Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines
Discussion
House external, drive, walls etc.
The renting farmer got a dry stone waller in to put some of the fallen field walls back up which was good to see.
One day I plan on doing part of the yard and driveways with reclaimed stone setts. A sett has 6 definable sides, a cobble does not. Cobbles can be just pebbles or bits of undressed stone set in mortar.
Setts can also be placed on and surrounded in mortar, but used to be 'grouted' in with bitumen so they can move a little without breaking the bond and weeds getting in or then coming loose.
They'll look good, original (rather then the mix of tarmac, gravel, concrete and Indian stone we have now) and are extremely hard wearing. It won't matter if they get the odd scrape, oil stain or a digger driven over them. That was and still is the plan, but 30T turned up unexpectedly for very good money so I had them delivered:
With the plan of lifting them with the digger into the dumper and dropping them off on some unused ground in a field.
We weren't off to a good start when I realised I could get the arm of the digger over the other side of the pile, on the ground and scoop them towards me into the bucket.
Trying to dig into them was no good, they just got damaged, gave the machine a hard time and ended up like skittles everywhere.
I consulted my digger friends who said put the bucket on backwards:
Perfect!
There is some serious weight on there:
Glad I fixed the brakes as it takes a bit of stopping on some of the hills around here.
The odd one or two gets bounced out now and again...
All ahum, sett aside for another day.
I've tried the reverse bucket trick since for other jobs and it works really well in some situations.
Meanwhile back in June some lime arrived:
I spent
He's turning his truck round so I got there first and pull in next to a black Beemer as the driver zips up his pants and a little face appears from down there. The female passenger covers her face as the truck arrives and the Beemer reverses out, all three of us have a laugh about it.
So the lime is transferred to the van and then into the Polytunnel.
Because I got so much I got a decent price, I sold off what I won't need at cost so ended up with a small amount with discount.
Then I contacted all the local builders merchants to see what sand they had in and bought some bags as samples, sharp sand in two colours:
The more grey one got through to the semi-finals, but I needed some yellow crushed stone sand. I found some at a local quarry and what a place that was. The owner (I think I dealt with) was short on words, but maybe i'll work on him in the future as a guided tour around his quarry and stone cutting equipment would be very interesting and make a great post.
The new mortar matches the colour of the one the stones were originally bedded on very closely.
Hacking out pointing is a numb job. It hurts my fingers, but i'm looking at what is coming out and how well it's been put in.
I may have mentioned it before, but whoever pointed the two most exposed faces of this place did a good job. It may be the wrong material, but it was bloody put on well. If you've got half a brain or more and are inquisitive you get a feel for what you're working with. It doesn't matter if it's a computer or mowing someone's lawn.
The more and more I work with this and chip off the miles of cement pointing it dawns on me that the stones were bedded on lime mortar and then immediately Portland cement was applied afterwards in a weather-struck strap style to finish it off.
Not some time afterwards as I once thought.
I've based this not only what i've seen, but also what they must have seen back then. OPC was being introduced (the house was built about 1908) and they're building this in an exposed area with high winds and rainfall. They must have looked at some of the old buildings round here with the quicklime washed out of the joints and figured they could do better.
The gable is done about 2 thirds up now, next is to get my scaffold up to do some more this Autumn. The front is complete. I removed the old flashing from the porch roof/house wall intersection, it was barely in a few mm, no surprises the water was getting behind and coming in. I got the Stihl saw out and cut it in deep before putting a new one in. I need to do the same above the living room roof before Winter.
I replaced some of the broken slates on the porch roof, given they are a metric size i'm presuming foreign.
Some tools I have no idea where they came from. Oddly enough this came out of a skip outside an Auctioneers in the town of Battle near Hastings.
I was subbing for a joinery company there decades ago now and it's been an occasionally used, but useful tool when i've needed it. It's known as a slate ripper.
When a slate roof is put on, one row of slates covers the last rows fixing nails so when you come to replace one or two you can't get them out very easily.
The slate ripper slides up, hooks around the hidden nail and you either yank it or hammer it down to pull the nail out, followed by the slate (or what is left of it).
I got some lovely, but obscenely priced heavy duty gutter and downpipe to finish it off. It'll look smart for the rest of it's days now with zero maintenance and will outlast me.
Edited by Evoluzione on Friday 9th September 20:29
Wacky Racer said:
Swervin_Mervin said:
Pendle Hill.
Animals & wildlife
I don't know if it's her age or just that she has more interesting and filthy things to roll in these days, but she's had more than one shower since we've moved here
She's not well, but still hobbles about and above all seems happy on her multiple meds.
