Month: November 2012

Sadly, this week we lost our Border Collie, Milly, it was a bit of a shock to say the least as she had been fine, no indication that she was ill at all. I came home from an appointment on Tuesday, let all the dogs out, went to get them in a while later and she was laying under the nut trees. I knew as soon as I looked at her eyes she had gone and I promptly burst into tears, sobbing her name, she was 11 so not a bad age but we always thought that Max who is nearly 14 would go first. She was the first dog we ever had from a puppy, the others all came from the pound and so we had a special bond, together with the fact that she was the most loyal and obedient dog makes her going a great loss to all of us. That evening was a surreal one, digging a hole in the pitch black pouring rain by torchlight, I remarked that I knew how Burke and Hare must have felt, we decided to bury her in the lawn so that she would always be with us when we were working or relaxing, she never liked to be very far away so I think that was a good choice. Goodbye and thank you for sharing your life with us. (I am blubbing at this point)

Mia and Max don’t seem to have noticed much beyond that first afternoon when they were unusually well-behaved and quiet, as long as Max gets his dinner and a can spend the day in the warm he is not too bothered, Mia was straight into Milly’s bed so I guess she has moved up a rank! Mia has now hit the manic, tearing around stage where everything is such fun, for her at any rate, I don’t think the chickens and the rabbit quite see it like that. Much to my amazement the rabbit is still pottering around the yard and has taken to living with the chickens in the back stable, although there has been a strong smell of Fox in the yard in the last couple of days. I need to keep my guard up during the daytime at the moment, due to the weather we have been letting all the chickens out on a daily basis, it wont be long before Foxy works out there is a free buffet going at Friesland!

The weather is a constant drain at the moment, we are not in imminent danger of having the house flooded nor is it a life and death situation but nevertheless it is still hard work that we could do without. When I said after the last deluge, that the worst I have ever seen it, you can scrap that as we have moved on a level! This time the hay barn and the feed room were flooded, luckily we keep everything up on pallets so nothing was spoiled but the mess underfoot adds to the daily grind, the fields are more flooded than ever and the horses are in, then turned out for a couple of hours then back in again. It’s a catch 22 situation, do you keep them in and save the paddocks from being trashed, only to let them out for a couple of hours where they proceed to thrash around churning up mud because they have been in for 24 hours, or do you leave them out to churn up the grass and only get them in when they can no longer tolerate the continuous downpours. Having them in for so many hours a day means mucking out two stable twice a day, I do the morning shift and my eldest daughter does the evening shift, we are going through hay and straw at a great rate but its all adding to the muck pile which make great fertiliser so at least some good comes of it.

Hubby collected the sheep this weekend and they are now back in the smaller paddock, only time will tell if we will be lambing for the first time ever in Spring. If they are pregnant, at the very least they will have one lamb each, they could potentially have three, that would mean hand rearing one of the triplets as sheep only have two teats, not too much of a problem as we have hand reared for a few years now and will be buying in other store lambs as well.

The geese have been booked in for slaughter and they will go this Thursday morning, they are non productive and so in my drive to tidy up all loose ends they will serve us better in the freezer. The cockerels really need to be dispatched as well but at the minute I am having difficulty with my wrist and so plucking is out of the question, it is likely that I may just have to cut the breast meat from them and save the rest for the dogs, I could really do with that plucking machine at times like this.

I have a list of Autumn jobs that really should be done but the weather is hampering efforts, Winter pruning is one that I still have not got round to, after doing the animal rounds in the morning, then the horses, ending up soaked, by the time I come in and get dry I don’t want to go back out again! Some of the nut trees need thinning out and the fruit trees need a prune, the raspberries also need sorting, hopefully the weather will get better soon and I can get on with it. At the weekend I pulled up a few leeks, well I say pulled, that was an impossibility as the clay was hanging onto the roots for dear life, so I tried digging them up and the amount of mud that was stuck to the fork made it heavy work. Because of the amount of water standing the leeks have started to go soft and I didn’t want to lose them all so it seemed like a good idea at the time, I managed to get a fair few up and made a batch of leek and potato soup, I also pulled some of the parsnips which are also beginning to suffer. While I was digging I discovered a bunch of carrots that had been missed when I dug them up in the summer so that was a bit of a bonus and they seem to be fine and are drying nicely in the poly tunnel ready to use in the next week or so. I have started to use the Kale, I find that at this time of the year I begin to crave some proper greens and Kale fits the bill nicely, it’s a lovely dark green variety with good flavour, it stands well over winter and its easy to pop out and pick it fresh right when you need it. The other cabbages have not done so well, not because they are spoilt by the rain but because I have had to let the chickens out of the run, they have quickly discovered the Brassica bed and greedily feasted on anything low growing, ah well at least it will produce good eggs!

