Poultry Partnership
Jackie has always wanted chickens, but we felt that the courtyard was not the place to keep them. Step in our neighbours Meg and Simon, they have chickens and in November last year we first helped out on feeding duty. Subsequent conversations over supper brought in...
Official Opening of the Boiler Room
Over the Christmas period we have had a visit from the Berry clan. Jean has not seen the boiler installed since she helped us out with a loan to help us buy it. So we hid a big ribbon behind the boiler room door and literally opened the door and handed her a pair of...
A Long Time Coming
We have had some grief from some of you recently that we haven't up-dated the blog for a while! There is a reason for this, we have had a major job that we wanted to show from start to finish and now we can. We think the West Barn was one of the things that stopped...
Pickering Wartime & 1940’s Weekend
Every October Pickering hosts a wartime weekend where people make an amazing effort dressing up in fantastic costumes.What makes this even better is that the steam railway get involved and there are different events at each station on the line. A lot of thought...
Biomass goes live
After all of the disruption of digging the yard up to install our pipework, the boiler is now installed and heats the house as well as the long barn, the west barn and the pig pens.This is Richard, Callum and Chris from VG who spent a week installing our system....
Skiptastic
As a kid I had a toy dumper truck and always thought how fantastic it would be to really drive one. This week we have hired a mini-digger and dumper to dig out the floor in the West barn in preparation for the new floor. I can honestly say that after a day of rattling...
Tour de Yorkshire
The Tour de France will hopefully showcase what a beautiful place Yorkshire is This is the peloton just before the centre of Ilkley. The crowds were really enthusiastic and there was just a fab atmosphere with the keen cyclists explaining the finer details of the race...
D day
It was exactly one year ago that we moved in to Town End Farm. Our mate Mike did the conveyancing and suggested that we set our completion date to the same as D day! We can't believe we have been here for a year, but looking back we have achieved a huge amount. This...
A room with a view
We wanted to create a wow factor in the dining room and Chris at KPP architects decided that the best way to do that would be to create a double height space by removing the 1st floor. We would then build in a staircase and gallery to the bedrooms which would...
Not Guilty!
We have just ordered our 10th skip today from Ryedale skip hire at Pickering and although we have been putting all sorts of stuff in, we have not had anything to do with the article published today in the Malton Gazette & Herald......honestly If you can't read the...
Decisions decisions………..
An F type Jag.... or an ETA biomass boiler? Truth be told we can't afford either, but for the long term we cannot afford not to have a biomass boiler system. We got the images above slightly wrong; the plan was to have two images of desirable...
Spring has sprung
Sheep, are an integral part of the village and we have been keeping an eye open for new arrivals. Easter weekend has seen the first of the lambs, and although very cute we will shortly have to stop them invading the garden. And once in the garden they don't eat the...
Progress
The site is now changing every day its very exciting and also rather scary. If you've ever watched any of the building make over shows on the TV you often see huge pieces of steel being manhandled through exterior walls just to get them in....well we didn't want to be...
All quiet on the Western Front?
Winter (what winter) has been kind to us but has had us kicking our heels while preparing planning and listed building consent for the National Park. The great news is that the first listed building consent has come in, which allows us to start making changes in...
Our first income!
No we aren't open for business yet! Our plan has always been to open in Spring 2015 but the farmhouse has already brought some money in. Town End Farm was once an important part of the village and has grazing rights for 80 sheep, these rights still exists...
By Eck
IT'S OFFICIAL YORKSHIRE IS BRILLIANT! Yorkshire was named as the 3rd best region in the World by Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2014! We just knew that we had chosen wisely when we decided to set up our business here (the image above was taken 5 minutes walk...
Too many fluffy kittens
We have been accused of showing far too many things to do around here and not things we are doing! (you know who you are). So while we are waiting for builders to take down our gable wall we have been trying to get the house draught proof etc. The sash windows have...
Twitching Weekend
One of our main reasons for our "change in lifestyle" (I've already been told I'm too old for a mid-life crisis), is to enjoy time together. So last weekend we headed to the coast, which really is close and went to the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs. All the birds...
The Daily Commute
We always knew the commute for Jackie would be tough, here is the Monday congestion she had to battle with today!
New Home!
It's really weird Jackie didn't want to tempt fate, but the first time we drove up to look at the house at Appleton le Moors she felt at home. She didn't say anything to me at the time, but the odd thing was that I was thinking the same thing. We are now...
Malton Food Fair
One of the reasons we really like the area around Appleton le Moors is the amount of things to do both for us and for our guests when we open. We recently went to the Malton food fair which was just brilliant. We had the last two battered oysters from the Greedy...
Time to move?
Looks like we are getting close, our offer has been accepted so we can now reveal where we are headed... Our little project is Town End Farm in Appleton le moors. This is a beautiful village in the south of the North York Moors National Park, with a pub in the...
Great Expectations
When we first started our search we quickly decided that properties in the National Parks were likely to cause too many problems and the planners would probably not allow us to set the property up in a way that would make it financially viable. Similarly we felt that...
The search is on
We are taking our next steps, the survey on our house was carried out a couple of weeks ago. Boy were they thorough, like a "Compex" going to the USA, you could almost hear the rubber gloves snapping on! It was built in 1904 so they are bound to find something, but we...
A leap into the unknown!
Having decided to completely change our lives we have taken the first big step to setting up our holiday rental business....we have decided to sell our house to raise the capital we need to start our business. The amazing news is that we have had 2 asking price offers...