Tag: geese

Posted in Friesland Farm

Man down and ‘the hobble’

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th January: It’s 10.45 and mission accomplished this morning, after doing the feeding the job was to fully secure the rabbit run and make sure that when the babies start moving about they can’t get out! We have 2inch square welded mesh around the run so the adults can’t get through it BUT baby rabbits can and do or did last time but not this time mwaahaha I have boarded and wired every escape route (hopefully)

I really need to have outside shoes to hand as I had just come in taken off my coat and wellies made a coffee and the bell rang at the gate 😜 even if I nip out in my indoor shoes they get covered in mud and that is the second time in 24hrs I have de robed only to have to go back out.

I had a wonderful view of a buzzard ‘big bird’ as we call him or her, sat on the fence outside the bedroom window this morning, the photo is not great taken with my I pad but I went to get my proper camera and the battery was flat. This bird is the one that is around all the time especially in the early mornings, either in the paddocks or sat on the fence, I will try and get a better picture, I should carry my camera round with me, there were deer in the field to the side of us the other morning it would be great to get some photos of the wildlife around us.

Tuesday: Hard frost this morning and brrr very chilly but the sun broke through so that was nice to see.

Did the usual morning feeding and egg collecting, nothing amiss thank goodness, then did a bit of tidying up outside before coming in to light the fire and make some soup. The long tailed tits have made an appearance this morning, nice to see them back again though I always say they indicate bad weather 😝

Had lots of visitors today, Sam dropped off Mia before going to work, Charlie was here on her last day off before returning to work, Mum, Gill and Zeri came for tea and cake, Shelley, Martin and Josh came round later to pick up some things for Charlie and Luke arrived later to pick up Mia so ‘full house’ today. Lucky I made cake in the morning, I used the orange and sultana recipe except that Charlie had a dried toffee apple/nut concoction that was out of date and she was throwing away so I used it up in the cake instead, smelt amazing and tasted pretty good too 😀 I made some chicken/veg soup in the morning which was also pretty good. John came home early and got some more wood in from outside and did the birds.

Wednesday: Well I am so over Winter ❄️I was trying to get everything done in the house so was a bit later out this morning than usual, I spotted the biggest black cloud and thought I might just be able to outrun it and get the front birds done, nope, bloody hailstones smacking me in the face like someone firing peppercorns through a tube at me. I slipped in the paddock spilling the chicken feed all over the ground, not the best start to a day, please hurry up Spring I am trying to be patient but it’s wearing thin 😝 We have plenty of eggs as the hens have now ramped up their laying, chicken, duck, goose, quail just waiting for the bantams to start as well. Some Salvia seeds I ordered arrived today, White Sage, I am hoping to grow them for smudging bundles, we will see how it goes, the blueberry bushes I ordered also arrived these are early fruiting to prolong the picking season, just need to get some ericaceous compost to pot them into unless I can find the right ingredients to make my own, pine clippings usually does it but not sure how much I would need and how long it would take to bring the ph levels down, apparently, oak leaves and coffee grounds will also work but with the time constraints it might be easier to go and buy some for now 😀

Sometimes when I write these blogs what you read is all about the swan gliding steadily along the river 😜 what you don’t read, because on the whole I don’t write all of it, is the feet furiously paddle away underneath the water trying to get somewhere! Today is one of those days, I have numerous tasks to do including keeping the Rayburn going, looking after Mia, meanwhile the phone is ringing multiple times, the doorbell is ringing, I need to make an urgent phonecall and then wait for a return call, the dog (not mine) keeps jumping the gate every time an egg customer arrives, a family situation that is very stressful, to deal with over the phone and internet…………I have a headache 🤕

Thursday: It’s dry but the wind is cold brrrr. After feeding etc I cleaned out the single rabbit run and the baby boy rabbits, still no idea what we will do with these 😜 and now more of them! After doing that and sorting the egg shed with today’s eggs I did a bit in the greenhouse. Its still very cold in there so can’t do much but I did sow the white sage seeds and the pomelo seeds, they are now indoors on the windowsill as they won’t germinate out there. I made a bit of a boo boo though because there was I gaily putting seeds on the warm south facing windowsills completely forgetting that the glass in them stops the UV rays doh, still they will get light and the indoor warmth so that’s better than outside. I ordered some more blueberry bushes which have now arrived so I unpacked them and they are in the greenhouse until I get them planted up. My old plants struggled last year and I have no idea why, I tested the soil it wasn’t that, I will have to wait and see if they come back this year, they have been fine for about three years so I’m at a loss as to why they failed.

