Monday17th April 2023: I had one of those mornings where all the things that were bugging me just had to be done and there was no putting it off any longer. It’s not that I put them off just that other jobs jump the queue 😂 So this morning I hoovered the boot room and washed down all the side areas, it gets dusty and dirty with the cats and dogs in there but when it’s constantly raining there is no point even trying to clean it because it won’t stay like that for more than ten minutes. It probably still won’t stay very clean but I couldn’t put up with it any longer, then there was the fridge to clean out, things lurking in the back and half used things sitting on the shelves, all clean and tidy again. I managed to smash my favourite tea mug while I was wiping down the side ☹️ so I then had to hoover the kitchen floor which also needs a wash but as the wet just gets walked right in I only want to do it when we have a dry period 😜 I cleaned the bathroom and emptied the wash basket, I also need to wash a few extra things for our holiday, my hat for instance. There were things to put away in their right place things that just get put down somewhere and left for a few weeks 😬 I feel less stressed when these jobs have left my head because they are done ✔️
The weather is cloudy and not at all spring like but that suits me fine as long as it’s not raining though the air is damp with no sun shining through. I have a few flowers to do for customers this week, some today but mostly at the end of the week and then there are Friday flowers of course, they sell quickly most of the time and as the growth season gets under way there will be many more flowers and so many more to put out which will be fabulous.
John bought home a second hand commercial freestanding sink and drainer which we had found locally, we got it all cleaned up (it wasn’t too bad just some grease on a couple of the legs) and go that in the flower hut. They have a deeper sink so much better for getting the buckets in, it is difficult in a shallow sink to get the taller buckets in and get the tap over the top. It will only be used to fill the buckets and give them a swill so didn’t need to be anything too fancy. Flowers being picked up this evening and then I have an online meeting later tonight.
Tuesday: I keep thinking it’s Wednesday 🤷♀️ I have flowers to do for Thursday and thought I better get cutting ready for conditioning then realised it’s only Tuesday 🙄 The morning started badly with me waking up with pink eye and then later dropping a box of eggs as I was taking them out to the shed 😝 Maybe I should just sit quietly today 😂 I know I won’t though as the sun is trying to make an appearance, it still feels a tad cold out but it’s only 9am so if it stays out it will warm up to a beautiful spring day hopefully.
It is three years today that Dad passed away, where does the time go and how come it goes by faster the older you get 🤔
I spent a large part of the day weeding, Shelley called in and also got stuck in helping me with the never ending weed harvest 😂 I know you can eat a lot of them and I have made food from them before now but mostly they feed other animals or get composted. I also took some cuttings from a sedum and dug up some campanula seedlings and potted those up, getting free plants for another day is money saving and satisfying.
Wednesday: It is Mia’s birthday today, a whole seven years old, oh to be seven again lol. We will be popping over to see her later after she finishes school.
I am hoping it will be dry enough to get the towels washed and on the line today 🤞🙄 They are just finishing the cycle as I type, I have a hearty beef stew in the slow cooker along with a multitude of yummy veg so once the towels are out I am free to get on with the rest of my day. I will be lifting and cutting flowers today ready for Friday flowers plus a few other orders I have tomorrow and Friday. Once the season is underway I hopefully will have flowers available all week long but at this time of year I concentrate them to the end of the week. This way I don’t end up with flowers I haven’t sold and therefore money wasted.
I got another brew on the go yesterday, comfrey tea 😁 comfrey grows like mad here and so best to make good use of it by steeping it in water for a few weeks. It makes a stinking tea but it is great plant food so worth the effort, sustainable, natural plant food 🥰 Fill a bucket with the leaves, cover with water, cover the bucket (because of the smell) and leave for three weeks then use it at a 10:1 ratio the 10 being water. It has a high nutrient content due to the deep tap root being able to access deeper soils, high in potassium and nitrogen, it can be used as a spray (foliar) feed or watered onto the soil promoting good strong growth and good fruiting/flowering.
Having sung Biscuits praises saying she doesn’t try and get out (famous last words) she has got out three days running the little s**t 😂 The electric tape is up and clicking away so I know it’s on, I think she is literally climbing through the post and rail fencing 🙄 So plan b is put into action 😝 She is fenced off inside the smallest paddock we have so I lure Jack across with the showing of tasty hay and shut the gates at either side of the paddock. I undo the electric fenced off area and let them both roam the small paddock, the hopeful outcome will be that Jack helps to graze it right off and then he will go into the paddock next door while Biscuit stays in the eaten off one. Every now and then we will have to put Jack in there to help keep the grass down as it is growing well now. This is the plan, plans do not always go how they should, watch this space 👀 by the time I finish sorting this out it is lunchtime.
Over to see Mia after school to celebrate her birthday with her. I left the water on in the tunnel while I was away and this year I and using the timer on my watch to remind me to turn the water off again, so far that is working well though I did have to re set it twice while we were out as I had only set it for an hour.
Thursday: A sunny day with a stiff breeze making it feel cooler. I had a busy morning doing flowers, I have some orders going to customers today, some tomorrow and then the Friday flowers and jam jars. It is surprising how long it takes to do them all, it’s after 1pm and I have only just finished having been doing them all morning. Normally I would do them this evening but I have some deliveries to make after the twins have gone home and then it’s pool night for John so I have to squeeze it in-between the two 😝
Friday: Up before the alarm this morning to get things done, flowers needed to go out early for customers coming first thing, the bunches needed wrapping and the jam jar flower needed tying loosely. I was hoping to get it done before the alarm went off and John got up but he decided to get up early too 😝 He had to stand and eat his toast as I had commandeered the kitchen table, once the flower hut is ready this will no longer be a problem. I had early customers coming for eggs and honey to so I had to make sure all those were ready and out in the shed. My day is going to be like that today, I have an appointment at 9 Shelley is coming over around 10.30 to walk through things that she will be looking after while we are away, I have customers coming to collect flowers at other times of the day and I have someone coming to collect lambing equipment I sold online.
The weather was lovely yesterday and today it’s not! Colder and wet again urrgghh there is just no consistency to the weather patterns at the minute. On the sunny days you think ‘ooo Spring has sprung’ and then back to ‘oh it’s winter again’ 😂 it does not make life easy for growing things either, the fluctuation in temperatures in the greenhouse and poly tunnels confuse the plants and seedlings and things growing outside are trying but progress is slooooow. Hey Ho no two years are ever the same so at least we are used to ‘winging it’ 😜 All we can do is try our best.
Saturday: Foggy and cold start to the day, it took a good few hours for the sun to burn it off but when it finally did it was not a bad day though it ended with rain and was cold again. First thing this morning we went to town as I needed a good rain coat for our holiday ✔️ then stop to get some shopping ✔️ once home I needed to pick rhubarb and then take that along with flowers down to the pub ✔️ once back I spent an hour or so in the greenhouse potting on plants and then I had the twins for a few hours while Sam and Luke took Mia out for her birthday treat. They were very good and I had them picking all the dandelion heads off the lawn and feeding them to the torts. Then George helped me to dig up dandelions in the pathways, I think he thoroughly enjoyed that especially the great big ones. I seem to have an awful lot of them this year they were growing everywhere and in order to knock them back a bit I needed to dig them up. Not all of them obviously, I have left some smaller ones and I didn’t dig any out of the lawn they can stay and just be mown every now and then. They got hungry and we went inside for lunch and stayed in for the next hour as the sun went in and it got cold outside again. Once they had been collected I was straight back out on the dandelion mission while John cut the lawn. As I said in the beginning the temps dropped and the rain came 🙄 Joping for a half decent day tomorrow 😬
Sunday: It was, for the most part, a decent day 😁 the weather conditions were just about right for me and so I spent most of the time in the greenhouse potting on or pricking out seedlings. John was busy having a bonfire at the back and tidying up. Sam came over with the children, a friend and the friends daughter who goes to riding lessons with Mia. They spent some time grooming the horses then saddled them up for rides around the paddock, everyone, horses and children were very well behaved except Lucie who by all accounts played in the horses water bucket 😂 and then had to strip off because she was soaking wet, you gotta love a spirited carefree child 🥰
We went round to Mums later in the afternoon and we were there when the national test alarm sounded on our phones. Mums went off and then around 30 seconds later mine went off, apparently lots of people didn’t get it at all so it’s lucky it was a test signal and not the real thing 😝 We had a discussion about what exactly the alarm might sound for, we don’t have tsunami, we have fires but nowhere near the scale of some countries, I suppose flash flooding might trigger it but I am guessing the flood would be quicker than the alarm 🤷♀️ chemical leaks or explosions might well be on the list but they would be localised as would many threat to life situations such as a gunman on the loose. We concluded that a meteor strike or nuclear attack were what it is intended for 🤔 Which begs the questions, do they know something?
Monday 29th November: Oh what a lovely Monday morning 🤪 snow on the ground, flipping freezing and as yet (2pm) it has not thawed 🙄 A different routine this morning, the birds are now all housed and so that means there is no point John doing them in the morning before he goes to work, it becomes my job 😏 I was glibly thinking ‘I don’t need to go out until mid morning’ but then realised that I actually would have to go out first thing of course (silly me) The horses need hay, the water buckets need the ice broken and although we had filled up the feeders in the stable block and for the ducks, the others in the orchard will still need feeding and watering. So I donned my big ‘duvet’ coat, my isotherm wellies (they keep your feet warm down to -10 🥰) and my leather gloves because if they get wet it doesn’t go through to my fingers and make them freezing cold. I did all the feeding and watering and then had to set up a small run for the light Sussex hen with the chick, everything needs to be enclosed and no wild birds should be able to get to the food or water, this is quite a task but luckily, as it happens year on year now, we are prepared. Once I had finished outside it was back indoors to divide up some blocks of mature cheddar for the freezer and get those in along with some blocks of butter and a carton of milk. I am not stocking up honestly lol, the milk I asked John to get on top of our regular delivery because he seemed to be drinking a lot of tea. In the end we didn’t use it and had our normal delivery this morning so I need to freeze it and save it for another day. The butter I am going to need when I start making mince pies by the dozen and if I have them in the freezer ready then I can do them when I want to. The cheese is because John only eats mild cheese which is not much good for flavouring something like cauliflower cheese so if I put it in the freezer I always have some handy and it’s not going hard in the fridge. I have been a Jack of all trades today because after that job I went and painted the pantry. I say painted and John is going to tell me it’s not finished but that is the look I am going for 😂 he will hate it, I will love it, it’s my pantry and once the door is on I doubt he will ever go in there 😂 Then I spent a bit of time trying out new bits of crafting, I want to make some decorations for myself and so have been having a go at cone trees, not pine cone trees but cone shaped trees, I haven’t finished yet but if I am pleased with the result I will take photos. A quick sit down with a cup of tea and then onto the next job of the day, caramelised red onion chutney making 😁
With the chutney on the go, the dinner prepped ready for this evening and an apple and blueberry crumble also made, I got all togged up to go outside and do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting. Luckily the outside taps had thawed and I was able to get more water to the ducks, geese and horses who also had more hay. The shift took me far longer than it did to write about it 😂 I had planned on coming in for a cuppa before shutting them away at dusk but by the time I had finished that, collected the post, checked the egg shed, fed the dogs and the cats it was getting dark and so I shut down doors etc before coming back inside and taking off my artic gear. I just got into the kitchen when John arrived home, typical that he arrives just as everything is done. He asked if I had painted the pantry, I told him yes but he won’t like it, he said and I quote ‘it’s your pantry, you can paint it how you like’ 😮 As we went through to have a look, John shouted at the dog who was busy helping herself to eggs from the bucket! Normally I put the bucket of eggs in the sink but there was the paint tray in there so I put it on the floor, I won’t make that mistake again 😂 The reason I don’t box up the eggs right away is because then the cat sits on the boxes which is ok-ish when the weather is dry but if it’s wet she gets the boxes dirty. Sometimes I feel the battle is already lost before I even get up 🤪 I complain all the time that the geese eat all the chicken food (because they should not be down in the stable block) the dog eats the cat food (he reaches up on the side to sneak it out of their bowl) the chickens eat diesels cat food (big no no) if the he hasn’t eaten it all and now the dog is eating the eggs, I need some sort of order back with the feed routine which will be easier now the birds are all shut away.
Hens on lockdown 😏
I think I am just going to relax this evening, once the dinner is made, eaten and washed up that is! I hope it thaws overnight, Smallholding life is a lot harder when it’s freezing outside.
Tuesday: i did the rounds again this morning and it has all thawed thank goodness, it was hard work over the last few days 🙄 The art of the job is getting in through the stable doors without letting any hens out 😂 this morning just as I opened the door and ducked down to go in, one of them flew straight at me from where she was perching, I did t have the heart to tell her she has a very long time until she can go outside again 😏
I didn’t have anything in particular planned for today which was just as well as Sam came over with the twins and Shelley and Flo came after Flo finished nursery so it was a few hours of chaos and cacophony 😝 Once they had all left to do the school run I sat in total silence enjoying the moment 🤪
I did have time to make a cake before anyone arrived though, it was a recipe I wanted to have a go at, pumpkin cake with a cream cheese frosting. The verdict from the little ones was ‘nah’ the verdict from Sam was ‘not bad’ I can’t decide if I like it or not 🤷♀️ I think if I did it again I would doctor the recipe somewhat as it is quite heavy, more like a pudding texture but chances are I won’t make it again lol.
