Sunday evening Dec 1st: Sometimes on a Sunday evening after the blog has been published there are things I like to tell you about, tonight is one of those evenings. A real live game of cat and mouse was played out in the undercover back area. I think we don’t have many mice as I never really see any, however Benny the cat is a super duper mouser and he is always catching them. This evening I witnessed the classic cat catches mouse and then plays with the terrified little thing until he finally gulps it down in one go 🙄 It’s why we have cats here I suppose but we don’t usually witness the events as he mostly hunts out and about at night.
Monday 2nd December: So the first job on the list is obviously the animals, I made sure as it was a pretty cold morning, that everything had plenty of feed and water and the horses and the rabbit/guineas had a pile of hay to keep them going. I noticed a whole bunch of feathers in the front paddock, there were so many that I thought one of my geese had perhaps not gone to bed and been got by the fox but it was the lone cockerel from the school hatch back in spring. He roosted in the walnut tree, he chose not to live with 50 women 😜 and I assume he has come down too early this morning and been got 😏
After that it was straight inside to get the cockerels prepped for the freezer, three of them anyhow the forth will be prepped for dinner tonight. The cockerels we breed do not have a massive amount of meat on them but there is enough for a roast, then a curry or casserole and finally soup so you can get 3 good meals from them easily, then of course there is broth/stock to be made as well. I have been ‘doing’ our own chickens for over 10 years now, I went on a course along with Sam many years ago to find out how to do it properly and I think we pretty much have it nailed these days. I consider it a skill set, you never know when you might need it, and over time I have also taught Shelley and Charlotte, my sister Gill and her friend how to do it as well. I can also paunch a rabbit, without a knife if necessary so you see I am a very useful person to know 😂
The bird I selected for dinner tonight is now slavered in olive oil, sage, garlic and black pepper with onion in the cavity and that will be slow roasted, also cooking are the other bits that will go to the dogs, the feet, the hearts, the livers, the gizzards and the necks. Every bird is different, some are narrow some are wide, some carry more fat than others and of course even though they are the same age and have had the same life some are heavier than others 🙄 but all have had a good life, mostly free roaming and living a near to natural life as possible.
I may have to have a sleep at some point today, I seem to have got Johns cold and all the back of my throat and nose is inflamed meaning I didn’t get much sleep during the night as I could breathe properly and sleep at the same time 😜
Tuesday: Feel slightly better today and had a better nights sleep so that’s helpful. It’s not as cold this morning as the past few mornings and the sun is shinning, always a bonus. The long range forecast that I follow suggests that we won’t have a cold snap this side of the new year, even though I have read that I still sorted out my winter under layers just in case lol.
I did the morning rounds and also put in some clean bedding for the ducks and cleaned out the quail, who have now started laying again.
I watched a short film on gratitude and it mentioned that we rarely look at the sky, not true here, I am always looking skywards lol, it helps that we can see the sunset clearly and there are some spectacular ones to see at times, especially over the last few nights, I can also see the sunrise so I get a double bonus. I watch the cloud formations on different days and I like to look at the stars at night as we have very little light pollution here so a clear night is full of twinkling ✨ I usually think of one or two songs when I’m looking at the stars, Starry, Starry Night by Don McLean a fabulous song about Vincent Van Gogh and I only have eyes for you by The Flamingos, probably because it was always played at school discos in my youth and it mentions the stars 😂 I have been known to sing out loud on occasion and why not no one is around usually lol.
Had a quick meeting with the chap who pruned our cooking apple tree last year, he is coming to do the eating apple tree, hopefully on Thursday if he has time. The tree produces some great ‘keeper’ apples, some type of cox I think, but this year though there were hundreds of apples, a lot of them were tiny and so the tree could do with a good prune and hopefully we will get less apples but of a better quality, possibly not next year but the year after, sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to get better benefits.
Did some late evening gift shopping in Swindon, bliss without the crowds of people lol.
Wednesday: Another cold frosty morning, I am rather enjoying these mornings though as they are very pretty to wander round in. I did give out extra rations to those that need it, generally I don’t feed the geese as they graze the grass but when it’s frozen they need some kind of sustenance so they have layer pellets on mornings like this.
