Books and Chooks

Post 9: Progress happens

This photo was taken from our new deck. On the right you can see our camper-trailer, which we stayed in for the last couple of weeks of our summer stay. The power lines are one of those things you just have to look past – if you focus on them, you miss the beauty of everything else (and there’s my deep-and-meaningful message for you today). The “everything else” isn’t fully captured in this photo – the horizon goes on and on, and the evening sky is always huge and magnificent.

I thought this post would be up and published weeks ago, because optimism is knitted into the fabric of my bones. Yeah, nah. I admire those people who can carry a go-pro around with them, recording their progress. I was busy doing two different things during January, from day’s start to day’s end: building work, and work work. A lot of the latter was done from a camp chair and card table, battling semester planning with intermittent interruptions to do things like holding up bits of ceiling.

Updating the blog didn’t get to the top of the to-do list till now. During that time, three months have passed and I’ve had a return trip to Victoria and didn’t even go to the cottage. But we did get a lot done while we were there:

Specifically:

Insulation (glass wool) in all wall and ceiling cavities.
Plaster on all un-plastered walls.
Repaired walls and ceiling, and fully re-painted, the old bedroom. Which then turned into the store-room so the lounge-room could be done, so will need another coat before the new carpet eventually goes down. Deep sigh.
Board-and-lath ceiling in the new bedroom, installed and painted (ohmygosh, the painting and sanding and painting…that went on for Such A Long Time…).
Tongue-and-groove ceiling in the new sunroom.
Another clear coat on the sunroom’s exterior window/door frames
Levelling compound on the drastically uneven concrete floor.
Ordered floor coverings.

There were probably other things I’ve forgotten. Oh, such as, the electrician came out and moved the wiring for the lounge-room light fittings up to the gable. We’re going to leave the timber framing in place and drop the lights down to hang just below these.

I’m a bit desperate to get back and close it all in before mice set up home in the insulation, but there are just not enough hours in the day or days in the week. I really hope we don’t have to re-do a whole lot of what we achieved in January. Current plans are to return in mid-May. Fingers tightly crossed and going a bit blue with the effort.

Post 8: Feeling it in my waters.

Another post about water, but this time featuring two separate dramas, and illustrating rather nicely the importance of water (and the tensions that can escalate amazingly rapidly when water is involved). The dramas happened a month or two apart – it’s been a while since Post 7.

So.

Drama 1: Remember that lovely nearly-full dam we had in post 7? The one I was so excited to see in person when we finally made it over the newly-opened border into Victoria? Well, one day a few weeks ago, we had a phone call from our neighbour asking if we had given someone the ok to run the dam pump. Erm….no? Turns out the pump had been running all day, pumping water to…who knows…and the dam was now as good as empty.

LOML stayed calmer than I did. He went straight to ‘philosophical’: “Well, it’s done now, not much we can do about it, can you please make sure the pump has been turned off. We’ll be there in a few weeks.” I dwelled rather longer on ‘furious rage mixed with deep disappointment’. Think along the lines of those cartoon phone calls when you just hear enraged squeaking pouring out of the headset. That was me.

We don’t know what happened. We’re confident it was an accident (honestly). I’m not entirely sure how, but neighours’ sheep do use our paddocks from time to time, so perhaps it was someone assuming we’d be ok with it and just forgot to turn off the pump to the water trough… If we lived there, we’d probably follow it up, but from a distance all that’s likely to happen is that misunderstandings get even more entangled and life will be unnecessarily tense when we do finally move there. So now no-one can get water from the dam.

Drama 2: This one we were there for, at least initially. As we were having coffee in town, about to head homewards, I realised I’d missed a couple of calls from our tenant. I called back, to be informed that there was an emergency: all three of the tanks to the main house were empty and there was just brown sludge coming from the taps. It was noted that the tank for the cottage (reno job) was full. We clarified that it’s not possible to siphon water from the main house to the cottage, and we wouldn’t, even if we could.

Having made sure the problem was also called in to the estate agent (they would need to arrange tradies, plus we really want to separate our neighbour/tenancy relationships) we diverted back to the property to check out the tank situation. No sign of water leaks anywhere – no water lying around on the ground, leaks to be seen anywhere, banging the tank walls didn’t give any clear indication of water levels, and turning the tap on at the bottom of one tank ran brown then clear. Hmmm. A mystery.

However, water is vital, no question about that. With the assistance of our tenancy manager, who did a truly great job, a water carter was found (no mean feat, as it turned out) and a tank maintenance company agreed to rearrange their day’s scheduled to attend asap. Quote to check and clean three empty tanks: $1,400 approximately. Gulp. But what can you do.

