Category: How did we get here?

We’ve just finished planting all along the road: drifts of crab apple, holly, wild cherry, service, lime and hornbeam among oak and hawthorn. We started in sunshine and finished in snow. It was a great exercise to get Monica engaged in planning and managing the land. The day we received 1,000 bare-root trees needed a big push and she got stuck right into the muddy work and they were in within a week.

We had an experimental winter solstice party before Christmas. A few local friends and family sat about the garage on hay bales, eating baked spuds and onion soup, while I kept a bonfire burning in the rain and Monica’s brother Kevin led some clogging and singing. I wanted this to lead into a stay-awake, log burning slobathon in the parlour with ghost stories, wee-hour feasts of strange pickles and tastings of the summer’s wines and flavoured spirits. Unfortunately, this had to be shelved because I had to attend a funeral in the early morning but maybe next year.

Ralph, who sold us the farm and who had become my good friend, died a week before, as did my best friend in Australia. You could guess I’ve been pretty sad and grumpy rather than festive. Planting trees is a great therapy because I feel they’ll last far longer than us puny humans. At least they’ll have the local farmers complaining about loss of grazing for generations.

Monica’s allotment has moved, recently, from the front field to the back because we found a less steep area that was unallocated. Now we’re looking for new uses for that area I fenced for her above the meadow: flowers or animals are possibilities because we haven’t any planned elsewhere.

This year should see the end of the planting and the start of building. M has booked me on a course near cousin Jackie to learn about traditional lime mortar in April.

In my twenties, I had a copy of Breugel’s “Hunters in the Snow” hung over my fireplace. This morning, I looked South out of the window at the snowy scene and realised the view along the canal is very similar. The cliffs, water, bridge, nearby trees and buildings are all in the same place and the land drops away similarly. I wonder if my subconscious spotted it when I first visited.

Fred Gungl conveyed sad news: my good friend Peter Kefer died.

I was Peter’s neighbour in Adelaide and we were very close friends. We had some fine times together: fighting his landlords; experimenting with coffee and food; and getting stuff done around our houses. I gave him my old laptop and he quickly learnt to search for information. By the time I last saw him, we were as close as brothers.

When I first met Peter and heard his story, he was a proud guy but in poor shape, mentally, physically and financially. He told me of his sky-diving and what that led to; about his life in Munich, working with his parents in their business; and about how he came to burst his spleen at the “Seven Habits” conference, the first time he felt he had his life together.

I liked him enough to start feeding him decent food and to give him a metalwork project out on our street, where the neighbours could see that he was not as scary as he looked; this soon led to him working for many of them, too. I learnt a lot from his Germanic work methods, “85% preparation”, and photographing everything as he disassembled it. Once, I gave him two old Kenwood Chef mixers and asked him to make one good one. A few days later, when he flicked the switch, it tripped our electronic fuses. “This is impossible”, he said, “My work methods cannot fail so your fuses must be faulty”. It took me some time to convince him to search for the tiny stray wire touching the case; not enough current to melt his house’s older fuse wires.

Over a couple of years, he got himself together and ready to move on. Having his rotten teeth pulled and replaced was a big event; he insisted we lurk about the supermarket so that he could grin at women! His doctor, in the Adelaide Hills, proudly paraded “The New Peter Kefer” to his waiting room and staff after his final visit; one of his few successes.

He was keen to leave Adelaide, then, because it reminded him of his past. Few of his close friends were still alive but he hated meeting the wrecks of people he knew. As he got clean, he started to look for an activity that would distract him and give him a new purpose. After his first paragliding lessons with Fred, he was thrilled that he had made a connection and was super-keen to return. About that time, at the first firing of the brick oven he and I had built, he met Katy Torokfalvy, another of Fred’s students and was given a tandem chute to trade by another of our guests.

I moved his stuff to the camp site in Bright just before I left Australia in 2011. I know the area a bit, from cross-country skiing, and was pleased with his choice. We corresponded sporadically because he was busy and Internet connection was difficult. He said that he was happy to have made a new life in Bright, where he felt he had become a valued member of society with real purpose. His job with Fred sounded perfect and I was very happy to know someone else had seen through his shell to the kind heart and keen mind inside.

He wrote to me of his illness while Fred was on holiday and was dreading telling him and his family. I sent him some cash to get medical help and we corresponded a couple of times after that. He was worried that, because of his history, the pain-killers may not work but seems to have got that sorted, eventually. Then he said he was ready to die because he felt his life was now in order; that in Adelaide he expected to die but wasn’t ready.

