Sounds in the blogsystem Tuesday, 25-May-21 22:40:36 CEST

Our sheep arrived Sunday, 06-Jun-21 20:41:48 CEST

Sunday, 30-May-21 21:48:44 CEST

Three sisters

Preparing for the three sisters.

Monday 24 May

It is Monday, and it is another compulsory day off celebrating the founding moment of the business selling the delegation of accountability. It is the perfect scam business. I preferred to use this day off on a day I choose, but this is how things are arranged.

We went to the new house to work inside the house because it was predicted we would receive rain all day. Not much each time but all the time some rain.

Before we got started working, we had a checkup of the garden. We really like to walk around and watch how it is growing in the garden. While we are at it, we are usually removing a thistle or two.

The grass on the north side of the house that I sowed on 4 April has sprouted. That is 50 days ago, one month and twenty days. It was cold this period but recently sufficiently wet.

Then we went inside to mount gypsum plates to the walls. We finished the kitchen part. There were two smaller walls on the kitchen side, and they both got their own plate. First, we did the southeast wall of the kitchen. Like when working on the planks outside, we had done this before and mastered it thoroughly. We had forgotten that at the bottom, there needs to be a beam for the seam. Next, we realized that the edge on one side was too narrow, so it was impossible to fasten the plate correctly to the wall. So we took it off and added more beams behind it. The wood behind the plate was skewed a lot, and that made things worse. Made the wood straight by bending it back and fastening it in the correct position. Now we could put the plate back again, and now it was fine.

 

The southwest kitchen wall went much better. These little walls have no tremendous functionality in the house. You could wonder why we should put isolation in them. I am reasoning such that when there is sound in the house, it is better to have walls that absorb the sound rather than having empty walls that amplify sounds like the box of a guitar.

We will put up gypsum on the thin remaining part as well. It is not entirely finished.

Next up, we went on with the west wall of the hall of the entrance. That hall is ending at the south wall, doing a 90 degrees turn, and then goes to the living room and kitchen, but now we will do the west wall of the hall.

We still had hiccups in the procedure. We forgot that at the bottom of the plate, it was necessary to fasten a beam at the seam of the plate. Yes, precisely the same mistake as on the first wall today. It is not good to let the edge of the plate hanging in the air. I am trying to prevent that from happening by applying beams behind the seams. The gypsum plate is strong enough to hold up without a beam, but what happens when using putty to seal the seam? Will the putty disappear when there is no beam behind the seam?

The rest of the plates went without any hiccup. We started to find the pace again. New for this time is that we are using the electric jigsaw for more tasks. When we put up a plate and need to cut out a corner of a door, I started drilling a hole near the corner and then, with the jigsaw finding the corner. Then it is easy to draw a line and saw straight out from the corner to the edge of the plate. It is much faster and precise than any method we used up until now. Next, I cut down and break the plate to take out the part of the door.

Also, these walls got extra isolation applied because behind this wall, there is the utility room, and it can be so that some noise is produced here.

We are getting closer to when we used the first stack of gypsum plates in the living room. Obviously, it is not a critical milestone to remove the pallet between the stacks, but it feels excellent. These are the small things we need to feed our feelings with to keep the fun.

We get a lot of energy from the garden and the idea of the sheep that might come to our farm next week. When we reached our milestone of gypsum plates in the hall, we went outside and collected thistles. The rain took a pause, and the sun was shining on us, and it was a beautiful evening. We collected one very full weel barrow of thistles that I drove to the compost.

In the distance, the sky was turning black, but at our new house, it was pleasant. We pottered around and fixed little things in the garden. This is what you need to do. Be in the garden and do things. That is how it is supposed to be.

Our son came with us today as well. He went outside and cut grass beside the path in front of the house because he believed it was becoming too high. He used the scythe to do that, and it was the first time he used the scythe. It went well, this time.

 

Wednesday 26 May

Today was an active day. This is the last full day off in our series of Wednesdays in April and May. The first Wednesday in that series was 31 March. We arrived well on time today. We were surprised by a neighbor that offered us to lend his fence. He had two rolls of similar fence that we also have. We could lend them from him!

His fence had the same height as ours. Actually, it was one chicken fence and one sheep fence we could lend.

Next up, we went to the place where my wife was going to be vaccinated. It was done in a sports complex in another city. All went fine, with no complications. There was a big parking lot outside the building, and I parked near the building. My wife got inside to get the vaccine. I could see people enter the building, but I did not see people leave the building. That was kind of spooky. When my wife arrived back at our car, she did not come out of the entrance either. She left the building from another door and then came from the side of the parking lot. This was the reason for the illusion that people were only entering the building. Especially since I had parked on the front row of the parking lot.

We went to our new home and put up three gypsum plates on the north wall of the workshop. This wall will not have any electricity, so it was easy to put up these plates.

Now we had finished the first stack of plates in the living room. This is a milestone, kind of. We could place the pallet outside, and that makes the stack much lower so. The following stack has all four sides with an indent. The previous stack had an indent for putty only on the long sides. When a plate has an indent on all four sides, it is better for use in the ceiling, but we are not done with all walls yet, so we will continue on the walls with the new stack.

