Tag: Autumn

Posted in Friesland Farm

Winter preparations & trips out.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday October 30th 2023: The sun is shining this morning so that a good cue to get some washing on the go. I expect everyone else is all of a fuddle over what time of day it is exactly 😂 I had plenty of things I need to get done today as I seem to have a full week already 🙄 Cue a mad dash to hoover and polish quickly, whip round the bathroom and kitchen, put on a second load of washing and hang the first load out, get something out of the freezer for dinner on the way back. John has delivered flowers this morning and I have someone coming late morning for dried flowers. I have done the eggs and put out social media posts so that everyone knows what I have available today.

I feel like I am in busy mode all of the time and never enough time to get it all done properly. The flower side of things is pretty full on with getting bulbs landed, lift dahlias, clearing beds, transplanting next springs plants, preparing for workshops, preparing for table sales, cutting for orders and getting those ready, sorting dried flowers using those to make lovely things for sale. Then there is the paperwork side of all of that plus Johns paperwork, household paperwork and bills, housework, cooking, cleaning, appointments, Nana daycare, Smallholding jobs, don’t forget to sleep and eat 😜 Next there will be Christmas shopping to think about and I still haven’t done the books for the accountant yet! Don’t get me wrong, I do sit down but I am usually exhausted by then 😂 I think I may need a personal assistant, cook, cleaner or gardener or someone who can do any of those, thinking about it I am worth my weight in gold aren’t I 🤪

I spent most of the day in the flower shed doing dried flowers up ready for the upcoming table top sale. I sorted through and threw anything out that wasn’t up to scratch.

Around 4 I thought I better check the torts because I had put them in the other week and then out again when it got mild. I figured it was now time for them to go away for winter permanently. I found Voldertort easily enough he was in the hut but Billy was more difficult to find. This was because he had dug himself into the ground 😂 and boy can they dig, the tell tale signs were a give away though, freshly dug dirt under a large tuft of grass. I had to get a trowel to dig away all the mud and carefully lift him out and then take him to his winter quarters.

I am still getting enquires for wreath workshops, I have 5 this year all fully booked bar an odd space, not sure if I put more dates on or not. I guess I need to decide exactly how busy I want to be and how tired lol.

Tuesday: Oscar day, he is a little under the weather plus his big teeth are coming through so he is not a very happy chappy today 😞 While he was sleeping I looked for recipes using up apples, I had lots of cooking apples this year plus I have quite a few eating apples from one tree that look great but the taste is not there so I will use those for cooking too. I could dehydrate some but in all honesty I still have some from the other year as we seem to have bountiful harvests each year at the minute. I also have a lot of eggs at the minute so I think it will be a batch bake of apple cakes for the freezer but I will do those tomorrow. Yesterday evening I put all the bits of veg I needed to use up into the slow cooker for some vegetable soup today and as there was a fair bit of kale it is a very apt colour for Halloween 😂 green and nutritious 🥰

None of us can have escaped what is happening in Gaza, daily news is wall to wall with the war 😞 I thought we were an intelligent, civilised species but the more I see, the further away from that thought I find myself. Despite the reasons there are so many innocent people on both sides caught up in the rage, each of the next generations will feel animosity towards each other and so it never ends.

Wednesday: I needed to use up some eggs as we have lots and I have apples that need using because they are eating apples we grew but they don’t have the best flavour for eating fresh. So baking was on the schedule this morning, apple cake and lots of it. Most will go I to the freezer and then be drizzled with icing when needed, could be flavoured icing such as blackberry or could be chopped nuts either would be lovely. I ran out of butter because John has eaten it, I try to stash some some he can’t find it and then when I need it for baking I have it but he has opened it 🙄 So I switched to using olive oil instead and that works just as well, I also needed to use up some Greek yoghurt and that went in too. Two of the cakes are lemon and orange flavour rather than apple but all or any of them will make great tea time eating or even pudding with some custard or cream 😋

We have storm Ciaran approaching and a weather warning has been issued for later this evening so it will be nice to have some comfort food to hunker down with. We are on the letter C already for named storms and it’s only November, last year 22/23 we only had two named storms in total.

My elbows hurt today, what is that all about, no idea but it is noticeable enough for me to mention it 😞

It is not usually my day but I am collecting Oscar from nursery today after lunch and will have him for the afternoon. The security these days is impressive but sad that it is necessary, I need to be pre authorised, have ID, and a password, good that the children are safe and a sign of the times I guess but I feel sad at the loss of a way of life fast disappearing. I suppose that’s how each generation feels and it will be no different for future generations.

Thursday: I had to be up at the hospital for a blood test this morning as part of the Molecular research programme. HLA-B27 is a protein that is found on white blood cells, these proteins help the immune system tell the difference between good or harmful cells. Autoimmune patients are often positive for these proteins which is why the body attacks itself and is closely related to the eye problems I have been having. So I wait to hear the results of this test, it won’t make much difference to me, I already have what I have but it will help research teams to understand the diseases better. I was watching a new clip about AI and I know everyone is wary and rightly so but AI is already helping to understand the inflammatory process and being used to find out more about what might help, even cure may eventually be found 🤷‍♀️

Sam took me up to the hospital and afterwards we met Shelley, Charlie and Oscar for some lunch, nice to do that every now and again.

Friday: I spent most of today getting things ready to take to the coffee morning tomorrow and also doing some tidying up in the flowers room. Sam came over in the afternoon to get the horses in ready for the farrier at 4pm. We did a bit of tidying up in the stable block too and got some old straw and paper feed bags burnt.

Saturday: Coffee morning sale, I loaded up the car and we got there for 9.30 am and set up the table. Not soo many people this year but the weather was t great so no surprise really but it was a lovely couple of hours all the same. I came back with a hime Bakewell tart, one of my faves but I never make it because John doesn’t like it. I have cut it up into pieces and frozen it for some delicious pudding options 😊 I also bought a pair of knitted fingerless gloves, great for the colder months when I am working outside.

Once that was finished and I packed everything up and back into the car it was straight off to my great nieces 1st birthday party. I realised when I got there I had drunk plenty of cups of tea but not had anything except a banana since first thing, the food table was laden with lots of sandwiches and cakes luckily as I was starving by that point.

In the evening we went over to see my brother and his wife, we needed a piece of stone for the wood burner to sit on and he had just the thing so we went over to collect it and have a cuppa while we were there.

Sunday: I spent the first couple of hours cutting flowers for orders next week, I had two large bunches for Monday and the request was red. Actually the request was for poppies but they don’t grow at this time of year. The reason we use poppies for Remembrance Sunday is because they sprung up everywhere in the Spring following the end of WWII. Poppies love disturbed earth and sadly there would have been plenty of that, it would have been ideal conditions for them. Poppy seeds can lay dormant for a long time before germinating which is why they sprung up everywhere and why we use them but they don’t flower in November.

Meanwhile John was busy tiling the wall where the wood burner will go, it’s just a small one and we won’t be using it much but it is handy to have in a power cut over winter. It was the last component we needed in case of power loss, we have battery operated lights, a camping stove and gas canisters, a fire pit if needs be and now we will have something to keep us warm too 🥰

We were going to go out and find a bonfire and fireworks for Guy Fawkes but in the end decided we couldn’t be bothered 😂

Posted in Friesland Farm

Foliage, Flowers and Pumpkins 🎃

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 23rd October 2023: I am gearing up for future workshops and so spent a couple of hours sending out messages and payment links plus checking what I need to order. I need to make sure I have all the sundries plus enough pairs of secateurs for each session. I was under the impression it would be raining this morning so I was glad to see that it wasn’t and by the time I finished my admin tasks it was warm enough to go out and get some work done on the garden.

4.30pm and I am knackered 🤪 I have been working on one of the big beds that I couldn’t control this spring and summer because of my arm. I have dug, cut, weeded, pulled, cleared, planted and barrowed all day long and if bind weed was a cash crop I would be rich 😂 I have to make a decision about the asparagus because that is the bed that it is in, the crowns are now around 8/10 years old and did not produce well this spring. It could have been the weather or it could be that bindweed is all around the roots 🤷‍♀️ should I dig it up or leave it? A quick bit of research and the jury is still out, several sites says anywhere from 10 to 20 years 🙄 I could feed them but I will also be feeding the bindweed lol.

