Month: August 2020

Posted in Friesland Farm

Rain, homegrown passata and a broken tractor 😕

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th August: Rattling through the weeks, I think like most people I will be glad to see the back of 2020, while not wanting to wish my life away it’s been a tough year by anyone’s standards 😜

It’s just gone 2pm and I am all plummed out I reckon, I spent the first part of the morning doing some cleaning whilst listening to some tunes, haven’t done that for ages so it was good to have the music blasting out 😜 After that it was plums again 🙄 I have just processed another 4kgs, 2 of them as more jam and the other two for the freezer, there are plenty more on the trees but seriously I think I have enough in reserve 😂 come this time next year if there are no plums I may regret that decision but it’s one I will have to live with. What is left on the trees will keep the birds going hopefully, that’s if the wasps haven’t had them all by then.

The weather is changeable, I went out to hang the washing, the minute I walked away it started to spit then got a bit worse, I got it all back in again and it stopped, it was like a bloody comedy sketch! The sun is out now and I’m tempted to try again but we are running out of good drying time and you never know at the minute if it will stay dry long enough. Update: it didn’t and now it’s in the tumble dryer which I try not to use very often but needs must.

John is working today but then has the next three day’s off, I would be chuffed but the forecast is dreadful so I can’t see us getting much done on that front border which was the plan.

I managed to get a photo of the hens and their chicks this morning, it’s not a great one but it is cheery 🥰

Popped round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa before dinner then afterwards we did a little bit on the front border. It’s quite hard going because it was mostly shingle and hardcore lol, taking a while to get it up together before planting up.

The nights are drawing in, it’s getting dark at 8.30pm 😏 Winters coming lol.

Tuesday: It rained pretty heavily during the night and was still raining this morning, not a good start to Johns days off to do the border 😏 We got the animals done and a few other random jobs and then John went out to do a bit out front. Luckily by this time it’s only fine mist rain so he was able to get on a little, not sure how long for as the forecast is terrible today, rain and high winds again, I definitely think Autumn is upon us already 😕 Meanwhile indoors 😜 I made some fresh bread and got some vegetable soup on the go, all from the garden so it’s good and wholesome, free of any nasties. Veg soup is a great way of getting plenty of goodness, in this pan there is potato, onion, garlic, chard stalks, courgette, turnips, lovage and sage, you cant really go wrong putting whatever you have in the pan as long as there is a selection 😀

The weather didn’t get any better, it ranged from awful to worse, storm Francis you can do one it’s supposed to be late summer 🙄 As the weather was not favourable I spent some of the day sorting through Dads stuff and seeing who wants what. Bits and pieces he had collected or been given, nothing of great value but all things typical of him, harmonicas, brass ornaments, penknives, he always had a penknife and they had been sharpened away over the years but that’s what’s makes them special. I kept a couple of pruning knives that he used and in the garden 😀

I hope the weather is nicer tomorrow 🙄 We have BT coming to supposedly reconnecting us, I won’t hold my breath 😂 and I have a bloods appointment in the morning.

Wednesday: So today was the day for the big BT cock up correction, I am pleased to report we now have a landline again albeit a new number for the time being, we also have full internet access once more instead of a ‘here you are this will keep you off our backs’ mini hub which incidentally doesn’t do anything ‘wired’ only wireless 🙄 go figure. Anyhooo as I said we are now able to function fully though it did take the engineer from 8am through to 3pm to get it sorted, again, go figure, I don’t understand how it can be that hard but then again I’m not qualified in that industry 😜

Meanwhile John and I have been getting on with the front border, I ordered a good few tonnes of topsoil and we are almost ready to put it down. I was pleased that we have been able to progress without using weedkiller which was a task in itself and it’s basically compacted earth and shingle. We have raked and weeded the perennial weeds and have now put down a layer of cardboard which will block out the light from remaining weeds, that with a deep layer on top should do the job. I can’t wait to start planting it up, I think I have decided on just the flowering shrubs and then cast seed from things like love in a mist, verbena, red flax and whatever else I fancy. My biggest worry is keeping the hens off it.

Thursday: It’s 1pm and started raining about 20 minutes ago, up to then it had been dry and overcast and we had been busy. After the morning rounds John got on with the front border, we have a few tonnes of topsoil coming but he has been using the tractor to put manure in the bottom of the bed and moving a lot of stones as the ground dips away quite a bit at one end so it needs making up. Meanwhile this morning I got Biscuit the Shetland in from the main paddocks and into a smaller one. She has done really well all summer and not had any laminitis but with all this rain the grass is flushing and that won’t do her any good so for the time being she is confined. I took a walk around the paddock edges and ate a few blackberries as I went, I will endeavour to get out there and pick some as soon as I have time. I picked a few things this morning, runner beans and lots of tomatoes. The runner beans have not done so well this year I think the weather has been all wrong for them. There are beans but they were late and instead of young, long beans there are shorter fatter beans which are normally what you would get at the end of the season. They will still get used though, I chopped some of them along with a few cauliflower heads I picked (these are quite small too this year) and some carrots, these will be open froze ready to bag up. The cauliflower stalks don’t get wasted as I chopped them up along with patty pan, turnip, runner beans and carrots for a soup bag mix. I also picked a punnet of soft fruit, raspberries, the last few blueberries and plenty of hybrid blackberries. At the moment I have bread on the go and have just taken some roasted, tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil and oregano out of the oven, I will wait for it to cool and then put it through the mouli for passata, it smells amazing 😀

The passata tastes seriously good I’m really pleased with it, its the river cottage method but tweek it however you want with whatever you have 😀

Rain stopped play for the rest of the afternoon really, the downpours were heavy and thundery and more of the same tomorrow I think 😕

Friday: A soggy morning and more rain forecast for today 🙄 John did the animals and went off to work for the day and I did some bits and pieces around the place. I got the milk in and then realised that I hadn’t put the dustbin out and the cart was going past 😏 I put it out anyway in the hopes that they would stop on the way back, they did 😀 Some people complain about their binmen but I always find ours accommodating, I went back down the drive to thank them. Then I burnt some paper rubbish, when I eventually found something to light it with that is, a one time I always had a handy lighter but not these days, I need one of those everlasting matches I think. I checked on the horses, they were fine and then over to the orchard pen to check things there. I found a dead chick, it had got stuck behind the hut and died 😢 but the other five are fine, there are always ways animals find to get themselves killed no matter how careful you are. You wouldn’t believe some of the predicaments we have found animals in over the years even in a seemingly innocuous paddock. Sheep are the worst as they move forward, a dog or cat will move backwards to try and untangle itself but sheep go forward often making the situation worse. We had one once wedged under the Cambridge roller, it has a triangle of iron angle bars to hitch it up with. The front end lays on the ground when not in use and why the sheep decided to get under it I don’t know, how it managed to get under it I don’t know either but luckily you can just pick it up and release the sheep which is what we did. That was an easy one, we have had one firmly stuck underneath the hen coop and one that had got its head stuck in the stock fencing (which is fairly common) they were much harder to release when you are doing your best not to hurt them in any way. We had a horse that managed to roll and find the only piece of old barbed wire in the field (not our field) and slash open his face, cats stuck down gaps we didn’t even know were there and hens wedged behind drainpipe, animals get themselves into all kinds of scrapes from time to time.

