Monday 24th June 2024: It seems like the months are whizzing past lol. Sorry about the lack of blogging I have either been too busy or too tired to keep up with it.
Summer has finally arrived after all the rubbish weather and this week we have wall to wall sunshine which means of course that I cannot get outside for the best part of the day! There never seems to be a good balance but I am getting up very early and getting work done, by 9am I have usually done 4 hours already. It is a beautiful part of the day, cool and quiet, very good for mindfulness.
The flower sales are going well and the flowers are now a little more abundant than they were in the dull, wet spring 🙄 But the slugs, oh my days, they have been rampant and munching on everything and anything 😂 It is quite disheartening at times but try as I might I lose something to those slimy jaws every day.
This weekend coming I have the busiest weekend I have ever had flower wise, I totalled up the stems I will need and it is around 650 which for me is a lot. I have two private workshops, flowers for a private event and orders so I will be busy and I need to get my head in order so that I have everything I need for when I need it and do not miss anything out.
I have more or less finished planting everything out now, the only things left are back up plants for any failures. One big fail I had were the snapdragons, on one side of the tunnel they got rust and all had to come up, strangely though the ones on the other side are fine 🤷♀️ I will definitely look for rust resistant seed next time.
I have spent a lovely hour or so every evening picking raspberries, there are a lot on there this year. There are two reasons for that, the first and the most stupid error I made was thinking that they were autumn raspberries and so cut them down each year as you should for that variety. I didn’t have time last year and so they got left and voila an abundance of raspberries, they were summer fruiting ones all along 🤪 second reason is that we put new netting on the cage so no holes means no birds getting in and stealing them. It is raspberry everything at the minute, crumbles, sponge puddings, yoghurt topping and then some for freezing too. The redcurrants are abundant again and I always use them mixed in with other fruit for puddings, the blackcurrants are just ripening and the gooseberries too. We will have a good amount of fruit this year as the top fruits are also looking good including the apricot tree 🥰 I just need to get back to growing a good amount of veg, we have tomatoes, cucumber and courgettes growing plus a few runner bean plants but that is it this year which is not ideal. There are however some good little farm shops around selling veg and we have a lamb coming for the freezer from a small local farm 😊
I have emptied and defrosted one of the freezers and then started filling it back up so that I can defrost the other freezer. I am trying to either use up what I have or at least know what is in there so that I can plan meals around the contents.
I still prepare for emergencies and as the government suggested a couple of months back (although not many people seem to have heard about it) that everyone should have three days of food, water and supplies for emergencies I wonder what they know that we don’t? Sadly with the state of the world today we have never been closer to disaster in my lifetime than we are now, wars, invasions, climate catastrophes, being prepared is just common sense really, we saw what happened in the pandemic so it pays to be mindful that anything is possible! Personally I like more than a weeks supply and mostly dried or tinned because if the electric goes down then the freezers are fine for a few days but after that everything spoils. Obviously I would use up the perishables first but if the emergency went on longer then we are on to dried and tinned goods lol. If you are interested in the concept then there are some very good you tubers (UK based) doing some excellent round ups of what you would need. The government list is a little basic and not very inspiring or nutritious, you can definitely do better than that with a bit of imagination. Only store what you would use and the key is to use what you store so that you keep it rotating, especially anything with a shorter shelf life.
You can check out the government website to see what they suggest you should have. https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/
Tuesday: Oscar day: It will be a long day today as the sun is out and it’s hot meaning I can’t really go outside so everything will be indoor activities. He doesn’t understand why we can’t go out and play in the garden which makes me sad and frustrated at the same time. Actually I do get a little emotional at this time of year when everyone wants to be out doing stuff in the sun and I can’t join in. My nephew is getting married this week, we had an invitation and of course I would love to be there but it is in Greece 😬 I know I would just about die in that kind of heat so won’t be going which makes me sad. It is not just being outside because you could probably organise some shade but just travelling to and from places is difficult, no transport is ever set up with shady areas 😂 even in a car is horrible unless the windows in the back are blacked out and there is air con, two of the things that were a must have when we got our new car.
I tend to just not go to events if I think they are likely to be out in the open, which is most of them, including pub gardens, you can’t really carry an umbrella big enough to stop UVs bouncing around.
We booked a holiday in the med last year in October thinking that would be ok, nope they had a heat wave and I am still suffering the consequences of getting stuck waiting for the tourist bus in Barcelona with not a single piece of shade in sight.
We need more shady areas, I think I need to start a campaign lol. Joking aside though, there are so many problems that do not have a simple solution when it comes to Lupus and the sun.
