Sheep week Sunday, 16-Oct-22 20:41:14 CEST

Kitchen bench top Sunday, 30-Oct-22 22:16:13 CET

Sunday, 23-Oct-22 21:50:09 CEST

Kitchen appliances

This week we ordered appliances for the kitchen.

Monday 17 October

DD visited us this weekend. I brought her to the train station in the morning, and after that, I went to the office.

When I came home after work, I started to reinforce the rain roof tarp. I got the tarp in the workshop, which is needed because it has to be dry when putting on the reinforcement. At the anchor points of the tarp, I sandwich the tarp between two triangles of multiplex boards and double-sided tape. The tape creates extra friction and then bolts to squeeze the boards together. I managed to do a couple of these triangles before it was time to eat.

DW had harvested our mangold for the first time. There is much more in the salad bed of this stuff, but this was the first time we tried this vegetable. She made a pie out of it, which was an achievement because we still only have the combi microwave oven. It will be so lovely with a regular oven in the future.

It was rainy today, and the sheep did not like having only their two huts to hide in. They got so big that there was only room for one sheep in each hut. I was at work over the day, so I could not help them.

This evening I also finished the blog of last week. Yeah, the blog is not writing and publishing itself; I am doing it.

Today DS stayed home because he had got a common cold. Somehow we were convinced it was not Corona. Anyway, he was feeling bad, so he took it easy. Both DW and I had no problems.

Tuesday 18 October

This evening I moved a vacant sheep hut we had standing on the south side of the house. I moved it into their winter area, so they all got their own huts to hide from the rain.

DS stayed at home. He did a self-test and concluded he did not have Corona.

Wednesday 19 October

This was a somewhat more hectic day. First, I went to work as I usually do these days. After lunch, I went home, and today we got a visit from the carpenter that will build our kitchen.

He brought a little sample of what the wood looks like that he will use for building the kitchen. It is ash wood for the doors, and the cabinets are built with laminated wood. It will look good. We checked the plans and could double-check that everything would work. Next week we will go to stonemasonry to make the kitchen benchtop. We go together with the carpenter to the masonry.

We will also need to order appliances for the kitchen. That is not something the carpenter does for us, but that is fine. We can handle that.

The carpenter will come to us in week 47 and install the kitchen. That is good because then we got time to prepare for the kitchen and even have some holidays. This also puts pressure on me to finish the plastering of the kitchen area.

DW told me that something extraordinary happened when the carpenter and I were discussing how to set up the shelves on the west side. We stood close to the ozone detector, discussing what to do with the led light. Apparently, the detector activated our ventilation system and had it increase its power. When we were done in that corner, the ventilation system was happy again and put the ventilation on regular speed.

When the carpenter left, DS and I went to the dentist. I had to repair two fillings, and DS had two wisdom teeth removed. DS had a more painful experience than me, but he did fine.

In the evening, I sat down and composed music. No, gardening, no sheep fence, nothing, just playing with music.

Thursday 20 October

This morning it was a gorgeous sunrise. The first I did was to make a sequence of the windmill, just for fun.

I took one photo with a sufficient amount of unsharpness. I combined the moving effect with artificial sharpening in post-production.

The photo is taken with f/5.3; exposure is 1/25 of a second at iso 200. I had the camera on a tripod this time. We all know that moving things are supposed to look unsharp, although these days, camera equipment is so light-sensitive and fast that it is ridiculous. It is funny, though, that a cultural understanding of camera technology is so widespread and intuitive that you don't even have to explain it to a person. "The blades move so fast it becomes unsharp." No, they don't.

The exposure time was something that I experimented with creating. I put the camera on aperture preference, the A selection on the big knob. I set the aperture to rather big, i.e., the opening was big. Then I varied the time of the exposure. It had to be open for a long time to create sufficient fuzziness. Not too much and not too little.

After taking this photo, I had breakfast and worked from home.

