Monday 31st October 2022: I feel better this week and thank you for all the kind words 😁 I think I must have had a virus that but not really presenting itself as anything major in particular just lots of little things that were pulling me down. Weirdest of all was the sensitive scalp 🤷♀️ really annoying but not painful, not Lupus I don’t think (not showing anything on the blood tests) I do wonder what my body is doing with all these vaccinations mind you 🙄 I am tempted to think that the big pharmaceuticals want to keep prolonging it, I weigh this up against the clear statistics of illness and death at the beginning of the pandemic and remain sat on the fence. I also need to remember I am getting on a bit 😂 no longer a sprightly 30 or 40 something and perhaps at times I do too much but somehow feel like I don’t do enough either 🤪
It Samhain, you would be forgiven for thinking it is the end of the year but actually it is the beginning. Time to clear out the old and make way for the new, in my life I would apply this to the garden. Lots of things have done their thing and are now spent, clearing up and clearing away begins, preparations are made to reinvigorate the soil ready for fresh panting next year 😁 The majority of the year is behind us but there are new adventures waiting ahead 🥰
Today we were up early, the physical clocks went back but the body clocks are still on old time and so before the alarm went off at 6.30 I had already had breakfast, got the first load of washing done, sorted the eggs and put them out for sale and done the washing up! I picked quite a lot of peppers yesterday, this will be the last of them now and so I thought I would make some tomato and pepper soup in the slow cooker. Peppers, tomato, onion, chop it all up, chuck it all in, add pepper and stock and wait for lunchtime 😁 Next job (which was not even on the list) was to prepare for flower club competition evening this week. The title is ‘Fireworks’ very appropriate, I did make a dried flower arrangement but the starburst chrysanthemums are amazing and zingy so I think I will be using those in a fresh arrangement instead. Arranging flowers without the aid of floral foam is a challenge but challenges are there to be accepted and besides foam does not fit with my ethos. There are plenty of high profile florists that are not using it so I am sure little old me will manage too.
Omg it’s Sunday before I write any more 🤪 that’s because it’s been a busy week. Every evening I have had something on, either birthdays, flower club or other stuff, I was also busy getting all things ready for the sale yesterday. Topped off by the fact that on Thursday John lost his phone with his bank card and driving license in the phone case 🙄 Cue hours of trying to recall his exact steps, constantly phoning the phone, driving round to see if he dropped it anywhere, calling into all the places he had been. Then hours of trying to figure out how to trace it without the find my phone being turned on 😬 We decided by late Friday that it was lost somewhere and not been picked up as it was still on and ringing and there was no attempt to use the card. Friday morning John was going to a funeral so that made things more chaotic and difficult. I spent 45 minutes on the wait list trying to get to talk to someone and by the time I did he had been into the bank and cancelled his card. I mean what is the world coming to when he drives approx 7 miles, parks in a busy town and gets to talk to someone and cancel his card before the customer service even answers the phone call I am trying to make at home before he even left 🤷♀️ Next I tried to cancel or report his driving license 🙄 what a rigmarole, I get through all the questions with the relevant details of NI number, driving license number only to be asked for passport number which he had with him because it was his only form of identification 😂 The next step was to try and get his phone number up and running but the shop would not do anything without his bank card (which was lost with the phone) so I order a pre paid SIM card for an old phone. That needs activating with an email but the email is just queued and won’t budge 🤪 By now I am losing the will to live. I go off to the sale for which I have been busy trying to pack everything up ready to take. I was nervous about doing it, it’s not anything I have done before, Shelley came to help and give moral support but in actual fact I had a lovely morning and I sold a few things as well, win, win. I was also able to talk to everyone about fresh, locally grown flowers and let them know I am here and what I do so that was a bonus. I get home and there is a message on the house phone, Johns phone has been found, big smiles and relief all round 😁😁 It was actually in a the suppliers where he had been back to and they had looked but couldn’t see it. We don’t know where they found it yet as it’s the weekend and so he hasn’t been able to go back and get it.
