September 2024: It has been ages since I last blogged and I am really sorry, I started so many drafts only to get caught up in life in general that they never made to publishing 🤪
It has been a busy few months, on the flower side of things business has been brisk, different to last year but a definite increase in orders. I have still done bunches and bouquets as usual but also DIY buckets, bespoke flower arrangements for customers as well as regular customer orders. Just when I think I will have a quiet week orders come in and I am off again. I have done more funeral flowers and memorial flowers and workshops too.
I had my roadside flower stand pinched, the whole thing which was about 5ft tall by 4ft square and pretty heavy. It would have taken two people to lift it and a lorry or a van to take it away. Thieving b**tards that think it’s ok to rob people. I was totally gutted the morning I went out and found it missing, deflated and despondent is not overstating how I felt. But every cloud has a silver lining they say and this has in a roundabout way done me a favour 😂 I made a reel for Instagram about my stolen flower shed complete with ‘detective’ music and the reel went viral! That kept me busy I can tell you, almost 10,000 views in the first 24hrs and weeks later it is still going and up to 700,000, yup 👍 Why is that a good thing? Well it has raised my Instagram profile and as the reel is being watched by 100’s of people a day, some of them are then following me. What good is that if they are not customers I hear you ask 👂 it’s good because it means all my other reels are getting some traction and potentially being put in front of viewers who are more local, in fact I had a new customer who said ‘oh I saw you on Instagram’ and basically the more views and follows you have the more the algorithms put your reels in front of those with an interest. Besides all that it is fun to watch the numbers though I don’t take it to seriously.
Life has been busy too, school holidays mean grandchildren visits and I have had a few of those, I still have Oscar every Tuesday and we even managed to get away for a weeks holiday to tick some things off my bucket list. It was my 60th birthday at the end of July, we had a spa day and meals out and then we went away on a road trip.
We travelled to Bakewell to have Bakewell tart on our way to our first destination which was York, it has been on my radar for a good few years and I finally got there. We spent two days there doing some fabulous tourist things including a visit to Betty’s and the Jorvik centre (both are an absolute must) before setting off again for Edinburgh, with a detour to see Lindisfarne on the way. The main reason for the trip was in Edinburgh and that was an evening at the Royal Military Tattoo 🥰 We had a pre show hospitality package and did the whisky experience before hand and now I have a new appreciation for whisky 🥃 We met one of the riflemen from the United States Navy Ceremonial Guard who was on his first ever trip outside of the USA, he was only young and what a first trip that must have been 😊 Plenty to do in Edinburgh and we packed as much in as possible before moving on to our next destination. Lake Windamere in Cumbria, we stayed at a very nice hotel on the shores of the lake and had a relaxing first evening before a trip we had booked for the next day. A Beatrix Potter tour, we couldn’t come here without visiting her house and garden and it was a real delight. We had a fabulous tour guide who took us to some real hidden gems in the area as well as imparting so much local knowledge it was mind boggling. Beatrix Potter was a visionary and understood her legacy long before anyone else did I think, incredible lady. Time to head back home with a detour to Stafford castle on the way where just by chance they had a Viking re-enactment day, well that just topped off what had already been an amazing bucket list ticking holiday.
Over the last couple of weeks it has been time to harvest fruit too, apples, plums, blackberries, elderberries it has kept me busy I can tell you. I am trying to rely less on the freezer now and do more drying and preserving. I still have my prepper head on and there a has been a global internet outage over the summer, it affected many things and I honestly don’t think it will be the last one nor the biggest, I think there is the likelihood of more and bigger in the future. So that is just one reason I prefer to be prepared for all eventualities, I just hope more people start to see exactly what could happen and think about how they would cope. If anything affected the logistics systems for deliveries then 3 days and the supermarket will be empty so it’s worth having some back up stores. Buy what you use and use what you buy, rotate it then it’s never wasted.
We have suffered plenty of daytime fox attacks, even Ted the Turkey has become a victim 😔 We are down to less than twenty hens which is not much good because I never have any eggs for cooking and baking. We did say we would not bother getting anymore but we do need eggs for ourselves so we have decided to get a few new ones in to keep ourselves and the customers going. The ducks are not being replaced though so once they stop laying there will be no more duck eggs.
There has been, as always, plenty of work to be done outside on the Smallholding, hedges, paddock, fencing, weeding, mowing, strimming, you name it and it needs doing. Yesterday I sowed a couple of rows of carrots to hopefully have some for Christmas and I have harvested a few runner beans this week but the veg are sadly lacking this year. So I am going to do something about that and one way to have veg but not have to work too hard at it is perennial veg. Welsh onions, perpetual spinach, garlic chives, perennial kale will give me useful veg that just keep appearing (hopefully) along with plenty of herbs that I already have growing that way I can concentrate on a few other things such as carrots and beans etc. I keep hearing there will be shortages this year due to flooding or lack of sunshine so I am not waiting to find out I can’t buy any lol.
