Eggs – Page 8 – frieslandfarm (flowers)

Dead duck, disappearing baby rabbits and parsnip cake.

Posted on October 29, 2017October 29, 2017 by frieslandfarm

Monday: Woke up with a touch of vertigo today so just about got round and did the feeding then mostly tried to sit still all day until the next lot of feeding in the afternoon! Thankfully it had passed by early evening and fingers crossed it won’t come back for a while. Bit of a waste of a day but sometimes the body is just trying to tell you to stop.

Tuesday: Better today, not dizzy but have a head cold blurhh, sweating as I did the morning rounds. Got a few things done before Mia arrives, some potatoes that needed digging up and put up some protective fencing around the fruit trees in the front paddock, the geese keep trying to strip the bark which will kill them off if I don’t stop it now.

Wednesday: Lovely sunny morning ☀️ got the feeding done then onto picking the rest of the veg I started getting in yesterday. There are potatoes, parsnip, celeriac, snack peppers, hot peppers. The pepper plants in the poly tunnel are huge but did not produce much, however they are still healthy plants and as peppers are perennial plants I will see what I can do to overwinter them, it would be great to get such a head start on them next year, I also think I need to keep the plants smaller so that they produce fruit quicker, can’t hurt to try. After that I went to clean out the geese and then put fresh bedding in for the ducks, which by the way we are lucky to still have this morning after John did not shut them in, either their house nor their pen, the gate was wide open this morning and they were taking themselves off down to the paddock! Still have a touch of vertigo but not too bad, I think it’s caused by this head cold which is also something and nothing at the moment, hope it doesn’t get worse 😝

Ordered some ‘meteor’ pea seeds as the last ones I planted got eaten by something, I will be growing them the way we used to in school, well starting them off that way at least, on a wet piece of tissue on the windowsill along with the broad beans. I’m guessing it’s mice pinching the seeds before they even get started, I can’t blame them really but they are interrupting my growing attempts, so starting them off then planting them will hopefully give me a better shot at it.

I am making roasted celeriac soup today, have not made it before so I am hoping it tastes good, I made fresh bread yesterday so that will be dinner tonight, we try and have a meal in the week that rests the gut a little, besides soup is such an easy and delicious thing to have. There are recipes for apple and celeriac soup but I opted for just the celeriac, with a touch of garlic.

As I was looking for recipes I found one for parsnip Madeira cake, yeah, I will let you know what it tastes like once it’s cooked lol. Next to chocolate cake, Madeira is one of Johns favourite cakes so we will see how it goes down.

Verdict is still out, it’s edible and not at all unpleasant, John asked me not to tell him what was in it so I haven’t and he has been eating it just fine lol, I quite like it though I wouldn’t put it on my favs list.

Thursday: Drizzle today, as the mornings are quite dark, before even going out to do the feeding I cleaned the bathroom, after feeding I got on with some washing and cleaning the rest of the house and that was pretty much the day for me, John was home early so he did the afternoon feed and collected the eggs and lit the fire, Sam came over and did the horse, I did do a bit of paperwork that needed doing.

Goodness I haven’t noted anything for Friday or Saturday lol so I will have to round up, did the usual feeding etc. I can’t actually remember what I did Friday except that I thought all the baby rabbits had gone, turns out they were hiding behind the side of the hut and a wall, so much for me blocking up all the holes! Had Josh in the morning while Shelley and Martin went for a scan on baby, she is a pink one 💕😀 Sam and Mia came over in the afternoon and Charlie came round in the evening. Saturday morning I did a bit of clearing in the poly tunnel, I have cut back all the peppers as they won’t produce anything now, but they are perennial so I have given them a good watering and covered them to see if they will survive winter, no harm in trying. I also put fleece jumpers on my lemon and orange trees, gave them a good last watering and bubble wrapped the pots they are in, I have about 5 small lemons growing and hoping they make it through the winter. I intend to move them into the large tunnel next year but need to build some raised boxes for them so that they are not in wet cold ground, ideally a conservatory is needed but we don’t have one so until we do I hope they survive, they did last year but it was fairly mild.

