Treatment Room is now open!

The Valley Gate Osteopathy Clinic is now open for business.  We have just finished the conversion of one end of the workshop building into a treatment room for Kim to treat patients from home.  Pictures of the works in progress and the finished article are on Picasa.  For more details of Kim's practice, please visit her website.

Where it all started...

As I am playing catchup, perhaps I should start from the beginning.  We first saw the house in July 2009, completed the purchase in October 2009 and moved in between Christmas and New Year - almost exactly one year ago.

I can't remember if it was our 5 or 10 year plan, but we wanted to move away from the South-east to find a better life in the country with a bit of land and somewhere to work on my van without upsetting the neighbours.  Not that we didn't like West Malling; we had been there for 10 years and had a number of close friends, including our neighbours Rob and Becky and Dave and Kate.  But it was time for a change and coincided with Kim graduating from the European School of Osteopathy.  There were just too many osteopaths in Maidstone and if Kim was to set up a practice, it had to be somewhere with less competition.

Kim is from Welsh stock and her parents have a flat in Swansea, so we had spent weekends and the odd week's holiday exploring South Wales and the Gower Peninsular in particular.  I had been at University in Exeter and lived in Plymouth for a couple of years after graduating and so always dreamed of returning to the South-west one day.  However, we both decided that south Wales was where we should start looking ideally for a small holding with a few acres of land.  The Gower turned out to be too expensive and very few houses came with land, so on the advice of one of Kim's Dad's old school friends, we expanded our search area west to include Pembrokeshire and in particular, the area around the small market town of Narberth.  Based on a quick preliminary visit, Narberth felt very similar in many ways to West Malling.

We had not really considered moving that far west as I still had to work in London a few days a week having agreed with my employer that I could work from home on at least a part time basis.  There are lots of smallholdings in Pembrokeshire and west Carmarthenshire, however, we discovered that many of them are very remote and part of the criteria for our perfect place in the country was that it had to be within walking distance of a pint of milk and a short drive to a train station.  As Kim was nearing  the end of her course and was offered an Associate position working in an established osteopathic practice in East Grinstead, we decided to put the house hunting on hold for while.   Following her graduation in July, we went to Swansea for a week to spend time with Kim's brother Andrew and girlfriend Kelley (now wife) were visiting Wales.  As we were back in the area, we decided to check up on any developments in the housing market.

We had registered with a few local estate agents earlier in the year and had recently been sent details for a property called Valley Gate, just outside Narberth.  Kim had done a quick drive-by a few days earlier with her parents and was initially put off by the seemingly remote location and position of the house right on the road side.  However,with Andrew and Kelly in tow, we decided to have another look.  We both fell in love with the location (a 20 minute walk to Narberth - not so remote after all!) and the land that came with it; 3.5 acres in two plots either side of Valley Road.  We did a second viewing the next day and, thanks to Kim's Dad who had agreed to provide a bridging loan at a very competitive rate, we were in a position to make a 'speculative' offer that was accepted straight away.


It took until October for the sale to go through but we could not move until Xmas, so took a week off when we got the keys to gut the place.  It had been rented out for a number of years and was in real need of updating as the lovely 1970's fitted bedroom furniture shows.  The front, original part of the house, is probably 200 years old with 2' thick stone rubble walls.  The rear of the house is a 2 storey extension that was originally flat-roofed, but in the 1980's a new roof was added to the whole house.  Downstairs has a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom and upstairs there are 4 bedrooms and a small bathroom.

Once we stripped out the fitted furniture we found thick mould on the external walls that was removed with copious quantities of bleach.  We also found central heating pipes had been run across the floors under the fitted units.  We spent the week stripping all the wallpaper off (along with plaster in places!) and removing all carpets to give us a 'blank canvas' to work with.  There are more photographs on Picasa

After all this excitement, on the morning we were leaving to go back to Kent, we had a bit of a flood following a night of very heavy rain.  No water got in the house, but a few hastily dug trenches were required to drain the water away from where it got trapped behind the house.  The 'locals' said it was the heaviest rain they had seen for 10 years.  There are a few more photo's of the flooding again on Picasa.

So this was the starting point and we have now been here a year...

Happy Xmas from Valley Gate

To all our Friends, Family and Followers (apart from Family, Brian!) Happy Xmas from Kim and Ian.  It is a perishingly cold morning here, the coldest of the year so far.



When Kim went out to feed the Chickens it was -12 C and not much warmer when I finally surfaced to helpfully take a few photos of the festive day.  We are now going to knuckle down and get the Nut Roast going and chisel out a parsnip or two and a swede.

For more pictures of Valley Gate on Xmas day follow the link...

Home at last

With the sale of the house in West Malling after seven months on the market, it was time to go and collect the remnants of our furniture, the crap from the greenhouse and the Van.  The Van, Purple Haze was imported from the States in 2006 and you can read all about it's life in West Malling at our 'other' Purple Haze Website.  However, please ignore any reference to TDC Auto's (I must update the website) as he is a crook, but that is another story.  To bring the van back required a trailer and 4x4 which I hired from Pembrokeshire 4x4.