The weather: because I always mention the weather 😂 jeez this spring and summer have been all over the place 🤪 Cold wet spring, cold wet summer, occasional sunshine, it has been nothing if not challenging for growing stuff let me tell you. Slugfest arrived and never left, the blighters have been eating everything more especially all the young tender shoots of annuals 🙄 add that to a total lack of sunshine and warmth and it has not been a great year for anything that needs the sun. Still you get dealt the cards and you play with what you have, on the flip side it has been a summer I could tolerate and move around in easily 😬 It just is what it is and you have to go with it, luckily as I always hedge my bets I have had plenty of flowers that have made through and so although there is an impact I can side step it and go forward most weeks.
The flowers will still be blooming for a few weeks although the season is moving to slow down now but I have workshops ahead of me including Christmas ones and I still have plenty of preserving and processing to do so I will still be busy.
Right this minute I have some mango chutney cooking down (a bit of an indulgence that one) But over the past few weeks I have been making jams and chutneys, canning apple and plum sauce, freezing apples, blackberries, elderberries and plums, dehydrating herbs and vegetables, making and freezing crumbles and stews and I have my Christmas mincemeat made already. Apple cider vinegar is on the go and something new this year is honey fermented elderberries, should be great to stave off any winter bugs lurking.
Oh and it will soon be time to start collecting walnuts and hazelnuts, if I can beat the squirrels. This year I am also going to collect conkers and make some washing soap with them, we will see how that turns out 🤷♀️
There you go, that’s pretty much up to date. I will try to blog a bit more regularly but once you get out of the habit it’s difficult to get back in to it 😂
Monday 8th April 2024: It is still the Easter holidays for the children and Sam came over with the kids today. The farrier was due out and so she came over to get the horses in. She was worried about Biscuits feet as they didn’t look right and she has had laminitis in a previous life, we did get her penned in a quarter of the paddock on Friday as a precaution but the farrier said her feet are all good which is great news. She will stay restricted though as the grass is growing much quicker now and that’s not good for her. Jack had a bit of a bath but he really needs another he was filthy from the winter weather. Hopefully as the weather warms up they can both have a good wash and scrub up.
Charlie arrived with Oscar at lunchtime, the children played for a couple of hours and they were able to play in the garden for a change as it was dry and not too cold. They decided to pimp the pirate ship with chalks 😂 looks quite good I think 😊
After they left I got on with some work, weeding and gathering up rubbish to put in the skip, tidying stuff away and then dividing some plants up, potting them ready for sale once the roots have settled and begin to anchor.
Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 He was unwell today so he was very subdued even refusing to eat chocolate which is unheard of 😂
Wednesday: Sam had asked me to go with her to get all the passports renewed but before she came I managed to get a few bits of housework done. When she arrived we went off to the post office to get the passports done, the twins had not had passports before, Mia needed a new one and Sam had to renew hers in her married name. Given that the twins can be a bit of a handful at the best of times and that they were very likely to get bored standing there waiting I had agreed to go with her to help. She got the twins done first and as soon as they had both had their photos taken I took them into the cafe to get them some lunch while they did Mias passport. She then joined us and had lunch while Sam got hers done. They were actually all really well behaved, I confess it surprised even me 😂
Thursday: There is plenty of work to be done outside and it is taking up any available time I have, weeding today. Then unexpectedly Sam arrived with the children late afternoon, she had bought them over for a talking too 😂 their good behaviour did not last long and they had given her the run around. When mine were young I occasionally took them to my Mum for a talking to, Nanas are wise and hopefully grandchildren will listen to them 🤪 I think I got through to them, only time will tell and once they I had finished talking to them they went off to swimming lessons.
Friday: I can’t remember what I did the day but late afternoon my sister picked me up in her Morris 1000 ‘Daisy’ and we went off to a classic car event at a local gin distillery. Wood fired pizzas were available and we had a very pleasant evening with other classic car enthusiasts, the weather was great which made it all the better.
Saturday and Sunday: We had a very busy weekend, the weather was good, sunny, warm enough, no wind and no rain. I spent most of the two days gardening, weeding, seed sowing, dividing, potting on and some watering in the tunnels.
