We like growing our own fruit and veg at Llidiart, and we love olives.  So this winter we bought an olive tree and decided that the best place to put it was where the raspberries were growing. We also like raspberries, so we decided to create a new fruit garden, and move the raspberries, gooseberries, and blue berries to it.

The old raspberry plot was a bit of a messy area, so when we’ve tidied it up, and planted the olive tree, it should improve the view, particularly from The Granary and Stables cottages. Meanwhile the olive tree is sitting in its tub waiting to be positioned.

Hopefully, later in the year, we should have enough fruit to make some available to our guests.

At last, after too much heartache we have eventually abandoned our first attempt at going green with the heating and hot water.

The cooking oil powered combined heat and power unit never worked properly, so we’ve taken it out and installed two 23 kw  Stiebel Eltron air sourced heat pumps. Not only should these provide plenty of hot water and heating, they are quieter and far more reliable than the CHP unit ever was.

Apparently, although the heat pumps are powered by electricity, they are much greener than burning heating oil, supposedly generating three times as much heat in kilowatts as the amount of electrical energy in kilowatts that we put in. We’ll see.

Since we installed them, the weather has been unseasonably mild, but so far results seem to be good. Consequently, we’re able to stay open all winter without worrying if we have enough heat and power to ensure our guests comfort.

Another benefit is that we’ll be able to remove the fuel tanks, which although disguised, will enable us to improve that bit of the garden as well.

Our original intention was to be ‘utility company free’ by generating as much energy as possible ourselves, but as the MOD have prevented us installing a small wind turbine we won’t be able to achieve this goal. The next step may be to look at Solar PV to see how much we can offset the electrical cost of running the heat pumps.

Elsa came on holiday last week & Indie fell in love!  They had lots of walks together & played until they were exhausted!

Poor Ella she thought she was Indie’s girlfriend!

Why not come & spend a week walking, relaxing, reading …… whatever you fancy!

Take advantage of our Spring offer during March & April 2011:

7 nights, £425.00 staying in The Dairy or The Shippon

7 nights, £560.00 staying in The Stables

Book now!

Choose your cottage now!

John & Hazel would like to wish their guests (past & future) a very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

Indie has been working hard with John clearing snow.

What are we going to do next?