A Happy New Year to all! We wish you all good things for 2021.
For many 2020 was a terrible year of sadness and loss, disruption, hardship and uncertainty. A year that got us all thinking seriously about our lives and our planet. We feel very fortunate that aside from a few challenges, we had many positive things happen to us last year including the opportunity to discover Old Dairy Barns. Many strange things just fell into place to enable this to happen, and despite at times wondering why we were doing such a crazy mad thing, we are excited to see where 2021 takes us.
Getting off to a great start already with the removal of some panels off the slurry tank!! Yay! I can't tell you what a relief it is to feel that very soon we might actually see the back of the sodding thing ... Let's hope we aren't getting prematurely excited ... time will tell.
The site is very wet, and very muddy at the moment. The trench at the front of the barns resembles a moat, and we joked with the idea of putting up a drawbridge! We've not only had rain but also had some very cold weather with a dusting of snow on the hills. We are having fun dreaming of the days we can come home to Old Dairy Barns after a long walk in the hills, light the wood burner and hunker down in our super efficient warm home, with a hot toddy and the dogs at our feet. Bliss!
The first door to be constructed on site is for the old pigsty, pictured above with Andrew proudly claiming 'his' new shed. Despite all these barns we have very little secure storage on the site, so needed to make the pigsty into a storage shed. We are soon to be moving from our rental house in Minehead to a cottage close to the barns, so have emptied our shed into the pigsty, which feels like 'moving in' on some level!
In the field, Matt's sheep have made themselves very much at home preparing the grass for the ponies arrival later in the spring. They are gradually getting to know us and being very curious. Did I say two of them are called Hilary?! All are pregnant now, so I won't be apologising for posting cute little lamb pictures in March.
So, I do hope to be able to tell you very soon that the slurry has been taken away, the tank dismantled and that we can see the full glory of our southerly view. My latest plan, that I've managed to convince Andrew is a good idea, is to dig a large wildlife pond just about where the tank is now. While the guys still have some diggers on site we should get it done so as to make the most of all this rain before spring. Fingers crossed. We can plan all the site's drainage to flow that way and also take overflow from our rainwater harvesting tanks. So it'll be functional as well as fantastic to be able to watch the wildlife from the barn ... If we're really lucky we may even get the Red Deer coming down from the hills!
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