Month: November 2020

Monday 9th November 2020: First thing this morning I have a repeat blood test as my last lot are showing low leucocytes again 😏 That means increased risk of infection so I need to be a bit careful.

Last night I was reading that the house sparrow is on the red list for conservation which surprised me greatly, we have a good flock of them here, around twenty I would say. I need to make sure they have everything they need, food through the winter and housing, I put up new sparrow flats for them when we took the old boxes down but they haven’t been seen in them as yet. What they have been doing is going in the roof where we haven’t put the capping back on (it’s ordered but not arrived yet) and I was complaining that they have pulled out bits of fibreglass which are now on the ground in the front. I think I will look to see where else we can put the old bird boxes until they decided to move into the new ones.

I was quite depressed at the thought that this is only day five of the lockdown, seems longer, and how I was going to pass the time but if this morning is anything to go by I needn’t worry. First the blood test, then Shelley walked over to get eggs so we had a chat over the gate (odd that last week they could all come in and this week they can’t 🙄 but rules is rules) then I thought I will phone Sue and see how she is doing, five minutes in and the straw and hay delivery arrived so I said I would call her back. Went out to sort where it was all going came back in to get the payment and realised I had left my soup on high, luckily it wasn’t burning, called Sue back for the rest of our chat, did some hoovering, sat down for my soup and John popped in between jobs. The time has shot past today and hopefully it will be like that every day.

I was feeling quite anxious and emotional this morning, mainly I think because of these white cells or rather, lack of them. It’s important because they lead to a condition called leucopenia and even when we don’t have a viral pandemic you are advised to wear a mask as you are highly susceptible to bacterial and viral infections as the immune system is not functioning. With the Lupus and the meds you take for it you can swing from a very over aggressive immune system to one that can’t even be bothered 😂 So you can see why it’s a worry, obviously the ideal would be a level system but that never seems to work because too many other factors can intervene. A morning of interaction and I feel more emotionally stable now thank goodness.

I had planned on doing a few things outside but the hours have passed and other things occurred instead, I did water the carrot seedlings, they don’t seem to be growing very fast though and I checked on the oranges which look nearly ready to pick 😀 I hope they are sweet enough and not sharp, that will be very disappointing.

I prepped dinner Nr lit the Rayburn, monitoring the time all the while but John came home early and he did the feed rounds and egg collecting so that was a happy bonus and with the extra time I made a raspberry pudding for dessert 😀

Shelley decided that through hers and Martin’s businesses they would like to spread a little cheer and have donated selection boxes, people can nominate someone they think could do with a little cheer either because they are alone, have lost their job or are struggling for some reason or other. The gift is in the giving and so we have donated from both the farm and the plumbing business as well and she is getting offers from lots of people to also donate, it’s amazing and so many people need to know that others are thinking about them at this difficult time and that although we are all socially distanced they are not on their own.

Helping people out gives you much more pleasure than you can imagine and is good for the soul and at time brings unexpected returns, some of my favourite memories are from people giving me things because I had helped them out. I have told these before but I love them so here they are again, one was when a chap stopped to get duck eggs when we first started out, duck eggs are difficult to find and so he was delighted but he didn’t have enough money. No problem just drop it in next time you are passing and we are talking about 40p or something like that. About 8 weeks later he arrived with his 40p and a trailer full of hay bales, would you like these he asked me, how much I said, for free he replied, I was flabbergasted, amazed, delighted 😁 The other times are also to do with eggs, people often want eggs for hatching but they don’t need many, one lot was for a Duke of Edinburgh award and some other lots were for children to hatch at childcare facilities, for activities like these I give them for free as they are learning opportunities which I am all for 😀 Never expecting anything in return I was humbled when I received chocolates/cards/flowers thanking me. They were such small giving moments but they grow of their own accord, the excitement and the chance to encounter nature doing what it does best and then the learning activities around it and finally the knowledge they gain from the experience, it’s all priceless and very rewarding. So you see a small gesture of kindness naturally grows into bigger things for everyone involved 😀

News just released of a real potential vaccine which gives us hope for the future, 90% effective apparently, obviously they will proceed with caution but it’s a chink of light on the horizon.