Wednesday: Busy day today, first up, the morning rounds and sorting out fresh water, feed etc then onto digging up the dahlia bulbs and putting them to dry out in the greenhouse before storing for the winter. The smaller ones I have left in the ground to see if they survive but the big star ones and the cafe au lait I have dug up as I don’t want to lose those. Some of them have got massive over summer and so I should be able to get lots more plants from them in spring. I also found a couple of lupin seed heads which I have drying in the kitchen now, also for sowing again next spring. I had quickly painted the remaining bits I needed to do in the pantry before doing the gardening and so once that was dry I went back to get some bits of furniture cleaned and moved in there. The apple rack is going to live in there and needed the dust cleaned from it, also a cupboard that needed a hoovering to get the dust off. The rest of the day until feeding time I spent cleaning out screws and nails from the workbench which is also going to be going in there. The bench is one that we inherited at our old house from the previous owner, it is old, heavy and well used, it will look fab once it is cleaned up. But before I can do that I needed to clean out the little cubby holes at the back which were full of screws and nails, some of which have been there for well over twenty years I imagine 😂 I sorted through thousands of screws and nails of all different sizes and types, lots were rusty and so have been thrown away, lots are still very useable and indeed we are always looking for nails and screws so sorting them all out will be a good job, well done. I have now ordered a screw organiser thingy that will go on the wall and I can sort them out into sizes hopefully. I came in for a s quick sit down before having to go out and do the afternoon rounds and saw what I thought was an egg customer sat in the car, I went out with more eggs as we have had a few visitors to the shed today. He got out and asked for Samantha, my thought were now whirring as the horses were due to have the dentist visit but I didn’t think it was today, I asked him if he was the dentist and yes he was 🙄 A quick phonecall to Sam and it seems she had the wrong day written down 🤪 he agreed to come back tomorrow bless him, which is when Sam thought he was coming. The reason that I couldn’t supervise is because Sam doesn’t know how Jack is going to react, previously he had to be sedated to have his teeth rasped and it’s not something I would be confident overseeing. I finally got a sit down for about half and hour before starting with the afternoon rounds and egg collecting.
Huge dahlia tuber root, hopefully I can get a lot more plants from it next spring.
I am not quite sure where Thursday and Friday went lol or what I did on those days except that the horse dentist came back to do their teeth and it’s good to finally get a rough idea of biscuits age, apparently somewhere around 20 years old. She is in good oral health though which is good to know, Jack also has no problems and his lameness has gone so that is good as well. I have had the twins three times since Thursday morning so no wonder I have no idea what else I have done 🤪 Friday (I think) I went into town with Shelley and Flo for a mooch round the charity shops and to get a nice coffee. I found a few bargains including a gorgeous Rumtopf pot, I did already have one but this one was so lovely I couldn’t leave it sat there so I bought it 😁 I gave the other one to shelley so she can have a go at it next year. Traditionally you fill the rumtopf with layers of fruit, rum and sugar, the fruit can be a complete mixture which means to can add to it as the season progresses. You then eat the boozy fruit around Christmas time. I tend to use plums and brandy but any combination works just as well if you fancy giving it a go.
Saturday: I had the twins for a couple of hours while Sam and luke went to a meeting and then it was time to go to the family Christmas party. Each year (except last year) my sister hires the hall in Kelmscot and we have a big family get together, there are a lot of us and we need a big space for everyone to be able to come 😂 This year it was mainly centred around the children having fun so there was a disco and games and a sack of gifts for them all, we all did something for a buffet and as always there was plenty to eat and drink 🥰 It is important for the children to get together as a good few of them have only known pandemic conditions which is really quite sad.
Sunday: Up and about early this morning and after getting all the Smallholding jobs done, feeding, watering etc, and then the household things done, washing on, rubbish out etc, I could finally get on with the job I was excited to get started, the pantry 🥰 We had moved some of the cupboards in yesterday but we could finally get started on fitting shelves and fixtures. I am delighted with how it is going so far, I have plenty of shelves and storage space and I have lots of hanging space for drying flowers or storing onions and garlic. I have tried to use everything I already had here and have easily achieved that, I still have a fair amount to put in there but here is a sneak preview 😁 I can’t wait to start stocking it with goodies 😍
Monday 4th October 2021: A nice day for the best part, a little rain in the afternoon but only quick showers really. I had decided how my day was going to go and got on with things only to get a phone call from John at around 9am. The job he was starting this week and had gone to was cut short because the customer had received a phone call from the hospital to say they had tested positive with covid. John put his tools back in the van and came back home, that put paid to my peaceful day 🤪 he decided to stay home and so I got him working, not going to waste an unexpected opportunity like that 🤣 He burnt all the paper and cardboard rubbish that had mounted up and then did some tidying up of various areas. He did pop out again in the afternoon to a couple of small jobs.
Meanwhile I spent the whole day outside working on the veg garden. Firstly I did some picking, the tomatoes are still giving me plenty of lovely fruits, I had considered pulling them all up a few weeks back but I am glad I left them now. I picked a few of the last cucumbers, the plants have pretty much finished and the cues I picked were really only any good for the animals. While I was in the tunnel I decided to give it a bit of a tidy up, the weeds had grown again and mint has managed to find its way in too so I cleared all that. I will keep the mint, dry it and it will be used for the Guineas and rabbit over winter. I cleared one of the makeshift beds that had strawberry plants in, got some huge pots, filled them with compost and replanted some of the strawberry runners. Plenty of work left to do in there yet but the sun came out and it was quite warm in there so I left that and moved on to something else. I kind of floundered around a little doing bits of this and that before knuckling down to digging up the herbs from the herb bed. I am relocating that bed and it will be flatted and laid to lawn, more grass for the children to play on, less area that I have to work on. The herbs have been there for nearly ten years and the roots on some of them are huge, I have dug up what I can, divided and potted at lot of it up ready for when I decide where it will go. Some of the p,ants will be kept to go out for sale next year. That all took me up to around 5pm and I didn’t really stop except for a few tea breaks so a good days work there. Luckily it was bubble and squeak for Johns tea and I had cold lamb so not much preparation to be done for that.
Tuesday: Oooosh that was a lot of rain over night but not as much as other parts of the country have had and I just saw the forecast for the end of the week the temps are going up again to an unseasonable 20c 🙄🤷♀️ crazy days.
I had a good productive morning, I spent the first couple of hours clearing the small tunnel, all the tomato plants are now down, those plants were mostly finished, they were flowering again but I don’t think we will have temps that would help them to fruit successfully at this time of year. I planted the garlic chives in one of the beds instead of leaving it in the pot, hopefully they will continue to grow all through winter. Next it was the turn of the tomatoes in the big tunnel, there were still plenty of tomatoes on these. Some were ripe and some still green but I have got all of them off and have left them to ripen in the greenhouse. The tigerello tomatoes are definitely a type I would grown again next year, they are nice and fleshy and ideal for cooking with, produce well and have few problems with disease as far as I can tell.
The farrier was arriving at 11 and I worked right up to 10.45 when Sam arrived with the twins, I twinsat while she went and got the horses in, gave their tails and bit of a trim and waited while the farrier did his job then she put them back out in the paddock. They stayed until mid afternoon. The weather was on and off in the afternoon, rainy, sunny, rainy sunny so I did some inside bits and pieces. The lamb we had Sunday was a big joint and so there was plenty left even after John had bubble and squeak yesterday. Today I sliced it all up, put two lots in the freezer and saved a third lot to reheat with gravy for dinner tonight. The bone has gone into the slow cooker along with carrots, celery leaves, baby leeks and a bay leaf, also a bit of lemon juice. The lemon juice is the acidity needed to pull all the goodness from the bone to make broth, a delicious, nutritious way to use every last bit of the joint.
When John came home we organised getting the side of the building reclad, I say organised, what that consisted of is me taking control because John hasn’t done anything about it and then John interfering with what I was doing! Anyhow we now have the ball rolling, I just got to keep pushing it 😜
Wednesday: I spent a very pleasant morning in the garden, working mind you, but it was lovely and sunny and not too hot so I got on with things. At first I couldn’t decide what exactly I was going to get done but once I made decision I cracked on and didn’t stop until early afternoon. The bed that the herbs are coming out of is a very long bed and at the other end is where the rhubarb grows, before that is the asparagus bed and where all the strawberries have run riot, there is a pear tree and a chokeberry as well and somewhere in the middle are the courgettes I planted this year. I pulled off all the dying rhubarb leaves and weeded round them, then I weeded round the courgettes, cut down the asparagus fern (normally I leave them but want to get sorted this year so they have been cut down) after that it was the humongous task of taking out literally hundreds of strawberry plants and runners. They have really taken over and so I needed to thin them right out, buckets and buckets of plants went onto the compost heaps. I still want a fair few of them left to grow again next year, not for the strawberries particularly but because they grow well with asparagus and they make excellent ground cover, they also provide food and shelter for wildlife and I seem to get a great crop of pears each year with them growing underneath the tree. I worked on that until I found myself self resting more and more often, time for a break and some lunch. It may seem like such a waste with the plants going into the compost but honestly there are too many of them to do anything with, I have already planted up plenty of runners for next year both to plant elsewhere and to sell, you have to know when to stop lol.
Shelley called round with Flo before going to pick up Josh from school and then I hoovered through and cleaned the kitchen floor which I have been looking at for ages thinking I really must do that, well now it’s done 😁
Tonight I have my flower arranging group so I made sure I had everything ready to take, not really sure if I have enough or if I have the right things but I guess I will find out later. I am looking forward to it although a bit nervous about what I am supposed to produce 😂
Not a bad effort if I do say so myself 😁
Thursday: A perfect day for working in the garden all day which is exactly what I did. I spent the whole day weeding the veg beds, digging up what I didn’t need anymore, a whole lot more time on my hands and knees carefully picking out couch grass. I actually love weeding couch grass 🤣 I find it very therapeutic trying to get all the roots untangled from the soil. I feel like the beds are coming back into some sort of order now although there is still a lot of work to get through before I am finished. It helps that this year I have not been plagued with any Lupus flares 🤷♀️ no idea why but I am not complaining as it means I have been able to achieve a lot more than previous years. We had a couple of loads of type one delivered for the side driveway first thing this morning and I could have spent the day levelling it but nah I would rather garden instead. Twin sitting late afternoon means chaos and fun and then dinner and the day is over already.
Oooo I have been proper slack at writing this up this week, it’s Monday morning and I haven’t done it since Thursday! Mostly it’s because I have been pretty busy with one thing and another, I have done a fair bit of clearing in the garden, tidied out both my sheds so I can get in them and store stuff away for winter. I have also sorted out all the bird feeders and boxes ready for winter feeding and roosting for the wild birds, cut the grass, helped John with recladding the side of the building, been out twice for cake with both lots of grandchildren, cooked a Sunday roast for one of the families to join us in, moved the fencing for the horses so they can start to eat off the grass in a different paddock as they were getting a bit hungry, planted garlic, transplanted winter lettuce, been foraging for apples in the lanes around here, no wonder I haven’t had time to write anything 🤣
Must do better next week 🤪 Have a good one wherever you are x
Monday 2nd August 2021: It is actually Wednesday morning as I type this, I have missed a couple of days due to external matters that needed my time. On those days I have done only the necessary basics here, feeding and watering animals, picking and sorting veg and household bits so there was not much to report anyway. I did move the horses from the restricted paddock which is all but eaten off now, they are in the side paddock but at some point I need to put the electric fencing up in there so that they don’t gorge themselves.
Today I can get on and as yet I haven’t quite decided what I will do although the cloud looks quite thick at the moment so I should be able to get out for a good part of the day. I had been feeling down and disillusioned with everything as well as very tired, some of that was due to other things going on and some of it just whatever is going on in my body at the minute but today I feel I can bounce back a little bit and focus 😁
Wednesday: A did a really good stint at weeding the veg beds, most of the morning in fact. When we go away shelley will be living here and although I can tell weeds from the veg it’s not so easy for anyone else 😂 so I have made it easier to see what things are and what needs to be picked hopefully. I did a bit of picking, runner beans and some blueberries and Loganberry and then the grandchildren arrived at lunchtime for a couple of hours. We saw some deer in the field beyond ours which was nice for the kiddies (and adults) and the weather was pretty good, not too hot. After they left John arrived home early from work but I still had a lot that I wanted to get done. I needed to cut the lavender before it rains again as I want to dry it off for later in the year, I did some more weeding and then picked tomatoes ready for putting out tomorrow.
I forgot to let the ducks out this morning and didn’t remember until mid afternoon which is really bad of me and I’d better not do that again 😕
Thursday: Weather started off ok but by lunchtime it had turned cold and started raining quite a bit 🙄 First thing I did some more picking, courgettes, jalapeños and peppers, the jalapeños are growing thick and fast and I really need to find a good recipe for them as I don’t really eat them as they are. Once I had done all I needed to I sat down for a quick coffee and publish my weekly round up podcast and then Josh and Flo arrived as I was looking after them for a couple of hours. I love 4/5 year olds, the conversations you can have with them is priceless as are the things they come out with, under that age it’s a bit more basic and over that age they obviously know a lot and don’t need to ask you any more 😂 I think I would phrase it as the ‘conversation gold’ part of early childhood 🥰
Shelley arrived back and we had some soup for lunch before they left to get on with their day and I got on with mine. By this time is was raining heavily and I needed to get some paperwork sorted so an indoor afternoon.
Spent a ridiculous amount of time on the phone (with a very pleasant lady mind you) getting some holiday insurance and all the extra Covid cover we need this time round, but it’s done now all I have to do is think about packing, sort out the farm ready to leave it and not catch Covid beforehand 🙄 Oh and try and find some flat shoes as the ones I ordered are too small 🤪
It carried on peeing down most of the afternoon and into the evening so I found plenty of indoor jobs to be getting on with 🤪
Friday: It started off with rain first thing which cleared up but we still had these blustery winds with some pretty strong gusts at times 🙄 One thing I am glad of is that last year we changed how we grew runner beans as each year the winds would blow the ‘wigwams’ down when the plants were full of foliage and heavy with beans. John built a better permanent frame and this year I have not had to worry about them going over. These are the kind of modifications I am trying to get in place each time to make life easier. I did all the usual morning jobs but no picking this morning as I thought I would leave it and do a bigger pick tomorrow. That gave me time for a more leisurely shower and smoothie morning 😁 Mid morning Sam came over with the children and we went out for lunch to a local child friendly pub. There were plenty of toys to keep the children occupied and active and we ate outside, all part of re introducing the children to social activities that have been lacking, certainly for most of the twins 2 years of life, crazy isn’t it?
