Month: July 2015

Sitting drinking my morning coffee this morning, I could be forgiven if I didn’t have a calendar, for thinking it’s Autumn! I love Autumn it’s my favourite time of year just not at the end of July! What has happened to summer, it reared its head briefly at the beginning of the month and then went away on holiday. This whole year so far has been odd to say the least, as a consequence the green tomatoes on the vine are still green, the beans are trying to perform as are the squash but they are struggling. Only the fruit seems to have relished in the weather that nature has thrown at it this year, bumper crops of raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, cherries and apricots mean we will eat lots of lovely pies and cakes in the winter months, something to look forward to at least.

With a short or non existent summer comes the realisation that ‘winter is coming’ sorry couldn’t resist and that will only mean something to Game of Thrones fans 😉. I am already making plans for the run up to the colder months, trying to get the birds in tip top condition to help them through. They have been given soluble vitamins and cider vinegar in thier water and soon it will be time to give them all a dusting to keep critters at bay from thier feathers. Hubby’s new chicken house is brilliant, well I think so but the chickens are refusing to go in still preferring to go back to the old hut every night. Drastic action is needed this weekend to remove the old huts so that they have no choice but to take up thier new des res.

Bella the cat has been in for spaying, we locked her in a cage as per instructions the night before surgery, in the morning she appeared on the doorstep! After surgery we locked her back in the cage and tied the handles with string, an hour after being put in there she appeared in the stable block, somehow she had managed to get her head collar off, get out of the ‘secure’ cage and rip out a stitch in the process! She is now locked in the toilet, we should have called her Houdini, how she managed to get out of the cage (dog cage type) I will never know but we have always had difficulty keeping her locked in anywhere, I will be glad when she is healed and able to roam free again without the added worry of her getting in the family way. 

I have just started a 14 day process to make Glacé cherries, why, you may ask when they are readily available in the little plastic tubs in the shop, curiosity is the answer, to see if it works and if they taste better than shop bought ones which I am sure they will. It’s quite a long process although a fairly simple, repetitive one, I will let you know the result in due course. 

Hubby is off from his regular job for two weeks fairly soon so I have been busy writing him a long list of farm jobs, no rest for the wicked lol, we having fencing to finish and a whole load of little jobs to be sorted, things like realigning bolts on doorways and gateways. It is surprising how much everything moves over the course of the year, resulting in having to lift the gates or doors to shut them, this takes its toll on my arm muscles so I will be glad to be able to slide them shut smoothly with no effort at all, for a while at least. We bought some large water tanks back in the spring and they need connecting up to the others, this will enable us to save at least 6000 litres of rainwater. Most of it is used for the ducks but apparently I am having a pump fitted so that I can use it on the veg garden as well,that will save a bit on the water bill. I try not to use the hose to water the garden if I can help it, only when the plants are looking close to collapsing and needs must. 

I have already started to think about how I will do things slightly differently in the veg plot next year, the strawberry beds are going to be raised off the ground and the dwarf beans need to be higher up too. I am trying to make things easier for myself, as time goes on the difficulties bought on by the Lupus are more apparent, generally speaking kneeling down to pick produce results in pain and so the higher up I can get stuff the better for my health. 

On the whole life is good as they say, and over the past few days I have felt a contentment I have never had before, yesterday was my 51st birthday (woah, where did the years go) I have a grandson on the way, my health is good to middling and the weather is not too bad. My favourite book is Cider With Rosie and these are the type of days I measure against the feeling I get when I read it, if you understand what I mean, I think today will be another Cider with Rosie day, long may it continue 😎

Have a good week 😃

So this week has been exceptionally busy produce wise,  the weather on the majority of days, for me has been just perfect, overcast but warm, this means I can get a fair amount done outside. 

We finally got the tractor repaired or so we thought, so I took it out to move some livestock housing and a mound of earth, but the clunking noise didn’t seem quite right, so I called the tractor man who came back and confirmed it wasn’t! More parts need to be purchased £££££ and it will be fixed sometime, eventually! Back to doing everything by hand then 😕 

As I reported last blog, the veg is coming on in leaps and bounds and so I began picking, freezing and putting any excess out for sale, well the minute I put it out it sold, which is fab but it turned into a frenzied couple of days picking, stocking and restocking the little shed. Available at the minute are garlic, beetroot, broad beans, runner beans, potatoes, bunches of herbs and raspberries. In the end I was working through the evening picking to get a head start on the next day. I also put out some jars of jam which were very quickly snapped up I am pleased to say.

Hubby has very nearly finished the chicken shed we hope to move them in on Wednesday evening. Last night was quite funny though as he had gone out to finish the door, eventually he came back in saying, I have been shouting you, I didn’t hear him honest. He had screwed the ply onto the door frame, but beforehand had bolted the door through the open framework so it didn’t move ( the bolt is on the outside) and then proceeded to screw the ply on, from the inside 😝 and consequently couldn’t get out lol, the options were to unscrew the ply or shout for help, luckily one of the livery girls was still in the field and eventually heard him 😂

Just as the produce sales were picking up, the hens decided to go off lay, when one goes, they all go, well at least half of them. I hate it when that happens as there are never enough eggs to go round and I have to explain to customers there will be a shortage for a while. We are hoping that a change of residence will kick start them a bit and at least a few more of them will start to lay again. Before we move them in we will have to catch them up one by one, give them a dusting of lice powder and put Vaseline on their legs to prevent mites. It’s always a good opportunity when moving them to do this then hopefully they will be bug free for a good few months. I will also begin to put garlic and cider vinegar in their water, all this is preparation for the winter months to make sure they are as healthy as can be before the weather turns cold again. 

