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 😜
frieslandfarm (flowers) 