2021 - a year of growth and Covid lockdown
It was January 2021 and we had finally completed a secondary dwelling next to the cottage for my mother to live in. It became known as Birdsong and has developed its own identity. For the first few months, we built fences and raised gardens around her using as much of the saved building materials as we could. By January 2022, most of the infrastructure has been finished with just some patios and a green wall yet to be completed. Yikes it was hard work and took longer than we expected...we did most of it ourselves with shortages of builders and materials - especially in the last few months of the year. Development of the main home and land took a back seat although we tried hard to keep pushing on. Growing fruit and veg Luckily, our food self-sufficiency had started to pay off after nearly 5 years. Improving the soil and finding the best positions for growing various veg took time! We learnt: Most plants and trees do badly in full, unrelenting sun. We needed shade. Finally we started to...