A Nice Little Place in The Country by Sarah Wint

A short note to the Pet-Sitter

2012-01-18T12:22:00.001-08:00

Guests are often interested to learn about my many animals so I thought I’d share my short note to the Pet-Sitter who is looking after them all while I am away in Australia visiting my brother this February…..She should be fine shouldn’t she?

Dear Maggy,

Just a quick note to explain who is who. It really is simplicity itself…

Firstly my beloved dogs Harry and Dixter. Dixter is the friendliest easiest going dog you are every likely to meet though sometimes a little embarrassed by too much cuddling. On the other hand if you are not paying him enough attention he will chase his tail until you tell him he is the cleverest dog in the world.

Harry is gorgeous but getting on – he is now 14 so really very old. If you translate that into human years he would be saying “I’m 98 you know” to anyone who was listening - or not. Which reminds me he is also deaf so there is very little point in calling for him. The trick is to catch his eye and do an exaggerated beckon with your arm and hand Barbarba Woodhouse style.

The dogs have a walk in the morning and the evening just around our bit of land. Harry is too rickety to go further and Dixie is just happy to be with you and Harry. If there is some distance between you and Harry, Dixie will stand somewhere between the two of you, not wanting to leave either one. Loyal little dog.

The sheep are Soays and are the easiest of all the animals to deal with….simply give them something to eat in the morning and evening and check they are alive. There should be three.

The hens are pretty easy too. There are five. They are fed in the morning and evening and roam freely around the place in between. Their stable needs to be cleaned out once a week which is not such a bad job as it might be so long as they are getting their Bokashi mash which miraculously prevents a horrid stink.

The donkeys are bundles of gorgeousness. Don’t be afraid of them – just pretend they are large dogs ( but don’t feed them meat or let them off the lead) Alfie the grey is the more inquisitive of the two and likes to push the boundaries a bit. Sometimes he will rush up to looking decidedly menacing with his head down and ears back. You must stand your ground and he will skid to a halt right next to you, his ears will come forward and he will know you are not in the slightest bit affected by his silly sabre rattling. Talking to the donkeys is a good way of making them relax around you and convinces them nothing scary is about to happen to them. Truly if you treat them as you would a dog you will be well away.

Queenie is the quieter of the two, personality-wise, though she is the only one who can bray properly noisily. (Alfie is still learning and sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is just breaking- his bray is very sweet and funny.) Queenie is the boss of the two and she can give Alfie a really hard time when she is in season. You will know if she is in season by the way she snips at Alfie and generally looks pissed off. Neither of them have ever hurt me but I do take a little more care around Queenie when she is like this. Standing too long behind her back legs would simply be asking for trouble. If either of them bites or kicks you (which they won’t I am certain) you must not waste time writhing around on the floor in pain, but return a swift boot to the bum (or whatever bit of you can easiest reach whatever bit of them ) within three seconds of the attack. After three seconds they won’t associate the two things and just think you are horrid. Shouting loudly works just as well with bad behaviour so if you find you cannot rise to return the thump, do make sure you yell at them.

The donks get fed morning and night, go out in the field during the day and come into the barn at night. This is the most pleasurable part for me – seeing them bedding down happily in their straw, munching on their hay in a nice big dry barn. They will come to the gate to be taken in – don’t go and collect them from the top. They will take their time about it which can be frustrating if you have a million other things to do, but hopefully you will be in roughly the same state of mind as them – perfectly relaxed and not seeing what there is to hurry about. Alternatively you might decide that it is quite true that donkeys are indeed the stubbornest of animals. If they don’t come, go away and come back when they start yelling.

The barn needs mucking out every morning but I am doing a deep litter system which means you only need remove the poo and not the pee-soaked straw. There is a rather dubious idea that this creates extra warmth for them over the winter but I use it because I don’t have the time to completely muck out everything every day and prefer to put off the day in spring when the whole lot needs to come out. Lucky for you you will be well away by then.

So that only leaves the cats. Well, there’s just the thirteen of them.. Eleven are fed in the utility room but Twinkle (small black & white) and Holly (named because she was very prickly as a kitten but is a sweetie now) are fed in the barn.

Willow (tabby with white socks and bad breath) will welcome lots of cuddles. Dilly (tabby with only one eye) will also welcome cuddles and likes to nibble your fingers. Brookie (ginger and white) would love a cuddle but will probably be too shy to ask for one til the day before you leave.

The others will probably only come near you at feeding time in the utility room. Fast movements, noise and normal speech alarms them. Spotty is a tortoiseshell with an orange spot on her forehead, wide round eyes and a kink in the end of her tail. Scally cat is similar to Spotty smaller, thinner, shyer. Keep an eye on her as she is very shy and prone to illness so you need to be sure she is actually getting some food. Albie is the floppy pretty all over ginger, Smithy is the less pretty solid looking ginger. Albie has just discovered the delights of being stroked so you may have some luck making friends with him. Rosie and Molly are the fat multicoloured ones, mother and daughter, Molly (mum to Rosie, Brookie and Willow) is the enormous one, Rosie is the simply large one. Bella is the large tabby and mum to Dilly, Scally, Spot and Albie.

Mincie is the black and white one with wobbly legs. He is a law unto himself and will in the space of five seconds come for a cuddle and then swipe the nose off your face – so watch out! However, it appears he saves most of his aggression for me and has now also started sabotaging my business by doing unmentionable things on the floor in front of potential guests. (This has actually happened just the once and he has been left in no doubt about the error of his ways.)

