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.