Monday 2nd May 2022: Bank holiday Monday, overcast but not raining like it was yesterday and not as cold either. I have been out this morning cutting flowers for conditioning for a birthday bouquet. I have quite a few enquiries which is brilliant and I every day I look around at what is coming on, it’s exciting when you realise something will be ready soon and it’s going to look amazing in a bouquet. I have been planting out the dahlias and chrysanthemums this morning though I will have to watch the weather to make sure I cover them if a frost is forecast. I really need to start getting plants out into the ground but the weather is as always unpredictable 🙄 I still have plenty of veg plants to get planted as well, the squash, courgettes, cucumber and runner beans still need to go out or in wherever they are going to end up. I have some veg seeds still to direct sow but I am not going to go too mad with that this year as I won’t really have time to do big amounts of picking and processing, I will limit it to just enough I think.
As it is Bank holiday and there are plenty of things going on we went out to have a walk around some of them, got to have a day off now and again 😁 We went to the May Day fair in the next town which was heaving, great for raising money for charity but so packed that we walked round once and then went to the Vintage show a coup,E of villages away. That was a lot quieter though still quite busy, we had a walk round and a bite to eat, a chat to people we know and met Sam, Luke and the kids there. Then back home to do the animals before going over to see my niece for her birthday. Busy weekend but lovely to get out and about.
Tuesday: Another overcast day but not cold, after the usual bits and pieces I went out to the greenhouse to water everything and plant up a few things that my brother had given me. Then John came home and it was time to go to the chemist and see if (without holding out much hope) I could get the rest of my prescription 🙄 Yet more saga 😂 I explained the situation that John has been twice and they had given him parts of my prescription each time, they still didn’t have my other meds ready, could I wait 20 mins 😏 yep ok then. I waited half an hour then somebody asked me again what my name was and what I was waiting for. I explained again and then they said sorry the printer isn’t working can you come back later, no, no, nope I said, I am not leaving here without my prescription meds, I have already been without them over the weekend. Ok have a seat and we will get it sorted. Finally after I had been there just over an hour they gave me my meds, I opened them and I said, they are not all here. I think I was pretty good because I didn’t even get irate 😂 They said the rest of the prescription had not got to them so I went round to the doctors explained everything and they printed out another prescription simple as that, well one thing I can tell you is that I will not be taking it to that chemist 😝 I actually never want to use them ever again if I can help it!
Other jobs today included hoeing the front driveway and trying to tidy it up a bit, every weed in the the place had suddenly sprouted massively. Watering the plants I have recently planted and some that are struggling with the lack of rain. In the evening it started raining 😂 only a little bit, typical.
I noticed that Biscuit had escaped from her little enclosure and into the paddock where Jack was. What I couldn’t quite work out is how she got past the new fence and gate until I looked again and could see she had pushed one of the new rails off 🤬 honestly as if there isn’t enough to do round here.
Wednesday: It’s only 11am but I feel like it’s manic Monday today 🤪 I have been rushing around trying to get all sorts of things done. I started off with cutting flowers to condition, I have the weekly bouquet to do plus some for flower club competition tonight. Then onto getting the eggs sorted and out for sale, onto social media to let everyone know what is available. Pings from rural crime as the rate is spiking in specific areas 🙄 personal message pings, pings from customer messages, ping, ping, ping 😂 Out to pick rhubarb and asparagus and bundle that to put out for sale. In to get something out of the freezer for dinner tonight, decided on diced beef in the slow cooker, out to pick some fresh thyme and some spring greens, in to prep it all and get it under way. Make some crumble topping for a rhubarb (fresh) and apple (from the freezer) crumble, cook those both down and leave to cool, make coffee, sit down and type this. Still haven’t got the washing on the line yet nor some of the plants out for sale that I have been trying to sort out and get on the table for sale. It has been trying to rain so may abandon the washing line and just bung it in the dryer, needs must when time is scrabbling away.
Facebook and Instagram are both great ways of promoting business locally but I am finding it all very time consuming 😝 For the farm egg/veg sales I have both media, for the flowers I have both media, for my personal life I have both media, then there is WhatsApp connections, for the business, personal and rural crime. I then have the smallholders facebook page group to run and I can’t even tell you how many people don’t even bother to read the rules on joining. It’s there is bold letters and still they ignore it. There are the sales pages for plants and anything else I am selling, I need a PA just for social media I think 😂 it’s mentally exhausting some days.
1pm and sat down for an hour with a cuppa and a bite to eat. I did manage to get all the plants that were ready out for sale plus put them all up on the selling pages to catch a wider audience. I have a bouquet to make up this afternoon plus an arrangement for flower club later and three deliveries to do at some point, an egg collection, get the rest of the dinner sorted and eat dinner at some point in everything that is going on, I think John will be on washing up duties today 😝
Manic afternoon after the lunchtime sit down, sorting, organising and preparing then out for delivering, back home to get the dinner sorted and on the go, try and sort my flower arrangement for this evening. The arrangement didn’t quite work out how I wanted it to so I quickly changed some of it, I am half happy but not entirely but you have got to try these things or you never learn. Eat dinner, clear away, wash up, go to flower club, come home, sleep 😴
Well flower club competition done and I got a second again 😁 I am very happy with that as I did think nah not going to take it lol. The brief was ‘jubilee’ the critique was that the board was too rustic but that it was bang on trend 🥰 I will take that 😁
Thursday: A busy morning and by lunchtime I was flagging a bit 🙄 Mostly whizzing around doing household bits, I was going g to hoover and polish and then thought as it was overcast I might as well work outside. Sunny and rainy days for indoor stuff, so I spent some time cutting flowers for a bouquet tomorrow and watering the poly tunnels plus anything g I have planted in the last couple of weeks. I also picked some blue and yellow flowers for a jam jar posy, blue and yellow for the arrival of a Ukrainian lady coming to stay with my sister. Slightly difficult because I don’t have many blue flowers and definitely hardly any yellow. That’s because the general rule is not to put yellow flowers in a bouquet or arrangement 🤷♀️ I did manage to find some borage, forget me not and some little Leo (though the birds do like to eat the petals on those 🙄 A bit of weeding, sort the horses water out and by that time the sun had come out and I was lacking shade and feeling tired so I came in.