Meanwhile John was busy getting the Parthenon finished lol, it is now ready for soil, he has put damp course all around the bottom and cut the metal grid for the climbing plants. He has also moved all the IBC tanks and levelled off the driveway as parts of it were high. He has cut the lawn, dug out thistles from the front side paddock and dragged it. In-between all we have been doing all the other jobs housework, cooking, washing, shopping, feeding the birds, collecting the eggs, a hundred and one jobs that always need doing.
At some point this week I pulled a lot of rhubarb and took some down to the pub along with fresh flowers. Some of it I used to make some rhubarb and vanilla jam, which is delicious. I had other flowers cut ready for customers, some collected and some delivered but I can’t remember which day that was.
Buckets of flowers being cut at the minute, finally spring has sprung 🥰
Tuesday 9th August 2022: No idea what I did on Monday apart from cut a whole load of flowers for an order that was cancelled 😏 and went to my brothers in the evening for his birthday. The rest is a blur 😝
Tuesday: After making up a couple of jam jars, sorting flowers for drying and making up a bouquet I went to Shelley’s with Charlie, Sam and the twins also went and we spent most of the day there. Shelley made lunch and the children played indoors some of the time and with the splash mat outside some of the time. It was hot 🥵
When I came home I had half an hour sit down and then spent 4 hours watering, yes 4 bloody hours of my life watering. Watering everything that was necessary, about two thirds of everything, the other third I have had to let take it’s chance 😔 Normally, in a normal year I would only be concentrating on the tunnels, greenhouse and anything in pots but this year it has to include all the beds both ornamental and vegetable. We have had no significant rain since we came back from our holiday in early June and coupled with that we have had ridiculously high temperature consistently and it’s not over yet. This means in order to keep everything alive I have to constantly water, the fact that I didn’t do any last night has a big knock on effect the next day. It’s tiring but I have invested a lot of time and effort into the veg, flowers and ornamental beds and so I can’t just give up, not to mention the money that plants cost. To give up now would cost me dearly, mentally, emotionally and financially, this year has taken gardeners by surprise but I will make sure it doesn’t happen again next year 🙄
Wednesday: It’s sooo bloody hot that evening standing around makes you sweat 😅 uuurgh give me back the traditional English weather if I wanted relentless heat I would go on holiday to a hot country and that is something we don’t do 😂
Busy morning of getting jobs done, cutting flowers for delivery today and then on to pick tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peppers and plums. I also decided that damage limitation was called for and pulled the cabbage and kohl Rabi plus carrots, it’s too hard trying to keep them watered so time to get them in the freezer. The courgettes I am picking when they are small (baby) so that I don’t need to water as much as I would to get them to normal size. From here on in fruit and outside veg will have to take their chances, I will only be watering the necessary plants.
I then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon prepping it all for the freezer. Slicing, chopping, peeling, blanching, bagging, cooling and finally freezing. I also made up three batches of crumble mix, stewed some apples with sugar and some maple syrup and made up four small apple crumbles which went into the freezer along with a bag of crumble mix. I did intend to make some plum jam but in all honestly I was tired by then and still had flowers to make up so I cleared away, washed up and I will do the jam in the next couple of days.
John came home early and went off to deliver the flowers for me, I had a phone call from the neighbouring farm to say they had lost some piglets and could I keep an eye out for them, I haven’t seen them yet but hopefully they will find them soon.
Tonight I will not be able to get any watering done as we are off on a short train journey for an evening trip. It’s going to be a round of watering for me again tomorrow that will take hours 🙄
With the complete lack of rain we have decided to increase the amount of rain we can hold, the amount that comes off our roof is an awful lot so makes sense to hold as much of it as possible and so we have ordered another 12,000 litres of tanks, that will take us up to around 30,000litres of water storage. Sod’s law we won’t even need it next year but ‘be prepared’ is a sensible mantra I reckon and so prepared is what I will be, for that at least.
If you are reading this and living in a hot, dry climate then all tips appreciated 😁 Approx 9th June was the last time we had any significant rain and temps have been at least 25c and mostly in the 30s pushing up just beyond 40c 🥵 According to farmers there is no significant rain in the forecast for at least another 30 days 🙄 crops are suffering as well as wildlife. Last night while watering I noticed around 30 sparrows making a racket in a puddle of water I had made on the driveway, I went into the garden and collected up all the shallow dishes I could find and filled them with water for them. A Robin was also sat in the tree watching me and so I filled up the bird bath (which I do daily) and watched him enjoying a much needed bath lol. I know I am going to hate the winter weather when it comes but seriously this is another level of ridiculousness 😬 If it is climate change, it’s coming a lot faster than predicted, it’s not good news for the planet or anything that lives on it 😔
Thursday: No idea what I did and it’s too hot to care 😝 I did plant up some alstroemeria at around 9pm, it wasn’t much cooler but the light was fading and I wanted to get them into the ground. The moon was beautiful, almost a full moon but not quite, that comes tomorrow evening.
