and its gone!

Lots of air and light and space with the roof gone. Now Ron can start to make the roof timbers and really get going on the build.

Cutting through the bolts....

Taking the roof off......

This is the 'before' photo as Mark and I get to work cutting the bolts that held the roof on

Sawing more timber

Here we are again sawing up yet more Guild oak trees to make the roof timbers, rafters and joists for the Studio.

We had a much better system this time with the Pasquali tractor (thank you Natural England) able to offload cut timbers. As ever Ian Carmichael did a brilliant job on the mill. Mark Cleaver was in charge of operations and Tim Lewis was a star busy sawing up all the slabwood.

Work starts on the Ruskin Studio

Here's the team that will be converting the small barn into the Ruskin Studio - on the left is Ron Clowes the builder, then Rob Taylor the Architect and one of Ron's workers. Today they have put up the scaffolding ready for Wind and Sun to take down the solar panels and relocate them.

We'll then be taking off the roof ready for the new timber frame roof construction - we'll keep updating as the project unfolds

Dancing in the barn to Bandemonium

Bandemonium

Hereford community band, Bandemonium, came and played and led the dancing in the barn

Vegetarian paella ready to be served in the barn

The Pig Roast

Here's Smokey Joes pig roast all ready to serve (not one of our pigs!) - really juicy and absolutely delicious!

Uncllys Party

Mark Cleaver who works at Uncllys for the Wyre Community Land Trust speaking about the ways in which pigs will be used to manage some of the woodland near the farm.

Uncllys Party

Yvonne's SocK Game was a great success with some people spending ages trying to guess what was in each sock...!

The Uncllys Party - May 9th 2009

Lots of fun at the party for loads of families

Bee swarm collected

Here's the bees on the barn being collected - you can see the ball of bees. They are being gently encouraged up into the cardboard box and they'll then be taken to a new hive.

The beekeepers told us that in the next couple of days a new queen will hatch in the old hive and then start laying 2,000 eggs a day to produce new bees. Apparently up to 1,500 bees a day will die so its all quite an amazing process and we were privileged yesterday to have the opportunity to see this swarming in action.

Bees swarm

Here is the inside of the hive that is located in one of our orchards. You can see the additional wax that the bees have made as they run out of space in the frames.

When the hive gets overcrowded - which it did yesterday - then the bees swarm. The queen and about 20,000 bees left the hive and started hovering above the barn finally settling on a corner and forming a great ball about 12ft up.

We contacted local beekeepers to see if they wanted to come and collect the swarm. A couple of hours later they were here and getting the bees into a box to take to a new hive.

New chickens arrive

Thanks to Tim Lewis, we now have 26 new hens 'at point of lay' - which usually means we'll have to wait 2 or 3 weeks for them to get going.

They arrived in the dark last Monday evening and were very drowsy (and so easy to handle) and put into the hen houses.

They are getting used to the outdoors and scratching around for grubs etc. But they find it hard remembering to go back into the hen house at night - last night we found 4 of them up in the leylandii to roost - at least out of the way of the fox.

We lost 7 lovely hens to the fox last week - he got in and killed them all. Didn't even bother eating much!

So hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be having a good regular supply of free range eggs again.

Hunting for invertebrates in the orchard

The Wyre Study Group recently came to the orchard at Uncllys to get up into the blossom of the old cherry trees to see what insects were there.

Pet lambs

Here's one of the pet lambs - struggling to get free from me!

Great Crested newt

Great Crested newt found at the edge of the pond.