Later after returning home I had a quick nap, still feeling tired at times but not as much as before and no blips on my blood tests, well I haven’t been contacted so I assume there aren’t 🤔 John came home early again today and so after a cuppa and catch up we got on with afternoon feeding rounds, poultry, cats, dogs and humans 😁 Popped out to visit Mum in the evening but she wasn’t in so we went up to see my sister, while we were there my sister, John and my nephew fixed the car door. The passenger front door would not open from the inside or out and we couldn’t work out how on Earth we were going to fix it but between the three of them they did it. I have had to sit in the back for the last month so it was nice to sit in the front again. However when we got back home I couldn’t get out 😂 it wouldn’t open from the inside again, luckily it opened from the outside. We keep talking about getting a new car but John loves this one and although it’s old it is a really good car (apart from the door)
I had a notification from WordPress that 67 people now read the blog 😲 oh my goodness that is crazy, that is just on WordPress I know a fair few others read it straight from the Farm Facebook page or my personal page. I would just like to thank anybody that has ever read it, I think it has been going about 10 years now, it has only ever been about sharing the journey with anyone who wanted to come along. When I began it I didn’t have Lupus, life has changed in various ways time and time again, I have got older, grown an extraordinary amount of fruit and veg in that amount of time, probably baked tons of cakes, made hundreds of jars of jam and chutney, tried out a book full of new recipes, laughed, cried, been knocked down and got back up numerous times, I have enjoyed doing it and will keep blogging for as long as I can. I have recently dipped my toe into the podcast pool which I am enjoying as well though sometimes I wonder what on Earth I think I am doing 😂 but it’s just a different way of sharing this life.
Just listening to the late night news and weather forecast 🙄🤪 rain, thunder storms and blustery winds, are we sure it is actually August?? Time for bed and mull over tomorrow’s jobs before I fall asleep 😴
Saturday: Had to crack on this morning and get some picking done, tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper, chillies, French beans, some to go out for sale some to sort out for the freezer. I picked about 1kg of tomatoes 😲 and put a few punnets out in the shed, some are continuing to ripen on the windowsill and some I have frozen whole on trays to bag up once they are solid. I have done the same with the jalapeños, they will be fine for adding to soups, stews and sauces, I will probably make some tomato soup to freeze with the rest, I have made sauces in the past but I rarely use them, soup is more my thing. After picking and sorting I did a bit of slug hunting in the greenhouse, found about 15 of the little blighters, then it was indoors to clean the spare room, strip the bed and get that all washed before laying out the suitcases ready to fill for our holibobs 🥰🥰 I spent a large part of the afternoon trying on clothes and making piles of what to take. It’s been such a long time since our last holiday I had almost forgotten what we need so I’m just packing everything lol.
John has been to collect some hay bales today ready for winter feeding, I like to have in some of the small bales as well as the big round ones, they are easier to move around for the smaller animals, not much hood for the horses as they would it them in one sitting lol.
The red onions, I am pleased to say, did not succumb to the alium leaf miner so they are now pulled and drying off, they will store unlike the white onions which I have had to chop and freeze.
The rain just couldn’t help itself today and there were some pretty sharp showers at times, it is supposed to settle down after tomorrow with some warmer weather on the horizon. It has been the weirdest of summer seasons so far who knows what else is in store 🙄
The turkeys have been laying well, one more and I will be able to put them out for sale 😁
Jalapeños Tigerello tomatoes
Sunday: Bit of a busy day off the farm today, after all the morning jobs were done someone arrived to collect the first of the kittens to go, I have had an update and she is settling in well her new home 😁 As soon as she had left we went to Witney to get a few bits of shopping for the holiday (did I mention we are going on holiday 😂) then back home again just after lunch to let the dogs out and do a few bit before going off to my brothers for the afternoon into early evening for his birthday celebrations. It is the first time that so many of us have been together and not everyone was there but we all had a lovely time. Once back home there was a bit to sort out, I took some hay to the Guineas and rabbit and got them fresh feed and water, and the quail. My main aim in the orchard was to separate the lonesome light Sussex hen that leaves with Ted and his ladies and get her in with the light Sussex flock. I watched her the other day and she has been plucking out Teds feathers that were newly growing through after his moult 😲 I managed to get her out but had to leave putting her in with the others until it was nearly dark. We had some other hens that have been in quarantine, they were also moved to the main flock once it was nearly dark, then on to do the water for the horses, feed the dogs and cats and then on to do another slug hunt in the greenhouse. The slugs are flipping getting to every pepper but I was able to see them by torchlight and get them out, probably still plenty more but if I keep doing it I might be able to sabotage their efforts.
Another week over and onto the next one, it will be a short blog as I am going on holiday (did I mention that 🤪) Only one obstacle to overcome and that is the testing centre at the terminal, fingers crossed 😁
Monday 12th July 2021: 😢😢😢😢 We lost the football final, but what we got was a nation riding high on hopes and dreams for a while and that was worth it’s weight in gold especially this year.
Still the weather is not typical but it’s fine for me except the rain showers which are making the weeds enormous, the soft fruit and flower buds wet and soggy and me run in and out with the washing 🙄 Today I ah e been spinning plates again (metaphorically of course) trying to get the kitchen washed down, holes filled, caulking done, almost ready to paint it but not looking forward to doing that job especially the ceiling 😂 At lunchtime the farrier came so half an hour beforehand I went to get the horses in, as soon as I took the electric down Jack jumped the rails effing donkey is what I called him 😜 I got biscuit in and tied her up, Jack was wellying around the yard and then found the big paddock with lots of grass. Of course he then did not want to be caught so I had to use some psychology on him, shut him in the paddock, go back to biscuit where he couldn’t see me, come back, stand with my back to him and eventually he came and stood so I could get his head collar on. Only then did he get half an apple and it was just in time as the farrier arrived. Feet done I turned them back out into the restricted grazing, I might let him out towards the end of the week when it’s going to be hot rather than raining.
Back into the kitchen to get some more bits of filling done, just some rubbing down to do and then it will be ready. With that and a chat to a couple of customers not much got done outside though I might get out and do a bit tonight if I can, providing no more rain that is.
Well tonight instead of getting on the garden I went out to the paddock as Sam came over to get the fencing sorted for the horses. We have now moved the fencing to go round the whole perimeter of the paddock with a gateway I can open and let them onto better grass at the weekends as a treat. Had a bit of trouble getting them back in as we had let them into the other paddock which is full of nice lush grass and obviously they didn’t want to come back in, but again with a bit of bribery, something tasty, and grabbing hold of biscuit to lead her in first, we got them in and put the electric back on, job done.
Tuesday: Up early, before 5am, I thought it was going to be a hot day so I got up and got on, turns out it wasn’t but at least I got plenty done. Hoeing, picking, cutting back things and I was in the kitchen painting by 9.30 😂
I have two large blackcurrant bushes in the fruit cage but one has struggled for the past two years and so this year I have cut it right back down to hopefully give it some vigour next year though it won’t produce fruit until the following year now. That’s fine because the other bush is healthy and loaded this year, I’ve no idea why the other is not 🤷♀️ Currants fruit on two year wood which is why I will have to wait for that long, normally you would just cut back this years growth and thin it out a bit but a hard cut back will either finish it off or renew it, I will have to wait and see which one happens. Then also in the fruit cage I have this triffid of a kiwi which takes up loads of room and as yet has never produced a kiwi even though it’s self fertile. So I made an executive decision to cut it down, I will dig up the root and plant something more productive in its place. I can pot the root and put it somewhere where it can just look attractive rather than keep waiting every year for something to grow.
Rain showers again today 🙄 tiresome and we are going straight into bloody hot weather I believe in the next couple of days urgh can’t win.
My scythe arrived 😁 it needed putting together so following the instructions I think I have managed to do it properly. I did contemplate not touching the blade until there was someone else here just in case I cut myself but I went ahead anyway 😜 and no injuries I am glad to say.
Painting the kitchen is the worst room isn’t it, you just think right I can get on and sort this and then you have to tidy away so you can get dinner, slow progress as I don’t want to be sanding down with food on the side, I’m sure I will get sorted eventually.
I did most of the cutting in and that took me till gone 6pm, more than a 12hr shift today, pooped 😜
John went out to put the birds to bed around 9.30 he was in the stable shutting the geese in when he heard the hens making a racket, ran out to them and a fox was carrying off one of the hens 🤬 I have ordered a cheap solar powered radio which we will put up the back with the hens and see if we can keep the bloody fox away like that, running out of options, and hens 😕
Wednesday: Spent most of the day painting, first colour coat was on by 10am, walls and ceiling, then while that was drying I went out and sorted the onions and garlic, the onions have had the first few layers peeled off and are drying in the sun. The garlic I divided into individual bulbs, they were starting to regrow and have become disfigured lol but if I dry each bulb out it should be fine to store. The onions will not store as they had to be pulled early due to the grubs in them and so I will have to chop and freeze most of them 🙄
I took some pics of what else is growing nicely, a melon, an aubergine and peppers, I also have some jalapeños growing nicely, happy with those especially the aubergine as I have not managed to grow one before now.
I did the second coat of paint in the afternoon but I think it will need a third coat 😭 my hands are swelling from holding the roller and the pressure used, I can officially say I bloody hate painting ceilings. I told John I am getting too old to do them now 🙄 especially in the kitchen where there are so many unmovable obstacles. I want to get it finished and get the kitchen back in some sort of order, seems to have taken ages to sort this out.
The weather has been pretty good for me so far this summer but it’s about to get hot 🥵 shame really as I have been able to get some work done nearly every day without feeling tired, all good things come to an end I guess, enjoy the sun while I sit indoors 😂
Thursday: I had already decided not to finish the painting today, I usually have the twins and didn’t want the kitchen upside down when they came, as it was they didn’t come because their cousin, who they saw on Monday, developed chicken pox today and so Sam and I decided it was best if I didn’t see them until we know if the have contracted it or not due to my lowered immune system. So that gave me a full day of doing what I had started in the morning, weeding, I kid you not, all day long I have been weeding 🙄 John made a cup of tea at 8pm and I had fully intended to carry on after I had sat and drunk it but as I got up I realised my legs were just not going to go anymore lol 😂 That is more than a twelve hour shift today and I am knackered, tired, grumpy, so I will quit now rather than push myself to beyond my limits and regret it, I feel a snooze coming on 😴
Friday: Grabbed a banana and a cup of tea for breakfast before get straight on with the day, it’s going to be hot, it was already very warm at 7am this morning.
I started off hoeing the flowering shrub bed in the front, this gets the first sun the morning and seemed a good place to start before it got too hot, pruned some of the spring flowering branches out that have now gone over. Onto some picking in the veg garden, a few bits and pieces before the main picking which was blackcurrants. Only one bush to pick this year but it is loaded. Into the kitchen to process them and so far I have blended and sieved blackcurrant purée and that is now freezing in ice cube trays and I have a tray of whole blackcurrants open freezing ready to bag up once they are done. Quick sit down and some lunch and then I will use the rest to make some apple and blackcurrant crumbles for the freezer, I have some cooking apples already that need using up.
Blackcurrant haul Puréed blackcurrant, frozen in ice cube trays to use in smoothies etc
Keeping the house cool by closing the curtains and blinds, at least on a hot day I can get inside jobs done, it not painting the ceiling 🤪 that will have to wait until another day 🙄
The rest of the afternoon and evening consisted of the usual jobs, feels quite warm and muggy tonight, I still have some blackcurrants to sort out tomorrow, probably cook them down, extract the juice and either make jam or some cordial maybe, not sure yet.
I had to water some of the plants in pots tonight, it’s amazing how quickly they dry out, I really need to amend that and put something in to hold the moisture longer though these are out in the blazing sun most of the day so it’s no surprise really.
Saturday: Hot, hot, hot 🥵 Got as much as I could get done this morning, should have got up early but I didn’t (again) I did some picking, blueberries, courgettes, Blackcurrants, French beans, cucumber, let the horses out into the bigger paddock for a treat, all the other usual jobs and then planted some cauliflower and cabbage plants. They had to be covered as the cabbage whites are out in force at the minute 🙄 Meanwhile John had done the morning rounds and he spent a few hours hand weeding the paths in the veg garden which was nice of him, he also cleaned out the ducks. Once it was too hot for me I came in and hoovered and polished the sitting room, closed the curtains to keep it cook and did a quick clean in the bathroom. By lunchtime John was in and watching the F1 build up and then we had a rest for a couple of hours.
Mid afternoon I said to John I fancy and ice cream and so he has gone off to get some 🥰
I have been doing daily round ups on the podcast if you are listening to that, it’s just a different media and I quite like doing it, you get a different perspective on the same subject really 😂
In the evening I tried out the scythe, yep that definitely needs more practice despite watching a you tube video lol. After that I watered the greenhouse and the two poly tunnels and then indoors to sort the eggs and then de flea, cats, kittens and dogs and worm the adult cats and dogs, finally finished at 10.45. Time for a quick shower as it has been really muggy this evening and then collapse into bed ready to start again tomorrow. If I set the alarm for 5am fingers crossed I can actually get up and do some extra work.
Sunday: Phew it’s hot again today hot 🥵 sweltering temps mean most of my work is done in the early morning, inside most of the middle of the day and then out again in the evening until late to get stuff done.
This evening I have also washed Johns van as we went out to collect some shopping in it this morning (the air con in the car is not working and in the van it is 🙄) and I said I was embarrassed to be seen in it as it was filthy dirty lol, so I washed it. John meanwhile was out digging up ragwort, that should be all of it now and then I went on to do the watering until 10pm while John weeded some more of the pathways. He is doing a great job but I told him by the time he finishes it will be time to start again 😂
Monday 28th June 2021: It is overcast but that’s fine for me, just how I prefer it, overcast but still warm 😂 I did a thing as Jeremy Clarkson would say 😜 I thought I would do a voice memo as I was going round this morning, actually I thought initially it would be for note taking but on playback I rather liked it. Then began the next couple of hours trying to get it onto some kind of platform so that I could transfer it to WordPress. You will see below that despite everything I did do exactly that, although I would have like to merge the recordings that seems a bit beyond the basic free apps, maybe I will pay for a good one so that next time it is seamless 😬 But here is a first ever audio of life on the farm, this is me with my local accent (which will sound strange to those readers in far off lands 😂) My voice is slightly huskier than normal due to this bug I have, normally it’s a lot tinnier, I prefer this husky one personally lol
Apart from faffing around for a long time trying to upload, download, offload the files 😜 I have done other bits of picking, chatting to a customer who came especially to get some fresh veg, organising what will be for dinner later, video call with shelley, and probably a few other things that I have completely forgotten about by now. The day has shot past, it’s already mid afternoon. At some point today I also whizzed up some strawberries to pour into an ice cube tray and freeze so that I can use them in smoothies. The strawberries are all little ones and so ideal for using up this way, you could always use the small amounts to add to fruit crumbles or defrost and add a bit of sweetness for a couli to have with ice cream or yoghurt, so many other things you can use them for really.