I hoovered the boot room and the kitchen and did a bit of putting away and then went into the garden to see what could be done out there, it’s very soggy so I decided not much! We are still waiting for the delivery of topsoil so I can’t do that either, I will have to find something to do indoors I think, coffee break first though 😜

I have been thinking a lot about the weather patterns, hard not too when they are all over the place. A news item this week was about the shortage of wheat due to the conditions and so the knock on effect on bread and cakes etc and how farmers are going to have to look at their growing practices. The same can be said for veg growers, I have been saying for a few years now about how the seasons seem to be shifting, very warm spring, wet summer, early autumn, that has certainly been the case for the last two years. I need to work out how to change the way I garden to fit in with the weather changes. I am thinking that making more of under cover growing helps to stabilise the conditions as they can be controlled (to an extent, obviously I can’t control the sun) I can control the amount of water and I can protect crops from these high winds which are becoming more frequent in summer, I may need another tunnel 😜 The forest garden is coming on but obviously it’s a slow process, the trees and shrubs I planted have not got to a size yet where they are beneficial to the plants around them although the roots will be helping to stabilise the ground, it’s looking more like a jungle than a forest at the minute out there.

The topsoil arrived, it’s pissing down with rain I’m not moving it in this 🤪 I have spent the morning doing various little jobs that have needed doing, it’s still raining, crap day.

John came home and got the tractor out, the rain was intermittent with a bit of thunder thrown in for good measure. He moved the fist bucket load of soil onto the bed, went to lift the second load and disaster, a tractor malfunction 🙄 worse than that there was now hydraulic fluid pouring onto the top soil 🤪 all the efforts we have gone to making sure that we are doing everything the eco friendly way and bam contaminated soil 😡 luckily the tractor was stationary and that bit (about a wheelbarrow full) can be thrown into the skip but not what you want on a Friday afternoon 😟 I called Ken, he came and had a look and the ram (arm thingy on the bucket) had broken so they undid it and John went off to the local hydraulic place to see what they could do. They will have a look at it on Tuesday (I forgot it’s a bank holiday) and let us know how much it will cost 😏 Meanwhile it’s shifting 8 tonne of top soil by hand this weekend 😭 and it’s still raining on and off, some days are just sent to try us, today is one of those days 😂 Oh yes and I had a phone call to say stop the meds the white cell count is down again 😕 back to weekly blood tests, I wish this damn disease would stabilise or at least the meds would stabilise it 🙄 Update: Just had another phone call from the doc and now I don’t have to stop them, it seems rheumatology have a lower threshold count than the standard one 🤷‍♀️ so keep taking them and bloods again next week. I don’t actually mind because as always when my count is low, I feel much better, maybe that’s my level, who knows as it was never tested before I had the disease!

Saturday: I spent today looking after Mia, Lucie and George while Sam and Luke went off to look for a new car that can accommodate three car seats, a double pushchair and a dog easily lol. Charlie was with me for most of the day and I have no idea how Sam does it on her own 😂 We went on a walk, just a short one Charlie said, 3k later and Mia was crying, Lucie was crying but we were nearly home again. To be fair Mia did very well and we had a lovely time most of the way round. We picked blackberries (which she ate later with cheese for lunch) and we stood ‘at the top of the world’ well it must seem like it to a four year old when you can see for miles around 😀 We stood at a five bar gate and saw a ‘magic wood’ all these things you have to tell toddlers just to keep them going lol. I didn’t get back until 4pm by which time John had filled the front border with topsoil and done the birds and eggs.

Sunday: Today seems to have shot past probably because we had a lie in until 7.30. Once we had done the rounds we went off out to get some breakfast (another reason why time seems to be flying past) the morning journey was beautiful, the sun was shinning and coming back along the top road you could see right across the shire, there is nothing better 🥰 Once back we had to get on, John went off to get a bit of shopping, I told you I was sending him in future 🤣 and I did some picking. Every last thing sold in the egg shed yesterday and so I needed to replenish it, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, marrow, chillies, beetroot, runner beans and French beans all picked and put out for sale. I did pick some blackberries and raspberries for us that are now in the fridge. I picked a few more eating apples and watered the tunnels and the greenhouse. It has been an odd year for growing veg here, the courgettes that normally appear so fast you can’t keep up have been sparse, the patty pan never materialised at all, the French beans seem to have given up already and the runner beans just went into seed setting mode, I didn’t have a very big crop of those at all this year. I did pick another batch of rhubarb though, it really struggled earlier in the year but has now produced some new tender stems, it’s all arse about face. Everything seems to indicate Autumn already and it’s only the end of August 🤷‍♀️ I still have a few things coming on, butternut squash, pumpkins and sweetcorn but none of it really doing as well as previous years, I can’t say I blame them the weather has meant they have no idea what season it is 😏 John then topped the front paddock, the grass has got longer than we would have liked but with all that rain and not being able to get it cut it’s not surprising.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Changeable weather, plenty of produce, especially plums 😂

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 17th August 2020: Up and about this morning get some veg picked, I think I need a bigger basket 😂 loads of tomatoes this morning and the conference pears were ready to pick. After sorting it all out, putting some out for sale, finding homes for the rest of it, I got started on the front area we are creating the border in. There were bramble bushes growing which needed digging out and then shredding any material from the existing bush that I cut back yesterday. I had a go at a few of the perennial weeds as well but there is still plenty more to do. That took me up to about 11.30, that’s when I heard the first crack of thunder and felt the first spots of rain. Honestly we seem to dive from one extreme to another as far as the weather is concerned, I’m pretty sure it ought to be a little more constant than this 😏 A customer arrived to collect the last of this batch of hens, the next batch is nearly all sold already and they are not due in until October 🙄 The rain got heavier but that’s fine as I have a bit of tidying to do indoors, I haven’t done any all weekend and things get plonked down all over the place, I have looked at the forecast for the rest of the day and it’s a washout so might as well stay in.

Although staying in was my plan it didn’t actually carrying on raining and so all I did indoors was the washing up, a quick phone call to Sue and then outside again. I wanted to dig up the rest of the carrots because the rain we are forecast all week will not do them any favours so might as well get them up and into the freezer. I found a marrow that had escaped my eye as they often do, it’s not too big but big enough, some of the smaller courgettes had rotted at the ends so I cut those off and threw them to the chickens and I picked a few berries from the fruit cage and some cape gooseberries from the tunnels. The clouds were intermittent and you know what that means for me, diving in an out of shade areas lol, it’s pretty strong when it makes an appearance 🙄

This mornings haul, under the tomatoes and pears there is a good layer of beans as well 😀

Someone gave me some packets of chilli seeds back in spring, I am not a fan of spicy food as it causes my acid reflux to play up but I grew them anyway and now I have loads of little Thai chillies lol. Not sure what I am going to do with them apart from put them out for sale. It’s the first time I have successfully grown chillies though, must have been the high temps we had back in spring and a decent greenhouse, I might try growing some with less heat next year.

I am running out of available space in the kitchen, there are tomatoes and plums everywhere 😂 I think a good amount of tomatoes will be ripe enough to pick again tomorrow as well, I really need to do something with them.

Tuesday: I decided to make today an ordinary day, that is nothing out on the farm or in the garden except the essentials, a day pottering around indoors, a bit of cleaning, washing, tidying away and anything else I fancy doing. I started off with good intentions and got the boot room hoovered and tided and a few bits in the kitchen, then got side tracked by chatting with customers. One couple I was chatting to come once a year when they are down in their caravan on holiday, they always come and get their breakfast eggs here which is lovely 😀 A bit more hoovering and put the washing on the line though I’m not sure how long it will be out there before it rains 🙄 I am not picking anything today as I have plenty still to sort out before I get more in, I have ordered a food mill/purée maker so that I can purée the tomatoes etc for passata. I made some last year if you remember and I experimented with one jar in the fridge and one in the cupboard to see how they did, well they are still both fine so that’s a year they have kept easily, really ought to use them up lol.

