3 tonnes of wood pellets later...

Took delivery of 3 tonnes of wood pellets today....when I say delivery I mean that they drop them at the bottom of our very steep hill, about 1 1/2 miles from our boiler! Was a little warm for the job really...all ready for winter then!!! (It's cheaper to buy them now). 

It would be great to rely just on the raw logs for heat and all that but after our first winter here we can see we would need a huge barn to do this. Aready the wood shed is maybe 30 ft long or something like that and it does give us a lot of heat through the regular wood burner....the thing is once autumn comes and the solar water panels arent doing much your really glad of the wood pellets!

We did start up the pellet boiler quite early last autumn as we had only just arrived and were still acclimatising to the temperature up in the hills rather than down in the valley, will start it up later this year......hang on a minute whats all this talk of starting up boilers and the winter!!!! Right my next post will be about spring and all the fantastic things that are starting to grow in our new raised beds. :)

Solar dryer

Solar drying power! Have recently built this very simple solar dryer for drying herbs and things...may even manage sun dried tomatoes here in west wales! So far have dried wild garlic and mint very quick compared to usual hanging it around in brown bags etc

As usual made from reclaimed bits n bobs and is really just a box with an inlet hole at the bottom and one at the top to let real hot air out. (Could do with adding insect proof screening to these really.

Will look at drying stuff for adding to wine to give a country boost (for selling at market mainly) or for when its the dead of winter and not a berry around...