Farmhouse Chimney Upgrade & Homesteading in Ireland 

Looks wonderful! So happy about the fireplace fix. Sometimes things do go right...

I can’t wait to see how the dead hedges turn out!! I’m also enjoying the blooming leaves on everything, so pretty! 😊💚

So wonderful to see ye getting the chimney going again and soon will have a stove. Our old cottages here, have to have a fire burning in them, otherwise they die.

Great job clearing the orchard out !!! Just remember that the only food that fruit trees get is rotten leaves.

You guys really have it looking so good around there. I saw some people who have stinging nettles on their French Homestead and they make stinging nettle Pesto With the leaves and say it's very good. If you look on youtube, there's all kinds of recipes for stinging nettle pesto Like pesto with walnuts etc. Maybe you 2 can make some and see what it's like. So Great. You got your fireplace chimney tube up there and you'll be able to use it soon. Once you get a stove. That'll help keep it warmer in there for you. Then your little orange kitties can curl up near the fire. Seeing you walk the kitten on a harness, what's so cute. Some cats do fine with them and other cats. Just lay there flat and act like they're being killed. It really looks nice behind that 1. Burn where you leveled everything off and made it all cleaned up. Everything is looking so good around there. You guys are very hard workers and get things done. Dawn is an absolute working maniac and puts her whole heart and soul into everything.

Yes, a dead hedge along your empty Stone fence areas would look great. I love that look!

A chimney liner !!!! How very exciting 😂😂😂 now get the back and sides of the fireplace repointed ready for the multifuel stove with 2 doors on the front and a singing kettle on top. There is plenty of logs to keep it going for a while .❤👍👍👍👍

You are ready for Spring. You’ve really cleaned and cleared it up! Looking good!❤

Hi Dawn and Ben! I can't wait to see the dead hedge built! That's a tremendous idea! It's just so beautiful! Take care and see you in the next one!

Great success with the chimney.👍 I have to smile when I see a cat wearing a harness l, having seen the reactions from the cats I've had over the years, it can be either dramatic or entertaining when you first put it on.😂

That farm house must have been impressive in its Hey Day…glad you are trying to restore it.

Hi Dawn and Ben You're both doing a fantastic job. Extremely hard workers. Best wishes to you both 🎉🎉

Hello from Sacramento, California. Your hard work and positive attitudes are really paying off. I'm so enjoying your videos😊

It’s a nice sized fireplace, and very interesting to watch as we need to reline our own chimney. Thanks for sharing!

Everything is looking so neat and tidy now! You guys have done a wonderful job, amazing clear out behind the big shed/barn.

It’s so great to see the raspberries getting their leafs! Another great vid the land looks SO much better!

So happy Dawn and Ben ye are getting the chimney fixed and there will be a fire going soon again. You know I was in Carrick on Shannon last weekend with family was thinking of ye. The garden looks wonderful. Have fun

Ben and Dawn delighted to see the flue liner going in as easy as it did. Great to get the job done without any problem. I am glad you are getting a multi fuel stove .I have two and they were agreat investment .I have an Erin Stanley which heats my water and 8 Radiators. The land looks really well now. Plenty of lawnmowing as the nettles and brambles keep on growing. Take care and God Bless you both xx

Spring is coming 👏 I’ve got to say your land is looking so lovely, once the grass takes over and all the mowing is going to be lush ❤️a beautiful garden will appear❤️ Dawn and Ben you both work so hard, the rewards are coming …very happy for you,to be able to get your wood burner going, will heat the house up a treat xx🤗

ROFL the line coming down the chimney made me jump hahaha. That was a lot more than a bit of tidying up lol Now you have to stop working and go buy a fireplace. So interesting to know that it was originally an open fire with a grate. I can't wait to see what you've chosen.

The land looks spectacular! Hello to dear Alan who clearly loved sniffing all around haha. You'll have raspberries galore - that patch will soon be doubled.

Progress is wonderful!

You two need to reach around and pat yourselves on your back. Amazing the difference the back yard. Love watching😊

Great progress! And raspberry plants in bloom too, yummy! Good save Dawn.

So glad the flue went up the chimney to save you some expense! The garden is really coming on bit by bit. It was lovely seeing Alan enjoying the outdoors. I hope the kitties will be good mousers for you. Blessings Sharon

Fantastic looking indeed and see how big this wide open plan is becoming and very hard work has paid off. Nice having the chimney liner installed.. Congrats for getting your audience thrilled in what your doing and your new members.

