Month: November 2025

One thing I’m really starting to understand about farming is the relentlessness of the weather. Beginning the week at sub-zero temperatures, and finishing with a few inches of rain over the weekend. Neither end of the week has been the most pleasant for roofing work. But against the odds, more progress has been made than I ever expected.

Things not covered in this week’s write-up;

• I found out the wife’s car is Rear Wheel Drive.
• Holes have been dug down to find foundations.
• The kids were sent out to litter pick, but it didn’t go well.

Husbandry

There is a general calmness when it comes to the animals at the moment. The fear of losing a pig (one way or another) overnight has abated. With the kittens now allowed out, the panic of getting in through the door without letting them out is lost. Generally, all the animals are just a little more settled.

Felis Catus

The cats are slowly finding their feet outside. Bonnie is still quite timid, but Clydes confidence is gradually building. They’ve not quite made it to the farm’s furthest boundaries, but Clyde has been out to the top of the drive.

The kittens’ morning routine hasn’t changed much. They’re still zipping around like angry wasps come five AM, and there is a good chance of bitten toes if you don’t get out of bed and feed them soon enough.

The pair are slightly less bonkers in the evening, but I think this is from all the daytime flying around. Clyde is growing at an astounding rate and already feels fully grown. However, it seems Bonnie has the bigger appetite, eating far more often.

Porcine

Like the cats, it seems the Kune Kunes have us well trained. Heaven forbid they’re not fed at 7 am prompt, they’ll certainly let us know if we dare to have a lie-in. And they are equally boisterous when it gets to 3pm in anticipation of someone coming home.

Food is definitely the way to their hearts, and a bit like puppies, they are not beyond begging if you are in eyesight. There aren’t many apples left on the trees, but they’re still enjoying the occasional lunchtime sna-pple.

Interestingly, just one of the pigs has started rooting quite heavily in places. While a relatively minor behaviour change, it does seem to be only the single piglet digging in. Regardless, they’re all growing well, and I’m not sure I could pick them up any more, even if I could catch them.

Apis

The bees have all been wrapped up for the winter now. The extra insulation of the small hives should reduce the energy loss in the cold months.

Although the bees are relatively self-sufficient and generally aren’t seen, they were coming for a visit quite regularly. As their journeys over to our house have dropped off, their absence is definitely noted.

Farm Cottage

While the construction focus has been on getting the Megashed 2.0 complete, so the office can be set up, some work has started inside the cottage. If only to avoid the cold and rain.

To find the floor and locate the foundations, the former pantry needed to be cleared out. With a little help from mum and dad, the cladding and shelves were stripped out last weekend, and this weekend saw the walls stripped.

Running out of power

Rather frustratingly, the Freelander has been suffering from an increasingly frequent flat battery. While it hadn’t quite left me in the lurch away from the house, the frequency of jump starts was becoming problematic.

Yes, it is winter, and I’m using more electricity for the heated seats and the windscreen. Yes, the battery is nearly five years old. But even after a full charge on the CTEK, the battery was flat within a couple of days. Finally, I caved and bought a new battery.

Having been a bit unimpressed with Varta batteries dying at almost exactly five years, regardless of use or treatment, I’ve moved to Yuasa. Despite the size difference, I was somewhat hampered in the battery swap until I realised this bonus plastic piece needed removing!

Once installed, charged, and the battery management reset, the starting has been much improved. So far, no flat battery. The quiescent battery current meets spec, and the alternator seems healthy, so all being well, this new battery should see us happy for another five years or more.

Wet Weather

I mentioned that the weather has been rather wet, with plenty of localised flooding. The front field has been turning into a pond in the worst of it, though it drains pretty quickly.

However, a walk around the block might have highlighted an additional water source. Where the main road dips, it seems someone has dug through our hedge to run the water off the road and onto our field. I really hope this doesn’t kill the grass. This isn’t the only time someone has taken liberties with our boundary. Clearly, someone local has an ‘it’s only a farm‘ attitude.

Megashed 2.0

The urgency of completing the Megashed has increased as temperatures have dropped. Currently, I’m working from the cottage and with no heating, office work is getting ever less efficient.

Roof Sheet Delivery

Monday saw the arrival of the metal for the roof, having been ordered from MCS Roofing a week earlier. For the expenditure, the actual delivery was rather underwhelming. Ten nested roofing panels really don’t seem like a lot, until you try to pick them up!

