If last week felt quiet in terms of progress then this week seems to have disappeared under a pile of jobs. We took the plunge and started decorating in the Cow Shed – John spent the week moving the builders’ equipment into the shower room to make more space and then wiped the walls down to get rid of the building dust. We then started priming the bare plaster ahead of properly painting. We split the painting between us – I do the edging and John rolls. I managed to get all the edging done (bar the bathroom) but a last minute midweek booking for Monday meant that John spent Sunday doing a changeover in the Farmhouse so only got a third of the living space rolled. The hardest part is starting though! We have a busy few weekends coming up so will only make limited progress for a while now.
As we’ve had a few days of sunshine John spent one of them clearing the Farmhouse flower beds. Even though we spent several weekends at the start of 2025 clearing all the weeds, many of them (including three cornered leek and countless clumps of grass) have returned. Now some of the flowers have started to appear it’s been an interesting challenge to avoid disturbing them!
John also made a start pruning the trees in the orchard and the wood, cutting back the lower branches to allow more sunlight to get to the base of the trees. We still need to find time to prune them properly since we didn’t manage to fit it in last year – some of the orchard trees are in dire need of proper pruning. We’ve been gradually trying to remove the canker and ingrowing branches to restore them each year, but having missed last year some of the trees are definitely feeling it.
We’ve gradually started clearing the vegetable beds and getting them ready for Spring. This weekend we cleared our celeriac, and started using up some of the chillis to make hot sauce. We did think about making some for guests to buy but we have such a range of chillis now it’s hard to guarantee a certain level of heat. Plus we seem to be doing quite well with jams and jellies recently so we don’t want to disrupt that!
We have plenty more jobs that we’re behind on, but we have so much to juggle at present with running and maintaining the Farmhouse, and working on the Cow Shed that most other things aren’t getting a look in right now. Roll on Spring with lighter evenings and more chance to get jobs done after work…
Ley Farm Cottages 