It's rather hot over here!

chrismahon

chrismahon

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I've been experimenting with a DIY process for drying unseasoned timber to use in the wood burner. It must be lower than 20% humidity otherwise the flue soots up. 25% of the water content is 'cellular entrapment', which means you have to break the cells open to get the water out. This is normally done by 'seasoning' for two years, which rots the cells and they split. The alternative is kiln drying above 50 degrees, but less than 60 degrees or the wood can explode. So I've taken the two apex panels from the greenhouse out and put wood in there. Working a treat, with the wood drying to 5 -10% within 2 weeks.

So I'm in there taking wood out and look at the thermometer which reads off the scale -so over 50 degrees. Thinks to myself "I must be getting used to the heat over here", been 32 -35 in the shade for a couple of weeks now. But I decided to check the thermometer after a while, only to discover that the bulb had exploded in the heat! That's hot. Must have been over 60 degrees in there.

Apparently a good method in the UK is to put it in a polytunnel, open at both ends for a year. But over here the plastic would melt.
 
'Into each life some rain must fall' - so they say, but when???
Even the bindweed is crunching up. On Monday we were teased with distant thunder, covered the quails and the garden loungers, went to bed in hope of a severely disturbed noisy night - nothing.
Sunny again yesterday. Felt three drops of rain on my face at about 6p.m. Teasing me again.
Gras all brown and crackly under dog's feet, he doesn't like it.
 
Meteo France forecast thunderstorms here yesterday followed by showers. I was really looking forward to that. Guess what, not one single drop!

Ground is all cracked up and leaves are dropping from the trees as they have insufficient water. But it's still damp in this house! Water is running underground and into one wall. Took 4.5 litres of water out of the tiny lounge in 5 hours of running a big dehumidifier. The problem is the heat outside is driving the damp inside, so it's actually far worse than it was in Winter. Can't use the salt cellar without drying it in the greenhouse. Moving soon I hope.
 
The news today is about all the areas that have had a months worth of rain in one day and are now flooded with runoff. Newsreaders always talk about the 'threat' of rain, don't they, even when its desperately needed.
 
Marigold. I picked up my Longtown Brown, Chalkhill Blue & a utility Light Sussex on Monday & drove them home (4 hours, but mercifully the car's air conditioned, so the girls didn't cook). They can't have had much sleep that night, as they're spending their first 3 weeks in the greenhouse at night, & they had several hours of thunder, forked lightening & torrential rain (resulting in a power cut too). The water butt went from completely empty to overflowing in a matter of hours. Funny to think that the rest of the hens at the farm might not have had a drop of rain?

Photos to follow, I promise.
 
Look forward to the photos Icemaiden. Isn't it a bit hot for chickens in a greenhouse -ours is 60 degrees! Mind you not at night.

We gather rainwater here for toilet flushing. It's very good for the 'fosse septique' as it has no Chlorine and saves 1.8 cents per flush. We decided to tap into another downpipe and set up a 300L water butt. If you have seen a downpour in France you will understand, but it took 10 minutes from empty to overflowing.

Ah! Rain, I remember it well and miss it a lot. Meteo France has let me down again. Just had to lie down in the dark for half an hour. Tried working outside and succumbed to the heat.
 
Chris. Your loo flushing method reminds me of a canal restoration that I once worked on. Rumour had it that the lock bywash ran under the lock cottage's outhouse & it was this that washed the 'waste' away. When we worked there, the canal had been derelict for over 100 years, so the loo was well overdue for a flush!!
 
When we moved to our present house 42 years ago, it had a septic tank and no mains drainage. The tank had been installed in the 1930s and consisted of a concrete cylinder with holes in the sides. A builder friend explained that the original builders would have implanted glass bottles in the sides, strategically placed so they could be skimmed over and the tank would apparently pass the building inspectors requirements. When he had gone, a crowbar was used to break the thin skim and the bottles, thus ensuring good drainage of the liquid contents and little need to empty the tank until full of solids. It worked wonderfully well, the garden was never so fertile once we eventually went over to mains drainage, and as we are at the top of a hill on chalky soil there were no flooding problems.
When we eventually had it pumped out, it was on a very hot day in Summer, when my house proud neighbour, who always reminded me of Margo in The Good Life, was trying to have a refined tea party on her lawn next door. The stench was tangible. But the men doing the pumping were full of enthusiasm for what they called the 'lovely crust' on our tank when the cover was lifted. 'You don't see very many like that any more ' one of them said nostalgically.
 
Well Icemaiden, if you saw the place we are thinking of buying! The same pit (the hole created from extracting the stone to build the houses) has been used for a toilet for 400 years. It's a big hole and nowhere near full. The current toilet drains into the same pit. We were told it was a pond -which it is after heavy rain, good all year. Well it has fluid in all year that's for sure. The concrete 1000 litre septic tank has probably never been emptied since it was installed in 1980, so the outflow is totally unprocessed. The old toilet is still in position, sitting on the edge of the pit. A lot of the properties we have looked at are in a similar (but not that bad) condition. Regulations now are as tight or tighter than the UK and are set to change further in 2015 making knowingly operating a non-compliant sewerage system a criminal offence. So the old two tank systems with sludged outflow beds will land you in prison.

You remind me of many things Marigold. The Good Life was a great series made even better by Felicity Kendal. The next one, To the Manor Born, had Margo and Hyacinth. We named two chickens after them and I've just put the second perch back into a new coop to give Hyacinth more room. Sadly Margo was fatally injured after soil bathing in the rusty nail laden ground that was our UK garden.

