Month: April 2021

Posted in Friesland Farm

Jam, asparagus soup & May Day 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 26th April 2021: Still on the chilly side for April and no sign of it warming for the next two weeks. Best to dress for the cold and take layers off I think 🤔 This week John has a full week of ‘proper’ work so I will mainly be here on my own bimbling away. This morning I set to making the dandelion honey from the flowers I picked yesterday, if you are going to try then pick them from a place you know has t been sprayed with anything and preferably where animals have not been 🙄 Mine have come from the garden where no animals are allowed and definitely no spraying, pick them in the sunshine so they are fully open and warmed by the sun. You can either take your time and pull off all the petals or you can keep them whole with the green bits attached (not the stalks) because you are going to strain it so it won’t make much difference in the end. Just give the flowers a good shake so any insects have time to escape before you boil them 😜 Simmer for 15 mins with a slice of lemon and then leave overnight to steep. Strain and squeeze out all the juice you can, measure the liquid, you want a pound of sugar for every pint of liquid. Then simmer (a good simmer not gentle) for 15 mins before putting into hot, sterilised jars. That’s it, liquid gold, sunshine in a pot, it is not as thick as honey more of a sauce but still very delicious and worth having a go just so you can say you have done it. Back in the day dandelions were a very important flower/crop and far from removing them from lawns they were actually planted up. They are a great source of nectar for bees and other insects, a great food source for many small mammals and you can even make a reasonable coffee from the dried roots (I have read this but never tried) Part of what is wrong with today’s thinking is we want perfect lawns and grass areas, what is perfect, that’s the question 🤷‍♀️ To me a perfect lawn is full of wild flowers, they are not weeds, they serve a purpose just not to humans, unless you make use of them that is.

It is mid morning and one of my plans today is to get my tomato plants in the polytunnel. I have looked at the long range forecast and even though the temps are below average it looks like the overnight temperature will remain above freezing for most of the time. I may have to put an extra fleece over the plants if I think it’s going to go below 0c but it’s looking hopeful.

I spent the rest of the morning in the small tunnel planting the tomato plants, 14 in total a mix of sweet million, tigerella and cherry indigo. I have to confess I don’t know which plant is which because though I labeled the rows when they were growing I muddled them up once they were potted up, I didn’t think carefully enough and whoops error made. Still have more plants, some will go into the big tunnel and I always try some outside to see how they do. I have staked them all and tied them in and the run string from the stake to the crop bar in the roof of the tunnel. These measures will hold them upright and hopefully take the weight when they are loaded with tomatoes. Because the temperatures are not up to seasonal average at the minute I have taken the precaution of fleecing the inside of the door ways to provide extra protection from the night temperatures, I have also cut extra fleece to put over them at night. It’s nice and warm in there at the minute, around 25c but you can feel the difference once you step outside so best to Molly coddle them as much as possible at the moment, I don’t want to lose them after spending so long getting them growing from seed.

I came indoors then for a bite to eat, I am not sure if it was the heat in the tunnel or what but I didn’t feel too well, a bit sick. I have had it before and wonder if it is my blood sugars dipping too low for some reason. Usually if I come in and have something to eat and a sit down it passes after a while 🤷‍♀️ I have regular blood test so if it was a permanent problem I think they would have seen it in the results before now. It tends to be when I am busy but it doesn’t happen often, I always have a good breakfast of oats and banana so it’s not that I have skipped breakfast or anything like that.

It is very quiet here today, not much noise outside at all and we have probably had one egg customer all day 😔 We worked out that we need to sell £7 worth of eggs a day just to cover the feed costs that doesn’t even include bedding or our time and the egg boxes we buy and it certainly doesn’t cover times when we have to worm the hens (which we only do if necessary). If business gets much slower I think we will have to have a serious discussion about wether to carry on with it or not 🙄 We might have to come up with a different idea altogether. I think it is because we are used to not being able to keep up with egg demand lol and it has certainly dropped for some reason. Not that I am too worried, the intention was always to be self sufficient and the egg thing just started as a sideline to move extra eggs but it’s nice to have people come and have a chat and put the world to rights sometimes.

Cup of tea and a sit down mid afternoon, I have just finished making some rhubarb and orange jam. Hoping it will set, there is not much mystery to jam making except the set lol and a lot depends on how much moisture is in the fruit you use. Really once you get it to a rolling boil and a temperature of 105c it theoretically should set but there is always the unknown. I never do the freezer test because quite frankly I can’t be arsed, our freezers are right out the back so by the time I got the plate in it would have warmed up a bit and so no good anyway. I prefer to get it to temp and hope🤞 generally it’s fine but sometimes if we have had a lot of rain and the fruit has taken up a lot of water it can be more tricky but nothing a re-boil couldn’t sort out. I went with orange in the end as that is what I fancied doing, the vanilla option can work out a tad expensive as you are supposed to put half a bean in and they cost a fair bit plus to me that’s a bit of a waste of a vanilla bean 😜

The dandelion honey is a little runny so more of a pouring sauce, it will still be great with ice cream or even pancakes/yoghurt etc but no so good to spread. The one I made last time was a better, thicker consistency and was so yummy that finger dipping was a must.

The jam was a good set, I can tell after only 10 mins because even though in the hot jars it’s still runny, in the bottom of the pan it’s nicely cooled and thick and sticky. I used to wash the pan straight away but it is good way of finding out how the set has gone so I leave it to cool and then wash it.

I sometimes think it would be good to do it for a living but I am a bit of a perfectionist, there is no way I would sell anything that wasn’t exactly right. I can imagine if it was yays to the left and nays to the right (or which ever way round it goes) that I would have a bigger reject pile than a sellable pile 😂 That goes for anything I do really. I think another reason I would like to do something is because I love to look for new recipes for things I grow but half of it John wouldn’t eat so there is not much point making it just for me, I would look like a roly poly pudding (even more than I do now) maybe I will just start making it and hope that he likes the look, but no, I don’t think that will work, we have such totally different tastes in food it’s ridiculous 😬

Oo John saw a shooting star last night, there is meteor activity at the minute, the eta aquariids, so that’s most likely what he saw.

Just in case you thought I was finished with the making today, nope, I made some asparagus soup. I had a bunch that I picked the day before yesterday and put in the shed but it hadn’t sold and so I got it back in. It had gone a bit limp so no point leaving it out there, I picked another fresh bunch and made soup. A simple soup that is big on flavour and of course would be delicious with a hunk of fresh bread and some Parmesan shavings. You could add cream to the soup but I like simple soups and beside it’s less fattening 😬 Just chop up and onion and a clove of garlic, sauté in a knob of butter and a drop of olive oil, the butter gives it a richer flavour but you can leave it out if you want. Add pepper and the chopped asparagus and then stock of your choice, either veg or chicken. Simmer until the asparagus is soft then either serve like that or whizz it with a blender stick. I don’t add extra salt because of the stock cube but add salt to taste if you like. Simple, nutritious, delicious and can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. You can freeze this but not with the cream added, leave it out and add it later if you are freezing it.

Tuesday: I feel like I have been on the go fours and it’s only 9.30am. Mostly I have been doing household bits, the mundane stuff that has to be done also sort the egg shed, feed the dogs, put out the rubbish etc. Time for a quick coffee and contemplate what jobs I will do today, it’s still cold only about 5c at the minute, getting up to 14c at some point but at least the cold wind has dropped today which is a bonus. I haven’t checked the poly tunnel yet but I think the plants will have been ok, I have some out for sale in a little greenhouse and they are fine this morning so the Molly coddled ones should be cosy. The pepper plants and cucumbers are not big enough to transplant yet, they will go into the big tunnel, I had considered doing that today but they need to wait a while yet.

I decided as it was pretty cool outside I would sit and make some cards which is what I did for a couple of hours.

John came home as he had left his phone somewhere and had to phone around to find out where it was, eventually located it and will pick it up later.

I then went onto doing paperwork as I have got a bit behind and needed to catch up. Doing the household stuff and the farm receipts was the easy bit, doing Johns plumbing was painful. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ springs to mind. I took a lunch break and went back to it but I honestly can’t make head nor tail of some of it. It appears we don’t have all the statements, some of the invoices and I can’t for the life of me match up payments for one supplier 🙄 It drives me to despair the amount of times I have tried to get John to organise supplier and payment records might as well bash my head against a brick wall. I am sure we will get there eventually as it’s usually all filed in Johns head but that’s not much use to me when he isn’t here. He tells me he has a book that he writes it down in now, I can’t wait to see that! Probably won’t be able to make head or tail of that either, it will be in special ‘John’ code 😜

Typical of me as I can’t leave a job alone until it’s done even when I know I can’t finish it so I have been going back and forth to the paperwork 😂 I have managed to chip away at little bits so I have less of it buzzing round in my head. This is all just to get it straight ready for getting in order for the accountant, that is yet to come 😩

I lit the Rayburn around 3pm, we haven’t had it lit for the last few days and relied on the electric blow heater in the living room but it’s just too cold overnight and so today I have decided to light it. Chances are we will be roasting by mid evening but we can always let it go out again.

