A wet start to Sunday meant we decided to find an indoor job to get on with. And what better job than to start work in the Cow Shed – the one bed cottage that’s located at the other end of the shippon to our house. When we were decorating our house we didn’t sand and clean the beams until the internal walls were up and plastered, which made it difficult to get right to the visible ends of the beams. It also meant the walls were dusty and got wet when we cleaned them.
We didn’t want to be in the same situation with the Cow Shed, so we’ve had the job to sand and clean the beams on our to-do list for a while now. John cleared the building a couple of weeks ago and we moved the ladders in there shortly afterwards. So this morning we grabbed the sandpaper and made a start. The beams have probably never been cleaned – they were covered in dust and dirt and algae and all sorts of joyful things! But several hours and a few splinters later, the beams are smooth and mostly free of dirt. They look so much better!!
Now we just need to wait for our builder to have some gaps to fill and start sending the tradespeople over. We’re going down the ‘gap filler’ route for the Cow Shed rather than booking it in as a proper job so we have more flexibility over the timelines – including the decorating and choosing the interior design. With the Farmhouse full most weekends and keeping on top of everything else, it’ll be hard to find time to get to interior design shops to look at options, or actually decorate the building. It’s quite exciting to get the first bit done though!!
We’re well and truly into harvest season now – both in the kitchen garden and in the orchard. We’re not very good at harvesting our vegetables throughout the season, instead we tend to leave them until later, then pick a whole crop in one go and batch cook with it. This week we harvested our celery to make soup (along with homegrown onions and potato), and Chinese cabbage and French beans to go into a stir fry. This year we experimented with celery and grew all our plants from the ends of shop-bought celery that we left in water until it rooted. Most of the plants bolted – but as our celeriac (grown from seed) did the same thing, that feels more down to the hot weather this year. So we’ll try again and see if the same thing happens next year.
We also harvested our plums (a dismal harvest this year as we didn’t get to them before the rain, and most of them split and ruined), and we’re continuing to harvest our damsons and freeze them ready to make jam. In recent years we’ve tried making jam as we go and we’ve been overwhelmed and ended up with spoiled fruit because we never had enough time. So freezing what we can will give us more time and hopefully keep as much of the fruit as possible. Fingers crossed!!
We’ve been lucky enough to have some wonderful moonlight views this weekend – both on Saturday night and then on Sunday night with the Blood Moon lunar eclipse. While we don’t get sunsets because we’re on the side of the valley, we get amazing sunrises and moon rises – and this weekend was no exception. We consider ourself to be very luckily located!
Ley Farm Cottages 