Tuesday 28th May 2024: I am totally out of whack with the blogging, apologies for that.
Yesterday was a bank holiday but we mostly spent the weekend working outside trying to bring some order to the driveway. It is, or was shingle, but the weeds have taken hold and I am very loathe to spray it so it has to be done by hand 🤪 and it’s a big area 🙄 by the time you finish the last bit the weeds are back in the first bit again 😂
I had Mia, Lucie and George late afternoon Sunday and overnight until lunchtime on the Monday. They were really good and George was keen to be helping Grampy with all the jobs. I said to Sam he is a grafter when it comes to working, they came in when it started raining but George kept an eye on the weather and told Grampy when it had finished raining that they could get back outside to work again 🤣 The girls meanwhile had no intention of helping Grampy weeding so they did some arts and crafts plus help me cut some flowers in the morning and I gave them a little lesson in how to do a hand tied bunch 🥰
We went out to get something to eat on Monday afternoon after they had gone home and then called in to see Shelley on the way back before finally getting home and doing nothing for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday is Oscar day 🥰 so I have not got much done today, Oscar also refused to give in to tiredness and I finally managed to get him to have a nap at 3pm. What is it with kids and sleep, I would be more than happy if someone said to me go and have a nap in the middle of the day 😁
I can’t even think of all the things I haven’t told you in the blogs I forgot to do but one of the best things was the arrival of the Floret seeds from the USA. First time they have been on sale in the UK and I was determined to get some, they arrived a couple of days later and I already have them sown and cannot wait for them to come up. I only sowed a few of each just in case it all goes wrong, the seed is fresh and so it will last until next year but I suspect I am not alone in wanting to get some growing this year.
I have discovered a series called homestead rescue, it is American and their homesteads are not like most of our Smallholdings in the UK but it is a fascinating series. Firstly most of them are very remote, totally off grid and have predators that are a threat to human life as well as animal whereas our predators only threaten our livestock. They tend to have a lot more acres and the terrain or weather is often hostile in one way or another and I don’t just mean a lot of rain or high winds 🙄 Harsh living is what I would call it and although I love the thought of the challenge, having to be totally self reliant and self sufficient, in reality I would not like to live permanently like that unless there was no other choice. What I love about it is the ideas the rescuers come up with to overcome a problem such as the greenhouse built into the side of the mountain to get a more even temperature year round and protect crops from the weather. It would seem though that they can pretty much build whatever they need to without the local planning on their case which must make the challenges a bit easier than they are here 🤪 Mind you, if you are 42 miles from the nearest town and all the way up a mountain I don’t suppose anyone is ever going to see what you have built 😂 I tried to find a definite answer to see how far the most remote house is from a town in the UK and the furthest I could find was about 15 miles so we are not even in the same league lol.
Wednesday: The weather is up and down at the minute from blue sky and sun one minute to a cloudy downpour the next minute 🙄 still not complaining as I don’t need to water outside yet.
My day has been pretty changeable just like the weather, planting out one minute, cutting flowers the next lol. One job I did was move every single plant in the greenhouse in turn to check for slugs, counted and removed approx 10. It is officially the worst year for slugs ever I reckon and the damage is so frustrating, I have lost no end of plants to those gastropod jaws 🤪 Top tip is to grow the plants on until they are bigger and stronger because the slugs love the new fleshy growth, I will take my own advice next year and not be too hasty. Obviously I am making a mental note of which plants the slugs do not touch and of course this time next year I will remember the mental note I made 🤔 best I write it down 😬 If the winters are warmer and wetter going forward we will have to find a way of either dealing with them or living with them. Not all slugs are bad of course, some slugs eat other slugs 😊 I need an identification chart in the greenhouse to see which is which otherwise I am disposing of the allies as well and the villains 😂
Growth in the garden is beginning to speed up and I am hoping that is one way of overcoming slug damage, leaving the plants to slug it out (pun intended) and it is then a case of survival of the fittest 🤷♀️
Thursday: I went to Millets farm with Shelley, Charlie and the kiddies, spent most of the day looking at animal as and eating 😬 It was a chilly start but once the sun came out in the afternoon it was boiling, it’s a no win situation at the minute 😂
Friday: I really needed to get some work done as there are just not enough hours in the day at the minute. Paperwork, housework, gardening, farm work, it’s pretty full on.
Saturday: John had to go and do a job first thing and I got flowers ready for delivery. We went off to deliver them then collect my Mum and went for a drive out to support my sister in law on her launch day. She has a bay in an emporium and it was a lovely drive out there, a great vibe with music and a bar, some fabulous furniture and other things to look at but it was pretty chilly until the sun came out late afternoon and then it was boiling (can you see a pattern here)
Sunday: Work, work, work, a different start to the day as the sky was blue from the minute we got up.
We have lots of big weeding to do, John was on the strimmer, me on the scthye, then mowing and hand weeding and we haven’t really made a dent in it all 🙄
There is watering to do in the greenhouse and tunnels daily at the minute and plenty of flowers to continuously cut. On Friday afternoon I got John to convert an old chicken hut into a roadside flower hut. That is working well as I have sold a few bunches, it’s better by the road as nobody really reads the sign saying flowers up the driveway lol. It’s a good job I have lots of flowers because I have lots of them going out and lots of activity coming up when I will need them. I have a few regular subscriptions now as well as other orders, two private workshops booked for later in June as well as the monthly one and I am now on the church flowers rota so I will being doing those plus church flowers for the open gardens day in the village this weekend coming, plus getting flowers ready each day to go out to the stand. Hopefully John will be home quite a bit this week and I can set him to work on some areas that really need doing. Although I don’t like to cut back the wild areas too much, the reason is that we have finally reached a pretty good biodiversity balance in the garden and the proof of that is in the lack of pests (apart from slugs that’s is) I thought last year was a fluke but it seems that it may have been the real deal as so far this year all is looking fairly pest free (probably shouldn’t speak too soon 🤪) It can be tempting to just think about getting weedkiller and using that but for me the wildlife is more important than what other people think and it is paying off in many ways. Most weeds are useful food for something and so only those that strangle everything (bindweed) or perennial weeds in the beds get pulled. Nettles are a great wildlife food and there are plenty of areas we let them grow but we do pull them from around the garden area otherwise they just take over.
It is British Flowers Week next week so I will be busy promoting that and then on Saturday I have a few people coming for a coffee morning to see what I do and how I do it, hence the need to get lots of outside work done 😂
I could do with a cleaner, cook and odd job man then I could just do the garden 🤪
frieslandfarm (flowers) 