Batman II

Batman has cometh and goneth, we're relieved to say that nothing too serious is going to arise from his survey. There are some signs that the barn is being used as a roost but it may only be one bat. If the barn was being used as a nursery roost then we'd have been in a very different situation.

We've learnt that bats have different roosts for different activities day roosts for chilling out in, night roosts for dining and hanging out in (literally, boom boom tsh), nursery roosts for rearing the young and also hibernation roosts. I seem to remember Tim our architect telling us they even have a 'getting jiggy roost', but i may question his authority on this point, bats suffer enough bad press without slandering their character further.

The ecology consultant is going to report the following: -
- Barn owl box condition is satisfied as there is a vacant box nearby.
- Day bat roost to be provided within part of the roof of our small lean-to extension.
- Night time roost to be provided within garage (basically make sure they can get in and out of the building).
- Ridge tiles must not be removed until September
- Nest box for House Sparrow to be provided on site.

We're really happy with this result and hopefully the bats and the birds will be too.

This is where I saw the bat!!

Settled in

Firstly I guess I should apologise for such tardy blogging skills. We don't have internet access in our caravan hence the delay between posts.

Sunny Caravan

There's good news and kind of bad news since i last wrote back in February.

The good news is we have full planning permission, everything we have asked for has been approved by Cornwall Council so our yellow planning notice can be removed from the site access. Our architects 'Atelier 3' are very pleased with this result and naturally so are we.

Planning Notice

The kind of bad news is that we have noticed a bat in the barn and informed natural England. The obvious answer would be to forcefully evict the little critter but we want to make sure he's ok and perhaps encourage some of his buddies to come dine on our land. Apparently one bat can eat thousands of insects in one night. Cool huh?.. and it's a myth that they get tangled in one's hair, i'm not sure if that applies to everyone or just me?!

Milking equipment gone

Progress on site has been slow but we have made a few changes worth mentioning. Most of the milking equipment has been removed from inside the barn but we had to suddenly stop all work to avoid upsetting the bats, they are a protected species and i'm far too attractive to risk spending time in jail (IMHO) and too mean to pay a £5,000 fine.

We have also built a structure to house our compost loo. We call it the pyramid stage for obvious reasons.

Compost Loo

Growing Beds

The other change is the garden, we have a few herbs growing, cleared some nettles and have some wild flowers growing - its like well natural. Wayne and Amy helped us dig some veggie beds the other day. We've just added half a ton of compost which is settling before we plant out. I think Sal is pleased to be getting her hands dirty again!

The next step is deciding exactly how we want the building to work so that we can submit plans for building regs approval. This will involve decisions around how efficient we want the bulding to be in terms of water usage, heating and cooling. Doors, windows, flooring, insulation and heat sources will all need to be detailed in the plans.

The other item to deal with is obviously the bats. We have instructed an ecology consultant who seems costly but lets hope they are efficient too. The solution is likely to provide an alternative roost, our concern is over how costly this may be. An obvious option to consider is to re-house the bats in our garage, hopefully this can work. We can kinda see why they like it here...

That lovely view again