I have been saddened to read online that the whole shop local frenzy of last year seems to have died. Plenty of egg sellers wondering where the customers have gone 🤔

I just need to have a small moan and get something off my chest here: I have just seen a social media post regarding garden waste and the fact that you have to pay to get your waste taken away. A garden tax, was someone’s description, excuse me 🙄 but it’s your garden and your garden waste and yet you think you shouldn’t have to pay to get it removed kerbside, here is an idea COMPOST IT YOURSELF THEN! Thanks for listening 😜

Seriously though there is a mind set that is pretty ugly when you look at it, everything is someone else’s fault or responsibility, the wider picture is never looked at or considered 🙄

It’s 8.45, John has gone out to put the birds to bed and if I had any nuts I would be sweating them off by now 😂 bloody roasting in here even though we didn’t put any more wood on the fire after 7pm as it was already getting a bit warm, all or nothing!

Wednesday: It started raining persistently last night with a few heavy bursts overnight and it’s still raining this morning. This is about one of the only times I will put a smiley face for rain 😁 we haven’t had any for weeks and the ground was really, really dry. The beds we planted up were holding up just about, I had been giving the plants a quick pick me up sprinkling with the hose but they really needed a soaking and now they have had one. Of course, not only will the plants put on some lush growth but so will the weeds 😂 ah well you can’t win them all and at least they might be easier to pull than they have been lately.

I have been delighted with the tulips this year, we don’t have many but they have been bright and cheery and really lift the spirits more so than the daffodils I think. So I had a mad idea lol and thought it would be nice to plant up pots of tulip bulbs and perhaps sell them, they would make great Easter and Mother’s Day presents ours birthday or general have a nice day gifts. Of course one thing led to another and my enthusiasm spread to, wouldn’t it be nice to have the bed in front of the window filled with tulips so I bought 500 bulbs, yep 500 lol, it’s the daffodil episode all over again. Obviously I have missed the boat this year but next year they are going to look fantastic and there will be enough bulbs to pot some up for sale. The 1000 daffodil bulbs I bought and planted along with Mum and Ken are doing well, they come up each year in a block of beautiful yellow but they always seem to be a bit late pr than most. They are up in the back paddock too which means they can’t really be seen, on hindsight I should have planted them in the driveway grass, never mind I can always start dividing them, this is the third year of flowering so I could start lifting some later in the year.

BOO! I just want to conduct a little experiment lol to see how many people read the blog all the way through. So if you could add Boo to the comments I would very much appreciate it 😁

Don’t forget to Boo 👻😜

Went out mid morning to do the horses and the guinea pigs, I watered the greenhouse and checked on the polytunnel. Where my hands got wet I could really feel the cold it’s not much warmer out there and there is not much I can be doing at the minute so I came back in to organise dinner tonight. I did get chased by the gander and at one point I thought I was cornered but found a hazel stick on the floor, a wave of that and he went off haughtily with his women, 😅

I have avintage flower press that I picked up at a boot sale years ago just because I loved it. I have never used it, until now, this morning I have picked some tiny flower heads and pressed them, no idea what I will do with the yet but it will be fun to think of something.

Saturday May 1st 2021: May Day, Beltane, a time to celebrate the arrival of summer 🙄 (thats a bit iffy here in the UK 😂) Still it is the time to enjoy nature at its finest, the blossom on the trees, the flowers, the hedgerows, the lush green grass. Birds, insects and animals everywhere are busy reproducing. These days we barely give May Day a second thought which is really sad, there was a time when a maypole was a permanent features in towns and villages and May Day was a day of celebration.

I had a very productive morning and part of the afternoon. I have been weeding, digging out deep rooted weeds, raking, having a bonfire and putting down membrane on the difficult for me to get too bed. It’s a good job I had been busy as you will notice nothing written for Thursday and Friday, that’s because apart from basic jobs I did bigger all really 😜

Sunday: Productive again, I know, two days in a row 😂 On the job list this morning apart from the usual was to get a spot of shopping, we were there at 9.30 and gone by 9.55 😜 Luckily the supermarket we use allows self service before 10, as we drove past another supermarket they were still queuing to get in. Back home unload and put away and then off to the DIY store for some fencing. We have an area just outside the back door that the old drive way cuts through, across the drive is the gate to the garden. I wanted to fence the drive off part way down, firstly this will mean that the area is secure for the toddlers and children to move between the house and the garden. Second but no less important it means the dogs can’t get into that area, they knock the kids over half the time and the other half of the time they dig holes. The holes then become ankle twisting areas that you don’t always see, usually because I am carrying something. The dogs can come in when we allow them but it means we can also shut them behind the fence if we don’t want them there. The other reason is the free range mobster geese, they have no manners, crap everywhere and nibble on everything plus they are pretty scary to children being much bigger than them. In fact they are pretty scary to me at the minute so the last thing I want is to open the back door to find them there 😜

Have a great week, hopefully the weather will warm up just a tad and everyone will be happy 😃

Posted in Friesland Farm

A pub lunch 😁 eggs galore & a Fox attack 😩

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 19th April 2021: Monday again yay 😜 Today it is Mia’s 5th birthday so we will be popping over to see her later 🎂 John went to work this morning after doing the rounds and I have mostly been pottering out and about in the garden. I have had to do some watering as even the plants that like it dry are beginning to struggle a little. Most of the plants that are in the beds or in the ground are fine, anything I had recently planted needed water and plants in pots need some water. I don’t have many pots now as most of them have gone into the new beds but there are still a few that I haven’t put anywhere yet or that will stay in pots elsewhere. I watered the veg plants I put in last week and also the raspberries and blueberries that are all in pots. Everything else will still be able to get some overnight moisture or deep ground moisture hopefully. There is no rain on the radar at all 🥴 certainly no sign of any April showers 🙄

I dug up the few plants I wanted to move, the water I gave them last night has done well and the rootball was still damp this morning. Some I have planted straight in the ground and some have gone into pots to bring on either to sell or plant where I have a bare patch. I have tried to get a broad a range of flowering plants and shrubs as possible, this includes different heights, strength of fragrances, some with evening fragrance, different colours and sizes of flowers but nearly all are single open flowers which are what the insects need, I do have a few flowers that are double but not many. In other areas I have included grasses for the wildlife that prefer those and I have the small (tiny) pond which has water plants. I keep contemplating a bigger pond, the one I have is literally a large tub but it works well enough as a wildlife pond. As long as I have water areas around I suppose they don’t need to look like a pond just do the same job.

I had my lunch sat outside which was glorious, all I could hear were the birds and myself crunching on an apple 😀 beautiful day. John came home mid afternoon so we went over to Sams early so that she could go and pick Mia up from school while we looked after the twins, and then saw Mia and gave her some birthday presents.

Back home and I cut the grass in the front driveway, I have left some squares so that the grass gets long, the insects will appreciate that. John then cut the lawn before we had something to eat, we had a delivery of an old cupboard I have bought to put where the Rayburn is once that goes and then we popped round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa as it was such a nice evening.

The amount of eggs the hens and ducks are laying is verging on ridiculous 🙄 we have about six trays to try and shift. At one time I could advertise on Facebook but the algorithms have put paid to that as soon as you mention any animal species, I even heard of someone having a horse manure post declined. I think I will have to make lemon curd, lime curd and orange curd and give it to people, then a batch of cakes for the freezer maybe some pickled eggs, John is already eating eggs for breakfast every day 😂

Tuesday: Beautiful morning 🥰 Last night driving back from Mums the sun was a fireball and early this morning it was the same.