Wednesday: On reflection I should have done some outside things yesterday! It’s 7.30am it’s already raining and it’s set in for the day according to the forecasters 🙄 There are plums on the trees still to pick and there are seeds to collect, none of this couldn’t wait until the next dry day except that there are strong winds forecast after that, the plums will all be on the floor 😦 Hopefully somewhere in between our demented weather I will get an hour or two to do these jobs. They say make hay while the sun shines and I should have heeded the old proverb 😏 Having said that there is only so much you want to be doing or you would be totally submerged in the processes of self sufficiency, maybe you should be, I don’t know. What I do know is that to be totally self sufficient in food you would have to work from dawn to dusk at this time of year. We are ss in fruit/veg/nuts/eggs and that keeps me busy enough imagine if we had a house cow as well, I’m not sure there are enough hours in the day even if I really would love one. Imagine on top of those two you grew your own grain as well and reared meat in what ever form you decided, that’s a very busy, full on life, I salute anyone that manages all of those!

I could bake today, I always used to say, rainy days are baking days but to be honest we are trying to eat healthier and cakes and pies don’t fall into the healthy category 😂

I was delighted to see The Guardian report that the interest in allotments soared during the pandemic, our fragile food security was exposed during those early days and people recognised the need to have home grown food (and by that I also mean UK grown) instead of relying on imports. My aim is always to encourage people to have a go at growing your own even if you just start with a tomato bush and some herbs, it’s something and you never know, you might get hooked 😀 There are so many gardens in our wonderful country, town gardens, country gardens even some city gardens and the potential to grow food is massively overlooked. Even small spaces have potential with the idea of vertical gardening, get creative, you don’t need masses of ground area and the taste is amazing.

In my blog I try to keep it simple and non reactive (on the whole anyway) because it’s a diary blog after all but there are a lot of topics that I research or follow in much more depth than I write about. One of those is the fragility of how we live, not just the climate but our fundamental way of life, which is pretty fragile as shown by the pandemic. That was a disease and on the scale it’s not a bad one either, of course to those affected it is catastrophic but at least it wasn’t airbourne, can you imagine how cataclysmic that would have been and who’s to say that won’t happen sometime in the future with a different disease. Now you are beginning to see why I keep it quite neutral aren’t you 😂 The government stepped in and kept the country ticking over by ploughing money into the system because to them that’s the most important thing and even I was grateful for that. Now imagine that airbourne disease and how it is affecting everyone, people are dying by the tens of thousands and the systems that we rely on can no longer function, what are we going to do? Anything is possible as we have just witnessed, how well are we equipped to manage?, on the whole, we are not and that is the scary part. Electricity & Water, outside of the basic food system, are the two biggies to focus on, at the moment they are pumped to our properties with uninterrupted supply, on the whole. We don’t think about it until the supply stops for whatever reason, but if you really think about it you will begin to realise just how much we rely on it, electric especially. If the power plants closed, because there was no one to run them, EVERYTHING shuts down even your water supply 🙄 If you want to learn more then there are plenty of pod casts out there, Permaculture for the future is a good one to listen too, and far from giving you nightmares I think the knowledge builds strength within you to cope with whatever life throws at you, I hope so anyway.

Does anyone have the address for ‘offmet ‘ I want to write a complaint about the weather 😜 Seriously, this time last week we were sweating our nuts off, today it’s umbrellas and rain coats all day and then we have high winds coming, nothing resembling a ‘normal’ late summers day in sight 😒 I think I need to stop watching the forecast and just be surprised by whatever it is wet get thrown as us, it’s just depressing otherwise.

Thursday: A nice morning so far, not raining and not too hot. The first job on my list was to pick plums, with the high winds forecast later today and tomorrow, most of the weekend in fact, the plums would be all on the floor pretty quickly so needed picking pdq. I now have many kgs of plums to sort and process 😂 I also picked a few other bits, the tomatoes are coming in thick and fast, I picked beans of various variety’s and of course courgettes, marrows and cucumbers. This is where we move from the ‘grow your own’ into the self sufficient realm, definitely self sufficient in fruit and veg that’s for sure and so many things can be made from the basics that we won’t go short for the next few seasons 😀

A snapshot of some of the produce this year 😀

There is still plenty to harvest, the sweet corn I checked today but that’s not ready just yet, butternut squash still growing nicely, plenty of turnips, beetroot, swede and leeks still in the ground, cauliflowers coming on, there are also Oca in the ground that won’t be harvested until after the from and the yacon, I have no idea when to harvest that but I’m sure it will become evident. There are chillies continuing to grow and ripen along with the cues and toms, next will be nuts and blackberries 😀 busy times ahead!

It’s 1.30pm and I am having a sit down, mainly to stretch my back out lol, I have spent the whole morning processing. It’s surprising how much time it all takes but I now have 8 jars of plum jam, and for the freezer two containers of tomato purée, two bags of plums and a tray of French beans, plus two plum breads in the oven. Seriously, that has taken me about 3 hours and there are still loads of plums left to do something with 🙄 Hopefully the plum bread will turn out ok, the recipe was a bit finicky but I just threw it all in a gave it a stir so we will see 😜

Plum bread was delish 😋 After a rest I did more plums then all the washing up, got some bread on the go, sorted the eggs, got the dinner, knackered now, over and out for today, writing anyway, still got to water the tunnels later!

I did spend a pleasant half an hour gathering some seeds from marigolds, cornflowers, love in a mist, poppies and morning glory. I intend to cast theses next spring, along with a few others that have not set seed yet, in a part of the veg garden that I struggle to get round to. Hopefully they will cover it and provide some lovely colour and nectar and save me weeding 😀

Friday: Oh my word they were not wrong about the wind, some of the gusts are savage 🙄 First job was to get the egg shed sorted with stuff for sale as Fridays are proving to be pretty busy at the minute. There was a lady at the gate who’s words were ‘I have a strange request’ that’s fine I said, you wouldn’t believe some of the requests I get 🤣 Turned out not to be that strange, not in my experience anyhow, she was after fertile eggs to incubate, all pretty normal so far 🙄 The embryo would not reach full gestation though as they would be frozen and used to help develop a new scanning system for animals, a cross between an x-ray and a scan, still in 2D but more detailed, I think I got the gist of it. We have fertile quail eggs and duck eggs but not many chicken eggs as our layer flock don’t run with a cockerel I explained. I also explained that what fertile eggs we do have are currently being sat on by broody hens, we went to have a look to see how many they were sat on and guess what, chicks 🐣 they had hatched! She went away with quail and duck eggs and my e-mail and she is going to send me the results of any scans that they get, exciting stuff, she asked how much she owed and I replied, it’s for science, they are free 😀 got to help science along as you never know when you are going to need it yourself.

I had Florence and Josh for a couple of hours this morning while Shelley was busy. She runs an eyebrow/eyelash business from home and has only just been able to start up again after the lockdown and so customers are queuing up. It’s funny really as when she left school she qualified as a beauty therapist but ended up in hotel management for years. It would always be something she could fall back on when she needed to and so once she had Josh and Flo she started up again so that she could work from home, it proved to be a great back up plan 😀

I asked Shelley to pick me up some brandy as she was popping to the shops before coming back here, I think I am going to make some plum brandy, might as well make good use of these plums. It might be a very nice warming, winter tipple if I add some cinnamon as well 🥃 I used the Rumtopf vessel I have as that’s as good as anything, gradually getting through the plums 😋

Plums, Brandy, Sugar, Cinamon, Orange zest, stir and leave for a few months until ready then strain and bottle or drink up 😀

After they went home I went outside to do a bit of weeding and feed the guineas some weeds but although the weather itself is ok the buffeting from the wind is as always pretty exhausting. When Shelley came back to pick the children up she said it’s not that noticeable in town, we definitely notice the weather extremes here because it’s fairly exposed.

I called John to tell him we will need some chick crumb and now I have to work out where they will go, the last mum and babies I moved out because of the holes in the ground if you remember, I don’t want them falling down crevices, not sure where I am going to move them too, I will need to have a good think about it.