Today our contact person for the sheep came to us. She talked through the deal with us, what we had to do and what not. She was happy with the fence we bought. She advised on a shed for the sheep as well. I built one right away while she was still talking details with my wife. It is three pallets for walls, and one as roof screwed together. The opening is away from the sun and the wind. We will probably lend three white Flevolanders sheep. They are bottle-fed sisters, so they are used to people. When they arrive at our farm, it is lambs, so they all three fits in a small pallet shed. As they grow, we will find out something else. I think I will do something with scaffold material when that is the next phase. The two extra fences from our neighbor came in handy because the sheep will be unloaded at our driveway, and they walk from there to the first area we designated for them.

Suddenly I discovered that our plumber had been at our place yesterday and installed the outdoor water tap. One that cannot freeze. There is a pin that goes all the way into the wall to the mechanism opening the crane. When closed, the water flows away, leaving no water in areas that can freeze. He had also worked on the sink in the workshop. It will be so lovely when we have that sink.

With the water tap, we can easily give water to the sheep. Lovely. Right now, we got the scaffold there, so it is not that easy just yet, but we are working on that.

Then we went to our old home, and there we discovered that our order of seeds had arrived. We ordered these on 5 March, and today they arrived. That is 82 days ago, or two months and 21 days. I did not blog about it that we ordered these seeds. We were not happy that it took so long to deliver the seeds. No single package passed the sowing date, so we are all fine, I suppose. Next year we need to be earlier when ordering these seeds.

Here is a list of the seeds we ordered to learn what we have. The list is in the same order as in the picture.

Dutch name	English	Latin	Comment
Stamboterbonen	Yellow Waxbean	Phaseolus vulgaris	These seeds we had to put in water one night before sowing.
Suikererwt “Delikett”	Snap Pea	Pisum sativum var. macrocarpon	I think macrocarpon means large fruit in Latin, but I don’t know for sure.
Witte klaver “Apolo”	White Clover	Trifolium repens	We will plant this to suppress weeds under our newly planted trees.
Courgettes “Piccolo”	Marrow, Summer squash	Cucurbita pepo	Small squash.
Pronkbonen “Color mix”	Runner Bean	Phaseolus coccineus	Ten sorts of colors of Runner Bean.
Indigostruik	True indigo	Indigofera tinctoria	A dye plant.
Oost-indische kers	Nasturtium	Tropaeolum majus lobbianum	Colorful flowers for salads. Seeds had to be put in water overnight before sowing.
“Golden Zucchini”	Marrow, Summer squash	Cucurbita pepo
Biet “(Early) Crosby’s Egyptian”	Beetroot	Beta vulgaris Conditiva	American variety
Kroten “Chioggia”	Beetroot	Beta vulgaris Conditiva	Italian variety
Zoete uien “Dulce Tonda di Tropea Record”	Sweet Red Onions	Allium cepa cepa
Zuikermais “Tasty sweet”	Sweetcorn	Zea mays saccharata

 

There is a way of planting called “Three Sisters.” You plant Courgettes, Beans, and Corn next to each other. They support each other, and it is supposed to work very well. We will try that. Funny that our seeds of three sisters coincide with talking about our sheep that are also three sisters.

Saturday 29 May

This was the first really nice day in almost two months, and it was as if people came out of their cocoons for all sorts of reasons. This became a social day. Marleen got her jab of vaccination, so she is fine, but I will get mine next week; hence we kept a reasonable distance.

We did not finish much of the house today. To delay the work even further, I suggested moving some of our plants from our old garden to the new garden. So these plants had to be dug up and moved, and then we had to figure out a new place for them in the new garden. The plants got a new place in the front flower garden. That is the same place where I planted seeds from my mother-in-law.

In the house, we put up gypsum plates in the workshop. It is the west wall of the workshop. We picked up the next plate after the door, but we did not finish it but just let it stand against the wall.

 

Sunday 30 May

Today we were eager to compensate for the inefficient day yesterday. We skipped the morning walk in the new garden. We started with mounting the gypsum plate we left just leaning against the wall. The good thing with finishing this part of the wall is that the ventilation specialist can mount the pipe as we agreed on, and we don’t need to get behind the pipe with this gypsum plate. Preferably we do the south wall in the workshop as well. That will be the priority for next week.

Next up, I climbed up on the scaffold and cut out corners for the window sills. Then I applied foam to the corners of the sills. When cutting corners, you get sawdust in the face. The foam is sticky stuff. This is not such fun work. Perhaps that was one of the reasons it took so long to do it. The enjoyable work, though, was done by my son and wife below me. They started creating our vegetable garden!

We have collected cardboard boxes for over a year now, for this moment. This is called a no-dig garden. We started by spreading our compost over the area. That compost is not fully mulched yet, but it forms a nice bottom of the garden. On top of that, we placed the cardboard. We removed the plastic tape from all the boxes. The cardboard is repelling weeds from growing up through the beds. On top of the cardboard, we put rests of our isolation material. The isolation is made from wood fibers, so that will also compost over time. The final layer is compost soil material that we bought on 20 November 2020.

Here in this photo, you can see a little bit of all layers in the garden. It is the cardboard in the bottom and the compost soil on top. To support the beds and avoid them falling out, we support the sides of the garden with wood snippets. Later, when I was done with the corners, I joined in and brought wheelbarrows of compost soil to the garden and wood snippets.

My wife started planting in the vegetable garden, and I went to the side of the container and prepared a place to sow the colored running beans. I can hang a thread from the corners of the container that the beans can climb on.

That was it. This was the week of preparing for the three sisters. Next week we will hopefully welcome the three sisters.