Author Archives: hotnsticky

The Old Feed Mill Factory

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Today I spent the day demolishing the old feed Mill factory sheds in Moss Vale. I had known about the sheds needing to be demolished to make way for a new steel fabrication factory. The owner had offered me all the roofing iron for free if I took it all apart. I looked at the site a month ago, but wasn’t ready for the iron until now. The Old Feed Mill has been on that site for a very long time. I was told by one person that their father went there as a kid with his father and his father is now over 80! The original feed mill was built and run by the Hirsh family. This shed appears to be a more modern building. It doesn’t look to be 80 years old, possibly dating back to the 50’s or 60’s. The current owners, who bought the company in 1992, finally closed up in 2017. I know this because the last message was still scrawled up on the black board at the entrance.


The pottery rebuild has got close to the stage of lining the sheds. The electricians have started wiring the building, but will still be another few weeks before they finish, as they are doing my job in their ‘spare’ time in between doing a huge factory installation in Mittagong. so I only get them when they have ‘spare’ days.Once the electricians have all the wiring installed in the walls, I can then start to put the insulation batts in the wall cavity and then line the buildings. The iron from the old feed mill will do nicely as a fire proof lining material. The shed will be steel framed, steel lined and steel clad, with fibreglass insulation. Not too much to burn there.I would have left it for another couple of weeks until the electrics were done, but I got a call asking me if I still wanted the metal, because if I didn’t, there are plenty of others who do. So I had to move now.


I asked my friend Andy to help me on this one, as I thought that it was just a bit too big for me alone. also, working on ladders at heights and on high roofs, it’s best to have a friend there just in case. I’m a decade past the age when I should have stopped doing this kind of work, but nobody told the bush fire that.


We started at 8.00am and hammered, ground, levered, screwed and bludgeoned our way across the two roofs prising off the old rusted nails and screws, then throwing down the liberated sheeting to the ground in a rather messy pile. It all went to plan – almost, except for the rather strong gusty winds that picked up, just after we started, we had to time the picking up and carry the loose sheets to the edge of the roof and throwing them off to coincide with lulls in the gusts. It could have ended badly if a severe gust of wind hit me with a full sheet in my hands at that height. Long sheets of iron act like a sail or even spinnaker.


We finished taking the roof off by 2.30 and then spent an hour cleaning up the mess on the ground and loading some of the iron onto the ute. We got about half of it on. 104 sheets on the ute, which was a really full load for the one tonne ute, but I made it home OK with out being booked. Andy had more sheets on his trailer. We stacked them all in a corner of the new workshop. They can wait there until the sparkies are finished.



We finished stacking the first load of 100 sheets in the shed around 5 pm. A big day for an old guy.
I’ll be going back tomorrow to take the walls off and bring the 2nd half of the load back home. That’ll keep me off the streets for a while. I’ll certainly sleep well tonight.
I know that I shouldn’t really be doing all this ladder work and roof work at my age, but I gave the Work Fairy a month to get it done for me, and she never showed up. Fictional and imaginary friends are just So unreliable! There is nothing much that a passionate and committed human can’t do – given time.

All this self reliance is hard work!

Like Father McKenzie

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Finally, a post that isn’t about building!We have been working hard every day. We work outside until dusk, but that isn’t the end of the day. We have to deal with the days produce from the garden. 


Summer is always such a busy time, but this year it’s so much busier with all the building work taking up so much time. Janine has put in nearly all of the garden harvesting work this last few months, as I have been up the ladder, on the roof, or in the ground digging trenches.
The tomatoes keep on coming, so before we cook dinner, we slice and dice the red globes and simmer them down to pulp, while we prepare dinner. The following night I push the pulp through the moulii and then re-cook and simmer the passata down to half it’s volume, concentrating the flavour, before bottling it while it is still hot.


I start by browning onions in olive oil with pepper corns and chilli, then as the sauce pan fills, I add in the herbs and bay leaves.
When the pan can’t take any more it is left to simmer all the aromatic sauce down to pulp, so that it will pass through the moulii easier.


The grapes have started, so we are making regular batches of grape juice, grape jelly and red grape ice cream. As the citrus trees are still producing, Janine also made batches of juice from navels and sevilles, using some of that juice to make a seville orange ice cream.



