Eggs – Page 6 – frieslandfarm (flowers)

Cold winds, fence repairs, my seed stash and storm Dennis 😏

Posted on February 16, 2020February 16, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th Feb 2020: Oooooh it’s Monday again 😏 Some Monday’s I don’t mind, the ones where the weather is fair to good but it’s cold out and we still have the blustery remnants of the storm so I’m not really feeling this one lol.

Still the winds blew over night, not quite so fierce but still audible, I found some ear plugs last night though and so managed a good nights sleep 😴 in fact John was up, breakfasted and gone to work by the time I dragged my sorry backside out of bed! I can already tell this will be a ‘non’ week, a week where I won’t be able to achieve very much outside due to the weather. This is a month of hope and then disappointment, ah we’ll roll on Spring.

John and I watched the woodpecker yesterday, I spotted it on the oak tree just outside the black door and called John over and we were both amazed when the woodpecker started to walk backwards down the tree trunk 😮 right to the bottom it went then onto the ground. Well I have never seen that before we both said and this morning I have tried to find out a bit more but apart from the fact that they have two toes that point forwards and two that point backwards I can’t find any reference to them walking down backwards as standard behaviour.

I went out and did the morning rounds and surveyed the place, a few small branches down but apart from that no major damage I am glad to say 😀

I picked some purple sprouting, I was mindful that it needed picking and didn’t want to waste it, it’s now soaking in cold water to get any bugs out then I will either blanch and freeze it or have with dinner tonight I haven’t quite decided which yet. There are still some Brussel sprouts to be picked and there is curly kale too, I need to make an effort to remember to pick them for dinner this week.

Next job on the list was to try and shift some duck eggs online, that’s always frantic backwards and forwards messaging but tonight we will be delivering trays of duck eggs and a few quail eggs so that’s a result 😀 The aim is to get customers coming to the farm but every now and then we are willing to go out and deliver to those a bit further away and so that people get to know where we are and we can then shift the eggs faster, I don’t like them hanging around for more than a couple of days lol.

I thought about making a quiche with one of the goose eggs and scoured around for ingredients, I only had a small pot of sour cream though so I will wait until I can get a big pot of proper cream. In the end I made a Madeira cake, one of Johns favourites and I decided we would eat the purple sprouting for dinner, might as well eat it while it’s fresh and full of nutrients.

The brassica cage is not going to be used for brassicas this year as I have already used it at least two years in a row and I don’t want pests and disease to build up in the soil. I had a big problem with whitefly in there last summer and need to break their cycle. That leaves me with two dilemmas , what to grow in there this year? And where to grow the brassica? The cage is permanent as we found a flimsy structure that is moveable doesn’t keep out the cabbage white butterfly very well so we built a more robust structure that did the job, however we can’t move it 🙄 I need to use it for something that at least needs either a bit of protection or a bit of shelter as the environmesh does slightly increase the temperature, you can feel the difference when you go in there. At the moment I haven’t thought about it very much and so have no idea on either problem. A lot of things don’t need protection of that kind but I’m sure I will think of something that does. Meanwhile, where to grow the brassica if at all, it would be a shame not too but they do need absolute netting otherwise they just get decimated.

Well the weather got proper shitty 😜 still blustery and then a good dose of rain thrown in for good measure, at one point I thought it might even snow it certainly looked that way.

I feel a bit tired and could do with an evening relaxing but we are off out to deliver some trays of duck eggs after dinner.

Tuesday: It’s a bitterly cold wind today, the wind hasn’t actually stopped for a few days now it’s just got colder and colder 😏 I didn’t do much in the way of the farm today mostly hoovering, polishing and I looked after the twins for an hour while Sam went for physio.

Wednesday: A cold frosty start to the day but the wind has dropped however we have another storm rolling in at the weekend, storm Dennis 🙄

I did the morning rounds, topping up straw bedding in the ducks and geese as I went, taking a sack of hay to the horses and then a bagful to the rabbit/guineas, still no sign of the other one, completely disappeared. I noticed the fence inbetween the side paddocks is nearly touching the floor having gone over, this didn’t happen during the worst of the winds but must have happened yesterday evening or I would have seen it. I have phoned John and asked him to come home an hour early so we can get it back up and temporarily fixed in position, the horses will soon be through to the side paddock if we don’t get it sorted ASAP.

The grass has definitely been growing, I can tell by the little flakes of grass left in the water bucket by the geese and also John moved the chicken fence the other week and that ground has completely recovered with a growth. There are other tell tale signs, the geese and the horses can be seen more often with their heads down gleaning the new blades of grass emerging, all good signs that we are moving towards Spring.

Here is my random thought of the week lol, I was reading an article about Jane Fonda and the fact that she has reused a dress for an award ceremony 😲😲 shock horror surely not 😜 and I’m not knocking her it’s great that she is doing her bit but I was slightly concerned to read that she spent 7 hours having her hair completely transformed. I am guessing that she has not used very environmentally friendly products to achieve what is a splendid look, that got me onto thinking about nails, not natural nails that everybody once used to have but these horrible little bits of plastic stuck on in place of a perfectly adequate nail underneath. How many millions of bits of plastic are used daily in the pursuit of the desire to look glamorous I wonder? I have had them once, for Shelleys wedding 6 years ago, I wouldn’t have them again as the state of my real nails when they came off was awful. Is there a compostable or biodegradable product out there? I have no idea🙄

I put my coat on mid morning and went outside to see what could be done and have a look at how things are going. On the plus side the carrot seedlings in the poly tunnel are coming up and so are a few peas, the garlic in the small tunnel are growing well and so is the parsley, I gave them all a light watering. On the downside something has chewed one of my seed potatoes in the greenhouse and looking at the tooth marks I’m thinking rat 😝 I need to get rid of that, it can only get in under the door so something needs to be done though I’m not sure what just at the moment. The broad beans spin the greenhouse are also coming through and the over wintering plants in there are doing fine. The arches I put up were bending in the wind a fair bit during the storm so I have strengthened them for the time being although I have discussed with John about concreting some stronger posts in to help. Needless to say the wind has picked up again so I wasn’t out there very long as my fingers and toes were freezing so I came back in a lit the Rayburn. This is what I mean about February, it teased with some lovely weather at the beginning of the month and ever since then it’s been a right sod 😏 The seedlings on the window sill are just starting to emerge, I guess all in all I am winning 😀 I would just like some warmer, still days to get ahead 😬

John came home early and we got the fence propped back up as a temporary measure, the ground is too wet to get the tractor on there to do a proper job for now but we need to time it right when we do, too dry and the posts won’t go in.

I did the afternoon feed rounds and egg collecting while John cut up some more wood, we have piles of it out there to get through and so he has decided an hour here and there is better than a whole day doing it. I sorted out the eggs, fed the dogs and got something out for dinner later, then had a sit down, I am struggling with stiff hip joints at the minute and I’m hoping it’s just the cold weather. They are not painful, just don’t want to work, squatting down to chop kindling is hard work, getting back up is hard work, lifting my leg over the chicken fence is proving hard going 🙄 and to think that last week I was thinking it was the best I had felt in a few years, hey ho.

Thursday: It’s milder this morning, the downside of that is rain, we have had torrential downpours during the night and have the beginnings of the lake in the side paddocks again 🙄

I felt unwell this morning but after taking a coup,e of ibrufen feel a lot better now, I had blood tests tomorrow and am hoping it’s a passing bug and nothing more.

The seedlings that showed tiny progress yesterday have burst through with more growth today, not all of them, I’m still waiting for the aubergine and water melon to show up lol.

I have had all my seeds out this morning, going through them to see what I have and try to organise what will go in first. I could do parsnips and swede now straight into the ground but I know my garden and so I am going to wait a couple more weeks as a too cold/wet start will only rot the seeds off. I have ordered a totally new vegetable (to me anyhow) and that is yacon, it is also perennial and so will go in the permanent bed although it seems I may have to dig the tubers up for overwintering. I also ordered multicoloured beetroots seeds to give those a go and I still need to find some of these round radish I grew last year though I can’t remember what they were called which is a shame. They were free seeds and far better than the breakfast radish that is usually grown.

I gave the grandchildren a goose egg each, Mia made cake with hers, Sam said it was the best tasting cake she had ever made. Josh and Florence decided to eat theirs, Josh had scrambled egg and Florence had a dippy egg almost as big as her 😂

I really am busting to get out and get something done that is productive on the garden, keeping my fingers crossed for some better weather though it doesn’t look like it’s heading our way any time soon, must try not to be so impatient. I am feeling instinctively that the greenhouse will soon be ready to use mind you as everything in there has either survived the winter really well or is starting to grow (broad beans). The tooth marks I thought were rat I’m now thinking are actually squirrel, I see him daily and I think he could easily squeeze under the door to nibble on my seed potatoes, I need to sort that ASAP, we have a weather board to go on the bottom of the door which should solve it but it’s in Johns van and I keep forgetting to ask him for it.

Friday: I feel ok this morning, I was worried yesterday in case it was all going ‘Pete Tong’ but all seems well and I had blood tests this morning so that should pick up any anomalies.