The fruit trees arrived this week and we got them into the ground as soon as we could, they are planted in the bed where the leeks are at the minute, partly because it is not much good for anything else as the ground is too heavy, also they are patio sized trees and it is my intention to make a small forest garden in that bed. The idea being that you layer the canopy, so fruit trees, then fruit bushes underneath and then low growing crops under that, it is an ideal bed for it because it gets full sun all day, eventually we will have a structure for the grapes vines to grow up too, if it all comes together it should be quite a productive bed fingers crossed.

The weather is set to change for the rest of the week according to the met office and just for once I will look forward to a cold snap, if we don’t see rain again all Winter I will be very happy. The Christmas trees are coming in this weekend and I would rather be out there in the cold with a mug of hot chocolate than stood with water dripping down my face and soaking every part of me 🙂

The weather has been fairly kind to us this week and the ground is drying up quite nicely for the time being. It is helped by the millions of leaves that have now fallen all over the farm, we don’t pick them up, firstly it would be too long of a job and secondly if you leave them long enough the worms will take them all down and do the job for you. They are also making a good dry layer to walk on at the moment, it will be a different story once it rains as they will become slippery in places but we will deal with that if and when we need to.

Two weeks ago I decided to let the remaining giant rabbit out to roam free around the farm, you will remember that the dog killed the other one and she was all alone in her cage. To be honest I didn’t think she would last long but she is still pottering around having the time of her life, much nicer to see her being able to practice some normal behaviour, she has five acres to run around in and she is making the most of it! If you remember I hatched out a batch of Quail in the summer and although I sold some there were still a few left, I also released these as they were surplus to requirements. I could have fattened them up for the freezer but to be honest the amount of work involved for such little meat didn’t seem worth the effort so off they scuttled, they didn’t do so well and lasted only a few days before I found remnants of them here and there. I like to think they had a few days of total freedom before becoming dinner for the cats etc.

The cider has been fermenting away all week and the next step is to rack it off into a storage vessel, I have a barrel for this purpose and it will be exciting to get the first taste of my home-brew, I just hope it tastes good! I can’t wait to go on and try some wine next, it gets to be a bit of a bug and to be honest it’s so easy , especially with a kit, I can’t belive I havent tried doing it before. It will be lovely to offer visitors a glass of cider and maybe even mulled cider at Christmas.

On Friday I had a day out in London, we went to watch Scrooge at the London Palladium, it was a fabulous show and really got us in the Christmas mood. We decided to make a good day of it and caught the local London connection arriving around lunchtime, the minute you step off the bus the contrast of worlds hits you, the noise, the people, the smells all in epic proportions! It is nice to visit a different world now and again but I deduced that I like the quiet of the countryside, I also couldn’t help thinking that the people who live there must have permanent levels of stress of one kind or another, there is no escape from the noise, it is a constant bombardment of the senses. Having said that I did love it just for the day, the Christmas lights alone were worth seeing, huge drapes of lights everywhere you looked, the local town lights will be a bit of a disappointment in comparison. I felt like a country bumpkin when the store assistant in a large department store laughed at me for taking photos of the sweet display, it was like being in Willy Wonkas factory and my eldest daughter couldn’t resist seeing if the larger than life chocolate house was in fact made of real chocolate and broke a bit off the roof to see, she wasnt the first one to have done it judging by the amount of broken tiles 🙂 It was a very long and tiring day but full of fun and discovery and we were very glad to be home amoungst the greenery, quiet and with just the Moon to light up the sky.

Hubby went down to visit the sheep at the weekend, they have the exclusive attention of the ram and so the possibility of lambing in the Spring looks like a good one. The chap who had kindly had them with his flock for the last couple of weeks is talking of giving them up next year, you will recall that he is seventy and it is all getting a bit too much for him, he has a flock of about twenty ewes and Hubby talked about buying them from him when the time comes. This would take us into new realms of full scale lamb production which would be quite daunting but very exciting at the same time, I will let you know if that is on the cards, we will need plenty of customers for home reared top quality lamb.

I spent Saturday morning picking and processing Brussel Sprouts, the weather in the Summer was not the best for them and then an attack of caterpillars meant that they had either ‘blown’ or had been nibbled. Having said that I still managed to picked a good haul of nice tight uneaten sprouts, not that I am keen on them but for some reason a lot of men would not consider it Christmas dinner without them, I personally think that the after effects appeals to the little boy that is still inside each of them :s personally I prefer mine raw in a salad. The manuring of the veg beds is now finished and Hubby has worked tirelesly to get that done over the past couple of weeks, it will be left now for the Winter to do its work and break it down so that the worms can turn it over, it is the easiest way of doing it, although I have been taught to double dig the old fashioned way I am all in favour of making light work of it with the same results in the end.