I drove the 4x4 and trailer and Kim drove the Luton Transit. I managed to get the engine onto the back of the trailer, but the gearbox had to go into the Luton.  Unfortunately, and yes Kim you were right, I had not drained all the oil from the gearbox and there was a bit of an environmental incident on the way back.  Luckily, most of the oil was soaked up by the bed that we decided needed to be replaced (anyway?). I had never driven 4x4 or more significantly towed anything.  Going forward is relatively simple if you remember the trailer is there, but going backwards is another matter.  I had to tow the van out of the drive in West Malling and reverse it into Dave's drive next door to get the Luton in to be loaded.  Against all expectations and with a huge amount of luck (I had visions of blocking the road with a jackknifed trailer) it went in first time with no drama.

The trip back to Wales was fairly uneventful apart from the cover trying to part company from the van.  Once back home, another tricky manoeuvre was required to get the van somewhere close to her new home in the workshop.  Again, it all seemed to go quite well without a hitch.  Purple Haze in now in the workshop awaiting the next phase of restoration, whenever that might be...

Slugging it Out

With the deep snow and freezing weather and in an effort to get this Blog up to date, I will take you back to a warmer time to recount our battle with Pest No.1, the Slug .  During the prolonged dry period between April and June, they lulled us into a false sense of security until the rains came for the start of the school holidays (this is Wales after all).  All those tender shoots were decimated by a plague of slime.  We are trying to be as organic as possible, but even the blue supposedly organic slug pellets somehow seem wrong and roaming around in the middle of the night picking them off the lettuce plants is perhaps going too far.

There is lots of advice out there from pots filled with beer to scattering Comfrey leaves around as a sacrificial fodder, however, we were looking for a more elegant solution and it appears that it is Copper.  Slugs do not like crossing copper as apparently they get a minor electric shock that deters them.   There are many products on the market including rings for individual plants, however, we needed an industrial scale solution: copper tape.

After much research on the internet (ebay), I found a suppler of self adhesive copper tape at a fraction of the price charged by Garden Centres and Horticultural Outlets.  I therefore bought enough rolls to go all around both of the raised beds and, with the help of Basil, give them a very attractive pinstripe effect (no I am not going bald, that is the equivalent of red eye on the scalp).

The proof of the pudding is in the eating (not an analogy to take to far with slugs) and so we waited for the slugs to come out of hiding and head for the restaurant thoughtfully created for them.  The sequence of photos below speak for themselves....

However, life is never quite that simple.  The larger slugs did not seem deterred by the copper tape and waltzed happily over it (to die eating slug pellets...) and I did catch the tape with my brush cutter which came off second best by quite a long way.  You also have to keep the tape quite shiny with a pan scourer otherwise the oxidised surface is less effective.  In other places it simply fell off where the tape did not stick too well to the timber sleepers.  I think there was also a resident population of slugs in the beds that saw no reason to go and hide in the surrounding grass each night.

Next year (this year now!) I will try and paint a strip of varnish around the sleepers first to aid adhesion.  I did think about 2 parallel strips a few millimetres and a battery; that really would give them a shock.  Perhaps a modification for 2012. One very effective method of control is the Chickens; they simply love slugs, however, they would probably eat everything else a well!  I am sure the saga will continue.

Photo Album

Rather than clutter up the Blog, I have been experimenting with Picasa as a way of sharing our photos.  The first album is from a very snowy start to 2010 in Valley Gate!

Views of Valley Gate

The Kittens - Bryn and Bron

We adopted Bryn and Bron in October from a local woman in Narberth who had rescued a stray cat and her 3 six-month old kittens.  Not long after, the cat had a second litter of 5 kittens (the cat has now been neutered!) I couldn't resist the only 2 black kittens - a brother and sister from the first litter - especially after the male one (now named Bryn) settled onto my knee without hesitation on my first visit.

Generally looking cute

Doing what Kittens do

Cute again

Tired of being cute

Watching birds

Chasing birds 

Thinking about chasing each other

Cute yet again

Not so cute

There were birds here just now

Bird!

Cat and electric fence turns out not to be a match made in heaven and cat decides to go for smaller birds in future and leave this bit of the garden well alone.  Enough cats for now. 

The Chickens - Rosemary, Tarragon, Fennel and Dill

We adopted 4 ex-battery hens in September from the British Hen Welfare Trust.  I drove to the remote hills north of Camarthen to collect them - they had already travelled all the way from Devon.

When I safely delivered them to their new home, imagine my surprise when one had laid a egg in the cat box she had been carried in! 

They looked a little worse for wear as the photos taken shortly after their arrival show (one of them looked more like a Turkey!), but they did seem to get the gist of being free-range pretty quickly and still generally lay an egg each every day.

We sell a dozen eggs to our neighbours each week which tends to cover their feed costs so they do earn their keep! 

The hens need shelter when not in the coop and so one was fashioned with some old sheets of corrugated iron and a few fence posts.  A very rustic affair.  A couple of straw bales have been added to give them shelter from the wind.