After that we went to yet another independent cafe, Humble Bumble cafe in Brize Norton, it’s in the old cricket pavilion and is just charming, the coffee is good and I had toasted banana bread with Greek yoghurt and honey, delish 😋 A quick trip to the shop to get something for dinner later and then back home to light the Rayburn. The wind is already picking up a bit and the forecast says we are going to get a battering of 49/50/60 mph winds and 100% chance of lashing of heavy rain for a 24hr period, oh the joys of the English weather systems. It’s further north I feel sorry for they have already had floods and are likely to be hit hard again, I can’t imagine how they feel with another storm warning to close to the last poor people 😢

It’s Valentines Day today and no I won’t hold my breath waiting to receive a card or flowers 😂 if I did that I would have died about 20 years ago which is around the time John stopped buying me anything. To be honest it’s not quite the same as when you were a teenager and you opened that card with a big ? and really had no clue as to who sent it 💕 ah those were the days 😀 I am not the kind of wife who presses John into buying me anything either, you know, like saying, ‘don’t forget it’s Valentines day’ there is no joy or delight in knowing that you nagged someone to show you their undying love 😜 besides he would say ‘I love you every day, not just on Valentines day’ well of course you do 🙄 but it would be nice to be surprised once every few years 😬 I did get a box of Maltessers from Josh and Florence though, ‘Happy Birthday Nana’ he said ‘thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day to you’ ‘I do know it’s Valentine’s Day but I like to say Happy Birthday’ Josh said, lol that suits me fine 😀

Saturday: What a totally crappy day so far weather wise, it’s horrible out there. I helped John do the morning rounds so that neither of us got too wet and then Shelley picked me up and we went to a second hand book sale where I picked up a book of wildlife gardening and a book on caterpillars and butterfly’s for the kids to learn from.

Shellley came in for a cuppa when we got back and Charlie and Macca called in as well so we had a nice little gathering round the kitchen table and tried to ignore the weather 😀

We nipped to the local diy centre to pick up some paint for the kitchen, I have been wanting to freshen it up for a while and as we can’t get much done outside we might as well go and get items we need. We also went to the local nursery to pick up some plants and have coffee and cake. I wanted a Daphne as they smell amazing and as I said before I wish I had bought the one I had at the old place with me when I moved. At the time I was focussed on smallholding and so flowers and flowering shrubs didn’t really fit into the picture but as time has gone on I have realised that they should and so I’m on a mission to fill the place with a wide variety of plants, shrubs and trees. Of course I couldn’t walk past the bright colours of the primroses and picked up a pack of those to cheer up a dull day. I also hatched a plan to fill some of the gravel areas out the front with low growing creeping plants so I bought a few of those to see if my plan will work, I need to keep the chickens off them while they establish but once they have they should be fine, I also think that if they spread enough It won’t matter if they get walked on now and again as long as it’s not constant treading. And then there were these miniature iris that I just couldn’t resist 😜 I actually went back to get them as they were so endearing, no idea where I will put them yet but that’s not a big issue.

I think I will grow the plants on a while and then divide them to give me twice as many little plants to dot around.

Sunday: Ooooo it’s lunchtime and we have already been busy thanks to storm Dennis 🙄 remember the fence we propped back up in the week, well it was back down again this morning, properly down, the horses had escaped as well. I rounded them up and got them into the stables and after feeding and letting everything else out we picked up the post rammer and went out the the field to repair it again. A little more robustly this time, the post rammer is a very heavy piece of equipment to use and the ground is soft so we (I say we, John was on the rammmer lol) got some new posts bedded well into the ground and re nailed the rails back up. I don’t mind telling you it was a filthy, cold, wet, windy job that I would rather not have had to do. The stream we get runs through that bit and at one point John dropped a post, it went into the muddy water and guess who got a splattering 😜 I have researched a petrol driven rammer that I think we might invest in as we are not getting any younger and after each post John tells me he is too old for this 😂 We have plenty of fences to do this year and so now might be a good time to get one, it also would make it easier for my plan to have double fences so that we can grow hedges in between them. This idea would, stabilise the ground, provide shelter/shade for the horses, provide a buffer from the winds and be a wildlife corridor, I wish I had done it ten years ago but hey you live and learn.

Dennis was pretty horrendous through the night as well, the strong gusts kept waking me up and in the end I listened to some soothing music on my headphones just so I could actually get some sleep.

When we finished doing the fence I came in and lit the Rayburn while John cleared the drains, they soon get silted up with rain like we have had, then I sent him off with a shopping list for some essentials while I waited for someone to come and collect a tray of duck eggs which they duly did. I think we have earned the afternoon in the warm on the sofa don’t you lol.

I took a photo of the geese in the week then I played with the filters, love the result they almost look cartoon like.

I think that’s me done for this week, if you drive past you will probably see me with my nosed pressed up against the window looking for some nicer weather 😝

Friesland Farm

9 years of blogging, ‘dragons’ & storm Ciara

Posted on February 9, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd February: Oh my goodness WordPress has informed me that I first registered and posted 9 years ago, 31st Jan 2011 😲 It seems I have been banging on with my blurb for quite a long time 😜 My first blogs were short and sweet lol, they have got a lot longer over the years. You can access these old blogs by scrolling right the way back , I tried to find a search bar which would be useful but there doesn’t seem to be one 🙄

So we are safely into February a month that usually disappoints on a couple of fronts. Firstly we are always hopeful of some warmer weather we almost hold our breath waiting but it never quite comes and eventually we tell ourselves ‘well it is only February’ lol we do tell ourselves that at the beginning too of course but still we hope 😏 The second disappointment is Valentine’s Day, I think maybe this is the year I will get some flowers then usually nope lol. We have been married a long time and have got to the point where over the years at some point I have mentioned what a waste of money flowers are, indeed as is the whole frenzy surrounding any type of celebration 🙄 my mistake. We also hit the point years ago when John would say ‘well you don’t get me anything’ now we are at the stage where if I did get him something and he didn’t get me anything I am going to be bloody fuming 😂 so probably best to ignore it and leave it to others 💕

I take back everything I said about February 😜 I just spent a lovely morning outside, first job was to burn the pile of sticks that we failed to do yesterday, then I burnt the paper rubbish. Then into the garden where I spent a good couple of hours tidying stuff up, cutting dead stuff down, sowing a few early seedlings (climbers for my arches) making a new raised bed in the poly tunnel for salad stuff, generally looking over the plot to think about where I will plant stuff. I captured four chickens and put them back over the fence so I could work in peace and so they didn’t undo any tidying I was doing, pretty satisfied with my mornings work 😀

While I was out with the bonfire I noticed two little holes in the bottom of one of the buddleia bushes, if you look closely at the phot you can just about see them. I think this is a mouse home as the cat was pretty interested in the activity under the piles of sticks when they were there, they could be vole I suppose, I would have to sit and wait to see what came out of them to be sure. These bushes were planted way back in the seventies and have done really well to survive this long, the trunks are beautifully gnarly.

I met a lovely couple who have taken over the running of a local pub, The Carpenters Arms in Fulbrook, they are hopefully going to have quail eggs from us 😀

Tuesday: A colder feel to the start of the day 🥶 so I don’t think I will be spending the morning outside again today.

You may have noticed that occasionally I have a random thought 😂 and just have to get it written down to get it out of my systems otherwise I will be thinking about it all day. We watched Shrek at the weekend and on it there is a dragon, the conversation goes like this, ‘that dragon would never actually be able to fly with wings that small and a belly that big’ 😜 then I said to John ‘as there are so many myths around dragons is it possible that they did exist? Who can say if there wasn’t a pterodactyl or two still around back in the 6/7/8th century and that’s where the legends come from’. If there are any eminent palaeontologists reading this 🤣 please let me know if this is a possibility.

Now that is off my chest I’d better get on with the rest of the day lol.

I did the morning rounds, it’s a tad cold due to the wind but not as bad as I was expecting it to be however I hate trying to work in the wind so I will give outside a miss today lol. I got some wood in and will probably light the Rayburn earlier yesterday, I didn’t need to light it until 2.30 it was that mild. I have a haircut booked today, it’s that time again 😜 I’m not a regular, I’m the type that thinks, yikes I need a haircut and desperately tries to get an appointment before I let myself loose on cutting my own fringe 😂

We have roast pork for dinner tonight so I may make an apple pie/crumble as a treat for pud.

I had my first ever proper disaster with making bread today. First prove and it wasn’t growing in size particularly well, I put that down to the temp of the kitchen which was cool as I hadn’t lit the fire yet. I left it half an hour longer than normal until it had doubled in size, I was timing the whole thing to fit in with my hair cut so was now half an hour behind, second prove was on course but I had to take it out of the oven when the hairdresser arrived otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get it out. I took it out and thought, it looks ok, nope it was not cooked through as I discovered later. What I should have done was left it to prove and not put it in the oven until after I had my hair done but you live and learn.

I listened to a couple of pod casts while I was working today, the first was the Organic Gardening pod cast and the second was from Roots and all which was about Forest gardening, some useful information on both in fact I even started taking notes on the forest gardening one lol.

Wednesday: Every morning once I’m up I open the top half of the stable door in the kitchen and I am greeted with the sounds of excited chattering birds. Over the years the number has increased and there are now a whole flock of sparrows we also get great tits, chaffinch, blackbirds, wren, robins, sometimes goldfinch, long tailed tits, greater spotted woodpecker, we have had a jay and I often spot a flock of greenfinch in the back hedge and wagtails in the paddocks. Crows, jackdaws and magpies. Other wildlife I have spotted here are frogs, a toad, a newt, a grass snake (although this had got caught in netting and had died but it indicates that there may be more) hedgehog, squirrel, rabbits, a deer in the paddock, bees nesting in the ground, leaf cutter bees, mason bees, ladybirds, lacewings, all manner of ground beetles and bugs. A real plethora of wildlife and I keep trying to encourage more by having the right kinds of habitat for them as well as not using any chemicals of course. One I want to concentrate on a bit more is the butterflies as I have noticed a decline, we have little blue in the paddocks when the grass is long but the garden butterflies seemed sparse last year compared to previous years, although we had a lot of caterpillars for the cinnabar moth more than I have ever seen before.

