clearing the stables

Not quite a Herculean task (did Hercules have to worry about rabbits under the floor?), but a very dusty one just the same. First I chucked everything easily moveable out:



Then it was a matter of shovelling up a half-century's worth of dirt and rotten boards. The rotten boards went straight on the bonfire and the dirt is now filling holes in the embankment and should look very nice once if the grass seeds germinate.

Here's how it looked when it was finished:



I plan to take up the stone floor and put down concrete, in the hope that this will sufficiently deter the rabbits living down there before the walls collapse. In a couple of places the stones dropped suddenly under my feet (though only about six inches) when I trod on a bit with a burrow under it. The cats had a field day, and indeed they had a rabbit for supper last night as a result of the newly accessible burrows (I locked them out after they brought it in to play with).

These stables will eventually become my workshop. Whether they will include a woodstore or not is something I've yet to decide.

Working outside

No major projects at the moment. Maybe I'm just recovering from the visiting grandchildren and their first attempts at skiing:



I decided that it was a pity that I couldn't open the silo (wood-store) door when the silo is partly full, without having a cascade of wood-chips all over the floor. So here is the new modular and progressively demountable version:



My first attempt had the bars on the heavy oak outer door fouling the strengthening cross-pieces on the removable planks (which are in fact 1cm plywood). So the bottom one was raised a few centimeters and the top cross-piece dropped a few. Now it's also possible to shut the door.

I also had a go at straightening the line of a dry-stone wall I built down by the solar panels. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture until the work was half way through, so I don't have a proper "before":



But the "after" picture is definitely after:



I was lucky enough to find a very large rock to fill a gap in the new wall. Or perhaps unlucky - I was only just able to move it, by rolling it into the wheelbarrow and levering that upright. The new wall will give us a bit more space outside the shed door. Oh, wait a minute - what shed door?

Still the next small task will probably be clearing up this lot -



Kindly left us by the previous owners. In there is a car door which probably dates from the 1920s or very early 1930s, and I'd guess it has been there since the 1950s. It's not actually on our land but it's an eyesore just the same.