Month: April 2017

Bank holiday Monday: Did the usual morning stuff then some pottering in the garden before deciding to pop out and get some multipurpose compost and some potting trays. When we got there John starts chatting to a bloke, ‘hello mate how ya doing’ he replies with the usual, ‘yeah, good how are you doing’ turns out none of them knew each other at all they just both look like someone else each of them knew 😂😂😂😂 still we made a new friend who is going to come up and get some muck for his garden lol.When we got back, John went off to cut wood and do some tidying, I was in my element with new pots and compost so I did some more potting on and set up a raised bed for planting potatoes, using the compost, as they grow I will top up the soil instead of the old fashioned earthing up method as these are late going in I’m hoping this method will enable them to catch up. I also bought some rooting gel to get some cuttings going, I will try the clematis first and see how that goes. 

I made some liquid manure this week, basically rotted manure soaked in a bucket of water for a day or two, then strain off the liquid into a container, I will dilute it and use it as necessary, it’s high in nitrogen so an excellent boost for growing plants. 

The hens are becoming a pain, they are proper free ranging over everything now they are out, helping them selves to my cabbages, scratching up the pathways etc and laying anywhere they see fit to lay! 

I was busy hoovering while John went out to do the afternoon feed, he came in disappeared and came back through with his .22, I asked what he was doing and he said, if you think that last rat was big you should see the monster I’ve just seen in the back run! By the time he got back there it was of course long gone 😜 more rat poison down, I will get rid of this bloody family, one way or another! 

Tuesday: Sunny but still cold and dry, apparently the temps are set to go down to -7 on Wednesday night! Hopefully the weather front will have shifted by then or we are in danger of losing all the blossom on the trees and that in turn means the fruit will be lost too 😕 Just in case it does plummet that low I will be covering the seedlings in the greenhouse and poly tunnels with fleece, I can’t risk losing them now after all the growing they have done, roll on some more settled weather than we have had of late. 

Wednesday: What a beautiful morning, a day that you can’t help but sing while you are working even if the voice is still a bit croaky! Did the usual morning stuff, then cleaned out the ducklings, they are messy now and it gets smelly very quickly, I have tried to limit the wet bedding by putting the water holder in a plastic cat litter tray, we will see if it works or not. I took a video of them and then tried uploading it, I don’t know if the internet is playing up or what but it was a mission to get it on there 😝
A beautiful morning turned into a fabulous day weather wise 😀 Did a bit more potting on of veg seedlings, then Mum came over and did a bit of thinning and potted up some strawberry runners as the ones I potted up sold, had a visit from a friend for coffee. In the afternoon I made some bread and healthy rhubarb and banana loaf, if it turns out ok I will put the recipe up. It’s good and healthy. This one is from kimscravings.com

RHUBARB BANANA BREAD
Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 50 mins Serves: 12 slices.

INGREDIENTS

1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (spelt flour would probably work great too)

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon all spice

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup mashed (ripe) banana, about 2 medium bananas

⅓ cup honey (I use raw local honey) (brown sugar or maple syrup would probably work well too)

1 cup finely chopped rhubarb, about 1 large stalk

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and prepare an 8×4″ loaf pan* with a natural cooking spray.
Whisk all dry ingredients, flour through all spice, in a medium bowl and set aside.

*Use a stand or hand-held mixer to beat eggs on medium speed for about 30 seconds.

Mix in vanilla, banana and honey until combined.

Slowly add in the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just combined. Gently fold in rhubarb. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until loaf is golden and a toothpick comes out 

Thursday: You won’t hear me say this often but hooray is raining ☔️ only a bit mind you but it’s better than nothing. I can’t tell you how dry the ground is at the moment and it needs a bit of a boost, the grass needs freshening and the garden needs a drink. 
Even a little bit of rain is far more beneficial than water with the hose, even if it’s rainwater in the tank because it’s overall coverage so everything gets a bit and it soaks in better. 

Two days this week John has gone to collect the eggs and seen the rat at the back, ‘I will get the bugger before the end of the week’ he said, well this morning I went in to feed them and thought I will just check and there in the nest box is what I thought was a dead rat, I went to get a glove and then pick it up but it moved urrrrggghhhh. It scuttled to the back of the pen and tried to get out. It’s clearly dying as it’s bleeding out so been eating the poison, it hasn’t got what it takes to climb up the four foot metal side and get out so I decided to get my Webley .177 a very old hand air gun I was given, that still works beautifully. The rat was back in the nest when I got back and so were my hens trying to lay, I loaded the pistol got the hens out had it at point blank range and fired, well not because I had forgotten to take the safety off by which time the rat has sussed something was up and made his escape to the back of the hut. He is now out of sight for the most part so I decide on plan b, I go off and get a hoe which will be long enough to oik him out and then sharp enough to decapitate him, I didn’t bank on the fight he put up! Well I suppose you would wouldn’t you, naturally. First time I’ve had a fight with a rat, damn thing was screaming and hanging on to the hoe and that was while I was just dragging him out, eventually I managed to get him into a position that I could apply some force and do the deed. Two down, god knows how many there are but we will keep ‘feeding’ them and hope we get them all eventually, we have never had a problem in the run before but I guess eventually they are going to find out that there are lovely yummy eggs to be had for breakfast 🍳 I have to say though the chickens seemed more than happy to share the nest box with a dying rat! 

