Finished the two south grazing fields Sunday, 24-Nov-24 20:43:20 CET

Sunday, 01-Dec-24 22:16:43 CET

Surveyor set out the shed

This week, we finished the preparations for the shed build outside. The surveyor came to set out the position of the shed. I fetched the tiller machine from the repair.

Monday 25 November

It's a new week with new opportunities. It was 14°C outside this morning. Unheard of. A little warmer is easy to get used to but is not normal. In preindustrial times, 14 C at the end of November would have been like grilled chickens falling from the sky, with dessert falling from the same sky a while later.

Today, I worked from home, and DW went to the office.

In the evening, I prepared music for future DJ sets, and Merida came to sleep beside me. I paid another installment for the shed builder.

Tuesday 26 November

Today, DW worked from home, and I had a half day off in the morning. The surveyor came to mark out the location of the shed. We discussed the shed's location, and he prepared his files for the work. He loaded the files into his equipment, and we went outside to set out the shed's location.

The location differed from how I had measured it and marked it with a yellow thread. The shed came further away from the road. That is great.

I can explain exactly how it happened. Initially, I set the shed to be 3.2 meters from the corner of the road, the actual pavement. Later, I was unhappy with that decision. Now, the surveyor asked me where that point was on his map? Well, I had the pavement in my head, which was the base point, but there I hesitated, and we thought it should be the corner pole of the GEO location of the property. That had been a much better point, to be honest. After all, it is marked in the ground with a pole. We checked if my drawing had the exact GPS coordinates as the surveyor's drawing, and that was so. Then, I let my CAD program display the distance from the GEO location to the point of the shed, which was 3.2 meters. Thus, it was the correct point. That was not so; it was not the correct point, but we made that conclusion there and then. The shed is placed 3.2 meters from the GEO location, further away from the road, but that is not where I had initially placed the shed. Well, the new location was much better.

So, what caused this happy accident? I had imported the GEO locations into a plane below the ground. When looking straight from above, indeed, that is the location. But I had it in my CAD drawing below the ground. I had forgotten. So, when we measured the distance from the corner of the shed to the GEO location, it was 3.2 meters diagonally down to a much deeper fictitious place into the ground, so to speak. So then we concluded that this was the right place.

This final location will make the traffic around the shed safer, and future changes in the sewer system will be more accessible when the shed is in this new location. The surveyor put the shed 3.2 meters from the GEO location, where it will be. It will be good.

The surveyor was a long man. He placed corners of wood outside the future building. Then, he put markings on the corners to indicate where the building would be. The wood constructions are placed 20 cm below the final floor level and 12 cm above the road. He also placed smaller sticks for where the poles would be placed.

When the surveyor left, I had lunch, and then it was time to work from home. I had good progress with exciting things to do. It was a great day.

After work, I blogged. Usually, I would come home from the office, so this felt luxurious.

Wednesday 27 November

Today, DW worked from home until the afternoon, and I also worked from home in the morning. It has been raining heavily in the morning. We were lucky with the weather yesterday when the surveyor and I set out the shed's perimeter.

After lunch, I hooked up the small trailer to the car. Then I brought DW to the train station with the trailer and everything. She was going to a party. From the train station, I drove to another city where I would pick up the tiller machine at the garden and tractor company.

We brought the tiller machine on 25 September. That was 63 days ago. I could have had it quicker, but it would have been more expensive.

So right now, I'm on my way to pick up the tiller machine. It's exciting! The storm Conall is approaching, and I am sufficiently terrified to ride an empty small trailer with a hood on the motorway. Luckily, there were traffic jams. In a way, it was good to keep the speed down, but on the other hand, it was questionable if I would arrive on time.

So what else could I do in that traffic jam? I progressed slowly to my destination. It turned out that repair was carried out to the asphalt covering of a bridge. The hole was not over 40 by 50 centimeters (16 by 20 inches).

I arrived at the shop well on time. I paid for the repair and loaded the tiller machine in the trailer. The wind picked up in speed; it was dark. I decided to return home via an alternative route parallel to the motorway. My idea was that I could go slower, which might be better to avoid having the little trailer topple over in the stiff wind. Besides going slower, I had the tiller machine, although heavy, not that the storm Conall would care about another 70 kilos of weight in the trailer. I must confess I don't know the weight of the tiller machine.

Surprisingly, more people considered going via a road parallel to the motorway. Especially since the bridge repair on the motorway was still underway. I drove on the road with a continuous stream of headlights towards me while my side of the road was empty. The wind was stiff and directly towards the front of the car. With that, I knew I would arrive home safely. It got darker. By the time I came home, it was completely dark.

