Opening The Cow Shed – in the nick of time 

If we’ve looked back in recent weeks and wondered what progress we made that week, this Sunday it’s completely the opposite. It’s been a monumentally busy time with more than a couple of later-than-1am finishes.  

So – where to start? Our biggest achievement is getting The Cow Shed finished and ready to let. In all fairness we didn’t have a choice – on Wednesday our first website booking came through – for this coming Monday morning when our diary is officially open. We’d expected that because our listing doesn’t show a furnished cottage, it would be a little longer before we had any bookings! So this accelerated all our plans to get everything ready. 

We finished buying and installing the remaining furniture: the new TV mounted on the wall, side tables in the lounge, the dining room table and chairs, a small chest of drawers and a shelf in the bedroom, and a shoe rack and side table by the front door. 

We’ve hung pictures, the bedroom mirror and the OS map of the local area just above the dining room table. We’ve installed a rail for the bath mat, coat hooks, torch hooks, door stops, and a lock for the bathroom door (a lovely big black gate latch that looks much better against the door catch than the black bolt does in our own house). And we treated the slate thresholds and the granite ensuite worktop to seal the natural stone and stop water seeping into them.

A final shopping trip to Taunton on Saturday meant we’ve nearly purchased everything on our list (of c.300 items!) – only a couple of items we couldn’t get and are making do without. We’ve found everything a home and washed all the kitchenware so it’s clean for our first guests. And we’ve tested all the appliances and set up the various internet-connected devices so we can make sure everything works properly.  

With the hot dry weather, many of the flowers we’d planted in the Cow Shed planters were looking a little worse for wear. So we deadheaded everything and swept up so it’s neat and tidy in the outside patio area, and then created a parking space with agapanthus pots. Such a shame the heat has caused the flowers to die and seed already – it would have been a lovely sight otherwise. 

We’ve created the welcome folder for The Cow Shed and added a few signs around the cottage to help our guests and make things a little easier for us as well – including signs for the various recycling bins. Because the council is very strict on not mixing recycling, John has to go through all the recycling and make sure it’s been sorted correctly. Some guests are better than others at this – definitely not one of his favourite jobs!! 

Our final DIY job was to install the slate house sign in front of The Cow Shed. We’ve done so many you’d think we’d be good at it by now, but we’ve still managed to install it slightly wonky. Hopefully the rose that we’ve put in front of it hides the wonk to some extent! 

Because the Games Room in the New Barn is a communal area, we’ve had to come up with a way of allowing cottages the chance to book it for a private ‘slot’ while in the main using it as a shared space. John’s created a board where cottages can book the room in advance for up to 3 hours for a private ‘movie night’. Creating and then installing the board after a changeover has been a feat in itself! We’re keen to see how it works with guests and if it enables that balance between communal space and letting guests use it privately too. 

All this effort has meant cancelling social plans this weekend – not something we like to do but when we finished at 6pm on Sunday night having worked all the way through Saturday evening/night till the early hours, we were very grateful for our decision! The final step in getting the Cow Shed ready was staging it for our listing photos – with Dalwood vineyard fizz, scones and our favourite damson jam, and lemon drizzle cake and coffee. Trying to get the right angles to show off the cottage took several attempts – keeping the curious pup out of shot wasn’t the easiest either! A nice excuse though to sit down for fifteen minutes at the end and demolish the scone and glass of wine! 

We’ve continued to battle the suncream stains on the bedding. Last week we established that Ace bleach wash doesn’t work – this week we’re trying a citric acid soak, followed by toothbrushing washing up liquid to loosen the remaining stain particles, and finishing with a wash with biological washing up liquid and white vinegar. It may be wishful thinking but it does feel like it’s gradually fading the stains, even if the bedding isn’t yet back to its crisp whiteness… 

We had an extra day off during the week for my birthday so we set about blitzing the garden job list. We only got halfway through but managed to tick off some big items. I feel far less stressed as a result and can actually go up to the kitchen garden now without dreading the state it’s in! We had a two-pronged approach – John would weed each bed and I’d follow behind planting out the seedlings that were languishing in the greenhouse. We managed to plant out climbing beans and runner beans (and some seeds for the latter as we didn’t have enough seedlings to fill our runner bean tunnel so hopefully it’s not too late), pumpkins and squashes, celeriac, and romanesco cauliflower seedlings. We planted out more carrot (after a terrible germination rate) and beetroot seeds, and potted up more tomato seedlings.  

Our lettuce and radishes have bolted so need to be dug up and replaced – and we still have celeriac, kalette and leek seedlings to plant out.  We did manage to clear enough in the greenhouse though to remove the shelves and give the cucumbers more space – one vegetable that seems to be doing very well this year as we’ve already harvested 7. With so many failings and a lack of time to give most of the plants a chance, it’s lovely to have a success!