This has been the second Christmas since we started renting out the Farmhouse and we’re lucky enough to be booked for both Christmas and New Year. With the weather expected to turn chillier in the coming weeks, John arranged for a top-up log delivery so we have enough to keep our winter guests in stock. It’s never a quick job moving a trailer-load of logs into the Old Barn (our future three-bed cottage but currently providing storage for all sorts of things including our log pile!!) so we were pretty lucky the weather wasn’t too damp while John was stacking it up.
We welcomed our Christmas guests the Wednesday before the big day – they’d booked the Farmhouse over a year ago and so we were very pleased to receive positive feedback after their visit as they’d waited a long time to stay. We like to remain at home over the festive period in case something needs repairing – our biggest fear is that the aga breaks and makes Christmas dinner more complicated as our only mitigation is to use our kitchen to cook for everyone!!
We had a day between our Christmas and New Year guests, so we made the most of the extra time and daylight hours to tidy up around the Farmhouse gardens – cutting back shrubs to open up the terrace more and clearing branches that had fallen from the fir tree in the recent storms. We also popped to the shops on Saturday after the changeover to try and secure some sales bargains for The Cow Shed. We managed to get most of next year’s Christmas decorations half price which was a bit of a result.
Making a few wear-and-tear repairs in the Farmhouse on Sunday took longer than expected but we did manage to clean and paint the first coat on the steel beam supports in the Cow Shed in the afternoon once our New Year guests had arrived. We’d already experienced difficulties painting in our Shippon where there are small gaps between the walls and the supports, so we took the opportunity as the stud wall frames are in (to show where the walls are) but we can still access the back of the support beams more easily. It did mean painting in the gloom and freezing cold though – it took a while to warm up afterwards!!
We did manage to get a rest over Christmas – taking the opportunity of having family staying to visit Montacute House and Ham Hill Country Park. Despite mentioning Montacute House in our visitor folder we hadn’t actually been ourselves, so it was a good excuse (and afterwards we found out our Christmas guests had also been!). We had a lovely walk around the gardens and parkland (both dog friendly) and took it in turns to explore the parts of the house that are currently open. Montacute had a Christmas choir feature with trees decorated and carols recorded by local choirs playing around the ground which felt very festive. Afterwards we discovered Ham Hill Country Park just down the road, with an iron-age fort and ramparts, a [modern!] stone circle and a lovely war memorial on the top of the hill. The wind was too cold to hang around for long but at least we’ve discovered a new walk to add to our guest folder.
Ley Farm Cottages 