Building the Whisky Cabinet Part One (mostly not gardening related)

So today's blog isn't actually about gardening, but it is kinda about homesteading because I've been creative and constructive and made the base part to my whisky cabinet :)

I have designed this all myself and over the last 3 days have finally put it together.

I have learned a lot about wood work over this period; mainly "don't be stupid!" as in, I left a piece of the wood standing on it's narrow end by accident and it fell, and broke.

So, without further ado, here follows the picture diary of my whisky cabinet building experience.

So, lesson 1: measure twice, cut once. I made a mistake with the left hand cut out, but discovered this when checking my measurements again.

I used my old Black n Decker jigsaw to cut out each shape. In this picture I'm carefully shaving across a small amount at a time.

The finished cut out. During this I learned another lesson; cut from the outside in. My next attempt caused me to ruin this section as I cut the inside line, then went to cut the outside and hadn't secured it so it vibrated and split the wood. Idiot that I am.

Me wielding my tool (as it were)

More tool wielding :)

At the end of day one; I have cut each required piece and it all fits together.

Prior to staining the wood I am drilling and counter sinking holes for screwing the unit together. These were measured (twice) and marked onto the wood before any holes were drilled.

Staining the wood; before with Ronseal (tm)

And after. Lovely colour, I think you'll agree.

Mid stain :) Though it didn't say on the label that it was "wood and hand stain".

Screwing the whole thing together... I found out that the manual screwdriver was actually easier to use and gave up with the electric driver after the picture was taken.

The finished product! edit: those are not undrunk bottles of whisky; I just keep them in the boxes. Most of those have been opened apart from the miniatures which are Kilchoman Inaugural Release and will maybe be opened just before the sky falls down.

Well, not quite finished; this is only half of it. There is an upright section yet to be built which is next on my list.

And in other (gardening) news; I now have more than 100 tomatoes, the chillis are looking good, potatoes going insane but nothing from carrots, parsnips, cabbage or spring onions (or mint) ((or peppers)).

So yeah; bad weather forces internal work to be done.

The potatoes are finally showing, plus other progress

Well the last few days I have been in Prague on a stag do so have had to leave my seedlings in the care of my girlfriend.

While I was going around looking like this:

My tomato plants were doing this:

I have over 50 seedlings that have started growing in there! I have no idea what I'm going to do if they all grow into full sized plants... I'm not sure my garden is big enough.

Anyway, I split them up into seed trays (ran out of trays and potting compost so this will have to be finished tomorrow when I have more trays and compost) as shown below:

In the next couple of weeks I will have to rehouse them again into bigger pots. 50 bigger pots.

Anyway, the rest of the garden has been going great guns :) and last up there is a very exciting piece of news (which you'll already know if you've read the post title)

The herb garden. The parsley and the chives are exploding!

The apple tree, with blossoms finally open.

Close up of the apple blossoms. Stunning!

The recovered chillis.Only one seedling has died! outstanding result

The Stuttgarter Giant Onions; a few additional plants have started coming up since the last update so it looks like we have a success here too

Karmen Red Onions.

Red Sun Shallots

Casablanca Garlic

And now for the big surprise, the best news of the day so far!!!!!.........

Potatoes showing some green in the old car tyre planter.

Close up of a potato in the vegetable bed.

Not many have come through, but you can see about 4 or 5 sprouting if you look REALLY closely.

So, growing successfully now we have:

Tomatoes, Chillis, 2 types of Onion, Shallots, Garlic, an apple tree and FINALLY Potatoes!  Still to show green are Parsnips and Carrots and still to be planted; Cabbage and Mushrooms.

Now I'm going to go and recover from that stag do....

A weekend of digging...

So I spent all Saturday digging, and started doing so on Sunday (until the weather tempted me too much to lay on the grass reading and relaxing....

But before my laziness took over, I managed to extend the vegetable patch half way across the back of the garden, and also started a couple of feet of patch on the right hand side to extend it back towards the house.

So a few pics coming up, starting with my new pride and joy, the light of my life:

My new All Steel Spade (buy one yourself here)

The All Steel Spade as I'm about to use it :)

This is how the bed looked after Friday evening's effort

And this is at the end of Saturday... that was HARD work!

The view of the garden on Sunday early morning (note the light frost.... oooh don't kill my veg nasty mr frost!)

And the view just now showing the extended bed to the left of the picture, and the tiny little start to the right hand bed. I will be planting potatoes and carrots in the left hand bed tomorrow after work.


So, this weekend I have really gone for it, proving the even for a Part Time Homesteader sometimes you DO need to put a lot of effort in for prep.

Before anything has happened.....

Hello there,

Welcome to my blog and thank you for dropping by. I suppose I should probably introduce myself and explain what it is this blog will be about; so....

I am a (relatively) normal 30ish man who works full time alongside running another full time business. In two weeks time myself, my girlfriend and our housemate are moving to a larger house with a large back garden and this has caused me to consider how I can use the space to reduce our food bills, increase our self reliance and reduce our dependence on taxable cash.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing some research on how I can organise such a decision around having a very busy work life (and very little time in the house) and have not really found many places where people talk about "homesteading" or "self sufficiency" but coupled with the very real pressures that come from still having a job; If I was willing to sack my business and job off and go full time as a homesteader then the resources available to me are quite significant.

So, in the spirit of giving I have decided that I should start my own blog, with my own experiences and lessons that I have learned, so maybe others who are also considering how such a decision CAN work with multiple other commitment will be able to make an informed decision.

So, please do get in touch if you have any hints or helpful ideas... and let's see where this takes us. I am hopeful that this experiment will be a success and I will find that I can juggle growing some/most of my own food with the rest of my life. Who knows.

So, what am I considering as the first steps?

The house I am moving to has a sizable back garden so the first thing will be to decide where I should place things such as a vegetable garden, maybe a small green house, and potentially chickens. I am also starting a Compost Heap and I think that this is going to be the first thing that I do.

So, right now I'm on the look out for good links to posts about composting and reuse of vegetable matter. I am also considering the requirements for chickens to be kept safe in a semi-rural environment where humans are not around a lot to watch them etc.

I will blog about my discoveries in the next few days.

Regards

TPTH