I fed the chicks and there are five little yellow fluffy bundles in there 😀

We decided to go shopping, we didn’t need much but had run out of washing up liquid and cheese so off we went. Well I wish I hadn’t bothered, it was hammering down when we left and all the way there, got a soaking getting into the shop to start off with, then of course my glasses steamed up. The whole glasses and mask thing is a pain in the arse, I can’t see the labels clearly without them, they don’t sit on my head (they slip off) and no matter how I adjust the mask they constantly steam up. We were just about done and I remembered that I had forgotten something but I couldn’t think what it was and the bloody music they pipe over the whole place wasn’t helping with my concentration levels. I ended up being so irritated I decided I’m not going again, I will send John with a list and do without whatever I forget to put on it. I know I’m a grumpy cow lol.

Saturday: The weather is a bit on and off today. After doing the animals John got the tractor out to dig a trench for the new border, this will have a low fence to hold the soil in and keep the shingle separate. It was sunny and we were out there discussing the outline when out of nowhere it starting raining, 1st soaking. He got on with that while I went and did some picking, again it was sunny when all of a sudden it started raining, I dived into the poly tunnel before I got a second soaking, by now John was on the tractor digging and he got a soaking lol. No doubt that is how the day will carry on by the looks of things.

We had a busy morning, John on the new border and me sorting out the newly hatched chicks (6) and their Mums. I have moved them into Teds pen, there is a little hut in there and the ground is not full of potential pitfalls for small chicks. Both the mummy hens and the cockerel have been moved along with the chicks. That means Ted will have a new place to sleep tonight and that might be difficult encouraging him to change. I cleaned out Teds pen, sorted out food and water then caught up one hen dusted her for mites, moved her, moved the chicks, then the other hen, dusting her as well, then finally the cockerel giving him a dusting too. Then cleaned out then pen where they had hatched and burnt the bedding, where the hens had been sitting tight and the weather has been hot there were quite a lot of red mite in there, burning gets rid of a vast majority of them. I then used the DE to dust the hatching area and I will leave it a while before cleaning it out completely and giving it a wash down with some jeyes fluid. The pen was never intended for chickens (originally it was for the rabbits) so it’s a bit awkward to clean out. We never intended to have hatchlings, typical, if you had wanted them it wouldn’t have happened and now we have eight including the two that hatched a few weeks back!

While we were both busy patch started yapping incessantly, I could hear John telling him to be quiet but I also knew that the type of yap he was doing meant he was telling us something. Not all lassie like lol, there was no one stuck down a well or anything like that and usually it’s if the horse has got out. I went to investigate and found a large hedgehog, I’m guessing the dogs had disturbed from wherever it was sleeping. I watched it and it was trying to get along the fence line of my garden so I opened the gate and in it went, I turned round to see where it was heading and it was gone, they really moved fast when they want to. I said to John we need to make little hedgehog tunnels so they can move between fenced areas more easily.

Sunday: Another busy morning, the weather has been favourable, for me at least 😜 John got on with the front bed and I did a bit of cutting back in the garden and then some potting on of a few pots of things as well as some pricking out of lupins and huechera seedlings that have grown nicely. After that I went to help John in the front, digging out weeds etc. We are hoping to do the bed without weedkiller which is a pretty big task as it’s very weedy and not just easy to pull weeds either but some real tough rooted ones. I think I have settled on putting flowering shrubs in there and intersperse with some late flowering plants, then scatter some annual seeds for a wispy look. I also have some bulbs which can go for spring interest, hopefully hat will cover all the seasons and be changing all the time. Most of the shrubs I already have growing in pots and once they are in the ground they should tare off pretty quickly provided we can get them in fairly soon.

I took some photos of the flower bed in the veg garden as a few smaller plants have got lost in with the giants, there is a lovely little salmon coloured dahlia that can hardly be seen as it’s behind a much bigger yellow one, all things to consider for rearranging in autumn. The photos are to remind me once the plants have died down, it’s all very well having an idea of what height they grow to but seeing them gives you a much better idea of where to place things.

All looks a bit of a mess as I did just shove it all in this year but come autumn I will re arrange it all a little better 😀
Posted in Friesland Farm

Hot, hot, hot, wet, wet, wet & work, work, work 🥵 ☔️ 🏋🏻‍♀️

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th August: Monday again, it comes round with prompt regularity 🤪 I set the alarm for an early morning as it’s been so hot and I really need to get a few jobs done. I did hit the snooze button three times before I finally got up at 5.30am. The air was deliciously cool outside so I know I made the right decision. A quick breakfast and then straight out into the garden, I spend such an amount of time picking and processing at the moment that little time is left for maintenance aka weeding 😀 I cleared out plants from the greenhouse that were not doing well or that I hadn’t had time to pot on, mostly veg plants and I don’t really need any more veg than I have now. Then onto the weeding, the bean bed first, I got sidetracked on the way to the compost heap and ended up weeding random areas. I really wanted to have a methodical approach so that the results were obvious but it dose t really matter as long as it gets done. I spent an hour and a half at that before onto some picking, a small batch of petit poi, some runner beans, mange-tout and courgettes. I spent a good couple of hours last night watering so I didn’t have to do that this morning. Processing next so back into the kitchen and pod the peas, chop the beans, put the courgettes and some cucumbers out for sale, de stone some Victoria and greengage plums for the freezer and peel, chop and cook down some cooking apples I had been given. Once that was done I took the Apple peelings up to the geese and the other peelings etc went onto the compost heap, nothing gets wasted round here, if the animals don’t it eat it goes back into the soil system 😀

I need to have a good think about the veg garden, I feel it’s too big for me to manage (or at least to keep in good order) I thought about cutting out one whole bed and laying more lawn but that would mean moving the asparagus and it’s only halfway through it’s productive life so maybe not. I’m sure I will come up with some idea eventually 🙄 At this time of year I always think ‘what a mess’ but come Autumn when everything is spent or cut back ready for Winter it dose t seem so bad, maybe it’s an attitude adjustment I need 😜

We have point of lay hens arriving today, as with previous batches since lockdown, these are all sold before they even arrive and most of them will not be on the premises for more than a few hours. In more normal times we buy a batch of forty in at the beginning of summer and gradually sell them on, this summer we have sold 180 in various sized batches and the turnaround times have broken all records here!

I haven’t mentioned the pandemic for a couple of weeks, that’s because most things feel fairly normal or at least the new normal. It’s amazing how quickly we can change and adapt, I am avoiding the shops as much as is possible and everything else just seems like the usual thing to do. If we meet up with family it’s mostly outside because the weather is favourable, if we go out to eat, it’s a little bit different but everyone quickly got the hang of it and now it feels normal, yep I’d say we are definitely comfortable with the new normal lol. The cases are rising again slowly but then with more people moving around that is obviously going to happen, it’s just something we will have to get used to living with unless they find a vaccine.

I cleaned out the fridge, soggy celery, buttermilk I forgot was in there, a dribble of cream in the bottom of the carton. There is now room to put fruit in there because the fruit flies around the fruit bowl are doing my head in. I know they are only around for a short while but the little wafts of them every time you pick up a banana is annoying lol.

