Month: February 2020

Posted in Friesland Farm

Crap weather, Dotty Iron Man rabbit & decisions, decisions.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

A bit late, sorry 😜 normal service will return when I feel better 🤒

Monday 17th Feb 2020: We are back round to Monday again how did that happen 😜 The remnants of storm Dennis have still been felt, lashings of rain, some gusts of winds, to be honest I expected the lake to have become a reservoir this morning but to my surprise it had receded quite a bit instead 🙄 and the river has almost gone too.

I did the morning rounds as per usual, the horses were still in their stables so I took them some hay and topped up the water buckets. I cleaned out the quail and then did a little bit outside, planted the pretty primroses and the miniature iris that I bought at the weekend. It was cold but not freezing, however, when my fingers and toes started to get cold I came back in. Paperwork was calling to me and I really needed to be able to see the top of the desk so I got on with sorting it out, doing some invoices and paying some bills.

Sam, Mia and the twiglets arrived mid afternoon and Sam had a look over the horses before turning them back out, she said they almost ran out lol, they don’t like being in.

I eventually got the Rayburn lit just before it was time to go out and do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting.

In the evening we went to pick up a new member of the pet menagerie, a little black and white rabbit, very sweet little girl and our other rabbit seems to like her, don’t worry I have checked and it’s definitely a girl 😜 The guinea pigs totally ignored her prefering to squirrel away the cabbage leaves I had given them to share lol.

Tuesday: An altogether better morning this morning, it’s not raining that’s a big bonus, it’s not too cold and the sun keeps trying to come out. The ground underfoot is awful, squelchy, sodden, sticky, muddy hopefully we will have a few dry days now.

I’ve just spent and hour and a half cleaning the bathroom 🙄 a proper clean, all the walls, toothbrush and white vinegar in the difficult areas, behind the towel rails etc. This is because we have 5 downlights and two of them had blown, the one in the shower cubicle over a year ago, we replaced them yesterday (long story as to why we hadn’t done it before now) and suddenly I could see all the areas that had got grubby 😮 so I decided to give it a right good clean, just as well I didn’t decide to work outside as the rain returned 😏

Shelley, Josh and Florence came round in the afternoon for a while and in the evening I had a Bowen therapy session booked.

Wednesday: A typical February day, dull, slightly cold and trying to rain. Before going out this morning I got some dinner going in the slow cooker, a rich beef stew if I get time I will pop in some dumplings.

Then out to do the animals, the new baby rabbit has been locked in her cage for the time being, I couldn’t quite believe it yesterday when I went out and couldn’t find her in the run with the others, turns out she is small enough to squeeze through a 2″ square mesh and she was in with the light sussex hens. I would have left her there but that run is not as secure as the other one and there are small gaps she could get out of so for her safety and my sanity she is in the cage which is within the run.

I pottered about for a little bit, putting clean bedding in the duck shed and checking the seed potatoes in the greenhouse. Again they have been nibbled, I thought it was a one off but no, not only the potatoes but the second lot of broad bean seeds have also been eaten along with the sweet peas 😡 I removed the seed potatoes and put them in a dark cupboard indoors and I have set a mouse trap, judging by the droppings it’s not a rat or a squirrel but a mouse which means it has probably set up home in there somewhere so I need to exterminate it 😕 sorry.

I contemplated finding more to do outside but it started to drizzle and as the ground is already waterlogged, tramping about compacting it won’t do much good either so I came inside. I have a stupid dry cough and feel a little under par so I think I will potter about indoors and listen to a few podcasts 😋

Having spent the day inside in the warm I was reluctant to go out and do the afternoon feed and egg collection but it has to be done. It is about this time of year (every year) when I am trudging round in the cold and the mud (which is worse this year than any other) thinking ‘why am I doing this’ and thinking perhaps selling up is a good idea. I know once the sunshine comes and the ground dries up I will think this is the best place in the world to be but right here right now it’s not 😏

Thursday: (and I had to change that as I keep thinking it’s Friday) Another vile day 😕 I got everything done and dusted by 8.30 as I had Josh and Florence for the morning while Shelley had her hair done. She had it cut short and had been growing it to donate her pony tail to the Princess trust who make wigs for children with cancer. We had planned, along with Sam, Mia and the twiglets, to go to Blenheim Palace for the afternoon but the weather was just horrible so we stayed home instead. We made a super hero’s den for the kids in the spare room and set up a picnic blanket for them, then Shelley went off to the shop to buy the kind of goodies you need on a day like today, chocolate, biscuits, an activity magazine and apple juice, while the adults had baked Camembert and chocolate 😜 They played very well together all afternoon and tidied up with the tidy up song while I went out to feed the animals and collect the eggs. The weather had cheered up a bit by then, still a little windy but the Sun had come out, after I had finished the afternoon rounds I went and got the new rabbit and bought it indoors to show the children. What shall we call her? everyone chipped in and now she has the name Dotty Iron Man Rabbit 🤣

Friday: It’s definitely Friday 😀 I went out to do the morning rounds and Jack had managed to get his rug off, a horse rug is basically like a straight jacket with many buckles and belts so how the heck he has done this I have no idea 🙄 On with the rest of the rounds and nothing much to report which is always a good thing 😀 I then spent a couple of hours in the greenhouse, first I set up the heat mat and I put some staging up higher to make use of any rising heat. Then I set up an electric propagator and the tomatoes and cucumber I had growing on the kitchen windowsill have now been potted on and are in the warmth in there. I am trialling this so it may be that I have peaked too soon but nothing ventured is nothing gained as they say. I have also put a couple of tomato plants on their own and a few in bunches as they grew, I want to see if they do better with other plants as company. The next job was to hunt for this damn mouse but I couldn’t find it living anywhere, at the moment I am filling the mouse trap and it is eating it all so it must be quite small and light, I will feed it up until it gets heavy enough to spring the trap 😜

Back indooors to light the Rayburn as I have the twins later while Mia goes for a swimming lesson and some great news on the family chat as my niece had her baby last night 😀 a little boy (well 8lb 12oz, ouch) lovely news 😀

It’s been a bit of a boring week to write about to be honest and I have had a horrible cold coupled with a hacking cough, I am kind of hoping that my bug will do one right about the same time as the crap weather and what a joyful day that will be 😀

Saturday: Another crap weekend with the weather, seriously, the wind and the rain have been going all night long and have not eased this morning. I am weather weary now, feeling so poorly doesn’t help, I can’t breathe through my nose, the cough is hacking, my head feels like it will explode, wake me up when it’s spring.

