It has been a while since the last post as we’ve been busy with work, travel, family birthdays and a surprising number of social events. One excellent thing about moving here is how friendly the village is. Recently, some of our neighbours threw a party for all the “newbies” in the village. Over thirty people turned up; ate, drank and made merry. We already knew many of them, but made lots of new friends too. Tonight we are off out to dinner with some other neighbours and some very interesting new arrivals to the village, who I hope I can write about in a future post because they represent a truly extraordinary coincidence! Meanwhile, it’s good that we aren’t the newest arrivals any more. I am already starting to feel quite settled and like I am “home”!
Not much has visibly changed in the past month as we have been so busy and bad weather has prevented much work from occurring but a few things of note have happened and not happened…
The roof work still hasn’t started. If you’ve been following this blog you might remember that work was meant to start in early September. We draw strength from the fact that at least the scaffolding has gone up, and the roofer actually came round to visit today and made positive noises, but I somehow doubt work will now start until 2023. We sigh and move on. What else can we do?
The frame of the greenhouse is up, thanks to Fiddian and Carl. It looks ENORMOUS! I call it my cathedral and neighbours who know us well enough tease us about it. They’ll be smirking on the other side of their faces come summer when they witness the magnificent palace I plan to create in there (stay posted!)
A huge pile of horse shit is occupying the other end of the veg garden, thanks to our neighbour Charlie, who deposited two digger loads of it and wouldn’t take a penny for his troubles. At some point, when the weather clears, I plan to barrow it over to create our first no-dig beds. This reminds me that I also owe Charlie a very nice Christmas gift!
The Walled Garden looks like a total mess as it is still filled with felled tree trunks, brush and branches. Our tree surgeon has been coming round between bouts of bad weather to turn the felled Leyland cypress trees into planks that we can use to construct a pergola. He’s also cut up and taken away quite a lot of the unusable eucalyptus tree trunk (he has a big woodland where he dumps excess wood for nature to claim). Once this slow work is complete, we will burn the remaining brush and Fiddian will chop up the rest of the cypress to season for firewood in future years. All of this is made harder because the walled garden is only accessible through three very narrow entrances – no machinery can get in there and anything we want to take out has to be dragged or cut into small pieces and barrowed out. I shall be very happy when it is an empty canvas and we can actually start to plan its next incarnation.
Aside from the roof and garden, Fiddian has been doing good work trying to turn our very cold house into a habitable space for winter. He somehow managed to get a woodburning stove (a Jøtul) and a stove fitter to install it (there is heavy demand for this service across rural areas at the moment). It’s a fabulous stove, and now that he has worked out the little tricks to get it started and keep it going, we have actually been able to get the living room up to over 18 degrees in the evening! Previously it was more like 10-12 degrees and we were sitting on the sofa in multiple sweaters with hats and fingerless gloves.
The upstairs rooms are still really cold, as there is no heating up there, no insulation in the loft and only single glazing in the windows. I was cleaning the windows in the spare room this morning and found moss growing inside on the frames! During the recent cold spell it was absolutely freezing at night. If it hadn’t been for the electric blanket (have I mentioned how much I love that thing) I think I would have insisted we sleep downstairs in front of the stove. As for going to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat at night is… shall we say… refreshing!
Despite the cold, the mould and the moss, I have found myself in very good spirits of late. Yes, it has been tough at times, but mostly I just feel lucky that we get to have this adventure, and optimistic about the wonderful house we will hopefully start to create next year. The Christmas tree is twinkling away, Fiddian has decorated the dining room with boughs from the felled cypress trees, the dogs are snoozing in the warmth of the fire and we are off out to make merry with new friends. What could be better?
bookbusbird 
It is wonderful to read about your optimism in spite of the cold weather and other setbacks.
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