Skip to content

New sink tap in the Cabin

One of the first things you realise in any off grid set up is how much we take clean water for granted. It’s literally “on tap”. Soon after we built the Log Cabin at Century Wood I installed a kitchen sink with a waste going to a gravel trap dug into the ground behind the Cabin, and a tap supplied from a water carrier. After 15 years of this set up, I decided to upgrade it with an on-demand pump and a better tap.

Read More »New sink tap in the Cabin

My wrist

Last spring I had a bad fracture in my left wrist, had surgery to put the fragments together, and then got the bombshell advice to avoid use of vibrating machinery like petrol chainsaws from now on. As you can imagine, that’s a life changing injury in my case. Since then I’ve been working out what to do and getting as much advice I can including from my physiotherapist. I’m planning to make posts about how I carry on managing Century Wood and I hope it will be useful for other people who are dealing with injuries and conditions like arthritis.

Read More »My wrist

Lantra clamp down on chainsaws!

Well, to be specific, Lantra wants to criminalise chainsaw use by private individuals on their own land unless they have paid for a Lantra-style chainsaw course. Lantra describes itself as the UK and Ireland’s “one-stop-shop for land-based training and careers”. It has a dominant position in regulating training courses for rural skills. Since there are HSE regulations that require businesses to ensure that workers are properly trained, this brings some Lantra qualifications into that mandatory framework – you can face criminal prosecution for employing people to use chainsaws without the proper training. That’s reasonable and we have a long tradition starting with the Factory Acts of requiring safeguards when employment is involved. But now they are seeking to extend this to private individuals.

Read More »Lantra clamp down on chainsaws!

The Wood of Versoix

This month I’ve visited the Bois de Versoix, a forest of about 1300 acres about two miles from the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This woodland is a working forest but also contains a nature reserve, Les Douves, with amenities for the public. In particular, there is parking near the nature reserve on the Chemin de Douves, and so it’s a good place to start.

Read More »The Wood of Versoix

Leopards of Shropshire

In 1425, 600 years ago this year, the town of Shrewsbury had a stamp made for the wax seals attached to official documents. On the stamp are three shield designs: the three leopards of the King of England, a cross of St George, and on the right the three leopard heads which have become the emblem of Shrewsbury and its county of Shropshire. But why leopard heads? And why are they called “loggerheads” in Shropshire?

Impression of the Shrewsbury town seal, 1425, in the Shrewsbury Museum. Copyright Shropshire Museums, used with permission.
Read More »Leopards of Shropshire

The Little Red Cabin in Illinois

Earlier this month I was on a trip to Illinois in the US and inspired by my shepherd’s hut stay in Devon, I took the opportunity to stay in a cabin on a small farm well away from the cities. “The Little Red Cabin” is on a hobby farm just outside the town of Lena in northwest Illinois, only a few miles south of the border with Wisconsin.

It was built only a few years ago and is a timber framed building with wood siding and a corrugated metal roof. It’s very well insulated, finished to a high quality, and well thought-out.

Read More »The Little Red Cabin in Illinois