I started doing this diary in June. If you haven't been following have a look at the Cast of Characters which gives a quick low down on the essential day to day characters who are mentioned here...it will make more sense if you do.

    

Lorna came in shortly after I'd got out of bed and said that she was going to be home all day because Lauren with off school with a cold so she was happy to get into a bit of fencing. It was raining a bit, and looked set to continue like that all day, but it wqasn't quite enough to put us off. David arrived shortly after that so once I was dressed I went up to the field. I got talking to David about where exactly the fencing inside the orchard was going to run, the plan is to have an enclosed area for doing fires and sweats with an open walkway from the top of the steps and so we had to decide just where that division was going to be. He then told me that there was another whole load of posts outside the field so it seemed that I didn't need to go and get more posts after all which was a relief, I would have been annoyed if I had calculated it wrong. It did mean, however that he would then waste a good hour 'walking' the JCB out of the field and back in with the posts but it was easier than carrying it through the bog.

After I had dealt with wood and got my fire laid I went out in the field and shifted poles around and sawed down some of the shorter lengths around the corners of things until Lorna was ready to start. We then got several hours in laying rails while David was setting the rest of the posts in the orchard. It was kind of hard work, especially now that I've had no proper food for days and days, by the end of each nail (they are big nails, really big nails, ok) my arm was turning to jelly, even Lorna was getting jelly arm after a while, but it was very satisfying to see the rails go up and they do look ever so good. Rustic, yes, but ever so good. The only interupption was when Jean, the hay woman arrived in the field, lucky for her she was wearing wellies. She wanted to "have a look at the barn" where the hay would be put, ostensibly to know where to put the hay in the (unlikely) event of her turning up when there's no-one here. Once inside the barn she was not shy about asking whether we had any good junk, having a good look at it all and almost demanding that we put a sign up outside and have a barn sale. We established where the hay would go and got back to the field. A quick break later to light my fire and get it going and then we carried on until it was getting dark and the amount of rain was getting to be silly.

After another short break to eat some more yoghurt (still nowhere near solid food yet and I'm getting a bit bored of yoghurt) and then I made a start on the WIT list. Although some of it involved doing things I don't really like because I find them boring (which is possibly why I had delayed doing them) it didn't take as long as I thought it was going to and I was actually finished by 10.00pm. So then I had a bath and washed all the mud and sweat off and, after doing this, I can still get to bed before midnight.

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