MODEL FOOD CITIZENS

Elmgrove House

“LIFE GETS IN THE WAY WITH THE FARM GETTING INTO TOP GEAR AS THE SUMMER ROLLED IN, AND THOSE CRATES YOU SWORE YOU WOULD TACKLE NEXT SUNDAY STARE AT YOU FOR WEEKS ON END.”

and those crates you swore you would tackle next Sunday stare at you for weeks on end. In the meantime, we are getting to grips with how the heating works, why the shower and the washing machine can’t run at the same time because the water pump can’t cope, while at the same time trying to remember to feed the cat. That’s the other thing you inevitably inherit with a farmhouse – a collection of animals, some domesticated, and others not so much.

Aoife has visions of the cat making a home for himself in her bed, so suddenly the cat is getting short shrift inside the house. But she is delighting in the range of wildlife she encounters every time she comes down the driveway. The cityslicker in her is amazed that she can encounter foxes, rabbits and pheasants all in the distance between the gate and her new front door.

We also need to discover our inner gardeners, now that we’re in charge of a garden that real gardeners would swoon over. The problem with a large garden full of beautiful blooming roses, cosmos, aquilegia, aster, fuschia, campanula,

I always remember my gran getting me to wind up the clocks for her any time I was visiting... it took a while to get around them all!

A collection of oil lamps that must have been an essential at one stage, but are more of a decorative throwback to another time these days.

“WE ALSO NEED TO DISCOVER OUR INNER GARDENERS, NOW THAT WE’RE IN CHARGE OF A GARDEN THAT REAL GARDENERS WOULD SWOON OVER.”

Some of the long-forgotten clerical elite that graced the walls in Elmgrove.

Roses were one of my gran’s favourites and her legacy lives on.

alstroemeria and more is that it takes a lot of minding! Lawns have to be mown every two weeks, flower beds weeded, roses sprayed, creepers clipped back, vegetable patches watered, fallen branches gathered up and cut and so on.

Of course, I’m conscious that this all sounds like a moan of the over-privileged when so many would (and do) pay through the nose for the pleasure of residing in such a country idyll. The first reaction of friends that we’ve invited over to our new/old home are lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ about the lovely peace, space and maturity of it all. It’s just that it takes a fair bit of doing! But I’m happy to make it one of the missions for the rest of my living days – that of making the family farmhouse our own.

THE SHEAR REALITY