BIG LIST

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The BIG LIST and the small dog…

May 4, 2011 in Campsite Improvements, Environmentally Friendly, Frugal Living, Team News by fullmonte | 3 comments

I’ve been wanting to blog about our BIG LIST ‘11 for weeks but the further we got from ticking much off that darned table of tasks, the less I wanted to be reminded about it…  And then recently, we’ve been so busy working away at getting the jobs done that I haven’t had time to blog!

When we wrote the BIG LIST, we didn’t have Daisy Marmite on board.  A small, mischevious puppy with curiosity as sharp as her teeth is not overly conducive to getting stuff done!  The action of sweeping anything is fascinating to her, so cleaning up after projects  with Daisy attached to the broom has been challenging.  We can no longer leave objects within puppy range whilst working.  The list of things we’ve turned around to find her hareing off with excitedly currently include: Nik’s phone, lighters, gloves, hand trowels, flower pots, hosepipes and fittings and (most hilariously) Steve’s underpants.  Disappointingly he disposed of them before I could take a picture of the shredded bits of cloth that the former M&S tackle-huggers had become!  Despite this, here are the achievements to date:

  • Compost loos

  1. re-concrete the floor of the toilet chambers, raising the level to meet the drainage pipe
  2. re-construct the crates and mesh on the chamber floor
  3. put extended hatch sills around all the openings and weather proof the actual hatch covers

1 & 2 – done.  Only one chamber has an extended sill and water ingress in the front of the remaining chambers during the recent rain has continued to reinforce the importance of doing this for them.

  • Tyre Wall

  1. constructed
  2. topped off with a new stone wall
  3. planted

After much digging of clay & ramming of earth, the wall of tyres is complete.  The stone wall is half finished so only some of the planting has been done (can’t risk wrecking the plants with rocks falling on them!) but so far, so good:

For me, this task won’t be fully ticked off until I post a photo (late summer?) of the completed wall aburst with colour, foliage & tumbling fruits…

  • Tent Pitch #3

Done.  And grass seeds are already beginning to sprout on all 3 new tent pitches.

  • Generator Shed

Done.  But not as originally planned.  Rather than build an entire new structure for the trusty genny to live in, why not keep it in the workshop but extend the exhaust to be long enough to expel its fumes outside?  Steve’s brainwave was made a reality by the clever guys at Auspuh Servis:

A hole then had to be drilled through the workshop wall:

And the modified generator was installed:

It’s quiet.  It’s out of the weather, although we still have fashion a surround (we’ll recycle an old tin can) around the hole so that water won’t get into the gap in the wall and we’ll need to sheild the end of the pipe to stop water dripping down the exhaust and rusting the engine.  It doesn’t fill the workshop with fumes anymore.  This solution has saved us time & money – bravo Stevo!  Drawbacks – it’s not exactly portable anymore.  But  that’s ok.

  • Fencing

This was the task that held us up for so long & that I blogged about here.  Strictly speaking it isn’t completed.  There is still a piece of mreza (thick metal mesh) to erect in place of the tatty-looking and vulnerable (security-wise) stretch of fencing from the upper gate to the new boundary fence.  There’s also the small question of the stream-side fence, which is non-existent and we currently have no-friggin-idea how we will secure this.  But no goat or cow debacles to report so far this year and we’re hoping that here at least Daisy Marmite will come into her own… although based on her uncouth eating habits so far, she’ll probably just follow them round and eat their poo!

  • Restore table & chairs

Not even attempted yet, but an absolute MUST if our beloved wooden furniture is to survive another year.  This is a job for a run of sunny days when we are living up there but before our guests arrive as the task will be messy & noisy, involving belt sander & the like.