I put new batteries in my small camera and took it out with me this morning, I took photos of the rabbits and the runs and a cheeky hen who is always right under my feet no matter what I’m doing. I also took photos of the greenhouse, garden and large poly tunnel, my thought is to take them on the first of each month and have a round up later in the year to see the progress over time.

Then I came in for a coffee and to warm up my toes, I’ll wait for the sun to warm things up a bit before going out again.

Did a bit of tidying up and lit the fire and then things went tits up about 2.30! I was just going out the boot room door to get some more wood for the fire, put my foot down straight onto a 5”long, 2” round stick that the dog had left there and went over on my ankle with horrible pain, then crash down onto my kneecap with horrible pain and ended up in the dog bed and dog hair in my mouth not that it mattered as I first shouted f***ing dogs, at that point they scarpered, then the pain fully kicked in and all I could do was let out loud primal moans. At this point I could not stand up and proceeded, after moaning for a good minute or so, to drag myself back inside the kitchen and half up to the table to grab my phone and call John who luckily was on his way home anyway. 3 hours later, I have iced, rested, elevated and compressed the ankle, taken painkillers and arnica and assessed that I have not broken anything as far as I can tell, but badly sprained the ankle and bruised the kneecap.

Friday: Not the day I planned to have, the weather is going to be better than yesterday and I had planned on getting the veg garden tidied up 😩instead I am doing what can only be described as ‘the hobble’. Everything takes three times as long so simple tasks like going backwards and forwards to the recycling bin, getting wood for the fire, anything really is slow. First thing is to do the morning routine, John can’t because at the moment he is going round to his Mums to get her up and I can’t load any more stress onto him this week! It is painfully clear my welly won’t go on, nor will Johns which are 3 sizes bigger nor Maccas which are bigger still, so the only option is to wear slip on garden shoes, good job it’s not freezing out there today. The ground is fairly dry and hard though that has its problems because it’s lumpy so having to be very careful where I tread, I did the bare minimum needed and the only thing I couldn’t do was clean the front hens floor because the mud in front of the door is still wet and deep enough to cover my shoes, never mind the slip hazard!

Then it was time to put egg in the shed, well this would be interesting as I needed to carry trays of eggs lol, luckily the eggs and I survived the hazard trip negotiating 3 gates and a shingle driveway. It becomes evident how much you actually do when suddenly you are encumbered and are only doing half a job.

I sat down with a coffee after that and will rest it now for an hour or so before I start again, plenty of resting bits in between and anti inflammatory/arnica and I will be swinging from the trees before you know it. I have ordered an ankle strap and put out a plea to the family for a pair of boots that might be suitable oh my days life is complicated sometimes.

All the birds have ramped up their laying but we seemed to be short on customers, last week the sales were down and so far this week it’s the same, I hope they come back soon lol, it’s typical when you have limited eggs the customers come thick and fast and when you have loads of eggs you are eagerly waiting for them to buy 🤪

Sam and Shelley came over in the afternoon and did some of the jobs for me while I pretty much rested my ankle, then John came home and did the afternoon feeding and egg collecting and got me some dinner 😀

Saturday: The resting did me a whole lot of good as I can walk around fairly normally now, however I still can’t get my wellies on so John did the morning routine and then went to his Mums and I got on with de cluttering and cleaning our bedroom. I had decided January was going to be the month to get sorted and get rid of stuff but never got round to it, so today seems like a good day, a bag full of clothes that i never wear for the charity shop, some for the rag and shoe bin, some stuff for the dustbin and voila it’s done. Meanwhile John is getting barrowfulls of wood into the back area and Macca is cleaning the bathroom, happy days 😀

Sunday: Still no chance of me getting anything other than a slip on shoe on this foot, bearing in mind the mud out there it means John has to do the morning routine again today. Poor John is working flat out at the minute, looking after his Mum having to do what I can’t do and he is not even complaining 😐

