The actual barn and a bit of an update on the goings on

So of course this is all about the barn, not just our lives here. Our fantastic friend Dave is our architect (DW Enterprises Splott Road Cardiff) and as both Mags and he are so special the design work is our house warming present, there is probably no way we can thank them enough! We have the final designs and Dave is now working them up so that we can go to building regs to get all the final agreements. We are going to ask for a couple of small additions through planning permission but hopefully nothing that will freak the planners out. Inside is beautiful with the downstairs middle room open to the roof and a fantastic bridge between the two upstairs bedrooms. It's becoming easier to visualise the whole place as time goes on.

I also have my dream of having a larder included in the design. When I was a little girl my nan from Yorkshire had a pantry, she was such a fantastic cook and she really inspired me to enjoy eating and cooking good food. So I want a cool larder where I can store all our home grown produce.

Talking of which we have also been busy digging beds and preparing the ground for a polytunnel whilst at the same time desperately trying to keep hundreds of seedlings alive!

The land is all coming to life around us and it's such a different place now, all the different greens are quite breathtaking and exciting.

We have also met our other neighbours across the river and again we are so lucky to have such nice people living here. They have very kindly offered their shower and as they have it set up downstairs in their lobby we can use it whenever we need it. John and Pat have lived here 20 years and so have a fantastic understanding of the local wildlife. They have seen over their time here, an otter every autumn who follows the salmon up when they do their run up the river, dippers nest all along the river, pied fly catchers swoop up and down the valley and will nest in boxes put up for them, woodpeckers thrive as does the local gosshawk (especially on the local chickens!)

Finally on the matter of chickens we have 12 new inhabitants who are getting to live in our barn before us.. and I am already getting a sense that they are very naughty.. After escaping the one area we hoped to confine them to one managed to kick over a paint pot, she is now called Blue Foot.. still haven't found out how you get paint off chickens!

The Maidens go exploring

Whilst we are waiting to get stuck into the barn we have been busy - no slacking for us! With over 400 trees to plant (of local provenance) we had our work cut out. We intend to have a good supply of fuel for the future so have planted a short rotation coppice, including willow, hazel and ash all of which grow on the land already and there is evidence of previous coppicing, so we carry on a tradition. Our drive is also finished now so there should be no more vans stuck in the mud! So all in all a busy old week, and we're still working.

Our cat is also getting used to the place - he's been a city cat all his life and an indoor cat largely, so the big outdoors is an exciting experience for him. Initially he was so entranced by the scenery and explosion on his senses that he wouldn't pay attention to where he was walking and fell off the deck a number of times as a consequence, much to our amusement. I wouldn't say he's ever going to be a truly out door cat, especially as he follows you like a dog, however he's certainly had his horizons expanded.


Oh and our bluebells are coming out!


We've also been meeting some of the neighbours. Whilst planting all our trees a robust elderly man pulled up in his car and got out to introduce himself - turns out he's the father of one of our nearest neighbours. His family have been in the area since 1780 so he has some pretty interesting stories to tell. He was able to tell us that where we were planting our hazel was known as fools corner, reason being that in during the second world war the very steep hill had to be ploughed for grain... if you have seen this hill you would understand the name.. we got the impression he thought our approach was a lot more sensible.

Also we have discovered another neighbour - a rather impressive stag who has obviously been living in our woods.







Oh yes and as a final word we really do need to thank Tamsin, who housed all three of us for 2 months for free with barely a grumble. Without her we would have had to found somewhere to rent which would have tied us in for 6 months.. in fact we would have been really very stuck... so thank you my dear - free holidays in a tent for you ;-)

The first two weeks of living on site

or how to build a fabulous temporary home

So this is our new home for the year - we have a small mobile caravan as well - however the yurt is a more pleasant alternative as it has a woodburning stove and is significantly warmer with it's thick wool walls. Another bonus of living away from the main building site itself is that we have seen a lot of wildlife, so far the list includes a male red deer (about 6 years old with impressive antlers), red kite, green finch (and lots of other birds of which I am ignorant), have heard curlews, nightingale, cuckoo and woodpeckers.

