The Badlands Trilogy Part Deux

"You learn from your mistakes"

Dave was all for dumping the strimmed and dug up brambles onto the existing mountain in the yard, I knew better - create a new pile and burn it.

Armed with our new flame gun, the pile set light very quickly, flooded the valley with smoke and caused an anxious few minutes when we realised that there was a gas canister still attached to the caravan.

Nervous jokes were bandied about fire engines storming up our lane closely followed by irate neighbours. We stopped laughing when we heard a car driving up the track.. I hid behind a wall.

It was the local window cleaner touting for business.

Happily the gas canister did not explode, the coastal breeze dispersed the smokey fog and we received no further visitors..all good right? Wrong - the fire didn't consume the entire pile and I spent a day shovelling the remains.. onto the existing mountain. Sometimes ladies (just sometimes) the husband is right.

Now, those of you who have been reading our blog know that our biggest challenge has been finding reliable contractors to carry out works which are beyond our skills. Well we have finally found a good 'un - meet Shaun from Allspeck.

Shaun and his crew have already dug out the raised sides of the barn and re-concreted AND very kindly lifted and disposed of a mountain of old rotten wood from the badlands that I was dreading removing manually. The inside of the barn is now ready and we've even got our first loads of barley straw and hay in.

Shaun will be back tomorrow to begin the next job which is to replace the side entrance to the barn - the corrugated sheets are rusted, the doors are crap and the new roof isn't capped which means we run the risk of losing it in a gale. Happily for Dave, this work will require the dented end (tractor bucket versus barn incident) to be replaced.

Once this is done, the guys will then replace the perimeter fence around the section of the Badlands that we have ear marked for the goats. The existing fencing isn't that bad but if sheep can get in then goats can certainly get out and nobody wants to see a video of me chasing after goats in my dressing gown and wellies at silly o'clock in the morning, nobody.