New Look to Cottage Lounge

We started the renovation work of the lounge in the holiday cottage just before Christmas. There has been evidence of damp in the floor and up the walls so the floor boards were taken up to have a look. It appears that several of the floor joists were rotten, a leak from one of the central heating water pipes and only one air brick have caused the problem. We have now laid new joists, more air bricks and insulation has been put between the joists. The plaster has been taken back to the point of no moisture with a special lining now placed on the walls to help prevent damp before the replastering took place.
We are also replacing the wood burning stove with a new one that is easier to operate and has glass doors so the fire can been viewed and enjoyed. There will be a new carpet once the decorating has been completed, all in time for opening at Easter. No pressure then!

Medieval Barn Restoration

As well as working on the inside of the Medieval Barn we also have quite a lot of work to do outside. The window to the left in the photograph will be filled in with cob bricks and the door to the right is to be replaced and will match the new door on the left. The shrubs have been grubbed out in front of the barn ready for repairs to the rendering and then once completed the outside with be painted with limewash,. The stonework over the doorway will be covered with lime rendering and then the rose which is currently tied up will be trained to go over the doorway.

Winter Restoration on the Medieval Barn

This winter we are doing some restoration work on the old medieval barn. The two trusses which were burnt in a fire with the previous owners of Burrow Farm are now being replaced with new oak trusses hand crafted by Charley Brentnall and his team. Charley is well know for timber restoration having worked at Windsor Castle and Shackleton's hut in Antartica. The photo shows a new truss being created in our garage which was also built by Charley.

TREC Horse Competition

Over the weekend of 21-23 September we ran a British Horse Society TREC competiton at Burrow Farm. This competition is made up of three phases, on the Saturday the riders go out on an orienteering route with one class for Level 2 riders riding 17km and the Level 3 riders 27km. On the Sunday their riding skills are tested and then all the scores are added to find the winner. We ran the competition in aid of the equine charity Brooke and at the Saturday evening social which was held in Wootton Courtenay village hall  Petra Ingram the CEO for Brooke gave a talk outlining its work. Competitors travelled from as far as Co Durham, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Kent and Surrey. Hilary Barnard from Bristol the reigning GB  Level 4 TREC Champion entered our event and came second with her pony Harvey in the L3 class (see photo overlooking the Bristol Channel and Minehead). Despite the rain on the Sunday everyone seemed to have a good time and Rob and I received many emails thanking us for the competition.

Summer and the Barn

Where has the summer gone. I seem to have spent most of this summer stressed out with rain and haymaking. It seems we never managed more than three days at a time without drizzle and mist and a local Somerset person described it as 'mizzle'. We managed to make hay during the one good hot week in July and then not again until the middle of September, in between we just made haylage. Now we have so much hay and small bale haylage it has filled up half of the barn! It's a good job we got planning permission to put on a side extension which has now been completed, otherwise we would have ended up putting all the equipment outside for the winter which would not have been a very good idea.

A Disaster!

We have now started taking the rendering off the front of the Medieval Barn because it is falling off the cob and letting in the rain. However when the rendering was taken off over the barn door a great chuck of the cob wall fell out. Rob wedged up some wood to hold up what was left and put in another oak beam across the door to help with the loading of the wall. We are now waiting for Russell the man who built our walled garden to come and put in some stone to hold up the remainder of the wall before we can continue taking off the old rendering.

Baby Doves

In April like the rest of the country we had a lot of rain, but now May is here the weather has finally improved. All the birds are busy nesting and this year we have a good number of Swallows returning to build their nests, some are high up in the roof of the stables and in the barns. A pair of doves have made a nest on top of a pillar in the new stable block and I managed to stand up on several bales of hay to take a a photo while mum and dad were away.