I have been doing what I can inside including up dating the chalk board we have out by the egg shed, well I would if I could get the last lot of writing off! I scoured the internet for tips, tried everything from nail varnish remover, hob cleaner, white vinegar, a rubber and plain old water but there is still ‘ghost’ writing. I have ordered a ‘magic eraser’ to see if that helps but what is the point of a board that you can’t re use? I can’t use water based chalk pens because that will just wash off in the rain, ah well there are bigger problems to have I suppose. I made fresh bread, did the washing etc etc, if the ground would only dry up enough I could be outside 😀 I bought some ericaceous compost yesterday for the blueberries but I will have a go at making a batch to see if it’s worth doing, the biggest problem will be getting the ph right and seeing how long the ph levels stay like that because from what I have read without peat it reverts back to neutral after 4/6 months or so which is not a lot of good.

This is fanny, she is a pain in the butt, she is constantly under my feet when I am in the orchard pen, she follows me round (very closely) pecking at my feet, coat, hands wherever she thinks she might get a morsel or two 😝

The little birds that have taken to roosting in our boxes all winter, there are loads of them, they even roost in the vent from the hob extractor hood and behind loose house boards!

Posted in Friesland Farm

Goodbye 2017, Hello 2018 and the bits in-between 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

I thought I may as well make a few notes over the festive period, so Christmas went really well, our visitors enjoyed themselves immensely, objective achieved 😀. Most of what went wrong was technology, Alexa crashed on Christmas Day due to the overload of her system with all the new ones I’m guessing, and the day after Boxing Day we lost our landline and internet connection so couldn’t catch up with programmes we had hoped to watch. As you know I am a great advocate of modern technological developments but when they go wrong it’s a big fat fail. To begin with trying to get hold of a human being to report a phone line down is hard work, it keeps directing you to the website, all very well but we don’t have any internet either, the fact that we don’t get much mobile signal compounded the issue further, still I eventually made contact with the outside world, probably India 😜 and reported that we and our neighbours had a problem, an engineer (grumpy by all accounts) is fixing it as I type, thank you 😊

John held the fort outside doing ALL the feeding, egg collecting and putting to bed, while I held the fort inside doing all the cooking and hosting. One of our house guests insisted on doing all the washing up every time there was any to do and I was very grateful for that. We have had 4 family birthdays over the Christmas week as well so have been extremely well fed and no doubt we are all looking forward to the new year clear out of bad habits etc to have a fresh start. I got the ball rolling by clearing out my baking cupboard, specifically the ‘cake making box’ full of out of date food colouring (2011) sprinkles of various descriptions, gelatine sachets and two full tubes of liquid glucose? A bottle of vegan rennet? About 20 half burnt cake candles 😝 I even found a dead spider though how it got in there in the first place is a total mystery. It’s all cleaned out now and at least I know if I need supplies for birthday cakes I shall have to go and buy some and as we are on a septic tank the pretty colours going down the sink might show up in the excess run off and give us a laugh 😂

The weather has been up and down, nothing new there, 11 degrees on Christmas Day, snowing and bloody freezing two days later, lashings of rain and some cold winds thrown in for good measure. Our guests left yesterday and this morning I ventured out to give John a hand for the first time in almost a week, the first thing I did was put my foot down on what I thought was a puddle, it was in fact ice, the foot slipped forward causing me to crash down on the opposite knee looking like I was waiting to take a well deserved knighthood, **#@£&!!? bloody good start that was, heat and pain shot up my leg to my hip and after a few minutes it eased off and thankfully after quickly taking some ibrufen no lasting damage has been done.

Marvellous job, the phone line/broadband has been restored, message on the answerphone from BT thanking me for reporting the fault and that they will be out to fix it and ring me to keep me updated!!! Some serious joining up of thought needs to be done in that company me thinks 😜

It seems like a continuous round of sorting leftovers, some to the dogs, some sliced for the freezer, some to use up as soon as possible and reluctantly some for the food waste bin, I only use that when we have had a ‘gathering’ as most things are processed as above in various ways but once things like pate/dips have been opened and left on the table for a few hours I prefer not to keep them especially when multiple knives with other stuff has been in and out of it!

