Building work has begun!

Yes after many years of planning and many months of fundraising and worrying about grants, work to renovate our Old Dairy building into a tearoom, classroom and office space has now begun. Builders arrived on site yesterday and wasted no time by beginning to remove the old lean-to, once used as a loading bay for the farm when it was making yoghurts back in the 1960’s and 70’s (see photo below).
We are working with a family based firm from Shrewsbury, Shingler Construction. Together with Gavin, our wonderful QS from WCP Associates, and Ian from Seven Architecture we have a great team on the case. Furthermore, Connie, Charlotte and Ben’s mum is busy keeping a close eye on everything – just in case any old farm artifacts are dug up during the process. With hard hat and high-vis jacket on she is never far away, but this morning she even had a friend helping her out. After feeling something funny tingling her head she took off the hard hat, and there sitting on her head curled up was a small mouse! As you can imagine, Connie was not too pleased, but it is good to know that everyone on the farm is following the progress… 🙂

After set up and some demolishment work yesterday, today has been focussed on reducing ground levels around the building, which also means moving current water supplies. As you can imagine it didn’t take long for the builders to tear the water pipe with their digger, and so whilst that is repaired and new supplies are brought onto the farm, we are having to limit our cups of tea in the office!

However, all the inconvenience and chaos is worth it when we remember the vision that these buildings will soon turn in to. A big thank you must always go to all of you who donated towards this landmark project and to Advantage West Midlands for their grant aid support, without either this project would not go ahead.

We will try to keep everyone informed of progress on this blog, with photos and updates – so please keep this page as a favourite.

http://www.fordhallfarm.com