Tuesday 9th August 2022: No idea what I did on Monday apart from cut a whole load of flowers for an order that was cancelled 😏 and went to my brothers in the evening for his birthday. The rest is a blur 😝
Tuesday: After making up a couple of jam jars, sorting flowers for drying and making up a bouquet I went to Shelley’s with Charlie, Sam and the twins also went and we spent most of the day there. Shelley made lunch and the children played indoors some of the time and with the splash mat outside some of the time. It was hot 🥵
When I came home I had half an hour sit down and then spent 4 hours watering, yes 4 bloody hours of my life watering. Watering everything that was necessary, about two thirds of everything, the other third I have had to let take it’s chance 😔 Normally, in a normal year I would only be concentrating on the tunnels, greenhouse and anything in pots but this year it has to include all the beds both ornamental and vegetable. We have had no significant rain since we came back from our holiday in early June and coupled with that we have had ridiculously high temperature consistently and it’s not over yet. This means in order to keep everything alive I have to constantly water, the fact that I didn’t do any last night has a big knock on effect the next day. It’s tiring but I have invested a lot of time and effort into the veg, flowers and ornamental beds and so I can’t just give up, not to mention the money that plants cost. To give up now would cost me dearly, mentally, emotionally and financially, this year has taken gardeners by surprise but I will make sure it doesn’t happen again next year 🙄
Wednesday: It’s sooo bloody hot that evening standing around makes you sweat 😅 uuurgh give me back the traditional English weather if I wanted relentless heat I would go on holiday to a hot country and that is something we don’t do 😂
Busy morning of getting jobs done, cutting flowers for delivery today and then on to pick tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peppers and plums. I also decided that damage limitation was called for and pulled the cabbage and kohl Rabi plus carrots, it’s too hard trying to keep them watered so time to get them in the freezer. The courgettes I am picking when they are small (baby) so that I don’t need to water as much as I would to get them to normal size. From here on in fruit and outside veg will have to take their chances, I will only be watering the necessary plants.
I then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon prepping it all for the freezer. Slicing, chopping, peeling, blanching, bagging, cooling and finally freezing. I also made up three batches of crumble mix, stewed some apples with sugar and some maple syrup and made up four small apple crumbles which went into the freezer along with a bag of crumble mix. I did intend to make some plum jam but in all honestly I was tired by then and still had flowers to make up so I cleared away, washed up and I will do the jam in the next couple of days.
John came home early and went off to deliver the flowers for me, I had a phone call from the neighbouring farm to say they had lost some piglets and could I keep an eye out for them, I haven’t seen them yet but hopefully they will find them soon.
Tonight I will not be able to get any watering done as we are off on a short train journey for an evening trip. It’s going to be a round of watering for me again tomorrow that will take hours 🙄
With the complete lack of rain we have decided to increase the amount of rain we can hold, the amount that comes off our roof is an awful lot so makes sense to hold as much of it as possible and so we have ordered another 12,000 litres of tanks, that will take us up to around 30,000litres of water storage. Sod’s law we won’t even need it next year but ‘be prepared’ is a sensible mantra I reckon and so prepared is what I will be, for that at least.
If you are reading this and living in a hot, dry climate then all tips appreciated 😁 Approx 9th June was the last time we had any significant rain and temps have been at least 25c and mostly in the 30s pushing up just beyond 40c 🥵 According to farmers there is no significant rain in the forecast for at least another 30 days 🙄 crops are suffering as well as wildlife. Last night while watering I noticed around 30 sparrows making a racket in a puddle of water I had made on the driveway, I went into the garden and collected up all the shallow dishes I could find and filled them with water for them. A Robin was also sat in the tree watching me and so I filled up the bird bath (which I do daily) and watched him enjoying a much needed bath lol. I know I am going to hate the winter weather when it comes but seriously this is another level of ridiculousness 😬 If it is climate change, it’s coming a lot faster than predicted, it’s not good news for the planet or anything that lives on it 😔
Thursday: No idea what I did and it’s too hot to care 😝 I did plant up some alstroemeria at around 9pm, it wasn’t much cooler but the light was fading and I wanted to get them into the ground. The moon was beautiful, almost a full moon but not quite, that comes tomorrow evening.
Friday: What can I say except, it’s hot and dry, I am basically just trying to get from day to day until hopefully one of the days the temperature falls or we have rain 🙄 I spent most of the day making up button holes and hair combs with dried flowers plus a small arrangement to fix to a headband. I can’t show you the pictures yet as it is for a wedding that hasn’t happened but when it does I will.
Saturday: I was up early as was John, he went off to get feed for the poultry, I did the usual household bits then outside to get some watering done, We then had to pop out for an hour and get back to hand over some flowers to a customer 🥰 I can’t remember what other jobs we did but there were a fair few before coming indoors for the middle part of the day and watch some films. Back out in the evening once it was cool enough and more watering, I watched the meteor shower for a while, saw three, before going to bed.
Sunday: Still bloody hot 🥵 seriously it’s scorching weather, relentless too. We were up early again and it was nice and cool at that time of the morning so I got some watering done, John said ‘shall we have more tea’ at 7am, ‘nope’ I replied ‘we need to get the small paddock cut before it gets too hot’ so that’s what we spent the next hour doing. It had got long (long but mostly dead) and needed tidying up. John carried on outside for a couple of hours while I came inside and made plum jam. The thing is that the fruit will not wait no matter how hot the temps are the jam still needs making 🙄 We then spent the hottest part of the day inside again and went back out until dark once it had cooled down a touch, though that is not much at the minute.
I am sure you are all feeling it too, hot and bothered, the paddocks are as dead as I have ever seen them, there are huge fissures opening up in the ground, the massive trees that are around 50 years old are beginning to wilt, the berries that the birds would be feeding on to fatten up for winter are shrivelling up and there is not a drop of water to be found anywhere for the wildlife such as bees, butterflies, birds, beetles etc. Each day I am trying to keep plants alive and each evening when I go out they are parched again. I deadheaded some roses earlier and the petals were crispy 😳 I don’t think I have ever sweated so much before even when sitting still, when I was outside I kept thinking something was crawling on my leg but no it’s just beads of sweat running 😂 I am not one for praying but spending most of my time just trying to keep things alive is seriously taking its toll on my sanity so I am praying the rain comes tomorrow. It will fill up the water butts and hopefully give me the day off from running around like an idiot, I may even be able to get something different done for a change. Anyone know any good rain dances 😝
frieslandfarm (flowers) 