Continued to empty the sea container Sunday, 24-Aug-25 21:48:51 CEST

Sunday, 31-Aug-25 21:23:27 CEST

Mounted the winch

This week, I mounted the winch in the barn's ceiling.

Monday 25 August

Last week ended with a perfect cliffhanger: The right front wheel of our car made rattling sounds when we came home yesterday afternoon. Will we be able to celebrate a holiday by car at the end of the week? I called the garage, and they had their garage fully booked for the whole week. However, if we parked the car in their garage and they could keep it for a couple of days, then they would be able to pick up the task at their convenience. I will bring the car tomorrow morning.

Today, our heat pump specialist Gijs came to service our heating system. The first time he came here was before the foundation was finished on 4 June 2020. On 21 December 2021, Gijs came and installed the system. Today, he discovered that the pipes from the living room had been mixed up with the pipes from the workshop. In the workshop, we have a thermostat regulating the temperature. That means we had a spot in the living room that didn't heat up much because I set the workshop to a lower temperature. I don't think you can follow. Anyway, now the living room is adequately heated and cooled. Great!

We both worked from home today. It was a lovely day. It feels like the beginning of the end of summer.

After work, I continued mounting the winch to the barn's ceiling. It looked good, but I was not satisfied with the result.

In the evening, I worked on the phoneme project. When the program stopped at line 48890, goddamned, we went to bed.

Tuesday 26 August

Hi. It is Tuesday, 26 August. This morning, DW and I drove to the city center. On the trailer hook, I mounted our bike carrier and my bike. I brought DW to the train station, and then I continued to the garage. The garage received the car but made no promises that they would have time to inspect it. If they knew more, they would make contact with me. I waited for a phone call all day, but it never came.

After work, before the garage closed, I biked back to the garage and had a chat with the owner, Nico Holdinga. he didn't give any firm predictions, but things were easier now that they could have the car for a longer time. Perhaps he could even have a look at it this evening?

At the onion field, the onions were being picked. There was a distinct smell of onions in the air that I'm used to in this area at the beginning of the autumn.

It's a lovely 27°C today, and I enjoy biking from work in these conditions. I took an image of the bike path and calibrated the color to 6300 Kelvin to match how I was seeing the light at this moment. If you take a photo with auto settings, you cannot be sure that the colors match what you are seeing. Obviously, when doing this, you are relying on the fact that your screen is properly presenting colors, and that is not always the case.

Just before I came home, I realized that it would be nice to have a few items from the farm shop. It was 15 minutes before closing, so I was well on time. The cows were out walking.

I hope to receive a positive message from the car garage tomorrow.

Wednesday 27 August

This morning I made a zucchini horn!

I learned about the phenomenon via my YouTube shorts feed. It is simple to make a zucchini horn. This is how to make a horn. Cut of a leaf with a good portion of the stem. The stem is hollow all the way to the leaf. Cut away the leaf, but leave the cap of the stem. Then, scrape the end of the stem near the leaf to remove any spikes. Then slice into the stem along the nerve two or three centimeters, about an inch. Now put the sliced end in your mouth and blow the horn.

Yesterday, we didn't pick any raspberries, so today we had a plentiful supply. They are delicious for breakfast.

The garage just called me, and told me that it was a stone scraping on the wheel which had been removed, and the car is good to go on holiday. I feel so relieved! I will get there tomorrow and pick up the car.

At 3 PM, I went to the food co-op and delivered vegetables. I feel so proud of the potatoes we are harvesting. They look amazing. They are huge with light skin. Fantastic.

I figured out what my problem was with the winch. The roof beam (1) is slanted, but the winch (2) is mounted on it, hanging horizontally. This means that the bolts (5) will be subjected to lateral force every time I pull something with the winch. At some point, they will snap. I mounted the bolts through the pipe (3), and the winch brackets (4) are mounted to the winch.

