Half our apples are currently being turned into cider (see Apples apples everywhere… – Aug 31). The rest were too high for picking so we collect them by the bucket-load once they’ve fallen.
In the meantime Ed’s been coveting a large heap of horse dung in a neighbouring field. Strange things happen when you have a garden…
I tracked down the owner and she’s very happy to do an exchange. Apples go in – free fertiliser comes out. Done.
Autumn is setting in and these last dry days have given us one final chance to get all the grass mowed and the lawns in order for winter.
Gracie and I collect 3 buckets of apples from the orchard and then mow the walled garden on the small wheel tractor. Yes I can now drive a tractor (Ed fixed up the mower attachment and it works brilliantly). I can also drive a tractor with Gracie sitting on my knee, singing and eating apples and grapes (there’s a tiny vine in the old green house that’s managed to produce a few small sweet clusters without any assistance). Ed takes care of the paddock and drives.
Then the lawns. Gracie and I rake leaves while Ed gets back to the never-ending scarifying (see Making Hay – Jun 9). Various attempts at scarifying have produced so much thatch that it’s an overwhelming amount of work and our many compost pens are overflowing so we’ve downsized our plan with Ed’s recent efforts focussing on the main lawn outside the house.
He’s taken to calling it the croquet lawn which is an admirable aspiration – flat, hard, no moss and well drained. The ‘croquet lawn’ has now been scarified 3 times and what’s left behind is patchy grass but thankfully no moss. After a spread of sand (to help with drainage) and some new seed the make-over of the croquet lawn is complete – but it looks a bit naked. Ed says if the grass doesn’t grow then he’ll have to cover it all in top soil and reseed again.
And as moss is catching – come the spring, we’ll need to re-start the whole cycle and get to work on the rest of the grass. Having a good looking lawn it seems requires some serious effort….
10am. The builders are here. The scaffolding is up and there are several men on the roof trying to put an extremely large silver tube down the boiler house chimney.
3pm. It’s in. Thank God. Tomorrow we order the boiler!
2 litres courtesy of the tree we found at the bottom of the walled garden…
The man from the council has just been round and despite all the conversations we’ve had – the plans, the to-scale maps, the photographs, the drawings, the photoshops and the endless specs ( “do you really want the 8 page spec for a 2 and a half inch bit of pipe that isn’t even going through the wall?”) he now thinks it’s unlikely he’s going to give us planning permission for the new wood pellet boiler.
The problem is the flue – a big metal tube that will act like a chimney and run up the outside of the old boiler house.
Our intention has always been to try and use the existing brick chimney – but as it’s not been possible to know whether this will work till we try it, we were advised by the council to apply for permission to put the flue on the outside of the building just in case. This is what set us back so many months given all the extra paperwork.
I tried to persuade someone from the council to come to the house in April (the office is just 10 minutes away) so we could at least get a view on which way this was likely to go – but they were having none of it. Instead we’ve wasted loads of money and loads of time just to be told something that they could have decided in 5 minutes 7 months ago. What can you do….
So the pressure is on. The only way we will ever get this boiler in – and the only way we will ever have a warm house is to get a flue liner (another big metal tube) down the current chimney come what may. Only then will the council grant us permission. If the builders can’t get it in I don’t know what we’re going to do. Several men and a load of scaff’ are arriving on Monday…
We’ve had the fire on most days now for the last couple of weeks and although there’s enough wood on the land to chop for logs, it’s been one job too many – so yesterday we gave in and ordered a truck load (which will last us a couple of months). They were deposited in a huge pile at the back door – Ed ferried and I stacked. It’s just taken us 2 hours. How far away life in London now seems…
The radiators arrived today. 9 out of 11 survived the pressure testing. We went for gun metal grey and they look great.
The roof insulation is all in. We have 7 different roof spaces but as half of them had no access new holes had to be created to get the insulation in and then filled back up. We now have a thick blanket of wool above our heads which has surely got to make a difference…
However the plans for the biomass installation (See Preparing for next winter – Apr 7) have been seriously delayed. The council planners said to estimate 3 months so I doubled it and crossed my fingers that it would be in before Christmas. It’s tight. The man from the council is coming next week and it’s a 5 week lead on the boiler….
All the time we were living in London we’d see stuff in auctions, junk shops and antique markets that we would fantasise about buying if we had a big enough house. Now we’re here we have to stop ourselves from going too many auctions and markets until we’re ready…
Ideally we’d love to furnish the whole house second hand and nearly every room needs an overhaul; re-decorating and furnishing. Coming from a 2 bed flat means we have very little furniture – and most of what we do have doesn’t really work. In the long term the bathrooms and kitchen will also need replacing.
But we’ve got to wait. Our budget means we’ll have to do 1 room at a time and until we have a clearer idea of what exactly we’re going to do – it’s dangerous to start buying too many things – especially big bits of furniture.
So for now we’re sticking to generic or small at the cheaper end of the market. Here are some of our bargain vintage finds to date…
A Castle in the Sky 