It was time to clear the barns and so we set about dismantling all the cardboard  carrying boxes in which our possessions had travelled to the gables. We stored the “good”cardboard in the back of the cart barn having first removed any masking tape.  It is now biodegradable and we will use it to suppress the weeds between the rows of asparagus and around the vegetables that we plan to plant in the field garden.  The rest of the rubbish in the barns we loaded onto the trailer and Jeremy drove it across the front lawn to the skip at the side of the garages.

Craig arrived just in time to help Jeremy load the skip and to flatten the old kitchen units with a sledge hammer.  There is an art to packing a skip and between the two of them they managed to fill it to capacity, safely.

After a quick cuppa and a biscuit it was off to the poly tunnel to water the plants and sow parsley seeds and welsh onions.  The daffodil bulbs are opening in the warm microclimate in the tunnel and I took three pots outside to sit on the staging by the summer house, just in front of the goldfish pond.  And to add to the excitement Jeremy attached the pump to the electricity supply put in by Bob and lo and behold we now have a fountain in the pond that will aerate the water and help the fish to breathe and multiply.  We may need to build a bigger pond or a second one for any new fish that, we hope, will appear in the spring.