Lets spare a thought for the Pump Out man.

Lets spare a thought for the Pump Out man,

a thankless task emptying out another man's 'can'.

He'll put on rubber gloves and the wellies too,

just to remove the things that you and yours do.

Along the lane he trundles in his tanker so small,

emptying every body's septic tanks or their cesspool.

It's a lonely job and not the place to be..

especially in a heat wave at 36 degrees C!

They toil all day rolling out their pipes and kit...

It has very little kudos pumping out another person's...

pit.

You'd have to enjoy it or it'd be a bummer of a rap...

Peering deep into the tank to look at your fellow man's....

trap.

It's hard to impress the girls when going out on a date,

if you tell her "I'll pick you up at 7 in my tanker mate!"

Ostracised by one and all, they even reject your money at the bank,

You know it's bad when the Fishmonger says "Cor blimey he stank!"

So spare a thought for the Pump Out man,

for removing tons of feculence is not grand.

But it is a noble job which someone has to do

and thanks be to God that it's him and not you!

M.Thomas

Our pump out guy came last week, he is often seen passing by in his bright blue tractor with matching tank being towed behind. More often than not his wife is riding 'shot gun' in the cab with him, true love runs deep (about 6' deep actually). I am truly staggered at just how much 'stuff' is processed by our tiny septic tank. It is a very old structure, could easily be 100 years old. Brick built it is just 6' deep and at best 3' square with all our waste entering through one pipe at the top where the solids drop to the bottom. On the opposite side there is one pipe exiting the pit. It's job is to take the liquids away to an area to soak into the ground (in a neighbours garden!).

Well in that year I have had hundreds of nights with B&B guests all busy flushing, showering, washing etc. I and ours all doing the same, the holiday cottage occupants too. On any one change over day my washing machine is normally running for at least 8 hours constantly. Absolutely hundreds of washes go through in the year. On top of that all of the rain water running of the back roof of the main house and the whole of the east wing also runs into the tank. So I think it is quite astonishing that this tiny tank can process that volume. My pump out man was very impressed and said that I "Had a lovely crust formed on the top of my solids".  I'm so proud.

Summer is here and things are growing fast and furious. We picked several pounds of Blackcurrents the other day and have made some lovely jam from it which the guests are already eating up.
The Raspberries are good and the Loganberries prolific so more jam urgently needs to be made there.

We spent several hours picking Gooseberries down the allotment too, it seemed to take for ever. Tub after tub of the things. We spent the evenings watching TV whilst we topped and tailed them. We have still not finished the job and so ave not weighed them all yet but we reckon there's between 24 to 28lbs of them.

Picking, freezing, picking, preserving, picking, jam making, picking, eating, picking......

Did I ever mention that I left work to get away from the drudgery of it all?





The Redcurrents look like they're next and all the time the Rhubarb keeps cropping so we pick it and freeze it for crumbles for our guests in November / December.

I have a small field of New potatoes which I need to start digging and I have about a hundred Onions which look like they are just about ready to harvest.




The Brassicas are in eventually and as you can see my little trolley was very useful in getting them down to the allotment.

I think of my little trolley much like Lieutenant Hubert Gruber from "'Allo'Allo" thought of his little tank with much affection and pride, but not in such a gay way.

Now we are seriously starting to harvest what I sowed and time as usual is of the essence.  Here the Broad Beans are just at the point that I like them most, slightly under mature and able to be eaten raw.








I really don't like fully grown Broad Beans but these are delicious and I can't eat enough of them.









Now cast your mind back to September 2012 and this was the allotment plot which I had inherited...

And from the same view point you can now see a bed of 300 onions ready to be pulled....

 

I have to admit that I'm pretty chuffed with myself now I look back at the progress made. Despite the full on business, the renovations to The Old Bakery and even squeezing in a few holidays my 'patch' has actually done quite well. 

So here are a few photos to show what I have replaced the weed infested plot with....

A small field of both 'New' Potatoes (Kestrel and Casablanca) and main crop (Desiree and King Edwards), all staggered to give me different cropping times, hopefully taking me right through to January as they did last year. This is handy as I use these in all the guests meals right up to Christmas.

Kestrel New Pots,  Mmmmmm!

I had some nice carrots & Parsnips last year, but not many because the weeds over took them both. This year I worked really hard to minimise the weeds and so far it is looking promising.

I'm hoping that this Sweet Corn is productive too, I have doubled the plants this year because I so enjoyed the taste of last years crop. It has been bone dry with hardly any rain and I have been using plenty of my stored water to get all of the young plants going.

A large patch of assorted squashes, Black Beauty Courgettes, Patty Pans, De Nice a fruit rond and Yellow Scallop are in there somewhere. I have also planted A LOT of Pumpkins which I may sell on my garden wall again like last year (depending on the success of the crop of course). Oh and I'll make my favourite Pumpkin soup too.