In mid-September he said he moved in with Dianne when it got too cold and then moved home again, where he had nurses visiting. That’s the last I heard from him.

Now, I’m very happy that Peter found his place; even that he no longer needed any support from me. I’d just like to know that he died in peace and with the serenity and dignity he deserved. Not too much pain. I asked Fred to lie to me, if necessary.

Peter was a gentleman, one of the best I’ve known. I will miss him.

Do you enjoy the cut and thrust of business life? I was OK at faking it but I’m much happier out of it. You are blessed with a partner who is smart. Do everything you can to support her and maybe she’ll let you retire early, while you can still cycle. Worked for me!

We don’t own the Sydney house, now. We sold that, which cleared our mortgage on the Adelaide house, then we sold that and we’re living, carefully, on the proceeds. We had a bit in our retirement fund that was planned to top us up in a couple of years (I’m 56). Almost all in Apple shares, by gum. We put our money where our mouths were and the Gods have smiled.

The beneficiary of our comfortableness has been Warland Farm, so I’ll give you a brief idea of what we’re doing here:
• fenced in most of our twenty acres and planted 15,000 native trees to replace long-lost woodland and to establish firewood coppices (this will also prevent erosion and help reduce flooding in towns downstream).
• established a couple of acres of meadow, orchard and forest garden to feed us (no animals but we might have to eat the squirrels, deer, rabbits, pigeons etc that invade)
• learnt all about bee-keeping and established an apiary (Monica’s new passion, as well as clog dancing).
• set in train plans and permissions to convert the big barn to an apartment and a bunkhouse; and to build another barn to put all the crap out of the big barn into.
• established a semi-pro joinery using no equipment younger than myself; plus a smithy that’s just waiting for its forge to be built.
• ranked up a list of minor building projects including a bakery, brewery, pottery, green wood workshop, japanese bath house (in the woods).
• moving towards conversion from oil-fired heating and cooking and grid electricity to solar power and firewood.
• adopted the canal and cycle path that pass by the meadow and started to improve those.

All of the motive power for these projects comes from porage. The land is too steep for tractors and independence is our style, so we’ve learnt to be efficient with scythe, maul, twibil, side axe, froe, boy and banker: a wondrous collection of odd tools and the ancient crafts they serve. We’ve learnt about timber framing, fencing, woodwork, metalwork, ecological building design, forestry, permaculture, green wood work. This year’s courses include basket-weaving (we are planting Osier), lime mortars and dry-stone walling. The last of these will be based here, perhaps the first of Warland Farm’s rebirth as a centre of culture and craft. Our visions is for all of the skills, from clogging to coppicing to blacksmithing to have a life here and for the farm to once again be an example of a valued centre of hamlet life. I imagine each of the crafts folk gathering in the yard or barn, after their day’s efforts, to eat from the bakery oven and drink the brewery’s tipple, inspiring each other’s skills and sharing folk music and dance. The bunkhouse will have a small performance space and a tiny green room. The barn walls will display art and craft and local history.

Monica is also taking care of her aged parents, in Manchester, and we both have big families to keep in touch with. Tasks we side-stepped by living in Australia. In September, I cycled the Gloucester, Kennet & Avon and Grand Union Canal tow paths over two weeks, staying with friends and relatives every night. It was a great way to check in with a good proportion of the folk we left behind; this lot have all fallen under London’s gravitational pull. Sustrans were one of the first recipients of Lottery funding—£23 million—which they used to set up a national cycle route network. It was a shock, when I returned, to see that there are now more miles of cycle routes than I’ll live to ride along. Just before we left, we were inaugural riders on Sustrans’ first, hand-weeded railway track: about ten miles between Bristol and Bath. I revisited that, too, on the expedition and the trees now meet over the path and it’s hard to see out to the farmland it crosses.

