Time flies…

How has it been seven days already?! The days are flying by, and we seem to barely make a dent in our job list – this week more than most. We’ve been helping with our village’s Coronation celebrations so most of our time has been focused on that over the last few weeks.  

The weekend itself started with a live screening of the coronation in the village hall complete with tea and cakes (we decided to watch at home while working, so it was a great excuse to bake something and not feel bad for then eating it!!). We did manage to get out for another walk on Saturday afternoon – several people in the village had taken part in our Scarekings competition and made scarecrows inspired by kings, so we walked around the village to look at these. They’re so impressive! 

For our Sunday celebrations, two of our local farmers kindly let us host a barn dance in one of their barns – recently vacated now the cows are out in the fields. With a mixed community of different ages and interests it can be hard to find something that works for everyone, but a packed day with a bring-and-share lunch, various raffles, a paper crown boat race, tug of war (led by our local Young Farmers Club), and a barn dance seemed to do the job! As the event was funded by various kind donations, we also managed to support four local charities with the raffle; by collecting food bank donations; and from the bar run by the Young Farmers Club. All in all – a successful weekend!  

The weather on Monday didn’t stop us catching up on our job list. John managed to finish clearing a pile of soil left from planting our sloe bushes back in November – removing the stones and then topping up the potato bed with the soil. He also finished cleaning the remaining stack of roof tiles (just in time as the drizzle turned into pelting rain) – now we just have the ones to pick up from one of our neighbours and clean. I spent most of the day planting out seedlings into the garden and then sowing more seeds to take their place. I thought we had rabbits eating our lettuces but given they’re now covered and still disappearing, I suspect slugs (I’ve caught quite a few in my night-time checks). We’ve ordered some slug nematodes to see if they work as well as they did with the codling moth in our fruit trees – until then I’m reluctant to plant out more vegetables just to watch them get eaten, so we’ve run out of space in the greenhouse with seedlings ready to go outside. I did promise this year that I wouldn’t take over the conservatory as well… Need to start thinking about what to do next year when we don’t have as much space!! 

The builders have continued to make progress. Their focus is on ‘getting out of the ground’ – which means spending the day laying a double layer of breezeblocks on the concrete foundations. The ground is still filling with water so they’re making good use of the pump to get the worst out – it can’t be much fun standing in water all day laying bricks. Our stonemason has also started facing the roadside wall of our extension with stone – it’s looking brilliant! The weather for the rest of the week doesn’t look great so hopefully they can make a start inside our two-storey barn where it’s weather-tight – especially tomorrow when we have storms due during the day. Not a day for outside jobs…