A great crop of Blackcurrants, many of which are really large the biggest being as wide as my thumb nail.....

Mmm, perhaps I need a manicure.

And Next up are the Redcurrants which are also prolific and pretty large too.

We have had pounds of Strawberries and at least 10lb of Loganberries from the garden along with something similar in weight in Raspberries from both the garden and the allotment. There are about 30 Runner Beans growing plus Berlotti Beans, a whole row of Autumn Raspberries, yet to crop and a good hundred Leeks in their early stages. I have even planted some Sweet Potatoes but I'm not too convinced that we'll see much happen there.

So all in all looking quite promising, just need that Summer rain now.

An update on the fedge... Well as the photo above shows all my canes seem to have taken and with the Mock Orange pouring over the arch the room has really come together now. We even had a little girl go in their (from the cottage) so mum would read her bedtime story in there.

It is Poppy season again and there are a few fields out there just blushing with poppies. They look spectacular and I just can't resist taking more photos of them.

Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar. Alexis Ohanian

You know that when the holiday postcard from your dear family member/ friend doesn't come through the letter box but into your inbox or onto your phone that the ways that we are communicating are changing. When even 'creaky old back-packing travelers' start to embrace different forms of social media then the times they really are a-changing (to paraphrase Bob).

And so it must be with our businesses: The Old Bakery enterprises which include The Bakehouse holiday cottage; the preserves division and the photography retail section; Gladstone Coaching - training, coaching and mentoring and linking in with The Old Bakery enterprises - Starting a B&B course and coaching retreats; and now Norfolk Patch - patchwork lessons, workshops and talks across Norfolk and quilt retreats in The Old Bakery.

Having just reduced my time with the NHS to 4 long days a week, I now have Fridays to devote to the administration and marketing of our various enterprises. I've drawn up a spreadsheet to make sure that we are organised about how we will start to use social media appropriately and regularly to increase our presence in the wider world.

We'll wait and see what impact these have but this is where you'll currently find us.

Facebook: You can find The Old Bakery and Norfolk Patch on Facebook. We mainly post photos of the B&B, the garden and the local wildlife and pictures of my quilts on Norfolk Patch. 

Twitter: We tweet at @gladstonecoaching and @norfolkpatch. Finding something to tweet about once a week is a big challenge but I'm reliably informed that we should be tweeting 4 or 5 times a day to make it worthwhile. Who knows if we'll even manage one a day and whether it will make a difference. We'll report back!

Pintrest: In case you've not come across Pintrest it is just up my street. A chance to create online photo boards that you can share with others and pin new photos that you come across onto the boards that you create. I have one in my name which is also known as Norfolk Patch - along with quilt boards, coaching quotes and various recipe boards I also have one for all things cauliflower (the wonder veg we are eating in place of rice, potatoes and anything else that is laden with calories - cauliflower wine anyone?)

LinkedIn: The professional job and networking site (the business equivalent to Facebook where you can post you CV). You'll find me here too - not that anyone has offered me a job yet!

Blogs: This blog is not one we share with our guests; although we are careful to make sure we don't talk about our guests on here in case they come across it inadvertently. I've started a blog to promote Norfolk Patch; you can read about it here: http://norfolkpatch.wordpress.com/

The next task will be to start again with my Gladstone Coaching blog - I did a few when I first left HSBC but this needs to be done regularly to be of any worth. Stuff on management, leadership, coaching etc - well I'll enjoy it and there are a few out there like me that may read it. More importantly it will enable me to provide helpful information and show what I know and that may drive business.

Wherever all this tweeting, pining and blogging takes us we need to be mindful that ...

"Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say."

(Steven Levitt)

The return of the Creaky Old Backpackers.

Where have we been you may ask. Well the short answer is Scotland, busy with guests, down the allotment, Jam making, cottage maintenance and gardening.

SCOTLAND

Firstly we took a ten day jaunt up to the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. With just a rucksack each we flew to Edinburgh then wandered through Scotland by train ferries and buses. We got full on sunshine and at times drenched by rain but we had a really great time and plan to do something similar next year in Europe. Having traveled around on so many holidays by car it was, for us, a really interesting exercise in packing the bare minimum especially knowing that we could expect a huge mix of weather. We did seriously discuss the possibility of posting our dirty underwear home but as the temperature back home was in the high twentys we thought that they might hum a little by the time we got back. We also considered what if they went missing but decided we wouldn't report it, just too embarrassing, so there would be the same stinky package sitting in some poor guys office for the next 3 years.

Anyway just to make all our friends absolutely sick of us and our bloody blogs we created a new one purely as an extended 'postcard' of our trip. So if you wished you may view it here...  "The Creaky Old Backpackers".