Well, long story very short, the maintenance guys attended very promptly, and very promptly – and I gather a bit tersely – informed the property manager that all three tanks were full. Call-out fee would be payable. No argument with that – their day had been messed around and they’d attended very quickly.

I figure there’s something to learn from most of life’s dramas, and this one was no different. Take-aways from this one:

I know where to find a tank maintenance company (whether they will ever agree to come again is a different matter)
I know of at least three water haulers if needed, and that they often don’t answer their phones.
Tanks run with brown water (not sludge – later photos confirmed the difference) for a while if they’ve been disturbed, but run clear again after a little while. Chances are, our building work (or something else) had done this. And following on from that:
Tank filters need to be cleaned regularly.
People get very stressed about water, very quickly. Sometimes a little quicker than is strictly necessary.
Staying calm, not fighting fire with fire, and having a good tenancy manager, all help to avoid relationships going off the rails. Misunderstandings happen, and good relationships with neighbours are almost as vital as water.

Two other exciting things to share from this trip, not water-related.

Firstly, our gorgeous kids gave us a custom-built fire pit for our 60th birthdays. How fabulous is this! (Be assured that it’s just on the deck for photo purposes.)

And second, the community of fairy martins whose nest we had to disturb to build the rear deck have returned and, undeterred, have rebuilt. We will now build around them so as not to disturb them further. We’re so pleased to see them! (This photo is taken from a video, through a screen door, so it’s not great quality, sorry)

This all happened over a month ago, but work commitments were a bit overwhelming and blogging went by the wayside. We’re back and getting stuck into our own bit of the renovations, so Post 9 is about to follow. There will be pictures of insulation and indoor scaffolding…it’s very exciting.

Post 7: La Nina comes to visit

We still can’t visit, which is getting really tedious but can’t be helped. But in the meantime, we’ve received photos, and the exciting thing to share in this post is that there’s water. Not only in the dam, which is nearly full (is there a leak?) but also in the creek.

Credit for photos: Mum.

How exciting is that!

There’s been a pause in the building works. Pretty much all the exterior work that can be done has been done, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone willing or able to take on the levelling of the concrete floor. I’m inclined to leave it as it is and just seal it rustically, but that may not be safe. It’s rather, um, lumpy.

We really can’t go any further until we can get inside and see it. There are wall and ceiling materials to choose, light fittings to decide on, powerpoints to locate, etc etc etc and more etcs. Hopefully the border between NSW and regional Victoria will re-open soon. Once it does, we’ll be packing up the car, booking the pusscat into his holiday accommodation, and you won’t see us for dust.

Speaking of dust, instead of putting in more photos of books or yarn, or starting with the non-existent chooks, I’m going to post a link to a project long-planned and finally completed for sharing at mum’s recent birthday party on Zoom. It features a poem I wrote several years ago (my one and only venture into bush poetry, which has rhymes and rhythm and verses and structure) accompanied by some photos that LOML took on our various travels around Australia.

I’d like to tweak it with some more photos that I have in my mind but not, apparently, on the computer. For example, verse 1 needs an aerial photo of city streetlights looped like a glittering spiderweb…I’ve seen this from a plane window when we’ve been coming in to land at night, but my photo skills and equipment are not up to scratch.

To quote Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, “perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor”. So it is what it is: “Logging On”. I hope you enjoy it.

Post 6: Both kinds of yarning

No action on the home front in the past couple of weeks, so the focus for this post is books and knitting. In other words, I will tell you about the stories (yarns) I’m reading, and the wool (yarn) I’m knitting.

First, the book: Chicks in Chainmail, a collection of short stories about brass bras and battles. I’m not far in yet, but it came highly recommended. From the yellowed pages in my new copy, I’d say it has been in a storage shed somewhere since it was published in 1995.

Chicks in Chainmail is the first of a series with similarly cheesy titles, offering a spirited feminist take on tales of action and adventure. I’m not sure that it could be called a parody, any more than “equal pay for equal work” can be considered a parody of the concept of payment for work. The stories all feature strong women who like to get into the thick of it all, rather than simpering about fighting for a decent breath because their corsets are so tightly laced. Which is not to say that women shouldn’t wear corsets..they are absolutely entitled to wear corsets. The point is whether a given woman wants to wear a corset, or whether she’d rather rip it off and head out into the fray. That’s the point.

