Category Archives: Men in Sheds

Punching a puppy and other office jargon

No, I haven’t suddenly decided to turn to a life of animal cruelty and being hated by small children. If you read the business jargon link in the penultimate paragraph, all will become clear. It was just too good a title to pass up.

I can now reveal Julia’s secret destination to be Eden Hall Spa. I think she is safe from kidnap now as I am on the point of picking her up and whisking her away for a birthday meal somewhere that she won’t have to wash up. Gosh, I treat her well…

The website, though informative about the experience you can purchase, is strangely reticent on the subject of former uses for the building.

They are less reticent here and here. I particularly like the term fish bait farm. They mean maggots. I had some dealings with maggot farms in the past and I confess I’ve never seen one as grand as this, or ever thought “This would make a nice up-market health spa.” It’s also been a poultry farm, a kennels, offices, restaurant and equestrian centre.

Just to add a little more to the story, the conservatory, that once held 2,000 plants, was destroyed in 1942 when a Lancaster exploded at Syserston. I’m assuming that it was loaded with bombs at the time. The Lancaster, that is, not the conservatory.

There is a footnote about an explosion here, and a mention of Bill Reid VC who used to work at BOCM with my father, as I may have mentioned previously. I think, to be fair, he was more famous for winning the VC than for working at BOCM.

So there you go – a relaxing day of luxury for one half of the family while the other has been making wooden signs with Men in Sheds and wrestling with the complexities of merging the views of five people into one SWOT analysis. The process has been slightly simplified by one member of the management committee saying that he prefers to stick to blue-sky thinking rather than think of negative things like weaknesses. That, of course, is what landed us in this situation in the first place – 500 great ideas but no actual progress.

Anyway, that’s all for now – I just had the phone call that the day of pampering is over.

Why doesn’t my spell checker like welly whanging?

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Simultaneous with the volunteers yesterday, we had a group of kids for the afternoon. They did a noisy nature walk, had a welly whanging competition, a festival of shouting and made bug hotels. When all that was over, we made butter.

Thirty hyped-up kids, screw-top containers, double cream, shaking…

What, as they say, could possibly go wrong?

Apart from one kid throwing up, one turning green (we blame the jumping up and down technique of shaking for this) and one lid leaking – nothing.

You can’t count the kid that sprayed himself in the eye with the automatic air freshener because that wasn’t caused by butter-making: that was, I confess, caused by me forgetting to screw the air freshener to the wall out of the reach of kids.

Bug Hotels

Butter. I felt the need to explain that because it does look like er…not butter.

We then pass to Men in Sheds. We made more signs and welded up a bracket. We were also commissioned to build an adaptor to fit a square heater to a round tube in the grain dryer. There’s a song about that, isn’t there?

Actually, when I check the lyrics, there’s one line about that – There may be trouble ahead…

The rest of the song, with it’s moonlight and music and love and romance doesn’t really match with my experience of Men in Sheds.

Most memorable moment of the day was the one where the Man welding up the bracket turned and said “I’ve just welded it to the vice!”

It soon came off, with the help of an angle grinder, as we all tried to keep straight faces…

One bracket, welded to vice.

One angle-grinder in action.

Coots, moorhens and the pursuit of knowledge

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There were three young pheasants by the side of the lane today as I came to work. If they are still alive their world will have taken on a different complexion today, as today is the opening day for the shoot.

It’s amazing what you can learn, even when making fairly random notes. I just looked up the shooting seasons and found there is a season for coots and moorhens. I can’t imagine why that’s necessary – they aren’t a pest, they aren’t out of control and I can’t imagine they taste particularly good, which just shows how wrong you can be.

There are quite a few coot recipes on the net, this being one site with a couple.There are also moorhen recipes, and some talk of them being a pest.

I never cease to marvel at the information available on the net, if only you can come up with the right question. Up until now I’d only seen moorhens as a pest when they sidled up to me and ate maggots from my bait box.

Today we did breakfast for twenty and lunch for 30, due to the shoot, plus a variety of other people talking of permaculture, pizza and nasturtium leaf soup. Put out a few feelers for Men in Sheds and saw two of the members – one beating for the shoot and another arriving with a selection of booty from the Saturday auction in Newark, including several power tools and a welder. Have a ton bag of apples promised – to be juiced on a 50/50 basis and a group of volunteers who are coming on Thursday to do some heavy garden work.

Strange how talking of pressure yesterday seems to have rekindled my enthusiasm for tomorrow.

Signs, gin and Christmas puddings

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It’s been days since the past post – sorry about that. I’ve been locked in a cycle of work and sleep that doesn’t seem to have left time for anything else. Well, to be accurate I suppose work, sleep and staring at the TV in a trance-like state. I can’t tell you what I’ve been watching but I’ve failed to see the end of a lot of it.

After one day, where we had a group in, meetings and ran a craft session we eventually left the farm at 10.30 one night, only to be stopped by a neighbour who wanted to know what we were doing.

