Month: June 2021

Posted in Friesland Farm

Something different, something new & the return of the cat 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 28th June 2021: It is overcast but that’s fine for me, just how I prefer it, overcast but still warm 😂 I did a thing as Jeremy Clarkson would say 😜 I thought I would do a voice memo as I was going round this morning, actually I thought initially it would be for note taking but on playback I rather liked it. Then began the next couple of hours trying to get it onto some kind of platform so that I could transfer it to WordPress. You will see below that despite everything I did do exactly that, although I would have like to merge the recordings that seems a bit beyond the basic free apps, maybe I will pay for a good one so that next time it is seamless 😬 But here is a first ever audio of life on the farm, this is me with my local accent (which will sound strange to those readers in far off lands 😂) My voice is slightly huskier than normal due to this bug I have, normally it’s a lot tinnier, I prefer this husky one personally lol

Apart from faffing around for a long time trying to upload, download, offload the files 😜 I have done other bits of picking, chatting to a customer who came especially to get some fresh veg, organising what will be for dinner later, video call with shelley, and probably a few other things that I have completely forgotten about by now. The day has shot past, it’s already mid afternoon. At some point today I also whizzed up some strawberries to pour into an ice cube tray and freeze so that I can use them in smoothies. The strawberries are all little ones and so ideal for using up this way, you could always use the small amounts to add to fruit crumbles or defrost and add a bit of sweetness for a couli to have with ice cream or yoghurt, so many other things you can use them for really.

So as is typical of me once I had recorded that snippet for the blog I thought ‘I wonder if I can do a podcast’ 🤣 so guess what? That’s exactly what I did, yep seriously I found platform called Anchor and I recorded a podcast, well I would probably call it a shamble ramble actually but I was pretty pleased with the end result if I do say so myself. If you like podcasts and want a listen I will see if I can work out how to get the link on here. It is a little different to the blog, to start with it is about how we got to where we are and why. It is also a lot easier to talk about and convey your thoughts and ideas more easily than trying to write it at the end of the day when you are knackered. Basically that’s what I spent the rest of the afternoon doing except for the moment I spotted a fox! I had just finished recording a section and was sorting some interlude music when I looked out the door and thought, is that a fox? I couldn’t quite tell if it was or if it was a clump of dock heads but as I moved closer I could see it was a fox with its eyes firmly fixed on some hens in the paddock. I shouted it looked up at me and then back at the hens, I shouted again and by this time the dog had run round so the fox scarpered back through the hedge. This is the one that has black tinges and obviously the day time raider as it was only 4pm. I grabbed a stick and went out the the hedgeline and made as much noise as possible in the hopes it would bugger off, I then had to wait out in the garden until John came home in case it came back. Once John was back we got some corn and rounded up as many as possible for damage limitation and we house the geese as well. At the minute here are around 10 hens still out so we still have to be a bit vigilant.

There is still no sign of the cat and so I have had to call the vet again to cancel all future appointments 😕 One of the other jobs that need doing fairly urgently is moving the kittens and mum from up on the side in the boot room down to floor level. The reason being that the kittens, who now have their eyes open, began to start gentle exploration today out of the cosy little cat house they have been living in. In fact when one of them saw me it started mewing and coming towards me so it won’t be long before they are leaping about.

John is watching Andy Murry play at Wimbledon and keeps asking me ‘oh why is he using that drop shot’ or saying ‘he needs a double fault’ I am just trying to watch it in peace 😜

We bought in a dog crate and set it up on the floor then moved mum and the kittens along with their cosy little cat house down into the crate. I know what would have happened if we had left it any longer, we would have gone into the room to find one of them had fallen from the worktop 😏 we did a risk assessment and altered the situation for a better outcome 😜 We have left one door on the edge of the cage wedged open, the dogs can’t get past it but the cat can jump up and out so all should be fine for at least a week. They have started playing with each other now so won’t be long before they explore further.

Tuesday: Still overcast this morning but it’s warm enough, again it is rather a perfect day for me in mid summer 😬 I think it rained overnight, bonus because I don’t have to worry about watering 😁 I still have this dammed ‘thing‘ it’s really not that surprising because being on immune suppressants everything takes ages to clear up but I really wish it would do one so that I can have a clear head for once. In an effort to try and shift it I did do a simple sinus rinse this morning, ewwww, yes it is ewww but it gets rid of a lot of mucus and crap, still don’t feel much better but at least I can breathe through my nose now 🙄 I found a pot of eucalyptus oil last night which is more potent thank the jar of vicks and although it clears for a couple of minutes it is back to being blocked before very long.

What is on the agenda today? Good question, at the minute I am sitting having a decaf coffee, I am pretty tired from being awake half the night coughing so I am going to amble through the day I think 🤔 The ducks need clean bedding so that is on the list, I try not to set too much in stone because things change or I might spot something else that needs doing or I fancy doing and if I plan my day too rigidly it can become stressful and who wants stress 🤷‍♀️ I need to pick strawberries, they are coming in thick and fast now as expected it is Wimbledon fortnight after all. As always one job will lead to another so I won’t be idle just pacing myself. Oh and of course I will have to keep an eye out for the fox, we managed to get all the birds inside early last night, around 7 they were all safely locked away. We had put the geese in a stable about 5 as they were in that area anyway so we just herded them in. This morning John went out to let everything out for the day and he told me that when he got to the goose pen up in the small paddock he thought ‘oh shit we forgot to put them to bed’ he had totally forgotten that we had locked them somewhere different and had a slight panic for a moment 😂

So I actually achieved next to nothing today, not on the Smallholding anyway, I did manage to pick a good haul of strawberries and that was about it. Sam came over with the twins and we went out to a local garden centre to see the fish and have tea and cake. The crazy thing is that although the twins are nearly two, this is the first time they have done that 😢 it is very sad really that for the last year and a half they have not been able to do the things that their older sister was able to enjoy doing. So we went out on a socialising the twins mission 😂 I have to say they were really well behaved for a couple of toddlers on reins who suddenly are allowed to go out in the big wide world bless them 🥰

When we got back which was around 1.30pm, John was home and Shelley and Flo were visiting as well. Once they left I had to help John get a wire through the wall from the bathroom into the bedroom so that we could get the electric radiator in the bathroom working. We still have another to do in there and one in the living room but we need an electrician for those. A quick chat with a customer at the gate and then a cuppa in the garden as it was about the right time for the fox to make an appearance. John fed the birds, I put some lemon verbena and mushrooms in the dehydrator, then I took out the mushrooms because I don’t want the lemon verbena smelling like fungi 😂 I will dry them separately later, the verbena was almost dry from hanging in the kitchen I just need to crisp it up a bit. Lemon Verbena tea is supposed to be good for joint mobility, acne, soothing the stomach, anxiety and inflammation as well as a few other things, there is science to back some of it up and the rest is what people report back after taking it but there are drawbacks as well, it can have a laxative effect on some people and it is a diuretic so anyone with kidney problem should avoid it. Most if not all articles will say that you should seek advice from a doctor if you have an underlying illness or are on medication before consuming anything in the herbal section. That is great advice but not terribly practical is it 🤷‍♀️ I mean I am hardly going to give the practice a call for everything I want to try, I would probably try a little bit see if all seems well and go from there, but that’s me 😬

The kick off for the football is about to happen, England v Germany always a big match in whatever tournament they are playing. This is how seriously we take football in our house, the anthems play, John goes out for a smoke, he comes back in, they are about three minutes into the game, the conversation goes something like this: John ‘have we won yet?’ Me ‘yes game is over’, John ‘what colour are we playing in?’ Me ‘Pink’ John shouts are the telly a couple of times before leaving to go out and price up a job 😂 Not really football fans and quite honestly I would prefer to be watching the tennis.

We won! Many chants and posts of ‘it’s coming home’ yeah don’t count your chickens before they hatch 😜

We weighed up the fox situation and decided to pop to Mums for a cuppa, as John said we can’t just be here the whole time in case he comes, we did put the geese away first but the hens we left out as they are far more troublesome to round up, impossible even. As we drove back towards ours I could see that the verges had been cut and I was horrified to see that ours had been cut too. There are orchids growing out on the verge as well as in the front paddock, ffs what is wrong with the world wanting to cut everything back all the time, not the contractors fault I know but urrrgh humans 🤬 Luckily we have plenty this year inside our boundaries but still I am dumbfounded really, it’s not as if it’s on a blind bend, I could understand the need to cut it back but on a perfectly straight road it is not necessarily to do it until the end of the summer 🤷‍♀️ The hens were fine by the way, no visit from the pesky marauder this evening 😁

Wednesday: Another good day weather wise for me, sorry about the lack of sun folks but I’m fine with that lol. We did some very brisk trade at the egg shed yesterday in fact we pretty much sold out of everything we had which is fab. It did mean though that I need to be up and about early enough to put out the eggs for today before the customers, who call in on the way to work, get here. John did the animals and went of to work, this semi retired has pretty much gone out of the window as he is now booked up to mid August 😏 I did a bit of picking, not much today, a few peas and that’s it, I need to wait for the braid beans to fatten in the pods before a pick any more of those and everything else is slowly but surely forming. I then went to put some clean bedding in for the ducks and move the electric fence for the horses, I a, going to have to extend the tape again soon and put in more stakes as I am running out of ‘give’ with this lot. Onto the guinea pigs, I gave them a clean out, swept the floor, got them some fresh hay 🤔 That is one of those terms that is a paradox isn’t it 😂 fresh hay, it hadn’t occurs to me before now but dead grass is fresh hay 🤪 Anyway I sorted that lot out and picked them some fresh mint, lemon balm, dandelions and sow thistle they are very happy with that lot.

Back inside then to check the mushrooms I have had in the dehydrator, a lot of them are ready but some are still a bit soft. I took out the lot that were ready to whizz into powder, put that in a jar and left the rest to continue drying, they will be added later. Whenever you dry anything it starts off as quite a bit of bulk but by the time it’s dried it has shrunk to around 1/3rd of it original size and then once powdered the amount is minuscule, but it packs a punch with flavour which is the main thing.

My first ever podcast 😬 has been well received by family members and I didn’t even have to pay them or anything 😜 so I have already drafted up the second one ready to go next Monday. If you are interested or like podcasts you can find it on Spotify titled, Our Smallholding life warts ‘n’ all. I was going to keep it similar to the blog but I changed my mind as it gave me an opportunity to do something slightly different but there are cross overs on both.

In the early afternoon I went up to the back point of lay pen where we are keeping the new hens. For the last couple of days they a have been kept in because of the fox and I will have to be vigilant today now I have let them out. I let them out so I could clean the pen out, the water drinker they have works well unless they stand on the side and then it leaks out onto the mud part of the pen and then it becomes a stinking mess 🤪

Today has been the first time I have been able to sit for any length of time without coughing, and I mean coughing, the whole can’t stop, eyes streaming coughing fits 😷 So with my re-found ability I sat and watched the ladies tennis which was well worth a watch even though our girl didn’t win. Then as it went on longer than expected I could be bothered to start making dinner so we had boiled eggs 😂 Once we had finished and had a cuppa I got on with doing something with the fruit I picked earlier, raspberries, recur rants and strawberries are at this minute in the ice cream maker and we will have summer fruits sorbet in about half an hour. The ice cream maker I used to think was a bit of a faff because I used to keep the bowl in the cupboard but now I keep it in the freezer so it is always ready when I need it. I picked this one up second hand at a car boot sale a few years ago and if you have a lot of soft fruit it’s well worth looking out for one. It saves all that freezing, getting it out, stirring it round, freezing it again before doing the whole process at least one more time. Summer fruit sorbet, any fruit sorbet is easy really, this was 500g of mixed fruit, 185g caster sugar, 185ml water and the juice of a lemon. Heat the sugar and water together until the sugar dissolves then turn up the heat and boil a little to get a soft syrup, allow it to cool, then blend the fruit, lemon juice and cooled sugar syrup in a liquidiser and put through a fine sieve to get rid of the pips and stalks etc. Get the ice cream maker plugged in and going and pour in the liquid mix, probably takes 30/40 minutes depending on what consistency you want. Eat immediately if you want to or freeze in a suitable container. I think I will get some of those wafer cones and we can use it instead of ice cream, also great for those dairy intolerant of course 😁

So after saying the the machine will make light work of the sorbet, it failed to freeze it very well 😂 so I had to resort to freezing in a tub and in about an hour or so I will have to remember to go and give it a mix before leaving it over night 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Yet another warm but overcast day, can’t say I haven’t had my fill of workable days this week can I 😂 This morning we were late up, the alarm went off, we fell back asleep and an hour later it ‘oh shit’. It doesn’t really make much difference to me but obviously John has places to be (even though he is supposed to be semi retired, I am going to mention that a lot 🤪) So in a good will gesture I offered to go round and do the morning jobs as long as I didn’t have to haul buckets of feed around, he assured me that only two lots needed feed. So off he went to work and I bumbled round letting everything out and feeding the ones that needed it, topping up water containers as I went. Then I sorted out the washing and got that on before doing the eggs and the egg shed and getting on with some watering and picking. Then I confess I recorded a podcast, I now have three in the bag, one published the other two scheduled. The problem is that once a topic starts rattling round in my head I have to get it sorted. Hopefully now I can have a week or two without thinking about it, is that likely, nope 😂 too much say!

