A mixed week of maintenance, cooking, seaside and building work prep 

Another week and a few more jobs ticked off our to-do list. The external steel stairs up to the Games Room had started to go green with algae so John spent a few hours on Saturday pressure washing them back to their original black. We’re so cautious of people slipping on the brick path and the stairs – John’s been regularly out with grit to stop the bricks from getting slippery – and a couple of weeks ago we put the anti-slip mats down on the grass (you can already start to see the grass poking through one of them).  

We were expecting a same day changeover on Tuesday this week but our guests left late on Monday instead which gave us a much-appreciated extra evening which helped. It gave us time to upgrade the torches we leave for our guests to much brighter ones with rechargeable batteries – far better for the darker evenings in case anyone wants to walk to the pub. The old ones have done well to last for five years (we used them before we started renting the Farmhouse) but we’d noticed them losing their brightness – we’ve always said we would prefer to continue to invest in providing a fabulous experience than letting things slide over time.  

We’ve also created tasting notes for our jams, jellies and chutneys for any guests who want to buy one. Our flavours range quite a bit and as some of our orchard fruits are heritage and not well known, many people haven’t heard of them (we hadn’t before we moved in!) and so they don’t know what they’re buying. We’ve sold quite a few jars of jam and are now hoping to sell some chutneys and jellies – fingers crossed this inspires some more sales! 

With the frosty weather becoming a bit more frequent we’ve started digging up our vegetables before they ruin and making them into soup to freeze. This weekend we’ve been using up pumpkin, carrots and kohlrabi – it takes a while to chop the smaller vegetables up but we like to use as much as we can. We’ve also continued working our way through the medlar and quince fruit we have stored we have in the fruit fridge – this time making more quince jelly to sell and then pulping the medlar for use in tarts and sandwiches. We’ve pretty much picked all the orchard fruit now so it’s a case of preserving it as quickly as possible before it spoils. We’re trying to get this all done by Christmas but we’re getting busy now – always good to have an aspiration though. 

The recent weather has also caused damage to our listed cottage, with the dubious stone walls of the back lean-to finally starting to collapse from all the wind and rain. Although we have planning permission to convert the building, at the moment it’s more of a dream than a financially-feasible reality and so we need to look for a more immediate stabilisation solution before the whole wall and lean-to collapses and exposes the old cobb walls to the weather. John has organised for a structural engineer to come round next week to give us some advice on what to do – so he also cleared all the overgrowth behind the cottage. We’d let it grow up in an attempt at protecting the walls but it was impossible to see the full extent of the damage. Here’s hoping for a quick and not extortionate solution! 

Excitingly the internal work is finally starting on our one-bed cottage – The Cow Shed – next week – the one at the gate-end of the shippon that adjoins our house.  It’s been almost three months since we finished treating the beams and have been waiting for our builder to have space. In preparation for next week John organised for our local chimney sweep Stuart to assess the location for the wood burner. With the carpentry work the first thing to start, we needed to understand when Stuart would be needed to adjust the roof structure for the new flue. He’s asked for the carpenter to complete the wall stud work and most of the roof work but leave the corner by the wood burner where the flue will go. Stuart will then return to take precise measurements for the wood burner’s position and determine the exact flue location, allowing the carpenter to create the required clearance for the flue. This involves cutting through one of the rafters and installing additional supporting timber to pass the flue safely through the roof. 

John also asked about the fire-resistant boarding material needed for the wall behind the wood burner so that we can tuck it in as close into the corner as possible. Unfortunately we only learned about this material after we’d built, plastered and decorated the wall in our home, so our wood burner sits further out into the room – when you have a small house you want every spare inch!! At least we learned something that we can use for our next cottage. 

On Sunday we helped out at our local village Christmas Lunch. Every year volunteers from Yarcombe organise and host lunch for retirement-age villagers in the village hall. This is our first year helping out – with about 100 guests much of the cooking is done in home kitchens throughout the village and brought to the hall to warm and then serve. Our neighbour gave us just over a hundred pigs in blankets to cook, and then we waited on tables at the event itself. It’s not much effort and it was lovely to spend the afternoon watching everyone enjoy themselves. And we got to meet a few more people who we’ve heard of and not properly met before. A great way to start the Christmas season. 

We did manage to get out on Friday courtesy of one of our friends who came to stay. As she’s just moved to Switzerland we decided to take her down to the coast at Branscombe and walk along the South West Coast Path to Beer for lunch. We walked up over the cliffs and had beautiful views along the Jurassic Coast both east and west. Both villages are full of character with old buildings, fishing boats and heritage, and the beaches and coastal views. And we timed our walk home such that the sun was close to setting over the sea. What a lovely day out – we’re so lucky to have places like that just a short drive away. We just need to get through our job list so we’re ‘maintaining’ rather than ‘improving’ and have a bit more time on our hands!