I still have some bulbs to plant but I am waiting to lift some of the dahlias and then the tulip bulbs can go into that bed. After that first frost the weather has been mild again and so the dahlias are still flushing but not for much longer I suspect.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰

Wednesday: I spent most of the morning tidying up the flower room because I have workshops this weekend and besides it needed a tidy. Putting things away, throwing stuff out, sweeping, hoovering and washing buckets, it is now ready. Sam and the twins arrived just before midday and Mia was at pony club just down the road. The twins have discovered ‘snap’ but trying to teach them the rules is hilarious, Lucie is a big cheat but eventually she got the hang of it and how to play without cheating 😂

Sam went to collect Mia and she came home with a 1st rosette so she was very pleased with herself 🥰 After they left I went back to the room to trial one of the pumpkins, just cutting it because the outside seemed quite tough and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be too difficult for workshoppers, I needn’t have worried once through the skin it was just as easy as other types.

Late afternoon I watered the poly tunnels and greenhouse and had a look round at what flowers I might be cutting tomorrow, it has been lovely and sunny and lots have come out including more cosmos 😊

Thursday: Drizzle this morning which is a shame because I did think about cutting flowers late yesterday but in the end I didn’t, now I have to cut them and get wet at the same time 😣 You see plenty of social media images of people cutting in lovely sunshine and not so many in the rain but it has to happen sometimes.

It took me the best part of the morning to cut everything g I need for flower orders and workshops this weekend. After a quick lunch and a sit down with a cuppa I went back out to the flower hut and sorted out all of my dried flowers. Quite a bit needed to be thrown out either because they didn’t Ho,d colour very well or the stems were weak but now I have sorted it all I can use the material I have left to get on and make things. I have a table top sale to do first week of November so I need to have something to put on the table top 😜

John came home and bought me a cuppa while I carried on and by 4.30 I was able to sit down again and give my back a rest but I have no finished for the day yet, apart from getting dinner I still need to make up a bouquet order that is going out tomorrow and a jam jar for a birthday at the local residential home, I will do those this evening, oh and I have a zoom meeting too 🤦‍♀️

Friday: Up early to get sorted and all jobs done before Sam arrives with the kiddies as I am looking after them for a few hours while she goes to work. We did plenty of colouring, watched Harry Potter and Horrible Histories they had lunch and then Sam collected them mid afternoon.

I now had to get on and finalise everything for the workshop later, I went into the flower room only to find that the celebration flowers I had wrapped and boxed had leaked everywhere 🤦‍♀️ Oh ffs, I cleared everything up, cut new wrapping, got out a new box and got it sorted, again. I had also had another phonecall for flowers and so needed to get those made up as well as anther bouquet for Saturday morning. Once they were done I concentrated on making sure I had everything I needed for later. John came home and we went off to deliver two lots of the flowers locally and then to get a small amount of shopping, we just needed a few essentials so it was a quick whizz round. Back home and get dinner then out to the workshop to put everything in place, clean up the goose poo right outside the door, yep they are still sitting there everyday 🙄 and then wait for people to arrive.

It was a great evening and the arrangements all looked fabulous and round two again tomorrow night.

Saturday: The weather was not too bad for most of the day and so I spent the morning doing some work in the garden, John was busy riddling one of the big compost heaps.

Mid afternoon we went over to my niece who was having a Halloween party for all the kiddies, the decor was brilliant, plenty of sweets and food for the kids and drink and food for the adults. The dressing up was epic by some and all added to the occasion, we left early because I needed to get ready for the second pumpkin flower workshop that evening. The weather turned filthy, heavy rain showers all evening although luckily just at the times everyone was arriving and leaving it had stopped but before and inbetween it hammered down 😂

Is everyone gathered for a funeral 😂 nope its Halloween 🎃
The second workshop of pumpkin flowers 🥰

Sunday: The weather was not too bad today just the odd shower, I spent he morning in the flower hut tidying up from last night and then getting some of the dried flowers ready for selling. I also made a couple more of the little dried flower fairies, they are fiddly though so not sure how many I will get made. I have a table at the coffee morning next week so I need some stuff to sell which is why I have been getting the dried flowers ready.

The clocks went back last night and so today seems long, I came in at what I thought was around 1pm only to find it was just midday, I had done enough though and so had John so we downed tools and went out to get something to eat. The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling because you can’t work all the time can you lol.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Autumn is here but I am preparing for Spring 😊

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 18th September 2023: This month seems to be rattling past 🙄 the weather is up and down but there is definitely an autumnal nip in the air in the mornings and evenings. Last night there was a big storm, I have to say apparently because I didn’t hear it 😂 John said it lit up the room and was really loud, I was busy sucking up 💤 flat out and didn’t hear anything except at me point heavy rain woke me but that’s it. I must have been tired after our long walk during the day.

It may seem early and I am not one for acknowledging the festive season until the beginning of December usually but I am starting to advertise wreath workshops lol. The spaces are already filling up and so if I can fill them well beforehand then I don’t need to think about that again until nearer the time.

Meanwhile there is still a lot of preparation for next spring to be done first as well as ongoing flowery and gardening stuff. I have been soaking the Ranuculas and anemone bulbs and will hopefully get those planted today along with some daffodil bulbs. I have hardly annual and biennial seedlings and plants to constantly pot on or plant out and perennials to divide to increase my flowers for next year. I try to keep the seasons extended for as long as possible which includes drying flowers and making lovely wreaths or things with those, all of this plus everything else in life keeps me pretty busy on a daily basis.

We have the new hens and we had 32 in, yesterday we got 31 eggs from them which is fabulous, we just need the customers to return to buying them now. To be fair they are going well but it needs to be a constant turnover and at least I have enough eggs now to do some baking, everything was going out to the shed before 😂

The sun is shining today despite the storm last night, John is mostly going to be at home for the next couple of weeks, having said that he has gone to do a small job this morning 🙄

So far I have had a very productive day, I have planted up some of the bulbs that needed doing, sown some seeds and started another dried flower wreath. John came home and we went out to get some evergreen shrubs from the wholesale place, I can only do this during weekdays as they are not open at the weekend so I have to wait for John to be available. I got a nice haul of rosemary, pittosporum, photinia euonymus, griselinia and some white astrantia that I have been trying to find all summer, I will definitely be going back there.

Then Charlie picked me up and we went over to Upton Smokery where once upon a time they had a fabulous bbq restaurant and is now a much bigger shop with all kinds of fabulous ingredients and fresh fruit/veg and is a much nicer shopping experience than the supermarkets 🥰 I bought some wild mushrooms some other veg, smoked chicken and other goodies.

Once back home I made some mushroom soup for later, put some fresh tomatoes, carrot, onion and celery in the slow cooker to make another batch of soup for another day and made an apple and sultana sponge pudding. We are feasting on natures bounty tonight and there is nothing more I like than using fresh home grown or locally grown ingredients.

Tuesday: A blustery, grey day today but I had Oscar and so didn’t have to go outside.

Once Charlie had finished work and collected Oscar I decided to brush Mia the dog. She has long hair and is short in the leg which is not ideal on a farm 🙄 she has been moulting a lot and so giving her a brush would help it on a bit, there are clumps of fur all over the place from her at the minute. She is not keen but I managed to get quite a lot of fur off her and the wind was blowing it away which is useful. Meanwhile John is trying to stack wood that he has been cutting and, this is hilarious, Patch is trying to hide behind Johns legs wherever he goes thinking any minute now it will be his turn 😂 I didn’t have my phone on me but it would have made a great photo, the thing with Patch is that he is short haired and tall so he doesn’t need de fuzzing at all, somehow he always manages to look clean and tidy 🤷‍♀️ I came in and hoovered the boot room which was full of clumps of hair and now I keep feeling that I have a hair in my mouth which is highly likely 😜

I got my dahlia order in, no good waiting until next year to do it otherwise the ones I want will be all gone, they will be delivered next year in Spring.

