Since our second planning application was submitted, our amazing architects have been hard at work drafting designs for our listed cottage. We’d originally planned to leave this building until much later (once we’d actually converted our barns), but we’re keen to do all the groundwork at the same time (water, electrics, sewage etc) to avoid doing disruptive building work while we have guests staying; plus our recent conservation survey identified some urgent work required to prevent the rear lean-to collapsing. So we’ve decided to bring forward the listed cottage work to run just behind the barns – starting with initial designs and planning application. Build-wise, we’ll do enough to make the building secure and watertight, and leave the interior work for a while until we can afford it.
And things are moving with our barn conversions too. As well as reviewing the listed cottage designs, we’ve been arranging our drainage survey and our structural ‘trial pit’ survey (where someone digs up patches around our barn walls to check the foundations and establish just how structurally-sound the walls are). And of course – nothing is quite as easy as it sounds – we’re also having pre-survey visits to check what equipment is required for each survey, and identify any clearing we need to do in advance. We already know we’ll need to clear some space around our third barn where our fig tree and established blackberry bush are growing, and are just hoping we can keep the fig tree long-term and build around it…
This weekend we’ve also made real progress with our spring bulb planting. Having started with 100kg of daffodils (plus 500+ tulips and irises to perforate the daffodils), we realised we didn’t have enough to finish the stretch along the fence, and so ordered another 25kg daffodils and 150 random bulbs. Winter daylight hours are limiting what we can achieve, but we’ve managed to complete another 10m (roughly 20kg bulbs) and have just 5m left to finish next weekend. We’ve been covering the bulbs with chicken wire as we go, to discourage the squirrels from eating them over the winter – the last thing we need is all our hard work to end up in a squirrel’s tummy!!
We’ve also managed to squeeze in a few quick jobs when it was too dark to dig bulbs, but just light enough to see. The kitchen garden is looking sorely neglected with overgrown vegetables needing to be picked – we dug up the beetroot to find something had beaten us to it and started munching; so we put the covers back to protect the rest of the vegetables, and cut back the artichokes ready to move them to a different bed. And we made a start making leaf mulch from the leaves we set aside – currently in huge white building sacks, we’re moving them to smaller black garden sacks and storing them behind the compost for next year’s vegetable beds. If we can plant the rest of the bulbs next Saturday, we should have enough time on Sunday to finish off the tidying!
Ley Farm Cottages 