The next preparation is for NYE, we are gathering with some of the village and eating, drinking, making merry, I shall be making a large beef stew, I hate cooking for other people, just in case it doesn’t come up to expectations, and have never been a natural hostess (or even sociable some may say) type but I am making an effort, it’s the least I can do once a year 😜

I will not be making any resolutions, I’ve NEVER kept one I have made in he past so gave that up as a bad job years ago, what I will do is probably make a list of objectives and see how many I can achieve, I’ll make them reasonable, no point failing before I begin. I have been looking at the seed catalogues, not rushing into buying them this year, I will look carefully at each variety, see what their strengths are and see how well they can be used in specific areas of the garden. After all there is no point having sugar sweet peas that take forever to grow to a reasonable size when we have such exposed conditions here, what I need is something of acceptable taste that can withstand a wind chill, that’s the kind of thing anyhow. On the garden subject the fruit cage or rather replacement of it will need to go on the list and a possible relocating of it if I feel there is a better place for it to go.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND WELCOME 2018

The second day of the New Year, I was busy cooking dinner for the family yesterday and watching films 😜

This morning it’s raining but we still had work to do so off we went outside, I did the rabbits etc while John did the others, then I decided to rake up the leaves from the drive next to the house it been bugging me for ages. I blocked off a particularly muddy bit, that the dogs keep running in, with some sheep hurdles and swept the area clean, very satisfying but I was actually soaked through to the skin by the time I finished.

John went off to the dentist to have a tooth out so that’s him done for the day today and he will probably spend the rest of it in bed, I set about looking for a new waterproof coat! I decided on a wax coat as they are obviously made for lots of outdoor use, I didn’t go for a brand name however, they are extortionate in price but for one about a third of the price. John has had one for years so I know they do the job, I also ordered some waterproof gloves that are intended for cycling but should be just as good for farm work though I may need to replace them regularly as the finger tips tend to wear away quite quickly.

I had Mia for a few hours so got the house warm and we watched The Gruffalo for the umpteenth time 😝 could be worse, could have been Peppa Pig 😩

John got up eventually and probably should have stayed in bed, it’s not easy having to look after someone who has had a major operation like an amputated leg, oh, wait it wasn’t, it was a tooth out, honestly, I had a caesarian section then looked after a new baby and two other children while he was at work, I can see a kick up the arse coming, obvs I will wait till he has healed a little bit 😜

Wednesday 3rd Jan: Storm Elenor is currently roaring away outside, she could be heard all the way through the night here but as yet no damage luckily. John is into his last week of three weeks off, to be honest we are getting to the end of each other’s tether 😝 coupled with the fact he had a tooth out yesterday and hasn’t had a smoke for nearly 24hrs he is getting on my nerves, I am getting on his nerves lol roll on Monday when we will be out of each other’s hair for a good 8 hours a day 😝 It makes me wonder how retired couples get on, badly, I’m guessing, at least to begin with.

My hands were a bit swollen from raking and brushing yesterday, that’s typical of the Lupus and very annoying, I get the bit between my teeth, do a job and then wham there is a price to pay.

Thursday: The winds dropped last night but are back with some force again today 💨 John is off to do some work later but stayed to do the animals this morning first, he did the usual stuff while I cleaned out the goose hut and the ducks. The goose hut has a separator in there for spring use when they start to lay eggs so that they are not all laying in one nest, that becomes a problem when one starts to sit as the other eggs can’t be collected, this way we stand a chance until they all decide to sit. The duck pen is basically a giant muddy puddle and hopefully that’s one good use for the wind it will help dry it up a bit in between rainfalls😝 I tided it up as best I could given the circumstances, it’s a waiting game for a dry or cold period to give us some respite now.

My new coat arrived this morning and I can’t wait to put it on and go out to play lol. The old one has seen much better days, been repaired goodness knows how many times and the zip is at best barely functional and at its worse downright stubborn. I’m not one for throwing things away too quickly mind you so I shall attempt another repair job and use it when the weather dries up a bit, but for now I am happy with my new waterproof, windproof coat, I hope it doesn’t get too dirty too quickly 😩.

I am waiting for a calm, dry day so that I can get in the greenhouse, empty it out and give it a clean ready for spring. I know a lot of people do it at the end of the season but I’ve done that before and had to do it again as the wet/damp weather just creates more green algae so no point wasting energy better to pick the right time.