John came home early afternoon which I wasn’t expecting but he is not here for the rest of the day as he has to pop back out again apparently. We had lunch and a cuppa together, watched the news and I now have the tennis on. Meanwhile John is bashing something about in the kitchen, I can’t even be bothered to go and find out what at the minute 😜 I can hear it involves a hammer and chisel so I guess it’s the rest of the tiles that he is taking off from the wall. I did ask, nicely I have to say, if we could perhaps finish the making good where the Rayburn came out 😬 I want to give the kitchen a good clean but there is no point doing that if the very next day he starts bashing about and plastering, so I’m guessing he has taken the hint and is getting on with it 😁

Bits of broken tiles all over the floor and John shouts are the grandchildren coming today? I do t think so I said 🤔……shit, it’s Thursday and the twins will be arriving any minute now 😂 hastily get the hoover out and all broken tiles down to the skip, cleaned up just in time 😜 It was a lovely day so they had their tea as a picnic outside before helping me feed weeds to the torts. George got a bit carried away and starting pulling off strawberry leaves from my plants to feed them 🤦‍♀️

After dinner my sister and her hubby called in for a cuppa and we sat on the decking in the garden. We spent over an hour watching a pair barn owls systematically going up and down the field next door and occasionally diving down once they found something tasty to eat, they are such graceful birds to watch.

Friday: Yet another overcast but warm enough day so I am having to make the most of it. It’s 10.30 I have just sat down for my first coffee break having been up and about since 6.30 this morning. First on the agenda was to buy a big walk in 6m x 3m metal chicken run. I said to John shall we get one of these be cause we can’t keep not going anywhere because of the fox or worrying when we absolutely have to go out. This one will attach to the front hut and it will mean that if we know we are going out we can let them out into the fresh air but they will be secure. It’s not being enough to do that all the time but it will be great to have the option. After I had orders that I got on with the usual bits, feeding, picking, watering, washing up, putting the eggs out, slug hunting 🙄 Something has made a hole in one or two of the little peppers in the greenhouse, picking up the pots and looking underneath them all I found about 10 small slugs in all. I fired them out onto the grass, I tend not to kill them after all they are only doing what slugs do to survive but they can go and do it on something less precious than my peppers 😜 I need to let the ducks into the garden in the autumn so they can hoover up as many as possible mind you we do have hedgehogs, I see the deposits on the grass in the mornings so at least they have something to eat. I still have this bloody silly cough though each day it is getting better but the minute I sit down I start coughing, standing up all day is the only answer 🤪

The goose died 😢 sadly despite doing what I could it died overnight. In my experience by the time you realise there is something wrong with a goose it’s already too late. Geese are extremely good at concealing the fact that they are unwell or injured unless it’s a blatantly obvious injury. It occurred to me that she may have received a puncture wound in the fox attack but stupidly I didn’t think to check for that, also in my experience a puncture would from a fox is pretty fatal anyway, the germs from the bite would be enough to cause infection. Then there is the site of any wound, depending on where that is, which would be hard to see under all that down, it is likely to cause maximum damage. But in all honestly I don’t know why she has died except that she was not in top form for some reason.

Once my coffee break and sit down are over I have to go out to the paddock and extend the electric fencing for the horses, I need add more tape and stakes again as I can’t get much more slack out of what is there already so that will be a hour or so to do that, good job it’s overcast, actually if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be doing it!

Did that job came back in sorted out peas ready to freeze and strawberries for pudding later. Sam and he twins came over and so did Shelley and Flo, they at school pick up time and I went in to watch the tennis 😜

I think we may have found the cat 😁 a local animal rehoming charity has put up a picture of a cat that has been at their place, he fits the description and matches the photo so fingers crossed we will get him back, and I will have to call the vet again and book him in once more 😂

Jack waiting for me to release the food 😂

Saturday: After emails back and forth the local rescue centre were satisfied that Jack was our cat and we made arrangement to pick him up mid morning. He had turned up a few days ago and being a rescue centre they thought he had been dumped, they managed to trap him and put out on social media which is where we saw him. He has now been chipped by them, I gave them a donation for doing that, and we bought him home. You would think that he had been away for months as at first he seemed very agitated and un settled and I was worried he would take off again. We fed him some very tasty sardines and within a couple of hours he had calmed down and realised he belonged here, even being uber friendly with the dogs much to their disgust as he wandered past them, brushing against them with his tail in the air, I am sure he was purring, it’s my family 😂

Jack safely back with Jill 🥰

The rest of the day we spent getting a bit of food shopping and doing things like depositing cheques at the post office, paying a invoice at the wood yard, I paid some online bills and did a bit of paperwork while John made good the site the Rayburn came out ready for plastering tomorrow.

In the afternoon we discovered that the fox had taken two of our new hens 😕 We had left the one in the front locked away because he keeps going there but let the back ones out and he had been to the back and had those 🤬

One of the reasons we left them in was because we wanted to go out in the evening to watch the football and while we can get the hens at the back in easily, we can’t do them same with the front ones so they stayed in. Once everything was safely shut away around 6 we went off to collect fish and chips, go round to my sisters and we watched England play Ukraine and win! Hoorah, we seem to have a great team at the minute and there are high hopes that they will go far 🤞

Sunday: John was up early to watch the qualifying for the F1 as we were too late home to watch it yesterday, if he doesn’t watch it early he is likely to hear the results on the radio and then he gets mad 😂 He then did the animals and got on with plastering the bits of the wall and ceiling he made good yesterday. Meanwhile I did my usual bits and then went out to move the fence for the horses and dig up ragwort. There seems to be a bit more of it this year than previous years and I did a big barrowful but it started to rain quite a bit and so I will either do some more later or tomorrow. I just need to get it up before it goes to seed, it’s only just started flowering so we are ok for a few days. We don’t spray our fields as you can imagine and it is teeming with insects and a huge variety of different vegetation is growing. Many people prefer to just have grass for their horses but I like ours to have a good range to graze, clover both red and white, plantain, so many different types of grasses, various types from the dandelion family as well, it’s diverse which is great for them and the wildlife. Mind you it absolutely stinks of fox down in the corner of the paddock 🙄

Hopefully once John has finished plastering and it is left to dry we can go and get some paint, I can start to give the kitchen a good clean, spruce up the bits that need doing and give it a new coat or two of paint next week 😁 That will be another job ticked off the never ending list ✔️

Johns patching up, got to wait for it to dry and then painting can commence

Podcast number two will be released tomorrow if you are interested, let me know what you think 🤔

Just been pottering in the garden, it July and the weather is not July weather lol, it started spitting and then was obvious it was going to hammer down and that’s exactly what it did, it’s absolutely pouring down 🙄

In the end we didn’t go and get paint as we have some to do the undercoat and can pick some up one evening in the week when the shop is quieter.

Have a great week 🥰

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/our-smallholding-life-warts-n-all/id1574503311

Posted in Friesland Farm

Mid Summer, a rotten cold & a missing cat, again!!

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 21st June 2021, Summer Solstice: The birds will all be kept in today and possibly tomorrow and the day after that, actually for as long as needs be, I am hoping the foxes will move on and be a problem for someone else and that they manage to get them dealt with because so far they have evaded all our efforts.

Been keeping myself busy this morning with some picking, strawberries, peas, mange tout, chard, baby beetroot and some carrot thinnings, not a bad little haul, some has gone out for sale some will be for dinner tonight. It takes a lot longer than you realise to pick it all and it will only be ramping up from here on in but it’s a lovely job to do, very fulfilling knowing you have grown it from seed to feed 😁 I did a bit of weeding around one of the rows of beetroot and then I have sown another lot of beetroot plug plants, trying to get this succession thing successfully working this year. Then it was onto planting the last of the squash plants, five more courgette plants (lol I have no idea what I will do with that lot as I have nine plants in total 🤪) Then I planted the rest of the squash plants in the menage, more pumpkins, spaghetti squash, crown Prince, table king and musque de something or other (I really must learn the name) Again if all these growq and produce I am going to have an awful lot of squash 😂 I had a look at what else is coming on, the broad beans have good sized pods but I can feel that the beans have not swelled enough to pick just yet. The tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melon all have tiny fruits forming in good quantities, the aubergine are flowering, the runner beans, dwarf beans and French beans are all flowering. I am waiting for the onions, garlic and shallots to start dying off so I can pull them and dry them, another couple of weeks before that happens I think. I am picking a good big bowlful of strawberries every day and the yellow raspberries are starting to ripen as is the red currant. The blackcurrant bushes are loaded with berries still green at the minute though. The early potatoes are only just starting to flower, they are way behind 🙄 The rhubarb is still producing plenty though it will be time to slow down picking that soon. The sweetcorn are doing well and growing strong, I think that covers most things apart from herbs and salad which are tickling along nicely without much fuss. Next I will be panicking that there is so much I haven’t got time to sort and process it all 😂

I have started accounting for exactly what is put out on a daily basis and what has sold so that I can see what we should be taking, I say should because takings seem to be down despite selling well 🤷‍♀️ another depressing realisation that we are probably too slack and the honesty box is great for the honest but not so great for the no so honest 🙄

Despite the fact that we will not be replacing any more birds we still have nearly 80 in various forms so we will be continuing and I still will be growing veg so they will still go out for sale along with any plants I have grown. Who knows what other opportunities will arise or become apparent, today even though I am trying to chivvy myself along I feel as though I am going uphill backwards 😬

I did do a positive step forward job this morning, I booked our male cat, Jack, in for the chop 😋 he is not the father of the kittens but it wouldn’t be very long before he would be and I don’t want that. Besides we don’t want him wandering as they always tend to wander towards the road instead of the acres and acres towards the back 🤷‍♀️ Once Jill’s kittens are weaned I will book her in as well, this little accident was exactly that and we don’t want hundreds of kittens running around, that’s how populations get out of control. There is always a drawback though, we have spent hundreds on getting cats spayed and neutered only for them to either disappear or get hit by a car, another thing we may give up on if it all goes pear shaped again besides with less birds we won’t get as many mice hopefully. Lol I sound as though I am ready to throw in the towel on the whole lot but this time of year is the time I find I am furiously trying to combat one pest or another and trying desperately to keep my head above water.

After some lunch I managed to get the petrol strimmer working and strimmed the walkway between the menage and the big paddock at the back. One of the problems with the fox is that the grass is long enough for it to hide in, where I strimmed is exactly where John nearly tripped over the fox munching on one of our hens, neither of them saw each other until the last minute! I would have done more but it was making my arm ache from holding it and the vibration in my hand only stopped about half and hour after I did lol.

I prepped the bits of veg I picked this morning ready for dinner later, John will have fresh garden peas and baby carrots with chicken and potatoes and I am having a garden salad made up of chopped beetroot and the beet leaves, chopped baby carrots, mange tout, white icicle radish sprinkled with a few red currants I picked the other day which I will also have with chicken.

I have decided that his year I will use what I pick while it’s fresh, sell anything I won’t be using and not do massive batch freezing like I have in previous years. The reason being I grow so much we don’t get through it before the next lot is ready 😂 Also having now got just one smallish chest freezer and a back up under counter freezer I am not going to have the room to hoard 🙄 so I either use it, sell it, give some of it to the family or I process it to store in a different way by either drying it of jamming, chutneying it etc, I am not keen of fermenting we won’t eat it and I still haven’t had the courage to try canning, though I really ought to give myself a stern talking to in that department. One of the problems is in the UK they don’t make canning equipment it would have to be bought from the US.

This morning it was overcast but dry, no chance of seeing the sun rise on solstice day today 🙄 By mid afternoon it was raining, I’m not too bothered as I got the bit of strimming done and it’s watering in the squash I planted BUT it’s gone a tad chilly with it 🤪 the radiators are set at 18c and some of them have come on, I am sure I am feeling it because we had got used to nearly 30c and now it’s dropped dramatically but still 🤷‍♀️ There is definitely no relying on a standard weather pattern anymore.

So I did a fair bit of reading up about canning and decided against it lol, still,worries me and when I spoke to John he said ‘it’s a bit like having a bomb sat on the stove top’ 🙄🤪😂 which put me completely off even though I’m sure they are not that dangerous 🤷‍♀️ Anyhow I also researched vacuum packing and have bought a home use machine. I know this will use plastic which I didn’t really want to do but it will also preserve the food a lot longer than putting it into freezer bags as it does end up with freezer burn after a while. As I said before there is no easy answer to making the most of storing the harvest, I just have to pick what is going to work best for me. Shelley said ‘you can’t save the world everyday’ and she is right though I should still be mindful of what I am doing not just do it because that’s the way it’s always done. So methods of preservation I will be using are: dehydration, freezing including vacuum packed, it will also include jams and chutneys though for long term storage I will be processing the jars in a water bath to make them safer.

Tuesday: It was raining when I first got up but the sun ☀️ made a breakthrough before 9am so it should be a nice enough day. I got some indoor morning jobs done, washing, cleaning the countertop in the boot room, putting out rubbish, breakfast etc etc. Then I did a bit of printing out for my Mum who was struggling to get her printer to work, I know how that feels 😂 see previous blogs for that story) I still don’t feel 100%, the cold is still lingering although the throat and the cough have almost gone now, I have a hair appointment this afternoon so anything I want to achieve today needs to be done this morning. We also have someone coming later to see if they can deal with the fox problem so that we can let the birds back out, it wasn’t so bad while the weather was cool and wet but if it gets hot I don’t really want them inside all day for any longer than necessary.

