Tag: Friesland Farm

Posted in Friesland Farm

Some lovely sunny days, some very rainy nights and flooding again.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 12th February 2023: Wowzers I logged on to see a message from WordPress wishing me happy anniversary, 13 years I have been blogging, that’s some dedication isn’t it 😂

The sun has shone beautifully today and my first job was to walk up to the church and meet the lady in charge as I have a customer who wants pedestal flowers for a funeral next week. It was nippy on the fingers but a lovely walk there and back, even with the volume of traffic that has increased due to another local road being closed from today for repairs. I say repairs I am not sure they actually do very much 🙄 the pot holes are ridiculous around the area, some could be regarded as craters rather than holes and some are very dangerous indeed especially on the unlit roads. The council seem to be able to wriggle out of paying any compensation from what I have seen on social media so it is costing car owners a fortune.

Once I was back I set about the business of selling flowers, well gearing up for it anyway. I got my roadside sign out and cleaned it up ready for the year ahead and made some extra signs that can be added to it to say when I have flowers available. Then I made a notice for the egg shed so that people know exactly how to pay for their flowers and finally make sure the doorbell was working, it wasn’t 🤪 So here is where working by yourself gets annoying, once I prised the bell off the gatepost and took it in to find a new battery (turns out I didn’t need one as the bell works and just needed the battery clamped a little tighter) I took it back outside and re fitted it. So far so good but I needed to see if it works and I am too far from the house to hear the internal end of the bell. So I set my phone on voice memo, pressed record and went outside to ring the bell, came back in to listen to the recording to find out if it actually works. I am glad to say it does and so that saves me a lot more faffing around.

I made soup for lunch today and we have left over roast chicken for dinner tonight, there is enough for bubble and squeak for John and I will have mine with some mushrooms and pasta or rice, haven’t decided which yet.

In the afternoon I was in the flower room creating a heart memorial with flowers for a customer tomorrow. I love doing these, they are different and I usually know who they are for so each one is a little sad to make but an honour to be asked and made with love and respect.

I also made up a small bunch of flowers for someone having a tough time at the minute, they are purely from me to them to say, chin up, you will get through this. That’s the thing about flowers, they can say so many things, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m here for you, Happy birthday, Happy anniversary and so much more, only one other thing can do the same, Chocolate 🥰

I will have flowers for Valentine’s Day but I have not taken orders I mean how many significant others are that well organised 😂 This year at least I will be relying on those that are driving past, see the sign and think ‘you have saved my day’ and with the diverted traffic increase it might work well!

I did a small amount outside, just moving Ranuculas from the greenhouse to the poly tunnel, where the air flow will be better for them, before coming in for a sit down.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 We had a fun filled afternoon it being pancake day. It’s one of those traditions that everyone loves, my Mum always made us pancakes, I made our girls pancakes and now they make their children pancakes. This year it fell in the half term and so they all came over here for pancakes with Oscar which is lovely. It was carnage 😂 all kinds of goodies went on top of each pancake and Oscar although he is only 16 months put away three of three and wanted more! Once they were done the adults had a chance to have a more civilised feast of pancakes, fruits, crème fraise and a drizzle of melted chocolate 😊

Although I had already been busy all day long there was no time to rest as I had flowers to get sorted for tomorrow. Finally sat down around 9pm so that was a long day.

Wednesday: It is of course Valentines day ❤️ so I was up early getting the sign out and putting out some flowers I had made up last evening.

I spent a good chunk of time sorting out what was going to be for lunch and dinner tonight before going out into the greenhouse for a more gentle couple of hours. I have sown seeds, pricked out seedlings and divided up a large pot of chrysanthemums. I have a lot more chrysanthemums to divide yet and no idea where I will put them all. Some I will be selling as small plants but I will be keeping a lot for flowers later in the year. I have two reasons to try and sell a lot of plants this year, one is because I have a lot of material to divide and can’t possibly use it all and the other is because I have an awful lot of plant pots 🤪 Seriously I can’t believe how many there are out there, so if I can use a good lot to sell plants in then I will free up some space. I don’t think I have ever bought a new plant pot in my life, not empty ones anyway, there is always someone who asks if I want any and I never say no lol.