The first year we mowed the meadow, I learnt to carry a huge pile of hay on my back using just a piece of string, looking like a walking haystack. Monica was heard to exclaim, ‘I’m living in a f…ing Breugel!’. Turns out she wasn’t wrong. When we lived in Bristol, before travelling to Australia, we had ‘Hunters in the Snow’ on our chimney-breast, looking at it every day. Dunno where that print went and hadn’t thought about it until it snowed recently. Looking out of the window, I recognised the arrangement of elements in our view that is almost identical to one of my favourite and most familiar artworks. How weird is that? My subconscious must have registered it when I first viewed the place. I’ve managed to convince a few old Warlandians that it was actually painted here; one refuses to believe I was pulling her leg even though her house, on the left, is Victorian. Sorry for the pants picture; now that I’ve registered the coincidence, I’ll get crafting to create a better photo. And I’ll have to leave those trees standing!

I had set aside some dough for a treat, to build a Caterham Seven kit car, but I’ve discovered I’m not that guy any more so I blew it on camera kit: Canon, mainly, but with the desktop bits, too. I really missed my cameras since they were swiped from Edward Street and I hope to get back to taking some photos. This is quite a handsome area, with nicely moody weather so, insh’Allah, I’ll find the inspiration to take the time to get out with the kit. Maybe I’ll shove some up on t’Interweb some time, too. I took a quick look at yours: nice use of colour and grads. Much ‘shopping? I get pretty confused by Photoshop now, all those non-destructive layers, which is sad considering I was once an expert. 

Was out at a concert last night—African Cora and mixed Reggae—great fun in a small venue. When I realised that the place was almost identical in size to my proposed barn venue, I spent most of my time checking out the lighting, acoustics, bar location etc. Kind of fun.

The joinery is still progressing while I get some materials together for fencing. Yesterday, I decided to give the planer/thicknessers working because M wanted a decent piece of wood to make a curtain rod support. Miraculously, the smaller machine was found to have sharp blades and its beds are parallel and true. After a couple of scrap board tests, I found a heavy, dirty piece of something from who knows where and gave that a whirl. It was heavy, about three inches square and a foot long; it revealed itself as a fine lump of rosewood (I think, being no expert). So, it’s too good for Monica’s job.

The other planer—the big Wadkin that will become the best machine—needs sharpening, the beds truing and a feed problem sorting. Still, it put a good finish on a pine test piece.

The other machines are gradually getting fettled and tested. Soon, we should be able to actually make something useful.

Council finally told me the New Barn doesn’t need planning permission as long as it doesn’t interfere with the existing barns. After fencing and drainage, I’ll  be laying the foundations for that, hopefully this year.

Una found this stone staircase while dreaming of moving house. Warland Farm has to have one, don’t you think? 

We settled down for winter with the forest garden mown, limed, manured, composted, marked out and mulched. All of the hundred fruit trees, planted last winter, did well over the summer. Then the weather changed. The plastic mulch took off, the boat sailed around the pigsty on its trailer, the rebel flag was in tatters and the bird table got decapitated! Fortunately, only one fruit tree was physically damaged, though not killed, I hope. After our hasty retreat with the balled-up matting, the garden is a mess of builders’ planks that were useless at holding down the plastic and the grass is starting to grow again.

BUT, after a couple of months building my dream woodwork shop, the weather is on the turn and I’ve just received four big boxes of goodies from Martin Crawford. Last year, it was the easy-to-get stuff; this year we are planting some more unusual fruit that we love. Walnuts in the meadow; mulberries, perry pears and autumn olives out the back. Grapes, peaches and nectarines will join the hops to soak up the heat from our mighty wall. We’ve propagated some lavender, local oak and totally foreign eucalyptus for some specialist tasks. Both hives have survived the winter with ample bees and honey.

Monica was successful in obtaining (possibly one of the last) eWGS grants so that we can bridge between the ancient remnant of Warland Wood and the denuded part that Treesponsibility replanted for us. The latter, I discover, is entirely English Oak so the new plantation will be a buffer of those local Sessiles. The grant also allows us to plant alternative firewood on t’Other Bit, e.g. ghost gums, over the road in case our ash gets infected. The Yogi who came to assess Warland Farm was very keen to support our efforts and smoothed the application through.

We’ve adopted the two nearby stretches of the Rochdale Canal and the Trust, we hope, will assist with materials for improving fences below the meadow. If we do the work ourselves, the grant will help pay for perimeter deer fences and a rabbit fence for the fruit areas.

Today, I set out my list of spring tasks. Much of it is still preparatory and, as yet, I have no real design for the under-storeys but, by the time the meadow is ready to be mown again, the woodlands and orchards will be making their presence and potential obvious.

