We’re constantly looking at ways to improve our guests’ stay at the Farmhouse at Ley Farm. This week we added two stair gates for families with young infants after a previous guest mentioned that our doorways and stairs are too wide for standard stair gates. We also know how easy it is to fill up a car when going on holiday, so the less our guests need to bring with them, the better! So now we offer various different items for young families – including a travel cot, high chair, baby bath with toys, baby bouncer, and a few books and toys. With our 2026 diary now open, and vacant weeks towards the start of summer and then from September onwards, hopefully this will make our property more attractive to guests who are looking to make their holiday a little easier and more enjoyable!
And after hearing that a few of our guests have brought their own games consoles, John added an extra HDMI cable in both the Games Room and the Farmhouse so they don’t need to keep unplugging and switching over the TV cable. It’s only a small thing on our side but again – something to make our guests’ holiday a little easier.
With most of the weekend spent back in the New Forest to see my younger brother on a trip back from Australia, we’ve spent the rest of the week and Bank Holiday Monday either in the garden or completing another changeover after our latest very lovely guests left on Monday (see their wonderful review below!). I know we’re not alone in having too much to do but sometimes I really do wish we could stop time for a while and just catch up for once!!
John’s made great progress outdoors this week, fertilising and mowing all of the lawns around the Farmhouse, the New Barn (our future 3-bed) and our house. It’s an annual job that combines killing the weeds and getting nutrients into the soil (especially in the new lawns that were laid after the building work last year). He’s mowed the wood for the first time this year. We tried leaving it so the wildflowers would grow but it ended up being taken over with cow parsley and lord and ladies (the latter which can be nasty if you eat the berries) and looking a mess, so we decided to cut it back. It’s a much nicer space now – and there are plenty of flowers starting to open around the garden (and weeds in the surrounding hedgerows!) for pollinators. And he finished the changeover early on Monday to plant out our maincrop seed potatoes. Last year I managed to kill half of our potato plants by using weedkiller on the weeds that grow behind them – so this year I’m not allowed anywhere near them!
John also finally finished incinerating the last of the garden waste he’d cut back throughout the winter. He’s been burning it gradually since the weather dried out, waiting until we didn’t have guests (or they’d gone out) – it’s taken a good few months! It makes such a difference not having huge bags of garden waste at the entrance to the wood. We did learn that it’s best to water down the ash before putting it into the compost bins though – after one slightly hairy moment when I could hear crackling from both ends of the orchard and saw one of the bins on fire! Luckily it didn’t do any significant damage – and definitely a lesson well learnt…
Ley Farm Cottages 