Author: frieslandfarm

Posted in Friesland Farm

Knowledge, pasties and twiglet sitting.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 20th January 2020: Morning 😀 another hard frost last night, lovely jubbly. John has gone off to ‘real’ work this morning leaving me to do the morning rounds which I don’t mind in the least when the ground is firm underfoot 😜

I listened to another podcast this morning, gardening related naturally, this one was about a innovative lady called Joy Larkham, she wrote ‘creative vegetable gardening’ but it was the journey in life she took that was quite fascinating and ahead of time, resulting in many of today’s well known vegetables/salads being available to everyone to grow/buy. I found a paperback version on Amazon for £3.20 which is a bargain I reckon 😀

You may wonder why I am pleased to have a frost, you may not wonder and if not scroll past this bit 😜 Frost, as we all know when we have lost some precious plant to it, can be damaging but it is also very beneficial to the garden as a whole. Frost is caused by cold air trapped close to the ground, this happens when there is no cloud cover (so the heat from the days sun escapes back up into the atmosphere) and no wind (so a clear, still night) if cold enough (freezing point) the temperature of the ground and the temperature of the cold air just above it freeze and tad dah, frost. (a hoar frost, which is my absolute favourite, is slightly different, if we have one I will write a bit about it)

You probably all remember the school lessons about freeze/thaw and thought ‘when am I ever going to need to know that’ 🙄 You were probably right, I mean do you a actually need to know, not especially, it happens, you deal with it and move on until it happens again 😝 The freeze/thaw bit is the bit that is great for the soil, the moisture gets in between the particles, freezes, bursts the particles apart and voila, finer soil which is easier to work with than lumps or clods. The frozen air and soil also interrupt the breeding cycles of soil borne pests keeping the numbers in check so that there is not an epidemic in the spring. So you see it is very beneficial in the gardening cycle.

I can’t really talk about frosts without mentioning ‘Jack’ we have all heard of the mythical being that spreads the frost, usually depicted as a mischievous waif having fun. There isn’t an awful lot on the web about how the stories originated but it is interesting that most countries that have frosts have a folklore character connected with it 🌬

It seems to be the day for discovery for me as I have just discovered someone else or rather something else that I will be looking into in more depth. John always says ‘you spend far too much time on that thing’ the iPad, but that’s because there is so much out there to read and discover and that’s mostly what I am doing. Even Facebook has a wealth of information that is shared, its true that some of it is utter crap, a lot of it is best to scroll on past but there are some gems and one thing it does do well is link together common interests wether that be friends, family or topics. My brother tagged me in a link he thought I would be interested in and he was right 😀 I read the link, which happened to be to plug a book but it was the topic and then the author that got me intrigued. Next step was watching a video that he had made and from there onto the website where a wealth of information is available. It’s not just the topic it’s his whole way of looking at things that I really like. Not a conventional path to where he is now and not terribly politically correct, and not out to build an empire from what he does, just to pass on knowledge (and pay the bills 😜) So what and who I hear you ask, well his name is Robin Harford and the topic is foraging and the website is eatweeds.co.uk just in case you want to look it up. I like to forage, I never let the seasons pass without collecting free food in the form of blackberries, elderflower/berries, wild garlic and nuts but there is a huge array of other plants that we have lost touch with or that we might know are edible but don’t know what to do with them, I will be delving into this site to glean as much information as I can 😀

I started off doing this blog as a way of journaling our change of lifestyle and the challenges we came up against, the stories of things that happened and then as I learnt more, a way of passing that knowledge on with no expectations other than someone, somewhere may get something out of reading it. You may read it because you know me and want to know what I get up to, you may read it because you would like or do have a similar lifestyle, you may read it for the occasional recipe or for gardening tips, there are many reasons why and hopefully somebody, somewhere gets something useful from it (I invite you to let me know 😀) My point really is that I like to share information about the things I know about, I like to read stuff and in turn share my discoveries with people who also might like to discover it. It’s important to pass knowledge in all forms on and I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about weeds, watch this space there will be a weed based recipe at some point in the future I’m sure lol.

Tuesday: It’s been a busy morning so far, the farrier was coming first thing and so I needed to get all the morning jobs done first. Sam had bought the horses in late yesterday afternoon so when he came I just had to get them out of the stable and tie them up ready. While he was working I skipped out their stalls and replenished the hay and water, Sam is coming over later to give them a brush before they are turned back out. Just as I was giving Jack his hay I could see a post office delivery van in the driveway, I didn’t want him to drive off but anyone with horses knows full well that they don’t want to wait either 😂 Luckily the van was just reversing and not driving off and I finished what I was doing g and went to collect the parcel.

It was the bare root hedging plants I ordered last week, I have a few spaces in mind for these, I ordered forsythia, alder, June berry and a holly. Typically the ground is frozen solid so I won’t be able to plant them just yet, they are currently say in a bucket of water out the back. I need to remember to get them out of the water before the temps drop again tonight, I don’t want to freeze the roots.

Back indoors to sort the eggs (while listening to a pod cast, loving these) and then on to light the Rayburn, I got a barrow full of logs in while I was outside earlier. Once the fire had stabilised I set about making the pastry fro the Cornish pasties, I made a few errors with this project. Firstly, I thought I had the correct flour but didn’t so I couldn’t make them yesterday, Sam picked me up the correct flour yesterday afternoon so I could do them today. Secondly I didn’t look at the amount of beef skirt I would need and so only have 2/3 of the amount for the recipe 😏 Not to be deterred I prepped and weighed out all the vegetable ingredients I needed and then bagged half of it for another time, I will freeze this along with half the pastry. The other thing that was difficult was finding good old fashioned lard, I wanted to make a decent pasty and so lard is needed, hmmm that is not an item that is stocked where I shop so I bought an alternative. Unfortunately it contains palm oil and I didn’t read the ingredients until I had bought it, now I have it I have to use it up but will be more careful next time. The pastry is made and needs resting for three hours in the fridge, I hope these taste good as it’s been a task and a half lol, mostly because of my errors.

I also made some delicious soup made from tomatoes, celery and carrots plus veg stock, very tasty. The pasties look and taste great though they could have done with more seasoning and in the end I did use all the filling and pastry, I looked at it and thought there was enough meat to go round after all we are supposed to be cutting down on red meat.

Wednesday: Not so cold over night and we have fog this morning, got to love a bit of fog, the mysterious veil that can prod the imagination, wondering what is inside that cloak or what might come wandering out of it 👀

Today’s trivia, I learnt this on a pod cast lol, did you know that female ants can live up to thirty years!

I went out and did the morning rounds, before letting out the hens at the front I cut down some suckers from the fruit trees, they seem to be everywhere. And then I tried putting up some wire to keep the hens out of my garden. We are failing big time at this, John has put up a six foot fence they are still getting in, I put up another bit of fencing as they were going round the side and hopping over the lower fence, they are still getting in. I don’t mind admitting that two minutes after I had put the fence up and one hopped over a space further down, I wanted to cry 😭 I am getting exasperated by this, it’s not like there are just one or two of them, by the time I go to do afternoon feeding there are about fifteen of the f***kers in there 😤 I did think, well that’s ok we can just build mini wire frames to protect everything, and we can, it’s just that I can’t even rake the ground and sow the seeds without being swarmed by them. It’s got to the point that I bloody hate the things and it’s not even their fault 😜 Answers on a postcard please 😏

My seed potatoes arrived along with some more garlic bulbs. The garlic I planted in Autumn are doing really well in the small tunnel but you can never have enough of the stuff can you lol. The seed potatoes will be set now to chit which basically means that the little eyes you get on them begin to sprout growth. When they have done this it will be time to plant them up and as they are earlies I will be doing them in potato sacks in the big tunnel. I was thinking I probably won’t plant any main crop as we usually have a lot of self setters however if I want enough to get us through next winter I may have to rethink that.

I went out to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting and had a nice chat with a customer over the gate 😀

Egg sales have been brisk today which is unusual for mid week.

Thursday: I went out this morning to do the rounds and the first thing I see is a horse in the yard, he is supposed to be in the field 😜 Jack has broken out, to be fair I knew it was coming, he has been hanging round the gateways looking longingly at greener grass elsewhere but he can’t have it. For one it’s not that green it’s just greener than his paddock and for two the ground is soft and there are only so many paddocks I want him to trash 😂 The paddocks he is in have served well going this far into winter but they are running out of nibbling areas so we will have to take a roll of hay in for him to keep him happy until the grass begins to grow again. Biscuit will probably manage to steal some now and again but she doesn’t need a great deal. Anyhow, I got him back in the field with some big piles of hay and a carrot, the pictures you see of dangling a carrot are so true 😂

Onto the next jobs of finishing the feeding and letting out rounds and then as it’s mild again, which means I don’t have to light the Rayburn too early and therefore keep an eye on it, I decided to try and sort out this fencing malarkey to stop the chickens. I spent a good couple of hours fixing fencing to existing fencing to make it higher and hopefully stop the bloody things. I am not at all competitive but I don’t like to be defeated, I think they are two different things even if they don’t sound like it. Mission accomplished I went round the back washed off my wellies, went inside to grab the seed potatoes and a kombucha came outside and guess f*****g what, there was a chicken in my garden 😤 I grabbed hold of it and took it back to the paddock then waited to see where exactly it got in. A job is only as good as the weakest point and that ladies and gentlemen is the shed roof it seems 🙄 Damn thing surveyed all the fence line looked up and took flight onto the shed roof and down into the garden, not only that but it bought another bugger with it this time so now there are two in there. Two I can cope with I’m hoping the others are thicker and that there won’t be many more out there later, plus I can sort something out to stop them getting on the shed but it’s beginning to look like stalag 19 which is something I didn’t want.

I unpacked the seed potatoes and put them in a tray underneath the potting bench in the greenhouse, they need a bit of dark and that is a great place to put them, it’s dry and out of the daylight. They will spend a couple of weeks chitting before they are ready to plant. I need to identify exactly where the garlic needs to be planted but there is no great rush to do it today so I came in for lunch and to put this evening dinner in the slow cooker.

One of the reasons I want to keep the hens in their paddock is because I want to plant these bare root shrubs and I know from experience that they easily undo all the hard work once they smell some freshly dug earth. I planted a few plants last year along the fence line and only one or two have survived their constant scratching about.

In the afternoon Sam came over and we popped into town and then round to see Shelley for a quick cuppa.

On the afternoon rounds I found only five hens in the garden so that’s a start at least I have reduced it from fifteen 😀 Never one to be deterred I went and got some scissors and caught up the five as they tried to get some grain and clipped their wings. This doesn’t hurt them it’s like trimming your fingernails, you take the first six or so flight feathers on just one wing and cut them back by about 3 inches. It may stop them it may not but it’s another go at trying to deter them. The upside was that there were no hens in the orchard at all, until I went in there that is and they all tried to get through the bars in the metal gate, I found a piece of wire and fixed it over the top half of the gate, the bottom was already covered. Winning, still winning 🙄

When I went out to shut everything away there were no chickens in the garden whoop, I won’t hold my breath but it’s a start. This is of course the demented batch and they were all still out in the paddock even though it’s dark, we have managed to train them to follow us to the hut. They are fed in the morning then I put the food up out of the way so that when I go in at night and put it back down for them they all coming running in, simples.