She still enjoys life:
I've opened a YT channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6X4_pQMAgaPmCd9x...
I think that link should work and so far we have snogging owls and mad jumping rabbits. If it doesn't let me know, i'm logged in so the link might be different.
I recently saw a Hare nearby, if you've never seen one and wonder how they differ from rabbits well they're huge in comparison, with long ears and very long back legs.
We get loads of these Willow flea beetles on the house in July/August:
As you can see a very distinctive shiny green-chrome back.
Given the amount of caterpillars eating my veg at the moment I was happy to see this:
We have a large rash of these things at the bottom of the field:
Sadly the Ash in there is dying, probably Ash dieback and I don't know what to do with it, whether cutting it down stops the spread or not. I've got some new ones growing up at the house.
A little bit of investigation shows them to be Fleabane
I think i'll part some off and plant it elsewhere here as it seems to like the environment and is obviously good for insects.
A Red admiral was escorted out of the PT to safety but didn't want to leave me:
You can have too much of a good thing you know:
The bee version of having too much to drink maybe.
Local photographer Steve got his huge lens out and snapped the owls properly:
It's a been a rare sight to see them together this year and i'm a bit worried something has happened to the female. I've rarely seen her and apart from those brief appearances now I haven't seen her for weeks. She's either hiding so high up in the tree that I've missed her, in another tree or something worse.
A trio of caterpillars, all moths IIRC:
The last one favours apple trees, I know as it was eating mine with it's brothers.
The camera was initially bombed by a nosy visitor checking it out:
To the left
To the right
Step it up, step it up it's alright
Check the new ride out it's alright....
Amazingly we have small rainbow Trout in the small Clough here:
I caught one with my hands and a sieve (another story) before returning it, it was about 6" long as they grow to the size of where they live.
You'll see the quality ramp right up here as a pro takes the pics, these are a couple of miles away from us, but still local:
Incoming:
Received:
3 waiting to be fed:
Is that all?
Nah, mum and dad are busy this year:
I'm told the owner of the old abandoned farm won't sell, 'f
k it I don't need the money, the owls need a home though'.It’s good to see you back posting about the property, OP. Can I ask what your approach has been to cleaning the stonework: I guess I’ll have read about it but I can’t remember what you’ve said about your preferred method. I’m asking because we’re about to move into an old farmhouse which would benefit from a clean up as well as having the cement mortar redone with lime based.
These guys seem to have a good approach and aren’t too far from us https://www.sandblastinginyorkshire.com
These guys seem to have a good approach and aren’t too far from us https://www.sandblastinginyorkshire.com
Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area said:
It’s good to see you back posting about the property, OP. Can I ask what your approach has been to cleaning the stonework: I guess I’ll have read about it but I can’t remember what you’ve said about your preferred method. I’m asking because we’re about to move into an old farmhouse which would benefit from a clean up as well as having the cement mortar redone with lime based.
These guys seem to have a good approach and aren’t too far from us https://www.sandblastinginyorkshire.com
It's in the thread near the start. You need to have some pretty serious problems to have it done and suffer the consequences. These guys seem to have a good approach and aren’t too far from us https://www.sandblastinginyorkshire.com
Wacky Racer said:
Great thread, one of the best ones on PH 
Evoluzione:- Received your PM, Thanks for the information.
Apologies for being brief and to the point, it was very late at night Evoluzione:- Received your PM, Thanks for the information.
Thanks all for the replies. On the subject of pics, as said before i'm in the right place, just don't have the equipment, nor the required skill to use it. Maybe one day when I have more time (if ever such a day arrives!) then i'll invest in a good camera and learn how to use it. I'm rushing around atm getting as much done outside before Winter arrives as all the signals are there. It was so clear last night I wondered if we were going to get an early frost, but it just went to about 7 or 8, with 3 forecast for Fridayish. Lovely, warm and sunny today though.
Certainly not short of opportunities for pics and footage, but i'd have to carry a huge camera with me all the time. I was about to leave the yard when a Stoat came bounding up the drive, I wound the window down and said 'Oi!', but it just looked up at me then carried on, totally unflustered whilst I followed it. It went down the paddock in front of a car, paused and just looked round at me as if to say 'Er, and?' before hopping through the lower air intake in the bumper! Cute as they look I wasn't going to be poking my face in there so left it to it.
The sight of 7 kestrels hanging on the wind together or the barn owl coming out early to hunt and being seen off by a Kestrel are sights I won't forget for a while.
At least twice a week there is something new worth photographing or filming.
As said earlier sadly I think the female owl has gone, but on a happier note just as the sun was setting the mild breeze blew the sounds of other Tawneys up from just down the valley from us so there are definitely others in the area.
