December

It is very dark in Svångemåla this time of the year. No street lights, no neighbours, no cars, and hardly any sun only our own lamps inside and outside give us some light. It is also very, very quiet. It is time to shut off the heating, empty the water pipes and prepare the house for the winter. 

A young moose came wandering over the field and found a tree a storm had brought down. It stood there for a long time looking at me and I wonder what, if anything, it was thinking. I am glad it survived the hunt and hope to see it again next spring!

November

November is a cold, wet and dark month in Sweden in general and in Svångemåla in particular since there are no street lights and very few houses in the village. I had to turn on the flash to be able to take the pictures below !

The wild pigs are back in full force but the electric fence still keeps them out although a big tree had fallen on it. Thanks to the elasticity of the cables it had not broken and the voltage was still around 6000 V.

Thanks to the warm weather, the grass is still very green and lush. It should have been cut but the mover is not working due to mice eating the fuel tubes :(

Tasty food for our resident rabbit!

Autumn

The days are getting shorter and the nights longer. Most birds have gone silent and most of the trees and plants are no longer green. It is easy to get a bit sad but a moose on the Field and a red sun flower made me smile when I recently spend a few days in Svångemåla. The moose hunt has gone on for some time and I hope this one can avoid the many hunters I saw in and around our area!

Sunflowers make me happy!

Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) is one of the flowers that really make me happy!  Maybe because they give us a bit of sunshine when the sun is not shining as much as it did a month ago.

 

Clearing of the Field

The Field was, as I have mentioned before, a lake that became wetland and a grassing area when a farmer dug ditches to allow the water to flow into a nearby lake, Svångemåla Lake.

 

When we bought our house in 1978, cows were keeping the field free of bushes but as soon as they stopped coming, trees and bushes were quickly back and sadly the field was not what it used to be. I was therefore very happy when I early one morning heard a big machine cutting down bushes and smaller trees to make way for a new fence.

 

Hopefully the field will once again be full of grassing animals. It is really impressive to see how easily one man can sit in the comfort of his cabin and cut down both small trees and big bushes using only his fingers and what looks like a joy-stick.

 

 

 


As soon as the harvester had done its job, it was time for a collector to come and gather everything into a big pile where it will stay until it is made into bio-fuel.

Blackbird vs. frog

There are a lot of young blackbirds (Turdus merula) flying around Svångemåla right now. Some of them are still learning what they can eat and what to stay away from. This one was happily chewing away on a couple of worms but decided to go for something a bit bigger, a frog. Big mistake! The frog put up a fight and the female blackbird had no chance.

Air show!

There are many great air shows all over the world.  Farnborough is one of the largest but I think I prefer the one in Svångemåla since it takes place almost every day during the summer :) 

This time it was two common buzzards (Buteo buteo) that tumbled around high, high up in the blue sky sounding like this http://www.fågelsång.se/ormvraak .

Strange looking bumblebees and some sort of Pentatomidae

I found this strange looking bumblebee as well as a some sort of pentatomidae that I have never seen before. If you happen to know the names of them, please tell me in a comment below!

As expected, a note on Facebook and now I know thanks to my good friend and one of the real experts in the area of beetles, Bengt Andersson! It is Trichius fasciatus and it is not a bumblebee but a beetle. In Swedish it is, however, called a bumblebee beetle!

This is, I have been told, a "dock bug" or Coreus marginatus.

Drama in the Field !

The Field is an important part of what I consider to be the core of Svångemåla. That is where cranes, moose, deer and many other animals live and thrive. It is also an important agricultural piece of land where my neighbor farmer collect hay and, some time ago let his cows graze. It is, though, a dangerous place since it is an old sea bed and the soil is very slippery when wet. Two gentlement got first hand experience of that the other day when first a 4x4 with a small trailer got stuck and when they tried to use a 4x4 tractor to pull it out, it also got stuck!

I guess the driver had a "sinking feeling" !

The smell of this kind of soil is not for sensitive noses.

The problem was easily solved by a large forest machine that pulled out the tractor like it was a toy.

We got a new gate!!

After the wild pigs forced me to put up an electric fence around the plot, we have had to use long removable springs to connect the wires where our entrance is. Not only has it been a bit cumbersome to do that but it has also not looked good so a proper gate has been on the wish list for a while. When I got a bit of help from a good friend we started the job by digging a small ditch in which we buried a small plastic hose in which the wires could run. 

 The second task was to dig a relatively deep hole in which the pole for the gate could stand. It was not easy since there are so many stones where ever you try to dig in Svångemåla. 

We used three bags of cement to stabilize the pole.

To make sure that the pole stood absolutely vertical we used a bubble level and spent some time stabalizing the pole after we had filled up the hole with cement.

Although it is a very simple gate, it put a lot of strain on the pole so we anchored it to a big stone.

The gate itself is made of treated wood that will last for at least 20 years. It is only a simple frame with a cross beam to make sure that it does not lose its shape after a while.

The latch is made of a piece of wood that I got from a tree I had to take down. It is shaped as a Y and can be lifted up and down thanks to a hinge. Simple, appropriate and sustainable technology :)



The end result as seen when leaving the plot. I have not cut the poles yet since I am not sure if I might want to build some sort of arch over the gate.



How to build a small house in a corner of your garden.

There are many reasons why I have not had time to up-date the blog as frequently as I used to and this is the main one!

 

When building a house on a small plot it is very important to find a place that has the right light, ground, elevation and place in relation to all other buildings on the plot. In this case we choose a corner that we have hardly used at all before with some tall trees that we thought would give some shade. It is also a bit higher than the rest of the surrounding area enhancing the view. The main problem was to find spots to dig the holes we needed for the plinths.

 

After trying various places, we eventually found spots where we could dig eight holes about 50 cm deep.

 

In each hole we put some macadam in the bottom and forms of paper to put the cement in. A small cement mixer made it fairly easy to mix the cement.

  

To be able to fasten the foundation for the floor on which the house would stand, I choose adjustable joist hangers to make it as easy as possible to get the foundation / floor absolutely even.

 

 

 

Finally the truck with all building blocks, nuts and bolts arrived. They truck was too big to take the stuff all the way so we had to load it on a trailer and move it that way the last hundred meters.

 

 

 Plenty of bits and pieces to put together!!!
  
 
 
 

The first step is to lay the foundation. It must be perfectly level and all angels exactly as they should be or the glass panes would not fit, the roof  leak and so on.

The pillars for the wall also had to be exactly vertical or the rest of the house would not be as expected.

  The roof is made of polypropylene to keep the temperature down a bit and to withstand branches that might fall down from all the trees around the house.



It is only 9 m2 but still large enough for a table and four chairs!

Although we have only had it for a couple of weeks we really love it and use it far more than we thought we would. It is such a good feeling to sit inside it, listen to the birds and the wind in the trees while as the same time be protected from both the wind and mosquitoes.