  • Maintain grounds

  1. Sow grass
  2. Strim, stump, mow
  3. Re-gravel drainage ditch

1 & 2 – done.  Although mowing and strimming will now be an ongoing task.  And there are more areas to try to level with the remains of the topsoil that arrived way back then and then to seed.  The ordering of gravel has to be done.  We can’t put it off much longer.  In digging out clay for the tyre wall construction, we started to uncover the terrace wall that is a priority re-build:

This stretch of wall runs along the last 2 grey water baths.  If we re-build it well, and incorporate steps, it will give us easier, more stable access to the orchard, flower garden & compost areas.  You can see from the picture above how eroded the gravel ditch has become here as the clay has fallen onto it and we’re re-cutting ground level by digging out clay.

  • Tile the last toilet & grout all loos

Done. Done. Done.  We’ve even painted over all the tile adhesive marks and scrubbed the loos to within an inch of their long-drop lives.  The only picture I have is of the toilets finished but not cleaned.  It does NOT do the job justice so will have to wait for a sunny day for a re-take.  Trust me, it looks great – except in the now brown & cream tiled toilets with dark brown wooden toilet holders & light brown wooden toilet seats, the green & blue galss bricks do not co-ordinate well at all!

  • Tiling the steps

Not even started yet although we’re considering trying to get Steve’s Dad, Gerry, into it as a project when they visit soon.  I reckon he’s a dab hand at tiling.  Realistically though we may only get one set of steps tiled this season as it has to be done when there are no guests due to inevitable ensuing inconvenience and mess.

  • Grey water system made optimally operational

  1. Dig out baths & replant
  2. Dig up irrigation pipes
  3. Re-build stone walls and protect pipes

We’ve made good progress with this task.  The baths were totally clogged with over-developed roots that had been greedily feeding on grey water goodness for half a year.  The first task was to dig out the problem baths.  This was no mean feat!  Check out the straining muscles on this poor face as Steve desperately tries to heave out chunks of the bamboo:

All the baths needed attention, barring the first bath which we’d dealt with at the end of last summer and which didn’t have any ferocious bamboo planted in it!  The pictures below barely illustrate the mental-ness of the bamboo roots but…

At least 3 of the baths were completely dug out, de-rooted (made up word alert?!) and washed out.  Gravel & stones were replaced, all clay removed as far as possible and fresh commercial & home made compost added to top the baths off.  Drastically reduced clumps of reeds, bamboo, sweet potatoe flowers, umbrella plants and mint were put back in the baths.

Unsurprisingly, Daisy Marmite was fascinated by the smell of the grey water pipe pieces that we had to dismantle in the process of clearing & re-planting the baths:

We’ve elected not to dig out the irrigation pipes in the raised beds.  Water seems to be flowing away reasonably ok in most beds.  Enough to dispose of the excess grey-water safely anyway, which was one of the key objectives of the design in the first place.  We may have to give a few areas of the beds special attention though, to compensate for blocked irrigation pipes. Timing-wise, it’s too late now anyway.  Each bed now has green stuff growing away in it.  The only bed with no irrigation pipes dug in will be the one that brassicas and other veg over-winter in and the rest will have their pipes dug up, flushed through and re-set before next year’s sowing & planting.

The re-building of the stone wall along the last 2 baths is tantalisingly close to completion.  The topping off of the longer terrace wall from the building all the way down to the 3rd bath is much more of a mission and may not be tackled for a while.  Since the grass has grown over the pipes here they are more protected & less likely to move anyway.

  • Re-palm boundary fence

Most of the fence has been patched up.  We have enough palms to cover the agricultural mesh on the section over the stream that is a big green blot on the landscape when viewed from inside the camp.  But in order to do this, we’ll need to construct some kind of platform over the stream at least 3 metres high and stable enough to work on comfortably. Hmmm.

  • Tile splashback area around gas cooker

We’ve got as far as choosing the tiles.  Our stocks of tiles are seriously low these days.  This is a good thing as we have managed to use so many in various ways and have created tons more space in our basement area as a result too.  But it does mean choice is limited.   It’s a stroke of luck that we have just enough of the same tiles (with a single tile to spare!) to continue the splashback already in place around the sink.  Fingers crossed we don’t break any!