It is at this time of year gardeners are chomping at the bit to get going and I’m no exception, I have already clocked the emergence of the snowdrops and noted dead stuff that needs cutting back or clearing when the time is right. The seed catalogue takes the main place on the coffee table pile though I haven’t finalised my decisions yet it won’t be long 😀 The broad beans and peas I planted in Autumn appear to have survived and are doing fairly well as are the garlic and onions, I haven’t ventured into the poly tunnels yet but as they are a dry space I really ought to get started on them, I can feel a list coming on 😜 John has a couple of jobs on his list that need doing, the post that holds the big gate open by the back door got ripped out of the ground by the last winds and I am having to hold it open when anything drives through so that’s a priority and the stable bolts all need adjusting again as the water table has gone up and pushed the posts up slightly, we are always adjusting them depending on the water table lol.

Got some homemade veg soup out of the freezer and made some bread, definitely a day to appreciate it, I think more scanning of the seed catalog is in order this afternoon apparently the winds will not die down until tonight and I can’t take a day of buffeting so indoor stuff until it’s necessary to go out again.

Well we must have had a very strong gust of wind, when I was doing the afternoon feed rounds I could hear something banging away and looked over towards the rabbit run, one of the roof panels had come off together with the wood that it was screwed to, phoned John to let him know he had a job waiting for him before dark 😝 We managed to patch it up enough that it should hold overnight and not let the rain in, the garden chairs had all gone flying as well but I have left them where they are until the wind dies down.

Spent most of the evening looking for chickens of certain varieties, they are proving elusive or a days journey away! I am after a utility breed, Large Light Sussex, Ixworths or what would be best of all Le Bresse, these would be to rear the cockerels as table birds, I may have to purchase hatching eggs which is not a problem just takes much longer to get what you want.

Friday: John has gone to work today so it’s down to me to do the morning routine for the first time since before Christmas. My nice new coat didn’t stay clean very long, I let the ducks out, one flapped it’s wings sending mud splattering all over me including my face 😜 After that job I cleaned out the quail hut completely and put in fresh bedding and floor covering plus a nice dust bath bowl for them to play in. They have laid all through winter not as many as in the summer months but that’s to be expected. The egg numbers in general are going back up thankfully just waiting for the geese to start laying and we will have a full range for sale again.

One thing about having someone else around is that I can never find my equipment, the time I have spent looking for something that hasn’t been put back where I left it is nobody’s business, drives me insane, this morning it’s the shovel, the light weight one I bought for myself because the heavy one is, well, too heavy!

I took photos of the silkies this morning, I have asked online for an opinion on which sex they are, I can normally sex chickens easily however these have a full head of fluff and not many obvious features that are different. I looked online for the answers but it’s a bit vague so needs must, or I can just wait to see how many eggs I get or if any start crowing.

Saturday: What a day, 2.30pm and I have only just come inside or indeed sat down since 8.30 this morning! After doing the morning feeding we decided to ‘cut back’ the two big bushes in the front, why stop there we thought, might as well do the hazels while we are here with all the equipment out 😝 we have cut back hard this year, previously we have just trimmed so they are not in the way so in for a penny in for a pound we set ourselves loose. As the hazels were quite tall it was an ideal opportunity to make some bean and pea poles with the debris, so with the billhook and loppers in hand I spent many hours making them. My back, legs and hands are aching but it’s an excellent job done and I will be thankful when I need some supports in the garden I’m sure. I don’t think I will be able to move again for a while now I have sat down lol.

Sunday: Got the usual stuff done then it was on to burning all the debris from cutting the bushes back and sorting out my bean poles into sizes. The wind was bitter, but we kept going, well I did until lunchtime when I came and put some sausage rolls in the Rayburn, once they were done I took them out to John with a cuppa and he suggested I go inside as I was pretty cold. I did a bit of cleaning and some washing and was grateful to be in the warm. The sun has been shinning nicely and with the tops out of the hazels lots more light is streaming into the house, unfortunately that shows the dust 😝 but dust is always there no matter how much I polish and I have better things to do than worry about it too much.

In-between all the other jobs John concreted in a new post to hold the gate open it is much better than the last one so I’m very pleased.

Hazels cut right back this year

Hazel poles for beans and peas

Poles sorted into sizes

John still outside burning the cuttings 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

Rain, Sun and naughty dogs. 

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Have a fabulous week people 😀