Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines

[ST565NP]

Steve_W said:

You'll end up like Marty T in New Zealand if you keep buying old kit - when you get a grader and a couple of dozers you know you've got it bad!

Or like Andrew Camarata who does similar things like OP but on a bigger scale : https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewCamarata/videos

[Steve_W]

ST565NP said:

Steve_W said:

You'll end up like Marty T in New Zealand if you keep buying old kit - when you get a grader and a couple of dozers you know you've got it bad!

Or like Andrew Camarata who does similar things like OP but on a bigger scale : https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewCamarata/videos

Yep, there's a few channels like those that I find myself absorbed in - Diesel Creek's another one. Amazing what some of the kit does or doesn't go for when he visits the Ritchie Bros auctions too.

[Evoluzione]

Evoluzione said:

silentbrown said:

Evoluzione said:

Last nights hard frost is certainly bringing the birds to the table, a woodpecker and what looks like a Finch with a red breast visited this morning amongst the other regulars. Had a little white flash on either wing and the red colour went from it's beak down to it's legs. Not a Bullfinch, Chaffinch perhaps?

Or possibly a redwing. You can get flocks of them scarfing rowan berries at this time of year.


Chaffinch is sort of pinkish all over.

Hmmm, neither of those then. It was too small for a Redwing and I think i'd recognise it as they're very much like Thrushes and like the Fieldfares we do have a lot of. As you say they have been in the Hawthorn bushes getting the berries, but they won't come near the house. A Brambling perhaps? Will keep an eye out for it.

It turned out to be a Chaffinch after all



They are both (M&F) regular visitors to the feeder now.

[Evoluzione]

Looks like I have some YT videos to watch on other antique plant collectors

Plant:

When you have an excavator you soon realise you need something to accompany it. You're either taking something out of the ground or adding it in and need something to carry it. I needed a dumper.
2wd was out of the question as was a swivel skip. A what? Yeah, the container which holds your muck on a dumper is called a skip, on some models it swivels round so you can tip it to the side which is quite useful sometimes.



However, they sit a bit higher so if you have a small machine to load it up you'll either struggle or it be of no use at all. I'm really glad someone mentioned that to me.
What I knew about dumpers I'd also known about excavators and I took a risk with that. I know a lot more about diggers now.
At the local auction 2 turned up, one old Benford and one newer swivel skip. I spoke to some people who know and the said don't pay more than £1500 and don't get a Petter engined one. The swivel went for silly money and £1400 all in (including fees) bought me Benford:



Whilst the metalwork has more rust than paint it's solid enough, it starts and runs so time to get busy and see what we have.
Like most plant at auction it's been run into the ground and sold on. It needed a good week spending on it and about £500 in parts & fluids. I've:

Reconditioned both steering rams with new seals and bearings.
New filters to: Engine oil, fuel, air and hydraulic oil.
New fluids to: Front and rear axles, brakes, gearbox, transfer box, hydraulic system and engine.
Brake master cylinder was remanufactured - re-sleeved in SS with new seals for use with hydraulic oil, NOT brake fluid.
New battery
New starter motor
New sealing ring/gaskets to cylinder heads
Set tappets
Get the handbrake working
Fitted a pair of front mudflaps
Fitted a twirly knob to the steering wheel

Still to do:
Make an exhaust pipe as it's rusted through.
Service the skip ram as it weeps a bit. This is a big, heavy ram and at the moment one of the fixings is seized solid hence me leaving it.
Get the footbrakes working.
Maybe find out why it's overfuelling under load, (black exhaust smoke). I've been told it might the governor, but it's inside the engine block and looks (on paper at least) a bit complex with lots to go wrong. I lack a bit of confidence with going out of my safety zone and doing engines I have no experience with, but it usually works out ok in the end.

The only thing I got wrong was the battery. I listened to someone else who was incorrect in diagnosing it and it turned out to be a very old and internally corroded starter motor. Still it's done now and for an old machine with no glowplugs starts extremely quickly, 1 second on the key and we're off.

Celebrated getting it mechanically sound by taking the bin out:




It's a 3 ton capacity machine and from a mechanical POV it's:
Air-cooled 1.9L 3 cylinder. Lots of torque, no bhp
A really small basic 3spd + reverse gearbox with no synchro
Foot brakes are by a normal master cylinder, but interestingly it uses hydraulic oil and the brakes are none contacting discs immersed in oil inside the axles, a bit like motorbike clutch or a viscous coupler.

