Monday 9th September: I have a diary that belonged to someone that lived in the cottage just up the road from where we live now, my Dad found it when Sue bought it and renovated it. It covers two years and is mostly about the weather, the routine, and small daily happenings, nothing unexpected, nothing untoward and nothing extraordinary, which in itself is extraordinary as it was written right smack bang in the middle of WWll 😮 I have searched every day that was written and there is not a single mention of the war. I always thought this was very odd indeed until I began to write this blog, on the whole you won’t find a mention of anything much other than what happens here, even though our country is engulfed with BREXIT we have it morning, noon and night, it is the main topic on nearly every news broadcast every day. I guess that I feel this is not the platform for it and that this blog is my little bubble, one that I control the content of, so now I understand the diary and the writers omission of the bigger things happening around them.
A good morning in the garden after doing the animals, Mum arrived to dig up a row of raspberries, these are outside the fruit cage and I hardly get the berries because the birds eat them all before I can 🤪 I did some digging up of self set potatoes, cut the pumpkins and spaghetti squash and put them to ripen in the greenhouse before the hens start pecking at them, I pulled up the kidney, haricot beans and a sunflower and they are also drying in the greenhouse, I picked cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, beetroot and blackberries. Then into the kitchen to sort it all out, I bagged up some goodies for Mum to take home with her and sliced and blanched the carrots I pulled on Saturday. Our dinner tonight I am chuffed to say is very low on miles, the veg all came from the garden, the lamb from a local smallholder, the berries and pears for pudding were grown here so only the sugar, flour and butter have any miles at all and they are all of British origin 😀 smugness overload 😋
I’m feeling the cold today, sure hope this Indian summer comes along 🙄
This afternoon I had a message from a friend which quickly spiralled into potentially having a new member on the farm, can’t say anymore at the minute but watch this space 😜
On the way home from shopping the other day we were listening to the radio as usual and there was someone on there talking about all kinds of skin remedies. One of them caught my attention because working out in the winter air causes my hands to become chaffed and split and this was about a hand cream developed by a farmer, or his daughter can’t remember which, that would help. If someone who knows the problems developed something to help it’s got to be worth a try right? Obviously I ordered some straightaway lol and we will see how good it is, if you suffer with ‘winter’ hands it’s called ‘O Keefes’ and it feels a lot different to normal hand creams, here’s hoping it’s not just spin 🤪
Tuesday: A cracking morning this morning shame I didn’t think to take photos but I was just enjoying the moment. A misty morning but with the sun leaking through, quiet and peaceful 😀 We were up a little earlier today 😜 so John did the feeding while I put some washing on and then got on with burning the paper rubbish and a pile of bindweed roots that Mum dug up yesterday. Then I did a bit of this and a bit of that, some picking, some hoeing, and cutting back the long new tendrils of the thornless blackberry. I try and keep it under control so it’s easier to pick the berries and cover with netting so the birds don’t eat them all. A bit more hoeing on the pathways and then indoors to get the hoovering done. I wanted to get that sorted as it was annoying me and the sad fact is that today I can feel that I won’t be able to do a stint in the garden and then come in and do the hoovering as I am already feeling fatigued. The problem with this disease and many others is that I don’t look ill and I’m not, not as ill as I can be but I do have to listen to what my body is telling me at times. That has been a hard lesson to learn, as someone that has always been on the go it’s difficult to reign yourself in, however needs must as my system can’t cope with me pushing it if it isn’t firing on all cylinders 🙄
After hoovering, a catch up with gardeners world, a couple of blogs I follow and a coffee 😀
It’s nice to read other blogs especially ones who live similar lives to us, they always inspire me to do something, passata is something I really want to try but I’m a little afraid of ‘canning’ it in case I end up with botulism or something! I love the rows of jars stored ready for use when you want them. I have ventured into dried beans that’s a start and of course the freezer is always fit to bursting, last year I collected, dried, shelled and stored as many nuts as I could and I felt a sense of achievement when I could reach for a handful of nuts back in April or May 😀 We do not live in an isolated area like some of the blogs I read, I could easily pop to Morrison’s as many times a week as I want to but I don’t want to and that’s the whole point of being self sufficientish.
