Sunday 31st December 2023: Out with old and in with the new, I guess we are lucky if we can think that, as it stands there are still terrible things going on in the world and the year date doesn’t make much difference to those who are suffering so much.
Firstly an apology for the complete and total lack of a blog, partly it was because I was very busy with the flowers and workshops in the run up to Christmas and partly because I was just too tired to think let alone write anything 😂
I had a very busy and successful run of Christmas wreath workshops and there is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on before, during and after the sessions, I absolutely love doing them though so they will always be in the calendar. I have pencilled in dates for the coming year of all the workshops I am hoping to run and I have a few more that I am wanting to slot in-between those so it will be busy on that front. Growing flowers for seasonal cutting is an ongoing cycle so I never really stop but I am at a lull in the year just at the minute which gives me time to look back on what worked well and look forward to what I want to change. I am always investing in my own learning too and have been taking notes at every zoom lesson/session or meeting I have with the group I am in. AI has been an exciting discovery and it blows your mind when you start using it for specific tasks, I can see how this is going to revolutionise everything and at a very fast pace too. Most of it will be good but I guess there are always those using it for under hand means too 😒 We are going to be lucky enough to witness a new era where AI streamlines businesses with incredible effect I think. I have also been learning a lot about Instagram lol, I definitely struggled with it before but I am beginning to understand it much better I just need to refine my end of things 😝 Learning to use it is important as it reaches a different demographic to Facebook and therefore I reach different potential customers.
Back to real life and it has been a fabulous Christmas, we had all the family over for Christmas day and then Mum and Ken for Boxing Day and Kev and Ali joined us too. One fly in the ointment was that our car broke 😣 I mean really broke, the sub frame collapsed 🙄 It is a manufacturing defect that the company was aware of and we had the part on back order ready to be done when it came in but it broke before that could be done. Luckily the company (Mercedes) is fixing it free of charge but as we would be without a car for quite a while and given that it is getting on in age we decided to get a new one. Not brand new, a few years old but a lot of years newer than the broken one. John was always reluctant to part with that one, he loved it a lot but he loves his new one just as much (if not more 🤪)
The weather has been awful, in the run up to the festivities it was very windy, fierce at times, Christmas day and Boxing Day were better, mild and dry and then the wind and rain came back. The rain has come back with a vengeance, yesterday evening, all night and this morning it has not stopped and has been very heavy at times. The result is a lake in the paddock with a river that runs all the way through the other side paddocks. The lane is flooded which hasn’t happened for a while and we are still forecast lots of rain, I hope we get enough gaps inbetween for some of it to flow away before it starts again 😒
We have eaten out and about quite a lot this holiday, coffee and cake here, breakfast or lunch there and we haven’t finished yet as we have dinner with Shelley and family tonight (NYE) and dinner with Charlie, Macca and Oscar tomorrow on New Years Day. Once all the goodies are finished up it will be time to cut out all the rubbish food, I really need to take my diet back to a very basic lean meat, veg, fruit, nuts, eggs to get a handle on the inflammatory goings on in my body. I have been back to the eye hospital with a flare up and I have a result from a blood test that confirms I am HLA-B27 positive. That means I have a protein on the white blood cells which is an indicator for a higher than average chance of autoimmune (ya think 😂) Good to know though and sugar, high fat and sweeteners are some of the foods that can trigger inflammation so I want to switch back to some clean eating, always tricky when all those Christmas goodies you were given are sitting in the cupboards.
I have ordered myself a new years present 😊 a large wormery. At one time all our veg peelings went to the rabbits and Guinea pigs but they are no longer with us and so I will feed them to worms instead. They should produce excellent worm casting which will be great for the garden and a liquid run off which will be great as a liquid feed, it’s a win win situation as well as a symbiotic one.
The elephant in the room has to be addressed at some point for me and that is Gaza, it can be dressed up how any government wants but the cloth is see through and it is genocide as far as I am concerned. The attack on Israel was really horrific but the retaliation has been 100x more horrific. There have been of course many shameful episodes in history and what I cannot get my head around is how a nationality that was so badly and horrifically persecuted can turn around and do this to another 🤷♀️ I despair of the human race I really do, the innocent on both sides suffer in a mad man’s world, maybe AI will make a better job of it, certainly more intelligent thinking is required.
NEW YEARS DAY 2024: We made it 😊 In actual fact we were in bed before midnight 😂 we had been to Shelley’s and along with Martin, his Mum and Dad and the children we ate and played games and then did the countdown and auld lang syne early so the children could go to bed. We all enjoyed it, the children loved it and Flo was none the wiser that it wasn’t officially midnight 🥰 and anyway it was midnight somewhere in the world 🤪
Todays weather is pretty good for the beginning of January, sunny and dry so far. John has washed his car 🙄 we will see how long that goes on for, I have cleared the house of Christmas decorations and taken out the tree remembering to say thank you it on the way. I can’t see the point of keeping it all up it feels wrong to me, new year, new start, clear out the old from last year 😝 job done, move on. We have dinner later this afternoon at a Charlie and Macca’s so the rest of the day will be relaxed and do the odd bit of tidying or sorting if I feel inclined.