I spent the morning doing various bits including sowing some more seeds, his time I have sown dill, coriander and basil for continuity and also some pak Choi and Chinese cabbage for sale later on. The reason being that the little gem and oak leaf lettuce I have growing will soon be smothered in greenfly, that my past experience anyway, so if I get some replacements on the go now I should have some salad leaves once that happens. Pak Choi will grow in the tunnel even when it’s getting colder, I haven’t grown the Chinese’s cabbage before so it will be interesting to see how well it does, might become a favourite who knows. I also watered both the tunnels, it’s tempting to not do them when nothing growing outside needs water but that can be downfall of the fruit that has already set so best to keep doing it even if it’s only a small watering and not a soaking. Then it was round to the paddock to move the electric fencing out a bit for the horses, they soon eat off the strips they are given 😂 the idea though is that they are not able to just gorge on everything and anything, Jack was getting a bit porky and restricting him will slow that down. If, like last year, we just had weeks of sunshine it wasn’t necessary because the grass was dying off due to lack of moisture anyway and so it was more like hay but this year with the rain it is lush and green and full of sugar which is not ideal. He is not happy and tells me when I need to move the fencing 🤪 he sees me out in the garden, starts neighing at me and I think, ah time to move the fence a little, actually I did throw some hay in today as well because the fence is almost as far as I can move it without getting more tape and extending it but I also need to bring them in later when they come to deal with the fox and if I leave them in overnight I can extend it in the morning before I turn them back out again.

Went out for the afternoon to get my hair done. During lockdown, like everybody, my hair didn’t get cut, it got longer and longer, it also got greyer and greyer but I kind of liked it. When I was young my hair was blonde, as a young adult it was golden brown as a much older adult I had resorted to dying it light brown 🤷‍♀️ So now I had long hair that was grey on the top and light brown on the bottom, the dilemma was do I continue to grow the grey or do I return to the box dye that I had always done. I bought the dye and it sat there and sat there and sat there, it was a rolling decision not to dye each week and eventually I thought I like it like it lighter so I will stay grey. As I said the problem was the bottom of my hair was a washed out light brown that I didn’t want to cut short, so the answer was highlights apparently. I say apparently because I have no clue about these sort of things, seriously, I had my hair coloured once in a salon about 15 years ago and that’s it 🙄 So now after being ‘done’ I have long hair that is even in light colour all over, fabulous, let’s see how long I keep it up for 🤪

Once back home there is no time to enjoy swishing my new locks around as it was straight out to get the horses in while John fed the birds. Then a job that I imagine a lot of people would refuse to do including John but I am not squeamish, never have been, I am one of those weird people who rather likes getting maggots off a sheep’s backside or pus out of a nasty cut, I am quite happy to watch brain surgery or open heart surgery on TV so this job was a breeze. We have dead hens, you know how that happened, and I gathered up bodies in the aftermath of the attack and bought them in overnight. The chaps are coming later to see if they can help sort the problem out but they need bait, cue dead hens, they need bait that isn’t easy to run off with though and so we took out a hammer and tent pegs and yes I hammered the tent pegs through the dead bodies to secure them to the ground. I don’t see this as a problem at all but John flat refused to do it and wouldn’t even look 👀 Let’s hope the chaps get here before the fox makes a meal of the skewered hens!

We are pretty diverse here in terms of things going on, personal house things, veg things, flower things, poultry things, pet things, Smallholding things, family things, so sometimes I completely forget to double back and update on things I may have mentioned in the blog. One of those things is a Smallholding thing that we did a round four years ago, might be three, definitely three maybe more 😂 The front paddock we decided would no longer be for grazing the horses, it would be for chickens/poultry only and with that in mind we planted a few more fruit trees, plum, cherry and apple and we used a grass seed which was especially for chickens. The grass is shorter and so matures quickly and sets seed readily, the idea behind this is that it self sows as you leave it long enough. There were also a mixture of herbs and wildflowers in it, herbs in the form of things like plantain not sage or mint 😜 and wildflowers in the form of what most would call weeds not pretty cornflowers etc, we also added red clover separately. The idea was firstly to provide the hens with a good range of more natural forage and secondly to build up the thickness of the sward as it had got rather sparse from constant grazing and the fact that during the war there were buildings on there and the foundations are pretty much still there just buried under the surface and not that far down either 🙄 Three (or maybe four) years later it is doing really well, the variety in there is amazing, mostly just looks like grass but if you walk through it you can really see the variety of plants that are growing. It is buzzing with insects which again is great for the hens they love to run and jump and catch flying insects. It has been a successful attempt to get a much healthier paddock than it was previously.

The only problem is that we don’t have the equipment to cut long grass lol, the ride on mower would just give up on grass that long and thick. We discussed cutting it by hand when the time comes and then leaving it to dry before stacking it or making a home made box to bale it, something I will have to look into. John thinks a strimmer will do, it probably would but wouldn’t it be nice to use a scythe 😁

Wednesday: It’s nearly 12 noon and I am having a little sit down. We were up early this morning, the sun was shining and it looked like it was going to be a warm day so we got on. Cup of tea first mine you 😂 Then John did the feeding rounds while I went out to the paddock and altered the electric fencing to give the horses some more grazing, I had to get extra stakes and electric tape as we had got to the limits of the first lot. 6.30am out in the paddocks it was quite lovely though I could already hear the traffic from the A40, all those commuters buzzing backwards and forwards, glad it’s not me. Then it was onto looking for the bodies that we pegged last night, rookie error here as I only found one body, and only 4 out of 8 metal skewers 🙄 The chaps never saw a fox at all last night but they are definitely here otherwise the bodies would not be missing. If they stay active only at night then that’s fine but I have a feeling they are chancers and will come anytime we are not around. We haven’t let our new birds out but the older lot are back wandering around, I have no idea where we go from here to be honest, I fully expect more attacks but these foxes are as cunning as they are elusive.

That done it was onto sorting the eggs and the egg shed and then some picking of peas. I woke this morning with the cold I had now pestering my sinuses and if you have ever had inflamed sinus you will know how I was feeling. At this point I came in and laid on the bed for half an hour as I felt truly awful, I had taken some up the nose spray so was waiting for it to work which it did after a short while. Once I felt I could actually breathe again I went out to clean the dustbin, I had noted a while back that it was in a shocking state 😜 so I was determined not to forget to give it a power wash and a scrub out while it was empty. I used some Zoflora and now it smells lovely. The next job was fed the Guineas and give the light Sussex pen a spruce up and a clean out. I raked the floor to get up debris which was still there from the ash tree we cut down, cleaned out the house, sprayed it with some diluted jeyes fluid and put in fresh straw. I also hung a piece of shading on the door to the run, not to shade but to keep the damn magpies and rooks from eating the feed. The top of the door has a metal grid but it’s big enough for them to get in, but it seems they are way to stupid to get back out again and then when they land of the floor the chickens attack them. Hopefully that will sort the issue and I no longer have to listen to the racket they make. The rest of the morning I spent watering the greenhouse and potting on some plants that I had grown from seed. I also sorted out a few plants that I have been bringing on for a while and composted anything that hadn’t made it, gave it all a good feed and a drink and then in for my sit down which I think I have earned.

Well I have tried on and off to get a few bits done outside this afternoon but the cloud cover is sparse 🙄 I did manage to dig up a few verbena seedlings and pot them but that was about as far as I got. I am hoping it will be a fair bit cooler later and I can get out and do some more then.

We did manage to get out again after dinner, we wanted to get some of the grass around the front chicken hut cut to try and give the hens a bit of a chance to see the fox coming 👀 It is a bit too long for the mower so we only did a small bit, I need to order that scythe 😂 My sister and brother in law popped over and we had a cuppa in the garden, we did a bit of target practice with the air gun, turns out I am better than I thought I would be. We were only shooting at a plastic plant pot but it’s good to practise.

My vacuum packing machine arrived and I can’t wait to use it, it should make the space in the freezer a lot more useable plus we won’t end up with freezer burn.

Oh yeah nearly forgot, had a panic moment when John opened the post to find that we had not paid the electric bill and they were threatening action. I never had a bill in the post, nor a red letter I searched for it everywhere but we just haven’t had one so no wonder I haven’t paid it! Paid it now so all is well.

Thursday: I keep waking up each day expecting to feel better but it’s not happening and this morning I feel worse. All over body worse not just my sinuses which makes me think that it could be inflammation throughout. I feel cold too, not the kind of cold that putting on an extra jumper will sort out, it is one of those ‘if you know, you know’ feelings meaning only anyone who gets chronic inflammation will know exactly what I mean. My muscles ache this morning and bending down getting the oat milk out of the fridge my lower back muscles felt like they were dried out bits of leather someone had just bent 😕 I do hope this is not the beginning of a flare and that it is the immune response to this lingering cold. Only time will tell, in the meantime I will up the anti inflammatory foods and see if that helps. Most of what I eat does come under the anti inflammatory section, plenty of fresh veg and fruit, low fat Greek yoghurt, wholemeal or whole grain foods, olive oil etc etc but there are a few things I could ramp up on specifically such as turmeric and ginger, maybe a orange, carrot, ginger shake with a touch of turmeric or a banana, pear, blueberry & cinnamon or even spinach, pear, red grape, celery, all good choices.

I made an orange, carrot, turmeric, ginger and, because I had it left from breakfast, half a banana smoothie, which was delicious and packed with beta carotene. Often over the years before I was diagnosed with Lupus I had researched my skin condition. It started when I was 21 and pregnant with out eldest daughter, the midday sun began to affect my bared skin, it would erupt in thousands of tiny blister like spots. I would look around and see who else had this problem and there was nobody, I could see heat rash but this was different. Back then there wasn’t really the wealth of information available like there is today on the internet so it was difficult and I ploughed through a lot of reading. I concluded I had polymorphic light eruptions, I didn’t go to the doctor back then as it was definitely seasonal but I tried a plethora of creams and oils including rose hip oil, beta carotene seemed to be a dominant ingredient in many things alleged to help. None of them really helped very much and so I just became used to either avoiding the daytime sun or suffering with the rash. The eruptions are the same as I get now if I am caught out but the Lupus diagnosis comes from the presence of a high level of antibodies which were obviously not there back then or they would have picked that up in blood tests during subsequent pregnancies. There are other symptoms they look for as well most noticeably the butterfly shaped redness across the nose and cheeks, actually it is not where near as pretty as a butterfly 🤣 and not much similar in shape but 🤷‍♀️ I plan to have a purely plant based day today, we don’t eat that much meat, well I don’t anyway and we had fish yesterday, I hardly ever eat processed food and I rarely drink so I should kick this in to touch pretty quickly fingers crossed 🤞 #igotthis 😋

Oh what a full on day I have had and not finished yet as it’s twin sitting day today 🤪🤪 I have been prepping and cooking, one of the things that happens when I, but probably anyone, who is not on form, is meals kind of go out of the window. Generally once I am hit by fatigue I can’t function but what I need more than anything is some goodness so I have been sorting that out today. I started off with the smoothie which as I said was delish, then I moved on to making a few things that can be frozen and easily thawed so that I still get some good nutrition. I have made a couple of batches of butternut squash soup, this one is just roasted butternut squash, sautéed onions, a teaspoon of make syrup and a grating of nutmeg, plus salt and pepper. I worried a little about what it was going to taste like but it’s lovely, and it’s nutritious and that’s the main thing. Then I made a large batch of roasted butternut squash and pasta, I roasted it with onions and garlic but also some pecan nuts and edamame beans, then cooked some wholewheat spaghetti and wilted spinach into it and mixed the whole lot together. One lot I have for dinner tonight the other two lots were vacuum packed and frozen. There were a few issues with the vacuum packing, user error I have to say but I got there in the end, actually ‘we’ got there as Shelley was here at the time. Again nutritious and easily cooked by reheating in a pan of hot water. I have also made some pork mince, which is exactly that with spinach, carrots, edamame (because I had them out) and a sweet potato mash to go on the top. John will have some for tea and any other portions I can freeze for another day. Of course there is always room for crumble in the freezer and so I made a blackberry and apple crumble, one portion for John later and possibly tomorrow and two portions for the freezer. Go me, and on top of all that I have been busy organising and booking a couple of things for later in the year and moving the rabbit hitch out into the orchard for Rosie (Shelley’s rabbit) to come and stay.

Literally just sat down with a cuppa and hope to get it finished before the bundles of mischief arrive 😂

Evening jobs were move the electric fencing for the horses, Jack was telling me it was time 😂 then watering the tunnels and the greenhouse before going back in to wash up do the egg sorting and feed the boot room crew, 9pm sit down, surprised I didn’t fall asleep.