I’m on the second story, “And Ladies of the Club” which is about the unfair taxation of brass bras, which are part of the warrior women’s battle dress – unfair because the brass clothing designed to protect male warriors’ soft bits is not similarly taxed, being considered a necessity. This was written pre-tampon-tax-debates, so it’s quite prophetic really. The warriors engage a plastics wizard to enact a spell that removes their breasts when they need to go into battle (hence requiring only flat armour and avoiding taxation) but, helpfully, returns the breasts for their down-time. This seems entirely reasonable to me. Breasts can be a lot of fun, and extremely useful for feeding bebbies, but when it comes to running, for instance, they’re a damn nuisance. Not to mention hand-to-hand combat, I guess…I have less experience with that.

Chicks in Chainmail is an easy read, and not to be taken too seriously, although it’s got a bit of bite as well. I suspect that gender debates have widened quite significantly since it was written, and it feels a bit dated, but that must be a good thing, right? Although I look around me and wonder whether it really is all that dated. We seem to be fighting a lot of the same battles still (brass bras notwithstanding).

So, to wool, the other type of yarn. And I really am using wool – 100%. I’m attempting to make a gansey, or guernsey, as traditionally as I can. The yarn is Frangipani, which is grown and milled in England specifically created with ganseys in mind. I have three cones, 2 x 500g and 1 x 250g. The reason for the cones is that there’s minimal need for joining and sewing in ends (yay!). It does mean that this is not an easily transportable project, though.

A gansey is a working person’s jumper, knit in 5-ply/sport on very small needles – I’m using 2mm, to get gauge – so that it creates a tight, nearly waterproof fabric. This is also why it’s in 100% wool: warm, dry, something to wear in freezing temperatures when out on the fishing boat or (given that fishing’s not big in our dam) feeding the chooks in winter.

The first step is to make two welts (like flaps at the bottom of the garment). I used the Channel Island cast on, which is a new technique to me. It involves using three strands of yarn, just on the cast-on row, to give a tough and hard-wearing edge for those rugged blokes out on their trawlers. That said, it also gives a knotted appearance that is quite like picot, and actually surprisingly decorative for such a no-nonsense jumper. After the cast-on row, you drop the extra two stands and continue with just one, as usual.

The welts are knit flat, one front and one back, then joined together and followed by a band of 2×2 rib. Then the jumper is knit in a straight tube up to the armholes, with a column of two purl stitches on each side (“seam stitches”) which will feed into the underarm gussets. I’m a long way from the gussets, though.

The gansey is in a single colour, and I’m making this one navy blue, one of the traditional colours. In contrast to the colour work that I’m more familiar with, this uses knit and purl stitches to create designs that have significance for the individual wearer. PJ’s initials are in the process of being knit into a section just above the band, and then it will be all plain until the armhole, when the fun really begins – trees, mountains, anchors, wedding lines, all sorts of symbols that make this about him and our life together. More of that later on…for now, here’s a picture of the Channel Island cast-on in progress.

And maybe by Post 7 there will be a new roof to show off!

Post 5: Tanking – in the best possible way

As you can see from these photos, this week has brought a few exciting developments. And I don’t just mean that I’ve figured out how to arrange photos in a “mosaic tile” in WordPress (although that is significant).

The unfinished, partially weathered deck has been taken up, sanded, re-laid fully and coated. Cannot wait to sit out here and watch the sun set. The new bedroom and living area have been lined with corrugated iron to follow that of the original gable section above the existing bedroom. And that roof over the deck will already be catching water, which, in the fullness of time (and maybe already – we don’t know that detail at this point) will feed the rainwater into our lovely big new tank.

“Squee” is an overused and twitty word, but… squee!

We don’t know when we’ll get there in person but if all goes very well and people do what it takes to get a grip on this pandemic, we might get to visit in September. I’ve been looking at light fixtures online, and finding it pretty much impossible to do this without being able to get a sense of the place by standing in the spaces myself. Plus, I’d like to get recycled materials if possible, and the two places in town that I would go to would need a long, leisurely explore. In person.

Meanwhile, squee again! It looks just the way we wanted it to!

Post 4: Progress

Since we left a fortnight a fortnight ago, things have moved along at many levels. 2020 is turning out to be a weird one, alright.

On the day we left, we popped past so that I could see where things had got up to. It was good to go and have a look, with a view to being back in a month (best laid plans…more on that in a moment) to spend more focused time on preparations for the inside.

The second bedroom has now been enclosed:

After we left, we headed to Bright for a week’s R&R with our kids and grandbaby, before heading home.

So, the plan was to take a week’s leave in late July and go back. That is still the plan, sort of. Except…Melbourne (where we weren’t, except for a few hours to have dinner with PJ’s family) has had an uptick in Covid-19 cases and several suburbs are now in lockdown. Travel options are a day-by-day proposition, and it’s looking quite likely that if we were to travel to Victoria, even though we wouldn’t be in Melbourne, we probably couldn’t be confident of being allowed back to NSW. (I read a news article yesterday that suggested Victorians might be smuggled over the NSW/Queensland border inside trucks. This is all very bizarre.)