As a grace note for the year, we’re about to get the OK from Calderdale Council to build a new barn, behind the other two. All eco and habitat-holed, it’ll be where the coppice and orchard produce gets brought and processed into (I hope) valuable goods. Perhaps when I can distribute jams, kirches, hurdles and baskets, the locals will start to see the renewed social value of Warland Farm.

I’ve had an excellent week.

First, I got my sight back. All of it; perfect. I can, again, see every detail of the world from near to far. In the years since I first got spectacles, I and the opticians have ignored my long sight while trying to make reading and computing work better. Mainly to make driving less tiring, I finally asked for a long-sight prescription, with a medium-distance bifocal below. The result is magical and has made me very happy. I sometimes forget that I can see, wincing and frowning at the world, as has become my habit. Then the new specs are remembered and the world is pulled into sharp focus. It’s like I’m seeing the farm for the first time.

Next, the truck has gotten all better. The door locks have been giving me trouble: ghostly forces were locking and unlocking the doors at inopportune moments. Jake, who borrows it to deliver firewood, got locked out with the engine running and had to call a breakdown service. The difficulty, you see, is that there was never a spare key and the one I have is too worn to cut from; plus, I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to insist on getting the key number when I bought it. After a month of ineffective replacement locks and frustration, I called to collect it after being told the fault could not be traced, nor fixed beyond replacing all the locks for hundreds of pounds. I found an older, experienced mechanic in the middle of working on it, not reassembling it as I expected. He had found the problem—a misplaced spring—and needed the evening to fix it. When I called the next day, the problem was gone and he’d discovered enough about the lock to programme a remote control for it. So now I have a second way to get into the cab plus remote control, if I need it, both of which are bonuses beyond the ghosts being driven out of the locks. I love it when thing grow in their usefulness to me.

Thirdly, I did a good job of fixing my workshop floor. No-one else would think this a source of unusual happiness but I could so easily have messed it up. I put the table saw in its designed location and it seemed fine although I knew the floor hadn’t been designed to support a half-ton machine. Then I built a neighbouring mitre saw bed, flat and level, that should have formed an outrigger for the table saw but I discovered that the latter was leaning quite a bit. I sort of expected such a thing and to have to locally strengthen the floor so I slid underneath and banged in some supports. Now, the saw was level but the floor around it had started to bow and buckle in odd places. The pleasing part of this story, for me, is that I didn’t just accept the botch but got back under the uncomfortable, cramped floor for a good look, to discover that four joists had been left almost unsupported. All around the saw, the floor wasn’t held in place and wouldn’t be straightened by adding more piers. Like a tin tray with a heavy weight on it, it had to buckle. In addition, any messing under the floor threatened to bring that heavy, cast-iron machine down upon me if a small failure started a chain reaction. So, I amazed myself by rigging up the engine hoist once more, getting the saw onto some wheels and out of the danger zone, and assessing the true nature of the floor’s problems. I was rewarded by the floor returning to being flat and true. All I had to do was spend three days crawling in and out, carefully measuring the height of the joists and slope of the floor at each station missing a stump then accurately cutting and then fixing the supports in place. No fun and nothing to see for my efforts but the floor is still flat and true while losing all of its prior bounce. Anyone with an ounce of nouse would have done exactly this but, for me, this was a much better outcome than I would normally accept.

So I’m happy, even though I’m now getting a cold. I’m now going to rouse the fire and soothe my throat with more of Monica’s damson gin. Simple happiness.

I am celbrating the successful installation of 3 phase power in my shed! All the old machines started up and run smoothly though the lights dim a bit when the saw or planer start up. An ammeter is on order.

Pictures are of: super cable routing behind pattress; lathe in front of 3 phase box, new 240V box and big switch for converter; morticer and multi-function machine in front of half-finished wall panelling; band saw and pull saw along insulated, panelled wall (somehow, the big table saw is hiding behind the wheeled bench at the far end); planer in front of new corner office with stove peeping out. 

After weeks building walls so that the cables have somewhere to live, then another week switching out the old electrics and installing new, I had my fingers crossed when I fired up the converter for the first time. It has been sitting on the floor for more than a year and I had no idea how noisy it would be. No worries; it’s nearly silent. Then each of the machines had to be tested and almost all of those haven’t been switched on for at least a year. In fact, as I had only seen one of them working, it could have been a bit of a disaster. However, quality shows and, after only a couple of phase-swaps, each machine runs correctly and passes the coin-on-edge test for smoothness. The newer multi-function machine’s perishing plastic switches need replacing but it’s saw, planer/thicknesser/morticer and spindle moulder motors all work. The pull-saw, unbraked, is still slowing down and I’ve been in the house for an hour.

