Building and craft barns

Well another week gone by and some more slow progress made on the road to self sufficiency. I spent a lot of time last week building little brick walls. At the back of the house we have the old farm yard. In it are some nice herb beds, Since last week I got all of the lemon balm up (except for a little for use). I then had to go about rebuilding at least 50% of the wall that made up the bed as it had, or was about to fall down. Having done a little brick laying before at Embercombe and building a pizza oven I did manage to get it roughly straight and all at about the same height, which amazed me.

 Above is the finished one and below is the next one. It looks better than it really is at it contains loads of loose bricks that need to come out.

 I am now looking for inspiration for which herbs to plant next while I get the next bed ready. Do let me know if you have any that you think are really good and you want to recommend, add it as a comment  at the end of this entry. I'll have a look before I go to Jekka's herbs to get therm.

The saga of the chickens continues:

 Bluebell (on the right in the photo) is now much better, not limping and with the rest of the flock. Duke (cockeral on the left) is slowly moving up from being at the bottom of the pecking order. He now no longer gets chased away from the food. It seems now he is doing the chasing trying to get to the ladies (not sure if he has actually managed to catch them though). To show off his masculinity he has taken to attacking our legs when we go in the run. For a small chicken he puts up a good fight and has a sharp beak. Poor Harriett it getting worried about going into the chicken run. She did get nipped the other day and it drew blood. I think the cockerel has too much testosterone.

There are now actually some vegetables in the field

We have three small beds

Yes if you look closely there are plants growing in them. After a morning of heavy strimming they are now no longer surrounded by 6ft docks and nettles as they are in the photo.

I must mention the "craft barn" which is now ready and Zoe's pride and joy. I can now get on outside and stop spending sunny days in a barn as it is about done. It does look good though. I am just hoping my DIY damp course does the job with the damp wall.

Clearly the door needs a little more work, but apart from that It's about finished. Once that's up and running we'll have nearly all of the boxes unpacked.

I'm back to Kings Langley at the end of the week for the last few days of term, so just a few days to make some more progress this week. Today has been heavy strimming, I think there may be more of that to come.