After almost a month of largely wet and stormy weather, we’re having a dry spell. It’s a last chance to clear and tidy the garden and mow the lawn one last time before autumn gets really damp and dark and starts to give way to winter.
So, I did my Sunday afternoon duty today, giving the garden one last trim before rolling the mower into the furthest corner of the shed and starting the annual task of converting it from summer to winter mode. The difference between my shed’s summer and winter modes is simple. In the summer, what remains of last year’s pellet supply is buried beneath bikes, buckets, a watering can and anything else the family needs immediate access to. In the winter, it all gets heaved over to the other side of the shed, burying the lawn mower and freeing up the space I need for my winter fuel.
The big heave complete, I decided to improve and extend the wooden platform I use to keep my stack of pellets up off the damp shed floor. It’s built around an old, rotten delivery pallet, which I keep meaning to replace, except whenever I see a fresh pallet, usually thrown in a skip outside someone’s house, my own is normally well buried under half a tonne of pellets. Using a pile of left over fencing timber, I’ve enlarged the area available for stacking my pellet sacks as well as taking the weight off most of the pallet.
I hope I’m well prepared for my first delivery, which I need to order this week. The supplier I’m going to try out, Puffin Pellets, supplies bagged pellets in 20kg sacks rather than the 10kg sacks I’m used to. Without seeing them for myself I don’t know if that’s going to make them more or less efficient to store. Hopefully they’re going to take up slightly less room, in which case my extended storage area might now be just large enough to take a two-tonne delivery once winter sets in.