The cats will eat a box of Felix pouches and two or three tins of food a day. The dogs will push them off and eat it themselves if they get the chance. The cats and dogs will eat the hens’ evening feed of sweetcorn and sardines. The hens will eat the cat food in the barn and everyone will eat the bread put out for the birds. The donkeys will eat the sheep food and the hens’ breakfast corn. All such sharing of feed is to be discouraged as much as possible…..(good luck with that)

And that’s it ! As I said, it is simplicity itself ………………………….(*Heads off to the airport whistling*)

A Guest Blog – featuring Me as The Guest

2011-11-08T03:43:00.001-08:00

This was a Guest Blog I wrote for Tree to My Door www.tree2mydoor.com where you will find the loveliest of Christmas presents!

‘How to Make A Cottage Garden’

First buy your cottage in the country, then plant lots of roses, lavender, foxgloves, aquilegia, hollyhocks, pinks and delphiniums and Hey Presto, Bob’s Your Uncle, Simples – you’ve got your cottage garden!

Well OK maybe it takes a bit more than that. For a start on slug infested wet clay soil delphiniums are going to struggle and that’s why we don’t have them. Hollyhocks like it dry too, so it’s taken a long time to encourage them, foxgloves that grow all over the old vegetable garden refuse to do the same in the cottage garden, and no matter how many pretty different aquilegia we buy, the same old blue and pink ones dominate. I have no idea why the pinks are unhappy.

But roses, we can do roses, they love our clay and we’ve chosen varieties such as Felicia Buff Beauty, Ellen Poulsen and The Fairy which go on and on and on and on all through the summer into the autumn. And if there is one flower everyone thinks of when they think ‘cottage garden’ it’s the rose.

So, with a good selection of roses happily flourishing, we have had to find other plants that while perhaps not immediately obvious as cottage garden plants are giving a very convincing performance as cottagey. Shrub potentillas, for example, like the roses flower all through the season. Being shrubs they stand up properly and are useful for propping up their floppy cousins the perennial potentillas and the equally lax but deeply gorgeous geums.

Santolinas and box balls give a little structure and act as good supporting acts for the flimsier plants either side and behind them. The santolinas can be cut into smart balls if you sacrifice the flowers, (which we actually don’t as it just seems mean).

Mingling a few herbs amongst the flowers also works well. We have lovely grey leaved sages and a lot of marjoram which, though quite good at collapsing, flowers late and insects love it. Sadly we are too cold and wet for rosemary and have killed off I think at least a dozen before finally accepting the fact.

Lavender struggles here too but I cannot have a garden without lavender so I now have it in pots down the front path which keep it drier in the winter and will also be rescue-able if the weather drops down to -18 as it did last winter.

The main thing I think is to get as much in there as you can, repeat the plants often, get some spring bulbs in early for spring colour and also for later on - a favourite of mine is the drumstick allium which flowers mid to late season and whose seedheads look presentable for a long time after too They do have a habit of ducking around a shrub rather than growing through it which is what I would prefer them to do, but nature will have her way. And she’s generous with it too providing desirable ‘weeds’ like poppies, campion and cowparsley – all of which are welcome in our garden.

A cottage garden should be billowing, frothy, lively. Have a little patience – fill in the time and gaps with annuals if you’re any good at them (I’m not) and deadhead like mad. Pinks, blues and mauves are my favourite colours in this garden, although the rose Evelyn May is bright orange and is one of the best performers we have. Make some rules, then break them! Have fun!

My Cheerful Little Town In The Orchards

2011-09-22T03:37:00.001-07:00

I thought, dear reader, that you might like a little look around my local market town, Tenbury Wells. It’s where I get all the food for the B&B and the Hen House and is the friendliest local town I’ve ever lived near. Some days it's a bucolic reminder of times past with many of us tromping around in our wellies and tractors pulling trailer loads of potatoes or apples or hops, and other days it is a bustling modern country town serving its widespread community with things as exotic as sunblushed tomatoes, polenta and the interweb.

So approaching from the Berrington end of town my first stop would be the fabulous and ever busy Farm Barn Shop where I buy local tomatoes and mushrooms, free range eggs if my hens are being slack and butter.

Right next door is the lovely little fish shop which is a rare thing in many a town so we are very lucky indeed.

And opposite is Caldicotts builders merchants and funeral directors, a family firm who have seriously got it sussed because everyone needs somewhere to live before they die.

Further along is the lovely Spotty Dog Café & Gallery which has local art, crafts and jewellery and serves a very nice latte too – and lovely cakes.

You can also get jolly nice cakes from Swifts the bakers on the corner and opposite them is Country Flowers where I buy flowers when I can’t bear to cut my own.

Heading up Teme Street towards the river there is a dress shop, a jeweller, an optician, an electrical goods shop, a book shop (for which I have 10% off vouchers if you come and stay!)

And then after the library, The Food Hall which supplies all my free range meat (well all your free range meat if you stay cos I don’t eat it but am happy to support ethical producers and cook it for you).

Then there’s the proper little sweet shop and the newsagent and a shoe shop and the dentist (opposite the doctors) and then the fabulous Banfields where you can buy anything from fork handles to four candles and where they have lovely old drawers behind the counters.

Then you get to the girly end of town where you will find Soap Opera my hairdressers and Pure Beauty Salon where all my beauty secrets are kept! (Actually that might not be a very good advertisement for Jules the owner – but she is really very good, she can’t help what she’s given to work with.)

