Fire and path
A wild weather day at Wild Acres. I’m definitely glad to have the full water and windproof PPE – the hi viz jacket and trousers worn by road maintenance crews. It was pretty driving rain, but the overall temperature was mild.
The first job was to light a fire in the firebowl in the outdoor dining room. We struggled with basics like matches and dry paper/kindling, but eventually I found a fire lighter and a pocket cigarette lighter did the trick. Spurred on by Martin who said it was impossible to build a fire with wet wood, I nurtured the thing into life with ever increasing size of wood. Eventually it would become hot enough to warm everyone and boil water.
My main task was to resurface the main path to the kitchen with woodchip. There was a pile at the bottom of the meadow, left by the team who recently took out an ash that was too close to overhead power cables.
I worked with Amy, and she filled the wheel barrows at the bottom and I shifted them up to the top. We both then spread and tampered the chip into the path.
Afterwards we went into the woods to count the rings on the felled ash. I counted 85 and Amy 120, so maybe it’s an average of 100 years old.
Kathy prepared the most delicious and warming lunch from the polytunnel and larder ingredients.
There was still driving rain, so we arranged the tables longways at the back of the dining room and ate in a line.
Early lunch today. Normally it’s 1pm but I think the wind and rain sapped more energy.
In the afternoon, the scratch Dursley Code Club took place in the library. Again, a full house of PCs occupied for the hour after school, and everyone made excellent progress on their projects. They were particularly persistent today in chasing down why their code didn’t work as expected.
