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.
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 🥰
And some of the pyramid orchids growing in the long grass in the driveway, that’s why I can’t cut the grass yet 😁
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 😡
frieslandfarm (flowers) 