And up this end there are the banks too and the Spar, which of course we couldn’t live without because they never seem to shut and any B&B landlady will tell you how essential that can be at times…..

Pop over the bridge and you’re in Shropshire, drive along to the left a bit and you’re in Herefordshire, but this is Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire. It’s not fancy, but I love it and I can absolutely guarantee you will receive a very friendly welcome when you come to visit.

And I haven’t even mentioned the pubs yet…….

Summer

2011-07-28T12:40:00.001-07:00

Forgive me readers, it has been several weeks since my last blog. A little round up of life here in the summer might be in order….

In between hosting lots of lovely guests (I truly think there must be some divine intervention on the interweb thingy that sends me only nice people to stay) there actually isn’t that much spare time when you run a B&B. Happily I have my garden on the doorstep (obv) so as soon as I’ve finished breakfasts and cleaning and tidying I can get straight out there and play with the flowers. But we actually shut the B&B for a couple of days before our charity garden opening so that I could devote all my time to trimming the grass edges with nail scissors and other such important tasks. (Meanwhile Willy managed to break the big lawnmower and had to do it all with the little one which was only what he deserved really.). It took three versions of the “Please Don’t Feed The Donkeys” sign before we managed to place it somewhere the donkeys wouldn’t eat it.

So the day came, the signs went up, friends and family came to help (and supplied enough cake to feed the whole of Worcestershire) and the gates were opened. And the people actually came! And they seemed to like it! Embarrassingly, some wanted to know the names of roses that I had long forgotten so I felt a complete fraud. But they enjoyed smelling them so that’s the main thing (I think someone from Stratford might have put that better once upon a time)

We had chosen to open on a Friday for our first time to see how it went. We had heard from others that we might expect 200 people – and we had the cake to prove it – but we had 80. Eighty is good, we raised £400 for charity, but it’s not as good as 200 so I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Next year we will open on a Sunday and expect a stampede.

After the open day we felt we could legitimately venture out of the property when we had a moment and one lovely Sunday we found ourselves looking around the village gardens of Whitton. The tickets were being sold from the church and it was this that turned out to be the real find because not only is the graveyard covered in wild flowers but there is a William Morris stained glass window in the small old timber raftered church. When I popped back up there recently they were clearing some of the wild grass and flowers to make way for a small tent for the annual blessing of the medieval preaching stone which was to be followed by the christening of a local farmer’s baby – a small community church doing the same thing it’s been doing for hundreds of years. I’m not at all churchy but it is now one of my favourite places in the area.

And then for something completely different….The Richards Castle Soap Box Derby. Set high up in the hills, an amazing venue for a mad event where gravity fuelled carts race down the hill against the clock. Some built for speed, some built for fun. Locals and visitors picnicked on the hill, the Tenbury Brass Band played and some classic and kit cars showed off their polish too. A little eccentricity in the beautiful English countryside – a perfect Sunday.

A welcome to England

2011-06-04T11:27:00.001-07:00

As you may have heard me mention (!) we are opening our garden for the National Gardens Scheme to help raise money for charity on 24th June. I am not going to talk about our garden here because I am reaching combustible levels of stress thinking about it and to write more will only wind me up further.
But what a fantastic thing this garden opening scheme is. How many countries can you visit where you can, on any day during the summer turn up at someone's private house, wander around their garden, drink their tea, eat their cake and chat to the owners all for about five quid? In some cases you can even stay in their bedrooms! (Book now to avoid disappointment 01584 819868)

If I was a foreigner wanting to visit Britain and get a real feel of life both in the country and in the cities, the Yellow Book would definitely be my travel guide. It's like every year the whole of Britain puts on a Grand Garden Festival - a countrywide flower show of big and small gardens, allotments and whole villages opening together - all with just normal everyday folk there to welcome you in with a smile - whatever the weather - and a quintessentially English afternoon tea. (The quintessential bit being the rain)
Last weekend I visited Glanarrow at Eardisland in Herefordshire.I could just imagine the gasps of tourists as they wandered up the path to find a gorgeous house with it’s lake complete with little boat and a newly planted avenue of trees leading from the lake to the fields beyond

I really liked the combination of the silver foliage of the weeping pear with the santolinas in the white garden.

The best bit of all is this wonderful herringbone haha which I had never seen before … beautifully made with elegant steps leading to the top lawn (Blogger has decided to place this pic at the top)

Behind the perfectly planted herbaceous border with its hedge backdrop is the neatest potager I’ve ever seen…

But what I loved most was where part of the house became more cottagey and so did the planting. This was where I had my tea and a slice of Victoria sponge….

…..at a table outside the kitchen door looking towards the potager

An interesting contrast was this bench looking very rustic and pretty with the daisies coming through it backing onto a planted streambed leading to the lake,

….but facing a large expanse of plain lawn with a smart Lutyens bench in the distance. A deliberate contrast or the setting of some new project?

Glanarrow is open again on 18th and 19th June in aid of the local church funds.

2011-04-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Areas of Concern

It is just under two months until our Garden Opening and I feel like I'm flying. Not in the sense of gliding or soaring as happily and nonchalently as the buzzards mewing overhead, but more in the sense that I think we'll probably be all right but there is a chance we might crash and burn.

