Monday 12th August: A decent morning considering last nights storms, I helped John do the animals then got on with tidying up the hay bay in the barn. The hay gets everywhere once it’s opened, we have the big round bales, and most of it is now gone but I bagged up the last bits which makes it look tidier. I don’t want to tidy too much as somewhere round there is where the hedgehog is living or at least passes through. In the bay is also a double height rabbit hutch which had fallen apart, it got worse when a hen snuck in there overnight and the fox trashed it getting at her. I have now taken it apart and put it back together, making it stronger as I went and I have a usable hutch again. At the moment I have just put some hay in and left the doors open so that the free roaming hens can lay in there if they wish to and we can actually find the eggs🤞
I have plenty of other jobs to do but feeling a bit tired after those jobs, not a good sign really 😟 I have a few other minor issues I am monitoring at the moment hoping they are all individual things that will clear up one by one, wishful thinking maybe 🤔
Dinner is going in the slow cooker today so that is one less thing to do later on and frees up my day no end 😀
Just lost the electric for a second or two, it happens quite regularly here after heavy rain 🙄
Afternoon chaos with Sam, Shelley and the children lol, the babies are doing well, not even at their due date just yet but putting on the weight well.
Early evening John cleaned out the hens in the side paddock while I got the dinner ready, braised beef, mash and runner beans, followed by rhubarb crumble and ice cream 😀
Tuesday: A lovely sunny morning, the temps are below average and it feels a bit autumnal. I am buzzing today as everything seems to to ready to harvest all at once lol, more runner beans and tomatoes but also plums, pears and apples.
I spent an hour or so picking greengages, got to get them just before they are ripe so that the wasps haven’t had them all, pears, which need picking when they are mature but they don’t ripen on the tree only once picked, tomatoes and beans which are in abundance now and the apples.
Shelley, Josh and Flo came over and we had a glorious time picking eating apples 😀 I didn’t think there were many on the tree, I kept looking at the side by the driveway, but when I went round to the other side my goodness it was loaded 🍎 They are keeper apples so will store well if they last that long lol, as I don’t have any cooking apples I intend to use these instead.
I had a lunch of pasta, feta, freshly picked basil and tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and a twist of black pepper and then sat down to have a look at what kind of recipes I will use the produce for. Though the skins on the pears are not very cosmetically pleasing the flesh underneath will be perfect for freezing, baking, bottling whatever I decide. I have three types of tomatoes, small Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, your average red tomato and a black variety, I can’t remember the name and I have no idea how to tell when it’s ripe lol. I never put my tomatoes in the fridge they taste so much better if they are kept on a sunny windowsill until needed.
I love this time of year and all the possibilities of using the fresh produce, not to mention the amazing smells, I picked some fresh basil popped it into a bag and straight into the freezer for use in the winter months, smells divine.
Tonight we are having chicken and potato bake I think, that will be a new one on John but hopefully he will like it, I will only put parsley on half of it as he does not like parsley 🙄
Lunch finished, sit down finished, now time to process runner beans for the freezer 😜
Usual afternoon routines done and I had intended to go out in the evening and do a bit but I was quite tired so I didn’t 🤪
Wednesday: Oh what a different morning this morning! Pouring down with rain, it’s not cold though and I don’t mind doing the animals in a bit of summer rain. We had planned on an hour round trip to collect a lamb for the freezer but as it happens they were coming out this way and delivered it first thing so that saved us a trip out. We used to do our own lambs but after a terrible year what with one thing and another we gave up and now try to buy from other local producers. I was thinking that I should set up some kind of page for local produce to advertise because although it is shared on the Smallholders site I run, not everyone has access to the page. Primarily it’s for Smallholders to network and not for the general public so how would the public know what produce is available locally unless it is sold at some outlet like a farm shop or local shop, there must be plenty of farm/garden gate sales like ours that locals would use if they knew they were there. I think that is something I will mull over for the next few days and see what I can come up with.
After planting 1000 daffodil bulbs last Autumn I thought I would expand a little and get some tulips to plant this year, not quite as many though, only 125 lol.
The rain is set to be here for the day so the choices are tidy and sort out the office or bake, yep baking it is then 😜 I made, choc chip shortbread biscuits, good old rock cakes, the faithful Marry Berry Orange and Sultana cake and a Gingerbread loaf. I started at 10 and finished washing up at 1pm it’s surprising how long everything takes which is why I police Johns eating of them, they are not McVities 50p a pack biscuits rattled out in a massive factory in 20 seconds flat you know!
Thursday: One of those days when you never quite get on, windy but dry, are we going to just go straight into autumn, it seems these days that we don’t have any gentle ride into the seasons, just boom, Winter, boom Spring, boom Summer and now boom Autumn , we are ver hopeful in the UK that we will get an ‘Indian summer’ well we have been known to have a day or two in the past 😂
Firstly, I did the animals this morning as John and I were mulling over some invoices first thing which made him later than he likes to be. He doesn’t have to be anywhere on time as he is self employed but he had good work ethics and likes to be at a job early.
