Monday: 19th March I’m not sure if I like marking off the weeks with the date, time seems to fly past even faster!
It’s still cold, the wind is still coming from the east and it’s bitter, hopefully it won’t be much longer before we see the temperatures rise, I’ve seriously considered moving somewhere warmer 😜
Not much to report in terms of the farm really as you can imagine the jobs that need doing are having to wait for the weather to warm up. The paddocks usually would be dragged and rolled in March but we are fast approaching the end of the month and not a hope of getting on them. The problem will be that when we can, the sun will be a lot warmer and dry everything a lot faster, coupled with the fact that John can’t just stop what he is doing during ‘the window of opportunity’ and quite rightly he says I shouldn’t be using the tractor if I am here all day by myself ‘health and safety’
We have made plans to topseed the paddocks which will mean enticing the hens to a different paddock during the daytime, we will see how that goes when the time is right. At the moment they are still on the front paddock which is showing signs of growth through the mud 😝but it will be good to get them off and get the grass sorted. There is still enough grass for the geese to graze if they venture further afield providing it’s not snow or frost, on those days we have to supplement their diet with pellets. They are laying well and have split their nests into two now, to begin with they were all laying in one nest, last year three of them sat on eggs but only produced one gosling between them, I’m hoping now they are more experienced we might get more.
Tuesday: Still a cold wind went I first went outside but by the finish of my rounds the wind had dropped and the sun was out, lovely to feel some warmth though it didn’t last very long. While I was waiting for the water buckets to fill I went to have a look and see if the wild garlic I planted last autumn had come up, it has 😀 I pinched a bit off the top of a leaf and oh my goodness the smell is amazing, very strong, I won’t harvest it this year but wait until next year although I can see the hens have been trying it already.
The worming we did over the seven days last week has boosted the egg numbers to almost maximum, 96 out of 100 from the front hens, I will settle for that.
The seedlings on the window sill have shot through, a bit too quickly really as they are getting leggy and with the temps still not up I can’t really move them anywhere 🙁 I may have to come up with a solution or it will have been wasted effort. I ordered some garlic, onions, kale and broccoli seeds on top of my last order as I am trying to figure out what we mostly want, need, eat, no point growing veg we don’t eat even if I do sell it, I need to make sure we are reaping the benefits as much as anyone.
The baby rabbits that were produced from the escaped bunny have produced a brood of their own under the decking 😩 I saw them nibbling on the lawn this morning, oh my days this rabbit thing is out of control, I need to get that sorted too, either cull them or try and move them off out into the paddock.
I have been trying out a new diet and recipe book for Lupus, Shelley got it for me for Mother’s Day, AIP is autoimmune protocol diet and cuts out things that cause inflammation or fatigue, although we eat fairly healthy in terms of not consuming processed foods in any great quantity there is still a lot to cut out and learning different ways of using alternative ingredients. I am on day three and last night for the first time in ages my hands did not seize up and I do feel like I have turned a corner energy wise, so I shall carry on with it and see how I do.
I made an alternative pizza for lunch today, for my last birthday one of my sisters gave me ‘a bunch of flours’ which included teff flour, don’t worry I’d never heard of it either! So I used that and ground almonds, egg, garlic powder and olive oil to make the base then walnuts, garlic oil and basil to make a pesto and topped with mushrooms and a bit of cheese (though the cheese is not strictly allowed 😲) verdict: not bad 😛
The fox got one of our older hens last night, shame as she was one of my faves, she was a light Sussex hybrid and was from a fairly old batch, she obviously didn’t go to bed last night and there are the feathers all over the yard to back that up 😟
Today is the Spring Equinox and it doesn’t even feel like we have entered into spring, equal measures of light and dark, well that’s great but can we please have some warmth to go with it now 🙏
Wednesday: Oh how long have we been waiting for a morning like this? Seems like forever! Frosty start but the sun shinning gave promise and hope and delivered 😀 After doing the morning rounds I went straight to the garden and greenhouse, I put classic fm on a little radio and had a wonderfully content 45 mins pottering and sowing seeds, mostly courgettes and squash but also some broccoli. The squash seeds will go under cover into a unheated propagator and if the temps threaten to plummet again I will have to bring them indoors. The broad beans have flowers on already and the other seedlings are sprouting nicely now. I did sow some basil into a pot and brought it inside to put in the windowsill propagator. I watered the peas in the small tunnel and the strawberry baskets in the big tunnel, everything is starting to bud, the blueberries, the fig and the apricot tree outside has little bombs of pink all over it just waiting to burst open.