However, these are top quality, having opted for Tata Rural Clad sheets in a 0.7mm. They’re heavy-duty sheets, and probably excessive for this little shed of mine; however, they should outlast me!

Eaves Felt Support

Before the sheets could go up, a few additional trimmings needed to go up. First off were ‘eaves felt support’ panels.

These plastic trays, made from recycled material, help to guide the rain away from the breather membrane and into the gutter. IN turn, this should help to keep the barge board dry.

Such a simple, cheap piece of trim, this seemed like something of a no-brainer. I guess only time will tell. However, for the time being, they really tidy up the underside of the eaves.

Front Roof Sheets

And finally, after weeks of building up to this point, a break in the weather on Friday means the first sheets could go up.

And they practically flew up. Although the first sheet took a little while to position, once we had a method, the rest shot up. Amazingly, the whole front of the roof went up in just 45 minutes. Not bad for amateurs. They were also lined up by eye, and over the five-metre length, the complete panel only runs out by 5mm!

Once the top was loosely fitted, the bottom row of screws was marked before the fixings were applied. By the time I’d finished, the rain had arrived, and frankly, I forgot to get a picture of the roundabout-straight row of screws.

Insulating out the cold

In the later, darker, colder hours, installing roof sheets is less than optimal. Especially when the plastic-coated cladding is lubricated with a misting of water. This means working on the inside of the building once the light and temperature drop.

Speaking of temperature, the evening task has been to install insulation in the wall cavities. While this isn’t really making much difference to the temperature yet, it has made a big difference to the interior sound.

Gable Cladding

In between the showers and the breaks in other tasks, the remainder of the gable cladding has gone up.

For recycled sheets, often cut with a recip saw, the finish is fantastic. The overlap line between the upper and lower sections is remarkably straight for ‘by eye’ measurements.

Rear Sheets

Saturday started as ‘all go’ for installing the rear roof cladding. The weather was scheduled to be a little variable, so every minute counted in the drier spells.

Like the front, the rear received an eaves felt support panel to deflect moisture from the wooden structure.

Then, having learned a bit of process from the day before, the first sheets were offered up, stitched together and aligned. Again, the alignment was by eye, and I might regret that this time.

Between each panel, a lapping tape was used to help bond the lips, stopping moisture and air from blowing up between the panels. On the rear, the runout was closer to 15mm, but once the finishing cladding and gutters are on, this won’t be visible.

Another Cold Night

Overnight, the temperature dropped to sub-zero again, and back inside I went.

Where the wall membrane meets the roof membrane, both sections were lapped with a breathable tape. This dark coloured joiner helps to bring the two sections of membrane together, but really it helps keep the cold out while the heater is running!

Once the sections of breathable sheet are joined, the loft insulation is offered up. This might be getting ahead of myself a little, but as the roof is nearly complete, I hope it won’t get wet!

Unplanned Guttering

After getting drenched multiple times while walking out the shed door on Friday and Saturday. In order to combat this deluge to the neck, Sunday morning saw a trip to Screwfix for their finest flow plast guttering.

And while probably not the greatest priority, it was satisfying to get installed. The relatively short run of the gutter went up rather quickly.

Ridge Finish

While it was great to get the gutter up, I should have kept a better eye on the weather. By the time the barge flashing was installed between the shed and the shippon, the rain had arrived.

Not only was it wet and rainy, but it was also really rather cold. Practically icy everywhere it ran. Down my back, down up front and up my legs. It took an excessively long shower to get warm again.

But despite frozen toes and testicles, by midday all the roof sheets were on, the ridge flashing installed and finally weatherproof.

Compared to the original Megashed, this one is just so much bigger, and the size has definitely caused some challenges. From the roof’s apex, on the plastic finished wet panels, the journey to the floor is a lot more rapid. Then there’s getting onto the roof in the first place. And of course, working on the inside at height causes its own problems. I might need to buy some scaffolding!

And that’s a wrap for this week. Hopefully, next week I can get the inside wrapped and semi-air-tight. Wouldn’t that be something!

Until next time
Nothing to Farm.

After getting so close to covering the roof, before running out of membrane, the rain came. And oh, did it come down! Not quite the wettest day on the farm so far, but certainly the longest continuous shower. This made for a slow week of progress, unfortunately, and after the rain came the cold!

