Our second year anniversary – a look back 

Yesterday marked our second year anniversary of moving to Devon – neither of us can quite realise how that happened! There’s still so much to do, and so many friends we haven’t managed to invite down – and importantly we haven’t even got all our planning applications in place yet, let alone started build! The longer it all drags on, the more naive we feel when we look back to when we thought it would only take a year to convert the buildings and open our self-catering cottage rental business… 
 
But looking back at what we haven’t achieved is never a good way to celebrate an anniversary… so here’s a look back at everything we HAVE managed in the last year…. 
 
Whereas the work in our first year was fairly split between the garden and redecorating the farmhouse, this year it’s mostly been in the garden – and completing two huge jobs in particular. We spent four months clearing nettles and weeds out of the stretch along the fence in our wood, and then digging the whole area up to plant 125kg of daffodils, 250 irises, 250 tulips and 250 bulbs we forgot the name of (the allium we planted never appeared). That was a pretty horrendous autumn/winter job – with time against us and stony wet clay soil almost the entire stretch – but the view of daffodils in the spring more than made up for it

We then spent January to May building our two new vegetable beds along the side of the orchard.10m and 8 m long, we cleared the nettles and brambles, dug up never-ending roots and more stones, before building the beds and moving all the soil back, layering in our first ever homemade compost (which the plants seem to love!). After this we said we’d never try and dig throughout the wet season again, but let’s just see what happens this year! This was a tough job but we’re so happy with the result and the extra space we have, so it feels well worth it.

We finished our first full growing season in the kitchen garden, with some successes and many learnings too! I failed on my failsafe labelling approach as we still have courgettes labelled as squashes and a rogue broccoli growing amongst the brussels sprouts! We learnt to space out our tomatoes more, and moved the artichoke after they grew taller than the cover over the bed – although we need to rethink sharing their bed with the mangetout and french beans as they’re too closely packed this year. And this year we tried a different runner bean structure – more of a tunnel shape that’s more stable than last year’s attempt, which kept collapsing.

 After our first year’s success with the lawns around the house, John spent a lot of time repeating the scarifying > aerating > seeding process with the rest of the grass in the orchard, around the compost area and in the wood – as well as repeating the front and back lawns. They look so much better than they did last year – although the combination of overhanging trees and hot weather means the grass in the wood hasn’t survived very well.  

We had a decent harvest from our orchard, reaping the benefits of the work we did in the first winter to try and reduce the pests that were ruining the fruit, and spent our autumn (and half of winter) preserving it all. I think the final count was 109 jars of jam, 119 jars of chutney, 26 jars of fruit jelly, and 28 jars of hot sauce, not to mention the amount of fruit we froze to eat until this year’s harvest. It’s actually been quite fun finding different ways of using the fruit without involving copious amounts of sugar! 

And we did actually make a lot of progress on the build. Our first planning application for the main barn conversions was approved (after 9 months), and the second one for changes to the farmhouse went through far quicker. Our architect has made good progress on the detailed designs at the same time as submitting a further three applications for our renewable heating and solar panels, for the Elizabethan cottage, and for some minor modifications to the shippon designs. These are taking a bit longer to get council approval for, and we need to follow up with additional justification documentation – but the council are mostly sounding helpful and our architect is optimistic these will be approved.  We’ve also had countless additional inspection surveys completed – including drains, trial pits, structural surveys, asbestos, more bat and tree surveys, and a historical conservation survey of our Elizabethan cottage.

We’ve spent hours and hours looking at renewable technology, bathrooms, kitchens and lighting – both flicking through brochures, scouring Pinterest and visiting showrooms. While most of our appointments haven’t come to much yet, we’ve nearly decided on bathroom designs and renewable technology products (installers still to be chosen), and will hopefully be moving onto lighting and kitchens soon, starting with a few companies we’ve been kindly recommended – Amos Lighting, Howdens and DIY kitchens (thanks Andy, Emma and Julie-Ann!). We loved visiting the in progress and completed builds to get a feel for what lies ahead, and getting extra inspiration from what others have done before. 
 
We’re still hoping to start build in October, although it does feel like we’re running out of time to finalise the last few bits and pieces, including getting council approval for the materials we plan to use, and commissioning plans with the utilities companies. But we know our architect and builder are working hard behind the scenes for us, so maybe the final things will fall into place easily 🙂🤞