The Cow Shed is coming along quickly – our builders have now finished most of the plastering and in a few days it’ll be ready to start painting. There’s one remaining bit in the ensuite to finish but apparently that needs to wait until the toilet cistern is in. Our builder even came over on Saturday to lay the screed in the shower tray as that’s being fitted next week – we were a bit surprised to hear banging next door in the morning – but that just shows how brilliant he is.
It’s looking nearly ready to paint which is much faster than we anticipated so we’ve started clearing the next few weekends to make sure we have enough time to get through it all. We’re hoping to make a start next weekend if we can. We went to B&Q this weekend to pick up some paint sample cards – as one of my friends said they do all look very similar though!! There’s not much natural light in the Cow Shed – and we’re very conscious not to just repeat the colour scheme we have in our house or copy the Games Room (which effectively rules out any blue walls). We are leaning towards having a dark green kitchen and then perhaps a lighter green at the other end below the stone gable wall. This decision has come around far more quickly than we expected!!
As it’s our financial year end, John has been busy finalising our accounts and submitting the necessary information to HMRC and to Companies House. At the end of our first full financial year (February 2025 to January 2026) we ended with 62.2% occupancy compared to 59.9% which was his forecast based on Cottages.com’s initial proposal. This equates to 46 stays in total throughout the year – during which we’ve welcomed 276 adult, 36 children, 8 infants and 96 dogs. We’ve been lucky enough to get 3 last-minute stays in January but our February and March calendar is looking quiet. Our contact at Cottages.com did say the trend this season is more towards later bookings – we’re really hoping to get a few more as it’s so nice to see people enjoying themselves when they stay.
We spent the weekend finishing various repair jobs we had around the garden. Our cheap and feeble blackberry arch in the kitchen garden gave up in the Christmas Eve/Day winds and has been collapsed in a pitiful heap since then. So – dodging raindrops again – the first thing on the list was to replace that with a sturdier version. We now use Tom Chambers arches which are so much better and not hideously expensive if you manage to get them in a sale. It was interesting though trying to build it in the lounge while we waited for the shower to pass – arches are so much bigger than they seem once they’re in position.
We also repaired our pea & bean frames after a design flaw left them unable to cope with winds while covered in vegetation. Instead of just having poles in the ground with netting inbetween we have now added a top frame to keep everything in position. It’s a much more solid structure – even if some of the poles are slightly wonky where we didn’t position them exactly equidistant from each other. We also tidied up the netting so it’s tighter and will help the plants grow up. It looks so much better, I’m getting excited for Spring now and for getting seeds planted.
And – hopefully better late than never – we cut back our nectarine and peach trees and covered them with their plastic-covered frames. You’re supposed to cover them in the UK to protect them from rain which can spread peach leaf curl – but we just didn’t get round to it before now (typical since we’ve had rain every day for over a month now). One of the trees already has peach leaf curl so we’re hoping cider vinegar spray and fungicide may help instead… When we got the covers out of storage (between the Farmhouse garden wall and the New Barn we noticed that one of the covers is looking worse for wear. It won’t last another storm so we’re starting to think about how we can redesign the covers to be sturdier and last longer. If anyone ever has very large sheets of plastic then please do save them for us!
We’ve still got vegetables in the kitchen garden which are starting to be munched by insects so we’re now making a concerted effort to use these up now. We should have emptied the beds and covered them well before winter to kill off the weeds but just haven’t had time. I suspect we’re now going to spend half of this year weeding….
Ley Farm Cottages 