Since last year a lot has changed.

Dan and I said goodbye to our rented terrace house in March this year to move into our farmhouse. It’s a huge project as the house was not a home at all. It took a team of us to get the house clean enough to start decorating, then once we’d got our essential rooms done, we moved in.

We currently have our bedroom, our snug, the guest bedroom and we’ve given the bathroom a spruce up to get us through the next few years. We’re using the property’s existing kitchen but have just put the deposit down on a new kitchen which will be fitted into where the current large utility room is.

We are both putting money away every month to pay for these projects but something I couldn’t wait to work on was the garden.

It was such a large unused space, laid mostly to lawn but with a patio area and brick built barbeque. I am sure over the next few years the garden will change even more but I’m so happy with the changes we’ve already made:

• We have removed and reused the picket fence from the top of the garden to the bottom of the garden to separate the lawn from where I wanted my kitchen garden.
• We’ve stripped down and rebuilt the wooden rear porch. A clematis had become rooted within the wooden planks and damp had seeped in.
• We’ve taken out the old pond and created a rustic strawberry patch with flower bed towards the back.
• We’ve recycled my friend’s fabric greenhouse and created a large allotment patch to grow fruits and vegetables in.
• We’ve cut down two thirds of the ancient apple tree as it’s started to go rotten. We will still have a large crop of bramley apples for the next few years but I imagine that the tree will eventually need to come down for safety reasons.
• We’ve painted the rear of the house cream, as it had become discoloured and was a dark yellow when we first moved in.

By the end of next year I’d love to have the garden fencing all finished, along with a large glass greenhouse in place ready for next Spring. I also want to build large raised beds around the edge of the kitchen garden and plant a plum and cherry tree. We are currently growing carrots, raspberries, blackcurrants, rhubarb, garlic, mangetout peas, sugar snap peas, 3 different tomato varieties, onions, leeks, dwarf French beans, rubber beans, potatoes, corn, peppers, spinach, basil, mustard leaves and melons. Just a few things which we will need to harvest and freeze for use throughout the winter!

Speaking of winter, we also want to have the stables in place which will be a lot of work stripping back dead trees and flattening the earth underneath. We have 2 stable blocks each with 2 12 x 12 stables in and both Hartley and his buddy Lenny are currently living out 24/7. It’s incredible having the boys at home and I often work with Hartley now later in the evening to ensure I can fit everything in.

Once the kitchen is in I will stop with any house renovations over the winter and just focus on keeping on top of the house as it is. We have a living room to renovate with the original open fireplace still present – something I am so excited we get to use! I also want to decorate the porch and dining room, along with the stairs, hallway and landing but that is a big job.

I’m going to keep posting my updates but now everyone is up to date I’d love to hear your thoughts! I’m sharing daily updates of our progress over on my Instagram page (@abiidowdy) so head over to follow what we get up to.

Thanks for reading.