The new arrivals turned up this afternoon, when I have some hands to help me I will take some photos of Herbie and Stuart Little the guinea pigs 😀

Friday: The house needs a clean and a declutter so that is what I have done today, makes you feel good but I would rather be outside to be honest. 

Started to write a list of jobs for John at the weekend, couple of gates need fixing the stable the ducks were in is still waiting to be cleaned out, I’m sure the list will be longer by the end of the day 😜

Brown rat number three has been found dead in one of the stables.

Saturday: Lovely sunny morning which progressed into a beautiful day, after doing the morning rounds John and I got started on clearing out the stable that the ducks were in, we left it this long so that it would dry out a bit and make it easier 😝 Once we had dug out all the wet straw we got the jet wash out and washed down all the cobwebs in that and one other stable, they are looking rather clean now. We have done lots of little bits of jobs today, tidying here and there and fixing things, then in the afternoon we sorted out the spare room, got the new double bed in and up along with some shelves, just waiting for a new mattress to arrive and I can use it to watch films while John is watching snooker or F1 😛

Shelley and Josh popped in and I introduced Josh to Herbie and Stuart Little though he was more interested in the geese and looking into the rabbit house, the hole is just little boy sized so we had to make sure he didn’t try and get inside the rabbit house lol. 

Sunday: Another lovely day, I watered the greenhouse and poly tunnels, did a bit of potting on and moved some plants outside to start hardening off. John bought a few loads of muck round to the garden on the tractor and we barrowed some onto the beds, I am going to grow the squash on the heap that is left because they are hungry plants and should do well on there providing they get enough water as well. Then we nipped off to the car boot sale to get some bits for the spare room, we also came away with a nice metal egg sign that John wants to put up on the egg shed. Had a lovely visit from Mum and her Sister too, nice to see Aunty Louie again 😀 

And another week over. 

Monday: Had a good morning in the greenhouse, potting on and sowing seeds, tidying up a bit. Decided that I could use the poly tunnel that the tomatoes go in a bit more wisely as they won’t go in for a couple of months yet. So I dug out the old pasting table, put a plastic sheet on it and moved a fair few seedlings and plants in there to grow on, just need to remember they are in there otherwise I will forget to water them. The weather was quite a bit colder than previous days and windy, so in the afternoon I decided to try and get the end of year PAYE done, unfortunately I have some data missing from when my hard drive was chewed and even after three hours of reading the manuals I couldn’t find out how to re enter the data, I would have phoned the helpline but I have hardly any voice at the moment and am prone to fits of coughing 😝Tuesday: A warmer day today, I spent a while trying to clean the floor of the front chicken hut a bit better than I have of late. The problem is it is so dry, when we have rain the wet feet of the chickens keep the floor moist enough to scrape easily, when it’s dry it sticks like glue and is difficult to get the last bits off, anyway if I do that for a couple of days I might be on the right side of good. Came in and put the dinner in the slow cooker, picked a load of fresh herbs to go in and some sprouting, good splash of red wine, braising steak and the jobs a good un, I can forget about it till later on tonight. I also picked some fresh mint to make a mint syrup, this cough is doing my head in and as rose hips are not about yet I thought I could try mint instead. It’s different lol, I guess if I had peppermint growing it would be more minty than the garden mint but it tastes sweet, not too minty just a little bit of the flavour comes through, you can use it on ice cream or in long summer drinks so I will use it for various things and see what is best. 

The ducklings are doing really well, we have had to put a bigger water bowl in already which will mean they will start making a real mess very soon 😝

Today we found two dead rats, just like buses, none, then all at once, the first was probably killed by one of the cats (as it was out in the open with a hole in its side) and was a grey rat ‘big’ John said, when I went out to pick it up I thought, that’s not big. The second really was big and was the one that had been nicking eggs from the POL pen at the back, how do I know it was that one, it died in the nest box! I had fed it two sachets of rat poison over the last few days, good to know the stuff works. I sent John up to get it out as I didn’t have my gloves on when I was collecting eggs or I would have done it myself, besides he never believes me when I say there is a rat nicking eggs, well the proof as they say……. John then decided it would be a good idea to sit the rat somewhere the girls would see it when they came to the yard to do the horses, then wait for the scream 😝 To be honest, I went along with the idea, naughty I know, they walked past it without even noticing 😂😂😂😂😂 we hid like children and waited then were disappointed when our little joke went flat lol

We went to bed around 10.30 only to be woken around half hour later by the dog yapping intensely, I went to have a look through the windows and from the side door could see a chicken trying to get through the gate towards home! Obviously having too good a night to realise she should have been back hours ago, I got my shoes and coat on and went out to grab her and put her in with the orchard hens, lucky I got up or she would have been supper for either the fox or Kai depending on who got to her first. 