The chickens arrived and that meant an evening of people arriving to collect which in the blazing sun was hot work, for John anyway, I stayed in the shade 🤪

Tuesday: Is it only Tuesday lol. I have no idea what the temps are out there at the moment (9.45am) but I am already sweating. Up and at it, not quite so early this morning, I suspect like most people last night, I didn’t get a lot of sleep as it was so warm. As I said it’s 9.45 and I have already first proved the bread I made, it’s now on its second prove, I have sorted dinner for this evening and it’s in the slow cooker, made a plum sponge and cooked that in the oven so we can just reheat it later, put a wash load on and hung it out to dry, gone round and made sure all the animals have plenty of water, fed the torts and the Guineas some high water content bits such as cucumber and apples and slung the hoover round. I am just waiting for the bread to finish proving so I can put it in the oven for 25 minutes and then I don’t need to turn the oven on later when it gets very hot 🥵. I am on my third glass of water, got to keep hydrated especially as I seemed to have picked up a summer cold, fabulous, nothing more sinister than that as far as I can tell 😬 it’s all nasal and sinus. The plan for the rest of the day is to stay as cool as possible indoors. I do have jam to make but I am not even going to attempt that today 😋

The phone line saga: lol you thought it had gone away didn’t you, nope, we were expecting to be connected this Friday but I’ve just had a text to say it’s delayed until 26th August, are you f**king kidding me 🤬🤬 angry does not even come close to how I am feeling now and I have just emailed them to tell them. Bloody joke, if that’s what you get for being a loyal customer of thirty years plus you can shove it where the sun don’t shine!!!!! I went onto the BT Facebook page and I despair at ever getting the correct connection judging by the complaints on there 😏 at least I have the mini hub with unlimited data at their expense I suppose 😋 although we can’t connect the tv or Alexa buy hey!

The thermometer is registering 26c in the kitchen that’s with the windows closed and the blinds shut 🙄 outside a thermometer that is just outside the back door but under a sun umberella says 35c 🥵 We officially have tropical weather, apparently that is when the temps remain above 20c overnight for five days in row or something like that, most peculiar to us Brits no wonder we can’t cope, this time next month we will be moaning because it’s freezing 😂

We had our dinner early as we were both hungry, glad I made the slow cook decision. I had cooked the plum sponge earlier too so just needed to reheat in the microwave, do we have any ice cream left? I asked John, as he has been eating it all week. Yes there are two tubs, one nearly empty and a new one, have you started the new one? I asked, there was a look of horror on his face and he said, NO! that’s more than my life is worth 🤣🤣 37 years of training and it’s starting to pay off finally 😜

Wednesday: Well that was a hot night as far as the air temps go anyway 😜 Apparently there was an amazing silent lightning storm but it seems we were looking out of the wrong window, we have windows on the East and south side not the North and on the west side we would have to go out past the trees to get a view. The North was where it was all happening it would seem 🙄

Again the temps are set to climb and climb 🥵 Most of the birds freely roam around the place and so can find their own shade. The new arrivals that are waiting to go to new homes however are in a pen and most of the day there is shade but late afternoon and evening there is none so I have made a temporary shade shelter for them. Chickens are descendants of jungle fowl and so while they are used to heat, it’s shaded heat not blaring sunshine ☀️

I picked some tomatoes this morning and some cape gooseberries, you may be familiar with these as a ‘flourish’ on top of your dessert but they can be grown in good quantities even in the UK under cover. I say under cover as I haven’t tried them outside, I guess in a year like this they would be successful but they have a long growing season and I’m not sure if they would ripen in a ‘normal’ year. They can of course be eaten as they are or they apparently make good jam 😀

My goodness that got hot today lol, 37c was recorded in the south, we are south east by definition but right on the border of south west, so any way you look at it we are south 😜 Shelley, Sam and the children came over to sit under the shade of the trees in the garden. Who knew you could have so much fun with two washing up bowls of water and a sprinkler 😀 The twins had a mighty time splashing themselves and everyone else and thought it was incredibly funny 😂 Needless to say I did not do anything else except sit in the garden, keep hydrated and trying to keep cool. By mid afternoon it was too hot to stay out any longer, the girls went home and John arrived home and evening indoors was like a sauna, hot and muggy.

The weather finally broke with thunder, lightening and rain, it was so nice we actually went out and stood in it lol, the only time I am happy to be rained on 😕 It was still uncomfortably hot indoors though so I kept going outside to cool off!

Thursday: It’s cooler this morning but I don’t think it’s going to stay cool as the day goes on. I have no idea how people in hot countries deal with this on a daily basis 🥵 and working in it, well that’s unfathomable. I guess developed countries have air con, not many places have it in the UK and generally speaking we don’t need it 😂 I have observed there are two types in this country, those who like it hot, the hotter, the better and then those who don’t, there don’t seem to be many inbetween. There are still thunderstorm warnings for the next two days and some places have had torrential downpours, it’s all very tropical at the moment. The one thing I am glad of is that I don’t need to water the garden 😀

I picked a few courgettes and then sorted out veg and fruit I had already picked before it got hot, I needed to process it all before it spoilt. I made some more Victoria Plum jam, always useful for giving and then plenty for the winter stores. The next lot of plums are looking ready and I haven’t finished picking the Victoria’s yet 😬 it’s been such an abundant year we will be sick of plums by spring lol.

I really need to get back a healthy eating regime, like large percentage of the population during lockdown my habits have slid down a slippery slope 😏 I am trying to re educate myself, I don’t really need to do that, I know what I should and shouldn’t be eating 😂 Two of the biggest problems I have is tiredness, when I cant be arsed to sort something good out and so reach for the easy things which are usually carb heavy 🙄 and the fact that I grow such a lot of my own. You wouldn’t think this was a problem would you but even though I grow a lot the selection is limited (to my mind at least) and I won’t buy anything lol. Things are not always ready at the same time, so a chopped salad of tomatoes and cucumber would look great with sweetcorn but it isn’t ripe yet, do you get where I’m coming from, and sprinkled with nuts, that are also not ready yet, now you are getting the picture 😜 I don’t do myself any favours by being such a purist I know! The other problem is that things come in such gluts they need to be frozen and that’s not much good when you want fresh stuff. I just need to get my head around it a bit I think. As a result of moving in that direction I have some Greek yoghurt on the go, freshly frozen berries and yoghurt make a great breakfast or pudding 😀

I took a photo of a plant I have grown, I grew it because the seeds came in a multipack with morning glory which I wanted to grow for the bees. The other seeds in there were something called Spanish Flag, Ipomoea lobata, I have never grown it or even seen it before but it has turned out to be one of my most favourite little flowers 😀 It is a climber and not a very strong or dominant one, it’s rather delicate, but it is exquisite especially when the sun is shinning on it. It reminds me of festival flags and its one of those that makes me smile when I walk past it.

Friday: I have just done a good mornings work, the weather is soo much cooler and we had heavy rain in the night but it’s not raining now. I cleaned out the quail and then the guineas, then spent ages looking for the animal nail clippers as one of the quail has grown a long bendy nail so it need soy come off. I couldn’t find them anywhere and so I have had to order a new pair and we all know what will happen once they arrive don’t we 🙄 the other pair will miraculously turn up somewhere unexpected 😂 After doing that it was into the jungle, that’s what I have been calling the poly tunnels for the last couple of weeks. The foliage from tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and cape gooseberries has gone mad and I could barely get into the big tunnel. I spent the rest of the morning cutting back long tendrils from the cucumbers/melons and lots of bottom leaves from the tomatoes, I also snipped off the tops of the plants so that they can put all their energy into the fruits that have already set rather than new ones. I thought I didn’t have many tomatoes but once I cut it all back I could see plenty 😀 I don’t hold out much hope for the melons, they seem to have tiny fruits which then die off and the same with the loofahs. It’s a shame as this was the year I was hoping to grow my own washing up scrubbers 😜 I may give them one more go next year but after that I will quit, I have spent far too much time on them already. There are quite few things I will scale back next year I have decided, I just need to remember that I had decided that come seed buying time 🤣 I am going to concentrate on things we eat a lot of, for instance carrots, beans, peas, potato, brassicas, leeks, onions, garlic, root veg and also things that the torts eat, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers but things like chillies, aubergines, globe artichoke I won’t do at all and courgettes I will just buy one plant, pumpkins I will still grow for the children but I might give the sweetcorn a miss as it’s only me that eats it, these are my mullings anyway, we will see what happens next year.