By 7.30 I had breakfasted, dressed, got the first load of washing on and cleaned the windows. With the sun finally shining the dusty windows were getting a bit annoying, I am not fanatical about my windows but they have not been done all winter, we don’t have many and they are not very big so any light I can get inside is welcome. I don’t spend too long faffing just a soapy cloth over and then the squeegee any marks left behind can stay, they will soon get dirty again and I can think of better things to do than meticulously getting them to be perfect, besides, I don’t stay inside on a sunny day looking out of the window 😜

I spent the next two hours outside sorting out a few plants, re potting some shrubs that I have now placed in an area that is looking pretty bare. Under the Oak tree is fenced off because there was a hawthorn there, which has mow died off after years of cutting back and also a dog rose which I cut back hard each year, both of these have viscious thorns and I don’t want the children getting tangled in them. It means I have a fenced area with not much in it, over the years I have filled it with pots of things but now most of that has been planted in the beds. I did have mock orange, a dogwood, a euonymus and a white buddliea which I have grown from very small plants, these are now bigger, potted up and sitting nicely in that bare space. The white buddliea was quite big, about three feet but it was really struggling where it was and so I dug it up the other day, put it in a bucket of water with some feed ready to move elsewhere. It was only when I was looking around for things to fill the space that I decided it could go in a big pot and hopefully it will like it in its new place. I also scattered a few packets of flower seeds to see how they do, it should look nice and full by mid summer.

John came home mid morning, I hung the washing out and then we decided not to waste the day so we went out for lunch! Oh how fabulous was that to sit outside by the river having a pub lunch and a cold drink, very fabulous I can tell you 🥰 People were happy to be getting out and about and doing something normal, we went for a short walk along the river before returning back to town to get some shopping.

Wednesday: It’s mid afternoon and I have come in for a sit down after a very productive morning doing various jobs in the garden. I have to pace myself otherwise I won’t have the energy to haul myself around later this afternoon and get the dinner etc. I know when it’s time to stop as my feet hurt and my legs won’t carry me much more, definitely sit down time. So what have I been doing? Well I started off planting four rows of root veg, two rows of turnips and two more rows of beetroot, that’s four lots of beetroot at the moment and we don’t even eat that much but it does sell well and it makes a great chutney. After that I watered it all in and watered a few other bits and then planted more potatoes, that’s all of them in now so it’s just a case of waiting. I checked the carrots and as always they are spasmodic so I topped up the rows with more carrot seed, I am determined to have a lot of carrots this year. I have done some hoeing (a lot actually 🙄) I have fixed down weed membrane in unused areas like the compost area so that I don’t have to worry about weeds growing everywhere and I have tried to dig out the comfrey root on one of the beds that has not been planted yet. If you get comfrey, and it is a great plant, make sure you get the bocking 14 which does not readily seed everywhere and cause a big problem later on like the one I have 😂 I have dug up a trug full of dandelions to feed to the torts and Guineas and I have picked purple sprouting and asparagus for dinner later. There are probably lots of other little things I have done but can’t recall now that the time has passed. I feel like I have definitely made some headway and no longer feel that I am lacking behind. I have had a good look at the areas that are still to plant up and decided what will go where, I just need to wait for the tender plants to get bigger and the weather to stop plunging back into artic mode 😜

Everything in the greenhouse is doing well, although we are getting a lot of frosts the temperature over night in there must be staying reasonably above freezing which is great. I was tempted to plant the tomatoes in the tunnels but as they would be directly into the ground that might not be such a good idea so I will hold my horses. Talking about horses, I observed that biscuit was lying in the paddock this morning when I started gardening, a couple of times I spoke to her as she was just the other side of the fence, she didn’t seem overly unhappy, but after she had been there at least two hours I went into the paddock to give her a thorough check over. I gave her a nudge to see if she would get up, nope, I gave her a shove to see if she would get up, nope, so I walked a way to go and get a head collar to put on her and see if I could force her to get up that way. By this time I was slightly concerned that she couldn’t get up of her own accord, I turned and walked away and up she jumped 😂 little sod was just having a lovely sunbathe and resented my intrusion I think lol.

Oh my days we have so many eggs at the minute I am seriously going to have to do something with them. Not sure where all our egg customers have gone 🤷‍♀️ two regulars that always had a lot of eggs each we have moved recently so that makes a difference and I guess so does the fact that we sold so many chickens last year 😂 Right I am off to find out what recipes use an enormous amount of eggs up, I guess I could make pasta but we don’t eat that much of it so it will have to be cake for the freezer!

Thursday: Lovely sunny morning again, a tad cold first thing but soon warmed up. It’s 9.30 and as yet I have not done anything else except have my breakfast and make stuff. I have a batch of lemon curd on the go in the slow cooker, yep in the slow cooker, I could have stood and made it but I figured this way I could get on with other things. In the oven at the moment I have the fail safe Mary Berry orange and sultana cake and a lemon drizzle cake, 16 eggs used in total so far 😜 I know what will happen, I will use all these eggs and then the hens will go on strike and we won’t have enough eggs 😂 can’t win, it’s never a dead cert either way so I am just rolling with it. At the moment I have not pickled any eggs, I need to check I have enough vinegar to do a large jar full, not quite sure what I will do with them then as John doesn’t eat them and it’s not something I would think about having very often but luckily the boys in the family do like them so they will probably go to them 😀 Great with a pint and a packet of crisps I am told though never tried lol. I also made some little cakes for the children, light lemon flavoured ones. I know lemons are not grown here so technically not sustainable but I need to use up eggs somehow and so lemons it is 😜 On the subject of lemons, it is possible to grow them here so I’m not sure why it’s not done on a bigger scale to be honest, plenty of people have them in the conservatory and they produce half decent lemons, maybe it would cost too much on a commercial scale 🤷‍♀️

John has gone off to work again today, that’s two in a row lol he will be tired out by the end of the week. The semi retired thing is working well so far but I wonder how long it will be until he is booked up again.

The wind is a bit chilly and if you are in the shade or not moving around very fast it can feel colder than the impression the sunny bright blue sky is giving. In the greenhouse though the temp has hit 40c which is amazing, it feels lovely in there as long as you don’t spend too long inside 😜 You can definitely feel the difference when you come out again.

Sam came over with George and Lucie for a couple of hours over lunchtime, we went for a wander round the farm introducing them to all the animals, George spends his time saying cock-a-doodle do and Lucie gets busy exploring everything she can.

The cakes and the lemon curd are resting nicely on the side, I am hoping the curd does set, home made lemon curd is totally amazing, zingy, tasty and not over sweet like the shop bought stuff so if you ever get a hankering to make it then go for it you won’t regret it.

Lemon curd, sooo delicious 😋

I spent more time, much more time, than I would want to, trying to sort out a printing problem, basically I eventually found out that my iPad would not talk to my printer for some reason, kids 🙄 A few updates and resets later (and you all know how long they take) and I was back in business. The object of the printing was to print pictures of the plants I had out for sale, it’s all very well putting greenery out there but if someone has no idea what it will look like eventually then they probably won’t bother, well now they know 😊

Friday: Another lovely day of wall to wall sunshine (if you can tolerate that sort of thing) I never have a plan of what I am going to do, I may have a vague idea of things I want to get done but these days I don’t stress over it. I wanted to strip the bed and get the covers washed first thing and on the line, one bit of cleaning leads to another and before you know it the morning has largely passed. That is a bit of a school boy error for me because ideally I should get outside while it’s still cool. Anyhow I didn’t and so mid morning I decided to then get out on the garden. The birds, bees and beer bed has done well for around five years with hardly any work needed. Lately it has got a little wayward, stingers have taken hold and are big strong plants, I have a tree growing through a blackcurrant bush, the golden hop has gone berserk and twined round everything, the gooseberries are suffering due to not enough air circulating. It is time to address the problems, we began back at the beginning of the year by digging out one of the gooseberry bushes and trying to get the roots of the hop out but it was so wet and claggy it was near on impossible so I have left it. Today I started to tackle it again but it is incredibly dry 😂 and digging is almost impossible. The sun was getting hotter and hotter and there is no shade there, it is one of the beds that is most difficult for me to tend because it gets all day sun right from the off. There are four trees which are now pretty big, a cherry, an apple, a mulberry and a dual pear, plus three blackcurrant bushes and three gooseberry bushes, there are wild strawberries growing on the ground in one area but the rest has weed membrane down because I can’t get to do it easily. There is rhubarb and the hop as well, it is a very productive area and mostly I leave it for the birds and bees, the hop part was for the beer but that has never happened yet 🙄 Over time the trunks have got large and round and the membrane has come away allowing the stingers, docks, keck and dandelions to take hold. The idea was to get all those out and then adjust the membrane to cover the soil again, but I can’t dig a lot of it out as it is entwined in the fruit bushes, the dilemma is, do I forsake the bushes and start again or leave it for the time being and tackle it at the end of the year when the ground will be softer. I would have to make a proper plan as I will need Johns strength to help get those plants out, the roots will be deep. I was enjoying doing what I could but I could feel the sun and the heat beginning to affect my skin, (a kind of prickling feeling) there is nothing more I would enjoy than being in a vest top digging away and to be honest it pisses me off that I can’t but I also don’t want to induce a flare so I am limited in what I can do. For today I have now left it, I have been able to adjust some of the membrane and cover gaps but that’s about it, still, every little helps I suppose.

