We may not know what it is … but we built it anyway!

September 3, 2015 by easternhighlander

There were a lot of semi-dried, over-sized eucalyptus logs that needed a use. So we built this ….thing …

Tendai hammering a smaller in-filling log

Very heavy wood logs

Needing a lot of effort to roll

Rolling logs

The big lift

7 man lift

into place

Didymus lifting

Didymus in charge of the design

Tongai trimming and shaping

Tongai and Ramius congratulating themselves!

The rolling team end of day

The designer – triumphant!

Team photo!

Ok, it’s a tidy way to store the logs for future stone cracking (i.e. burning) and provide an interesting castle for the school children to play on. It’s a good place for grown-ups to sit absorb the surroundings too.

Sorry – missing a doggie photo!

Fencing Part 4: Start Fencing – Section E to D

September 3, 2015 by easternhighlander

It has really arrived! The day we start putting up the 2.1m mesh fence supplied by Fence Secure of Msasa Harare and made in Zimbabwe (also termed Veld Fence or Bonox Fence).

I will post under the alphabetical boundary sections. We are starting from point E (close to the house) and heading off to D about 250m away to the east.

Ramius and Tendai on Day 1 of fencing

100m of fencing rolled out infant of the poles

100m of fencing rolled out in front of the poles

I’m sure there is a technical name for this device – ‘fence grabber’ will do for now!

Using our custom made fence grabber for the first time

To pull the fence tight requires the use of a fence puller. The puller is tied on to the grabber (which is temporarily screwed down onto the fence) and then itself wraps around the straining pole (right of picture below). The straining pole has extra (barbed) wire tied down to a large stone(s) buried in the ground. You can just see the barbed wire below top right.

George attaching the fence puller to the fence grabber

As we learnt the hard way – the chain must not be twisted or else, sooner or later, the puller cannot grab any more links as they are twisted out of alignment compared to the jaws.

The chain must not be twisted!

George happily inspecting the fence grabber

The whole lot is tightened using the jaws, one by one, to grab and slide over successive chain links. There is a lever coming off to left below which provides the manual driving force.

The fence puller jaws

Manually helping the fence puller create that tension

Helping the fence puller along

Fence held tight by the puller

Hold the tensioned fence against each post

Nail the fence up everyone!

Nail it Garikai!

and repeat for 4.5 km

And if you must be tarred and feathered at least don’t do it to yourself ‘Hamletta’!

Tarred and feathered

New litter of five Jack Russell puppies

New litter of Jack Russell puppies

And, finally, more of our home made poles ready to continue the fencing journey.

Our lovely home made poles

Tree House Number 1

September 1, 2015 by easternhighlander

Treehouse under construction

Treehouse with fish scale roof

Treehouse doorway

On the way up to play inside

Essential tree house tool

Treehouse furniture

Treehouse furniture and other useful items!

Completed treehouse & furniture

Tadpole Part 7: The Before & The After

April 2, 2015 by easternhighlander

Here are some ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots – so we can see how far we’ve come since 1st April 2014!

At the beginning – a burnt out shell of a building

A burnt out roofless structure

and suddenly ..

The tadpole building

Walls go up and extend the original rondavel

Looks better now

looking south

at sunset now

the original doorway

and now its an interior doorway!

And again from the inside – the original door and window to its left.

that original doorway from the inside

our masonry stove – faced in soap stone

Remember the saga of the stairs:

Mr Willard infront of the eventual stairs

Well we got there in the end!

stairs – unfinished

Finished stairs

Looking down those stairs

And finally the school room up those stairs

Our Montessori school room upstairs in Tadpole

The Scottish play in our school library

Rondavel extension Part 2: The foundation trenches

April 1, 2015 by easternhighlander

After burning some of the granite rock out of the way we start digging. How hard can it be after all?

Mr Tongai & Mr Didymus in the easy trench

Mr Didymus & Mr Tongai in the easy trench

Edmore getting that earth out

and then signing off for the day

Well up here what you see on top is not what is lurking underneath – more rocks.

OK more burning was to come. The rocks are all under ground too!

after burning – well nearly after

Somethings still alight in there

And it is a building site with a pretty good view too.

It slowly goes down in size

We have to dig round out to burn it. Lots of digging

smaller now!

Temporary retaining wall

The men who bring the sand and gravel take a look at progress

If this tree was to fall down…

Mr Garikai does the job first

and shows us how its done

He’s getting good at this

The site is ready

Measuring for the footings

Tadpole Part 6: The Stairs

April 1, 2015 by easternhighlander

Well the stairs were a bit of a mission in of themselves. To start with they had to follow the curve of the rondavel, plus I had the fine idea to make them wider at the bottom than the top. So what yours truly didn’t realise is that making a single laminated plank a) angle up, then b) curve while angled, and yes c) follow a decreasing arc not a constant curve (the stairs being wider at the bottom) is not straightforward! So the carpenters had to do their best job yet.

Mr Willard infront of the eventual stairs

Below you can see the laminated plank that was contorted into part of a decreasing 3D spiral