If you want to make life tricky, try building a new house with a huge, complex curvy roof. If you live in the countryside you could even make it the shape of a plough. And if that’s not challenge enough, why not build a barn at the same time. That’s exactly what Mark and Candida Diacono and their daughter Nell are doing on their 17 acre smallholding in Devon. Alongside their sweeping wedge shape new home, they’ll build a working barn for cookery courses and to process their highly unusual produce like Szechuan peppers, quinces and pecan nuts.

Mark and Candida set themselves an ambitious schedule of just 7 months to build their matching house and barn – each from very different materials. The house has a timber frame and timber cladding, whereas the barn is all steel frame and traditional Devon cob. It’s a unique technical challenge, and it’s a unique builder taking it on too – a man with his own mission to bring work and skills to local people. It’s a non-traditional set of farm buildings made by a non-conventional team of people. But will it prove a recipe for success, or disaster?