John was home mid afternoon, with flowers 💐 at this point I can here you asking ‘what has he done wrong’ because that’s exactly what I would think normally except that we had had one of those conversations the night before. You know the ones, long time married discussions, he says to me that I am a pessimist and so I explain that once upon a time I was an optimist but was regularly disappointed and eventually because a realist 😜 One of the points I made was that he prided himself on the fact that he bought me flowers ‘once every twenty five years’, each birthday, Valentine’s Day, anniversary I would hope to get flowers and they never came so eventually you stop hoping and face reality. I’m not sure if that shocked him to hear that but the result was a lovely bunch of flowers today so I’ll take that 😁

I picked a few bunches of rhubarb in the afternoon and a bunch of asparagus all of which went out for sale as I won’t be using it today. I noticed quite a few spindly stalks of rhubarb so I will probably pick those and make rhubarb jam either with vanilla, orange or ginger haven’t quite decided which one yet. Ginger might be too wintery and I don’t have an orange thinking about it so it will most likely be vanilla lol.

Saturday: Ooosh busy morning this morning doing various garden jobs, lots of potting on, putting plants out for sale, various other bits up for sale, trying to move on some of the ‘stuff’ we have lying around 😂 We had a tragic start to the day mind you as sometime overnight the fox has got into one of the huts in the paddock and slaughtered 17 hens 🙄 At first we couldn’t work out how it got in but further investigation shows that he has some how managed to lift a very heavy side panel and get through some tight bars to get access. That’s the end of that lot and I won’t show you the graphic photo of the aftermath I will leave that to your imagination 💭 They were our oldest lot of hens but they were still laying well and that’s about 12 eggs a day we have now lost 😠 Typically I literally just sold the 13 point of lay hens we had left otherwise we would have just kept those, the old law of the sod and all that.

John has been on the tractor moving heavy stuff around to tidy up and also cleaning out some of the other birds as well as the morning jobs of feeding, watering and egg collecting.

It is sunny with blue skies today but there is quite a breeze and it’s a tad cold. April is normally a month you can enjoy with warming temperatures and showers but this one has been cold all the way through, I do hope May has better things in store for us. There is no sign of rain for at least a couple more weeks and the wind direction is predicted to be either from the north or the east so it will stay chilly. Not until the first week of May does the wind start coming from the west 🙄

Blimey trying to get the washing off the line in this wind was a mission 😂

Sunday: We started off well this morning, no frost but still windy and it’s coming from the East but with the sun out as well it’s not bad. John did the feeding, no more Fox attacks, and then he got on with cleaning out the point of lay pen. This pen we built around five years ago at a cost of around £1000 and when the batches come in for sale that’s where they go. We have now decided because it is fox proof we will house one of the two permanent flocks in there and let them out in the daytime and use a stable for the point of lay when they come in. Makes much more sense to not loose our flocks overnight, the huts are great, they are over 100 years old though and they were used back in the day when foxes were controlled as that is no longer the case we have to move with the situation.

While John was doing that I started a bonfire to burn some paper rubbish, dirty shavings and some bits of wood. While I was doing that I noticed that biscuit was lying down again, this time I decided to get her in as that is not normal daily behaviour for her. She is a bit pottery on her feet, the ground is rock hard due to the lack of rain and her feet need looking after as it is so I got her into the stable. I didn’t want to leave her there because she is better off outside but I needed to put up the electric stakes and tape. This would have been a ten minute job if John had not just gathered it all up and dumped it in a heap when we dragged the fields. Anyone who has ever had to untangle electric horse tape will know this is a pig of a job 😂 I got that sorted and moved the water bucket, got John to fix a piece of the fence that was broken and got biscuit back outside with some hay. All the time she was in Jack was wellying up and down the paddocks making a racket, if you regularly see two or more horses in a field and then one on it’s own going a bit mental, the reason is because they have been separated from their friend 🙄 Once they were both settled again we shot off to get a little bit of shopping.

When we got back I went out to sort out the guinea pigs etc in the orchard. As I was in there I looked up to see a chap walking up the drive, he spotted me and then turned and walk back out and off down the lane. I said to John something doesn’t feel right and John went across the paddock to the wall by the lane to see where he went, he had carried on and then went off to the left down scrubs lane which is basically a dirt track that goes to a few properties and eventually out across the fields. No problem I thought, it’s just a walker and maybe my intuition was not right. However, 10 minutes later we were stood in the drive talking to Sam and Luke who had pulled up in the car and he walked back past the bottom of the driveway. This then does become odd as if he was out walking I wouldn’t expect him to be back 10 minutes later, it means he didn’t go far before turning round and coming back rather than continuing his walk. He was almost dressed like a Walker but not quite, dark clothes a flat cap and a small backpack, let’s just say he looked like he was trying to blend in with Walker but definitely didn’t. He may have been totally innocent but my instincts were telling me differently and you get a feel for things like that over time. I flagged it up on the rural watch page I am on just in case there are any other reports.

I then spent another hour weeding the front beds, I figured if he came back a third time I couldn’t really be seen until the last minute and might catch him coming up the drive again.

We nipped down to the local pub for a drink in the garden with Sam and Luke who had been to the wildlife park. I did pick some dandelion flowers beforehand and they are now sleeping overnight ready for dandelion honey tomorrow.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Snow! A hair cut & Mint jelly 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 12th April 2021: WTAF!

Woke up to snow, not just a few flakes but more than we have had in the wintertime 😂 As if this past year hasn’t been crazy enough 😜

John was up, fed and let out the birds and gone to work by 8am this morning, he should be back by lunchtime. I had the Rayburn lit by 8.30, not because it’s particularly cold, I always think it feels warmer with snow on the ground, but more because it will be soggy which means we will get soggy. Soggy gloves, hats, coats, and so it is useful to have somewhere to dry everything and warm up hands and feet when we get back inside.

I have so far only done the indoor bits and pieces but I need to get outside and bring the torts back in. They must wonder the heck is going on, they have already been digging themselves into the ground at night but of course the day time (especially if the sun comes out) they are wandering around. I left them because I kept thinking, it will warm up today, ha, so I give up and will put them back indoors.

Today we also get more freedoms in the form of non essential shops opening including hairdressers, barbers, salons and outside eating and pub gardens😂 What a day for it to snow, I feel sorry for those businesses that have waited all this time to wake up to a blanket of snow this morning, it was bad enough that it is colder than average and certainly much, much colder than this time last year! We should be having warm spring sunshine and be able to comfortably sit outside having some refreshments 🤷‍♀️

Just sat down for a quick break after cleaning the spare room, I have come to the conclusion (again 😂) that I have too much stuff. We make extra storage to store stuff we hardly, if ever, use, what is that all about. I hate to get rid of it though, you never know when you will need it 😜 In all seriousness I do need to find new homes for a lot of it, now the charity shops are open again at least I can take stuff there, someone else might be able to make use of some of it. Whatever ‘it’ is ai need to go through it all and thin it all out.

The next electric radiator has just arrived eeeek, I am looking forward to this one because it’s for the kitchen which means that on chilly mornings it should be warmer in there than it is when I haven’t lit the Rayburn 🥰

Time seems to be passing slowly today I don’t know why, maybe because I have been cleaning and they say time passes quickly when you are having fun so the opposite must be true too 😜

Tuesday: Totally different day today, cold start but the sun is shining and it’s quite warm 🥰 John has gone to work again today but did the animals before leaving. I spent the first couple of hours indoors sorting out some of the ‘stuff’ and also taking up a pair of curtains to hang in the spare room. Then outside to get on with the jobs of the day, first off the water buckets, it was frozen this morning when John went to do them. Another reason for getting the indoor stuff done first, by the time I go out pipes have thawed and it’s warmed up a bit. I water the plants growing in the tunnels, cut a couple of bunches of rhubarb but most of the time I spent in the greenhouse sowing seeds. This morning it was runner beans, dwarf French beans and sweetcorn as well as pricking out some echinops for the flower beds. I feel like I am really behind, I say that every year but I still have work to do on some of the beds as they are not ready for planting yet although it won’t take long I am still aware that they are on the todo list. A bit of weeding in the front flower beds and then inside to get the washing up done and a quick sit down before I get a haircut yay 😁

Hair cut done ✅ after a spot of lunch it was back outside to try to gain some ground, which I feel I have done. I have planted the peas and the mangetout, I just have a few pea left to find a space for, I also planted and covered two rows of beetroot (chigoya, stripey) and two rows of swede. The root veg I have sown in multi crop blocks which basically means more than one seed in each sowing, they like it apparently and you thin out later once they are swelling up. Each sowing was watered in with some organic plant food and hopefully they will get going pretty quickly. Most of the peas were sown outside, four rows, but two rows I have sown in the poly tunnel. I am hoping I will get an earlier drop from these, if I don’t and it fails at least the compost they are in will get some goodness from the nitrogen nodules. I figured that the tomatoes won’t be going in for a while and even then will take a while to get big enough to out grow the peas so we will see what happens. I also had some more broad beans left over so I have planted them next to the swede, might as well mix it up a little and see what results we get.

