Category: Farmhouse (Page 1 of 2)

Working on the farmhouse: the existing buildings that we will live in.

Planning permission is go

22 August, 2015 / Jason

Big news: the council has finally granted planning permission for our revised four-hotel-rooms-plus-a-house idea. Like every bureaucratic process it took longer than we expected or wanted, although we did get some reassuring feedback on the structural soundness of our designs. Anyway, we’re really glad it’s all sorted, and now we can move on to getting quotes for the concrete-slab foundation work and the pool.

Now we can build all this!

A while ago we passed our one-year anniversary of being here. It would be great if more had happened up in the orchard by now — at the moment it’s just the fig trees, dry grass, marker pegs, and one steel telegraph pole with a light and a power connection box. But we’re optimistic that with all of the red tape out of the way, some earth should start getting moved around very soon.

One thing that we did manage to finish before the one-year mark was the kitchen. I know it has been drawn out over many blog posts, but it is now finally, properly finished. Here are some shots showing the tiled worktop and the finishing touches on the woodwork.

High-angle view of the kitchen. Hope everyone likes the tiles.

The kitchen sink view looks out into the street at tractor-wheel height.

The kitchen sink window looks out into the street at tractor-wheel height.

Free-standing cabinet between the fridge and the door. Plus added cat (Maya).

My mum and dad came to stay with us for the first half of August — we are trying to talk them into coming at a less outrageously hot time of year for their next visit. But it was good seeing our progress through their eyes, as they were last here almost exactly a year ago. Dad was extremely helpful in the garden, as he was the first time around. And they talked us into taking a seaside break for a few days: the first nights we had spent away from this place since we arrived. (A huge thank you to Sirem’s sister Çisem for holding the fort and feeding all the animals while we were away.)

We spent three nights at the Panion Park Hotel in the coastal town of Guzelçaml?, close to the entrance to the Dilek National Park. It was a really pleasant, quiet hotel and we can recommend it. They have a lovely pool and an equally lovely bar by the pool. They’ve only been open for six years and we were impressed with how well their landscaped garden had come along. Lots of ideas to file away for future reference.

The view from our room in the Panion Park Hotel. Great garden.

What else have we been up to? A recent carpentry project was the door to the second bedroom. The old door was a bit of a mess and we had to lock it with a very amateurish chain and padlock around the handle. More importantly, the doorway was much lower than it needed to be, with a small window over the door for no good reason. More than one taller visitor had smacked their head on the low lintel (sorry, Mark). So we came up with a plan for a full-height door that included a central window with shutters for extra ventilation in summer. Sketchup again, of course. We think it all turned out OK.

New door from the outside, shutters closed.

From the inside: going for a medieval look with all the black iron hardware.

And with the shutters open to let in a breeze.

The weather has been really hot, of course, but never humid. We found that the sun was tracking so far north that we weren’t getting enough shade on the sedir in the middle of the day. So we’ve rigged up some sheets to make it feel more pleasant.

Dealing with the heat: sheets as shadecloth.

The grape vines do well in all that sun.

Summer also brings the insect population to life. (Which is mostly fine, honest: even the wasps have their role in pollinating the figs.) One day we found some ants struggling to lift something up the wall and into the garden. Turns out they had stolen a cat biscuit, and were cooperating admirably to get it back to the nest.

The ant helpfully standing on the biscuit must be the one in charge, surely?

And to conclude: some readers will be unsurprised to learn that our four kittens have not found new homes yet. We still haven’t named them, because we are clinging to the (perhaps foolish) belief that we’re going to successfully give most of them away. In an effort to show potential adopters how cute they are, here are some photos at 2 weeks and at 5 weeks. Incredible how much the ears grow over that time.

The tabby one.

The black one.

The white one.

The grey one (who Sirem refuses to give away).

Summer: postscript

11 July, 2015 / Jason

As promised, some photos of the finished furniture that Joe helped to make. The desk is great for days when it’s too hot to sit inside with a PC exhaust fan going, and the cupboard is built like a tank and will outlast us all.

Portable computer desk

Cupboard for the verandah

So much room for shoes, pet food, vacuum cleaners, etc.

Also, some gratuitous kitten photos.

The kittens are getting bigger…

… and cuter.