I couldn't sleep this morning for some reason, so came down for a drink and ended up being lured outside by the moonlit night. I could see every single star and planet very clearly and then two satellites tracked by, both parallel with each other.
As yesterdays low rainclouds (low as in, we were in them) lifted and drifted away in preparation for the clear night I managed to get these shots:
This was the gutter chosen:
[url]So I had to smile when I dug this up from the field in front of the house on Sunday:
It seems that by chance it's very likely I've managed to match the original quite well.
Falconry day will be next month.
Edited by Evoluzione on Tuesday 13th September 13:39
I don't know why the renting farmer kept leaving this patch of rush in the middle of Turf Meadow, but it offended my eye.
So I asked a neighbour to hit it with his topper, a topper is basically a sled with a rotor under it driven by the tractor, like a rotary lawn mower.
His topper was broken so I fixed it, in return he fixed my field:
Job done:
The bits he missed I did with the brush cutter, I also did over the old drainage channels so he didn't have to go over them
I've also been round with the Stihl brush cutter and weedkiller to flatten various other areas of soft rush too, but won't bore you with all the pictures. I have a crap memory so looking back on all these pics I realise how far we've come now.
Next year when it returns i'll knock it back with a selective weedkiller. Because all the mass and old dead growth is gone i'll just be hitting the new green spikes:
This saves on weedkiller. Which is now 3 times the price it was a few years ago.
I've noticed we have a healthy dose of Horses tail too, that stuff is even worse than Knotweed to get rid of.
I think I mentioned this soft rush is a widespread known problem up and down the Pennines, there is even a Guardian article about it where they admit they don't know why it's taking over, but one of the local farmers says he does. Apparently they used to get a grant to spread lime on the ground to neutralise it, now that has gone the soil is acidic (I tested it to confirm) and this plant loves it.
So we have much more productive land now for grazing, but have upset those who lived in there and used it for occasional or even permanent cover and hunting. We have all year round creatures here, but most are seasonal, they come and go. I'm going to have to Google how frogs and toads manage to reproduce here with no still water, but there were a few in there.
If you look in the pics above you'll see a sizeable triangle of rush, well that is staying. Any frogs and toads I came across were safely deposited there. That and the re-wilding that is going on around us ensures there is something for everyone because in my eyes that's how it should be.
You may notice the lack of sheep and lovely green grass. The Herdwicks have been sold off, but some will be brought down here from up on the moors. The Tup will be out to do his stuff this Autumn and off we go again.
I don't know If I mentioned it before, but whilst Herdwicks are good at escaping, they're also very quiet. When you live out here you can't complain about animal noises, but to have a peaceful flock is a bonus.
I need to increase the yield in the PT too, much of it is still storage, but i've condensed some of it and opened up some areas for cultivation. As noted earlier the ground is mainly stone with a bit of soil!
Chuffin 'eck, it's like something from Cambodia.
It's built upon what I call the paddock near the house. It's a sloping, but flat field and I think has been artificially formed by flattening it and dumping waste on it.
It's a Mattock and pickaxe job to dig in, but what to do with it? Well I can use stone and use soil, but need to separate them first. I'd been looking out for a cheap concrete mixer of a certain style and eventually one came up for £50:
It was lined with mortar which some doofus had left to set in there and the wheels fell off, but I didn't want a decent one for what I had in mind. I bashed off most of the mortar, fixed the wheels and then it was out with the plasma for a few hours of solid enjoyment blowing what seemed like a million holes in it:
It works though:
Because there are some many stones in there (and some are quite sizeable) they pummel the soil breaking it down so it goes through the holes. It isn't instant, but certainly labour saving. You just load it up, leave it spinning and go do something else for 5 or 10 minutes, then tip the stones out into the barrow.
Under there is the home made compost, i'll get some over Winter veggies in and see how we go.
So I asked a neighbour to hit it with his topper, a topper is basically a sled with a rotor under it driven by the tractor, like a rotary lawn mower.
His topper was broken so I fixed it, in return he fixed my field:
Job done:
The bits he missed I did with the brush cutter, I also did over the old drainage channels so he didn't have to go over them
I've also been round with the Stihl brush cutter and weedkiller to flatten various other areas of soft rush too, but won't bore you with all the pictures. I have a crap memory so looking back on all these pics I realise how far we've come now.
Next year when it returns i'll knock it back with a selective weedkiller. Because all the mass and old dead growth is gone i'll just be hitting the new green spikes:
This saves on weedkiller. Which is now 3 times the price it was a few years ago.
I've noticed we have a healthy dose of Horses tail too, that stuff is even worse than Knotweed to get rid of.