Friday: What can I say except, it’s hot and dry, I am basically just trying to get from day to day until hopefully one of the days the temperature falls or we have rain 🙄 I spent most of the day making up button holes and hair combs with dried flowers plus a small arrangement to fix to a headband. I can’t show you the pictures yet as it is for a wedding that hasn’t happened but when it does I will.
Saturday: I was up early as was John, he went off to get feed for the poultry, I did the usual household bits then outside to get some watering done, We then had to pop out for an hour and get back to hand over some flowers to a customer 🥰 I can’t remember what other jobs we did but there were a fair few before coming indoors for the middle part of the day and watch some films. Back out in the evening once it was cool enough and more watering, I watched the meteor shower for a while, saw three, before going to bed.
Sunday: Still bloody hot 🥵 seriously it’s scorching weather, relentless too. We were up early again and it was nice and cool at that time of the morning so I got some watering done, John said ‘shall we have more tea’ at 7am, ‘nope’ I replied ‘we need to get the small paddock cut before it gets too hot’ so that’s what we spent the next hour doing. It had got long (long but mostly dead) and needed tidying up. John carried on outside for a couple of hours while I came inside and made plum jam. The thing is that the fruit will not wait no matter how hot the temps are the jam still needs making 🙄 We then spent the hottest part of the day inside again and went back out until dark once it had cooled down a touch, though that is not much at the minute.
I am sure you are all feeling it too, hot and bothered, the paddocks are as dead as I have ever seen them, there are huge fissures opening up in the ground, the massive trees that are around 50 years old are beginning to wilt, the berries that the birds would be feeding on to fatten up for winter are shrivelling up and there is not a drop of water to be found anywhere for the wildlife such as bees, butterflies, birds, beetles etc. Each day I am trying to keep plants alive and each evening when I go out they are parched again. I deadheaded some roses earlier and the petals were crispy 😳 I don’t think I have ever sweated so much before even when sitting still, when I was outside I kept thinking something was crawling on my leg but no it’s just beads of sweat running 😂 I am not one for praying but spending most of my time just trying to keep things alive is seriously taking its toll on my sanity so I am praying the rain comes tomorrow. It will fill up the water butts and hopefully give me the day off from running around like an idiot, I may even be able to get something different done for a change. Anyone know any good rain dances 😝
Monday 22nd August 2021: Well we had the best weeks holiday 😁 the weather was just right for me, the sea was as calm as a lake all week long, the food was out of this world good and we rested and relaxed a lot, job done now back on with the work 😂
Shelley has looked after the farm beautifully, everything was in order and then some as her and Sam had done some mowing and weeding and clearing, it all looked lovely on our return. In order to keep up the good work we have not been idle since arriving home and have been trimming the front hedge, hoeing, sweeping and tidying, still a fair bit more to do but it’s looking loved again. Hopefully we can get quite a bit achieved this week as John has another week away from his plumbing and we can crack on here with tidying, strimming, cutting back, mowing, weeding, lol it’s never ending 🤪
We were up early and ready to crack on, I got some picking done and checking over everything to see what needed doing. John got busy with the morning jobs and then back to the front driveway which he has gone to town on, really pulling out and raking up all the stinging nettles and weeds. I picked another lovely bunch of flowers for the kitchen, beautiful pink dahlias this week 😁 We worked until almost lunchtime then John took me over to Sams to look after the kiddies while she went for her second vaccination. John was supposed to come back home and do some work but he made a cuppa sat down and had a sleep instead 😂 Once he had picked me up and we came home it was my turn for a quick kip, I was exhausted after and early start and grandchildren sitting 🤪 John went out and cut the middle paddock and gave the back paddock a better cut while I had a sleep. Once awake I picked some raspberries and blueberries, I still think birds are getting in the fruit cage as there is not a red raspberry to be seen, normally there are loads, I think I will definitely grow more yellow ones next year as the birds don’t touch them 🤷♀️ I picked a cucumber, tomatoes, garlic chives, celery greens, and carrots for dinner this evening, John has chicken with runner beans which I had already picked, plus the home grown carrots and potatoes while I have chicken with salad and baked potato and some home grown fruit with yoghurt for dessert including a home grown melon 🥰
Shelley did some daily recordings for the podcast if you are interested in listening to that, I do a weekly round up on a Thursday and then on a Mondays I cover a topic of one type or another, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/our-smallholding-life-warts-n-all/id1574503311 or it can be found on Spotify. I am really enjoying doing them, I think it is a completely different perspective when you can hear me talking about things rather than reading them.
