Loo for number 2s, pink birdhouse and a very hot gas cylinder

Posted on

We have a composting loo, the birdhouses finally get put up, we made a new stove and the roundhouse got a top hat.

It’s been a while since the last farm blog post, however today’s work day was inspiring. In spite of coronavirus fears we had a splendid turnout and got a lot done. We welcomed new members, had visitors and some volunteers working towards their Duke of Edinburgh awards. Time to update you on some of our projects, some have taken rather longer than one would expect.

Birdhouses

So we made some birdhouses back in Jan 2019, but they got forgotten and didn’t get put up until a few weeks ago.

Wendy and Amos, painting one of our new birdhouses.
The luxury birdhouses are finally up!

Loo for number 2s

In the summer we were very fortunate to have won a grant from The Sheffield Town Trust to allow us to buy a very nice proper composting toilet. Wanting to post about it when it was complete time has ticked by. By complete I mean, delivered, moved to it’s location, hand wash sink plumbed in, and baby changing table installed. Well we’ve got most of that done, here it is…

It has arrived on site!
A cunning plan to move it up the site.
Like a well trained team of litter bearers, the cunning plan seems to be working, although those ladders look a bit stressed.
Doesn’t it look good.
Warren whipping up a hand wash facility.

The only thing left to do is the baby changing table!

@The Sheffield Town Trust thank you so much, this is huge improvement to the farm’s facilities.

Very hot gas bottle

We made another gas bottle into a stove, which seems to work rather well. Smoke in the roundhouse is reduced due to the long flue pipe taking the smoke out the top of the roof.

Round house gets a hat

For a while now we’ve discussed the need for the roundhouse to have a sort of top hat to protect the structural roof timbers sticking up through the middle of the roof which had started to suffer from exposure to the elements. We finally got around to making an ambitious polythene wrapped skylight complete with hole for the stove flue.

Some almost precise cutting – not done on the farm – we don’t do precise there!
This was the plan.
Installing it on the roof.

Elsewhere on the farm

There’s always work to do in the polytunnel even in winter.
The teens decided to modify an old trolley into some sort of ‘chariot’, he was instructed shortly after this pic that safety googles must be worn. There may be an update on the Chariot in due course.