Wednesday: Windy (very) rainy and altogether horrible, trees down in various places and I don’t think it is going to improve much more. Off to deliver an order first thing, then pop into costa on the way back, Johns treat, I understood why on the way home, can you just do me a couple of invoices when we get back’ 🙄

I am on a downer today with technology, it’s all very well ramping it up but when the systems don’t work correctly or you do everything it asks for and then find you didn’t need to do it after all because the bod on the gate says, oh yeah your name is on the list just go in, it’s bloody annoying. It is more annoying when I have to do all of Johns online stuff because he can’t (or won’t) and then there are crossed wires when logging in because it is all from the same iPad 🤪 and the algorithms don’t like that, one of us must be an imposter 😣 Then there is our upcoming holiday where everything is done online beforehand, check in, booking activities, booking bloody dinner, all the joy has been taken out of a holiday by this point and what about those who are not so tech savvy. We are all being herded into a technological cell, one that we will not be able to escape from before long, rate your delivery, rate our customer service, rate our rate app 🤦‍♀️ Collect points for shopping, collect beans for coffee, all very well if when you get there you can actually connect to the internet or the app is working correctly, it’s like a giant dysfunctional toy asking you to play but the parts don’t all clunk into place. I admit we have come a long way, I am the age that was there at the birth of the World Wide Web, dial up was slow and painful and very frustrating. It has all moved very fast but I am not sure the systems are up to it and I am not sure a lot of humans are either 😂

I spent the best part of the day in the small tunnel, I have some bulbs planted in there and I planted up the anemone as well. Next job was to clear the cucumber and tomatoes harvesting everything that was any good while I was clearing. I have a lot of tiny toms and will make more soup with those, a lot of green toms that hopefully will ripen, a lot of toms went to the torts as well as a hidden away cucumber that was huge, I also bought the last of the cucumbers indoors. Once that was done it was time to bring in the chrysanthemums, they now go into the small tunnel to flower and they are in there so that the weather does not spoil the flowers. I got soaked just getting those inside and had to come in and change my top putting the one I was wearing into the dryer for 10 mins. Some of chrysanthemum plants have got huge nearly 5ft tall, I really need to have a good research on how best to grow them because they need some hefty staking the way I am doing it. I think I should have split them in the spring but of course I couldn’t, my plan is to cut right down the stems that are flowering and see how they recover, it might be a good plan, it might not 🤷‍♀️ I do have some in the big tunnel too but they have also got big and the staking is not great meaning they flop over and then begin to grow bent which is not much good for a vase 🙄

It has been hammering down for most of the afternoon but I thought I would be safe in the tunnel and I was until I needed to go and get scissors, string etc 😂 Never mind it’s a good job done now and I can have a cup of tea.

Thursday: Up, jobs done, out to get blood tests by 9am, John had to have some as well so I had booked us both in at the same time, I also got my flu jab. Then it was on to Witney to get some bits for holiday, nothing exciting really, tights, socks and a 2024 diary. We saw Gerald from Jeremy Clarksons programme, he was leaning against the wall out side WHSmith, I gave him the thumbs up and he laughed 😂 We bumped into Sam and Charlie while we were there too lol. Next it was off somewhere else to get some new trainers and a new top I rather liked while I was at it. Back home and back to getting some work done, John has been doing an excellent job of clearing all the old wood we had lying around in a heap, I have no idea where it all comes from sometimes. We now have a pile of logs from the ash tree that had to come down, a pile of kindling from the hazels we cut back last year, a pile of pallet wood ready to make boxes for jam jars and the rest which was mostly old fencing etc has been burnt, looking good.

Sometime in the afternoon I finished a dried flower wreath that I started yesterday and then I started another one and eventually finished it halfway through the evening. A full round wreath takes a long time to do and a lot of materials, no wonder they are expensive to buy, the largest one I have done I definitely wouldn’t sell for less than it’s worth, soo much work and my back was aching after doing them because you can’t really sit down to do it otherwise you can’t see it properly.

Friday: The weather seems to be developing a pattern, nice in the morning then rain in the afternoon (usually around school run time as always 🙄) This morning I got some social media sorted and then some flower cutting and then onto a bit of gardening, potting up, dividing, propagating. Now is a good time to divide or propagate and I have this great gadget that I was given for my birthday.

It is inside my back door so if I take a cutting I can just pop it in here and wait for the roots to develop as they have in the bottom left tube, simples 😊 once the roots are good I take it out and pot it up carefully as those roots will be fragile, voila a new plant 🥰

Sam came late morning and we went off out to get some lunch leaving John working here, I did offer for him to join us but he declined (garden centre 😜) I did bring him back a slice of Victoria sponge though.

The rain started while we were on the way home and pretty much stopped and started all afternoon making it difficult to get anything half decent done outside. I did manage to plant up a few things and dig up some plants that were in the wrong place and pot them up for re positioning in Spring. I have a lot of this kind of work to do, re position plants and propagate lots of the plants that do well as cut flowers. I went to the wholesale nursery the other day and bought some evergreen shrubs, rosemary, you can never have enough of that and my big one split and died a couple of years ago so time for some new ones. Pittosporum, I lost both of mine in the cold last Winter, this is a much bigger shrub and along with a couple of photinia red Robin, Portuguese laurel, parvifolia and euonymus (which by the way I have no idea where I am going to put 🤪) I also have other evergreens in pots that all need to go into the ground 😣 I have tried buying the small plants and waiting for them to grow and now I am going for the bigger ones instead, the problem with that is our ground or rather lack of soil depth. I am sure I will work something out, we did discuss moving the fence between the garden and the paddock and pinching around 10ft x 50ft which would be a lot of space but then I thought about deer, rabbits, horses etc. At the minute the deer and rabbits cannot get in although the horse regularly leans over and nibbles on anything nearby. The reason for this way of thinking was that the fence needs replacing but there are self growing hazels and sycamore growing through it, take the fence out dig out anything that should not be there and move the fence a little. Sounds easy but it is still a fair amount of work and then the new fence would need to be animal proof, ducks, geese, chickens, deer, rabbits, horses and dogs would all be in there given half the chance 🙄 I might have to think about a plan B 🤔

And if anyone reading this locally is cutting back evergreens near the end of November I am more than happy to come and collect from you, I can use it for wreath work and it saves it from going into your green waste bin. I often wonder if people realise just how useful their cuttings would be, there is plenty to be foraged but there are also plenty of out of control shrubs in gardens 😂 and I am always looking when I am out wondering if the owners even know how useful the shrubs are 😜

Saturday: I spent the morning doing a dried flower arrangement while listening to John trying to start the ride on mower. Eventually I went out to try and help, well actually first off I told him to move it out into the sunshine in case it was just damp. When that didn’t work I went out to help him try and work out what was wrong. He had reversed it about a foot and it had cut out so we were thinking it was an air lock in the fuel line. John I did the first pipe and the fuel was getting to there (and by the way we had checked fuel levels, battery was fine as it was turning over well and all the fuses) The question was ‘is there a safety mechanism we had forgotten about?) I called the mower man and he said most likely an air lock further down the fuel line and did we have any easy start we could use. The answer to that was no and that’s because John would always refuse to use it even though my dad had said many, many times to him, you need some easy start 😂 Off he went to get some 😜 he came back we unbolted everything to get to the end of the fuel line, sprayed some easy start, started it up and voila it worked 😊 I have no idea what easy start actually is or what it does but from now on we will make sure we always have some 🤪

I then cut the front paddock, the side walkway and the back walk way and not sure what John did because I couldn’t see but it was something useful I am sure. To be fair he has been really busy this week and so much has gone done and tided so it’s looking much more loved than it has done.

Late afternoon I did some gardening as the weather was lovely, the sun was out but not too hot, I was weeding and planting and it was very enjoyable.

Sunday: If ever there was a full days work it was today, I feel like I have got lots done despite being a bit indecisive to start with. First I watered the small tunnel which had the chrysanthemums in and then onto planting up almost 600 bulbs! It sounds impressive but bulb planting for cutting is not quite the same as for garden display. The bulbs are planted very close together in tubs or pots and that’s because what I am after is stem length and flower not a pretty looking area. I have planted tulips and narcissi, all the tubs then need covering with wire so that a) the squirrel doesn’t plant nuts in there and b) so the cats don’t think I have made them some swanky toilet area. After a brief trip out to get some lunch I got straight back on with gardening, planting up carnations and sweet Williams into the spare area in the small tunnel. These are all flowers I am hoping will be ready as early as possible next spring along with some ammi Majus I planted the other day and some daucus (wild carrot) which I had grown from seed and now needed planting out. Then I went onto the delphinium bed, removed the netting that it grows through, cut them back, top dressed with some blood fish and bone, put some more wood chip on top, replaced the netting and stakes (oh also planted another one in the space I had obviously lost one over winter) and whoop that’s another bed sorted ready for next year. Next weed the small area next to it that does not have anything growing there except weeds, it is about half a metre by 1200 and is between the delphinium bed and another raised box that has a mock orange growing in it. I weeded the area and then put down weed membrane and pegged it down, that is another tiny bit under control plus it means I have a place that I can get from one path to the other without treading on the flower beds. By this time my shoulder was stinging, I have no idea what that is but I have had it for a very long time and once it starts I know it’s time to stop work 🤪 I feel as though I have accomplished a good amount today though and as a bonus I split a delphinium plant, planted one and then potted up three other small plants, always handy to have spare plants 🥰

This is how close the bulbs get planted when growing for cutting, they don’t need an air flow around them because they get cut as soon as they are ready and the bulbs won’t be any good for next year. Many people compost the bulbs but I don’t, in a couple of years they will recover enough to flower so mine will go in the raised beds in the front and if I get tulips that’s a result and if I don’t well I will wait.
Believe it or not almost 600 spring bulbs are in these few containers.