So as is typical of me once I had recorded that snippet for the blog I thought ‘I wonder if I can do a podcast’ 🤣 so guess what? That’s exactly what I did, yep seriously I found platform called Anchor and I recorded a podcast, well I would probably call it a shamble ramble actually but I was pretty pleased with the end result if I do say so myself. If you like podcasts and want a listen I will see if I can work out how to get the link on here. It is a little different to the blog, to start with it is about how we got to where we are and why. It is also a lot easier to talk about and convey your thoughts and ideas more easily than trying to write it at the end of the day when you are knackered. Basically that’s what I spent the rest of the afternoon doing except for the moment I spotted a fox! I had just finished recording a section and was sorting some interlude music when I looked out the door and thought, is that a fox? I couldn’t quite tell if it was or if it was a clump of dock heads but as I moved closer I could see it was a fox with its eyes firmly fixed on some hens in the paddock. I shouted it looked up at me and then back at the hens, I shouted again and by this time the dog had run round so the fox scarpered back through the hedge. This is the one that has black tinges and obviously the day time raider as it was only 4pm. I grabbed a stick and went out the the hedgeline and made as much noise as possible in the hopes it would bugger off, I then had to wait out in the garden until John came home in case it came back. Once John was back we got some corn and rounded up as many as possible for damage limitation and we house the geese as well. At the minute here are around 10 hens still out so we still have to be a bit vigilant.
There is still no sign of the cat and so I have had to call the vet again to cancel all future appointments 😕 One of the other jobs that need doing fairly urgently is moving the kittens and mum from up on the side in the boot room down to floor level. The reason being that the kittens, who now have their eyes open, began to start gentle exploration today out of the cosy little cat house they have been living in. In fact when one of them saw me it started mewing and coming towards me so it won’t be long before they are leaping about.
John is watching Andy Murry play at Wimbledon and keeps asking me ‘oh why is he using that drop shot’ or saying ‘he needs a double fault’ I am just trying to watch it in peace 😜
We bought in a dog crate and set it up on the floor then moved mum and the kittens along with their cosy little cat house down into the crate. I know what would have happened if we had left it any longer, we would have gone into the room to find one of them had fallen from the worktop 😏 we did a risk assessment and altered the situation for a better outcome 😜 We have left one door on the edge of the cage wedged open, the dogs can’t get past it but the cat can jump up and out so all should be fine for at least a week. They have started playing with each other now so won’t be long before they explore further.
Tuesday: Still overcast this morning but it’s warm enough, again it is rather a perfect day for me in mid summer 😬 I think it rained overnight, bonus because I don’t have to worry about watering 😁 I still have this dammed ‘thing‘ it’s really not that surprising because being on immune suppressants everything takes ages to clear up but I really wish it would do one so that I can have a clear head for once. In an effort to try and shift it I did do a simple sinus rinse this morning, ewwww, yes it is ewww but it gets rid of a lot of mucus and crap, still don’t feel much better but at least I can breathe through my nose now 🙄 I found a pot of eucalyptus oil last night which is more potent thank the jar of vicks and although it clears for a couple of minutes it is back to being blocked before very long.
What is on the agenda today? Good question, at the minute I am sitting having a decaf coffee, I am pretty tired from being awake half the night coughing so I am going to amble through the day I think 🤔 The ducks need clean bedding so that is on the list, I try not to set too much in stone because things change or I might spot something else that needs doing or I fancy doing and if I plan my day too rigidly it can become stressful and who wants stress 🤷♀️ I need to pick strawberries, they are coming in thick and fast now as expected it is Wimbledon fortnight after all. As always one job will lead to another so I won’t be idle just pacing myself. Oh and of course I will have to keep an eye out for the fox, we managed to get all the birds inside early last night, around 7 they were all safely locked away. We had put the geese in a stable about 5 as they were in that area anyway so we just herded them in. This morning John went out to let everything out for the day and he told me that when he got to the goose pen up in the small paddock he thought ‘oh shit we forgot to put them to bed’ he had totally forgotten that we had locked them somewhere different and had a slight panic for a moment 😂
So I actually achieved next to nothing today, not on the Smallholding anyway, I did manage to pick a good haul of strawberries and that was about it. Sam came over with the twins and we went out to a local garden centre to see the fish and have tea and cake. The crazy thing is that although the twins are nearly two, this is the first time they have done that 😢 it is very sad really that for the last year and a half they have not been able to do the things that their older sister was able to enjoy doing. So we went out on a socialising the twins mission 😂 I have to say they were really well behaved for a couple of toddlers on reins who suddenly are allowed to go out in the big wide world bless them 🥰
When we got back which was around 1.30pm, John was home and Shelley and Flo were visiting as well. Once they left I had to help John get a wire through the wall from the bathroom into the bedroom so that we could get the electric radiator in the bathroom working. We still have another to do in there and one in the living room but we need an electrician for those. A quick chat with a customer at the gate and then a cuppa in the garden as it was about the right time for the fox to make an appearance. John fed the birds, I put some lemon verbena and mushrooms in the dehydrator, then I took out the mushrooms because I don’t want the lemon verbena smelling like fungi 😂 I will dry them separately later, the verbena was almost dry from hanging in the kitchen I just need to crisp it up a bit. Lemon Verbena tea is supposed to be good for joint mobility, acne, soothing the stomach, anxiety and inflammation as well as a few other things, there is science to back some of it up and the rest is what people report back after taking it but there are drawbacks as well, it can have a laxative effect on some people and it is a diuretic so anyone with kidney problem should avoid it. Most if not all articles will say that you should seek advice from a doctor if you have an underlying illness or are on medication before consuming anything in the herbal section. That is great advice but not terribly practical is it 🤷♀️ I mean I am hardly going to give the practice a call for everything I want to try, I would probably try a little bit see if all seems well and go from there, but that’s me 😬
The kick off for the football is about to happen, England v Germany always a big match in whatever tournament they are playing. This is how seriously we take football in our house, the anthems play, John goes out for a smoke, he comes back in, they are about three minutes into the game, the conversation goes something like this: John ‘have we won yet?’ Me ‘yes game is over’, John ‘what colour are we playing in?’ Me ‘Pink’ John shouts are the telly a couple of times before leaving to go out and price up a job 😂 Not really football fans and quite honestly I would prefer to be watching the tennis.
We won! Many chants and posts of ‘it’s coming home’ yeah don’t count your chickens before they hatch 😜
We weighed up the fox situation and decided to pop to Mums for a cuppa, as John said we can’t just be here the whole time in case he comes, we did put the geese away first but the hens we left out as they are far more troublesome to round up, impossible even. As we drove back towards ours I could see that the verges had been cut and I was horrified to see that ours had been cut too. There are orchids growing out on the verge as well as in the front paddock, ffs what is wrong with the world wanting to cut everything back all the time, not the contractors fault I know but urrrgh humans 🤬 Luckily we have plenty this year inside our boundaries but still I am dumbfounded really, it’s not as if it’s on a blind bend, I could understand the need to cut it back but on a perfectly straight road it is not necessarily to do it until the end of the summer 🤷♀️ The hens were fine by the way, no visit from the pesky marauder this evening 😁
Wednesday: Another good day weather wise for me, sorry about the lack of sun folks but I’m fine with that lol. We did some very brisk trade at the egg shed yesterday in fact we pretty much sold out of everything we had which is fab. It did mean though that I need to be up and about early enough to put out the eggs for today before the customers, who call in on the way to work, get here. John did the animals and went of to work, this semi retired has pretty much gone out of the window as he is now booked up to mid August 😏 I did a bit of picking, not much today, a few peas and that’s it, I need to wait for the braid beans to fatten in the pods before a pick any more of those and everything else is slowly but surely forming. I then went to put some clean bedding in for the ducks and move the electric fence for the horses, I a, going to have to extend the tape again soon and put in more stakes as I am running out of ‘give’ with this lot. Onto the guinea pigs, I gave them a clean out, swept the floor, got them some fresh hay 🤔 That is one of those terms that is a paradox isn’t it 😂 fresh hay, it hadn’t occurs to me before now but dead grass is fresh hay 🤪 Anyway I sorted that lot out and picked them some fresh mint, lemon balm, dandelions and sow thistle they are very happy with that lot.
Back inside then to check the mushrooms I have had in the dehydrator, a lot of them are ready but some are still a bit soft. I took out the lot that were ready to whizz into powder, put that in a jar and left the rest to continue drying, they will be added later. Whenever you dry anything it starts off as quite a bit of bulk but by the time it’s dried it has shrunk to around 1/3rd of it original size and then once powdered the amount is minuscule, but it packs a punch with flavour which is the main thing.
My first ever podcast 😬 has been well received by family members and I didn’t even have to pay them or anything 😜 so I have already drafted up the second one ready to go next Monday. If you are interested or like podcasts you can find it on Spotify titled, Our Smallholding life warts ‘n’ all. I was going to keep it similar to the blog but I changed my mind as it gave me an opportunity to do something slightly different but there are cross overs on both.
In the early afternoon I went up to the back point of lay pen where we are keeping the new hens. For the last couple of days they a have been kept in because of the fox and I will have to be vigilant today now I have let them out. I let them out so I could clean the pen out, the water drinker they have works well unless they stand on the side and then it leaks out onto the mud part of the pen and then it becomes a stinking mess 🤪
Today has been the first time I have been able to sit for any length of time without coughing, and I mean coughing, the whole can’t stop, eyes streaming coughing fits 😷 So with my re-found ability I sat and watched the ladies tennis which was well worth a watch even though our girl didn’t win. Then as it went on longer than expected I could be bothered to start making dinner so we had boiled eggs 😂 Once we had finished and had a cuppa I got on with doing something with the fruit I picked earlier, raspberries, recur rants and strawberries are at this minute in the ice cream maker and we will have summer fruits sorbet in about half an hour. The ice cream maker I used to think was a bit of a faff because I used to keep the bowl in the cupboard but now I keep it in the freezer so it is always ready when I need it. I picked this one up second hand at a car boot sale a few years ago and if you have a lot of soft fruit it’s well worth looking out for one. It saves all that freezing, getting it out, stirring it round, freezing it again before doing the whole process at least one more time. Summer fruit sorbet, any fruit sorbet is easy really, this was 500g of mixed fruit, 185g caster sugar, 185ml water and the juice of a lemon. Heat the sugar and water together until the sugar dissolves then turn up the heat and boil a little to get a soft syrup, allow it to cool, then blend the fruit, lemon juice and cooled sugar syrup in a liquidiser and put through a fine sieve to get rid of the pips and stalks etc. Get the ice cream maker plugged in and going and pour in the liquid mix, probably takes 30/40 minutes depending on what consistency you want. Eat immediately if you want to or freeze in a suitable container. I think I will get some of those wafer cones and we can use it instead of ice cream, also great for those dairy intolerant of course 😁
So after saying the the machine will make light work of the sorbet, it failed to freeze it very well 😂 so I had to resort to freezing in a tub and in about an hour or so I will have to remember to go and give it a mix before leaving it over night 🤷♀️
Thursday: Yet another warm but overcast day, can’t say I haven’t had my fill of workable days this week can I 😂 This morning we were late up, the alarm went off, we fell back asleep and an hour later it ‘oh shit’. It doesn’t really make much difference to me but obviously John has places to be (even though he is supposed to be semi retired, I am going to mention that a lot 🤪) So in a good will gesture I offered to go round and do the morning jobs as long as I didn’t have to haul buckets of feed around, he assured me that only two lots needed feed. So off he went to work and I bumbled round letting everything out and feeding the ones that needed it, topping up water containers as I went. Then I sorted out the washing and got that on before doing the eggs and the egg shed and getting on with some watering and picking. Then I confess I recorded a podcast, I now have three in the bag, one published the other two scheduled. The problem is that once a topic starts rattling round in my head I have to get it sorted. Hopefully now I can have a week or two without thinking about it, is that likely, nope 😂 too much say!
John came home early afternoon which I wasn’t expecting but he is not here for the rest of the day as he has to pop back out again apparently. We had lunch and a cuppa together, watched the news and I now have the tennis on. Meanwhile John is bashing something about in the kitchen, I can’t even be bothered to go and find out what at the minute 😜 I can hear it involves a hammer and chisel so I guess it’s the rest of the tiles that he is taking off from the wall. I did ask, nicely I have to say, if we could perhaps finish the making good where the Rayburn came out 😬 I want to give the kitchen a good clean but there is no point doing that if the very next day he starts bashing about and plastering, so I’m guessing he has taken the hint and is getting on with it 😁
Bits of broken tiles all over the floor and John shouts are the grandchildren coming today? I do t think so I said 🤔……shit, it’s Thursday and the twins will be arriving any minute now 😂 hastily get the hoover out and all broken tiles down to the skip, cleaned up just in time 😜 It was a lovely day so they had their tea as a picnic outside before helping me feed weeds to the torts. George got a bit carried away and starting pulling off strawberry leaves from my plants to feed them 🤦♀️
After dinner my sister and her hubby called in for a cuppa and we sat on the decking in the garden. We spent over an hour watching a pair barn owls systematically going up and down the field next door and occasionally diving down once they found something tasty to eat, they are such graceful birds to watch.
Friday: Yet another overcast but warm enough day so I am having to make the most of it. It’s 10.30 I have just sat down for my first coffee break having been up and about since 6.30 this morning. First on the agenda was to buy a big walk in 6m x 3m metal chicken run. I said to John shall we get one of these be cause we can’t keep not going anywhere because of the fox or worrying when we absolutely have to go out. This one will attach to the front hut and it will mean that if we know we are going out we can let them out into the fresh air but they will be secure. It’s not being enough to do that all the time but it will be great to have the option. After I had orders that I got on with the usual bits, feeding, picking, watering, washing up, putting the eggs out, slug hunting 🙄 Something has made a hole in one or two of the little peppers in the greenhouse, picking up the pots and looking underneath them all I found about 10 small slugs in all. I fired them out onto the grass, I tend not to kill them after all they are only doing what slugs do to survive but they can go and do it on something less precious than my peppers 😜 I need to let the ducks into the garden in the autumn so they can hoover up as many as possible mind you we do have hedgehogs, I see the deposits on the grass in the mornings so at least they have something to eat. I still have this bloody silly cough though each day it is getting better but the minute I sit down I start coughing, standing up all day is the only answer 🤪
The goose died 😢 sadly despite doing what I could it died overnight. In my experience by the time you realise there is something wrong with a goose it’s already too late. Geese are extremely good at concealing the fact that they are unwell or injured unless it’s a blatantly obvious injury. It occurred to me that she may have received a puncture wound in the fox attack but stupidly I didn’t think to check for that, also in my experience a puncture would from a fox is pretty fatal anyway, the germs from the bite would be enough to cause infection. Then there is the site of any wound, depending on where that is, which would be hard to see under all that down, it is likely to cause maximum damage. But in all honestly I don’t know why she has died except that she was not in top form for some reason.