Again, another nice morning, sorry for being so negative February 😜 The shingle arrived this morning, it was supposed to come yesterday and John came home early to shovel it but after phoning the supplier they had forgotten 🙄 It arrived before 8.30 this morning so after doing the rounds I set about shifting it to where it needed to go. The driver was pretty helpful trying to drive and tip it at the same time but most of it ended up as far away from where it needed to go as was possible 😂 So cue Dawn, a shovel and a wheel barrow to spread it around, I did a pretty good job I reckon though I think we could have done with more than the three ton. The dog in the photo, Patch, although he looked as though he was ready and willing was absolutely no help whatsoever 😬

As I said, it freshens things up a bit and once the foliage starts to grow on the shrubs and flowers it will look quite nice, well nicer than it did before lol.

I was delighted to receive some feedback about the quail eggs, the chef sent this picture of his game scotch eggs using the quail eggs, don’t they look yummy, I might have to go a sample them lol

Thursday: An entirely different morning this morning, freezing fog 🙄 it was weird as it seemed as though daylight was early but it was the fog lightening everything up. It should burn off into a lovely day.

I wanted to get a couple of jobs done, the boot room needed a hoover and a wipe round, some washing needs doing so as well as the usual morning rounds I did those too.

I ordered a windowsill propagator, in the early days we didn’t have any windowsills so I never bothered but I do now and so I might as well use them to my advantage. I want to get some of the seeds going early but it’s still too cold even in the greenhouse for some seeds so a warm windowsill is ideal. There is a knack to raising seedlings indoors, light but not full sun all day, if the sun moves round that’s fine but they don’t want to be in it all day long. When the seedlings appear it’s important to keep turning the trays around this will hopefully stop the seedlings reaching for the light and getting too leggy, it also strengthens the stem. The next thing to consider is where you will move them onto, you have all these seedlings appear and then what do you do with them if it’s still too cold? That’s why I bought a heat mat for the greenhouse because that will be their next destination, after that it will be the greenhouse staging with no heat then depending on where they are going either to the poly tunnels or into the cold frames to harden off. I have sown tomato, cucumber, aubergine, peppers and melon, all these need a long growing season to produce anything useful.

The broad beans I showed in the greenhouse are coming up and the peas in the guttering in the polytunnel are also appearing. The carrots have still to appear 🙄

There are a couple of things you can sow now under cover, radishes and cut and come again lettuce. The other thing you can sow are micro greens, these are just seeds from broccoli, cabbage, celery, beetroot, peas, radish, rocket and you grow them like you would grow cress (which can also be sown) and snip them off to sprinkle on your salads or add to something cooked like a bolognese. Growing and harvesting like this gives you great little power packs of greens, full of nutrients and the kids will never know they haven’t just eaten something good for them 😜 I gave some packets of seeds to Shelley and she has been trying it with great success. The range is huge so even if you have a small space you can grow your own and it’s not difficult, if you can grow cress you can grow these there is no mystery to it. I found out accidentally many years ago when I sowed a tray of celery seeds intending to plant them out for full sized celery, I didn’t get round to it so snipped off the seedlings and they were really tasty. At this time of year I would probably use the hardier veg as mentioned above but as the season gets warmer you can start to use all kinds of greens including basil and coriander.

You would think that sowing a few seeds this morning would have satisfied my yearning to get on with preparing for the sowing season, but no, I am looking at the lovely sunshine and thinking what can I get done out there lol all the while I know full well the ground is too cold and too wet to do much at all so all I can do is plan. One part of my plan is already in motion, I have booked John a week off work in March so he can help with the heavy stuff 😜 I have compost to move onto the beds, the heavy strawberry troughs to move and any other job I can’t manage all by myself. I have identified exactly what area I will be using for the perennial cut flowers and they have all been growing in pots since last year ready to fill the bed up. I have chosen the area near my apricot tree, it has been a kind of non area for the last couple of years. Mum dug out all the raspberry runners and bindweed at the end of summer, half the bed will be for runner beans and the other half will be full of flowers hopefully. I have been going round identifying exactly what I have got to plant in there and I will be filling it as full as possible. Rudbeckia, lupin, delphinium, geum dahlia, sweet William, stocks, achillea, campion and a lot more that I can’t remember just now. At the moment it is weedy and I can’t really get on it to weed it until it’s a little drier but as soon as it is I will be raring to go 😀 And if I never get round to cutting them I will have a lovely flower bed to admire.

Friday: Another foggy morning but without the freezing bit however it is still pretty cold and the forecast is not much more than 6c so I will light the Rayburn early as I have the twins for an hour or so while Mia has her very first swimming lesson this afternoon.

I did the morning rounds and I have a missing guinea pig, there is no sign of it being attacked and laying dead anywhere, I assume it has got out somehow, it may return but if it has got out it may have been somethings supper 😏

I lit the Rayburn as soon as I had finished and come back inside, typically the sun cam out about half an hour later but I still don’t think it’s going to get very warm today.

I chopped up a load of veg to make some soup, tomato, pepper, leek, celery and carrot, should make a tasty lunch. I should do more soups as they are easy and packed with goodness all in one hit.

Saturday: A lovely day, the calm before the storm, and we spent most of it outside doing various jobs. John connected up the other ibc tank ready for the torrential rain and we moved the geese to the small back paddock where the grass is better for them and they won’t terrorise the hens now that they have started laying and are fiercely protective. Other jobs included cutting large tree trunks up and then splitting the logs.

Late afternoon I went off with a few family members to Aylesbury Waterside Theatre to watch a play called Ghost Stories 👻 I have no idea why we thought that would be a good thing to do lol.

Sunday: The storm rolled in at around 11pm last night and it has been noisy all night long, roaring through the tree tops. We are only on the letter C and this is Ciara so not too many so far this winter however they are saying that this is a once in every ten years storm and some areas have tornado warnings 🙄 If we get through this without any damage I will be surprised (and very relieved) We have discussed this morning the lighting of the Rayburn or not, I think not as we are bound to lose power at some point and indeed as I write this the lights have flickered ominously. John thinks light it now and if the power goes off at least the house will be warm, decisions, decisions. The storm is set to peak between 1 & 4 pm so we still have a while to go yet I have put a lump of beef in the slow cooker though and hopefully it will be in there long enough to cook.

Doing the animals this morning is going to be a task and most of the hens will probably not venture out very far from their huts, I am wondering how to get hay to the horses without it just blowing away 💨 I hate the wind, I almost hold my breath during storms, obviously won’t be able to hold it all through this one as it’s over 24/48 hrs. I can’t even begin to image how people feel in tornado/hurricane prone areas, I think I would have to move 😏 or have an underground bunker 😜

I went out to fill hay nets for the horses and take them down to the field shelter so that we don’t end up with hay blowing all over the place. As I got in there the wind blew hard, the roof of the shelter was loose and flapped and banged, the horse shat himself and so did I 😬 I went to get John, we found a roof strap, a hammer, nails and a ladder and went back down to secure the roof, crisis averted I reckon 🙄

I think smallholders are probably at their best in times of adversity, either alone or as a team they get out and sort it out. One of the things we tend to do is keep everything, it means we have a lot of crap but sometimes that crap comes in handy, like the roof straps, I have had them knocking around for years, I’ve used a couple for other things now and again but luckily I still had one left.

It’s just gone 4pm and we seem to be coming out of the other side of the storm, it’s still blowy but the strong winds have subsided apart from an occasional gust. Over the day we have had lightening, heavy rain, sunshine and of course the winds. I have seen Facebook updates of fallen trees all around us on the local roads and the new reports of the damage around the whole country is epic, fingers crossed that’s the worst of it over and in our little kingdom we have escaped unscathed 😬

We mostly spent the day inside hunkered down, we had bacon and eggs this morning and plenty of cups of tea, I have done some reading and John has watched the tv (when we had signal that is lol) Nov to have a day of not doing much every now and then even if it is forced upon us 😜

Friesland Farm

Knowledge, pasties and twiglet sitting.

Posted on January 26, 2020January 26, 2020 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 😝 🌧

Friesland Farm

Stormy weather, goose eggs & pod casts.

Posted on January 19, 2020January 19, 2020 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 🙄

Friesland Farm

A happy and healthy 2020 🥳 to you all.

Posted on January 5, 2020 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 😀

Friesland Farm

Mud, wreaths & the Winter season.

Posted on December 1, 2019 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 😀

Friesland Farm

Lots of rain, passata & baked beans 😜

Posted on October 6, 2019October 6, 2019 by frieslandfarm

Monday 30th Sept: Oh don’t you just love Monday mornings 🙄 I wanted to get on but the gremlins are at it again, half way into feeding the electric trips again 😏 Our electric consists of 4 fuse boxes each one reaching further out into the farm, so the main box is in the kitchen, then we have another in the outer building another in the stable block and then one in the hay barn. This means multiple trips backwards and forwards to discover which fuse is actually causing the problem, I unplug everything and turn everything off and go through a process of elimination backwards and forwards, plugging back in as I go until I am left with the stable fuse box which is knocking out the main box in the house. Eventually I find the individual fuse that is causing the problem so now we have everything working except the sockets in the stable block, everything is unplugged but it’s still not staying on so I’m guessing it’s actually a socket that is the problem but which one 🤪 The problem is that this ring of sockets are the ones out to the electric fencing in the side paddock so I’m hoping the horses and the chickens don’t work it out until we get it sorted 🙄 At least I can make a coffee now 😀

I spent the rest of the morning out in the veg garden, it is supposed to rain later so I’m taking advantage of the dry morning. First some weeding and tidying of the small poly tunnel and then onto some small raised beds, all the weeds went to the rabbits and turkeys who were happy to have some greens. I’m covering beds with weed membrane as I clear them, it will save me a whole heap of time in the spring and I did a couple of beds last year and it worked well, besides if I don’t get round to planting into them they will stay manageable. I squished a few caterpillars in the brassica cage, mainly on the sprouts, John loves them and so I grow 2/3 plants each year for Christmas. Then onto picking a few things, I still have plenty of tomatoes, a few courgettes, some peppers, the odd cucumber, thousands of hazelnuts on the floor 😂 so I’m still gathering in the harvest so to speak. I picked a few raspberries then some blackberries and by this time it’s lunchtime so I made an almond milk, banana, raspberry and blackberry smoothie and had a quick sit down before starting on tidying the house 🙄

The rain came on cue as I was hoovering 😏 so I spent some more time tidying up and sorting out tonight’s dinner, then out to do the afternoon rounds and collect the eggs.

