Well, we made a few new bird boxes last winter, including an Owl box. This ended up a heavy, awkward thing, almost a two-man lift and hard to handle. The basic design was one I found here http://www.lincstrust.org.uk/factsheets
I painted the box with water-based preservative, but only outside.

I had a tree selected, a majestic Oak tree on the edge of a field. It overlooks the orchard, and is in the boundary hedge to the west of our land. It has an open area of main trunk about 10 metres up. The instructions about siting the box were adamant that it had to face East, and this open part did just that.

Fortunately, Pete visited us in early spring, and amongst many other tasks, he helped get the box into position. We wanted it as high as possible, so ended up balancing a ladder, fully extended, on the back of the quad! It was quite simple to fix - we just used a couple of heavy duty 6 inch wood-screws - the sort with a hex head that get driven in with the battery drill. The trunk sloped naturally, so the box ended up at about 45 degrees, and the entrance hole at the end was roughly vertical.

The last thing Pete did before we hoisted the box up, was to fill it with dry bark bits, and dry leaves from the floor of the log store. He filled it right up, there was even some grass waving about in the entrance. He muttered that "You have to give them something to do!" when I asked him why he was filling the box!

We dismantled all the ladders, and basically forgot the nest box was there. The dark green paint made it blend in well with the dark trunk, although it is quite obvious in the morning sun.

It was sometime in May on a wet and gloomy afternoon, when we got back from some shopping. As I unloaded the car, I glanced over at the nest box, about 60 or so metres away, and noticed something light coloured, filling the box entrance. On looking closer, I thought I had imagined it, as there was nothing there. The wisps of grass had gone, though.

Alerted, we kept looking at the box, and were rewarded by the occasional sight of "Tim the Tawny"! Gradually, he has become accustomed to our comings and goings, and now he sits in the box entrance most days, for hours on end. He sometimes sleeps with his head under his wing, but usually is apparently watching, although he does seem to have his eyes screwed up.

He (or she!) is quite vocal at night, and now we often hear the characteristic "Hoo Hoo" noises. It seems there are several other Tawnies in the area and there are often quite lengthy exchanges. Elliot can mimic these noises convincingly, and we have listened to some hilarious conversations between him and several owls.

An unplanned result of Tim's occupation of the box is a supply of pellets in the grass below. This provided some hours of fun, and some learning. Here's a happy grandchild busy with the tweezers!



Summertime

Terraces

Paul has started making terraces above the three we have already. (Where the Polytunnel is). We're doing them in decreasing length, so they make a sort of crescent shape leading up to the Smug Bench. Anyone can have one of these - it's just a normal bench but to make it smug, you just plant a Wild Service tree or two nearby. These are rare native trees, and "anyone who has one in his garden can feel smug about it!" say's our Guide to British Trees! You can’t see it in this picture, it’s just to the right.



The Extension and the Dam

Next, the big project is building the extension. We now have Planning Permission and some detailed plans have been developed by Mark Baggott (local Surveyor).

Electrical design to be done, then all can go to a QS for pricing. After that comes Building Permission and then we find a builder. Will it happen this year? I think so!!

The extension will snuggle into the bank behind the house, which therefore needed digging out. Paul's contract on the A46 has ended, so we now have Employee No.2 (Adam is No. 1) and a 3-tonne digger and a dumper here (hired).

Paul's done about 10 days so far and the results are quite impressive.

There's now a roadway through the Orchard, and a much wider gap behind the house. Not only will this allow us to dig out further, it will also be access for the builders later. There's still quite a lot to excavate, although I imagine it will only be a matter of days before that bit is done.

Those of you who are not asleep by now might be asking what we are doing with all the soil! Well, we have made a pathway across the soggy bit at the bottom of the left-hand field, that's what we fondly call the Orchid Field, although we haven't seen any orchids yet this year. Basically, if you are in the Orchard, it's below you bordered by the road. Anyway, this "pathway" rather cunningly encloses the wet area, which of course can't get its water out any more, and so is filling up!

Note the neatly weeded bed – Thanks Ju, it’s looking good!