With the warm weather everything is threatening to peak too soon. Usually our roses would be looking good at the end of June - the NGS day is the 24th - but if this weather keeps up it will all be over with only us and a handful of guests having seen them. But hey, the people who visit gardens are usually gardeners themselves and they will understand won't they? Won't they? Or will there be frowns of disapproval and mutterings of "Hmmm how disappointing" ?? If only we didn't have to be so visible. (We have to wear badges stating 'Garden Owner' - it will feel like a badge saying 'It's all my fault' or 'Direct your criticism at me' It would be so much easier to bear if we could just blend in with the visitors and tut and pass comments such as "I don't know why they've planted that there" (And indeed we probably don't)

There are three particular, or four particular, no maybe five or six particular areas that are causing me concern.....First why, in seven years have we still not managed to camouflage the sewage tank at the end of the Not the Daffodil Bed. Second, why does Not the Herb Garden still not look quite right? Third, will anyone actually find the Not the Sweet Pea garden so does it matter that it is empty? Fourth, when will we come up with some decent new names for these areas. Five, will the wildflower area under the apple trees actually ever germinate this year or will it remain bare for both the June and the September opening. And six, will the Buggery have anywhere near enough in it to attract more than a couple of lone bees?

And I haven't even mentioned filling the gaps left by things that have died over the winter. There is an area where a big old buddleia, that used to cover up an awkward slopey corner, has just died. We decided to tackle it at the weekend. What shall we do we wondered while sipping our coffee staring unenthusiastically at it. "Why don't we get some of those big stones and pile them up and plant some aubretia in them and plant a philadelphus over the top?" "Good idea - let's get to it." Half an hour later - hey presto - it looked...well ...like someone had piled up some stones and planted some aubretia.

When things aren't going too well in the garden I am glad I can at least take pride in my B&B business and one of the very nicest things about it is having people say how much they love it here - inside and out. And so I guess it can't be all bad out there. In fact I know it is not. There are some lovely bits and on the 24th June I shall stand by the lovely bits wearing my 'Garden Owner' badge with pride and cheerfully agree that some other bits are actually really awful and need to be better next year.

Country Sports

2011-03-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's spring again and the wildlife and I can relax for a while and live in peace. No more hunting til autumn means no more worrying about whether my animals will be scared or hurt and no need to will the foxes to come and hide here.

I have spent all my life sitting on the country sports fence. Having been involved with horses as a child and teenager, I managed to avoid going hunting myself though my pony was taken by a friend a couple of times. I've always been an animal lover and couldn't see the fun in it but I've always been surrounded by people who do. And as a fickle youngster I managed to think nothing of going to hunt balls, (probably because the most handsome boys were to be found there - the rich have an annoying habit of being beautiful).

I once went fishing with a boyfriend - a beautiful spot and almost a nice way to spend a day. The moment when I first felt a tug on the line was quite exciting even for a split second, but then I immediately felt awful about yanking the poor thing out of its watery world, a barbed hook in the roof of its mouth. Ouch.

For several years I worked as a PA to the owner of a large country estate where one of my duties was to help organise shooting parties. I don't like the idea of shooting wild birds for fun but it's another one of those traditional country sports that amuses the county set over the winter. They're a funny lot... I should know, I married one of them.

Thankfully William had long given up shooting when I met him and had also decided a long time ago he was never getting on a horse again. He's also a zooologist by training so whilst he doesn't love animals like I do, he has some sort of interest in them. He stopped shooting when he was a student realising the idiocy of shooting wild ducks one weekend and counting them for a survey the next.

And so we sit here in our nice little place, both country people but with different backgrounds and experiences and we're surrounded by other country people with their own views and desires. Whatever happens nearby Brook Farm is, I hope, a haven for wildlife and therefore a quiet, peaceful place to stay. We like it like that and our guests like it like that.

'Harm None' is my motto - 'Live and Let Live' is William's!

It's Not That Easy Being Green

2011-03-02T12:41:00.000-08:00

Today I forgot the mushrooms. I haven't any B&B guests this week so I only needed a few to put in the Hen House breakfast hamper with the sausages, bacon and tomatoes. Should I drive the two miles back down to Tenbury for a few mushrooms or give my guests some lovely organic local yogurt instead. The yogurt it is.

I have dilemmas like this every week. Ideally I am buying local, organic and fair trade and also keeping an eye on how much I use my car. But local doesn't always have organic and fairtrade. So do I shun the small local shops and use more fuel to get to specialist shops or supermarkets further away or do I buy the best I can get locally?

I used to buy my bacon direct from a local farmer but felt bad because I'd taken my business away from the local butcher, so I switched back and now I feel bad about the farmer. The local butcher sometimes has organic chicken, but rarely anything else organic, but he does have local free range meats. Do my guests expect me to buy organic bacon from further away or buy the local free range stuff?

If I go to the Spar in Tenbury for some tonic water and I also need tomatoes for breakfasts, do I ignore their dutch tomatoes in the hope that the greengrocer has some english ones? He's at the other end of town and might only have dutch ones too. It's easy in summer because there is a local farm that supplies the greengrocer with the loveliest juiciest tomatoes which I buy by the box and keep out of the fridge where they ripen to their most gorgeous tasty best. But they're not labelled organic. Should I visit the farm and check what they are putting on them?

In an ideal world I would grow my own, but my success rate with tomatoes isn't impressive - if they manage to get off the ground without slug damage, they ripen so slowly that only one or two guests would get them on their breakfast during the summer and anyone who came in September/October would find only tomato based breakfasts on the menu. (And speaking of slugs - I garden organically and won't use pellets. And being a big soft veggie I am certainly not growing my own pigs.)