 FYI the card actually starts at the very bottom of the page that you are signed into and then progresses up the page.


At the end of the holiday I was concerned that Alison seemed to have gone native in the ways of the Scots...

BUSINESS

 We have been very, very busy and so far this year between the bookings that have already stayed and those that have booked to do so we have already matched the Total amount of  bookings achieved last year and it is only early June!Our Tripadvisor reviews have reached 45 all of which are excellent. Consequently we are proud to have received a Certificate of Excellence award for 2014.

THE ALLOTMENT

This always plays second fiddle to the B&B and Cottage work and so I often get behind with it making it all the harder to play catch up when I do get some time down there. That said we have been serving The Old Bakery Strawberries in our fruit salad for several weeks now and we have served our beautifully tender Broad beans to our guests that had an evening meal here Oh and served them our classic Rhubarb & Orange crumble made with freshly picked rhubarb. The New Potatoes have also started to be harvested.
Last year we lost all of our Gooseberries to the pigeons, currents to the sparrows and Blackbirds and the Cabbage Whites even managed to squeeze through our netting and decimate the brassicas. So this year Alison joined me to erect several fruit and veg cages.

Rather than messing around with makeshift 'cane' or 'pipe' tunnels I decided to invest in some metal cages which have a long life.
As I write this I am pretty much on top of the weeding, but a little bit of sunshine and rain and I'll have my work cut out for me. We have had practically no rain for several weeks and I am relying on the 2,000 litres of stored rain water that I had collected over the winter months. The long days have afforded me the opportunity to be hoeing as late as 9:30pm which is why I am not too far behind.

The allotment is just too far to pop down to and back quickly unless I cycle so it has been a chore to move plants and stuff down there up until now. Sad as I am I asked for a small trolley for my birthday (thanks mum, dad, and mum & dad in-law) and so now I can move bulk quantities of things in my truck, all I need now is a Yorkie chocolate bar.

JAM MAKING and PRESERVING.

Well the season is still in it's early days but we have made about 30 jars of Strawberry jam which is selling fast. we have also frozen over 7lbs of Rhubarb securing the raw ingredient for our most popular winter dessert, the aforementioned Rhubarb & Orange crumble. The Gooseberries look almost ready to harvest and so that will be our next job.

THE COTTAGE 

Being well over 200 years old naturally the fabric of this building requires a lot of TLC and so it is a constant battle to keep the old girl in a fit condition. There is rising damp, a little woodworm and some movement but nothing too severe yet but that's enough about Alison! The tiles in the Self catering cottage's shower are slowly easing themselves off the wall and whilst I have made a temporary fix to get us through the season I can see that this will be a winters task (unless they fall off any sooner!).
However the general condition of our cottage is still excellent and we have just been graded by the Visit England tourist agency and once again achieved a 4 STAR rating.

 THE GARDEN

 

 

Many comments about my 'Fedge' and 'Stumpery' most impressed, a lot want to create one in their garden and a handful just think I'm nuts. "Why an earth do you put the stumps upside down?" "But what does it mean?" Or simply an incredulous "Why?" That's all fine because we have already had one small child stay who loved having stories read to her whilst she sat on the bench in the stumpery. We add a little 'magic' to the area by hanging some Ikea lanterns from the walls and the arch. The lanterns have been pimped by my sister in law, Helen who gave me lots of stained glass replacement windows for the lanterns and they really make the area magical.

Once again we have had lots of birds nesting in the garden with fledgling Blackbirds, Goldfinches and Blue Tits. The Blackbirds and Tits both had two broods and sadly I have had to lock our cat in on several occasions because the fledglings were out and vulnerable. One of the Goldfinch fledglings even entertained my guests at breakfast by clinging onto the wooden french windows for about 5 minutes, very odd.

The blackbird had 2 chicks in the first brood and 5 in the second! It was comical seeing them all squeezed into the nest. It looked like a group of old ladies crammed in on the top deck of a bus on a shopping trip. The Mother Blackbird has been a real nuisance continually making it's warning call, really irritating. My Dutch guests got so sick of it that they tried to download a Hawks call to see if it could be scared off, but sadly to no avail.

The breeding season is a good time of year for spotting some of our more hidden birds as they have to get out and feed their young. For the last few weeks Alison has seen a Barn Owl just down the road as she drives to work and so she suggested I take my camera down there.
I only really had one opportunity this week because I had breakfasts on most days to cook, so I jumped on my bike at 7:45am and cycled down the road to the farm.

I stopped a fair distance away and eventually I saw a Barn Owl enter a barn then I cycled down and waited. When it appeared I followed it and then found a good spot to wait for it's return trip.
The subsequent photos are my best ever of a Barn Owl and so I feel compelled to show them right here....

The Owl's chicks are at the back of this Barn and after a quick shake she headed off for more food...