Geordie called in, so he helped us roast and bottle peppers in oil, cucumbers in saline, while Janine made orange juice.Then stuffed capsicums for dinner, with marmalade for breakfast.


If there is nothing on the idiot box, which is most nights. I sit and do a few repairs to my worn out clothes. I added another patch to the arse of my old jeans, as they slowly fade away into a threadbare riot of tears and patches. Finally I sit quietly and darn the holes in my woollen socks. Janine made a lovely porcelain darning mushroom a few years ago. It works a treat. I do these repairs to save waste, prolong use and preserve the embedded energy in the items. I don’t like to throw anything out until it is really beyond repair, but like Paul McCartney’s Father McKenzie. Nobody cares!

But I do!

It’s all part of this busy self-reliant life.

Still on the tools

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We have been working on the tools, brick cleaning for the past 3 weeks now. Last week, my wrists began to ache, so I stopped and had a 3 day break to let them rest. Our friends Rei and Fran called in on Monday to give us a hand and I did my share, but that night my wrists swelled up and ached, so I realise that I have reached my limit on brick cleaning. I’ll need to have a few weeks off now to let them recover. We got 2,200 bricks cleaned, so we are about 2/3 of the way through the job, an average of around 100 bricks a day. Not too bad, but obviously too much for my ageing body – at this time of great anxiety and stress.

Instead of brick cleaning, I finished off the claywater/greywater drainage system, digging the trench from the pottery studio to the seepage trench by hand using a crow bar and shovel. Interestingly, this didn’t hurt my wrists the way that chipping away at lime mortar does?


Once the sewerage line was completed, I turned my attention to the LP Gas line. We hadn’t fired our LP gas kiln for the past decade, as we were trying to minimise our use of fossil fuels. But the gas bottles still have gas in them and I’m planning to build another solar electric kiln using gas reduction at stone ware temps.
There are so many services that need to be buried all around the building, I’m trying to get these done, I’ve finished the storm water and guttering, so all that remains to be dug in and buried is the fresh tank water supply to the sink. This has to come all the way around the building from the 2 big rain water tanks next to the barn. I want to get all this done so that I can finish the ground works around the building and start to clean up the site. 
The LP Gas line comes from the 2 big gas bottles past the studio and around into the court yard then up and over the verandah and into the kiln room. I’m really proud that I have been able to achieve this complex installation using only two tools, a coil bender and an expander.

With this minimal tool set, I have been able to make all the elbows and joiner parts necessary for the job from simple copper pipe. I’m using thick class B pipe and 5% silver solder for all the welds, as required by the Australian Standards. The only parts that I will need to buy are the 2 end threads to screw on the LP Gas connection fittings. 
Miraculously, my ancient 1950’s oxy set and the 2 gas bottles survived the fire because I wheeled them out side into the paddock and wrapped them in a piece of 1/2” ceramic fibre blanket. The fire raged past and over them and didn’t even melt the plastic hoses, such is the insulating value of ceramic fibre in the short term. It saved me too!


I’m not real fast, It has taken me 2 days for this job, but I don’t charge myself anything for my time. One of our past pottery students is a plumber and he has agreed to come and test my line and certify it if it passes, then connect the kiln for us. I saved myself a lot of digging by using the existing stormwater trenching for nearly all of the underground work.
Another of our past students, Tony, a retired builder came and installed the glass french doors. These were donated to us by another ex-student Geoffrey and his wife Sue. They bought the doors 2nd hand and Geoffrey cleaned them back, reglazed and puttied them, then undercoated them. Only to realise that they didn’t really suit what they had in mind and found them to be excess to their requirements, so donated them to us. Tony did a wonderful job of installing them, which required moving one of the studs and me making a new steel header beam and then some new steel door jambs out of 3mm thick gal steel plate, so as to save using a wooden door jamb to save the extra space. This was the only way we could fit them in. They look great and let lots of light into the building. We are really pleased!


I also finished the back verandah with the help of my friend Warren last Sunday. I had made up all the parts to make a new ‘portal frame’ to finish the job that the builders said couldn’t be done. I used the off cuts from the 3mm thick gal steel plate that bought for the french door jambs, and cut out and folded the parts for the frame myself, using the guillotine and pan break, watched over by the always attentive chickens, Gladys and Edna. 


