Another week without guests, and frustrating as it is to have such a quiet month, at least it’s given us time to tidy up around the Farmhouse. This time we focused on clearing and cutting back the trees and bushes around the back and side of the Farmhouse – areas that would be difficult to access with guests. We’ve weeded the flower beds (more manageable than the front as we only did them last summer and they’re much smaller); cut back the buddleia, lavender and various shrubs and hedges around the garden; and cut back the lilac so it doesn’t look as wild as it did previously. The garden looks much tidier now.
We also cleared the rainwater channel that runs down the side of our property next to the wall that separates us from next door. Because we’re set into the hill a bit, the wall actually holds up part of next door’s garden, and has a huge bank above it, covered in brambles, nettles, ivy and all sorts of dead vegetation. The channel had got pretty overgrown – with big piles of mud full of weeds catching the vegetation coming down off the bank and the silage from the farm above. The metal ‘gates’ that John put in place to catch things on their way down had been washed out and weren’t catching anything at all – no wonder the drain cover blocked last week. It was a pretty messy job getting rid of all the mud and weeds, and our arms are still sore from removing the brambles and nettles from the bank. It looks a lot better now though – and we uncovered a gap in the wall that used to be steps up to the land above when it was all part of the same farm and housed their vegetable patch; now blocked up and home to a self-seeded tree. The rainwater coming off the hill should make it down the channel more quickly, and the [now-reinforced] gates should catch any stones, silage or anything else coming along with it. At some point we’ll do more to the bank to tidy it up properly and put plants there instead of allowing the weeds to grow – we have enough major jobs on our list for this year though!
We’ve ticked a couple of other things off our list over the last few weeks as well. The flooring company came back to fix a few bubbles in the games room floor, and this week the mastic man came to seal it around the edges so we can mop in there. He also put mastic around the stone floor of our woodburner to seal it in. And we added two more walks to our house folder and our website. Several of our guests have asked for shorter walks to the pub, so John mapped two routes that end up at The Kings Arms in Stockland.
With the disappointing year we had with our vegetables and fruit last year, we decided to start early while we have the time and before it gets busy with cleaning jobs. We put the propagator up in the greenhouse, using our new power supply in there for the first time, and have filled it full of vegetable seeds to start with. We give all of our guests fresh flowers so this year I’m also hoping to grow some of them ourselves to save money – so that gives us a new challenge as growing flowers isn’t really our forte!
Ley Farm Cottages 