I have a list of garden jobs that need to be done, cutting back and storing pots of Dahlias so that I don’t lose them over winter and the large Bramley Apple tree needs a Winter prune to keep it under control and maintain a good shape. It is at the end of the drive and so it can’t be left to just grow as eventually we wont be able to drive past it without scratching the van. My sister and I gave it a good prune about three years ago to bring it back under control and it has kept a good overall shape, it is quite a difficult job as you need someone on the ground to be able to see and direct the pruner so that it does not end up lopsided. The fruit cage needs a bit of attention to tidy it up for the its winter rest and the netting has a fair few holes in it resulting in the birds being able to get in, so that needs some wire tacked all around the bottom third to prevent them stealing fruit next year. Apart from that the veg garden is pretty much redundant now until spring, there are leeks and parsnips to be used up over the next few weeks and there are the sprout stalks to be lifted, these will go to the chickens to pick over before going on the compost heap. Then it is all about planning for next year, getting the crop rotation right and deciding what to plant, the order will go in just after the new year and it will be time to begin all over again, the circle of life is never more evident than in the vegetable garden 🙂

 

This weeks title is dedicated to my laptop! It was slow until I spent all this morning, uninstalling, defragmenting and optimising, basically giving it a technical boot up the bum, hopefully it should run a bit faster now and I can get this weeks post out on time 🙂

Lets think, what has happened this week, it started if I remember correctly with a glorious sunny day on Monday, I spent the day gardening, well weeding mostly, I collected the last of the cucumbers from the poly tunnel amazed that I could still pick them in November. I had quite a little haul from the tunnel including some potatoes that I had planted a while back, they seemed to bolt quickly and I didn’t think that there would be anything from them so it was quite pleasing to find a couple of boilings beneath the surface, those together with some brocoli and some french beans made a lovely addition to some lamb chops for tea. Hubby has been busy putting more manure on the raised beds that are now cleared of any produce, and I am still waiting for the fruit trees to arrive, I need to chase them up I think or the ground will be frozen and we will be unable to plant them.

Monday was also the day that the mower was scheduled to be picked up after we sold it on Ebay, various text messages informed me that the transporter driver was coming from Germany and would arrive at 6pm. He was on time and his transporter was huge, he couldn’t get in the drive and so we had to load it up in the lane. Now you would think that if someone was collecting a ride on mower they would have ramps to get it up onto the lorry wouldn’t you, it appears not, luckily we have some ramps but the incline was so steep that it had to be pushed up, this coupled with the fact that the driver hardly spoke a word of English made it quite entertaining, although poor hubby ended up with backache, he is not getting any younger you know 😉

The weather went into decline after that first day and it became quite a bit colder, the fire went out over night on one occasion and I took the opportunity to clean the flueways on the Rayburn before relighting it so that we don’t accidentally  poison ourselves. I have also fed my christmas cake this week, I had cleaned out my store cupboard and found various bottles of unopened alcohol in there including some miniature Whisky which I decided was just the right amount to lace the cake with. I found half a bottle of Vodka which is now steeping in raspberries and sugar to make a nice liqueur ready for Christmas, and I have begun the process of brewing Cider, which I am especially looking forward to tasting! Talking of Christmas  (we can now as December is only a couple of weeks away) I have been looking through the various produce I have been making ready to box up as gifts, I have amazed myself with my organization this year and found I only needed one or two more items to complete my list. The Christmas tree enterprise is going ahead, we have now paid for the trees and eagerly await their arrival at the end of November, I still need to make a board for the front but I have been putting it on all the Facebook pages I am a member of so hopefully people will remember where they saw them advertised and come and buy one. We are delving into the unknown a bit and just hope it works out ok.

The weather for the rest of the week has been a bit uninspiring really and does not beckon you outside and so I have been tidying various areas indoors, one of which was the store cupboard where I found enough unused alcohol to see us through this Christmas without the need to buy any more! I also tided and cleaned the room where the dogs sleep, not that you would be able to tell now as they soon mess the place up again. I changed their floor cushions for thicker ones as the weather gets colder, they are getting on a bit and need more padding underneath them than they did before, don’t we all, I can hear you say 😉 There are plenty more areas to be sorted, just as well really with the weather on a downward spiral.