Wednesday: Not such a cold start this morning g and the sun was already out first thing. I whizzed round and did the indoors stuff before going outside around 9.30. Watering the veg I planted yesterday and then some pricking out of dill and coriander. Onto hoeing the onion bed and one of the asparagus beds. John came home at lunch time and we popped to the shops to get a few bits, it was manic, I had forgotten what it was like when everybody in the whole world was out shopping 😩 busy, manic, everyone fighting for a car parking space, queues, bring back lockdown 😂

Thursday: Still cold for the time of year and so I am holding off a few jobs, besides the fact it’s chilly to work outside unless you have a job that keeps you warm, the ground is too cold to plant much. Likewise I can’t move things on in the greenhouse because what would normally now move to the bench is still on a heat mat 🙄

We haven’t done much today, John has done a bit of tidying up, the wood store is now empty and John has cleared the ground ready to put the tractor in there, that will free up a bay in the hay barn, for what I don’t know yet. I have pottered about doing not much really, Charlie came over and bought lunch with her, it’s her birthday today so we had lunch outside but it was a tad cold when the sun went behind the clouds. Sam and the kids came over in the afternoon and the kids played with bubbles, a piece of board on the ground (jumping up and down) and the wheelbarrow, who needs expensive toys 😂

Friday: Temps are about a degree warmer than yesterday and for an hour at least this morning the sun was glorious, unfortunately it disappeared and as yet has not reappeared but the chilly wind has dropped and so it feels much better today. John went to work and I spent my time in the garden after going round and doing the water buckets which were frozen when John tired to do them first thing. In the greenhouse I am still waiting to be able to move things along but the constant cold nights mean I won’t chance it yet. I pot on some of the cucumber plants and the courgettes so at least something is happening. I have also sown some more flower seeds, rudbeckia and lupin, they will go out for sale once they are big enough. On the garden itself I have done some weeding, well that’s mostly all I did, weeding lol. I put out a couple more plants for sale but as yet it’s too cold to put some of the others out so they will have to wait a while longer.

Before coming in for a sit down at 3pm I picked some purple sprouting for dinner later and had a quick look at the asparagus which is just starting to appear above ground but not big enough to cut yet.

I have seen the forecast for next week the temps are going to climb nicely and then plummet with an artic blast again! I think I am just going to have to go ahead as best I can with planting up and moving on then try to protect the plants as best as possible and see what happens. I can always start sowing some more just in case the first lot get affected and if they don’t then I can sell the second lot of sowings when they get bigger. If I keep waiting will be at the end of the season before we know it lol, a difficult year but then every year seems to have its challenges nowadays.

Saturday: The weather looks promising today, despite a frosty start there is wall to wall blue sky. Today was one of those days when you have a plan and probably shouldn’t have bothered 🙄 A job that should have been first thing and 10 mins didn’t get completed until midday for various reasons. Last night I cooked up bramley apples and mint along with some cider vinegar to make mint jelly, that all went well and I left it overnight to strain hoping to get it boiled and jarred up first thing. I had just got the sugar in and dissolved when BT arrived and almost at the same time Martin, Josh and Flo called in to see us. As I always say, everything stops for grandchildren and so I set the pan aside to return to it later once they had gone. We had coffee outside and played with the kids, all the while the BT man is checking equipment. He goes off at some point believing he has detected this elusive fault. Martin and the children leave so I go back inside and get the pan back on the boil only it has developed a skin which I skimmed off first (I think it was from the vinegar) The engineer returns as I am carefully watching the mixture boil and get up to temperature, I barely look at him when he is telling me, he thinks that is now sorted and I shouldn’t have any more problems, yep I have heard that one before 😂 He leaves and I carry on until I am happy I will get a set and then put it into jars than have not been in the oven sterilising for over two hours 😜 Job done I go outside to get started out there as I haven’t had a chance to do that as yet. I go into the orchard to started getting water for the Guineas, quail, Turkey and light Sussex, only to find the water is not coming out of the tap, that means a leak somewhere. I go back into the garden and can hear it pouring out of the main tap, it has been going a while as the paddock has a slick of water across it 🥴 Luckily just as I discovered it, John, who had popped to the shop for some milk, returned, there were three joints in total that had popped off from the freeze thaw process 🙄 Once we got those sorted and I may say it wasn’t without incident as John lost one of the washers down a hole in the ground (yeah I know, you couldn’t make this stuff up) I finished getting the water buckets etc sorted and then it was onto watering some of the veg plants I have planted recently. It is not as bad as it was this time last year when we had record high temps and no rain for weeks but this year it’s cold and no rain for weeks 🤷‍♀️ always a situation to overcome, hopefully it will all be fine in the end and we will get veg!

Mint jelly, not quite as clear as I would have liked and I forgot to turn it when it was part set so the mint bits are all at the top but it will still be delicious 😋 The jelly you buy in the shop will have green food colouring added to it to make it more appealing 🙄 this is the colour it actually should be 😀

I checked the greenhouse and opened the vents, all seems well in there so there was nothing to be getting on with. I came in for a cuppa around 1.30 and did a bit of researching of various plants, we will watch Prince Phillips funeral later this afternoon though John is annoyed as the snooker is starting as well but I have already bagged the tv 😋

Sunday: Lovely day, sunshine, warm fabulous. Today is the first anniversary of the passing of Dad and so tinged with a little sadness, but not too much as there are so many things I remember that make me smile or laugh. I often wondered when people said they think of them every day, how that was possible but it really is, in the littlest things you catch yourself thinking about a chuckle or a ‘wise word’ or just the appreciation he would have had for something like a good home cooked dinner. We went to the grave and gave him a toast with his favourite tipple, had a little sing song and a jig, he would have loved that 😂

For the best part of the day I have not done much other than clean out the Guineas and a trip to the garden centre and a visit to my brother for a cuppa on the way over. I attempted to do something about one part of the veg bed that I had turned over to wildlife, it needs sorting but apart from pulling out nettles I abandoned the job, I will get back to it at some point but not today. John meanwhile has been doing the usual jobs, feeding, watering, egg collecting. He did start the very last raised bed at the side in the driveway, until I pulled him away to go to the garden centre that is but he didn’t offer up much objection to abandon tools 😜

Early evening I went out and checked the greenhouse to make sure everything was alright and then I watered the herb bed. It is so dry that nothing is really bursting into life like it should be at this time of year. There are a couple of plants I want to lfit and so giving them a soaking will help immensely when I go out in the morning to dig them up and move them.

I can’t quite believe that right at the very beginning of this week we had a covering of snow and now the days are bright, sunny and warm lol. I think we have a few more days of warm weather before it gets cold again 🙄 not sure how long that will last but these things are sent to try us and they certainly do!

Posted in Friesland Farm

Ash before Oak 😏 a bit of creativity and it’s still cold outside 🥶

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 5th April 2021: Bank Holiday Monday and you couldn’t have got a more different day than yesterday 😂 Yesterday we were basking in good temps with wall to wall sunshine and today there is a cold North wind and it actually snowed at one point! To be fair I am writing this at 4.30pm the sky is blue the sun is shining and it is not too bad but the chill in the wind is noticeable 🥶 We started off the day and the week with the usual morning rounds and jobs, I lit the Rayburn at around 8.30am as we didn’t light it yesterday and it was a bit chilly. John got the tractor out and was levelling the drive again although he tells me he is now happy with it, it had a few lumps and dips which he has now sorted out. Meanwhile I spent the morning doing a bit of pirate sewing 🏴‍☠️. I have sown pirate bunting, pirate cushion covers and a pirate table cloth. The sewing skills needed were not great, pinking shears eliminate the need turn over material, fairly basic but overall a good job done for the pirate ship and the grandchildren when they come to play. The rest of the day was spent doing not much at all really, we popped over some strawberry plants to my niece and had a cuppa with my brother and his wife. Then we went to the green with Shelley, Martin, Josh and Florence so that Josh could show us his bike riding skills 🚲 and then back home to do the egg rounds and water the greenhouse and poly tunnels. It is amazing how hot they are even though it’s cold outside, all it takes it the sun and they warm up massively, the greenhouse regularly reaches 30c on a sunny day.