The back verandah is now complete and weather proof.
The brickie that we originally had come out ond look at the job, has now said that he can’t do it. A shame, but I have been in touch with a couple of younger guys who are interested. One says that he can start in 4 weeks, so the pressure is on to get the last 1200 bricks cleaned in 4 weeks! We’ll see what we can do. That’s 50 a day, 25 bricks each. It may be possible? 10 before breakfast, 10 before lunch, and 5 before dinner. We have a few weekend working bee’s organised, so that will take some of the load off our wrists.

A Day Off.

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Today I didn’t clean any bricks. We had an almost full day yesterday when 2 friends came and gave us a hand for most of the day. Janine and I did our ‘normal’ shift from 6.30am till 9.30, then our friends came at 11.00 am and left at almost 7.00 pm.

We did have a long lunch, but it was still a big day on the tools. So today is a designated day off from brick cleaning. Our first

The electricians turned up, so that was good. It’s nice to see some progress. I spent the morning helping them by digging out the old pottery 3 phase cables down to 750mm. deep and exposing the horizontal run of the orange conduit. The sparkies then joined on a longer section of cable and ran it up the outside wall of the Gallery room, and then along to the new main sub-board inside.

My next job was then to fill it all back in again, after laying a sheet of orange ‘warning-electrical cables’ plastic safety strip along the trench, half way up. By doing these mindless labouring jobs myself, it saves paying the high hourly rate to the sparkies, for something so dull and time consuming and saving me some money.

I will need to make some new corner flashing out of gal steel sheet to cover this conduit and make it safe and weatherproof.

The sparkies continued on inside wiring the rest of the building.

Progress in fits and starts. I’m grateful for every little bit of it.

10 Days on the tools – We’re half way.

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We have been working consistently on the brick cleaning, with have had a couple of friends come and give us a hand during the week and that has sped things up quite a bit. Janine and I have been at it every morning for a few hours from 6.30 to 9 or 9.30. We regularly clean our quota of 100 bricks to stay on target of finishing by the end of the month. With the little bit of help from our friends, we are now well ahead of our target. We had 3 friends here yesterday, so knocked off 300 bricks before lunch.This has brought us to about half way through the cleaning job. Ahead of schedule is a good place to be.

On the other days, we only had Gladys and Edna to help us.


We came across a really lovely example of the blue mould on one brick, with some green moss. I sent a photo of it to my friend Warren. He sent back an image of a pile of his bricks that are a stunning example of both the blue mould and bright green moss.

On The Tools – brick cleaning, day 6

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The weather has turned cooler now with a southerly change coming through yesterday. We were out there cleaning bricks again today and we managed to put in 3 hours from 6.30 to 9.30 simply because it is not too hot. We got over 150 bricks done, plus a number of broken bricks, shorter ones, skinny ones, plus the usual halves and quarters.

We have now cleaned up to around 1,000 bricks in all categories. I have separate piles for 1/4’s, 1/2’s, 3/4’s. Then other piles for bricks that were cut to special tapered shape for use over the window arches. There is a whole category of smaller bricks that we excavated from the footings of the old Mittagong Railway Station. These make up about 10% of the total. I stack them separately, because 33 years ago when we were building our extensions onto the Old School building here in Balmoral, The brick layers would often call out for me to find a taper brick, or a small brick, to fit a particular spot in the bond.

The long original pile of bricks that used to continue all along our drive way, is now significantly shorter. We keep moving the bench up to the pile and then, the next day, the pile has receded back further again, as we clean the bricks and stack them at the other end of the driveway. This stack advances, as the old stack recedes.

You can see where we started on the brick pile on the far right of this picture after the red wheel barrow, there is a patch of green grass surrounded by a ring of white lime mortar. This was where the bench was when we started. When I start again, later today, we will move the bench again up closer to the brick pile.

The cleaned brick pile is looking very healthy.

We are so far ahead of my hoped for estimate of 100 bricks a day for 33 days. Getting close to 1000 bricks in 6 days. We are wearing our way through the stock of Scutch combs.

It’s a small but significant measure of our progress.

The other big achievement of yesterday, was the completion of the big arched window. I had the glass delivered just before Xmas, when the glass shop closed for Xmas break. Unfortunately, I had miss-measures one sheet, very slightly over size. It was one of the triangular sheets at the very top. I thought about trying to cut the curved arch end back by 10mm., but decided against it. The glass shop didn’t open again till yesterday, having had 6 weeks off. So I rushed down to Mittagong and got them to cut 1cm. off the curve for me and then brought it home and fitted it.