I followed her (or him) and then waited for it to return.

Then silently it came straight towards me following the route of the road with a mouse firmly held in it's talons.

And nearer...

And so close that my zoom lens struggled to focus on it.

The poor mouse swinging helplessly below it.

Then resting for a moment with the mouse held under it's left foot befor disapearing into the barn to feed the chicks.

AND FINALLY....

Why Dorothy shouldn't let the 'Tin Man' use a Scot Rail toilet.

 Talk about being stuck on the loo all day!

Freshly baked bread made the traditional way is back once more in The Old Bakery and though we say so ourselves it tastes damn good!

With so much to do each day I have been reluctant to make bread as well. However that doesn't mean that I didn't want to make it regularly at some point in the future. Well that time has arrived and I am now producing all of our own bread needs from scratch in our ovens.

One of the things that I wanted to achieve was bread hand made using quality local ingredients.I also really enjoy the whole process of bread making, something that I was trained to do nearly 30 years ago. I still get a buzz when I open the oven to see the finished product.

I go and get my flour directly from the watermill that grinds it at Leatheringset near Holt. I make a  white loaf and a Granary loaf. My favourite of the two is the granary which I have elected to make using just granary flour and not to mix it with white flour as is the trend nowadays. This means it is slightly more dense but the flavour is far more superior in that it is really malty to the taste.


I have to say one of the real pleasures of this job is having the ability to go and get many of our ingredients directly from the people that produce them. This involves a drive around the beautiful back lanes of North Norfolk touring the countryside seeking out the best that Norfolk can offer.


KIPPERS
I'll leave the house on a sunny morning and head straight up to our nearest coastal village, Cley. The 'ey' is pronounced as in 'eye' and calling it Clay is an instant way to spot a foreigner round these parts.

In Cley there is a small family run Smokery called Cley Smokehouse but it does a great range of smoked product including old traditionals like Bloaters, Bucklings and Red Herrings through to Prawns, Cod Roes, Gravlax and a Hot smoked Barbary Duck breast. This is the first of our local food heroes and my regular order here is several pairs of their un-dyed kippers cold smoked over oak.

We do smoke some food (both hot & cold smoked) at The Old Bakery, our favourite being our Hot Smoked Salmon, also over Oak sawdust. However I would not dream to be able to match the Cley Kippers. I have them most days and as part of a diet they have helped me lose just over two stone! I plan to write a book on this diet called "How to get Chipper, Fitter and Ripper with a KIPPER".

They are really good value as well. AND you can buy most of their stuff on line! So even the 'townies' can get some.




 From Cley I drive back inland to a small village just outside of Holt where I buy my.....



FLOUR

This I purchase from the watermill that actually grinds it at a place called Letheringsett. Whilst the existing building was built in 1802, after a fire, there is a record of a watermill here in the Doomsday book. Once again we are blessed not only with a working mill but one that produces a wide range of flours and is especially well known for it's Spelt flour.

I buy my Whole Grain flour and my Strong White Bread flour from here and have just started buying their Muesli after an extensive period of research (Alison had a bowl and liked it!).

It is a real 'no frills' mill. To qualify that comment a bit I would say that it is a huge building originally with the ability to have four mill stones grinding at once but despite that grandeur the carpark is simply it's working yard and the tours are pretty low key as is the shop itself.

The other day when I arrived as I walked towards the mill's entrance I had to wait just outside the door as a mother duck and her ducklings came waddling out of the dark mill to enjoy the days sunshine. Very rural.









Back into the car and a short drive to the town of Holt for our......


GREAT SNORING QUAIL EGGS

They, the eggs, do not snore. Nor do the Quails from which they oose, and they certainly do not snore greatly. The Great Snoring Quail Eggs are named so because 'Great Snoring' is the name of the village where Top Farm is based which produces the eggs.

That clarified I have to say that I don't actually buy these from the farm but from the department store in the town of Holt. It is just as easy and they have only traveled about 9 miles to get there.
We use the Great Snoring Quail eggs to create The Old Bakery's 'signature' dish which is an English muffin with a Portobello mushroom on top filled with a tomato & basil brushetta which has 3 soft boiled Great Snoring quail eggs nestling within. Yes it is quite yummy but really tricky to get the eggs just on the cusp of runniness.

CROISSANTS

The department store is called Baker's and Larners and if ever you visit Holt you must make a point of exploring the store. Whilst there I buy their frozen pastry croissants which we bake-off every morning for the guests.


MRS' TEMPLES BINHAM BLUE CHEESE

The last item that I routinely buy here is Binham Blue cheese. A semi-soft creamy blue veined cheese full of flavour and a highly respected cheese in this area, vastly out selling other blue cheeses.
It is made in a village called Wighton by an actual Mrs Temple. The milk comes from her herd of Brown Swiss cattle.