When I came home, DW was still at the party. I listened to Ukraine-the-latest podcast while I filled the dishwasher. I listened to episodes 1007 and 1008. Especially episode 1007 was worth listening to.

Gemini asked me if I needed assistance, and I said I wanted to write a poem about me driving in a storm with a trailer. It did not make a lovely poem. Gemini is like a stressed person who wants to help people but cannot take the time to listen to me. In the middle of a sentence, Gemini cut me off. It rephrased some of what I said, missed the essence, and asked me if that was correct. No, that is not what I want. It happened several times.

I decided to give the task to Chat GPT. I gave ChatGPT this prompt:

I want help writing a poem with rhymes in a nice cadence. The poem should be about my experience today when I drove home from the garden machine workshop. They had repaired my tiller machine. I had a trailer behind my car with my tiller machine, and it was getting dark. The wind was picking up, and there was a storm coming in. I was afraid the trailer with the hood would topple over in the stiff wind. I avoided the motorway and took countryside roads to drive slower. A constant stream of headlamps towards me lit up the wet asphalt. It was nerve-wracking. Can you help me by writing a poem about this?

So here it is. The poem is about me driving home with the tiller machine.

The Tiller's Journey Home I left the workshop, the sky grown dim, A tiller on the trailer, held by a rim. The wind was stirring, a storm on the rise, Darkening clouds covered the skies. The roads ahead, a winding path, I took the country lanes to escape the wrath. The motorway felt too swift a ride, So slower I went, with caution as guide. The trailer behind, with its hood held tight, I feared the wind would give it a fight. With each gust, I gripped the wheel firm, Watching the road, my nerves on the term. A stream of headlamps, like fireflies bright, Cast shadows upon the wet, glistening night. They came at me, one after one, Their beams flashed bright as if to stun. The wind howled fierce, the storm drew near, But I pressed on despite my fear. Through twisting roads and weather so wild, I drove that trailer, though my thoughts reviled. With every bump, my heart skipped a beat, The hum of the tires, a steady retreat. At last, I arrived, the journey complete, A sigh of relief in the storm's retreat.

Nice. The road was completely straight, though. Haha. I like it. It had taken me at least a few evenings to look up those rhyme words. The spell checker is not enthusiastic about the poem. It wants to rewrite words, but then the rhymes are lost. So we will not do that.

Today, DM had her 82 birthday. I called DM and DF. They were surprised I had got the tiller machine operational again. They are doing fine. Hearing is getting worse, but that could be fixed with hearing aids.

Thursday 28 November

It was a lovely morning. There was a blue sky, no wind, and 6 C. DW worked from home, and I went to the office. My work went well. I had a good day with my activities. Today, I played the Afrobeat list. After that, I played Jens Top List. I think people like it, but if they do not, they can tell me. I have young colleagues, and they like the top list better. Older colleagues like the Afrobeat list. Jens banging house and techno list is not working that well at work.

https://music.youtube.com/channel/UC3bF5XUhSUfv490liGYs-1Q?si=bi5A_juYivCB1xmn

While at work, the builder contacted me. He was anxious about how the pole-driving machine would be able to navigate around the site. I told him there was nothing to be worried about. He wanted more photos from the site. His competitors, The Knol company, have a totally different attitude. They drive over everything while laughing.

I do need to remove the fence along the driveway. That will be necessary. I suppose that is a task for the upcoming weekend. The trailer and the car must be parked elsewhere when the pole drivers arrive. I also want to put poles around trees that we want to keep near the shed and mark these with barrier tape.

In the evening, I worked on the song collection of my DJ set. Some errors had sneaked in. I got it working. With that, I paused from DJing, animation, and blogging and scrolled the entire evening. Sometimes you need evenings like that. I lit a fire in the wood stove from pieces I cut off while working on the fence project. Every time I drill a diagonal pole, I cut off the top of the poles, and I have a couple to put in the fire. They burned nicely.

Today, The Guardian wrote about this area: Urban agriculture experiment in The Netherlands. I am sure I am the only Swede blogging about life here in English. So perhaps they had been reading my blog.

Friday 29 November

Today, the weather forecast claims it will be sunny. We will see about that. Both DW and I have a day off today. This weekend is the calm before the storm for the next two months. We will have shed builders and stuff going on until the Yule holidays. Today, I will work on the final preparations for the shed builders.

I put poles around the chestnut trees. We want these trees to survive the building of the shed.

Then we did a grocery shopping at the farm shop. It was such nice weather, and after we loaded our groceries, we checked on the farm's cows.

Between the farm shop and the cow barn is the hayshed. It is a six-edged building with a roof window at the top. Beautiful!

