Life's so busy but we are enjoying every minute

During the preceding decade, our home had been at The New Inn, at Baschurch, in North Shropshire. We were proud of the way we developed the pub and built up a loyal local following.

Our move to the Brompton Cookery School and Bed and Breakfast, on the National Trust's Attingham Estate, near Shrewsbury, began at the end of last year.

We were the preferred bidder for the complex when it came on the market – and we were both thrilled when the National Trust handed us the keys.

I spend a lot of my time demonstrating dishes on TV – many of you will have seen me on ITV's This Morning, or on Channel 4's What's Cooking – so it made perfect sense to take over the cookery school and demonstrate to people day in, day out.

We'd been working endless hours to get things right for last weekend's launch. There were evenings when I'd find myself up the ladders at 1am, still drilling holes in the wall to fit new curtain rails or complete a bit of DIY.

Don't believe for a moment that being on TV means you can get away with less work. It's the opposite. You end up doing more and more and more. I still do all of the things that I always did – taking the kids to school, meeting my suppliers, checking the orders, preparing food and, of course, demonstrating at Brompton – but then there's all the extra things that go with that.

In a typical week, I'll end up on the train to London for an overnight stay before the following day's broadcast. Or I might have to head up north, to judge a chef's competition. It's busy, busy, busy. On top of all of that, I run regular sessions for people who want to improve their cooking skills. I usually find myself falling asleep in front of the lap top at 1am. Thankfully, I didn't fall asleep when I was using the drill.

And now we've finally opened and held our official launch party: there were canapés, fizz, live music and lots and lots of laughter. The Brompton Cookery School and Brompton Bed and Breakfast are officially open.

Hopefully, in the coming weeks, Jenny and I can start to turn our attentions to our wonderful garden. We've got an amazing plot of land beside the cookery school and we plan to put it to best use.

I'm a huge fan of seasonal produce and I love using the freshest possible ingredients. You look at the example of great chefs like Raymond Blanc, for instance, who has a cottage garden next to his restaurant and you can't help but be inspired. We're planning to take a leaf out of that book – or, that vegetable patch.

Here at Brompton, we want to grow as much of our produce as possible. Then, when we have people sign up for our cookery courses, we can pop out into the garden and pick what we need. In recent weeks, I've had meetings with the Cottage Herbery, who are fantastic. They have given me some ideas about what we should plant.

We've already had plenty of rhubarb through already and we've been getting some of the beds ready for planting. Pretty soon, we'll have peas and beans and lettuce. Hopefully there'll be plenty more after that, too.

We're also hoping to find time to go foraging. The countryside in Shropshire is beautiful and we're big fans of pure, natural ingredients. Foraging has become increasingly fashionable in recent years – though that's not why we are fans. We love to forage because it means we can find the best ingredients and use them in our food.

That's one of the beauties of living where we are. The food is stunning – and at Brompton, we aim to put it to best use.