We ran the feed right out this week, it’s good to empty the feed bins totally now and again, and so John has gone off to get supplies, we can’t do any feeding until he gets back and so no point letting them out either. I also have a hay delivery coming this morning, we are at that stage when the horses are hungry but the grass is non existent especially this year with all the rain. We will be rolling a big round bale into the field and hoping it will keep them going for a couple of weeks until the weather settles and the new grass comes through.

Fingers crossed that the week I have booked for John to be at home is a decent week. It’s a shame really as we could have been getting ahead of ourselves but it looks like it will be all to do at once 🙄

Sunday: Yesterday I felt really ill but it seems to have turned a corner this morning thank goodness. The weather has not really got any better, still blowing a hoolie with rain now and then for good measure, I am so done with this weather stream as are many other people. I know we have a lot to be grateful for as our home is not flooded and everything is intact but even so I have had enough of the relentless wind and rain it’s been going on for around three weeks with hardly a break.

Whinging over 😜 John did the morning rounds and then we measured up for some fencing that has come down at the bottom need of the veg garden, the posts have been going for a coup,e for years and now they have gone and all that is holding the fence up is the wire. We thought about picket fencing and went off to the diy shop to have a look but when we priced it up decided it wasn’t worth it so we bought some more wire with smaller holes to stop the ducks getting in and then went to get some breakfast at a local garden centre. We met Shelley, Martin and the kids there and they joined us, I bought a couple of pots for the daphne and another shrub I got the last time I went. I want to keep them in pots for now as I am not sure where I want them to finally end up and besides they are quite small so need a bit of looking after to being them on. The rest of the day we spent discussing and researching various topics such as solar panels and electric boilers, mulling around ideas of wether to apply for planning for a house and what kind or, as this one is perfectly adequate and just need some upgrading, wether we just upgrade it, we went round and round until our brains were frazzled, we discovered what we don’t like but not what we do.

I will try and do better with the blog next week, hopefully I will feel a little more up to it by then, have a good week.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cold winds, fence repairs, my seed stash and storm Dennis 😏

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th Feb 2020: Oooooh it’s Monday again 😏 Some Monday’s I don’t mind, the ones where the weather is fair to good but it’s cold out and we still have the blustery remnants of the storm so I’m not really feeling this one lol.

Still the winds blew over night, not quite so fierce but still audible, I found some ear plugs last night though and so managed a good nights sleep 😴 in fact John was up, breakfasted and gone to work by the time I dragged my sorry backside out of bed! I can already tell this will be a ‘non’ week, a week where I won’t be able to achieve very much outside due to the weather. This is a month of hope and then disappointment, ah we’ll roll on Spring.

John and I watched the woodpecker yesterday, I spotted it on the oak tree just outside the black door and called John over and we were both amazed when the woodpecker started to walk backwards down the tree trunk 😮 right to the bottom it went then onto the ground. Well I have never seen that before we both said and this morning I have tried to find out a bit more but apart from the fact that they have two toes that point forwards and two that point backwards I can’t find any reference to them walking down backwards as standard behaviour.

I went out and did the morning rounds and surveyed the place, a few small branches down but apart from that no major damage I am glad to say 😀

I picked some purple sprouting, I was mindful that it needed picking and didn’t want to waste it, it’s now soaking in cold water to get any bugs out then I will either blanch and freeze it or have with dinner tonight I haven’t quite decided which yet. There are still some Brussel sprouts to be picked and there is curly kale too, I need to make an effort to remember to pick them for dinner this week.

Next job on the list was to try and shift some duck eggs online, that’s always frantic backwards and forwards messaging but tonight we will be delivering trays of duck eggs and a few quail eggs so that’s a result 😀 The aim is to get customers coming to the farm but every now and then we are willing to go out and deliver to those a bit further away and so that people get to know where we are and we can then shift the eggs faster, I don’t like them hanging around for more than a couple of days lol.

I thought about making a quiche with one of the goose eggs and scoured around for ingredients, I only had a small pot of sour cream though so I will wait until I can get a big pot of proper cream. In the end I made a Madeira cake, one of Johns favourites and I decided we would eat the purple sprouting for dinner, might as well eat it while it’s fresh and full of nutrients.

The brassica cage is not going to be used for brassicas this year as I have already used it at least two years in a row and I don’t want pests and disease to build up in the soil. I had a big problem with whitefly in there last summer and need to break their cycle. That leaves me with two dilemmas , what to grow in there this year? And where to grow the brassica? The cage is permanent as we found a flimsy structure that is moveable doesn’t keep out the cabbage white butterfly very well so we built a more robust structure that did the job, however we can’t move it 🙄 I need to use it for something that at least needs either a bit of protection or a bit of shelter as the environmesh does slightly increase the temperature, you can feel the difference when you go in there. At the moment I haven’t thought about it very much and so have no idea on either problem. A lot of things don’t need protection of that kind but I’m sure I will think of something that does. Meanwhile, where to grow the brassica if at all, it would be a shame not too but they do need absolute netting otherwise they just get decimated.

Well the weather got proper shitty 😜 still blustery and then a good dose of rain thrown in for good measure, at one point I thought it might even snow it certainly looked that way.

I feel a bit tired and could do with an evening relaxing but we are off out to deliver some trays of duck eggs after dinner.

Tuesday: It’s a bitterly cold wind today, the wind hasn’t actually stopped for a few days now it’s just got colder and colder 😏 I didn’t do much in the way of the farm today mostly hoovering, polishing and I looked after the twins for an hour while Sam went for physio.

Wednesday: A cold frosty start to the day but the wind has dropped however we have another storm rolling in at the weekend, storm Dennis 🙄

I did the morning rounds, topping up straw bedding in the ducks and geese as I went, taking a sack of hay to the horses and then a bagful to the rabbit/guineas, still no sign of the other one, completely disappeared. I noticed the fence inbetween the side paddocks is nearly touching the floor having gone over, this didn’t happen during the worst of the winds but must have happened yesterday evening or I would have seen it. I have phoned John and asked him to come home an hour early so we can get it back up and temporarily fixed in position, the horses will soon be through to the side paddock if we don’t get it sorted ASAP.

The grass has definitely been growing, I can tell by the little flakes of grass left in the water bucket by the geese and also John moved the chicken fence the other week and that ground has completely recovered with a growth. There are other tell tale signs, the geese and the horses can be seen more often with their heads down gleaning the new blades of grass emerging, all good signs that we are moving towards Spring.