Back in the early '80's I bought a bungalow in the country. Being a total 'townie' I didn't know the first thing about septic tanks or the difference between that and a cess pit. So when our 10,000 litre tank needed emptying every 3 months I was rather surprised by the unexpected cost. So I called Severn Trent Water who sent a very knowledgable chap round. He suggested converting it to a septic tank and explained how to do it. After some rather smelly and awkward conversion work we had a septic tank -that wasn't working! My friend suggested throwing a dead cat or fox into it, which starts them working apparently (told yesterday a dead free ranging chicken is just as good). As I had neither I went next door to collect a few buckets of 'crust' from their tank. It was very thick and very hard but I managed to break some up and throw it into our tank. Month later and still not working! So I had the idea of using sheep guts from a local slaughter house a workmate knew of. On a hot Friday evening I tried to find it but failed. So after an even hotter weekend I went to work on Monday to get more detailed instructions. Found the place and was told "they are still there". So I collected 50Kg of rotting sheep guts in a plastic bag in my Mini (1966 with sliding windows) and drove home with all the windows fully open and my head out of one of them. Holding my breath I poured the gloopy mess into the tank and after a few weeks it actually started working! The smell from the outflow stopped (well wasn't nearly so bad) and a crust started to form in the tank! Not so fond memories soon to be repeated perhaps as I will have to sort a lot of this mess out if we buy the property -tradesmen (artisans) cost a small fortune over here.
 
We've got the same kind of tank as Marigold, & very healthy rose bushes & cobnut trees as a result. Glad we don't get the trouble that you've had, Chris!
Mind you, I've given up developing & printing my own photos, for fear of poisoning the bugs in our tank, & I was a bit worried about using bleach at first. 13 years later though, I'm much more chilled about it.
Would chicken poo work to jumpstart a cesspit?
 
Well it's the gut enzymes in a free ranging chicken. Free ranging being important to get the meat diet, rather than just pellets. Everyones chickens, except ours, just wander around the place eating whatever they find. the layers pellets are just a supplement so they have a whopping 5% calcium addition. So their poo would carry the enzymes, so poo should do it Icemaiden. When we bought some Beryl's tonic we treated the problem birds and then a random bird in each coop, on the basis that grubbing about they would digest their poo and spread the enzymes. They are all very healthy so perhaps it worked?
 
Sorry Foxy :-)07
Possibly a daft question, but what's "Beryl's tonic"?
 
Oh, it's a solution containing enzymes Icemaiden. The producers claim to have found an old lady called Beryl who had a flock of chickens totally disease free in her lifetime. They analysed the gut flora and found hundreds of different varieties they had never seen before. So they cultivated them. Now market them for domestic chickens a bit out of sorts. They arrive by courier in a chilled pack but you must be in to receive them. Ours were dumped on the doorstep 48 hours later rather warm and possibly useless. Still they were administered and seemed to have good effects.

And talking of hot! 26 degrees tonight and absolutely not a whisper of a breeze. The coop side doors are all open for the Wyandottes and of course the Orpingtons and they are still gasping. Forecasts 21 degrees later so I will stay up and shut them in when they stop gasping.
 
I think Beryl's miraculous tonic, and the story behind it, is just advertising hype. You could get equivalent results by administering some bioactive yogurt, which is all Beryl's is, really. Much much cheaper, immediately available at your local shop, and fresher as well.
I do go along with giving probiotics where appropriate, I'm not saying Beryl's doesn't work, just that its not necessarily the only or the least expensive way to get results. My dog recently had a stomach upset which resulted in farts that would clear a room, until I put him on probiotic tablets for dogs. These are easy to administer and very effective, we have all been much happier since he started on his YumBio!
 
Beryl's is supposed to have hundreds of strains whereas probiotic yoghurt could have between just one and four cultures. We tried the yoghurt first Marigold, without success, then bought the Beryl's.

I couldn't stay awake any longer last night. At 11.30 they were still panting! 5.30am I got up and shut the doors to avoid mayhem at dawn. At 7.30 am Basil, the very stocky Buff Orpington (Bottom's son) was panting as soon as he came out so he's in front of the electric fan now. Supposed to be cooler today -just 32. Saturday is heavy thunderous downpours -hooray!
 
chrismahon said:
Oh, it's a solution containing enzymes Icemaiden. The producers claim to have found an old lady called Beryl who had a flock of chickens totally disease free in her lifetime..
Click to expand...

Maybe Beryl, if indeed she existed, was just an old lady who had years of poultrykeeping experience behind her, who had always kept her chickens on a simple diet in suitable conditions on a no-fuss regime, and thus, like me, had never had any serious problems with her flock other than age-related maladies. The people who flog this stuff at a vast profit don't say that the health of her chickens was down to her giving them yogurt, so the flock must have been producing all these beneficial bacteria without the help of any medication or tonics. So perhaps any of us could promote similar levels of health in our birds by just observing common sense rules about how to quarantine and introduce new stock, where to get new stock from in the first place, and how to feed and look after our birds long term.
 
I agree with you entirely Marigold.

And now I am packing my camping stuff for a trip to Gascony to look at a potential short-term rental. It's even hotter down there and the site will be nearly full. No chance of picking a shaded spot so will need a hat. The biggest battle we face here is with the climate, as the annual temperature swings are much higher than the UK. No Gulf Stream to keep the Winters (and the chickens and us) warm. So the only way to keep the energy costs down is to move further South to get warmer Winters. Problem is with that move comes warmer Summers, so we are going to buy an old stone house with a barn large enough for all the poultry in the peak months of Summer.
 
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