Thursday: I got a bit done first thing and then Mia, George and Lucie for a few hours while Sam was busy and Charlie came over with Oscar. After everyone had lunched we went out for a walk, it was a lovely afternoon, the sun was out and it felt pleasant. The ground in still a bit soggy underfoot in places and so directing George away from mud was a full time job 😂

Friday: Another nice enough day in the end, the sun came out again and so working outside was ok. I spent a couple of hours in the greenhouse first, dividing more chrysanthemums, I will have lot of good sized plants at this rate. Yesterday one of those cheap tunnels arrived because that’s where I want to put the chrysanthemums once they start to flower. At the minute they are in the small tunnel, they come out over summer and then go back in as the weather changes, mostly to save the flowers from the rain and cold. But it means I can’t use the tunnel for anything else and it is difficult to manoeuvre in there when I am cutting the stems and so I ordered this one. I put it together in the afternoon once I had put membrane down in the place I want it to go, turns out it was bigger than I had imagined, because of course I didn’t take much notice of the dimensions when I ordered it only that it was big enough 😂 It is actually really good value for money and fairly robust once everything is tightened up, though I am not sure it will stand up to high winds 🙄 so I may need to remove the cover once the flowers are done each winter 🤷‍♀️

Saturday: We did a few jobs around the place before going off to collect some very lovely flower buckets that someone was selling online. A florist that was retiring and moving away, she was lovely and full of support for British flowers, gave me lots of extras as well as lots of great flower arranging tips.

We just got back when Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo and the Charlie, Macca and Oscar arrived too. Shelley and family had been in London for the past few days having a lovely time being tourists and we heard all about their adventures. Meanwhile Charlie had come to fill up some bags with woodchip to take home and put on her garden.

After everyone had gone I spent some time doing the greenery for a pedestal arrangement that will be going on Monday, the flowers I will put in on Sunday ready to be delivered first the Monday morning.

In the evening My brother and his wife popped for a visit and a cuppa.

Sunday: It rained all night long, heavy at times, we had 4 inches of water in a bucket that was empty last evening. The paddocks were flooded, the hay barn was flooded, the lane was flooded, it was a terrific amount of water overnight. We went out to the lane first thing to see just how deep it was and if cars could pass, just about was the conclusion we came to along with our neighbour.

John and I then spent quite a few hours working on the front fence line, it was in a state of disrepair and falling over so we began taking it down, cutting back and raking out debris. By mid afternoon we had got it sorted and now all that is left to do is burn all the branches and rotten fencing. We then need to plant some saplings into any gaps, we left the stock fencing up as there are so many bits of tree and shrubs growing through it that it stays there by itself and looks ok as it is.

All the time we were working we were watching cars come down the lane towards the flooded area, some, especially smaller cars, turned around, some drove through cautiously and some absolute t**ts sped through with some speed (yep that is you in the DPD van too) Great fun for them not so much for us with land each side and definitely not so much for the poor jogger who got soaked by one idiot going through 😡 and got called, quite rightly, some choice names. I was secretly hoping that at least one that went through like an idiot would break down the other side so we could have a good laugh, wicked I know but would have been very satisfying 🤣

Even though we had all that rain, the weather was actually really nice during the day, spring is definitely on the way thank goodness. Blossom is beginning to burst out, daffodils, iris, crocus, snowdrops, hellebore are all adding to the pops of colour and all very welcome after the greyness of Winter.

Oh and the geese laid their first eggs today 😊

Posted in Friesland Farm

I found a frog 🐸 some flower work and plenty of outside jobs done.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th January 2024: First month of the year almost done we just need to get through February 😂

I started the day with a cook up, I am getting into a good routine with this and I have great freezer choices to show for it. We had roast chicken yesterday and so I wanted to make good use of the leftovers this morning. In the slow cookers are a chicken stew mix which could also be used for chicken pie. The other one has the carcass in with onion, carrot, bay and thyme, that will be stock, useful for gravy or soup. The last lot is in a pan and is chicken curry, I like a mild curry and use whatever spices I have available, a bit of this and a bit of that, as long as it tastes good too me that’s fine as John does not eat curry.