Marmalade and jams come from the lovely ladies at the WI - they're not going to fork out for an organic certifcation but I know their fruit is chemical free. But if they run out of marmalade which happens alarmingly often what then? At the moment I have delicious marmalade made by my friend Karen from Hopton House B&B nearby. Otherwise I buy La Vieja Fabrica made in Seville. It's very good and it's going to be the oranges or the jars of marmalade that are flown over here isn't it? You don't get many productive orange trees in Worcestershire.

And it's not just the food that causes hand-wringing - the laundry - OMG the laundry. For a few months I struggled to do all the washing and ironing myself, but was it such a good thing to have the washing machine and the iron running almost permanently? Now I use a laundry for the bedlinen and towels for guests, and whilst they are using environmentally friendly washing powders, they are of course using industrial sized washing machines, tumble driers and ironing machines. So though I can quite honestly say we don't have a tumble drier on green grounds and all our own washing is air dried, I am in fact paying someone else to use one for me. Oh, what to do, what to do.

It's not easy being green but, dear guest, please trust that I believe in respecting this planet and all that live on it and I am doing the best I possibly can.

2011-02-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

February is a time for planning and dreaming. Anything is still possible this year. I can dream of the Hen House and the B&B rooms being booked up for the whole of spring and summer, of the garden looking beautiful from April to September, of fixing my poor old car up, of walking the whole of the Teme Valley, of training the donkeys to pull a cart, of visiting the gardens I want to see and of spending sunny days with good friends.

Some of it I might even manage.

In the meantime, I write lists - each list getting longer daily with a new idea.

And at night I jump into bed with Carol Klein and her gorgeous book 'Life in a Cottage Garden' and I fastforward my dreams and soak up the coming of spring and summer, a notebook on my bedside table for jotting down brilliant tips and the names of plants she makes sound so irresistible. There is plenty of time to fit everything in because it's only February - a time when anything I imagine can become true.

A Right Old Knees Up

2010-12-30T09:29:00.000-08:00

Christmas has been and gone now and peace is returning to Brook Farm. Burst pipes and frozen drains didn't stop us from scoffing and guzzling ridiculous amounts and having a good old knees up round the joanna. My Dad on the guitar and lead vocals, the beautiful niece perfectly in tune and the rest of us catterwauling along as best we could until the choruses when aunts, uncles, cousins, mothers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives all came together in perfect harmony and it all sounded fab (I'm lying) Doing the Lambeth Walk, Don't Dilly Dally and Knees Up Mother Brown were the favourites and to finish Oom Pah Pah from Oliver Twist. What a giggle.

All is quiet now, we've had some B&B guests and some Hen House guests come and go and more here now for New Year break. The candles are lit, the log fires burning. And now I have time to catch my breath and start to think about the nice things to come, starting I think with a bare root rose order. Lovely thing to do by the fire on a chilly January evening. Happy New Year to everyone (if anyone?) that reads this!

It all goes quiet and I dolittle

2010-11-10T12:13:00.001-08:00

With fewer guests around at this time of year and the garden preparing for its winter sleep, I spend more time playing Dr Dolittle. For me animals bring Brook Farm to life - inside and out. However pleasing a scene is in our garden, if a cat or a chicken saunters into view it becomes even more so. Picture the old orchard on the hill - misshapen old apple and damson trees, a few wildflowers and some grass. A lovely country scene in itself, but add a couple of donkeys watching you quietly as they chew messily on an apple, the juice pouring out of their mouths and it becomes a real delight - well it does to me anyway.

In summer, a walk around the garden will find a scattering of sunbathing cats in various lazy poses, decorating the sunnier spots and looking as good as any expensive piece of sculpture to me.

And heading off into the woods for a walk in the morning wouldn't be the same without the dogs bounding ahead sweetly delighted with the same route every day thanks to the delicious smells laid by various wild creatures overnight.

At the beginning of November I bring the donkeys into the big barn overnight. It means more work for me, but I love having them here next to the house looking all cuddly and cosy in their straw bed. This year for the first time they are having to share with my new chickens. Neither species was particularly pleased about the arrangement for the first couple of days and I nearly had a squashed chicken or two as the donk Queenie chased them around the barn trying to hit them with her front feet. Several barn cats enjoyed the show from the safety of the hayloft - I'm sure they were grinning.

Willy says I'd have the whole menagerie in the house if he wasn't here and he could be right. I still have a childish love of seeing outside animals indoors and didn't rush to shoo out the hens when they came exploring the hall and the sitting room the other day. When I was about twelve I used to ride a neighbour's pony called Snowy. One day, when my parents were out, my friend and I thought it would be a good idea to take Snowy indoors. It was summer so he was quite clean but unfortunately as we took him through the sitting room he lifted his tail and started to produce an enormous poo. Being twelve year old girls we shrieked and giggled and were generally useless and I grabbed the nearest thing I could find in the kitchen which happened to be the cake tin and caught most of the pile of steaming dung in it. The rest of it went on a very pale rug. We obviously thought it was hilarious and I got away with it for years.....well til now actually. Sorry Mum!

So if you fancy snuggling by a roaring fire with or without a furry animal at your feet - whether you want to come and sightsee the area, go for bracing walks or simply Do Little, Brook Farm has a warm welcome, a cup of tea and a nice slice of cake waiting for you. (I have a brand spanking new cake tin honest.)

Look no further than Twitter for a great B&B!

2010-10-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

For me running a B&B is made so much more fun by tweeting. There's a lovely community of Lords and Ladies (landlords and landladies) that chat, advise and giggle often early in the morning when normal people are still in bed and I just love being part of it.