Here is my random thought of the week lol, I was reading an article about Jane Fonda and the fact that she has reused a dress for an award ceremony 😲😲 shock horror surely not 😜 and I’m not knocking her it’s great that she is doing her bit but I was slightly concerned to read that she spent 7 hours having her hair completely transformed. I am guessing that she has not used very environmentally friendly products to achieve what is a splendid look, that got me onto thinking about nails, not natural nails that everybody once used to have but these horrible little bits of plastic stuck on in place of a perfectly adequate nail underneath. How many millions of bits of plastic are used daily in the pursuit of the desire to look glamorous I wonder? I have had them once, for Shelleys wedding 6 years ago, I wouldn’t have them again as the state of my real nails when they came off was awful. Is there a compostable or biodegradable product out there? I have no idea🙄

I put my coat on mid morning and went outside to see what could be done and have a look at how things are going. On the plus side the carrot seedlings in the poly tunnel are coming up and so are a few peas, the garlic in the small tunnel are growing well and so is the parsley, I gave them all a light watering. On the downside something has chewed one of my seed potatoes in the greenhouse and looking at the tooth marks I’m thinking rat 😝 I need to get rid of that, it can only get in under the door so something needs to be done though I’m not sure what just at the moment. The broad beans spin the greenhouse are also coming through and the over wintering plants in there are doing fine. The arches I put up were bending in the wind a fair bit during the storm so I have strengthened them for the time being although I have discussed with John about concreting some stronger posts in to help. Needless to say the wind has picked up again so I wasn’t out there very long as my fingers and toes were freezing so I came back in a lit the Rayburn. This is what I mean about February, it teased with some lovely weather at the beginning of the month and ever since then it’s been a right sod 😏 The seedlings on the window sill are just starting to emerge, I guess all in all I am winning 😀 I would just like some warmer, still days to get ahead 😬

John came home early and we got the fence propped back up as a temporary measure, the ground is too wet to get the tractor on there to do a proper job for now but we need to time it right when we do, too dry and the posts won’t go in.

I did the afternoon feed rounds and egg collecting while John cut up some more wood, we have piles of it out there to get through and so he has decided an hour here and there is better than a whole day doing it. I sorted out the eggs, fed the dogs and got something out for dinner later, then had a sit down, I am struggling with stiff hip joints at the minute and I’m hoping it’s just the cold weather. They are not painful, just don’t want to work, squatting down to chop kindling is hard work, getting back up is hard work, lifting my leg over the chicken fence is proving hard going 🙄 and to think that last week I was thinking it was the best I had felt in a few years, hey ho.

Thursday: It’s milder this morning, the downside of that is rain, we have had torrential downpours during the night and have the beginnings of the lake in the side paddocks again 🙄

I felt unwell this morning but after taking a coup,e of ibrufen feel a lot better now, I had blood tests tomorrow and am hoping it’s a passing bug and nothing more.

The seedlings that showed tiny progress yesterday have burst through with more growth today, not all of them, I’m still waiting for the aubergine and water melon to show up lol.

I have had all my seeds out this morning, going through them to see what I have and try to organise what will go in first. I could do parsnips and swede now straight into the ground but I know my garden and so I am going to wait a couple more weeks as a too cold/wet start will only rot the seeds off. I have ordered a totally new vegetable (to me anyhow) and that is yacon, it is also perennial and so will go in the permanent bed although it seems I may have to dig the tubers up for overwintering. I also ordered multicoloured beetroots seeds to give those a go and I still need to find some of these round radish I grew last year though I can’t remember what they were called which is a shame. They were free seeds and far better than the breakfast radish that is usually grown.

I gave the grandchildren a goose egg each, Mia made cake with hers, Sam said it was the best tasting cake she had ever made. Josh and Florence decided to eat theirs, Josh had scrambled egg and Florence had a dippy egg almost as big as her 😂

I really am busting to get out and get something done that is productive on the garden, keeping my fingers crossed for some better weather though it doesn’t look like it’s heading our way any time soon, must try not to be so impatient. I am feeling instinctively that the greenhouse will soon be ready to use mind you as everything in there has either survived the winter really well or is starting to grow (broad beans). The tooth marks I thought were rat I’m now thinking are actually squirrel, I see him daily and I think he could easily squeeze under the door to nibble on my seed potatoes, I need to sort that ASAP, we have a weather board to go on the bottom of the door which should solve it but it’s in Johns van and I keep forgetting to ask him for it.

Friday: I feel ok this morning, I was worried yesterday in case it was all going ‘Pete Tong’ but all seems well and I had blood tests this morning so that should pick up any anomalies.

After that we went to yet another independent cafe, Humble Bumble cafe in Brize Norton, it’s in the old cricket pavilion and is just charming, the coffee is good and I had toasted banana bread with Greek yoghurt and honey, delish 😋 A quick trip to the shop to get something for dinner later and then back home to light the Rayburn. The wind is already picking up a bit and the forecast says we are going to get a battering of 49/50/60 mph winds and 100% chance of lashing of heavy rain for a 24hr period, oh the joys of the English weather systems. It’s further north I feel sorry for they have already had floods and are likely to be hit hard again, I can’t imagine how they feel with another storm warning to close to the last poor people 😢

It’s Valentines Day today and no I won’t hold my breath waiting to receive a card or flowers 😂 if I did that I would have died about 20 years ago which is around the time John stopped buying me anything. To be honest it’s not quite the same as when you were a teenager and you opened that card with a big ? and really had no clue as to who sent it 💕 ah those were the days 😀 I am not the kind of wife who presses John into buying me anything either, you know, like saying, ‘don’t forget it’s Valentines day’ there is no joy or delight in knowing that you nagged someone to show you their undying love 😜 besides he would say ‘I love you every day, not just on Valentines day’ well of course you do 🙄 but it would be nice to be surprised once every few years 😬 I did get a box of Maltessers from Josh and Florence though, ‘Happy Birthday Nana’ he said ‘thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day to you’ ‘I do know it’s Valentine’s Day but I like to say Happy Birthday’ Josh said, lol that suits me fine 😀

Saturday: What a totally crappy day so far weather wise, it’s horrible out there. I helped John do the morning rounds so that neither of us got too wet and then Shelley picked me up and we went to a second hand book sale where I picked up a book of wildlife gardening and a book on caterpillars and butterfly’s for the kids to learn from.