I saw Cyril the squirrel tip toeing across my lawn, I said ‘I can see you Cyril’ at which point he stood stock still lol, then I said ‘it’s ok you can have the rest of the nuts I’m done collecting’ 😜 and he scuttled off towards the walnut tree.

John came home and we deduced that is one of the actual sockets that is causing the electric to trip, we now have to figure out which of the sockets it is and what’s causing it. As they are all inside at a guess something has got inside but that’s the best guess we have at the minute. The electric fencing will have to be plugged in the back here instead of the stable block and it needs doing before the horses realise it’s not on so that is Johns job later as I am going for a massage 😜

The lady and little girl that we got the pony from came over to see how she had settled in, very well so no worries there. We were in the field when a VERY LOW FLYING Chinook came right over where we were standing, you can imagine how the horses reacted not to mention the chickens flying everywhere. That has to be the lowest I have seen one fly and it’s bloody dangerous for both the horses and people when you are in the field and that happens. I sent a complaint via the website e-mail but it was returned as undelivered, typical, I have complained by phone in the past and found it doesn’t make any difference anyhow, so in future if I hear a helicopter I will get out of the field quickly!

Tuesday October 1st 😮 We are trying to get up earlier, we have been getting up around 7.15 which is quite late really. Last night I set the alarm but apparently did not turn it on 🙄 so again today it was around 7.15 before we got up. I like to think it’s the natural body clock and that it’s something we should follow and perhaps if we were both working here we would but John has to be at peoples houses before they go to work so that’s out of the window, for him at any rate 😜 I got the morning rounds done and it was already spitting with rain, by 9am we had a full on downpour and I think it’s set for most of the day so I haven’t made any plans to go back outside until necessary at feeding and egg collecting time later this afternoon. I have plenty I can turn my hand to indoors, some very outstanding paperwork, making some kind of sugar free goodies, checking thoroughly through the cctv to see if I can find out what actually happened to the cat. The more I think about it the less I think he just took off, I think he would have returned by now if that was the case, so I’m left with an accident of some sort or he has been taken, by what or who I don’t know and maybe the cctv can help, but there are nearly 100 hours of footage to look through 😏

I just had a quick look at the forecast, heavy rain right through to 9pm 😮

So rather than wall to wall rain, the sun actually came out ? By that time I was knee deep in paperwork 😏 but on the plus side the farm accounts are up to date, just need to do the plumbing ones but that can wait for another day, my eyes are tired, not used to doing a days paperwork anymore lol.

I felt the need for some stodgy food for dinner so we had a beef slice with homegrown mash potatoes and broccoli and then I made a sugar free pudding, basically I made a fruit sponge pudding with stevia instead of sugar, we had a small amount of ice cream with it and felt very full and satisfied. I know there are many people moving to a plant based diet but I wonder how many of them do a proper physical job, heavy lifting, digging, carrying 20kg sacks, lugging stuff about all day, working outside in the cold, I would bet not many, you really need some excellent fuel when you are doing jobs like that I think. Not one to write something and then carry on regardless, I looked it up, it seems you can do manual labour but supplements are mentioned and careful balancing of the diet is a must.

Wednesday: I had finished the morning rounds and was just finishing my coffee when Mum arrived to do some work 😀 I’m sure she has more than enough work of her own but she comes over to help when she can, love her 😘 Rather than work on the veg garden which is sodden we decided to sort out the plants directly in front of the house. When I put them all out there I had a definite idea of how I wanted it to look, which never really transpired due to one thing or another and now it’s looking, frankly, a muddle at the very least. So we moved pots around and took things out and put other pots in then got some of the weeds out of the gravel until it looked more structured and less cluttered. The sun was shinning so it was a good location to be working in.

John came home for lunch and a cuppa then after he left I cleaned out the rabbit which Josh has named Rosie and she is doing really well he even held her on his lap yesterday 😀 Then I went out and planted a few of the tulip bulbs in the driveway grass area, a bit of cheer for spring, we planted some crocus under the apple tree a month or so ago so it should be nice and cheery in the early part of the year. It’s getting near to (but not quite time for) feeding and so when I go out at this time of day I have stalkers 😋 the pitter patter of tiny hens feet and sometimes they are not even that subtle, launching themselves on a bucket if I happen to have one in my hand no matter what is in it!

By the way it’s a fab day, the sun is shinning and it’s not cold a real boost after the last week of rain.

Thursday: A frost again this morning, that’s two in a row and so the high water content veg will soon be showing signs of going over, the courgettes and outdoor tomatoes especially, the rhubarb leaves which were already wilting will fall off, the leaves on the trees will begin to brown and fall quicker 😔 There is no stopping the march of time into Winter 😜

Cor blimey that is a tad chilly out this morning, I came back in and put my wax jacket on instead of my gillet and even the ends of my fingers were feeling it inside my gloves 🙄 I flicked the electric fire on in the living room to take the chill off the air. John and I discussed lighting the Rayburn but it’s a difficult time of year to get it right, the building does not take much to heat it up so having the Rayburn on would make it too warm in here but without it it’s decidedly chilly in the evenings and early morning especially when it’s a cold night like last night. The temps today are forecast to be up to 13c but that is even through the night which would then be too warm and we would be sweating lol, ideally once the Rayburn is lit it wants to be kept going so it’s game of wait and see how long we can tolerate the chill for. The lucky thing is that the year before John cut enough wood for two winters, this will be the second one so he will have to cut more next Spring, lucky because he hasn’t felt well for a few months and so would never have got it done and we would have had to buy in. The good news is that he is feeling and looking much better, he is getting the hang of a healthier diet and rarely has cake, choc or biscuits and has cut down to around 5 cups of tea a day, anyone who knows him will realise what a big change that has been 😜 But he is much better for it 😀

I am having a coffee contemplating what jobs to do today, topping up bedding straw in some of the sheds/huts is a definite, especially as it’s got colder and wetter, the torts need to be monitored closely now to watch for them closing down towards hibernation. They need clean straw packed into their hut which they will spend more and more time in, when they no longer come out they will be packed away and put in the shed until next spring. There are the tomatoes of course lol, I will probably have a go at the Passata today, the last of the walnuts need cleaning up and drying ready for use and there is plenty I could do on the garden, some self set potatoes that need digging up and always at this time of year clearing of dead or dying stuff ah decisions decisions 🤔

I decided that first off, as I have been talking about it long enough and besides it was still a tad cold out, that I would make the passata. As I was doing it I was still thinking that I would freeze it but I have taken the plunged and put it jars and then in a water bath whoo hoo go me 😜 I will put two jars in the fridge just to be on the safe side but the other I will put in the dark preserves cupboard and leave it a while to see how it stores. I did the traditional Italian method (almost) but I think I would change a couple of things next time, the Italian way is processing the fresh tomato so no blanching to remove the skins as a lot of the flavour is in the skin apparently. I used some overripe toms and some just ripe but I would always use overripe in future as they are much easier, the bigger toms I used had a lot of flesh so they were fine but the smaller ones probably should have been scooped out and the middles put to the side, only small changes but things I think would make it better, the Italians by the way do scoop out but these were cherry toms so a bit fiddly. I kept the pulp pure so no basil or garlic because I may use it for chilli which won’t require basil. Not having a mooli 🙄 I used, firstly a steamer pan and squished them through the bigger holes then a sieve and the back of a wooden spoon to get as much as I could from them, a bit of effort required but not too bad with a small batch. I didn’t weigh the tomatoes but I ended up with three 1lb jars which I felt was a good ratio for the tomatoes I used. The pan has a clean tea towel in the bottom and wrapped round the jars to stop them moving about and as a bonus my tea towel gets a good boiling, win win I say 😀 It smells like a Chinese laundry in the kitchen with the tea towel boiling away, I know the smell because pre children I used to work in one (not a Chinese one but I like the saying) it reminded me of the hot washed sheets as they went through a huge roller machine that would dry and press them at the same time, funny how smells can bring back long ago memories.

Well I got the jars out of the water bath and the passata has separated 😏 nothing was ever mentioned in anything I have read so I did some further research and it seems that blanching the tomatoes is a very good idea, I didn’t do it remember, it’s a good idea because it destroys an enzyme that cause the separation of tomato and liquid, so in future I will definitely be blanching, apparently it’s still fine to use, it just doesn’t look good in the jar lol.

This is what I found:

‘During storage, pulp and juice in home canned tomatoes may separate, especially in sauce or juice made with crushed or puréed tomatoes. Separation is caused by an enzyme, Pectose (Pectinesterarse), found in high concentrations in tomatoes. The enzyme is activated when tomatoes are cut. To reduce separation, heat tomatoes quickly over high heat to 82 C (180 F) to destroy the enzyme’

We decided with the weather forecast for this evening, windy and wet, that we would light the Rayburn and so not one to waste the use of free cooking I cooked the first dinner of the winter on the top 😀 It will be nice to have warm dry towels and a overall warmth in the house.