Once my coffee break and sit down are over I have to go out to the paddock and extend the electric fencing for the horses, I need add more tape and stakes again as I can’t get much more slack out of what is there already so that will be a hour or so to do that, good job it’s overcast, actually if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be doing it!
Did that job came back in sorted out peas ready to freeze and strawberries for pudding later. Sam and he twins came over and so did Shelley and Flo, they at school pick up time and I went in to watch the tennis 😜
I think we may have found the cat 😁 a local animal rehoming charity has put up a picture of a cat that has been at their place, he fits the description and matches the photo so fingers crossed we will get him back, and I will have to call the vet again and book him in once more 😂
Jack waiting for me to release the food 😂
Saturday: After emails back and forth the local rescue centre were satisfied that Jack was our cat and we made arrangement to pick him up mid morning. He had turned up a few days ago and being a rescue centre they thought he had been dumped, they managed to trap him and put out on social media which is where we saw him. He has now been chipped by them, I gave them a donation for doing that, and we bought him home. You would think that he had been away for months as at first he seemed very agitated and un settled and I was worried he would take off again. We fed him some very tasty sardines and within a couple of hours he had calmed down and realised he belonged here, even being uber friendly with the dogs much to their disgust as he wandered past them, brushing against them with his tail in the air, I am sure he was purring, it’s my family 😂
Jack safely back with Jill 🥰
The rest of the day we spent getting a bit of food shopping and doing things like depositing cheques at the post office, paying a invoice at the wood yard, I paid some online bills and did a bit of paperwork while John made good the site the Rayburn came out ready for plastering tomorrow.
In the afternoon we discovered that the fox had taken two of our new hens 😕 We had left the one in the front locked away because he keeps going there but let the back ones out and he had been to the back and had those 🤬
One of the reasons we left them in was because we wanted to go out in the evening to watch the football and while we can get the hens at the back in easily, we can’t do them same with the front ones so they stayed in. Once everything was safely shut away around 6 we went off to collect fish and chips, go round to my sisters and we watched England play Ukraine and win! Hoorah, we seem to have a great team at the minute and there are high hopes that they will go far 🤞
Sunday: John was up early to watch the qualifying for the F1 as we were too late home to watch it yesterday, if he doesn’t watch it early he is likely to hear the results on the radio and then he gets mad 😂 He then did the animals and got on with plastering the bits of the wall and ceiling he made good yesterday. Meanwhile I did my usual bits and then went out to move the fence for the horses and dig up ragwort. There seems to be a bit more of it this year than previous years and I did a big barrowful but it started to rain quite a bit and so I will either do some more later or tomorrow. I just need to get it up before it goes to seed, it’s only just started flowering so we are ok for a few days. We don’t spray our fields as you can imagine and it is teeming with insects and a huge variety of different vegetation is growing. Many people prefer to just have grass for their horses but I like ours to have a good range to graze, clover both red and white, plantain, so many different types of grasses, various types from the dandelion family as well, it’s diverse which is great for them and the wildlife. Mind you it absolutely stinks of fox down in the corner of the paddock 🙄
Hopefully once John has finished plastering and it is left to dry we can go and get some paint, I can start to give the kitchen a good clean, spruce up the bits that need doing and give it a new coat or two of paint next week 😁 That will be another job ticked off the never ending list ✔️
Johns patching up, got to wait for it to dry and then painting can commence
Podcast number two will be released tomorrow if you are interested, let me know what you think 🤔
Just been pottering in the garden, it July and the weather is not July weather lol, it started spitting and then was obvious it was going to hammer down and that’s exactly what it did, it’s absolutely pouring down 🙄
In the end we didn’t go and get paint as we have some to do the undercoat and can pick some up one evening in the week when the shop is quieter.
Monday 14th June 2021: Today we find out if any of the restrictions still in place will be lifted or not, not holding out much hope for a full lift 🙄
Another fine day with the temps set to climb up near 30c, you know what that means for me, early morning, so it’s 8.30pm I have stopped for a coffee after already doing a three hour stint this morning. Most of that was picking, peas & mangetout today, a bit of weeding while I was going round, sorting out some plants in the cold frame and picking weeds to feed the Guineas and torts. I also did all the usual jobs of feeding various four legged pets, putting eggs out, a bit of watering out the front etc etc.
This is the month where the harvests begin to come in, they start off slowly but soon there will be so much to pick I won’t know if I am coming or going. And then there is the processing of it all lol, at the minute my plan is to keep back what I want for the day and put the rest out for sale, this morning that only amounted to two bags of mangetout and a tub of strawberries but it will start to come thick and fast especially if we get any rain, doesn’t look very promising at the minute. Of course we have been here before and what will happen next is too much rain that spoils the fruit 🤣 there is no winning this swim only treading water and trying to stay afloat 🤪 I still have some squash to get in the ground but I am waiting until it cools a little first, they will be fine in pots for now. I also have a fair few pepper seedlings and runner beans, I tried selling them but no takers and I hate throwing them away so I am going to have to find a place for them to grow on.
After coffee I did another hour outside which will probably do for today. I have potted on the pepper seedlings, it doesn’t matter if I have 20 pepper plants, I have space for them so may as well grow them, there was a jalapeño plant too, the tomato plants that didn’t sell are also potted on, I may put them back out or plant them up outside who knows yet. I planted up sweetcorn that I had left over, I put those in a bucket for the kids to pick if they get big enough, the corn, not the kids and I sowed some more carrot seeds, some in a bed in between the rows that are nearly done and some in pots again for the kids to pick. They are round carrot so ideal for pots, I picked some of those from the bed for dinner tonight and I found a stray potato which had grown so that will be potato, carrots and peas from the garden as well as strawberries for pudding 🥰 That is what is called the good life and it really is.
I noticed, when I pulled the carrots that the bed was very dry under the initial damp surface so I gave it a good soaking with the rain water hose. It is always worth digging down a bit to see exactly how far the water has penetrated, you will be surprised at dry it really is. A good indicator are ants, if there are a fair few nearby then you can bet there is an ants nest and that will tell you it’s way too dry they don’t like damp soil.
Once indoors I decided to get some polishing, cleaning done and change the bed sheets, I found a great podcast to listen to while doing it, Self Sufficient Hub. There are some interesting topics so if self sufficiency is for you then have a listen or have a listen if it’s it’s not you may get the bug 😁 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/self-sufficient-hub/id1506405294
It’s 1pm and I am a little tired now so I have had a quick lunch and am now going to have a little rest and maybe listen to another podcast.
In the evening after some dinner we went round to Mum and Ken’s for a cuppa and a slice of cake, there is always cake at Mums 🥰
Tuesday: Up earlyish to get the morning jobs done as I have blood tests first thing, they are a little over due but not to worry. Back home and I just about go put the washing hung out when Sam arrived with the twins. She had come over to move the electric fencing and make a bigger restriction paddock that will also now house Jack as well as Biscuit. To be fair Biscuit is looking and doing well but Jack on the other hand is getting too fat, too much grass for him to eat all by himself lol. He will also now be restricted probably for the next 2/3 months depending on the weather. If it stays hot and dry the grass will die off and he can go back out but any rain that we have will ‘flush’ the grass and he will have to stay put. He won’t like it one little bit but he will get I’ll otherwise so it’s for his own good. That took up a couple of hours, once we had got the stakes in place and some electric tape plus the water buckets all filled I took the twins back to the house to get some snacks and a drink while Sam finished it all off.
The twins had such a fun time here that they had to have a bath before going home 🤣 George had by that point, played with horse poo, dirty water in the garden & soil in the veg bed which he delighted in putting all over Lucies back. Lucie had stuck her whole foot in the horses water bucket, sock, trainer and all, thrown her bear in there too and de planted some of Nannys pricked out foxglove seedlings 🤪 All good fun and because there are two of them it can be manic when one goes in one direction to create havoc while the other is off in another direction, hilarious at times as well though 🤣
Wednesday: I was up fairly early and got on with a few jobs before having breakfast, John did the animals and then left for work. Next came a first for me, a covid test, a lateral flow test to be precise, the reason being that I have a sore throat, similar to having swallowed sandpaper 🙄 which is making me cough. I checked my temperature and oxygen levels all normal, I didn’t think for one minute I had covid but I have to check. Two things struck me as I did the test, first on opening I couldn’t help but notice it was all made in China 🙄 if I was a conspiracist I would definitely be jumping up and down saying ‘I told you’ China is probably making a fortune at the minute 😬 Secondly I don’t know if it was just me but I suspect not, I could not help but sneeze, 4/5/6 times while doing the nostril bit. I was thinking good job I am not in a test clinic and positive or else those sneeze spores are going to be all over the place 🤷♀️ I have just checked my test as time is up and it’s negative, I kind of knew it would be but you never know. Actually I have a third point to add, all the pieces of the test are plastic, they go into a plastic bag when you have finished and then that goes in the bin 😖 In a time when we are trying to reduce plastic use this is disastrous really, I know there is probably not a way round it when they are needed so quickly and in great quantities but can you image exactly how many billions of pieces of plastic have been added to landfill over the last year and a half 😢
While I was waiting for the test to ‘ripen’ I went out to water and feed the plants in the greenhouse and then the small tunnel.
Pottered about a bit picking strawberries and peas, a bit of watering and then Shelley arrived with Flo. They had come over to help get some work done in the veg garden, they weeded around the courgette plants and then watered and put down some cardboard mulch as the relentless sun dries the ground so quickly. The we went onto tidying, weeding and sorting the area right inside the gate, I tend to dump pots and tools and everything else there on my way to and from the front garden and never get round to tidying it, well mow it’s all done and feels like a much nicer part of the garden. I have many spaces like that to sort out mind you 😜 Shelley had bought lunch and went inside to make that while I carried on a little more and then we sat down and ate in the garden where there was still some shade. We are forecast thunderstorms and rain over the next couple of days and we could really do it to be honest, everything is flagging a little.
I heard on the radio a report that in this country, and many more around the world I suspect, we are unprepared for the climate chaos that is ahead in the UK. This definitely rings alarms bells for me, I have been saying for a couple of years now that the weather is so much more unpredictable than it was even five years ago. It was never this relentlessly hot for days or even weeks on end, we seem to have our weather in blocks these days and it is nearly always extreme bouts of it too. I seriously need to get a handle on what it is I need to do in order to be able to continue to grow fruit and veg successfully. Trying to stabilise the soil is probably the main thing, the torrential downpours we get now wash the soil downhill. Next would be trying to work out ways to get through drought periods, I may have to use more drought tolerant varieties, I am finding that swede and turnips just keep bolting because of the lack of rain, I either don’t plant them any more or look for better varieties. One thing is certain, a change in thinking and planning is needed to combat whatever the future weather has in store.
I just signed up with a group called Arbtalk where you can register as a tip site for free woodchip if any members are working in your area 😁
After a quick dinner we went over to babysit Mia, George and Lucy for a few hours while Sam and Luke went out for a drink.
Thursday: It’s 9.15am and I have already showered, breakfasted, put on some washing, fed the dogs, cats and Guineas, sorted the eggs and put them out for sale, have three loaves of bread on a second prove and got a lamb stew going in the slow cooker. It rained a little over night but not as much as was forecast and no thunder storms, my plan was to be indoors today as it was supposed to rain heavily most of the morning but as yet nothing🙄 As I am already committed to timings and will have the oven on I am going to make some more rhubarb and orange jam. A couple of years ago I split my three rhubarb plants into six because I couldn’t keep up with the demand for rhubarb, it’s Sod’s law that nobody seems to want much of it this year 🤪 Nobody seems to want much of anything actually lol but that’s fine, more for us and less pressure.
I still feel a bit rough but the throat no longer feels like sandpaper so that’s an improvement 😁
11am and three loaves of bread cooked and cooling as well as five jars of jam and the washing up done. Time for a sit down I think.
Those loaves are bigger than they look in the picture 😂 they are 1lb loaves, I use half white flour and half granary to get a nice loaf, forgot to score the tops of these though 🤷♀️
I emptied, what was left in the small chest freezer, into the big chest freezer and have now turned the smaller one off to defrost. This will be cleaned out and moved to a new position and I will reload it with only what I want to keep and will use. Both of the freezers were half empty or half full depends on how you view it, and both freezers have things in them that I will probably not get round to using before the next lot of produce starts going in. The plan is to throw out what I don’t want, when I say throw out I don’t mean throw away mind you, there is a fair amount in there that I will feed to the dogs, gravy stock for instance, if I don’t think I will be using it within the next couple of months I will defrost and use it to mix with the dog biscuits. The reason being I am bound to be making more so I need to move it on. There are ice packs in there, a drawer full, they have arrived at various times with meat or fish orders and rather than throw them away I have kept them but I don’t need them, what I do need to do is get rid of them 🙄 There are things like frozen buttermillk, pesto, herb portions in there, I need to get good idea of what is available and plan to use it all up. Once the smaller freezer is cleaned and moved I will transfer over and then defrost the bigger one which we will be selling, I have a small under counter front loading freezer which is off most of the time but I will keep it just in case I need extra space 😜 It is always handy to use if you are stocking up for a birthday or bbq anyway.
I went outside and did a bit of weeding in the bed on the side of the driveway, then some picking of peas and watering in the small tunnel. I pulled up the rocket which has now gone over and some early sown baby spinach which has now bolted. These were both in tubs in the small tunnel because they were sown so early, once it gets hot in there they just bolt. I gave the tubs (old recycle bins) a good soaking and then sowed some corn salad in one tub and some celery seeds in the other. The celery will be for snipping like you do with cress, I never was a good enough veg gardener to perfect the art of full grown celery 🤪 but this way is ideal, useful on salads and if I don’t use all of it the leaves will get big enough to pick and dry as celery powder or freeze in packets.