Watching gardeners world reminded me of a couple of jobs I wanted to get done, one was collecting the seeds from some beautiful apricot coloured wallflowers that I had growing outside the gate and also some deadheading to prolong any flowering so off I went and did those couple of little jobs.
While I was working in the garden I heard a noise and wondered what it was, I looked over the fence and saw the geese cracking open hazelnuts lol, the dogs do it too, I was wondering why I wasn’t finding that many on that side of the fence 🤣 I shall have to start picking them off the tree to get my quota!
Wednesday: Not a bad day a bit dreary but dry and not cold so that’s a bonus. I did the morning routine this morning, then onto collect some greenery for the rabbits/guineas. They had an assortment of fruit bush cuttings, weeds and herbs, I also try and give some to the turkeys who love green stuff and the quail and the light Sussex. Then I watered the poly tunnels they don’t need much now but they do need a bit of watering to keep them going. I studied the grapes in the big tunnel, they are nearly ready to harvest, it will be all at once lol so goodness knows what I am going to do with them all. There are not enough to warrant getting the press out for juice so I will have to have a search and see what the next best thing is. I am aware that there are lots of jobs to do and I am wandering round thinking this needs doing, that needs doing but I never really get anywhere so a coffee and a list is in order. I find that if I have a list I will go down it and cross things off one by one, very satisfying. The tomato harvest is in full swing and I am getting a good variety and plenty of them, I keep banging on about passata but today I decided to make fresh bread and fresh tomato soup 🥣 for my lunch. John has been feeling a bit under the weather and has had some blood tests which he is awaiting the results for so I dug out a chicken carcass (always save them) and bundled that with various veg, garlic and turmeric into the slow cooker, chicken soup you can’t beat it if you are off kilter 😀
For the tomato soup I have just bunged it all in lol, I chopped up tomatoes, a fair few, I didn’t weigh or count them, 3 cloves of garlic, a stick of celery, a few carrots (grated) salt, pepper and olive oil, that’s it. Basically it is on a low heat until it all breaks down and then I will whizz it and possibly strain it depending on how many seeds I can see but I’m not really bothered by them so they may stay. One thing, don’t take the skins off of your tomatoes, a lot of the flavour is in the skin, I have just had a taste while it’s still cooking and mmmm it’s delish it won’t even need any stock it’s that good already. Some of the tomatoes I have grown are beefsteak so they have a fair bit of flesh to them if you decided to use shop bought you may want to scoop the middle out so you just have flesh and not too much liquid.
Sam, Mia, George and Lucie plus Shelley, Josh and Florence came in the afternoon so it was a full and chaotic session lol. I had made a cake which pleased the children, I made it with oil as I didn’t have any butter left, it was a normal jam sponge and tasted great 😀
In the evening we popped to the shop to get some bits and I have been eyeing up an apple tree half way down the lane, I made John stop on the way back so I could pick a couple and see what they are like. I think they are a cox apple and they are not quite ripe yet but they are not sour or sharp so should be lovely once they ripen, I will be going back to get some more 😀
Thursday: I thought it was going to be a good day today, for the washing that is, so I put on a couple of loads but found it was a very fine drizzle when I went out and that hasn’t let up yet so the washing is still in the basket 🧺
I did the animals and then a bit of picking, the courgettes are still coming though getting smaller now, cucumbers can apparently keep producing until December if they are indoors so I am still harvesting and looking after those, the tomatoes are in full swing, and the cultivated blackberries are doing well now I have netted them to stop the birds. One thing I always wonder is why salad stuff I.e toms, peppers, cucumbers all come at what is virtually the end of the season when you don’t really want a salad lol, I know there is plenty of other stuff that can be grown and used as well it’s just that these mainstay salad items seem to be maturing at the wrong end of the season 🙄
Off to get my bloods done this morning, the last lot were all normal and I expect theses will be too, I can usually tell if something isn’t right. I get tired but that’s just part of the condition either that or I am very unfit (a considerable possibility 🤪) or due to the fact that I am getting on in age although I still try and pack as much in as when I was 30 lol. I never want age to be a factor in slowing down, I don’t want to be that person who says ‘I’m an old age pensioner now you know’ My Mum still does a lot and can still dig over the garden, haul things around, put a good day in, I never consider her to be an ‘OAP’ because she doesn’t come across as one and that’s how I would like to be 😀
I finally got round to picking some flowers from the garden 😂 a bit late in the season but hey at least I have done it and hopefully I can continue to do it for a few weeks more. I was always of the opinion that flowers belong out in the garden and not in the house but I guess attitudes change over the years and now I am looking at each plant with new eyes, would that look good in a vase? It brightens up the table and makes me smile so they are as good as any reasons for doing it.