We use this in our menu as a choice with scrambled egg on our home made toasted bread . It is my favourite breakfast from all that we serve.


Now I can start moving towards home again, so back into the car and a little like a scene fom Postman Pat you'll see me driving down some more narrow Norfolk lanes as I head to Grange Farm to buy our.......


YOGURTS & ICE CREAMS

From the outsiders eyes Grange farm in the middle of a collection of fields might look like the Grundy's old place in the Archers but that would be so unfair. It is very much a working farm and has the muck splashed around the yard to prove its credentials as such.

I've turned up and seen a dozen or so rabbits 'hanging' from a couple of broom handles which have been balanced horizontally over the backs of a couple of kitchen dining chairs just inside the almighty old flint barn.
The place is old and showing signs of being a little tired but in a couple of the out buildings sits a manufacturing dairy as pristine as any that you will find on any anonymous industrial estate.

Their yogurts are fantastic made with milk from their own herd of cows of course. We only buy the full fat yogurts as our philosophy is that you are probably only staying with us for a few nights so the pleasure gained from two or three full fat yoghurts outbalances any guilt caused.

The Ice creams are used on our evening meal menu and are just as bad for you.... Thank God!


I possess a chiller in my car that plugs into the car's power outlet because as you can see the 'round' is quite an extensive one which I only do once a week or perhaps a week and a half. Having said a long goodbye to their farm dog I head up the track and back into the lanes to the village of Melton Constable where we buy........


SAUSAGES

We took sometime when we first moved here to seek out the best supplier of each of the ingredients that we used and Rutlands Butchers were,and still are, the best sausage producer in the area (in our opinion). With a range of over 40 sausages all made on the premises we are spoilt for choice. However to give our breakfasts a slightly unusual but extremely tasty sausage we generally buy either their Smokey Joe's or Honey Glazed Gammon sausages.

We also buy our Haggis from them as they produce an excellent product which is on our evening meal menu. Delia Smith serves them in her Norwich restaurant on Burn's Night and they also export them to Scotland! All our guests really rate the Haggis and this is one of my favourite evening meals.

It is a real family butchers with Mum, Dad and their four adult siblings who equally give the best service in the country. If I had known about them in the past I would have arranged field trips from my Supermarkets for staff to learn what excellent service really is!





 I may make a slight detour here to Briston the neighbouring village if we have guests who are having an evening meal and have chosen....



CROMER CRAB

These are the sweetest of crabs and we buy them direct from the fishermen who have caught them early that morning (depending on tides). The company is called Norfolk-C-Larder and are another of our local food heroes that have great 'green' credentials.


We also sometimes treat ourselves to one of their lobsters to bung on the BBQ as they are the cheapest when bought straight from the fisherman!



I'm on the home run now, just two miles to home but with one more stop on the edge of our village where I buy the.....


EGGS

Talk about free range, you can see the chickens right across the road in the meadow. Martin's Farm is one of four farms which have the Farmhouses right in the village itself. The eggs are extremely fresh and we tend to buy a little but often so that the yokes are a deep bright yellow.

We buy them from a small...   very small shed where they also have a fridge/freezer with rare breed sausages, chickens, and bacon in plus fresh milk. On other shelves in the shed you can buy seasonal vegetables, it is a very busy little shed.

Martin's Farm has supplied Galton Blackiston with ducks for the BBC 2 TV show The Great British Menu and the family has been farming here for four generations (over 60 years!).

Every year we treat ourselves to a Christmas goose from them as we know that their animal welfare is top notch and that all their food is grown on the farm itself. In fact I probably saw our goose many times as I drove past the field until late October when the field became eerily vacant.


Back into the car, turn right and there we are right back at The Old Bakery just in time for lunch, after I've put all the shopping away of course.




Well that is most of the suppliers but there are a few more that I have to visit in the opposite direction and those I do on Thursdays. For Thursdays are market day in Fakenham and so I tie them in with that. First port of call is the James Beck auction where I may or may not find myself a bargain.

Then I will visit the market buying any.....



FRESH FRUIT & VEG.

I buy any fresh fruit or veg that I think is outstanding in quality. Normally the Pink Grapefruit are far larger here than the Supermarket, as are the Cauliflowers and Tomatoes, cheaper too.


Then I'll drive to Morrisons Supermarket where I will get all the usual basics. Yes I still have to shop at a supermarket.

From there I will drive to my last supplier for our....


BACON & BLACK PUDDING

At a small village called Great Ryburgh (You'll find that many of the smallest villages in Norfolk are normally prefixed with the word 'GREAT'), there is a brilliant Pork Butchers called Perfick Pork.

