Started insulating the barn Sunday, 16-Mar-25 21:18:02 CET

Sunday, 23-Mar-25 20:21:02 CET

The southeast field sowed with grass

The southeast field was tilled and sowed. I started mounting ceiling beams in the barn workshop.

Monday 17 March

Today, both DW and I worked from home.

I had my lunch while driving to the hardware store. It is just going to be a quick tour of the city. So I don't want to stay away from work. This is my lunch break. The idea is that I will use the tiller machine this evening. We're going to have two nights at -2°C. The clay reacts well to the minus temperatures. When it's below freezing of water, the clay is breaking up.

We have contacted the insulation company, and they will deliver the remaining bales of insulation on 28 March. When I first told DW about that news, she was unhappy. It is not that bad because we can do plenty of other things. The delayed delivery of insulation will not hinder us when we are working. She will look into ordering boards and ceiling beams.

My visit to the hardware shop was successful. I bought two jerry cans of Aspen 4. I bought filler material for cement boards. The toughest challenge was the hook. I wanted to buy a hook for the barn in Sweden to be used in the wagon hall. I want a hook in the wall to drag the wagon with the crane. They helped me with that. It is brilliant. That was good. I must remember to bring the drill hammer to Sweden next time. The holiday will be in May, and I already have plans for what to do during that visit. I will renew my Swedish passport. It's beautiful weather today. 10°C. It is just about the temperature that the grass needs to start growing.

The last time we went to Sweden, I wrote about 5000 words a week. Since then, my writing has been tumbling down. Last week, I wrote 1800 words. That was not much at all. So what am I going to do about it? Well, I'm going to write more. Look. I had this feeling that the blogs you don't write they won't get written another time. When you have a brilliant idea about what to write, you must write it immediately if you don't do that. It's not so that you will remember all those brilliant ideas in the evening. They will be lost, and you will be tired.

All the work at the house has to be done, and it's much work. What I should learn better is to include tidying up at work. I've been annoyed that I often work too hard and long when working. So much so that I'm too tired to clear up the tools after the day's work; that's not good. I need to change my attitude towards work. Work includes should always include cleaning up after the task.

On top of that, I want to have the energy to blog about work, so if the work takes over too much and I am too tired to blog about things, it is not that fun anymore. We will see how I am progressing on this idea. I hope it will be brilliant.

Need to be funny as well. It's not funny, but it needs to be enjoyable to work. There is always more work. Done. Does not exist. The definition of dumb. Perhaps something? You need to contemplate it before you start. So now I'm at home. Continue work for my employer. No. Take out the tiller machines.

Tuesday 18 March

Last night, it was minus two degrees Celsius. That was great for the work I did in the southeast field. Today, we both worked from our respective offices. I brought DW to the train station in the morning.

After work, I went home without DW. She will take the bus. Letting her stand there and take the bus home feels strange. We talked about it, and she agreed on it. I wanted to get home on time to use the tiller machine in the evening. The idea of this project is to improve the grass in that field. So why is it so urgent? The temperature will be below freezing again tonight, and I would like to use that. It will be the last night with minus, so I wanted to use that.

I could use the tiller machine non-stop for two hours when I came home. When I was done, DW came home.

It was a beautiful sunset this evening.

I found Merida trying to be invisible behind a curtain when going to bed. That did not work, but I don't think she understands it is not working.

Wednesday 19 March

Last night, it was a couple of degrees below freezing. We figured out what to order from the hardware store in the morning. We will need OSB boards and beams for the ceiling.

Today, I worked from home in the morning. DW had a day off. Her mind was at work from time to time. She had things going on at work that kept her busy. But officially, she had a day off. It was a sunny day.

After lunch, I went out to work with the tiller machine. Today, I wanted to smooth the surface using a harrow behind the tiller machine. The harrow collected material in a prominent bulge, and it did not smooth anything. I switched to my homemade shuffle blade. I could tilt it to flatten the surface behind the tiller. This worked well. I am so happy with that blade.

DW was happy with the result and suggested we could sow the grass on the field as it is now. She ordered grass, and hopefully, it will arrive tomorrow.

Thursday 20 March

It was a beautiful morning. I took a photo, but it got grainy. I later modified the photo considerably. It is not a photo anymore but more of a pixel painting. The grain is gone!