I keep looking at the sky and thinking ‘come on, rain please’ but as usual the weather forecast has changed somewhat and there is no rain in sight until later tonight, so much for heavy downpours, I may have to do a rain dance at this rate. It is seriously beginning to affect some areas now, not everything, some things are plodding away content with the sprinkling they might get when I hose at night or the spitting we had overnight which hardly wet the ground and certainly didn’t penetrate much further into the soil than a nano of a millimetre 🙄 Around the farm I can see the ground beginning to open up with fissures, dry, cracked ground, I think I have been here before 🤔 The water tanks are almost empty now and it’s very definitely going to become a problem is we don’t get some rain soon.
During the afternoon and then in the evening I watered, the signs of rain were there but I it wasn’t really happening and I know from experience that I may as well do it. If the rain comes then it’s a bonus if it doesn’t come then at least the plants get something to drink.
At teatime I looked after the twins while Sam took Mia for her swimming lesson and then in the evening Sue and Shane popped over for a cuppa and to let me know about a small business arrangement that I may be able to take advantage of, more about that later if it happens 😁
By the time we went to bed, still no rain, we were later to bed than usual as we have been binge watching Clarksons Farm, which is the funniest thing on TV all year, seriously it’s hilarious, definitely watch it if you live around the Cotswolds, the very real characters are worth a watch in their own and together with Jeremys humour it is side splitting 🤣🤣
Friday: Rain 🌧 actual rain, enough to wet the top layer of the soil 😁 hopefully we will get a fair bit today, it will enliven the plants and fill the water tanks. The problem will be getting it to stop 🤪 The forecast is possibly ‘a days rain in an hour’ 🙄 that is definitely climate change, we never had such volumes in such a short time years ago, whatever is causing the change it is undeniably here. Still it means that today I don’t have to water anything outside and as I did the tunnels and greenhouse last night and the sun is nowhere to be seen, it means no watering at all and I can concentrate on other jobs. I still feel a bit rough, still have a sore throat so I am thinking that I will probably have a good rest this afternoon to gather strength for the weekends work ahead.
It’s been steadily raining for a few hours now, nice and steady so far 🙄 which is what we want, heavy rain washes away the top of the soil because we are on a slight slope and that’s not good.
After doing the washing up I went out to mop up the defrosted freezer, what I could have done with was a pile of tea towels 🤪 I knew I needed them for something. I have cleaned all the areas I can get to, inside is done and the front and sides, I need to move it so that I can Hoover off the back and the side ventilation, that will have to wait until John is home, unless I am feeling particularly strong. Actually I don’t think they are that heavy once they are empty just cumbersome due to the size.
I was listening to a couple of podcasts while I was working and I need to get some more veg in for successional sowing, things like French beans and beetroot, but I also need to start off some veg for overwintering such as cabbage maybe. If you sow them now and keep them in modules until later then hopefully you miss the cabbage white butterfly which as you probably know will decimate a crop very quickly. Think I will have my first break now and peruse some catalogue to see if there is anything I haven’t got that I could be sowing for winter.
The business thing I was talking about has happened quickly and so I am able to tell you that from later today we will be selling local honey from the egg shed 🥰 I am delighted to be able to help a small local producer by buying any jars they haven’t sold and then selling them in the shed. It’s a win win situation and I hope it works out well. The bees live in a quiet area on the edge of woodland just 4 miles away at Grove Farm, I am very excited at the opportunity to be able to do this for our customers.
I popped into the greenhouse for half an hour and have sown some swede, turnip, peas, cabbage, cauliflower and French beans as well as some icicle radish. I know I said I wasn’t going to do some of these but I am thinking that later sowings might be better especially for the root veg. By the time they are big enough to go in the ground, then establish and finally begin to put on some growth they won’t have got so big that they need to bolt due to lack of rain or consistent sunny weather 🤷♀️ I will only know if it try it out, I will have the onion bed available at the beginning of next month and then the broad bean bed will also probably be vacant by then, both of these areas I can use to grow veg well into the Autumn or even winter.
The honey arrived and I got sorted making a little notice for the shed and putting it on the Farm Facebook page. I had some on the bread I made yesterday (toasted) I can confirm it is delicious 😋
I have been researching mulches, home made mulches to be precise, to see exactly what you can/can’t should/shouldn’t use as a mulch. Pretty much anything as long as it does have a seed head is the answer, I have plenty of raw material round here it’s just a case of deciding which to use, probably a mixture of a few things would be ideal. I need to get into the habit of shredding everything I cut back but you can even use a shredder to shred cardboard (as long as the blade is sharp enough and the cardboard is dry) Remember the jute I was trialling? Well here is my conclusion, yes it works well for the first year, it doesn’t exclude all light but it is not a bad alternative to plastic membrane, however as expected it does not last through to the following spring, even if you take it up off the garden, the weather has already started to degrade it. I would say if you can get hold of it easily or cheaply then use it but I wouldn’t buy it off the shelf unless you have plenty of disposable income. Next the biodegradable, compostable plastic membrane, this one had good points and not so good. It was flimsy, quite expensive (but hey we are trying to save the planet 😬) Not permeable which is a bit of a drawback if you are using it to grow crops in, however I would think if you made a ridge and furrow type bed, laid the membrane then planted into the top of the ridge the furrows would collect water run off and so water would get to the roots that way. Laying it on the top of a flat bed does not really work if you are growing through it but it is ideal as a weed suppressant on its own. As for it breaking down, I think you could probably get two years out of it, it showed no signs of disintegrating when it came to plant season again this spring though it didn’t feel quite so robust. It is also a bit like cling film, sticks to itself making for a very good comedy sketch if your sense of humour is present that day 😜 So the good points are, it’s good for the environment, not so good, fairly expensive and tricky to use. Cardboard is another one I use, this is pretty good, the thicker the cardboard the better, but slugs do like to have a festival gathering underneath it so make sure you have frogs and hedgehogs to help keep the slugs down. Mostly I am trying whatever I can to suppress weeds and prevent moisture loss, so far the woven weed membrane is ticking all the boxes except the most important one which is the environment.
Went and got some food shopping early evening, when we got back the geese were making a racket so John left the shopping in the front and ran up the back to see what was happening, he couldn’t really see anything and so came back in. When he went to put the birds away the fox has had two full grown geese 🤬🤬 Last night as he was putting away he nearly tripped over the fox who was busy eating one of our new hens 😳 It’s a f…ing nightmare, what are you supposed to do, full grown geese can’t be kept in a fox proof pen, they graze grass and cover large areas while they are doing it 🤷♀️ getting close to the ‘what’s the point’ point 😢
Saturday: It’s overcast and quite a bit cooler today hence why it’s now 5pm and this is the first time I have sat down all day long I even ate my lunch on the move. I spent the first hour or so doing the usual jobs and then picking, peas, mangetout, baby beetroot and rhubarb, while John did the morning rounds. After that I went out to move the horses restricted fencing just a tad so that they have a bit more grass. Then we moved the freezer into its new position and I went to inspect the damage to the geese from the fox last night. He had gone for the goose on the nest and the gander had tried to defend her but he had both of them. The eggs were scattered everywhere last night but this morning they had put them all back in a nest 😢 However we had already decided to get her off the nest as it was now obvious they were not going to hatch, we wait every year but they are nearly always duff. These were the same I threw them in the hedge and most of them exploded eww that stinks. I then said to John we need to get the grass cut in that paddock, one of the reasons they would have not seen the fox was because the grass was long and it could easily sneak up. Once we got the ride on mower going I whizzed round and round until it was done, found the remains of the female goose in the long grass, the fox has been chewing away on it overnight by the looks of things 🤬 John dug up any ragwort and docks for burning. I then went round to the side by the ducks and cut that grass, it’s a walkway really so needed cutting, John meanwhile dug up docks in the side paddock. He then went in for lunch and I made a sandwich while he got the strimmer going, once it was running I finished my lunch quickly and went out to strim. John had a bit of a sit down but not for long, once I had finished that we tided up some rubbish from the back area and sorted out one of the cupboards which had stuff in there I have been keeping ‘just in case’ five years later I haven’t ever needed it and so now it is getting binned. It is nothing special just things like nets that bulbs came in or plastic fruit punnets I had collected by the dozens 🤣 I also had some brewing gear in there but that is going to my niece and her partner, I said he could have it in exchange for a bottle of whatever it is he decides to brew. I did do some brewing once upon a time, not much, a batch of beer and some cider but as neither of us drink very much I haven’t really bothered for years so might as well give it to someone who will. Shelley came over with the children, my sister was here doing the caravan and then my Mum turned up, all at the same time lol so we had a cup of tea 🫖 Then it was time to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting which John did while I cleaned the kitchen up a bit and washed the floor and that lot took us up to 5pm 🤪 At least I can get a good days work in when the weather is like this, here’s hoping it is the same again tomorrow and at this rate everything will be ship shape in no time at all.
Ooo one thing I nearly forgot, I picked some tea 😁 Camellia Sinensis, not much but about 15 leaves, the tips of the plant (hence PG Tips 😜) will dry them out and then wait for some more to grow and pick them and keep doing that until I have enough for a cup of tea 😂 Actually what I need to do is propagate the plant so I have quite a bit to pick at the same time.
I took some pics in the week of all the lovely pink flowers that are coming out 🥰
I love the baby pink lupin, the rose is Hermione, the salvia is pink sensation and I had no idea I had this dusky pink delphinium 😁
And some of the pyramid orchids growing in the long grass in the driveway, that’s why I can’t cut the grass yet 😁
Pyramid Orchid, there are a few in the driveway and quite a few more in the front paddock, hopefully by not mowing they will increase year on year.
Sunday: Father’s Day, we got up and did all the early morning jobs as usual and then Charlie, Shelley, Martin, Florence and Josh came over. They bought all the necessary ingredients to cook a Father’s Day breakfast which we all sat and ate together, lovely. That was a couple of hours of a leisurely breakfast and some Sunday morning chat and then John went off to pick up some tiles we had ordered to repair the floor in the kitchen where the Rayburn had been taken out. A short rest early afternoon and then mid afternoon someone arrived as planned to take the Rayburn and all the fittings. So now Rosie the Rayburn has gone, I am going to have mixed feelings, we were getting to the point where it was bloody hard work, chopping and cutting wood all summer, loading and keep her going all winter but I will miss the cooking facilities and the amazing warm hug that comes from a wood burning stove that you just can’t replicate with any other heat. I have toyed with the idea of having a small wood burner but that is my heart tugging and not my head thinking 😂
Later we are off to Sam and Luke’s for a roast dinner 😁 and this evening a chap is coming to see if he can dispatch the fox for us. Actually it’s two more foxes, he was here last night and saw them but couldn’t get a safe shot as one was in the yard and the other near the goose hut. When we lost the chickens the other week, he got three foxes and now there are two more to deal with, when I say it’s relentless, it really is. And as I will always say we don’t just do it for the sake of it, the nighttime prowlers are perfectly entitled to prowl, the birds are locked away safely, but the daylight ones well they are a different kettle of fish, we can’t afford to just allow the fox to continuously take all our birds. Come the day that happens we will be shutting up shop as there is only so much of a bashing you can realistically take. I know there are people who don’t agree and that’s fine they are entitled to their opinions and while it is still lawful we are entitled to ours. Before we go out we will be locking the geese away, the new hens have been locked away for three days now, the ones out the front are still free ranging but I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose a few of those while we are out 🙄 people like free range eggs but they come at a cost one way or another 😕
Well we have arrived back home about 8pm from having dinner with Sam and Luke, to a massacre 🤬🤬 I don’t even know what to say to be honest, you know when you just feel hysterical and it’s going to go one way or the other, either laugh or scream. There are bodies and feathers all over the front paddock, side paddock and walkway. This is unsustainable, as I say I can’t see how you can keep a free range flock safe any more unless you invest a lot of money and fence them and then they are not really free range are they 🤷♀️ It is soul destroying and we are getting nearer to the end of keeping hens a lot quicker than we had anticipated, seriously we can’t go on like this much more, we can’t even go out for a few hours. The fox numbers are becoming out of control, they will be in competition with each other for food, I have already heard first hand reports of small dogs being snatched, I suspect at least two of our cats were taken when they were small, where does it end ? 😢 When we no longer have birds it won’t be our problem but at the minute it is and it’s a big problem 😡
Monday 10th Feb 2020: Oooooh it’s Monday again 😏 Some Monday’s I don’t mind, the ones where the weather is fair to good but it’s cold out and we still have the blustery remnants of the storm so I’m not really feeling this one lol.
Still the winds blew over night, not quite so fierce but still audible, I found some ear plugs last night though and so managed a good nights sleep 😴 in fact John was up, breakfasted and gone to work by the time I dragged my sorry backside out of bed! I can already tell this will be a ‘non’ week, a week where I won’t be able to achieve very much outside due to the weather. This is a month of hope and then disappointment, ah we’ll roll on Spring.
John and I watched the woodpecker yesterday, I spotted it on the oak tree just outside the black door and called John over and we were both amazed when the woodpecker started to walk backwards down the tree trunk 😮 right to the bottom it went then onto the ground. Well I have never seen that before we both said and this morning I have tried to find out a bit more but apart from the fact that they have two toes that point forwards and two that point backwards I can’t find any reference to them walking down backwards as standard behaviour.
I went out and did the morning rounds and surveyed the place, a few small branches down but apart from that no major damage I am glad to say 😀
I picked some purple sprouting, I was mindful that it needed picking and didn’t want to waste it, it’s now soaking in cold water to get any bugs out then I will either blanch and freeze it or have with dinner tonight I haven’t quite decided which yet. There are still some Brussel sprouts to be picked and there is curly kale too, I need to make an effort to remember to pick them for dinner this week.
Next job on the list was to try and shift some duck eggs online, that’s always frantic backwards and forwards messaging but tonight we will be delivering trays of duck eggs and a few quail eggs so that’s a result 😀 The aim is to get customers coming to the farm but every now and then we are willing to go out and deliver to those a bit further away and so that people get to know where we are and we can then shift the eggs faster, I don’t like them hanging around for more than a couple of days lol.