Friday: Up early to get some picking done so I can put it out with the eggs, mange tout, peas and a punnet of strawberries today, not much today but hopefully soon there will be loads of produce available. Then onto a job I have been trying to get at for a few days but failed, cutting back the dying flowers on the lupin, delphiniums, geums etc, if I cut of the flowers that have gone over, they will make more, it’s like magic 😁 I also dead headed the roses and cut back the early flowering clematis as well as digging up a few self self verbena and planting them elsewhere. The clematis had quite a bit of foliage that I have taken some cuttings from, not too good at cuttings but nothing ventured nothing gained as they say 😜 Back indoors at 11 for a coffee that I really fancied, absent kindly made myself tea 🤷‍♀️ Absent minded because I was thinking I must find the cat (Jack) as he has his vaccination this afternoon at 2.30 and I haven’t seen him this morning yet 🙄 Need to give myself plenty of time to locate him or the vet plenty of cancellation notice if I can’t find him 😬

I couldn’t find the cat, not a sign of him and yet he is usually always there when I am gardening or pottering about, it’s like he knew 🙄 I have rebooked the appointment for next week and I will capture him the day before and keep him confined 😂

The weather turned out to be not as bad as I had heard, it was North winds and cold but it has been fine, great for me really because mostly overcast. When I was feeding the torts I spotted some lovely strawberries growing so I grabbed a pot and picked them. Along with others I had already picked I made some jam, Strawberry jam always smells amazing when it’s cooking 🧑‍🍳 I just made two jars both of which will never leave our kitchen as John is a strawberry jamaholic 😜John came home just after lunch, with some flowers I might add, it is our 38th wedding anniversary, after a cuppa he started taking up the broken tiles on the kitchen floor where we had taken out the Rayburn and the cupboard next to it. We managed to find some tiles that are almost identical, not an exact match but it will be difficult to tell the difference unless you know, apart from the fact that the new ones will be a lot cleaner 😂

The new tiles are now down and if you can’t really tell which are the new and which are the old ones so that’s good. The cat still have not a made and appearance at feeding time which is a worry as we have been here before, more than once and nearly always when we have a marauding fox about. They get to an age where they go a bit further around the edge of the paddocks, because they are not big cats, still only a year old and so fairly petite, I am convinced the fox has them, I mean I can’t be sure and I haven’t seen them do it but the cats disappear into thin air when they have been cats that are nearly always around 🙄

Saturday: I have the most ridiculous cough which has kept me awake a lot of the night and consequently I am not Mrs Happy this morning 😬 My sinuses are still playing up that’s the cause and the effect is constant coughing, whenever I sit down or lie down the coughing starts so I just have to be upright most of the day 😜 We started off with all the usual jobs then shot off to get a bit of shopping, stop and Shelley’s for coffee and to sort a couple of bits out then back home to get some work started. Moving the electric fence for the horses was first on the list and then John started digging up docks in the bit they have eaten off. Try the strimmer was my suggestion, it will be quicker, we got it out the line jammed, we took it apart and went back to digging them out because we couldn’t get it back together. I got the antique scythe out, John tells me I am doing it wrong, he has a go and breaks it clean in half, don’t why I bother sometimes, I left him to carry on digging them out with his spade 🙄 he is still digging mid afternoon 😂 Meanwhile I found other jobs to do, take down some bits in the kitchen ready for when John plasters the wall, a picture needed to come down and the ‘Shelia’ I don’t know if that’s the right name it’s what I have always known it as but it is one of those farmhouse airers that go over a fire and it has pulleys to lower it and higher it, anyway it’s down now. Then I went out and had a look at the onions, rather mortifyingly I find they have a ‘miner bug’ ffs, I think it’s allium miner, either way I have to pull them to stop any further damage. I will see what they are like when dried out a bit and see what can be salvaged and how. It means I won’t be able to store them but I will be able to either dehydrate them, freeze them or vacuum and probably a combination. The shallots are also affected though not as much and the garlic is only slightly affected but it has other issues. Where we had so much rain the garlic cloves have begun to grow again before the tops have died off ready for picking 😂 ha you couldn’t make this up, I seriously am considering having a year off veg gardening next year, it is too hit and miss with some things. The good thing is that the red onions I planted in spring seem unaffected, I am not sure if that is because of the colour or because they have not been in long enough to be affected. That is a problem with over wintered veg it has had longer to harbour pests, the struggle is real, oh well there is always next year 🤪

Sunday: An overcast day that, although rain threatened constantly, stayed dry until during the night. I am typing this up Monday morning so I’m a bit late but I actually couldn’t sit down without constant coughing so I spent most of my day up on my feet so give my ribs a rest (they ache like billio from all the coughing) I keep thinking, today it will move on surely, but nope each day here it still is like the unwelcome wasp buzzing round your head. It is getting a little better each day but I still feel thick in the head and sinus, once that goes I shall be fine 🤞

Between us we have grouted some of the floor tiles back in, cut the lawn, dug up docks, picked peas, weeded, hoed and swept the front driveway, investigated a collapsed manhole we found that we had no idea was there, I think it was from the MOD days as it doesn’t appear to be linked to anything current, as well as all the usual jobs that need doing daily.

I have cleared the peas that were growing with the tomatoes in the small tunnel, they worked well as an experiment, I had a good picking of peas shoots initially and then a decent crop of peas after but now they have got leggy and straggly and are blocking light from the tomatoes so it’s time to cut them back. One of two things will happen, they will either die off and release nitrogen into the soil or they will start to grow again, I suspect the latter and I will monitor that to see if I need to take them completely out or leave them for another crop it just depends on how well the tomatoes are getting on at the time.

That’s yesterday in a nutshell really, I still don’t feel well enough to expand on that lol.

Peppers, aubergine, melon, ginger are just some of the fruits beginning to swell in the greenhouse.

Have a good week, hopefully next time you read the blog the cough will have gone 🙄😬

Still no sign of the cat 😢

Posted in Friesland Farm

Busy week, some rain at last & fox attack again & again 😢

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 14th June 2021: Today we find out if any of the restrictions still in place will be lifted or not, not holding out much hope for a full lift 🙄

Another fine day with the temps set to climb up near 30c, you know what that means for me, early morning, so it’s 8.30pm I have stopped for a coffee after already doing a three hour stint this morning. Most of that was picking, peas & mangetout today, a bit of weeding while I was going round, sorting out some plants in the cold frame and picking weeds to feed the Guineas and torts. I also did all the usual jobs of feeding various four legged pets, putting eggs out, a bit of watering out the front etc etc.

This is the month where the harvests begin to come in, they start off slowly but soon there will be so much to pick I won’t know if I am coming or going. And then there is the processing of it all lol, at the minute my plan is to keep back what I want for the day and put the rest out for sale, this morning that only amounted to two bags of mangetout and a tub of strawberries but it will start to come thick and fast especially if we get any rain, doesn’t look very promising at the minute. Of course we have been here before and what will happen next is too much rain that spoils the fruit 🤣 there is no winning this swim only treading water and trying to stay afloat 🤪 I still have some squash to get in the ground but I am waiting until it cools a little first, they will be fine in pots for now. I also have a fair few pepper seedlings and runner beans, I tried selling them but no takers and I hate throwing them away so I am going to have to find a place for them to grow on.

After coffee I did another hour outside which will probably do for today. I have potted on the pepper seedlings, it doesn’t matter if I have 20 pepper plants, I have space for them so may as well grow them, there was a jalapeño plant too, the tomato plants that didn’t sell are also potted on, I may put them back out or plant them up outside who knows yet. I planted up sweetcorn that I had left over, I put those in a bucket for the kids to pick if they get big enough, the corn, not the kids and I sowed some more carrot seeds, some in a bed in between the rows that are nearly done and some in pots again for the kids to pick. They are round carrot so ideal for pots, I picked some of those from the bed for dinner tonight and I found a stray potato which had grown so that will be potato, carrots and peas from the garden as well as strawberries for pudding 🥰 That is what is called the good life and it really is.

I noticed, when I pulled the carrots that the bed was very dry under the initial damp surface so I gave it a good soaking with the rain water hose. It is always worth digging down a bit to see exactly how far the water has penetrated, you will be surprised at dry it really is. A good indicator are ants, if there are a fair few nearby then you can bet there is an ants nest and that will tell you it’s way too dry they don’t like damp soil.

Once indoors I decided to get some polishing, cleaning done and change the bed sheets, I found a great podcast to listen to while doing it, Self Sufficient Hub. There are some interesting topics so if self sufficiency is for you then have a listen or have a listen if it’s it’s not you may get the bug 😁 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/self-sufficient-hub/id1506405294

It’s 1pm and I am a little tired now so I have had a quick lunch and am now going to have a little rest and maybe listen to another podcast.

In the evening after some dinner we went round to Mum and Ken’s for a cuppa and a slice of cake, there is always cake at Mums 🥰

Tuesday: Up earlyish to get the morning jobs done as I have blood tests first thing, they are a little over due but not to worry. Back home and I just about go put the washing hung out when Sam arrived with the twins. She had come over to move the electric fencing and make a bigger restriction paddock that will also now house Jack as well as Biscuit. To be fair Biscuit is looking and doing well but Jack on the other hand is getting too fat, too much grass for him to eat all by himself lol. He will also now be restricted probably for the next 2/3 months depending on the weather. If it stays hot and dry the grass will die off and he can go back out but any rain that we have will ‘flush’ the grass and he will have to stay put. He won’t like it one little bit but he will get I’ll otherwise so it’s for his own good. That took up a couple of hours, once we had got the stakes in place and some electric tape plus the water buckets all filled I took the twins back to the house to get some snacks and a drink while Sam finished it all off.

The twins had such a fun time here that they had to have a bath before going home 🤣 George had by that point, played with horse poo, dirty water in the garden & soil in the veg bed which he delighted in putting all over Lucies back. Lucie had stuck her whole foot in the horses water bucket, sock, trainer and all, thrown her bear in there too and de planted some of Nannys pricked out foxglove seedlings 🤪 All good fun and because there are two of them it can be manic when one goes in one direction to create havoc while the other is off in another direction, hilarious at times as well though 🤣

Wednesday: I was up fairly early and got on with a few jobs before having breakfast, John did the animals and then left for work. Next came a first for me, a covid test, a lateral flow test to be precise, the reason being that I have a sore throat, similar to having swallowed sandpaper 🙄 which is making me cough. I checked my temperature and oxygen levels all normal, I didn’t think for one minute I had covid but I have to check. Two things struck me as I did the test, first on opening I couldn’t help but notice it was all made in China 🙄 if I was a conspiracist I would definitely be jumping up and down saying ‘I told you’ China is probably making a fortune at the minute 😬 Secondly I don’t know if it was just me but I suspect not, I could not help but sneeze, 4/5/6 times while doing the nostril bit. I was thinking good job I am not in a test clinic and positive or else those sneeze spores are going to be all over the place 🤷‍♀️ I have just checked my test as time is up and it’s negative, I kind of knew it would be but you never know. Actually I have a third point to add, all the pieces of the test are plastic, they go into a plastic bag when you have finished and then that goes in the bin 😖 In a time when we are trying to reduce plastic use this is disastrous really, I know there is probably not a way round it when they are needed so quickly and in great quantities but can you image exactly how many billions of pieces of plastic have been added to landfill over the last year and a half 😢

While I was waiting for the test to ‘ripen’ I went out to water and feed the plants in the greenhouse and then the small tunnel.

Pottered about a bit picking strawberries and peas, a bit of watering and then Shelley arrived with Flo. They had come over to help get some work done in the veg garden, they weeded around the courgette plants and then watered and put down some cardboard mulch as the relentless sun dries the ground so quickly. The we went onto tidying, weeding and sorting the area right inside the gate, I tend to dump pots and tools and everything else there on my way to and from the front garden and never get round to tidying it, well mow it’s all done and feels like a much nicer part of the garden. I have many spaces like that to sort out mind you 😜 Shelley had bought lunch and went inside to make that while I carried on a little more and then we sat down and ate in the garden where there was still some shade. We are forecast thunderstorms and rain over the next couple of days and we could really do it to be honest, everything is flagging a little.

I heard on the radio a report that in this country, and many more around the world I suspect, we are unprepared for the climate chaos that is ahead in the UK. This definitely rings alarms bells for me, I have been saying for a couple of years now that the weather is so much more unpredictable than it was even five years ago. It was never this relentlessly hot for days or even weeks on end, we seem to have our weather in blocks these days and it is nearly always extreme bouts of it too. I seriously need to get a handle on what it is I need to do in order to be able to continue to grow fruit and veg successfully. Trying to stabilise the soil is probably the main thing, the torrential downpours we get now wash the soil downhill. Next would be trying to work out ways to get through drought periods, I may have to use more drought tolerant varieties, I am finding that swede and turnips just keep bolting because of the lack of rain, I either don’t plant them any more or look for better varieties. One thing is certain, a change in thinking and planning is needed to combat whatever the future weather has in store.

I just signed up with a group called Arbtalk where you can register as a tip site for free woodchip if any members are working in your area 😁

After a quick dinner we went over to babysit Mia, George and Lucy for a few hours while Sam and Luke went out for a drink.