Winter brings more animals

10 February, 2015 / Jason

It’s February already. How did that happen?

I have to confess that January wasn’t our most productive month. We’re not too worried though. More than half of our rainfall comes between December and February, and on rainy days there’s nothing for it but to sit inside and drink coffee and watch movies. That should change in the future: as we empty out the last of the moving boxes in the barn, there’ll be more space to do carpentry in there. But for now the courtyard is our workspace and so if it’s wet, we have a quiet day.

The bigger confession, and maybe another reason for low productivity, is that our animal population has grown again. I know, I know: that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be building a hotel / fig-farming empire, not playing pet rescue with all the local strays. The problem is it’s very hard to say no when the animal in question is cold and wet and hungry and outside your front gate.

Meet Zeli?, our new dog.

This is Zeli?. We found her out in the street, looking dangerously thin. We tried feeding her by the roadside for a while, but during the January cold snap we were worried she might freeze. She didn’t have a protective layer of fat, and she seemed to have had a tough time in general: just a very skinny, submissive, and sad-looking dog. So she went from being a street dog to a yard dog, like Zeytin before her.

Zeytin and Zeli? at play.

Luckily the two of them get on very well. Zeli? is a kangal which means she’s been bred for guarding sheep and fighting off wolves (!). She’s already big and she’s going to be huge once she puts some weight back on. But, luckily for us, she is extremely sweet-tempered. She barks if there’s a noise in the night, which is good for security I suppose, but I think an actual intruder would probably get licked to death.

Sirem with Zeli?. Dogs love hugs.

Unfortunately for Zeli?, her previous owners chopped off her ears. There’s a misguided belief around here that says you have to do that so the dog will hear better and won’t have floppy ears for another dog or a wolf to latch onto in a fight. It’s a real shame, but we try not to make her feel self-conscious about it.

Sookie the kitten. Could you reject this animal?

We also have a new kitten, Sookie. We did try really hard not to have a new kitten. We told the neighbour who brought her to us (as a crying wet little bundle in the middle of a thunderstorm) that this was not on, and never to do it again. We even found a new owner via the internet, and drove Sookie to Izmir to meet her new adoptive family. She lasted about four days. Bothering the other cats in the apartment, constantly growling, and crapping everywhere. She seemed to be of the firm opinion that our place was her real home. So we drove to Izmir again and brought her back.

Sookie yawning.

Sookie stretching.

Sookie is named for one of the characters from the show True Blood (if you’re a fan of that show, note that I am increasingly thinking we should have called her Jessica because of how much she enjoys biting people). She has almost exactly the same calico colouring as one of our other cats, Sutlaç, who is also from the village. So we’re thinking they’re probably sisters, and somewhere around here is a mother cat who really needs to be snipped.

Sookie’s nephew (?) Sam looking all grown-up and handsome. Don’t tell the other cats but I think he may be the best-looking one.

All the other cats are doing well, although some of them think Sookie is a bit of a pain. There’s still a bit of an apartheid system with the Turkish cats living outside in a heated cat-box and the English ones tending to come inside, but the boundaries are blurring now that we have installed some cat flaps in two of the bedroom doors. We will see how long the outside cats take to figure out that they can potentially be inside cats now.

Sookie’s other nephew Sezar looking intrepid.

Donkey is feeling a bit morose.

We’ve also adopted a donkey!

No, I’m kidding. We are not quite that crazy. This is a picture of our neighbour’s donkey grazing on the side of the road. She doesn’t look too happy but I guess donkeys usually don’t.

In other more practical news, we have made some progress in the kitchen. But I’m determined to stop showing you embarrassingly incremental photos of that and just get to the end of the process as soon as we can. In the garden we’ve started building a big hügelkultur bed: basically a raised bed with lots of old, rotting wood underneath the soil to act as a water reservoir in the drier months. We’ve fixed some leaks in the barn roof by taking sections of the old Roman tiles down, cleaning them, and replacing the cracked ones. And we are only one more tiling and grouting session away from having all three bedrooms renovated.

Finally, after being told off by our postman for not having a letterbox, we built this one.

Our new letterbox.