Tuesday: We got off to a flying star with all the usual morning jobs and then John continued with the driveway, it’s hard work but he is doing a great job and it looks fab. I picked some flowers this morning to go out with the produce and eggs, I definitely want to be doing more flowers and plants for sale. With that in mind I collected some seeds from a lovely soft pink snap dragon I have growing and I took some cuttings from some pinks, if I do a little bit every day I will soon have plenty of plants to put out next Spring. I have a large order of tulip bulbs arriving in September, most will go into the garden but a lot will be potted up and hopefully ready for Easter next year. I picked courgettes and lots of tomatoes this morning though the tomato plants are coming to the end now as they definitely have something wrong with them, I think it is from spray watering, I really need to get set up to water at ground level really. The lads from Wildpoint arrived to take some photos, they are working hard to get the website off the ground and have already had a piece in the Guardian and have been approached by a main tv station to do a bit on one of their daily programmes which is great for them. Exciting stuff and they were very enthusiastic about our little Wildpoint campsite 🥰
Mid morning we went to the garden centre for a mooch around and some lunch and then round to Mums for a cup of tea or two before returning home. As the sun was out we decided to wait until later in the day to carry on outside. Once it was cool enough John went out to put some things in the skip, it was changed over this morning and we always have plenty to fill a new one up 😂 I went out to pick some plums, the greengage and Victoria’s are ready and I think I will make jam with those. While I was in the vicinity I did all the water bowls for the animals in the orchard, rabbit, quail, light Sussex and turkeys plus the guinea pigs. Sadly I found one of the pigs in the last throes of dying, I have no idea why as it was fine yesterday although he is the one I had to separate because the others bullied him. Maybe they knew there was something wrong, animals have the instincts to detect things we can’t even see and I’m guessing this was something internal as there were no external signs of anything 😢
When we were driving to Mums I spotted a compost bin that had been put out on the pavement ‘free to take’ yay, I had been looking round the farm for something to use in the front area so that I didn’t have to keep taking it round the back and so that little find was perfect 👍
Wednesday: Busy day today, it was overcast so I made the most of being able to be outside all day 😁 Mostly I was weeding and clearing, the peas have finished so I took down the canes and cleared away dead foliage, weeded the bed and I will cover it to stop the cats using it as a toilet area and keep new weeds at bay. There is plenty of weeding to do, it’s amazing how much time it all takes lol I spent most of the day doing that. Meanwhile John was finding things that needed to go in the skip and burning the hedge clippings and all the weeds he has been digging up. It doesn’t sound like we did a lot but we really did 😂 we were tired by 3.30 so went in for a sit down and a cheeky nap 🤪 After I had cooked dinner and we had finished eating I used the tomatoes I picked yesterday to make some quality tomato soup. I used a BBC Good Food recipe as it does not have any extras such as flour as I don’t think it’s needed. Most of the ingredients were home grown, tomatoes, onion, carrots, celery and bay leaves, just the addition of vegetable stock, tomato purée and a pinch of sugar (which reduces the acidity of the tomatoes) were needed to finish it off, lovely jubbly. That will go into some pour and store bags ready for the winter.
Home grown ingredients for tomato soup, I love making this and then getting it out of the freezer on a cold winters day 🥰 I also strung up the red onions to store, these were a good crop unlike the white onions which won’t store and those have been chopped and frozen instead.
Thursday: Had a busy morning, first up after the usual stuff then onto blending up the tomato soup, I left it to cool down overnight so I could do it this morning and then freeze it in four portions of approx 500ml each in pour and store bags. Then straight onto making 4lbs of Victoria plum jam and 3lbs of garden chutney plus a ‘compost cake’ 😂 I found a lovely site with both these ‘formulas’ rather than recipes, formulas because she just talks about the basics and the ingredients are whatever you have. The garden chutney this time had courgettes, onion, apple and runner beans in it and the compost cake had banana, kiwi, plums and a satsuma as the ingredients. Basically it’s a cake that uses up fruit that is probably about to go into the compost, as long as it’s not mouldy or dry as a bone it can go in, the banana was black on the outside but still useable inside, the kiwi was a bit squidgy (it was one from the fruit bowl on holiday lol) the plums were the cherry plums I picked before we went away and so needed using up and there were a few grapes that went in as well. Makes a lovely, fairly heavy cake with is almost like a bread pudding texture, I had mine with some yoghurt when it was still warm 🥰 The chutney has a basic chutney base (sugar, vinegar, apples, onions) and then whatever you have to use up which in my case was some wonky courgettes and some tougher runner beans, I threw in some sultanas for good measure and I added some powdered allspice but you could use any combination of spices that you prefer.