Shellley came in for a cuppa when we got back and Charlie and Macca called in as well so we had a nice little gathering round the kitchen table and tried to ignore the weather 😀

We nipped to the local diy centre to pick up some paint for the kitchen, I have been wanting to freshen it up for a while and as we can’t get much done outside we might as well go and get items we need. We also went to the local nursery to pick up some plants and have coffee and cake. I wanted a Daphne as they smell amazing and as I said before I wish I had bought the one I had at the old place with me when I moved. At the time I was focussed on smallholding and so flowers and flowering shrubs didn’t really fit into the picture but as time has gone on I have realised that they should and so I’m on a mission to fill the place with a wide variety of plants, shrubs and trees. Of course I couldn’t walk past the bright colours of the primroses and picked up a pack of those to cheer up a dull day. I also hatched a plan to fill some of the gravel areas out the front with low growing creeping plants so I bought a few of those to see if my plan will work, I need to keep the chickens off them while they establish but once they have they should be fine, I also think that if they spread enough It won’t matter if they get walked on now and again as long as it’s not constant treading. And then there were these miniature iris that I just couldn’t resist 😜 I actually went back to get them as they were so endearing, no idea where I will put them yet but that’s not a big issue.

I think I will grow the plants on a while and then divide them to give me twice as many little plants to dot around.

Sunday: Ooooo it’s lunchtime and we have already been busy thanks to storm Dennis 🙄 remember the fence we propped back up in the week, well it was back down again this morning, properly down, the horses had escaped as well. I rounded them up and got them into the stables and after feeding and letting everything else out we picked up the post rammer and went out the the field to repair it again. A little more robustly this time, the post rammer is a very heavy piece of equipment to use and the ground is soft so we (I say we, John was on the rammmer lol) got some new posts bedded well into the ground and re nailed the rails back up. I don’t mind telling you it was a filthy, cold, wet, windy job that I would rather not have had to do. The stream we get runs through that bit and at one point John dropped a post, it went into the muddy water and guess who got a splattering 😜 I have researched a petrol driven rammer that I think we might invest in as we are not getting any younger and after each post John tells me he is too old for this 😂 We have plenty of fences to do this year and so now might be a good time to get one, it also would make it easier for my plan to have double fences so that we can grow hedges in between them. This idea would, stabilise the ground, provide shelter/shade for the horses, provide a buffer from the winds and be a wildlife corridor, I wish I had done it ten years ago but hey you live and learn.

Dennis was pretty horrendous through the night as well, the strong gusts kept waking me up and in the end I listened to some soothing music on my headphones just so I could actually get some sleep.

When we finished doing the fence I came in and lit the Rayburn while John cleared the drains, they soon get silted up with rain like we have had, then I sent him off with a shopping list for some essentials while I waited for someone to come and collect a tray of duck eggs which they duly did. I think we have earned the afternoon in the warm on the sofa don’t you lol.

I took a photo of the geese in the week then I played with the filters, love the result they almost look cartoon like.

I think that’s me done for this week, if you drive past you will probably see me with my nosed pressed up against the window looking for some nicer weather 😝

Posted in Friesland Farm

9 years of blogging, ‘dragons’ & storm Ciara

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd February: Oh my goodness WordPress has informed me that I first registered and posted 9 years ago, 31st Jan 2011 😲 It seems I have been banging on with my blurb for quite a long time 😜 My first blogs were short and sweet lol, they have got a lot longer over the years. You can access these old blogs by scrolling right the way back , I tried to find a search bar which would be useful but there doesn’t seem to be one 🙄

So we are safely into February a month that usually disappoints on a couple of fronts. Firstly we are always hopeful of some warmer weather we almost hold our breath waiting but it never quite comes and eventually we tell ourselves ‘well it is only February’ lol we do tell ourselves that at the beginning too of course but still we hope 😏 The second disappointment is Valentine’s Day, I think maybe this is the year I will get some flowers then usually nope lol. We have been married a long time and have got to the point where over the years at some point I have mentioned what a waste of money flowers are, indeed as is the whole frenzy surrounding any type of celebration 🙄 my mistake. We also hit the point years ago when John would say ‘well you don’t get me anything’ now we are at the stage where if I did get him something and he didn’t get me anything I am going to be bloody fuming 😂 so probably best to ignore it and leave it to others 💕

I take back everything I said about February 😜 I just spent a lovely morning outside, first job was to burn the pile of sticks that we failed to do yesterday, then I burnt the paper rubbish. Then into the garden where I spent a good couple of hours tidying stuff up, cutting dead stuff down, sowing a few early seedlings (climbers for my arches) making a new raised bed in the poly tunnel for salad stuff, generally looking over the plot to think about where I will plant stuff. I captured four chickens and put them back over the fence so I could work in peace and so they didn’t undo any tidying I was doing, pretty satisfied with my mornings work 😀

While I was out with the bonfire I noticed two little holes in the bottom of one of the buddleia bushes, if you look closely at the phot you can just about see them. I think this is a mouse home as the cat was pretty interested in the activity under the piles of sticks when they were there, they could be vole I suppose, I would have to sit and wait to see what came out of them to be sure. These bushes were planted way back in the seventies and have done really well to survive this long, the trunks are beautifully gnarly.

I met a lovely couple who have taken over the running of a local pub, The Carpenters Arms in Fulbrook, they are hopefully going to have quail eggs from us 😀

Tuesday: A colder feel to the start of the day 🥶 so I don’t think I will be spending the morning outside again today.

You may have noticed that occasionally I have a random thought 😂 and just have to get it written down to get it out of my systems otherwise I will be thinking about it all day. We watched Shrek at the weekend and on it there is a dragon, the conversation goes like this, ‘that dragon would never actually be able to fly with wings that small and a belly that big’ 😜 then I said to John ‘as there are so many myths around dragons is it possible that they did exist? Who can say if there wasn’t a pterodactyl or two still around back in the 6/7/8th century and that’s where the legends come from’. If there are any eminent palaeontologists reading this 🤣 please let me know if this is a possibility.

Now that is off my chest I’d better get on with the rest of the day lol.

I did the morning rounds, it’s a tad cold due to the wind but not as bad as I was expecting it to be however I hate trying to work in the wind so I will give outside a miss today lol. I got some wood in and will probably light the Rayburn earlier yesterday, I didn’t need to light it until 2.30 it was that mild. I have a haircut booked today, it’s that time again 😜 I’m not a regular, I’m the type that thinks, yikes I need a haircut and desperately tries to get an appointment before I let myself loose on cutting my own fringe 😂

We have roast pork for dinner tonight so I may make an apple pie/crumble as a treat for pud.