4wd, but on open diffs so it will go 2wd if challenged (1 at the front, 1 at the rear)
What it's like to drive:



It's dirty, bad tempered, bucks up and down, you sit very high up, it pivots at the centre and makes a right old racket. If you're heading into the wind you get facefuls of dust and grit blown into you from the skip.
It feels very dangerous and it is. Health and safety has come a long way since Benford was new and scampering around a building site. I would have just been leaving school, starting work, dating 'birds' and going to college at that time.
It has no suspension, just the tyre flex and a sprung seat which is rusted solid. The front is fixed from left to right, but the rear is allowed to rotate slightly (clockwise left to right) on a centre pivot.



This is so all four wheels stay on the ground on uneven terrain.
The front is also connected to the rear with a central pivot.



Some sexy Benford shots:



Phwoaaar:



Getting stuck in mud here is now no longer news, it's just everyday life and (aside from this one below) i've actually given up taking pictures of it. I've had every vehicle we own completely stuck in either mud or snow.
Benford got stuck on his first serious job. Whilst fully laden it sunk in the mud by a ditch we were filling with gravel.
I then used a bed of rushes to take him and me back and forth to another job successfully all afternoon. Until one time when we strayed off piste into virgin territory by just 1 metre and it immediately sunk up to its axles.
Both times the excavator came to the rescue and pulled him out. You stretch the bucket out as far as it will go and tether it. Dig in by lowering the dozer blade then retract the bucket pulling it towards you.



^ I'd been working in this bed of rushes all afternoon, until this happened. Just before darkness fell, it's always just as the light is fading, every bloody time! I had a go, but ended up walking home, The Walk of Shame
Next day I went back with a clearer head and some daylight, unbelievably I got it free:

Edited by Evoluzione on Friday 29th April 08:04

[RC1807]

that's gonna take a bit of jet washing....

[Mars]

I drove a few of the site vehicles when I worked in construction during my university hols back in the early 1990s. I had limited-duration licences for a dumper, and some tracked forklift thing (never seen one since) that was assigned to me alone because I was the store-keeper on one site and had to manage incoming deliveries.

I even had to be licenced for the Hilti gun. The excavators were out of bounds for me - I think they were hired with their owner/operators. Same for any of the cranes.

I was in my early 20s then and never really thought about the dangers, although I did see a few site accidents, including one where a guy broke his leg (a steel lintel fell on him as it was being set in place - he ended-up losing it), and another where the telehandler operator set a pack of bricks down on the scaffolding and pulled the scaffolding away from the wall as he reversed away (with two guys hanging on). That same telehandler operator drove it too fast with a large piece of concrete shuttering hanging from the forks, and as the shuttering started to swing in time with the bumpy ground, it pulled the whole machine over onto its side. He was banned from driving again and I got the job going-forward.

I used to enjoy driving the dumpers most. The days when I was assigned to drive them were always easy days. We'd bomb around in them - probably no faster that 10mph - but I would invariably end up with a headache because of exhaust gases.

There's a YouTube channel called MartyT - a New Zealander who owns some land that requires maintenance, including a long access road. He buys and repairs old tractors and site equipment for small-change. He speaks in a nice calm manner without any background music, and edits his videos so they're brief and to the point.

[Mark Benson]

You're on the verge of amassing a proper collection of rusty yellow plant. Excellent





Only wish I had an excuse to do the same

[outnumbered]

Great update. The dumper is actually quite nicely camouflaged in your landscape with that "paint" scheme.

[Evoluzione]

The three antiques at play:




When I was about 7 i'd have to be called in from playing outside with my toys for my dinner.
Not much has changed, just the toys got bigger, more expensive and rustier.


Getting tooled up for forthcoming battles:

The plant collection is growing, mechanical plant that is. I've been busy at the local auctions and as you can see a Stihl brush cutter, Belle compactor have been procured. I've also picked up some forks.




The Stihl seems ok, just needing a mild service with air filter, new harness, ear muff/helmet/visor combo and new 3 pointed cutting blade (it already has a nylon string thing with it).

The compactor was a different story, it was not in good condition. It looked like it had either fallen off the back of a lorry or taken a heavy clout from something big. The handles were bent, drive belt missing, On/OFF switch hanging off, starter cover battered in, starter locked and rubber anti-vibe mounts bent too.
I set about it methodically enough in the barn back in Jan whilst getting rained and snowed on. Starter cord cover came off and was pummelled back into shaped with a metalworking hammer and sand bag.

