Monday: Peculiar day but then I wouldn’t expect anything less with a solar eclipse happening even if we can’t see it. The weather was just an added peculiarly, my weather app showed black clouds, just that, no rain or anything so I couldn’t really work out what the day was going to do, well it just stayed cloudy and thick cloud at that although the sun did try to come through a couple of times it never really won. After doing the morning rounds I cleaned out the hatchlings, they are already getting big enough and string enough to kick their chick crumb all over the place!
Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the day, I did some picking, runner beans and a few cooking apples, though I quickly decided it wasn’t the cleverest idea after a night of persistent rainfall, ended up with a wet arm lol.
Although we have hatched some bantams we also picked some up from a friend tonight, these are still teenagers so no layers as yet but in a few weeks I’m sure we will have bantam eggs for sale again 😀
Tuesday: The new bantams settled in over night then I let them out this morning, they are going to be trouble, well at least one of them is, she has already worked out how to get up and over the six foot fence, up onto the hut then onto the top of the fence then wayhay freedom, twice she has been out despite us moving the huts away from the edge after the first escape 😜
Meanwhile elsewhere I have been busy picking beans and some more blackberries which we will have with apple tonight over ice cream and I spent a good while cutting back the two buddliea bushes in the front area. They have grown a lot since last year and I couldn’t see through them down the driveway anymore, now it’s nice and open and I have a good view of who is coming and going. I also prepped some swede for open freezing, although open freezing takes a lot longer to prepare its better than a lump of frozen swede, I have been trying to do most of the veg this way so that I only get out what I need, less waste.
Molly the yard cat has been eying up the bantam chicks in the back so we are having to keep the doors shut, the last thing I want is for them to be eaten by the cat! I will need to keep an eye on the bigger bantams to I think as they might be just the right size for her to pounce on whereas the chickens are a bit too big for her to bother with. I wish she would set her sights on more mice and rats rather than the birds, she has had a few robins since she has been here so feathers must be her thing rather than fur 😝
Wednesday: Still the same weather, mind I’m not complaining, it’s not raining, it’s not sunny, it’s not cold and it’s not windy, win, win I reckon.
Did the morning routine and decided that we probably won’t be able to keep these bantams in so I left the gate open for them and they have stayed inside all day 😜 they can free range, they don’t cause damage to the garden like the chickens do it’s just a case of trying to keep them safe really.
I did a bit of tidying in the big tunnel, the tomatoes that had self set in there have grown massively but with not very many tomatoes so I pulled them up and kept the green fruits either to see if they ripen or for green tomato chutney, my Dad likes them fried but I’ve never tried it myself.
Went to the park with Sam, Mia, Shelley and Josh, John was driving past in his van and so he stopped to play at the park as well much to the delight of the grandchildren, Grampy is great on the monkey bars and slide 😀 while I played hide and seek round a huge tree trunk with Josh and roly poly down the hill with both of them, lovely interlude to the day.
I’ve been looking at fermented vegetables and how to do them, it is commonly known how good they are for your gut and the keeping bacteria balanced, I tried the Kombucha that I looked after for Mum but I didn’t like it so I thought let’s try veg instead at least I can eat them with a salad. I like the idea of fermented cherry tomatoes and I have plenty of those 😀
Thursday: I kept thinking it was Thursday yesterday so I’m glad it’s here today 😜
The freeranging bantams roosted in the tree last night, unfortunately they had chosen very low hanging branches of the Walnut tree so we scooped them up and put the away safely, all except one that we couldn’t find, when I let the geese out this morning I found it had shacked up with them overnight so all is well.
I had a fairly straightforward uninterrupted day ahead of me so I got started with some picking, it’s continuous at this time of year and today I picked courgettes, runner beans, dwarf beans, blackberries and the ying yang beans for drying. I am very pleased with those and they will look great stored in a jar ready to add to soups and stews. The chick peas on the other hand were not so successful, I think I left them too late to pick and most of the pods were empty, they had obviously gone on their own journey and either something has eaten them from the ground or I will have hundreds of self set plants next year! To be honest I won’t bother again but it’s nice to know they can be grown. The time seems to move very slowly this morning and by 10.30 I had done all that and done some clearing and weeded the big poly tunnel. For lunch today I decided to go and pick some sweet corn which I had with the home made butter, yum, this is a crop I don’t tend to sell as the girls love it and so do I 😀 I checked the growth of the celeriac, it’s looking like it should swell nicely by the time it needs picking which is late September/October, there is a lot of it lol.
I was just wondering what I should do next when two things happened, first a delivery, of plastic lids for the killer jars and secondly it started raining so good timing to start off those fermented cherry tomatoes. I did a fair bit of reading up and you can buy fancy expensive jars plus glass discs to weigh the produce down but I went for plastic lids and a folded cabbage leaf to keep the tomatoes submerged. With the plastic lids they are screwed on lightly and then ‘burped’ each day to let out the gas, once the fermentation is complete screw the lid down tight and store in the fridge. Again with this type of thing you can use whatever you like in the way of spices, I used garlic, fresh oregano, all spice berries, ginger, whole peppercorns and some celery seed, they should be ready in around 4-6 days so we will see what happens and how they taste then.
