Romantic Reverie and Reality

As autumn is swiftly crushed in winter’s icy grasp and I am secure in the protection of our new home, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on life in the barn so far.  There are many aspects to share about this new way of life, not to mention how we got here, but more of that to come in later posts.    Right now the barn is talking to me, so that’s where I’ll begin.

Up on a hill and parallel to a brook, our barn overlooks the rolling hills and valleys that lead to Powys Castle.  Over 100 years old with a slate roof and timber frame half of our home is built of 2ft thick stone walls and half of timber cladding.  Inside, all the rooms have exposed beams, rafters or purlins.  That’s a lot of wood.  Wooden beams are alive, they shift, expand and contract conversing with you through creaks that denote a change in temperature or the force of the wind.  They have character; some are straight and true whilst others stoically bear the weight of the building scarred by the marks of time, knots, crevices, wounds from an historic battle with interloping beetles.  They also have cobwebs.  So many in fact that it is almost impossible to keep up with removal.  Needless to say, where there is a big cobweb there is a big spider but I can honestly say that in comparison with other uninvited guests, the spiders don’t bother me at all. 

Back in my romantic reverie; we welcome an array of beautiful birds feeding and flying around the garden every day.  Blue tits and great tits visit the windowsills and gently tap their presence on the glass, occasionally sitting on the door handles to peer into the barn, curiosity getting the better of the dainty little fellows.  They are often accompanied on the feeders by the greater spotted woodpecker or the jay, whilst the robin, pheasants and wren forage below.  At night the owl hoots a textbook ‘twit-twoo’ as its companion practices its calls with a juvenile voice breaking version that invariably makes us smile.   At dawn and dusk the rabbits bound about the track, flashes of fluffy white bottoms and tails bobbing through the grass. The sheep amble their way around the boundary, incessantly trimming the grass in the fields whilst occasionally observing the activity in the garden and the barn.  Sheep it seems are surprisingly nosy as well as unsurprisingly stupid; they stare directly into the barn windows showing signs of intelligence that are dispelled when they run directly ahead of the car for 100 yards rather than stepping aside.  Almost every day ladybirds are gently collected and released from the bedroom window and I answer the call of the butterfly as it flickers its wings on the windowpane.   Some visitors are not so quickly released, one tiny blue tit ventured into the bedroom where he remained all morning and much of the afternoon, nestling in the apex window and occasionally flying amongst the rafters as if housed in a private aviary.  From its perch on the open window, a companion considered joining him until I shooed it away with a waft of my hand.  My patience was eventually rewarded when the first little chap left (with surprisingly few parting gifts) through the window he had arrived in.  Other invaders have not been so cute.

Within days of moving in we realised that the wasp problem extended beyond the workshop opposite the barn. Lying in bed we could hear persistent buzzing somewhere above our heads – it was OK though because they weren’t able to get in.  Simon, our pest controller, couldn’t make it for a few days and so we resigned ourselves to listening to the growing hum and the noisy nightly masticating in the nest – until the morning that an extremely large wasp dropped from the ceiling and into the bed.  The mattress was swiftly dragged to the floor of the next room where we spent the following few nights until the coast was clear.  It transpired that we had eight nests in and around the barn.  How smug we felt after one visit from Simon - pest problem done and dusted.  If only we knew.

What we should have been doing over the summer was inspecting around external pipes and cables, checking cobwebs for signs of activity and observing how many holes we could see in these areas that were big enough to poke a Bic pen into.  Being new to this country life we didn’t have a clue.  As September came to an end and the brief autumn weather drew in, a new companion joined us in the bedroom.  Nestling in nocturnal bliss, the mouse alerted us to its presence in the wall by gnawing and nibbling at the insulation with rustles and scratches loud enough to wake the dead.   And so, the war began. 

To be continued….