I had my first ever proper disaster with making bread today. First prove and it wasn’t growing in size particularly well, I put that down to the temp of the kitchen which was cool as I hadn’t lit the fire yet. I left it half an hour longer than normal until it had doubled in size, I was timing the whole thing to fit in with my hair cut so was now half an hour behind, second prove was on course but I had to take it out of the oven when the hairdresser arrived otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get it out. I took it out and thought, it looks ok, nope it was not cooked through as I discovered later. What I should have done was left it to prove and not put it in the oven until after I had my hair done but you live and learn.

I listened to a couple of pod casts while I was working today, the first was the Organic Gardening pod cast and the second was from Roots and all which was about Forest gardening, some useful information on both in fact I even started taking notes on the forest gardening one lol.

Wednesday: Every morning once I’m up I open the top half of the stable door in the kitchen and I am greeted with the sounds of excited chattering birds. Over the years the number has increased and there are now a whole flock of sparrows we also get great tits, chaffinch, blackbirds, wren, robins, sometimes goldfinch, long tailed tits, greater spotted woodpecker, we have had a jay and I often spot a flock of greenfinch in the back hedge and wagtails in the paddocks. Crows, jackdaws and magpies. Other wildlife I have spotted here are frogs, a toad, a newt, a grass snake (although this had got caught in netting and had died but it indicates that there may be more) hedgehog, squirrel, rabbits, a deer in the paddock, bees nesting in the ground, leaf cutter bees, mason bees, ladybirds, lacewings, all manner of ground beetles and bugs. A real plethora of wildlife and I keep trying to encourage more by having the right kinds of habitat for them as well as not using any chemicals of course. One I want to concentrate on a bit more is the butterflies as I have noticed a decline, we have little blue in the paddocks when the grass is long but the garden butterflies seemed sparse last year compared to previous years, although we had a lot of caterpillars for the cinnabar moth more than I have ever seen before.

Again, another nice morning, sorry for being so negative February 😜 The shingle arrived this morning, it was supposed to come yesterday and John came home early to shovel it but after phoning the supplier they had forgotten 🙄 It arrived before 8.30 this morning so after doing the rounds I set about shifting it to where it needed to go. The driver was pretty helpful trying to drive and tip it at the same time but most of it ended up as far away from where it needed to go as was possible 😂 So cue Dawn, a shovel and a wheel barrow to spread it around, I did a pretty good job I reckon though I think we could have done with more than the three ton. The dog in the photo, Patch, although he looked as though he was ready and willing was absolutely no help whatsoever 😬

As I said, it freshens things up a bit and once the foliage starts to grow on the shrubs and flowers it will look quite nice, well nicer than it did before lol.

I was delighted to receive some feedback about the quail eggs, the chef sent this picture of his game scotch eggs using the quail eggs, don’t they look yummy, I might have to go a sample them lol

Thursday: An entirely different morning this morning, freezing fog 🙄 it was weird as it seemed as though daylight was early but it was the fog lightening everything up. It should burn off into a lovely day.

I wanted to get a couple of jobs done, the boot room needed a hoover and a wipe round, some washing needs doing so as well as the usual morning rounds I did those too.

I ordered a windowsill propagator, in the early days we didn’t have any windowsills so I never bothered but I do now and so I might as well use them to my advantage. I want to get some of the seeds going early but it’s still too cold even in the greenhouse for some seeds so a warm windowsill is ideal. There is a knack to raising seedlings indoors, light but not full sun all day, if the sun moves round that’s fine but they don’t want to be in it all day long. When the seedlings appear it’s important to keep turning the trays around this will hopefully stop the seedlings reaching for the light and getting too leggy, it also strengthens the stem. The next thing to consider is where you will move them onto, you have all these seedlings appear and then what do you do with them if it’s still too cold? That’s why I bought a heat mat for the greenhouse because that will be their next destination, after that it will be the greenhouse staging with no heat then depending on where they are going either to the poly tunnels or into the cold frames to harden off. I have sown tomato, cucumber, aubergine, peppers and melon, all these need a long growing season to produce anything useful.

The broad beans I showed in the greenhouse are coming up and the peas in the guttering in the polytunnel are also appearing. The carrots have still to appear 🙄

There are a couple of things you can sow now under cover, radishes and cut and come again lettuce. The other thing you can sow are micro greens, these are just seeds from broccoli, cabbage, celery, beetroot, peas, radish, rocket and you grow them like you would grow cress (which can also be sown) and snip them off to sprinkle on your salads or add to something cooked like a bolognese. Growing and harvesting like this gives you great little power packs of greens, full of nutrients and the kids will never know they haven’t just eaten something good for them 😜 I gave some packets of seeds to Shelley and she has been trying it with great success. The range is huge so even if you have a small space you can grow your own and it’s not difficult, if you can grow cress you can grow these there is no mystery to it. I found out accidentally many years ago when I sowed a tray of celery seeds intending to plant them out for full sized celery, I didn’t get round to it so snipped off the seedlings and they were really tasty. At this time of year I would probably use the hardier veg as mentioned above but as the season gets warmer you can start to use all kinds of greens including basil and coriander.

You would think that sowing a few seeds this morning would have satisfied my yearning to get on with preparing for the sowing season, but no, I am looking at the lovely sunshine and thinking what can I get done out there lol all the while I know full well the ground is too cold and too wet to do much at all so all I can do is plan. One part of my plan is already in motion, I have booked John a week off work in March so he can help with the heavy stuff 😜 I have compost to move onto the beds, the heavy strawberry troughs to move and any other job I can’t manage all by myself. I have identified exactly what area I will be using for the perennial cut flowers and they have all been growing in pots since last year ready to fill the bed up. I have chosen the area near my apricot tree, it has been a kind of non area for the last couple of years. Mum dug out all the raspberry runners and bindweed at the end of summer, half the bed will be for runner beans and the other half will be full of flowers hopefully. I have been going round identifying exactly what I have got to plant in there and I will be filling it as full as possible. Rudbeckia, lupin, delphinium, geum dahlia, sweet William, stocks, achillea, campion and a lot more that I can’t remember just now. At the moment it is weedy and I can’t really get on it to weed it until it’s a little drier but as soon as it is I will be raring to go 😀 And if I never get round to cutting them I will have a lovely flower bed to admire.

Friday: Another foggy morning but without the freezing bit however it is still pretty cold and the forecast is not much more than 6c so I will light the Rayburn early as I have the twins for an hour or so while Mia has her very first swimming lesson this afternoon.