Tuesday: It’s lunchtime and it is lovely and sunny and quite mild out there, it wasn’t first thing mind you, the minute I put my coat on to go out it started raining but it soon cleared up. This morning I have spent a large part of the time rearranging electric fencing for the horses, during spring and summer we have an area fenced off for biscuit that she periodically goes into to prevent laminitis and that has worked well this year. Now we don’t need it for her but we need it for Jack, basically to keep him off the yard, as the grass gets more sparse he starts looking further afield which means he breaks out, plus I want to fence off the big side paddock so the hens don’t end up living in a bog. Horses feet churn up the wet ground and basically trash it and it quickly becomes a big muddy puddle, the ground recovers in Spring but it’s good to have some grass for the hens. I took all the fencing down from one area and then put it all up where I need it now, I connected everything up closely watched by Jack who was like my shadow the whole time, I went in to plug into the mains and when I came out he had got two of the slip rails down in that short time 🙄 I put them back up and then turned on the fence energiser, click, click, the minute Jack heard that noise he knew the game was over and he turned and wandered away. Up to that point he was probably thinking wayhay I can escape but the horses are very familiar with electric fencing and once they hear that noise they know there is no use hanging around anymore.

After that and a quick coffee I went into the greenhouse, might as well make good use of a nice day. I spent my time cleaning up the tubers I dug the other day, the dahlias still need to dry off a bit more and I brushed off the dirt from the yacon and Oca. Some off them will come indoors to be used in cooking and some will dry off and I will store them to plant next year. I have hedged my bet four ways with the yacon as I don’t know much about them, first I have put one lot in the ground and will see how they get on through winter, the next I have potted up and that will stay in the greenhouse, the third lot are smaller tubers that I will dry and store and the last lot are the plant roots that I will also dry and store, hopefully out of that lot one or more will be successful. I picked some of the runner beans that are now ready to store, the pod goes brown and papery on the vine, pick them, get the seeds out and dry before storing overwinter somewhere dry. I have dwarf French beans doing the same, and little piles of other seeds drying on the side waiting to be stored in the dry. I usually bring the seeds inside and keep them in the spare room in the dark, it gets too damp anywhere outside and I find that works well. I then did a couple of hardwood cuttings of my fig tree hoping to get a few new plants for next spring.

Wednesday: John knocked on the bedroom window from outside, get a look a the sunrise he said, Wow, it was fiery and orange and usually thats what the sunset looks like but this was first thing in the morning, breathtaking.

I got up and dressed and on with the day, various jobs to do, clean the boot room and the back toilet, sort out dinner for this evening, nothing very exciting on the to do list today. Shelley walked over and we stood and had a chat over the gate but apart from that and a hardware delivery nothing much eventful happened. I did decided to make a Slimming World Diet Coke chocolate cake, one word, don’t 😝 It went in the bin it was that bad, I think I would rather have a normal one and eat less of it 😂 It got me thinking about healthy bakes and trying to find recipes that look vaguely like they would taste good but they are all full of weird ingredients. I think the closest I find to a good recipe are probably diabetic recipes, at least the substitutions are usually honey or maple syrup not some reconstituted husk of a hitherto unheard of vegetable or grain 😏

John called, he will be later than normal can I put the birds to bed, looks like I will have to. I hate the early dark evenings when he comes home after dark and then goes to work before the light, it feels like you have no one to share the daylight hours with.