This means I will continue to blog from a distance at this stage, relying on photos and updates from mum and the builders.

On the topic of builders, we are really happy with the people working on this project locally – they’re doing a great job. Not only that, but they are great to work with. Ash and PJ have frequent conversations and Ash sends through photos to keep us updated. This week, he contacted PJ to say that they had only been able to get half the deck laid before the weather changed, so they’ve taken the weathered boards back up, sanded them, and will re-lay the whole deck and prep it so that we don’t have a before-and-after look. A lacklustre tradie would presumably have just forged on and hoped it would all even up in time (with us not being there to see it). He has also tracked down some discarded timber for the shelter “wall” (not fully enclosed, but providing some protection from the southerlies as well as structural support) at one end of the deck, which will be perfect.

The other bit of news for this week is that the roof of the Dairy is now going to be replaced, because it turns out the pitched and flat sections are different materials (gal and zinc…or summat…I’m more into yarn, personally, but I get the gist). The unplanned re-roofing is not a big problem, in fact it’s good to have it picked up and dealt with.

Meanwhile, our week’s leave has been approved and the cat is booked in to his holiday accommodation, so if we can’t travel to Victoria we’ll hopefully get to spend a few days away somewhere closer, just for the change of scene. Although one of the workers at our local supermarket tested positive for The Virus a week ago, so Victorian clusters might be the least of our challenges.

To close, here’s a picture of the cat, who is untroubled by any of this.

Post 3: in which we get to see the progress in person

The inside has now been completely gutted, and the breezeblocks along the west wall of the carport have been removed to make way for the framing of what will become the other bedroom (visible in the right-hand side of the top picture, and the centre and right-hand smaller ones. I really need a WordPress tutor to show me how to do this stuff…).

It’s so exciting to see it coming along and we’re really, really pleased with how it’s looking. The sliding door/window is now in place, which makes a huge difference. I’m dreaming of long summer twilights sitting on the deck, with a beer and a guitar, watching the sun set over that wide, wide horizon…. But at the moment the temperatures are down close to freezing overnight, the frosts have started, and days are short and muddy.

Inside, PJ and Dad spent a couple of days moving piles of bricks and tearing out the wood-veneer panelling on the walls. The lounge-room ceiling has been pulled out and the roof will be insulated then either plastered or lined with painted tongue-and-groove. We’ve decided to leave the timber frames exposed as they are, for both structural and aesthetic reasons.

This was a passing visit – we spent fours days with my parents and fitted in a day-trip for dinner in Melbourne with PJ’s family, then off to Bright for a week with our kids and grandkid. And I’m not on leave – work is crazybusy so I spent a good portion of time pounding away on my laptop. But it was just long enough to prowl around and scheme schemes, dream dreams, and plan plans.

The block is very green, with a thriving assortment of weeds. The trees my sister and her friends planted for her 50th birthday, all indigenous to this area, are looking spritely – apart from the three that are dead, but they’ve been dead a while now so that’s not news. Rainfall has been very high, after the baking hot, fiery summer, and the dam is about 20% full (my estimate, who knows, really – highest we’ve seen it, anyway). The tanks are full, gumboots are the preferred footwear…it is a landscape transformed, and will no doubt transform again.

This was it 18 months ago:

(In case anyone’s wondering, the Golden Wombat spent a year with me, from one Christmas-in-July to the next, and chronicled its experiences during that time. This photo is from one of the chronicles.)

We will return home with a clearer idea of what we need to decide on: light fittings, wall finishes, floor covering, window covers. Mumma is about to have Things To Contribute. Yay!

Oh, by the way, I’ve also just finished Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming”. Great read.

And I’m knitting a black jumper with a circular Fair Isle yoke, which will be nice and snugglywarm for when we visit next. That is scheduled to be a month from now, if we’re still able to travel…the Victorian curve seems to be upticking…

Post 2: The work begins

4 April 2020

A lot has happened in the world since that first post, hence the unanticipated lag between Post 1 and Post 2. But here we are, and there’s progress to report.

The building got under way very quickly after the permits were approved, as these photos show, and for a fortnight or so it got really exciting. Demolition happened, posts went up, and decking timbers were chosen and laid.

Inevitably, with any project of this type, it’s not until you start work that you discover the oversights and gaps in communication. There have been a couple of these already. First up, I had hoped we’d be able to source some recycled metal for the rear deck structure. However, that was based on an assumption that things would move ahead slowly enough that we’d be able to go and visit the local yard (a treasure trove of second-hand building materials, from doors and window frames to roof trusses).

