pond dried up and eventually we emptied the ornamental pond at the front of the house to keep the trees and vegetable alive. This drove us to make a concerted start on the reed bed.
The reed bed is located behind the stable block and consists of two concrete chambers, one filled with cobbles, gravel and pea shingle and the other is a holding tank for the filtered water. The water from the bio-digester is diverted into the reed bed and slowly passes through filtering out any remaining pollution and eventually arrives in the holding tank. Once this is tested and is proved not to contain any pathogens this will be diverted into the rain water tank and will provide additional water for the garden. The reed bed is completed but will not come into full operation until next spring.
The beginning of year also found us with no bees. The bees were present in January but when we came to look in February they were gone! Having cleaned up the hives, we placed them empty in a new location at the corner of the vegetable garden in the faint hope of attracting a swarm or finding a nucleus. Surprisingly in June a swarm arrived over the chicken run and went straight into an empty hive. About the same time, a friend kindly presented us with a small nucleus. We have been nurturing the new colonies and hope to see them through the winter and be back in honey production next summer.
The success of our holiday cottage this year has also led us to investigate the possibility of adding an additional unit. A successful planning application was submitted with a view to converting the garage to a two-bedroomed self-contained unit, and creating a new garage in the stable block. So all we need now is to save up the money!
As autumn progresses, the dark evenings have shown the Barn Owl to be back hunting over the top field. While Martin's bird boxes have attracted several birds to nest. The Kestrel Box has an inhabitant - but we think it's a squirrel.
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