There's a monkey on my wall and other first world problems...

Firstly, I must apologise if you tuned in last week only to realise I hadn't posted anything new - it's no excuse, but 'busy' doesn't even come close to describing the schedule we've dealt with over the last 14 days. Amongst everything else, I've also been trying to secure a new job... Thankfully I got the one I was rooting for, so let us go forth with a renewed sense of achievement and confidence in the next steps.

It's been a horribly sweaty couple of weeks hasn't it? Even if I hadn't spent an inordinate amount of time steaming off wallpaper and painting walls and scrubbing floors I would have felt the oppressive humidity that has enveloped Britain of late. I know it's so terribly British to complain about the weather - particularly hot weather! - but it really has been sleep-deprivingly hot and sticky... I like to drink water not breathe it in! It has just made a very busy and trying time even more frustrating.

Some of the friendlier chickens got to clean up and cool down in a nice bubble bath...

Bubba found the coolest spot in the half-way house... bathroom floor was it apparently!

Things are coming on in leaps and bounds at The Keep though, so much so that the decorator has been in and we have some entirely decorated rooms! I admit I did argue the case for not having a decorator - I've painted enough walls in my life to think I know what I'm doing enough not to entirely mess it up, so when D suggested it I poo-pooed it straight away. He persuaded me though and I am entirely glad he did. Our bathroom is now stunning, that's the only word for it. What was a dark hovel-like room with a hole in the floor is now a fresh but dusky grey sanctuary, it has a beautiful soft 'shabby-chic' floor and is having the new suite fitted this week. I honestly could not be happier with that room.

A sneak peak before the bath and shower goes in...

Our bedroom has also been completely decorated, including a vintage inspired, wallpapered feature wall. Or at least that was what it was supposed to be... As with everything at the Keep, the paper was pondered over for some time, many samples were hustled out of DIY stores and colours were matched with tester pots and material swatches. In short, we thought long and hard about what we wanted the last thing we see before we close our eyes at night to be. So, imagine my reaction when, after all that forethought, we finally get to see this masterpiece installed on our bedroom wall and there's a monkey, yes seriously, a monkey in the pattern!! 

Monkey say, monkey do...

Peeved. I am somewhat peeved. It laughs at me every time I curse it's little face, it says 'silly girl, you should have stuck to growing veg and fannying about with chickens, you know nothing of interior design...' Damn monkey...

It has a point though. I am good at growing veg and raising chickens and I want to be getting on with exactly that. There's very little in the house for me to do other than clean up after workmen and the decorator, so I have been promised that the next few weeks can be more focused on the garden. My new job should mean more time to spend on my back yard farm project and I hope to start posting more regularly on what this blog was really meant to be about - the life and times of a backyard farmer. The truth behind what it takes and the struggles you encounter. But, most of all, the utter joy I get out of it. 

I feel, at least, like I have taken some pretty big strides forward since I last posted and that I have made some sound decisions that should benefit our future at The Keep. D is tirelessly doing everything the contractors don't do and I pick up the pieces around him. Money's tight, time is tight and there is a sense that we are really suffering for our cause at the minute - but it feels good. The roots are taking hold.

With plenty of change afoot, I feel strangely cool and confident, sure that things are taking a turn for the good. You know what they say, chop your own wood and it'll warm you twice.

Now to get that monkey off my back...

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Reap what you sow...

My seeds arrived!! Those satisfyingly tiny pips are my first investment into my new back garden (if we excuse the fence) and they have unleashed a flow of excitement in me that I just can't seem to stem. I am woman, I will grow things!

Funny, for the first time in the history of me growing things, that I should get so excited over flower seeds - I am definitely on 'team veg' when it comes to the world of horticulture, only really choosing the seeds or bulbs that promised the biggest, brightest or craziest of fruits. Given, however, that I am going to have a bee colony on my backyard farm I thought it best I get to grips with flowers and try to recognise that they are just as important to this new edible garden as any purple sprouting broccoli may be.

Of course I've opted for the most exotic, intricate looking blooms I could find... they're something I can't even pronounce but they have vivid dark petals and lovely, protruding yellow trumpets burgeoning with nectar, so thought they would be a good start. There was method in my madness too though - they're hardy perrenials so should, with any luck, come back every year without much effort on my part! I like a lot of 'bang for my buck' so what I've bought plus some luxurious looking peonies should get the ball rolling in the right direction.

It's all these little decisions that are taking up most of our time at the minute. What colour should this wall be? What type of flooring shall we have in here? Papered or plastered? It's right what they say, the devil is in the detail. With things moving way too fast for our income to cope, we're making spur of the moment decisions and I can only cross my fingers and hope that they are the right ones. We are so focused on doing The Keep Justice and making sure our own stamp is well and truly marked on it that I sometimes wonder if we should dress up like war veterans and paste ourselves on the walls -vintage, quirky and an expression of ourselves - exactly the look we are going for!