Shelley popped in for a cuppa but as soon as she left I went outside as the weather is pretty good again today.

I have been tidying the area around the greenhouse, the winds we have had blew things everywhere and knocked over overwintering plants. I swept up all the leaves and righted the pots, picked up pots and rubbish that had been blown around and that is a great time to check on the health of plants that have gone through the winter. I only found a couple that didn’t make it so that’s great news, the others are all beginning to put small amounts of growth on, they will be left now to continue growing in until I can plant them up or sell them on.

I found a frog! This is fabulous news because I haven’t seen any since we had the snake a couple of years ago, funnily enough I was only talking to Mum about it yesterday and then today ta da 😊

Indoors for a quick lunch and a cuppa before going back outside where I decided to tidy up the plant pot section 😬 oh my days I have a ridiculous number of pots 😂 I found a clutch of eggs too but decided to throw them rather than test them but they didn’t pop or smell so we’re probably recently laid there. Normally I would test them and then we would use them ourselves or give them to the dogs and cats but I was feeling sure they would be no good, wrong 🤪 never mind. The hens are confined to their outdoor run at the minute because they scratch everything up and I want some of the plant growth to get stronger before they come back out. If they see newly mulched beds they think it is for their pleasure!

Tuesday: Oscar day, he was on fine form today lol.

Wednesday: I couldn’t really get stuck into much because I had a hospital appointment in the afternoon in Oxford 🙄 While I am grateful, getting to the other side of Oxford for 4pm is a mission. You need to avoid the school traffic and then avoid the work traffic on the way out. The first we managed by leaving here early, the second, nope, two hours to get back home 🤪 The appointment was a Lupus one and we had a good discussion about various symptoms, I had lots of blood tests for any vitamin deficiencies as well as monitoring vital organ health. Remember that blood test I had that means I am HLA-B27 positive? Well it turns out that it is a useful blood test as it elevates me to another level of medications should I ever need them, Biologics 🤷‍♀️ Useful to know, another thing I found out is that when I had blood tests for my eyes they tested my heart enzymes as well, along with a chest X-ray I think these are pre checks for the Biologics in case I need to have them at some point.

I did play with some flowers in the morning though so not a totally wasted day, I also cut some flowers for a test run. Hellebore can be tricky and I want to use some at the weekend so I tried different methods of conditioning for them to see which holds up best.

In the evening I had a zoom meeting to attend although by 8pm I was quite tired and by the time it finished at 9.30pm I was definitely knackered 😂

Thursday: Sunny but colder today and I mostly spent all morning trying to do an information reel that in the end was not how I wanted it to be 🤪 If at first you don’t succeed try, try, try again but it does take up a lot of time which is fine in the winter months, I won’t be doing it during the spring and summer 😬

I then tried to set up a new email with my Google domain, sign in, wrong password, really I only changed it two weeks ago 🤷‍♀️ hit the forgot password button, chose the text message option for a code, no signal, none, nada, so try again with an email option……we will send it in 5 days, 5 days wtaf! This is the age of instant information what in the heck could take five days? I could probably get snail mail quicker than that. So here I am stuck between a rock and a hard place at the minute unable to update my business page 🙄

Friday: I had some flowers to cut this morning then some flowery stuff to do, it’s nice to have that amazing smell again, everyone always comments about how lovely the flower room smells.

My tooth or more precisely the socket where to tooth was is still giving me a bit of gip but nothing like it was, I think everything around it is moving and settling now now it’s more of an irritating nag than pain.