Friday: I did the morning rounds and then mostly had the day off 😜 I went with Shelley, Josh and Flo to soft play where we met Sam, Mia & the twiglets as they have become affectionately known. By the time we got back in the afternoon John was already home and had lit the Rayburn, he went and got a few bits of shopping and then did the afternoon rounds while I did some tidying and hoovering. Shelley, Martin and the kids came over after tea and picked up Rosie the rabbit to take back to theirs and then early evening Charlie came over and we had cheese, wine and a proper natter, day done, bedtime 😴

Saturday: We got the rounds done had a coffee then went off to a local tractor spares jumble sale 😀 not just tractor parts there I should say but plenty of old and interesting bits and pieces too. I bought some lovely old tools, the craftsmanship is so much better than today’s stuff, a lovely old back hoe, I have been wanting to get one for ages and a lovely old fork, nice and light, little and beautifully made, no doubt it was a much loved tool for somebody. I also bought an old galvanised paint bucket, yesterday I went to the garden centre looking for something to plant into and everything is so expensive for what it was. This cost me a fiver, a bit of time cleaning it up and making holes in the bottom and voila a lovely planter for a splash of colour, happy as a pig in poo this morning 😀

When we returned John went to power wash the POL pen and I went into the garden, the outdoor tomatoes have blight which is a shame as there are loads of fruit on them, some beefsteak and some cherry but none of them any good so I pulled them all up and took them to the burning pile. I watered the poly tunnel, I keep forgetting that it needs doing now that the rain is doing the job outside 🤪 and I weedkiller the pathways, they are just too weedy to hoe and I’m not sure what else to do with them, I need a whole load of wood chip delivered ideally then I could use that to smother the weeds perhaps.

I still have plenty of tomatoes ripening I the tunnels and greenhouse but there are also a lot of green ones as well, that’s where green tomato chutney recipes are useful. I do though have a lot of very small cherry tomatoes that are ripe but smaller than average, I think I might do a ripe tomato chutney with these 😀

Sunday: Up and out to do the rounds, I was doing the orchard when I heard John chatting away and wondered who he was talking to, I suddenly remembered that the lads with the ferrets were coming this morning to do a bit of rabbiting lol. John went off to visit his Mum and I took a coffee out to the greenhouse, the sun is shinning this morning so it was a nice place to be for an hour or so. I spent my time, potting up some Chinese lantern that I had grown from seed but not yet divided and they were becoming a bit crowded in the one pot. The rest of the time I spent shelling beans and this is where the baked beans come in, they are haricot beans which I trialled and they did very well considering the few plants I grew. I also did a few kidney beans which also grew well, they have both been drying in the greenhouse waiting for the moment for me to shell them and now they are done. There are not many of each but it just shows that I could plant plenty more and they would be a good crop. I don’t think we use dried beans and pulses in this country as much as we should, me included. There seems to be divided opinion on wether to soak your dried beans prior to cooking or not, I think I may have to excitement with the soak and no soak methods and see which I prefer. I think I would err on the side of caution for the Kidney beans mind you as they contain a toxin that needs to be extracted before eating apparently but I shall still look forward to making a chilli with them at some point in the future, provided I remember to soak them prior to thinking, I’ll have chilli today 🤪

I let the turkeys out into the orchard pen today and the first thing they did was fly over the top! So they are currently grazing in the front paddock, turkeys are quite sweet birds, much more gentle than I thought they would be and quite timid, the chickens soon see them off and tasty morsel lying around.

With the daylight hours ever decreasing the egg numbers are dipping drastically too, I think currently we are feeding twice as many birds than are laying 😏 The last new lot have never got up to speed with only 38 eggs out of 50 and now they have dropped down to around 28. We have tried leaving them in until lunchtime to make sure they are not laying elsewhere, they have a light on for a few extra hours in the evening but it’s not helping much. They have been a ‘rouge’ batch from the beginning, the first day half of them flew over the electric fencing and we have not been able to keep them in despite multiple attempts at various things including heightening the fence, a lost cause is what they are I think.

Friesland Farm

Apple picking, baking day & the Wildlife Park day out 🦁

Posted on August 18, 2019 by frieslandfarm

Monday 12th August: A decent morning considering last nights storms, I helped John do the animals then got on with tidying up the hay bay in the barn. The hay gets everywhere once it’s opened, we have the big round bales, and most of it is now gone but I bagged up the last bits which makes it look tidier. I don’t want to tidy too much as somewhere round there is where the hedgehog is living or at least passes through. In the bay is also a double height rabbit hutch which had fallen apart, it got worse when a hen snuck in there overnight and the fox trashed it getting at her. I have now taken it apart and put it back together, making it stronger as I went and I have a usable hutch again. At the moment I have just put some hay in and left the doors open so that the free roaming hens can lay in there if they wish to and we can actually find the eggs🤞

I have plenty of other jobs to do but feeling a bit tired after those jobs, not a good sign really 😟 I have a few other minor issues I am monitoring at the moment hoping they are all individual things that will clear up one by one, wishful thinking maybe 🤔

Dinner is going in the slow cooker today so that is one less thing to do later on and frees up my day no end 😀

Just lost the electric for a second or two, it happens quite regularly here after heavy rain 🙄

Afternoon chaos with Sam, Shelley and the children lol, the babies are doing well, not even at their due date just yet but putting on the weight well.

Early evening John cleaned out the hens in the side paddock while I got the dinner ready, braised beef, mash and runner beans, followed by rhubarb crumble and ice cream 😀

Tuesday: A lovely sunny morning, the temps are below average and it feels a bit autumnal. I am buzzing today as everything seems to to ready to harvest all at once lol, more runner beans and tomatoes but also plums, pears and apples.

I spent an hour or so picking greengages, got to get them just before they are ripe so that the wasps haven’t had them all, pears, which need picking when they are mature but they don’t ripen on the tree only once picked, tomatoes and beans which are in abundance now and the apples.

Shelley, Josh and Flo came over and we had a glorious time picking eating apples 😀 I didn’t think there were many on the tree, I kept looking at the side by the driveway, but when I went round to the other side my goodness it was loaded 🍎 They are keeper apples so will store well if they last that long lol, as I don’t have any cooking apples I intend to use these instead.

I had a lunch of pasta, feta, freshly picked basil and tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and a twist of black pepper and then sat down to have a look at what kind of recipes I will use the produce for. Though the skins on the pears are not very cosmetically pleasing the flesh underneath will be perfect for freezing, baking, bottling whatever I decide. I have three types of tomatoes, small Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, your average red tomato and a black variety, I can’t remember the name and I have no idea how to tell when it’s ripe lol. I never put my tomatoes in the fridge they taste so much better if they are kept on a sunny windowsill until needed.

I love this time of year and all the possibilities of using the fresh produce, not to mention the amazing smells, I picked some fresh basil popped it into a bag and straight into the freezer for use in the winter months, smells divine.

Tonight we are having chicken and potato bake I think, that will be a new one on John but hopefully he will like it, I will only put parsley on half of it as he does not like parsley 🙄

Lunch finished, sit down finished, now time to process runner beans for the freezer 😜

Usual afternoon routines done and I had intended to go out in the evening and do a bit but I was quite tired so I didn’t 🤪

Wednesday: Oh what a different morning this morning! Pouring down with rain, it’s not cold though and I don’t mind doing the animals in a bit of summer rain. We had planned on an hour round trip to collect a lamb for the freezer but as it happens they were coming out this way and delivered it first thing so that saved us a trip out. We used to do our own lambs but after a terrible year what with one thing and another we gave up and now try to buy from other local producers. I was thinking that I should set up some kind of page for local produce to advertise because although it is shared on the Smallholders site I run, not everyone has access to the page. Primarily it’s for Smallholders to network and not for the general public so how would the public know what produce is available locally unless it is sold at some outlet like a farm shop or local shop, there must be plenty of farm/garden gate sales like ours that locals would use if they knew they were there. I think that is something I will mull over for the next few days and see what I can come up with.

After planting 1000 daffodil bulbs last Autumn I thought I would expand a little and get some tulips to plant this year, not quite as many though, only 125 lol.

The rain is set to be here for the day so the choices are tidy and sort out the office or bake, yep baking it is then 😜 I made, choc chip shortbread biscuits, good old rock cakes, the faithful Marry Berry Orange and Sultana cake and a Gingerbread loaf. I started at 10 and finished washing up at 1pm it’s surprising how long everything takes which is why I police Johns eating of them, they are not McVities 50p a pack biscuits rattled out in a massive factory in 20 seconds flat you know!

Thursday: One of those days when you never quite get on, windy but dry, are we going to just go straight into autumn, it seems these days that we don’t have any gentle ride into the seasons, just boom, Winter, boom Spring, boom Summer and now boom Autumn , we are ver hopeful in the UK that we will get an ‘Indian summer’ well we have been known to have a day or two in the past 😂

Firstly, I did the animals this morning as John and I were mulling over some invoices first thing which made him later than he likes to be. He doesn’t have to be anywhere on time as he is self employed but he had good work ethics and likes to be at a job early.