I did the morning rounds and I have a missing guinea pig, there is no sign of it being attacked and laying dead anywhere, I assume it has got out somehow, it may return but if it has got out it may have been somethings supper 😏

I lit the Rayburn as soon as I had finished and come back inside, typically the sun cam out about half an hour later but I still don’t think it’s going to get very warm today.

I chopped up a load of veg to make some soup, tomato, pepper, leek, celery and carrot, should make a tasty lunch. I should do more soups as they are easy and packed with goodness all in one hit.

Saturday: A lovely day, the calm before the storm, and we spent most of it outside doing various jobs. John connected up the other ibc tank ready for the torrential rain and we moved the geese to the small back paddock where the grass is better for them and they won’t terrorise the hens now that they have started laying and are fiercely protective. Other jobs included cutting large tree trunks up and then splitting the logs.

Late afternoon I went off with a few family members to Aylesbury Waterside Theatre to watch a play called Ghost Stories 👻 I have no idea why we thought that would be a good thing to do lol.

Sunday: The storm rolled in at around 11pm last night and it has been noisy all night long, roaring through the tree tops. We are only on the letter C and this is Ciara so not too many so far this winter however they are saying that this is a once in every ten years storm and some areas have tornado warnings 🙄 If we get through this without any damage I will be surprised (and very relieved) We have discussed this morning the lighting of the Rayburn or not, I think not as we are bound to lose power at some point and indeed as I write this the lights have flickered ominously. John thinks light it now and if the power goes off at least the house will be warm, decisions, decisions. The storm is set to peak between 1 & 4 pm so we still have a while to go yet I have put a lump of beef in the slow cooker though and hopefully it will be in there long enough to cook.

Doing the animals this morning is going to be a task and most of the hens will probably not venture out very far from their huts, I am wondering how to get hay to the horses without it just blowing away 💨 I hate the wind, I almost hold my breath during storms, obviously won’t be able to hold it all through this one as it’s over 24/48 hrs. I can’t even begin to image how people feel in tornado/hurricane prone areas, I think I would have to move 😏 or have an underground bunker 😜

I went out to fill hay nets for the horses and take them down to the field shelter so that we don’t end up with hay blowing all over the place. As I got in there the wind blew hard, the roof of the shelter was loose and flapped and banged, the horse shat himself and so did I 😬 I went to get John, we found a roof strap, a hammer, nails and a ladder and went back down to secure the roof, crisis averted I reckon 🙄

I think smallholders are probably at their best in times of adversity, either alone or as a team they get out and sort it out. One of the things we tend to do is keep everything, it means we have a lot of crap but sometimes that crap comes in handy, like the roof straps, I have had them knocking around for years, I’ve used a couple for other things now and again but luckily I still had one left.

It’s just gone 4pm and we seem to be coming out of the other side of the storm, it’s still blowy but the strong winds have subsided apart from an occasional gust. Over the day we have had lightening, heavy rain, sunshine and of course the winds. I have seen Facebook updates of fallen trees all around us on the local roads and the new reports of the damage around the whole country is epic, fingers crossed that’s the worst of it over and in our little kingdom we have escaped unscathed 😬

We mostly spent the day inside hunkered down, we had bacon and eggs this morning and plenty of cups of tea, I have done some reading and John has watched the tv (when we had signal that is lol) Nov to have a day of not doing much every now and then even if it is forced upon us 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

Breakfast bars & muffins, archways & Imbolic

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 27th January: Is it going to be one of those days or even weeks, January, the longest month ever! This morning started off with me still in my pyjamas stripping off the bed covers and putting them in the wash, I added a couple of drops of essential oil (Orange) to my softener as it’s a eco one and not highly perfumed. While I am doing this job (it’s still dark outside) one of the dogs starts barking furiously, I look out of the window and she is just stood there, I carry on and she starts again, I put on some shoes and go out the back to see the bloody horse in the yard again 😂 My plan this morning was to get a few bits of housework done before I went out to do the feeding but that plan was then scuppered and I get dressed quickly, load up a sack of hay and entice the horse back into the field, put back the poles that have been skill fully moved or just barged not sure which and head back indoors for a coffee.

It’s a very good job I am not a creature of routine, I hate routine, I feel trapped by routine, you can have a basic routine that needs doing but I don’t like to do it at the same time in the same way every day, I am the master of my day here (except when the animals play up) and it’s a good job I like the flexible type of day because things happen and you have to respond appropriately. I used to try and do routine but I just stressed myself out so now I don’t bother and jobs get done as and when they need to or when I have time to. At some point today I will endeavour to continue with the household jobs that need doing but for now my flow has been interrupted and I’m off in a different direction 😜

Outside jobs sorted I came back in determined to get on with the jobs I had planned, success, I am sitting with a coffee having cleaned, polished, washed, hoovered and tidied, I still have the Rayburn to sort and light although it is pretty mild today so I will leave it until later. I need to sort out tonight’s dinner, I don’t know about you but after 36 years of planning what’s for dinner I’m kind of tired of it, it’s an overrated pastime eating an evening meal I would rather graze through the day lol. The joy I have to see me through are these marvellous pod casts lol, seriously I am loving listening to things that interest me rather than the radio, this morning I have learnt about the job of a forensic linguist, yep there is such a profession and self healing, not in terms of medicine but mindfulness, it’s a revelation I can tell you 😀 the pod cast world is my oyster 😜

I made some breakfast oat bars, sometimes I like to just grab something for breakfast other times I will sit and eat just depends on what I feel like so I made some grab bars. I will admit I had been buying them from the shop but then after discussing making them with Sam I realised I have all I need and they are simple enough to make. These had oats, peanut butter, agarve syrup, dates and dark chocolate chip. The recipe called for almonds but I didn’t have any and I was going to use my shelled walnuts until I realised they had got mould in the jar 😏 The dates I pulverised in the nutri bullet and I put the oats in the oven to toast but got bored of waiting for that and wanted to get on so they were warmed lol, this in turn melted the choc chips 🙄 but also helped to soften the peanut butter and made mixing it all easier.

1 cup of oats, toasted lightly if you prefer

1/2 cup dates, blitzed

1/4 cup peanut butter, I used crunchy

1/4 cup agarve syrup, could use maple syrup

A sprinkle of dark choc chips

Mix until well combined and press mix into a dish/pan and leave in the fridge until it ‘sets’ Thats it, really easy, tastes yummy and probably much better for you than the shop bought ones 😀 I intend to keep it in a sealed tub, I cut it into 8 squares so I have one for every morning plus and extra for hungry moments 😀

Tuesday: Something in the walls kept me awake on and off for a good deal of the night 😤 I do hope the cat gets it soon 😏 That together with the fact that I turned the mattress yesterday and this caused pain in my hip as well, I think I will be heading for a nap later lol.