On one of those days the disabled duck died 😩 she has had a bad leg, I tried rest and all kinds of other things but in the end she just seemed to get on with it as it was, she was eating and drinking fine, she even learnt how to stand on one leg, just using the other which was pretty useless, to balance on but when I opened the hut one of those mornings she didn’t come out and had died overnight.

Sunday: Sunny but a cold wind, and the clocks have gone back, that will mean dark nights and it really doesn’t seem much lighter in the mornings either!

Friesland Farm

Rain, Sun and naughty dogs.

Posted on March 26, 2017 by frieslandfarm

Monday: Back from a weekends rest although we did a lot of walking, but the change of scenery was very nice.The quail seem to be thriving now and having a quick glance at them I am hopeful there are a fair few females amount them although I won’t know for sure for another week or so and they could be famous last words!

After the morning rounds I went straight into the greenhouse with the fuchsias that arrived while I was away, I ordered some hardy fuchsia plugs, 20 in total, I just need a couple for the front boxes and I plan to bring them on and sell the rest at the farm gate. It was very satisfying potting them on and they will just need a little nurturing before going outside to grow on. I came in a researched each type and made notes that can be printed off for information if anyone buys any. Fuchsia flowers can be eaten as can the berries they produce, some of these will make stunning additions to the salad bowl or cake decorations as well as a beautiful display in the garden.

I am pretty sure Mr Fox has had an escaped chicken overnight as there are feathers in the yard 😖

We have plenty of eggs at the minute, the hens have gone into mega lay lol, I may need to do a bit of cake baking to use some of them up, quiche would be ideal but neither John nor I particularly like them so will have to think of something else.

I decided to do a bit of using up, I had some bread to make into crumbs and then made a treacle pudding and put the other crumbs in the freezer for using later, then a use up of fridge stuff, bits of cheese, mushrooms, some salami I bought at Christmas and never used, half a bag of fresh coleslaw veg, a good handful of herbs, half a carrot two decidedly seen better days spring onions, plus 9 eggs and made a frittata which will hopefully taste good (it did 😀) and serve me well for a couple of lunches. I intended to make some Yorkshire pudding batters for the freezer but of course you never have the right ingredients in the cupboard when you need them 😝 I fancy a go at scotch eggs so the breadcrumbs will come in handy for those when I get round to it and of course I could make fresh pasta, but I need 00 flour so that will have to wait, I also need to borrow a pasta machine, I have hand made it in the past but if it’s thick it’s not so good. Oh my days did that ever chuck it down this afternoon, hurry up back springlike weather please.

Tuesday: Did the morning routine, all seems well. Then came in to make some Yorkshire pudding batters up for the freezer to try and use up some of these eggs. Sam got me some flour yesterday so I made up 4 batches using 16 eggs in total. It makes sense really as there are times when we don’t have any eggs at all because the chickens have gone off lay or the customers have bought them all. Then I had a go at curing eggs, I’ve wanted to do this for a while, they are all the rage in fancy restaurants at the moment, basically you take the yolks and bed them in a mix of salt and sugar for 4 days in the fridge then dry them and use them grated on salads or pasta, we will see how they turn out. With the whites I made an angel food cake.

Then I had a most unexpected, unwanted incident that made me fly out of the door shouting like a banshee, I could hear Kai making a racket but thought it was because Sam was out in the front paddock collecting eggs, until I looked up and saw the two dogs, Mia and Patch tearing an escaped chicken apart, furious does not even come close I can tell you. I flew out of the door, growling at them to get round the back, when I got them in they had a good few belts with my shoe on the backside and on the nose, all the while I am still growling ‘how dare you’ ‘you disgust me’ not that they understand that but they know I am furious with them. Then I put them both in the cage and shut the door, the ultimate in ‘you did a bad thing’ round here. I can’t quite believe it, Mia is nearly 5 and never done anything like that ever, nor Patch who is just over 2, in fact I have never had to raise my voice to them let alone a hand. The plan is that they will not be allowed out unless I am out there for a few days and we will see how it goes, not sure what I will do if they decided to do it again, the trouble I’m guessing is they have far too much freedom to run around as they please, I’m hoping they just got a bit over excited and that’s it. On the chicken front, I went back out once I had confined them, expecting to retrieve a dead body but while there were plenty of feathers everywhere there was no chicken! Despite having a look round for it I couldn’t find it at all, so it must have got up and run off in which case it possibly wasn’t too badly hurt, I will have another good look round once the cake is out of the oven.

