Monday 27th September 2021: Autumn made itself known this morning, we have had sunshine and warm temperatures for a few weeks now but this morning we woke to windy, rainy weather and the temps are a tad lower than they have been. The sun did break through though and most of the day was nice apart from a sudden shower just after I put the washing out 😜
I have been busy today trying to catch up with jobs that I couldn’t do Friday and Saturday. Firstly though I had promised John a roast dinner so I got that all sorted, veg, potatoes all from the garden and beef from Emma, apples for an apple crumble from the garden as well. I had promised John apple pie but discovered I had no flour left, lucky I made some crumble mix for the freezer last week. Then I made some elderberry syrup with a batch I picked and put in the fridge last week, knocked it over as I was bottling it, swore, then mopped it all up, lucky I didn’t lose too much of it but it was a messy clear up job.
Once that was done I set about sizing up and ordering the last electric radiator we need, John took the last old one out of the living room and I need to get the new ordered and in before the cold weather sets in. After some lunch I went out to the greenhouse and potted up all the herbs I dug up yesterday, some will be for the relocation of the herb bed and some will be for sale next Spring. Back indoors and I had an hour sit down before making a couple of loaves of bread. I want to try and utilise the energy I am using as well as possible and so the bread making was timed to bake them while I am cooking the roast dinner and the crumble. I need to be more aware this winter, not having the Rayburn anymore is going to change how I have to do the cooking and drying the washing (yep the rain shower wasn’t helping today on that score) I don’t actually have to be energy efficient in terms of paying for it but I chose to do it for the sake of the planet, hopefully I am doing the right thing, it won’t always work but at least I am trying.
I put in an order at our local flour mill for different types of flour, plain, self raising and bread flour, that should arrive tomorrow and I also have a delivery of chicken, in various forms plus sausages and bacon from a farm arriving tomorrow as well. With all the problems around CO2 and now fuel John said ‘I think we should go shopping and stock up’ no we don’t need to do that I told him, we have enough here in one form or another to keep us going. I prefer to make sure we can manage with what we have rather than rely on the supply chains as they seem dodgy at the moment lol.
With that in mind I have been thinking ahead to Christmas, we are already being told there will be shortages, think laterally then, eat something different, it doesn’t have to be the same as every other year just because that’s what we usually do. I shall be checking over my stores etc and see what I can use as replacement ingredients for things like the Christmas pudding and mincemeat just in case we can’t find the usual ingredients, in fact I may not even look for the usual ingredients and use what I have which is the whole idea of a life of self sufficiency really.
Tuesday: Today I wanted to get the new project area planted up but I felt I needed to get the ‘must do’ jobs done first, that way I could enjoy the time doing what I wanted to get done. Mainly it was all the usual stuff and then some bill paying etc before finally getting outside to plant up. The area is in front of the dog kennels, they are no longer used and the plan was to take them down and build an arbour but as that is not an urgent job I can’t see it getting done anytime soon so I started growing things up the kennel instead 😜 The hop looked so lovely that I thought I would add some more bits to it and that’s when the plan formed. I had a big wooden box that my brother was getting rid of one day when we were visiting, I will have that please 😁 It’s been sat there a while but today I lined it all filled it with some well rotted manure and a few bags of compost and planted it up with a hydrangea I bought in the summer. Everything I used was something I already had, plants, box, manure, just the compost I bought to do the job. It looks good, the hydrangea is a bit lost at the minute but next year it should look brilliant if I do say so myself. I now have a wisteria, hop, climbing rose and a jasmine which will grow up and over the kennels, the hydrangea in the box along with some huechera and bronze grass, various pots with small trees in to give shade to the hydrangea in the afternoon and a pot of tulip bulbs which will add a lovely splash of colour come spring, I planted some small dahlias in the pot on top of the bulbs for now. I think I will move some pots of daffodils out there to at some point.
Once I had finished that I had a quick sit down and then got on with other jobs. The beef we had yesterday was quite a good sized joint and I don’t want to waste any of it. I have used half of what is left, chopped it up and along with onion, swede, turnip, carrots and potatoes, added some beef stock, mustard powder, flour, black pepper, tomato purée, Pontack sauce, rosemary sprigs and a bay leaf and piled it into the slow cooker. Once it is cooked I will freeze it in portions for another day. I had a delivery of fresh, free to roam chicken in various forms, a couple of whole ones and then breast, thighs and diced plus some marinated strips as well as some pork chops, sausages and bacon. That all came from Blackwall Farm in Dorset, I sorted out what we would have for dinner later and got the rest sorted for the freezer. I am pretty much stocked for the next few months with everything really, I have flour coming form the local mill and I have 5kg of sugar delivered lol. Every time we go to the shop there is no sugar so I ordered some and will have to find a space to keep such a big bag.
I am not sure what I will do with the chicken thighs yet, I would have liked to make a korma with some but also don’t want to waste energy cooking two different meals as John won’t eat curry, maybe if I cook a big enough batch I can freeze some for another day 🤔
I did intend to go out and pick runner beans in the afternoon but the rain came in and didn’t really stop long enough to get out there, it is definitely turning towards autumn now, hopefully John will get the wall plastered tonight where he took the old radiator off and we can get the new electric one on, we might need it soon.