Although we’ve had a run of rain over the last week or so, I don’t want to give the impression that there are no sunny days. In late January Sirem’s sister Çisem was visiting so we took her over to Ku?adas? to see what the beachfront promenade looked like in winter. Some of the cafes were still open and we had a really nice lunch.

Winter sun at the beach with Çisem.

Taken from the same spot: a view of the Greek island of Samos.

Sunset in Ku?adas?.

A few days later we had a chance to see one more of the amazing ancient Greek sites in the area. We were in Didim, a seaside town about an hour down the coast, and stopped off at the Temple of Apollo, which was the religious centrepiece of the ancient city of Didyma. Most of the other ruins we’ve seen are in splendid isolation out in the countryside, but the Temple of Apollo just rears up from its surroundings in suburban Didim. Incredible stuff.

The Temple of Apollo.

It must have been spectacular in its day…

Must get faster at carpentry

7 December, 2014 / Jason

This will just be a quick post. I wish there was more to add: we’re pushing on with the kitchen, but the date of the previous post is evidence that progress hasn’t been all that dramatic. On the positive side, we’re learning lots of woodwork tricks that should make us faster in the future.

Here’s a shot of one of the kitchen cabinets, almost done. From left to right that’s going to be four drawers, an open slot for storing wine (above) and trays (below), and a large corner cupboard that will sit up against the washing machine. As you can see, we’re going for the rustic look.

Cabinet for the left side of the kitchen.

We’ve picked out the tiles we’re going to use for the worktops. Very Turkish! There will be some interesting cutting to get those hexagons to work, but we think it will be worth it.

The tiles we've chosen for the worktops.

Tiles for the kitchen worktops.

As of yesterday the cabinets actually got dragged into the kitchen itself, which was a bit of a milestone for us. No doors on the cupboards yet, and the worktops still need to be trimmed and screwed into place, but you can start to see what it’s going to look like.

Cabinets in place.

Real drawers will work better than a wicker basket.

Lots of room in those corner cupboards.

A couple of weeks ago I finally found the bag that had my camera gear in it, so I now have a tripod again which means night-time photos are possible. I know I should get out and capture the atmosphere of some of the local towns after dark, but for starters here are a few shots of home.

View of our garden by night: the winter rains have made everything green.

Looking back into the village from outside our gate.

Kitchen progress

24 November, 2014 / Jason

I’ve lost the last couple of days to flu — nothing serious, but Sirem has been very patient with the usual tragic man-flu whining. So this seems like a good moment to take stock with a progress report.

Currently, the kitchen is our big priority. As usual we’ve sat down with Sketchup to figure out what we want to build. Because the room is not that big, and there’s only the one door, we’ve found it much easier than when we designed our kitchen in Southampton. Basically the strategy is to build as much worktop space as possible and then to cover every available bit of wall with cupboards. Nobody ever complained that their kitchen had too much storage space, right?

Planned kitchen layout in Sketchup.

The door is at the back of the picture, and that slot on the front left wall is an old fireplace where we plan to keep the gas bottles for the stove. The window ends up traditionally placed over the sink, front right. The microwave and our small oven get stacked on top of each other, and there’s a chunk of bonus storage space above the fridge.

So far, we’ve started on some of the framing work, and found some 18mm plywood to serve as a base for the tiled worktops. We’ve been lining things up out in the courtyard to check that it’s all going to fit. Once we take the pieces into the actual kitchen, there will be a lot less room to move.

Kitchen cupboards and worktops starting to take shape. None of the kitchen walls are at right angles to each other, so there’s some fiddly bits with the carpentry.

At the risk of appearing to have gone full red-neck, here’s a shot of the nail guns I mentioned last time. They may look excessive but they’ve been extremely handy in putting together framing projects like the kitchen. Of course sometimes you have to use screws, but when you can get away with nails, the power to get twenty of them into the work piece inside a minute is just amazing. The little one, the staple gun, has probably been the big surprise: you can use it to put together something like a mitre-cut picture frame very easily, and it’s great for pinning up wire mesh for plastering.

Nail guns: the one on the left fires nails up to 5cm long, and is moderately scary. The one in the middle fires staples deep into timber, and is not so scary but will still hurt you. The one on the right fires 9cm nails and is absolutely terrifying.

