It could have been worse...

About 7 weeks ago I became aware of a terrible smell in my office, which back on to the chimney. Basically it started to small horribly of creosote and I couldn't work in there (for 2 days as it ended up). So we let the fire go out (not fun when it's winter and less than 10 degrees during the day and in the 0 territory at night) and then got a chimney sweep out to do the chimney, thinking maybe it was blocked / dirty.

Only to find that the sweep doesn't actually sweep chimneys! "You'll have to do it yourself" he says. WTF?! Talk about false advertising - even after I clearly explained the situation and what I wanted on the phone. My favourite bit was when he said that he couldn't clean a real chimney because it was square and the brushes were round. Come on - has anyone actually ever fallen for that line?

Anyway, I've just about let it go, as you can see :-)

Next step was to get up on the roof to see if we could see anything obvious down the chimney - but we couldn't. So it was time for more drastic measures - and Jerry and friend pulled the fireplace out of the wall. This is what we found.

It seems the fireplace hadn't been properly set in the space, and with no flue the ash, debris and rain has been falling behind for 20+ years and had completely rusted the outer skin of the fireplace. We suspect some of this material caught fire and that caused the smell and us finding the problem. Phew! It really could have been much worse.

So the downside is that there's no fire. The very bright side is that I now had the excuse to do what I've always wanted to do - take the fireplace out, remove the wall and replace it with a freestanding stove with a cooktop! Yipeeeee  (although obviously very bad for the bank account!).

Lily tried hard to make the best of it in the few weeks before all this happened "think warm thoughts, think warm thoughts, there IS a fire"

Fortunately wall and chimney removal went well thanks to lots of hard work from Jerry and Dave. Although it was very, VERY dusty.

The roof has been patched, and the gaps filled in with new pine boards, that rather stand out, will should weather down and blend in over the next year or so.

Now to decide on a hearth covering. We've pretty much settled on the Lopi Endeavour as the new fireplace, although it won't be installed and ready to use until next winter. We're hoping for sales in the next few months to take a bit off the price tag!

Even better, Jerry managed to sell the old fireplace on ebay, which just about paid for the skip hire for the bricks.

Happy piggies

Love it when they smile for the camera. They must be enjoying their morning treat of vegetable scraps form the local greengrocer. Although I think the greengrocers have become attached to them (even though they have never seen them) as they often sneak in the odd treat like a perfectly good looking pumpkin, bananas, and even chestnuts.

We're so HUUUUUUUUUUUUNGRY

Honest we haven't eaten for hours.... (read: about 65 minutes since breakfast)

We'll even sing a squeely song about it........

Pavlov would be proud at how well we've conditioned our piggies to associate human with food. This is the kind of palaver we get every time we're near the fence, food or not :-)

Of course, we give in and give them a treat :-)

This one's for you Jason!

Jason's comment on the last post gave me the perfect opportunity to make another chart - and I didn't even pay him :-)

He asked how the 2011/12 season compared to last year - et voila! Last year we had about 261kg (of the things I counted), and this year is 189kg so far, but I did harvest at least 5 kilos of yacon on the weekend, and the oca is still in the ground. However, in spite of that I don't think we'll get too much closer to last year's harvest total. For those who are interested the 09/10 season total was 268kg (167kg accounted for by tomatoes!).

The main reasons this year's harvest is smaller, in no particular order

• The birds ate most of the apple crop, which wasn't as abundant as last year on the main tree
• I planted half the number of tomato plants - although interestingly they were almost as productive - I think this is due to the cages we used rather than traditional staking
• The brambleberries had a significant haircut last year, and as they produce on last year's growth we knew we wouldn't' have many this year. Ditto redcurrants which I think were down due to over-zealous pruning
• I was a pumpkin failure (again) this year
• The damp summer wasn't good for the courgettes

However, the value of what we've grown this season is over $3,000 - which is a pretty satisfying saving all round!