Once the splashback is in place, we can further improve the kitchen area with:

  • the addition of a small wooden unit that will support extra work surface alongside the cooker
  • a bespoke work surface (hopefully home-made but, at a push, purchased) to fit snugly over the floor standing units & into the corner
  • a pole (material as yet undefined…) to hang pots & pans off above the cooking area

And whilst we’re talking about the kitchen, there’s another small (?!) task that’s new on the list.  The construction & erection of a piece of canvas (hopefully made from the remains of our ex-Yugoslav Army tent that Nik & I salvaged) that can be fitted into place over the doorway and last stretch of open, non-bottled-window.  This should help reduce the amount of water that floods in when it rains.

Hurrah for us and the progress so far and this doesn’t even include a load of little things like:

  • sorting out the basement
  • finishing tiling edges and corners left incomplete until now
  • neatly enclosing in trunking, the leads for connecting the solar-powered fan from solar controller box and to the waterless urinals
  • a major workshop tidy up
  • endless ongoing planting tasks

Here’s to the BIG LIST diminishing and to volunteers this season helping us tackle projects not even on the list yet like:

  • re-building endless terrace walls
  • maintaining, cultivating & improving the whole 4,000 sq metres of upper woodland, currently in disarray
  • building an outdoor bathroom
  • re-directing the water run-off from the drainpipes into the ditch
  • constructing/ begging/ borrowing (?!) some rainwater collection devices for the building and/ or the workshop and water tank
  • solving the problem of how to provide our veggies some shade from the relentless summer sun
  • filling in & levelling the ground around the side of the building where the steps leave the shower/ toilet area
  • painting the workshop, the compost toilet area and the compost tea tank

Diminishing? Oh wait, I just made the BIG LIST even BIGGER, Damn.

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BIG LIST update

April 15, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build by fullmonte | 1 comment

Back in November last year we compiled a BIG LIST of all the high level tasks and I outlined them in this post, promising to update our progress every month…  Mmm, I’ve been a bit rubbish, haven’t I???

Well, nearly 6 month later, here’s an update on progress and the latest news of what’s on the BIG LIST now…

  • drainage

Ur, well, the first item on the list & that’s where it all started to go wrong!  The drainage ditch turned into our Elephant Task and no matter how much we broke it into bits, we got so tired of chewing those chunks!  But the drainage on the main campsite is now DONE.  We still get soggy patches where underground springs mysteriously appear when the water table rises, but things are better.  It’s still a quagmire when it really buckets down but that’s mostly because of all the distrurbed earth which Nature needs to knit together again. 

  • installing our rainwater collection systems

This is a tricky one.  Water is so precious, of course we should be saving every drop.  But unless we can salvage a couple of big water butts from somewhere, we simply cannot afford to invest in the materials needed to install the system properly.  Our first check list for whether we do a task or not is: how much will it cost?

Thankfully, the water tank we filled up at the start of last summer is still half full!  So having enough water for everything is NOT an issue, in fact we are desperately trying to empty the tank so we can fill it fresh from the spring before it dries up.

  • finishing our greywater irrigation system

We started with grand plans for this project but the cost of fancy joints and weird plumbing bits was crazy so we are going to make do with bits of hose and ’stuff’.

It’s been a stressful time on the greywater front.  We were keen to cover the ugly pipes and protect them, but were concerned about piling mud on them and screwing up the levels.  These pipes have been lovingly positioned and levelled to have a 2% drop all the way along – not too much or the water will rush through the system and not be properly filtered, nor too slight a gradient or the water will not run fast enough and stagnate.  After enclosing them with earth we waited for it to settle and then had to tweak the system a little, straightening the pipes and inserting stones as rests in places.  The system still works; the water flows through well.  The problem now is with the last bath.  We noticed a slight leak when doing the landscaping around the end of the system.  It was too wet to use Plumber’s Mait or other good stuff so Steve cemented over the entire piece where the pipe exits the last bath through a rubber bung.  Our mistake was then carrying on regardless, in denial that the fix may not have worked…

It still leaks, really badly.  And now there’s a frigging stone wall enclosing it and a load of dirt!  The only hope is to dig the bath out and attack the problem from the inside.  Watch this space to see if this works or if we have to dismantle the entire stone wall:

  • levelling ground to create flat terraces for outside eating areas, a  Boules pitch and lots more tent pitches

We’ve levelled a lot of ground dealing with the spoil from the drainage ditch.  The area we played Boules on last year will be less lumpy & bumpy & sloped than before, if not pristine!  Ideally, we’d like to build a proper pitch – a frame filled with sand maybe – but not exactly a priority for this year.

