Week forty eight.

Sunday 6th

Last night we spoke to S & G to ask them if they could come and have a look at our van - G knows what he's doing when it comes to vehicles. They arrived around 10 this morning and in less than an hour our van was working again! Woo! It was just a loose connection to the battery - knocked about and made worse with every pothole - so G was able to screw it back on and fix it with some tin foil. So easy if you know what you're looking for!

It was a huge relief to have that sorted, so we drove to Chirpan to celebrate and stock up on a few bits and bobs we couldn't get on Friday. S & G were also going to Chirpan to do a bit of shopping, so after we'd all got what we needed we decided to go out for lunch, which was lovely.

 

 

Back home we unpacked the shopping and then went out for a walk, as it was such a lovely day. We took our basket and gloves and managed to forage quite a lot of nettles, as well as a small amount of sorrel and some more lapad (or patience dock.) When we were back at the house we stuffed most of the nettles into big plastic bottles and filled them with water to make 'nettle tea'. No not for us! But for our plants - it is rich in nitrogen and other minerals and is great for giving your veggies a boost! I also potted out the rest of our tomatoes seedlings into bigger containers and planted some new veg as well. We are now running out of room in the kitchen and are thinking we definitely need to invest in, or make, a green house this year.

Walking along the river

Picking nettles

Lucy

On the bridge

Nettles and sorrel

'Nettle tea'

Loads of seeds

For dinner we made fresh pasta and Pete made a delicious sauce with nettles, sorrel, lapad, garlic and lemon. It was soooo good and almost all foraged and homemade!

 

Making pasta

Yummy, foraged diner

Sleepy cat

Monday 7th

 

After a few lovely days off we were back to work today - we were in the garden and the sun was shining. I started the day by finishing off the end of the long raised bed, whilst Pete carried on with digging the trench to the barn (for the water pipe.) He managed to mark out the trench most of the way, but it is hard going so we have decided we will get a man in to dig it for us. We also lay concrete into 2 plastic tubs in an attempt to make concrete slabs for the top of our stone wall. This didn't work out very well, and looked awful, so we are going to have to re-think that idea.

Finished the end

Trench is getting longer

Concrete slabs

We stopped for brunch and a coffee and spent half an hour or so discussing how we are going to build our front porch. The balcony that is already there is crumbling and dangerous so that needs re-doing. We also want to bring the doors forward and create extra space inside the hallway. We came up with a few ideas and decided we would crack on with that this week, which is exciting!

 

In the afternoon we moved some more earth around - half filling the long raised bed with the rocky earth from the septic tank (the other half will be filled with nice soil from the water pipe trench.) We then went round to our neighbours to pick up some of his amazing worm compost. He has a work farm and has kindly said we can have as much compost as we want for free! He wasn't actually there today but he'd said we could pick it up whenever, so we went back and forth several times and ended up getting 10 wheelbarrows worth. This was enough to cover the top of all the beds that are ready and we were pretty happy.

 

Picking up compost from the worm farm

 

Lovely dark compost going on the beds

This took a while as even though the worm farm is technically 'next door' it is actually quite a long way to walk back and forth 20 times! In the early evening we cleaned the chicken coop and Pete got his little woodburner out and made some more tortillas over the fire, in the garden. Then, as we were tidying up and splitting more wood for the woodburner inside, Pete broke the handle of his amazing axe. A slight disaster as it was a good, expensive one and it is a necessary tool for us. :(

 

Getting hot

 

Bread!

Noooo

We drank our last English ale in the evening - we miss proper beer so much!

 

Tuesday 8th

 

So when we were talking about the porch we decided that we didn't want to just keeping making more piles of rubble in the garden - we wanted to put the rubble somewhere where we will use it. There is a collapsed outbuilding by the barn that we have been using as a massive bonfire pit, but in the future we plan to make it into a shed or a patio or something. Whatever we make it into it will need a concrete base - so we decided this was where we would dump all our rubble from now on!

