In, out, in, out, shake it all about...

Total nightmare!! We have had no internet for the better part of three weeks!! I go around thinking I have a very old head on young shoulders and that modern conveniences, like ordering online and looking up 'how-to' videos on You tube, are merely things I use to fill my day when I'm not doing far more important things like cleaning out chickens and watering plants. Apparently not...

Even more tragically, it has meant that I have been unable to update you all on what has been going on at the Keep for ALMOST A MONTH!! Furthermore, you will have to wait a little longer for a photo-based update as I am currently sat by the broad side in Norfolk enjoying a well deserved holiday and not at home in the chaos of the The Keep. Let me explain...

Over a year ago we booked our annual holiday to Potter Heigham in Norfolk where myself and D join my Dad and stepmum by the river to get some R and R and do a spot of fishing. Back when we booked it we obviously had no clue we were going to take on a big renovation project and cut it right down to the wire regards a moving in day. Several times over the last few weeks we were certain we would have to pull out of the as The Keep was reaching new heights of disaster-dom and time away felt like an impossibility.

Fast forward to a cancelled house sitter, a desperate search for somewhere for all the animals to stay, an incredibly stressful late night move-in, a five hour journey to our riverside-rental cottage and all I can do is sit here, chocolate oatcake in hand and wonder how on earth we actually did any of it.

I suppose the most important thing is, we are in. Properly, officially in with all of our worldly goods piled high and our bed squished in amongst packing boxes. IN. And for a moment it was fan-bloody-tastic - we were home after 18 months of not having one of our own.

Ofcourse, things are never that simple are they... After a manic few hours after work making sure everything was out of the half way house and in at The Keep we looked forward to finally getting to use our beautiful new shower and settling down for the night. The dogs and I gathered in the bathroom to witness D go first and share in the glorious moment we had gotten all giddy about. Glorious, however, is not the word I will ever use to describe that first evening. The water shooting with great ferocity out of the shower head only ran either freezing cold or scalding hot (picture D dancing about in the shower cubicle trying miserably to find some sort of medium heat). It then coursed down the glass side panel and straight out of the entry to the cubicle and on to the new bathroom floor. To add insult to injury, the down pipe of the shower was pulsing out water too, so after we'd cursed it all and messaged the bathroom fitter I reluctantly ran a bath. I'd so wanted to savour my first big bubble bath, I've wanted a roll top bath since I was little, but needs must and we both had a quick rinse in it filled just half way up.
Wanting nothing more than to fill our bellies and get some sleep, we padded downstairs to put some tea together. Which is when we discovered that the shower had also leaked into the freshly plastered and decorated kitchen ceiling.

I didn't care what we had to do we were going on holiday after that.

I took the chickens to a local poultry breeder who hires pens out at £3 per pen per night with food and bedding - Pages Poultry in Burton on trent, she's a lovely lady and welcomed my girls with open arms should anyone else require the same service.

D's mum has been brilliant, especially considering she has two dogs of her own, and had both of ours for us while we are away. I've had daily 'dog diaries' with videos to show me how much they are definitely not missing us.

More carpets are being fitted while we are out of the way and of course the shower is being fixed, which means we should go back a slightly more liveable situation.

When I think about it now I realise it should be no surprise to anyone, particularly me, that I have gone on to buy a house by some sort of water - I've been coming to visit the Norfolk broads my whole life and always love it. I'm going to use our time here to regroup, work out a priority list for when we get back and remember why we took on The Keep in the first place. Life sort of starts again when we get back and intend to make that a life I rarely feel I need a holiday from.

Come rain or shine (or leaking shower) it'll still be mine.

G

The last mile home is always the longest...

So, I'm not going to bore you with further apologies for my lack of posting over the last week or so - I'm just going to make up for it with a super-duper picture-full update post to get us all back up to speed!

I'll start by letting you know that my new day job definitely has all the promise of a good decision - hurrah! There was a little 'hiccup' with my start date though and it meant I was a week out of work... not good for our pockets, but good for making unexpected progress at The Keep. I got up every morning as if I was going to work and got on with the multitude of little jobs that had begun to form a job mountain towering above us with no view of the top. 8 hours a day, every day for a week had an amazing impact on the 'to do' list and come the weekend I had cleared the way for bigger jobs to take precedent.

One of the 'little jobs' that took up what felt like most of those hours was finally painting the main chicken shed that lovely duck egg blue colour I chose all those weeks ago.

The unassembled but finished article.

As the shed was originally that delightful shade of burnt orange that is most popular with cheapo shed owners the world over, I did have to undercoat the whole thing in white emulsion and then paste it with three coats of the duck egg blue... Needless to say, should I ever have to paint anything this particular shade of blue again I might have a paint induced breakdown. 

In between the drying stages of each shed panel, I cleared the area where the main coop will be.

Before I set to work...

Once I'd got it cleared...

Now that the posts have been put in.

The area is about 15ft by 12ft. We are installing a simple 'gutter' system around it's perimeter as we are laying astro-turf over concrete slabs for the coop floor and want to be able to hose it off regularly to keep the area nice and clean for the girls. Astro turf? I hear you cry - well yes. After years of watching all of our chicken coops be pecked down to bare earth, boggy to the point of becoming ankle deep sludge and down right stinky, we've learned the hard way that conventional methods don't work for small time coops. So for aesthetic purposes and for the health and happiness of our chickens we're opting for astro turf. I guess 6 months from now I can update you on exactly how good that decision has been...

While I did my best to do everything that nobody had either the time or job spec to do, the decorator, builder, bathroom fitter and carpet fitter went to town on the house.

Our all but entirely finished bedroom including carpet!

Though our spare bedroom lacks the carpeted finish, we think the fab bookcase wall paper makes up for it!

All that's left to do in the living room is give the newly sanded floor a lick of varnish, then add a sofa, two snoozing dogs a crackling fire and hey presto! 

Though our kitchen is not being fitted for several weeks yet, we've at least had the oven surround installed - so overjoyed to come home to this masterpiece this week.

Does anyone remember the dark hovel that was the original bathroom? Flip back a few posts and you should see some pictures. THIS Could not be further from it, just look at it....

Just look at it...

JUST LOOK AT IT!....

Honestly, these pictures don't come close to doing the transformation of the The Keep justice. It really is incredible and we have a lot of really hard working people to thank for it. Everyone we have hired to work on our new home has gone above and beyond the call of duty to make all the little details just right. As soon as the hot water is back on there is not a power on earth that will keep me from that stunning tub!!

We only have a couple of weeks to get as much finished as we can before we have to move in. The rental agreement on the half way house is up, our fellow house mates are shipping out to Cornwall to start their own adventure and the bottom of the money pot has officially been scraped. The time has come for us all to find our rightful places. 

My chickens can rest on their perches safe in the knowledge that their swanky blue shed awaits, my dogs can snooze dreaming of walks by the canal and nights in front of the fire, I can lay my head on my pillow and cast my mind ahead to days of sowing seeds and posting recipes from my own edible garden and D can rest his weary, weary head and know that he gave everything he had to create himself a home and, in turn, create his queen her castle.

We are so very close. This last mile, the last push, is going to be the most testing but transforming of times and I just know the days are going to be gone in a blink.

In the words of Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done".

Come rain or shine it'll still be mine.

G

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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