Meanwhile John was very busy tidying up the stable block, over time lots of things had got put away (dumped) in there and now everything has been put away neatly and it looks great, he then went on to start cutting up a huge pile of wood that we still have. We decided to keep the wood and use it on the fire pit, should be enough to last about 5 years 😂
In the afternoon we had a rest, did a bit more late afternoon and then some dinner, out to get a bit of shopping and a bit more when we came back. Watering the greenhouse, feeding the cats and dogs, putting the birds away etc etc, feels like the jobs never end sometimes.
Cheeky little Anna cat playing hide and seek, she will go to Shelley’s once they are back from their holiday, no doubt she will keep them on their toes 😂
Friday: Another busy, busy day today, got to make the most of John still being at home 😉 He started off with the feed rounds and then went off to get a feed load, meanwhile I did the usual morning things and then set about picking which was a big session 🙄 Cucumbers, courgettes, beetroot, tomatoes, sweetcorn, jalapeños, all went out into the Little Shed along with some plum jam and garden chutney. Then I got started on covering an area that I cleared yesterday where the peas were, I don’t want the cat using it as a toilet so I have put down membrane to also prevent the weeds growing until I decided what to do with it. Then I was looking at the old bean bed, we moved the runner beans last year and it has been successful (with a modification) and now this bed needed repairing and tidying up, cue John 🤪 I called him over to help decide what was the best thing to do and we spent until gone 2pm taking out the old sides, digging in pallet collars and tidying the whole bed up. It will now be a one of these collars, which make great raised beds, instead of one long bed. It will be easier to cover individual boxes when they are not being used and also easier to make frames to put netting or environmesh over. We did have to leave some things in situ as I have leeks growing at one end and brassicas growing halfway down but we have put in four new collars and will do some more tomorrow. I am thinking that I will use some of the beds for some of the cutting flowers for next year but the decision has not yet been finalised.
Late afternoon we went round to water Shelley’s plants while she is away and then drop some veg off to Mum and have a quick cuppa. Back home for dinner and a restful evening (well except the putting to bed stint)
Saturday: A bit late up this morning, we have our daughters dog while they are away and it howled all night long 🤪 Once we were up and about and had got all the morning feeding and letting out done John cleaned out the ducks while I prepped some dwarf beans for the freezer. Mid morning we went out, there was a carnival on in the next town so we went for a mooch about, I won a nice ha dang, a hatching dinosaur egg and a bottle of wine on the tombola stall 😂 I also pledged to go along to the local flower arranging group which is starting up again on Wednesday evening, I am really looking forward to that, I have wanted to do it for a few years now and so I seized the opportunity to have a chat with them and said I would go along, the lady said I will probably be the youngest one there 😂 the way I see it that just means there is a lifetime of knowledge I can glean information from 😁 When we got back we decided to mostly take the rest of the day off as we have been working so hard this week, and we are tired from not getting a decent sleep during the night 🙄
Sunday: After having a more relaxed day yesterday we got on with it again this morning, after all the feeding and letting out was done John did another of the raised beds in the garden, I did a lot of dead heading and cutting back on the flower garden. Shelley, Martin and the children came over to collect the last little kitten who is called Anna and then we went to the DIY shop to get some bags of compost. On the way back we called in to see my brother and his wife for a coffee and came back mid afternoon so up to that point we didn’t actually get much done at all 😂 John continued with that theme by having a sit down but I got on with clearing some of the bed in the veg garden that will make way for more lawn. It has all the herbs in there but also some plants left from when I used it as a nursery bed before the flower garden got finished. My plan was to dig up all the seedlings and plants that were left in there and pot them up ready for next spring either to use or sell on. So far I have potted up 79 plants 😲 of one type or another and there are plenty more to do. I have hundreds of strawberry plants and runners to dig up, some I will save, some will be given away and some will be potted up for selling next spring. The same goes for all the herbs I will be digging up and dividing. John did come back out eventually and did two more boxes/beds, I think he said there will be 11 in all so that is 13.2m long (approx 43ft) by a metre wide, each box is 1.2m x 1m and I think it will be much easier to cover the boxes individually with different things depending on what is growing and what stage they are at. I carried on digging bits up and potting them until I felt I needed a sit down 🤪
Bank holiday tomorrow, it’s always nice when the weekend is extended, then job is back to the day job on Tuesday and I will be back on me tod again 🙄 Things get very busy in the garden at this time of year, harvesting everything that seems to be coming in fast and furiously, taking cuttings, collecting seeds, dividing plants, planting bulbs, cutting back, pruning, planting winter veg, prepping, freezing, drying, jams, chutneys, sauces, syrups, yep it’s a busy time for sure but it keeps me out of trouble.
