The heat recovery ventilation system got installed Sunday, 14-Aug-22 20:58:25 CEST

Started plastering the kitchen Sunday, 28-Aug-22 20:49:51 CEST

Sunday, 21-Aug-22 21:00:08 CEST

Southwest fence

This week we started putting up the fence along the southwest border of the property.

Monday 15 August

It is not a good feeling when you have a good flow in writing the blog when you know it is last week's blog and not the current week's blog. Well, I had to finish last week's blog until I could start this week.

Last weekend I finished the sowing beds for the second round. That was hard work. I still got to apply slug protection to the second bed. The first sowing bed has two copper lines, but I think I want to add a third line. We bought a stapler with sturdy staples perfect for the job, so I will use that. The positive thing about warm weather is that the seeds jumpstart their germination.

Another worry right now is what we should do with the harvest. We got enormous courgettes. We harvested one of four kilograms, but there are three more on the way of the same size. DW tried to pickle and sour courgettes. It is the first time she has tried that, so it is an experiment.

The last thing we are worried about is that the sheep have enough to eat and will not be damaged by the heat. I brought the shed to where they were and gave them water and hey to eat in the shed. That was a great success. The day after there came a bit of rain, that was great. Since then, there has been raining from time to time, so this is much appreciated. There is enough for them to eat, but they are not that adventurous in searching for calories, so they appear a little hungry from time to time. This is especially true with scorching weather when they try to stay in the shade, but it is an issue if there is not enough to eat in the shaded area.

We decided to buy sheep fencing on rolls to make it much easier to move the fence for the sheep. That fence will arrive in a couple of days. We will still use the secondhand fences we started on along the road. The rolls will come on other parts of our property. It is so much work and not so fun to do when it is scorching hot, so I hope we can get over the heat soon.

Tuesday 16 August

DD came home today. It was a long time since she came to us last time. At least, it felt so for me. After the regular work, I had to do tasks for the planting committee at work. That is true; I am part of the planting committee. We went to a garden center and picked up some plants to make the office greener. That was nice. It was no problem to stay late because DD would come to us, and she arrived in the early evening.

Wednesday 17 August

It was a regular work from the office morning. I brought DD to the train, so I arrived early at the office. I opened the windows to ventilate the floor. That was highly appreciated among my colleagues. At some point, it started raining, and I had to close all the windows; in that hectic moment, I missed a door for a wall. I smacked into the wall. It was a loud bang; indeed, it was an enormous one in my head, but no one else noticed it. When I came home, I had a little scratch above my right eye. There developed a hump above the eye but no pain at all.

DW asked me if I had any ideas about erecting the runner beans. Due to the rain and the weight of the beans, they had fallen over, and soon enough, they would reach the ground. I had an idea for how to do it, but it was my kind of idea. Metal.

It worked. I used one standing pole of the Crab 48 scaffold with four feet. I did not even use any diagonal, but that is still possible. It became sturdy enough to keep the runner beans upright. It might be challenging to reach the uppermost beans, but it is possible to untie the cord and let the beans come down a bit. Great fun that we have these tools!

Thursday 18 August

I woke up with a dark red ring above my right eye. It looks worse than it is. I worked from home today, so I could not show my new fancy eye shadow to my colleagues. We will see how much is left of it on Monday. Perhaps it is by then back to light green or yellow. I tried to take a photo with my phone, but it is not that good at focusing, but this is what it is right now.

In the evening, I went out in the garden and removed reed shoots. In the process, I had to transplant the silver gray Sea Wormwood to a new safe place. I split it and planted it in two different places.

I also transplanted the White Mallow I moved here on 18 June and the Japonica Froebelii. With this operation, I can go after the reed much easier.

There is plenty of germination in the first bed. In the second bed, it is a little quieter.

The Radish has started to come up, but not much is happening for the rest.

Friday 19 August

I discovered the first Swiss Chard cotyledons. I might be wrong, but I believe that since the cotyledons look similar to many plants, they might have a common genetic background. It is just speculation. Getting the slug protection up on these beds will be necessary, but I will do that over the weekend. You might wonder why I am not rushing to do it now; I am busy now.

The harvest of strawberries is better and better. There is about a handful of strawberries every day. It still feels like a luxury in this amount. I am not sure I will appreciate the strawberries if it gets more. The plants like it here and send out stems, but I cut them off. There is a couple of offspring that succeeded in escaping.

