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Self-Sufficiency in Style

boobs and blunders

This page is a running log of the second thoughts. The things we might do differently.

New catastrophes will be added at the top.  The "royal" we, will be used throughout, despite the fact that Mrs P will not admit to any little errors of judgement.

Hay, cowshed and milking parlour. The feed-store is just out of shot as is the muck heap.

Originally we had it rather badly organised.

It is essential to be able to unload hay and straw from a large vehicle. That means big gates and turning space. The cow shed and other animal housing should be near the hay and straw, to avoid having to fetch bales a long way in bad weather. The same is true for the feed store...and you won't want to go too far to milk and feed in winter.

The mucking out is a big job - so the muck heap should be near too...and naturally you will not want to cart the well rotted muck far to the vegetables, so the vegetable garden should be close too.

Congratulations, you have just discovered why every farm has a farmyard near the house with big gates and hard standing.

Our forefathers were not so stupid.

Beams are lovely, but the walled garden should have had higher walls. Walls near a "listed" house in Britain are subject to controls.

A minimum of eight feet, ten even better, twelve - heaven. 

We are coping well enough with seven to ten, but higher is better and does not really interfere with the sunlight.

The wall-trained fruit trees need the extra height. We were not refused permission, but were nervous of asking and moderated our application to what we thought would be acceptable. I think we would probably have got permission. Walled gardens are popular and most people like to see them.

Extra height would, of course, have been more expensive.

Lovely to live with, but remember the outside may be controlled too.

Build tall! This little tree reaches six feet above this wall now and has to be hard pruned.

Evicted oranges awaiting destruction.

However, we got greedy and crowded too many ever larger plants into too small an area through the winter.

The result has been disastrous. Everything now has a very unpleasant infestation of an exotic (to England) insect.

Gunge drips everywhere, makes the place filthy and attracts flies and wasps.

We have completely failed to control it - and everything has to go.

Mrs P's orders. After some cleaning and a pause, we will start again on a more modest scale and keep a much closer eye.

An expensive mistake.

We surrounded the exterior ground with "ground cover plastic" in the belief that this would keep the weeds down. This being done, we did not allow much space between the tunnel and the adjacent fence.

The weeds still grew.  We would have been better allowing more space, a little shingle against the actual tunnel and running a mower round once in a while.

Fortunately, one tunnel is done correctly.

    Wrong - no space                     Right - lawnmower space 

The idea was to lean around the door, switch from left to right - and off and on, but you do have to be able to get to the door!

We connected an internal overhead watering system and connected in to the water supply, with an on-off control and the ability to shift from the left to the right of the tunnel and vice versa.

There was no need, we told ourselves to run through the spray to switch from left to right, or to turn off. We could run round the outside and in the other door next to the controls.

Err, no. The weed suppressing ground cover material did not work and the very small gap is thick with nettles and thistles.

So there is a choice, scandalising the neighbours, a couple of fully clothed showers, a good stinging or watering with the hose.

The hose usually wins.

You can return to FIVE YEARS ON to learn of some of the successes.

blundering about

at

 the absurdly  named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.