We had a chap come from Wales today to catch some rabbits, he has been coming for a few years now (although not last year) he usually comes with a friend but today bought his son to teach him and get him off the computer, his words not mine lol. Many people would not agree with it but it is free meat and yes they do eat it, curried mostly I gather from our previous conversations. It is living off the land and not out of the supermarket, which to me is the best way, and great to teach the next generation because you never know when you might need to catch your own food in my opinion. We don’t eat rabbit but that’s only because John doesn’t like it, if we didn’t have anything else then we definitely would.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Clear outs, dried flowers and a walk in the country.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 11th September 2023: A bit cooler today and def not as muggy thank goodness because I have spent 7 hours (yes you read that correctly) cleaning the kitchen 🙄 From top to bottom, every cupboard, every drawer pulled out cleaned, stuff I didn’t need thrown out and everything put back. I don’t know about you but my cupboards just get things stuffed into them 😜 and just exactly how many paper bags do I need to keep just in case 🙄 a whole bag full of them that’s how many, now in the recycling. Tubs without lids or lids without tubs, now gone, half used food stuff that is out of date, binned, I wish the manufacturers would realised that very few people can get through a colmans mustard powder tin within the allotted date 😂 smaller tins would be appreciated. To be fair I only used to buy it for when dad came or if I needed mustard powder for a gf recipe because for some reason the jar stuff is not gf or never used to be 🤷‍♀️ I have found stuff I had forgotten I had such as the special cleaner for the workshops and three bottles of windowlene with the price ticket of £2.59 on them, I have no idea how much it is now but these would have been from Johns Mums house and I do use it occasionally although a cloth and a squeegee are much quicker.

After I finished and steam cleaned the floor I had a quick cuppa waiting for it to dry and then onto the paperwork pile which (and I hate to say it) has been piling up for more than six months! It is all now in its respective years ready for the accounts (which I have yet to do) and I have plonked 22/23 in the office (another room that needs a total declutter and tidy) 23/24 is in the rack on the wall that separates it into plumbing, farm, household categories, John however can’t seem to get the hang of this simple filing system as I found plumbing stuffed into farm and farm stuffed into household 🙄 despite the fact that he is not supposed to file it at all, that only happens once it has been paid or dealt with, usually 😝

I think I can see just how poorly and lacklustre I had been for months now, sometime it is only when you look in the rear view mirror you can see what has been happening. To leave things for such a long time is not me but I was beginning to think it was, it is 5.30 and I don’t feel exhausted for once in fact I then hoovered the boot room too 😊 I will probably be tired tomorrow but that’s ok because I have Oscar and that is a different kind of day.

Tuesday: Although I was supposed to have Oscar today neither he nor Charlie are every well and so she is not going in to work. That gives me a day I was not expecting to have and so I spent most of it playing with flowers, I know I should have been doing other things but it was a bonus day so I took advantage of that lol.

One of the my favourite flower arrangement I have ever done was the dried flower meadows for Sam and Luke’s wedding. I used dry foam back then as I had no idea how else I would do it but I wanted to find a way without and so that’s what I set about doing. Using chicken wire topped with dry moss I got a pretty good result although I need to use smaller gauge wire (I just used what I had which was about 1 inch, too big really and would be better with much smaller holes because of the fine stems on dried flowers. I also made a fresh flower jam jar box, i also love doing these and think I will do workshops with these next year (just need to get John to make the boxes) and I had a go at another little flower fairy, these are very fiddly and delicate but great fun to make. This one reminds me of Nurse Phylis from Call the Midwife 😂 definitely capable of getting the job done 😊

In the evening we were going to pop along to Witney Feast which is a big local fair but my brother and his wife called in and we drank tea and chatted for the evening instead.

Wednesday: It is definitely a September morning this morning, dew on the ground and a slight chill in the air first thing but the sun is shining so I think it will be a lovely day.

Just gone 11am and I have another room sorted, the office/craft room had become a dumping ground for anything that didn’t have another home. I have sorted, recycled, bagged for the charity shop and binned plenty. It is where paperwork is supposed to get done but I couldn’t even get to the filing cabinet, it is where I keep the cot for when Oscar comes and I leave it up but it was hard to get round it. Now everything is tidy there is floor space again, cobwebs have been hoovered and surfaces wiped over, dusting done and I folded up the cot so I can now move around in there. I have a cupboard with Christmas stuff in photo albums, LPs and anything else that can’t be thrown out, though why we keep it all is anyone’s guess. The ironing board lives in there as does the steam mop and the hoover plus everything for crafting or sewing and a plethora of paperwork, pens, scissor, sellotape, card, glue, you get the idea 😂 I do have all the stuff I oiked out that needs to go to its final home to put away yet though and a lot of it is for the flower room as it is mostly for flower work, amazing how much stuff you can accumulate 😜

The weather is t as great as I thought it might be rather overcast but not raining at the minute so that’s good. We had a good couple of downpours yesterday so no watering needs doing for the time being 😊

Once I had put everything where it needed to be and could get to the desk I then needed to fix an issue with the laptop, it was connected to the internet but it seems there was something preventing it from accessing it. Cue a couple of hours downloading, restarting, installing, etc etc etc 🙄 While that was happening I decided to fill in the online forms and print documents for our up coming holiday and then phone the company to link a booking. While I was on hold to them I downloaded and printed off documents for Johns day out on Sunday, he is off to Williams Racing for the day to watch the Singapore race with hospitality. Jeez in the age of technology everything takes so bloody long to sort out, currently still on hold while I am typing this up listening to the music with the frequent interruption telling me ‘my time is precious so why not do things quicker online’ um because that does not seem to be an option in this instance 😂 Talk about multitasking!

Thursday: You can definitely feel the autumn chill in the air in the mornings and evenings now. The sun is shining this morning though and so I imagine it will be very much the same as yesterday.

I sorted out some dried flowers first thing, I have flowers to cut for orders and some to deliver as well. One of the reasons I tided the office was because I needed to get to some paperwork that was at the back of everything else as always. I had an official form to fill in online which I flipping hate doing anyway, I had until the 18th and yet they still sent me two reminders including a final reminder ffs, that’s enough to send the blood pressure up on its own. I had till the 18th and I was damn well going to do it before that and I don’t need you constantly sending out letters and emails 😂 I hate officialdom in any form, it always makes me nervous, when I was in the thick of it and doing it all the time I wasn’t so bad, I got used to it, but not having done it for years I was putting it off till as late as possible. Well now I could find the right paperwork I was set to do it and logged on, my anxiety levels were high (ridiculous I know but that’s the way I am) I started the online filing, gave details requested for the first couple of pages and that was it! What 😯 I had put off doing this because it would stress me out trying to find all the info and all they wanted was basic details not even official documented proof 😂😂😂 what an idiot Dawn, all that time worrying about it for nothing 😜

So now that is done I can get on with the rest of my day in relative harmony 🙏

I got flowers arranged for delivery later and then took flowers down to the local pub, nice walk down and back today, the village was much quieter than it has been the last couple of walks. Once back I did some flower pressing and then a lunchtime sit down.

Friday: Now I can get the ironing board up in the office I did a bit of ironing, I like ironing on the whole but don’t do it very often lol. I picked the rest of the ripe tomatoes while waiting for a customer to come and collect flowers. The variety I have this year has produced literally hundreds of cherry tomatoes and while they may be small they certainly do not lack that full tomato flavour.

In the afternoon I started a full dried flower wreath, that is a lot of work and a lot of flowers but it turned out beautifully and is so much better in real,life than the photo I took.

Saturday: The forecast was for hot sunny weather today but that did not pan out, not here anyway. It was however the perfect day for me to get some gardening work done, overcast and warm enough, perfect. I started off in the big tunnel, clearing, weeding, deadheading and cutting back. Then onto potting or pricking out some of the seeds I have been growing for next year, planting out was next, cornflowers and ammi majus. Weeding next, plenty of that to do, plus cutting back some of the perennials, next year I need to cut back harder and earlier I think. Quick stop for lunch and then out to help John clear up or pick apples from the cooking apple tree which has had hundreds of apples this year. I have been giving them away for weeks and there are still a lot left on the tree, I need to do some more for the freezer but not too many or we will never use it all up before next years crop, unless we don’t get one which is possible.

It rained a little in the afternoon but nothing that gave you a soaking, in the evening we went over to my brothers for a bbq to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries.