That brings up up to speed and it is now Sunday, the morning was spent getting everything ready for the housing of the poultry due to avian flu. We have cleaned everything out, made arrangements for the ducks to go into a stable, the geese will go back up to the small paddock at the back, that all needed getting ready. We putting scaffold netting over the top of the front run to stop and wild bird poop getting anywhere near them, putting wood clippings down in the pens to try and stop the ground going to mush when it rains. Oh yes and yesterday we finally sold the tractor too so that has now gone, I told you it has been a busy week.
Mid morning I went off with Charlie and Shelley to my nieces baby shower, plenty of babies being born into the family at the minute lol. The weather has been mixed today, torrential downpour one minute, sun out the next but still it is pretty mild for November. Back home mid afternoon, a cup of tea and a sit down and then the fun begins with the birds. Well I say fun, that is of course irony, what a bloody sh*t show (excuse my language) When we went out it was daylight and not raining, we herded the ducks from their outdoor pen into the stable block towards the open stable. You kind of have to know how stupid ducks can be to get this but one got stuck behind the duck pen gate (it ran the wrong way) never mind we carry on herding the rest and will come back for that one, they then all got behind the wrong side of the open door and two by two I gently herded them along the door and round into the stable. One of them shot off in a different direction. The thing with ducks is once they are separated from the flock they tend to panic (fair enough) but they also go into hide and seek mode 🙄 except they are like children who close their eyes and think you can’t see them 😂 they find a corner (always just out of arms reach) and bury their head in as deep as they can. We manage to scrabble through the fir trees and retrieve one, the other we couldn’t see and so left it to home in on the duck chatter in the stable and hope it made its way there. At this point it is still dry and the daylight is fading but still plenty of light to be able to see. We go over to the front hens and for some reason, well actually the reason is because we put the green scaffold netting on the roof of the run (how very dare we) the hens decided that they were not going anywhere near that tonight! They congregated in the corner of the paddock and when we tried to herd them they scattered into the tree line behind the stock fencing. They are now in fractured groups not willing to go anywhere near the run or the hut and yes you guessed it cue a bloody downpour 🤬 We are scrabbling around in the p**sing down rain, in the hedge, over the fence trying to round up chickens and by this time it is getting dark. Every time we thought they had gone into the run they turned round and came back out, we quickly sorted that out buy closing all the doors but that meant that each time we managed to herd a couple more one of us had to run ahead and open the door before they reached it. Finally we got all those in and we just needed to catch the light Sussex one by one and put those in there too. This is new to them but it the only way we could keep them under the restrictions so in they went. Of course we are not finished yet (mentally I was 🤪) then it was back to the stable block to see if the duck had returned, she had 🙏 We get her in, wait for the other hens to go to their preferred stable, shut those in, shut the back lot in and job finally done. The soaking wet, dragged through a hedge backwards look is not my best look, it also does not put me in the best of moods 🫤 The hens in the stables are going into the back pen but not before we work out which are actually laying, the ones that are not, well their time has come shall we say 😔 We would never cull normally, usually they are allowed to freeload off us and live out their barren days free ranging in the paddocks. The cost of feed and bedding coupled with the lockdown means we will have to be harsh this time and I know we are not the only smallholders facing these horrible decisions this year. There are plenty that are giving up altogether, I don’t blame them, last year the lockdown was a month longer than the year before, this year it’s a month earlier than before and so if things go the same way that is 7 months in lockdown and what the hell is the point of that 😡 Avian flu is serious, I get that, there is a serious risk it could transfer to a human who unknowingly has covid, I get how serious that would be for mankind. What I don’t get is why when there are dead wild birds on the rivers no one is clearing them up if they are such a hazardous risk. Why are the bird sanctuaries and the nature reserves still open to the public, are they vetting the public to see if they keep poultry and stopping them coming because if they are not then what is the point? These measures are purely there to protect the big Turkey, goose and poultry farms up to Christmas so they can still make their huge amounts of money and so the supermarkets can cash in on the festivities. Don’t get me wrong if I was one of those producers I would be glad of it I am sure, but I’m not, I am little old me with my few poultry that are going to be locked up for more than half a year and it feels all so wrong 😔
Tomorrow is another day and a new week, a slower paced week hopefully 😁 have a good one whatever you are doing, be grateful it is poultry in lockdown and not us again 😬
frieslandfarm (flowers) 