Month: April 2015

They say, a picture paints a thousand words, that’s only true if the onlooker can interpret or has knowledge of what is being seen. I took photos this morning partly because I don’t have time to sit and write an amount today and partly to prove the above statement I made.

This one for example, just the inside of the greenhouse, you can see the plants coming on, what you don’t see are the many, many hours of work and care to even getting them to this stage. 

  
These two of blossom, one is pear, the other is apple, very pretty and the fragrance is wonderful, I also see a harvest, lots of blossom should result in lots of fruit IF the frosts are not too harsh and the birds don’t peck away at the buds as they form.   

Photos of the fences, the first which has been done, and the second waiting to be finished when there is time. The first shows a lovely scene of the country side, it does not show the time, effort and manual labour that went into it.

    

Pictures of the poly tunnel with over wintered veg and the veg plot as it stands now, again hours of work go into keeping the crops growing, and weeding to keep the ground clear so that valuable nutrients are not taken up by weeds but go to the plants that need them. 

  

A random picture of the dogs mooching around? No, the dogs either follow me around chucking a ball at my feet in the vain hope I will throw it for them, or, as in this case they pester the cat who has just dived under the caravan for cover.

 

Lovely early morning photo of the geese, well ganders actually, all of them. What that photo does not show is a whole year of nurturing them from day old, feeding, watering, mucking them out, looking after one of them when it was very poorly, and it certainly does not show my sheer disappointment in finding out they were all male one year on!   
The quail, all growing nicely, well not quite because of course it does not show the five that have died along the way and the struggle that some of them have in order to survive, even though they are fed well and looked after for some it is still an uphill battle.  
And last but not least, the beautiful Dicentra, or bleeding hearts, the photo speaks for itself, almost, what it does not say is that this is my favourite perennial flower of all time and that it makes me smile whenever I look at it 🙂  
So there you go, looking at pictures in all forms, as long as you look deep enough, can tell you so much more than you think. There is always an untold story behind the pictures, remember that when the media put up pictures designed to evoke a certain emotion, what is in that picture that you can’t see or haven’t been told. Have a lovely week, Hubby and I are off on a break leaving the farm in the capable hands of others, when we come back everything will look the same (hopefully) we won’t see the hiccups and problems they had while we were away, unless I look very closely that is! 

I am losing track of the blogs, I thought I had done one last week but it seems not so apologies for that.

I will start with today as that is the easy bit to remember, the job that took up most of my time this morning was searching for Bella, the little cat. She is quite a pesky little thing, always around your feet so it was noticeable this morning when she was nowhere to be seen, I fed Deisel, thinking she will appear in a minute, but even after finishing all the feeding she had still not turned up. I began by asking those who had bought a vehicle onto the yard to check that she hadn’t crawled in unnoticed, then I checked all the outbuildings, twice, I walked down the lane and along the hedgerows in case she had been squished. I came in and got the dog on a lead and walked the lane again to see if the dog could smell her anywhere, I went down to the next farm to see if anyone had seen her, nope not a thing. It is very unusual for her to go anywhere other than hang around the stable block so I decided to watch the CCTV to see if I could work out when she was last here. I could see that she was about until 9pm after that she does not appear again even when the dogs were let out for their last wee before bed, and there was no sign of her in the morning when the first livery arrived. By 12 noon, I had decided to give up looking and get on with the jobs I had planned for the day, after sending the last of many texts to the others discussing what could have happened to her, I went outside for one more look, lo and behold, there she is sat on top of the bale as if nothing had happened, huge sighs of relief all round, I am guessing that as she is now nearly 6 months old, this is the beginning of her wanderings and we will have more absences in the coming months.

The weather has now turned quite nicely and we are getting more sunshine than not, however we are lacking a bit of rain, I hate to say it but it’s true, the average rainfall is down for the month and the ground is rock solid! We started repairing and replacing fencing the weekend before last, the winter weather takes it’s toll on the wood and we last did it nearly four years ago, we were surprised however at how much some of the rails had rotted and quite a few posts just snapped off in the ground. Hubby keeps muttering that post ramming is a young mans job, I can’t argue with him there but we didn’t have any sons, all daughters and so all you are going to get from them is cake! Actually that’s not true, as you probably know they are pretty good at turning their hand to physical work and have been helping as and when they can.

The greenhouse is full to bursting with seedlings coming up, some have already been potted on, others are slower to develop, the samphire in particular, I should have know when the label said erratic viability! The onions and garlic that I planted are shooting up fast and the potatoes are just beginning to show greenery above ground. I have been thinking that I may have to water the garden tonight though as there is no sign of rain until the weekend. The first pickings of rhubarb have been put out and sold and on Sunday I picked the first of the cauliflowers that have been growing overwinter in the poly tunnel, we are going to have one with a homemade beef pie for tea tonight so that is something to look forward to.