My morning went from bad to worse in every way, the cake cooked I went out to look for the chicken, I went into the front paddock and have a look in the chicken hut to see if it ran in there, I couldn’t see any distressed or injured chicken so came back out, the gander headed straight for me head down and neck outstretched so I shot back inside the hut and shut the door. I will sneak past I thought phahaha nope, he came for me again so for the second time I ran back to the chicken hut and shut the door, he was getting pretty close I was sure I was gonna feel him grab the back of my leg, I then picked up the floor scrapper I use which has a long handle and armed myself with it to get out of the paddock, laughing nervously all the way back. Then I turned out the cake, I hadn’t read the instructions properly and instead of folding in gently I had whisked in rapidly, result, flat cake 😝 I think I will start today over again 😭😭

I have Mia this afternoon but she was tired and fell asleep pretty quickly enabling me to get some dinner made for later, chicken casserole for John and chicken and mushroom stroganoff for me 😀 I then got the dehydrator out and gave it a wash, I’m out of mushroom powder and need to make some more plus there are some herbs I want to start picking and drying and the garlic I grew last year which has been hanging up is starting to ‘green’ in the middle, I have about 4 bulbs left and once they go like this they can get bitter so I thought I should probably dry them and grind them to powder before they start to shoot. I really ought to try using the bottom of the Rayburn but I have had less than great results with it in the past and at least the dehydrator is temperature controlled, as long as I pack it full and get the best use out of it that’s ok isn’t it?

Wednesday: The foul weather isn’t getting much better but apparently the weekend will be warmer so I will hold onto that fact 😄
I sneaked into the goose hut this morning to see how many eggs are in the nest, 10 so far, one of the geese is spending more time on the nest, not much but enough to indicate that she will sit soon. As we still have goose eggs for sale I will probably leave them in there now and see what happens. We have sold nearly 60 eggs so that’s not bad at all. So far this morning the dogs have been on their best behaviour in fact Patch is hardly leaving my side bless him, I am really hoping they just got a bit over excited and have learnt a lesson, still no sign of which hen it was so maybe it was more of a rough game than a kill mode. I bought a couple of large punnets of mushrooms yesterday which are now in the dehydrator.

I went out and spent an hour or so in the greenhouse, sowing more seeds and splitting the herbs I bought last week at the garden centre. I noticed one of my rhubarb crowns has been ravaged by something, sawfly I think, but I have not come across this before so have asked opinions on garden pages, it something I need to sort but I need some idea of what I am dealing with and google is not coming up with anything.

It is a filthy day today, it reminded me of childhoods days like these when the only entertainment was racing raindrops down the window pane 😛I lit the fire early, it will make it cosy indoors and I won’t mind the rain so much. Then I think I will scour Pinterest for slow cooker recipes, I bought one yesterday after chatting with facebookers about the merits of owning one, the general consensus was that it was worth having, my reasoning was that it uses up a lot less electric than turning the oven on in the summer months when the Rayburn is not lit and now I’m going to compile a page of recipes for it, what better day to do that than a wet soggy one. ☔️ First into the pot is breast of lamb, when you buy a whole lamb this is included, sadly in our house it’s nearly always left in the bottom of the freezer, until the slow cooker that is because slow cookers make the very best of the cheaper cuts of meat, at least that’s what I keep reading so we will see. I plan to stuff it with sage and onion stuffing, chuck in chunky veg and some garlic and herbs including rosemary of course and see what happens, I’m just a little bit excited about using one for the first time lol.

