This feels like another mini-milestone week. It was our site manager Paul’s final week on site – even though there are bits to finish, these can be done by trades or other members of the team, and his skills are more useful on another site. It was a sad moment saying goodbye – Paul has been coming almost every weekday since we started in February 2023. He’s done a terrific job and we are very appreciative of him! The one-bed cottage looks much bigger now it’s not being used as a site office.
He still kept busy throughout his last week – tidying up and then concreting the final area behind the ‘New Barn’ (our communal building). He’s done a fantastic job of concreting our dog shower (or muddy boot shower!) – all we need now is the taps and shower to go in, and then we can spread the pebbles and tick that off the list. One of the other builders has continued to build up the stone wall beside our one-bed cottage to hide the air source heat pumps from the rest of the site.
And our carpenter has been on site this week too – installing the sliding door between the guest laundry and our laundry, and then making a start on the kitchenette in the games room. He’s also started on the snagging list – the spare bedroom door in our new house was fitted before the carpets went in and subsequently needed sanding down to fit.
We’ve found it much harder to get things done especially over the weekend. Our pup is supposed to be on bed rest for two weeks after having a knee operation on Monday, but every time we try and get something done she’s out and about – following us down to the new house when we’re moving furniture or sneaking upstairs when we leave the wrong door open. John managed to make good progress during the week – finishing off pressure washing the concrete in front of the farmhouse, and then priming the front of the shippon ready for the mortar paint. We managed to get most of the first coat on over the weekend – we’ve had to leave parts though where the render has cracked. The renderer is coming to repair it on Monday, so hopefully we’ll be able to get it finished towards the end of the week or early the following one, so the builders can fit the drainpipes and water butts, and tick that off.
We did start to move the first bits of furniture into our new house while the dog was distracted. We’re in a bit of limbo where we don’t quite have enough to move (namely we don’t have beds) but we need to start setting up the farmhouse rooms as they’ll be when it’s rented out, so the holiday cottage company can get enough photos to put it live on their site. We’ve started ordering the furniture for the farmhouse, but it’s not ideal having to get everything online and we simply can’t leave the dog long enough to go out shopping at the moment.
Always keen to add a bit of variety into our tasks, we managed to get through a few outdoor jobs as well. The grass seed has grown amazingly in our new lawn and that of the three-bed barn after John’s careful sprinkler routine, and he chose a dry day to weed the three-bed barn’s lawn (the topsoil annoyingly came with weed seeds in it). He also then put more grass seed down in the orchard and remaining areas that had been dug up and hadn’t re-seeded themselves. It’ll be so nice to have the grass back to normal instead of soil/mud patches!
I managed to carve out some time to put the second arch up along our brick path and plant another jasmine. We want to create a little more privacy between the farmhouse front garden and the kitchen garden and greenhouse, so we can work there without disturbing anyone. While three arches won’t completely separate the two, at least they’ll cover the gaps between the trees. The kitchen garden is suffering this year – partly from our lack of time, and now receiving attention from slugs, mice and birds. It’s frustrating that all those early mornings spent trying to catch up have simply fed the pests with some delicious seedlings. We’ve reverted to using plastic bottles to protect them, until we can mend the vegetable covers and put them up, and planting more seeds to try and replace them. I know it’s a bit later than recommended but I also sowed the wild flower seeds in the corner of the farmhouse front lawn between the fig and apple tree. I figured everything is late this year and the seeds may yet grow – plus it’s one thing less to move…
One big achievement this week though is getting the new section of our website live. John started designing walks over two years ago (thinking then that we’d be open not long after) but as the planning and build process has taken so long, it slipped right down our priority list. It’s been hard finding the time to get it finished but we’ve finally managed it – adding a new section for local walks for our guests, and then a new page with details of our local pubs too. We hope it’ll help give our guests an idea about what they can do – either before they arrive if they want to plan, or while they’re staying here. There’s so much to see and do it’s going to be hard to limit the information we provide to something manageable. We have plans to add more content so watch this space!
Ley Farm Cottages 