Friday: It’s 5pm and I am plum tuckered, I was up early, couldn’t sleep so I got up and got on with stuff. Shelley dropped Josh off about 9am and he helped me with his favourite jobs, feeding Jack and Biscuit and then the Rabbits/guineas, we did some drawing and writing and Shelley came back around lunchtime with Flo, Sam arrived with Mia and the twins. We watched an old DVD of me when I used to do pantomime which was entertaining lol then Shelley, Josh and Flo went home. Sam offered to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting, I stayed indoors with Mia and George and Lucie who were asleep, George woke up and was crying for his bottle which I started to give him, Mia went to the toilet and was shouting ‘Nana I’ve done a poo’ I put George down to go and help her, he is screaming then the phone starts ringing Oh my days, all or nothing lol, eventually all was sorted, but now I’m tired 😜

Saturday: Up and getting on with the jobs this morning as I have a different to usual day ahead, I have the twiglets for the day and overnight 😝 wish me luck lol.

Sunday: Just over 24 hrs of twiglet sitting and it’s been pretty good, they are very much on cue with their feeding and sleeping habits so we all know what’s happening and when lol. John has been on farm duties while I am on baby duties.

The weather is vile today so I’m rather glad I’m not out there 😂

I have my Nieces baby shower to go to this afternoon once the children have been picked up so it’s early feeding and egg collection which John will be doing 😝 🌧

Posted in Friesland Farm

Stormy weather, goose eggs & pod casts.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 13th January: I had a cracking evening last night, by that I mean cracking nuts not having a good time 😜 I thought I’d better get started on the nuts if I do half an hour here and there I will soon have plenty of nuts to snack on or use in cooking. Turns out that only approx 60% of the walnuts are any good but that’s still useful, I haven’t started on the hazels yet. John spent late afternoon getting the gate finished and hung, he is getting very good at gates now, if you put his first effort next to the latest you would laugh and wonder how on earth it ever kept anything in or out let alone shut properly. Our skill set has widened massively over the years, hopefully we can pass some of them on to the next couple of generations you never know when they will need them.

I did a few extra jobs while I was on the rounds this morning, topping up the duck house bedding, moving the electric fence for the hens out in the side paddock and I had to fix the turkey pen fence. Something, probably a Fox has had a go at pulling the fence and there was a gap in it next to the doorway, basically it had been pulled out of the wood pinching it together. I grabbed a hammer and some u nails and fixed it, good job I saw it other wise the turkeys would have been got.

When I finished that I thought I would see what could be done in the garden, the weather is nice enough this morning and I feel like these are bonus days and shouldn’t be wasted. I got the jute out that I ordered and set about putting that down on a bed I cleared last week. I have reservations about using it, on the one hand it’s natural and therefore environmentally friendly, biodegradable, compostable so plenty going for it, it also does not flap about in the wind like the plastic and it would stabilise the soil if left in situ with more compost put on top. On the other hand it’s quite expensive monetarily speaking and I doubled it up because I’m not sure it will exclude the light with just one layer. It is an experiment so we will see how it goes.

I then tried to dig up the blackberry and stingers that have taken hold near the far fence 🙄 hmm I found I wasn’t strong enough to get right to the bottom of the roots nor to pull them so I am going to have to get John to help with that as some point. It does need a new fence there so we will probably do both jobs at the same time. While I was mooching about I found a piece of guttering and had a lightbulb moment, I would use it to plant some peas into in the tunnel. Mice usually bugger up my plans for early peas but you can hang a piece of gutter from the cross bars and that means the little sods can’t reach the seeds 😀 Even if I just use the shoots for salad they will be welcome early greens. The gutter didn’t have any stop ends so I got two plant pots and used those instead, filled it with compost and planted the seeds, it’s not pretty but it is functional and will hopefully work well.

The weather is about to get a bit nasty, we have a very deep depression coming in from the west which will bring strong winds and rain according to the forecasters but the temperatures are still well above average for the time of year.

So I just joined the group NFFN which stands for Nature friendly farming network, I don’t normally randomly join groups but this one seems to be aimed at exactly what I am trying to achieve here which is living off the land but not to the detriment of all other living things that are also here, sustainable farming, not that I farm in the general sense but I do have land that needs managing.

In the run up to Christmas the egg sales went berserk and we couldn’t pick them up and get them out fast enough, the week between Christmas and New Year was pretty steady but since the New Year it’s safe to say it has slowed down considerably and non existent on some days. In order to have a good turn around I have been trying to sell the duck eggs on the sale pages, normally they get snapped up but nothing doing today so I need to look up ways of using them up lol.

Tuesday: It’s calm this morning but we have another weather front coming in apparently so we are in the calm between storms. Here in the UK the storms are named in alphabetical order yesterday’s was storm Brendan so we are only just into storm weather, it usually gets to around g/h/i/j/k but there are 21 storm names allocated each year, if they surpass that I don’t know what they do lol.

I did the rounds this morning, again doing a bit extra as I go, this time it’s a sack full of hay for the rabbit/guineas and two sackfuls of fresh straw for the light Sussex pen, a quick coffee and sort out the egg shed and it will be time to clean out the quail who are still in the back area under cover as they seem to be laying much better in there. Not that we need the eggs, as I said yesterday the customers seem thin on the ground at the minute, I have been plugging them on the sale sites though so hopefully we will get a few new customers to help keep the eggs turning over quickly.

Sat and watched the horses frolicking in the paddock, I don’t know what had got into them but they were having a fine time of it 😀

I have some strawberry plants and some pots of tête-à-tête daffodils to put out for sale but I am kind of holding off until the storms pass as they will just get blown everywhere 💨 The winds were quite strong last night probably around 55-60mph (not strong in comparison to some countries) further up country they were reaching 85mph, but coming up from the south west and from that direction they don’t seem to affect us hugely.

I cleaned out the quail, one of them gets hard little balls of muck stuck to its toes so I had to soften that and get it off, it only happens to one I don’t know why. Then I collect up the daffodils and strawberry plants took them into the greenhouse and gave them a tidy up before putting them up for sale on the sites. The minute I got into the garden I was swarmed by hens all thinking that hopefully it’s three o’clock and I am going to feed them, not a hope it’s only 11am. I don’t know why they do it as they have feed inside the hut so if they were really hungry they could go and get that 🙄 Then is was inside to get the Rayburn lit, the weather though it started off ok has declined and it’s now wet with a breeze, I can tell it’s colder because I wanted to light the Rayburn at 10am but held off to get things done outside first.

I got myself ready to leave the warmth of the house to do the afternoon rounds, I stood at the back thinking ‘bloody heck it’s rough out here’ when all of a sudden crack and a bough came down, good job the wind is blowing so that the bough went along the fence and not towards the house, this is exactly the reason we started taking these down, we really need to finish the job 😏 Just before I went out, as I was getting my coat on, we lost the electric, just for a minute and it came back on but I’m pretty sure it will go again at some point.

We lost power at 4.45 after a couple of flickers, I just knew it was going to go 🙄 luckily I had kept the Rayburn low so there was not much in the fire box which is good as no power means no pump to take the hot water away from the boiler!

John came home and we went out to get something to eat and called into my sisters to get a cup of tea, when we got back at 8pm the electric was still off so John had a bath by candlelight while I sat in the living room with a torch and did some reading. All good fun, this is when we could do with a small wood burning stove that would be like the 1970s when Mum used to make toast on the parkray during power cuts 😀

Wednesday: Is it only Wednesday lol, the power did not come back on until 10.30pm by which time we had given up and gone to bed, it was starting to feel a tad cold and likely that the torch would run out of power so called it a night at 10pm.

It is a calm pleasant morning again, and this mornings survey of the place found no other damage but we do have the big lake back in the side paddock. This normally appears after days of relentless rain and not overnight, there was nothing there yesterday. The chap was due to come Sunday morning for rabbiting but I have warned him it might not be worthwhile as the rabbits have either drowned or fled the burrows.

I keep thinking we must be able to utilise this transient feature somehow but you can bet your bottom dollar that the minute we decide to male it into a permanent wildlife pond we will have a drought 😜

One good thing is that I was unable to cook dinner last night so I am ahead of the game with what to have tonight 😂 I have also lit the Rayburn earlier than usual as you can feel the cold having had no heating during the previous evening.

Thursday: It was colder overnight and I thought we would see a frost but at 6.30 this morning I couldn’t see any sign of one.

Out to do the rounds once it was light enough and nothing untoward but I did find the first goose egg of the season 😀 John had said he thought he saw something when he was shutting them away last night and he was correct. This is nearly a month earlier than usual and I can only assume that the mild winters as contributed to that. Normally the winter would be full of days when the ground is frozen or at least frosted but we have had less than a handful of days like that so the geese have been able to steadily graze grass constantly which is unusual. It means that they have been able to get good nutrition throughout and therefore start laying early which is great for them and a bonus for us.

One of the things I started listening to when the electric was off were podcasts, the selection out there is phenomenal and every type of subject is available. This morning I listened to an hour long podcast about growing and storing enough food to feed your family for a year, it was interesting and the best thing is that on the phone it’s mobile, I just take the phone with me whatever I am doing and can carry on listening. I got dressed, I did the washing up, then out to sort and box the eggs, all the while taking the phone with me and listening to something that interests me, much better than listening to the radio or the cat meowing 😜 I think I will definitely include podcasts as a part of my day.

Friday: I have blood tests this morning, these are for monitoring the effects of the drugs I have to take, they are disease modifying drugs and can have all sorts of side effects so need keeping an eye on. When I feel really well, like I do at the minute, I question wether I even have anything wrong but in truth if I came off the drugs I think things would plummet pretty quickly.

So the weather has been pretty atrocious this week I think it’s fair to say, today is not much better but we do have some sunshine in the forecast for the weekend, hopefully it will make an appearance, if for no other reason than to bring a bit of cheer to what seems like a very long month. We have about six weeks to go before we can get uplifted by the fact that spring will actually begin to spring. I watched a programme last night and the clip with the birds singing and the green grass made me realise how much I long for that time of year. I said to John yesterday that I look forward to the weekends when he takes over the feeding, if I had to do it seven days a week I think I would give up the birds entirely 🙄 We have customers that say ‘don’t give up doing this, we love your eggs’ but I reckon if they spent even one day in the wet, wind and mud they might think differently lol.