I have pretty much procrastinated this morning, kind of, I have done a little reading up or watching videos of regenerative agriculture which I think has to be the way forward, it’s basically using a combination of local ecology, permaculture and farm animals. It’s a no brainier but I think it will take many years before mainstream agriculture gets on board with it so in the meantime it’s up to the smaller producers/land owners and those farmers willing to stride out ahead of the rest to fly the flag, lets face it many people thought Prince Charles was a bit nutty 20+ years ago when he championed Organics and now its mainstream so there is always hope 😀
In the afternoon I thought I’d better do something rather than nothing lol so I got a hearty beef stew on the go ready for dinner tonight and then a bit of crafting. I had some polystyrene balls in a box, I’ve had them for about six years, no idea where they came from but I also had some wool packaging from some meat I had delivered back in spring, an idea formed 😀 At this time of year I get an urge to do something creative, I guess it’s not really wanting to do something outside as it’s too cold so needing to find something to do indoors preferably not cooking or cleaning 😝 So I gathered up all the things I needed and felted these Christmas baubles, I was pretty chuffed with how they turned out.
I went out to do the feeding then the shutting away for the night, another lovely sky, pink this time though the photos don’t really do it justice. As I was in the side paddock I looked across to the back paddock and couldn’t see it, the mist was rolling in and it was a complete white out, by the time I had gone round to the front paddock and put them away, walked back to the side, the long side paddock was also beginning to mist up, so it’s gonna be foggy tonight. I love a bit of fog, not if we have to drive anywhere obviously but if we are at home a foggy night has a magic all of its own.
Thursday: As predicted it’s a foggy morning this morning but not too cold. I got the feeding etc done then lit the Rayburn and I have got a blood test mid morning. I was telling the nurse about my cold and she said I need to be careful as my white cell count is low so I will be keeping a close eye on how it develops as I will struggle to fight off any infection that occurs, at the moment it has gone into my sinus and causing pressure in my ear and jaw, hopefully it will just blow over and I can get on with things.
This afternoon the chaps came to give the eating apple a good prune, it’s looking good and hopefully will bear some good fruit next year or the year after. I need to remember to do the plums trees next June but as that’s always a busy month I keep forgetting year on year 🙄 The pruning s from the tree will again be use as dead hedge especially now I know just how much the little birds love it and use it all year round either for roosting or nesting in.
We had a bit of a back log of duck eggs but I managed to sell them easily enough on the selling sites, if I hadn’t been able to I had made a contingency plan anyway, I ordered some big jars and some apple cider vinegar to pickle them in.
Friday: Ok so this sinus thing got worse I I felt like s**t I still dragged myself around and got the feeding done but that was about it for the day.
Saturday: Feeling slightly better today, I was worried that each day I woke up I was getting worse but hopefully the worst is now over and it will improve hugely, by Thursday pm I couldn’t even hear properly as my ears had blocked and could feel the pressure in my jaw as well as my ear. Onwards and upwards though and as it’s Saturday John is here and so he did the morning routine, then he went off to get some feed while I did a bit of cleaning, lit the Rayburn and got some bread on the go.
My seed order arrived in the post this morning so I had a quick look through and then stashed it away until spring. I am going to have a go at purple carrots and liquorice this year, radical hey lol.
I am feeling pretty accomplished as far as the big Winter Feast season goes, the sprouts are firming up nicely out in the garden, the rest of the veg is in the freezer, we have potatoes stored, the turkey is wandering around the farmyard, the cake and the pudding are done, we have a store of home grown walnuts and hazelnuts and I still have some jars of homemade mincemeat from last year to use when I finally get round to making mince pies. On top of that I have numerous bottles of slow gin, pear liqueur made with fruit from the farm so if by any chance we get so snowed it that we can’t move we will feast well 😀 something to be proud of I reckon, I just think I need that house cow to make the list complete with cream lol.
Sunday: Pretty much the same as yesterday really, John did the animals, I stayed in and did some indoor bits, he moved a few wheelbarrows of wood chip into the pen that the Turkeys have decided to call home so that it’s not so muddy. They get let out during the day so they are not trashing it but when I shut them in at afternoon feed it would be nice if the ground was clean and so that’s what that is all about.
There was a phonecall to say that Johns Mum had a turn and an ambulance had been called so that meant most of the late morning and lunchtime waiting for return calls to find out what was going on. The paramedics phoned to say she was now ok and that as all her obs were normal they were not going to take her to hospital after all.
I lit the Rayburn early afternoon it was a pretty vile day at times, the Sam came and we had the Twins for an hour while she went food shopping, by the time she got back it was almost time to do the bird feeding and the egg collecting.
Oh I did make some pickled eggs during the day but I stupidly bought 2 1/2 litre jars, do you know how many eggs you need to boil to fill that 🤣 I think I did 14 and that has only half filled the jar 🙄
Round to a family birthday once the birds had been safely shut away for the night.
Still feeling stuffy and a bit rough at times.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 