A sunny weekend

A weekend of sunny weather meant we managed to get through plenty of jobs this weekend.

Our first success was in the kitchen garden. One of our aims over the next few years is to replace all the gravel with brick paving so it’s quieter to walk on and looks cleaner. We started with the space behind the greenhouse because we needed to have a flat area to put a plastic greenhouse on (we use this to keep seedlings in before planting them out). Last year with the slope and the gravel, the greenhouse we had wasn’t stable enough and collapsed, destroying the greenhouse itself and most of the seedlings too. We also found that the ivy on the wall behind it harboured lots of slugs and mice that feasted on the seedlings – hence why the first part of this particular garden makeover was to remove the ivy (over Christmas) and get the wall rebuilt (at the start of March).

It took us a bit of time to figure out the levels to make sure the flat areas are large enough for our replacement greenhouse and the runner bean sacks, which meant digging out quite a lot of the ground. We found so many broken clay tiles from the shippon that had been buried beneath the gravel. It’s taken us two weekends to dig out the whole area and lay the bricks, making sure we had the levels right. We’re pretty pleased with the result and the amount of space we’ve now gained from losing the ivy and improving the ground. Now we just need the replacement plastic greenhouse to arrive and we can move into the space!

Our second job was a long-standing one – finishing the brick trough at the front of the courtyard. When we moved in it was completely overgrown, with cherry laurels planted in pots in the concrete in front of it and not growing. We cleared most of the trough during the building work and the builders removed the cherry laurels when they re-concreted the courtyard. Work then paused as the trough needed drainage holes at the bottom to let the stagnant water out and stop it damaging the plants. We did ask the builders to drill holes but they ended up being too high up, and finishing the trough has never reached the top of our to-do list until now (or we’ve had guests in the Farmhouse and not wanted to subject them to loud drilling).

So this weekend we finally got round to it. As we’ve been digging out the kitchen garden gravel we’ve been putting it aside to go into the trough – partly for drainage and partly to save us buying topsoil to fill the trough with!! However we finally ran out of space in the dumpy bag and decided to finish the job… It took a while to drill the hole through the thick bricks – we realised very quickly that we needed eye protection and ear defenders as this wasn’t like drilling a hole in stone as we’re used to. Once we cut through (cue a spurt of dirty stagnant water pouring out – we only just missed getting covered!) John filled the bottom of the trough with the broken tiles from the kitchen garden and then emptied the gravel and bag of top soil. Now we have a new planter we can fill with flowers to welcome people when they drive in, and we’ve got rid of the two dumpy bags from the courtyard too. Bonus!

Our third job was to put the slate signs up for the dog and boot wash and the New Barn (for the games room). Again it’s not been top of our to do list until now and we didn’t want to subject our guests to loud drilling during their peaceful holiday (although inadvertently we did as it turns out they hadn’t all left for lunch at the same time – if you’re reading this then apologies!!). The signs really help to finish each of the spaces. We’ve also had feedback from previous guests who couldn’t find things like the games room or the dog poo bin, so John made a site map for the welcome folder showing the locations for everything. Having the signs up will make it clearer for our guests too.

We’ve put some of our jam and chutney jars for sale in the games room, although the shelves we bought turned out to be half the size we expected! The price we charge only covers the cost of making the produce, but we have more fruit than we need and we hate waste – so we’re hoping that our guests will support us with their purchases and enjoy some of Ley Farm when they’re back home, or gift them to friends and family.

And finally we had another changeover this week with a lovely review from our previous guests in our guest book. We welcomed new guests on Thursday – they seem to be loving the house and the games room which is fabulous to hear. We all know that good reviews help to attract new guests – but for some reason not all of our guests have been asked to leave a review on Cottages.com. As a new business these reviews are really important to us, so John’s been having a fun few weeks trying to find out why this is happening. It turns out that if you’ve ever opted out from the third-party website used by Cottages.com, the review request is withheld and if our guests want to leave a review for us, they have to go through a really convoluted process. We’re incredibly lucky that some of our guests are patient enough to do this for us – it’s a huge ask of them and we feel so guilty asking them to jump through all these hoops. It encourages us to go the extra mile even more to make it worth their while!