I think I mentioned this soft rush is a widespread known problem up and down the Pennines, there is even a Guardian article about it where they admit they don't know why it's taking over, but one of the local farmers says he does. Apparently they used to get a grant to spread lime on the ground to neutralise it, now that has gone the soil is acidic (I tested it to confirm) and this plant loves it.
So we have much more productive land now for grazing, but have upset those who lived in there and used it for occasional or even permanent cover and hunting. We have all year round creatures here, but most are seasonal, they come and go. I'm going to have to Google how frogs and toads manage to reproduce here with no still water, but there were a few in there.
If you look in the pics above you'll see a sizeable triangle of rush, well that is staying. Any frogs and toads I came across were safely deposited there. That and the re-wilding that is going on around us ensures there is something for everyone because in my eyes that's how it should be.
You may notice the lack of sheep and lovely green grass. The Herdwicks have been sold off, but some will be brought down here from up on the moors. The Tup will be out to do his stuff this Autumn and off we go again.
I don't know If I mentioned it before, but whilst Herdwicks are good at escaping, they're also very quiet. When you live out here you can't complain about animal noises, but to have a peaceful flock is a bonus.
I need to increase the yield in the PT too, much of it is still storage, but i've condensed some of it and opened up some areas for cultivation. As noted earlier the ground is mainly stone with a bit of soil!
Chuffin 'eck, it's like something from Cambodia.
It's built upon what I call the paddock near the house. It's a sloping, but flat field and I think has been artificially formed by flattening it and dumping waste on it.
It's a Mattock and pickaxe job to dig in, but what to do with it? Well I can use stone and use soil, but need to separate them first. I'd been looking out for a cheap concrete mixer of a certain style and eventually one came up for £50:
It was lined with mortar which some doofus had left to set in there and the wheels fell off, but I didn't want a decent one for what I had in mind. I bashed off most of the mortar, fixed the wheels and then it was out with the plasma for a few hours of solid enjoyment
blowing what seemed like a million holes in it:It works though:
Because there are some many stones in there (and some are quite sizeable) they pummel the soil breaking it down so it goes through the holes. It isn't instant, but certainly labour saving. You just load it up, leave it spinning and go do something else for 5 or 10 minutes, then tip the stones out into the barrow.
Under there is the home made compost, i'll get some over Winter veggies in and see how we go.
Edited by Evoluzione on Wednesday 9th November 18:46
I've got tons of the stuff to do so it was well worth the investment. You'll find that style of mixer usually a lot cheaper than the orange Belle type ones and they sit quite high as they are.
If you don't have a plasma cutter, but do have an angry grinder with cutting disc and a basic welder then there is another way of building one. Get some mesh or punched sheet, cut some panels out of the mixer then weld the mesh or sheet over it.
If you don't have a plasma cutter, but do have an angry grinder with cutting disc and a basic welder then there is another way of building one. Get some mesh or punched sheet, cut some panels out of the mixer then weld the mesh or sheet over it.
Just like to comment on some of the stunning photographs on your thread, the contrast between the mid summer and the winter snow covered ones is marked and wonderful,
Btw, passed your place last Sunday whilst having a run out in our NC MX 5. Had a ride on the KWVR from Oakworth where they filmed "The railway children" and it's recent remake.
Btw, passed your place last Sunday whilst having a run out in our NC MX 5.
Had a ride on the KWVR from Oakworth where they filmed "The railway children" and it's recent remake. Wacky Racer said:
Just like to comment on some of the stunning photographs on your thread, the contrast between the mid summer and the winter snow covered ones is marked and wonderful,
Btw, passed your place last Sunday whilst having a run out in our NC MX 5. Had a ride on the KWVR from Oakworth where they filmed "The railway children" and it's recent remake.
Should have called in for a cuppa. We'll be going there next month for the beer festival. Btw, passed your place last Sunday whilst having a run out in our NC MX 5.
Had a ride on the KWVR from Oakworth where they filmed "The railway children" and it's recent remake. I wished yet again that I had a decent camera this morning as there was a Buzzard sat on a post in the fields. It would have needed a big lense, I had to get the binoculars out to ID it.
Yesterday I happened across a family of 5 Pheasants wandering around, they must look after their young for a long time.
For some reason the Owl has been making a lot of noise during the day. The more well known and very loud WoooOOOOOooooo, I've added it to the YT channel. In order to learn more I've put a newly released book about the Tawny on my Christmas list.
It woke us up at about 6ish doing this repeatedly. To get my own back I played the recording back to it in the evening and it causes it to fly out!