We have been working too and in our first two weeks we have created the yurt and yurt decking, the compost loo, a rain water collection system for washing us and our plates, knocked down the brick wall which had to come down according to our planning permission and we've employed someone to sort out the drainage on the drive and the drive itself. The site looks different already.

After a farce with BT we are no longer bothering with a landline which is frustrating but not as frustrating as spending our lives explaining that we don't have a house number, getting lost on the line and finally being told that we can't have internet after all as the line is too old and BT aren't going to invest in the work which is needed!

In short being able to live and work in this place is blissful, even with issues about communication and we are already enjoying having people dropping by, so we get to proudly show the place off again and again.

A little bit of history

It all started about 5 years ago when two good friends, Dave and Mags, tempted us with the idea of buying an abandoned village in Spain. Sadly it was at the wrong time but it kick started something in our imaginations. We dreamt of growing our own food in a community and having our own energy generation. We then started talking about doing something in Wales with the community of friends we had made here. Unfortunately we were all at different stages, eventually we realised we needed to do something on our own.

So having had years of experience volunteering with a green building company (Rounded Developments) and Cardiff Friends of the Earth we knew we wanted to build as green as possible. We are now exploring everything from using the stream to provide some energy to solar and small wind turbines. We will be adhering closely to the philosophy of reducing first, ensuring that anything we consume is at the minimum, which shouldn't be a problem. The house should be fairly passive as the walls are about 2-3 foot thick, it should get great solar gain and is in a very sheltered south facing spot. We are also exploring underfloor heating in order that we heat the house as evenly as possible. This year we hope to plant hazel, ash and willow plantations to provide biomass fuel for the future, and we will be coppicing some of the old hazel in Autumn after the nesting season. We will also be collecting rainwater for showers and washing etc whilst remaining on the mains for drinking water.

The first week of owning a pile of stones and a beautiful piece of land.

This is a bit of a blog for all our family and friends to keep you up to date with what we have been up to over the last 6 months, why we have been out of touch at times and what we will be doing for the next... who knows how long!

So anyway about 4 months ago we had accepted an offer on our house in Cardiff and were looking for a place to rent in west Wales. We had seen a lovely house in Llandeilo and in the afternoon went to casually look at a piece of land a bit further up the valley. It was out of our price range but was intriguing so we couldn't resist looking. The owner had decided, however, that she would drop the price by enough for it to suddenly be in our price range. By the end of the day we had resolved to put in an offer and buy it. The last few months have therefore been a bit madcap! James was finishing his PhD and so the leap into this may have seemed more than a bit daft.

Our kind friends and family have helped us in many ways, from putting up with us and our mad cat in their houses, to storing our furniture and ridiculous amount of books and records. Our friends, Clayton and Dana who came over from America to go to our parents wedding anniversary party, even became our willing slaves for a week on the land!

Without them all this would all be even madder we're sure!

So on the 29th of Feb we finally bought the place. A total of 9 acres of mixed land which has not really been touched in the last 40 years or so, a stream or few, about 5 acres of very rich, slightly clayey (is there such a word?), south facing field, the remaining 4 acres being a mix of woodland and open steep sloping meadow.

It's a little piece of heaven!

We have been fortunate enough to be able to see the land go from the dark of December into the sunshine and snow of March. We have found bluebells, daffodils, snowdrops, foxgloves and unfortunately Japanese knotweed! The land is bordered on all sides by streams, but rises away from them, the barn is thankfully out of flood range by a good long way! The last week has been spent: climbing around in the brambles; exploring the range of the land; creating the platform for our yurt which we will be living in for the forseeable future; and getting the caravan up a crazy lane and track.

We will try to portray all of this in pictures as much as possible here.