We have the wood cook-stove installed and working. First when he lit it, there was a fair amount of smoke in the house, but it was seemingly just a burn-off, as with the use of the ceiling fans it cleared and then didn't continue. Looks as if the pipe is without leaks, yippee. He wasn't hungry, but had to eat something made on the stove, so he started with buttered toast, then moved to potatoes. I'd been toying with making cinnamon rolls, so did a batch which baked in the new oven. It has a temperature gauge on the oven door, but we don't know how accurate it is, as it was under 300 when I popped them in. The recipe called for baking 20 to 25 minutes at 400, so tested them at 25 minutes but they needed some more. Didn't think to rotate the pan in the oven, so the back left ones closest to the fire-box scorched on top. Just cut the dark bits off, drizzled with maple flavoured sugar icing, and they were yummy.
It really warmed the house up too, DH even took his grungy green hoodie off. Had to special order the 7" oval flue to fit, as well as a connector to 8" to fit the existing piping, but it was perfect. Now need to look at how to clean the somewhat rusty top. My friend Jackie found the water kettle for me for $5 and we had to re-fill it as it was boiling merrily. Going to go get a load of slab wood hard wood as it will burn hotter in the oven than our own softer wood cut from the woods, and am actually looking forward to baking bread in it. Should prove nicely in the warmer.
Dolly has something wrong with her milk. Saw on Wednesday that the milk from Tuesday had separated into cream / milk / watery stuff and on Wednesday it was yellow yellow. Damn. Will see what's up today.
My face is healing well. A little itchy, but all the scabbing is off and I'm left with red etchings lengthening my brow line on the left side of my face. My check is still a little new-skin rosy, but is looking much better.
Below are photos of the wind damage we experienced in the storms we had a few nights ago. Oh boy, more fixing to do. Not sure what to do with Little Africa. It's full of runny fresh poop, and the one corner post snapped off so I don't think I can successfully dig another hole in all the muck.
Later :
Went out and checked the whole electric fence line. Surprisingly, of all the trees that were blown over, and I saw at least 11 of those, none landed on the fence !
Then went and tied the sheep roof back on with baler twine and then collected all the broken branches from their paddock. They pulled the whole wisteria completely out of the ground, killed all the bushes down the driveway, the Red bud tree and the pink Dogwood. If I'd known they were that destructive, I would have made sure that none of these were in their area. Live and learn.
I pulled up the hosepipes in the vegetable garden and down to the back pasture. Changed out the hosepipe to the sheep for the heated one, but it was dark already and I didn't get it threaded correctly so will need to re-do it tomorrow. Ran the hosepipes down the driveway to empty them and then rolled them up to be put away for the Winter.
Had called Mike to go get another 2 bales of hay, but he was in court and didn't get to call me back to collect while it was still light. That's why I stuck around at home, waiting for his call.