Monday July 5th 2021: I always have the urge to sing ‘Monday, Monday’ when I am writing up the first day of the weeks blog lol.
It is sunny today thought not a typical July day, it’s cooler than average I would say and we have constant threat of showers, a real topsy Turkey weather year this year, random 🤷♀️ I haven’t been up to much this morning apart from all usual jobs and one very important job first thing. That was get on the phone ASAP to get the cat booked in which I am glad to say they can do tomorrow I just hope the little bugger turns up for his dinner tonight so I can crate him ready to go 🤪 He has stuck around since we picked him up so I have no reason to think otherwise but you never know!
This morning a letter was released from Buckingham palace, the NHS has collectively been awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian gallantry award and covers the 73 years of dedicated service and for courageous service of healthcare workers during the Covid 19 pandemic, a great honour and richly deserved 🥰
I haven’t mentioned the restrictions for a while I feel like we are all treading water but hopefully mid July all restrictions will be lifted. I am guessing that those who wish to carry on with restrictions will but those that don’t will have the freedoms that have been sorely missed over the last year and a half. My opinion is that once the majority have been vaccinated we may as well carry on as normal otherwise there is no point in the vaccinations 🤷♀️
The sun is out today and although I have been out doing a bit of picking in it I soon get tired, that is my system saying we need to attack 😏 and so it’s not long before I go back indoors. Luckily it’s Wimbledon fortnight so I can rest out of the sun while watching something interesting. I would be doing something but I feel very tired, I can’t explain that to anyone who doesn’t experience it, it’s total fatigue it happens when I go out in the car on a sunny day too. Good job I don’t drive really isn’t it, I have no idea how people who have Lupus and do drive manage because the heat in the car and the sun rays totally floor me sometimes.
I picked soft fruit, a mix of raspberries, red currants and strawberries which we will probably have later for dessert, I generally have mine with some Greek yoghurt John will either have his just with sugar or with some ice cream depending on what he fancies.
In the evening before I sorted out our dinner I wanted to get the cat sorted and locked in! He appeared as he always did before he went and so I sorted out feed for him, water, a blanket and a litter tray and then we put him in a large dog crate. John said we should leave it out in the back bit I said no because he might get through the gaps at the bottom. He didn’t think that he could get his head through the gap, I said I have been here before with cats 😂 and so we moved the crate into the boot room, closed the window and shut and locked the cat flap. If he does get out of the cage, he can’t get anywhere else this time. The problem is that the dogs can’t get in (it’s actually a dog sized flap) and it means that Jill can’t get out either but it’s only for a short time, I have to make sure I have the cat to take to the vets tomorrow 🤪
Tuesday: Up with the alarm to get sorted before packing the cat safely off to the vets 😁 The usual jobs before he went except feeding the others because I thought that was a bit unfair as he was not allowed to eat from 9pm last night so I fed them after he had left with John. Outside then to let the ducks out, John had let everything else out but the egg numbers have gone down and sometimes when they are let out too early they lay outside and the crows eat them. However, they had still only laid half a dozen so I guess some of them are just on a break 🙄 Out then to do a bit of picking, broad beans mainly this morning, I picked approximately one and a half kgs of course once you have shelled them it’s a lot less. Some went out for sale some for dinner tonight and some for the freezer along with a few peas. I also grabbed an onion and some carrots, we have slow roasted shoulder of lamb and that will do nicely for dinner later. I went into the big tunnel to check in there and was horrified to find I had left the hose on, shit, ah well it won’t need water for a week in there now, I did pick a lovely big cucumber which went out for sale as I won’t be needing that today and there are plenty more forming for when I do.
At this point the sky turned dark and it looks like it is going to rain heavily at some point this morning. We have had heavy downpours overnight, great for the veg garden, not so good for the flowers as they have had a bit of a battering from it, can’t win them all I suppose. I now need to decide what I am going to get done today, the plaster still hasn’t finished drying in places so I won’t bother about painting yet, I still need to go and get paint and one or two other bits anyway so I’m not quite ready myself 😂 I still need to sort out the other freezer, I keep trying to use bits up in there but there is a fair amount still left to use or transfer to the freezer we are keeping.