The Quail are growing well and I have now bought them a food dish that they can’t kick the food out of, there was a huge amount of waste when they were able to get in the dish and scratch it all about. It won’t be long before I can tell if they are make or female and then they will be ready for selling. My bad luck bird story this year are the geese, it turns out that I have five ganders! Not a goose in sight, how did that happen, I am on the look out for females but it will be difficult this time of year as they are already either breeding or laying and so not up for sale 😦

The laying flock is doing well and the egg numbers are still up, luckily the customer base has picked up as well and the turnover of eggs is healthy. The point of lay hens for sale have been flying out the door, not literally lol, but we have just SOLD OUT this morning, that was 55 birds in two and half weeks! The next lot don’t arrive until the beginning of May and I already have a list of people waiting. 

Enjoy the sunshine, they say it will be colder again next week, not too cold I hope and if we could just have a little bit of rain I will be very grateful 😉 

I will probably blog a bit more frequently from here on in, there is more to tell you and if I left it to fortnightly it would end up as an essay! 

On a warm(ish) day last week, I decided now was the time to get cracking with the seed sowing and planting. It was a lovely sunny morning and for a change no cold wind, so I set about busying myself in the greenhouse sowing seeds.

First in at this time of year go the squash seeds, butternut squash, courgettes and this year some patty pan which are nice a sweet according to the packet. The sweet corn have also been planted along with broad beans, all of the trays have been covered with a plastic lid, not just to increase the temperature but because last year I lost a few trays to mice. You soon realise you have mice after waiting patiently for a couple of weeks for the shoots to appear and still nothing, on further investigation you find no sign of the seeds! While I was on a roll I did a bit of hoeing and then planted up the garlic, onion and shallot bulbs.  Straight lines have never been my strong point they are a bit wonky but that does not really matter unless you are growing a prize winning plot, the lines just make it easier to hoe inbetween without hitting the crops and damaging them. I did think I would just be able to push the bulbs into the ground but the soil was harder than I expected and so I used the dibber to make holes to drop the bulbs into. The skill here is not to make the holes too deep because if it rains the holes will hold water and the bulbs will rot away, always a risk at this time of the year. The next thing I do is cover the area in environmesh, this does two things, firstly it stops the birds tugging at the tips of the bulbs and uprooting them, and secondly the moisture that accumulates overnight is enough to keep the bulbs going without watering them for a while, again because if I water them in and then it rains they may get waterlogged. 

Since I wrote the first bit we have at last been blessed with a couple of sunny days 🙂 so I went all out, planted all the seed potatoes, rows of carrots, parsnip, beetroot and chicory. I also planted up the salad leaf box with spinach, watercress, lettuce leaves and spring onions as well as planting artichoke seeds, samphire and sugar snap peas, phew. Weeding as always played a bit part of the day and Hubby did a fine job on a couple of the beds, although I did have to convert him from hand weeding to hoeing otherwise it would not get finished before they started growing again. 

In the poly tunnel that have early veg I at last found the beginnings of a cauliflower, I was beginning to think I had only planted cabbages, the broad beans have flowers and the garlic is has good strong growth. We have reconnected the outside taps, I hope we have seen the last of any freezing weather or they will soon pop the pipes off and leak like they did at the end of the year when we forgot to disconnect them 😦

I saw the first Bee today quickly followed by a butterfly, not literally following the bee though lol, we have plenty of daffodils brightening up the place now as well as a few other early spring flowering plants, it’s looking a whole lot better than the drabness of Winter. 

I was very pleased to find a supplier for Quail, normally I would hatch them out  myself but I am down to only four hens which cannot lay enough eggs to fill an incubator in the time that they would be viable. We set off on Saturday morning and came back with thirty tiny little chicks just a week old, they may be small but they can eat for England! 

Our push on the egg front, due to the incredible number they were laying, resulted in record takings over a two week period, in fact it was so successful that we actually sold out of eggs and then had to play catch up, it’s all or nothing. Nothing is exactly what we have had from the geese so far, zilch, not one single egg, so either they are all male, I am not convinced of this or, well in all honesty, I have no idea why they would not be laying but if they do not start soon they will end up being diner which would be a grea shame. 

The weather forecast is good for the next couple of days and so I will be spending the time outside, I have some wire netting to put around the fruit cage and some weed cover to go on one of the permanent beds as well as more weeding, then there is the herb garden to tackle, it has been left to get a bit overgrown so that will be quite a project to bring it back into line. It’s good to be able to finally get outside without shivering though so I will make the most of it before it gets too hot for me 😉