It is also a brilliant way of finding places you just have to go and stay in. I started tweeting in March this year egged on by my friend Karen (www.shropshirebreakfast.co.uk) and by the beginning of April had a "Must Stay" list as long as my donkeys' ears, so using the excuse of our 15th wedding anniversary we planned a lovely TwitterTrail starting at the Grand Designs favourite Peel Castle (www.peelcastle.co.uk), then on to the beautiful country house Austwick Hall (www.austwickhall.co.uk), then some sea air at "The Best B&B in the NorthWest" (www.no43.org.uk) and finally the elegant Ashton in Lancaster (www.theashtonlancaster.co.uk)

A better selection of modern B&Bs would be hard to find and we had an amazing time. Each one was different, though all had the highest standards, and that is what is so lovely about British B&Bs : they are so different, being as they are, creations and perhaps even extensions of the owner's personality. And what food! Quality local food cooked perfectly every time.

Thinking of our 'little' farmhouse B&B, we felt like the poor relations in these enormous rooms and stylish surroundings. But of course our 'nice little place' is different again and though when I arrived back, with guests arriving that evening, I felt inadequate in comparison, the guests when they arrived did the same sort of ooohing and ahhing that we had been doing all week.

So there is obviously a place for "New Country" which is how I like to think of my own B&B alongside "Boutique" and "Luxury" and - er- "Castle" in the B&B world. What a great choice we have in this country. Thank goodness for that.

2010-10-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

Ah Autumn - mellow fruitfulness for some; chainsaws and wellies for us. We've got fruit too - a few sloes, pears, autumn raspberries, loads of damsons and enough apples to feed the world. If the world has long enough arms to pick them. Our old orchard is planted on a bank and the trees are about 40 years old and big 'uns so we have to wait for windfalls to be able to appreciate their fruit.

This suits me "Leave it for the birds" I say, but Willy is different. He likes to strip a tree or bush of all its fruit and stash it in the freezer in the misguided belief that I will one day turn them into something delicious. He still does this every year despite the fact that I barely ever get around to doing so - a strategy that has worked well (finally) as he has taken to preserving and pickling things himself this year. He is in fact right now decanting damson vodka which is much loved by our guests. Hopefully soon he will move on to making pies and crumbles. I'll make the custard.

There are times when I can put on a good performance in the kitchen (hopefully most mornings as I run a B&B) but I would very much rather be in the garden than baking cakes and making jam, and autumn to me is the beginning of the gardening year. Although it is looking much as I feel at the end of a busy summer, it is now that I can start its makeover for a new look next year. Not a completely new look, but an improved look - Plants get moved from one place to another (Why on earth didn't I put them there in the first place?) Things get lifted and divided to give me more of the plants I love (Yay - free plants!) and a lot of stuff gets put on The Naughty Step.

The Naughty Step is a bank around the back of one of our barns where we put the thugs who would take over the garden if they had their way: a boring Lysimachia, Alchemilla mollis and masses of wild strawberries. There was a time when we were desperate for something to fill the acres of space we had and we were grateful for them so rather than compost them, we allow them this space to do their worst. It will probably end up being the best bit of the garden.

And with autumn, the chainsaw comes out again. Big old trees, weighed down with the rain on their leaves finally give in and fall. There was an ash at the far end that had been getting lower and lower over the seven years we've been here. It was a bit like living with an aged grandparent, he'd had a great life - what heights he'd reached - and we knew the end was coming, but it was still sad when he fell.

But what a great supply of wood for the fires this year. I love lighting the fires of an evening - that and a few candles make for a lovely welcome. Let's start getting cosy: the nights are drawing in.

2010-08-11T06:41:00.001-07:00

This is a PS except it appears to be at the beginning and won't move down.
This is Sue's lovely painting mentioned below and I forgot to give you all a link to her art and her B&B both of which you are all going to want to see : www.beechenhill.co.uk

Sue (pictured here with lovely husband Terry) and I were agreeing that so many visitors to our B&Bs and holiday cottages say they wish they'd come for longer - people snatch a couple of days here and there and try to "squeeze in" a rest. Yes, we agreed people really should take the time to seriously slow down and enjoy the new area they've discovered : Take it easy, breath in the country air, read some books on a picnic blanket or just sit and stare. They shouldn't screech into the driveway, unpack, screech out again, tick off the sights, tear back, shower, whizz down to the pub - it's all too like their normal lives.

But I didn't have time to linger and chat because we had only booked to stay two nights and there was much to do.

From pretty little Ilam - which looks like a model village but bigger (er, so a village I guess) you drive up over the moor towards Beechenhill Farm. Driving along you can spot the house away up on a hill and immediately know you are going to get great views once you're there - and indeed there are great views on the way there and in fact all around: it is a truly beautiful place, The Peak District.

I needed rest. For weeks I had been becoming more and more jealous of my own guests and I wanted someone to look after me for a change! You remember when you were in your teens and you were always being told off for "Treating This House Like A Hotel" - I think that is what a good B&B should feel like: Somewhere you will feel immediately cosy and welcome, where someone will cook for you and do the washing up and tidy your room, but with the added bonus that you don't actually have to have a conversation with them if you don't want to. This is precisely how it feels at Beechenhill Farm.

In fact we did have several conversations with Sue and her family - mostly because they are very interesting, funny and kind people.