Animals done I had just made a coffee and someone came to buy point of lay hens, sorted that out and sat down to drink my coffee, almost finished it when someone else came about a cockerel that needs rehoming, we have enough already though so it’s a no from me. Someone else came for veg and eggs but we are all sold out so I shouted a rough time when there will be more available and figured I better get on with some picking. Runner beans, courgettes, beetroot, cucumbers and some purple sprouting broccoli. Not all of that will go out for sale as we will use some things and the girls will have some of it too. I was thinking about what has done well this year, Runner beans, until the wind knocked them over, the French beans, though I should have planted more, cucumbers, they are going strong as are the tomatoes, the courgettes and the spaghetti squash too although they are not ready to harvest yet, I had a few broccoli and cauli, and the broad beans, asparagus and rhubarb did well. What has not done so well, carrots, sporadic, soft fruit, weather related? Peas, hmmm never seem to get those right, globe artichoke, plenty of heads but the plant was too big and went over in the wind, the brassica cage has white fly so that’s no great and a caterpillar or two as well.
Still going strong but yet to harvest much are the peppers, cape gooseberry and melon and one success I am rather chuffed with is the lemon grass, not ready to harvest yet but growing well and some ginger I bought from the shop has sprouted and going strong for the time being, with the latter two it’s always winter that is the tricky part of keeping them going, I’m hoping the new greenhouse will aid that greatly. I had a rogue chickpea plant come up and that has done well in the greenhouse so maybe next year I will try those again.
I am acutely aware that the garden is like a jungle at the moment, I have not had time to keep fully on top of everything and it shows, I got to a point when I thought ‘ah sod it, I will tidy it all up at the end of the year’ I know I was going in for forest gardening but it has got a bit out of hand lol. It looks like a jungle, feels like a jungle and when I can hear the monkeys from the wildlife park down the road, it sounds like a jungle 🤣
Friday: We had broken sleep last night and here is why: John turns the light on in the bedroom and starts getting dressed, what time is it? I say, 1am he replies, what are you doing? I heard a van pulling away from our drive, how do you know it was a van? It sounded sluggish like a van. Now considering the rural crime rate in the Thames Valley is high and at the moment activity just across the border is very active plus we have a big local gypsy fair coming up which always increases the crime rate, it makes sense to be on alert for these things. Can you check the cctv footage he asked, well I can but there is a 15 minute delay between recording and playback so I probably won’t see anything yet, I oblige anyhow and go into the office to look at the footage while John goes outside to check his van and anything else. The cctv as predicted is not available yet and I can’t see any other activity on there, meanwhile John comes back into the kitchen from outside and I go to the kitchen from the office. The first thing I see on the side is 3 bottles of milk and a bottle of orange juice, the milkman, you heard the bloody milkman ffs 🤣 Well at least I heard him John replies, I reply, he has been coming three times a week for the last year!!
Luckily this morning we don’t have to rush around and get to work because we are taking Joshua and Mia to the above mentioned Wildlife Park for the day 😀 Just the big kids to give the Mummies a break and to help the both of them feel grown up now that they have little sisters and brothers that they have to share the attention with, and the fact that it’s school holidays which seem very long to parents and children alike 😜
It’s overcast and just started to rain so not quite sure what kind of a day we will have but we will make the best of it 😀
Well it wasn’t too bad of a day, we got a bit soggy and a bit muddy, a bit tired but a lot happy 😀 Lovely day and the children were super good all day 😘
Saturday: Slightly better weather today although it’s still drizzled a little eventually the sun came out, now all we need it to do is dry up the wet mess the rain has left. John did the animals while I picked veg, I got a soggy pair of gloves and sleeves for my efforts 😜 If it dries up some more I can get on the garden and start tidying up a bit but at the moment it’s too wet. John fixes the pop hole on the duck shed which has been broken for a while and then did the guttering on the greenhouse, that’s the final bit for that and then we need to make tops for the cold frames. I have some cleaning out of cages to do but again I need to wait for the ground to be a little drier, no point traipsing muddy boots in and out 🙄 We have three out of the six turkeys left and they have been good for a week now and looking strong (famous last words) it looks like we have two stags and a hen judging by the tail displays 😀 One of the quail died in the week but I think that has to do with the cold wet weather, they are more exposed here than where they came from, they are laying well though so that’s a bonus.
Sunday: I was well peed off this morning to find that it was raining 😏 I was hoping to get up and get on a little bit and the rain hampered us a little bit not too much. After doing the usual we set about cleaning out the goose hut, putting some cover on the ridge of the quail hut as it’s been letting in rain, pulling up stinging nettles in the orchard and tidying that area, tidying and clearing the orchard pen including dismantling a falling apart hut and lastly but not least cleaning out the turkey pen. The turkeys have just begun to make the distinctive gobbling noise which makes me laugh every time I hear it 😆
John went off mid morning to visit his Mum and I did a bit of tidying of dead and dying stuff on the veg garden and fruit cage. I got stung in places I didn’t know existed by 5ft nettles 🤪
After lunch I did a bit more tidying and clearing before calling it a day, it’s windy and that really gets on my nerves after a while lol.
Charlie and Macca called in for a cuppa and then we went over to visit my brother and his wife and came back with some blackberries 😀
Oh the pullets started laying today as well 😀😀
That’s another week over, thanks for reading, have a good week and I hope the world is kind to you wherever you are 😘
frieslandfarm (flowers) 