Wednesday: Quick sprint round this morning as off the the hospital for my routine check up, all well on the lupus front but I have high blood pressure, well I knew it was coming as it has been creeping up over the last year, but here it is the actual diagnosis 😝 What does this mean for me well I could do nothing and go on the tablets and hope it settles down or I could take a good look at my diet and give it an overhaul, I decided on the latter. It’s not that we eat badly really it just that if I am busy I will either skip meals or go for a quick fix, if there happens to be a banana handy that’s good, if not it will be a biscuit (or 4) that’s not so good, chocolate when I have had a busy, hard, tiresome well any kind of day really, so I will try my best to be good from now on. That will mean less batch baking days from now on 😜

I think I spent the rest of the afternoon, doing a shopping list and looking up the kind of meals I would like to eat.

Thursday: Today after feeding I took the bull by the horns and called the HMRC to figure out how I am supposed to put back in lost data, 3 calls to different departments and nearly 5 hours later the decision was, just send what you have got as long as you are sure the information that was sent in real time was accurate and on time……………….🙄 it was, let’s hope we hear no more about it though I seriously doubt it😣I then took a brisk walk to the post box to post a letter, how good am I 😀gotta help this heart as much as I can. 

Still got this annoying tickly cough though it sounds much worse than it is, however it does break out at very inconvenient times, like when you are on the phone to HMRC 😝 I also woke in the night with toothache, on analysis in the morning I think it’s more to do with this virus and sinuses than my tooth at least I hope I’m right or I could be in trouble over the bank holiday weekend after deciding against bothering the dentist about it.  

Good Friday 💐 This morning I have decided to slow things down a bit lol, it’s a bank holiday after all although John has gone to work so it’s just me here. I wanted to leave the hens in a bit longer than usual as we are getting eggs laid all over the place, if I leave them in they will have to lay in the nest boxes, that was one good thing about them being confined, you could always find the eggs. I put more poison down at the back yesterday because despite catching that big brown rat there is still something eating the eggs, the rest of its family I expect! The weather is not as nice as it could be for the holiday weekend but it’s dry at least, I will probably spend a bit of time watering today as everything is quite dry outside, it’s not the established things like rhubarb and asparagus it’s the seedlings, strawberries in the raised beds etc that need a drink. 

Well first I did a good clear out of the floor in the front hut, had to wet it first so sloppy chicken shit everywhere, foolishly as it was a tad cold this morning I decided on two layers plus my gillet, sweating like a heifer now 😝 but at least the floor is clean 😀

The ducklings are doing well, I would put up more photos but they haven’t really changed that much, it’s a shame they can’t go outside yet there would be ample photo opportunities then 😀 they also need a clean out as they have moved onto a large water container and making a right mess! Spent a wonderful couple of hours in the greenhouse and garden, thoroughly enjoyed a bit of potting on and watering everything. 

Saturday: Skyped Charlie first thing as it’s her birthday but she is going out so we won’t see her until tomorrow. Then got the animals done while John went off to get feed, then off round to see my sister who’s birthday is also today. John did a bit of tidying up in the garden area, stuff that he has left lying around after doing various jobs! As Josh is now walking we begin to notice the things that are a bit dangerous including building materials left lying around, I am going to have to change a few of my habits such as leaving the asparagus knife lying in the bench, he makes a beeline for anything he can’t have lol, luckily he is easily distracted by stones and putting them into a pot 😜 I noticed some flowers on my orange and lime trees, very exciting I hope they form properly into fruit I will be chuffed to bits with that result. 

John cut the grass in the front drive, while I got dinner on, (worthy of a mention as I can count on one hand the times he has cut the grass in the last 30 years 😝)

Easter Sunday: The sun came out for a short while this morning although as soon as it went in you could feel the cold. John did the routine jobs this morning while I made a cake some bread and cooked a piece of beef for sandwiches later, I’ve never really done the Easter roast because it’s usually a good day and that means working in the garden so no time for cooking. We culled the poorly duck, I felt sorry for her but her joints were swollen and hot and she was using her wing tips to try and get around, she was getting into a bit of a sorry state and there was nothing I could do for her so her time had come 😔I also cleaned out the ducklings, they are getting quite big now and making a real mess with their water I shall be regularly cleaning them from now on in. John cleaned out the back pen and put up some boards for the next muck heap, considering how massive the old one was it has shrunk down to a neat 8ft square, lots of people have had some for their gardens and we have used a fair bit. The dung beetles are active at the moment and you can almost see the muck moving under their activity it’s amazing how fine they turn the muck. Mum came over as an extra pair of hands today and did some hoeing and planting, also helped me think a bit more clearly about what is happening in the garden at the minute, sometimes there is so much crammed into my head I can’t think straight lol. Some of the family came for sandwiches and cake and then the day was more or less over and it was time for a well earned rest.

Quail getting bigger

The ducklings have actually started to grow rapidly over the last couple of days!