We made the decision to collect some of our things from the lock up and move them over to The Keep so that, when the actual move in day arrives, we wont have that much 'stuff' to shift. We collected the vegetable trugs, some garden gates we'd (thankfully) had the forethought to keep and of course the all important chicken shed. The item that really struck me though, as it was hauled through the doorway on what was an incredible rainy day, was our new oven.

The oven was gifted to us by my old employer, it's a modern range and I fell in love with it the minute I started working for him. He closed his doors one sad day last year but he gave me the oven as a farewell - I know, what a legend. It has been in storage ever since. So to see it even near the kitchen in it's untouched glory was a bit mind boggling. I, G, the woman who has spent the last 18 months living with family and in half way houses, has an oven, a real life oven with which to cook and it is pending instalment in a brand new kitchen which is also mine... It was one of those moments where something twigs and you think 'oh crap I forgot I'm an adult' and I have a mortgage and I do adult things like own an oven'.

I can't imagine what I'm going to be like when I get to buy knives and forks...

With so much going on I think I may start posting in picture form - mad snapshots of the daily craziness that this project provides. One most assuredly should be of myself and the plasterer dancing to his odd Romanian music with wall scrapers held aloft in place of cans of beer... It's definitely been educational this little journey!

Have a pleasant week all.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Inspiration and installation...

I spent this weekend over at my mums. It was a lovely break from the constant stream of goings on at The Keep and an inspiring one at that. We spent most of Sunday having a tea and cake filled snoop around other peoples fabulous gardens thanks to the 'open garden' events that the NGS organisation put on. They are charitable events and you basically turn up on the doorstep of the advertised addresses, pay a few quid to step through the gate and off you potter around someone else's back yard creation - genius really.

Having, rather ashamedly, never done it before I wasn't sure what to expect, but got a genuinely pleasant surprise. In a way it takes quite a lot to open your garden to complete strangers - it would for me anyway, I'd worry about the critics who'd want to comment on what I was getting wrong... - but these gardens were just amazing. Truly, they were... well maybe the pictures show you a little of what I'm gushing about.

One particular garden was how I always imagined 'the secret garden' to be - lots of little nooks and crannies and hidden bits that just had to be discovered. Another was a continuous festival of smells, it was like the owner had made it their mission to give you a different scent at every turn. Roses flowed into honeysuckle then into lilies, nothing overpowering it's neighbour, just complimenting each other perfectly. Then there was a vegetable patch Monty Don himself would have envied... The whole event was a feast of inspiration and started ordering I seeds as soon as I got internet connection again.

While I whiled away my weekend taking note of every flower, fruit and fern that caught my eye, D kept the ship sailing back home and I returned to a house that now has rooms I hardly recognise. A stunning new fireplace now sits proudly in what will be our living room, complete with an aged sleeper mantle and space for a little log burner. Our Bathroom, having been re-plastered, has it's brand new suite waiting to be installed. We now only have one room left to strip and skim before the whole house has been taken back to the brick and made good. At one point last week you could stand on the earth that was beneath the old kitchen floor and look all the way up, through the holes in the floors and ceilings right into the rafters of the roof. The Keep has no secrets from us, we've seen it's bare bones. Moving in has become an idea based firmly in reality now rather than in pipe dreams and I get butterflies just imagining it.

So, I've promised myself that, when we are fully established, when I've got the garden the way I want it, OK maybe not fully matured but a clear, beautiful work in progress, I'm going to make cake by the shed load, put a £2.50 entry fee on my gate and invite strangers round to have a look at what we came up with! Just because maybe someone like me will pop round, they'll ooh and arrrr at the flowers and run their fingers over the leaves and take from my garden something they might imagine in their own.

Inspire others to install something beautiful on their own little patch... I like that idea.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine (really soon too!)

G

In or Out...

It would be hard to post this week without at least mentioning the result of the EU referendum. Whether your vote was for In or Out I think most would say they were shocked by the outcome. As someone who’s new home lost 10% of its monetary value overnight I felt somewhat abashed by the result and wholly guilty when talking to my lovely Romanian plasterer - lets face it most people voted with immigration issues at the forefront of their minds.

 Under different circumstances I may well have voted out, I get that Britain could be stronger as an independent unit and it certainly might cut some of the red tape that surrounds farming and animal rearing, but right now ‘Brexit’ is a wasp at my proverbial picnic and it has stung.

Anyway, onwards...

