I've just finished three days of hard physical labour, and woe is me I'm KNACKERED!
I was so tired when I got back home earlier today (yesterday by the time this is scheduled for) that I ALMOST swapped 500 000 DEC rather than pooling it, and that would have been a somewhat sub-optimal end to an already brutal day.
I hadn't planned for this to happen BTW. Being almost 50 and not historically used to whole days of physical work I tend to limit myself to 4 hours, but I've done more than that the last couple of days, it's just the way it's turned out, but it's been good, honest!
Sunday - bootcamp and Cobb Flooring
Sunday I helped out laying a cob floor - lots of tramping, a bit of lugging and the kneeling and spreading cob too, and that was after a morning bootcamp circuit session which was harder than usual, my legs felt that the following day....
Monday - roofing part 1
I thought the guy doing my roof was going to turn up with an extra labourer, but he came solo, and so that extra labourer ended up being me!
My job for yesterday being to help strip the roof of all the tiles, which involved a lot of up and down scaffolding and then lugging them to stack.
That was after having to lug all the scaffolding and tools 100 meters up quite a steep slope as my alternative access path, or rather field had been ploughed recently and so was, well, more of a field, rather than an access track, but there you go!
We got the roof stripped and finished quite early, but it was still a good five hours!
Tuesday - roofing part 2
Now call me a big hairy wuss (however you spell that?!?) if you like but my job for today I found more knackering than yesterday...
It was to strip some plastic protective wrapping off of 7 bits of 6 metre long, metre wide chappas roofing (while the professional builder got on with prepping the roof supports, something I couldn't really help with) and this may not sound knackering, but trust, me FUCKING PLASTIC!
I managed 13 out of the 14 sides (yes it's on both sides) before I lost the will and called it a day.
Oh it was fine when it started off nicely and peeled off as a whole meter wide strip in one pull, which it did for about 2 of the sides, but the rest.... it just kept splitting and so my day was one of constantly stopping, leaning over, scratching off small bits of plastic and then pulling again.
Possibly today's exhaustion comes more from the fact that this task was so soul destroying rather than brutally physical, that was NOT FUN!
There was a bit more general lugging around of materials today too - you can't really avoid it on 2.5 HA of land when your access road is 100 metres away from your house!
Final thoughts - back in balance pacing myself...
I am exaggerating a little, I've probably done about 4-6 hours of actual work every day, but that's ENOUGH for my old bones which aren't used to it!
And it's actually been quite nice having a bit more balance to my life... getting out on the land(s) and working with the old hands and less time online.
I've been careful to put off other physical tasks - so I've held off chainsawing for example, and any major tidying, well except for a load of washing I now need to hang up....
Then it's an early night, tomorrow (or today as this is scheduled for the early hours of tomo!) is day four, and that's the heavy lifting day when (I hope) we finally get the chappas up on the roof.
Bring it on!