Easter coming up, and still snowing

We were joined today by a new mill volunteer - welcome, Lesley! She rapidly got stuck in to cleaning and tidying part of the workshop. Ray was still snowed in in Weardale.

Meanwhile we managed to do some finishing off outside.  We replaced the little bit of fence from the launder to the wall next to the kiln door (back left corner of this picture) and finished off the new fence between the launder and the spillway pit.

George re-bedded the new spillway stone, which had come adrift in the frosts.  We generally tidied things up, hoping to be able to turn the machine over Easter weekend.  We will not be milling for a few more weeks.

We also completed the flour desiccation test - we bagged 1532g of flour in June 2012 and I have kept it at home to see how much weight it loses by drying out over its 6 month shelf life.  We meant to weigh it again in December, but weather and other stuff was against us, so we did it today and interpolated the weight at 6 months.  It was OK, so we know we need to continue bagging 1530g of flour in our 1.5kg bags.