Thursday: It’s 9.15am and I have already showered, breakfasted, put on some washing, fed the dogs, cats and Guineas, sorted the eggs and put them out for sale, have three loaves of bread on a second prove and got a lamb stew going in the slow cooker. It rained a little over night but not as much as was forecast and no thunder storms, my plan was to be indoors today as it was supposed to rain heavily most of the morning but as yet nothing🙄 As I am already committed to timings and will have the oven on I am going to make some more rhubarb and orange jam. A couple of years ago I split my three rhubarb plants into six because I couldn’t keep up with the demand for rhubarb, it’s Sod’s law that nobody seems to want much of it this year 🤪 Nobody seems to want much of anything actually lol but that’s fine, more for us and less pressure.

I still feel a bit rough but the throat no longer feels like sandpaper so that’s an improvement 😁

11am and three loaves of bread cooked and cooling as well as five jars of jam and the washing up done. Time for a sit down I think.

Those loaves are bigger than they look in the picture 😂 they are 1lb loaves, I use half white flour and half granary to get a nice loaf, forgot to score the tops of these though 🤷‍♀️

I emptied, what was left in the small chest freezer, into the big chest freezer and have now turned the smaller one off to defrost. This will be cleaned out and moved to a new position and I will reload it with only what I want to keep and will use. Both of the freezers were half empty or half full depends on how you view it, and both freezers have things in them that I will probably not get round to using before the next lot of produce starts going in. The plan is to throw out what I don’t want, when I say throw out I don’t mean throw away mind you, there is a fair amount in there that I will feed to the dogs, gravy stock for instance, if I don’t think I will be using it within the next couple of months I will defrost and use it to mix with the dog biscuits. The reason being I am bound to be making more so I need to move it on. There are ice packs in there, a drawer full, they have arrived at various times with meat or fish orders and rather than throw them away I have kept them but I don’t need them, what I do need to do is get rid of them 🙄 There are things like frozen buttermillk, pesto, herb portions in there, I need to get good idea of what is available and plan to use it all up. Once the smaller freezer is cleaned and moved I will transfer over and then defrost the bigger one which we will be selling, I have a small under counter front loading freezer which is off most of the time but I will keep it just in case I need extra space 😜 It is always handy to use if you are stocking up for a birthday or bbq anyway.

I went outside and did a bit of weeding in the bed on the side of the driveway, then some picking of peas and watering in the small tunnel. I pulled up the rocket which has now gone over and some early sown baby spinach which has now bolted. These were both in tubs in the small tunnel because they were sown so early, once it gets hot in there they just bolt. I gave the tubs (old recycle bins) a good soaking and then sowed some corn salad in one tub and some celery seeds in the other. The celery will be for snipping like you do with cress, I never was a good enough veg gardener to perfect the art of full grown celery 🤪 but this way is ideal, useful on salads and if I don’t use all of it the leaves will get big enough to pick and dry as celery powder or freeze in packets.

I keep looking at the sky and thinking ‘come on, rain please’ but as usual the weather forecast has changed somewhat and there is no rain in sight until later tonight, so much for heavy downpours, I may have to do a rain dance at this rate. It is seriously beginning to affect some areas now, not everything, some things are plodding away content with the sprinkling they might get when I hose at night or the spitting we had overnight which hardly wet the ground and certainly didn’t penetrate much further into the soil than a nano of a millimetre 🙄 Around the farm I can see the ground beginning to open up with fissures, dry, cracked ground, I think I have been here before 🤔 The water tanks are almost empty now and it’s very definitely going to become a problem is we don’t get some rain soon.

During the afternoon and then in the evening I watered, the signs of rain were there but I it wasn’t really happening and I know from experience that I may as well do it. If the rain comes then it’s a bonus if it doesn’t come then at least the plants get something to drink.

At teatime I looked after the twins while Sam took Mia for her swimming lesson and then in the evening Sue and Shane popped over for a cuppa and to let me know about a small business arrangement that I may be able to take advantage of, more about that later if it happens 😁

By the time we went to bed, still no rain, we were later to bed than usual as we have been binge watching Clarksons Farm, which is the funniest thing on TV all year, seriously it’s hilarious, definitely watch it if you live around the Cotswolds, the very real characters are worth a watch in their own and together with Jeremys humour it is side splitting 🤣🤣

Friday: Rain 🌧 actual rain, enough to wet the top layer of the soil 😁 hopefully we will get a fair bit today, it will enliven the plants and fill the water tanks. The problem will be getting it to stop 🤪 The forecast is possibly ‘a days rain in an hour’ 🙄 that is definitely climate change, we never had such volumes in such a short time years ago, whatever is causing the change it is undeniably here. Still it means that today I don’t have to water anything outside and as I did the tunnels and greenhouse last night and the sun is nowhere to be seen, it means no watering at all and I can concentrate on other jobs. I still feel a bit rough, still have a sore throat so I am thinking that I will probably have a good rest this afternoon to gather strength for the weekends work ahead.

It’s been steadily raining for a few hours now, nice and steady so far 🙄 which is what we want, heavy rain washes away the top of the soil because we are on a slight slope and that’s not good.

After doing the washing up I went out to mop up the defrosted freezer, what I could have done with was a pile of tea towels 🤪 I knew I needed them for something. I have cleaned all the areas I can get to, inside is done and the front and sides, I need to move it so that I can Hoover off the back and the side ventilation, that will have to wait until John is home, unless I am feeling particularly strong. Actually I don’t think they are that heavy once they are empty just cumbersome due to the size.

I was listening to a couple of podcasts while I was working and I need to get some more veg in for successional sowing, things like French beans and beetroot, but I also need to start off some veg for overwintering such as cabbage maybe. If you sow them now and keep them in modules until later then hopefully you miss the cabbage white butterfly which as you probably know will decimate a crop very quickly. Think I will have my first break now and peruse some catalogue to see if there is anything I haven’t got that I could be sowing for winter.

The business thing I was talking about has happened quickly and so I am able to tell you that from later today we will be selling local honey from the egg shed 🥰 I am delighted to be able to help a small local producer by buying any jars they haven’t sold and then selling them in the shed. It’s a win win situation and I hope it works out well. The bees live in a quiet area on the edge of woodland just 4 miles away at Grove Farm, I am very excited at the opportunity to be able to do this for our customers.

I popped into the greenhouse for half an hour and have sown some swede, turnip, peas, cabbage, cauliflower and French beans as well as some icicle radish. I know I said I wasn’t going to do some of these but I am thinking that later sowings might be better especially for the root veg. By the time they are big enough to go in the ground, then establish and finally begin to put on some growth they won’t have got so big that they need to bolt due to lack of rain or consistent sunny weather 🤷‍♀️ I will only know if it try it out, I will have the onion bed available at the beginning of next month and then the broad bean bed will also probably be vacant by then, both of these areas I can use to grow veg well into the Autumn or even winter.

The honey arrived and I got sorted making a little notice for the shed and putting it on the Farm Facebook page. I had some on the bread I made yesterday (toasted) I can confirm it is delicious 😋

I have been researching mulches, home made mulches to be precise, to see exactly what you can/can’t should/shouldn’t use as a mulch. Pretty much anything as long as it does have a seed head is the answer, I have plenty of raw material round here it’s just a case of deciding which to use, probably a mixture of a few things would be ideal. I need to get into the habit of shredding everything I cut back but you can even use a shredder to shred cardboard (as long as the blade is sharp enough and the cardboard is dry) Remember the jute I was trialling? Well here is my conclusion, yes it works well for the first year, it doesn’t exclude all light but it is not a bad alternative to plastic membrane, however as expected it does not last through to the following spring, even if you take it up off the garden, the weather has already started to degrade it. I would say if you can get hold of it easily or cheaply then use it but I wouldn’t buy it off the shelf unless you have plenty of disposable income. Next the biodegradable, compostable plastic membrane, this one had good points and not so good. It was flimsy, quite expensive (but hey we are trying to save the planet 😬) Not permeable which is a bit of a drawback if you are using it to grow crops in, however I would think if you made a ridge and furrow type bed, laid the membrane then planted into the top of the ridge the furrows would collect water run off and so water would get to the roots that way. Laying it on the top of a flat bed does not really work if you are growing through it but it is ideal as a weed suppressant on its own. As for it breaking down, I think you could probably get two years out of it, it showed no signs of disintegrating when it came to plant season again this spring though it didn’t feel quite so robust. It is also a bit like cling film, sticks to itself making for a very good comedy sketch if your sense of humour is present that day 😜 So the good points are, it’s good for the environment, not so good, fairly expensive and tricky to use. Cardboard is another one I use, this is pretty good, the thicker the cardboard the better, but slugs do like to have a festival gathering underneath it so make sure you have frogs and hedgehogs to help keep the slugs down. Mostly I am trying whatever I can to suppress weeds and prevent moisture loss, so far the woven weed membrane is ticking all the boxes except the most important one which is the environment.

Went and got some food shopping early evening, when we got back the geese were making a racket so John left the shopping in the front and ran up the back to see what was happening, he couldn’t really see anything and so came back in. When he went to put the birds away the fox has had two full grown geese 🤬🤬 Last night as he was putting away he nearly tripped over the fox who was busy eating one of our new hens 😳 It’s a f…ing nightmare, what are you supposed to do, full grown geese can’t be kept in a fox proof pen, they graze grass and cover large areas while they are doing it 🤷‍♀️ getting close to the ‘what’s the point’ point 😢

Saturday: It’s overcast and quite a bit cooler today hence why it’s now 5pm and this is the first time I have sat down all day long I even ate my lunch on the move. I spent the first hour or so doing the usual jobs and then picking, peas, mangetout, baby beetroot and rhubarb, while John did the morning rounds. After that I went out to move the horses restricted fencing just a tad so that they have a bit more grass. Then we moved the freezer into its new position and I went to inspect the damage to the geese from the fox last night. He had gone for the goose on the nest and the gander had tried to defend her but he had both of them. The eggs were scattered everywhere last night but this morning they had put them all back in a nest 😢 However we had already decided to get her off the nest as it was now obvious they were not going to hatch, we wait every year but they are nearly always duff. These were the same I threw them in the hedge and most of them exploded eww that stinks. I then said to John we need to get the grass cut in that paddock, one of the reasons they would have not seen the fox was because the grass was long and it could easily sneak up. Once we got the ride on mower going I whizzed round and round until it was done, found the remains of the female goose in the long grass, the fox has been chewing away on it overnight by the looks of things 🤬 John dug up any ragwort and docks for burning. I then went round to the side by the ducks and cut that grass, it’s a walkway really so needed cutting, John meanwhile dug up docks in the side paddock. He then went in for lunch and I made a sandwich while he got the strimmer going, once it was running I finished my lunch quickly and went out to strim. John had a bit of a sit down but not for long, once I had finished that we tided up some rubbish from the back area and sorted out one of the cupboards which had stuff in there I have been keeping ‘just in case’ five years later I haven’t ever needed it and so now it is getting binned. It is nothing special just things like nets that bulbs came in or plastic fruit punnets I had collected by the dozens 🤣 I also had some brewing gear in there but that is going to my niece and her partner, I said he could have it in exchange for a bottle of whatever it is he decides to brew. I did do some brewing once upon a time, not much, a batch of beer and some cider but as neither of us drink very much I haven’t really bothered for years so might as well give it to someone who will. Shelley came over with the children, my sister was here doing the caravan and then my Mum turned up, all at the same time lol so we had a cup of tea 🫖 Then it was time to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting which John did while I cleaned the kitchen up a bit and washed the floor and that lot took us up to 5pm 🤪 At least I can get a good days work in when the weather is like this, here’s hoping it is the same again tomorrow and at this rate everything will be ship shape in no time at all.

Ooo one thing I nearly forgot, I picked some tea 😁 Camellia Sinensis, not much but about 15 leaves, the tips of the plant (hence PG Tips 😜) will dry them out and then wait for some more to grow and pick them and keep doing that until I have enough for a cup of tea 😂 Actually what I need to do is propagate the plant so I have quite a bit to pick at the same time.

I took some pics in the week of all the lovely pink flowers that are coming out 🥰

I love the baby pink lupin, the rose is Hermione, the salvia is pink sensation and I had no idea I had this dusky pink delphinium 😁

And some of the pyramid orchids growing in the long grass in the driveway, that’s why I can’t cut the grass yet 😁

Pyramid Orchid, there are a few in the driveway and quite a few more in the front paddock, hopefully by not mowing they will increase year on year.