But before we could dump anything there it needed clearing out - so that was the job for today. It took all morning to do - it had rained heavily the night before so we had to do the bonfire little by little. Whilst I tended the fire Pete was taking down the bricks from the walls. We are going to leave the stone there until we can make gabions with it.

 

Fire woman!

 

View of the garden from above the fire

 

Before - FULL of brash

 

Before

 

After - waiting for the last bit of fire to burn out

 

After - the bricks all gone

It was only just gone lunch time by the time we'd done this and the clouds were rolling in and threating to rain. We decided to pop in to Chirpan to buy a few building materials for the porch. We also bought a couple of sheets of rebar so we could build our first gabion. It didn't rain in the end and when we got home from shopping we decided to try and make the gabion now. We followed a video we'd seen on the internet and it was pretty easy to do. You have to use two layers of rebar, otherwise the holes would be too big, so we managed to make one gabion with 1 and a half sheets (about £8 - not too bad.) It was getting dark by the time we'd finished and we had quite a lot of cuts on our hands from the pointy ends of the metal, but it looked great!

 

Bolt cutting to size

 

Connecting 2 sheets together

 

Double layered for smaller holes

 

Tada!

 

Wednesday 9th

 

Annoyingly it has been forecast to rain all of this week. This has put us off getting a worker in to dig the trench as we will have to work with him and we don't want to do that if it's going to be very wet! The forecast rain has also stopped us from really starting on the porch, as we can't smash down the old balcony if it's raining because it is the only thing currently protecting our hallway from getting wet. But even more frustratingly is it hasn't actually ended up raining properly all week - so we could have done it!

Anyway, today we thought we'd start what we can on the porch - so Pete knocked off the old plaster from the stone wall that will eventually be inside, and I used our new heat gun to remove all the old paint of the wooden doors that we will be using as our new front doors. It did actually drizzle a bit in the afternoon so I moved the doors underneath the porch to stay dry.

 

Pete starting on the wall

 

 

Nice stone is revealed

 

One of the double doors we will use for our front doors

 

Heat gunning

 

One done, one more to go

In the afternoon Pete took Lucy for a much needed walk and collected dandelion buds, so that he can make capers with them. The doors ended up taking me most of the day and then as a last job, whilst Pete was out, I decided to organise all our power tools and move them out to the barn, as we need to start clearing upstairs in the house.

 

This is actually organised, would you believe!

 

Dandelion buds for capers

Thursday 10th

 

We wanted to go to SZ today but as the sun was shining when we woke up in the morning we decided to start on the footing for the new porch. We used the disc cutter to cut the shape and then the massive jack hammer to get out the old concrete, rocks and earth. It didn't actually take long at all - less than 2 hours - but once we'd finished the clouds were rolling in again so we decided not to risk laying the new concrete today.

Lucy is helping!

 

The jigger jigger is back

 

All done - shallow area (left) dug for new steps and a long, deeper area dug for columns and door frame footing.

We got clean and ready to go to SZ but then were held up because I needed to find the guarantee for my laptop - which had recently just stopped working. I thought it was in the box with all the other guarantees, but no. It took me over an hour to find it (in a random bag in a random box in the room FULL of stuff) before we could set off. We then got all the way to Chirpan before realising we didn't have our new van insurance paperwork with us - which you legally need in your vehicle at all times and there are often police on the motorway to SZ checking for these things. So we had to turn around and go back - argh! So at least a couple of hours after planned we got to SZ to do some food shopping in a supermarket and get my laptop fixed (which they did in the shop within half an hour - yay.) Sadly we couldn't find a new handle for Pete's broken axe - the helpful man in the shop told us 'just make one.' Thanks.

By the time we were home it was gone six and because of the dark clouds around us it was almost getting dark. We unpacked the shopping, had dinner and drank one of the bottles of wine we'd bought in SZ.

 

Gloomy afternoon in our village

 

Hilarious name for this lovely Bulgarian wine!