Sunday: An early alarm set for today, John is off on a F1 hospitality day which was a birthday present from Charlie and Macca. I hope he has fun Charlie messaged, um he is being fed all day and watching the racing it’s all his dreams come true 😂

That left me home on my own so I opted for a lazy Sunday morning, not in bed because that’s not me but in my pjs lounging around drinking tea, eating toast and catching up with watching Instagram posts and reels. Well I did that until I figured I really ought to get on with something because we are off out on a birthday ramble with Samantha and family today, hope it does not rain too hard but I a, sure we will find a nice pub at the end with something warm to eat and drink.

We had a lovely walk today around Sherborne Estate and village, the rain held off until we were safely inside a local pub having something to eat, the heavens opened just after we got there 😂

Lovely village shop and great coffee 🥰

John got home before I did and he also had a great day at Williams F1 in Grove, good day all round and a great end to the week 😊

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hot & muggy, flower fun & everything else 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 4th September 2023: Blooming hot today and set to be like that all week 😂 I got started early with watering, weeding, feeding, cutting etc, I haven’t had much time to do any of it and now the sun has made an appearance and is fierce so early mornings it is for the time being. At 11 the farrier turned up, earlier than expected so I had to get the horses in from the field, I just got them tied up and Samantha arrived with the children who do not go back to school u til tomorrow. Once the farrier had finished and gone Sam and her helpers gave the horses and nice wash down, tail and mane trim, hoof polish and fly spray before turning them back out and poo picking. We are in a situation where the grass has not stopped growing and you would think that is a good thing but it is growing so quickly (due to all the rain) that as fast as the horses eat it off, it grows back and it grows back lush with a high sugar content. Normally through summer it would die off a little due to lack of rain and be better for them to eat but not this year, this year is a tricky balancing situation for horse and owner. Ours have been restricted and at the moment they don’t seem to mind (due to the grass growing back so quickly 🙄) at least a hot dry week will bring the growth to a halt.

I asked Lucie if she missed me now she was back home with Mummy and Daddy, no 😂 I love kids honesty at that age.

I was out there for a while with them all but eventually came in and decided to give the bathroom a clean, the whole place needs a deep clean but by 2.30 I was exhausted (knock on from the weekend I think) so I will have to do a little bit here and there.

I tried doing a little bit here and there lol, first I had a go at doing the bathroom, not a deep clean mind but a descale, clean and hoover then I was pooped 🙄 so I sat down for a while to watch some of my online course, I figured that was still work and counts. After watching a couple of modules I finished off hoovering the living room and kitchen and then I was pooped. Seriously I want to get on but there is nothing in the tank, when I say I’m exhausted it is not a mind thing but a whole body thing. Fatigue is something that can’t really be explained to someone unless they have something like Lupus, Fibromyalgia, ME or similar and if you know what I mean then you know, if you think you know then you probably don’t know if that makes sense. With fatigue like this lifting an arm is not an option, sometimes I can’t even find the energy to talk and often I simply cannot find the energy to eat (although I know that is counterproductive) It is not laziness, the last thing I want to be doing is sitting down doing nothing and yet I cannot do anything else 😔 I want to be cleaning my house so it feels good to be in, I want to get the washing done and on the line to dry, I want to be in the garden weeding, planting cutting back, I want to do all these things and more but can’t and that is really frustrating. I try not to let it stress me though as that is also a recipe for disaster, I just have to wait until I can.

I saw a thing this morning around 7.30/8am, I walked out of the back door and directly opposite me is a small clearing in our hedge and I can see into the next field. I saw something fawn in colour with a cream patch so at first I thought it was a deer, facing away from my direction grazing. Then I realised it was not stood to graze so I went in and got the binoculars thinking it might be injured, unusual for a deer to be right in the middle of an open field was my train of thought. When I looked through I could see that it was eating something and it def was not a deer though I couldn’t distinguish what it was from that distance. As I walked down closer to the fence in the garden (so still a good distance away) it stood up and for a fleeting moment I thought it was the golden lab from across the road. Then it turned its head and looked at me, distinct pointy ears, rounded body and a bit of a tail with some bush to it. It walked off and try as I might there was no gap in the hedge to study it further. I know what it wasn’t, it wasn’t a deer, it wasn’t a dog and it wasn’t a fox, but I don’t know exactly what it was. I messaged a friend who is a keeper at the local wildlife park to ask if they had any escapees lately, nope. I asked the farrier if he had ever seen anything or heard of anyone that has and he said probably a bob cat as they are about 🙄🤷‍♀️ I hope I get to see it again but not too close up 😜

John came home and we got dinner and ate it outside as it was such a lovely evening and then John moved the remaining hens from the front to the back and will be cleaning out the front pen ready for new hens, I know I said we were not going to get any 😜 but people still keep coming for eggs 😂 I did a little bit of flower arranging practice with some of the flowers I cut today, might as well practise while I can as too often I need the flowers for orders.

Tuesday: Another blue sky day, it got very warm yesterday and more of the same today I think. Crazy that last week I put on an extra layer and even considered turning the heating on 😂

I have Oscar today, just until mid afternoon this time as he is having settling in periods at Nursery, I will still continue to have him on Tuesdays but other days he will go to nursery or his other Nanny.

Wednesday: I spent the morning having my hair done and then because the sun was blazing hot I spent the afternoon doing some of my online course. In the evening John did the last bit of cleaning in the front hen house ready for the new hens tomorrow. I did some watering, I am amazed at how quickly plants are flagging in this heat considering the amount of rain we have had all summer long, one week and they are pfft. I guess that is because they were actually gearing up for autumn and so winding down a little 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Omg that was a humid night, it was still 29c at 6.30pm and 18c at 7.30am this morning, yuk. I had some flowers to cut this morning so was up early to do that and noticed that the elderflower is flowering again despite having berries on it 😂 even nature has no idea what is going on.

New hens arrived in the afternoon, I know I said I wasn’t going to have any but we literally have no eggs even for ourselves so we had 30 delivered and they were hard to get hold of. They were from an order that someone made but never confirmed so luckily for us we were able to have them.

Worked in the flower room on Thursday night getting tidied up ready for the workshop on Saturday morning.

Friday: We 18 eggs this morning, whoop, whoop 😊

I spent the first couple of hours cutting a lot of flowers for orders and the workshop tomorrow, it is horrendously hot still and I had to put up makeshift curtains (bed sheets) to try and keep the heat out, I can’t leave the doors open (not that it makes much difference) because the geese are constantly trying to get in there. I had left my secateurs in the garden went back to collect them, came back and the geese were inside the room bloody crapping everywhere like geese do 😂

I made an autumn wreath even though it does not feel like autumn, I usually do a flower arrangement to place outside the door for when people arrive but it would just die in the intense sunshine.

Saturday: I was up early to get some watering done as plants are flagging, it has only been a week of heat but it is so intense all day long that it’s detrimental. I looked up at the big trees and even the top of them have crinkled leaves, partly I guess because they were moving into autumn mode and wham along comes summer finally 😜

Flower workshop at 10am and I had six lovely ladies here to learn a new skill, luckily it was early enough in the morning not to be too hot.

In the afternoon after a short rest and tidying up I decided now was a good time to do something else I want to try. I had seen beautiful pumpkins decorated with pressed flowers and wanted to get some flowers pressed ready to do exactly that. It has been decades since I last pressed flowers and I had forgotten how relaxing it is 🥰

Is it still incredibly hot for the time of year, we don’t even get temps like this in summer usually, the humidity is also high, 91% overnight, yuk it is horrible. Trying to work in it and clothes just stick to you, I can see a boom in air conditioning in the UK if this keeps happening year after year.

Sunday: A tad cooler today but not much, the difference is more cloud cover. I made an autumn wreath for a customer order this morning and then at lunchtime we had a few spots of rain 😊 followed by a deluge and some thunder, whoop. I spent much of the day trying things out with flowers while John was cutting, strimming, chopping (an ash tree that has die back needed to come down and be chopped up) a pleasant day all in all.

In the evening I went over to baby sit Oscar while Charlie and Macca went out for a meal, I could see flashing periodically and when I looked out of the door a huge storm was going on miles away (80 miles) but it was clearly visible from here, it went on for over half an hour. I checked the live lighting strikes website and there were almost 68,000 lightening strikes today alone (77,000) in the last month so you can see that most were today!

Hopefully it will be a tad cooler this week although I don’t want it to disappear altogether 😂 have a good one.