Sunday: Father’s Day, we got up and did all the early morning jobs as usual and then Charlie, Shelley, Martin, Florence and Josh came over. They bought all the necessary ingredients to cook a Father’s Day breakfast which we all sat and ate together, lovely. That was a couple of hours of a leisurely breakfast and some Sunday morning chat and then John went off to pick up some tiles we had ordered to repair the floor in the kitchen where the Rayburn had been taken out. A short rest early afternoon and then mid afternoon someone arrived as planned to take the Rayburn and all the fittings. So now Rosie the Rayburn has gone, I am going to have mixed feelings, we were getting to the point where it was bloody hard work, chopping and cutting wood all summer, loading and keep her going all winter but I will miss the cooking facilities and the amazing warm hug that comes from a wood burning stove that you just can’t replicate with any other heat. I have toyed with the idea of having a small wood burner but that is my heart tugging and not my head thinking 😂

Later we are off to Sam and Luke’s for a roast dinner 😁 and this evening a chap is coming to see if he can dispatch the fox for us. Actually it’s two more foxes, he was here last night and saw them but couldn’t get a safe shot as one was in the yard and the other near the goose hut. When we lost the chickens the other week, he got three foxes and now there are two more to deal with, when I say it’s relentless, it really is. And as I will always say we don’t just do it for the sake of it, the nighttime prowlers are perfectly entitled to prowl, the birds are locked away safely, but the daylight ones well they are a different kettle of fish, we can’t afford to just allow the fox to continuously take all our birds. Come the day that happens we will be shutting up shop as there is only so much of a bashing you can realistically take. I know there are people who don’t agree and that’s fine they are entitled to their opinions and while it is still lawful we are entitled to ours. Before we go out we will be locking the geese away, the new hens have been locked away for three days now, the ones out the front are still free ranging but I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose a few of those while we are out 🙄 people like free range eggs but they come at a cost one way or another 😕

Well we have arrived back home about 8pm from having dinner with Sam and Luke, to a massacre 🤬🤬 I don’t even know what to say to be honest, you know when you just feel hysterical and it’s going to go one way or the other, either laugh or scream. There are bodies and feathers all over the front paddock, side paddock and walkway. This is unsustainable, as I say I can’t see how you can keep a free range flock safe any more unless you invest a lot of money and fence them and then they are not really free range are they 🤷‍♀️ It is soul destroying and we are getting nearer to the end of keeping hens a lot quicker than we had anticipated, seriously we can’t go on like this much more, we can’t even go out for a few hours. The fox numbers are becoming out of control, they will be in competition with each other for food, I have already heard first hand reports of small dogs being snatched, I suspect at least two of our cats were taken when they were small, where does it end ? 😢 When we no longer have birds it won’t be our problem but at the minute it is and it’s a big problem 😡

Posted in Friesland Farm

Kind words, the Rayburn is out and Kittens 🐱

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday June 7th 2021: It’s Johns birthday today and he has this week off so naturally I am making him work here 😂 First off we got the morning stuff done and John let out the new batch of hens, they have been in over a week so time for them to explore. Unfortunately although they have plenty of acreage at the back to roam in they decided to come down to the front area 😜 I was not too happy with that as they will soon be scratching about in my new flower beds, we found some stock fence and corralled them back up towards the back and put them fence in place to prevent them coming down again. How long will it be before they find a way I’m not sure but for now they are not being a nuisance. Then John decided he was going to take out the old heating, he was going to wait until tomorrow but changed his mind, that’s why he is working on his birthday, not because I am making him really. He has disconnected the radiators and the heating pipes in the airing cupboard and will wait until tomorrow before draining the hot water cylinder because there is still a full tank that he can use tonight, best not to waste the energy that was used to heat it up 🙄 So from now on we are reliant on electric only, I think I will really miss the Rayburn itself but not the wood cutting, fetching loading and cleaning it out lol. While John was doing all that I was watering and then picking, peas, strawberries and asparagus today, I think that will probably be the last picking of the asparagus now, I wasn’t going to let it go to fern this year but I think it will be better for the health of the plant if I do. Then I went onto do some planting and tidying up in the very front bed just outside the gate, it has a few gaps so I planted some dwarf rudbeckia, chrysanthemums, a pheasant grass and a yellow daisy, should fill it all up nicely. Already growing are delphiniums, foxgloves, sweet peas, jacobs ladder, wall flowers (they have gone over now mind you) dianthus, day lilies and a few other things that escape my memory at the minute. By then it was lunchtime and Shelley and Florence came over with Rosie the rabbit, we had a cuppa and I trimmed Rosies nails, she will probably be coming to live here as she isn’t getting on with the guinea pig, she keeps biting it, they are not happy living together 🙄 We set up a run and had her out on the lawn and she seemed very content in there by herself. Shelley left and it was time for an afternoon sit down, I have bought just a neck massager for John for his birthday as he keeps having a real problem with his shoulder and neck. He has had it checked over by the doctor and had Bowen on it but it still gives him grief so a neck massager might just help.

Johns brother came round to visit just before dinner and then after we had eaten Sue and Shane popped round to say happy birthday on the actual day even though they were round yesterday with the others 😁

Tuesday: The sun gets higher quicker at this time of year so I am having to rush round to get stuff done. This morning was no exception, John did the animals and then went to do a small job he already had booked in, on his way back he is picking up materials to get the airing cupboard changed and sorted. After a quick shower I have been rushing about watering poly tunnels, pots, horses, doing the eggs, washing, sorting out plants and weed killing the side drive where some type 1 to dust has got to go down, can’t put it down with weeds on here or they will just grow through anyway. Quick sit down and an apple before I start again. The washing line is still a dilemma I can’t make a decision to save my life at the minute. It needs to be in the morning sun but by afternoon in the shade so that I can get it in without standing in the full summer sun. I was thinking that most people don’t get it but if you swapped the sun for Covid rays, imagine if they were rays and you had to protect your skin from them, then you might get some idea of what I have to do. Even factor 50 sun block only goes half way to stopping the reaction I get if I am caught out in it for more than five minutes and then add to that the amount of times I have to move around in between shade spots and you kinda of get the picture hopefully. I very rarely have bared skin apart from hands and face, my legs are usually fine, as is my torso and on the whole my arms though they do get affected even with long sleeves, but my hands, face, head and neck are all areas of concern. Ears are particularly difficult, putting sunblock on the ear is fiddly if I miss a bit I end up with itchy spots. Hats are great but in the heat I do end up with a headache from wearing it constantly, the neck cowl I have has been brilliant so far this year as that is a very sensitive area. You can see why in the heat of the day I prefer to be inside, it’s to hot outside with all those clothes on 😂 I really need to start setting the alarm for a lot earlier than 6.30 probably more like 5am, at the height of summer it will be 4am 🙄 just so I can get stuff done outside lol.

We are coming to the end of asparagus season but I did pick some yesterday along with some peas, I didn’t get to use them yesterday what with one thing and another so I am eating them today. I just googled asparagus and peas and a plethora of recipes came up, mostly risotto which I am not keen on. But one recipe caught my eye and that’s what I am making for my lunch, the dressing alone is amazing 🤩 and could easily be used instead of Mayo for potato salad or coleslaw. 1tbls Greek yoghurt, half teaspoon of honey and a teaspoon of mustard plus a squeeze of lemon. I use the Fage 0% so it’s really healthy as well 😁 Then chop the asparagus, and some bread (I just used half a bread roll) coat in a tbls of olive oil and roast in the oven. Hard boil two eggs and when they are all cooked toss in the dressing along with some peas, add a bunch of green salad and voila a seasonal salad. In my case most of it is home produced so that makes me even happier, the whole lot comes in at around 400 calories depending on the various amount you chose to use, I had 1/4 cup peas and 100g asparagus.

Trying to think what I did in the afternoon, pootled about a bit maybe. Although John was supposed to be off he had a job to go and do in the morning, then he came home around 11.30 had a cup of tea and had to go and do another job that he had forgotten he had booked in, it’s no wonder we never get anything finished around here 🙄 Eventually he came home, had a shower to use up the hot water and then drained down the cylinder, we got it out and he had take out some of the pipe work. The airing cupboard needs refitting and boarding out which is what he is doing at the moment (7.30pm) Meanwhile I had to go and feed the hens and collect the eggs, I had to leave it until the heat had gone out of the sun but it was still quite warm. I got the washing in as well which is also in the sun and now my energy levels have dipped quite a bit and I feel lethargic to say the least. It is really rather rotten sometimes I feel quite trapped inside when I really want to be outside.

Oh I remember what took me a while in the afternoon, downloading our coronavirus vaccination status, easy on my phone, not so easy on Johns 😜 And to add to the confusion both the Astra Zeneca and the Pfizer have now had their names changed, when you read it you think, that’s not the jab I had, but it is, they have just changed identity 🤷‍♀️

I put the animals to bed tonight as John was still working, I topped up the waters ready for the morning as I went and I also got Biscuit in from the paddock and put her on restricted grazing again. She does really well, she has had laminitis in the past where she was before but so far since we have had her we have managed to keep it under control. Jack is next for restriction as he is getting a bit fat, he won’t like that but he has no choice if he carries on as he is he will explode lol. I saw a barn owl flying low in the field behind while I was bringing biscuit in 🥰🦉

Wednesday: Lovely day, plenty of sunshine. Kicked of the day with the usual jobs then John got on with the airing cupboard and I went straight outside. I didn’t come back in for breakfast until nearly 10 as I wanted to catch as much shade as possible to get things done. I did get John to help me move the gazebo to an area I wanted to work on that gets the sun pretty quickly. I watered a few things first and the lovely Elodi clematis I planted the other day has been scratched up by something and broken pieces off, I have now covered it with a cloche and taken in the broken bits to see if I can root them in water. After watering one of the first jobs I wanted to get done was the big tunnel, don’t want to be in there once it starts to get hot 🥵 I weeded it all, despite putting down barrier to try and keep them under control they still managed to grow round the edges of the tunnel. And then I sorted out the strawberries, so far I have picked two bowls of them but the wood lice and slugs always manage to ravage them so I have tied the plants up in an effort to lift the berries away from the ground and hopefully that way I will get lots more. I had a few tomato plants that were in there that haven’t been planted, they are still in pots but there is no more room so I decided to plant them outside and if they produce, that’s great and if not it doesn’t matter much. The cucumbers are romping away in the tunnel but the melons are struggling, I need to do a bit of research to see what exactly are the best conditions as I never seem to get much from them. On then to the fruit cage, this is an area where bindweed is prolific, it strangles everything but once it is growing well I just go in and rip it up, it doesn’t stop it, I have tried for years to stop it, but it does knock it back and give the fruit bushes a chance. After that I weeded the broad bean bed and nipped out the tops of the plant, it already is showing signs of blackfly and taking the tops out will also slow the blackfly down so that the plant can do what it is supposed and produce beans. The blackfly is quite bad this year, I have noticed it on lots of things, I intend to blast them off with the hose later this evening. The last job before lunchtime was pricking out foxglove seedlings and potting on some dwarf rudbeckia, most of these will be going into the front beds when they are big enough, might as well fill them with what I have rather than going buying something else 😜 Going round today I have noticed how dry everything is again, we haven’t had rain for a few weeks, we don’t have any forecast for the next couple of weeks and the temps are set to keep climbing, looks like I will be watering a lot 🙄

When Kellee came to visit last week she took some lovely photos of the place, something I never really do and furthermore she wrote something quite lovely about her visit, I know she won’t mind me sharing:

and then there is the flourishing Frieslands Farm which is still in the family, owned, massively improved and tended by Dawn Pearse and her hubby John who have made this place a harmonious, ecologically perfect garden of Eden favouring the natural life cycles of all the creatures! How I thrill every time I witness this beautiful relationship Dawn has with this sacred land. Thank you Dawn. You are such a tremendous inspiration to me and hopefully hundreds of other people who care about the health of our planet. 💚

It was fairly overcast in the afternoon so after lunch and a sit down I was able to get on with some more bits and pieces outside though I can’t remember what lol. In between getting the dinner cooked I watered the front beds as some things are struggling with the dry, a lot of it is fine but recently planted needed a boost. I also planted some more dwarf rudbeckia in the front bed and one or two other things I have been growing on in pots, might as well fill it full, keeps the weeds down. Around 7.30 I went to water the fruit cage, I have a lot in pots, Bush cherry, olive, fig, blueberries and some yellow raspberries, they were all looking dry. I could see some storm clouds on the horizon, I could smell the rain and hear the thunder but I watered anyway, I have been here before where I have left it thinking the storm will come our way but it always goes round. It did spit a little while I was doing it but not much. Then shelley FaceTimed, well Josh actually, to tell me he passed his grading at martial arts 🥰 and it was raining well at her place. That is only a mile or so as the crow flies but as yet we still have not had a decent wetting here 😝 We are quite high up compared to the surrounding area, not high enough to have a magnificent view mind you but about 400m higher, that and the fact that the brook runs round us at a much lower level about 1/2 a mile away seems to be the reason that the weather fronts go around, they follow the lay of the land. So it’s 8.30pm and it looks like I will have to go out and finish doing the watering after all as I can see clear sky on the horizon now, bugger that 🤪

I went out and watered the squash as the rain never made here 🙄

Thursday: The week is whizzing past! Overcast from the start this morning but still warm, typical because today is the day of the partial eclipse but does not look like we will see much due to the amount of cloud cover.

John did the animals and then got on with the airing cupboard, putting it all back in and re fitting the shelves which have all had to be altered. The problem with the cupboard was the dust, because it’s in the boot room the dust seeps into the airing cupboard. Now he has reboarded it all and sealed all the joints so that it hopefully stays dust free, he has had to move the heater switch as well, it was on the inside and difficult to reach, now it’s very accessible outside 😁 I watched him do the copper pipe work last night, brought back plenty of memories of when I would go to work with him at the weekends way before we had children, he is still good at it although as I said to him, I remember when bending the pipe was a lot less effort than it seems now 😂 He has also taken off the ladder rails in the bathroom which were on the wet system, drained them down, cleaned them out and refilled them with thermal oil, they will also now be electric.