After the deluge of rain we have had this last week one serious thought I have been having is about exactly how to stabilise the ground. You can visibly see serious amounts of run off (as we are on a slight incline) and consequently the erosion of the soil especially on the veg garden. If the past few years have taught me anything it’s that this problem is getting worse and I don’t really have the expertise or knowledge so I am going to have to read all I can and work it out. The problem would not doubt be easily solved if we did not have grazing animals on the land and by that I mean the horses and the geese. They would eat most of anything you plant unless it is well protected, heavily protected in the case of the horses. I think I need to, and indeed want to, increase the hedging especially in the side paddock at the front by the lane. We have discussed putting up a fence to keep the horses away from anything newly planted but the geese would get through that and so would the chickens and they would scratch up round the roots so you see what I am up against here, multiple procedures are needed. In the meantime if anyone can point me in the direction of some serious land management articles involving erosion and how to prevent it I would be very grateful 😀

Saturday: A good hard frost overnight whoop, nice and fresh and crisp this morning and we did need it. Those plants that go dormant over winter need the cold so that they recognise when to break dormancy as it gets warmer plus it kills off a few pests and diseases. Of course along with the frost generally come a sunny day and that is exactly what we got, cold but sunny. John did the animals then had to shoot off and sort something out on a job he is currently on. Meanwhile I sorted out the morning household jobs and then went out to give hay and some carrots to the horses, top up the wild bird feeders and feed Diesel who had actually bought his own breakfast along in the form of a dead mouse 🙄 glad to see he is still earning his keep. When John came back he got to work on the fence that runs along from his new gate, digging holes and putting in fence posts, not a great job for a cold day so I made a batch of biscuits to keep him ticking along. Shelley, Josh and Florence came over, Josh wanted to help with some jobs. Always keen to take up the offer of some help as you never know when they will stop wanting to, we put some clean bedding in for the ducks, checked the growing daffodils and fruit trees at the back, had a tour around the veg garden, Josh was very interested in what was growing he kept asking ‘what’s this plant Nana’ lol, we went to watch Grampy do a bit then they found a nice icy puddle to jump up and down in which entertained them no end 😀

Back indooors for a cup of tea and some lunch and we had an episode that is the only time it is acceptable to hit a child, choking, Josh got a whole hula hoop stuck and was choking, Shelley whacked him a few times nothing, she looked at me saying ‘Mum’ and I went round and took over, three hard whacks, nothing, rapidly going through my head was after this next one if it doesn’t budge I am going to have to do it much harder and roll my fist up under his rib cage, thankfully it budged and came out. It was probably seconds but it feels like a lifetime and so many thoughts are running through your head mostly what your next stage of action will be. Of course a hula hoop will eventually go soft but at the time, the child is panicking and in this case Florence was also screaming because we were whacking Josh. Object removed, sighs of relief, then come the lectures lol, don’t talk with your mouthful, chew your food properly, and sit still while you are eating, all the things countless generations of mothers have said to their children, there is a very good reason for that 😜

I listened to another pod cast this morning while I was sorting eggs, one from the RHS about Wisley, very interesting and it got me intrigued, I definitely want to go and visit this year if I can. They have an attraction called ‘The giant houseplant takeover’ I am not really keen on houseplants but listening to the pod cast I was thinking how very clever the idea is as they explained what it was all about. John will be delighted lol, I’m sure they have a good cafe he can sit in and while away the time 😝

I made a pan of vegetable soup, nice and warming on a day like today and obviously very good for you, get your five a day all in one hit lol. I will probably whizz it up as I have put herbs in there and what John doesn’t know won’t hurt him 😜

I really have a hankering for a Cornish pasty lol, I might just have to make some.

I cleaned the windows, I thought it would probably be better if I could see through them 😝

The sky is kind of purple tonight, love the spectacular sunsets and sunrises the cold weather brings.

Sunday: Another hard frost, harder than yesterday I would say, but again the sun is shinning brilliantly and it looks magical shinning on the frozen branches and ground. John did the morning rounds and cleaned out the front hens, I sorted eggs etc.

This morning we are going to Blenheim Palace for a walk around the grounds and a coffee. We are very lucky to have this magnificent stately home only 20 minutes down the road and this year I bought annual passes for us and the girls so that it can be enjoyed all year round.

Well that turned into quite a chunk of the day visiting ‘The Kingdom’ as Josh called it 😂 I bought family passes for presents and I think we will definitely get our monies worth going there regularly, there is plenty of ground to cover and lots to do as well as the events they put on.

We got back at 3 and it was then a rush to grab a sandwich (long story as the cafe was packed as were the palace grounds) and scoot round to visit Charlie and Macca for his birthday. A quick cuppa with them then back home to do the afternoon feeding, egg collecting and light the Rayburn. The place gets pretty cold when there is no heating all day 🙄

Posted in Friesland Farm

Back to normal, stuff to sort & Winter flowering shrubs.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th January 2020: I have enjoyed having John at home for three weeks but this morning I am also happy to have the place back to myself as he goes off to work early. I think it’s the sense of back to normality and there is definitely a lot to be said for doing things the way I want them done instead of compromise or argument 😜

So what will I be doing with my time? Good question, I always say ‘I never make plans’ they go awry quite quickly I find so a loose idea of what I want to achieve with an indefinite time frame is a much better option lol, it also give me room to completely change my mind 😀 Today’s tasks are to get the morning rounds done, finish setting up the heat pad in the greenhouse now I have found everything I need, possibly move a bit more wood chip (nearly done) a few household tasks such as hoovering, dinner prep, lighting the Rayburn (they all take time) and probably a million other little things along the way. I have a couple of other jobs in mind that need doing such as cleaning out the quail and the ducks and they are the kind of job that are on the list but can be flexible as long as I get them done at some point within the next couple of days.

I did the animals, topping up the duck bedding as I went round, finding the rabbit/guineas some lovely greens and then figured I may as well strike while the iron is hot with a bit of outside work. I chose to do the rest of the wood chip laying in the fruit cage, the plan was to get the wood chip down, weed and mulch the pots of summer raspberries and cut back the autumn canes. I was about six barrowfuls in when I felt decidedly shaky, stupidly I had only eaten a banana for breakfast like I have been for the past couple of weeks but with some hard work on top the banana didn’t cut it 😜 I can only assume it’s blood sugar levels, I have had it before when I haven’t eaten enough to fuel the jobs I’m doing, I went in and had a large bowl of bran flakes, and a couple of shortbreads, 15 mins later I felt better but still a bit shaky so I made a coffee and sat down a while.

Once I had recovered I went back out and got the job in hand finished in the fruit cage, the areas that needed wood chip are all done, the summer raspberries have a mulch layer of wood chip on top of their pots, I have cut down the autumn raspberry canes and did a bit extra pruning of the blackcurrant bushes. I got half a trug of weeds out which will go to the rabbit/guineas for tomorrow’s snack. I secured the posts and canes and then shut the gate, that is all that will need doing in there now until well into spring except a bit of potash feeding for the strawberries to encourage flowering.

A midway through and finished picture of the fruit cage.

Indoors to light the Rayburn, John called in for a cuppa and I will have a quick sit down before a chap arrives mid afternoon to collect some hens.

Just as I am about to get back into working outside the weather is on the turn, the forecast over the next couple of days is for warm temps but accompanied by rain and possible high winds 🙄 urgh. Not to be deterred I have rainy day jobs in mind including getting the big poly tunnel up together and ready to plant into.

And right on cue just as I wrote this, it began to rain 😂

Tuesday: I have enjoyed another great morning outside getting things done, I am really enjoying myself at the minute, the weather is fairly kind and I have the energy and strength, fabulous. First up as always was the morning rounds and this time while I was doing them I cleaned out the goose hut, I have to then close the door all day as the chickens would get in there and scratch it all out again 🙄 Then onto the garden or more precisely the big poly tunnel, I tidied it up a little, pruned the grapevine, tidied up the strawberries and topped up the compost they are growing in. I made sure everything else was tidied up and added extra compost, I have chard and flat leaf parsley growing nicely. The other things overwintering in there are the lemon grass and the Chinese gooseberries, I am hoping they come through the winter ok along with the basil and the lemon verbena. All look ok at the minute so fingers crossed. I cut up some old compost bags and used them for weed suppressant round the edges and then I topped up an empty raised bed and sowed some early carrot seeds. I have covered them with fleece and we will see if they germinate or not, nothing to lose as they are some seeds I found from last year so if they don’t grow it’s not a big loss. I sorted out the potato bags and I need to order some first earlies, I am going to grow these in the tunnel as well, I don’t normally do earlies but it’s good to change things about now and again.

Early in January it’s mostly about preparation for the months ahead, there is not much that can be sown until early next month. It’s a good month to get your crop rotation plan sorted and write down anything you would really like to grow. Sit with a cuppa and order your seeds, onion sets, garlic bulbs and seed potatoes. I have just ordered mine, the plants are despatched to you at the appropriate times for planting so you can’t go wrong really. I have also ordered some grafted plants, water melon and aubergine, two plants I find difficult to get going from seed as a general rule. Often with the amount I order I get a ‘deal’ of some kind, this time I have opted for 36 geranium plug plants for £2.99 I probably won’t keep them myself but what I will do is grow them on and put them out for sale for a couple of quid each depending on size, that way I will hopefully cover the costs of the veg I have bought. That’s what I always aim to do with the veg/fruit I sell at the gate, if I can cover the cost of the seeds, growing them and harvesting what we need then I am doing myself a favour plus providing some tasty home grown veg/fruit for customers, a win, win situation 😀

Indoors at lunchtime to grab a sandwich and get the Rayburn lit, decide what to have for dinner later and prep it.

Wednesday: The weather is holding beautifully which means after doing the animals I was able to get another morning out in the veg garden. I started off tidying the greenhouse a little bit, moving stuff around, sowing a few broad bean seeds then out onto the beds. I lay awake last night thinking about what beds I had done and what still needed to be tackled, a bit sad lol but at least I got up this morning knowing what I wanted to achieve. You may remember last year I tried the ‘chop and drop’ thing, well not this year, I didn’t really like the untidy look and more importantly it didn’t give a feeling of an end and a beginning if that makes sense, I also found that I felt I had a lack of control over the garden which persisted all season long. So this year I am clearing and tidying which is what I have been doing this morning, I am happy with what I have done and whilst doing it I am mentally making a note of what will go where which I felt unable to do last year. As it stands out there I just have two more areas to sort out, I do have to replenish the soil with homemade compost or manure but once everything is cleared I can get that done. Both the compost heap and the manure pile are very wet at the moment which in turn makes heavy work so I will wait a while and hope it continues to dry out some more. I still have a few bits of produce growing, the winter spinach and a few tiny cabbages that the birds have been at, I have now put protection over them so they can continue to grow. There is of course curly kale still in the ground and the sprouting broccoli which I am able to get a few bits off of. The babbington leeks are pushing up through, they are a perennial leek and at the moment I’m not quite sure how that works. With conventional leeks you plant one and pull it when it’s bigger the perennial leeks should keep produce off shoots I suppose but as yet that hasn’t happened. I pulled up some radish, I need to try and find out which variety these are as they are far better than the usual French types. They are white and grow to golf ball size, tasty and more importantly they don’t bolt and go woody, a winner as far as I am concerned and a definite to grow again. Oh and the rhubarb is beginning to grow 😀😀

I have to order some more weed membrane to block out the light on the growing beds so that weeds don’t become a big problem. At the moment I am using black plastic which I reuse each year until it falls apart so although it’s not the option I would like it’s the one I take. The reason being that the thin fabric stuff gets absolutely ripped apart by the winds up here, the thicker stuff is very costly and I need quite a lot of it. I will keep searching, I may eventually find an alternative.

So scrap what I have just written, I am going to trial jute, it’s a natural fabric, it will have a limited life span but it’s better for the environment, hopefully it will do a similar job to the plastic in cutting out the light. I also am thinking I can use off cuts of it as strawberry mats or cut holes in it to plant into, watch this space and I will let you know how it performs 😀

Thursday: The weather is a bit more feisty today lol but despite having lots of rain overnight, this morning it is dry and windy. I had already decided not to work on the garden today there are other jobs that are calling. One of those was my jam jar cupboard, I have a cupboard dedicated to jam jars, bottles, Kilner jars and any other glass container that might come in handy, some have been bought, some given and some had goodies in them made by others so it’s quite a collection. Over time they just get washed and stuffed anywhere that is not in the way and that means that I don’t really know what is in there 🙄 so sorting and tidying the cupboard was a job that needed doing, I can also then see what if anything I need to get for the coming seasons. I made a coffee, went out there and got so engrossed in what I was doing I forgot the coffee and it went cold 😏

That actually didn’t take as long as I thought it would and now I need to find some other jobs to get on with.