Now, if I made arch shapes for the pipe, just like in the famous video 'Learning Shapes the Wrong Way,' the arch will take up the sideways forces. It worked very well, but I will glue the arches next time. Then I moved the ladder to a new place. I tried the winch by pulling up winter tires. This makes it possible to continue cleaning up the sea container.

Thursday 28 August

This morning, I harvested 6 zucchinis to bring to work. I hoped that people would want them.

It was a beautiful morning, and I biked to work. I wasn't even that late. After breakfast, a kestrel landed on the fence to our kitchen garden. It gave me time to fetch my DSLR camera with a telescopic lens. It posed for me for a couple of seconds, so I've got a reasonably good photo of the bird; you can clearly see the pupils. It had circular pupils.

I wonder if this bird had an issue with one of its feet. This is one of the more noble birds, and they don't come to your garden without reason. This was just another indication for me that this autumn we will see an invasion of mice. Those rodents are good at digging, and we have a weak spot below our house. I think I will try putting poison under the house. The question is, what smell do I prefer: decaying carcasses or an entire population of mice peeing and pooping? Well, we tried the latter a couple of winters in a row, so I think we can do something different this winter.

I just passed crows killing a pigeon. Life is hard today. But the bike is not clicking, and that fills me with joy. In the afternoon, I will pick up the car!

All colleagues wanted zucchinis! I forgot to bring my lunch today. How is that possible? I got three slices of bread from a colleague. That was very kind of him.

Now I am on my way home with the car! It is 4:50 PM right now. I thanked the people at the garage for fixing the car despite being fully booked for the entire week. Nico reiterated that it was only possible because I left the car at the garage for a couple of days.

At home, I harvested two zucchinis that I gave away to neighbors. I hope that the remaining zucchinis will not grow into giants before we are back. Perhaps DS would like to harvest a couple of zucchinis? We harvested four sweet corn cobs that we will bring with us to Sweden.

With all the things packed in the car, DS informed us about the ins and outs of taking care of sheep, an orange cat, indoor plants, and so on. We rolled out of the driveway. The neighbors stood by the road waving to us. They are so funny.

When we arrived at the border into Germany, a mist hung over the landscape. It looked cool. At that point, I wished I weren't driving and could take pictures of the landscape, but DW was kind enough to do it for me.

I drove to Delmenhorst. We stayed in Delmenhorst on 17 May 2024. This time, we stayed in a more modern hotel, at Hotel Thomsen. The house itself was two buildings bolted together, but the room was nice. I suppose our room was located in the more modern part of the building. The room had a hall, a small living room, and a large bedroom with an en-suite bathroom—a little apartment in a way.

Friday 29 August

This was a more up-to-date hotel experience. The madras was on the stiff side, and the duvet was made for arctic conditions, but I emptied the duvet sleeve before going to sleep. By now, I am accustomed to duvets made for extreme cold conditions in hotel rooms, although the rooms themselves are usually at a normal temperature. We slept with the two windows open. The road outside was noisy, but I used my earplugs. DW doesn't like earplugs, but she had not experienced the road as disturbing.

We had breakfast in the hotel. It was nice. The guests were men only. It was like sitting in a canteen of a construction worker company. The breakfast was good, nothing fancy but good enough for ten euros per person. I concluded that it would be okay to return to the hotel another time. That is a rather good rating.

After breakfast, we continued driving north to our cottage in Sweden. In Denmark, after a three-hour drive, we switched at Holmmoor Ost.

DW drove, and I wrote on the blog and took a rest from driving. I am capable of sleeping in the car when someone else is driving. I fall asleep quickly. It is a gift I am happy to have.

In Denmark, near Copenhagen, in Salby, we had a break. I wanted to take a photo of the motorway from the parking area, and I wanted the cars to appear as though they were driving past us at a high speed. For that, I wanted motion blur, but I couldn't create it with my mobile phone camera. The DSLR camera can do that! I took this photo.

