Making a bender: Pt. II (and a bean tragedy!) August 22, 2010

But before any of that… There’s been a lot of people here recently, many of them visitors. I like visitors, the whole house seems more exciting, I like the comings and goings, the general bustle, but especially I like the big meals all together. We had a particularly good one last weekend, down in the campsite at the bottom of the garden. Sam and I cooked a vegetable tagine over a campfire, which we had with couscous and mint tea, then Sam brought out an amazing Summer pudding (which, for Northerners like me who’d never heard of it, is one of these). It was really nice with about ten of of us on picnic mats around the fire, with the shafts of sunlight highlighted in the smoke. Safe even from the intermittent showers under the cover of the big beech trees.

Those intermittent showers have pretty much continued constantly throughout August, probably peaking this weekend, which is a shame because we’ve got lots of visitors again. Luckily they don’t seem to be too put off by the rain, but it’s playing havoc with my lawn mowering schedule! I suppose that’s what you get when you let kids have a big holiday off school.

Anyway, that rain has meant it’s been hard to get a good time for me and Sam to really finish off the bender. But today we did! Over the past few days we’ve got lots of withies and wove them into the base of the bender (had to put lots more stakes in to give them something to weave in and out of), making a bit of an edge to it. And today we took the tarpaulin off, covered the skeleton with old blankets and things, and then put more tarpaulin on it, covering the whole thing nicely. Then we got another tarp to line the inside, and covered that with blankets and stuff. Now its all snug and ready for some cushions and bean bags and lanterns to make it a lovely place to spend the night.

We’ve rather proud of that really.

Anyway, onto the main tragedy that came with the bad weather – the bean tripods have been felled! Collapsed all over the leeks! The bamboo was no match for the combined forces of the wind and the weight of the beans…

I’ve done my best to prop it up, but it’s going to struggle. Still, we’ve had a huge amount of beans over the last month or two.

Last but not least, we’ve expecting the polytunnel to be erected next weekend when we’ve got some handy relatives coming (although I don’t think they knew we’d earmarked their time here… hope they’ll still come!). So I’ve got a bit of groundwork to do. Dad and I have been trying to mark out the exact location of where it will be, using trigonometry and everything, but still having trouble getting it right! But I thought I’d try to do a ‘before and after’ type photo thing… watch this space!

Think of us in the storms predicted for tonight!

Another rainy day August 4, 2010

It’s hard to know whether I’m actually disappointed that the weather is so awful today – it is quite nice having lazy rest days sometimes, picking beans and peas and processing them, reading, chilling out. And we had a glut of old bananas, so yesterday and today I made four banana loafs.

Anyway, what I really wanted to post about was the bentwood tent that Sam and I built in the woods at the bottom of the garden this week. Usually called a bender, but it’s rather hard to put that into a sentence without sullying the rest of it. It’s a very simple sort of structure made of bent wood with material tied onto the top of it. And here’s how you make one…

1 – Locate a decent site and chop down at least eight suitably bendy saplings/branches. The size depends on how big you want your bender – we aimed at about 2 inches thick at the thickest point. Hazel or ash or willow are best, but we used sycamore and it seems fine. Chop off all the side-branches (there shouldn’t be many) so you’ve got a long, straight, bendy stick.

2 – Make a hole in the ground preferably about a foot deep, as wide as your thickest stick. Put the stick in it and make it firm by jamming the hole full of other little sticks.

3 – On the opposite side of your site, do the same with the second thickest stick. Bend these sticks over towards each other to make an arch with a big overlap, and tie them in place. We used nifty garden ties to hold it in place to begin with before securing it up with string and wire. The advantage of the ties is you can tie them with one hand, while holding the wood with the other. The alternative would be to get more friends, but this is sadly out of the question for me and Sam.

4 – Repeat this to make another arch crossing the first:

Hmm… I think these photos may not be too helpful! It is rather gloomy in those trees. Anyway…

5 – Continue this process and tie together the arches where they cross:

Standing inside it and looking proud is very important at this stage.

6 – Now chop down some much smaller, even more bendy sticks and weave them in and out of the uprights. We did ours in a spiral pattern to try to make it look prettier, but the pattern isn’t too important. Do as much of this as you like until it’s pretty firm.

You could also make a pretty door and then use it even though it’s not entirely necessary at this point. We went round with another spiral (going the other way) to firm it up.

7 – Cover the bender. This is actually the hardest part (not to mention most expensive if you are to do it properly). We used one big tarpaulin, because we didn’t have anything else and because we didn’t want to spend any money! Although it wasn’t actually big enough. It would probably be best to cover it with lots of canvas, blankets, warm things, rope them down or tie them on, and then cover the whole thing with a really big tarpaulin to make it waterproof. Then get a groundsheet for the inside and use the edges to make a lip. Then fill it with cushions and blankets and lots of nice things.

Oh, the door could be used as the basis of a porch, if it was tied to the bender and then to the floor with guy ropes. If you had a curtain door to get into the porch and another to get into the bender, it would give a good insulating zone between the inside and the outside, and make it all snug. Doesn’t really look that impressive in the photo does it? Have to use your imagination.

So, there you are! Nothing to stop you! Quite a lot cheaper than a mortgage.