I thought about making a quiche with one of the goose eggs and scoured around for ingredients, I only had a small pot of sour cream though so I will wait until I can get a big pot of proper cream. In the end I made a Madeira cake, one of Johns favourites and I decided we would eat the purple sprouting for dinner, might as well eat it while it’s fresh and full of nutrients.
The brassica cage is not going to be used for brassicas this year as I have already used it at least two years in a row and I don’t want pests and disease to build up in the soil. I had a big problem with whitefly in there last summer and need to break their cycle. That leaves me with two dilemmas , what to grow in there this year? And where to grow the brassica? The cage is permanent as we found a flimsy structure that is moveable doesn’t keep out the cabbage white butterfly very well so we built a more robust structure that did the job, however we can’t move it 🙄 I need to use it for something that at least needs either a bit of protection or a bit of shelter as the environmesh does slightly increase the temperature, you can feel the difference when you go in there. At the moment I haven’t thought about it very much and so have no idea on either problem. A lot of things don’t need protection of that kind but I’m sure I will think of something that does. Meanwhile, where to grow the brassica if at all, it would be a shame not too but they do need absolute netting otherwise they just get decimated.
Well the weather got proper shitty 😜 still blustery and then a good dose of rain thrown in for good measure, at one point I thought it might even snow it certainly looked that way.
I feel a bit tired and could do with an evening relaxing but we are off out to deliver some trays of duck eggs after dinner.
Tuesday: It’s a bitterly cold wind today, the wind hasn’t actually stopped for a few days now it’s just got colder and colder 😏 I didn’t do much in the way of the farm today mostly hoovering, polishing and I looked after the twins for an hour while Sam went for physio.
Wednesday: A cold frosty start to the day but the wind has dropped however we have another storm rolling in at the weekend, storm Dennis 🙄
I did the morning rounds, topping up straw bedding in the ducks and geese as I went, taking a sack of hay to the horses and then a bagful to the rabbit/guineas, still no sign of the other one, completely disappeared. I noticed the fence inbetween the side paddocks is nearly touching the floor having gone over, this didn’t happen during the worst of the winds but must have happened yesterday evening or I would have seen it. I have phoned John and asked him to come home an hour early so we can get it back up and temporarily fixed in position, the horses will soon be through to the side paddock if we don’t get it sorted ASAP.
The grass has definitely been growing, I can tell by the little flakes of grass left in the water bucket by the geese and also John moved the chicken fence the other week and that ground has completely recovered with a growth. There are other tell tale signs, the geese and the horses can be seen more often with their heads down gleaning the new blades of grass emerging, all good signs that we are moving towards Spring.
Here is my random thought of the week lol, I was reading an article about Jane Fonda and the fact that she has reused a dress for an award ceremony 😲😲 shock horror surely not 😜 and I’m not knocking her it’s great that she is doing her bit but I was slightly concerned to read that she spent 7 hours having her hair completely transformed. I am guessing that she has not used very environmentally friendly products to achieve what is a splendid look, that got me onto thinking about nails, not natural nails that everybody once used to have but these horrible little bits of plastic stuck on in place of a perfectly adequate nail underneath. How many millions of bits of plastic are used daily in the pursuit of the desire to look glamorous I wonder? I have had them once, for Shelleys wedding 6 years ago, I wouldn’t have them again as the state of my real nails when they came off was awful. Is there a compostable or biodegradable product out there? I have no idea🙄
I put my coat on mid morning and went outside to see what could be done and have a look at how things are going. On the plus side the carrot seedlings in the poly tunnel are coming up and so are a few peas, the garlic in the small tunnel are growing well and so is the parsley, I gave them all a light watering. On the downside something has chewed one of my seed potatoes in the greenhouse and looking at the tooth marks I’m thinking rat 😝 I need to get rid of that, it can only get in under the door so something needs to be done though I’m not sure what just at the moment. The broad beans spin the greenhouse are also coming through and the over wintering plants in there are doing fine. The arches I put up were bending in the wind a fair bit during the storm so I have strengthened them for the time being although I have discussed with John about concreting some stronger posts in to help. Needless to say the wind has picked up again so I wasn’t out there very long as my fingers and toes were freezing so I came back in a lit the Rayburn. This is what I mean about February, it teased with some lovely weather at the beginning of the month and ever since then it’s been a right sod 😏 The seedlings on the window sill are just starting to emerge, I guess all in all I am winning 😀 I would just like some warmer, still days to get ahead 😬
John came home early and we got the fence propped back up as a temporary measure, the ground is too wet to get the tractor on there to do a proper job for now but we need to time it right when we do, too dry and the posts won’t go in.
I did the afternoon feed rounds and egg collecting while John cut up some more wood, we have piles of it out there to get through and so he has decided an hour here and there is better than a whole day doing it. I sorted out the eggs, fed the dogs and got something out for dinner later, then had a sit down, I am struggling with stiff hip joints at the minute and I’m hoping it’s just the cold weather. They are not painful, just don’t want to work, squatting down to chop kindling is hard work, getting back up is hard work, lifting my leg over the chicken fence is proving hard going 🙄 and to think that last week I was thinking it was the best I had felt in a few years, hey ho.
Thursday: It’s milder this morning, the downside of that is rain, we have had torrential downpours during the night and have the beginnings of the lake in the side paddocks again 🙄
I felt unwell this morning but after taking a coup,e of ibrufen feel a lot better now, I had blood tests tomorrow and am hoping it’s a passing bug and nothing more.
The seedlings that showed tiny progress yesterday have burst through with more growth today, not all of them, I’m still waiting for the aubergine and water melon to show up lol.
I have had all my seeds out this morning, going through them to see what I have and try to organise what will go in first. I could do parsnips and swede now straight into the ground but I know my garden and so I am going to wait a couple more weeks as a too cold/wet start will only rot the seeds off. I have ordered a totally new vegetable (to me anyhow) and that is yacon, it is also perennial and so will go in the permanent bed although it seems I may have to dig the tubers up for overwintering. I also ordered multicoloured beetroots seeds to give those a go and I still need to find some of these round radish I grew last year though I can’t remember what they were called which is a shame. They were free seeds and far better than the breakfast radish that is usually grown.
I gave the grandchildren a goose egg each, Mia made cake with hers, Sam said it was the best tasting cake she had ever made. Josh and Florence decided to eat theirs, Josh had scrambled egg and Florence had a dippy egg almost as big as her 😂
I really am busting to get out and get something done that is productive on the garden, keeping my fingers crossed for some better weather though it doesn’t look like it’s heading our way any time soon, must try not to be so impatient. I am feeling instinctively that the greenhouse will soon be ready to use mind you as everything in there has either survived the winter really well or is starting to grow (broad beans). The tooth marks I thought were rat I’m now thinking are actually squirrel, I see him daily and I think he could easily squeeze under the door to nibble on my seed potatoes, I need to sort that ASAP, we have a weather board to go on the bottom of the door which should solve it but it’s in Johns van and I keep forgetting to ask him for it.
Friday: I feel ok this morning, I was worried yesterday in case it was all going ‘Pete Tong’ but all seems well and I had blood tests this morning so that should pick up any anomalies.
After that we went to yet another independent cafe, Humble Bumble cafe in Brize Norton, it’s in the old cricket pavilion and is just charming, the coffee is good and I had toasted banana bread with Greek yoghurt and honey, delish 😋 A quick trip to the shop to get something for dinner later and then back home to light the Rayburn. The wind is already picking up a bit and the forecast says we are going to get a battering of 49/50/60 mph winds and 100% chance of lashing of heavy rain for a 24hr period, oh the joys of the English weather systems. It’s further north I feel sorry for they have already had floods and are likely to be hit hard again, I can’t imagine how they feel with another storm warning to close to the last poor people 😢
It’s Valentines Day today and no I won’t hold my breath waiting to receive a card or flowers 😂 if I did that I would have died about 20 years ago which is around the time John stopped buying me anything. To be honest it’s not quite the same as when you were a teenager and you opened that card with a big ? and really had no clue as to who sent it 💕 ah those were the days 😀 I am not the kind of wife who presses John into buying me anything either, you know, like saying, ‘don’t forget it’s Valentines day’ there is no joy or delight in knowing that you nagged someone to show you their undying love 😜 besides he would say ‘I love you every day, not just on Valentines day’ well of course you do 🙄 but it would be nice to be surprised once every few years 😬 I did get a box of Maltessers from Josh and Florence though, ‘Happy Birthday Nana’ he said ‘thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day to you’ ‘I do know it’s Valentine’s Day but I like to say Happy Birthday’ Josh said, lol that suits me fine 😀
Saturday: What a totally crappy day so far weather wise, it’s horrible out there. I helped John do the morning rounds so that neither of us got too wet and then Shelley picked me up and we went to a second hand book sale where I picked up a book of wildlife gardening and a book on caterpillars and butterfly’s for the kids to learn from.
Shellley came in for a cuppa when we got back and Charlie and Macca called in as well so we had a nice little gathering round the kitchen table and tried to ignore the weather 😀
We nipped to the local diy centre to pick up some paint for the kitchen, I have been wanting to freshen it up for a while and as we can’t get much done outside we might as well go and get items we need. We also went to the local nursery to pick up some plants and have coffee and cake. I wanted a Daphne as they smell amazing and as I said before I wish I had bought the one I had at the old place with me when I moved. At the time I was focussed on smallholding and so flowers and flowering shrubs didn’t really fit into the picture but as time has gone on I have realised that they should and so I’m on a mission to fill the place with a wide variety of plants, shrubs and trees. Of course I couldn’t walk past the bright colours of the primroses and picked up a pack of those to cheer up a dull day. I also hatched a plan to fill some of the gravel areas out the front with low growing creeping plants so I bought a few of those to see if my plan will work, I need to keep the chickens off them while they establish but once they have they should be fine, I also think that if they spread enough It won’t matter if they get walked on now and again as long as it’s not constant treading. And then there were these miniature iris that I just couldn’t resist 😜 I actually went back to get them as they were so endearing, no idea where I will put them yet but that’s not a big issue.
I think I will grow the plants on a while and then divide them to give me twice as many little plants to dot around.
Sunday: Ooooo it’s lunchtime and we have already been busy thanks to storm Dennis 🙄 remember the fence we propped back up in the week, well it was back down again this morning, properly down, the horses had escaped as well. I rounded them up and got them into the stables and after feeding and letting everything else out we picked up the post rammer and went out the the field to repair it again. A little more robustly this time, the post rammer is a very heavy piece of equipment to use and the ground is soft so we (I say we, John was on the rammmer lol) got some new posts bedded well into the ground and re nailed the rails back up. I don’t mind telling you it was a filthy, cold, wet, windy job that I would rather not have had to do. The stream we get runs through that bit and at one point John dropped a post, it went into the muddy water and guess who got a splattering 😜 I have researched a petrol driven rammer that I think we might invest in as we are not getting any younger and after each post John tells me he is too old for this 😂 We have plenty of fences to do this year and so now might be a good time to get one, it also would make it easier for my plan to have double fences so that we can grow hedges in between them. This idea would, stabilise the ground, provide shelter/shade for the horses, provide a buffer from the winds and be a wildlife corridor, I wish I had done it ten years ago but hey you live and learn.
Dennis was pretty horrendous through the night as well, the strong gusts kept waking me up and in the end I listened to some soothing music on my headphones just so I could actually get some sleep.
When we finished doing the fence I came in and lit the Rayburn while John cleared the drains, they soon get silted up with rain like we have had, then I sent him off with a shopping list for some essentials while I waited for someone to come and collect a tray of duck eggs which they duly did. I think we have earned the afternoon in the warm on the sofa don’t you lol.
I took a photo of the geese in the week then I played with the filters, love the result they almost look cartoon like.
I think that’s me done for this week, if you drive past you will probably see me with my nosed pressed up against the window looking for some nicer weather 😝
Tuesday 24th Sept: We arrived back at around 10pm last night, it was raining most of the day in Guernsey, all the way home it has rained non stop and it’s still raining this morning. I woke at 5, I think I heard rumbles of thunder, and it has not stopped at all, it’s now 8.30 and I really should go out and let all the birds out, it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop at all today so best get on with it.
Oh the joys of getting back to work 🙄 wet and muddy out there today lol. All seems to be well with the farm, I found a few eggs that Shelley wouldn’t have known where they lay as I forgot to tell her but it was checked on Thursday so they are still ok. The only thing out of order at the moment is that we can’t find one of the kittens, TC, I haven’t seen him at all since we got back and I have checked all the sheds and called him but as yet no sign of him, I’m hoping he turns up sometime today. On the other hand Diesel who has not been around for about a week has turned up for feeding this morning, I know cats are a law unto themselves but they sure cause worry 😏
The geese have still been laying while we were away, not sure what is going on there but never look a gift horse in the mouth as they say.
10.30 still raining, quite heavily too, I guess that summer is over then 😏
Shelley has been collecting the walnuts as they have been dropping while we were away, I thought the squirrel was getting them but obviously not which is great for me 😀
Still no sign of the cat and you feel out of sorts when something isn’t where it’s supposed to be, I have checked in all the outbuildings just to make sure he’s not locked in somewhere, I’ve checked the roadside to make sure he hasn’t been run over, it’s odd because he is always the one under my feet and the pair of them haven’t really ventured very far as yet. Benny is on his own for the first time ever and keeps sleeping in the dog bed, good job the dogs don’t mind him bunking in with them 😀 hopefully TC will just show up after being off for a wander 🙄
John and I spent two hours tonight once everything had gone to bed and it was quieter, trying to listen and see if TC was stuck anywhere. I kept thinking I could hear faint miaowing and we searched every tiny space we could find, up in the roof space, down the walls, behind the walls, under wood stacks, up pipes, literally every inch was searched but no luck and the noise I thought I heard occasionally never got louder the closer we got to anything. At one point John fell over and knocked all the grass seed everywhere and hurt his shoulder, the opposite one to the one he hurt last year falling over in the duck pen. To be honest it could have been anything that I heard, John would say can you hear that bird, nope, my hearing is not that great since I’ve had tinnitus 🙄
Wednesday: I feel despondent this morning, the cats missing, one day back at work and John is feeling tired and achy, it’s been raining so it’s wet and muddy everywhere, these are the kind of days I think ‘yep let’s give it all up’ 😏
On a brighter note our new resident arrived last night just as it was getting dark, Biscuit, the Shetland pony 😀 she is a lovely, obliging little pony who likes to be brushed and fussed. Her long term field companion died of a stroke a few weeks ago and her owners were looking for a new home for her, we went and had a look at her and she is very sweet and the perfect height for the grandchildren to interact with plus a gentle temperament. Jack has not met her yet as she is in the stable for the moment but hopefully he will be happy to have a ‘little’ company 😋
I did the rounds this morning then onto some picking, still plenty of tomatoes and courgettes, also some cucumber and a melon. I need to pick the grapes soon and I have been collecting more walnuts.
