Welcome to the Boot Up! Project

Welcome to Boot Up! Outdoor Learning with Falmouth Forest School

Monday 17 May 2010

bricks....

The edible garden at flowerpots is starting to take shape...after the 'aqusistion' of a few hundred red bricks, and the purchase of some more, the path has been laid... I think it looks beautiful, and cannot wait to see it twisting in and around our plants! :)















Sunday 16 May 2010

More smokey pictures, taking by a budding photographer...



Making Charcoal



Today we learnt from an expert how to make charcoal.
To start with you make a fire, steadily adding left-over wood remnants to it. Waiting for the wood to go black, with a white hue, then covering it in turfs, until no smoke escapes, to make sure all the heat is kept in and no oxygen can reach the fire. Leave for 2 hours, and then ... Charcoal!!

Messy and smelly (but very productive) fun!




Tools of the trade


Accessories needed for clay rendering...

Saturday 15 May 2010

Rudolf the Red-Mud Render!

Yer Tiz...... we have nicknamed the render 'rudolph' as it this stuff is 'Rudolf the Red-Mud Render'
1 Ton of cob render ... in convenient sized bucket ... heavy though at 40kg each!
Hmmmm. will it all fit in?

Kevin's cob and straw house near ottery St Mary. Sadly his roof caught fire and he is repairing it before starting to build a new entirely carbon-neutral house in the adjoining piece of land.


At last the time has come to start rendering the straw walls inside the build. This has been looked forward to for a long time and it is important to get it right.

After much deliberation and anxiety about getting the right 'recipie' and mix, a decision is taken to buy in a ready-mix cob render, as the clay tests done on site proved to be unusable.

The local supplier was unwilling to supply only the mix so we had to go out of county to 'Red Devon' to get what we needed. Not necessarily the greenest option but as someone was going that way with a van we seized the opportunity.....

This is sooooooo exciting!

Hard Landscaping



Meanwhile....up at Flowerepots Allotments ....... the decision has been taken to make this into an edible landscape in line with modern ideas about mixing flowers and vegetables in the same plot.

To do this we have sat down and planned a garden design and the first think is to put in the hard landscaping. We all like the aesthetic of old bricks for paths so after much searching, a supplier of 'new bricks that look old' was found locally and off we went to fetch them. They are going to look fab.


Friday 14 May 2010

It rains AND it pours!







With the long dry spell continuing and no sign of rain, there is increasing concern about watering. As the only tap brings us UV filtered drinking water, we do not want to waste resources by using this for irrigation.

After much thought by our resident genius engineer, there was suddenly a simple solution. harvest the rain from the roof of the polytunnel. The volume of water pouring off this is colossal and to trap the overflow would be fantastic.

Some strip;s of unprepared timber, some sealant and some self tapping screws and hey presto! We are away. The first rain shower filled up half a 200 litre bucket. Simple but effective.

Blossoms in May