We have worrying confirmation of six different cases of Avian Flu in the country, more worryingly is that they are fairly spread out in different counties all around the UK, many more cases and there will be a lockdown for poultry as well as us 🙄

We went food shopping tonight, I just needed a few things but seemed to end up with a lot of things. When I was packing it away I began to wonder if I was subconsciously stocking up, genuinely not doing it on purpose but I have definitely more than three tins of baked beans in the cupboard 😂

Our egg customers have gone awol again, really weird how it goes through phases, each day this week we have had hardly any customers, other days we are inundated with them, one week we can hardly keep up with duck egg sales and this week they are stacking up in the shed 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Do you ever think that when things start to go wrong they go wronger and wronger 😏 This morning started off ok as far as the smallholding goes, jobs done, things sorted and all that. I need to get my prescription picked up and the plan was I would call the pharmacy to make sure it was ready then call John and have him collect it later, first fly in the ointment is that John has left his phone here 🤷‍♀️ so that plan goes out the window, luckily I call Shelley and she is in town and collects it for me, I will get John to collect from her later tonight (I need it for the morning). Second is the doctor calls re the blood results but only has half of them in will call again later when they have them, fine I go to the loo and the phone rings again, damn it, luckily they then tried the house phone and having finished my function I was able to answer. Terribly sorry but there has been a mix up at the lab and we will need to redo the full blood count, ffs, I am going to have an arm like a drug addict at this rate, your thinking that I could change the arm, nope the other arm doesn’t appear to have a vein that can be tapped 😂 so I now have to get over first thing in the morning for another blood test. On top of those life misdemeanours we have the more worrying aspect of the Avian Flu to sort out, it is now a legal obligation to make sure our biosecurity is in order. For the hens that means that we need to feed inside (which we do anyway because of the crows) and we will also need to keep their water inside away from wild birds. The ducks will also have to be fed inside but their water is a problem, ducks and water go together like bread and butter so more difficult to implement that, they need constant water to keep their nostrils clean after dabbling in the undergrowth. That is stage one, along with foot baths for anyone coming into the farm but that is not an issue at the minute is it 😜 The next is that I will have to stop feeding the wild birds, this is the saddest bit for me but the idea is to not encourage them to be anywhere near the flock as they will be the carriers/transmitters of the disease. We then need to make plans in case a full lockdown is required which given the spread of it is highly likely this year. That means all birds will be shut in for the foreseeable future, if they have an outdoor run it needs to be netted so that wild birds cannot get in. We have the POL run which is suitably netted after the last outbreak a few years ago, but the rest will be in the stables, luckily we have them spare, not ideal but at least they will have room. I remember last time we tried to tarp the orchard run, gee, we had the wettest, muddiest winter and it was soul destroying stuff but the stable block is dry and has windows so at least they can see outside 😜 Keep chickens they said, it will be fun they said 😏 Apart from all that, the sun is shinning and it’s not a bad day so I will take the good along with the bad today. Sometimes life seems like a scrabble, it’s like scrabbling up the rock face until you get to a level plateau again 🤦‍♀️

Went for a stroll round the village with Mum at lunchtime which was very nice, the sun was shinning and it wasn’t too cold, saw a couple of people to say hello to which lifts the spirits 😀

John came home early and spent a couple of hours cleaning and tidying out his van 🤷‍♀️ still it was nice to know someone else was around.

Friday: Another sunny and not too cold start to the day although it rained heavily during the night. Got a few bits done then off to get yet another blood test done 😜 hopefully this one will come back all in one piece and I can move forward in whatever direction I need to go.

I heard a couple of very strange wildlife stories this week, the first was of a fox taking a small dog somewhere near where Mum lives, this was witnessed by a gentleman although it seems they don’t know who’s dog it was. The second was the discovery of a dead otter, what is curious about that is that to my knowledge we don’t have otters around here, not for miles as far as I know. I have seen the photo and agree that it does not look like and English otter, it’s a mystery as to how it got there and why it died but it has been called in to wildlife experts and a university is taking it to do a post mortem to find out more if they can.

I have decided that I will keep feeding the wild birds but I will be moving the feeders to an area that is about as far from the hens as I can get it, it’s likely that the poultry industry will go into lockdown if reports of confirmed cases keep coming in anyway and once they are shut away there will be little risk of contamination. Worrying times with two major viruses in the country, if the two collide 😳 (and that could happen) we would be up shit creek without a paddle!