Do you ever think things have a way of finding you, John always says animals will find you if you are meant to have them lol. Anyway this ‘finding’ regards my previous paragraph and the wobbles I have been having about growing my own, if I was waivering about what I am doing and why a pod cast I came across has slammed home the message good and proper. GMO’s Glyphosphate and gut health, some of it I knew already but some I didn’t and it has given me a much clearer picture of how one affects the other. It’s and hour and forty minutes long but if you are remotely interested then do listen, if you are not then you should be because as the saying goes your are what you eat’ quite literally as it turns out 🙄 its The Rich Roll Podcast you can find it on you tube but I couldn’t paste a link sorry 😜

Saturday: A damp overcast morning but despite yellow warnings we hadn’t had any rain by lunchtime. John did the feed rounds and then finished off the last bit of fence. The whole job is not finished by a long shot as the rest of the old fence needs to come down and then start on the shrubbery that will go in front of the fence. He then went on to clean out the ducks and dig up the last few bits of ragwort before nipping out to get some guinea pig food.

Meanwhile I started some picking, beans courgettes, cauliflower, turnip, swede, beetroot and the more Victoria plums and some damsons which are not ripe yet but someone I know wants some and I had a bit of time to do it so I did 😀 Indoors then to sort out bits for putting out for sale and processing the rest. I have two trays of beans peas and cauliflower plus five purple carrots (that’s all that grew from a whole row) all chopped and open freezing. The turnip, courgettes, swede, beetroot, some carrots I already picked along with an onion and a stick of celery have all been chopped and bagged as soup mix for the freezer. Then I chopped loads of veg to go with some locally reared mince beef in the slow cooker for dinner later and finally I put the sage I had been drying into jars for storage and winter use 😀 Morning done sit down and have a couple of hard boiled eggs for lunch and a coffee 😜

Listening to that podcast has really sharpened my thoughts on what we eat and although generally speaking it’s good as far as home grown goes there is considerable room for improvement. I have decided not to waste anything and by that I mean eat even the things we don’t really like very much, hence the soup mixes, they will be a permanent feature as you can disguise the bits you don’t like but still get the goodness.

Sunday: Although rain was forecast it never really arrived and so in the morning we got plenty of work done. John has finished off the fence and we started clearing g the old fence and giving the bushes a bit of a trim. We debated about taking them down as they re very old and parts of the multiple trunks are rotten, however the bees and butterflies love them , the birds use them to roost in the winter and the decay is great for the insects so we decided they can stay 😀 We had the afternoon and evening off apart from doing the eggs, to recharge our batteries for a new week.

You can see the new fence that John has put up and now the job of creating a border begins 😜
Posted in Friesland Farm

Lunch in the City 😲 plenty of plums & RIP Benny 😢

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd August: This morning I whizzed around and got a few things done ( made two banana loaves and a greengage and vanilla tart) before going out for lunch in Oxford with Charlie as a birthday treat. We went to The Alchemist, the food was delicious and it all felt very safe and social distancing was well in hand. I haven’t been to Oxford centre for a least 6 years if not a lot longer. The new shopping centre is light and airy and the rooftop terrace where all the eateries are is a delightful place to eat. Afterwards we went on the tourist trails and into the back streets to find lovely park areas and beautiful architecture. A lovely way to spend an afternoon 🥰

My birthday treat at The Alchemist

When I got back John was already home and had been working on the new fence which is very nearly finished.

Early evening I went out into the paddock John is working in and had a look round. We discovered bees in a hollow of the apple tree, these might be bees that have swarmed and set up home here or they may be native bees but they are definitely honey bees 🐝 happy days, hopefully it will start oozing out lol.

We still have no internet and it’s due to be connected tomorrow, the equipment arrived safely yesterday morning due to the fact that our postie knows everyone so well that he delivers it to the named recipient not the address which is just as well. Trying to bounce off the hot spot on my phone is very tiresome I can tell you and I do find the reliance on the internet more than a little disconcerting. As I have written before in previous blogs, an apocalypse (disaster, pandemic) was always on my radar and one of the worst would be if the internet went down, we would be totally screwed I can tell you that so it would be prudent to look at what you use the connection for and always make sure you have an alternative 🙄 That is self reliance 😀 One other way to make sure you stay connected is the telephone line. We have cordless telephone handsets but I always keep a corded set in the cupboard because if we have a power cut we still have a phone, you may think that’s ok I have my mobile but trust me the amount of time I have no battery when the power goes is nobody’s business 😜

Tuesday: Picking produce was this mornings task, more plums, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, dwarf beans, beetroot, turnips, snowball radish and a few potatoes, I am quite literally drowning in veg lol.

1.30pm and I’m sitting down to give my back a rest lol, I have spent all this time prepping nearly everything I picked this morning. Beans, carrots and turnips chopped and open froze, beetroots and radish peeled and chopped for a few days of salad meals and greengage plums stoned and made into jam. Lots of the veg were weighed and bagged up to go out for sale and I still have Victoria plums to make more jam with but not today 😜

After a short rest I went out and cut back one of my two sage bushes, the leaves are now drying in the dehydrator ready for putting in a jar and using over Winter. The other bush I will leave for now and cut it back later in the season and continue to use the fresh leaves when I need to. John came home just as I had finished and put the kettle on, I swear he must hear it being turned on as his timing is impeccable 🤪

Early evening I had a phone call from our neighbour, we have travellers in the area and they have been doing what they usually do and targeting work vans. They tried to break into her husbands van and when challenged by her Hubby the person lunged at him with a screwdriver, threw a walling brick at him (which missed luckily) and jumped into a waiting car which drove off. There is a serious problem here at the moment and it seems the police are not getting on top of it at all, I have seen reports on Facebook all day of people/vans/businesses being hit in broad daylight 🤬

Wednesday: Phone saga: So this morning I had an email to say we were good to go, I checked the phone, dead, I looked at the hub, red light, not good to go 🙄 I phoned them (another hour on the phone) and they said the line is live, no it’s not I told them. Another transfer to a different department and to cut a long story short we now have to wait until August 14th for an engineer to come out, meanwhile they will send me a 4G mini hub so I don’t have to use data on my phone. Well that’s good because I am using it as a hotspot and that is painful as I have said before, 3G is all we get and that drops out pretty frequently 🤪

When I finally got off the phone to them I thought I ought to try and get some work done. I can’t remember what else I did but I did make six more jars of Victoria plum jam 😀

We had to take Benny to the vet early evening, luckily I had got him in at lunchtime and shut him in. We put him into a carrier and set off, 10 minutes down the road the cat pooped, 🤣🤣🤣 OMG it was hilarious, I thought John was going to be sick, he was actually gagging, he pulled a mask out of the side pocket and put it on and then we found a safe place to pull over. John held the cat while I sorted it out and we went on our way. The upshot is that it looks like he has been clipped by a car and it has put his hip out ‘Ouch’ this is going to be expensive 🙄 he has to go back tomorrow for an X-ray and they will decide if he needs surgery (possibly amputation depending on injury) 😏

Thursday: Funny kind of a morning, it’s warm but as I was out picking plums it’s started a fine misty rain and just as I am typing the this the sun is coming out and I think it is going to be hot 🥵 (10 minutes later it has gone back in again)

John did the rounds and then went off to work with Wonky Benny to drop him at the vets this morning, I do hope he doesn’t poo again as John is on his own this time 😂

First jobs on the list were watering the pots, the tunnels and the greenhouse as the forecast is anywhere up to 30c+ over the next few days. Then making sure the animals all have got plenty of fresh water just in case, they have fresh water anyway but we tend to double up when the weather is very warm. After finding food for the torts it was on to a bit of plum picking, if I told you the trees are dripping with plums it would be no lie, it’s a bumper crop this year right across the varieties. The Victoria tree is always abundant, the greengage not so much, except for this year, the damsons, never seen so many on there and the new tree (the variety escapes me) is also loaded and very tasty they are too.