I’m not sure what triggered the next job but it took me a lot longer than I had thought 🙄 I think I started off by thinking I will tidy up the office, another area that just gets stuff dumped until you can hardly get in the door to find stuff. My aim was to get some of the things under the bed in the spare room but then I looked under the bed and pulled out stuff that was under there. Stuff that came from Johns Mums and to be honest I have no idea why we still have it, other stuff that we no longer use and have nowhere else for it to go, that all got sorted and out into piles, charity shop, free sites, selling sites. The space was then ready for the things like the travel cot which is stored in the office but can go under the bed. That then led me onto all the other stuff in the office lol, again things we no longer use or that are broken so more piles for recycling or selling on or putting on the free sites. I am not saying the office is now clutter free because there are still things in boxes to be gone through but I have made a dent in it.

Friday: Today has been an altogether different day, Josh arrived early morning to help with the morning rounds 😀 he was all kitted out in mud proof gear and keen as mustard to help me. We fed everything and let them out, collected a few eggs then took some hay to the horses. What made me laugh is that he is a little afraid of the chickens and ducks but no fear whatsoever of the horses. Once we had finished outside we came in for a juice break and chatted about the types of food he likes, then I asked ‘shall we make a cake’ ‘oooooo can we make pie’ he replied lol. I let him choose the fruit and he decided on apple, plum & blackcurrants 🙄 it actually tasted quite nice if a little sharp. He did a good job of rolling out the pastry and even made a pastry triceratops head to go with it 😂 Mid morning, just before Shelley came to pick him up, Sam arrived with Mia and the twiglets, everybody (except the twiglets) had pie 🥧 I looked after the twins and Mia while Sam went off to get some food shopping in peace and then it was time to do the afternoon feeding and egg collection. A lovely day.

When I walk down the driveway at this time of year I always stop when I am halfway back to smell the Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) that has been growing for a few years now. The amazing sweet scent of this otherwise unremarkable shrub is delicious and a real treat at this time of year. It goes by some other rather sweet names such as kiss-me-at-the-gate or sweet breath of spring 😀 I took a few sprigs indoors to put in a pot on the windowsill for a natural room scent and I also took a couple of cuttings, I’m not sure if they will take this time of year but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At our old place I had a Daphne and really wish I had dug it up and bought it with us as you could smell its lovely scent long before you got anywhere near it. I think sweet smelling winter shrubs are under used probably because by the time people go to the garden centres en mass it’s late spring and they have passed their best and don’t look particularly engaging but they are definitely worth a thought if you are looking for something to fill a gap and the reward is uplifting in the depths of winter.

Saturday: 😀 yay the weekend, great because John does the rounds in the mornings giving me a break from it. I get on with other things and besides the household chores I spent a small amount of time in the garden. A quick job of tidying the bird, butterfly and beer bed, I call it this because it has a pear, apple, cherry and mulberry tree in it as well as Japanese honeysuckle, blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes which pretty much feed the birds and hopefully some butterflies, the beer comes in with the hop I have growing there though I have never used it for that purpose as yet lol. It was a quick visit outside because it’s a bit blowy and a tad cold so my fingers soon felt the nip in the air. I had intended laying the jute weed fabric but when it’s windy trying to do that by yourself is a tricky job and John has gone off to get feed.

When he gets back the jobs on the sheet are to brush the flue and clean out the Rayburn and then he is building a gate for a new fence in the orchard as the one I put up keeps falling down. I need to stop these demented hens in the front paddock from reaching my veg garden. At first just a couple made it there then a few and now about 15 of them, most of the wood chip I put down on the pathways has been scratched into piles or onto the lawn 🙄 I want to get well ahead with keeping them at bay so that gardening is an altogether pleasant affair this year instead of an angry one because they have scratched up all my hard work.

The gate didn’t get built but John re loaded the wood pile in the covered area just out the back then we actually had a few hours off before starting again with the afternoon rounds, Charlie and Macca walked over for a cuppa, we went and got a bit of food shopping and called in to see Shelley, Martin and the kids to deliver a tray of eggs. By 8.30 I was asleep on the sofa, feeling tired after a busy week 💤

Sunday: The weather was filthy overnight, lashing rain and strong winds but all is settled this morning. Again, John did the morning rounds while I had a shower and did the household chores. A quick coffee and John went out to power wash the POL pen now that we have moved our ex laying hens on to a new home. I don’t know what it is about that job but as soon as it needs doing he moves it directly to the top of the list 🙄 still once it’s done it can be left until we buy in the next batch of POL for selling probably in March.

The plan for the rest of the morning is to go out for breakfast at a local plant nursery, John gets a cooked brekkie and I get to look round at the plants it’s a win, win 😀

I bought an evergreen shrub at the nursery, only a small specimen, I can’t bear to part with the amount of money they want for things when I can grow it on lol. If I specifically wanted something for a certain space then I would but this will go in a pot for now and be put out the front, I’m trying to get a bit of colour out there as it’s all very dead and brown looking. On the way back we called into my Sisters for a cup of tea, one cup lead to another cup and before we knew it we’d been there a couple of hours 😜 We booked a trip to the theatre while we were there, some sort of interactive ghost show 👻 it is billed as ‘not for those of a nervous disposition’ 😝 it will get the adrenaline pumping and blow away the cobwebs lol.

We got back, I lit the Rayburn, I had to pop along the road to get some natural fire lighters as we only had one left. These are rolled up wood shavings and I think they have a extremely thin layer of wax on them, I was finding it more difficult to get hold of newspapers as we don’t ever have them and so these are a great alternative, they also light first time and are very easy to use. Meanwhile John went and finished cleaning the POL pen then he fed the birds and collected the eggs then he finally got on to making the gate and I got tonight’s dinner sorted which is shepherds pie.

The long range weather forecast shows no freezing temperatures in sight so looks like we are going to have a mild winter (famous last words) I must admit that although we always think we need a bit of freezing weather to break dormancy and kill off any pests, I am rather enjoying a milder season. Though it does means I am really wanting to get my teeth sunk into some sowing, I’m like a race horse that is being held back at the minute 🐎 I have learnt from many years experience not to be too hasty in that department though as it can all go horribly wrong 🤪

Whatever you are doing this week have a good one, do something outside your comfort zone if you can, as I say to Josh ‘put your brave hat on and go for it’ TTFN 👋

Posted in Friesland Farm

A happy and healthy 2020 🥳 to you all.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

New Year’s Day: We have had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. In between the two we have had Johns Mums funeral, an occasion which is always bitter sweet I think, on the one hand you are saying goodbye to someone you will never see again and on the other hand you meet up with relatives you probably haven’t seen for a while, there you have it, the good and the bad all in one hit lol.

The farm has mostly just tickled along, feeding, watering, egg collecting, cleaning out, the occasional mention of what needs doing over the next few months. Planning is just about all that can be done for the garden at the moment, I did go into the greenhouse and dig out the heat pad I bought back in summer. I need to get it set up and then decide what I shall grow on top of it, mostly peppers, chilli and aubergine as they need a long growing season and so the sooner I can get them started the more chance they will produce something at the end of the year.

I am always chomping at the bit at this time of year, raring to get going with seeds and normally I would have to hold off for quite a while but this year with the new greenhouse AND a heat mat I shall be out of the starting blocks early 😀 There are plenty of things to be done in preparation outside, I still have some clearing to do and some wood chip to put down (nearly done 😝) and maybe some changing around, I will see what I am capable of as I go.

John is busy finishing off the boot room floor today and at the end of the week Martin is coming to build a cupboard and a seat/storage in there, happy days, I will be getting much more organised which can only be a good thing 😀

I don’t make New Year resolutions, best not to set yourself up for a fall I reckon 😜 I just make a mental note of what needs changing (and then I usually forget all about it 🤣) Must try harder, where have I read that before 🙄 I do think it’s good to set yourself a challenge though, not dry January as we don’t don’t drink enough to warrant giving it up, and that is not denial it’s a fact lol. We probably have around 6 units a month and most months not even that. I object to being told which day to go meat free so we won’t be doing meat free Mondays, I prefer to choose the day we have eggs on toast for dinner 😂 All that leads me to the 2020 challenge of not buying anything new 😮 yeah, I’m contemplating it and then the first thing I think is what about the sofas 😂 I think I will challenge myself to get what I am comfortable with second hand such as egg cups (we only have one left) and try really hard at limiting everything else. Hmmm now I have said it out loud I’m not sure how this will pan out 🙄

Thursday 2nd Jan: The weather, yes you knew I would get back to it soon lol, the weather, after that horrible wet period which seemed to go on forever, has settled into some unseasonable stability. It’s mild, disconcertingly mild for mid Winter I have to say, but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I have been outside this morning moving wood chip (nearly done 😝) The fist thing I notice is how unfit I have got from not doing outside work for a while, I managed a measly 5 barrows today and then I was aching and puffed, not good. I need to do something every day to build back up to the amount of barrels I shifted a couple of months back.

Meanwhile John is in the boot room putting the units back together, I say units they are not ready made ones just ply that make up sides and shelves plus a worktop. Obviously as the floor was lifted (to get over the soil pipe) everything else had to be lifted as well and then the sink and washing machine needed plumbing back in.

Martin, who is a carpenter, is coming tomorrow to build this cupboard which will store all the chutneys, jams, homemade liqueurs and a whole host of other stuff. Normally John would have built one but, truth be told, carpentry is not one of his strong skills, he manages with DIY carpentry but I want something robust, he is better off sticking to the plumbing, which he is excellent at 😀

I had to make a small sign to go in the grass under the apple tree at the front. Last year we planted crocus bulbs there and people tend to walk over the grass to the fence to look at the chickens etc, we love that they do that but didn’t think about the poor bulbs that are trying to push their way up this spring, so hopefully a polite notice will keep them off that particular area.

Friday: Just when I talked about how stable the weather was, it changed, last night and early this morning lashings of rain, a cold wind and a definite dip in temperature although still not that low. We got the morning jobs all sorted and waited for Martin to arrive laden with materials to build this storage. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see it getting built, I’m cock-a-hoop about the amount of storage space it has given me. I am definitely going to do much more this year in terms of dried herbs, beans etc plus much more jam and preserves 😀

Once the cupboard was finished I started filling it up, it not only stores what was in the old corner cupboard but I am able to get things out of the kitchen cupboards that have been stored there because there was nowhere else for them, freeing up other space and making life a lot easier in terms of finding stuff. There are bits that you end up with that you don’t really know what to do with but don’t want to throw them away in case they come in useful and I will also now be able to bulk buy should I want to as I never had the space before. Oh the possibilities are endless 😜

I also now have a storage box for hats and gloves etc with a lid at the height that the children (and me if necessary) can be sat to put their wellies on and off which will make life easier too, the option before was to sit on the mucky floor or trapse dirty boots into the kitchen.

While that was going on, John cleaned out all the chicken coops and I cleaned various areas indoors. I also started a to do list for the garden side of things and then a list for the farm side of things so that we both know what needs doing and besides a list is a great way to see what has been achieved 😀

Saturday: Martin came to finish off a few bits, a door on the cupboard that John built under the sink, a shelf over the top of the coat hooks and altered the door between the boot room and kitchen. I was going to have a new door but in the spirit of up-cycling or reusing and making an effort not to buy what we don’t need, we decided to put a wood panel over the bottom half of the door which was glass all the way down, a bit of primer and paint and it will definitely ‘do’.

