Shetland Morning
Updated: Mar 22, 2021
Woke up and it wasn't a Chelsea morning, as sung by Joni Mitchel but more of a Shetland Morn. In Shetland you can experience a year’s weather in a day with rapid changes encompassing everything from rain and snow to gales and sunshine; and that’s about how it's been here for most of the week. Since the weather changed on Wednesday we’ve had high winds and low temperatures and short breaks of everything else as well, very frustrating. I stated today with an earful of Shetland fiddle music from Bazin Fiddles album North ( http://bit.ly/2LnBG7P ) as it seemed most appropriate.
The dome zones have progressed some more, the Hafod has now got a timber walkway from the back door across to the bathroom and also now has a back door, although there is an issue at the moment with the door lock needing to be adjusted. The front door now has a timber landing outside and will shortly have a ramped access on one side and steps down the other side. The round, zipped front door is still only temporarily secured as I’m waiting for some more warm weather so I can tease out all the wrinkles in the covering before finally securing the doorway.
Meanwhile Katherine has finished the steps and path from the garden dome down to the fire pit and the wheely fire basket has been installed. I can’t think of a suitable word to describe a upcycled item that is made from a truck wheel.
K has also removed the turf from four areas which will become beds for shrubs and annuals around the garden dome. The turf has been used to put a firm surface on the bank below the dome. There are quite a number of plants on order as well as seedlings appearing in the polytunnel but up here at above 300mtrs above it’s still too early to be putting stuff outside
Our garden pond now has frog spawn, some from the stream at the bottom of the hill and some donated by two local frogs, so we’ve transplanted some down to the new pond adjacent to the Hafod dome. We’ll have to wait and see how the take to new environs!
I had to spend a few hours stuck inside the cupboard under the stairs last week fitting a new programmer for our under floor heating as the old one was not repairable. When I installed the original the stairs didn’t exist so it was easy to fit the controller to the wall. With the stairs in situ it’s a bit more of a squeeze for me. Hopefully I won’t ever need to repeat the job. But then 1st thing on Monday we had the oil tanks refilled which stirred up some shit in the bottom of the tank, said shit got through the filter and blocked the jets in the Aga boiler/cooker so half of Tuesday disappeared with me wearing my service engineers hat, lying on the floor and cleaning through the oil system and bleeding the jets. All sorted now but a real pain.
One good thing about the strong winds is the amount of electricity produced by the wind turbine. We’ve has a surplus since Wednesday so we have had electric fires on to use it up which does ironically cut the need for the oil burner.
The forecast for the coming week looks better with more sun and less wind so I’m hoping the ground will start to dry up as I’m in danger of cutting the ground up with the constant traffic across Janes field. With the dome shortly to be completely weather proof I can get started on the inside fit out. Our sitting room is becoming crammed with bed and furnishing for the Hafod so It will be good to start getting some of it shifted shortly.
Roast beef for supper this evening and to use up some of our eggs well have some Yorkshire puds to start, proper job Boss!
Solar PV 91.63Kw
Wind Turbine 62.52Kw
Power Created on site 154.15W