The rest of the day became grey. After work, I walked around our property to catch up with what was happening with plants. DW harvested runner beans for our dinner and made a Sajour beans dish of these. It was delicious.

I can see that the salad bed is still alive, so to speak. It has not been damaged by any frost so far. Tomorrow I will harvest some of the salad we can eat together with pizza. The sheep have eaten much of the grass on our property to a reasonable level. That makes it possible for the light to reach the ground and keep the grass alive.

The mullein plants are doing fine; we got these from MIL on 17 September. Their leaves are almost like soft fabric. Next year they will be almost two meters high. That will look soo cool.

The flower garden has not gotten any attention for almost a month, but it is doing well. It has flowers in it, still flowering. There is a lot of weed, but I have no time to work on that now.

One less funny note this Thursday was that DW and I started to also get the common cold. DS had been sick at home at the beginning of this week, so we have had his viral stuff around us for a couple of days. DW almost got rid of her lumbago, and now she got a common cold. Things are going well here.

Friday 21 October

Today in the evening, we had pizza again with our own salad, but first, I gave our sheep their food supplement. They also got a little hay to eat. There is still grass to eat, but the grass growth is slowing down, so we started giving them hey as well, just a little to keep them happy. They eat it as a kind of delicacy.

A neighbor walked with her daughter and asked how we made our mini dyke. I could tell the story and also send the links to my blog. Last year in March, I rented a digging machine to create the mini dyke. It is much cheaper to do it yourself instead of hiring a company to do the work for you. It felt handy that I had written down this story, so I could share it.

Saturday 22 October

I was inspired by my walk around the property, so I had a look again this morning. Some plants are unstoppable; our strawberries have begun on a new round of flowering. What are they thinking?

The zucchini Raven F1 produced another fruit; t his zucchini plant stands on the west side of the sea container. I thought F1 referred to Formula One car races. In plant breeding terminology, F1 indicates that this zucchini is the first cross-inheritor from two well-established ancestors. Look it up if you want a better explanation. To me, it looks beautiful.

Today we decided to go to a shop to look at the stove. It did not matter where we went, just that we could have a look at the stove IRL. We drove 45 minutes to get to the shop. We decided to buy an electric stove with two ovens 60 centimeters wide. There are two on the market. One looks retro, with a useless lid; we are not into retro that much, especially not useless design features. After extensive research, two shops were selling these in the Netherlands. One did not have it in stock, and then this shop where they had it.

The stove we wanted to buy had a more modern design. Both oven lids had a glass front like we are used to so that you can look into the oven while it is busy. We were so lucky because the shop had this stove in their storage! We decided to buy a black stove.

Next, we had a look at a freezer and a fridge. There was more to choose from. We looked at both configurations: 1. Two fridge and freezer combinations. 2. One freezer and one fridge. The second option gives more value for money because the dual appliance needs to reserve space for the delimiter and the doors. Since this was designed like a combination, the handles were identical but offset so they would not clash. We got one issue, though; taking the swivel of the doors into account, the space for these two machines is a little wider than we anticipated. We need to talk to our carpenter about this so that he can make the cupboard next to these two machines a little bit narrower.

Were we done? No, we were not. We want a dishwasher as well! The dishwasher was supposed to be built into the cupboard. Sure, they had this as well. It was a bit daunting to take a picture of it because the lid is made for having a front. Here in the showroom, it did not have that, and it was not anchored either, so when I opened it, I tipped the whole machine over me. After putting it back, I made a new attempt at making a photo, and it went so-so but okay. I have something anyway.

We gave our details to the salesperson, and the deal was closed. That was such a nice feeling. The salesperson was knowledgeable and friendly; he did not try to trick us into any deal we did not want. It was a coincidence that they had all our needs in stock precisely, that was pure luck, but it did not feel any less pleasant just because we had luck.