The farrier came late afternoon and Sam had already called in and got the horses into the stable with some hay so I only had to get them out and tie them up. Once their pedicure was complete I took them back out to the field where they had more hay. I was hoping John was going to be around to help me (and he was) because the gateway fences are really bad and almost going over, I can just see the scenario if they went over while I was trying to get two great galahs through 😂 We had a delivery of new gates and fence posts the other day ready to re new everything and hopefully we can get that done soon. The price of timber has gone up massively since we last bought any and it was a bit of a shock at how much one fence post is these days let alone 50 of them! Needless to say we will be reusing every bit of rail that is remotely good enough 🤪

We went food shopping straight after the horses were turned back out and I am finding it hard to believe the cost of food these days too 🙄 John and I talked about how expensive it must be with a growing family, we don’t even need to buy much but it still adds up. John insists on giving the cats and dogs treats on top of what they already eat, personally I wouldn’t as I am not keen on cereal based food for animals that wouldn’t normally eat it, but no matter how much I say about it he still buys them, you will kill them with kindness I tell him 🤷‍♀️

Food has been high on my thought chart this week despite the cost of it, I have been watching or reading different things about what is in a lot of it and how to make better swaps. It amazes me that people understand so little about what they are eating and what is healthy and what is not. The industry has managed to convince shoppers that low sugar or low fat are better products, they are not, they are just lower in sugar or fat, something else has been included to counter that and in low fat it is usually sugar and in low sugar it’s usually fat! You are not getting away from either ingredient lol, and don’t even get me started on how harmful sweetness are 😳 Eat full fat just don’t eat much of it, eat sugar instead of sweetener just don’t eat much of it, better still cut sugar out altogether. I confess I am no Angel 😇 I do not cut out sugar, I should but I don’t, I might try for a while but it never lasts. Watching or reading these things makes me realise that we do well with our food really, yes we eat sugar and fats but I cook from scratch (and scratch is not a jar of sauce and some mince btw) and I know exactly what is in most of our meals right down to how much salt because I have put it in myself.

My next lot of cooking or baking is going to be breakfast bars and maybe breakfast muffins. I normally have a banana for breakfast, sometimes with oats and Greek yoghurt but often I would like something I can grab and get on or have it with a cuppa mid morning. Oats, yoghurt, banana can all be turned into bars or muffins with a couple of extra ingredients so it is basically the same in a different form.

Saturday & Sunday: Bust couple of days as the weather is holding and for Winter it was fairly pleasant so we worked outside. John has been taking down collapsing fencing and gateways and replacing with new posts, reusing old rail and hung a new gate. He also helped me to put in some stakes on the perennial beds after I had top dressed them and mulched. I then put in place some netting to help the stems grow up through and keep them upright. Last year I lost too many stems to the wind or that just fell over, this will help them grow straight, stay in situ and so be more useful as cut flowers. I also spent a good deal of time at the bottom end of the garden cutting back shrubs and pruning the apple tree. The blackcurrant bushes there have died (swamped by nettles) and I cut the gooseberry bushes right down, there is still a lot of work to be done there but I made a good start.

I had some flowers to do for a customer who was having a Ruby wedding anniversary party and I was able to use some beautiful dark red Hellebore. They are notoriously divarish and can just flop without warning so I hope they behaved themselves, I did do a test run a few days before and all seemed well and then I cut them the day before and they were still ok the next day when I delivered them.With Hellebore they respond well to balancing in hot water for a minute or two, you can see all the air bubbles coming out and that’s what you want, to displace the air so the stem can take up water.

The fragrance from these jam jar flowers was amazing.
Posted in Friesland Farm

The weather is up and down and my tooth is out!

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th January 2024: We had a beautiful warm glow sky this morning, it didn’t last long and when I stepped outside it was trying to snow. There was a good frost which is much needed but I prefer the days that warm as they go and I don’t think we are going to get many of those this week. I will definitely be using some of my ready made soups and stews, it is going to be the week for them I think.

In previous years I have had the January blues but not this year, this year I am just looking forward to all the that the year will bring, even though I reach a big birthday 🤪 it is just a number and besides it is a good excuse to get some things ticked off my bucket list.

A quick dive into the freezer this morning to get some ready prepared meals out for lunch and dinner. Veg soup for lunch and then bubble and squeak (Christmas dinner version 🤪) for John a Moroccan lamb for me and an apple and strawberry crumble for pudding, living the dream 😊

Some household chores for the morning then in the afternoon I cut back the chrysanthemums in the smaller tunnel. These are in old recycle bins and when the weather warms up they go out, when they begin to flower and the weather turns again in Autumn they come back inside so that the rain does not spoil the flowers.