Arrrrgh, all ready for pirate playtimes in the pirate ship.

Tuesday: Brrrr that cold wind is here still and it is positively Baltic out there we even had snow flurries again 🥶 John did the animals and then went off to do a mornings work, I found inside jobs to get on with as I didn’t fancy being out there today. I set about cleaning the kitchen and putting stuff away, throwing out of date stuff away, mostly stuff with 2016/17 dates on them 😂 Cleaning the tiled walls down as I went round, looks a whole lot brighter and less cluttered now. John came home late morning just as I was with a customer who was buying hens. He spent most of the afternoon doing something on the tractor though I am not sure exactly what 🤷‍♀️ I spent the afternoon making cards, the ones I had made and put in the shed all sold so I needed to restock and I might as well stay in the warm and do that. I lit the Rayburn at lunchtime as it was cold in here, no point freezing our nuts off just for the sake of it, I am here so I can keep feeding it every hour or so.

Late afternoon John came in and a delivery arrived, a gel topper for the mattress, John finds the memory foam too hot and I am inclined to agree so after talking to my sister about it we ordered this gel topper. She has one and says it is great, it’s supposed to disperse the heat more evenly, we will find out if it works 🙄

I discovered that John had been removing ivy from the hedge at the back, the trees and shrubs are being choked by it and a lot of them have died. It is a job that is on the to do list, it’s a big job though as there is a falling down stone wall, barbed wire, dead trees, lots of ivy and broken fencing, it is not a quick fix job but it is one that you can take up or leave whenever you want.

Apart from the afternoon rounds and egg collecting that is pretty much it for the day, not much going on outside in these temperatures 😜

Wednesday: Oooooo that was cold last night, we had thick snow flurries mid evening and the temps must have gone down to around -4 overnight. Everywhere was covered in a hard white frost this morning, John did the rounds and then went off to do a mornings work, I got sorted indoors and then out to feed the Guineas and check the torts. Billy was in the hut and Voldertort had dug himself into the ground 🙄 it should be milder from here on in but you never know. I came back in and got some household bits done and I lit the Rayburn, then I spent a good hour looking thorough seasonal recipes so I can make good use of the things I am growing.

To be honest I haven’t done much else today 🥴 I always feel a bit guilty at the end of the day if I haven’t done much but sometimes I think it’s a case of recharging batteries. I did watch the seaspiracy documentary that is a hot topic at the minute, shocking, is the word. We don’t eat a lot of fish but will be eating a lot less now if any at all, if you haven’t seen it then as a consumer you really should 🙄 I watched it with an open mind, I am aware that this kind of reporting is often driven by the vegan section of society but it is undeniably bad even if you only think it’s half true.

Mid evening and still light, looking out of the back door I can see the two cats (that are usually so lazy they don’t go far from the food bowl) down in the hedge line stalking rabbits 😂 They have just got into their hunting stride, last week John said “did you put a dead mouse in the cats bowl”, why he would even think that is something I would do I have no idea! They had caught a shrew and bought it in and put it in to the bowl themselves 🤣

Thursday: Slightly warmer today in a cold sort of way 😜 if the sun had come out it would have been lovely but there is still a chill in the air. John did the morning rounds while I did the indoor bits, he went off to do a quick job in the village while I then did a few outside bits. When he came back we went off to get a bit of shopping from the local market, back home to put stuff away and then over to see Sam and the children and give her a bit of a hand if necessary.

When we got back from the market the sheep from the next field and got past their fencing, through the hedge and were stood inbetween that and our new fence lol, it took the first one a minute or two to work out how to get back but the second one took decidedly longer to work it out 😋

Back from Sams, lit the Rayburn then an afternoon of sorting out Johns van insurance which should have taken two minutes online except it wouldn’t recognise the email address even though they had emailed to that exact address 🙄 unbelievable sometimes. That then took half an hour to do it over the phone 😂 John went off to do another small job this afternoon while I sorted out some online payments and ordered the third electric radiator, this one is for the kitchen. We are getting to the stage that the Rayburn only needs to be lit for a couple of hours, unless it’s really cold, so if we slowly install the electric rads we can begin to use them just to take the chill off the air. We do have to sort out the back door as you can see daylight through it and so that’s not cost effective but we will get that done soon as well.

The blossom is beginning to be noticeable all around the place and the leaves on the trees are also bursting into life. Unfortunately if the old saying is to be believed we have Ash before Oak here which means a wet summer ahead 🙄 Oak before Ash just a splash, Ash before Oak expect a soak, time will tell.

Friday 😀 After doing the morning rounds we spent the rest of the morning doing the pirate ship. I have swept it out and put fairy lights up high in there, I have put the cushions and bunting and table cloth in and hung up some paper parrots. John and I then found some Perspex and put that in the windows, this will stop the wind blowing in and the leaves, make it feel a bit more like a playhouse and hopefully the children will get to play in there this summer.

Arrrgggghhh Jim lad

We came in at lunchtime to the sad news that Prince Phillip had died 😞 I know there were lots of varying opinions on him but he was someone’s husband, father, grandfather and great grand father and they will miss him dearly. He was the Queens Consort, not an easy job by any means, he devoted his life to supporting her and in turn everything she stood for, RIP

After a quick lunch John went off to look at a job and I planted the broad beans plants finally, as well as the Oca. I had to be very quick with the beans as the chickens could smell the Earth I dug for the holes and were there quick as a wink! I managed to get them in and cover them with hoops and netting though I had wanted to get some mulch round the bases but there was no way I would fend them off in time 😂 I can do that another day but at least they are now in. I had a few spare plants and where one or two garlic did not appear I have used the gaps up and put some in between and a couple of rows at the end of the garlic bed. Should be interesting to see if the garlic keeps the blackfly off of the bean plants.

Guess what, broadband and phone line issues again, this is ridiculous I think I will be going to ofcom this time 😡

Saturday: Still cold, not as cold as it has been but still no sign of the sun which we really need this time of year to get the veg plants going. After all the various morning stuff that needs to be done John went off to get feed and I went out into the veg garden. The planting and sowing really ramps up from here on in and this morning I have sown red onion sets. I will have a cracking haul of onions, shallots, garlic and leeks for winter storing hopefully. I then went into the greenhouse to do some pricking out, I have a mix of veg and flower seeds growing and this morning I have pricked out a couple of trays of achillea (summer berries) and I have also sown some celeriac and lemon grass seeds as well as some ginger roots but as I said we really need a bit of warmth soon for those to start growing. The lack of heat also means that the tomato and pepper plants that have come up are not able to move from the propagator to the bench yet, it’s just a tad too cold. I have cucumbers, melon and squash plants all coming on which also need to move out from under cover onto the benches, hopefully any day soon we will feel the temps rise. We also have a lack of rain at the moment 🙄 I can’t recall the last time it rained properly, at least a couple of weeks ago, it is the way things go sometimes and you can never know what kind of spring you are going to get so even the best laid plans get scuppered.

While I was in the greenhouse I was listening to the radio as always and the topic was the ship that blocked the canal holding up all the freight. It got round to the subject of self sufficiency of the country and if we ought to look into becoming more self sufficient 🤔 hmmm let me think, hell yes! I actually can’t believe that it is not on the ‘must do’ list, it is not rocket science is it 🤷‍♀️ if we produced as much as we could here that would give us food security and help the environment at the same time, why it is not happening as a matter of urgency I don’t know. I would have thought that the pandemic would have taught us big lessons in that department, it seems that we haven’t even felt the ripple effect that will be caused by the ship jam yet, I wonder what kind of panic buying that will result in, we will find out in a few weeks time 🙄

We have lived through history in the making over the last year and today we witness another at midday, a 41 death gun salute to HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, a very rare salute to witness especially as it was coordinated right across the UK and Gibraltar as well as HM ships at sea.

Just when I have stated the lack of rain situation we had a little shower, not much but enough to wet the ground which is all we need really 😀

Sunday: I hope we get a better second half to April than the first half, it’s been bloody cold today. At times the sun has made an appearance and it was nice, cool but still nice, but when it disappeared behind clouds the temperature plummeted and at one point it was trying to snow! After doing the morning jobs I went out into the greenhouse to get some bits done but after an hour I had to come back in as my feet were frozen and I haven’t been able to warm up all day. I did get a few things done in there, some rearranging, I sowed some more squash seeds and split and potted some pheasant grass I had growing. In the front I have resealed the bird bath hopefully with some success, it had a crack through it and before I try putting something in it I wanted to see if I could seal it.