Posted in Friesland Farm

An abundance of produce, grandchildren & flowers.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 28th August 2023: Bank Holiday Monday, we spent the morning working, John was cutting down stingers and mowing, always plenty of mowing to do. I did plenty of propagating either diving up plants or digging up plants that have got too big for where they are and dividing and potting them up. If done now they will hopefully put down enough roots to take them through the winter months. I staked the chrysanthemums as they are getting tall now too and it won’t be long before they are moved back inside the tunnel to save them from cold, wet or windy weather.

At lunchtime we downed tools and went to visit Mum, we made a detour to pick up some milk and that meant we didn’t see Mum who had driven to ours 😂 we waited for her to return to hers which she did about 10 minutes later.

In the evening after dinner we got working again, John mowing 😂 and me collecting plums, walnuts, hazelnuts and blackberries. This is a time of abundance and even if you don’t grow your own there is plenty of free food to be found if you know where to look and what to look for. Hazels are best found if you stand under the tree and look up, walnuts are beginning to fall to the ground and you can just pick those up. Hazels are easy to keep and use, even if they have the greenery still attached, that soon falls off as the nuts dry and ripen. Walnuts are more difficult so I would t blame anyone who would rather get them ready packed from the shop 😜 I have tried various methods over the years and there is no definite process that I can find on the internet but if you leave them in the green husk that shrinks and you can’t get it off, so the best thing is too put them outside (but not where the squirrel can find them) and wait for the husks to start splitting and then you can get them out. Once they are out they need cleaning and curing so that they can be kept without going mouldy, bit of a process as you can see but worth it for me at any rate. I know that nothing has been contaminated with any chemicals of any kind, with that in mind I am considering buying and oil press and pressing some for walnut oil. The abundance does not stop with the nut trees this year, everything seems to be prolifically fruiting, berries, soft fruit, some top fruit especially our plums and cooking apples but not our eating apples and pears although we have got some. That abundance may signal a tough winter ahead 🤷‍♀️ or it may just be all the rain we have had 😂 There is wild horseradish if you know where to look but we have some in the garden that can be harvested now, elderberries, wild blackberries, wild plums and plenty more. One thing I wish planning would insist on is incorporating food trees and shrubs at every opportunity.

Of course all the picking and gathering means a whole lot of processing ready for freezing because you can’t eat it all at once 😜 We will certainly have enough to keep us going and feed the family when they come for dinner in the winter months. We had Oscars party and bbq and the meat was what was not used at Johns birthday bbq in June, there were quite few sausages and some burgers left but they had been defrosted and so could not be frozen again. About thirty sausages and ten quarter pounder prime beef burgers, there was no way we could eat them all between the two of us and no way I was going to throw them away. I cooked all the sausages in the oven while the dinner was cooking and the burgers well they are just ground beef squished into shape so I broke them all up and cooked a big batch of mince and onions to freeze. These were quality burgers so perfectly good enough for turning into something else, waste not want not as always.

We have plenty of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers at the moment but not a lot else in the way of salad or veg this year sadly but next year I will hopefullybe well enough to sow seed.

Tuesday: Oscar day, playing, feeding, changing, singing, sleeping (for Oscar not for me sadly) and we went out for a walk in the paddock to pick some blackberries. My sister came over again with her granddaughter, I wouldn’t say they play together but at least this week Oscar acknowledged them 😂

In the evening my brother and his wife came over to collect a plant I had dug up for him and some plums for my great nephew who is their grandson and loved eating the plums at Oscars party on Saturday last.

Wednesday: I have Oscar again today for half a day, so more feeding, playing, changing, sleeping but he was a tad grizzly before his sleep and still grizzly when he woke up. So I decided we would go for a walk down into the village and have a look at the pond, it is actually a ford with a pond to the side but most people just call it the pond. I gathered a few bits of grass, yarrow and old man’s beard plus some honesty that was growing on the side of the road, I thought I might make a foraged dried wreath at some point.

When we got back Sam arrived with Mia, George and Lucie and the job on the agenda was to confine the horses to the small paddock as Jack has got a bit fat. Normally over summer we would have sun and no rain which means the grass would be parched but not this year and it is as green as it is in spring 🙄 although we are moving towards winter Jack still needs to be a bit more restricted than he has been. Once the school term starts again all three children will be at school full time and so Sam will have time to come and do some work with Jack (which will be a bit of a shock for him 😂) and get some time back into his muscles.

Charlie arrived had a quick coffee and collected Oscar to take him home and a short while after Sam and the children left. By now I am exhausted lol but I only have a day and a half to recover before having Sam’s three for the weekend while they go away to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. You may find me rocking in a corner by Sunday evening 😜 We have some jobs planned to get them involved in but it will be weather dependant so who knows how that will go, hope

Thursday: I keep thinking it’s Wednesday 🙄 anyhow I started early and by 9.30 I had done my first shift. It was not raining when I went out but by the time I came in I was soaking. I had been in the fruit cage which suffered this year because I wasn’t able to keep on top of it, Mum did come earlier in the year and weeded it but they soon took over again especially the bindweed. Normally I would tie in the autumn raspberry canes and cut back the currant bushes when harvesting but I couldn’t do either this year and so it’s a jungle. The kiwi has gone mad as has the logan berry, but I have cut everything back as much as possible and will have another go in a week or so. I could have come in once it started to rain but I was on a roll 😂 and I hate stopping when I am halfway through something besides it’s a good excuse to come in for tea and toast (and a change of clothes) once I was done.

Sort out flowers for orders today and then a quick walk down to the pub to deliver theirs. Not such a quick walk on the way back as it is a killer hill, no idea what the gradient is but it’s pretty steep 😂 that last 10ft is the worst. I wore my raincoat but luckily the rain held off.

I was talking to a customer the other day who mentioned a website called ‘weather without technology’ since 1958 the chap has been using nature to predict the likely weather outcomes in the months ahead. The thing that was particularly interesting was that nature prepares around 3 to 6 months ahead which when you think about it is obvious but we hardly notice it. Given that I have noticed a fair amount this year I thought I would read the articles on the site and they coincide with my thoughts. There are so many berries and nuts this year that even the less observant can’t have failed to notice can they? The ivy is smothered in ivy berries, the hawthorn and rose hips are abundant and one thing that hadn’t occurred to me before is the height of things like teasels, very tall this year indicating the ground may not be accessible and the food source needs to be up higher, all pointing to cold frozen ground? Who knows but it certainly looks that way if you ask me.

One of my favourite sayings is: If acorns abound in September, snow will be deep in December. They are as it seems to be a mast year, this then makes me wonder if the weather is all part of a cycle or rotation that we just don’t see (mini cycles even) and if we are so fixed on technology telling us what is ahead or what causes it that we no longer see what is obvious 🤷‍♀️ answers on a postcard please.

I am contemplating putting an extra layer on 😆 the colder months are knocking on the door 🥶

I made some chicken soup for dinner tonight along with an apple crumble, the wheel is definitely turning. I quite like autumn though and winter (although it seems to go on for ages) they are slower seasons, a time that I can do other things instead of dawn till dusk gardening.

I did cut flowers this morning for tonight’s and tomorrows customers, one lot was collected the other will be delivered.

I did a bit of dried flower work in the evening but I wasn’t really feeling it so decided to watch tv instead.

Friday: Busy morning first thing, I had flowers that were going to a customer, flowers to cut for customers later today and for the weekend which took a couple of hours to cut, sort and prep for conditioning. Then inside to whizz round with the hoover and duster before sitting down with a cup of tea and some toast. That was the calm before the storm as I have Mia, George & Lucie coming this morning and staying until Sunday while Sam and Luke go away for the weekend to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

The children arrived and the parents departed and we had a full on day, apple picking, lunch, then blackberry picking in the paddock, watering the garden and plenty of other things inbetween. Grampy arrived home at around 4 which meant my ears could have a rest while they battered his 😂 after their dinner Josh, Flo and Shelley came over for a short while and they played outside until bedtime at 7.30pm. That was not sleep time though, no that was not until 10pm finally 😝

Saturday: I had turned off the alarm set at 6.30 because I didn’t want it to wake the children, needn’t have bothered they were awake by 6am 🤪 a bit of tv watching in bed before breakfast at 7 then washed, dressed and off out to do the animals with Grampy once he had finished his breakfast. I managed to get a shower without the bathroom being invaded which was a surprise 😂 and we are all set for the day ahead. Josh and Flo are coming over to play later with Shelley, fish and chips are on the menu for tonight. They want a bath because for some reason that is great fun at Nanas lol and they were playing too late last night to have one and so I have been constantly reminded this morning that they want one later.