Wednesday: Up early to get the cutting for the weekend started, 3 hrs of cutting, then watering the tunnels. I do those in the morning to try and limit slug activity but there is still evidence of them having had a party every night. I need to get all the outside jobs done and dusted before it gets too hot for me, that includes any animal feeding, the eggs into the shed, the rubbish out to the bins, the horses water etc etc. Today that took me up to around 11am, then I had a couple of deliveries, one of them was some very tall stem flowers from another grower which then need to be stripped and conditioned. Lunch and a sit down for an hour or so before I get some inside jobs done and then have a sit down before getting dinner and starting the evening work. More watering outside, to be honest this is the first lot I have done outside and the heat has dried the ground a fair bit so everything needs a pick me up. Another delivery mid evening of some locally reared lamb for the freezer, sort that out and then round to Mums to cut some flowers from her garden that she said I could have, I took some lambs liver round for Ken as a barter swap 😊 Mum has the most amazing hydrangea growing in the front garden that has probably around 70/80 heads on it each year. It obviously loves the position it is planted in and you can bet if I wanted to grow one that well it just wouldn’t happen 🤪 Back home to get the flowers into the dark and some good depth of water so that they don’t flop. Outside to turn of the watering and by this time I am literally falling asleep on my feet so it’s a good job it’s nearly time for bed.
The temperature is supposed to drop around 5 degrees tomorrow which will be a welcome relief from the hot and humid few days we have had, as always the weather has jumped from cold and wet straight into blazing hot 🥵
Wednesday/Thursday: I mostly spent my days gardening or cutting flowers ready for the weekend. I am cutting everyday at the moment so I get up pretty early to get started. On Thursday evening I sorted out all the flowers and foliage I had cut into all the different things I needed them for. Bouquet orders, bunch orders, arrangement order which consisted of five large arrangements of flowers, eleven lots of flowers for the workshops also fro me to demo and then flowers for Friday flowers.
Friday: Up early again to get some watering done and wrap the flowers ready to go out on the roadside stand.
Feeling happy that everything was in hand I took the flowers out to the stand only to find it had been stolen! It is not a small stand, it’s 5ft tall and heavy, they took the one bucket that was still in there and discarded the clip board with the QR code on. I actually couldn’t believe someone had nicked it, wtaf.
I was pretty upset because they had not only taken something that was essential to roadside sales but also stolen a fair bit of my enthusiasm for the day. I am just trying to make an honest (and modest) living and some low life thinks it’s perfectly ok to take it away for themselves. I can only think that as it was a converted chicken house, that’s what they wanted it for but do me a favour and buy your own you tight, lazy, good for nothing gits. People like that have no idea of the impact stealing stuff has on the owner, they probably don’t care either and I just hope that Karma really has it in for them one way or another 😡
For an hour or so it really threw me and I couldn’t focus on the work I really needed to get done for the day but I had to get the jobs done because I had customers relying on me. Eventually after so coffee and toast I put that behind me and cracked on with arranging flowers and getting the flower room ready for the weekend workshops. By 9pm I physically could not do any more, my back ached, my feet ached and I figured it was best to stop, get a good nights sleep and start again in the morning.
If you ever wonder why flowers cost what they do then here is a run down to your order.
- Sow the seeds or plant the bulbs and plants (that you ordered months ago in preparation)
- Nurture those seeds/bulbs with water, feed and protection from the weather
- Plant the plants when big enough and continue nurturing
- Put staking in place so they grow nice and straight for cutting, continue to nurture, weed and watch the pests eat your precious plants 🤪
- Weeks but mostly months later cut the stems at the exact right time of opening.
- Strip the stems, condition the flowers so that they are at their best
- Arrange the flowers into whatever has been ordered, wrap and wait for collection or deliver.
- Sweep, wipe and clean the workspace, deposit the debris on the compost heap.
- Wash out the buckets thoroughly ready for the next cutting.
And of course that is only part of the story because in there is a wealth of knowledge that took plenty of studying, lots of planning and lots of heavy, continuous work just to get to the very first point. This is true no matter the size of the patch you are growing in, it is never just cutting some flowers and presenting them, that’s just how easy we make it look 😂
Saturday: Up early to get the room tidied from arranging all the flowers the night before, get the room straight so that people arriving for the workshop have no idea what a muddle it was in just an hour before they arrived. John went off to deliver a regular flower order, I don’t have time to do it today but he is used to delivering for me 😊 An emergency dash to another grower because the delphiniums I had were shedding petals everywhere (that’s a story for another day and I can chalk that up to experience 🙄) Teach the workshop, enjoy chatting all things flowers with some lovely ladies, clear everything up have a quick lunch break then organise exactly how I am going to transport five vases of tall flowers to a customer on a very hot afternoon 🤪 deliver the order successfully and then off round to Shelley and Martins for a BBQ.
Sunday: Up early again to water and organise everything for todays workshop, more chatting with more lovely ladies about flowers 😊 Tidy up and clear away, have some lunch and then deliver a big celebration bouquet in the afternoon. I made this up at some point during Friday or Saturday but I can’t remember when!
At this point I should go in and tidy up the workshop but I have done enough this weekend and it can wait until tomorrow.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 