Meanwhile I was outside mostly weeding the front beds, I set an alarm on my watch for 11.05 to see if I could see any sign of the eclipse. I have mostly been weeding the ‘weedy’ bed, this one is slowly going how I want it to, it’s mostly a flowering shrub border but has other things that will readily self seed in there too. Love in a mist, poppies, verbena, forget me not, foxglove, sweet woodruff, creeping phlox, the idea is based on woodland really, a garden copse I suppose you might call it and I want it to evolve as naturally as possible. I have taken some photos and you will see that there are big gaps but I am hoping the shrubs will fill these (eventually) and the self setters will fill in the smaller gaps. I don’t want to rush this bed but it does mean I have to weed it all the time until the plants establish well enough, this time next year it should be fairly full.

The other beds also have their own personalities although these I am happy to keep adding to with plants I have grown or ones that take my fancy when I am at the garden centre 😜

This one is a cottage garden bed, full of roses, delphinium, lupin, nepeta, primroses, stocks, chrysanthemum, dahlia, Hardy geranium etc, still work in progress and yet to look at its best but getting there.
A different view of the same bed.

The third one which is in front of the building doesn’t really have a character as such but it is becoming a favourite of mine. It is full of spring bulbs which have now mostly gone over and a lot of my favourite plants, salvia, geum, achillea, huechera, aliums, asters. It also has a lot of summer flowering bulbs in plus bedding plants and the forest pansy tree, a mish mash of all things wonderful. Again a lot of this will fill out massively so by the end of the season it will look full and colourful. No doubt there will be things I want to move come autumn but that’s all part of the fun of gardening 🥰

My alarm went off at 11.05 and I stood up to have a look skyward, nothing but clouds so I carried on for another 20 mins. I stood up to stretch and voila a break in the cloud and I could see the eclipse, my phone was on the table by the door so I ran to get it and by the time I had the cloud was back 😂 However there was another tiny break coming up so I waited and…….

……here it is, the partial eclipse of the Sun lol.

I did a bit more weeding before stopping for lunch, I made John a sandwich as well and then Shelley and Florence arrived to help do some gardening. Shelley did some weeding in the fruit cage for me while I introduced Florence to vegetable growing 😁 we looked at the peas, picked a pea pod, opened it and ate them, then we went onto doing the same with the carrots and finally onto the strawberries growing in the tunnel. Florence’s words when she saw them were ‘oh my goodness’ it is fabulous to be able to teach children not only where their food comes from, how it is grown but also how amazing it tastes when it’s freshly picked. If I can pass on just a little bit of knowledge and spark of interest then who knows it may develop into a passion for growing their own 🥰

I seriously can’t say it loud enough or often enough, growing your own fruit, veg, herbs is one of the most rewarding things, the sense of achievement when you taste your first crop of the year never diminishes, not for me at any rate. That first strawberry, tomato, pea, apple, plum, carrot, whatever it is, is pure delight. The wait seems like forever in fact I was thinking the other day that if people even knew how long a crop of something takes to grow they probably wouldn’t waste anything. The onions alone have now been in the ground for about 8 months, they should soon be ready to harvest and dry for storing but don’t waste that half an onion people, use it for something else or chop it and freeze it 😜

John went off at just gone 4 to collect a clothes airer someone is selling for a fiver, bargain. I have one already and have decided that the line can go and will use these outside the back door which gets all the morning sun and then is shady in the afternoon meaning I will be able to get it in without shrivelling up in the blaring rays on blue sky days.

I am thinking I really need to give the house a clean but at the minute the weather is not too bad for me to be outside getting stuff done, at the weekend it looks like wall to wall blue skies again and even warmer so I will wait until then. Besides I have the contents of the airing cupboard stacked around the place at the minute, I need to go through it all. Why do we (I) keep so much, the trouble is I have cushion inserts and covers from the old sofas (approx 12) well they are feather you know and who knows when I might need them 😂 Also some lovely candy stripe flannelette sheets from years ago, why do I still have them, well wouldn’t you keep them if you could 🤣 a BIG stack of tea towels, most of them came from Johns Mums house, all new, I will never have to buy another tea towel for as long as I live but will I live as long as the amount of tea towels I have 🤪 Cleaning cloths, another pile, how many do I need in reality, I am only going to use a maximum of two at any given time I suspect, the other forty are just sat there waiting for their turn 😬 They have all been used at some point, at least I am rotating them I guess. Then there are the weird and wonderful things you keep, tablecloths that hardly ever get used but too good to let go of, cooking aprons of all different types just in case I get flamboyant 🙄 a couple of costumes last used many years ago, one a dramatic Halloween queen type affair (yes I did wear that) and one is an authentic, vintage Austrian costume that belonged to Johns Mum, she gave me it many years ago and there is not a hope in hell that my matronly bust will ever, ever fit into the tiny blouse, but what do I do with it 🤷‍♀️ And then there is the bedding, duvet cover sets, as Shelley said earlier today, do we hold on to them in case we crap the bed, not once or twice but three times or more one night 😱 We might need those extra four sets over and above the two we use on a regular basis, you never know 😝 How many hot water bottles 😮well one less now as that made a ‘crispy’ noise when I moved it so that can go in the bin. Then there are the single muslin sheets 🤔 at some point in the past they have been beautifully darned, not by me I can tell you, but you don’t see those anymore so I had better keep them, a double, white cotton sheet, well you never know when you will need a ghost costume do you! Two sleeping bags, a relic of the children’s sleepover days I assume, can’t see we will be needing those anytime soon, we prefer five star these days, but they may come in handy 🤣 The mysteries of the (my) airing cupboard, I reckon I could write a book on the contents therein! I have actually made a start on clearing out, no honestly I have, I have a small pile of ‘rag bin’ stuff mostly old tea towels and cleaning cloths, that’s it so far oh and the crispy hot water bottle 😬 oh and a pile of tea towels in the washing machine to go to the charity shop (depending on how good they look when they are dry) Is there a name for the condition ‘you never know when that will come in useful’ 😖

Friday: Omg what a day 😬 After all the usual jobs I began to put all the contents of the airing cupboard back where it belongs, that was relatively easy, there is more space than before and I have got a ‘pile to go’ 😁 While I was doing that John started on decommissioning the Rayburn ready to get it out, well that has taken us nearly all day what with one thing and another. First up was disconnecting the pipes, easy, then onto taking off the tiles on the wall so that they didn’t fall off and damage the Rayburn, fairly easy as many had come loose from the heat anyway. Then onto getting the flue down, hmmm not so easy, in fact hours of pushing, pulling, heaving, tooing and froing, sawing and unscrewing, plus a bit of brute force, it was inside a fireproof box which John built and let’s just say he used the belt and braces method when he built it. After a good few hours, filthy dirty hands, getting hit on the head by debris and soot, some swearing and some tetchy moments, we finally got it out and cleared the boxing. Then It was onto trying to heave the 340kg cooker onto rollers in order to move it into the boot room where it is currently sat. Finally we got that done, tidied away, filled the skip with the rubbish, John wanted to make a cuppa and sit down and I said, just one more job lol. I have a pine cabinet I wanted to put in place of the Rayburn so we got that in, cleaned it and put it in place. We have parts of the tiled fooor missing and a chunk of the ceiling missing, a battered plasterboard bit of wall is visible but the job is a good un. Now we just need to sell the Rayburn. I have ordered new tiles for the floor, luckily they still do them but I think it will be a while before it is all ‘made good’ 🙄

We went round to see Shelley, Martin and the children in the evening.

Saturday: Looks like it is going to be warm today and getting warmer everyday through to Wednesday. Got all the usual jobs sorted first thing as well as cleaning out the Guineas and then onto sorting out the back area. This is where my store room will go, it is on the North facing side of the building so it’s ideal for keeping cool, John will build it out of ply but the concrete floor will stay as that will help to keep the temperature down in the summer months. There is a lot of tidying and sorting out to do, we plan to only have one chest freezer instead of two, using the store room will mean I can keep root veg, onions, garlic and squash without having to freeze any of it, so one freezer should be fine 🙃

That and a quick pop to the shop took up most of our day. Around 5pm I noticed some tiny meewing noises in the boot room, what I haven’t told you before now is that Jill the cat is pregnant. I knew she was getting near time and so when we sorted the airing cupboard we also rearranged an area in the boot room to put a bed up higher in the hopes she would have them there and she did 😁 The last lot of kittens we had a few years back we’re born in the stable roof which was very difficult lol, we were afraid they were going to fall down between the walls and get stuck, so this is a result. She has had four beautiful tabby kittens, two are grey tabby 🥰 It is very difficult to find genuine farm kittens these days, ones that are bred to live outside the home, are comfortable in a farm/rural environment and are good at their job. Our two came from a farm, taught to mouse by their mother and they are very good at it which is what farms and smallholders need. They don’t need cats that have come from sleeping on the bed or the sofa and are used to being stroked all day long 😂 That’s not to say that they can’t go on to be domestic petted cats just that if they learn their craft first they will be better farm cats.

Sunday: I was up early, the sun was shinning in through the curtains and so I got up around 5.30, did some watering and sat with a cuppa in the early morning sun, bliss. We are off out for an early breakfast this morning which I am looking forward to.

Lovely breakfast out and then a mooch round the garden centre, got back around 11 and pretty much did nothing the rest of the day until about 4 as it was too bloody hot 🥵 John fed the birds and I sorted the eggs and then we went round to see Sam and family who had been away for the week on holiday.

Got back had a quick bite to eat and then began a mammoth watering session which lasted until 8.30 😬 I said to John that I’m sure when I first started this, nearly 12 years ago, I didn’t have to water like I do now 🤷‍♀️ The heat from the sun seems more relentless during the day than ever before, the things I planted back in autumn and early spring are mostly fine but anything that has been planted recently needs constant watering just to keep it going 🙄

I have written this before and I’m sure I will again but everyday is a school day and if you haven’t learnt something by accident that day then find something to learn, it’s good for you. Back to today’s lesson, as Gardeners we tend to learn from the experts, watching programmes, reading about things but sometimes it’s a good idea to jump track and listen to the amateurs. I have begun to follow a few people who are not trained Gardeners’ or horticulturists but regular people who have gardened for a long time. Strawberries, we are taught, do not ripen off the plant, wrong says one chap who daily picks his strawberries (many kgs) when they only have a touch of colour on them and ripens them in the dark. This is very exciting to hear because when you wait for them to ripen, so is everything else and by that I mean slugs, wood lice, birds so you only get a small percentage of your crop. Today I have picked mine twice, once this morning and once this evening, they are sat on the side in a tub under a cloth and hopefully by morning they will be ripe. If this works, this is another game changer just like the other game changers I learnt, also from amateur Gardeners. I will let you know how it goes, or try it yourself and see what happens.

That’s it for this week, I am pooped, it is muggy, gonna be a horrible muggy night, oh joy 🤪

Posted in Friesland Farm

Spring Bank Holiday 😁 glorious sunsets & the first peas.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 31st May 2021: Bank Holiday Monday, Sam and Luke are coming over today, Luke is helping John with a few things round the farm that he can’t do by himself including taking down the ash tree in the garden next to the greenhouse 🙄 I was going to do a roast but it was forecast to be quite hot so we scrapped that idea, we do t really do bbq, neither of us like standing there cooking over hot coals when it’s hot 🥵 so we are having a picnic in style. I cooked a leg of lamb in the slow cooker overnight we will have that cold in rolls along with various salads including an aubergine and chickepea salad which I have prepped this morning. Great use of that aubergine I was given, cut into thick slices, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and grill, then do the same to the other side. Meanwhile rinsed a can of chickpeas, make a dressing from paprika, honey, olive oil and lemon juice, chop up some onion, I used spring onions but any will do, chop some coriander, mix all together and add the quartered aubergine slices, mix again, enjoy.

Before prepping food I went out and picked purple sprouting and a few asparagus spears that were long enough, John did the morning feeding and letting out before creosoting some rails. I am not too happy about creosoting these days but the preservative they use these days is awful and the wood does not last more than a couple of years. When you pay a lot of money for the fencing you really want it to last as long as possible. Some of our boundary fences are original and they would have been put up in the seventies, ore soaked in old oil, bad I know but that’s what they did then and they do last a very, very long time because of it.

This years bank holiday is definitely going to be a ‘spring’ for everyone, last year we were locked down, this year we have a lot more freedom and I am sure people will be taking full advantage of it 🥰 I just heard that next year we will have a four day spring holiday to celebrate 70 years since the ascension to the throne of our Queen, big parties will be planned all over the country I think.

Well what a fabulous day we have had today, Luke came over and got some welding done and then moved onto cutting down the ash tree. Shelley, Josh and Flo popped in and helped to load the trailer and had a ride in it. They left then Sam arrived with the children, I was getting lunch ready when Charlie and Macca also popped in, together with my sister who was working on the caravan we all sat and had a lovely lunch in the garden. Sue went back to the caravan work, John and Luke carried on cutting the trunk up, Sam filled up a washing bowl with water for the kids to play in and I remembered we had a paddling pool from last year so we got that out, the kids stripped off and played the rest of the afternoon in there 🥰 Lovely day indeed, we are now knackered 😂

But it doesn’t end there for us lol, even if we are knackered there is still the afternoon jobs to get done, some tidying up left to do, a quick bite to eat and then out in fox patrol for the evening. Usually I do the watering in the greenhouse and tunnels, plus the newly planted veg. John wanders round checking on everything and then eventually we can get the birds into bed and relax. Tonight I have set up the wildlife camera to see if I can capture and footage of anything 👀 it will be interesting viewing in the morning hopefully.

