A tenner well spent.

Rescue one rusty, dirty ol' saw from a brocante.  Clean off the rust with wet & dry, sand the handle clean and smooth and coat liberally with linseed oil.  Next day, wipe excess oil off hand, sharpen and set teeth with a pair of pliers and a file.

Then do the equivalent of 100 one-arm pressups and slice your log up.  This keeps you warm and gives you a perfect excuse to eat two lunches at once.

Take your surprisingly heavy slices and split 'em up.  Take the time to see where the grain runs to avoid hammering the axe down and getting nowhere and nothing but injury.  Should take little effort (kind of): like everything else done properly with hand tools, keep them super-sharp and use the tool's weight as the driving force.  Also, swing it well and the log just pops open (kind of) to reveal wonderfully-smelling beautiful wood.  Kind of.

Job done!  Off to eat a lot of food.

Last of the Gite-hicans.

Finally, absolutely finished!  Anyone fancy a visit?

Belters.  Now I can get on with the smallholding and waffle about food and stuff!

Cold and wet.

We have got gite bookings rolling in so I have been spending all week in the absolutely freezing hangar making a cupboard to hide the gas bottle for the gite cooker out of crappy scrap I had lying around and a splendid bronze plane.  Absolutely no gardening this week due to howling winds, torrential rain and freezing mud coating everything.  Still a bit to do out there though:

Finish digging (only a metre left but need a dry half hour for it!)
Mulch the beds with horse poo and compost depending on what's going where next year
Dig out a new bigger holding bed
Dig up all the ash and oak trees in the driveway and plant out in the field (have to wait for the Boys to vacate it now)
Cut and trim hedges and boundaries
Cut poles for trellis, beanpoles and pea-sticks
Prune trees and fruit bushes
Take cuttings of trees and bushes
Etc...

Thankfully, I have 5 crates of beer to get me through it - half the usual light fizzy ("mesle yellow") and a new one: a strong, dark, 7%(maybe) battle pop.  Tastes great and I no longer miss the Gardener's (nearly).  Need a name for it: maybe "Bad Santa"...

I'll post some piccies later.