Almost there...

No time to blog...almost there!

A cow's eye view of proceedings.

Our self-filling pond.

Ian M's new walk to work...handy come lambing!

Carpets and lights?  Luxury!

Erm, but this might be a problem come moving in day...

Clad tidings!

As the weather turns and it becomes misty moisty again, we are progressing into the final stage of making Blacktail Lodge ready for habitation.

After tidying up the site (dumpy bags of wood off-cuts, metal, plastic, misc rubbish, wood, more wood, oh lordy look how much kindling we have for the next twenty years...) a house appeared from behind.

Scottie, our chirpy chippy, has started putting on the external cladding (hence the dreadful pun in the title).  We "bought local" (Tiverton wood merchant and processor), only to find that the finished product was put on a lorry, sent to a distribution centre in Birmingham, then driven back past the gate of the wood merchant's to us.  We did try...but being green is bloody difficult when people are idiots.

On goes the cladding...

...but we aren't yet too excited, as there is all this to go...

Meanwhile, a tall French plumber barely fits in our water shed...

Dear old Joey guards the gravel put aside to drain the septic tank (coming Monday)...

Inside, a bit of colour makes it feel more like home...

...a few fittings in the bathroom give hope that one day we'll be able to have a wash and make use of said septic tank...

...and suddenly, fiat lux!  We have illuminations!

Smurfs live here

At Blacktail Lodge, things are still moving along...

Insulation for the space station...

...which then gets boarded in.

Water tank and rats' nest of piping.

Blue walls?  No, we've not turned it into a Smurf house...it's sand-impregnated gluey paint that goes on the walls (arms, face, hair) before the plaster.

Mules in the mist

After a few hot days, a cool autumnal morning surprised us, and was a reminder that summer doesn't hold all of the aces when it comes to the best weather...our girls grazed contentedly in the mist, yet it was still warm enough to be in a T-shirt (us not them...which now has me wondering what caption or logo would be on the front...mind wandering again).  In the far field the calves were lounging on the hillside, from time to time stretching out all four legs and risking a backwards roll down into the combe.

The rams came back from the orchard for a pedicure, and from the smell of them, they are getting ready for tupping.  This year we kept three of the ram lambs as "teasers" - not pure-bred, they've each had a vasectomy and will be put in with the ewe lambs before someone else arrives to do the necessary.  Apparently, this gets the women-folk ready for action...who knew?

Meanwhile, we now have a slate roof, solar panels, windows, doors and installed under-floor heating...another step closer to completion, but it will still be a while yet.

Front door and wee chimney (small, not something you wee into...)

The outside-inside to-be-decked area.

My desk will go here.

Not being on-site, the garden has done its own thing for most of the summer.  A scattering of marigold seeds from Crangs House in spring has given us a nice splash of colour. 

Without the grazers, the wildflowers have come up and made the mud-pit their home.  The challenge will be keeping the grass down so that they can stay.

All species welcome, excepting thistles, docks and stinging nettles that would spread into the fields and upset the stock.  Ignominious deracination for them.

The plan is to encourage as much wildlife as possible, and even without doing anything yet, we have rabbits (grrr!), stoats, two partridges that were living in the doorless house, swallows roosting in the rafters (and crapping on the screed), lizards on the rockery, yellowhammers on the fenceposts, and various bumblebees, bees and butterflies that I will one day identify when the books come out of storage.

Cody 2 Dyson 0

Like a lion on the Serengeti, Cody brings down another Dyson (although come to think of it, I don't remember ever hearing David Attenborough talk us through a lion disemboweling a vacuum cleaner, but perhaps I missed that episode).

You may well look away in shame...

...the dung heap is not the most appropriate place to go ratting, Flossie!