Back on and in place I gave it a tug and the Honda engine burst into life easily enough. After a new belt was fitted revving it up saw no whacking or vibrating going on and I noted the clutch wasn't gripping.
The handles came off and went under the hydraulic press, 10 mins, a bit of 'rack at eye' and they were lovely and straight.

Fastened back on and I noted the engine was sat at a weird angle. The cure was easy enough, I just slackened off the bent rubber mounts, spun them round 180' and locked them up again.
Still no drive though so I went in for dinner and hit Google before drinking some cider and cursing at people on the internet.
Bad news; clutches are NLA and used ones are fetching £100.
Drank more cider, swore some more and woke refreshed in the morning.
The ON/OFF switch is witchcraft. It has just one wire going to it and doesn't turn off (is permanently on) unless put into it's hole. Then it does. Well Araldite soon sorted that and it now works.

The clutch looked serious so to Plan B. Plan B is get off your arse and repair it, so I got me glasses on and had a good look at it. Well this is funny says I, turning it round in my hands, it should work? If you've ever looked into a car or trailer brake drum then that's what it looks a bit like, except the whole lot turns round and the centrifugal forces throw the 'brake linings' outwards so they lock the unit together.
It seems that the whole thing is driven by some very vague and mild splines, nay mere scratches between it and the end of the crankshaft it sits on. But it doesn't, it just slips around. I note this thing will go on both ways so offer it up the other way that it came off and Bingo! It grips and works and we now have a fully whacking wacker plate, ready for action.
Sorry for lack of pics, I just cracked on and forgot to take any.
The forks, hmmm, work in progress, we'll get onto those later.

[Evoluzione]

A bit of gardening.

By the house the soil is very stony, the fields are clay. I wanted to try grow some veg so found a guy who said he would deliver soil up here. When he got here he said when he was a kid he worked as a labourer in one of the farms below us, also that his truck had been down to 1st gear on the way up.
I've never lived anywhere where i've had to buy soil in before now! It's my first year of growing veg in a completely new and harsh environment, so that was the first hurdle. That was followed by 'Oh dear, i've just had 12t of clay soil dumped in my yard'.



After that was some research which pointed out it wasn't too bad afterall.
We watched The Don to get some good advice:



So into the beds it went, some cardboard went into both:




Couldn't get in the Polytunnel with the dumper so had to resort to barrowing it in:



All planted out:



It runs due East/West so to the right is absolute South. With this in mind two rows of staggered toms to the rear with lettuce in between. Strawbs at the front with French beans behind them. I've dug pockets in there and filled them with potting/general purpose compost before putting the toms and lettuce in.


Picked up some old sleepers for free so knocked up a bed outside. garlics to the right and some beans in the foreground. Even got the stringline and tape measure out!




That isn't what Monty said is it?




Actually I think you'll find he did. He uses a plank too you know.

All done:





Sorry, terrible picture for some reason, maybe clay on the lens.

Something has already found my 'grow a new onion from the top of an old one' experiment and put a stop to it:



'Eats shoots and leaves', but we have no Koalas here. The wildlife cam will be set up, heads will roll.

What this years crop will turn out like remains to be seen as I haven't had the chance to improve it in any way. I'm working on a few tons compost though, ingredients all locally sourced:



Dave scoops up last years hastily cobbled together failed Hot Composting hoss muck experiment and passes it over to Benford.



Sorry worms, you're just too slow. We need compost and we need it this year:



Off to the field to gather Moorland soft rush with Benford:





Then back to the new heap:




As every good gardener knows, equal amounts of brown and green are needed.

As is some wood ash:





Dave moves in to mix it all up and once in its stride it heats up by about 1'c more per day until about 65'c.

Someone has moved in under the tarp:




To help pay for the soil I answered an ad for someone wanting clay. He was making a cob floor in his house so I said I'll sell you finest Pennine blue Gley for what I can buy soil for. We have no shortage of clay or gley here so Dave and I spooned a few tons into Benford



and the guy picked it up in his Yaris (I kid you not!). No soil there, just pure clay. You could make finest Wedgewood with that

All I can do now is hope for some decent weather and keep watering it.
With my new Monty Don inspired Geko soft lance

[schuey]

This thread is excellent. I’d love a place like that.

[Evoluzione]

schuey said:

This thread is excellent. I’d love a place like that.

Thanks, I do try to post the interesting and positive bits. There are plenty of tough and negative parts too, but I don't think you want to be reading about me moaning about those though.

---

Wildlife vandals.