Far more important to me are the changes to our little slice of the pie. As I type this our builders are laying our new kitchen floor – an actual real, solid floor that you can actually walk on!! We have smooth, glossy, freshly plastered walls in our bedroom and bathroom simply awaiting a coat of well-chosen paint. A whole portion of the garden is now weed free and it’s genuinely starting to look like something we can live in. We are there so often now that the dogs turn in straight through the gate rather than carrying on up the street to go back to the ‘half way house’ when we go for a walk. It’s nice, it’s like we are already settled to some extent.

With our countdown to move in day still ticking, I find myself getting frustrated with the day to day running of the here and now. I noticed a leak in the chicken house last week and hastily retrieved some unwanted plastic sheeting from work to patch the roof - really?? It couldn't hold out just a few more weeks??! My car needed new front tyres before they got so bad I was heading for an accident - £60 we could have used elsewhere! I'm all too aware the dogs are due their boosters and annual check up next month and MOT's are on the horizon too. In short, though our little world has been put on hold to focus entirely on The Keep, the wider world keeps on spinning and demands to be obeyed and paid. Annoying, but grounding.

With things really taking shape we are contemplating starting to bring some of our belongings out of storage. First will probably come the chicken sheds and outdoor stuff so that it's all set up for the girls on move in day. Following that it will be wardrobes and bookshelves and tables. Then the time will come to rediscover all the little niknaks I have forgotten I packed so carefully away almost 18 months ago - I'm wondering now where my somewhat huge collection of ornamental chickens is going to go... 

With the future of the country (and my well loved ornaments) in limbo, I feel a certain resolve to roll up my sleeves and push on. We didn't take The Keep on for the money, help will always be gratefully received by us no matter the country of it's origin and tomorrow will no doubt bring a new challenge, a new turn of events. Either way, I'm IN.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Digging in the dirt...

A wise woman once told me that to plant a garden is to believe in the promise of tomorrow – and she wasn't wrong. The minute you put a fork in the ground you are preparing it for a different future.  No longer bogged down in weeds and host only to bugs and parasitic vines, it becomes the starting point for seedlings, the foundation for anchoring roots and new shoots to appear and then before you know it, a few weeks or maybe months have passed, and you’re eating the fruit that has grown from the tiny seed you popped in that freshly dug earth, because you dared to hope it would grow.

There’s something that runs a little deeper though that seems to wake up when you grow things. Some throwback to when we had to grow food ourselves just to survive triggers and suddenly you feel way more connected to actual life. All of the issues you have as someone living in the modern world seem to shrink to the tiny foibles they actually are and you realise that, while you’re running around like a headless goose trying to make money and buy things you’re told you need, making sure you satisfy all the right people, life, real life, is going on all around you and to some extent you’re missing it. It is the ultimate lesson in patience, no plant can be rushed. I am obviously biased, but I think if we all took the time to plant something, invest a small amount of those precious minutes, hours, days that we have into nurturing some ‘real life’ we’d all be that bit happier. Or at least less chaotic.

So, yes, you've probably guessed that I have been in the garden this weekend. I dug over what will be our little herb garden. It surrounds the greenhouse and is nearest the kitchen so it seems the perfect spot. Admittedly there were bulbs and roots and bugs of every description in there, some of which will no doubt come back if left too long again, but I've managed to get it looking something like a prepared plant bed.

While I cracked on with that, my dad and D happily sat at the canal side enjoying the ‘father’s day fishing fest’ (as I had so poetically named it). ‘Fest’ is probably pushing it a bit... my dad caught several fish but none that anyone would call big! 

We all ate a thrown together BBQ (the first cooked meal at The Keep!) and, when we had a moment, myself and my step-mum measured the windows throughout the house so that she can begin work on the blinds.

Things are still moving forward. D and I have more conversations about how much concrete we need to order and how low our funds are running than we do about, well, anything… As our move-in deadline creeps ever closer the need to see big advances in the building work weighs heavy on us. It’s a time when you regret every new pair of pants and pack of crisps you've bought on a whim over the last 18 months, because right now every penny counts.

Beans on toast for tea anyone??

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Good things come to those who wait...

It’s been a rainy old week, with a subdued mood to match. Thankfully we finally got the roof fixed, so for the first time in a long time the house has stood up to a good downpour. The fixing of the roof means everything inside can now be completed without the threat of becoming water damaged – so here begineth the choosing of colours and wallpapers and tiles and carpets and and and… Exciting and a little daunting all at the same time. We’ve put so much effort into making the house sound we want to make sure we do it justice with the décor.