The window is now complete. An intermittent job that has taken me 11 weeks, but 6 of them waiting for the glass. I’m quite pleased with it, and in particular the fact that I could do it all myself for about $1,000. A massive saving on the cost of having one made. I’m lucky that I have all the skills necessary to be able to do this detailed work for myself. There is a local factory that makes custom made steel framed windows for architects. I was told that the window would be in the region of $20 to 25,000 to have specially commissioned.

I can finally take the scaffolding down now.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this wall bricked up!

On the Tools – Day 4

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We work for a couple of hours every morning from 6 or 6.30 until 8 or 8.30, depending on when we wake up.

We do at least 100 bricks before breakfast. Our brick cleaning tally stands at 600 bricks now. I was thinking at the beginning of this little project that I had over 3,000 bricks to get done. I’m an ageing old man, maybe 100 per day would get them all done in a month. Achievable, without doing myself an injury. So, all in all, I think that we are doing pretty well.

There is a gap between the bench and the brick pile now. That’s progress made tangible.

We were joined this morning, very early on by half a dozen wood ducks, they came wandering past grazing on the grass and made their way up to the front of our land where I planted a patch of clover.

Janine wets the bricks down with some water every now and then to suppress the dust.

Yesterday, I started the day with a new set of scutch combs in the hammers and by the evening they were reduced to being pretty blunt, so I reversed them to get another day out of the the other edge.

Slowly but surely, we will get it all done. The 42 oC temperatures haven’t helped, but we are in for a cool damp change tomorrow, so I might be swapping my home-made Legionaires style, adapted sun hat for a rain coat. At least it will keep the dust down and be so much cooler.

I improvised it by fixing part of an old T shirt to my straw hat with some of Geordie’s old nappy safety pins. Needs will, as needs must.

On The Tools, Day 3

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Janine and I have been getting up early and going out to the brick cleaning bench each day now at around 6-ish. We chip, scrape and clean until we have have 100 done, that takes us about 2 hours. The first day it took us 2 1/2 hours, but we are getting better at it now, so we have knocked half an hour off. We don’t try and do more in the extra time, we just knock off once our quota is filled and then rest our arms and wrists.

We are usually quite hungry after 2 hours of work, so we enjoy our breakfast.

Stopping is good. We don’t want to over-do it early on. After breakfast today Geordie called in with some stuff from a restaurant that he was given and wanted stored. it is starting to look a bit crowded in the new shed already and we haven’t even finished building it yet!

Later in the morning after Geordie left, Janine had a little snooze. The extreme heat makes you tired at our age. I didn’t feel like it so went back out and work for another hour, which was OK after a couple of hours rest. I put up the shade cover thing and did another 100 bricks in just one and a half hours. Maybe I’m getting better at it? Or, maybe I was just working through a pile of bricks that had less lime mortar on them?

When I come to the ones that have cement on them, well, that really slows me down. I have a bit of a go at them, but really, it isn’t worth buggering up my arm muscles on these. I put them aside and I will come back to these in a few days time when there is pile of them built up, and I will get out the diamond saw and just cut the brick, just inside the cement coating, and clean it that way.

Some of the bricks are really pretty.There are a range of colours from red, through orange to yellow, with a few maroon and grey variations. There are also a ring of textures as well. Sandstock bricks have this hand made natural variation in deeply inherent in there making and firing technique.

I found one lovely one that had a blue kind of mossy mould growing on the lime in the mortar. It was quite a pretty blue and a lot of the bricks in one part of the pile had just the right conditions for its to grow. The red brick contrasted well against the blue haze of the mould?, with the rest of the brick having a sooty grey black mould on it.

We only found this in one part of the stack. It obviously had very specific growth conditions.

Our Summer Evening Ritual

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We are in the middle of a few days of high temperatures now. The real summer heat has set in and the garden is showing it. Everything is looking droopy and tired already at 11.00am, even though we watered everything last night and again this morning. By lunch time it was 42 oC in the shade.

We were up early at 5-ish and were out in the early morning cool to clean our quota of 100 sand stock bricks before breakfast at 8.00am. We knocked off as soon as the sun came up over the pottery roof and took our shade.

