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Shaving and Strimming

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The Straw Bales required shaving to get the walls smooth before we could attempt the cob render. This was laborious and time consuming…..some of us tried to cheat and used the strimmer! It was never going to be THAT smooth but the effort made to give the build a close shave was tremendous.

bricks….

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The edible garden at flowerpots is starting to take shape…after the ‘aqusistion’ of a few hundred red bricks, and the purchase of some more, the path has been laid… I think it looks beautiful, and cannot wait to see it twisting in and around our plants! 🙂

More smokey pictures, taking by a budding photographer…

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Making Charcoal

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Today we learnt from an expert how to make charcoal.To start with you make a fire, steadily adding left-over wood remnants to it. Waiting for the wood to go black, with a white hue, then covering it in turfs, until no smoke escapes, to make sure all the heat is kept in and no oxygen […]

Messy and smelly (but very productive) fun!

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Tools of the trade

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Accessories needed for clay rendering…

Rudolf the Red-Mud Render!

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Yer Tiz…… we have nicknamed the render ‘rudolph’ as it this stuff is ‘Rudolf the Red-Mud Render’1 Ton of cob render … in convenient sized bucket … heavy though at 40kg each!Hmmmm. will it all fit in?Kevin’s cob and straw house near ottery St Mary. Sadly his roof caught fire and he is repairing it […]

Hard Landscaping

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Meanwhile….up at Flowerepots Allotments ……. the decision has been taken to make this into an edible landscape in line with modern ideas about mixing flowers and vegetables in the same plot. To do this we have sat down and planned a garden design and the first think is to put in the hard landscaping. We […]

It rains AND it pours!

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With the long dry spell continuing and no sign of rain, there is increasing concern about watering. As the only tap brings us UV filtered drinking water, we do not want to waste resources by using this for irrigation. After much thought by our resident genius engineer, there was suddenly a simple solution. harvest the […]

Blossoms in May

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Feed the Birds

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Recycled juice bottle, a wooden spoon and a bird seed 3 course meal for the birds! The great tits and chaffinches just LOVE it. A ‘well balanced’ diet!

Poly3 – sowing and seeds

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We have pruned back the overgrown vines and swept out the top half of Poly3 ready to make use of the space and tables to create a nursery. As a back up to the outdoor planting, the same seeds have been sown in pots and trays in case of crop failure or bad weather. They […]

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