As a fortieth birthday present, Ian's Auntie Maggie kindly offered to pay the set up costs, namely the chicken coop and 50m of electric fencing which seems to be the only way to protect the hens from cunning foxes.

It now gives them a very extensive range to explore and they love digging in the old garlic bed.

The fencing and chicken coop (a Sonning Minor) was purchased from Wells Poultry in Ebbw Vale, Gwent.  So far, no complaints from us or the chickens!

  

Irrigation

Once the first two raised beds were in place (with more to come) we had to think how we were going to water them.  There is an outside tap but it is some way from the beds and given our worries about the well running dry, it didn’t seem like very good idea to use well water for watering the vegetables.

The obvious solution was to use water from the stream, however, the flow is at times very low and almost dries up in the summer.  We therefore decided that a small dam would be a good idea to at least try and store water when flow was low and to provide a bit of pressure.

About halfway up the field, the stream runs through a gully that looked like an ideal location for a small dam.  My Sister and family, Clare, Chris, Stefan and Zosia were coming to stay for the May Day Bank Holiday and Chris wanted a project.

The plan was to build a small earth dam with clay dug from a borrow pit at the top at the top of the field and lay a water pipe down to the vegetable garden.  The pipe would feed a tap and an old watering trough I found in a hedge.  The pipe and fittings were ordered from Screwfix.

The first problem faced was the lack of clay.  The borrow pit hit hard ground at about 300mm that turned out to be coal mixed in with the shale!  Thereafter the borrow pit was dug with a pickaxe (again!) with Stefan and I taking turns.  In fact the clay was too wet to work with when placed in the bed of the gully and the more granular excavated shale/coal proved ideal.  This was supplemented by a stockpile of arisings from a land drainage trench that I had not got around to screening.  The real work was shifting all the muck around in a wheelbarrow and took almost 2 days.

Despite out best efforts the dam does leak slightly, however, this will keep a small flow in the stream.  I made a spillway with a few bits of slate lying around and some larger stone, however, the flow in the stream has not been has high enough so far to test this bit of the works.  It may not get tested now until the winter.

Chris decided to lay the water pipe from the dam to the vegetable garden which was no mean feat in itself.  Rather than attempt to dig a trench, the 70m of pipe was pushed into a slit cut sa deep as it would go with a spade.  A valve was installed on the pipe immediately downstream of the dam and a washout at the vegetable garden to allow the pipe to be drained if a heavy frost is forecast as the pipe is not buried deep enough to guarantee that it would not freeze and split.

After a few leaks at the compression joints when backfilling the pipe I found you really do need to tighten the compression joints well and in the end used an adjustable wrench pliers rather than relying on hand tightening.

In hindsight, it might have been better to put a larger pipe in as the pressure at the tap is quite low and when connected to a 20m hose only a gentle trickle come out of the end.  However, I did form chamber of sorts at the inlet of the pipe behind the dam to stop it getting blocked using a section of slotted pipe wrapped in geotextile and this may be reducing the pressure at the outlet.

The water trough works well for filling the watering can or bucket but it takes ages watering the two beds we have now and we might need a more industrial strength solution when we have another 6 beds and a polytunnel!

The stream has now reduced to an imperceptible trickle and yet there is enough water collected behind the dam to enable us to water once a day.  It is unlikely that the spillway will be tested until the winter

Thanks to Chris, Stefan and Zosia for all their hard work over the weekend and to Clare who was official photographer for the project.

Soil Screening

Soil is a very precious commodity and therefore we have gone to some considerable length (probably too far!) to recover soil from the various excavations for land drains, cable ducts, vegetable beds and planting trees.

Every hole dug is hard going with pickaxe and mattock and result in a pile of broken rock and stone with some soil mixed in. The ‘soil’ (largely rock dust!) is useful to fill raised beds when mixed with compost and the stone for backfilling land drains. Larger bits of rock will be used for paths.

To sort these out we have improvised a screen made from an old gate covered with garden netting. Below this is a second screen made from galvanised wire mesh. Large stone are retained on the netting and are ‘bounced’ down the length of the gate. The stones and soil that fall through the netting are then screened through the mesh with the ‘soil’ falling to the ground and the smaller stone collected in a bucket.

The system works well provided everything is reasonably dry otherwise it all sticks together and does not pass through the screen.

The one final process is washing the smaller stone. As the soil is clayey, quite a bit sticks to the smaller stones or just small balls of clay don’t go through the smaller mesh. If this was used for backfilling a land drain, the clay would clock up the perforated pipe.

The stones were washed in a sieve with water from the stream and the washings filtered using a bulk bag that gravel was delivered in. Wash water drained back to the stream. There was a 20m length of blue water pipe we found in our hedge that we recovered and by simply weighting one end in the bottom of the stream up the field we had quite a flow of water. This gave us another idea, more of which later…

This proved to be a very slow and back breaking task and I am not sure if simply leaving the stone out in the rain for a while would not achieve the same result!