Of course, me being me, I have chosen and bought the colour for our new chicken houses rather than (the far more important) wall colours! They’ll be duck egg blue! I know, I know I need to get my priorities straight, but I can't help it, I can see light at the end of the tunnel. The dividing wall in the kitchen is out, the floor is coming up this week and once the plastering is done it will just be a case of decorating and moving all our stuff in, right? So I’m looking even further ahead to when I’m cooking home grown veg at my lovely big oven and rearing more chicks with our trusty incubator (though I have promised my current broody girls a go themselves next year). My thoughts have turned to soil PH’s and composting techniques, to the positioning  of the bee hive and which breeds of chicken I’d like to have a go with next. I can see BBQ’s by the canalside with family and friends and cosy nights in front of the log burner. It’s a frustrating mix of pushing forward while being held back at the minute. All will be resolved eventually – let us start the 10 week countdown to actually living at The Keep.

Now you see it...

Now you don't!

These pictures make even my toes curl with their stark reality check of just how far we still have to go, but we're positive the next month will see massive change and it should start to look like something inhabitable.

The Keep has already become a place to celebrate in and gather with the people we love. This weekend is Father’s day, so we’re having my dad round to do a spot of fishing off the back. I’ll make us some lunch – probably just sandwiches on paper plates as we have no means to make anything more sophisticated than that right now– and it will be the first of, hopefully, many celebrations at The Keep.

With most of the work left to do needing to be done by professionals, I'm hoping for a weekend cracking on in that garden of mine. If I want to be ready for the season next year, I need to rally. With over 200 concrete slabs to shift before I can even put  a fork in the ground, I'm going to have my work cut out for me and I don't just want it to 'work' I want it to be beautiful too. Espaliered fruit trees and well fruiting bushes, greenery everywhere you look and swathes of blooming flowers. I want it to be the edible garden I have dreamed of, while being really beautiful to look at. Of course that's a while off - no good food garden ever happened over one season... I did say I was looking ahead!...

Right that's enough day dreaming, time to get the hard stuff done.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

One man's trash...

I have a small confession to make. I am a bit of a bargain hunter. I can often be found in the musty depths of the local charity shop or sifting through the 'dump' area of a reclamation yard. If I like something in a regular shop I will generally go away, having not bought it, and try to recreate it myself. My name is G and I am a chronic penny saver.

I came across the most fabulous of shops not far from where we live (note we have only lived here for a matter of months so its all still new to us), very random in the middle of an industrial estate, but it was simply shouting my name. Any good bargaineer knows when to trust their gut instinct! It turned out to be a hoarders day dream; every trinket you can imagine, vintage wardrobes, upcycled chairs, beds, bar fridges, it was endless... and I loved it! I came away with a vintage mirror and a vintage suit, obviously the latter is not for the house but one doesn't just leave a vintage suit with a £4 price tag does one? I've since been back having dragged D with me, only to come away with an old-school coffee table, a further two small vintage mirrors and a fantastic little fishing display frame to go up as decor in the summer house. Something tells me it wont be our last trip there either.

This 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' attitude has rolled out into most areas of my life. Both of my beautiful dogs are, to all intents and purposes, other people's cast off's. Thankfully, neither were abuse cases, but unwanted for one reason or another they were. No problem, we had space for two little pretties, so they joined the gang.

One thing I learned fairly early on as a chicken keeper was that other people had had enough of them come the winter when trudging up the garden in the cold and the wet to feed/water/clean them wasn't particularly thrilling. I have replied to countless ads for 'hens free to good home'. I have had people come from all over to deliver chickens to my door that they no longer wanted. I put my own ad out with 'we take any unwanted poultry' as the title - I had to take it down within days because we couldn't physically house any more. We've rescued from farms when the hens have reached their 18 months limit and must be exchanged for new ones, we've even paid a farmer £1.50 a bird to take some home as that was 50p extra per bird than he would have got for them as chicken pie filler.

No two the same.

Young Money - our first 'home-hatched' hen.

Olga is the queen of photo bombing.

Tilly has her spot in the new house officially proclaimed.

These second-handers aren't fussy either. My chooks reside in a reused dog kennel with re-purposed water barrels for nest boxes. They are not one bit bothered by the upheaval of living in the half way house. The dogs take all of the flapping over the new house in their stride and want nothing more than to cuddle up with us in the evenings as thanks.

The Keep had been sat with a For Sale sign for over 6 months with little to no interest in it until we came along. It was entirely outdated inside with nothing having been touched since the early 80's, but most things since way before that. It was damp and we knew it would take an awful lot to make it look and work like a well loved home. However, the price was right and, just like a vintage suit in the back of a charity shop wardrobe, it was truly charming.

As you can see the old place is taking a bit of a bashing. I think I'll look back and call this the 'buffing' period. To make diamonds you have to apply plenty of pressure!

What is left of the old art deco fireplace.

Envision a spa-like, vintage inspired washroom... if you can!

All things considered, The Keep will probably be the home of second chances. Myself and D have lived together before, kept animals before and, honestly, mainly 'half ar*ed' it before. The chance we have now means we get a reboot, the chance to make old things new again. I can't think of more fitting place than this old house.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G