This is what a box of 5000 wire-coiled 90mm nails looks like.

This is what a box of 5000 wire-coiled 9cm nails looks like. I hope not to need to go back to the shop for a while.

Last week we put a solar hot water system in. Or, more correctly, we paid the professionals to put one in. Previously we’d been using an instant hot-water heater but that was going to lead to big electricity bills if we kept it up. Solar has been great so far, with plenty of hot water even on the cloudier days.

Our new solar hot water system, on the roof above the bathroom.

While we had the tools and timber out for the kitchen, we also thought we should put some kind of bed together for the cats that are sleeping outside. (Yes, I’m ashamed to say there is currently a terrible apartheid system in place where the pampered UK cats are sleeping indoors and the hard-grafting Turkish street cats are sleeping outdoors.)

Combined bench and cat box project. The cats were supposed to sleep underneath so people could sit on the top, but as you can see the cats had other ideas.

Combined bench and cat box project. The cats were supposed to sleep underneath so people could sit on the top, but as you can see they had other ideas.

The idea was to make a box to keep the cats out of the wind, and to put some cushions and blankets inside to make it comfortable. We’ve since put a panel of clear plastic over the middle section to help them keep more body heat in there. They seem to appreciate it.

This is Suzi, one of Sütlaç’s kittens. How can you look at that face and not build some kind of shelter for her?

Zeytin is shocked to learn that the cats now also have a house.

On our way back from a walk today, we climbed the hill across the street to get a new view on our place. I really like the shot below, because you can see all the different bits and pieces that make up our little compound. From the front left, anti-clockwise, that’s the disused chicken coop, then the old house, the new house, the barn, and, if you look carefully in the foliage at the back, you can see the slab of metal roofing that keeps the rain off our clay oven.

The farmhouse from a new angle. I like this shot because you can see all the different buildings.

Our farmhouse from a new angle.

And, in conclusion, a shot of a poplar tree to show the advance of the seasons…

Autumn colours in the village.

PS: there is one more thing. We really appreciate all the comments on the blog, but we’ve been a bit surprised to find how prevalent spam commenting is in the blog world. (Probably many of you out there already knew this.) At first I was manually approving or deleting every comment, but when the spam count got into the thousands it became overwhelming. So we’re currently relying on some spam filters that work on keywords. It makes my life a lot easier, but the downside is there’s a small chance that every now and then we’ll block a legitimate comment. If a comment of yours seems to go missing, I apologize in advance, and please feel free to email me and I’ll sort it out.

Why everyone needs an air compressor

11 November, 2014 / Jason

It’s a busy period at the moment. There’s just the two of us here, and we’re trying to get the rest of the renovation done on the farmhouse so we can switch focus to the straw-bale construction up in the orchard.

Of all the tools we either brought with us or bought here in Turkey, I think the most useful is the air compressor. I used to wonder what these were really for: why would anyone want a big supply of compressed air?

Compressor in action.

It turns out that the reason you want compressed air is because you can use it to do almost anything. Instead of buying lots of small tools like drills or sanders with individual electric motors, the idea is to have one big electric motor that fills a tank with compressed air, and then use the air to power lighter, simpler, hopefully cheaper tools.

Gauges, valves, copper pipes… it’s got everything!

In truth, we haven’t thrown away all our electric saws and drills. But the compressor lets us run tools that don’t always have an electric equivalent. The most dramatic are probably the two nail guns we own: scary! We also have an air-powered staple gun which is incredibly handy for things like upholstery.

For instance: we like our Toyota Hilux, and it will carry a lot of cargo. But one of its few weak points is that you don’t really have a boot. There’s nowhere to lock up your bags or shopping out of sight. So we built a removable tray cover out of basic timber and board, but made it look more professional by covering it in black vinyl. We wouldn’t have been able to do such a nice job of stretching the vinyl without the power of the staple gun.

Truck tray cover: timber and oriented-strand board covered in black vinyl.

We hope it looks professional.

Another air tool that’s going to get a lot of use in the future is a mortar-and-plaster sprayer we had to order from the US. This is going to be a life saver when it comes to the hard work of getting all those straw bale walls covered in three coats of clay plaster.

We tried the sprayer out for the first time on a smaller job: covering a brick wall at the front of the house with cement render.