In the end I did decide to make a batch of curry, some for dinner tonight and some for freezing for another day. With Johns chicken I made a spring chicken pot lol, in autumn 🙄 It’s just basically chicken, potatoes and runner beans in veg gravy, I fried off onions and garlic then browned his chicken before taking it out with a few onions and then I added mine chopped along with tikka spices and a tin of tomatoes, smells good hopefully it will taste good. I think I have a garlic naan lurking in the freezer somewhere so I will have that instead of doing rice.
I do love the Autumn not just for the amazing colours but also because as the weather changes I love being in the kitchen cooking up lots of delicious dinners and treats, I was thinking I may even make a harvest loaf just because I can 🥰
And the rain has well and truly set in today 🌧 When that happens and I can’t go outside to get stuff done I generally browse online for ideas on many different things. Today’s ‘ooo I think I might have a go at that’ is homemade bouillon cubes, I have most of the ingredients already as I have made powered onion, garlic and mushroom, I have herbs I can dry and powder and I have paprika in the cupboard, the only thing I would need to buy is nutritional yeast flakes and voila I would have my own bouillon cubes which could be used in soups and stews etc or can be added to hot water for a tasty warm up drink in the winter, watch this space 😜 I am definitely a prepped at heart I think 😂 I was also looking to see if could make hazelnut flour, turns out you can 🤷♀️
Wednesday: A better day today, I did some picking, it’s getting fewer and further between now but there are still things to pick.
Thursday: Blood tests this morning so I got up and got on then out early to the docs, had my flu jab at the same time so that’s ticked off the list. John dropped me at the docs then went off to do a small job so I had a look round the charity shops and then had a coffee before he returned to pick me up. He is at home today and so has been plastering the wall that the old radiator came off, then drilling through the wall in order to get electric cable to where the new one will go, hopefully the electrician won’t take too long to come round 🙄 he then had to make good the floor and skirting and we will think about decorating in the new year, until then it will stay as it is . Meanwhile I pottered about tidying bits up and sorting the office area out but all the while being on hand as the labourer 😂 When he went off to get some more supplies I set about making some bouillon powder. I had all the dried herbs so thought I would give it a go, I just needed nutritional yeast flakes which arrived yesterday. Blended it all up and it’s now stored in a jar on the side for use whenever I need it. I tasted the powder and it tastes delicious so I think I will be drying more herbs and making bigger batches of that 🥰
Friday: Not a bad day, the sun was out but it was slightly colder than of late. I spent the morning in the greenhouse sorting out the chilli and pepper plants. A lot of them have all but finished now, still a few that are producing but in all honesty I don’t need any more than I have got stored and I only sell a tiny amount of them. Half of them I removed from the greenhouse, some have succumbed to whitefly and greenfly, half of them I have left in to finish off the fruits that are still growing. I moved all the trays and are moved the capillary matting as they don’t need constant damp now and besides I found an army of slugs and their eggs hiding under it 😜 I bought one of the ginger plants indoors to see if I can keep it going over winter so it has a good head start next year. The other one I will put in the poly tunnel and see what happens, it will depend on how cold the winter gets as to its survival. I have some seedlings growing in there which I need to pot on next week, some herbs, parsley, coriander and basil and also some winter lettuce which I need to plant up in the tunnel once it’s cleared of cucumbers and tomatoes. I also have some annuals already growing for next spring. Sam came over with the twins, Charlie popped in and then Shelley came with Flo, John was home as well so we had a houseful in the afternoon. 🥰
Saturday: Oh such a different day today lol, we knew it was coming 🙄 Before the rain broke through John cleaned out the ducks and geese and I did the quail, rabbit, light Sussex and turkeys, topping up all the pens and huts with fresh straw. Two reasons, one because as their minder you want them to be warm and comfy 😜 two because it will make the eggs less muddy in all this rain. I put a load of straw in the tortoise hut and placed them inside, they have been digging into the ground so are definitely getting ready to hibernate. Then I got the hop up and the apple picker and went out to pick the remaining apples from the cooking apple tree. To be honest I didn’t think there were many but in the end I got two bucketfuls so I am happy with that this year. Into the kitchen then where I chopped up a butternut squash and made some soup for lunch and I made a big batch of mincemeat ready to jar up and store for December when I will begin making mince pies 😁 John grouted the tiles in the living room, the electric radiator is now in place and the area round it made good just need an electrician to put a socket in. Apart from the necessary jobs of afternoon feeding and egg collecting I doubt very much we will do anything for the rest of the afternoon, just sit and relax I think.
Sunday: Not too shabby today although it feels colder, still some sunshine in the showers though. John was up early enough, surprising really as he went out last night for a pre wedding drink with the lads and had much more than one too many sherberts 🤣 While he was doing that I made bread, an apple pie and prepped for a roast later. That seemed to take me a lot of the morning as I can’t think I did much else other than peeling and mixing 🤪 Mid afternoon a chap called in to drop some honey off, the honey we had been selling has now finished but he is just down the road and had supplies and so we struck up a deal and now have more honey in the egg shed to sell 🥰
Have a good week everyone x
frieslandfarm (flowers) 