I quite expected to see the horse out again this morning but no, he was waiting patiently in the field along with Biscuit.

This is one of the paddocks they have access to and as you can see there is not much grass left, just a nibble really, the grass will begin to grow when the temperature reaches 6 degrees obviously the warmer the ground is the faster it grows and we did see some signs of growth during the unseasonable warmer spell we had a few weeks ago but as the temps have dropped again the growth will have stopped.

As I am obviously bored of food at the moment, struggling to decide what I what to eat is the best sign, I decided to have a look through my saved pins, make a list and go shopping. It’s all very well having a freezer full of frozen veg that I have grown myself and it great for Johns palette as he is happy with stews, casseroles etc but about this time of year I yearn for something fresher and more colourful even though the temps are nowhere near salad season. If I was a purist of course I would eat totally seasonally and save for a few things I do but seasonal produce is a little sparse this time of year (the hungry gap) and so there is only so much you can eat without getting bored. So I scoured the recipes I have saved, made a list and got a few things to liven up my dinners, now I just have to decide what to have lol. One of the things I pinned was an orzo salad, have you had orzo? nope nor have I, do you even know what it is ? 🤔 it’s pasta that looks like rice. Cooked with some chopped peppers, onion, garlic and pine nuts (and anything else I fancy) I think it will hit the spot, plus it’s a meat free dinner so ✅ I will feel virtuous 😀 Now I just have to figure out what to feed John 😜

It’s a tad cold today so I lit the Rayburn and then while I was in the freezer looking for inspiration (I chose some smoked fish) I spotted some blueberries so I made blueberry muffins. I had some Greek yoghurt to use up and the recipe I used was the following:

Sorry I’ve cut off the rest of the method but basically have the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry in another and then mix the two. I used agarve syrup instead of honey but even so don’t expect them to be sweet they are meant to be healthy lol, you could drizzle some lemon icing on these which would sweeten them slightly but they taste fine as they are.

Two little stories I will tell you about cooking the muffins, the first is that I had a tin of those danish cookies that Shelley bought me for Christmas as she liked the tin and indeed when I opened it so did I 😀 The biscuits all came in individual cases so I saved them all and that’s what I used for the muffins as they were totally clean and so no point throwing them away. The second story is a little sad, the muffin tin I have is one that was given to me by a friend of my Mums, Jane, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was putting her house in order and clearing stuff out. We went out for coffee one morning and she gave me the muffin tin as she knew I liked baking so it’s a tin with attached memories. Actually at this time of year I often think of her as she loved the new season Rhubarb which of course will be available soon, even when she was still alive, picking rhubarb made me think of her.

Wednesday: I started off the day with a cuppa and a homemade breakfast bar and I watched a vlog that’s video blog for anyone that doesn’t know lol. It’s a lady called Liz Zorab and as she gardens here in the UK I find we often have the same things going on at the same time. This weeks vlog was a timely watch as I have just ordered some archways for setting over the paths so that I can create some shade and get extra vertical growing space and she talked about what she used to set hers up when she first started, I did have an idea on what I thought I should use but watching that has confirmed it. I shall not be going into vlogging any time soon lol, I don’t have the patience to do it and I certainly don’t want to be listening to my voice and watching myself back 😂

It was a cold start to the day and as I had planned to do a few bits in the garden I dressed appropriately, boot socks, extra layer and thick gloves. I did the morning rounds and as an extra I decided that if I can’t physically keep these hens out of my garden I would try a diversion tactic instead. I took a full barrow of wood chip into their paddock and dumped it, they seem to be drawn to the wood chip paths so I figured give them their own to scratch about in.

The job I wanted to get done was the archways across the path, I had ordered four of them, they are not particularly robust but at only just over £8 each if they only last a few years that’s money well spent. The plan is to not only add height but to give me some extra shade to work in when it’s hot and hopefully increase the amount of time I can spend out there. I have beefed them up a little with some welded mesh that I got from the now unused dog kennels, eventually when any chance of snow has passed I will put some more flexible wire over the top. These won’t hold the weight of runner beans or anything but they should support something like sweet peas or other annual climbers. We could have built something stronger but that just adds to Johns job list and these I was able to put together by myself, I will need him to help make them a little stronger but the majority of it I have done alone.

It was a lovely morning, the sun was fairly warm to work out in, just the shade that was cold, beautiful blue skies 😀

I finished at lunchtime and tidied up aware that I needed to get in to light the Rayburn. I took the back flue cover off to clean them out and instantly wished I hadn’t as the fire rope broke off. Midway through the day is not a good time for that to happen as to fix it you need a few hours drying time which I don’t have otherwise the house will be very cold later. I have wedged it back in as well as possible and fingers crossed it does the job, I had earmarked the flues for cleaning at the weekend as the fire smells pretty sooty so if it holds until then I will be happy if not I will be doing it tomorrow 🙄

As I was saying last week there is always something to learn, today I learnt about multi sowing. Sowing more than one seed, multiple seeds so that they have each other, this actually makes huge sense to me and something I didn’t realise was an actual thing lol. I watched a Charles Downing video on propagation and he talks about multi sowing, I am not a precise gardener when it comes to seed sowing, my rows end up wonky and I often drop clumps of seeds, I don’t bother with thinning either and often the result is that the plants grow anyway. Beetroot especially definitely like to grow with close contact to other beetroot and you can always pull them as baby beets and let the others fill out. I shall be trying this with other types of seed to see how they get on, I always felt a bit lazy not separating seedlings fully, not any more 😀

Thursday: I did the usual morning stuff, feed cat no 1, feed the quail and collect the eggs, feed cat no2, take hay to the horses, feed the ducks, collect the eggs, feed the first lot of chickens top up the water then onto the rabbits/guineas, turkeys and light Sussex. Then into the paddock where the geese and second lot of hens are, before I let them all out I moved some of the prunings from the apple tree that was done in December. The prunings have been sitting on the grass in the paddock for around three months and I want to use them to put along the hedge line to stop the hens eating my wild garlic when it comes up and also round the base of the apple tree to stop them scratching the ground and exposing the roots which would put the tree at risk.

