Monday17th April 2023: I had one of those mornings where all the things that were bugging me just had to be done and there was no putting it off any longer. It’s not that I put them off just that other jobs jump the queue 😂 So this morning I hoovered the boot room and washed down all the side areas, it gets dusty and dirty with the cats and dogs in there but when it’s constantly raining there is no point even trying to clean it because it won’t stay like that for more than ten minutes. It probably still won’t stay very clean but I couldn’t put up with it any longer, then there was the fridge to clean out, things lurking in the back and half used things sitting on the shelves, all clean and tidy again. I managed to smash my favourite tea mug while I was wiping down the side ☹️ so I then had to hoover the kitchen floor which also needs a wash but as the wet just gets walked right in I only want to do it when we have a dry period 😜 I cleaned the bathroom and emptied the wash basket, I also need to wash a few extra things for our holiday, my hat for instance. There were things to put away in their right place things that just get put down somewhere and left for a few weeks 😬 I feel less stressed when these jobs have left my head because they are done ✔️
The weather is cloudy and not at all spring like but that suits me fine as long as it’s not raining though the air is damp with no sun shining through. I have a few flowers to do for customers this week, some today but mostly at the end of the week and then there are Friday flowers of course, they sell quickly most of the time and as the growth season gets under way there will be many more flowers and so many more to put out which will be fabulous.
John bought home a second hand commercial freestanding sink and drainer which we had found locally, we got it all cleaned up (it wasn’t too bad just some grease on a couple of the legs) and go that in the flower hut. They have a deeper sink so much better for getting the buckets in, it is difficult in a shallow sink to get the taller buckets in and get the tap over the top. It will only be used to fill the buckets and give them a swill so didn’t need to be anything too fancy. Flowers being picked up this evening and then I have an online meeting later tonight.
Tuesday: I keep thinking it’s Wednesday 🤷♀️ I have flowers to do for Thursday and thought I better get cutting ready for conditioning then realised it’s only Tuesday 🙄 The morning started badly with me waking up with pink eye and then later dropping a box of eggs as I was taking them out to the shed 😝 Maybe I should just sit quietly today 😂 I know I won’t though as the sun is trying to make an appearance, it still feels a tad cold out but it’s only 9am so if it stays out it will warm up to a beautiful spring day hopefully.
It is three years today that Dad passed away, where does the time go and how come it goes by faster the older you get 🤔
I spent a large part of the day weeding, Shelley called in and also got stuck in helping me with the never ending weed harvest 😂 I know you can eat a lot of them and I have made food from them before now but mostly they feed other animals or get composted. I also took some cuttings from a sedum and dug up some campanula seedlings and potted those up, getting free plants for another day is money saving and satisfying.
Wednesday: It is Mia’s birthday today, a whole seven years old, oh to be seven again lol. We will be popping over to see her later after she finishes school.
I am hoping it will be dry enough to get the towels washed and on the line today 🤞🙄 They are just finishing the cycle as I type, I have a hearty beef stew in the slow cooker along with a multitude of yummy veg so once the towels are out I am free to get on with the rest of my day. I will be lifting and cutting flowers today ready for Friday flowers plus a few other orders I have tomorrow and Friday. Once the season is underway I hopefully will have flowers available all week long but at this time of year I concentrate them to the end of the week. This way I don’t end up with flowers I haven’t sold and therefore money wasted.
I got another brew on the go yesterday, comfrey tea 😁 comfrey grows like mad here and so best to make good use of it by steeping it in water for a few weeks. It makes a stinking tea but it is great plant food so worth the effort, sustainable, natural plant food 🥰 Fill a bucket with the leaves, cover with water, cover the bucket (because of the smell) and leave for three weeks then use it at a 10:1 ratio the 10 being water. It has a high nutrient content due to the deep tap root being able to access deeper soils, high in potassium and nitrogen, it can be used as a spray (foliar) feed or watered onto the soil promoting good strong growth and good fruiting/flowering.
Having sung Biscuits praises saying she doesn’t try and get out (famous last words) she has got out three days running the little s**t 😂 The electric tape is up and clicking away so I know it’s on, I think she is literally climbing through the post and rail fencing 🙄 So plan b is put into action 😝 She is fenced off inside the smallest paddock we have so I lure Jack across with the showing of tasty hay and shut the gates at either side of the paddock. I undo the electric fenced off area and let them both roam the small paddock, the hopeful outcome will be that Jack helps to graze it right off and then he will go into the paddock next door while Biscuit stays in the eaten off one. Every now and then we will have to put Jack in there to help keep the grass down as it is growing well now. This is the plan, plans do not always go how they should, watch this space 👀 by the time I finish sorting this out it is lunchtime.