We’ve cleared the ugly pallet fence between the raised beds and the stream so there is a bigger space there for tents and Steve has great plans to use the last of our sleepers and level earth on the very lower terrace.  But even if this doesn’t get done, with a little stumping, strimming, raking and mowing we can accomodate up to 30 people quite easily.  More level ground would enable us to space the tent pitches out much more, but even so tents will still be less cheek by jowl than many campsites!

  • making a rough, covered outside kitchen near to the eating area and BBQ

No progress made on this at all but we have all the raw materials: sink (reclaimed from the side of the road); pallets to make rough decking; an old table for a work surface – and it will be one of those projects that just gets done because it HAS to (hopefully in time for the Full Moon Party!).

  • repairing the critical collapsed terrace walls with planted tyre walls

Mmmm.  We have tyres.  We have tidied up the area around.  That’s as far as we’ve got and in truth we may not get an entire wall done this season.  After all the inside jobs have been done, it’s next on the list…

  • tile the last shower & the urinals

We can’t put the tiling off any longer!  We need to get the building functioning again.  Everything was moved down to the basement or back to Topla and the shower block has been left empty and abandoned.  We need to be living up there as soon as possible so that means finishing the last shower, tiling the laundry sink, installing the urinals and tiling around them and half tiling the loos so they are easy to clean.  We also need to fix the position of the cooker so we can tile around it for ease of cleaning and that means fixing the position of gas fridges & more cupboards in the kitchen.  Then we can lime wash all remaining bare plaster, move all the furniture and stuff in… and enjoy!

A new addition to the BIG LIST, all wrapped up in being able to move on site soon is:

  • clean, mouse-proof and limewash the basement

We need a proper usable space to set up an office, store clothes and things, have a cold store for food stuffs etc and the basement is it.  We need to tell the resident mouse (there’s only ONE mouse, right Kirst?!) to move on and get it cleared, cleaned, painted and organised!

  • paint the outside of the buildings

This is one of the tasks on the list for our work day on 8th May.  I painted a patch on the back of the workshop in limewash last year and it still looks great, even after all the ravages of winter.  A bag of lime is pennies (in comparison to the price of paint here) and will make loads of wash, a real cheap option for us and less harmful to the environment.  Having a sparkling white building will make an enormous difference – and help us sell the site in photos better!

  • plant the flower & veg beds

Made reasonable progress on this task.  There’s still lots to do and there’s a bunch of plants queuing up to put their roots down but there’s no chance of doing much more until the rain stops.  We desperately need some hot dry weather to follow the deluge of the last few days.  We haven’t been on site for the past 3 days due to the appalling weather and I dread to think what’s going on up there….

Since we are determined this year to keep greedy cows and intruders out, there’s a new task on this list:

  • secure the boundary

In practice this means: running barbed wire along the edges of the boundary where a cow can possibly invade and electrifying the main fence to deter the village kids and travellers who got on site, poked around and stole stuff last year.  If the barbed wire doesn’t get them, the x 1000 volts will!

Another key task is:

  • build a generator shed

We need a proper weather-proof, sound-proof, easy access structure to contain our trusty genny.

We have been gifted some great wooden stairs from Keith & Maja so now we need to treat them with wood preservative and install them firmly but that takes care of:

  • create safe, stable access at each end of each terrace

We now need to start making some rope hand rails or some such stuff to help support people safely down them!