Moved Jack to his paddock in the afternoon and also put down some rat poison, we have one in the wall again, it’s been never ending since Felix died, need a decent mouser on the farm!
Someone came to get muck in the afternoon and bought two pots of home made jam, one raspberry and one damson, what a treat as I haven’t made much of my own this year just blackcurrant.
Forgot to make bread today so got some on the go after dinner, popped out to take Mum some veg while it was proving, came back and time to put the birds to bed, the bantams are up the tree again although higher up tonight so we left them up there! Oh yeah and one of the bantams laid an egg already 😀😀😀😀
Friday: Lovely morning and after doing the animals I went to a walk up a nearby lane with Shelley and Josh picking blackberries along the way, Josh ate as many as we were picking lol, found a plum tree on the way back and filled a bag full of them they were sweet and ripe for picking.
Later in the morning something buzzed overhead and sent the horses into a tizz, when I looked up I saw a drone flying in a back and forth motion over the top of us covering the whole yard. In the week I was told by a customer how undesirables have been using a drone in the nearby villages to case areas of interest to them so you can imagine I was pretty pissed off thinking that this was one of those episodes. First I went out and flicked my ‘v’ at it then I strode off down the road to see if it was any of the lads working nearby using it, I spoke to my neighbour who said she would ring the farmer whose land it was also also going over, I was quite prepared to shoot the f***ing thing down! Turns out it was the farmer who had got someone to use it to survey his fields, I did feel a bit of a tit then but actually it should not have been flying over ours without some kind of notification, the laws are a bit flimsy for drones at the minute but there are privacy laws covered by cctv laws, plus there is common curtesy!
Saturday: It’s set to be warm and sunny today and to be honest I have spent a bit too much time in the sun lately and it’s beginning to take its toll on my health, proven today by the fact I have spent most of the day inside and don’t feel exhausted like I do when I have been working outside.
Apart from quickly sorting out the ducks, horse and rabbits while John fed the rest of the crew, I have been inside, I spent the first half of the day cleaning and washing as it really needed doing and then the afternoon baking. I made 2 choc/courgette cakes always a winner and a plum bread to use up the plums I picked up the lane yesterday, then I needed to use the windfall apples so I have in the slow cooker, apple butter, (apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar) there are a lot of tomatoes and so I have oven roasted some with basil, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, my taste and smell senses have gone into overdrive I can tell you. The apple butter definitely tastes and smells a bit like Christmas and the tomatoes etc are a wonderfully fragrant reminder that summer is still with us for now.
Meanwhile John has been uber busy outside getting the huts and the back paddock ready for the hens in the front to move to, he will then clean out and creosote the front huts ready for the new hens to arrive. It can’t come quick enough as far as the egg customers are concerned they arrive in droves and we quickly sell out leaving disappointed folks at the gate 😩 Some customers have a bit of a cheek, a note was left asking me to save 3 dozen eggs for them to collect………wait for it………6.30 am Monday morning! Not on your life, to start with we have many customers who ask us to save eggs which we cannot do for everyone so we don’t do for anyone and 6.30am on a Bank Holiday Monday ffs 😝😝😝😜😜😜
Shelley Martin and Josh came over with a pudding Shelley had made from the blackberries we picked on Friday, she was very pleased with herself and so she should be it was a delicious blackberry and apple upside down cake mmmmm.
Sunday: Well nobody can say the weather was rotten this bank holiday weekend can they? Another scorcher of a day and apart from some feeding and picking early on I stayed firmly indoors, hope everyone enjoyed the rays 🌞🌞🌞 I did the remaining bit of end of year paperwork and some file sorting on the laptop and then sorted out the stationary drawers and found an envelope with 135 euros in it, made some bread, then in the afternoon Sam, Luke and Mia called in to visit and then Charlie and Macca came a bit later with ice lollies 😀😀😀
John spent another day out in the heat, turning the muck heap, burning weeds and blighted tomato plants and putting up the electric fencing for the hens at the back. Tonight we will be gathering up 80+ hens and moving them from the front to the back but we will wait until it’s nearly dark and much cooler 😝
93 chickens moved by 9pm, loaded in 12’s into 2 crates at a time backwards and forwards from front to back and back to front, mind you I got the easy bit pushing the empty crates back lol. Then when we finished it was strip off, clothes in the washing machine and into the shower, for John at least cos he was the one in the hut and he was itching with red mite, think about how the poor hens feel I told him, one good thing about the colder months approaching there will be less of them. The now empty hut will be thouroughly creosoted and treated which will keep them at bay for a while at least.
Have a great week whatever you are doing 😀
frieslandfarm (flowers) 