I really need to divide them in spring and find a better or less heavy way of heaving them in and out of the tunnel because they do get heavy plus there is not much room in the tunnel once they are in. I will ponder on that over the next few days, for now they are cut back and new growth is coming from the bottom so they are doing ok.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 All my minutes are spent with Oscar but while he was asleep I got swayed by looking at seeds and ordered some more 🤪 normally I wouldn’t as I have what I need but then I thought, we’ll they would look nice with such and such, and then I was tempted 😂 oops 😬 sorry not sorry. I then signed up for another online course 🥰 I like the online ones because I can fit them in around me and my life and they usually have lifetime access so you can go back to them over and over again, plus this one was half price in the January sale, win, win.

When I get a minute or too I often read random articles and again while Oscar was sleeping I saw one that intrigued me. Dessert stomach, scientists have studied this and it appears to be part of that primal instinct that we have tucked deep in the recesses of our modern brains. You have had a hefty Sunday dinner and are ‘full’ but you make room for pudding, apparently this is not greed (you will be glad to know I am sure) but a primal need to include as many types of food in your diet as you can. The fact that modern society is addicted to sugar complicates things but put simply your body is after the fruit. You never need an excuse to have pudding again, you are pre programmed 😂

Wednesday: I had a dentist appointment mid morning so I knew I would not be getting stuck into any jobs that would take a great length of time. I had a filled tooth that had fractured and partly broken away leaving half a tooth and some filling and was going in to have it refilled but on further exploration the tooth was going to need to come out. I did have the choice of trying to fill it and see if it would hold but the best case scenario was a couple of years and the nerve was likely to be affected earlier than that so as I was already numbed up I decided to have it out there and then. It was tricky to remove as it rotated and had a slight hook on the end of the root but with quite a bit of effort it came out in the end 🙄

So that meant instead of getting on with anything I needed to go home and have a bit of a sit down for a couple of hours and some painkillers. Lunch was a no no and so a luke warm cup of tea was the best I was going to get for a while 😬

Thursday: I lost the day resting and taking care not to aggravate my empty tooth socket 🙄 I need to be extra careful obviously due to the immune suppressants and I can afford myself the time to do this. I had the online course to watch so that’s what I did and it is very good with plenty of new things to learn.

Friday: My goodness it is cold this morning 🥶 hopefully the temperatures will start to come up at the weekend but in the meantime it is cold and icy out. I didn’t have such a great night, I woke with some pain but once I took some painkillers and they kicked in I was able to get some sleep again. It is Maccas birthday to day and Charlie is taking him to London overnight so we will be collecting Oscar from Nursery and he will be staying overnight with us.

Saturday: A tad warmer today but we have a weather warning, as the temps come up we swing from cold frozen weather into very wet and very windy weather 🤪 I think I need to have a look back over the years at the weather in January to see if it has changed or it’s still fundamentally the same. It seems increasingly volatile and harsh but maybe it always seems like that when there is not much else to focus on. Having said that the volcanic eruptions in Iceland are signs of some kind of Earthly change 🙄

Oscar stayed overnight and he was a little star, we collected him from Nursery late afternoon, he had his dinner and a bath, played a while then went to bed as good as good. Slept 12 hours and was happy when he woke, had breakfast then we took him out to visit Mum and Ken. Back home for lunch and an afternoon sleep 🥰

The sweet pea seeds have sprouted roots, well most of them, the duff ones went in the compost bin. Tomorrow I will go and get some seed compost, garden compost is too rich for seeds and it needs to be sterile. I really ought to get into the habit of doing a leaf litter bin which would be ideal for seeds but I never get round to it. I do have more sweet pea seeds on order, not sure what possessed me 🙄 but I ordered a few different colours. I am not usually very good with them as I forget to pinch them out at the right time but I will try very hard this year and hopefully end up with lots of beautiful blooms.