Saturday: The weather started off ok and then took a complete dive until it was vile out there. John was busy digging out the rest of the raised bed area on the tractor until it began to rain so heavily he had to stop, there is no cab so he was getting pretty wet. I went out and put new bedding in the geese, duck and light Sussex housing and then put up the hooks for the bird feeders and moved them well out of the way, hopefully the birds will soon find them. I also put up the remaining old nest boxes give them somewhere to roost over winter. I then spent two hours looking for something I knew we had but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s a leather stamping kit, so basically letters on the end of metal sticks in a box, you hit the stamp and it punches it into leather, marking it with a postcode or name. I wanted it to make some Christmas decorations but I can’t find it anywhere and I had pulled out boxes, opened drawers, looked inside everything, nope nowhere to be seen. I have ordered a new set but you can bet your bottom dollar it will now appear.

We came in for lunch and lit the Rayburn, drank tea and watched the news, hopefully the weather will clear a little and we can carry on outside. 😏

It didn’t clear up much but John went out to do what he could anyway, me I stayed in to stoke the Rayburn 😜

I spent an evening do a bit of Christmas craft, I sometimes wish I was more artistic as there are so many things I would like to have a go at. In my minds eye I see what I want but the reality is nothing like it, I still remember my art o level piece, I knew exactly how I wanted it to look right from the beginning but it was a big fat fail lol. Nevertheless I still have a go at a few things when the moment takes me, tonight it was gift tags, I have a large amount of buttons which were in Johns Mum sewing stuff, I doubt I will be sewing buttons on anything any time soon so I made gift tags instead 😀

Sunday: It was vile weather overnight and vile this morning but eventually the rain moved on and the sun even came out at times though it’s a tad cold at around 8 degrees. John did the morning rounds and then attempted inbetween rain showers to carry on with the raised bed, he almost abandoned it altogether when a stiff breeze came along and blew the rain along. Meanwhile I have been doing the usual morning jobs, a bit of washing and sorting dinner for later, I did pop out to feed the guineas and have a look in the polytunnels and then back in to get the Rayburn lit. No point me trying to help John as he is levelling and squaring p, not my strong point and I would probably be more of a hindrance than help on this job. So I supply the cups of tea, a sandwich, make sure there is hot water and a hearty supper for later on 😀 Slow roasted lamb shank today 🥰

Just sitting having a cuppa and have been watching a short video on biodiversity on the smallholding (or it could even be related to a garden/allotment) It became obvious that I have been doing everything that was suggested and this talk was given by someone who gets paid to advise large farms and parks with their biodiversity projects so I am quite chuffed that I am on point with my plans to increase wildlife in all forms. The only thing I haven’t ever done is record it either by writing it down or logging it with various surveys. I will start a log I think, I can recall right back to the beginning when we first came that even though we are surrounded by countryside, there was not much going on here, mostly due to routine spraying I suspect. I have seen a big increase in wildlife especially over the last four or five years and each year I am surprised by more arrivals, like the bees in the hollow this year which incidentally are still going in and out, and the snake, it’s a great feeling to be able to make a difference however small.

Quick update on the kittens, both are doing well, exploring further and further outside but they can often be found curled up on a cushion in the boot room. They get on well will the dogs, by that I mean they tolerate them and are not afraid of them, the dogs don’t take much notice of them unless they go to close to a food bowl with biscuits in or if they make a sudden playful dash, on the whole though it’s lovely to see them all sleeping in the same room together proving that cats and dogs don’t always fight 😀

I went outside about 2pm and helped John, we now have the raised bed finished (except the top soil) and the ground all levelled back out again. Only thing was with the shovelling and raking I have twinged my lower back 😕 Today I did the afternoon feed round and egg collection while John got the tractor round to finished moving and levelling the driveway. We have got a way to go yet, topsoil needs delivering and then we need to build the last bed which is much smaller, then a layer of clean gravel needs to go down, some cutting back of the hazel trees (the planting up will have to wait till spring) then there is the side driveway to start on 😂 always another job on the horizon 😜

Have a good week and stay safe, keep your chin up and keep smiling, we will get through this eventually (the winter & covid) 😃