Finally (well, never ‘finally’ because the list never ends but…) now we’ve dismantled the old compost heap we need to:

  • build a new compost

Gulp!  Still a bunch of stuff to do.  Thank God there’s no guests arriving until end of May!  And we are feeling a little less over-whelmed since we’ve had news that a potential volunteer, Jaime, will be joining us in May for 1 or 2 weeks; a volunteer from Spain, Pedro, is looking to join us in June and will possibly stay for a couple of months if we all get along well and last, BUT NOT LEAST, Nik, dear Mr Nik, without whom it all wouldn’t have been possible last year, is coming back this summer.  Hurrah for willing helpers!  Anyone else fancy it?

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Drained

December 12, 2009 in The Build by fullmonte | 3 comments

We are.  Drained.  Totally.  Of money, energy & spirits…  And this is why:

Devastation

This is a ditch 100 metres long, 40 cm wide by half a metre deep – an ugly, oozing scar on our beautiful land that was just beginning to heal.  My heart grows heavy just looking at this photo and it looks 10 times worse in actuality!

This is a story that begins with THE BIG LIST.  As we reviewed the tasks, the priorities and interdependencies we realised that drainage had to be tackled first.  No point in finishing the greywater system into all 6 raised beds if the pipes would be disturbed again later; no point in shoring up the collapsed stone walls with our planned tyre walls if these would be trashed again later; no point installing guttering & down pipes on the workshop, water butts & a whole rainwater collection system unless there is a proper soak away for the overflow to run-off into; no point in paying for loads more top soil for the raised beds if digging a drainage ditch would generate lots of soil that would need to be re-distributed anyway…

We have been reading about land drains, talking to folk and generally pondering the thorny (or should that be soggy?) issue for months now.  Here’s what we are dealing with:

  • Water running onto the site from the road – the road is higher than the land so everything flows down onto us.  There is a gulley at the side of the road that is supposed to channel the water down but this is blocked in places & can’t be easily dug out because there are telephone lines buried there.  Over the years the veritable torrents of water that have flowed down have collapsed stone walls and littered the land with rocks.
  • Water coming up onto the land from underground springs – the porous limestone rock allows seams of water to develop and come to the surface in places
  • Surface water not draining away properly due to large areas of clay soil that squelches with moisture that cannot permeate

The solution, we have decided, has 2 parts.

  1. Firstly we need a drainage ditch running all the way through the first main terrace on the campsite – a big soak away that runs from the top (workshop) to the bottom (raised beds) and into the stream.
  2. Secondly, to catch water running off the road we need a drainage ditch that follows the line of our palm fence from the top gate to the bottom gate and into the stream at the bridge.

Slobodan our friend and trusty interpreter helped us negotiate a deal with Senisa the digger driver.  We did the sums and took a deep breath.  Could we afford to do this?  And more to the point, could we afford NOT to?

Senisa arrived on site on Tuesday morning and Slobodan was there to get him started:

Senisa & Slobodan

The first thing Senisa had to do was clear a path wide enopugh for the digger to pass.  This meant moving some of the huge rocks from the collapsed terrace walls out of the way:

Moving stones

It was a nerve-wracking time – the proximity of the digger, the rocks & the mounds of soil to the precious raised beds was too scary.  Thank God Nik wasn’t there to see the carnage!  The water pipe that runs from the top land into the building had already been buried in the ground so digging around this had to be done by hand.  Here’s Steve, doing the honours…

Steve - digging out

This was the picture as we trudged home that night in the dark with heavy hearts & furrowed brows at the end of the day of digging…

Muddy mess

That night a storm came.  We didn’t sleep much, fretting about the walls of the ditch collapsing and the site being a quagmire as the rain pelted down.  We were up early the next day anxious to get on site but dreading it at the same time.  On the way we picked up green pipe, drilled for drainage purposes, and pipe to run eletric cable underground from the building to the stone wall by the terrace – the chance to get an outside power point was too good to miss.  Here are the reels of plastic pipes nestling amongst the stack of tyres we are amassing to begin the tyre walls…