Thursday: Well the slow cooker was a success, the lamb just fell apart and tasted fabulous, I need to get a little bit more informed about using it, there were no instructions other than turning it on and how to use an electrical item, so I had to search and find out if you use liquid in it or not lol, I’m such a novice but hopefully will learn fast.

I candled some of the duck eggs tonight, out of ten at least eight were fertile and growing, 2 looked clear, I will candle them all again next week and remove any clear ones.

Saw 2 red legged partridge in the paddock today, it’s funny as I only see them at certain times of the year but they must be around all year long.

Friday: Did a bit of clean bedding this morning on the rounds, one of the geese is beginning to sit every day on her eggs now there are about 10 in there I think. The pump in the incubator has packed up, this means water is not longer being pumped in and the humidity had dropped to 37%, it should be 44%, I will have to manually add water to keep the humidity up for the next 15 days. I can’t turn the pump off and have a look to fix it as it is fed by the same flex as the thermometer so we will see how things progress, it shouldn’t be too bad as I have had incubators without automatic functions before where you manually top up the water to keep humidity up, just a pain only 10 days in 😝

I wish the wind would die down, I’m getting a headache being buffeted in the time I’m out there 💨

Looking at the quail this morning I think there are 7 females, they all have spotted chest feathers, of the other three one is definitely male, plain chest feathers, the other two are a colour I was not expecting (almost lavender) and so I have no idea what sex they are until they are old enough to vent sex them when a male will produce white foam.

I picked the first two lots of rhubarb this morning and put them out for sale thinking if they don’t go I will make rhubarb and ginger jam with them, needn’t have worried, they were snapped up within an hour!

The cured eggs are ready to be cleaned off and transferred to the oven to dry and will then be ready to use, will be interesting to see what they taste like!

I will have an extra pair of hands helping out on Fridays in a couple of weeks time, Elena used to help out before in exchange for veg and will be returning on Fridays, many hands make light work and all that 😀

Saturday: Busy day as the weather was fabulous, first of all I thought I’d better get the house cleaned otherwise I wouldn’t want to do it later. I worked mostly in the garden, watering, sowing, weeding, tidying, grass cutting and mending the fence yet again after the wind destroyed it, its only reed fencing so it doesn’t take much but I have bolstered it up now with some fence panels we had. I cut the front drive grass for the first time this year as well, I was fair tuckered after that lol. Popped down the pub for a couple of G & T’s before coming back to feed the birds.

Sunday: Mother’s Day, I hope all you Mums were thoroughly looked after, the girls came home to cook up a big breakfast for us which was lovely. Another beautiful day and John cleaned out the chicken run that the selling birds live in, we moved the others to the front hut last night when it got dark, we have got 25 point of lay coming in although I’m told they are already laying as things have been slow for the supplier during the lock down, goodness knows what we are going to do with yet more eggs!The egg sales are going well but so is the laying, we are getting around 80/90 eggs a day from the hens alone, that’s a fair amount to shift. The goose on the nest has not left for three days now so that’s it for goose eggs, I am not going in there to try and retrieve any lol. The quail are growing well they are about 20 days old now, a few more weeks until they begin to lay yet.

In the afternoon I cleaned out the chickens in the orchard and the rabbits, plus the hut in the front which didn’t get done this morning, then I went on the hunt for weeds, grass tufts and dandelions for the rabbits plus some chick weed for the hens in the orchard, then onto a bit of hoeing, loving the lighter evenings as it means I can be out there longer although I can feel that I have been bitten by midges 😝

We have a problem this year with either ash or sycamore saplings, I’m not sure which as we have both trees here, but the conditions must have been just perfect for them because there are thousands of little saplings all over the place, in the paddocks, in the garden, on the driveway, everywhere! We have never had it before like this and I’m not sure how we are going to tackle getting rid of them, they probably need to be mown in the paddock but they are not quite tall enough yet and my worry is if we leave them too long (more than two leaves, the cotyledon) the root, will have got strong enough to sprout even if we do mow them.