The weather always makes a difference to laying hens, you might think that summer is ideal for them but they do not like prolonged dry spells which is exactly what we have had. The paddocks are beginning to look scorched and even some of the trees are beginning to develop yellow leaves,  a good indication of lack of moisture. Each time a cloud passes over that looks like it may rain I am hopeful but usually it passes on by leaving my hopes dashed. 

With it being so dry the one worry we always have is fire especially living in a wooden building! The other night we went to bed and at the minute we have the window open a little, I had gone to sleep but woke up when I realised Hubby was sitting up, “whats the matter” I asked him, ” I can smell smoke” he said, “yep now you’ve said it so can I” was my answer. We got up and went outside for a quick scout round, it was fairly strong outside but did smell more like a bonfire than burning buildings. We got back into bed but a few minutes later the smell was stronger so Hubby got dressed and went out for a better look this time, he checked over all the surrounding fields just to make sure they hadnt caught, satisfied that we were not in danger he came back to bed and we were still here the next morning 😁

We still have to re home two of the kittens and get Bella in to be done as soon as possible, I am ringing the vet today before she ends up pregnant again! I am hoping that an operation and some recouperation time will break her rather stupid habit of sitting in the middle of the road down the lane, otherwise I can see the op being a waste of time and money if she ends up squished! 

In the next few weeks I hope to be picking apricots and morello cherries, apricot jam is one of my favs and as I have never made cherry jam before that will be exciting. I have also been looking into the process of making my own glacé cherries as I use them in fruit cake, it’s a two week process though but worth it in the end hopefully,  I will let you know how it goes. 

The pics are of the cherry tree, apricot tree, veg garden, shallots  drying (that are more the size of onions ) and Patch in his favourite position, laying down 😜

Have a good week 

   
    
   

Sorry, for anyone who likes the farm updates, I have either been too busy, too tired or can’t be arsed to blog! However, it has been at the back of my mind the whole time, and as I have stopped for coffee this morning I thought now was a good time.

As you can imagine lots of things have been happening especially in the veg garden, well the fruit garden to be precise. I have spent countless hours picking and prepping Strawberries, Raspberries and Blackcurrants, the jam store is chocka block and on one particular day all I did for around eight hours was make jam until I was sick of the sight of it. 

I have just started picking broad beans, runners, courgettes and patty pan, any gluts will be for sale in the little shed. I need to freeze a fair amount to last the Winter months but first I need to sort out the freezers, you know how it is when stuff just gets shoved in on top of other stuff, you have no idea what is actually in there and end up just grabbing what you can see if front of you, replacing the space with more stuff. In the big freezers I have plastic sacks to organise the bottom half but at the minute it is all in the baskets on the top! 

We finally managed to a) see the kittens and b) get them down from the roof space. We had seen three and so that’s how many we got down, then heard another crying so there were four all together. We put them in the stable and left a space over the door for Mum to get out, the next day they were gone! She was not happy with the other cat, Desiel, hanging around and had moved them, we located them in the hay barn and returned them to the stable making sure that this time there was a barricade and she has been ok with that ever since. They will be ready for new homes soon, two have already been reserved but there are still two to re home if anyone is interested. 

We have lost a few birds, as it stands is 2-2 to the fox and the dog! The fox came marauding one evening and had a gosling that had got out of the paddock, then a couple of nights later he had a cockerel. The dog has had his two in the last week, both of them were ones that sleep up in the trees, they came down early on different days and went into the front compound where the dog patrols at night, his kennel now looks like a feathered nest and we are down a cockerel and a hen 😔

The hens that were sat on eggs finally hatched them out, one had 10 which are still going strong the other had 2 one of which has since died for no particular reason. The one with ten was in a stable but eventually became so ferocious every time I went in that I have put her outside in the orchard, she is still a bit feisty at times but a lot better than she was, good job I always wear my wellies or I would have battle scars on my legs 😛

Hubby, in between all the other jobs, is busy converting the field shelter into a hen house, it will be much easier to clean out than the old huts, much as I love them, they are around 100 years old and although still fit for purpose, I am not and can’t crawl around inside anymore. Over the last three months I have had some Duke of Edinburgh volunteers once a week to clean them out which has been a tremendous help, but now they have finished I need to make life a bit easier for myself and standing up to clean them out will go a long way to saving my aching bones. 

Patch, the puppy that we ended up keeping has grown as you would expect, he is taller than either his mum or dad and he likes to play with a football, or sleep, typical boy child, he is lovely natured though and not full on like a typical collie so the two of them are a nice mix as Mia is very typically collie, full on and obsessed with chasing the ball. In the picture you can see that she is looking down, not an accidental, oh I didn’t get her looking up, she is focused on the scrappiest bit of left over toy and waiting for me to throw it!