Pipes & tyres

It was raining when we arrived on site but thankfully the ditch seemed to be doing its job, with water flowing down it and, contrary to the numerous nightmares fresh in my mind, there were no major disasters.  Cold, damp & miserable we set about the first horrible task – filling in the ditch again!!!  I know this sounds mad but at the very top end of the site near the workshop, where the earth had already been disturbed during the build and the ground was at its most soggy and spring-ridden, the soil had collapsed as the ditch was dug and in many places it was deeper and wider than it needed to be.  Because the chipped stone we are using to fill in is expensive it wasn’t an option just to fill in with that.  We had loads of good-for-nothing clumpy blue & red clay to get rid of and it had to go back in the hole!  It was comical – the 2 of us up to our boots in squelchy mud, trying to dig the clay which was sodden and weighed a ton and stuck to everything.  Just moving around the site was a mission as our boots were ridiculously heavy from all the clay sticking to them.  I think we both wanted to cry.  It seemed such a hopeless task.

By the time Senisa arrived with the chipped stone, we had rallied a little.  The pile of muck had considerably reduced in size, the rain had eased off and we were even managing to joke about the craziness of it all.  Plus we’d made a big decision – not to dig the roadside ditch now.  Realistically, it was going to take many many days for the 2 of us to fill in the one ditch we have and make good the land and we were putting pressure on ourselves to get it finished in time for our festive season break. We are leaving our home on Friday 18th December to take a month over the other side of the Bay house & dog sitting for various folk and enjoying Christmas with different friends and it would be a disaster to have an open ditch by the road for all that time, slowly collapsing into a muddy mess that may have to be re-dug.   The drainage on the campsite will at least provide a soak away for the road run-off in the short term until we can muster the resources to tackle phase 2.  Psychologically we felt better having freed ourselves of the burden for now and only having to concentrate on one nightmare at a time…

Senisa was a bit miffed as he was all fired up to dig the next ditch and now not only was that not happening but he also had to arrange to get his digger transported away.  It cost us another €60.

With the arrival of the chipped stone, things started to take shape as we shovelled it into the ditch…

Steve -filling in

By the end of that hard day’s labour we had nearly finished the first ditch that ran alongside the workshop and down the side of the land.  This would be the ditch that the overflow from the water collection system from the buildings would also run into.  We had shovelled a good layer of chipped stone in the base of the ditch, laid green drainage pipe in and then covered it up with more stone.

Drainage ditch taking shape

So, 10 metres nearly complete, only another 90 metres to go!!!  If any of you needed confirmation that we are nuts – well, now you have it!

That was Wednesday.  It’s now Saturday.  We are having a break today because our bodies ache too much (and Steve’s head aches too after a boy’s night out on the booze!) but we have made great progress.  We are a third of a way through the task and have begun to bury the pipe that will carry the electric cable.  Steve’s been on shovelling and barrowing gravel duties and I’ve been filling in the too-wide edges of the ditch with dirt and topping off the chipped stone with buckets of small stones collected from the heaps of clay and soil everywhere  – this saves us a couple of cubic metres of chipped stone, reduces the piles of spoil everywhere and also helps blur the edges of the torn earth a little.  We are now optimistic that we will get this big job finished before we have to leave on Friday.  We will be very proud of ourselves and will have earned a proper break and lots of jollies!

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Non-stop November

November 30, 2009 in Den, Fun Stuff, Organic Gardening by fullmonte | 3 comments

There are a few English words that have found their place in everyday language in Monte.  ‘Non-stop’ is one of them and it always makes me chuckle because a) this word in the local accent sounds funny and b) this an unlikely word for the Montenegrins to adopt considering they are the most laid back (aka, lazy) bunch of folk ever and pretty much everything is at a snail’s pace and constantly interrupted – about as far from being ‘non-stop’ as is possible!!!

