It’s been a quiet few weeks at The Secret Acre having been unexpectedly struck down by pestilence and plague. I spent the hottest day of the year, shivering under a duvet, unable to get warm. Annoying when there is so much to do. Hopefully we can start getting back to the harvest soon.

If truth be told, we’ve not done much with our refurbished barn either, since the main structural rebuild was completed.

In part at least, this is because we are now going through the slow process of seeking planning permission for the long awaited solar panels in the paddock, for which the refurbished barn will be the staging post for all the gubbins and battery storage. More on this soon we hope.

Meanwhile, we have applied a liquid DPM to the barn floor, and wired up the barn’s own lights and sockets. This is a big step forward, as the old derelict barn had neither power or water, the addition of which now makes the space much more useful (eventually!) as a workshop, and not just storage.