Shelley came over to help have a quick look for the cat but nothing. Sam arrived with the twiglets and we skipped out Biscuits stable then took 9 pallets up to the small back paddock to protect the trees I planted as the geese are going in there for a while. I had to drill a new hole for the bolt in their hut and put in some clean bedding, that was all in between rain showers and feeding the babies 👶 👶 After they left I cleaned out the stable that the chickens and ducks are in, put clean bedding in the other duck pen house, somewhere in amongst that I got the dinner ready. John came home and put a piece on the bottom of another stable to make it fox proof as I will be moving the light Sussex into there before dispatch.
After dinner and putting the birds to bed I had a customer come to pick up some plants, John went to get a bit of shopping and Shelley came back to listen in the dark when it’s much quieter to see if we could hear the cat, she has much better hearing than we do 🤣 we spent about an hour or so out here but couldn’t hear anything that sounded like a cat 😏
Thursday: Although it’s rained overnight it has been a fine sunny morning this morning. I did the morning rounds changing bits of electric fencing as I went round, the front hens now have free range of the whole paddock, they were getting out anyway so might as well make it easy for them 😂 I checked on Biscuit who is still in the stable at the minute and all the hens have had a scoop of calcium and grit to boost shell and gut health. Then onto the garden, I had quite forgotten just how abundant this time of year is, not only are there thousands of blackberries and hundreds of nuts but I picked a whopping load of tomatoes and a basket full of grapes. I just have to decide what to do with them all, some grapes have been frozen, I ate some with my lunch, some have gone into a jelly for John and some out for sale, I will give the girls some and have told the wider family if they want any grapes or tomatoes to pop by. At some point I’m going to have to do passata lol and I did think about dehydrating some grapes for raisins for cooking or snacking. Fruit leather is another thing I really want to try so if I get a bit of time I will do that as well, plenty of berries around to try that with at the moment. The elderberries are abundant though I haven’t actually picked any of those yet but I will hopefully get to some before the birds do.
I think someone somewhere has thought, right you haven’t got enough to write about in your blog so here you go have some of this 🤪
I messaged Charlie yesterday and said I am going to rename this place Chaos, no explanation needed and today it’s still the same. A busy morning and a busy afternoon as well, then Samantha came over with the twins and Mia as Mia wanted to see biscuit. They skipped her stable out and gave her a swede to chew on, took her into the ménage for a frolic and then out to meet jack for the first time, which incidentally went very well. Time to get her back in, she caught well and off went Sam back to the stable while I minded the twins and Mia, next thing Biscuit is dragging Sam back down to the paddock ‘I’d forgotten how strong they are’ she said 😂 I run and get an apple cut it into four pieces and we are leading her back with the proverbial ‘Apple instead of carrot’ in front of her nose to get her back, meanwhile the twins are crying and so is Mia. They leave and I get on with prepping dinner and hoovering the floor which has mud clumps from my wellies where I have been in and out all day, inbetween I am messaging people who want to buy plants. John comes home with the inserts for the tap that has been dripping for a fortnight, filling a small saucepan overnight, I kid you not the minute he walks in with his tools the tap fails to drip and we watch it and watch it but no drip, this often happens to customers he tells me, they say my tap is dripping badly and when he gets there nothing but at least he knows how badly this one has been dripping so that’s something at least even if it is a bit bizarre. Dinner is cooking and I get a message from the chap with the rabbit to say he is bringing it round now, ok, we quickly get dinner on the table and munch that down just in time for when he arrives. He comes in with the rabbit and I put the kettle on, I’m busy making a cuppa and we are chatting next thing we hear is a very loud crash right beside us, We have a recess alcove behind the hob and the top bit, so the ceiling of it, has just fallen off and landed on the hob knocking all my bottles of oil and herbs everywhere 🙄 What the actual 🤬 We go and get the rabbit hutch in and he has bought a glove to handle the rabbit, it’s four months old, it doesn’t bite but growls due to not being handled very much 😋 I wasn’t expecting that 🙄 so as this rabbit is intended for Josh and Flo I shall have to handle her until she is petable lol. The day is still not over yet, I cleaned one of the other stables this afternoon which is where the light Sussex are going, to clean them up and fatten, so off we go to round up 12 rather large chickens which make the most horrendous noise when they are caught, honestly anybody would think we were dispatching there and then.
If you can imagine that as this is all happening usually the dogs are barking at something or other, the phone is going, there are chickens and ducks getting under my feet, customers are turning up for plants and this has been a daily occurrence this week you can see why it’s chaos, I won’t even go into the two nightmares I had last night and woke in absolute terror at one of them, all adds to the mix 😜
Have you ever seen that picture of an aging lady in wellies and a straw hat on a farmyard with all the animals everywhere, that’s me I think 🤣
Once we put the animals to bed we nipped to Charlie’s for a cuppa.
Friday: After the morning rounds I spent nearly two hours processing the walnuts we have been picking up. First they need to be taken out of their green coat, sometimes they are already out but not often and sometimes the coat has turned to brown mush. So I spent a good deal of time in the greenhouse doing that then it’s into the boot room and put some white vinegar in the sink and tumble the nuts with my hands, this does two things, get any remaining casing bits off and makes sure there are no bacteria/mould on the shell. When you buy walnuts in the shell from the supermarket they will have been treated with a food grade bleach which is why they are a lot cleaner than mine will be in the end, I could do this but I prefer the vinegar and it works very well. Next the nuts are dried, I put them in a towel and roll a few at a time, and then they will need to air dry so they need to be somewhere that is not damp, the kitchen works well as long as the air can get all round the basket. If you put them in a container that the air can’t circulate in they will form mould again, my thoughts are that if the mould is on the outside it could penetrate to the inside which could potentially make you ill if you eat them like that. I generally keep them in their shells until after the New Year when I have more time to shell them for storage in jars, you can eat them straight after picking, they are called wet walnuts and that means the nut meat hasn’t dried, if you leave them to cure they become the walnut you are probably more familiar with and then they store much better. I like the taste of wet walnuts many people don’t but I see it as a bit of a foragers treat. The whole process may seem bothersome for many people but for starters the nuts are free 😀 (expensive in the shops) and then there is the fact that they are a great brain food so it would be a little idiotic for me not to do it, besides the fact that I end up with very dark brown fingers and thumbs (walnut is a great dye) it’s rewarding to have a store of nuts I have gathered and prepared and that will last well into the next year for snacks and cooking.
Luckily the hazelnuts do not need the same amount of work, they just need to be stored in damp free conditions until they are ready to be eaten or cracked for storing and using.
Sam, Shelley and the children came over in the afternoon to see Biscuit and the rabbit 😀
When they left I did the afternoon rounds and collected the eggs for putting out as usual. Yesterday I had put out a punnet of grapes and covered them in cling film and was pretty annoyed to find that someone had lifted the film and pinched a few grapes from the bunch, I could see they had been taken as they leave that little mushy tail behind, what kind of a person does that? I bought them back in and won’t be putting anymore out, last week it was the cherry tomatoes, I could tell one or two had been nicked and sure enough when I bought the punnet back in and weighed it there were some missing 😡
Dinner done and dusted we are having a quiet night tonight, famous last words 😋
Saturday: It’s forecast to be dry today which is good after the last few days of on off rain. I had a plan to keep the hens in the stable shut in this morning because I have no idea where they are laying their eggs, John and I talked about it last night and this morning he went off up the back to do the geese and hens in the small back paddock. Meanwhile I came out and fed and watered the ones in the stable being kept in and then went round to do the ducks in the side pen, next thing I see is are the hens out everywhere, there followed an exchange of words, mostly ‘you never bloody listen’ & ‘I forgot’ 😜
With the rest of the birds and animals sorted it was onto the jobs for the morning, I sorted out the egg shed and picked a few bits for putting out along with some pumpkins and a couple of spaghetti squash. I pulled all the remaining carrots, at this time of year if you don’t get them out either the rain starts to rot them or the slugs start to eat them. Johns job was to deep clean the Rayburn ready for lightening when we need it, it’s a pretty big job it includes sweeping the flue and pulling all the grates out and a mucky job to boot 😀 I cleaned all the carrots then sliced and diced them, blanched them and they will go in the freezer to open freeze once they are cool.
I am still trying to figure out what to do with these grapes and Pinterest isn’t giving me much inspiration on that front lol
I decided to have a go at dehydrating some of the grapes to see how well they would do and of course raisins, which is what they will be, will come in handy for cooking. I put a few of the hybrid blackberries in to see how well they do, then I started thinking about Christmas mincemeat and how lovely it would be with the raisins, dried blackberries and some of our chopped hazels/walnuts in there as well mmmm just got figure out a way to make it low sugar enough to still taste good but I think it’s entirely do able, it’s a shame I didn’t get the cherries this year as they could have gone in as well, but all that together with our own apples and I am looking forward to making it.
Sunday: It rained heavily last night and is lighter but still raining this morning, as I always say, once it’s here it doesn’t stop 😜 John was up early breakfasted and out doing the morning rounds before I got up 😀 that is an unusual but welcome occurrence, it means I don’t have to go out and get wet until later 😂 He has now gone off to visit his Mum picking up Shelley on the way, I am having the twins for an hour this morning while Sam does the food shopping.
I realised that we had lost the lights in the kitchen and out the back, normally after heavy rain the pump from the water tank is the culprit but not this time, so far I have unplugged and turned off everything outside in the stable block but it’s still tripping, John is not back yet and so I decided to wait until he is otherwise it’s numerous trips backwards and forwards to the fuse box to figure out what exactly is causing the problem, freezers, tumble dryers, washing machine who knows at this point 🙄
John Home problem sorted, it was the pump after all, it just took a while to settle for some bizarre reason.
Today has had a definite winter feel to it 😏 wind and rain although the sun did shine occasionally.
Still no sign of TC, I find the whole thing a bit odd to be honest, he was extremely friendly and always here, I guess we may never know what happened to him 😔
Now I know what some of you are thinking ‘what’s Hubby done now’ sorry to disappoint you, he appears to be blemish free this week! The ‘why?’ are genuine musings that I have pondered over while going about my work, I work alone all day, every day for at least five days a week and so with only myself to talk to (not out loud, I hasten to add) questions pop up all the time and none more so than this week.
Some musings are more intelligent than others such as why are we trading with China? and do we have more to fear from the controlling president of that country than we do from thousands of immigrants pouring into Europe with the only agenda for them being a decent life for their families? Sorry, that’s probably a bit deep for a smallholding blog but it is what goes on in my head along with why do flies make that irritating buzzing sound when they fly? Birds fly, but they don’t make a sound like you instantly want to swat them every time they come near, come to think of it they do not dive bomb you every few seconds either. They are not very clever, I mean if they went silently about their business we wouldn’t be reaching for the fly spray in the height of summer would we?
Other musings range from, why did we lend our new 1m blade electric hedge trimmer out and why didn’t they notice that the flex was dangerously close to the blade that chops thing off? I actually know the answer to this, because said person is an idiot that is why, and now we have a lovely piece of blue tape covering up the joiner (exasperated sigh) Shall I continue? Why when there are five acres, and a considerable amount of countryside thereafter available, does the cat want to **** right where you have just planted seedlings? Why wont the geese go to bed on the only night there is no one around to help? Why would you think it is perfectly ok to go and get your eggs from the local smallholding honesty shed at 11.30pm? Why didn’t anyone bring me chocolate home today? they must have known I needed some 🙂 It is at this point you are probably thinking, yep, she spends too much time on her own with only the chickens to talk to lol
Why is life so cruel sometimes? that applies to humans and animals alike, this week it all went very wrong for one of our new point of lay hens, life was ticking along nicely for her, she had been reared in a shed for the best part of 16 weeks then she arrived here and had her first taste of outdoor life, the smells, sounds, and new sights such as dogs and horses, in her prime she laid her first egg and disaster struck. A prolapse is not something I have had to deal with before and so I turned to Google to find out what to do, first bathe the prolapse in antiseptic, then using Vaseline and gloves push the prolapse back to where it came from (not for the squeamish I can assure you) use Witch Hazel to bathe it afterwards in the hopes that it will retract and deflate. Leave the hen somewhere quiet overnight with water only and see what happens, the hen went into shock, that’s what happened and so the kindest thing to do was ‘the deed’. Normally I don’t get sentimental feelings over the hens but I really felt sorry for this one, she was only a youngster and hardly had a chance at a happy life.
The tidying up of the veg plot has continued this week and this morning I began to venture out further onto the farm and identify areas that needed doing, one main area being the hedge along the front driveway. So that is where I was, trimming the hedge with my blue bandaged electric trimmer when today’s Why? came along, actually I wonder this one every year and people who do it seem to think it is a very reasonable thing to do, I however, cannot see the point, except under certain circumstances (which I consider to be ludicrous anyway). Why do people feel the need to spend most of Autumn and the first part of Winter gathering up all the leaves that have been shed from the trees? Do people not know that the worms and the weather will do most of it for you without any sweat being broken at all? Perhaps its a case of that shiny red/green leafblower in the corner of the garage is calling and you cant wait to play with it or it might be that the only bit of earth that actually belongs to you (so to speak because I bet a pound to a penny if it came to it you would not own the fracking rights under your driveway) has been entirely covered with block paving or slabs (that’s the ludicrous bit as far as I’m concerned and a topic for a whole blog of its own one day) and understandably you don’t want to slip on the wet soggy leaves. If you leave those leaves they will enrich the soil beneath them, ok so I know it will look untidy for a few weeks but its far better for the ground than buying lawn feed or soil improver surely, you don’t have to break into your wallet or that sweat, you can sit in the evening sun, sipping your glass of cider/ale/prossecco smug in the knowledge that those worms are working for you 😉
frieslandfarm (flowers) 