It's woolly hat and coat weather this week, mainly due to the incessant high wind. It's10'c some days, but the 40mph wind chill makes it feel like 2.
The plants I put out have done nothing due to the cold, just resisted being battered by the wind. Kind of wish i'd kept them in the PT for a while longer as warmer weather is promised for the weekend, but they were bursting out of their pots. Hopefully they'll catchup when it warms up, who knows, it is an experiment to see what veg will grow here afterall. The more I develop the inside of the Polytunnel the more we can grow inside it, but obviously some things can't be grown in there. Stuff like certain Radish for instance 'bolts' or goes to seed if it's too warm. Apparently French beans will do ok though.
I'm really glad of the Polytunnel though as we've not done bad for sun and things are coming along nicely in there.



The first flowers are just about to open on the biggest toms.
It's handy to be able to open the doors at either end or both to regulate the heat. The problem is you have to do this manually so have to be here all the time. Any still sunny Summer days may cause overheating problems - if we get many.




This old Pachypodium Lamerei is about 8ft tall now and has been with me a long time, it's a deciduous succulent. In the last house it had a pitched roof conservatory to grow into, but not now. It comes in the house in Winter and Polytunnel in Summer. I've had to cut off that extra long limb, this will equal it out and mean it can live here for longer before running out of headroom. It'll have all it's leaves back in a few weeks.

I'd been meaning to put a fence around the apple trees I planted all Winter, but never got round to it. Mainly this was due to not being able to get down there with Terry without getting stuck and usual Winter weather/lethargy. In the meantime the local auctions had yielded two new rolls of wire fencing cheap and I'd found a few fence posts kicking around here and there.
So a fence is now up, it'll do for a few years whilst we work on something else.



Stood back to admire my work and realised i'd put it all on upside down

It doesn't really matter if the rabbits get in anyhow, they're welcome to it.

Too late for the trees though, the new Spring buds of flowers and leaves were stripped from one lower tree and partially on the bigger ones by the Sheep. They'd also tried rubbing themselves against them, probably to scratch. One was leant over, others had branches snapped off.
One of the field gates isn't used and is always open yet I found it laid on the ground the other day, I can only presume a sheep has again tried to scratch itself on it and actually lifted it off it's hinges.

I saw and heard a Cuckoo recently, but it came and went in one day so I don't know what happened. Thanks to someone who pointed me in the direction of this Cuckoo tracking site which has some interesting info on them: https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/cuckoo-tr...

I also spotted a deer on the moors above the house, it's rare to see them up here.

The rabbits have bounced back from last Autumns Myxomatosis and the population has increased massively.
They haven't found my raised veg patch yet, but have been burrowing in Ks new planters.





Next job is putting back the anti-vandal mesh and some gates where they're missing to keep them out of the yard.







Thanks to whoever recommended Ecofriendly cat litter btw (rather than clay) The cat thought it was ok to pee in but any solids were better on the house floor.

In the last post I said the compost would go to 60, but it never did! It got to 40 then started to fall. I took this as a cue to turn it, I don't think you can see the steam here:



I think i've made a mistake in not chopping up the rushes before putting them in. They would have broken down much sooner if I'd mulched them and made better compost. Bugger, another machine needed.


Next up: Dry stone walling.

[deadtom]

I remain utterly envious of your house and burgeoning collection of slightly wobbly plant.

[Evoluzione]

deadtom said:

I remain utterly envious of your house and burgeoning collection of slightly wobbly plant.

I'm just glad someone's still reading



That's a drystone wall to be proud of.


We look across SW to here:



and can see a house on the highest hill to the right there on the horizon. So we knew what that looked like from here:



But didn't know what our place looked like from there, for a bit of fun we decided to find out.

The first time out we forgot the binoculars so it was a failed mission. It took a while to find that point and when we did looking back over here was so very different, we couldn't even find our house!
A few weeks later we tried again and took the binoculars with us.
This is us here:



The Polytunnel makes it a bit easier to spot. We thought we were quite high up, but that ridge behind us shows how low we are in comparison, it's miles behind us though.


We have a lot of dry stone (DS) walls here, most of them fallen or falling down. So it was no surprise when my birthday present was a two day walling course. We pay the Walling Association, but the old guys teach for free.