Not covered in this week’s round-up;

• Even more pallets were brought up to the farm.
• Road safety improvements installed.
• Destructo-parents 2: Shelved.

Husbandry

While it feels a little like cheating to give the weekly updates a regular structure, I’m hoping to create some anticipation for you, especially when the animals are so cute!

Felis Catus

The kittens are definitely growing, and at very different rates. Clyde is already becoming much bigger than Bonnie and a little bolder. I guess that’s just a boy cat thing, which I’ve never had before.

Both Bonnie and Clyde seem positively settled in. Bonnie seems more than happy to be stroked until she falls asleep. They’re still learning their way around the farm and slowly getting further away from their food.

Both of the kittens seem to be enjoying their wanders around the Shippon. We’ve had to cut holes in some of the doors so they don’t get trapped. They’ve also made a new piggie friend.

Porcine

The pigs are also well settled in, knowing their meal times and making sure we stick to the schedule if we forget. Three of the four seem pretty happy to be petted, once they have their food.

With Halloween having passed, there’s a local glut of cheap pumpkins. The pigs have had great fun pushing a giant pumpkin around until they finally broke it open.

Once they were through the pumpkin case, they quickly devoured the innards. I suspect they’re hoping for another one next weekend.

Ethnobotany

There are many wild edibles on the farm. Not all of it would I eat myself; however, some things, like apples and blackberries, do go together rather well under a crumble.

Mycology

When I thought all the mushrooms had receded into the ground, a damp, warm day resulted in a rather large crop appearing.

Believe it or not, there are actually four mushrooms in this picture, all of which seemed to appear in a single evening.

Megashed2.0

Much of this weekend’s focus has been on the Megashed and on finally getting the room vaguely water-tight. Once water-tight, I can start to get the space warmer and drier.

Wrapped

You might remember that last week, I ran out of breather membrane. Well, a break in the rain on Monday night meant I could throw some more sheeting over the gaps.

I didn’t have enough daylight to get the battening in place, or all of the overlaps seemed before total darkness fell. Unfortunately, the rest of the week was rather wet, and the shed was far from water-tight.

A mixture of driving rain blowing through the unsealed overlaps and heavy wind pulling some holes around staples made for quite a lot of leaks.

F€$£ing Foam

To dry out the shed, I needed to get the room a little more air-tight, so I’m not just heating the street. The gaps around the door were a little more than could be filled with sealant, so a can of expanding foam was broken out.

And what a disaster that turned into! I nearly always use Soudal expanding foam, but it comes in a pretty big can, and I didn’t want to create a load of waste. Instead of sticking with what I know, I picked up a smaller can of No Nonsense expandy foam.

And that was a massive mistake. The expansion rate is nothing like I was used to, resulting in a huge amount of excess being extruded. The cheap masking tape also failed, allowing the expanding foam to spread into too many places it shouldn’t have.

Insulation

To feel a little better about the foam disaster, I threw myself into installing the wall insulation. This is an interesting stage in the build as the space slowly gets quieter.

Pre-planning of the spacing meant that a lot of the sections of insulation slabs didn’t need any cutting. Better still, combinations of offcuts also fitted perfectly into the smaller gaps.

In just a few hours, I’d flown through a couple of packs of insulation and, amazingly, the temperature was already rising and slowly getting warmer.

Once all the insulation slabs were in the lower sections of the wall, I turned to the noggins. If I’ve got my sums right, these should all line up quite nicely with the plasterboard.

Some of the larger sections wanted to fall out as they expanded. A slim strip of breather membrane offcut allowed the batts to be held in place until the vapour barrier is installed.

Ready for a roof

By the end of the weekend, a break in the weather finally allowed for the additional membrane lapping to be installed. On top of that went the final battens for the roof sheets.

Hopefully, that should make the roof of the shed a little more water-tight. There are still some accidental holes to deal with, which a little tape and sealant should sort out when it arrives.

And that’s it for this week. Next week could be an interesting one if the roof sheds are delivered and I can find the time to install them. Then I can work on drying out the shed before the vapour barrier goes up.

However, that is very much dependent on the weather playing ball, and yet another named storm not turning up to ruin my fun!

Until next time.
Nothing to farm.