I made an interesting observation while doing this, vole holes, under the piles of sticks were little holes made by the voles, this then got me thinking about what we do with the paddocks and why. We deliberately left most of the grass in the paddock uncut it also hasn’t been grazed and won’t be, I wanted it to grow long and go to seed thereby seeding itself which obviously saves money. By doing this I inadvertently created an ideal habitat for the voles, then I got to thinking that where there are voles there are likely to be owls and so realised that cutting or grazing the paddocks is robbing the wildlife of an eco system. I thought that by doing the whole ‘organic thing’ of no pesticides/fertilisers etc was a great thing I was doing, and it is, but there is so much more that can be done such as leaving areas to re wild as it were. Now obviously I don’t want piles of twigs in the paddocks, well not in the middle anyway, but I can use them around the outside edges and I can leave the grass to grow long in certain areas.

That all then got me thinking about horses and wondering why the emphasis is all on meat animals grazing and releasing methane when there are hundreds of thousands of horses in this country that are grazing on thousands of acres of grass and hedges right down to the roots including ours, why is there no mention of them destroying the habitats, because they do and the majority of them serve no other purpose than pleasure, I am not for one minute saying that people shouldn’t have them I’m just wondering why they are not a hot topic of conversation like the meat animals? Is it because we don’t eat them which means that when someone is talking about climate change and the damage grazing animals do they are actually only thinking about wanting people to stop eating meat because horses are never included in those conversations or is it that they keep horses themselves and therefore don’t put them into the same category? A topic I will have to look into🙄

I went out with Sam, Shelley and the younger ones, the older two were at nursery, and we went to what is fast becoming our favourite cafe. Lynwood & Co use local and independent suppliers, the coffee is wonderful, the company make their own sourdough bread locally using local flour, the atmosphere is relaxed sophistication I think that’s how I would describe it, I went all out today and had brioche toast with maple syrup, mascarpone and blueberries and yes it taste every bit as wonderful as it looks 😀 No filter needed!

We had a quick trawl around the charity shops before returning home to light the Rayburn.

You need a treat or two in January don’t you think, a quite depressing month not only due to the weather but as a self employed person it means the tax is due, why on earth pick January as the month to pay it, July is the other month, both when you are likely to have had or about to have high expenditure, Christmas and Annual holiday 😏 keeps the minions in their place I suppose 🙄 Still, we are rolling on towards some warmer weather and that means seed sowing and planting which will make me a happy bunny 🐰 Imbolic is fast approaching, Feb 1st, that’s midway between the Winter solstice and the Spring equinox, the wheel is slowly turning.

Friday: Josh is coming for a sleepover tonight and fish and chips, it’s 7.30am and I have had a message from Shelley to say that he is up, washed and dressed himself, cleaned his teeth and packed his bag already lol, he is very excited I hope we don’t disappoint 😀

11pm tonight is the hour we leave the EU, no matter how you voted, tomorrow is a new day and I have been listening to a blog on creative and energising thinking to carry you forward through ‘situations’ such as Brexit and climate change, we hear all the doom and gloom but there is a lot of positivity around as well it’s just that it doesn’t make the news so search for the uplifting stuff it is out there 😀

While we are on world issues it wouldn’t be a diary blog if I didn’t mention the Coronavirus that has broken out, it started in Wuhan, China and at the moment the world is not sure how much it will spread, what has caused it, though they have an idea, how many people will eventually be affected or how severe it will be. What I can tell you is that less than two miles from us the first plane carrying the repatriations of UK citizens that have been trapped in Wuhan (which is in shutdown) is landing here at RAF Brize Norton sometime today 🙄

I spent the morning outside, it’s mild but blowy (which eventually gave me a headache) for a change I wasn’t working on the veg garden lol. I have been concentrating my efforts on the front area, this is the area immediately out the front of the building and before the gates to the driveway. It’s a pretty big area in itself, put into perspective I imagine you would easily get 4/5 modern sized houses on there including gardens or about 40 cars parked nose to tail so it’s a large area. It’s mostly shingle or was it has now compacted and we are looking at putting some more down as the top is starting to get wet and mushy, some of it is hard standing, a remnant of the war time RAF base that was around here and a little bit of it is a hazel hedge and there are a couple of butterfly bushes (orange globe ones) but that’s about it for permanent features. I do have a whole host of pots with various things growing in them to brighten the area up but I am trying to increase the amount of bushes and shrubs so this morning I have planted a holly and a photinia both are evergreen both will get pretty big and fill their immediate space both will give me foliage for Christmas and hopefully both will provide shelter for birds and insects. They are not big shrubs at the moment the problem with our ground is that the digging is hard going so I usually start off with smaller specimens which will hopefully take hold quickly. I also potted up a climbing rose I bought, it’s called New Dawn and I didn’t get it just because it’s my name but because I have grown them before at our old place and I know it does what it says on the tin 😀 A word of advice, if you are planning on moving do take cuttings or dig up anything you would like to grow in your new place, I wish I had bought a lot more with me than I did (which was quite a lot including my mulberry tree)

Saturday: Josh stayed overnight and we went out to do his favourite job, feeding the horses this morning while John did the other stuff, it’s a cold wind today so we didn’t stay out any longer than necessary 💨 preferring to stay in the warm lol.

It is February 1st today that marks the start of Imbolic, halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, it marks the beginning of the awakening of all things spring 😀 As I walked around today I was delighted to see some tiny little crocus, that I planted last year, making their very first appearance in the driveway under the apple tree. There are buds on trees and shrubs waiting to burst open and the Winter Honeysuckle is smothered in flowers which smell amazing, I have yet to see a daffodil open but there are some that are ready to open any day now, if you are a fly on the wall you will definitely see me smile the first time a see one 🌼

Sunday: We have had a good day outside, firstly John had got new bits for his chainsaw to give it a service and so cutting down the broken bough and tidying all the debris up was the first job after the feed rounds. Then it was basically more tidying which actually took more time than we allocated for it and we couldn’t for the life of us get the stack of dead bits burning despite using a blow torch so that will have to wait until another day but at least we have piles ready to burn. After that, which took us until 2pm, John cleaned out the flue and I cleaned out the inside of the fire. He has to go up on the roof and disconnect the twin walled flue shove a sweep brush down it and connect back up again. Meanwhile I have covered up the Rayburn with a dust sheet and when he has finished I hoover it all out, we have it off to a fine art now and luckily it is pretty mild out today so we didn’t need to light it until around 3pm anyway.

We have a few ton of shingle coming for the front area which again will freshen the whole area up and I have some more shrubs to plant out there for interest and for the wildlife to shelter in.