Animals done I had just made a coffee and someone came to buy point of lay hens, sorted that out and sat down to drink my coffee, almost finished it when someone else came about a cockerel that needs rehoming, we have enough already though so it’s a no from me. Someone else came for veg and eggs but we are all sold out so I shouted a rough time when there will be more available and figured I better get on with some picking. Runner beans, courgettes, beetroot, cucumbers and some purple sprouting broccoli. Not all of that will go out for sale as we will use some things and the girls will have some of it too. I was thinking about what has done well this year, Runner beans, until the wind knocked them over, the French beans, though I should have planted more, cucumbers, they are going strong as are the tomatoes, the courgettes and the spaghetti squash too although they are not ready to harvest yet, I had a few broccoli and cauli, and the broad beans, asparagus and rhubarb did well. What has not done so well, carrots, sporadic, soft fruit, weather related? Peas, hmmm never seem to get those right, globe artichoke, plenty of heads but the plant was too big and went over in the wind, the brassica cage has white fly so that’s no great and a caterpillar or two as well.

Still going strong but yet to harvest much are the peppers, cape gooseberry and melon and one success I am rather chuffed with is the lemon grass, not ready to harvest yet but growing well and some ginger I bought from the shop has sprouted and going strong for the time being, with the latter two it’s always winter that is the tricky part of keeping them going, I’m hoping the new greenhouse will aid that greatly. I had a rogue chickpea plant come up and that has done well in the greenhouse so maybe next year I will try those again.

I am acutely aware that the garden is like a jungle at the moment, I have not had time to keep fully on top of everything and it shows, I got to a point when I thought ‘ah sod it, I will tidy it all up at the end of the year’ I know I was going in for forest gardening but it has got a bit out of hand lol. It looks like a jungle, feels like a jungle and when I can hear the monkeys from the wildlife park down the road, it sounds like a jungle 🤣

Friday: We had broken sleep last night and here is why: John turns the light on in the bedroom and starts getting dressed, what time is it? I say, 1am he replies, what are you doing? I heard a van pulling away from our drive, how do you know it was a van? It sounded sluggish like a van. Now considering the rural crime rate in the Thames Valley is high and at the moment activity just across the border is very active plus we have a big local gypsy fair coming up which always increases the crime rate, it makes sense to be on alert for these things. Can you check the cctv footage he asked, well I can but there is a 15 minute delay between recording and playback so I probably won’t see anything yet, I oblige anyhow and go into the office to look at the footage while John goes outside to check his van and anything else. The cctv as predicted is not available yet and I can’t see any other activity on there, meanwhile John comes back into the kitchen from outside and I go to the kitchen from the office. The first thing I see on the side is 3 bottles of milk and a bottle of orange juice, the milkman, you heard the bloody milkman ffs 🤣 Well at least I heard him John replies, I reply, he has been coming three times a week for the last year!!

Luckily this morning we don’t have to rush around and get to work because we are taking Joshua and Mia to the above mentioned Wildlife Park for the day 😀 Just the big kids to give the Mummies a break and to help the both of them feel grown up now that they have little sisters and brothers that they have to share the attention with, and the fact that it’s school holidays which seem very long to parents and children alike 😜

It’s overcast and just started to rain so not quite sure what kind of a day we will have but we will make the best of it 😀

Well it wasn’t too bad of a day, we got a bit soggy and a bit muddy, a bit tired but a lot happy 😀 Lovely day and the children were super good all day 😘

Saturday: Slightly better weather today although it’s still drizzled a little eventually the sun came out, now all we need it to do is dry up the wet mess the rain has left. John did the animals while I picked veg, I got a soggy pair of gloves and sleeves for my efforts 😜 If it dries up some more I can get on the garden and start tidying up a bit but at the moment it’s too wet. John fixes the pop hole on the duck shed which has been broken for a while and then did the guttering on the greenhouse, that’s the final bit for that and then we need to make tops for the cold frames. I have some cleaning out of cages to do but again I need to wait for the ground to be a little drier, no point traipsing muddy boots in and out 🙄 We have three out of the six turkeys left and they have been good for a week now and looking strong (famous last words) it looks like we have two stags and a hen judging by the tail displays 😀 One of the quail died in the week but I think that has to do with the cold wet weather, they are more exposed here than where they came from, they are laying well though so that’s a bonus.

Sunday: I was well peed off this morning to find that it was raining 😏 I was hoping to get up and get on a little bit and the rain hampered us a little bit not too much. After doing the usual we set about cleaning out the goose hut, putting some cover on the ridge of the quail hut as it’s been letting in rain, pulling up stinging nettles in the orchard and tidying that area, tidying and clearing the orchard pen including dismantling a falling apart hut and lastly but not least cleaning out the turkey pen. The turkeys have just begun to make the distinctive gobbling noise which makes me laugh every time I hear it 😆

John went off mid morning to visit his Mum and I did a bit of tidying of dead and dying stuff on the veg garden and fruit cage. I got stung in places I didn’t know existed by 5ft nettles 🤪

After lunch I did a bit more tidying and clearing before calling it a day, it’s windy and that really gets on my nerves after a while lol.

Charlie and Macca called in for a cuppa and then we went over to visit my brother and his wife and came back with some blackberries 😀

Oh the pullets started laying today as well 😀😀

That’s another week over, thanks for reading, have a good week and I hope the world is kind to you wherever you are 😘

Friesland Farm

Lots of Sunshine, lots of birthdays & Easter 🐣

Posted on April 21, 2019 by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th April: I was up Uber early today lol, I woke at 5 decided it was still dark so would go back to sleep, couldn’t settle back so eventually got up at 5.45. I was starving, that’s the steroids, I couldn’t settle because my mind had by this time gone into overdrive and that’s also the steroids lol, still it’s a lot better than not having the energy to bother with anything at all so I’m happy 😃

I got up, dressed, breakfasted, out to do the morning rounds all before 7am, it gave John a lie in anyway 😘

I made a gruesome discovery in the quail house, something has devoured one of them, I’m not sure if the others have attacked it or if something has got in, I can’t see how but it’s possible, whatever has happened they have torn it apart and stripped all the meat off the bones making me think it’s possibly a rat but this hut is on 4ft legs up high. I will have to move the other three to safety and see what happens, they can be vicious towards each other if they decide to turn but at the moment it’s a mystery.

According to the weather forecast we are getting some warmer weather this week 😀 a bit of heat for all the fruit and veg will be very welcome.

Today is Charlie’s birthday and we are off out for lunch at Aston Pottery https://astonpottery.co.uk/ which is local to us, it’s a lovely place for lunch, plus a vast range of pottery and gifts and they also have a fabulous garden and sell the plants too, what’s not to love 💗

The wind was a bit blowy today and the warmth never really materialised but it didn’t matter for lunch and nattering and to be honest apart from the basics I didn’t get much else done today 🙄

The seeds are doing well in the tunnel, well most of them, yet again this year the peas are sporadic to say the least, last year I had to sow two lots and still they didn’t come up and this year the first lot are hit and miss, mostly miss 😜 Everything else is romping along.

Tuesday: Mia day today and so I got a few bits done outside as well as the feeding etc, then when she arrived she helped to do a few more bits before we spent a hour playing pirates in the pirate ship 😀 Then Josh, Flo and Shelley arrived for a couple of hours playing, Sam finished early and picked up Mia so I dashed round got the eggs and feeding down then indulged myself with Game of Thrones 😃 Another birthday today so when John got home we went off for cake 😀 Hoping for the warmth of the sun tomorrow as I have plenty of jobs to get done.

Wednesday: Up early because I couldn’t resist the promise of some warm weather 😀 I could see the orange Sun rising over the hedge when I opened the curtains whoop whoop, then it went cloudy lol, but still warmer than of late. I got the bed stripped and room hoovered and bed re made before 7.15 😀 off out to get the birds feed and let out and then straight into the poly tunnel and garden 😀 Mum arrived and we had a lovely session in the poly tunnel, she was giving me some lessons on cuttings, she has green fingers and years of knowledge so I’m tapping into that 😀 It got even better when some plants arrived with the postman and we got those potted on, ooo what a lovely morning 😀 Mum was just going when Sam and brought lunch, could this day get much better, lunch eaten Sam went to get the horse in and get him a wash down which by all accounts he enjoyed thoroughly. I went and picked some weeds for the rabbits and guinea pig and the set up a run that we have to put the tortoises in so they could eat without the chickens stealing it all.

I’m still moaning on about the price of plants at the garden centre lol, this has driven me to learn more about cuttings and propagating everything I have and I’m enjoying doing it, I just need the green fingers that my Mum has 😜

A quick sit down before I start again.

I did the feeding etc then spent a good few hours doing lots of little jobs, there are a million and one of them 😂 bathing the dogs, they haven’t been done for a while and with some dry days now is a good time. Patch is easy as he is short haired and lanky so doesn’t get too dirty, Mia on the other hand is shorter, longer haired and loves to roll in fox poo 💩 they both get a dose of flea treatment, Mia has a prescription treatment because she likes to roll in fox poo 💩 and can get mange from it. I altered the wording on the egg board sign, put some plants out for sale, got the washing in, put the dinner on, fed and watered the little chicks which are growing at a rate and beginning to feather up, watered the plants in pots out the front, oh and in between I reserved some turkeys to raise for Christmas 🤣 as you do. We always said we would like to do some turkeys and the opportunity arose so I took it, only 6 just to see how they do, excited 😜

I haven’t seen Diesel on the farm for a while, I see him down on the boundary wall and John sees him up the road a little but he is hardly ever at the yard at the moment 😕 there has been no sign of Cruella since the fox attacks back in February so I have no idea what happened to her ☹️ we have not had much luck with cats over the past two years, Molly hung around but obviously she was already old and now no longer with us so to that end I am on the search for two kittens. We have tried the re homing feral cats with not much success, they turn out to be not so feral more petrified, so we thought have them from young, two will be company for each other and hopefully they will be here for a long time to come, just got to find kittens that are short haired and not ridiculously priced!

