January Monthly Update
The very first few days of January were picked up in the December update, so this post continues from January 4th onwards. This post will fill up, as is normal! You can skip ahead to the different weeks as they’re added by clicking the links below:
January Week 1:
Water & Winter
Facebook memories shared that it was this week last year that the snow came. The same week saw the farm frozen, no water for humans or animals, and huge difficulties feeding everyone and keeping the site running. This is important to know, because it gave us a to-do list to prevent it from happening in the future.
However, we hadn’t dug in all the temporary water pipes in 2025, because they were always supposed to be temporary. When the mains water connection arrived, we could then route the pipework in the best way possible, depending on the direction it came into the site, rather than connecting it to loop in inefficient ways all over the place. With no water connection in place throughout the year, the pipes remained where they were.
That meant that in November’s cold snap (-10c), we froze up. In this week’s cold snap, which is on day 8 and counting, the exact same thing happened again. Whilst freezing isn’t the end of the world, and we’re kind of used to it now, it is incredibly inconvenient. Entire days are spent re-piping, defrosting or relaying water everywhere, and repairing burst sections too. Ben handled the cows, using sections of the horses’ spring pump-fed systems to ensure they were watered, but we had the houses to manage, which was a full-time job for Dan.
After 5 hours spent defrosting a section of dug in pipe (1ft of frozen ground and no digger, sadly), the water that finally ran through came straight back out in a split. It’s this kind of demoralising, slow, cold and repetitive work that we know we’ll be up against every time the temperatures drop below -4c.
On Monday morning, I left the farmhouse and heard a spraying sound. Water was launching into the air out of the back of the old biomass boiler (that was supposed to be disconnected) and turning the drive into an ever-growing ice rink. Easy fix, but the connection there is now broken. Dan took Ren (the Malinois) to her 6-monthly stem cell check at Melrose on Tuesday, and whilst he was away, I lost the remaining water in the farmhouse. Heading to investigate, the water exiting the porch to head down to the cottage was flowing out of a cracked joint, joining the driveway ice rink created the day before with gusto.
That’s everyday stuff when you have your own water pipes to look after, and it’s ok, but it is frustrating because we should have a mains connection by now, it should all be underground (deeper than 1ft), and it should all just “work”. Sadly, that’s not our reality so the frustration is real right now.
The troughs were frozen, the ground oddly mixed, and the horses decided this was the week that they’d plough through every line of fencing in the field. For fun 🤦♀️
Fencing and water were on our to-do list, so the updates for house progress are few and far between. At the time of writing on Saturday, we’ve lost 3.5 productive days, but at least we do have working water in both properties and on the farm. It’s just the wait for a thaw to get things back to normal now.
With the scene set and recorded for us to look back on and wince in the future, it’s time to look inside at what DID happen this week!
The Kitchen
The farmhouse kitchen was the only source of water, cold and hot, for humans and dogs for almost all of the past 8 days, so it was a working kitchen rather than a worked-on kitchen, but Dan did do as promised and added the board to the front of the fireplace there.
Dan did circle back later in the week to put another layer over the surround. We’re not going to be adding a mantel here; the hearth is HUGE as it is, so we thought we’d make a little more of a feature out of it by stepping it out a tiny bit more into the room.
The fire has been lit daily, and it is genuinely one of the best things we’ve done for the house - it’s so cosy in this room now, and I can’t wait to see it neat and tidy!
#trusttheprocess
The Bathroom
The upstairs bathroom, if you remember from December’s update, was just insulated on one wall and the ceiling, with the window wall framed out.
This week, Dan wanted to at least get it all boarded. So off he went! Stage one was insulation into the framing, then taping the joints. Everything was cut in bedroom 2, then popped into place and taped up:
Dan did the wall boarding himself, because I was on calls for most of the week too, which he cut in our old master bedroom and popped up until the only bit left to do was the ceiling:
With me off my last Friday call, we commenced around 3pm on project ceiling. As a short person, it’s hard to help with boards above your head but thanks to some carefully placed steps, we managed to get this zone complete before 5:30pm.
The insulation in this section is already noticeable, with nowhere near the same internal temperatures as we had last year, even with the holes to the outside for the extractor and the waste pipes. For those who are just joining us, this section was dead on arrival with part of the roof missing, but the zone of the wider building is a “repair and make good” rather than a complete renovation. Therefore, anything that can be kept is kept, but extra insulation, if it can be added whilst doing repairs, is a bonus.
‘Last week to this week’ for this room is therefore sitting here:
The only other thing to note is that, given zero water, we plumbed in our old dishwasher that we brought up from Yorkshire. It was working (ish) before we moved, but we’ve left it in storage since then, as we have had no need for it.
We don’t know how old it truly is, because we inherited it from our old house’s previous owners, so it dates back to before 2019 at least. Sadly, after running two cycles perfectly fine, it then started to burn itself. Another white good unit bites the dust!
Thankfully, Curry’s had a deal on so we scooped up a new Kenwood and plumbed it in last night to run a very, very, very full load.
It all came out sparkling, and that made our week complete.
Next week I fly down to London to work and return the following Monday, so the next weekly update will be delayed until my arrival back at the farm. Dan will be flying solo for this week, including doing all animal husbandry alongside renovation work and helping with the team whilst I’m away from the office.
Hopefully, he’ll get some progress footage, and the next update will be fun for both you and me!