Yesterday we had our friends Ami and Kate here for the day to give us inspiration and encouragement. We managed to work most of the day, out under the portable gazebo shade cover, and got 200 bricks cleaned. A good effort for a hot day. We worked slowly and steadily with watering breaks, lunch and finally a treat of ‘Splice’ style ice creams at the end of the day around 4.00.

5 girls working. Ami, Kate, Janine, Edna and Gladys
We have started to make a dent in the brick pile.

We now have a very modest pile of 300 bricks in the ‘clean’ pile. Just 10% of the total, but a good start. Thank you Kate and Ami!

After our breakfast this morning, we went back out and watered the garden and picked the produce. We are just past peak tomato. We started the month picking a couple of baskets full each week, then it was every 4 days, then every 2nd day etc.

This first early planting of 8 bushes were planted in September. The second planting of a dozen bushes were put in in November and are just flowering now, so will take over in a few weeks as the older bushes slow down.

Every few days we make a batch of passata. Before I cook dinner, I fill a 5 litre copper boiler with chopped tomatoes after first frying off a brown onion in olive oil with half dozen cloves of our garlic. I add in a sprig or two of fresh herbs from the garden, always a big bunch of sweet basil, but then a couple of bay leaves fresh off the tree and perhaps some thyme or sage, depending on how I feel on the day. Pepper corns and a little salt, just a tea spoon. As I want to keep my salt intake to a minimum.

Sometimes I add in a zucchini, or some artichoke hearts, other batches get a good dose of capsicums, a chilli, whatever we have in excess on the day. Sometimes, it’s all the above.

I simmer this for 20 mins or so until it all softens and then lid on and put it aside while we cook dinner, and leave it to cool overnight. The next day, before dinner. I pass the whole lot through a mouli sieve and then re-heat it to reduce the sauce to concentrate it down to half its volume.

After dinner, we pour the concentrated passata into heated and sterilised bottles straight from the oven and cap straight away while everything is still almost too hot to touch. As the bottles cool, we can hear the lids make a loud ‘POP’ noise. They are then sealed and safe to put away in the pantry for use later in the year.

One 5 litre boiler of fresh tomatoes reduces down to make just three 750 ml. bottles of sauce.

Last nights passata bottles and this mornings pick of zucchini flowers, this will be dinner. Plus baskets of more tomatoes, chilis, capsicums, artichoke hearts and cucumbers.

We’ll be making more passata again tonight as well. Every alternate night and new batch and every other night the simmering and concentrating, then bottling. It’s our summer evening ritual.

Every bug in the garden wants to attack and share our tomatoes, slugs, snails, caterpillars, but as yet no fruit fly. I got in early in the year with half a dozen Dak pots and lures. so have managed to keep them at bay for the time being. Fingers crossed.

Self reliance is a lot of work, but it is the most rewarding work. I wouldn’t work this hard for a boss!

Clay water/grey water

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On Wednesday afternoon, my neighbour Mitch called in with his excavator after he had finished work on another job.I had asked him to come when he could just a couple of days earlier.
We needed a seepage trench for the pottery sink to be dug 10 metres long and at least 600mm wide and 600 mm. deep. This will be for clay water/grey water seepage.I felt that as the weather is getting hotter and I’m wearing down. I copped out and got the trench dug. But it is money well spent.  Mitch dug the trench in just 10 minutes. It would have taken me all day – and then some.  3.5 cu.m. of crushed stone gravel is about 7 tonnes of material.

Yesterday I was in town, as I had a favour to repay and then I was off to Moss Vale to the plumbing supplies to buy all the parts for the seepage trench. 
Today, with everything in stock, we lined the seepage trench and built the stop ends/access/inspection ports, then filled 5 of the 7 tonnes back in again. A big day in the hot sun. We still have a couple of tonnes left over to deal with. 


I’m so glad to see the end of that job. It was over 30 oC here today while we did all this digging. After we finished all the earth works, we watered the garden and I picked all the days garden produce.


I picked tomatos, zuchinnis, capsicum, cucumbers, chillis and artichokes. This will be dinner. Janine cooked a vegetable risotto for dinner, while I made a big 5 litre stock pot full of tomato passata. We had our risotto with a small piece of fish, fresh off the south coast fish truck yesterday.

It’s a good life if you don’t weaken!