At this time of year my kitchen just isn’t big enough for all the produce I am bringing in on a daily basis and I always have baskets and trays of it stacked in various corners until I can get round to sorting them out. At the minute I have cooking apples to be sorted as well, the ones that are damaged will be peeled and cooked for the freezer and any that are in good condition will be stored out the back. This is when I could do with some cool storage as the back area heats up quickly due to the tin roof out there. It would be nice to have a little brick built store shed or at least a heavily insulated wooden shed, but I like the brick shed idea better 😀

So what am I going to do with all these plums? Good question 😜 some will be frozen for winter puddings, some will be made into more jam I think, always good for presents or exchanges, some will be given away to family and friends and some will be sold in the shed. In the past I have made plum sauce and plum chutney and if I get the enthusiasm I may do some this year.

As if I didn’t have enough to do I have come up with another job lol, I have ordered Almond oil as a carrier which arrived this morning and I am going to infuse it with lavender as a quick way of making it, I haven’t done it before so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. You can then add the oil to the bath or use it on your skin.

I harvested some lavender and tied it in bunches to dry on the rack in the kitchen ready to use when it has dried out.

My drying corner

The phone rang and it was John, I figured at 11am it’s not good news and I was right. The vet had called him and Benny’s hip socket was smashed to bits, they couldn’t amputate because they would need to remove too much. The next option was a specialist and even then there was no guarantee he would walk again and so John made the decision to put him to sleep which is exactly what I would have done. The vet said she couldn’t believe he had been walking on it and she had never seen any bone that smashed 🙄 So RIP Benny, I am so very sorry that your wonderful life as our farm cat was cut short and I will miss your very vocal presence. I am done with cats for a while, we still have Diesel (who is getting on in years) but we have been through a few other cats over the last few years, they either get hit by cars or disappear never to be seen again! Molly was the only other cat that saw her last few years out here and died peacefully.

Pretty sure patch will miss you annoying him as well 🥰

I am waiting patiently for this 4G mini hub to turn up from BT it comes with a sim and unlimited data until the problem is sorted. I have tried uploading last weeks blog but like the photos there is not enough umph to do it.

We went over to Sams late afternoon and took Mia out for ice cream and a play at the park just to give Sam a bit of a break from three children to two 😂

Friday: Today the temps are set to rise well above 30c not hot for some countries but not what we are used to here in the UK 😜 I opened the windows early to let the cool morning air in and then shut them as the sun came round, closing the curtains at the same time to hopefully keep the worst of the heat out 🙄 I was up early and outside picking first thing, marrow, beans, peas, mangetout, carrots, cauliflower and a bucketful of eating apples from a dwarf tree! As soon as the torts were fed I was off inside to start prepping. The veg have all be cleaned chopped and open froze, and the apples have all been wiped over sorted into perfect and blemished piles. The perfects will store nicely for a few weeks and the blemished (which won’t store well) will be either used in chutney etc or fed to the animals as a treat. The marrow I am undecided about, many people eat stuffed marrow, I can’t see the point personally 😂 my Dad always told me to make marrow rum, your pour rum into the marrow, hang it for a few days and then let the liquid out from the bottom, again I can’t see the pint, just drink the rum! I will say that I have never tasted either of these so I may be missing something wonderful but I somehow doubt it 😜 Why grow the marrows you may ask, I had the seeds, it’s as simple as that, and if nothing else the hens will enjoy a good feast on them 😀 They will store for weeks mind you so I may decide to have a go at a curry or even use them in a chutney, I don’t have to decide just yet.

I have just received notice that my 4G mini hub will be delivered today thank goodness, it’s a hub supplied by BT (when you have connection problems 😂) that has a sim and unlimited data (free of course) so I should then be able to upload pictures etc. Last weeks blog randomly uploaded while I was typing this up, I have been trying to upload it for days and gave up in the end 🙄

I made plum chutney, love a bit of chutney in a cheese sandwich 😀 Apparently the temps at Heathrow are already 31c and it’s only lunchtime, however Charlie has just sent me a video as she is on the way home from Devon and it’s pouring with rain, ah gotta love the extremes of our climate, it’s not like it’s a big island in comparison to some but the difference in weather from one end to another is hilarious sometimes 😁 It’s nearly 1pm and still pretty cool in the house hopefully it will stay that way 🙄

Yay the mini hub arrived, very mini, not much bigger than a business card in size I was expecting something bigger lol. I now have full WiFi signal 😀 hopefully I can now upload photos.

Saturday: Set to be very hot today so we were up early to get a bit done first thing, John went off to get a few and al supplies and order some bits of fencing he was short of. In the afternoon we went over to my brothers for the first real birthday BBQ this year. John came back mid evening to put the birds to bed and then came back and we stayed until late evening with the fire pit lit and watching the stars, lovely day. Luckily there was a lot of shade and a good breeze so it was t too u comfortable.

Sunday: A bit late up today lol, 8am which is late for us. After the feeding rounds John cracked on with the last remaining bit of fencing and I went out to pick plums and do a bit of weeding. It was overcast for a good part of the morning and although it was still warm it gave me a chance to get some things done. Mum and Ken came over after lunch to pick some plums , I gave them a bagful of dwarf beans a marrow to go home with as well. It is at that stage where I have so much produce I either don’t know what to do with it all or I am sick of processing it all so start giving it away by the bagful 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

Plums, Lammas & plenty of produce 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Apologies for the lateness of this we are still having problems with the landline and internet and uploading is difficult 🤪

Monday 27th July 2020: It’s wet this morning and we have had some terrific downpours over the weekend, great for the garden not so great for getting outside 😜 The phonline saga still continues because as it was left, we were to be disconnected in order to reconnect the cottage and then we could place a new order for a line. The disconnection was supposed to happen on the 28th which is tomorrow and we couldn’t put in an order until that had been sorted out BUT I have received messages from BT to say our order was going through and would be connected on the 5th August? I wait to see what actually happens here as I am convinced this is all going to go t**s up as well 🙄

Tuesday: An mixture of weather, overcast sometimes but warm and then when the sun comes out it’s pretty hot! I did a bit of cutting back, a lot is now going over and looking quite scruffy, time to tidy it up a bit, I always think that at this time of year the garden has the ‘morning after’ effect, the oomph and brightness of the party has gone and you are left with the clearing up 😂

Shelley messaged to see if I wanted a ‘shake shack’ ooo yes please and she came to pick me up, we sat in the car with our shakes watching the world (well the town anyway) go by, a lovely distraction from the norm.

I had a wander round to look at the plum trees today, they are laden with fruit 😀 however they seem to be nearly ready to pick which is about 4 weeks earlier than normal 🤔 I can only assume it was weeks of wall to wall sunshine earlier in the year. Plums can be picked and then ripened off the tree but they do need to be ‘on the turn’ as it were.