Yesterday afternoon when I was delivering flowers in Witney there was a downpour, it didn’t last long but it was heavy, ooo I hope we get that back at home I said to John but when we got back it was bone dry, nothing, nada, not a single drop 😏 I seriously think we picked the wrong place to live if we wanted to grow anything easily 😂
Went with Shelley and Flo in the afternoon for a mooch round the charity shops, got a nice haul 😂 3 vases and a little ceramic stem pebble and a couple of tops for the holiday 😁 Back home and a quick rest before the twins arrive for their Thursday session 🤪 to be fair they now go to playgroup on a Thursday afternoon and so don’t have quite so much energy as they did. They left and it was time to make up the bouquet that I cut the flowers for this morning and then deliver them. Back home and it’s pool night for John and the boys meanwhile my sister messaged me and was coming to pick some things up that I am lending her. That was a good opportunity to get the yellow and blue jam jar posy done so that she could take that back with her and put in the room ready for the arrival of the lady staying with them.
Friday: I spent the best part of the morning watering anything that was in the tunnels or greenhouse, anything in pots and anything newly planted just to make sure they keep growing well. I cut flowers first thing for a bouquet to do later today and did a bit of pottering. Sam arrived with the twins mid morning and I looked after them for a couple of hours while she got the horses in and gave them a shampoo and set, trimmed up tails and manes and polished hooves. I bought a £3 stick of bubbles the other week when I was shopping and what good value that was, it entertained the twins for at least an hour 😂 They are getting to the best age (in my opinion) the age of discovery and coming out with the funniest things. They found lots of old hazelnut shells on the path and decided they were pumpkins, it kept them occupied finding them and putting them all in a box lol. Then they went on to dig around in the gravel, they were digging for ‘dinosaur bones’ 😂 very delighted with themselves when they dug a stone out of the dirt and declared they had found one 🥰
I made up the bouquet later in the day, delivered it then went for my Bowen therapy session and then round to my sisters for the evening.
Saturday: It rained over night, whoo hoo, not much but enough to give the plants a bit of umph. I think I did well today as I got most of the cleaning done despite visits from various family and also customers collecting plants and to boot I made something I was pretty impressed with 😁 I wanted more hooks to hang dried flowers and they do really well in the kitchen as it’s mostly dry and cool and the corner I have them in does not get direct sunlight. So I ordered some hooks a while ago and today I found a piece of wood, sanded it down, bri waxed it, measured out the spaces between the hooks and voila a new place to hang flowers to dry 🥰 go me 😝
John has been busy cleaning out the geese and the front chickens today as well as finally, I say finally, collecting the rest of my prescription 😬 and picking up some offcuts of batten to make more flower supports for the cut flowers, hopefully he will start on those tomorrow. He has now finished any big jobs he had on and will mostly be around for the next couple of weeks until we go away on holiday, apart from popping off to do small jobs such as taps etc, hopefully he will be here more than not 😂
We are off on the 24th of this month for a whopping 16 days and Shelley will be moving in to take over for us. We are so lucky and very grateful that over the years at least one of our girls has stepped in to run the place while we are away. Whoever stays here is usually joined by the others whenever possible to help out, they do an amazing job and without their help we would never be able to get away 🥰🥰🥰 I have told Josh I will leave him a list of jobs that are going to be his responsibility every day after school.
Sunday: Busy morning, busy evening, less busy in the middle 😬 Up and about early and I did some watering first thing, it’s so dry it’s ridiculous. Then onto getting plants out of the greenhouse to start hardening them off, I figure if we are not going to get any rain then we might not get frosts either 😝 Onto a bit of planting up next, planting plants wherever there are any gaps, might as well cover all bases and spread my bets, if I have flowers all over the place at least some of them will succeed. That’s the plan anyway and besides, mono culture is not the way forward, mixing it up helps protect plants and confuse the nibblers, hopefully 🙏 For instance I have planted up sunflowers, they were getting near 4ft tall and toppling over in the small pots so I planted them but I also planted peas with them, they should grow up the tall sunflower stems and then sowed some annual flowers underneath, hopefully cover all the ground and maximise the use of space. Meanwhile John was busy building my last remaining supports for the taller cut flowers, then we cut the grass and that was a mornings work done, time for a rest. Well actually we went out to drop of plants to Charlie and then round to mums for a cuppa who gave me some more plants that I have been after. Then it was back home for a rest and back at it late afternoon with more watering before finally sitting down mid evening. That’s my week, I’m done lol, whatever you are doing g this week, have a good one.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 