It’s a clever tool. You dip the bucket into the wet mortar mix…

… and then the compressed air blasts the mortar out onto the wall.

Rendered in no time; will look much nicer once limewashed.

If we hadn’t had to stop and manually mix up additional mortar a few times, the job would have been done in ten minutes. It’s a really smart and simple tool.

Speaking of plastering, we’ve also started to experiment with using the clay-rich soil from our orchard as a plaster base. The oven at the back of the garden was looking a bit worse for wear, so giving it a new coat seemed like good practice.

Fresh coat of earth plaster (just dirt mixed with a bit of ash) on the clay oven.

In that photo, you might spot some cracks forming in our plaster coat as it dries. That was both frustrating and encouraging: it means that the plaster mix we get from simply digging up our soil is actually too rich in clay. We need to add some sand and maybe some straw and lime to perfect it. Further work needed, as the scientists say.

What else have we done lately? We worried that Zeytin (the dog) would not be warm enough as the nights got colder, so we gave her a clear plastic curtain to help keep her body heat inside the doghouse.

A curtain to keep Zeytin warm. Yes, we are soft-hearted people, I know.

And here is a shot of Zeytin looking like a fugitive in a wanted poster.

And here is a shot of Zeytin looking like a fugitive in an old “wanted” poster.

The next big project is definitely finishing the kitchen. It’s embarrassing how long I’ve put that one off. It’s not that we don’t have a kitchen; it’s just that it’s mostly made out of bookshelves and it doesn’t have a sink in it yet.

Thanks for reading. As usual I will close with a random selection of pictures.

Sirem wanted me to post this shot of some marigolds just to show that they are still in bloom.

More bounty from our neighbour’s garden: we fried most of these peppers and froze them to use over the winter.

A moody-looking sunset over our village.

Concrete is cool

27 September, 2014 / Jason

Bear with me. I know concrete may not sound like the most exciting subject in the world. I also know that Portland cement is not exactly the most environmentally friendly building material around. But we’ve been blown away by how useful it is, and how easy it is to do small jobs around the house with it. I confess that for years I assumed concrete work was something you had to pay a professional to do, but that’s just not true.

A man and his wheelbarrow. (Thanks for the shirt, Paul.)

A man and his wheelbarrow. (Cheers for the shirt, Paul.)

Our first job was pretty modest: after the work on our new bathroom, the trench through the yard had messed up some of the garden borders. So we made a new one. It’s not going to win any awards for style, but it works.

Lime-washed concrete garden border. Our very first job!

Lime-washed concrete garden border. Our very first concrete job!

Then we really got started. In the courtyard, the stairs up to the garden had a strange first step that was twice as tall as it should have been, making the stairs very awkward. So we built a new step, out of formed concrete with wire mesh for reinforcement, and tiled it to look like the others.

That bottom step didn't use to be there. Much more comfortable to walk up now!

That bottom step is new. Much more comfortable to walk up the stairs now!

We also made a new curved concrete ramp for the door to the barn, and a new sill for the kitchen window (the previous one had crumbled when they took the old window out).

This used to be a sudden step down to the barn floor level. Curved ramp makes it easier to roll things in and out of the barn.

New window needed a new window sill. Further plasterwork needed around the edges...

New window needed a new concrete sill. Further plasterwork needed around the edges…

We’ve even started on some bricklaying, adding a few courses to a wall at the front of the house to help with privacy. No photos of that yet, though.

Concrete is of course a bit grey, so I thought I should add some photos of more colourful stuff. Here’s another insect visitor to our garden: a praying mantis that helpfully sat right next to one of our outside lights one night and watched us as much as we were watching him.

Praying mantis wants in on the photography action.

And some shots of local places, thanks to our visitors Berkan and Sofie who dragged us out of the house for a bit.

Harbour at Güzelçaml?.

Evening street scene in Eski Do?anbey, a conservation village nearby.