With a feeling of satisfaction, we drove home again. While driving, I hypothesized that for every kilometer toward the center of the Netherlands, the more expensive the shop space is. It is less likely that the showroom is less equipped, it is smaller, and the storage is also smaller. These things decrease luck.

When we came home, we connected the small trailer and went right away to the upcycling center. It was still open, lucky again. There I threw away garbage while DW went to the second-hand store. The metal bin had a discarded scaffold. I was appalled seeing this.

With the trailer empty, I also went to the second-hand shop. I bought a foldable spade, and DW bought a couple of saucers.

When we came home, DW made supper of zucchini. It is such a lovely feeling to eat from our own garden.

We got a sort of mystery. There is a house in the neighborhood having a lamp shining. To begin with, I thought it was a red lamp. Then after a few weeks, I discovered it was changing color all the time. The orange color is more bright. The blue is not that bright. The lamp is turned off over the day, so it is difficult to see where it comes from. This evening I set up the camera on a tripod. I thought that was clever; then, I could flick between the day and night images to see where the light was coming from.

Sunday 23 October

I could also see the lamp and the house this morning in the dusk. It was the first time that happened.

	Red.
	Blue.

 

I like solving mysteries. Perhaps we go there and have a look at the house nearer by.

This morning we went with the trailer and picked up more stones for our sheep. We had asked the provider if it was easy to access the stones with a trailer, and they said it was easy with a wheelbarrow. Our wheelbarrow or theirs? We brought our own wheelbarrow, and that turned out to be handy. We could borrow theirs as well. I was slightly disappointed that they had not put the tiles in piles. The tiles had to be picked up. The lady providing the tiles did that for us, which was okay. The tiles were in a little garden behind the house, perhaps 50 meters from the street.

DW and I moved wheelbarrows to our trailer and filled it up. We usually do 4 or 5 layers of tiles. We also placed a couple of tiles in the trunk of the car.

DW hit my right ankle with the wheelbarrow, the Achilles heel at one point. Her wheelbarrow was loaded, so I suppose I got a severe hit, but I tried to pretend it did not happen. Later on Sunday afternoon and evening, I could feel my feet hurt, especially if I had been sitting still for a while.

When we came home, we laid the tiles next to the tiles from last weekend. The tiles are now filling the area under the entire rain roof.

While we worked on this, a neighbor came and borrowed our tool for compressing ground. We bought that from a second-hand shop on 6 June 2020 for €7,50. It is excellent that it comes to use.

This time we put gravel next to the end tiles to fasten the tiles a little bit. It is not a thorough method to fasten the tiles, but it is better than nothing.

I found that many flowers in the garden are still flowering. Here are the flowers right now:

	Alyssum "Violet queen" Lobularia Maritima.
	Calendula. Sowed 27 April.
	Rudbeckia Hirta. Sowed 27 April.
	Lobelia Erinus. Sowed 27 April, 2 June.
	Viola Wittrockiana. Planted on 11 September 2021. These plants come from a supermarket.
	Delosperma Jewel. We bought this plant on 4 June.
	A Dianthus. This plant is also from 4 June.
	Spaanse Margriet Rain Daisy
	Coreopsis Grandiflora Early Sunrise. Strangely, this plant never got documented. When was it bought, and where is it coming from? I think it is from the batch of 4 June.
	Phlox Drumandii. There came from seeds we bought on 30 October 2021. I had mishaps with the Phlox this year, but I do like them.
	Salvia Sylvestris.

 

So much fun with flowers. Amazingly, they are still flowering in October.

This evening I continued on the rain roof reinforcement project. I had prepared the triangles, the nuts, and the bolts. I ran out of bolts, which is good because I bought too long bolts. This means I have to buy more bolts to finish this project. This time I will sit and calculate how many I need and how long they are supposed to be.

There are eight triangles left to do, and I plan to do 6 bolts per triangle, which is about 50 bolts. I ordered them right away. They will arrive next week.

The milestone for this week was ordering the appliances for the kitchen! See you next week.