Now I need to persuade Monica that her odd jobs warrant the purchase of tooling. I think the moulding cutters will be easy because Kevin’s house needs loads of beading and skirting; it’s all very expensive to buy ready-made.

All of the machines will get a service and a true-up. Most will benefit from extended tables. The greatest novelty for me will be the two planer/thicknessers. As an inveterate recycler, I love the idea of milling pallets into cabinet timber (at least for workshop cabinets, though some from Kevin’s heavy engineering works contain quite stout, exotic timbers). I also have a sizeable pile of 100-year-old Baltic 12 x 1 x 12 foot pine floorboards from the hay loft; I hope a few don’t explode into dust on contact with the spinning blades. I have a decent bandsaw that will resaw or plank bigger stuff and I have some cherry logs to work with, if I can make a carriage to present them to the blade.

So, the shop has heat, water, light, power and machines. Oh, joy. And all just in time for me to switch to outdoor work, with tree-planting and fencing starting this week. I just hope we get a good few wet days when I have to find something to do in the shed.

Actually, I’ve a feeling in me bones that this spring and summer will be superb. If they are, nine thousand trees, planted two seasons ago, should start looking rather spectacular. That will make me very happy.

Monica and her youngest sister, Una, agreed to have another weekend away. Bath was meant to be the regular destination but Una tried to substitute Marrakech or Prague. I complained about the carbon footprint so now they’re carbon-booting me off the farm while they hide here! Can’t blame them, really.

Here are some pictures to illustrate how my world looks at the moment. The trees and flowers at Hebden Bridge show that Spring is well under way, at last. I’m very glad to have the stress of the planting season behind me and have moved on to tidying the barns before starting the serious work of designing buildings.

Plants haven’t left my mind, as you can see from the seed tray and plant pots. In the former, I finally sowed the Eucalyptus seeds that I bought before I met Treesponsibility. They put me off planting such exotics but I think I can forgive myself a small stand for the timber and the memories they will engender. That’s what the settlers in Van Diemens Land thought, though. In the plant pots: seventy Bocking 14 comfrey. A newcomer to the Incredible Edible fold, Adam, wants to grow tea flavourings at Warland Farm and these are a contribution to establishing his garden. He will be cultivating around the aqueduct and these will be above him, processing the runoff from a few neighbours’ septic tanks.

The soil stamper worked moderately well even though I was using a fibrous, peaty compost that argued with the machine. I need to get it’s bigger brother to create the soil blocks to drop the seedlings into. Oh, and a greenhouse! These seeds are up under the Shippen skylights, in the supplies store, where the heat pools, but that’s not ideal for daily inspection. Then again, I do pop up there for a bag of nails or somesuch quite regularly. Perhaps a new architectural pattern?

The last photo is the most significant, for me. I broke one of my cardinal rules of house-buying with this place: I could find nowhere to sling my hammock. Until yesterday. I promise it isn’t loafing but for the health of my spine and my mind. Monica seems to understand, anyway. You’ll observe that I’m still wearing my wedding beard and that my mop is similarly untrained since March.

Martin Crawford has my order for next season’s plants so I must fit marking out and mulching of the FG into my days. Monica is helping to clear some brash, snedding the branches into useable poles. I thought it too physical for her but it clears her mind of family concerns. Her father is undermining all the care and services that she has arranged to help him, driving her to almost hand him back to the other siblings. As a last effort, she’s spending a week, from today, in Manchester to coach him and, hopefully, he’ll see that his life and Mammy’s will be a lot better if he sets aside his pride, prejudices or whatever else motivates him.

Monica proudly refused a new bee swarm yesterday after discovering the queen was here on a Kiwi visa. A shame that many bee keepers seem not to care about the spread of disease. A shame my Eucalypts won’t be pollinated by experts, though.

We had guests here for a couple of nights: neighbours from Tennyson. They were jolly and kind but reminded us that we were not living there among kindred spirits. Robert and Juddy are retired, senior health professionals who know all the right people, have a huge country property and politely questioned all of our green values. The news from the beach continues to illustrate poor neighbour behaviour so we weren’t made very homesick by their visit.

