Archive

• A spot of gardening

  
  

• Windmills and Rotation Planting

  
  

  Thurs 25th Feb As it was raining today we did some activities in the yurt 🙂 The first group made scarecrow windmills out of holographic paper and recycled materials, including bottletops, cellophane and bamboo sticks. They were just fantastic – it could be the birds stand and admire the windmills rather than be scared of […]

• Straw Day!

  
  

  Today the lovely warm dry sweet smelling straw arrived from the local farm. The farmer bought it on a trailer behind a tractor across the fields at the back of the garden site. We were there to greet him and unload the dry straw bales onto a massive tarpaulin. It looked like rain was on […]

• You’ve been framed!

  
  

  Tues 23rd Feb Making the frame for the Straw Bale shelter. After wood working party hauled the delivery up the hill, the wood was stored neatly in the dry polytunnel. The Build Project Manager gave everyone instruction on the how the plans are being interpeted and how important it is to follow the measurements etc […]

• Forging Ahead

  
  

  Today we made a giant needle on the forge, needed to sew the straw bales together. First a fire was made in the fire pit, then some embers were placed gently on a dug out platform on the spoil heap. The make-shift bellows were put into action to keep the embers aglow. The fire was […]

• Fire Pit

  
  

  Mon 22nd Feb Today the student ambassadors and Booters made a fire pit for burning garden waste and for creating hot embers to feed the forge. Great fun was had improvising a set of pump-bellows – an air-bed pump, a length of tube and an old drain pipe worked wonders! As the saying goes – […]

• Hazel Gathering

  
  

  Tues 23rd FebToday we went to the woods to gather the hazel to make the stakes that hold the straw bales together. Everyone had a go at going into the woods and cutting the straight shoots from the hazel trees. It was so pretty with the catkins blowing in the breeze. The wood needed to […]

• Dig Up at Boot Up!

  
  

  Mon 22nd Feb First real day of the Straw Bale Shelter Build Project. The foundations that were marked out and started on the initial visit are starting to take shape. The earth is good quality topsoil so we are saving it to ship up to the allotments. The Student Ambassadors get on the case……and the […]

• Potting and Planting- Feb 10th

  
  

• First Visit Feb 10th

  
  

  The first visit to Boot Up! and Freda the dog came too! Sunny, cold and frosty, the garden looked really beautiful. Everyone had a go at everything……. pruning, digging, planting, exploring We found ice in a bucket, catkins on the hazel trees, flowerpots to make sculptures with, seeds to plant in pots…. so much to […]

• Straw Bale Build Design Foundations Exercise Group 1

  
  

  This time the exercise was to see how tall the structure would be made using the same materials using strong foundations. The lesson was about weight bearing. How tall can you go using the same material balanced equally on top of each other? This one reached the roof of the polytunnel which is 2.8m high. […]

• Straw Bale Build Design Foundations Exercise Group 2

  
  

  Better weather today so we decided to do a lesson in building foundations. The exercise is to create a self supporting structure using only 2 found materials in the garden. Flowerpots and bamboo canes. The lesson learnt was to use the big pots at the bottom to create strong support, adding the smaller. lighter building […]