Month: June 2011

I am conscious that every blog seems to have a weather report of one kind or another so today I am not going to mention it at all!!

I kept my camera with me today and took three photo’s, one that made me laugh, one that was taken during a relaxation moment and one of the recent fruit harvest that I am chuffed to bits with.

The one that made me laugh was of the Tortoise, usually there is not a lot you can say about these, they spend their days in the Herb garden wandering around not doing anything exciting, today I thought I would let them out into the big garden for a couple of hours so that they could forage on something different. They go for things like clover, plantain and dandelions but I caught Livingstone having a sneaky go at my Strawberries.

The second photo I took while having a break, sitting (well laying actually) under the Oak tree, I looked up and just thought how lovely it looked and so here it is

The third photo is not the most exciting and I will never be on a par with David Bailey, but it gave me great delight to gather and open freeze the fruits, when I mixed them all together in the bag they looked great, and it will be a real treat in the winter to be able to get it out to make some kind of pudding with. The mixture is Strawberries, Raspberries and Blueberries 🙂

The Goose is still sitting and has not hatched any goslings yet, I will give her a few more days just to be on the safe side, we have been busy moving and cleaning out Chickens, we are expecting a large batch in tomorrow morning and everything has to be cleaned and disinfected, especially this time of the year when maggots are such a problem, it is best to keep on top of the situation rather than find you’ve left it too late and something has flystrike. We caught our third fox as well this week, and we know we still have another prowling around, the little Light Sussex bantam disappeared the night before last, and yesterday evening we were having a cuppa in the garden about 9pm when one of the cockerels at the back starting making a heck of a row, we couldn’t see anything when we went up there but he and his girlie were both sat up on top of their house, a sign we have learnt to recognise and take heed of so the trap will be staying for a while longer yet!

We have a wild bird that we have been unable to identify, we think it may be a Nightjar or a Wheatear, it is mostly active at dusk and makes a distinctive call, if there are any twitchers out there that can help, we would love to know what it is.

I am hoping that the new chickens will not take to the trees again like they did last time, or Hubby will be up the ladder again!! He is busy weeding at the moment and there are an awful lot of them, he thinks I am in preparing the dinner so I had better wrap this up and go make him a cuppa and pick some strawberries for pudding 😀

I’m a bit late doing the blog today but with good reason, after a trip to dermatology, I am not allowed out in the midday sun, so needed to get all the jobs done first and blog later!! It’s a bit difficult with a lifestyle like mine but I am having to move with the shade!!

The weather has been great, as far as veg growing is concerned, showers one minute, and sun the next, excellent, not so good for people out and about in it though!

As it is perfect growing conditions the harvesting has certainly speeded up, even the turnips are ready to pull and that is a couple of months early, I am picking strawberries by the kg and making jam every day! People have started buying veg at the gate and yesterday I had a lovely couple who were motorhoming around the uk stop to buy eggs and veg, they are the best days, when you have a chat to folk from different parts of the country who have stopped to buy something from you 🙂

We caught another dastardly fox, a young vixen, although I did feel sorry for her, once they are trapped they are as vulnerable as any other animal, but I know that if we let her free she would be back to kill my chickens and we can’t let that happen. The other goose is still sitting, and I had to read back over the blogs to find out when she first started, by my calculations she has probably another 10 days to go so I will keep you informed.  The chicken selling is going from strength to strength, we have made a bigger better sign and have had three people in already this weekend, one was for an order of 30 hens!! A large delivery is due in next week of Blue Beechwoods and Rhode Rocks which will sell out at £15 each with discounts available on larger numbers, if you know anyone that wants any send them this way 🙂

Feel free to comment on the blog by the way, I know you read it because you tell me but if you want to ask any questions or know anything different just ask and I am happy to reply 🙂

I have a date with a pig later!! and a cow! We have gone halves with a friend who lives a couple of villages away, she keeps them at hers as she has more land, so we are off to visit them tonight so see how big they are getting, a cow is a year and a half before its ready for the freezer but the piggies will go aged about 7 months, these are baconers so we will have plenty of bacon, ham and sausages to look forward too :p if you are in the area  on a Sunday morning after October pop in and I will make you a bacon sandwich. 

Yesterday was the most awful weather here in the Shire, non stop rain and high winds, each time I went out to do the feeding I got drenched! On a day like that there is nothing more to do than light the woodburning stove, put the dinner in to slow roast and watch as many movies as possible, which is exactly what we did 🙂

We have had new arrivals in the form of chicks this weekend, remember the ones that were in the incubator when the power went, well so far 9 have hatched, not a great hatch rate out of 24 but better than nothing! Five Blue Splash and four Gold Laced Orpingtons, one of them was so stuck in its shell I had to get a warm cloth and clean it off before it could uncurl itself, that is usually caused by a humidity problem during hatching and we don’t normally help them out, if they don’t manage to hatch by themselves it is because they are weak and they are best left which seems cruel but it is kinder in the long run as they nearly always have problems and have to be dispatched eventually.