Look! The cars look fuzzy! I set the camera to S "Shutter priority" and then adjusted the speed to a slow setting, allowing the shutter to compensate for optimal picture quality. Marvellous. The photo itself is not a fantastic one, but considering it was not taken with a smartphone, it is still a nice picture.

Then I drove over the Öresundsbridge up along E6 and then E4 towards Stockholm. We stopped at Örkelljunga. We tanked the car and had dinner at Old Mike's Diner.

We arrived at the cottage at 7 PM.

Saturday 30 August

DM arrived at our cottage in the morning. She had issues with the phone. I managed to help her with the issues. It was not easy, but we managed. I sometimes wonder how non-technical people manage their daily lives.

DF was at the hospital. He had issues with his heart. The doctors were going to operate on the heart, but it was uncertain when this would happen. At least he was in good hands, with constant monitoring of the heart. If something went wrong, he would get quick emergency treatment.

Today, we started on our task for this week: improving the roofing over the root cellar, also known as a fruit cellar or earth cellar. We have not maintained the roofing exceptionally well, and now we need to take action.

The cows came to inspect our activities. Peter is a farmer using our property to let his cows graze. We get an open landscape in return. We also let him use our electricity for the fencing. He needs to come with water for the cows, and that is about it. He is not a talkative person. The cows are curious; they want to see what is going on.

We decided to start working on the southeast part of the cellar. Broken tiles were placed in the trailer for transport to the recycling center. The good tiles will be reused. We got more of these tiles on the other side of the barn, so we can easily rebuild the roof. The question is whether we can also do the other side, the northwest part of the roof, but we have other plans for that.

On the northwest side, there is another type of tile. We wait for decisions about the other side. On the southeast side, we dug out soil that was too high. Roots of raspberries were removed.

While working on this, the ice cream car came to our neighbours. We went there and bought ice cream!

In all the years we have been to the cottage, the ice cream car has never driven into our property, let alone our neighbors'. They bought plenty of ice cream, but we also bought some. The children got extras that they will not forget about for a long time. Games, a gold coin, and a box of colorful sticky plasters with the ice cream car's logo on them. It is a brilliant way of getting your advertisement out there. Get it plastered to wounded children! Mom and Dad got a cooling bag.

While we were at it, we were invited for coffee at the neighbours' to see their progress on building their new house.

In the afternoon, we were tired. We had a break, had ice cream, and then went inside. Tomorrow, we will continue working on the roof.

In the evening, it rained. It's possible that we had the best weather today; we will see. DW made a dough for bread this evening.

I worked on the phoneme project and reached line 67286! It was a significant step up from 59551.

Sunday 31 August

It was foggy this morning. As I understand it, fog forms when water vapor cools down. It was a warm day yesterday, followed by rain. During the night, it cooled down.

DW's dough was ready for baking this morning. She is using her fridge bread recipe, which I wrote about on 4 November 2022.

The bread rose more than usual. The dough was stiffer this time. The resulting bread looks fantastic!

We worked on the roof of the root cellar. On the one hand, it would have been nice to renew the entire structure, but then that would require the use of a lot of wood, and I was not sure it was worth it. We opted for replacing the worst parts. That meant we made adjustments here and there.

The root cellars in this area are built with an arch of stones for the roof, on top of that, sand, and on top of that, a roof construction. We removed bad tiles, removed old, rotten wood beams, and replaced them where necessary.

We concluded that we did not know how the side of the roof would be constructed, but we decided to leave it unfinished. Then, with the tiles in place, we would know how and where to build the sides.

The tiles that still could be used were put on the roof. That revealed an issue. The roof was not perfectly perpendicular to the barn's wall. It was easier to put the tiles perpendicular to the beams. That formed an opening near the wall, so how would we solve that? We left that work for tomorrow.

It was a great week. We got the car fixed. DF's condition was unexpected. Hope all goes well. I wrote 2658 words this week. Welcome back next week. Then you will hear more about DF and the root cellar roof, as well as other things we experience.