Anyhoo!   Here we are, nearing the end of another month… blimey, where is the time going?? So, time for the usual round up.  It really has been a month of non-stop activity, but in a nice gentle (Montenegrin) way.  We have a new BIG LIST of tasks to be completed on the campsite and I’ll be recording our progress against this list here every month.  We had to review the list in relation to funds & time available and get real.  We have decided to do a few things well rather than lots of things badly and on the cheap.  Here are the high level tasks on our list:

  • drainage
  • installing our rainwater collection systems
  • finishing our greywater irrigation system
  • levelling ground to create flat terraces for outside eating areas, a  Boules pitch and lots more tent pitches
  • making a rough, covered outside kitchen near to the eating area and BBQ
  • repairing the critical collapsed terrace walls with planted tyre walls
  • tile the last shower & the urinals
  • paint the outside of the buildings
  • plant the flower & veg beds

This is a pretty tall order considering we only have 12- 13 weeks to do it all.  We have to be ready to receive punters from 1st May and by the time we have taken out time spent away from site house & dog-sitting for various friends over Christmas and a planned break in the UK in March for Steve’s 50th birthday, about 3 months is all we have…  Watch this space!

Things accomplished from the BIG LIST this month:

  • We put the solar fluid in the solar thermal panels & after much faffing about bleeding the system of air we have water at 35 degrees
  • We have bricked off areas to facilitate easy fitting of windows and our planned plastic bottle screen in the kitchen area

Steve - rendering the new brickwork

  • The second wine bottle window is half built

2nd wine bottle window

  • The flower beds and orchard area has been dug over and stumped (the picture below shows the avocado plant in its new home)

Orchard & flower beds - imagine the concrete walls covered up by climbing sweet peas next year...

  • The first terrace has been strimmed, cleared & tidied

Cleared stone wall

  • Parts of the veg garden have been cleared and dug over and the slow process of topping the beds up with rotted manure, leaf mould and soil has begun

Tidy garden

  • Some drainage channels have been dug
  • The branches of the oak tree that were shading the solar thermal panels have been chainsawed
  • The compost has been turned and covered to rot down over the winter and we have a new heap of grass cuttings, debris from land clearing and wet leaf rakings
  • We have made a long-handled rake and raked the compost loo chambers for the first time – the good news is the hummus is already starting to look dry & crumbly and doesn’t smell
  • The workshop, including the work bench which has been in total disarray for months, has been swept & seriously tided.  In the process we uncovered the remains of the creature whose loud gnawing of the workshop roof timbers tormented us all summer and who perished when Steve ran the generator inside the workshop for a couple of nights!

Making & doing:

  • Lemon curd, mandarin marmalade, green tomato chutney & my new favourite, the easiest & tastiest preserve, lemon marmalade

Lemons

  • Endless plastic bags plaits
  • Living frugally.  Haven’t been ‘big shopping’ for over a month – if we had a cow for milk & dairy products, if I baked my own bread and if the veg garden had produced enough for us to freeze a few bags, we’d be fine!  I’m really enjoying being creative with what’s in the cupboards.
  • The biggest creative thing that has us totally absorbed at the moment… a new image and a new website www.full-monte.com

Reading:

  • Current novel is ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’ by John Nichols.  Have already read this month: Zadie Smith’s ‘Martha & Hanwell’ and Steven Galloway’s ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo’
  • Currently browsing: various books on gardening, self sufficiency, using herbs & cooking.  Too many to mention, all from Mon and all wonderful ~sigh~

What’s hot:

  • The weather!  Overall we’ve had a phenomenal November – gorgeous, sunny days & mild evenings.
  • The amazing Autumn-scape and sunsets

November sunset

  • Our chillies!  They may be small but they really pack a punch.  Two of these babies will get you sweating!

Chillies - not chilly

  • The 3 surviving broccoli plants that have managed to produce a spear of yummy green each.  Respect to Mother Nature!

Broccoli

What’s not:

  • The death of a unique individual from my past life.  Rest in peace Audrey Day.  You will be much-missed…

Fun stuff for us this month:

  • A drunken girls night at Danny’s – why am I always the last to bed???
  • Our ‘unofficial’ 19th year anniversary & Matt’s birthday celebration
  • Awesome beef curry at Pete’s
  • Day out on Monty B, this time with Ben & Emma
  • A Scrabble night to remember at Fiona & Dave’s (& not just because I won).  We laughed until our faces ached.
  • A Moroccan dinner party for 10 at our home, cooked by Nicky


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