I was indoors while they were out with Grampy and suddenly I hear Lucie shouting Nanny, nanny, nanny at the top of her voice, thinking there was an emergency I ran out only to hear Lucie say ‘we found lots of eggs’ lol. I am glad they find everything exciting even egg collecting 🥰

Sunday: Another early start at 6.30 this time, from the time they get up they don’t stop talking 😂 I had to juggle things a bit because I had flowers to get ready, I did most of it last night once they were settled in bed but I needed to do some finishing touches this morning so I left them watching a film with Grampy keeping an eye on them. After that we went out into the front paddock to help John, George is always especially desperate to help Grampy, I just hope he is always that keen. In for lunch and then some quieter play time until Mummy and Daddy arrived at around 2.30. Lucie couldn’t wait to go home, she was standing ready at the gate while we were collecting all their stuff together 😂 At 3 we popped down to the village dog show to support it, I had sponsored a class (fastest sausage gobbler) and given a prize of flowers plus some for the judges. Shelley, Josh and Flo came with us and we bought raffle tickets, ate ice cream, had a go at tombola and guess the weight of the cake. Then back home for a well earned rest and watch a film, I went out to water early evening but it was really hot out and so abandoned that till later, besides I am pretty pooped.

The weather is looking hot for next week, unbelievable, we have had no summer and now we get a week of it when the children go back to school. It will be early mornings for me for a while.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Rain, wreath evenings & wet feet.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 21st November 2023: What a soggy miserable day it was today, rain from dawn to dusk and beyond. I was not about to go outside and do anything in that sort of weather so I busied myself indoors for the morning, finding any little job that needed doing. Charlotte came over at lunchtime, we had some soup and then I went with her while she did her weekly shop, me pushing Oscar and Charlie pushing the trolley. I did get a diary and a calendar for next year while I was there, it has got to that time of year when dates need writing down.

Tuesday: A better day today, dry, sunny but cold. I spent most of the day cutting various foliage including rose hips which all had to be de thorned 😂 I am hoping that there will be enough diversity to appeal to everyone and that individual personality will shine through in each wreath made 🥰

Wednesday: Another filthy day 😂 honestly torrential downpours, hail, wind, yuk. Consequently I did not do much outside 🤪 sod that for a game of soldiers, I spent my time indoors cleaning and finding indoor jobs to get on with. I am aware that the year is passing buy so quickly and I have got plenty to do outdoors but I also reason with myself that a lot of it can wait until spring. There is nothing wrong with leaving all the dead stuff standing in situ in fact it is more beneficial to the wildlife that way. There will be plenty of insects overwintering in dead foliage and they are best left undisturbed. It is also better for the soil structure if it has partial covering, cleared ground gets pounded, compacts and then you get run off and leaching of nutrients all the more reason to wait. Besides I have plenty of other jobs to get sorted now we are fast approaching December with all the usual festive food to think about plus gift shopping.

Thursday: First thing this morning I spent an hour talking to myself 🤪 there was a good reason and I am not going mad. It was time to get sorted and ready to teach the wreath workshops tomorrow so I spent an hour talking to myself as a result 😂 I missed up and mad up one wreath just to practise what I was going to say, then I spent the next hour cleaning up the pool room and sorting out as John would be using the table tonight. I had the twins after school and then dashed off for some Bowen therapy early evening. It was a good session with plenty worked on and it tired me out so I spent the evening on the sofa relaxing.

One thing I have been doing is looking up as much as I can about operation Grapple. These were nuclear tests done out in Christmas Islands during the latter half of the 1950’s, the reason I am interested is because my Dad was there serving in the Royal Navy at the time. The powers that be have now decided to recognise these veterans with a medal (Dads will be posthumous) I have applied for his service records and hopefully they will be found, they will be an interesting read. It’s is pretty shocking stuff to be honest, Dad went into national service and would have been 17/18 going on an adventure of a lifetime. It was an adventure and he loved it but I can’t help thinking that they were inadequately dressed and exposed to massive amounts of radiation 😔 Dad was one of the lucky ones and never had any illness resulting from his time there but thousands of servicemen did and many of their offspring too. It is also sad that it has taken this long to recognise their service at that time and that many of them are no longer here to personally receive that recognition. Does not matter if you agree with Nuclear testing or not those service personal had no choice but to do as they were ordered. They were allowed to take personal photos and I have seen the ones Dad took though he always told us that because he had signed the official secrets act they were to remain unseen by others. There are some there where the only clothes they have on are shirts and t shirts 😳 and the protective clothing would be laughed out of the storeroom these days. It is what it is and they did what they did and I am glad they are finally recognising it but did it have to take so long?

Friday: The sun is shining thank goodness, we have had some horrendous downpours, that’s all we get these days, torrential or nothing 🤪 I have been busy this morning preparing everything for the first wreath workshop tonight 🥰 I am looking forward to it, the mince pies are cooked, the mulled wine is ready to go, the foliage is all waiting to be used, the Christmas song playlist is good to go, bring on the fun and creativity.

One thing I have been mulling over was a post on social media whereby someone was looking for a ‘ reasonably priced’ wreath workshop. These things always start me thinking about how detached people are from the real cost of things, we are so used to cheap goods that we fail to see the value in anything worthy. Behind each workshop there is a lot of work that goes on, a lot of organising and there are costs. Most people doing workshops have already invested in learning how to make a wreath many years before then there are costs like insurance, heating, lighting, renting a space if you don’t have one. The cost of sundry materials such as wire, frames, fir cones, ribbon, feathers, dried oranges, moss and foliage or the time it takes to gather moss and foliage and in my case to cut and weave the willow frames. Then there is the setting up, the teaching and the clearing away. I am not sure that people fully understand what is involved but it’s not just a bit of greenery on a frame 😬 And besides once you have done a workshop you have the skill for life 🥰

In the evening I had the first of three wreath evening workshops and I can honestly say I really enjoyed it, I was a bit nervous at first but once into my stride I loved it. It was great to see people having never done one before produce something very worthy of hanging on the door during advent 😁

Saturday: I had round two of workshops in the evening but I mostly spent the day making wreaths and tidying up, collecting more greenery etc, it’s surprising how much it uses 😂 Saturday nights participants also went away with fabulous wreaths.

Sunday: Slightly tired today but once we had done all the morning jobs it was time to go and get my eyes tested. New glasses for me as my eyesight has deteriorated a little in two years which I was aware of. Then we called into my brothers for coffee, they happened to have breakfast on the go so we had a bacon roll as well😁 I had called in to cut some foliage from their garden and once we had cut that it was back home. My feet were soaking wet, I should have taken my wellies but didn’t think about it so although there were plenty of Christmas fayres on today I couldn’t go anywhere else really as I wanted to get back and get dry feet again. I had a restful afternoon as I was feeling pretty tired, I need to conserve energy for the rest of the week.

John has been busy over the weekend cleaning out the birds in various stages, we are only a couple of weeks in and already it feels like it has been going on for ages, poor birds 😔

That’s it this week, have a good one 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Mince pies, flower stand and a rainbow 🌈

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 14th November 2022: Time seems to be whizzing by 🙄 A dank and foggy morning this morning but we are due heavy rain at some point over the next couple of days and so I needed to cut flowers for a few bouquets mid week. There are still some beautiful flowers growing, the foliage is a little more of a struggle now but a bit of creative thinking does not go amiss. I also cleared the rest of the flowers from the big tunnel and the pepper plants. The peppers did so well this year with all that heat and we don’t even eat them 😂 I do free some just in case I want to use them but they are one of the foods that is not so good for my condition. It’s funny because I am not really keen on them anyway almost a natural instinct I reckon 🤷‍♀️ I then cleared out any flowers from the small tunnel that are not going to produce much from here on in, I tied in the chrysanthemums and cut a few small heads for drying. I am drying with Mother’s Day next year in mind as well as Christmas 😂 I need a site meeting with John to discuss the flower workshop, we will convert one of the stables and then at least everything will be in one place and my kitchen won’t end up in such a mess all the time 🤪 I popped in to make a coffee, opened the fridge to get some milk and the pears that I poached in a vanilla sugar syrup fell out and the syrup went all over the floor and hit every shelf in the fridge 😬 the day was going so well until then!

I spent the afternoon making dried flower wreaths, I wanted to use up what I already have to make way for the next lot that is drying. I am still having difficulty taking photos that do them any justice, wherever I try to take them either the light is bad or there is a shadow 🤷‍♀️

I have lost track of the days 🤪 it’s Wednesday today so what did I do yesterday 🤔 no idea 😂 must have done something though! Today I can remember 😁 I started off shovelling and raking some type one on the driveway. John has now finished the new path and we need to bring the levels up to match and so 6 ton of type one was deposited and John raked some if it. I made an effort and did do a bit before thinking enough was enough and went off to do something else. I cut some contorted hazel ready for the wreath evenings and I collected some eucalyptus bark to use as well. Eucalyptus naturally sheds its bark and is cinnamon in colour, as it dries it rolls and so is perfect for using on wreaths no air miles needed 😁 The farrier came today for the horses pedicures and I got the dinner early before going to have my covid booster and then rest for the evening.