Then Mia arrived for the day and we decided to go for a walk along the lane, listening and looking all the way down and back, I even saw a muntjac deer in the scrub but I figured by the time I got Mia unclipped and out it would be gone so she didn’t get to see it this time.
Normally each year I do a crop rotation plan, actually draw it out, but I’ve been doing it that many years now that it’s all in my head and I don’t really need to or so I think because when it then comes to planting I know I will probably put something in the wrong place and besides it’s good to have a record year on year so I shall draw one up and see how well I stick to it.
Thursday: I was very happy to see the promise in today’s weather, sunny, not too cold, hardly a wind, happy days as a bonus John was also at home so we should get plenty done.
After doing the morning rounds we moved stuff, tided stuff, sorted out stuff that needed doing. The hose from the rain water tanks to the ducks was one job that needed doing as the old hose had multiple holes in it and so whenever it was used the bit of yard inbetween ended up soaking wet, I already had new hose waiting so I did that job and filled up the water butts. John did a couple of hours here and there cutting up wood, we gathered up tarpaulin that had been over the Horse box but got ripped to shreds over the winter by the windy conditions. Moved a pile of wood that was given to us but left at the front of the driveway, moved some bags of compost that came out of the old boxes we demolished before building the new fence in the front. I did a bit of work in the garden dug up some more bindweed roots and dug up and potted up some raspberry canes, that was harder work than it sounds 😜 I’m sure we did more but I can’t think what right at the moment.
John did the afternoon feeding and egg collection, the trays are flying off the shelf which is great as it means we don’t need to deliver them, I just went out to a customer who had not been before and needed change and the wind is quite cold out there now, luckily I am inside cooking a beef dinner and a traditional rice pudding for Dad and Sue on their return visit.
Friday: A very productive and busy day, John has been busy getting the POL pen ready for a new batch of hens, we have a new water and feed system in place and he has built new nest boxes for them, all looking very good.
I have been busy in the garden, planting onion sets and the babington leeks, digging, clearing and tidying the raspberry area, putting up more canes and putting down weed membrane for the pots to stand on, potting on the new blueberry bushes, I tried a bit of hoeing but the ground is just a bit too wet still.
We are experiencing very high gates sales for the eggs, I think this week will be bumper takings 😀
Ooops sat here typing up and in walks John without his trousers on, the pressure washer he was using has just split and he got a soaking 🤣🤣
Saturday: I went to London with Charlie to watch both parts of Harry Potter, The Cursed Child, it was a very long bit thoroughly enjoyable day. John was left at home in charge, all seems well 🤪
Sunday: The clocks went forward and that seems to have such an impact on the day, the time just disappears! I was tired from yesterday but still up at the usual time, John did all the animals this morning and I went out and got some gardening done. I potted on some tomato plants that have been on the window sill, cleared up some more debris from the raspberry canes, still a bit more to do there but not much now, I tided, clipped and weeded the herb bed, hopefully everything will begin to burst into life very soon. John did the last finishes to the POL pen and will be picking up 30 pullets tomorrow morning, hopefully they will already be, or very close to, laying as the eggs sales have been off the scale this week!
The sunshine was just too good to stay inside and do the chores so after a cuppa and a snack I went back out determined to get something achieved. I decided on the large poly tunnel, I really should have stuff growing away in there by now but as I said a couple of weeks back, it really wasn’t ready. I do have some left over cauliflower plants in there from last autumn, strawberries in hanging baskets, the fig I moved into there and a couple of rows of beetroot and parsley but apart from that, nothing. And I still haven’t except that now all the soil has been raked over to a fine tilth, I have made two temporary raised beds where the clay seam is and I have weeded, it’s good to go as soon as I decide what to put in there 😀
frieslandfarm (flowers) 