When we returned home from grocery shopping, we unloaded the tiller machine and put it in the sea container. But first, I did a little test run to listen to its sound.

I rediscovered that the tiller machine has reverse and forward gears. That is great.

The permanent fence along the driveway had to be removed. The pole driver must be able to drive along the driveway to the location of the stable. It is also necessary to make space for a pile of soil in the field along the driveway. The beautiful thing about attaching the net to the poles with regular thinner staples is that the staples can be removed. In that sense, the net is not permanent at all. Usually, you use thicker wire fence staples for a sheep fence, but those are harder to apply and, most notably, much more challenging to remove.

I put a clamp on the poles and lifted them up with the Stanley Fatmax trade lifts. I am using those trade lifts for so many things. Handy tools. I bought them on 5 July this summer.

You would be surprised how well regular staples from a staple gun can hold a sheep's fence. Besides, I have found that the staples are just one part of the story. The net has to be stretched, and when doing that correctly, the net is mainly held in place by the stretch force against the poles. In a curve, the net has to be placed outside the poles. When doing this systematically, you need a minimal amount of staples. In that case, I put a staple at the top and bottom of the net.

Saturday 30 November

I have heard about the social platform BlueSky for the last couple of days. I had to check it out. This morning, I got an account on the platform. I used my name as I usually do: Jens Malmgren. While at it, I also changed the blurb on the blog site. It is now much shorter. I first thought I was changing the burp, but that is not the correct word; it is a blurb. It is challenging to know how BlueSky will develop. I have seen platforms come and go, so this can be the same. As for today, the experience was great. I uninstalled X (formerly Twitter) simultaneously; it is about time.

Today, we had a slow morning. Today's real task was to decide the future stable's perimeter. We decided on 3½ meters by 7½ meters (about 7½ feet by 24¾ feet). I wanted the building height so one could walk under the roof's edge without ducking. I would hate the need to duck every time I go in or out of the shed for the rest of my life. DW was a little dissatisfied with my stand on this matter. She quickly calculated the ridge's height and concluded it would be okay anyway. Her estimation was 270 centimeters high. We will see if we can make it like that. We calculated how far the surveyor had placed the poles. That was 20 centimeters from the edge of the building. We copied that.

The rest of the day, I cleared up little things cluttering the area the pole driver would be accessing. I removed the permanent fence yesterday, but I put in a temporary fence as a replacement today. This time, I put it at a proper distance to the driveway so it will not hinder next week's activities.

Somehow, I managed to take no single photo today. That is amazing in a negative way. After writing this, I filled the dishwasher. While doing that, I got help from Merida.

She was adamant that this was an excellent position to sit and help me in the best possible way. I was careful not to step on her tail, lying on the floor behind her. She could have had it wrapped around her, but that had not been helpful enough.

So, let us see. What is going on here? Don't worry about me. I am just the helper. This cat is also good at the C# programming language. Her specialty is lambda calculus and asynchronous programming. But here and now, she was more interested in batch processing. Input and Output.

What are you looking at? I am waiting for the good part: The spoons and things that smell good from DW's cooking. Why is it taking so long?

Sunday 1 December

We had a slow morning. It was beautiful weather. I blogged, and DW knitted on a hat.

I arranged a temporary net for the sheep in our new vegetable garden. It will not be used as a vegetable garden until next season; the grass there is eatable for the sheep, so why not make them go there? Hannah and Bea agreed on this initiative. Selma was skeptical and stayed outside because she did not like this new fencing. While her sisters munched on dandelion leaves, Selma kept looking, longing to be part of the feast, but it was scary. She felt left behind by her sisters. I went behind her and fenced her into the new area, and then all was good, and the situation calmed down.

Next, I started preparing to work on the permanent fence. To do that, I had to take out the earth auger and give it more fuel. I noticed that a bolt was missing. It was not missing; the bolt head had broken off. I could get the rest of the bolt out and found a replacement. Oddly enough, the replacement bolt had a square head. Well, it was what I had, so I used it. Usually, the bolts have six-sided heads, but this one does not.

There was a washer hanging loosely, and I corrected that as well. With that, I started working on the fencing around the pond. We decided to give the birch trees individual sheep protection so the fence could more easily surround the pond. I got poles on the pond's west and the property's north sides. There, I made the poles for the gate. I will use a metal gate like I did on the south side. I did not finish the fence today.

I stopped working on the poles when I reached the northeast corner of the property. There, I made a proper corner pole with two diagonal poles. Then I packed the things and went inside. No less than a minute later, it started raining heavily. I was so lucky.

This is it for this week! Next week, the pole driver will come. Welcome back!