The guy that set it up came from West London and lived there back in the 60's & 70's when I was living there and he too came to Norfolk in the last 10 years. As I said we sought out the best ingredients for our breakfasts and on tastings his home produced, cured and smoked bacon was, and is, second to none.

We buy the Oak Smoked bacon.

 I love turning up when the smokery door had just been opened, that smoked bacon smell takes me right back to the late 70's when I worked on a supermarkets delicatessen. Every morning I would open the back up chiller to set the days counter up and be hit by that beautiful aroma of smoked bacon that had been building up through the night. For me it is one of those smells that I will never ever forget, very nostalgic and still hits a chord in my heart every single time.
 

Their sausages are excellent too but the sheer choice of flavours that Rutlands produce gives them the edge on that ingredient, whilst Rutlands cannot match the pure quality of Perfick Pork's bacon.

Perfick Pork are another supplier that sell their product online to any where in the country packing it in special containers packed with dry ice on a next day courier delivery.



So that is it, my tour of Norfolk's best producers of fine foods. Yes I could get it all in the Supermarket, Sainsburys 'Taste the Difference' or Morrisons 'The Best' ranges. Sure I could even get it delivered from one of those little shoe box vans that scoot around from house to house.

BUT there is nothing more honest than looking a true artisan in the eye as you buy a top class product at a fair price. Knowing that he or she has an unrivaled passion for what they produce and that as a result WE are keeping THEM in business.

Whilst at the same time their excellent food is giving us our reputation which in turn is keeping US in business!

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR LOCAL FOOD HEROES.

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A daily blog would just about finish me off completely. Robert Plant

Avid followers of statistics will have noticed that this blog keeps a record of the all the posts that have been made since we moved to Norfolk. We reached a peak of 102 posts in 2011 when we were setting up the B&B and opening for business. And ever since then as the business has built up the time to post blogs has reduced.

So, dear readers, if you are missing the frequency with which the wit and wisdom that are dispensed in these pages happens, we hope you'll be pleased to know that there are other places to read the various ramblings of our family members.

You'll have noticed that once in a while a poetic muse happens to Mike and scattered throughout these pages are some of the poems he has been inspired to write. That love of poetry has been passed down to another generation; our son is currently posting daily 'Six lines that rhyme'. Enjoy his poetic creations here:

http://swilliamthomas.tumblr.com/

Meanwhile in deepest Somerset our daughter has, this week, completed on the purchase of her first house. You'll be able to follow her adventures in knitting, stitching and crafting her home-made home right here:

http://thehome-madehome.blogspot.co.uk/

Which just leaves me and my coaching / management blog which has been untouched for months. But give it a couple of months when I'll be reducing my days worked externally to 4 and I'll be  blogging, tweeting and musing along with the rest of them. I bet you can't wait!



12,909

Villagers were met by the surreal sight of two guys bent over almost double, not unlike Burke and Hare, shiftily rolling an upside down tree root ball along the main village road.

Last summer we went to Wells-next-the-sea and visited some of the 'open gardens'. As usual they were all really good and most of them quite compact. We were particularly struck by the way one fairly small garden compartmentalised itself into separate areas almost like rooms.

The seed was sown (sorry) for us to create a hidden corner within our garden and when we got home we looked at our garden and decided to use a corner to create just such a room.

During the long time of inactivity towards this task we visited several National Trust properties and started to develop a penchant for their stumperies. We were really taken by the Stumpery at Ickworh. Now we knew what we wanted to be inside our new room in the garden....a stumpery. Hence I started in my quest to obtain stumps starting as I did in last weeks blog.

Now the first thing that we needed was a doorway to our room. A room is not a room unless you can enter it through a doorway. We considered several alternatives for this from buying a wooden trellis arch to making something ourselves and to bending over the native plants in that corner to create a natural archway.

The wooden trellis arches are too expensive and the folded over flora just looked like it needed watering rather urgently so we decided to create an arch from scratch and as cheap as possible.
This meant a trip to my flying farmer supply guy. He lives at the end of the village and, well actually you can read about him on a previous blog called "The Plot Thickens".
Having braved his Alsatians I bought a few large wooden poles and set about building a wooden arch.

I drew up a plan on a bit of A4 paper (I couldn't find any envelopes with decent backs) and to my quite considerable amazement it looks alright!....

I've used bolts to hold the thing together just in case children visiting the cottage think it is a climbing frame, which I would quite understand.

Now initially after I erected this thing I decided to create a Hazel hurdle fence to cordon off the room, a wall to my room I suppose.

Having cut many very long coppiced hazel  branches from my own garden I set about planting the uprights.
I had got to about half the height that I was aiming for when I ran out of the hazel wood. Now I started using an unknown tree that we had cut down during January.
Well the hazel fence had already looked in pain and by the time I had finished the whole thing looked like it had a strangulated hernia, twisted and contorted as if in agony.