It's looking pretty managed now and I reckon your soil looks very rich, dark and will definitely be nicely productive. Fantastic progress.❤

Raspberries make a welcome addition to your orchard. ❤❤❤

You are so right mowing will be the key to transforming the ground cover from what you dont want into what you do,

The garden is looking fantastic, you have both worked so hard on it, love and blessings from Scotland 💖💖

Stinging nettle soup is good if you experience arthritis, cream of nettle is delicious.🇦🇺🎸⚡️🤘🏿🤘🏼💋❤️my grandmother cooked it when I was a child

So pleased you got the liner up. One job that went well. Jo has raspberry canes and she tells me that they fruit on the second year of growth so don't be too disappointed if you don't get fruit this year. If you squint when you look at the ground it looks like lush grass not marigolds and stingers. See you Friday XX

I really can't get over how much you two have done in a relatively short time - your back garden is looking loads better! Just a thought on your dead hedge - have a look into taking a few willow cuttings and plunging them into the ground in the dead hedge. Willow takes easily from cuttings and you'd soon (well, maybe a couple of years) have a live hedge springing up to fill the gaps along side the dead hedge. It'd be nice to see new hedges growing from cuttings from your old tree's, kinda like a rebirth :)

My wife says give the raspberries plenty of compost and fully enclose them with wire netting.

You both are like the energiser battery. You just keep going & going. Love your channel and what you’re both achieving with the corner cottage is fantastic. I’ve watched you from the beginning & this is the first time I’ve commented. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay healthy and safe. Delphine from Ayr. Nth Qld. Australia.

Looks fabulous.

So pleased that the liner went through. That fireplace has left you with a some options to think about now as it also looks great stripped back to the arch. But the original fireplace looks great too.

Love watching this kind of thing. It's an escape from the mundane. New subscriber. Best.

Just having a tea beak from doing my house, don’t think it will ever end, great news that the flue fitted the chimney, my garden was full of weeds and nettles my house had been empty for a few years I ended up rotavating to get rid of it, I tried just digging and mowing but it all kept coming back, if they had veggies etc there the earth should be good, just stick a willow whip branch into the ground and they do grow, I did it, cheap trees 😁

Be great to get some serious heat in the house. We had a villager Berkley boiler stove in our bungalow when we lived in County Kerry for 2.5 years. Ran the 5 rads, towel rail and hot water off its 7.6kw wraparound boiler burning logs and supertherm. 2 bed Bungalow fully renovated and well insulated and exempt from BER report as derelict. When we sold in 2012, new energy rating a D2. Live on a narrowboat in the UK and have a woodwarm fireview 4.5kw stove. Amazing quality and stays in well. Much better quality and control than the villager.

aw, yaaaay!! love watching your journey (+ all the cats) it's very inspiring 🤗

Good to see all your efforts on the land beginning to pay dividends, It's hardly recognisable from when you started. Keep up the good work.

So happy to see something go according to plan without surprises. Looking forward to seeing how the stove gets fitted and seeing the bricks cleaned up a bit and repointed. Was there much celebrating for St Patrick's Day?? I've heard that we make a bigger deal of it here in North America than in Ireland. In any case, blessings for the two of you.

Yes I’ve heard that if you just stick Willow in the ground it grows, but it’s a good idea filling in some of the holes in your hedging. Do people walk up and down that road

Well done with chimney. Need to do that with ours but. Husband likes the chimney sweep s that nest in each summer.

good morning (?) dawn and ben... this is certainly interesting

Nettles can be used in cooking and sauces plus you can make very nice tea with it. Look for idears on line.

Looking forward to Friday! I'm jealous. I would love a property with land like this to get my hands dirty. You're doing a fantastic job 👍🏼

Also organically grown fruit and vegetables are healthier for you have more nutrients and if you sold them bring a higher price.

Great about the chimney liner. Also, you are having lovely weather for a change. xxx❤

I am so happy the chimney flu worked for you. Looking forward to seeing the burner you put in. I loved taking my cats out on the lead…I love that I looked like an eccentric old cat lady…hehehehe.

Happy the pipe for the chimney went easily. All the hard work of clearing the ivy all the rest looks wonderful! ❤

Yes! One step closer to a working wood stove. Land is looking so nice. You accomplished something I was unable to do, train a cat to take a lead. With me it was cat vs man…. man list 😼

Morning all thats great you got your liner in , won't know yourselves next winter . Im waiting for the postman to deliver a new lawnmower blade . I hit a hidden boulder with it and invented the rotovator 😋 . Assuming that turns up ill do the grass, If not ill do more on the van ... not wasting a dry day. Have a great week

It's good to keep some of the plants like the raspberries and blackcurrants because whatever variety they are, they are absolutely suited to the soil type, soil quality, pest attacks, diseases and weather in your part of the woods. They're bound to be an older variety. Your fruit trees probably are too. The newer types of currants probably have fatter fruit, but I bet yours taste better. Old varieties are worth their weight in gold. There's nothing worse than buying a plant that just doesn't like the conditions in your garden. And as for your fireplace. I was born in a house that was built in 1884/. A two up two down terrace there was a tiny front room for visitors then the 'same sized room which we called the kitchen. It had a small, black, cast iron range with a side oven, I remember my gran cooking a joint of lamb in it. I can still hear it sizzling and the smell of it.- That was where you cooked, and leading off the kitchen at the back of the house was the scullery which had a stone sink and a cold tap. That was where you did your prep and washing up.

Respect voor je vrouw harde werker

You should plant a few shovelfuls of marsh marigolds along the sides of your drainage ditch. That way you can save a few and still enjoy them. I don’t expect to see mine until late May. Property has become so much more accessible and open. It will be an interesting summer, so you can see what comes back and how much of it you still want to keep.