I am struggling to function today because I am feeling the cold, I know that is a pathetic statement lol but it’s true. I think I am primed and ready for some warm spring days and they are not forthcoming and so I have gone into idle mode 🤣 I am currently huddled on the sofa, John meanwhile is busy outside tidying his van 🙄 I am literally shivering, hope I am not coming down with anything except ‘whereisspringitis’ 😜

Have a great week, a little more normality is creeping in, this week coming I am having a haircut and a massage whoop whoop, other shops will be open so we have a bit more choice when it comes to buying birthday presents 😜and the pub gardens will be open, not that I want to sit out in the freezing cold 🤣 one step closer to total freedom hopefully.

I think I will start a running list of what I have growing, what I am planting and what I am picking:

  • In the greenhouse:
  • Tomatoes
  • Peppers
  • Chilli
  • Butternut Sqaush
  • Banana sqaush
  • Courgette
  • Crown Prince
  • Pumpkins
  • Cucumber
  • Basil
  • Garlic chive
  • Melon
  • Runner beans
  • Dwarf French beans
  • Sweetcorn
  • In the cold frame
  • Peas
  • Mangetout
  • Swede
  • Turnip
  • Beetroot
  • Planted up outside
  • Broad beans
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • Shallots
  • Oca
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes
  • In the tunnels
  • Lettuce
  • Baby spinach
  • Rocket
  • Spring onions
  • Radish
  • Flat leaf parsley (already growing from last year)
  • Already growing and harvesting
  • Purple sprouting broccoli
  • Leeks
  • Rhubarb
  • Asparagus (just starting to come through)

Not included on any of those lists are perennials such as herbs, sage, mint, lovage, thyme, oregano. Nor any of the fruit bushes, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberry, blackcurrant, blackberry, Logan berry, chokeberry, olive, fig. And then there are the top fruit trees, apple, pear, plum, apricot, peach, cherry.

I will keep adding to the lists as I remember as I am sure I have missed a fair few things out already. The lists will change as I move things around and plant up but they will give me an idea of what I have and what I need to be doing such as getting on with sowing the runner beans 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

More freedom for us and the hens 😀 some lovely weather & some of the best days for a long time 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th March 2021: Whoop whoop day 😂 today we are allowed a little more freedom, not much but enough to be going on with. I am not actually sure what are supposed to be doing now, meeting outdoors in groups of six I think or two households whatever that means 🤷‍♀️ it could be interpreted in different ways and does it includes children, who actually knows. The stay at home rule has ended, what does that mean, we have been able to go to the shops or on essential journeys, can we now go further to meet people, I am not entirely sure lol. The numbers seem to continue to come down which I assume means the vaccines are working in the limiting of the spread of the virus despite the children having been back at school for a few weeks. I find it nuts that I am even writing this let alone living through it.

It’s is overcast this morning but the wind has died down so it feels a lot warmer than the weekend, I think we have some sunshine coming his afternoon. Meanwhile the morning jobs all got done and then John went off to work, I went out and cleaned out the guinea pigs and checked on the lone cockerel before going into the greenhouse for the morning. In there I sowed some more beetroot, potted on sunflower seedlings and potted on some tomato and pepper plants. I watered everything that needed a bit extra moisture and all the while I am side stepping the torts. I was going to put them out at the weekend but it was too cold, they haven’t really got going yet either. They have food and water but at the moment are not interested, still warming up from the long winter sleep I suppose. I feel I must have done more in the greenhouse as I was in there a couple of hours but can’t think what else I did 😜 About 11.30 it was time for coffee but before I came i quickly nipped I to the tunnels to water the seedlings in each of those. I have spinach and rocket in one which have come up nicely and in the other various lettuce types and some spring onions which have also made an appearance. The strawberries in the tunnel are for an early crop, they are putting on good leaf growth and I have some escaped mint growing in there which is looks lovely and vibrant. The lemon and orange tree look a little worse for wear after winter but I have fed them and hopefully they will recover quickly with some warmer weather. The lemon verbena has tiny new leaves at the base of the plant, I was thinking I might dry some this year for a lemon tea which would be refreshing.

The signs of spring are everywhere, birds beginning to nest in the boxes, tiny buds on shrubs and trees waiting to burst, the daffodils bobbing a splash of colour all around us, dormant plants beginning to emerge from the ground, we are all just waiting for the sun to arrive 🌞

My expensive but necessary sun cream arrived this morning which is good, at least I know I don’t have a reaction to that one so I should be able to get on with life. The basic lotion isn’t all that expensive on its own but I ordered the lip balm and then a tinted one for the days when I have to go out in public and then a separate one for my face which is anti-ageing, every little helps eh 😂

We have loads of goose eggs, they sell slowly but we are getting six every other day, if you odds the seventh day that is about 27 goose eggs a week 🙄 I need to find another outlet for them I think lol.

The sun did come out in the afternoon and it was very welcome, I have to say it was truly delightful nipping out to the brassica cage to pick purple sprouting broccoli for our dinner this evening. Smoked haddock fillets, steamed sprouting and mashed potato mixed with the baby leeks which I chopped and sautéed in oil before mixing them in, wonderful. We have to make the most of the one nice day we are going to get tomorrow so dragging the paddocks is the first on the job list, fingers crossed we can start the tractor 😝

I bought some toastabags, biodegradable, compostable, steaming bags for the microwave, oh they are a game changer 😀 For smaller quantities of veg, i.e. enough for John and I, they are fabulous, the sprouting was perfectly done in less than three minutes and no extra saucepan to wash up bonus 🥰

It is 6pm and as yet I have not lit the Rayburn and I am wondering if I will, we will have to see how cold it gets once it starts to get dark but at the minute with the sun shining away there is no need.

Tuesday: It has just gone midday and I have come inside as the sun is blaring, lovely to see it but it’s all or nothing g at the minute. John is off today and so after getting all the morning jobs done as soon as possible it was time to drag the paddocks at last. I spent most of the morning on the tractor going up and down, round and round, it is one of my favourite jobs of the year 🥰 John spent his time cleaning out and power washing the chicken hits ready for their release on Thursday. It has been a long winter inside for them as well as us and they will be delighted to get back out on the grass. There is a part of the big paddock that needs going over again as we had bales of hay on in over winter, I have tried to get a lot of the trodden in stuff up but it got a bit hot for me, I do four wheelbarrows and the sun will dry off some of it then I can drag over it again. There are also some tiny hawthorn saplings that are growing and they need to be cut with the mower, hopefully it will be cool enough later to get back out there and finish the job off.

Once I couldn’t do anymore out in the open I went to get the torts and put them outside, big Billy was right behind the greenhouse door which took me a while to get him moved but they are both out in the sunshine and fresh air now. I checked the plants in the greenhouse and opened the vents and I turned off the propagators and took the lids off, it’s that warm in there, too much heat will do damage, as long as I remember to put it all back before the temps drop tonight they should be fine. The carrot seeds I sowed a couple of weeks back have finally started to show, carrots are pretty finicky here but hopefully they should continue on to a good crop. Once it’s not so hot I will sow another lot, you can’t have too many carrots 🥕

I do have my factor 50 on and a hat but spending too long in the sun is a no no for me, dipping in and out is not so bad at this time of year. Later on the trees will have leaves giving me more coverage and more time I can be out there without being in full sun. It is a pain really as I am sat in the shade thinking, I could be doing that job, hey Ho, we all have our trials and tribulations I guess.

It is ten to eight in the evening and it is still light outside 😀 I have had the best day, it’s been many months since I have had a day that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Tractor work in the morning, in the afternoon we went and had a cup of tea with Mum and Ken in the garden now we are allowed. My youngest sister also turned up with my niece both of whom I have not seen since last August. When we returned home we got the birds fed and collected eggs and then back out to the paddocks with the tractor. We dragged the part with hay on the ground again, at one point I got the tractor stuck as the ground was soft but after some shuffling back and forth I managed to get going again. We moved the two chicken huts with the tractor and then dragged the ground they had been stood on. After that we got the ride on mower out and cut back the hawthorn runners at the edge of the big paddock. Back inside to get the dinner cooked but in all honestly I would have been very happy to spend more time out in the paddocks on the tractor 🥰 It was a lovely evening and a great end to a fab days work. As a bonus the new suntan lotion seems to be brilliant, no sign of any sunburn or itchy spots, winner 😀

Wednesday: Another lovely day, not as hot as yesterday but that suits me fine 😀 Once the morning jobs were done, John is off again today, I got straight on with some weeding on the weedy bed in the front. The other two beds are fab but this one is going to be a pain I can see it now. After spending an hour doing that I went into the greenhouse to make sure everything is alright and also sowed some more tomato seeds. The ones in the first propagator have had a bit of an issue, there was a lot of water in the bottom of the tray, which I have now tipped out, and they have not liked it at all so that batch might end up in the compost heap 🙄 I am trying different things with them and at the moment they are not too bad but they just don’t look right. I sowed a couple more rows of carrots in one of he outside beds. Then Sam arrived with the twins so we sat in the garden for a couple of hours playing with them and had lunch. They went home and a customer arrived to buy hens and then we went off to the garden centre as there were a couple of things I wanted and of course ended up with more than that lol. Two of my lavender in the front bed died over winter and although I do have others I didn’t want to risk transplanting those and losing them too. I also wanted some flowers for the bed directly under the window as it is lacking in spring flowers at the minute. It is intended to be a summer flowering bed but it’s nice to have a splash of colour now as well. I bought some gladioli bulbs 😝 never in my life have I ever grown these before but there is a first time for everything and it is probably showing my age 🤭 I bought some more seed potatoes ready to plant on good Friday and a lovely primula that I couldn’t resist. After a cuppa when we got back I set about planting them all and a couple that my Mum had given me as well. I can’t wait for it all to start filling out and looking lovely.

