1096 days ago
As you may have gathered, I have become a bit of a bore on the subject of nature warning us of cold weather ahead and in that vein, I am bracing myself for frost and worse next week. I was working outside for most of the day in preparation for this and while the sky was a clear blue there was a real nip in the air.
1158 days ago
This is the great work which some busybody in the village of Holt reported me to Wrexham council and Natural Resource Wales for creating. Both have now wished me well with my endeavours, praising me for removing so many toxins and for improving the drainage here. This is what my shit of local (Tory) councillor wanted to snoop and spy on but was not brave enough to knock on my front door to be allowed access to the land. And it is almost complete so here is a sneak preview of what used to be rusting barns and piles of abandoned asbestos, tires, barrels of bitumen and other horrors. It is now shaping up to be an object of real beauty.
1191 days ago
We are getting there! What you can see below has cost a fortune but it will soon be a thing of great beauty and behind it the listed barns are also having a makeover.
1279 days ago
The main, listed, barns at the Welsh hovel form an enormous upside down L covering two sides of the farmyard. The house is on a third side and at the bottom is a separate barn and a garage and behind them the old apple orchard and then the river. The main barns have all been re-slated and now work starts on repointing them and also the house. That work started today and will last for at least a month and a half. We start with the one storey barns at the top of the L and at the start of its spine. These will be the chicken and goat sheds at some point and do not actually need much internal work at all.
1281 days ago
The other side of the barns is the farmyard, this side is the Ha Ha side. When we arrived, along the whole of this side were metal and asbestos sheds in a fairly dangerous state of collapse, built on hideous concrete slabs of various colours. They are all gone but some of the barns were still dressed in thick paint as you can see below. But now they are not. There is still some paint dust on the walls but a good day of Welsh rain will see to that. The next step is repointing and brick repair, new guttering, windows and doors and we are there…
1350 days ago
I thought that Robert and his team, who do the big jobs on the land here at the Welsh Hovel, would laugh at my idea of creating a huge lawn and Ha Ha. But I had been kept awake at night working out in my head how it could be done. And to my surprise they did not laugh. It was viewed as creative. Objection after objection of logistic issues were raised but each one was dealt with so we will go ahead. You may ask what is a Ha Ha? The Mrs did.