Stinging nettles are a powerful blood tonic in Spring. Just pop into a saucepan, stew for five minutes. Strain and drink.

I reckon a wood burner is a great plan. I'm heating my semi-detatched ex-Council estate bungalow entirely on wood. Get ilogs prepared right and they'll burn clean and hot with very little smoke. You may not need to burn coal-derived 'smokeless' fuel at all. Coal is sequestered carbon, like gas, oil and (arguably) peat, so by burning it you are increasing atmospheric CO2 whereas by burning wood, you are just speeding natural carbon cycling. With less pollutants. You have plenty of firewood, including lots of ash (the best), quite a bit of which will have ash dieback. I drove from Rosslare to Mulroy and back a week later in 2022 and it was everywhere and more trees effected than not. Though trees cycle down and die due to the disease, the firewood is fine. But dead ash is very brittle, so effected trees are best felled while still showing signs of life. Effected trees are a headache to climb and sectional fell due to the brittleness, and that's expensive even for 'simple' (un-diseased) trees. Most of the big trees on your boundaries seem to be ash. That one by your dead hedge site is an ancient hedgerow tree, so if it has (or gets) ash dieback, that will be very sad. For more on hedgerow trees, I invite you to take 10 mins to look at this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-n4kAKnjKxq0.html The ash is half way through. Yours has much bigger stems, but its history is similar. When considering your wood burner, I would advise that you get a bigger one than the size of the room 'calls for'. You can always shut it down low once it's running, open doors and position passive fans to move warm air. A big one will take bigger logs and stay 'in' over night, requiring less tending. You can get one with a back boiler and run rads or hot water (or both) off it. If you step it out into the room, you get better room heating efficiency and the space for perhaps installing a worm around the lower flue to heat water (whether or not you have a back boiler). You can do this whilst keeping the old fireplace as a feature although the orthodox path would be to sit the wood burner in the old fireplace. If you run rads, you can keep your central heating boiler If you have one) or night storage heaters for background warming if you're away for a while whilst heating rooms away from the wood burner. You're lucky because your chimney is inside the house. Hopefully, with a house that age, the chimney will be a big mass of masonry that will act as a big storage heater, releasing warmth gradually once the flue warms it. And heat the rooms above and next to it. Hope this is useful, good luck.

New subscriber here and love your work ethos and home 😁✅✅✅

I was so happy to see that you released it early. When I got up this morning I was going through my notifications and I said, hey there's the corner house project already yippee. We have a cat also, and she is not Street Smart whatsoever. If you just click a glass on something ,she goes running and hiding. You think she was beaten to death lol my husband doats on that cat from the time he wakes up tell he comes home from work ask about her when he's at work lol and then all night long when he's home from work 😂 he's a mess with that cat. Are you guys going to burn all those trees or let it die down to compost? The land is looking fabulous I cannot wait until the leaves start coming out on the trees. Oh you just said you're using the wood for wood chippings I talked to you guys all throughout the video while I'm watching it I should just wait till the end but I say too much to get it in before it all goes away 😂 good video much love from Oklahoma USA Jackie 🇺🇸💖

Hi Guys! I think that you have creeping buttercup and celandines rather than marsh marigolds but what the heck they are all yellow. Its lovely to see Alan outdoors, very cute in his harness! Fantastic that you got the flue up the chimney, did you see my stove recommendation a couple of vids back? With that large opening you now have more options. Great job on the land, looks huge now. Denis

That is a huge Ivy Henge 😀

whats happing ben your early hi dawn and ben

I love this channel. That is all.

looking great ,great ur clearin the land ,be gd when u cut use lawnmowerx

In USA they have a screen enclosure built at an open window . Called cat enclosure.they have on Amazon. Is the raised vareagoing to be the grass area to sit and relax. Or planting area.?

Are they Marsh marigolds? They look like Creeping buttercup. You have done a wonderful job, it’s going to look stunning. ❤

Bare root blac kthorn hedge shrubs!

Get a two wheeled cart , it will save you trips and your backs.

Just found your channel and have subscribed.Lots of catching up to do.I see you are in Leitrim but where?.I’ve been coming over around the Mohill area for nearly 30 years for the fishing.What was the lake in one of your videos I saw?

What do u plan to do to seal the soot in the back of the fire place. Its needs seal to kill the smell

I take it that you can't burn the brush piles. Or is that a personal chose not to? If you don't burn birds and ground animals will use them.

I know I am late to the party, but wouldn't it be easier on your bodies not to move things so many times, a tarp it useful for putting pruning's on and sliding/ pulling it to the end place.

I think it would be a shame to use herbicide on organic ground. Your raspberries will put up new shoots from the roots also if you bend them over and bury the tip in soil they will root.

wheres your mask ben

I hate to see cats on a harness. They have all that land to be free and no cars

Instead of a dead hedge maybe plant a white torn hedge the whips are about €30 for fifty 👍👍👍👍👍👍,Clearview multifuel stove are fabulous use one myself.