We discovered a couple of root beets that had been eaten by slugs. DW gave them to the sheep with the idea that they would eat the leaves. They did. Later Selma came back and developed a taste for the beet itself. She is now having not only eye shadow but now she got "lipstick" as well. It is a lady-like sheep. Since the beet also contains sugars, DW took away the beets. Then the feast was over. The sheep can have a little sugar but not too much. It deregulates their digestion system.

Saturday 20 August

This morning, I discovered I started to develop a yellow edge on top of the deep purple eye shadow. I doubt this will be over next week. I started thinking that perhaps I should buy myself new glasses. The ones I have are getting old. Then I will be able to see better, which is always good; that way, I can better notice the difference between a door and a window. I took this photo with the Nikon camera. It is not many times I made a selfie with a DSLR. Actually, it is not many times I take selfies at all. That feels new to me.

This morning I noticed that the cucumber had started sprouting as well. It will be interesting to see how this project goes. The cucumber will grow high, so I suppose I will need to provide it with support. I can build something for the cucumber. The kohlrabi will need a net around it to avoid white cabbage butterflies. I found a website about pests by the plant with interesting information, although I must say that flying pests are not the biggest problem for us: That is the slugs.

After breakfast, we worked on the sheep fence poles on the property's west side. I drilled holes in the ground and mounted poles while DW took the brushcutter to clear the way for my work. Our sheep held our company on the other side of the temporary fence. They got a willow branch to eat the leaves from time to time. We put the fence outside the dyke, but we tried to get it snug to the dyke so that the sheep would get as much as possible. We had planted trees and bushes along that side, so it fits tight.

In the afternoon we got visitors. Friends, we have not had contact with for many years. They were enthusiastic about our project. Life in this new house has much more social contact than in the old house. Our visitors got a squash from us. They were enthusiastic about that too.

I started working on the slug fence of the new sowing bed. This time I decided to use three copper wires. DW made supper with our own vegetables. We had coffee with strawberries in the garden on the north side of the house. After the coffee, I continued with the slug fence. After a while, it got darker, but it was essential to continue working on the slug fence because they started to show interest in the delicious plants. I stapled the wire to the wood with the new electric stapler. It was a little tricky to get it right and look nice.

When it was too dark to work, I took out lamps and continued working. At 10 pm or 22:00, to be more precise, I had finished the cabling and turned on the slug fence. A few moments later, the first contestant tried the fence. It had to turn. I already got a slug in the first bed, but that was because I had to turn off the electricity while working on the fence. The first bed only got two copper lines, and I am thinking of adding a line. This system works really well. I am growing things that the slugs find really delicious. Somehow they can smell from a distance how delicious a plant is.

Sunday 21 August

This morning, I planned to put out more poles, and DW would wash wool from our sheep that got cut on 9 June.

We placed 19 poles and reached 50 meters. For the first 25 meters stretch, we put the poles 2 and a half meters apart. At 25 meters, we planned an opening in the fence with two poles a meter apart. Then after the opening, we put out the poles three meters apart. The very last pole at 50 meters we will wait with until we get the net, which will arrive next week. It is a significant difference on the last pole if it is ten centimeters off. Then it is much better to put up the fence and know where the last pole will be. Then we can drill that hole. Sadly, it takes so much walking to finish a project like this. When we are done, much of the grass is flattened, so it will not be easy for our sheep to eat this grass. The poles will last 20 years, so the sheep will get plenty of chances to eat from this grass.

DW washed the wool. It was a lot of work, but she liked it. One byproduct of her washing was fertilizer water for our plants. It is nutritious water from the sheep, so it is like fertilizer.

Today we got new spontaneous guests. That is so nice, we did not have that in our last house. We could offer another courgette, so now we only got one giant courgette left. That is not true; there are new giants in the making. She washed the wool of one of the sheep.

 

	Rudbeckia
	Alyssum
	Phlox.

 

It was a lovely evening. I took portrait photos of flowers.

This week I finished the slug protection of the second sowing bed, and we put out 19 poles for 50 meters of permanent fencing. I smacked into a glass wall and got a black eye, just like the sheep Selma. DW washed one-third of the wool. As you can see, there are plenty of activities. This concludes this week's blog.