Container day 2: the return

21 September, 2014 / Jason

We had an exciting milestone when our shipping container finally arrived the other day. It certainly took the long way around: from Southampton to Hamburg, and then to Port Said in Egypt, where it changed ships before sailing to Istanbul and then back down to Izmir. I hope it had a good time…

I was off with Molly at the vet clinic when the truck arrived, so Sirem had the frantic job of telling the removal guys which box goes where. I think we had more than 100 items total, so it was tough to keep track of everything. Stuff that was urgent (kitchen things for example) sat in the courtyard, while boxes we’re not going to open for a while (books, blankets) went into the barn.

Boxes stacked in the courtyard.

Not sure what we would do without the barn for storage.

Not sure what we would do for storage without the barn.

Clay pot was the only breakage so far: not bad.

It’s a strange feeling getting to see all your belongings after seven weeks without them. After all this time sitting on plastic patio chairs, we were very happy to sit in some comfy reclining chairs again. And the dishwasher and washing machine were opened and connected up with great urgency and enthusiasm.

The boxes people open first say a lot about what they've missed most...

The boxes you open first say a lot about what you’ve missed most…

We have a dishwasher and a washing machine! It’s starting to feel like a real kitchen. (The sink is still outside though.)

?urup was very impressed with how comfortable cushions on a sofa can be.

So the place is starting to feel less like camping and more like a home. A few more jobs to go: the kitchen cabinets, tiling the bedrooms, etc. But we’re getting there. And we’re conscious of all the real work waiting for us up in the orchard.

What else can I tell you? It’s late September now and the weather is just starting to turn. The daily high temperature is about 30 rather than 35 or 40. Much nicer for getting work done.

Also, I don’t want to give the impression that it is always sunny here. Only about 95% of the time. :) In fact we had our second thunderstorm a couple of days ago: a short, intense burst of rain and thankfully no leaking roofs. And here’s a shot of a beautiful cloud-streaked sky at sunset.

It’s not all sunny days: very occasionally we have clouds.

What have we really been doing?

16 September, 2014 / Jason

It’s been a while since our last post. Sorry about that: must do better!

We’ve been a bit distracted. We have lots of projects to work on, as usual. But more than that, one of the cats (Molly) has been ill: liver problems brought on by the stress of the move. Which makes us feel very guilty. And means a 50 km round trip every morning to get IV fluid treatment for her at the university vet clinic in Ayd?n. Thankfully, though, she seems to be getting better.

So: what have we really been doing? I looked back at our previous blog posts and it struck me that often I would write about something just because I had a decent photo of it. No big deal, except it doesn’t give you a representative view of what life is like here. Sometimes cool things happen and I am not quick enough to get the camera: two camels being led out of the neighbour’s front gate, or a dapper old man riding past our door on a donkey, coming down from the mountains carrying a rifle as old as he was. Sometimes you don’t get the camera because it doesn’t feel right. You don’t want to be rude and in-your-face with people you don’t yet know very well. And sometimes you’re just busy.

The point of this post is to talk about the stuff we don’t have pictures of. Nevertheless, you will be needing some pictures, so here’s our place from the street.

A typical un-photographed day for us starts early as we’re woken up by either the call to prayer or a tractor going past our bedroom window. Then we go back to sleep until about eight in the morning when we get up to reliably blue skies and the hope that someone else has already started making breakfast. Sirem and I take Molly to the vet clinic in Ayd?n: a flat, straight drive into the morning sun, with the mountains on our left. Treatment takes a couple of hours, but the staff are good people. On the way back, if Molly is in a reasonable mood, we try to do some shopping. A stop in the sanayi (industrial estate) to buy tools and building materials, or a stop in Germencik for fresh bread, cheese, and eggs.

Shopping in Germencik

By the time we get back, it’s lunch time. After lunch, if it’s a hot day (and all of them have been) a siesta is tempting. Then we get started on something that’s actually useful: tiling, plastering, painting, concreting, working in the garden — that sort of thing.

This is how the bathroom looks now. It might seem all that great but that's because I didn't give you a proper "before" photo showing how the walls and ceiling looked.

This is how the bathroom looks now. It might not seem all that great but that’s because I didn’t give you a proper “before” photo showing the crumbling walls and the dark and dirty ceiling.

The current state of the garden. The neatly dug beds are due to my dad’s efforts while he was here.

Early experiments in lime-washing the walls are inspected by Tarç?n.

Early experiments in lime-washing the garden walls are inspected by Tarç?n.