I am not sure about you but January tends to be a time when I like to go through stuff and have a good old clear out, broken things, junk bits, things I no longer need all get sorted and dealt with appropriately. That’s what I spent most of the morning doing while John did a similar thing outside plus burning odds and ends of wood and paper feed sacks. At lunchtime Shelley came over with Florence and we went to Witney for a coffee and a mooch round. I confess I did buy some new shoes, waterproof pumps actually and a jumper in the sale, the next job is to go through my wardrobe and sort out stuff for the charity shop or rag bin. I don’t really buy many clothes at all and they are usually for working in 😂 but I had a favourite old jumper that is really only good for work now and I wanted to replace it with one for ‘best’ lol.

In the evening we went to a BBQ, yep you read that correctly 😜 an annual event by a couple in the village and it’s more fun than you would imagine in January, food cooked outdoors tastes even better when the temperature is low in my opinion.

Sunday: John did the morning rounds, that will be his last day until next weekend, tomorrow it will be my job from morning till night again 🙄 Meanwhile I got sorted indoors and also put a coat of paint on the door. Then we had Mia and the twins for a few hours, when they got back Sam and Luke had dinner with us and that was pretty much the day filled up.

I took a photo of some bulbs coming up, it’s great to see the wheel of the year rolling on towards Spring 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

A timely encounter, festive preparations and the Solstice 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 16th December 2019: I feel that this blog deserves a full date as it will be the last one for this year. I was going to do a round of pictures and I will if I can but the upload times are probably going to be very long so I may abandon it 😜

Yesterday I made the cranberry sauce and today I did a quick blog post with because I figured if I left it until next Sunday it might be a bit late if anyone wanted to give it a go.

Friday was supposed to be Johns last day but obviously there were things to organise which ate into the working week so he has had to go today and then hopefully that’s it until early January. Meanwhile after having the weekend off from doing the daily outside routine it was back to me doing it today. The turkeys have been confined to quarters after they were out on the lane yesterday when we came back from a bit of shopping 🙄 I am worried that they might ‘disappear’ at this time of year, rural crimes of this sort have sharply increased over the last couple of years and I don’t want them to be a statistic, besides, one of them will be our Christmas dinner, though I admit I have had difficulty thinking about that particular deed!

Do you believe in coincidence or fate 🙄 I just had the most timely encounter with a chap who knocked on my door looking for something that I didn’t happen to have BUT he had something that I need at this particular time, knowledge. It turns out that he is visiting from New Zealand and back there he had been a butcher for 40 years so not wishing to pass up an opportunity I asked him about doing the Turkey. I had been in discussions online about when to do it because it seems that you hang turkeys like you do for game or red meat and I was really dubious about the process, anyway he gave me the answers I had been looking for and some great tips for other birds including surplus male quail. I know it may sound mad but I can’t help smiling from ear to ear thinking ‘oh my days how timely was that’ 😀

Tuesday: A mixed bag of a day starting with the rounds, then a hour or so with the Chaplin discussing the arrangements for the funeral, then into Witney to get a few bits of Christmas shopping, back home get the Rayburn lit, I made a batch of mince pies and I just had a discussion with John and neither of us can remember what else we did!

Wednesday: Another mixed day but most of it on the farm. Straight after breakfast I gave the quail cage a proper clean out and checked the horses. Then we had Florence for an hour after that we went out and John dug the holes for the two apple trees while I collected up the stakes and ties plus some mycorrhizal granules and some well rotted manure to put in the hole and give the trees a good start. We decided in the end to plant the trees in the small back paddock, the front paddock would ah e been nice but the ground there is not very good as it is where the MOD buildings used to be and the top soil is non existent and there are foundations all over the place. The small back paddock already has a plum tree and beam let apple tree and a chestnut so now with two more apple trees we have the beginnings of a mini food farm 😀 Trees planted and back filled I left John to put wood chip around the base to mulch and put up pallets around them so that nothing has a nibble of them. Fingers crossed they will take and do well, while he was doing that I went inside and got the Rayburn lit. Once it was going and bedded down it was time to do the deed of the year, now I’m not gonna lie I was not looking forward to doing this and all it would have taken was for John to waiver as well and we would be eating beef or lamb on Christmas Day. John reminded me though that this is what we had got them for and so it was off to the turkey pen to select the roast 🙄 I pulled up my big girl pants and we got on and did the job in hand, it went very well, it was a very quick, clean dispatch and I was happy with that. Then I spent the next hour plucking it before it will be left to hang overnight, I think I made an error in cutting the head off to let it bleed out, it should have been left on to hang for a week and now I’m thinking I will have to dress it and put it in the fridge rather than hanging as it is open to bacteria, you live and learn.

Sam, Mia and the twiglets popped by late afternoon then it was time to get the dinner, go for some Bowen therapy and get my eyebrows done at Shelleys.

My job load is obviously halved when John is at home as he tends to do the rounds but it’s still a busy day.

Thursday: One of the jobs on Johns holiday list was the boot room floor, I have been stepping over the soil pipe for five years now and rather think that’s enough, it’s right smack bang in the middle so there is no escaping it. The plan was that Martin would be booked in for two days to build a more suitable cupboard and seating with a lid to store the hats, gloves etc plus some hanging for the coats. In order to do that the floor needed doing, I was under the impression that it would be done between the Christmas and New Year but no John has decided that today is a good day 🙄 So my kitchen currently has the entire contents of the boot room in it, not exactly how I had planned the run up to Christmas as I haven’t even got the tree up yet. The contents of the store cupboard are what is bothering me most, we have that much alcohol in there it’s ridiculous, you can tell we don’t drink much as it just all gets put in there, and that’s not all of it, there are two fridges full of various bottles of cider, wine etc as well. At this point I have a battle with John as he is the epitome of Scrooge when it comes to giving stuff away, we don’t need it or use it but he doesn’t like giving it to someone who will, go figure, anyhow I have won the battle and various bottles of spirits will be given to people leaving us with a more reasonable amount (that still won’t get drunk) but at least we can offer it 😂 Then there are the preserves and chutneys to sort out, some with a well past best date have gone into the bin, some with acceptable dates will be kept and hopefully once I can get into a cupboard I can see in I will start to use some of it up. There are jars of jam in there and John keeps buying it at the shop, we will be using those up in future, they just are not his favourite flavour 😏 which is strawberry but I think he can manage blackcurrant and raspberry flavours if he tries hard enough 😬 Meanwhile, I am cleaning dust off the jars and bottles and wondering what to keep and what to bin, and allocating those precious bottles of alcohol to various people 😜

The floor is half down which was the plan as the other half involves moving the washing machine and fridge out which would push into another day and that can wait until after Christmas.

Friday: I haven’t mentioned the rain lately, it has been raining constantly for days, I have never known such a wet start to the Winter, the fields were already saturated after the last stretch of wet weather and this will just compound the problem. Luckily apart from the water sitting in the fields it hasn’t really affected us massively although I am now thinking that getting the horses in might be a good idea, they won’t like it but we probably need to get their feet dry for a short while. There is not a cold snap in sight but as John pointed out, it’s better than being surrounded by everything burning, such a contrast going on in the world at the minute.

I had bloods first thing and it looks like my white cells have come up so that’s good news. Back home to clean the living room and bathroom, I still haven’t got the tree up yet but I have other stuff to do first like the horses and sort the turkey, I still need to get a couple of presents, I was hoping I would be done by now but plans change. John has gone to Witney to do a few errands and a bit of present shopping, and it’s still raining 🌧 🌧 🌧 so I need an absolute plan for the horses.

I went out and got the stables ready for them to come in, at least they will be able to get dry feet for a couple of days and not look so forlorn stood under the hedge like they are at the minute 🙄 Biscuit will probably like coming in, Jack will hate it and will kick the door every time he sees anyone passing but it will just be for a day or two then I will turn them back out for the Christmas days and if it’s still raining get them back in after that, this may be the new routine for a while 😜

I hadn’t planned on having to deal with the horses in such a way as it’s usually frozen some of the time around now but this year is different, this has a knock on effect to my ‘to do’ list as I have to prioritise obviously and anything living and incapable of looking after themselves (animals) have to come first, living and capable (husband, children, family) come next and non living at the bottom, by that I’m talking about garden, fencing, hedging, trees etc etc.

Saturday: ‘Twas the day to get stuff done, that was the plan and it was fairly well executed lol. John did the animals and the only problem of the day was when Jack got out of the stable as I was trying to skip it out, there he was charging round the place in his stable rug (basically his pyjamas), I managed to catch him eventually and get on with the rest of the day. This mostly involved finally getting the tree and the decorations up and wrapping the last of the presents.

The egg sales have gone berserk today, in fact all week it has been brisk and I think we will probably sell out early tomorrow but that’s good, better than them hanging around.

Tonight we have a Christmas get together with a neighbour to go to, looking forward to that, it will kick start the festivities 🥳

Sunday: Solstice 😀 the turn in the year back towards the Spring, very happy about that lol.

We did the animals that included turning the horses back out which they were very happy about and spent 5 minutes running around like they had been locked up for weeks 😜 Then we went off to get the last bits of shopping done and called in to see Josh for his 4th birthday today.

All that is left for this year is to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, enjoy every moment, have a great New Year and I will be with you on the other side when it will be 2020! It sounds like a sci fi date doesn’t it!

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cranberry Sauce

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Just a quickie blog post 😀

Yesterday I made the Cranberry Sauce to go with our Christmas dinner and of course it goes well with pork pie or even on a baked Camembert and it is the easiest thing to make. So if you want to feel that some of your dinner is indeed home produced I would choose this item.

I bought the cranberries, I do have a plant but it only produced 1 berry this year lol so I had to buy.

300g fresh cranberries

Approx 1 cup of orange juice

Approx 1/2 cup of sugar, or add to taste

Put it all in a saucepan, simmer gently until the sugar is dissolved and the cranberries begin to break up, I then crush it with the back of a spoon or a potato masher would work well. Then bring to the boil for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time as you don’t want it to catch and burn on the base of the pan.

That is it folks and it smells divine, taste fabulous and feels like a big achievement when you present it at the Christmas feast.

It depends on when you make it as to what you do with it, it will last a few days in the fridge easily enough, or as I have done, you can freeze it and get it out the night before it’s needed and put it in the fridge.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Windy, a passing & a family feast.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 9th December: Oooo we are getting closer, not to Christmas but to the Solstice 😀 I am writing this at 7.30am on Monday morning ( that’s approx 15 hrs of darkness 🙄) and it’s still dark outside 😏 I have bumbled round and done as many indoor jobs as I can and am waiting for it to get light before going outside. I could let everything out while it’s dark and indeed some people don’t have any choice as they have to get off to work, luckily I don’t have to do that and so I can wait. I’m sure that people have been caught out many a time by the fox in circumstances like the one above so I won’t risk it.

It’s been pretty windy overnight so I have no idea what I will find once I get out there, hopefully no damage anywhere just stuff scattered.

I’ve just come back in and all in all it’s ok out there, no damage that I can see just stuff blown around, if there was a leaf on any tree there sure isn’t anymore lol. One thing that I spotted which has been exposed by the leaf fall is a drey 🙄 I wasn’t sure if that’s what it was until I came back in a looked up some pictures but it definitely is, it is in the tree in the front paddock. A squirrel nest, not sure what I think about that to be honest, on the one hand I’m thinking ‘how lovely’ on the other I am thinking ‘thieving little sods living a bit too close for comfort’ 😜 It will remain of course and I will have to up my security over the veg garden, they don’t just pinch your nuts they steal fruit as well 😂 especially strawberries. Luckily I already have squirrel proof bird feeders, actually I got them initially because the crows were stealing all the bird food but I was a good move. This morning I have filled up the feeders with suet pellets as it getting a little bit harder for the birds to find food and they need a bit of extra help over the coldest months.