Sunday: A pleasant enough start to the day, the temperature has improved a lot and it doesn’t feel cold which is great. We do have a weather warning though as I mentioned yesterday but was able to get I to the greenhouse and tidy that up a little. It was lovely in there to be honest and I tidied up, swept, cleared dead leaves and watered the plants that are in there. Now the freezing weather has passed (no doubt it will be back) I was able to give the plants a bit of water and uncover them so they have good light. By the time the temperatures dip again they will have used up the water, they only need minimal at this time of year but it will help to put on a bit more growth. We also went to get some seed compost so that I can get the sweet pea seeds (that I have pre sprouted) growing.

Hopefully my tooth, or rather the hole where it was, is healing nicely. Being on immune suppressants can mean things could go wrong as the body does not produce a quick response to healing but so far so good 🤞

It is the turn for some beef in a batch cook today. I had a large beef rib in the freezer that needed using and so most of it will be roasted for dinner but the smaller bone end has been used for a batch of beef stew. The butcher cuts through the bone so that was already done and then I separated the beef from the fat layers and ended up with some nice pieces of beef that I then cubed. I cooked that off with some leeks and celery and then into the slow cooker with seasoning, once it is cooked I will portion it up into the foil containers and freeze for another day. I have roasted the bones along with the bulk of the meat and they will be used to make beef stock which again will be frozen for another day. I have some mince to use up and tomorrow I will be making shepherds pies and chilli. All this preparation will be fabulous once the weather is good enough to be outside for a large part of the day, it means I don’t have to think too much about what’s for dinner I will just grab something from the freezer. The days when I don’t we will eat fish or have non meat or fish days, beans on toast or eggs are our go to quick meals lol.

It is scarily windy out there tonight 🙄

Posted in Friesland Farm

Sorting appointments, seeds and poly tunnel.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 8th January 2024: It is a tad colder now and at least the rain has stopped. This morning a flock of long tailed tits arrived which nearly always suggests a period of cold weather looming.

I spent the first couple of hours trying to sort out appointments etc, trying being the operative word as nobody seems to answer the phone these days, you are always on a call back or in a never ending queue 🙄 The queue would not be so bad if you knew where in the queue you were but just to be on hold with crappy music for 15 mins is not great, no wonder stress levels have risen over the years. The next call was again on hold but at least I spoke to a human in the first place 🤪 I discovered I could book one of the appointments online, great until I realised I had booked it for two weeks away instead of this week! The forth I resorted to an enquiry form online and who knows if they will ever get back to me. Life is just not the same anymore, no one answers the phone and no one replies to your enquires lol. I managed to get three out of four sorted eventually so not a bad effort, the other I might just go in person when I have a minute.

I did up the list of workshop dates for the coming year and circulated those yesterday afternoon and despite the fact it is mid winter I still have a few flowers blooming and so a jam jar went to the local home this morning and I have sold a couple of bunches of dried flowers so it is still ticking over on that front.

Feeding the wild birds was on my todo list and prompted further by the arrival of the long tailed tits. I don’t generally feed the birds anymore, instead I leave everything that was growing, and has now died back, as a more natural eco system. I believe that there is plenty to be found and lots of hiding or overwintering places for insects that way and the birds can access those too. The exception comes when I know we are about to have a cold snap that will freeze everything and therefore either limit access to seeds/berries etc or kill off insects. Yes it does look untidy but we have to live in harmony with nature and not control it for our own vanity purposes, this helps to create a more natural environment for birds and insects and hopefully benefits me because they are sticking around and balancing themselves out 😊

I am determined to work my way through the freezers this winter and so today I have got out a leg of pork that needs using up, we will probably have that roasted tomorrow and then I will find a recipe for any left overs. I also got some chicken pieces that we had prepared for a bbq last year and didn’t use. I love a one pot recipe and so they are going on top of chopped celery, mushrooms and onions, brown rice is added to the dry mix along with seasoning and herbs and then water added to all of it, the chicken sat on top, covered and baked in the oven, easy peasy. I also got out a cake that I made and froze and some bubble and squeak (Christmas leftovers) for John along with one of the plum crumbles. I also made a batch of leek and potato soup (remember all those leeks John bought 🤪)