Wednesday: A warm and sunny day ahead and you know what that means for me 😀 get on early and avoid the uv rays later 😂 I had a definite job in mind this morning, picking plums, but first I had to get the other bits of picking done. The photo shows the haul today and to be fair I could do that every day now for a good few weeks, I also spotted our first cauliflower that is almost ready to harvest. But as I said the plums are my main focus at the minute, ripening earlier than usual, they can be picked and ripened indoors. Two reasons why this is a good idea, number one, wasps 🙄 the riper the fruit gets the more the wasps feast on them and the more likely you are to get stung, number two, you can pick in succession so I don’t have to pick them all at once, I will do it over a couple of weeks, by the time I get to the end of that time the plums will be ripe and I will be competing with the wasps but by then I will have plenty in store or in the freezer. They are looking pretty good this year too and by that I mean no damage, no sign of plum moth so the pheromone traps have worked well 😀

Once all the picking is done it’s indoors to prep it all, the beans, peas and carrots all chopped and ready for open freezing, I don’t blanch them, they turn out just as good if not better because they have no excess moisture on them which causes frosting. The potatoes will store readily enough for a while, the beetroot got roasted and then they will be frozen ready for use when required and the fruit is for pudding later. I was given some windfall apples (also earlier than usual) so I have peeled and cooked them and will make a sponge mix to go on top as we have plenty of eggs at the moment. The produce is coming thick and fast and it’s always a decision as to what to use that day, tomatoes and cucumbers don’t keep and don’t freeze so it best to use them first while all the veg can be frozen so they can be frozen and used another time. Some of it I will put out for sale, as I say, it covers the costs of the seeds so effectively apart from my time, the food is all free 😀

The phone line saga continues, I have had messages from BT to say our order is in and we will have a line on the 4th August all good except that as I understood it the last order was cancelled and I was going to have to make a new one once the cottage up the road had their number back. That was supposed to be yesterday but we still have it and today openreach called to ask what the problem was as they were at the junction box, so who knows how this will pan out now!

Sam, Mia and the twins came over for a couple of hours, we had a wander down to the paddock to give biscuit and brush and pick out their feet.

Almost immediately after typing the paragraph about the phone we lost the line and consequently the internet connection and even I had forgotten just how much runs on WiFi 😂 It’s a bit of a warning to us really about how dependant we become on some things and that we should always have a back up plan 🙄 We have now lost touch with the rest of the world until next Tuesday unless I can pick up 4G outside but we are rural and so that is not always possible. Luckily I can still type this up it will just be the upload that I need a connection for.

Thursday: It’s my birthday 😀 John had asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch or dinner and I said I prefer breakfast and I had just the place in mind. So we were up early and off out for waffles by 8am, they do lovely waffles, bacon and maple syrup and I was glad they were open again. The rest of the day was spent with visitors coming and going, Mum and Ken came round for coffee and cake late morning, then Sam, shelley and the children arrived, my niece and her little one came shortly after, then Charlie arrived. We had a short interlude before a chap came to give us a price to take down a few trees, then my brother and his wife called in, they went and my sister and her husband arrived and also my youngest sister popped in. By 9pm I was pooped 😜 I have had a lovely lot of presents befitting a smallholder/gardener from butter making equipment to garden solar lights and a beautiful hand drawn picture of the grandchildren, I’m very lucky.

I did do a few little jobs inbetween all that, picked the pears from my tree as it did have masses but something has been eating them and there two big ones on the path that had been half eaten. I don’t want to lose all of them so I had picked them and they will continue to ripen off the tree. I sowed a few flower seeds and repotted a plant but that’s about it.

My new winter wellies arrived, I buy Aigle wellies they are expensive but they last much better than any other brand I have tried over the years and so they are cost effective.

Friday: It is supposed to be a scorcher today 30c + 🥵 I got all the outside jobs done pretty quickly including hanging out the washing, might as well make use of the heat. The wood delivery arrived for a new fence out in the front area, it will be the same as the fence by the egg shed and hopefully discourage the hens from coming in the front as eventually I want to plant large areas of it up and don’t want them constantly ruining it.

I have just had an email from BT saying they have dispatched our equipment for the new landline and broadband connection, they have the right mobile number for me, the right email address, the right name but they still have the wrong address. No problem just give them a call and sort it, oh no not that simple as I appear to have no mobile coverage at the minute ffs I just feel like crying 😭 I am not worried about the equipment getting delivered because the cottage will just send it here if it goes there, what I am worried about is that after all we have been through they still don’t have the correct address and this will all start again with trying to connect the wrong line!

Bloody hell that was hot today 🥵 good job our place is nice and cool inside, the bathroom is the coolest of all so in desperate times I can always lie on the floor in there (I haven’t ever done it but I could if I wanted lol) I spent the day inside doing not very much, I did have Mia for a few hours and she wanted to play under the sprinkler but got bored with that quite quickly I’m glad to say. It’s very close this evening, I have watered the two tunnels and the greenhouse, there were a few spots of rain but as yet they haven’t amounted to very much. I do hope we get a storm it will clear the air and water the garden at the same time 😜 I had a lovely bunch of sweet peas given me today, they smell divine and have cheered the kitchen up no end 😀

Saturday: Soooo much cooler this morning and a lot fresher thank goodness 😀 We have both been very busy this morning, me picking, there is an awful lot to pick at the moment, it just keeps coming but that’s what this life is all about and the reason why we didn’t have or don’t have any fear of lockdowns 😜 After picking everything it was on to prepping, mostly for the freezer but I also made plum jam with some of the Victoria plums. I have my eye on a greengage and vanilla pie recipe for the beautiful sweet little green plums 😀 If you have never eaten them and think they don’t look ripe, they are and they are one of the sweetest tasting plums you can get. I am very proud to have a 50 year old proper Cambridge greengage tree here. The plums look amazing this year if a little on the small side but the plum moth traps have worked wonders and from 1.5kg I only found three plums with the grub in so that is good going. Meanwhile John has been very busy digging holes and put up a new fence in the front area. We watch the gardening programmes and laugh when they dig easily into their soil for projects, here on the edge of the Cotswolds it’s brash and that is hard going when you want to dig 🥵 not to mention the remains of footings from the old RAF buildings which without fail seem to be just where you need to dig as well 😂

Wasp season is well and truly here, the minute there is sweet, sticky jam about the wasps home in on it 😜 actually just one little wasp but it just would not let go of the spoon rest 😂

It’s August the first today and so it’s Lammas, the celebration of the first of the harvesting, last year I grew enough stalks of wheat to make a corn dolly but I didn’t grow any this year, I should have made a loaf of bread but I didn’t do that either, not doing too well am I. I could do an altar, I know lots of people do but I tend to just acknowledge the day and the turning of the wheel instead 😀

Sunday: An in between day today, when the sun comes out it’s hot but not as hot as it has been and we have intermittent cloud as well. John did the morning rounds and I got on with cleaning the house. Then John went out to continue the new fence which is progressing well 😀 I just hope it deters the chickens from coming in the front area as they are digging up my pots and anything I have planted in the ground suffers from their scratching around. It’s not like they don’t have enough other space to forage in 😂

We have two problems today, one is the water pressure, I have noticed that for the last few days it has been down, we needed to check that we didn’t have a leak on our side of the mains. We couldn’t see anything anywhere but best to check at the meter, when we have everything turned off the meter does not move so that’s good, we are not losing water we are paying for but the pressure is still down 🙄 The second problem is Benny the cat, he had been gone for 5 days and turned up last night but he is not walking right. He does not seem to be in pain, I have had a good feel and he does not cry when I touch him but it’s still not right. The other thing was that he was starving, he ate and ate and ate, he was pretty chunky when he was last here so I imagine he has got stuck somewhere, lost a bit of weight and wriggled out from wherever he was. At the moment he is in the boot room but we need to get him to a vet tomorrow, as I said he is not in pain and he is eating well but just not walking correctly and he won’t jump up or down either, I think he may have pulled or torn a muscle or something 😏 At least he’s is home and secured in the back for the time being 😀

I made butter today 😀 Last birthday my sister bought me a butter churn and this birthday she bought me some butter paddles and some cream so I thought I better try the churn out. It’s quite concerning at how many people (youngsters) don’t realise butter is made from cream 🙄 You May ask why bother, well generally I don’t but if there is cream that has been reduced in price I like to have a go, it’s not cost effective otherwise but the butter you get is far superior to the blocks you buy in the shop unless you are buying quality butter that is 😀

I am sorry about the lack of photos, I have taken plenty but I am using my phone WiFi to connect the iPad to and am barely getting 3G at the best of times so uploading them is failing miserably 😏 Hopefully when we are connected again all will be well 😜 It all takes me back to the days of dial up and how bloody frustrating that was!