I had a jam jar of flowers to get delivered to the residential home down the road, I get a list of dates and I provide flowers on those dates for birthdays. The fact that some have been on bank holidays, Boxing Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, makes no difference we still get them delivered because that’s what a small local business will do for their customers.
Tuesday: I think it’s Tuesday anyway 😂 it’s that time when no one really knows what day it is anymore. It’s raining quite heavily again and we have a weather warning for most of today for high winds and heavy rain. We really need some cold weather, I hate the cold but it helps with so many things in the garden, reducing pests and disease, breaking dormancy of plants and besides it is much nicer to walk around on frozen ground than soaking wet which is what it is at the minute. I guess that is global warming 🤷♀️ and it is changing very fast.
I had Oscar today but while he was sleeping I managed to get a few jobs done, some more washing (though there is no hope of drying it naturally) cleaning out one or two drawers and using up all the bits in the fridge to make soup. For Christmas I was given one of those daily to do charts so I started to fill that in for the days ahead, I want to make sure I am using up all the bits of food and not have any waste hence the soup today. I also have some chestnuts that I bought but didn’t use so I will be boiling those up and freezing them, they are a very versatile ingredient because they lend themselves to sweet recipes or to earthy savoury ones. They can be added to soups and stews or made into stuffing or even cake, one day my trees might produce enough to be self sufficient in them but not yet. We had a young tree a few years back and something ate the top of, I think it was the horse but could have been deer 🙄 I also bought some foil pie trays because I still have a lot of frozen fruit to use up, my thinking is that if I spend a day making and freezing pies then at least I will be able to grab one for pudding, when it’s just frozen fruit the effort seems great to make it from scratch on a whim. I also need to process the nuts I gathered in autumn so that they are in a useable state rather than having to think about shelling them whenever I want to use them. If they are preshelled I can throw them in to all sorts of things to add some goodness.
Omg that wind today was roaring across our place this afternoon, I hate high winds, we are fairly exposed and so everything bangs and creaks 🙄 I watch the trees with the expectation that one will come down any minute 🤪 luckily Oscar was fast asleep and didn’t notice. He even slept through the phone ringing, it is in the office where his cot is and no one phones all week long then Sod’s Law at the very time he is asleep, ring ring. He must have been pretty tired because that didn’t wake him either.
I had a use it up dinner this evening which was very tasty, some cooked chicken from the freezer stir fried with some veg, some noodles and the special ingredient a teaspoon of peanut butter, yum.
Nipped out to get a few bits of shopping that I needed and drove back through the village, the water is beginning to spread out of the ford which is not surprising as the amount of rain we have had is ridiculous in a short amount of time.
Wednesday: I always have the urge to use up everything in January, not just any Christmas food but all the bits in the freezer that I have either half used or processed in the growing season. I was supposed to get everything out to do a big batch today but forgot, normally I would think to myself do it another day but not this year. I went and got it all out this morning which means I won’t be able to start until this afternoon once it has defrosted but that’s fine it is the intention that is needed lol. So I have lots of fruit defrosting and I intend to make pies, crumbles and turnovers with that, I also have both slow cookers on the go with soup. Beef bones, small amounts of veg that were hanging around and some split peas have gone into those along with garlic, turmeric, pepper and herbs. I bought sweet chestnuts and have some left which I could still roast on the fire but I am boiling them up and I will either use them today or freeze them depends on what time I have.
Actually I may be at this a couple of days 😂I just found a recipe for the chestnuts in an Azerbaijan style lamb recipe which uses a shoulder of lamb which I knew I had in the freezer and needs using. Sounds like a great recipe and can be made and frozen again ready for using in the future. I won’t be using it all on that so I can do a few make ahead stews for John too and freeze those, win win.
There is an unstable polar vortex mashing about and at the minute it is unclear how it will affect us but if a very cold snap comes I will be well prepared and I love that, comfort food for the cold days 🥰
Thursday: A busy couple of hours this morning sorting out the next phase of batch cooking before going off mid morning with the girls and children to soft play for a few hours. The cooking this morning was a lamb shoulder that has been at the bottom of the freezer long enough and really needed cooking. I got it out yesterday to defrost and this morning I took off all the meat from the bones and then all the fat from the meat. I ended up with a good lot of meat that could then be cut into chunks and turned into multiple meals. So in one slow cooker went leeks, onions, carrots and lamb and in the other went onions, plum tomatoes, dried apricots, the cooked sweet chestnuts and the lamb, then it was seasoned with cinnamon and allspice. The onions and lamb was fried off quickly first beforehand oh and also some lamb stock in both. We will have it for dinner tonight, John will have the lamb stew with potatoes and I will have the other lamb with rice, I will then leave it all to cool before portioning them up for the freezer. I still haven’t got round to doing the blackcurrants but I will and I now have a lamb bone in the oven to roast off and a bowl full of lamb fat that I will render down, the jobs never end 😂 I sent John out first thing to get some bits I needed for cooking and on the list was leeks x 2, he came back with 8 🙄 x 2 packs 🤪 so now I will need to use those up and I think some big batches of leek and potato soup will be a good start.