I hadn’t bargained on the pace of work – not that I’m complaining about that! – and so before I knew it, new steel had been ordered. I was disappointed, and a bit frustrated, but also realise that it’s a sign I need to step up and be more engaged with things from now on. This is entirely my own fault, having been so overwhelmed with work that I’ve pretty much indicated my preferences for recycled materials where possible, and then looked away. I could have had as much input as I wanted, if I’d chosen to prioritise that.

Having compromised on that, I was again disappointed to discover that our expectations of a vaulted ceiling hadn’t made it into the plans. D’oh! Turns out the architect had thought we’d decided against doing that at this point, and in all our poring over drawings we hadn’t noticed that it had been left out of the plans and approvals. To factor that in now would mean going back for new approval, which would include new engineering designs and applications for various energy and other permits. Sigh. So after some humming and hawing, we’ve agreed that there will be a new flat ceiling, and we’ll raise it as a separate exercise down the track. (LOML has looked me in the eye and promised this will happen. I was cynical.)

So, third hitch was a delay in getting building materials, due to covid-19 interruptions. We could proceed with second-best material choices, but LOML and I both agree that there is no huge rush and nothing else can happen at the moment anyway, as I’ll explain in a moment. So we’ll hang on and do the next bit as planned.

In the course of all this, obviously, there has been The Virus.

In early March, we had planned to go and visit for Easter and a few days afterwards (LOML staying longer than me, because I needed to be around to teach on Maundy Thursday and back on the Friday after Easter). Then, everything moved online, including all my classes, so we arranged cattery accommodation for Sunny and decided to spend all of April in Victoria instead, working from home (well, someone’s home…). Of course, things changed again really rapidly – states started closing borders, we became increasingly aware of our risk of taking the virus with us and infecting people (particularly our parents) as well as the distinct possibility that we might not be able to get back home.

As a result, we haven’t been able to see the work ourselves, or source local recycled materials. On the other hand, the builders have had to slow or stop work because of lack of materials and labour for the same reasons. And this means…

Post 3 will be about books and knitting. Stay well, dear readers!

So much “potential”…!

Welcome to Books and Chooks!

23 February 2020

Welcome to the first post of Books and Chooks.

Last week we finally received the building permit that lets us get started on some renovations to a converted milking shed in central Victoria (Australia). This blog is going to chronicle the building work, and beyond, as the Love of my Life (LOML) and I move towards a new phase: retired folk with a few acres, keeping chooks and revegetating a paddock or two.

In between times, I’ll chat about what I’m reading, and what I’m knitting.¹

As this is the first post, here’s some introductory background to the Chooks theme. Spoiler alert: there are no chooks (yet).

A couple of years ago, we bought a small hobby-farm, with a lovely old farmhouse, some sheds, and a little “cottage” – where I gather the house-cow was milked and the milk was churned. There’s a photo of it above, taken on a chilly morning last winter.

When we bought the property, the cottage had been converted into a one-bedroom residence with a carport. In it, there lived a hunter and a couple of stuffed boar heads, compete with tusks. Well, one had tusks. Perhaps the other was his beloved. Who’s to know. By the time we got the keys, both were gone, but a healthy infestation of carpet beetles remained. I don’t like excessive use of chemicals, but there was really nothing for it but to set off a bug-bomb and stay away for a few days. That sorted that.

We’re not ready to move for a couple of years yet, so we have rented out the farmhouse and the two biggest sheds, and we visit as often as we can. Until the cottage was gutted ready for the renovations, we stayed there, and that will be our base again once it’s done.

The building plans that will feature in future posts involve a facelift, a free-standing pergola to the front (facing the road, eastwards) and a sheltered deck to the back, which looks west across the paddocks and down to a creek that as far as we know either runs dry or floods. We haven’t yet seen it in flood but I’m sure the time will come.

Inside, we’re enclosing the carport to make a second bedroom, removing part of the central wall to open up the living space, and removing the living area’s ceiling to create a vaulted ceiling. The bathroom will stay as is, apart from a bit of a repaint and maybe a new ceiling. The living space will be flipped around so that the current kitchen/lounge will be just lounge, and the sunroom (for want of a better description) will become kitchen/sunroom opening out on to the decking.

And from the deck, as well as the paddocks and creek, there’s a view of a couple of big eucalypts and…the old chook shed!

¹If I was a crocheter, I could have named the blog “Books, Chooks, and Hooks” but I’m not. “Books Chooks and Knitting Needles” doesn’t have the same rhythm. And I don’t cook, so there’s no need to go there.