Have a fabulous week people 😀

Friesland Farm

Why?

Posted on October 20, 2015October 20, 2015 by frieslandfarm

Now I know what some of you are thinking ‘what’s Hubby done now’ sorry to disappoint you, he appears to be blemish free this week! The ‘why?’ are genuine musings that I have pondered over while going about my work, I work alone all day, every day for at least five days a week and so with only myself to talk to (not out loud, I hasten to add) questions pop up all the time and none more so than this week.

Some musings are more intelligent than others such as why are we trading with China? and do we have more to fear from the controlling president of that country than we do from thousands of immigrants pouring into Europe with the only agenda for them being a decent life for their families? Sorry, that’s probably a bit deep for a smallholding blog but it is what goes on in my head along with why do flies make that irritating buzzing sound when they fly? Birds fly, but they don’t make a sound like you instantly want to swat them every time they come near, come to think of it they do not dive bomb you every few seconds either. They are not very clever, I mean if they went silently about their business we wouldn’t be reaching for the fly spray in the height of summer would we?

Other musings range from, why did we lend our new 1m blade electric hedge trimmer out and why didn’t they notice that the flex was dangerously close to the blade that chops thing off? I actually know the answer to this, because said person is an idiot that is why, and now we have a lovely piece of blue tape covering up the joiner (exasperated sigh) Shall I continue? Why when there are five acres, and a considerable amount of countryside thereafter available, does the cat want to **** right where you have just planted seedlings? Why wont the geese go to bed on the only night there is no one around to help? Why would you think it is perfectly ok to go and get your eggs from the local smallholding honesty shed at 11.30pm? Why didn’t anyone bring me chocolate home today? they must have known I needed some 🙂 It is at this point you are probably thinking, yep, she spends too much time on her own with only the chickens to talk to lol

Why is life so cruel sometimes? that applies to humans and animals alike, this week it all went very wrong for one of our new point of lay hens, life was ticking along nicely for her, she had been reared in a shed for the best part of 16 weeks then she arrived here and had her first taste of outdoor life, the smells, sounds, and new sights such as dogs and horses, in her prime she laid her first egg and disaster struck. A prolapse is not something I have had to deal with before and so I turned to Google to find out what to do, first bathe the prolapse in antiseptic, then using Vaseline and gloves push the prolapse back to where it came from (not for the squeamish I can assure you) use Witch Hazel to bathe it afterwards in the hopes that it will retract and deflate. Leave the hen somewhere quiet overnight with water only and see what happens, the hen went into shock, that’s what happened and so the kindest thing to do was ‘the deed’. Normally I don’t get sentimental feelings over the hens but I really felt sorry for this one, she was only a youngster and hardly had a chance at a happy life.

The tidying up of the veg plot has continued this week and this morning I began to venture out further onto the farm and identify areas that needed doing, one main area being the hedge along the front driveway. So that is where I was, trimming the hedge with my blue bandaged electric trimmer when today’s Why? came along, actually I wonder this one every year and people who do it seem to think it is a very reasonable thing to do, I however, cannot see the point, except under certain circumstances (which I consider to be ludicrous anyway). Why do people feel the need to spend most of Autumn and the first part of Winter gathering up all the leaves that have been shed from the trees? Do people not know that the worms and the weather will do most of it for you without any sweat being broken at all? Perhaps its a case of that shiny red/green leafblower in the corner of the garage is calling and you cant wait to play with it or it might be that the only bit of earth that actually belongs to you (so to speak because I bet a pound to a penny if it came to it you would not own the fracking rights under your driveway) has been entirely covered with block paving or slabs (that’s the ludicrous bit as far as I’m concerned and a topic for a whole blog of its own one day) and understandably you don’t want to slip on the wet soggy leaves. If you leave those leaves they will enrich the soil beneath them, ok so I know it will look untidy for a few weeks but its far better for the ground than buying lawn feed or soil improver surely, you don’t have to break into your wallet or that sweat, you can sit in the evening sun, sipping your glass of cider/ale/prossecco smug in the knowledge that those worms are working for you 😉

Have a great week 🙂

Friesland Farm

Water!