I made a batch of yoghurt, I don’t make it from scratch I use a yoghurt maker for that and I made a batch of doctored oats. I use plain quick cook oats, add anything dried that is suitable such as sunflower seeds and I have our own hazelnuts to start using so some of those went in as well. I also add cinnamon just because I like it and it’s good for you, mix it all up in a handy jar ready to use each morning. I use boiled water that has cooled a little to mix it and then add yoghurt and fresh fruit, sometimes with a drizzle of maple syrup or the blackcurrant syrup. You could mix in some nut butter instead (or as well as the yoghurt) Whatever you fancy really and it is so much nicer than plain oats with milk, healthier than sugary ready made cereals and good wholesome ingredients.

I love the apps that generate a recipe for you when you tell it what ingredients you have. I am using bing but there are probably plenty of others to chose from.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 I don’t get an awful lot done on these days, well nothing in fact 😂 but that’s ok because before you know it they are old enough to go to school and these days are gone forever so I make the most of them. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day I sing ‘the wheels on the bus’ or ‘twinkle twinkle’ but it is a lot 🤪

Wednesday: I decided today was a good day to sort out my seed box ready for the growing season ahead. Most of the seeds I want for this year were ordered back in Autumn, again in order to get the varieties I want I have to be on the ball and get the order in early. A lot are half packets from last year but I will be using those up and I have saved seed from a fair few plants too. Everything needed looking at and putting in the correct sowing month which is easier said than done because the time can vary over a few months for most of them but the ideal month to start them off and go from there. Some I sorted out for Mum and there was only one where the packet was empty and I re ordered. All in all it was a good hour or so spent doing that job.

It is very tempting to keep ordering more and more seeds or plants 😂 but I am trying to behave myself, I did spend the last couple of years investing in what perennials I wanted and so this spring I will be dividing a lot of them to increase my plant stock.

We have talked about the need for better staking so that is a priority this year and once that Easterly wind drops we will go off to the wood yard to find some garden stakes. Not point wandering around in the bitter cold is there 🤷‍♀️

John had been out to work for a couple of hours and then came back and we went off to see if I could find a dentist 🙄 For those readers not in the UK our NHS dentistry system has all but disappeared, well in this area anyway, it is even difficult to get appointments for children which is rather disgusting I think. You cannot get an NHS appointment for love and so you have to pay the money which is exactly what I will be doing. Everything went wrong when covid hit and I have not been to a dentist since 2020, I was doing ok and then after a toffee (because I can’t resist a toffee) half of a tooth came away 😝 It isn’t a problem yet as there is no pain but I do not want to get the that stage and so need it looked at. Once I had been in to register and book an appointment we went round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa.

The rest of the day was spent doing odd jobs, me around the house and John outside.

I have a zoom meeting tonight for social media, they are great and I learn a lot but I do wonder if I am getting sucked into the trap 🤪

January can be a pretty dull month, the sky is dull and there is not much going on but it is a great month to have a good think (in the warm) and decided what the year ahead is going to be all about. We have weeks to go but I can’t wait until the growing season gets going again and of course it will be warmer too hopefully.

Thursday: Getting bits and pieces done this morning, putting things back in their right places (I think they wander by themselves 🙄) Measuring and ordering muslin to make some curtains for the workshop, in summer it gets very hot as the sun shines directly in and last year I used some old bed sheets 😂 A quick reel for Instagram, which is never quick due to glitches 🤪 put out the rubbish, put on the washing all that sort of thing, nothing exciting but all necessary. I have a dentist appointment today but accidentally double booked it with looking after Oscar for an hour so I need to tweak timings, as long as the appointment is on time it should be fine but we all know how the best laid plans go! I also ordered some more business cards as I have used up the last batch 😊 to be honest I ordered them wondering if I would ever use them but each one went out on some flowers and I need more for the coming year.