I decided to put it out of it's misery and killed the fence off dismantling it the very next day. It was so shockingly bad that I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it and this from a guy that has taken photos of Otter Poo and a bloated dead deer floating in a lake!

We needed a new plan. This 'room' will be seen from the dining room by our guests and so we needed something special...

Trawling through the web we happened upon a fedge supplier. Mmmm, I thought that spell check wouldn't like that. 'Fedge' that's right... F.E.D.G.E. Fedge.

Those in the know will be aware that a fedge is both a fence and a hedge or to be more accurate a living fence. In our case made from willow.

Having paid my money the Fedge kit duly arrived comprising of many Willow canes and several pages of instructions. I decided not to disregard the instructions as I normally do with Ikea furniture but to actually follow them closely. Spell check doesn't like the name Ikea either, I reckon the Ikea catalogue would scramble spell checks brain's with it's FYRKANTIG (candles) and it's KNUTSTORP (chair) there would be red underscoring in abundance.

Although interestingly it hasn't raised an eyebrow with Fyrkantig but does suggest that I must mean 'Shortstop' for KNUTSTORP.

I digress, back to the fedge, I worked for the best part of the day working on this wall of willow, firstly removing the turfs and laying the mulching material .....




 Then planting the uprights.....


Next were the weavers which held all the uprights together by binding to them on the horizontal.






Now came the tricky bit, the weaving of the 'weavers'. Firstly to the left then back along to the right. This was the most time consuming bit of it all.

The thing was taking shape now and my room was forming.

The overall effect will be a light fluttery willow leaf wall in the summer months and during the winter it will open the view up into the room and our Stumpery.

The views from within the room towards the house and cottage will then disapear in the summer making this a great hiding place for the young children that come to stay in the Holiday cottage. We feel sure that they will love it.

The final bit was the creation of the Stumpery, where I turned one stump into four.

To do this I volunteered to help some neighbours (Neil & Julie) that had just moved into a bungalow two doors down from us. They were chopping tree trunks down and I asked if I could have the root balls. It was a day later before it occurred to me that actually I should offer to assist in digging out the roots rather than expect them to do it, I sometimes have tunnel vision when an idea worms it's way out of this tiny brain. They were a little stumped at first (did you see what I did there?!!) but it seemed like a good deal so they agreed.

Photos courtesy of Julie.

This was a lovely way to get to know new neighbours and we spent the lion share of the day together, digging and chewing the cud about ourselves and our plans.

They themselves have taken on a garden that looked very similiar to my allotment when I obtained it. When we were done I invited them over to see the Stumpery and I think that they may have actually been reasonably impressed.
I did donate to them my spare willow canes which they planned to use by a ditch at the end of their property to make a similar but smaller 'fedge'.

That said Neil had already seen where I was placing these stumps as he had to help me get them from his house along the road to ours. All we had to do this with was his little old foldable sack trolley.
It was half the size of the root balls it was carrying.

Villagers were met by the surreal sight of two guys bent over almost double, not unlike Burke and Hare, shiftily rolling an upside down tree root ball along the main village road. This was only enhanced by the need to make a right hand turn signal so a car coming in the opposite direction could tell which way we intended to turn.
No one flinched an eye lid. I feel I have turned native as this was definitely considered NFN...

Normal For Norfolk.

It was a very hot day, even for June but this was still March and so I got hot dirty and thirsty but soon my Stump gained a second then a third and finally a little runt, the fourth. This culminated in the end product our Stumpery Room.....

It has a look about it of a group of trolls on a picnic. I have to say that I feel the photos don't do it justice and that it has a quiet place feel about it.

So there you have it by use of a bit of willowology and good neighbourliness I have created something a little odd at the end of my garden and who wouldn't want something a little odd at the end of their garden?







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I could smell their doubt and a bit of urine too actually which I fear came from the tree.

It's not good enough, simply appalling! Over a month has passed since I bothered to put pen to paper, no.. errrr, digits to key pad and I feel I've let You down and that I've let Alison down and indeed that I've let my family down. But most of all......

I know....  I've let Myself down :(

So I am very sorry to anyone that still bothers to log on to this stuff of nonsense for failing you in your expectations, I guess I'm just another lowlife, the chewing gum on the sole of your tedious life.

Anyhooo, I'm back now and raring to go.

So what's been happening in the very merry month of...   March then?

To cut to the quick and to summarise, for all our sakes,I've been renovating in the house and cottage, digging and attending to the allotment, waiting on lots of guests (our busiest start to the year so far) and preparing the garden for our summer visitors.