Posted on September 9, 2013September 9, 2013 by frieslandfarm

The topic this week has to be water in its different forms, firstly because we spent a lovely weekend by the sea, courtesy of our daughters for our Pearl wedding anniversary. We went to the Cary Arms in Babbacombe, Devon, a five star boutique hotel and if you ever get the chance or the inclination I would certainly recommend a stay there. The setting is picture perfect, you couldn’t actually get any closer to the beach without being on a boat, the room was large and comfortable, the food was superb, the staff were efficient and friendly and the private terrace overlooking the bay was a treat each morning when I got up early to watch the Sunrise. We took a stroll along the quiet, pebbled beach on the first morning before breakfast and you could have been in the Mediterranean it was that idyllic!

The next batch of water was the rain, we desperately needed it and so (unlike me, I know) I am not going to complain, not about the downpour watering the garden and the fields at any rate. My complaint came when water started pouring through the kitchen ceiling this morning, great we have a leak in the roof, I went over to the stable block and the internal guttering is leaking, great, we have another leak, right outside of Jacks stable making the dirt floor a soggy mess, I turn to go to the bottom of the stable block and I am not sure yet if its another leak or if the guttering was just not coping, either way there is water gushing in and another soggy mess on the floor, the to do list for Hubby is already written!

Apart from the animals and birds all looking a little bit wet, they are much the same as normal, we have some new additions, three little piggies called Alvin, Simon and Theadora, they are Oxford Sandy and Blacks, a rare, traditional breed, so we were lucky to find them. The main reason for having pigs at this time of year is to use up the windfall apples and gluts of vegetables, they have been greedily tucking in to the fresh produce and when you watch them eat you know why they are called pigs, fighting over a piece of apple or banana is common. At the minute they are in one of the stables, they had not been outside at all since they were born although we will be transferring them to an outside run when Hubby gets to that particular job on his list!

Since I went away on Friday I have not yet had time to look in the veg garden, there is probably plenty of produce waiting to be picked but I was reluctant to get soaking wet doing it this morning, now at least I know I can easily feed the surplus cucumbers to the piglets instead of trying to find recipes for them. I did pick a few bits this morning very quickly, sweetcorn, celery, potatoes and an onion, to make a sweetcorn chowder for a friend who is visiting tomorrow, I hope she likes it. The egg number is slowly increasing from the laying stock but not back up to full production yet. We have been selling plenty of the point of lay hens and wont be buying any more in until Spring now, so whatever is left will go into the laying pen with the others. I don’t think the new ducks have started to lay yet, they will probably all go at once and I will have more than I need, that’s the time to do some batch baking for the freezer.

I have heard that we are in for an invasion of hornets! I hope that particular rumour is untrue, we seem to go through stages of insects, the flies were an absolute pain during the sunny days, always a loud buzzy one flying around and dive bombing you while you were trying to watch the news. Then there are the wasps, you need close inspection before picking up a windfall or plum off of the tree, they might have got there before you and give you a nasty surprise, luckily I have not been stung yet, even though each morning when I am picking beans I am surrounded by the Bumble Bees searching for nectar. Spiders, of various hugeness, are now rearing their ugly little heads indoors as the days get cooler, Hubby was waiting for a scream from the general area of the toilet roll holder the other day when a one the size of a football (nearly 😉 decided to roost there, very mean of hubby not to remove it I thought, but I didn’t cry out, I merely gave the spider my best, bugger off back to where you came from stare, and lo and behold he was gone by the morning. After that lot we now have the invasion of the earwig, they are on everything, I just had to eject one from the crawling up the inside of my trouser leg, to be fair, none of them are dangerous unless you are allergic, but I will be glad when it is too cold for them to bother coming out to play.

The Cary Arms, a delightful little bolt-hole by the sea