You could call the pathway a dam, I suppose! But, spoilsports that we are, we've put a huge pipe through the dam low down, so actually there's only an inch or so more water in it than usual.



We'll let the pathway get overgrown and natural looking, then gradually raise the height of the inlet. Then, maybe, in years to come, we might do a bit of digging out. Eventually, we'll have a pond of sorts! And hopefully, the gradual raising of the level will encourage the beautiful marsh marigolds to migrate with the rising waterline.

The Wet Room

The Wet Room project is more-or-less done. It involved piping water from the second spring (in the copse top left of FR), into a pH corrector, then a filter and a UV steriliser. These bits are housed in a small enclosure attached to the back of the shed on the caravan side. This still needs finishing plaster and painting in the rather attractive Fron Rafel green that adorns the rest of the building.

Inside the shed there's a BIG boiler, with chimney poking through the wall, and this is fed from two large red gas cylinders outside.

The W-R is a white-tiled space with the usual sanitary ware, and a LARGE shower head. This delivers water at a prodigious rate (about 25 litres/minute actually) at a selectable temperature from cold to too-hot.

The RESULT is the best shower we've ever had, well worth running across the yard in your dressing gown for. (In warmer weather I might dispense with the dressing gown! Just hope Jean The Post doesn't turn up!).

Fron Rafel Birdcam 28th April 2012 "The eggs have hatched!"

A short Iphone vid of the birdcam at Fron Rafel.
The eggs have hatched!

Bird Cam in the Potting Shed is showing us 8 tiny Blue-tits being stuffed with blue-tit food by their Mum. Ah well, something has to feed the Sparrow Hawk!



Entertaining the Grandchildren

Although there's plenty for the Kids to do here in Carmarthenshire, We recently decided to finish the tree-house that we built when we first moved in.

We had been thinking of the safest way for the Children to Get up to the Tree-house and after much discussion we opted for a Cargo net. We popped over to the local 'Army Surplus' store to see if we could get one but with no success.

They informed us that they weren't allowed to sell them anymore as they were dangerous. :(

The next day we nipped to our local tool shop to pick up some supplies for the Business. We got talking to the Tool store owner and mentioned that we were after a cargo/scramble net. The owner sent one of His Minions into the stockroom and he came back our with SEVEN, two metre square Cargo Nets that a previous customer had ordered in and never collected.

After a heap of bartering he agreed to sell all seven to us for £50.00. BARGAIN!

Let construction Begin.

The first thing we did was to Bind two of the nets together to make them long enough to reach the platform on the tree-house without there being too much of a difficult climb to the top.

We then worked out how to connect the net to the ground. We drove two stakes into the earth and stretched the loops from the net over them, harnessed the sides in the centre of the net to the branches above and fixed the netting at the deck with a good piece of 2x4.

We repeated this whole process on the next side of the platform to give the kids two means of access.

Next on the agenda was the lazy adults and babies hammock, this was placed under the tree-house, tied securely using the legendary blue nylon rope which we have used in the family for years.

On to the Beams.

For David's Birthday last year, Elaine got him a Gibbon Slack-line.

This is pretty much a very strong and long Ratchet strap. (like the ones used to secure items to Ones 'roof rack'). This requires a VERY sturdy strut at each end. Point 'A' was easy as it is a very old tree, but we came across problems with Point 'B'. We had a 5 ft piece of old telegraph pole laying around so we used this for point 'B'. After a hell of a lot of elbow grease we managed to sink it into the ground far enough for the horizontal resistance to be high enough to support the weight of a small child.

We also set up a few 'Bench beams'. These were a very simple structure, built by hammering two old gate posts about 6ft apart and then nailing an old pole across the top of them. We made two of these in total. one at 1.5ft high and one at roughly 2.5ft high, These can also be used as seats.

JUMP.

The last thing we built was the tyre/pole swing. This is a good piece of climbing rope suspended up high with a long piece of plumbers piping over it and a tyre on the end to act as a seat or to cushion the landing. if swinging from the decking.

That's the Adventure playground completed, the new features make excellent additions to the swings and trampoline that were there before.

Thanks for reading.

Adam