Why?

The house now has carpets and heating – including the old dairy and big back room. The thick stone walls, good water supply, concreted and sloping floors – with drains – a door big enough to get wheelbarrows through and an excellent dry loft above, with beams for hanging things – like onions – and marrows stuffed in old tights – is now a kitchen and utility room and the loft is my writing space.

Also in this area were freezers and an electric cooker – horse tack and dog paraphernalia.

It is now less picturesque, and there is a new ‘wet room’ where I once thought a good north-facing larder might be. It is pretty – and useless – for someone like me, who tinkers with heavy duty food and drink creation ranging from cheese production and butchery to jams, pickles and wine.

The clean storage of big bits of kit and useful bins – like the old washtub – and the scratter, cheese press and moulds – my Mackford type miking buckets and the tonnes of plastic buckets, demijohns and wine bottles is now a nightmare. And then there is my cider press – and barrels – if not  in clean storage then large amounts of boiling water and floors that cope with buckets of water slung on them is required.

All of this – and the free-standing solid old kitchen and ‘backroom’ furniture went in a shipping container during the ‘Open House Surgery’. The horse tack went into boxes – and lives a nomadic life – which drives me nuts . The wet dog issue is not a problem as we, sadly, have not replaced our old canine companions. The washing machine was evacuated to an old van body which had enough electric for a socket and a light bulb.

The van body is 20ft long, its roller shutter door is long rusted up, and we have had it in situ for about 30 years – for a wood store and stock feed store, cum shed. We don’t use much wood these days and are stockless – so don’t need to store 40 bags at a time. When the mobile home was put in, while the house was in surgery ( it still is), a proper electric supply was laid on including RCD boxes. Ditto cold water was laid from a nearby standpipe. As it is doorless the floor. in the first third, regularly rots – it is rotted now.

Our one house freezer, we kept going, was moved to a wooden field shelter type building where I store hay. This leaves a bit to be desired on many fronts – but the most annoying is that the freezer blocks the one door behind which I used to hang the bridles when I was riding, so each hack now begins with ‘untangle bridle’. The other freezers contain demijohns or horse feed

Add to that the revival of the veg garden in 2018, when Mum was in hospital, and the realisation hit me that with the house snug and floors covered – I could only grow those things that could stay in the ground – which I did. We also like onions – and spuds – and runner beans…

The soft fruit was pruned severely, the year of the house surgery, but last year a heavy crop was left for the birds as there was nowhere carpet/carer free to tinker peacefully with stuff and nowhere to store anything that I did make ( with the exception of three jars of pickled eggs that got shoved under the new gas boiler and promptly forgotten – I can see they might be our future Thousand Year Old Eggs…)

The idea has arrived in my brain to turn the van body into a food handling /processing/storage area.

It has electric and cold water and drainage to soak away. It is surrounded with flat concrete and accessible in part with the van for apple crop and barrel handling, and there is room behind it – also on concrete – for large barrels/ stillages of cider to stand – but not moved. However, I am not looking for industrial-scale production even if I am old school and tend to go larger ‘just in case’ (Apocalypse and now BREXIT). I am not looking to sell surplus. These premises will not conform to Food Safety Regs. They will be a distinct improvement on nothing at all and allow me to get the garden and orchard fruit on to the table or into the glass. The addition of some old conservatory doors – or similar – will make for a snug van extraordinaire 🙂

The new floorboards – marine ply – have been ordered. The skip has been filled. This does not mean the space is empty. At some point, after we have done the floor, when I have cleaned the furniture – we will have a day of shifting pile A to pile B to pile C – in time, I hope to get a couple of wine kits going for drinking next spring – the cold may make winemaking more of a challenge – but the cider might like it. 🙂 We shall see 🙂 And it could be insulated in the future and a sink can be fitted with a boiler if necessary though, once the gruby grunt-work is done I can cook in the house.