We had chosen to stay at Beechenhill Farm partly because we wanted to visit The Peaks, but also because Sue and I had been chatting on Twitter and I had mentioned an old saying that inspired Sue to paint one of her lovely swedish style folk paintings. I was very keen to see the painting and even hopeful that we might be able to buy it at her exhibition that week. And while we were staying we were able to see more of these gorgeous paintings and learn all about their history and how Sue is using the style to tell stories of the countryside and engage people in thinking about food production, farming and the environment. The pictures tell complex stories in a simple way and are especially a hit with schoolchildren visiting the exhibition. Hopefully they will hang on to the messages long into their adult lives.

So we did a little bit of sight seeing and a little bit of reading and quite a bit of sleeping and an awful lot of "Wow that's so beautiful"ing. And then it was time to go. Too soon. Should've stayed longer. We are so right about that Sue.

2010-08-02T01:16:00.000-07:00

I love close in hills and trees but I also love a feeling of space
I like hedges but I don't like 'rooms'
I love straight lines and symmetry but I want a natural feel
I like clever ideas but I also love simplicity
This is why I like the garden at Veddw, but you might not
In which case the owners would probably rather have a conversation with you than me

Do visit this amazing garden in person or virtually at www.veddw.co.uk

2010-07-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

It's usually about now every year that I realise that my charmingly chaotic garden is actually an alarmingly shambolic garden and instead of floating around thinking "Ah nature is doing a wonderful job all on her own", I'm muttering things like "Oh do stand up dear" to a laden floribunda rose and "Hmm you're not supposed to be there" to an enormous crocosmia falling across a tiny path and "Please don't strangle poor Miss Wilmott" to the dreaded bindweed. It is time to get my scissors out and start Tidying Up.

I will only Tidy Up twice a year - the first time lasts from January to April which is quite enough tidying in one year really, so this time it is a quick frenzy of beheading and deadheading, ruthless trimming and maybe even a touch of strimming because it is also a busy time of year for my B&B and holiday cottage business.

I emerge from a hedge backwards secateurs in hand to greet guests, make tea and present cake with small twigs and nettles stuck in my hair and then head straight back to the garden, briefly groaning as I pass a mirror and realise how frightening I look.

And after a couple of days everything is looking much much better ...much tidier ...very pleasing...except there are gaps now, which is not pleasing at all and in fact I appear to have tidied away a lot of the flowers along with the mess. If I was a proper gardener I would have several summer flowering bulbs or annuals in pots ready to slip into the blank spaces, but I'm not, so I haven't and a trip to the garden centre is the only answer.

The garden centre knows I'm coming and has all its best plants flowering their hearts out, totally distracting me from my pledge to only buy things on my list. And they have a lovely garden to look around too, which makes me feel even more of a failure, so I have to go to their coffee shop and have some cake and then a quick visit to their salvage yard and a longer and expensive visit to their interiors shop too which makes me feel better briefly before I realise what I just spent on a pretty bowl could have bought three more plants.

And so back to the garden and slotting in the sparkling new plants into my rowdy borders and now I'm feeling sorry for them as they look so prim and proper in their new home, like sober newcomers at a drunken party.

Never mind, like new kids at school they'll be joining in with the gang next year and I'll be pleading with them to behave like a worn out schoolteacher and being ignored and it will all start all over again... I love gardening.

A Blog of Roses

2010-06-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

Midsummer's Day at Brook Farm and what a beauty! Everything is looking healthy and bursting with life. Lots of roses are out and there are thousands more buds promising a lovely long flowering season.
This garden is now around six years old and is making us very happy. It is a garden made without a proper design or a planting plan, full of the things we love and tells a tale of our love of this place and the ongoing business of making a garden that is right for the land it sits in, right for him and right for me. It is a garden of compromises!

These pictures are some I have taken, but this week we were very lucky to have professional garden photographer, Julia Stanley, come and take some proper ones. I can't wait to see what she has done and see the garden through someone else's eyes. I have already seen a lovely shot she has taken of the old wreck of a 1950s caravan we have been meaning to remove for years. Now I think we might simply sow wild flowers in front of it and make it a bit of a homage to hippies!

Is our garden a work of art? I don't think so. It was not planned to be a work of art, it has no proper design, but I do often say to people that I paint with plants because I cannot draw, so I suppose I hope there is some artistic merit in it somewhere. What I am trying to do is create a feeling more than a look. One day I'd like to persuade the garden critic Anne Wareham to come and tell me what she thinks. In the meantime we shall continue to argue about it, enjoy it and share it with friends and guests as we have during the making of it these last six years and hope for lovely long sunny summer days as beautiful as this.

2010-05-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

So what happened was the neighbouring village (about ten houses) wanted to start up its horticultural show again after not having had one for several years, and the committee wrote a nice little letter to the residents of the neighbouring hamlets (about another ten houses between them) asking us to support the event.

Having only grown vegetables for the first time that year I said I really didn't think I was competent enough to take part when I met one of the organisers in the village shop. "It's just a bit of fun" she reassured me and so I agreed to take part. It would be a shame after all if their first show had a poor turnout.

So the day came and I chose my five straightest slimmest most slinky looking runner beans, two really quite beautiful lettuces - one red, one green - and three of my roundest juiciest looking tan skinned onions which I tied with a pretty piece of raffia. I displayed them all in pretty little wicker baskets lined with gingham napkins.

We all then went to the pub while the judging took place and I can't truly say that we sat nervously with our beers while we awaited the outcome, but it was a nice gathering of local veg growing folk and in fact some of us were quite late back to the village hall to see what prizes were being handed out.