We’re contemplating a tour of friends around London to give him a chance to meet for a chat. Might we stay at Tony’s for a night or two in, say, late June? I’d be happy to sleep on a couch. I’d love for Monica and Eileen to meet.

We used to have “Guilt-Free Saturdays” as a way to stop Monica from freaking out about house-work and such. This clumsy designation has now been changed and I’ve declared today a Snow Day even though the sun is promising to burn anyone it can reach. It’s rock-climbing for cousin Chris and myself, or some similarly dangerous pastime that stupidly endangers our future plans. Hey ho.

I love Bristol, so does Monica. We lived there for eight years and, when we sold our Bristol house to free up cash for Australia, we squeezed out a deposit on a flat in Clifton. Now and again, we get to stay there between tenants and always feel like there’s an energy-flow in that city that we’re missing. If and when the farm gets too much for us, we’ll be moving in ourselves.

Just back from our adventure. Cousin Debbie first, then a night in the campervan outside a favourite pub on top of the moors,  then down again to see Lizzy. She and Lee are fine and enjoying their new house; the boys were great fun. Not much news though, apart from the move to Spennymoor. Oh yes, next year Lizzy will get some training for a new role at work and probably a bit of a promotion. Lee is an ardent Manchester United fan and Monica has access to her sister’s season tickets so they were friends from the off.

Making stuff is wonderful. Isn’t it amazing that the vast majority are happy to buy, rather than doing their own design and getting their hands all gluey. In our barn loft, we each have a rough, twelve-foot bench for crafty projects. Monica’s currently has bits and pieces for her brother’s house. Mine has old tools waiting to be renovated and some leather-work projects that need attention.

Have you heard of Sugru? It’ great for modding and making. It sticks and stays stuck and lasts forever; and it has a nice warm, firm feel when set. I’m thinking of getting Rowan a big pack so that she can mould better handles to her own needs. http://sugru.com

Wood is my material of choice and I’m looking forward to making a complete house of it: from great big beams of green oak to textured panels of twigs and bark. Any old rubbish is my second favourite and I hardly ever buy new materials. Perhaps when the blacksmiths forge is up and running, I’ll get a happier relationship with metals; for now, I keep the nasty, dirty stuff in a separate shop.

As the barn design forms in my mind, I’m understanding that we have some great spaces and places for art. A mobile hanging from the barn roof; a high wall for the rag tapestry I always wanted to make; a massive stone fireplace to decorate. We’ll really need a few artist and makers to visit! Oh, and there’s the whole front field to fill with sculpture while Monica’s not looking.

We’re off to see Lizzy next weekend after inviting ourselves when in Canterbury. She has an interesting domestic situation, living with her husband’s mother and his disabled sibling, so it’ll be good to get a mental picture of her life to look at while conversing. It turned out that I have a long-lost cousin, from my mam’s stock, living only a few miles from Lizzy, so we’re having a North-Eastern weekend. Neither have spare rooms but we’ve borrowed another cousin’s camper-van and we’ll drive up into the Dales to wake up to a view. Probably less comfortable than the proffered air beds but we’ll always choose the adventurous option. That habit has got us into some scrapes!

Monica has been siphoning her country wines off their lees today. A new hobby that emerged with the glut of fruit in the local hedgerows and fields this autumn. I’m very pleased that she has taken to this because the gardens I’m planting have the potential to feed dozens and we’ll need a way to use up the bounty. There will be lots of jam in future Christmas parcels!

I’m working on three fronts: settling down the gardens for the winter; getting my wood workshop up and running; and creating 3d models on my computer so that we can visualise the barn conversion. Attached is an x-ray view of what we’re starting with. You can see the arched, barn doors with the threshing floor between and the stables with the hayloft above. Then there’s the latest model including a four-bedroom bunkhouse, a three bedroom luxury apartment, a performance space and a completely new barn, behind, to swallow all the rubbish I have to shift to get at the big barn. It’s complex so don’t worry if you can’t get any of that from the screen shot. That model was created to try out everything for size; now I have to make the models that will allow working plans to be taken off. When they’re at a reasonable stage, I’ll create an animated walkthrough that may give you a better idea.

Of course, if one or both of us is incapacitated by e.g. dropping an oak beam on our foot, the whole affair will grind to a halt. But then, it’s the adventure we’re after. If we pull this off, though, I really look forward to inviting great hoardes of family and friends to stay in Warland Mickle Barn.