The sheep have been penned with the ram at their temporary accommodation, they seem to be getting star treatment, the chap left a message to say that our sheep are pregnant “how does he know”, I asked hubby,” he is 70 years old” was his reply, as if that fact alone would verify it! The rest of the animals are getting as fed up with the declining weather as we are, the oldest of our dogs, hates any hint of rain or cold and is reluctant to go outside even for the shortest time, barking to come back in the minute he has finished his business. The chickens are still laying pretty well considering the drop in temperature, we have moved the coop in the big paddock onto new, clean ground nearer to the gate so that we don’t have to walk too far with the water buckets in Winter, the horses always look sorry for themselves when the wet weather is constant, the only one who love it are the ducks , they are not phased at all by changes in weather patterns, I suppose if I had a permanent, waterproof, duck down duvet on, I wouldn’t complain either.

I just took a quick look at the blog posts for this time last year to see what comparisons I could find, apparently I was feeling full of beans due to the brisk wind, hopefully the brisk wind will replace the rain later on this week and I will be full of beans again!

This is apparently my 91st blog post, that is almost two years of weekly postings, well done to anyone who has been with me from the beginning, please feel free to leave a comment and let me know who you are and why you are still reading!!!

My first post was at the end of Jan 2011 and was only 167 words long, by August of that year I was up to just under 1000 words, the busiest viewing day was Feb 21st 2011 with 42 people reading it, my top commentator is David and the blog has been read by at least one person in 38 different countries, the highest number of people reading it is in the UK followed by Australia the USA and Indonesia!!!

It has been a very wet weekend and as a result we now have a small river running all the way through the bottom paddocks, it doesn’t stop there, it then spills over into the lane and continues into the fields opposite, we have stables that have water coming up through the dirt floor and very soggy looking chickens. Hopefully the sun will shine and most of it will be gone in a day or two, what is worrying is that it is only the beginning of Winter and we seem to be at saturation point already, we could be in for an interesting few months.

The girls have gone on a three week holiday and hopefully they will come home pregnant, I am of course talking about the sheep 🙂 We loaded them up on Saturday morning, it went quite well considering they had never been in a trailer before, we took the opportunity to give them their injections and spray them with a colour mark so we know which are ours when we return. Hubby and daughters boyfriend then drove them a few miles down the road and offloaded them into the field containing their new beau. On Sunday morning we had a phone call, because of all the rain the chap looking after them had got them in to the shed, he was worried that they were looking too cold and wet, another reason we need some sun, so that the business to be done is successful!

My domestic (inner) goddess 😉 appeared to have left home for a short while one day this week, I decided that it would be a good day to make a panful of chicken soup and some freshly made
bread, I loaded up the bread maker with a sourdough mix, following the usual instructions and chopped up left over chicken with some onions, garlic, veg and stock that I had in the freezer. The soup was looking good and tasting great, it looked a bit too chunky so I decided to whizz it in the blender for a minute or two, this is when it all went badly wrong. I left it in too long and the result looked like something the cat threw up, it didn’t end there because for some reason the bread mix didn’t rise and there was a heavy lump of cooked dough in the bread maker, I hope the goddess comes back soon, I can’t face another meal like that 😦

Mia has reached the stage where she has selective hearing, she has gone from an obedient little bundle of love to a delinquent fur ball and a mostly filthy dirty one at that! She has suddenly decided I am no longer to be listened to unless one of the words is dinner or ball, she is certain to ignore any phrases that contain, bath, here or in. Her new favourite game is cat stalking closely followed by teasing the geese, even though both of these are likely to end with her getting a swipe or a peck, she shows no fear which is not always a good thing. Once she is in for the evening and cleaned off she is the delightful little puppy we were hoping for but during the day she is very much a tomboy dog, tearing around in the dirtiest puddles she can find and usually getting up to no
good. The training will continue and hopefully she will blossom into a well behaved dog, fingers crossed, she has been quite good up to now, I should have known it was the calm before the storm.

I did get busy this week with a few of the jobs I mentioned in the last post, cleaning out the poultry was the biggest and most urgent job, my back was aching by the end of the day but I was satisfied that it had been done and they were all nice and clean, and then the rain came, turning the pens into a bog and with the subsequent mud that was traipsed into the coops I wondered why I bothered! I still have not got round to doing anything on the veg garden it is generally too wet to work on and it won’t hurt to leave it for a while longer, but I will try and get into the poly tunnel this week and clear anything that has gone over. I ordered some ever bearing strawberry plants at the end of the summer and they will be going into the tunnel for and early crop, they should keep flowering from early spring until well into October giving us a good continuous supply of fruits next year. It might seem premature to be thinking about next years produce already but it is a good time to start planning the rotation and making lists of what you would like to grow, what worked and what didn’t, I have had a request to grow ‘spaghetti squash’ not something I have tried before so that will be interesting. Squash do fairly well in our soil on the whole, the pumpkins grown especially for this week just gone were carved out in splendid form to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, I will definitely be growing them again next year.

You can tell how the weather went yesterday when this weeks blog is pressed and ready to go just after 7.30 on a Monday morning! Have a good week everyone x