I spent some time earlier this week wrestling with the idea of having to spend in excess of £110 to get two railway sleepers delivered here for use as foundations beneath our shepherd’s hut.
Then, while admiring some of the oak windfall I collected in the forest after this month’s big storm, I had an idea. Would discs of oak work as foundations if they were cut large enough? A quick email to the joiner who is building the shepherd’s hut for us confirmed that it would work, so I headed off into the forest again this morning with a saw and a blue bag from Ikea. Here’s what I collected:
The three discs stacked up are ones I cut myself. The fourth was one I found near the roadside this evening. It’s much larger than anything I would have attempted to cut by hand and must have been left by one of the many contractors that came to the area to re-open the roads after the high wind brought down so many trees.
We’re really pleased that we’re able to make use of local resources in the shepherd’s hut, even if it is just a few pieces of oak for the wheels to rest on.
By the way … each of these came back home in the Ikea bag one at a time. One thing I’ve learned this week is that oak is very, very heavy!