Thursday: Up early again, you guessed it, bathroom cleaned and hoovered before 7.15, I’m on fire 🔥 😜 two loads of washing on and done then out to feed everything and let it all out for the day. Watering next because we have a distinct lack of rain 😲 so things in pots need a bit of help. Onto the polytunnel to water in there then a quick clean up in the boot room. I had Josh on his own for a few hours and we fed jack a carrot, put fresh bedding in for the ducks, moved the torts to the pen so they can eat, hung out the washing, made a paper aeroplane and flew it, kind of, then we gathered sticks and made a fire, cooked and ate cowboy sausages in the garden 😀

PICTURE ‘this is the life’ was our motto today 😀

Quick rest and a cuppa then onto the unending list of jobs, I’m down to around 999, 874.3 left on the list now 😝

Cleaned out the little chicks who are feathering up nicely now and growing every day!

Did a few more domestic bits before John came home and then went to get a bit of shopping because with a 4 day weekend there will be nothing left on the shelves 😂 I picked up a couple more plants for a couple of quid each a hardy fushia £2 and some day lilies also £2, not complaining at that 😝 and I think they will be on sale by the end of the weekend as most are in need of water!

Good Friday: The beginning of the Easter weekend, Eostre an ancient word meaning Spring, the celebrations of new life, hence the eggs and bunnies both symbols of fertility and the return of some warm weather 😀

It also happens to be Mia’s 3rd birthday today 😀

Up early 😜 crack on before it gets too hot! John did the feeding etc while I did some watering and domestic bits then we set about getting the poultry netting set up in the back paddock, this is a belts and braces job because we have three single strands of wire around the outside too. We need to (a) keep the hens in and (b) keep the foxes out 🙄 the netting has been chewed to bit by various animals, rabbits, geese, fox, as soon as there is not enough charge in a battery it gets chewed so I’m thinking we won’t buy that again. Anyway we have it, such as it is so we have doubled it all up and can only hope that this will work.

While we were collecting netting from the front we saw a car parked in the lane, I went to investigate as there was no one in it and saw a chap taking photos over our neighbours gate, I asked him what he was doing and he said he was photographing the horses, I think he was genuine but I explained to him that it’s not a good idea and he could be seen as scoping the place out, he seemed a bit shocked at that, either way if he was genuine he learnt something new and if he was not he has been clocked, keep em peeled people 😜

I was supposed to have a customer come and collect some goose eggs today but they can’t get past the traffic to the local wildlife park, do you think I should put in a claim 😝 honestly in the last two years the traffic to there on bank holidays has got horrendous.

We had a birthday party for Mia in the afternoon, the weather was amazing, bit too hot for me, hush my mouth, but it was a lovely time playing in the front paddock.

We moved 51 hens to their new back paddock enclosure, fingers crossed they stay there 🙄 by this time it was 9pm so we shut everything else away, I made myself a hot chocolate and John a tea, then I sat outside and drank mine 😀 The moon was fantastic tonight with an Amber glow just fabulous, I listened to all the noises, distant dog barking, sheep bleating, watched the night flights going back to London and wondering where they had been, and was aware of the bats flying around. We have always had bats flying here, I don’t know where they roost, we have never come across any in 10 years but they are out every night. Back inside to catch up with Gardeners World 😀

Saturday: Ahhh up at 5.30 lol, once I’m awake these days and if it’s light I figure I might as well get up and get on so that’s what I did, nice time of the morning as I watched the deer running across the field at the back of us. By the time John got up at 7.30 I had everything fed, watered and let out, got some plants in situ and done the watering 😀 He went off to finish the last few bits of Shelley and Martins bathroom and I set about planting the broad beans and putting together some metal shelving in the poly tunnel. Martin came and dropped off the wood for the greenhouse which is being done tomorrow 😀

Now by this time I was beginning to notice one or two hens walking around the place 😣 I went into the stables and there were about 10 of the buggers, more have appeared during the morning, we decided in the end just to electrify the ring fencing hoping the hens would stay behind the netting, so that’s clearly not working. I managed to shut the majority of them in a stable and that’s where they can stay for now, at least it’s not all 51 of them……yet!

I cut a piece of contorted hazel for the Easter tree, I like doing it and the children like looking at it, they get to take something off the tree to keep each year.

The thing I’m finding with this glorious weather is that I quickly run out of time to spend in the poly tunnel, it gets hot and as the trees are not out in full leaf yet there is no shade either, so while I’m itching to be out there, i can’t 🙄

Browsing through things while it’s a bit too hot for me I discovered you can eat Hostas, Hostas, who knew that? Amazing, apparently they taste a bit like asparagus and are considered a mountain vegetable, might just have to try one 😜 further reading and I discover that they are the perfect forest garden vegetable and have the potential to be a major commercial vegetable 😲 I wonder how many people I can convince to have a go lol, well if they are good enough for the slugs I guess they must be tasty 😋

Late afternoon/early evening I planted out some peas and watered bits that I have been planting over the last couple of days, then it was time to round up the escapees and take them back to the hut in the small back paddock, 22 of them in all 😕 Tomorrow we will electrify the netting instead of the strand wire and see if it keeps a few more of them in.

Before we did that John put the other birds away and I went to do the geese and Sussex, as I stepped out of the door I could hear a Robin sending out the alarm call and jumping from branch to branch in the trees, I wondered what was alarming it and then the cat appeared (the Robin has a nest in my plastic flower mountain) then I went over to the geese two of which had managed to get the wrong side of the fence so there were geese honking, A Robin shrilling loudly and the cat meowing, a right racket going on lol.

Easter Sunday: A busy day ahead of us, Martin & Luke are coming over to build the frame for the greenhouse, Macca is giving them a hand as is John. Charlie, Sam, Shelley, Josh, Mia and Florence will also be coming over and I will be on bacon rolls and tea duties then later on a roast lamb dinner and blueberry and apple pie, Chocolate cake and of course Easter eggs😜

It really was a busy day but the lads got loads done, we ate heartily and the children were exhausted at the end of it all, I am pooped 😬

The asparagus is at last coming through 😀

Over and out for this week 😴😴😴😴😴

Friesland Farm

A moment to cherish, plenty of jobs & visitors.

Posted on March 4, 2019 by frieslandfarm

Monday 25th Feb: Frosty, sunny, glorious 😀 A new week 😀 John has returned to work today I don’t think he is in the best of moods as I made him do some work at the weekend as well 😬 but as I explained we have to get some stuff done while the weather is with us 😝 I am hoping the weather holds enough to get the Hen hut moved a little ready for the new birds and to get the front paddock dragged and rolled, if we miss the window of opportunity who knows what the weather will do and when we can eventually get it done. It is not something I can get done by myself as the chains are really heavy to move, even attaching them to the tractor is an effort, a few years back I would have had a damn good go but these days I won’t even attempt it as it would just result in frustration and tears lol. In a normal year I would get Samantha to help me if I couldn’t do it by myself but she is expecting their second (& third, yes twins!) and so asking her is off limits for now 😀

I walked round yesterday I wanted to get a look at two things, the daffodils, they are just about up, pretty much the same as bulbs down the driveway so that’s good, bulbs in pots are up and flowering so they are way ahead. The second thing was to see if there is any sign of the wild garlic I planted along the front paddock hedge, no sign yet but I am pretty excited for these this year, it will be a real treat to pick some of that and I will probably put some out for sale for the more adventurous culinary customers. I need to have a look in the polytunnel to make sure the beans and peas ok, Shelley said she gave them some water when it got very warm, I need to give the citrus trees a little drink as well, not too much in case the temps plummet again.

The geese are laying 4 eggs a day between them, I’m still convinced the two youngsters are female so we may even get more a day than that, I might have to find somewhere local to sell them too, although social media selling pages produce great results I have found in the past.

One thing I learnt while I was away is that it’s not necessarily the work that makes my hands/feet swell and joints hurt, it happens anyway even while on holiday, I will await the results of my blood tests and see how we proceed from there 🙄

3.30 and I’m exhausted and contemplating a power nap, I have been outside all day trying to secure the area that the tortoises will go into when they wake up which won’t be long. I made some of the fences back in autumn out of pallets but I needed to fix them in place, easier said than done 😋 and then make another piece of fence for the front. Sam and Mia came over at lunchtime and together we hashed up something that will keep them in, I say hashed as we had a box full of useless screws to choose from and a saw that would be difficult to cut a melon with! Even so, we have a sort of result, just one more bit to do and it will be ready when they are and hopefully they won’t escape 😬 Then on to feed the birds and collect the eggs, not many tea breaks and certainly no dinner break today 🥴

Two cups of tea, some ibrufen and a quick nap and it’s on to the next jobs, luckily John was home by 4.30 so we went out and cleaned the two stables that the birds are in and put in barrowfuls of nice clean straw, he also sorted out the rainwater from the tanks as it was blocked this morning. Then John cleaned out the back pen ready for new birds in March while I lit the fire and sorted out tonight’s and tomorrow’s dinner, annnnnd relax finally. A good day, I’m happy with what we got done 😀

I am in the middle of liaising with a lady who runs a childcare group locally and each year she has eggs to hatch out for the children to watch and learn about, this year she will hopefully be having some of our light Sussex eggs, they will be incubated, hatched and reared under a brooder, when they are ready to go outside we will have them back to grow them on, this is a win, win situation for both of us as the children get to be excited by hatching fluffy chicks and we get young birds back to bring on to adulthood 😀

Tuesday: I have Mia today but the weather is great and so we have been outside, walking in the paddock first thing, feeding and watering the rabbits, then letting the birds out and collecting the eggs, playing with the dogs. Even with a broken arm she is a real trooper and nothing stops her trying, it’s amazing how quickly children adapt. Shelley, Josh and Florence came over at lunchtime, a bit of playing in the garden, then it was time for a sit down on the sofa, it’s pretty tiring carrying your arm round in a heavy plaster cast lol.