John had some blood tests last week as he was feeling extremely tired, the results show he is low in folic acid and is pre diabetic 🙄 Hmmm ‘I told you so’ springs to mind, considering the amount of crap he eats it’s no wonder, till now he has always been able to mostly eat what he wants and burn it off but as you age the body processes things differently or not at all and so a diet overhaul is in place 😀 It’s not at home that he eats it well apart from the cakes and puddings that I make occasionally but when he is driving around for work it’s crisps, cake, chocolate not to mention the obligatory umpteen cups of tea on a plumbers must have list! Cutting down to just three cups of tea a day will save on approx 20 teaspoons of sugar, I kid you not 😬
Friday: I heard the gate go quite early in the morning and Mum was back to get the rest of the bindweed out 😀 I think that’s two full wheelbarrows of the stuff now 🙄 it has been burnt on the bonfire so it can’t infest anywhere else. That won’t be the last of it either the stuff is a pain in the arse, we will have to keep on top of it all the time, I did try weedkiller on it twice in spring but still it persisted and swamped everything in its path.
I did some bits around the rest of the garden and I need to have a good think about how to rearrange things. It didn’t work at all this year with bits here there and everywhere so I will probably go back to a more orderly way of veg gardening with some blocks of flowers but I have the winter to think about it 😀
Saturday: The weather has once again switched and we are back to summer temperatures although the mornings and evenings are much cooler. Today’s jobs on the list were clean outs. John did the two mobile hen huts while I did the turkeys, rabbits/guineas, light Sussex and quail, 6 houses/pens in all. So nice when it’s all done 😀 inbetween doing them the deliveries of hay and straw arrived, we haven’t had any for a while so a nice chat and catch up with the supplier was in order 😋 We had lunch and a sit down to recharge for some more cleaning out in the afternoon but Sam, Mia and the babies arrived and then Shelley, Josh and Flo, a friend came with her husband to pick sloes for her sons wedding favours of sloe gin next year and by the time everyone left that was the afternoon done lol. The eggs needing collecting the birds feeding, the dinner getting on and before you know it the evening has arrived and that’s another day over.
At the moment I am collecting hazelnuts, I usually have pockets full of them and yesterday I spent some time collecting them off the tree, well a hour and a half to be precise, I couldn’t believe I had spent that long it only seemed like half an hour. I have cut the mesh to lay in the bottom of the apple racks so that they can dry out with air all around them, they still have a lot of moisture in them and so they sweat if they are in a container and that leads to mould which you don’t want.
Sunday: Another nice day on the cards, I spotted a squirrel at the end of the driveway early this morning, bad news for me and my walnuts, I did hunk it was odd that there were none on the ground yet 😏 After doing the birds I got on with cleaning out the stable that some of the hens and ducks are while John went off to visit his Mum. When he got back he cleaned out the front hen house while I did some hoovering, washing etc. Then we spent the afternoon at Charlie and Maccas along with Shelley, Martin and the kids and Sam, Luke and the kids, it’s Sams birthday Tuesday so Charlie had made her a birthday cake as she probably won’t get time to make her own 😂
We came back early evening to do the eggs and feeding and John came back from collecting and said ‘you’ll never guess what I picked up’ I went through the list of eggs and it’s a goose egg! Geese are seasonal layers and generally lay from Feb to May sometimes into June and ours stopped laying a couple of months ago but now one has laid again 🙄 it’s definitely a fresh one as we look there every day for hen eggs, I’ve no idea what’s going on with that lol.
I had a nice little blast from the past round at Charlie’s, Macca is very into his music and bought an old turntable, then someone gave him a load of 45’s, oh my days looking through those, the labels, the songs, the bands, bought a whole load of memories flooding back 😀
frieslandfarm (flowers) 