New year, new project, not a great start 

While we’re waiting to be able to start the building work on our barns, and for the planning permission on our farmhouse, we’re occupying ourselves by making improvements in the garden. Most of the main garden areas were beautifully planted with seasonal shrubs and flowers by the previous owners, so we’ve focused on turning the various stretches of brambles into something more attractive/productive. We spent three months last year replanting the edge of our wooded area with spring bulbs (which excitingly are already starting to appear), and so this year we started a new project (well, sort of)… 

Our orchard sides onto the top of a ditch that drops down to our neighbour’s field, and when we moved in it was so thick with brambles and nettles that we couldn’t even see into the field, let alone beyond it across the valley. Last year we trialled planting part of it with squashes and potatoes (with reasonable success), and we also built an asparagus bed using the leftover sleepers from our greenhouse renovation. This year our new project is to build proper vegetable beds along the full length, which are more stable than a pile of soil (being at the top of the ditch) and look better. 

We have an additional motivation. Along the edge of our derelict third barn (we’ve not blogged about this yet but will do soon), we inherited an amazing cultivated blackberry plant that – if we want to keep it – will need to be relocated ahead of any building work. We decided to move it to one of these new vegetable beds and train it over an arch so we don’t lose too much space in the bed itself. 

So on Friday, we started our three-day weekend by braving the cold and started to dig out the first length. We actually cleared the brambles last year while we’d rented a rotovator, but we still need to flatten the area, and remove the stones, weeds and general rubbish buried over time. We also have a plan to lay the sleeper edges on leftover ballast instead of soil, as we have clay soil and want to reduce the risk of standing water as much as possible.

But within a few hours of starting – the rain began. When it got too heavy, we retreated to the shed and busied ourselves by clearing and tidying it properly. By this point, the soil was pretty waterlogged and the areas we’d dug were full of puddles, so we called it a day outside and went in, instead spending the afternoon tackling our very first home-grown pumpkin (exciting!!!) and batch-cooking. 

Saturday wasn’t any better – so we decided to tackle two jobs that we’d been putting off for about 8 months – painting the radiators and door hinges and catches. It took us the entire day to do both floors (we’re waiting to hear back about our latest planning permission before doing anything to the top floor). It’s surprising just how much a white (instead of yellowing) radiator and glossy black (instead of rusty) door metal brightens up a room. Very satisfying indeed! 

Our plans for Sunday now involve sawing up the sleepers for our veg beds (delivered before Christmas), and generally tidying up our Shippon (currently our wood store), as the ground will still be too wet to dig. Both are still necessary jobs, but it’s still a bit frustrating not to be able to get outside and dig – however irritating the spadefuls of stones are. Here’s hoping for better weather next weekend!