The wind exposes your weaknesses, loose window panes, ill fitting doors, gates that don’t quite shut properly, fences that are not as secure as they should be, things you haven’t put away properly, the wind is out to show you what you haven’t done properly. Even if you think you have it sorted the wind will come from a different direction and prove you wrong 🙄 We are pretty exposed to the westerlies here which are our prevailing winds and we are used to those but today’s wind was northerly meaning different problems with things that don’t normally get affected. We rarely get an easterly, when we do it comes with artic weather and we rarely get a southerly either. Then there are the Squallies as I would call them, that is wind that seems to come from all directions at once and just buffet you constantly, I don’t know what the technical name is for them but that’s what I have named them lol. There is a silver lining to the wind as it dries up all the ground so it’s not all bad 😀

Mid morning I had a call from John who had a call from the nursing home, after her turn on Sunday his Mum has taken a turn for the worst and they said that they should probably come in and see her. He spent the rest of the day there, came home had dinner and a bath and then we went back in the evening for a short visit.

Wednesday: Ok so I have missed out pretty much all of yesterday and today the reason being as you might have guessed is that Johns Mum passed away very late last night. Sadly it was only an hour until her 85th birthday but she didn’t quite make it, just over a year ago she suffered a stroke which left her paralysed down one side and sent her into decline, a peaceful end was reached yesterday.

Meanwhile the daily routines still have to be carried out, animals need feeding and cleaning out, eggs need collecting and sorting and home life has similar routines to continue as well, all in all it’s possible I won’t get much else written this week depending on what is happening, there are obviously many things to sort out and finalise and paperwork to do so I will see what other time I have left.

Oh and we have the election to contend with and an outbreak of avian flu in the country again, could be a tough end to the week this week 🙄

Thursday: The weather is appalling, bursts of heavy rain with light rain inbetween not very nice out there at all. I’m hoping that I am at the tail end of this bug now so that I can crack on with things and although I did clean out the ducks on my way round this morning, I haven’t done anything but the necessary out there.

John, the girls and I have discussed planting trees in memory of both Johns Mum and Dad, at first we thought about a scheme in a woodland but in the end we decided on planting two apple trees here. John said it would be good to be able to see the trees whenever you went past them and also with apple trees you would get something back from them in a few years time. So I have ordered the varieties Greensleeves and Rosette, we had a greensleeves apple tree at our old house and the apples were plentiful and tasty, the Rosette is a new one on me but it apparently produces pink apple juice which will be pretty 😀

Saturday: Gaps again, sorry about that but really not much has been happening, the weather is awful with what seems like constant rain and indeed we have a mini lake back in the paddock and the hay barn has water on the floor. I haven’t been doing much in the way of anything, where I was all geared up to get ready for the festivities this cold and sinus thing has cocooned my thinking, I can’t hear much other than ringing in my ears and muffled noises, it’s surprising how debilitating that can be. John has now finished for the Christmas break so he will be here doing a few jobs, at the moment he is re stocking the wood pile out the back to keep us going over the holidays.

This afternoon we have our family Christmas get together, last year we did a full on four course roast dinner for around 50 people, this year we have decided to do a buffet lol. The men, of course, were heard to mutter and moan that they wanted the roast but most of them put absolutely no effort into helping achieve that and so they will have to put up with what they get this year 😜

A lovely time was had by all we feasted and made merry. I received what I think will be one of my all time favourite gifts from one of my Sisters, a hand made plaque with meaning 😀

The rain has been relentless again and we have water standing everywhere but it’s not really affecting us overall so I am not going to worry about it.

Today’s plans are mainly for us and not for the farm so I will finish this earlier than usual and hope you have an excellent week.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cat & mouse, cockerels & the Sky.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday evening Dec 1st: Sometimes on a Sunday evening after the blog has been published there are things I like to tell you about, tonight is one of those evenings. A real live game of cat and mouse was played out in the undercover back area. I think we don’t have many mice as I never really see any, however Benny the cat is a super duper mouser and he is always catching them. This evening I witnessed the classic cat catches mouse and then plays with the terrified little thing until he finally gulps it down in one go 🙄 It’s why we have cats here I suppose but we don’t usually witness the events as he mostly hunts out and about at night.

Monday 2nd December: So the first job on the list is obviously the animals, I made sure as it was a pretty cold morning, that everything had plenty of feed and water and the horses and the rabbit/guineas had a pile of hay to keep them going. I noticed a whole bunch of feathers in the front paddock, there were so many that I thought one of my geese had perhaps not gone to bed and been got by the fox but it was the lone cockerel from the school hatch back in spring. He roosted in the walnut tree, he chose not to live with 50 women 😜 and I assume he has come down too early this morning and been got 😏

After that it was straight inside to get the cockerels prepped for the freezer, three of them anyhow the forth will be prepped for dinner tonight. The cockerels we breed do not have a massive amount of meat on them but there is enough for a roast, then a curry or casserole and finally soup so you can get 3 good meals from them easily, then of course there is broth/stock to be made as well. I have been ‘doing’ our own chickens for over 10 years now, I went on a course along with Sam many years ago to find out how to do it properly and I think we pretty much have it nailed these days. I consider it a skill set, you never know when you might need it, and over time I have also taught Shelley and Charlotte, my sister Gill and her friend how to do it as well. I can also paunch a rabbit, without a knife if necessary so you see I am a very useful person to know 😂

The bird I selected for dinner tonight is now slavered in olive oil, sage, garlic and black pepper with onion in the cavity and that will be slow roasted, also cooking are the other bits that will go to the dogs, the feet, the hearts, the livers, the gizzards and the necks. Every bird is different, some are narrow some are wide, some carry more fat than others and of course even though they are the same age and have had the same life some are heavier than others 🙄 but all have had a good life, mostly free roaming and living a near to natural life as possible.

I may have to have a sleep at some point today, I seem to have got Johns cold and all the back of my throat and nose is inflamed meaning I didn’t get much sleep during the night as I could breathe properly and sleep at the same time 😜

Tuesday: Feel slightly better today and had a better nights sleep so that’s helpful. It’s not as cold this morning as the past few mornings and the sun is shinning, always a bonus. The long range forecast that I follow suggests that we won’t have a cold snap this side of the new year, even though I have read that I still sorted out my winter under layers just in case lol.

I did the morning rounds and also put in some clean bedding for the ducks and cleaned out the quail, who have now started laying again.

I watched a short film on gratitude and it mentioned that we rarely look at the sky, not true here, I am always looking skywards lol, it helps that we can see the sunset clearly and there are some spectacular ones to see at times, especially over the last few nights, I can also see the sunrise so I get a double bonus. I watch the cloud formations on different days and I like to look at the stars at night as we have very little light pollution here so a clear night is full of twinkling ✨ I usually think of one or two songs when I’m looking at the stars, Starry, Starry Night by Don McLean a fabulous song about Vincent Van Gogh and I only have eyes for you by The Flamingos, probably because it was always played at school discos in my youth and it mentions the stars 😂 I have been known to sing out loud on occasion and why not no one is around usually lol.

Had a quick meeting with the chap who pruned our cooking apple tree last year, he is coming to do the eating apple tree, hopefully on Thursday if he has time. The tree produces some great ‘keeper’ apples, some type of cox I think, but this year though there were hundreds of apples, a lot of them were tiny and so the tree could do with a good prune and hopefully we will get less apples but of a better quality, possibly not next year but the year after, sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to get better benefits.

Did some late evening gift shopping in Swindon, bliss without the crowds of people lol.

Wednesday: Another cold frosty morning, I am rather enjoying these mornings though as they are very pretty to wander round in. I did give out extra rations to those that need it, generally I don’t feed the geese as they graze the grass but when it’s frozen they need some kind of sustenance so they have layer pellets on mornings like this.

I have pretty much procrastinated this morning, kind of, I have done a little reading up or watching videos of regenerative agriculture which I think has to be the way forward, it’s basically using a combination of local ecology, permaculture and farm animals. It’s a no brainier but I think it will take many years before mainstream agriculture gets on board with it so in the meantime it’s up to the smaller producers/land owners and those farmers willing to stride out ahead of the rest to fly the flag, lets face it many people thought Prince Charles was a bit nutty 20+ years ago when he championed Organics and now its mainstream so there is always hope 😀

In the afternoon I thought I’d better do something rather than nothing lol so I got a hearty beef stew on the go ready for dinner tonight and then a bit of crafting. I had some polystyrene balls in a box, I’ve had them for about six years, no idea where they came from but I also had some wool packaging from some meat I had delivered back in spring, an idea formed 😀 At this time of year I get an urge to do something creative, I guess it’s not really wanting to do something outside as it’s too cold so needing to find something to do indoors preferably not cooking or cleaning 😝 So I gathered up all the things I needed and felted these Christmas baubles, I was pretty chuffed with how they turned out.

I went out to do the feeding then the shutting away for the night, another lovely sky, pink this time though the photos don’t really do it justice. As I was in the side paddock I looked across to the back paddock and couldn’t see it, the mist was rolling in and it was a complete white out, by the time I had gone round to the front paddock and put them away, walked back to the side, the long side paddock was also beginning to mist up, so it’s gonna be foggy tonight. I love a bit of fog, not if we have to drive anywhere obviously but if we are at home a foggy night has a magic all of its own.

Thursday: As predicted it’s a foggy morning this morning but not too cold. I got the feeding etc done then lit the Rayburn and I have got a blood test mid morning. I was telling the nurse about my cold and she said I need to be careful as my white cell count is low so I will be keeping a close eye on how it develops as I will struggle to fight off any infection that occurs, at the moment it has gone into my sinus and causing pressure in my ear and jaw, hopefully it will just blow over and I can get on with things.

This afternoon the chaps came to give the eating apple a good prune, it’s looking good and hopefully will bear some good fruit next year or the year after. I need to remember to do the plums trees next June but as that’s always a busy month I keep forgetting year on year 🙄 The pruning s from the tree will again be use as dead hedge especially now I know just how much the little birds love it and use it all year round either for roosting or nesting in.

We had a bit of a back log of duck eggs but I managed to sell them easily enough on the selling sites, if I hadn’t been able to I had made a contingency plan anyway, I ordered some big jars and some apple cider vinegar to pickle them in.

Friday: Ok so this sinus thing got worse I I felt like s**t I still dragged myself around and got the feeding done but that was about it for the day.

Saturday: Feeling slightly better today, I was worried that each day I woke up I was getting worse but hopefully the worst is now over and it will improve hugely, by Thursday pm I couldn’t even hear properly as my ears had blocked and could feel the pressure in my jaw as well as my ear. Onwards and upwards though and as it’s Saturday John is here and so he did the morning routine, then he went off to get some feed while I did a bit of cleaning, lit the Rayburn and got some bread on the go.

My seed order arrived in the post this morning so I had a quick look through and then stashed it away until spring. I am going to have a go at purple carrots and liquorice this year, radical hey lol.