“Going home.” I said.

It wasn’t the politest of answers but after 13 hours at work I’m not the politest of people. Actually, I’m considered “direct” at the best of times. In my world “direct” is good and saves time but other people don’t seem to see it that way. .

So, to sum up, since we’ve last blogged we’ve had 50 kids in for a day on the farm, the Quercus group, a project meeting, a craft session, Men in Sheds, done enough paperwork to choke a hippo, made sloe gin and had a day off to do personal stuff including sorting the Great Car Purchase Debacle.

Going back to the old hamster analogy, I feel like a hamster in a wheel that’s been put in a cider press – not only going in endless circles but being pressurised at the same time.

I’m going to put some effort into relaxation over the weekend and hope that normal service will be restored next week.

😉

Sloe Gin

Felting – ready for Christmas

Whatever happened to Poets day?

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By “Poet’s day” I refer to the “Push off early, tomorrow’s Saturday” variety (and its less polite derivatives), not National Poetry Day, which is something completely different.

What starts with preparing a set of international breakfasts (England, Scotland, France, Germany, USA) and ends with preparing for apple pressing on Saturday? That’s right – Friday.

International breakfasts

The kids, as usual, voted for the German Breakfast – salami, cheese and rye bread. The French (pain au chocolat), was second along with the American (pancakes and honey). English (toast and marmalade) and Scottish (overnight oats with fruit) came bottom.

I could have added a further breakfast by doing toast and Vegemite and calling it an Australian breakfast but it didn’t work out well last time we tried it.

They may not be the best examples of national breakfasts but we have time and cash constraints with these presentations. I’m not about to cook a dozen Full English breakfasts, for instance, and last time we made proper Scottish porridge the kids put so much sugar in it the healthy eating message was well and truly buried under a heap of calories.

So – shopping, breakfast for 12 kids, Men in Sheds (where we had tools, mugs and jam jars donated), back for apple pressing demo, replace fuse in electric scratter, press juice for someone in return for donation of apples and pears, clean up, blog, get ready for tomorrow’s pressing, set Saturday Cafe up, make overnight oats for cafe, home, sleep in front of TV. I think that’s all.

Routing the arrow signs for the footpaths

I’m slightly worried that things are going too well.

Men in Sheds – the journey continues…

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it was time for Men in Sheds again today and I managed to make it this time, avoiding the need for dentists and car mechanics. Hopefully this situation will continue, though with an intermittent fault in the car and a mouth full of ageing teeth nothing is guaranteed.

One of the members brought his lathe in today – he says it’s been gathering dust for the last twenty years so it looks like we’re already doing some good by enthusing people to take action. Once it was going he soon got back into the swing of things and turned out a replacement hammer shaft for one of the farm’s impressive stash of defective tools.

Later we covered the basics of bowl turning (is there no end to our ambitions?), spoke of mahogany, shellac and long case clocks.

There’s not been a dull day in the shed yet!

Men in Sheds – our first meeting!

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We had the first meeting of the Screveton Shed this morning and have agreed to go ahead with the project. We also had a go with the kid’s stuff from Project Molish and had sausage and mash for lunch. Obviously we did other things too, but those are the main points.

We covered finance, mental health, the ethos of sheds, Health and Safety, possible projects, First Aid, apple pressing, cider making and many other topics. We also agreed to admit all men regardless of age, on account of the fact that passing down knowledge would be tricky without young people to pass it down to.

Chilling out

Making towers from spaghetti and marshmallows

Someone with experience in another shed told us that they’d had two people taken off in ambulances in the last three years so we could also do with some youngsters to carry stretchers.

For the moment we are ignoring the subject of women. I know it’s not politically correct but I don’t feel guilty about this because the Women’s Institute refused me membership on the grounds of me being a man. What goes around comes around.

The other point is that it’s supposed to be a forum for men to talk about their health. Now, speaking as a man, it isn’t going to happen. I believe I talk for most men when I say this. Men in Sheds is supposed to make us open up about health and save our lives but speaking personally, it isn’t my habit to discuss ongoing medical problems with anyone. I don’t even discuss most of them with my doctor.

Candidate for Health and Safety rep

A discussion with apple juice in hand

Last time I discussed anything serious with my doctor I ended up with a prostate exam and camera in my bladder, and that camera was not inserted along a route that a sane man would consider, I promise you. Is it any wonder we don’t talk about health?

Anyway, when you deduct speakers and miscellaneous visitors it looks like there could be about nine people to start the shed, probably a few more after we’ve employed subtle pressure. That’s a good number, and something to work with. We now consider nine the lower end for the bread group but it’s taken a few years to build up to that. I can still remember when we thought nine was a good turnout.

And finally, lunch…

If you want to come along drop me a line at office@farmeco.co.uk and I’ll let you know when the next meeting is.

There’s no free meal next time, but as the poet said: “The days of sausage and potatoes, they are not long”.

(Apologies to Ernest Dowson)

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm