Composting loos and designer fire pits

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on September 30^th 2023.

As promised/threatened last week I shall begin with an update on our composting loo. This loo is now on its third life. When we arrived it was in the shed, in a tiny space with a leaking roof, a simple bucket under a wooden frame that had once been painted green. We moved it over to what had been the summer kitchen where there was a reasonably sound roof, painted it blue, put a hanging basket up and left it at that.

A loo may be a humble necessity of life, but that is no reason not to make it a pleasant place to be. When we arrived back this summer I decided that the spiders had reigned supreme for long enough in the gloomy recesses and hidden places and it was time to get some paint and brighten the place up. As always, once you start, you wish you hadn’t, but three coats and three different colours later, this is what we ended up with. We also decided to open up the back hatch so that we can enjoy the view in a different direction.

Michael has constructed a complete new bench seat,  with a clever hatch for the shavings, and hinged front openings for easy access to the bucket. We have also invested in what is known as a ‘separator’ which does exactly what the name suggests, separating the liquids from the solids, which we have found produces much better compost and is also more hygenic. For those of a squeamish disposition that is all I shall say on the matter, for those of you who have boats or also live off-grid I know you will already be aware of how this all works. Should anyone require more knowledge the subject is covered in greater depth in my book about our first year here, ‘A Simple Life.’

It has been a week of innovation and progress. Our friends Ken and Karen, last seen on their boat crossing a stormy IJsselmeer with us in the Netherlands, arrived in their campervan and have spent their visit hard at work, cutting wood, mending broken tools and designing a new fire pit for us. It has been a real boost having some help conquering our wilderness. We have rewarded them with home-grown figs and sweet chestnuts to take back to the UK and are hoping they will come back and live at the end of the field permanently!

We inherited this old copper tin and it has been languishing amongst the weeds for the last three years. Now it is a designer fire-pit, a one off and we lit it for the first time last night.

We did occasionally allow Ken and Karen a moment of respite and took them to visit some of our favourite places. More accurately I should confess that they drove us, rather than the other way round, as we are still experimenting with living without a car. More on that in a future blog as the situation is, of necessity, evolving. I’ll leave you with a few pretty pictures of lakes, rivers and sunsets. We had hoped for a swim in the river as it has turned hot and sultry here again (Oh autumn where art thou?) but the water level was so low that a brief dip in a murky pool was all that was on offer.

Hope all is well and see you soon.MJ