Hubby has been very busy cutting wood ready for the winter, we have been lucky enough to be given piles of wood from various people and have now got a wood pile that will last a few winters! The ancient woodburning stove we have is being replaced this year with a shiny new one 🙂 We have decided to invest in one that will run the heating, hot water and do the cooking, as well as dry the washing above it, a big investment money wise but one that will save us in the long run, we are totally reliant on electric here and you know the price of that at the minute. If we can cook, heat and wash for free that will drastically reduce our electric bill and I am all for that, we would love to go off grid completely someday but that will take time and more investment.

Although the weather is not what we are used to at the moment, the veg is beginning to take off, this week I have picked large quantities of Mangetout, I have also harvested, Broad beans, Gooseberries, Blackcurrants, Rhubarb, and Strawberries. I am picking about 1kg of Strawberries a day now, and after the first few days of eating them as they are, I have also made the first few jars of jam. There is nothing to rival the smell of Strawberry Jam as it is cooking and you can’t help going to the pan and just inhaling deeply! I have had to issue the warning to Hubby about this being a luxury item and not to use heaps of it on his toast in the morning so that a jar only lasts a week! Otherwise I would have to make 52 jars of the stuff and even my strawberry patch wont run to that!

I have spoken to lots of gardeners and everyone is saying the same thing, the flowers and the veg seem to be fruiting early this year, the plants are barely getting going and they are already flowering, even nature is confused by our weather patterns it seems, either that or it knows something we don’t! The dilemma is whether you let them carry on flowering and they then peak too early or if you delay it by taking off any early flowers, the risk being that if the weather stays cold it is possible they wont throw anymore flowers. I am going with nature on the assumption that it knows what it is doing, and so I will be leaving mine on and picking early this will probably mean smaller than usual veg but at least I will have a winter store.

While the heavens continued to open yesterday, I painted my new ‘Hens For Sale’ sign, I was so pleased with it that I have taken a photo to share it with you :). At the end of the month I am expecting the arrival of 25 Blue Ranger hens, at this precise moment I have no idea where I am going to put them, so one of today’s jobs will be to assess what is surplus to requirements and can go to auction or into the freezer!

 

Apologies for last weeks post as I forgot to add a title!!

We are fast approaching Mid Summer/Summer Solstice and as yet do not seem to have had much of a summer at all! A traditional way to celebrate Midsummer’s eve is with a bonfire, quite appropriate this year as the temperatures have not really got very high so far. A couple of nice days last week gave a bit of a growth spurt to the vegetation, that coupled with the odd splash of rain did wonders to the vegetable patch and as a result we are now harvesting plenty of mange tout and strawberries.

We have been eating the strawberries with balsamic vinegar and if you have never tried it, I can recommend it, put a few teaspoons of sugar on the bowl of strawberries and let it soak in for a couple of hours, then add some cream of your choice and a splash of good quality balsamic vinegar, I have no idea why it works, it just does!!

The mange tout are delicious, I can even be caught eating them whilst I am picking! Luckily, these can be blanched and frozen to save a taste of spring for the winter months, but they are great for salads, stirfries and boiled quickly for a couple of minutes as a side veg. Normally I grow peas but they are quite labour intensive at picking and podding time, they also are prone to pea moth, so very often you can go to all that hard work and find little maggots in the peas,  this year I opted for the mange tout which are proving much easier.

Last week I told you about the Light Sussex bantam that had hatched two chicks and one had died, I also mentioned at the time that I had caught her treading on the other by accident, I went up to the run after finishing the blog to take a photo of the remaining chick and it was alas already dead, so she had sat on her eggs for 21 days and they had lasted all of 2 days once they were born 😦

We had a bit of a drama in the week when the electric went off, I phoned the electric board and it was going to be off for a couple of hours, I have 24 eggs in the incubator (sods law), they were half way through incubation, after trying, and failing, to start the generator, I had to wrap the incubator in a thick blanket and just hope! They should begin to hatch next Sunday, so I will be able to tell you on Monday if my life saving technique worked or not!! Talking of eggs, the goose is sitting tight on hers now, everyday I tell her what a good girl she is, I just hope she manages to hatch at least one gosling. She is a young goose, this being her first egg season, they say that if a goose sits in her first season she will sit every year, so I have to let her have a go, even though it is a bit late in the year.

As well as this blog, I have now started a Facebook page for the farm, I can update on a daily basis and load lots of pictures, so if you are interested, just find Friesland Farm and ‘like’. I will be using the page to let you know what products I have a surplus of,  and how much it costs, so if you want anything just let me know and you can either pop up and pick it up or if we are out and about we can drop it off.

I thought I would leave you with a couple of photo’s this week, one of the goose sitting on her nest, the other two are of the young chicks and the ducklings that have now been put outside in the pens, the only problem with the ducklings is that they run away from you every time you go near them, so the photo is of them making a getaway!!