I am feeling pretty accomplished as far as the big Winter Feast season goes, the sprouts are firming up nicely out in the garden, the rest of the veg is in the freezer, we have potatoes stored, the turkey is wandering around the farmyard, the cake and the pudding are done, we have a store of home grown walnuts and hazelnuts and I still have some jars of homemade mincemeat from last year to use when I finally get round to making mince pies. On top of that I have numerous bottles of slow gin, pear liqueur made with fruit from the farm so if by any chance we get so snowed it that we can’t move we will feast well 😀 something to be proud of I reckon, I just think I need that house cow to make the list complete with cream lol.

Sunday: Pretty much the same as yesterday really, John did the animals, I stayed in and did some indoor bits, he moved a few wheelbarrows of wood chip into the pen that the Turkeys have decided to call home so that it’s not so muddy. They get let out during the day so they are not trashing it but when I shut them in at afternoon feed it would be nice if the ground was clean and so that’s what that is all about.

There was a phonecall to say that Johns Mum had a turn and an ambulance had been called so that meant most of the late morning and lunchtime waiting for return calls to find out what was going on. The paramedics phoned to say she was now ok and that as all her obs were normal they were not going to take her to hospital after all.

I lit the Rayburn early afternoon it was a pretty vile day at times, the Sam came and we had the Twins for an hour while she went food shopping, by the time she got back it was almost time to do the bird feeding and the egg collecting.

Oh I did make some pickled eggs during the day but I stupidly bought 2 1/2 litre jars, do you know how many eggs you need to boil to fill that 🤣 I think I did 14 and that has only half filled the jar 🙄

Round to a family birthday once the birds had been safely shut away for the night.

Still feeling stuffy and a bit rough at times.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Mud, wreaths & the Winter season.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 25th Nov: Firstly I must apologise for not proofreading last weeks post before publishing it, I was under a time constraint but that was enforgivable 😜

Today I am having Josh and Flo while Shelley does a course so I was up early in order to get everything done before they arrived first thing. I half did the rounds in the dark but it soon got light enough to double check everything was as it should be and it was except for one thing, yesterday’s eggs. John did the collection round last night and he has left the bucket of eggs untouched out the back there. So I gave him a quick ring at work to tell him I was thinking of him 😀 and exactly what I was thinking of him 😝 It may seem trivial but it is a bone of contention, when I do the egg collection, I also sort them, box them and put them out, when he does them he shouts ‘eggs are here’ meaning come out and sort the eggs, generally I don’t mind and will do them though if it played out the other way round he would have something to say about it, the point this morning is that he didn’t even say they were there and he had plenty of time to do them while I was otherwise engaged, so that’s why he got the phonecall 😬

Did you know you can eat dahlia tubers? No nor did I until this morning when I was reading a post from another group, every day is a school day 😀

Shelley came back had a quick cuppa and then they left about 3pm, my day was filled with Peppa Pig, Llama Llama (yeah that’s a new one on me too) playing chefs ? matching card games which Josh wins hands down every time 🙄 a bit of spot the difference, some writing and an animated film about Turkeys travelling back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get themselves off the menu 😜 A totally different day to most of my days but a thoroughly enjoyable one 😀

Once they had left it was time to get outside and round up my own turkeys, feed everything and collect the eggs, sort them and put them out for sale (John) a quick cuppa and a piece of Star Wars cake from a party Josh went to yesterday, sling the hoover round and it’s time to go back out and shut everything away for the night.

Whizzing round with the hoover and I’m thinking ‘it’s bloody hot in here’ the fire is going but I’m increasingly finding it stifling as it is pretty mild outside at the moment. Well that’s my thoughts on it anyway, of course I’m probably menopausal, I don’t have hot flushes but I seem to be hot all the time and I don’t mean in a deliciously good looking way 🙄

Tuesday: We had more rain overnight, not heavy but enough on top of what we already had to make it horrible under foot and more rain forecast today 😏 It’s mild for the time of year I think, up to 13c today, would be great if the wet stuff didn’t accompany it lol.

Now I am back on meds (a lower dose) I am not feeling quite as tired as I was which is a good thing, I have other issues such as rashes that appear 🙄 at the moment it’s on the tops of my ears and round my hair line, quite bizarre but only minor so not really a problem.

What did I do today, I’m not really sure lol, I did sort out some Christmas bits and pieces, I also sorted out some stuff for making wreaths at the end of the week, I cleaned off the dahlia & freesia bulbs and have stored them in the back toilet for the time being as it’s dry in there so they won’t rot. Apart from that it was the usual things like lighting the fire, hanging up washing, washing up, drying up, feeding, collecting eggs, sorting out tonight’s dinner, not a very exciting day at all. We do have someone coming tonight to buy some of the ex laying hens so that will be fun in the dark 🙄

Wednesday: Have I ever told you how much I hate this time of year, more than once I know 😂 it really is quite depressing with the endless mud and short days. You may wonder about the mud, you may not but I’m going to tell you anyway, mud to most people is what you encounter when you decided voluntarily to go on a walk with the dog or a wander across a park or a meadow to clear your head. Mud here is on, not just a daily basis but it’s a three times a day affair, it’s not your average mud either nope this mud is like a species all of its own that has found the right conditions to multiply profusely. Different mud particles have different attributes, there is the runny wet surface (very slippery) mud with the occasional puddle, then there is the trash mud, that is where either animals or humans or even vehicles are constantly moving over an area that used to be nice green grass with firm ground and is now trashed, it is often well over ankle deep and I have seen it deeper than that before now. This mud has the potential to be dangerous, how? I hear you ask, and even if you didn’t I am going to tell you 😜 suction, yes suction is your worst enemy and nightmare. Many a time I have been walking along minding my own business, well doing what I am supposed to be doing, and shlooooop there goes the suction 🙄 now at this point you are of course in mid walk and I can tell you from experience that suction is strong enough to relive you of your welly leaving an exposed, socked foot to go plundering straight down into the rest of the mud that is waiting gleefully for this to happen. I have known it to take prisoners, two feet firmly stuck in the mud waiting for the rescue party to come and help them out, that is trash mud. The wet runny mud has tactics of its own, it lies there looking all innocuous but it uses other animals to get you. There you are walking along again and the dog comes flying by flicking mud up all over you, but it doesn’t stop with the dogs, no, it uses the ducks as well, they get in a flap at letting out or feeding time and slip, slap, slop mud has been flapped all over you before you can make a run for it. If I had a favourite mud (which I don’t) but if I did it would be claggy mud, usually found on the veg beds, this mud sticks to you like a car salesman on a Sunday stroll round the garage forecourt, however it does give back which is very kind of it, being only 5ft 2″ I can easily be getting on for 5ft 5″ when I have finished 😝 So now you know about mud, it’s the smallholders nemesis, I keep trying in vain to work out how to turn it into a tourist attraction but so far I have failed. If by any strange chance YOU would like to fully immerse yourself in the experience of mud do come over and knock yourselves out, it will cost you a quid but it will be the best money you ever spent 😉

And on to today’s mumblings 😀 I did the morning rounds as per usual and then onto cleaning out the duck shed as it gets pretty dirty pretty quickly because of….you guessed it, the mud. The ducks don’t mind it in the least in fact they love it, give them wet sloppy mud and they are in their element. The chickens on the other hand are far more sensible creatures and they loathe the mud but can’t escape it. The light Sussex breeding group I moved only a few days ago, now have a trashed pen due to all the rain, when I put them in there the ground was firm and clean, now it’s a quagmire and it didn’t take long at all for it to get like that. I needed to move them to a pen that won’t get wet so I cleaned out the turkey pen and moved them into there. At this point the turkeys have no idea that I have evicted them 🙄 and I intend to herd them into the stable tonight where they will be based from here on in (famous last words as you will find out). Then as the day was fairly pleasant I did a bit in the garden, watered the garlic which is doing nicely although something has eaten the giant spinach I planted in the same tunnel. I have covered up some more bare ground to prevent weeds, the more I can do at this end of the year the easier it will be for me to get a handle on things come Spring and if for some reason (Lupus, I’m talking to you) I am incapacitated, I won’t fret about the rate of weed growth.

I did think to myself this morning that at this time of year we really are just limping towards the Winter Solstice and the promise of a few extra nano seconds of light each day 🙏 However, as miserable as I may sound 😋 I do try to find something wonderful to look at and in truth there is plenty out there, this morning I noticed the mist rising up from the paddocks as the Sun began to break through, I noticed the horse stood in the middle of the paddock bathed in a patch of said Sunshine and I always love the way the low Winter Sun peaks through the hedgerows at this time of year 😀 You will also be pleased to know that I am never alone here, I am followed constantly by those who think I may have something marvellous to feed them, especially the geese.

Thursday: I can feel that it’s a tad colder this morning and we are due some colder weather from tonight, I look forward to firmer ground lol. After doing the rounds and making sure all the water buckets are topped up, in case it freezes overnight, I set about sorting out cupboards in the kitchen. It wasn’t a job I had intended it just happened and clearly I haven’t done it since 2016 judging by the dates on some of the packets 😝

This evenings putting to bed was a bit of a Benny Hill sketch 🙄 the Turkeys realised they are not living where they were and gave me the run around, so much so that they are now penned up in the run that the light Sussex have just come out of. It never ceases to amaze me how birds that can easily pop over a six foot fence to get out need the bloody gate opened to get back in 🤬 The chickens in the front paddock were a total pain in the proverbial and I went round and round and round the hut so many times I got dizzy, eventually all but one was in and I have left that one to fate because there is only so much I can do, if you were in the vicinity I apologise for the swearing. (John caught it when he came home)

We have excess eggs now that the freeloaders have suddenly bucked up their ideas and that’s an extra 20 eggs per day so I put them on the local selling sites and we deliver them. It goes berserk and it’s difficult to keep up with the messages lol but I have sold 6 trays within half an hour so great result 😀

Friday: It’s Black Friday, oh what a joy 😀😀 I am gearing up to put my order in, no not for a 452″ wide screen tv that cooks the dinner at the same time but I will be putting my seed order in 😜 at £1 a packet I’d be foolish not to.

Noticeably colder again this morning, the cold was nipping at my fingertips and the end of my nose, the sun is shinning but I don’t suppose it will give off much heat at this time of year. All the morning rounds completed without incident and back indoors to get that Rayburn lit.

I got a large pan of vegetable soup on the go always a good idea through the Winter months, warm, comforting and nutritious what’s not to like about that 😀

Sam and the kiddies came over and she took Mia out to get the horses in, give them a check over and put rugs on them as the temps are set to be quite low tonight. It wasn’t long before Sam bought Mia back in, they had got the horses in easily enough, then Jack, who was probably trying to itch his backside, knocked over the wheelbarrow which startled Mia and set her off crying, game over trying to sort the horses with a crying toddler so she came in.

I gathered some greenery/foliage because tonight we are going to be making wreaths.

John came home just after I had finished putting the animals to bed and as it happens just in time. We had discussed that the job of the weekend would be to clean out the flues on the Rayburn as they need doing, just as John came in the flue caught, by that I mean we had a fire in the back flues, this sends me into a panic I hate anything fire related (long story) and I feel better when someone else is there with me when things go wrong 😝 We shut it down and it soon went out but we were right with our timing on the flues (or maybe not depending on how you see it 😂) so that will be the first job on the list tomorrow lol.

We made wreaths from greenery mostly gathered here and some from Shelleys holly tree, we had a great evening and tomorrow night Charlie will be coming round to do hers.