Oh my feet hurt 🦶

Tuesday: Another lovely day, I was up with the early alarm even though we didn’t need to be as John is off today, still I find it’s easier to get on in the cooler mornings than later in the day. I started off indoors though as I wanted to get the boot room hoovered, the dust and debris on the floor was getting a bit much. Put some washing on and then outside, do the egg shed, water the plants in pots out there then onto some early morning weeding, hang the washing out at one point, prick out some foxglove seedlings etc etc. Once the heat gets up and the sun gets round I generally give up usually around lunchtime and besides I have work to do later in the day so I need some down time as well. Shelley came over with Josh and Flo at lunchtime, they bought lunch with them and then played in the garden for a few hours. We played a board game and then with the bubbles and then onto some drawing, they can’t use the garden at home at the minute as they are having building work done lol. All the while John was busy sorting out scrap ready to take to the scrapyard for weighing in. When he got back he came and sat in the garden with us all.

We had a rest in the cool in the afternoon before commencing with the afternoon jobs around 5, a quick bite to eat and some paperwork and then I went out to do some watering, the greenhouse, the tunnels, the newly planted squash, bean and sweetcorn plants. I then got some more straw and filled up the trial potato beds, I am not sure how this is going to work out, so far I’m not convinced but time will tell. One mistake I made was writing on the wooden surround the names of the potatoes, well that has all but washed off in the rain so it’s guess the variety time 😜 Last job of the day was to go and water the squash in the ménage, John did it last night for me but I think he missed a few 😂 not surprising really as he wouldn’t know what they look like anyway. One thing to note is that the plants I actually planted have faired a lot better than the ones I sank in pots so I may go and plant those properly tomorrow. Something has been digging near them again though none have been damaged so far.

It’s just gone 9pm, I have just come in to write this and John is still out of fox watch and putting to bed duties.

I have been trying to find an answer to a question I have about the hazel trees, at this time of year the leaves are sticky (if you walk, under a low branch it gets in your hair) I assume it is honeydew, everything I Google tells me it’s honeydew. Honeydew is caused by insect infestation of one sort or another and supposedly it’s not good for the tree, but and it’s quite a but, we have this every year and every year we still get a fantastic haul of Hazel’s and the trees are in great condition. Other observations over time include the amount bees that are attracted to the trees presumably because of the honey dew and birds that are attracted to them because of the insects. So my question was, is this a natural secretion? I can’t see any sign of infestations and the whole thing seems to be beneficial rather than detrimental. One year I actually thought there was a swarm there was such a hum but it was a lot of individual bees feeding 🙄 Is this natural, I mean, Google doesn’t know everything does it 😂 maybe it’s a long forgotten occurrence 🤷‍♀️ If you know then do tell me.

Wednesday: Oosh it’s warm today touching 26c, muggy with it and thunderstorms are forecast later. That will be good as I won’t have to do any watering. Apart from the basics we have both had the day off today, we got up early got jobs done and then went out before it got too warm. We had breakfast out and I bought a couple of plants, had a wander about before setting off back home. On the way back we called into a local village recreation ground where Shelley, Flo and Josh were having cake at the cafe. When we got home it was lovely and cool indoors, it’s like we have air conditioning 😂 nice when it’s so hot outside. Early afternoon we went off to another local park where Shelley, Sam and all the kids were meeting up for lunch and a play together, we played for a short while before leaving them to it and coming back home again.

The weather was really oppressive, enough to cause a headache or maybe it’s just me 🤪 We had the tiniest rain shower and then it stopped, I’m hoping we get a bit more overnight.

While I was out watering the plants that are out for sale I noticed the apple tree has powdery mildew 😖 there is always something 🙄 It is a combination of things that has caused it, firstly the mild winter hasn’t done any good because pests and disease haven’t died off. I know it was a long winter but it wasn’t that cold, secondly we had all that rain, again not the best conditions and thirdly we didn’t prune it back when we should have done which means the growth it a bit thick and the air can’t flow as it should, resulting in powdery mildew this time. I have pruned off the worst of it, the tree is huge and luckily most of it is near the bottom so I have done what I can for now. I need to spray it and I will either use milk which apparently works well or neem oil, I have both so a case of deciding which I think will be better 🤷‍♀️ I can’t spray the whole tree obviously but I can spray some of it and hope for the best.

John thinks we have lost a few more hens, seriously I am at the point where I wonder, what is the point.

Thursday: John is having a week off this week BUT it was Bank Holiday on the Monday, today he has gone to work for the whole day and tomorrow he is working the whole day and Tuesday he spent sorting out plumbing stuff, great week off!

He did the morning rounds before leaving and then it’s me on me tod so I sorted out washing to put on, the eggs to put out and then go some bread on the go.

While I was waiting for the bread to go through the two proves I did a bit of hoeing in the front beds and planted the two new plants I bought. One is a ground cover clematis which should look amazing once it gets going the other is a gorgeous low growing pink flowering shrub that the bees are already feeding on. Back indoors to decide on what will be for dinner this evening.

The bread is now baked and meanwhile I have been making a Moroccan rice salad to go with my lamb chop later, ordering a birthday present for John, his birthday is on Monday and organising a gathering for Sunday. Luckily we have plenty of room here for 30 plus other paddocks which could technically hold 30 more each 😜 We have a big family, if we all get together (which is rare) there are 60 of us 🤪 that is just Mum and Ken, their children (me included) their grandchildren and their great grandchildren, most of us live close by and so we see each other all the time especially birthdays 😂

I went out to the greenhouse mid morning, it’s overcast but warm today with the occasional peek of the sun. I potted on two tomato plants which I will grow on in the greenhouse, I have a bit of everything everywhere this year, I am hoping to find out which is the best place to grown certain things. Normally all the tomatoes go in the tunnels and one or two outside but leaving some in the greenhouse will give me an idea of if that is also any good for them or if it is too hot. The peppers and chilli love it in there, I think tomatoes might struggle a bit but we will see. I also planted out two more courgette plants and then some climbing French beans, nearly finished with the planting now. I do have two more small trays of runner beans though, no idea what I will do with them 🙄 I will keep them going just in case any that are planted out fail I think. I just have a few more squash to plant out once they have hardened off, crown Prince which are the lovely blue pumpkins and a couple of spaghetti squash and butternut squash, one table king and the musque de something or other 🤷‍♀️ that’s it for planting out then, but there will still be work to do. The purple sprouting is coming to an end, John and I had it the other night and the stems are getting a little bit too stringy for eating. The rest of the plant will feed the Guineas so no waste there, one I will leave to go to seed and collect that ready to sow some more for next year. It is such a useful crop to have when there is nothing else around even though it takes forever to mature. The ground it is on I will clear and leave to recover, I will probably put some home made compost on there and then cover it. I have been growing in that ground continuously for three years I think so it needs rest and rejuvenation. I dug up a mini kiwi that has tried twice to come into leaf in the garden but each time the frost has got it, I will pot it up and see if I can rescue it and then overwinter it in the tunnel before putting outside next spring well after the frosts have gone.

I picked some asparagus spears in the afternoon, I had spotted them earlier when I was planting courgettes and thought, I need to pick those. They grow at a great rate of knots and if you miss them they become a fern, we also have asparagus beetle here and so picking the spears is a good way to knock back the numbers. The beetles lay little tiny eggs on the spear stems but they can easily be wiped off with your finger, no harm done, to the asparagus at any rate 🙄 I dug up a few leeks earlier, they have been in the ground all year and need to come out before they spoil. I often use leeks in place of onion, no point going to buy onions when I have leeks to use up. On the side in the kitchen I now have leeks, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce and the acquired butternut squash, I need to figure out what I am going to do with it all. I think the asparagus will be a side dish for dinner later, I may cook it and stir it into my rice dish while John can have it with his chop and potatoes. The lettuce can go into salad which I will have with the rice and a chop, I can also use some more of the peppers I also acquired, that leaves the rhubarb the leeks and the squash to sort out.

I thought I would take a quick look in the small tunnel to see if any peas were ready, yes they were 😁 so John will have asparagus and peas with his dinner tonight. Peas need picking regularly, they will then produce more peas, if you don’t pick them they think their job is done 🙄 The pea pod is the seed for next years plants after all and once they have successfully produced some pods they don’t need to do anymore, as a grower (and avid pea eater) we trick the plant into making more by taking the ones they have already produced, damn and blast it they think, I will have to produce more flowers now and ultimately more pea pods 😂 This applies to a lot of veg, take away this years seed and it will do its upmost to produce more, good eh, well for us anyway.

A bit of a sit down after dinner and then I went out to potter around in the garden and do a bit of watering in the tunnels. I also watered the fruit cage, well the fruit in pots anyway. It keeps trying to rain but never really amounts to much. I took a few lavender cuttings while I was out there, I will take a few every now and again and see if they amount to anything. The setting sun was glorious tonight, it bathed the next field in a golden glow, it bathed everything it touched in a warm golden glow it was a sight to behold. How lucky are we to see that on a regular basis 🥰

Friday: Not a bad day again, overcast but warm most of the day. I started off doing the usual bits in doors, loading the egg shed for the day, watering the squash plants, making sure the horses had plenty of water and potting up some more lemon grass seedlings. I also watered a few of the things that have been recently planted just to keep them going, not rain forecast for a while yet. Then I had a quick half hour catch up with a friend over from the US before Shelley came to pick me up to go out for lunch. We went to Bourton on the Water, it was packed, Shelley said on the way there, it will be nice to see the place without hundreds of tourists 🤣 I have never seen it so busy, it’s one of those places we take for granted, we have always visited there right from when I was a child as my Aunt and cousins lived there, I guess you forget it is a tourist destination. We had a lovely lunch and then a wander round and an ice cream before heading for home again. Luckily for me it was overcast, a nice change to walk round without shade searching for once. When I got back I had to reload the egg shed, it had been busy while I was away and almost empty.

Saturday: Another wall to wall blue sky day 😜 I wanted to get some food shopping done as early as possible this morning so by 8.30 we were off to the shops, I am going to do a cold buffet for any family that want to come over tomorrow afternoon. It will be one of a very few times we have had the opportunity to do this at all in a year, looking forward to it.

Although it didn’t take long to get the shopping I am always aware that the temperature is going up and the sun is getting higher giving me less time to get stuff done outside in the garden. So after putting the shopping away it was straight outside to get on, a bit of watering, some potting on, John cut the lawn and suddenly I’m out of shade and so I have to come inside 🙄 I could move the gazebo but it’s already to hot for me to be out there moving stuff around, sometimes it’s just the moving between shade areas that I can feel the sun prickling my skin, nightmare really, John said I need an indoor job but I like being outside 😂

We are all waiting to see what is going to happen on June 21st, it’s supposed to be the end of all restrictions but I don’t think that will be the case. For us it’s fine as it is at the minute, we feel that we have all the freedoms we need, we can go places, see people and do the things we like doing. I feel that at some point we have just got to learn to live with the virus being around, if when the majority of people have been vaccinated we still can’t have total freedom then what is the point of vaccinating 🤷‍♀️

I put some lemon grass plants out for sale, not sure if they will sell or not, it’s not something people commonly use unless they do a fair bit of Asian cooking. But it is a beautiful grass in its own right and has an amazing smell to boot so what’s not to like. Lemongrass is a powerful antioxidant and anti inflammatory, it would make a great lemon tea, it would also flavour vodka nicely I imagine, refreshing at any rate. I was surprised at how well it grew the first time I tried growing it but it does need to be brought in over the colder months.

It is so peaceful here today totally blissful. I think having spent last summer lockdown and not much interaction the rest of the year I have forgotten how noisy places can get. Yesterday was busy and consequently noisy, today in the shop it was noisy and here all I can really hear is nature, birds mostly. Starting to go out in the world again a bit makes me thankful that we live where we do, not sure why we would ever want to go anywhere else to be honest lol.

We lost more chickens today while we were putting the shopping away this morning I think, the birds were making a noise but I thought it was because we had let the dogs back out but then we found a pile of feathers a bit later on.

Sunday: Overcast today and the threat of rain later in the afternoon, bloody typical, when you want it, it’s nowhere to be seen, when you don’t want it, whoosh he it comes 😂 We got the morning jobs done and then I spent a couple of hours, picking, watering, weeding, hoeing and at the same time diving in and out of the kitchen cooking food for later on. Meanwhile John was burning, staining, tidying, and then came round to help me edge the lawn and tidy that up. Then indoors for a rest before I start sorting out food and drink for 3pm, I already got a head start by slow cooking the lamb overnight again, it was delicious last time so may as well do it again.

June is a fabulous month in both the flower garden and the veg garden, the flowers are beginning to bloom so we have nice splashes of colour everywhere this month. The veg will slowly start to come on a s by the end of the month we should be picking a selection of peas and beans plus the onions and garlic will be ready to harvest, dry and store. One of the best things in June is elderflower, the wonderful heady smell on a sunny day is a joy, taking those heads and making cordial is a delightful treat, the taste of summer is around the corner.