Around sunset on every alternate day it’s time to go and collect figs. We walk around all 65 trees, looking for figs that are already on the ground, and shaking the trees a bit to get the partially dried figs to fall. We’ve got other jobs too, like laying the figs out to dry, sorting them into different classes, and rinsing them in salty water to help preserve them for the winter. This last step gives them a fantastic shine though.

One of our better figs.

If lunch was big we don’t eat a lot in the evening. Or sometimes it’s the other way around. Dinner might be just bread, cheese, potato chips, and a beer. I say “beer” in the singular because the truth is we’re drinking a lot less than we did in the UK. I remain a fan of beer but after a day in the sun it only seems to take one to make me want to lay back in a chair and look at the stars.

As the evening goes on we referee a few fights between our cats and some of the local strays who wander in, and then eventually bed.

What else have we been up to? Just recently we found a good local welder in Germencik, and he put us onto his friend the window guy, and so we had new windows and security screens installed on some of the rooms. There’s not a lot of crime here, so hopefully we needn’t have bothered, but it gives us some peace of mind when nobody is home.

Security grille and fly screen for the kitchen; new window in the background.

In earlier photos of the garden, you may have spotted a half-ruined shed at the back of the block. I was a bit worried about this because it looked like the roof might collapse, so last week I decided the time had come and I pulled most of it down. No cats were inside. Now we’ve got a source of roof tiles, timber, and cinder blocks to recycle elsewhere.

The shed after my amateur demolition.

Zeytin, the dog, is still very pleased about her change in status from street dog to garden dog. It’s not really cold at night yet, but nevertheless we gave her a little house. Well, OK: a cardboard box with a blanket inside. She was incredibly happy about this development.

“Nobody ever gave me a house before!”

And finally, here’s a picture of a different sort of visitor. This guy sat on the back of one of our chairs and posed for photos for quite a while before he had to fly.

Grasshopper is ready for his close-up now.

Cats and dogs living together

15 August, 2014 / Jason

A few people have asked how our cats are doing, so I thought I should post on the animal situation here. (I know that not everyone reading this feels the same way about cats as we do, but don’t worry: once the hotel is built, the animals will be safely confined down here in the farmhouse, honest.)

So: Marlowe, Molly, and Maya were safely delivered by the nice people at Paws Bulgaria the day after we got here. I think the heat was probably a bit of a shock to them, but they’ve adjusted very well. The first week they were confined to a bedroom and a chicken-wire covered verandah. After that we let them outside, and they now sleep in the shade during the day, and run around hunting cicadas and grasshoppers at night.

Marlowe looking statesmanlike as ever.

Molly on the roof, looking wistfully through the vines.

Maya: blurry and hard to pin down. But happy, we hope.

We also have some other cats, because that’s just how it works in Turkey. Regular readers will already have met Tarç?n (“Cinnamon”), who was a very small and very hungry stray adopted by Sirem’s dad before we got here. There’s also ?urup (“Syrup”), who was fed by the previous owners we think. He is a very sweet-natured cat and Tarç?n’s chief playmate. The English cats are still deciding what to think about Tarç?n, although Marlowe seems to be mentoring him in serious cat business.

Tarç?n: does he know how cute he is, do you think?

?urup, who has endless patience with Tarç?n’s attacks.

There’s also O?lum (“My son”), one of Sirem’s family’s cats, who is just visiting from Istanbul. He was one or two problems, including epilepsy, so he needs some extra attention. He also likes to complain loudly if he thinks his food is a bit late.

O?lum managing our power supply.

And last but definitely not least, there’s Zeytin (“Olive”) the dog. She used to live in the street outside the house, and was fed by the previous people and some of the neighbours. We felt bad for her out there and thought we should get her spayed to avoid having to adopt litters of puppies. Since we let her in to recuperate after the operation she doesn’t really want to leave. But that’s OK, we needed a watchdog anyway.

Zeytin looking pleased.

Category: Farmhouse (Page 1 of 2)

Planning permission is go

Summer: postscript

Winter brings more animals

Must get faster at carpentry

Kitchen progress

Why everyone needs an air compressor

Concrete is cool

Container day 2: the return

What have we really been doing?

Cats and dogs living together

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