Over to see Mia after school to celebrate her birthday with her. I left the water on in the tunnel while I was away and this year I and using the timer on my watch to remind me to turn the water off again, so far that is working well though I did have to re set it twice while we were out as I had only set it for an hour.
Thursday: A sunny day with a stiff breeze making it feel cooler. I had a busy morning doing flowers, I have some orders going to customers today, some tomorrow and then the Friday flowers and jam jars. It is surprising how long it takes to do them all, it’s after 1pm and I have only just finished having been doing them all morning. Normally I would do them this evening but I have some deliveries to make after the twins have gone home and then it’s pool night for John so I have to squeeze it in-between the two 😝
Friday: Up before the alarm this morning to get things done, flowers needed to go out early for customers coming first thing, the bunches needed wrapping and the jam jar flower needed tying loosely. I was hoping to get it done before the alarm went off and John got up but he decided to get up early too 😝 He had to stand and eat his toast as I had commandeered the kitchen table, once the flower hut is ready this will no longer be a problem. I had early customers coming for eggs and honey to so I had to make sure all those were ready and out in the shed. My day is going to be like that today, I have an appointment at 9 Shelley is coming over around 10.30 to walk through things that she will be looking after while we are away, I have customers coming to collect flowers at other times of the day and I have someone coming to collect lambing equipment I sold online.
The weather was lovely yesterday and today it’s not! Colder and wet again urrgghh there is just no consistency to the weather patterns at the minute. On the sunny days you think ‘ooo Spring has sprung’ and then back to ‘oh it’s winter again’ 😂 it does not make life easy for growing things either, the fluctuation in temperatures in the greenhouse and poly tunnels confuse the plants and seedlings and things growing outside are trying but progress is slooooow. Hey Ho no two years are ever the same so at least we are used to ‘winging it’ 😜 All we can do is try our best.
Saturday: Foggy and cold start to the day, it took a good few hours for the sun to burn it off but when it finally did it was not a bad day though it ended with rain and was cold again. First thing this morning we went to town as I needed a good rain coat for our holiday ✔️ then stop to get some shopping ✔️ once home I needed to pick rhubarb and then take that along with flowers down to the pub ✔️ once back I spent an hour or so in the greenhouse potting on plants and then I had the twins for a few hours while Sam and Luke took Mia out for her birthday treat. They were very good and I had them picking all the dandelion heads off the lawn and feeding them to the torts. Then George helped me to dig up dandelions in the pathways, I think he thoroughly enjoyed that especially the great big ones. I seem to have an awful lot of them this year they were growing everywhere and in order to knock them back a bit I needed to dig them up. Not all of them obviously, I have left some smaller ones and I didn’t dig any out of the lawn they can stay and just be mown every now and then. They got hungry and we went inside for lunch and stayed in for the next hour as the sun went in and it got cold outside again. Once they had been collected I was straight back out on the dandelion mission while John cut the lawn. As I said in the beginning the temps dropped and the rain came 🙄 Joping for a half decent day tomorrow 😬
Sunday: It was, for the most part, a decent day 😁 the weather conditions were just about right for me and so I spent most of the time in the greenhouse potting on or pricking out seedlings. John was busy having a bonfire at the back and tidying up. Sam came over with the children, a friend and the friends daughter who goes to riding lessons with Mia. They spent some time grooming the horses then saddled them up for rides around the paddock, everyone, horses and children were very well behaved except Lucie who by all accounts played in the horses water bucket 😂 and then had to strip off because she was soaking wet, you gotta love a spirited carefree child 🥰
We went round to Mums later in the afternoon and we were there when the national test alarm sounded on our phones. Mums went off and then around 30 seconds later mine went off, apparently lots of people didn’t get it at all so it’s lucky it was a test signal and not the real thing 😝 We had a discussion about what exactly the alarm might sound for, we don’t have tsunami, we have fires but nowhere near the scale of some countries, I suppose flash flooding might trigger it but I am guessing the flood would be quicker than the alarm 🤷♀️ chemical leaks or explosions might well be on the list but they would be localised as would many threat to life situations such as a gunman on the loose. We concluded that a meteor strike or nuclear attack were what it is intended for 🤔 Which begs the questions, do they know something?
frieslandfarm (flowers) 