I am probably never going to be allowed to forget that my beautiful onions had won second prize - in a class where I was the only entry.

Just a bit of fun indeed - humpphh.

2010-04-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

I used to grit my teeth when my sister-in-law regularly declared the Cotswolds "Designer Countryside". I loved where we lived near Chipping Norton and our country life, our farming neighbours and friends and the lovely community feeling that centred around our 'local' The Tite Inn at Chadlington. Having lived in the area for most of my adult life I didn't really know what she was talking about - it was just countryside.

Maybe it was the day we first spotted our neighbour hoovering his drive that we realised things were changing. The old folk started moving out and younger 'London Folk' started moving in. Many of the new folk became - and still are - great friends, but some started complaining about the mud on the road from the tractors, the smell of pigs, the noises - of farm machinery and even cockerels for goodness sake!

So we came out to 'The other side of Worcestershire'. Really rural - not wild like the depths of Wales and Scotland - but just good old fashioned rural - lots of tractors, lots of smells, lots of mud. We love it. In the summer there is no place better to be. It is exactly as most people imagine 'The English Countryside' to be.

And now I understand what my sister in law was saying. The Cotswolds are beautiful and are made even more beautiful by the wealth brought by its more recent inhabitants. The perfect dry stone walling, layered hedges and post and rail fencing couldn't be achieved without them.

When we first moved here I admit I did smile at the variety of materials that could be classed as fencing. Now I have joined in with the rest of the ordinary country folk and will happily tie a few pallets together with some bailer twine and name it a perfectly good fence. I think it may be a small step towards my becoming a local - rather than merely 'Cotswold Overflow'.

Broadway is a lovely old town on the cotswold side of Worcestershire and it is where I often meet my sister as it's half way between me in Berrington and her family in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. We normally meet in the car park there so we can pile in her children's many bags of luggage when they are coming to stay with me. The last time we met I spluttered into the car park in our ancient Peugeot and noticed that this time all the cars parked there were new: Porsches, BMWs, Range Rovers and the like, all beautifully clean and shiny (not a single scrap of straw sticking out of the boots!) It seemed like a different world - almost unreal - and I marvelled how one county can be so different from one side to the other.

I love the Cotswolds, in fact I have always wanted to spend Christmas at one of the beautiful hotels there. Now that I don't actually live there it doesn't seem such a silly idea either. But for day to day simple country living I think I am in just the right place for me - on the wild side of Worcestershire.

2010-04-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

The past has been catching up with us these last few weeks or at least catching up with Brook Farm. We've often said one day we'll get round to finding out about the history of the place, but it looks like if we just sit still the story will unfold before us.

It started with the children of some previous owners contacting us for a trip down memory lane. They were thrilled it's now a Bed & Breakfast and were able to come and stay in their old bedrooms. Their parents had retired here in the 70s and they had spent many a weekend and holiday at Brook Farm lending a hand with planting trees and DIY repairs to the house.

There's a long tradition of making do and mending here - the evidence is everywhere. Strange random bits of wood or iron pushed in to support a window or a door; no door, window or fireplace the same in the whole house. It's lovely to think of previous occupants doing exactly what we do - wait for a salvage bargain, some reclaimed bits and pieces or even a freebie from a friend.

Then I had a booking from a lady who was born here in 1933. She's coming all the way from Australia to see her old home! (OK she might be doing other stuff too.) She remembers it as a mixed farm and says she used to help with the potato harvest and the milking. She recalls her mother spent hours in the dairy making butter. The dairy is our utility room and the coldest room in the house - not somewhere you'd want to spend hours even now.

And then last week I was contacted by a family detective looking at who lived here in 1891, but the name she gave didn't ring a bell so I fished out a letter from a lovely gentleman from the local historical society, in which he tells me an entirely different family lived here then. So a bit of a puzzle to work out there, possibly something to do with the fact that it may originally have been three farmworkers cottages, not just the one house.

According to the history society in the 1891 census James Lowe (38) and his wife Harriet (35) lived here with their children Tom (6) and Harriet (2). They had a farm servant Joseph Green (18) and a domestic servant Susan Acton (16). Servants at Brook Farm! If only!

Then again, would I swap my central heating, running hot water and roaring woodburning stoves for some servants? It would make my life a lot easier but I do like my house to be a nice cosy place to stay and guests always love the woodburners. Besides doing all the work myself is a good way of keeping fit and warm! Speaking of which... time I was off.

2010-03-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Last night a beautiful gentian blue hot air balloon landed in the field opposite the kitchen. A man jumped out and came running over shouting "Is it all right if we land here?" Nice of him to ask but they were already down and it's not our land anyway.

The residents of Berrington came out to see what was going on. It wasn't a crowd: two farmers (father and son); my husband and our neighbour with his three children, socks wet from running out without any shoes.

There is also the farmer's wife, the farmer's daughter, the neighbour's wife and a quiet gentleman who lives alone on the corner. And me.

We wave as we pass in the lane, we occasionally help catch each others free-ranging animals, we ask the occasional favour and once in a while we find we have come together at the right moment and we share a beer and a gossip and a laugh.

A hot air balloon seemed an acceptable sort of interruption to a quiet Sunday evening in Berrington: Gently floating in as if trying not to disturb the peace. The rich can keep their helipads - I'm all for guests arriving quietly by balloon. It's a quiet life here in Berrington and that is exactly the way I like it.