Monday: Woke up with a touch of vertigo today so just about got round and did the feeding then mostly tried to sit still all day until the next lot of feeding in the afternoon! Thankfully it had passed by early evening and fingers crossed it won’t come back for a while. Bit of a waste of a day but sometimes the body is just trying to tell you to stop.
Tuesday: Better today, not dizzy but have a head cold blurhh, sweating as I did the morning rounds. Got a few things done before Mia arrives, some potatoes that needed digging up and put up some protective fencing around the fruit trees in the front paddock, the geese keep trying to strip the bark which will kill them off if I don’t stop it now.
Wednesday: Lovely sunny morning ☀️ got the feeding done then onto picking the rest of the veg I started getting in yesterday. There are potatoes, parsnip, celeriac, snack peppers, hot peppers. The pepper plants in the poly tunnel are huge but did not produce much, however they are still healthy plants and as peppers are perennial plants I will see what I can do to overwinter them, it would be great to get such a head start on them next year, I also think I need to keep the plants smaller so that they produce fruit quicker, can’t hurt to try. After that I went to clean out the geese and then put fresh bedding in for the ducks, which by the way we are lucky to still have this morning after John did not shut them in, either their house nor their pen, the gate was wide open this morning and they were taking themselves off down to the paddock! Still have a touch of vertigo but not too bad, I think it’s caused by this head cold which is also something and nothing at the moment, hope it doesn’t get worse 😝
Ordered some ‘meteor’ pea seeds as the last ones I planted got eaten by something, I will be growing them the way we used to in school, well starting them off that way at least, on a wet piece of tissue on the windowsill along with the broad beans. I’m guessing it’s mice pinching the seeds before they even get started, I can’t blame them really but they are interrupting my growing attempts, so starting them off then planting them will hopefully give me a better shot at it.
I am making roasted celeriac soup today, have not made it before so I am hoping it tastes good, I made fresh bread yesterday so that will be dinner tonight, we try and have a meal in the week that rests the gut a little, besides soup is such an easy and delicious thing to have. There are recipes for apple and celeriac soup but I opted for just the celeriac, with a touch of garlic.
As I was looking for recipes I found one for parsnip Madeira cake, yeah, I will let you know what it tastes like once it’s cooked lol. Next to chocolate cake, Madeira is one of Johns favourite cakes so we will see how it goes down.
Verdict is still out, it’s edible and not at all unpleasant, John asked me not to tell him what was in it so I haven’t and he has been eating it just fine lol, I quite like it though I wouldn’t put it on my favs list.
Thursday: Drizzle today, as the mornings are quite dark, before even going out to do the feeding I cleaned the bathroom, after feeding I got on with some washing and cleaning the rest of the house and that was pretty much the day for me, John was home early so he did the afternoon feed and collected the eggs and lit the fire, Sam came over and did the horse, I did do a bit of paperwork that needed doing.
Goodness I haven’t noted anything for Friday or Saturday lol so I will have to round up, did the usual feeding etc. I can’t actually remember what I did Friday except that I thought all the baby rabbits had gone, turns out they were hiding behind the side of the hut and a wall, so much for me blocking up all the holes! Had Josh in the morning while Shelley and Martin went for a scan on baby, she is a pink one 💕😀 Sam and Mia came over in the afternoon and Charlie came round in the evening. Saturday morning I did a bit of clearing in the poly tunnel, I have cut back all the peppers as they won’t produce anything now, but they are perennial so I have given them a good watering and covered them to see if they will survive winter, no harm in trying. I also put fleece jumpers on my lemon and orange trees, gave them a good last watering and bubble wrapped the pots they are in, I have about 5 small lemons growing and hoping they make it through the winter. I intend to move them into the large tunnel next year but need to build some raised boxes for them so that they are not in wet cold ground, ideally a conservatory is needed but we don’t have one so until we do I hope they survive, they did last year but it was fairly mild.
On one of those days the disabled duck died 😩 she has had a bad leg, I tried rest and all kinds of other things but in the end she just seemed to get on with it as it was, she was eating and drinking fine, she even learnt how to stand on one leg, just using the other which was pretty useless, to balance on but when I opened the hut one of those mornings she didn’t come out and had died overnight.
Sunday: Sunny but a cold wind, and the clocks have gone back, that will mean dark nights and it really doesn’t seem much lighter in the mornings either!
frieslandfarm (flowers) 