One of the last tasks in the garden was to cut back the blackberry growth which I really wanted to do ages ago. This was stopped by the unseasonably early nesting of a blackbird amongst the thorny foliage. I also have some shredding to finish but do not wish to disturb the chaffinches nesting in the twisted willow, meanwhile it looks like the Blue Tits may well be squatting in the Sparrow's nest box and there are Collard Doves nesting in the Bay tree.
AND NOT ONE OF THEM A PAYING GUEST!


However to get you up to date with our current going ons we have just had the front door to the cottage and the front door to the main house replaced by our friendly builder.
The door to the cottage was due a major paint job and frankly I didn't think that it could withstand the preparatory sandpapering without just falling apart. The main house's front door however was far more of a concern as whoever fitted it (and we suspect it was probably Percy the retired Vicar that used to live here) fitted it back to front. The main consequence of this has been for rain water to seep in under every one of the nine panes of glass.
It about sums up The Old Bakery everything has been done but not quite by the normal traditionally accepted method, just like the two way stair light in the cottage which had been rigged up by using a stretch of old speaker wire. I feel we shall be discovering such issues for many years to come.




Probably the only really, well slightly interesting thing to report is that I have been creating a Stumpery surrounded by a fedge in which I have had to practice the ancient skills of willowolgy.
You think I'm talking double dutch don't you. Talking of Double Dutch we have some people from Holland booked to stay in our cottage soon and some booked for the B&B (not the first) at exactly the same time. We are so International! We have even got a returning guest from Canada next month, how cool is that?

Back to the fedge and my little stumpery. Firstly with regards to the Stumpery you may well know what I am talking about. All the local National Trust properties are installing them and even Prince Charles has one, so if it's good enough for Charlie boy then......

For those that are clueless, which is the state of mind that I generally live in, a Stumpery is a collection of old tree roots and tree stumps which have been turned upside down and positioned in a pleasing layout in a shady wooded area of the garden. They provide a great place for bugs to live and ferns and mosses to thrive whilst providing an interesting sculpturelike look with their twisting knarled arms stretching out.
Mark my words, you won't be anyone unless you have a Stumpery in your garden. It will be what the Pampass grass was in the seventies, the rockery was in the eighties, the Summerhouse in the nineties and the dismantled old banger in the naughties. Put simpy every garden WILL have one.

Where then does one obtain unwanted tree stumps you may well ask. Well at this moment in time I have to admit that my Stumpery is really just a 'Stump' as I only possess a singular stump because they are harder to obtain than I first thought.
There is a nursery nearby that actually sells tree stumps but I'm too tight to spend the money on them and they are absolutely massive.

 My Stump, that's the one and only stump I acquired by salvaging it from a lay-by where someone clearly NOT 'in the know' had fly tipped it.
Collecting it was a bit of a hoo-harr because I was by myself and it was just outside the weight and bulk that I could lift on my own.
I tried to lift it, shove it, pull it and swear at it but none of the above worked. The lay-by was on a very busy 'A' road and as I struggled with this beast of a fir tree root I increasingly became aware just how much it must appear to passing drivers that I was probably trying to 'fly tip' it myself.
The more I thought about this the more haste I applied and the more furtive I appeared.
Finally I hooked one root over the edge of the car's rather weak and fragile plastic bumper and gave one almighty UMMMPPFFFFFF tossing it caber like into the back of the car. I looked around for a passing car to be able to justify myself to and so that I could prove that I wasn't dumping it but there were none around to accept my vindication request. So I slammed the car door shut and putting the pedal to the metal, I legged it!


Of course when I got home I had no chance of getting it out of the car let alone in prime position in my 'Stump' area. (Dreaming of the day that it will make 'Stumpery' status by gaining a second).
However I had two builders on sight installing my new doors and I roped them in to help me install my stump. We lifted it together and struggled across the patio, over the lawn, through my new trellis arch and into my 'Stump', where we dropped it unceremoniously.

The three of us stood back and looked at this muddy thing. I could smell their doubt and a bit of urine too actually which I fear came from the tree. In hindsight I think it might have been used for 'target' practice in the lay-by!

We stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder looking down at this sad and broken thing.....

"Of course", I explained, "it will need a bit of a clean up."
 
Silence.

"And all those broken bits will have to be tidied up."

More silence.

"Oh and clearly I'll reposition it a tad so it........"

I ran out of explanations at this point as I could see by the look on their faces I was definitely NOT preaching to the converted.

We all seemed to accept this and I courteously thanked them for their assistance and we all went our different ways in a slightly awkward silent kind of way.


Now I have plans to turn my 'Stump' into a full blown 'Stumpery' because I have offered my services to a couple that have just moved in to a house a few doors down. I noticed there was some tree felling going on and despite also not having heard of a Stumpery they are willing to put up with a madman if it means he will dig up some unwanted roots for them.

I will keep you posted.

Well there you have it the story of my first stump. Next time I will tell you all about my fedge and the weavers, binders and the all important Uprights......

My Stump.

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