Friday 11th

 

Market morning has arrived again! We were record time today as we'd done a big shop yesterday in the supermarket, so it was just a quick stock up of veggies. There were quite a lot of stalls starting to sell small veg plants, which is cool. We didn't buy any as we have so many seedlings ourselves - but at least there is back up if all else fails!

 

 

 

Vegetable plants and flowers at the market

We were home early and had unpacked and had some lunch all before midday. The weather was looking alright again so we decided to lay the concrete in the footing. This was another quick and easy job - only 4 mixer loads and we were done.

 

Mixing the concrete

 

Smoothing it out

We can't keep the animals off!

 

In the afternoon Pete got started on a new batch of bacon, as well as preserving some small lemons we'd bought at the market. Whilst he did that I planted out a few more seeds and seedlings - including making a make-shift table in the other room to create more space. I also planted out my red onion seedlings into the garden, sowed some more red onions seeds straight outside and planted a few garlic bulbs we'd saved from a huge garlic we'd bought last year. It seemed a bit crazy planting such tiny things into such a vast space, but we'll see what happens.

 

Flower seeds

Seedlings in the other room



First seedlings outside!

 

The area around the chicken coop has been smelling weird lately and cleaning it out the other day didn't help at all. We think it could be the compost bin but also the ground around the chicken coop has got really wet and muddy (and probably covered in poop) so I tried laying down a load of straw to see if this would help.

Horrible and muddy

Covered with straw now

Eggs!

As a last job of the day we made another gabion (we'd bought some more rebar) which I think only took about an hour and a half as they are so easy to make. This meant we could attach this one to the first one we'd made and actually start filling them with stone. Once we'd finished this and got cleaned up we went out and had a fun evening at the bar with S & G.

Making the sides

And then there were two!



 Saturday 12th

We had a bit of a lie in this morning but we weren't feeling too hungover so we got up at about 10 and decided to crack on with filling our first gabion. Obviously this was so much easier and quicker than building the dry stone wall, but still took time as we wanted to make them look nice rather than just chuck it all in. Also we were removing the stone from the old collapsed wall and that was a job in itself. At some point during the afternoon our neighbours popped around (the one's with the compost) and told us we didn't have enough compost and that we must come and get more immediately! He ended up giving us about the same as what we'd already taken - so our beds are really looking good now. He didn't want money but we insisted that he take a bottle of wine, which he did.

First we scratched out a flat area for the cages

Me putting the stone in

Pete collecting the stone for me

Getting more compost from our neighbour

After getting more compost we carried on with the gabion and managed to get it finished in a couple of hours. Pete also took the advice of the man in SZ and had a go at making a new axe handle. I forgot to take a photo of the finished product but I think it looks good, although Pete says he doesn't think it will last long. We also planted 2 fennel plants that S had given us last night.

In the late afternoon we had a visit from George who was back in the village checking his wine, it was nice to see him as we haven't seen him for a month. He stayed for an hour or so chatting and us showing him what we've been up to.

 

Across wires in the middle to hold it together

 

Finished one!

Whittling a new axe handle

Fennel and tulip

Sunday 13th

So today the forecast rain has finally arrived and it has been cold and wet all day. The fire has even been on all afternoon. We had an even longer lie in this morning because of the rain, although I did get outside for a bit to start sanding back the wooden doors. I completely sanded one door and then thought I'd do a little tester of the paint colour we wanted. Once I'd done the tester I got excited and decided to just paint the whole thing! I got two coats on (it definitely needs at least one more coat) but we LOVE the colour and it will look so nice when it is on. Because of the rain I only got one door done and have left it sheltered under the balcony. I did get off all the old rusty fittings so we can buy new ones next time we're shopping.

Sanded

PAINTED

Old fittings

Rainy day (grass is looking good!)

Pete has made a yummy roast style lunch and we've sat inside keeping warm and I've written the blog whilst Pete's been researching home brew - we want to make nettle beer! Hopefully this week will be nicer so we can actually get on with the porch.

Sunday lunch

 

Until next time! xx