Mia and I have managed to feed the birds and collect the eggs, not that there are very many at the moment, I keep wondering why we bother really, I’d like the hens to be truly free range but the loses are just too great ☹️

This warm spell is a bit disconcerting, a false Spring, I keep thinking I need to get on and then reminding myself that they are bonus gardening days, the temptation to crack on with seed sowing is great but experience tells me that it is better to wait and so tidying up is all that is needed at the moment 😀

I have been lighting the Rayburn around 5pm because it’s so warm we haven’t needed it all day long but we do need hot water and some heat overnight.

Wednesday: Another lovely sunny, warm day, I had Florence for the morning so went out and did everything quickly before she arrived. She is a pretty laid back baby and so I managed to get a few things in the house sorted while she was playing with toys on the floor, mostly we spent the time playing ‘peek a boo’ or ‘pat a cake’. I don’t often get the chance to spend time with her on her own so we made the most of it. In the early afternoon. I went and got a bit of food shopping in preparation for Dad and Sue coming to stay next week after that it was sit down with a quick cuppa before going out to feed the birds and collect the eggs. By now it was 4pm and so I thought I would have an hour in the large poly tunnel, a bit of weeding and preparing the ground. I got about 45 minutes done and Mum and Ken turned up to collect an item they were borrowing, time for another cuppa 😀 The rabbit were happy with the fresh weeds, I need to get back into the routine of supplying them with fresh greens again. I think the tortoises have woken up as I can hear bashing in the shed, not quite sure what to do with them yet as although it’s been warm enough if the temps dip low again it could be disastrous! I ordered a 100w lamp because now they have woken up they need to come out and rehydrate and begin eating, I will need to find somewhere inside for them to ‘bask’ for a while.

Thursday: There are spots of rain on the window this morning so I think it will be an entirely different day altogether from what we have had over the past week. I have two jobs to sort this morning along with the usual, the first is to get the tortoise house out and find somewhere to set them up, the second is to separate one of the Light Sussex cockerels as he is being picked on and has blood on his head. This is the more dominant cock pecking him on the head to get subservience but it can all get out of hand and end in death so separation is the key. These are the birds we will be eating but at the moment I need them to produce eggs for incubation, however four cockerels to two hens is way too many so I will remove two and fatten them up.

I decided this morning that I will do that good old school experiment with the runner beans in a jam jar that we always did in primary school for Josh and Mia, I think they will enjoy watching the beans grow. It’s simple enough, a jam jar, a bean seed, a toilet roll inner and a bit of water, voila, science at home 😀

I decided that the best place for the torts will be the tack room, Cruella De Ville seems to have disappeared, her food has not been eaten for days and it’s clear there has been some disturbance in there as everything is scattered and there are chicken feathers. My guess is that a Hen has gone to bed in there, the fox has gone in and had her and the cat was terrified and fled, only a guess but judging by the scene and the clues that’s what has occurred 🙄 I will block up the cat flap but leave food water and a dirt tray just in case she is well hidden and set the torts up in there with a uv lamp.

Two of the welsh harlequin ducks have bonded and keep escaping outside the perimeter, presumably to find somewhere to set up home and raise ducklings. Unfortunately at the moment I can’t let that happen not until after Tuesday next week at least because they will need to be kept in all day just for the day, after that I can rearrange everything and fingers crossed they play happy families. The geese are laying phenomenally well and my educated guess was right the two youngsters are female, that means we are getting just over 40 goose eggs a week 😲 I really need to find somewhere to push the sales of these lol.

Meanwhile in the ‘ffs’ race, the sink in the back has blocked up, the washing machine discharging water is backing up into the sink, I’m am nothing if not a plumbers wife though and it’s a job I can manage, just not one I needed today 😝

Out to clean the goose hut out, I need to get all the old stuff out to make sure that I haven’t missed any eggs so far, only 1 so that’s good, I will now know for sure that all eggs are fresh eggs. I filled it up with fresh straw then shut the door, the reason being that the hens will soon find it and oik it all out if I don’t. Let me tell you a bit about hens, they are endearing and exasperating at the same time, endearing when they run and skip in the spring to catch insects on the wing, when they lay you a lovely egg, when they are clearly enjoying dustbathing and soaking up the sun 😀 But chickens are ninjas, they silently follow you and then when you open a door to the shed/polytunnel/tack room, they shoot in-front of you with lightening speed and proceed to wreck the joint. You May think they are light footed but they knock over everything, they scratch up everything and scratch everything out of where it ought to be. They also lay in the most awkward or inappropriate places you could possibly imagine, if it looks like you are going to get cramp or a near death experience climbing over something to get the egg, that’s where they laid it, if it’s just out of arms reach down a crevice, that’s where they laid it, honestly, free range is an obstacle course of egg collecting 😜 The ducks by complete contrast will dump their egg anywhere, oh we’ve been let out, let’s go, ooops laid an egg while I was running to the food bowl 😂

I moved the tortoise hut from the shed near the house to the tack room and sealed up the cat hole so they can’t get out, but neither can the cat if she is still in there so I will put a litter tray down, at least I will know if she is about or not. The lamp is arriving today and I need to put out some water for them to rehydrate and see how it goes from there.

We went out for lunch today as it was Shelley’s birthday, we picked up Josh from school later on and he wanted to help do the animals so he stayed while Shelley went home, Sam and Mia came out to help as well. I had a moment when I felt really blessed as I had a grandchild in each hand walking up to the hay barn, one of them was dressed in a fairy outfit with her wellies on 😂 the other having had a full day at school and helping out in his uniform, both jumping in muddy puddles on the way, that has to be right up there with one of my favourite moments 😍😍

Friday: March 1st St Davids Day I have got a fair bit to get done today, sat having a coffee at 8am having already cleaned the bathroom, put on a wash load and sorted out the spare room ready for Dad and Sue to come and stay on Sunday for a week. The weather is back to its grey, damp look but I don’t feel that the temperatures have gone too low again yet, it feels pleasant enough for the time of year.

Did the morning rounds, I can’t collect the goose eggs yet as one is still laying so I will have to do that later, spotted Diesel sitting on the bottom paddock hedge-line near the rabbit holes, which is good because we haven’t seen him for a few days, obviously out hunting 😀

Back inside now to get everything shipshape 😝

Saturday: Another dull, grey, uninspiring day today but work goes on 😋 I did the morning rounds while John finished cutting the hedge he started last week. When you watch farming programmes on the telly they always have the big equipment to do the jobs but in smallholding it’s nearly always done by hand making the jobs long and sometimes heavy work and most Smallholders do all the jobs themselves, no contractors to do it for them while they sit having a coffee lol.

The horse came in last night as we had our chap here to shoot, his mission was successful. My neighbour had said she thought the fox was coming at around 5.30 and so he set up around 5.15 and lo and behold by 5.45 he had done the job he came to do, he stayed until 9pm and though he could hear more that were further away he didn’t see any more on our land. That gives us a bit of a lull for a while and the hope that no more birds will be picked off. We are expecting a batch of new hens in next week, these will go back behind the electric fence rather than being fully free range, it’s just not possible, they will be free range in terms of the area they get is very large about 1/2 acre to 40 birds and on grass, moving regularly so that will have to be sufficient.

I finally got round to checking the tortoises, I unpacked a bit of straw to find them and there is movement there so they have survived hibernation, I’ve set up the heat lamp and put out water so hopefully they will slowly come back to life 😀

John went off to get the feed and I spent a pleasant hour or so in the poly tunnel and raking up debris in the garden. It was warm in the tunnel and I’m planning to get some seeds sown in there soon (as soon as I get around to it) probably some beetroot and early carrots, I have set a mouse trap just in case there are some living nearby as they will just gobble up and seeds that are sown his time of year 🙄 I went through the seeds I have already and decided on salad leaves, radishes, turnips, beetroot, spring onions and all year round cauliflower, I will also get some more broad beans and some peas on the go and see how we get on. Once the spare room is spare again I can use the window sill to start off some peppers and tomatoes, it’s the only sill I have got that will be useful so may as well use it. I realised I have no carrot seed so ordered some and will sow some of those too, these will only be small amounts just to get something growing but with most we should have something to eat in no time at all 😀 I might give planting/seed sowing with the moon phases a go, nothing to lose I figure and it may well just be beneficial, the idea is the pull of the moon which affects tides will also pull moisture up from the soil and help the plants develop better, with this is mind, leafy above ground crops are good for sowing next Wednesday & Thursday so that will fit in well with my week 😀

Sunday: Dull, drizzly but not too cold this morning, I stepped outside to drink my coffee first thing, heard the Lions roaring and watched the woodpecker fly across to our ash tree then proceed to hammer it 😀 happy mornings. It’s a busy day today, John unloaded the feed while I did the animals, then I needed to get some cooking done as Dad and Sue are arriving later plus we have some other lunch guests as well. I made a gluten free almond and coconut cake, dead easy and looks good, I will let you know how it tastes later on, I have a ham on the stove boiling reading for sandwiches all week, a keto avocado, chicken and bacon salad for lunch, a bit of hoovering to do and a quick wipe round of the bathroom, sort out the Rayburn ready for lighting then we are all good 😀

I walked to the edge of the paddock this morning while I was waiting for the goose water to fill up and there are the first signs of the wild garlic, excited muchly 😜, I pinched tip off just for a taste, mmm delish 😋 can’t wait for it all to come through.

Dad and Sue arrived and I forgot all about publishing the blog 🤣