Saturday: As expected a cold night resulting in the whitest of mornings with the frost widespread and beautiful. Everything looks so delicate when it’s frosted even grass takes on a beauty all of its own. John and I did the morning rounds and then got straight on with cleaning the flues on the Rayburn after last nights oopsie. The job is pretty mucky and starts off with John going up on the roof to sweep down the main flue, that collects in the firebox and is then hoovered out (I have a separate hoover for the fire lol) Then we take out the very heavy cooking plate which is given a hoovering, the fire box is hoovered out and then onto the back flues which are the ones that caused the problem last night. There are five flues along the back all about 2″ sq, four of the five are never any problem, the fifth which is actually the first flue gets pretty blocked/choked up. We brush them then rod them to get as much off as possible, the rest of the Rayburn gets a hoovering and normally that’s it we put it back together. This time though we needed to re stick the fire rope around the back flue cover as it had come off, I should have ordered some new before we started the Rayburn up again for the winter but I didn’t, I have now so next time we clean it we will put a new rope gasket in.

Once that was all done and put back together John went to clean out the front hens while I did some bits then it was off to get some essential shopping and we picked up a Christmas tree grown in a pot at the same time. Hopefully as it will only be inside for just over a week it will survive enough to go back outside and in again next year, that’s the plan anyway 😀

Charlie came round late afternoon to make her wreath and I made another one which I will put out for sale and see what happens.

After Charlie had I gone I set about an idea I had, last years wreath base which had now dried out after being in the shed all year and some flowers from the summer garden that I had picked and dried out, pretty pleased with the result 😀

Sunday: December 1st and the first day of the Winter season, although many think we are already in Winter, December, January and February are the Winter months 🙄 A cold start but not as cold as yesterday. We had a good day all in all, we had decided to go out for breakfast this morning and went to Bampton Garden centre, there we met Shelley, Martin and the kids who had come to get their Christmas tree, and I did a little bit of buying (be rude not too) a couple of shrubs and some tree baubles.

When we got home we lit the Rayburn then went out, set up and got the last four remaining Light Sussex cockerels dispatched and plucked ready for dressing tomorrow.

I have ummmed and arrrred about the turkeys and what to do, in the end I have decided that one we will have for Christmas, after all that’s why we got them, but we only need one so the other two a stag and a hen will get to live on and hopefully the hen will lay eggs come spring. The eggs can either be hatched or eaten and it will be a novelty to provide turkey eggs for eating. John was concerned that nobody will buy them to eat but I know the customers well enough to know that there will be country folk who will eat all kinds of eggs and there will be people who are willing to give something new a try 😀

Over and out for this week, I have had a great week and hope you have too 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Christmas cake & stir up Sunday

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 18th November: The weekend passes so quickly doesn’t it 🙄 Back round to Monday and it’s a sunny morning, not too cold and not raining so that’s a pretty good winters day 😀 I did the morning rounds, we still haven’t moved the geese but I have opened up the paddock gate for them to wander round the place and hopefully I can herd them into the front paddock later today. Geese are great for keeping your grass under control as long as it’s not too long in the first place and although the front paddock got long it is now dying back so they should be able to get some good grazing in there for a couple of months.

I have a choice of tasks I can tackle today and as yet I haven’t decided which ones I will do, coffee first, decisions after 😀

Coffee drunk, decision made and I got on with cleaning the bathroom, the kitchen, stripping the sofa covers to wash and making a fish pie 😀 not very interesting things but very necessary ones 😜 I was putting my preserve pan back in the top cupboard as I don’t think I will need that any more this year and knocked an empty bottle out which smashed on the floor and covered every square inch of the kitchen floor or so it seemed, took me ages to make sure I had collected all the bigger bits and hoovered up the tiny bits.

Sam, Shelley and the kiddies came over in the afternoon.

John has been coming home in time to put the animals away since the clocks changed but tonight I was on my own, it wasn’t too bad, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get the front lot of hens in by myself as they for some strange reason won’t go to bed even when it’s dark so they have to be cajoled in but I did manage it 😀

Tuesday: I had a bit of a bonus this morning in that the Rayburn was still showing embers in the bottom so before I even got dressed I got it going again, just as well because it was very cold outside🙄 I did the morning rounds breaking ice in the water buckets as I went round teas that cold overnight.

Once that was all done and I was back inside I sorted out dinner for later and then I got some bread on the go. I haven’t made any for ages as I just didn’t have time but over winter there is more time to do those kind of things so I also gathered together all the dried fruit for the Christmas cake, weighed it out and it is now soaking nicely in some pear liqueur and orange juice ready for making tomorrow morning. This year I have been able to use home produce sultanas and I was thinking that if I could get all things aligned I could actually use home grown apricots, cherries, sultanas, lemons, possibly figs and nuts in the cake, wouldn’t that be something 😀

I had a quick visit from two of Johns uncles who had come over this way to visit Johns Mum.

I left the afternoon rounds as late as possible because I have to feed and collect the eggs then go round and put everything to bed so it makes sense to only have to put coat and boots on once. The front chickens were a pain in the proverbial as usual and one is still out but I chased it round long enough so I will see if John can get it when he comes home as I have dinner to sort out. I did manage to manoeuvre the geese down to the front paddock and they are back in their old lodgings tonight, that great because there is plenty of grass out there for them to nibble on 😀

I don’t think it’s going to be quite as cold tonight as last night and I was sweating after coming in from outside lol.

I washed the sofa covers and more holes have appeared 😂 I really need to sort out new ones I think but I can’t quite commit 😜

Benny has been earning his keep every other day I see him with a mouse or something similar, I am glad we went for farm bred kittens who learnt the trade from their Mum, just a shame about the disappearance of TC 😔

Wednesday: A milder day today and the sun is out although my feet got cold towards the middle of the morning.

First off before going out I got the Christmas cake mixed and I to the oven as it was going to take 4 1/2 hours to cook! Then out to do the morning rounds cleaning out the ducks while I was at it. Then Mum came over and she has planted the tulips 🌷😀 I dug up the dahlias and washed off the tubers and did a bit of division with them. Then onto the freesias, I dug half of them up ready to store and I will leave the other half in the ground to see how they do through the winter, hopefully they will survive and I can do that every year instead of lifting them. This is about the point my feet got cold so it was time to come in and make coffee, we had a bit of pumpkin cake that I got out of the freezer yesterday and I lit the fire. Sam arrived with the twins as I am having them while she goes for some physio, the cake was finally done about 5 hours in 😬 It’s a few years since I have made one as normally there is so much food the cake is hanging around for weeks but this year it really will be a treat having not had cake available on a regular basis.

I won a bookcase on eBay, I’m delighted as my other one has run out of room for books 😂 I know it’s the digital age but there is something about picking up a book to read that I’m not ready to let go of just yet 😀

Thursday: Not a bad morning weather wise, I did the rounds and it is quite dry underfoot although we are forecast rain this evening so that will bugger it all up again 😏 As well as feeding and letting out I moved the Light Sussex hens to a pen and had to chose a cockerel from the five we have left. I will be using them as a breeding group and the choice was difficult. I spent a good five minutes looking at them, should I go for size and as they will be for the table that might seem like the obvious option but they will produce more eggs than I need so in the end I went for feathering which means I should end up with good standards and can sell the surplus eggs for hatching which will fetch a good price. Jobs done outside I came in to sort the eggs, we have lots at the moment and not many customers at the farm gate, I say not many we are still turning over dozens of eggs but eventually the surplus catches up and I have a few trays to shift. The duck eggs are going rather better than I ever expected, sometimes we even sell trays of those which is unusual.

Occasionally I have random thoughts and today’s was ‘what is the definition of farming exactly’ I always assume, probably along with most people that farming, especially in this country, takes place on a fairly large scale so I wouldn’t call myself a farmer however the definition is ‘Farming is the act or process of working the ground, planting seeds, and growing edible plants. You can also describe raising animals for milk or meat as farming‘ so it seems that I am after all a farmer 😀 I would also take to task anyone who labelled smallholders as ‘hobby farmers’ as a hobby by definition is something you do for leisure in your spare time 😜

I took all the books off of the bookcase in preparation for the new one and so get what happens next? Yep I spend ages looking through books I haven’t picked up for a while lol. I did sort them out and put a few smallholding/countryside books up for sale, ones I no longer need or use. The range of books goes from smallholding topics to gardening techniques and then publications on local history in one form or another to British countryside, then there are the children’s books that I have never god rid of so poetry and story books and finally novels that I have read or need to read. Another pile of novels will go to a friend who sells them for charity and now I have my eye on sorting out the cook books on the kitchen bookshelf 😜

I did feel inspired by looking through one book and so I did some apple slices to dry in the oven for storing, great snack for the grandchildren or for use on breakfast porridge I reckon.

Around midday when I had slowed down from busying I suddenly felt cold and thought I’d better light the fire, I’m not sure if the temperature dropped or if was already that cold but I hadn’t noticed.

Very pleased with how the bookshelf project turned out and it was a bargain for solid oak, love a bit of second hand shopping.

Friday: Early start for early bloods this morning so I cracked on and got everything done by the time I needed to leave for the doctors surgery. When I got back I lit the Rayburn and decided that I was going to have an easy day today, I feel like I have a cold coming but not sure if it is a cold coming or if it’s the Lupus so I figured a rest day was probably the best thing.

Saturday: Feeling tired 😑 Did the morning rounds, I was hoping that John would be able to do them but he has to get materials for next weeks job apparently, not happy 😕 I do everything by myself from morning till night and look forward to the weekend when I get a bit of help, still the same amount of work but it’s easier with two and besides that it’s someone to talk to as well, makes things more pleasurable. Tired and grumpy do not bode well for the day today 😳

To be fair John didn’t take too long and got dog/cat food and delivered some eggs on the way and I soon got out of my sulk 😜 (at least I’m honest) and we got on with a few jobs. John cleaned out the hens in the front and the ones at the side while I did the ones in the POL pen and the stable ones, we altered one of the stable doors so that I can open it with ducking (and usually banging my head) then we went to get a bit of food shopping and called in to see Mum and Ken for a cup of tea and a slice of cake 😋 Once back home it was time to feed the birds, collect the eggs, light the Rayburn, put the shopping away and organise dinner for tonight all before it gets dark at 4.30 😕 then it’s time to go out and shut everything away and that’s the day done outside.

Sunday: It rained a bit in the night but not raining come morning however it is one of those dank dreary days.

John did the animals this morning while I did some indoor bits and then he went to visit his Mum, when he came back he went out with the tractor to move the chicken hut onto some better grass, it have become a mud bath. Meanwhile I lit the Rayburn and as it is stir up Sunday I found all the ingredients to put together and make a Christmas pudding. This is a light version (Jamie Oliver) as it does not have any added sugar it just relies on the dried fruit to sweeten it, find a recipe and use any combination of dried fruit that you like as long as it adds up to the same amount needed. I like to use dates and cherries for a bit of opulence but any dried fruit will work, the same goes for nuts, if you don’t like almonds or walnuts then use nuts that you do like. I like to add freshly squeezed orange juice and some Christmas spices such as nutmeg which makes it smell amazing 😀 Hopefully the grandchildren will be around sometime today and they can stir the pudding mix and make a wish before it gets steamed and then stored. My children are very used to stirring the pudding mixture it’s been a long-standing tradition in our house. The hardest part of making a pudding is the amount of time it takes to steam it and then people think you need to steam it again on Christmas Day, you can if you want to be purist but you can also heat it much quicker in the microwave 😉

The pudding is currently steaming on the hob with a couple more hours to go🙄