Haha, after reading the insulated house thread back to something at the other end of the scale 
If this were a book it would be a bit more condensed and a chapter would deal more briefly with each of the highs and lows of living here, but as it's a real time blog it's a bit more disjointed and drawn out so I apologise for that.
To recap a little bit we have a house here which was built badly, then made even worse by people trying to cure it, extend and 'improve' it. Water was not only permeating gradually through damp, but it was actually running in too. The latter, was due to the er, latter. Water got into the porous stone solid walls, came down inside them, then ran in behind the two lean-to extension roofs and came out of them into the living space. The rain driven by high winds was one of the main and original issues, we have sat here in the past and seen water run down the walls as we watched TV. Got up, put a bucket under the drips then paddled off to the toilet - where is was leaking in there too.
Anyhow, as you know i've been observing, researching, fixing and last Friday started the first real test as we had 6hrs of rain driven by 50mph winds followed by much more intermittently through the night. You have to have some gallows humour and I did indeed 'LOL' at the wheely bin manoeuvring itself cleanly out of it's parking space, turn left onto the patio and carry on down the yard like a Dalek.
I've been learning, procrastinating and fixing the faults one by one over the last year or so, with the final touches, the 'icing on the cake' being done in the last week as we saw Summer coming to an end, the weather closing in and I picked up the pace.
It's early days, we have much worse rain and wind to come, but we're sat here in a house which doesn't leak at the moment!
How cool is that?!
I text' one of our neighbours who has an unfixed house like ours was and It was indeed leaking in there (which proves the weather has been bad enough to cause some issues). I didn't tell him we were moving in the right direction, but in the future I can pass on what i've learned to them so they don't waste further thousands of £££ chasing their tails. It's been K rendered twice and still pisses in.
As it was too hot to work I spent the hottest day of (a long time!) 2022 panning for gold
and catching rainbow trout in the Clough. No gold was found. I've since watched some videos on how to pan better so will have another go next year, but don't think even that will yield one speck of the yellow stuff.
Then I made a bridge cum dam so some of the fish have a bigger area to live in and the walkers to cross:
This was the scene on Friday eve however after the rain:
And that's nothing really as we only had about 30mm. It'll get much more lively than that, but It was fun to drive around the fields seeing all the land drains come to life after so many months of drought. I also saw a black Pheasant which i've never seen before here yet, it was too shy for me to get a pic sadly.
If this were a book it would be a bit more condensed and a chapter would deal more briefly with each of the highs and lows of living here, but as it's a real time blog it's a bit more disjointed and drawn out so I apologise for that.
To recap a little bit we have a house here which was built badly, then made even worse by people trying to cure it, extend and 'improve' it. Water was not only permeating gradually through damp, but it was actually running in too. The latter, was due to the er, latter. Water got into the porous stone solid walls, came down inside them, then ran in behind the two lean-to extension roofs and came out of them into the living space. The rain driven by high winds was one of the main and original issues, we have sat here in the past and seen water run down the walls as we watched TV. Got up, put a bucket under the drips then paddled off to the toilet - where is was leaking in there too.
Anyhow, as you know i've been observing, researching, fixing and last Friday started the first real test as we had 6hrs of rain driven by 50mph winds followed by much more intermittently through the night. You have to have some gallows humour and I did indeed 'LOL' at the wheely bin manoeuvring itself cleanly out of it's parking space, turn left onto the patio and carry on down the yard like a Dalek.
I've been learning, procrastinating and fixing the faults one by one over the last year or so, with the final touches, the 'icing on the cake' being done in the last week as we saw Summer coming to an end, the weather closing in and I picked up the pace.
It's early days, we have much worse rain and wind to come, but we're sat here in a house which doesn't leak at the moment!
How cool is that?!I text' one of our neighbours who has an unfixed house like ours was and It was indeed leaking in there (which proves the weather has been bad enough to cause some issues). I didn't tell him we were moving in the right direction, but in the future I can pass on what i've learned to them so they don't waste further thousands of £££ chasing their tails. It's been K rendered twice and still pisses in.
As it was too hot to work I spent the hottest day of (a long time!) 2022 panning for gold
and catching rainbow trout in the Clough. No gold was found. I've since watched some videos on how to pan better so will have another go next year, but don't think even that will yield one speck of the yellow stuff.
Then I made a bridge cum dam so some of the fish have a bigger area to live in and the walkers to cross:
This was the scene on Friday eve however after the rain:
And that's nothing really as we only had about 30mm. It'll get much more lively than that, but It was fun to drive around the fields seeing all the land drains come to life after so many months of drought. I also saw a black Pheasant which i've never seen before here yet, it was too shy for me to get a pic sadly.
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