Off to the dentist at lunchtime and I had the nicest dentist I have ever had 😊 Also very knowledgable about my medications and the impact they have on my teeth as well as how Lupus affects my mouth and teeth, impressed (even if it is going to cost me a chunk 🤪)

Straight after that I went to Charlie’s to look after Oscar while she went for an appointment, he went for a nap as I got there and didn’t wake up until Charlie came back. I had a lovely time as Charlie had left me some home made soup and I watched an hour of tv 🥰

I had taken this evenings dinner out of the freezer before I went out earlier as I knew I wouldn’t be here to make anything and that’s what the cook ups are all about. We had lamb stew and I made some dumplings to go in there too, nothing better on a cold Winters evening than a good stew and dumplings. That was followed by a fruit pie, slightly tart, I never like to overshadow the flavour of the fruit with too much sugar and surprisingly John didn’t even add extra sugar today either. I have a bit of a thing for evaporated milk 😂 and like to keep a small tin of it to have with a pudding occasionally.

Friday: I spent a good couple of hours making sure all my media was up to date and all linking with each other. Gone are the old days when you put a card in the local newsagent window 😂 or even just a straightforward website for that matter. Today social media pages need to link to websites, blogs, Google business profiles and vice versa, it is made all the more difficult because in my wisdom I set up separate ones for the flower side. In hindsight I should have just amalgamated it with the farm one which was already running 🤪🤪 I have updated a couple of the pages on this site to hopefully link with those social media sites so if you haven’t already had a look then please pop over and introduce yourself, you would be most welcome to follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frieslandfarmflowers?igsh=bDlqNmFmZ2w3Z21u&utm_source=qr

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dawnepearse

I still have some tweaks to make and one day I will streamline it all 🙄 but all in all you should find me one way or another!

I do have a podcast as well 😂 it started off really well and then when I changed direction it kind of fizzled out and I am floundering as to how to re invent it really but it was well received and I even have people who are now friends on Facebook from it 😊

Saturday: John spent the morning riddling compost, another 10 bags 😊 that will be very useful for topping up the beds come spring. Too rich for sowing seeds but good for everything else. Meanwhile I was in the workshop making some Muslim curtains for the windows, the sun shines strongly into the room in summer so if I can diffuse a little that will be helpful. I also collected up some of the weeping birch that naturally sheds when the winds are strong, I use that for making hearts. The hearts are then used as a base for grave flowers and in the past these are usually bought on appropriate calendar dates or for anniversaries.

It is cold enough today but we have an artic blast coming over the next few days, down to -8 at times 🥶 and that could potentially bring snow with it 🙄 All I think is just keep marching on and spring will be round the corner in no time, let’s just hope we get an early one lol.

Sunday: We went out for breakfast first thing, there is a place not too far that starts breakfast at 7.30am, ideal for us early risers who want to get on with the rest of the day. We called in to see my brother and his wife on the way back and had a quick cuppa with them before returning home to get on with some work. Right through until early afternoon John spent his time riddling the compost while I cut back the chrysanthemums in the big tunnel. I then got the staking organise for them for the next lot of growth, I covered the doorway at the end with bubble wrap and put a protect wrap around the stocks that are also growing in there. John came in with wheelbarrows full of compost to top up the beds at times and I feel that we accomplished quite a bit today. The sun came out and the temperatures in the tunnel were lovely but I needed to make sure that if we get that artic blast, plants are not going to suffer too much. I am also determined to get the staking sorting early in the season as I lose too many blooms that fall over otherwise. Mid afternoon my brother came over to get some wood chip to mulch his beds also to protect them from the cold weather.

I put some sweet pea seeds on damp kitchen towel to get them sprouted, I had a successful sowing in Autumn which is still growing I am glad to say. It is getting to the time of the gardening year when I am chomping at the bit but know I need to hold off for a long while yet but every little I can do is a step nearer.

Have a great week.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Winter preparations & trips out.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

Foliage, Flowers and Pumpkins 🎃

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

Autumn is here but I am preparing for Spring 😊

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

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

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovely village shop and great coffee 🥰

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hot & muggy, flower fun & everything else 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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