Harsh Land in Covid Times

 All of these pictures are out of order and blogger wont let me sort them.  Above is a salvaged plastic roof that be brought here from Cornwall.  In the last house it had an ugly as sin car port that we had to take down to make the driveway useable.  Waste not want not.  The carport would have covered 4 cars to give you an idea of how much roofing was there.  We have used it for a few logs stores around the house and the cottage.

 This is our Columbian Blacktail, we did have 2, but one was taken by some sort of animal or bird of prey.  We have many birds of prey in this area.

 This is our Buff Barred chicken, she is a funny thing and only lays occasionally and although she is still very young, she has already gone broody once.  We will see in the future if we want to use her to hatch some eggs.  

 As we were in lockdown when the birds arrived, we had to get a coop really quickly.  This one is from Cosy Pets.  Avoid at all costs if you can.  We had to get something that could be delivered as we couldnt go to the timber merchants.I will go through the list of items we have had to remedy to keep the ladies dry.

There was a pop door that had a handle to open it manually.  It is light here in the summer until well past 1am and then it is dawn again at around 3am.  Not wanting to run about in pajamas, a sensor door opener made sense - get it. Sense... lol  forget it.  As the run connected directly with the coop and its legs, we had to add some wood to extent it out.  This then meant rain could run down onto the doorway and the ladder.  We then had to use some more wood that we screwed onto the coop to shelter the gap and allow the string to the door opener to move freely.  

The roof was horrendous, made of tongue and groove with lots of knots in the wood that some popped out and the others just let the rain through.  We had to rebuild the roof with marine ply we had previously.  You've guessed it, we had it in Cornwall! lol  Womble, never chuck wood away.

The end of the pen, we have added a door to it.  We snipped the wire off and built a frame with a wash board (I cant think of another name for it, you use these on boats and yachts to keep the water from the cockpit out of the living area of a boat...).  This is actually the side of a chest of drawers we bought as a set with a Victorian wardrobe.  The drawers were broken and all very damaged.  Chopped it down, routed the edges to make it slide easier and the frame is double sided for rigidity and to hold the door in.  A bit of blue rope with a carabiner hook to hold it in place so the wind cant make it fall on a chicken.

You can just about see the inside frame of the wash board.  We also had chicken wire from the previous house and the deck boards are left over from another project.  Waste not want not.  The chicken wire gives them slightly more area than the pen, we shut them in there with the wash board open if I go to the supermarket etc.  When I am home the free range the whole of the back garden, except for the raised beds.  Which to be truthful are a complete waste of time in this area.  You can see why below.  It has rained none stop for 8 days.  Some days torrential rain.  And when it stops raining it is still windy.  In the last week we have had the wood burner lit 3 times.  It hasnt been warmer than 10 oC, its cold and miserable.  Welcome to Scotland!

Here are my peas today.  Yes, those are peas.  They were planted as it said on the packet.  The wind and the rain seem to have stunted their growth.  Pathetic arent they.  Their height is about 20 cm about 8 inches tall.  lol   

Yet strangely I have 14 figs on the tree and lots of flowers on the olive trees.  What the heck is going on!