The wormery had wandering worms last night, apparently this can happen in the first few days until they settle but luckily I noticed when I went to put stuff in the freezer. We had a laugh trying to round them all up and put them back and the remedy was to cover them with a bin bag (to catch any escapees) and to leave the light on all night because they dislike the light 🤦♀️ Life is anything but dull around here 🤣
Made the blackcurrant syrup which will keep in the fridge and be used for all kinds of things.
I had a lesson in AI on zoom this evening, more mind blowing stuff and it really can help to organise your life in so many ways 😂 plus a million more things.
Friday: I am on fire today! I have been so efficient getting plenty of jobs done and ticked off. I started with potting up the lamb dishes that had been left to cool over night and getting those in the freezer. Next job was to clean the slow cookers out and put the roasted lamb bones in one with celery and carrots etc and turn that on to make some stock. Next slow cooker had all the chopped up fat put in with some water and turned on, that will render down into tallow and some will be in the fridge and some in the freezer.
Next stop was to go out to the dahlias in the greenhouse, clean them, trim them up and bring them indoors to dry off completely. Luckily we have not had any cold weather yet or I probably would have lost them by now. A quick social media post or two and plan for tomorrows post, I am on a flowerfarmerrama challenge though how long I will keep it up for is anyone guess 🤪
I have also tided the office and put everything that came out for Christmas back in its place, plus some filing and sorting. Next onto paperwork, pay some bills, put some dates on the calendar and into my diary and called the insurance office to review our commercial insurance as it needs some changes.
Inbetween that I had a customer for some dried flowers so a quick chat with them before getting back on with things. I told you on was in fire today and it’s not even lunchtime yet 🤪 Lucikly for lunch we still have some beef and veg broth so that will do nicely.
Saturday: I didn’t get quite so much done today, Charlie and Macca came over with Oscar and Charlie, who now has her independent travel agent certificate, booked a trip I have been wanting to do for years. We had planned it for 2020 and then wallop the world stopped so now as it is a big birthday year for me I am making the most of it and doing what I want to be doing. What is this trip I hear you ask, something exotic? Something adrenaline pumping? Nope lol, I have wanted to go to two places for years, one is York and York Minster and the other is the Royal Military Tattoo in Edinburgh so we are combining the two in one trip with a stop at Windermere on the way back whoop whoop 🙌 We have another lil trip that the girls bought us for Christmas too which is to Hereford and both John and I will be blacksmithing for a day 😂 I can’t wait for that it will be awesome.
Once that was all sorted and I had a quick sit down I went out to the greenhouse to check on everything in there. We have had relatively mild weather so far this winter and so everything is fine but I think we are in for a cold snap soon and you never know just how cold it is going to get. I have bought a few plants indoors so that I don’t lose them like I did last year (although that was an intensely cold snap) and some to hedge my bets and hopefully one lot or the other will make it through. I have covered what is left in fleece for damage limitation. Most of what is in there should be fine as long as the inside of the greenhouse doesn’t go down past -5, and I don’t really want to heat it unless absolutely necessary 🙄 I also fleeced the anemone and ranunculus in the small tunnel, there are actually flowers on some of the anemone which means I may get an early cutting of those which would be fabulous.
Everything always grows well until that unexpected deep cold arrives, today for example the weather app says it won’t go down past 1c overnight but it feels as though it will be colder than that to me plus there is not a lot of cloud cover either so best to be prepared. I have looked at solar heaters for the greenhouse but there are not many, gas or oil produces too much condensation and electric is fine but I don’t have a power point in there so I would have to run an extension lead across the garden. I should have had a cable put under ground but at the time I didn’t really need it. The other option is passive solar (black tanks filled with water) and that is great if you actually get some sun (like today) to heat the water but not so great otherwise. I could not bother growing anything at all which would be the solution but it is nice to get ahead a bit and have some early flowers. Maybe in a few years with global warming it will be possible 🤷♀️ in the mean time I muddle on wondering what the best course of action is lol.
Sunday: I spent most of the morning in the workshop tidying everything up from Christmas and sorting out all the dried flowers. It is now looking nice and tidy ready for the year ahead and I know where everything is as it has all been put back in its correct place.
We went out for lunch at the local pub which was delicious and then back home to light the fire and watch a film. I also watched a you tube video of the most amazing pantry 🤩 admittedly they live around three hours from the next town and so probably need it but it was very impressive and only a pantry geek like me would watch for 40 mins 😂🤪
Have a great week.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 