There are a few variations up and down the country, but they all usually take this form:



As you can see it starts wide at the bottom and tapers in at a certain ratio, this is the batter.
Solid brick walls have 'headers' these have similar, but are called through stones.
A DS wall acts like a body lying down, it adapts it's shape to the ground it's laying on. As it's not glued together solidly when the ground moves the wall can move within itself a certain amount to compensate.
In many areas they were built from the stone found in the fields when clearing them for farming, others were from locally sourced quarried stone or even boulders from rivers.

We started off by taking apart a wall and setting out all the components in the right places on the ground. Then built it back up bit by bit. As you can imagine there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

Halfway here:



And finally finished:



All perpendicular joints are crossed like any other wall, none in a line.
A normal modern brick cavity wall has the bricks laid in length (stretcher bond), but in a DS wall they go the other way so the length of the stone points inwards for strength.

The top course of copes is also very tightly packed. If you shove the wall sideways and it moves it's no good, if it's solid then it's a good job well done. Every piece of stone on the floor will have a place in a wall somewhere, it doesn't matter what size or shape it is.

I think it's like a lot of things, you can learn to do it, but you'll never be as quick as someone who does it for a job.

It's physical back breaking work, but ultimately very rewarding too. Done properly it should stand for 100 - 150 years.

Edited by Evoluzione on Friday 27th May 13:19

[CrutyRammers]

Nice work! We've a few which need repairing on our land, it's something I need to have a bash at when the job list reduces to something manageable.

[beambeam1]

That is brilliant work on the wall. Cheers for posting, genuinely find your updates thoroughly entertaining!

[IanA2]

Evoluzione said:

I'm just glad someone's still reading

Plenty of folks still reading I'm sure. One of my favourite threads.

Pity there isn't a "like" feature so posters can know they are not Vox Clamantis in Deserto :-)

[Evoluzione]

Thanks
As i'm on a roll a bit of a wildlife catchup.



The big old Sycamore next to us loses it's leaves in Winter so the owls go roost in the only evergreen bush left which is a Laurel for a few grim months.
Early on in Spring the Blackbirds decided to nest in the Sycamore as well as my unprocessed pile of firewood. They sit on the wall, beaks full of food waiting for me to turn away so they can go to the nest unnoticed. I nod and smile; just crack on, I know where you're going anyhow, you're safe here.
Blackbirds show their emotions throughout the season, they get very stressed and vocal during nesting, once that's over with and the young have learned to go their own way the proud father often sits on a ridge and just sings on a still Summers eve.
If they're vexed you will know all about it and we did. I went to look under the Sycamore where they'd nested to see the owls were back. As it has new leaves they can roost under cover, but the blackbirds were not happy.
I looked up there last week to see one fly off carrying something large and brown, probably a rabbit as there are plenty around now. I'm pondering over making an owl nesting box and mounting it on the barn wall, it's the perfect place.




A rabbit has taken all the runner beans and some other stuff, fencing is now in place.



As expected things are fairing much better in the polytunnel:



A Shrew decided it was a good idea to join us in the living room



You could hear it clearly trying to drag some foil into it's new hole, the cat did nothing but look bemused. It was disturbing me watching Corry with it's constant rustling so I ended it by waiting until it was out and then blocking the hole up.
I'd like to say 'well go out as the weather has improved', but not by much at the moment up here:



Hint - study all the figures.

The Cuckoo went into overdrive and Cuckood all over the place. I tipped off friend and local semi-professional photographer Steve, he came up with his huge lens and wandered round the places I pointed out. There are some strange acoustic effects here, something to do with the shape of the land, maybe the rocks above us and certainly the wind. You can hear someone talking from about 1/4 of a mile away sometimes. Not actually tell what they're saying, but just catch words.
I think this helps the cuckoo stay hidden as it's call seems to bounce around a bit. Despite hearing it Steve could not find it. In pure desperation he pointed across the other side of the valley and reeled off a load of shots and went home. It was only as he was sifting through them later he found he'd actually got it from about a 1/4 a mile away:



Some more of his pics as he was here:

Edited by Evoluzione on Friday 27th May 11:41

[talksthetorque]

Strawberries look lush, plus al the other (potential) food pics your mate took are great
Are the fields drying up enough now to do more land work, or is it easier in the mud so you can see where the issues are?

[crofty1984]

bristoltype603 said:

Evoluzione said:

Thanks again for the replies. Sometimes I wish PH had a 'Like' button, you do wonder if your threads are being enjoyed or not, too easy to bang on and write something which is dull. But then as a reader you can't be expected to respond to each post. This is where 'Like' comes in, just a gentle nod in the right direction.

One of my favourite threads on PH at the moment!

Like.