Thursday: It has just rained and rained and now we have a little pond in the paddock, it’s not as bad as it has been in other years mind you as we have had a giant lake before now. Today is supposed to be dry so hopefully we get a bit of respite from getting a soaking all the time. I am going out for a coffee with Shelley so I don’t have much else planned, we may mooch around the shops as well 😬 mooching is pretty much all I will do as I am not a bigger shopper unless I need it I won’t be buying anything but it is nice to have a look round now and again.

The topic occupying my mind this morning is the limiting of eggs to customers in the supermarkets. Firstly the reports that it is down to bird flu is not entirely the whole story but as per usual the media only report the bit that they want to. Remember a good while back I said that feed costs were going up so much that businesses were struggling. Many of the smaller producers have given up and the bigger producers are losing money so it won’t be long before a lot of them give up too and I have seen big housing set ups for sale on the farming sites so it is already beginning 🙄 The next problem is that although the farmers costs have shot up, the price they are being paid by supermarkets has not (and this is not being reported but I can tell you it is very much talked about on social media) and they refuse to pay because eggs are a loss leader in the chains 😔 How sad that someone’s livelihood is a loss leader for others to start with. This is why it is so important to support your local small producers all the time and not just when there is a shortage in the supermarket. I can’t tell you how cross it makes me, back in the summer I was trying to push egg sales like crazy and I struggled to shift them but you can guarantee that I will see people who I haven’t seen before trying to buy eggs from us here now that there is a supply problem 😡 My thoughts then go to our regular, loyal customers and how do I best protect them and make sure there are plenty for them to buy 🤷‍♀️

Friday: Made six batches of shortcrust pastry ready for mince pie making. Sam came over with the twins at lunchtime.

Saturday: I spent the morning making mince pies, I had made batches of pastry late afternoon yesterday and put them in the fridge for today. 48 mince pies now rolled, filled and frozen ready for baking as necessary, I also have plenty of pastry in the freezer for maki g more at a later date. Lunchtime we went round to see Mum who was doing a craft sale of all the things she makes, the money was going to buy winter wear and energy bars for Ukrainian fighters 🥰

Sunday: We had such a good morning 😁 John has continually been raking a levelling type one and shingle and now that was done normal service could resume and so he cleaned out the chickens and the ducks lol. Meanwhile I burnt some rubbish and put some rubbish in the skip plus tidy up the back area. The we went out for breakfast, there was method in madness with that suggestion as I wanted to collect some bracken growing on the side of the road near the place we went to. We got a boot full of bracken and the. Spent the next couple of hours driving g around country lanes foraging for greenery for the wreaths. It was a lovely morning, the sun was out and it was a pleasant enough temperature. I found plenty of fabulous foliage to go with anything I will be cutting here on the farm, very happy with my haul. Came home and sorted it all into buckets of water and then no time to rest we went off to get some shopping as we were out of cat food and a few other bits. Back home and a well earned rest for a couple of hours before going round to Shelley’s for a roast 😁 and that’s the week over already.

At some point in the week my flower stand arrived and I put it together, it holds six buckets and is easily taken a part to transport. The uses I have in mind are for ‘pop up flowers’ if asked to, or for activities such as hand tied bouquet workshops for parties, hen dos or get togethers 🤷‍♀️ I will work on the wording for that 😂

A versatile addition to the flower farm 😁
Lovely rainbow today, driving up the lane we were hoping it was right on our place and the pot of gold would be waiting for us 🤪
Posted in Friesland Farm

Pumpkin flowers, wreaths & the clock change 🫤

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th October 2022: Ok I have been a little tardy with the blog posts apologies for that. I am feeling very ‘meh’ about everything at certain points in the day, generally late afternoon and evening when I would usually do the write up. I am more tired than usual, it’s starts off ok in the morning but slowly goes downhill through the day. So what has been happening, well not much really, all the usual day to day stuff that goes on in anyones life, all the usual day to day stuff that goes on in Smallholding life and none of it is very interesting 😂

I have decided I need to streamline my social media pages, I have one for the farm and one for the flowers but I think I will amalgamate them in the New Year. That will give me less of a fractured approach to posting provided the amalgamation goes smoothly that is. We have some small changes afoot here, nothing major and I will write about those when the times comes. I am awaiting the inevitable instruction to fully house the poultry at some point, a surveillance zone is already in force across the UK so it’s only a matter of time.

To be honest it feels like the whole world is caving in, the bird flu is affecting thousands of species of birds across Europe and maybe further I haven’t really looked it up. This could mean extinction for some species and that’s not an over exaggeration. Watching the Frozen Planet series about the ice melt all over the world and the accelerated rate it is happening is frightening. At the rate it is going now in 200 years time the sea level will be seven metres higher 😔 They say we could still slow this down if we all lived sustainably but that is not about to happen is it? There are individuals out there doing what they can and there are bigger organisations doing what they can but when a big majority don’t think it is going to affect them and carry on regardless then things will not change. Add to that the world governments obsessed with economic growth, which is basically consumer spending and investment, fine as long as they are mindful investments and expenditures it a big proportion won’t be, and you can see we are basically screwed. Then there are those demented power crazy lunatics in charge of some of the countries, we all know who they are they don’t need clarifying with names 🙄 All in all I feel we are on a road to disaster and I can’t shake the feeling, it’s a worry to be sure.

On a lighter note the flowers are still coming, the weather has been mild which is great for the dahlias. I have been making more pumpkin arrangements and I have a farewell wreath to make this week too.

Wednesday: Oops tardy again 🙄 I have been busy though especially today, pumpkin flower arrangement made first thing this morning then out to cut lots of lovely flowers for a farewell wreath for tomorrow and then hours and hours of paperwork 🤪 Each year I make myself a promise to keep on top of it, I always used to but these days work and life take over and I don’t have the time. Not quite true of course, I could make time, the truth is it’s not a job I want to be doing but then we get to that time of year when it becomes imperative that I get it sorted. That time is now, before life gets busy with festive preparations and so that is what I have been doing, all day long. I have at least another days work to do and then John can take it all to the accountant and I can breathe a sigh of relief.

Thursday: First things first this morning, the wreath of flowers for a farewell today. This was personal as it was for Sue’s ashes internment and I was nervous about doing it but very much wanted to do it justice. I was delighted with the outcome, a beautiful and bright tribute to a life now passed. Once I had done that it was time to cut flowers for pumpkin arrangements and then more paperwork. I only had a few hours but I was determined to break the back of the income and expenditures and get things all in order. I didn’t quite make it but only have a couple more hours to do and then the books will be finished and can go to the accountant. A quick shower mid afternoon and then off to the churchyard for the internment, the sun shine beautifully and it was a lovely autumn afternoon, very mild for the time of year too. We had some refreshments afterwards at a local pub and it was great to be able to put some names to faces. Many people I had heard about over the years but never actually met, some I had spoken on the phone to but never actually met and today we were able to get to know and understand who was who and where we all slotted in to the lives of Dad and Sue.

Friday: I spent the first half of the morning doing pumpkin flowers and then finished the last few bits of the bookkeeping to go to the accountant next week ✔️ Typing this up on Sunday I actually have no idea what else I did 🤷‍♀️

Saturday: I spent most of the day sorting out dried flowers, going through them all and throwing those that had broken, bent or just didn’t look good. Once I had done that I made another dried flower wreath and then sorted out all the things I had made that I will be taking to the table top sale next week. I just about hoovered and tided when the whole tribe descended upon us, Shelley and the kids, Sam and the kids and then Charlie, Macca and Oscar 😁 The kids had been to a party and so were full of sugar 🤪 Nice to have them all at once but the volume gets a bit loud 😂

Sunday: I watered the tunnels and greenhouse this morning as I still have flowers growing in those. Then onto cutting and weaving willow wreaths ready for the workshops. I actually managed to do a time lapse video of the process. John cleaned out the ducks and then concrete the next part of the path and then we went out get some lunch. Popped into Mums on the way home for a cuppa. Have to be home earlier today as the clocks went back last night and so it will be dark around 5ish today 🫤 bye bye summer.

Weaving willow wreath bases from willow grown here on the Smallholding 🥰