The grass seeds arrived today. We were both at our respective offices, but the packages with seeds could be delivered to our house anyway. It was a long day at the office. DW had a meeting early in the day, and she could not leave the office early, and the trains had issues. I had a productive day, and I was patient. It is odd to be the first in the office; all colleagues arrive, and then, one by one, they leave again, and you are sitting there alone.

Today, we learned that the PILs got an offer for an apartment. That is excellent news. They will get access to nursing assistance and activities. There will be food served. It sounds great. Now, it is a question of how it all will happen.

In the evening, I started experimenting with aianimation.com. It is a platform for producing animation with the help of AI. I had an idea about creating an animation about our three sheep. I got stuck with the ear tags. Writing them as two words did not work. When writing ear tags as a compound word, it worked. One developer, John Draper, created this system, and I am impressed with it. He worked for over a year on this. It is not finished, but it is good enough for people to experiment. I created one image of three sheep in a claymation style. It was less specific than I had desired, but the sheep had ear tags, which was my minimum requirement.

I learned there are more platforms like these. I will experiment with some others as well.

Friday 20 March

Today, I had a day off. DW worked from home. My first task for today was to sow the grass seeds of the newly tilled southeast field. DW had calculated that we had to use one and a half liters of seeds for this patch. A liter is a cubic decimeter or 33.8 ounces. You could imagine a cube with a side of 3.9 inches, that is one liter. Anyway, the manufacturer estimated that we should use one and a half such cubes of seeds in this field. I tried it, and it was like one seed per square decimeter. It was not going to work. At first, I ran around planlessly, spreading seeds. I ran out of seeds quickly without even finishing one-quarter of the patch.

When I used a stick on each end of the field, I aimed to walk straight towards the stick in the east-west direction. Then, when I reached the stick, I moved it a bit. That way, I gradually and systematically sowed the field. Then, I restarted the same process, walking in the north-south direction. I had reached the fifth one-liter bucket of seeds. I filmed a hyper-lapse video from the roof of the sea container.

After lunch, OSB boards, screws, and beams were delivered.

 

The beams were okay to move into the barn, but the boards were too heavy to handle alone. Unless I had a tool to help me, of course. I built a stand on top of the wagon. That worked brilliantly.

It was still hard work, but I kept going. The wind picked up, but with the wagon, I was not that vulnerable to the wind. I like it when I can use my creativity to solve a problem.

I was tired in the afternoon after I moved the boards into the barn. DW was as well, but she was tired from her work. At least, so I thought.

Saturday 21 March

Today, DW had a full day at a wool event. I had a day on my own. My first task was picking up the winch we lent to friends. I came right on time before they headed off to the market.

I created a frame for the winch that could stand on top of the opening to the barn's attic. The winch could hang almost a meter above the floor of the attic. I like this a lot. It will be helpful anytime we bring something significant to the attic.

Then, I started putting up beams in the ceiling of the barn. I did not get so far. DW came home, and she was not feeling well. In the evening, she got a fever. I hope she will be fine.

Sunday 22 March

DW felt much better this morning. In the morning, it rained! That is great for the grass seeds.

She terminated weed in the garden. I worked on putting up beams in the workshop's ceiling in the barn. At first, I was slow and unhandy with how to do it. Slowly, I gained practice and managed to reduce the number of misses. Measuring beams is a challenge, as it appears. I had the laser measure and a five-meter tape measure. That was not enough, but I could not find our 8-meter measure. It disappeared during the barn-building process. Introducing an error for each step in the measuring process is possible. Things can be too short and too long. The case of being too short is more problematic because it is not easy to add to something already cut off. First, measure the piece needed. Then, I must do it again on the beam cut to length. I made all the mistakes you can make. I measured something and then remembered the wrong value. There are situations where I cannot figure out how it got wrong. It is always like that. I am not freaking out anymore about the strange situations. It is what it is. I made a template beam for the most common length, which was handy. That reduced the number of errors considerably.

We had lunch, and after lunch came BIL and SIL. They inspected the progress of the barn and the property. We talked about the imminent move of the PILs to their new apartment. We will go there with our large trailer and help move things. DW

When BIL and SIL left, I put up another two beams at the end of this week's work on the barn. We will not have much time to work on the barn next week. Next weekend, we will be moving the PILs.

This week, I finished tilling the southeast field. The field was sowed with grass seeds. We received the beams for the ceiling and the OSB boards. It was an active week, indeed. I wrote 2075 words this week. Welcome back next week!