Let’s start this week’s blog with progress in the Cow Shed. Our tiler Jonas has been busy in the ensuite, finishing the back wall (more complicated than it sounds since every tile has to be cut to shape) and even coming on Saturday to lay the floor tiles. As with our ensuite we’ve chosen different tiles inside the shower to the rest of the room to create different sections in the room. The floor tiles are designed to match the slate shower tray to elongate the footprint of the room – although it’s hard to see this while all the protective floor coverings are down.
Our joiner Dave has been working on the kitchen – he’s got a deadline to meet as both the kitchen cupboards and the additional laundry units need to be finished in time for the stonemason to measure up for the worktops at the start of June. The colour scheme in the Cow Shed is the opposite to ours – with dark green cupboards against a pale yellow wall versus our ‘cashmere’ cupboards against a dark green wall. The Cow Shed colours look great but the cupbaords do make the room look much smaller – I’m hoping the lighter worktops will bring a bit more space back.
And our builder Tim has finished repointing the gable wall. The original mortar was cracked and coming away from the bricks – we could have retained this as an original feature but it would have looked dirty and at risk of collapse. Tim has done an incredible job repointing it – it now looks much cleaner and neater – we’re so grateful to him!
Our new planters for the Cow Shed also arrived this week. As the Cow Shed doesn’t have any garden space we decided to section off part of the courtyard to create a private area for them. We’ve had planters with trellises custom-made by a talented local carpenter and they look brilliant!! John treated them with cuprinol this weekend and has ordered the soil so I can plant them up next weekend and get some jasmine growing up the trellises a little before we have our first guests. Luckily I have a few other flowers left over from the pots that I can use there instead.
We’ve continued to buy bits for the Cow Shed – all the light fittings have now been ordered and we’re on to furniture and bedding etc. It feels like we’re making good progress, although we’re desperate to open by summer and there is still so much to do and to buy!
With an extra day off, we’ve been busy ourselves in the garden – making the most of the good weather to finish some of the jobs that seem to be never-ending. I finally managed to plant out all the dahlia tubers we’ve been given – we now have a huge collection of pots just in reach of the New Barn hosepipe and waiting for the various flower combinations to take before we spread them around the yard. I’m never very good knowing what goes best together, so I’ve mixed combinations of dahlias, dianthus, ammi, asters and alyssum together; with a few lupins, snapdragons and zinnia thrown in for good measure. As long as they bring a bit of colour to the yard then that’s the main thing!
We’ve tried protecting the cherries and nectarines from the birds using organza bags – I’ve tried this before with strawberries and failed, so hopefully it might be different this time! Our nectarine tree has been badly affected by peach leaf curl, and our peach tree is almost dead from silver leaf – both fungal infections. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to save our peach tree – I’m just hoping we can wipe the area down and replant one. The trouble is that so many people have untreated fruit trees in the valley that we tend to get all sorts of airborne fungal and pest infections. There’s only so much we can do…
John has been clearing our remaining vegetable beds so I can start planting out our seedlings before they bolt (too late for our spinach seedlings which I’m having to sow again). We’re still behind where we should be at this point in the year (having only recently planted out pumpkins, french and runner bean seeds) but every week we’re gradually catching up. This weekend I planted out the brussels sprouts and kohlrabi seedlings. Each seedling tray that is emptied brings a fresh sense of relief – then it’s just down to watering!! I’m really hoping we’ve got enough time for the vegetables to grow before the season finishes – it does feel like the start of the season but it won’t be long until it’s September and we’re picking vegetables before the cold weather sets in.
Given it’s been a bank holiday weekend, we allowed ourselves a bit of time off too. On Saturday we went to Devon Truck Show at Smeatharpe Airfield, just a few miles away. It’s the first time we’ve been – and what an experience! The airfield was full of rows of trucks, cranes and a few tractors – all polished within an inch of their lives and sparklingly clean like you’ve never seen before. We went mainly to see the monster trucks – a bucket list item of mine for some years – while their show was much shorter than I’d hoped it was still amazing to see. We also saw BMX and motorbike tricks, mini-trucks that were replicas of their real-life HGVs, and randomly some wrestling!! A slightly random but very fun day out.
On Bank Holiday Monday afternoon we made our way down to Stockland Village Fair, an annual event just down the road. The fair is a mixture of stalls selling locally made or sourced items; stalls sharing information about local activities (our neighbours were there shearing sheep and we’re now considering signing up for a Devonian hedgelaying course run by another of our neighbours); games such as hook a duck and pillow fights; and the famous Stockland eggathon. The latter – where pairs throw raw eggs to each other across a distance that gradually increases – is always entertaining as participants invariably get coated in raw egg (and bystanders if you don’t stand far back enough!). This year a new record was set at 101 feet!
Ley Farm Cottages 