After a short sit down it was time to crate up and move all the hens back to the outside huts, that was 56 to the front hut, 16 to the far side hut and 20 or so to the near side hut. Get fresh water and feed in there with them all and then John put up electric fencing while I collected eggs, put in clean bedding for the geese, clean water for everything else, box up the eggs and pick a bunch of daffodils for the kitchen. I forgot all about the daffs at the back and they are all out bobbing beautifully yellow in the sunshine 😀 That was a 6.30pm finish today and I’m knackered 😂 We have to make the most of it though as the forecast says the temps are going to plummet over the weekend and we could even have snow! Drat it, it was lovely while it lasted and hopefully it won’t be too long before the warm weather comes back again 🤞

I have got a lot of plants to sort out for selling, I have broad bean plants waiting to go in the ground, sweet peas waiting to go in somewhere, plants to pot on in the greenhouse but I am kind of waiting until this next cold patch passes, I always seem to be waiting for it to be the right time for something.

Thursday 1st April 2021: It is noticeably cooler today but the poultry don’t care because for the first time in four months they are allowed back out 🥰 Happy, happy birds, John said when he let them out they got their heads straight down pecking at the grass. They have been shut away due to avian flu and we were legally obliged to keep them away from wilds birds which for us meant they had to live in the stables, nice to see them back out in the fresh air again, not doubt they will be causing trouble before too long 😜

Stopped for a quick coffee at 11.30 but I have mostly been in the greenhouse. I have sown the first lot of squash seeds, I have standard pumpkins plus banana squash, spaghetti squash, crown Prince, butternut squash, and three other types of smaller edible squash that the names I can’t remember now lol. This is the first sowing of three seeds of each type and once they come through I will sow some more, I am planning on having lots of squash this winter 😀 I also potted on the toms and peppers that look a bit worse for wear, I can’t quite work it out but I think it’s too much moisture, anyway I have put them in bigger pots and got them under cover of some bubble wrap and we will see how they go, some of them I discarded but most look like they will recover ok.

Some of the hens have already escaped from their temporary compound and are wandering round the farm and garden 🙄 I think I am going to try to be more relaxed about that this year 😂 until they dig things up of course.

John came home at lunchtime and we popped round to see my Mum, it’s her birthday today so it was nice to be able to go and see her and have a cuppa and a slice of cake 😀 After that we popped to the shop to get some fruit and some hot cross buns, drop some eggs off at Shelley’s door and then back home.

A sight rarer than hens teeth could be seen today when John cut the lawn, I know he cut it earlier this month but seriously twice in one year is a record 😂. The small birds are still getting in the fruit cage but I think I have discovered an oversight, the wire all round is small but on the door the holes are about an inch, easy enough for them to get through I think so I will be stapling some mesh over the top to see if that is where the problem lies. We have looked all over and can’t see any other points of entry so that has to be it.

I lit the Rayburn about 4pm, the last two days we haven’t bothered but it is colder today, I will only run for a couple of hours though, just enough to take any chill off so that by bedtime it’s not freezing in here.

My new factor 50 clothing arrived, I have to say I love the neck cover, I may even order a second one. It is brilliant, it covers the top part of my chest where a top is usually scooped, that always gets caught by the sun, it covers my neck and I can use it to cover the lower half of my face to prevent the sun getting to it when I am working. The top is also lovely and again it is factor 50, expensive for working outside in but needs must 😜

Good Friday: Traditionally the day you put your potatoes in, that’s what Dad always told me, this year he is not here to ask if I have done it yet or not 😞 As I have said I am going to be trying out growing them in straw, never done it before so it’s a first for me, I will be keeping some back to grow more conventionally just in case it doesn’t work 😜

We had Mia for the day today as Sam and Luke had to go and collect something they bought from quite far away. We had a lovely day and took her over to see my Mum, they haven’t seen each other for nearly 15 months! We also went to get a smoothie as a treat and apart from that we didn’t do much outside apart from checking and topping up water for the animals.

Saturday: I finally managed to sort the potatoes today, as I have said I am trying out a totally new method and we will see how it goes. I have swift, Charlotte and Vivaldi as my first earlies and cara as my maincrop, I also have another bag of maincrop to plant a bit later on. Hopefully you can see from the pics how I have done it, I have raised beds that are not filled, placed the tubers on the soil and covered them with straw, that’s it. Once the foliage appears I will cover with straw again and again and hopefully we will still get a decent crop of spuds. I have also placed the environmesh on top of this is to stop any hens getting in there and scratching back the straw. I have also planted some cara a little more conventionally in a raised bed that has soil, that way I can see what the difference is and which way is better. I am hoping the straw method is good as it is easy and not much effort is required, always a bonus 😜

Lay chitted seed potatoes on the ground, cover with a layer of straw, as the shoots come up cover with more straw. The third picture is the more conventional soil grown method, again covered so that the hens and cats don’t scratch it up.

We cleaned, hoovered and washed the car today, worthy of a mention as that is not something that gets done very often 😂 There is never enough time (or perhaps inclination) to fit it in as a routine job and so it’s rare, however it was getting to the stage where it was desperate, it still had pine needles from the Christmas tree on the back seat 😜

The tomato plants in the greenhouse that looked a bit iffy have recovered really well with potting on and some feed, I am confident they will grow on to be good plants. I have onions garlic and shallots growing that I planted last autumn but I have also ordered some red onion sets today. I like red onions although John does not 🤷‍♀️ I actually don’t know what the difference is except that they look good in salad and coleslaw 😂. I am pretty sure that after this artic blast we are supposed to get on Monday, things will start to warm up and then veg growing will step up a pace. At the moment I am holding back on planting out anything including the broad beans, they are fine in pots at the moment and I don’t want them to have a massive set back from really cold air. I still feel like I am always waiting but I guess it will soon be time for all systems to go. Last year we had unseasonably hot weather for weeks and the year before that I think, so maybe this is a normal spring and I have just forgotten what that is really like 🤔

I went out and picked some of the purple sprouting, the more you pick the more it produces. It tastes lovely and is a welcome fresh vegetable at this time of year though it does take a long time to grow it is worth the effort I think.

Easter Sunday: The weather this weekend has been so much better than I thought it was going to be, according to the forecast last week it was not looking very nice at all but today has been glorious. We spent the morning and some of the afternoon outside working on the front, John on the tractor levelling the driveway and me planting some more things into the beds. I have gone through all the plants I have potted up and either planted them, discarded them or fed and labelled them for using later on. I have probably emptied around 50 plant pots including Johns Mums agapanthus which is now in the front triangle bed. I was thinking about how many of the plants have real meaning one way or another, some are cuttings given me by Martin’s Mum, some from my Mum, some plants were from Johns Mums garden and some from our old garden, those have been in pots for 11 years! Some of the plants I had bought from the house before that, I have been taking them round with me for years, other plants are what the children ah e bought me or friends for my birthdays, there are a lot of memories in the garden now 🥰

I used some hazel pruning to make some natural plant supports in one of the front beds, I think they look quite good and hopefully will do the job.

We finished at 1.30pm and then went to see Josh and Flo to give them their Easter eggs, on to see Mia, Lucie & George to give them their Easter eggs and then back home to feed the hens and collect eggs before going to Charlie and Macca to see them but I forgot to take their eggs 🤦‍♀️

Because we have been out and about we haven’t lit the Rayburn today and hopefully it won’t get too cold over night lol, we have only been lighting it for a couple of hours lately, for hot water and to take any chill off the air. I have a feeling we will be lighting it tomorrow as the temps are set to plunge, it was about 15/16c today if not more and tomorrow is forecast 5/6c bit of a difference isn’t it 😝

Have a fab week x x