I did order a couple of things online this morning as well, egg boxes, we are nearly out of those and so I have ordered 600 more and I ordered a scythe 🙄 The strimmers are a total pain if you can even get them going that is, they make a heck of a mess and so I d died in my wisdom 🤪 to order a brand new Austrian scythe, it doesn’t need any fuel and it doesn’t make a racket or a mess. My plan was to do a day course but as with most things this year they are either booked up or cancelled, Sod’s law that the three dates available near me are the only three days I can’t do all summer long 😂 so if anyone knows someone who uses a scythe on a regular basis let me know, I could do with some tuition especially on sharpening and preening the blade. Hopefully the walk in run will arrive either today or tomorrow and we can get that sorted, at least we will be able to go and get paint without worrying about the fox wiping out the hens while we are away. I am not sure if I a, honest what we are going to do about the increasing attacks, we can’t keep the hens locked up forever. My plan is that we keep the hens in until any foxes move on 🤷♀️lol not sure that will work but it might so we have to try.
I prepped the veg and meat for dinner later then made some biscuits, honey, pecan and orange, the raw biscuit dough was delicious and the biscuits themselves are too but when I was putting the ingredients in (from a recipe) I thought ‘this is a lot of sugar’ they came out flat and chewy lol. I will see if I can hone the recipe next time, meanwhile anyone need to exercise their jaw 😂
John came home at lunchtime with a box of quail egg boxes, the chap at the job he was on had them lying around and so gave them to him 😁 The delivery of the walk-in run arrived but it is raining so we won’t put that together unless it brightens up later. Shelley is picking up the cat from the vets for me and then dropping Josh and Flo with me for a couple of hours while she does some work.
John and I got the tiny paddock at the back cut again, actually I cut it while John cleaned out the chickens in the back pen. Just about finished when I ran out of petrol 🙄 Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo and the cat which she had picked up from the vets for us. I put the cat in the dog crate he was in last night, he has one of those big collars on and the first thing he did was go in the litter tray, which has sawdust in it because that all we have, dipped his head down, for what purpose I have no idea, and scooped up a ton of sawdust into his collar 😜 He didn’t like this and then proceeded to try shaking it out and knocked over his water bowl. So the nice tidy cage with a clean snuggly blanket in is now covers in water and sawdust 😂 I actually wish I had filmed it because it was a comedy sketch for sure, he has to stay in the cage until Thursday when I take him back for them to check him over, and the pain meds came in a syringe, I said to Shelley I don’t have to inject him do I 🤔 no it goes in his food, Phew 😥
Josh and Flo were here for a couple of hours and while Josh went with Grampy to feed the chickens, Flo was keen to go into the garden. I think Florence is going to be the next generation gardener in the family, she doesn’t want to play out there she wants to go round the veg garden looking at the fruit and veg, finding out what it is and having a taste test, yay I think the baton has been passed on already 🥰 Definitely going to have to nurture her interest 😁
Wednesday: The metal wire run got delivered yesterday but we didn’t get chance to put it up, hoping we can later this evening but the weather is all over the place. I spent the morning prepping and painting a mist coat on the bits John has replastered, then when I finished I went out to get some work done in the garden. I started off with some hoeing as the weeds are getting out of hand on the pathways, then onto the leek bed but it suddenly starting raining, I say suddenly it’s been grey and looming all morning. I went back indoors and it stopped, I came out and it started again so I have abandoned any work on the garden unless it clears up at some point.
About 10 this morning while I was painting I suddenly realised I hadn’t let the ducks out so I went and did that and found 12 eggs today which is a lot better, maybe we will leave them in until that time every day.
Didn’t get any more done outside, I pottered about inside instead, then John called and said he would be late and could I feed the birds and do the eggs, not while it is pissing down says I 😜 I waited for the rain to ease and shot out to do the job before coming back in and organising dinner. There was no chance we would get this pen up tonight, two reasons, one it was still peeing down on and off and two, the semi finals are on 😁
England only went and won, oh my days I don’t think we can quite believe it 🏴 I am not a football fan generally but I will watch England play and I am hugely patriotic so the excitement and pride are all there, well done lads, let’s bring this home we have waited long enough 🏆
Thursday: Up, shower, do the morning jobs and then get the cat into the cat carrier to take him to the vet.
He gets the all clear, his collar can come off and he is allowed to go out again but I leave him shut in the back bit as I am going out with Shelley and Flo for a coffee and then over to see Sam and the twins. He will be better if he has a bit more rest without his collar and I will let him out on my return.
I didn’t get an awful lot done when I got back in the afternoon, I had a good a chat with a friend I haven’t seen for a while over the gate and then the twins arrived and we looked after them while Mia went swimming. Sam did the horse fence when she came back, we had a very quick dinner and then outside to finally get something done today. While I was busy watering and picking peas, broad beans, beetroot, strawberries and raspberries, John cut the lawn and then went in to do the washing up. After I finished outside I came in to pod the peas and beans and get them in the freezer, the fruit I will be making some jam with at some point tomorrow. I actually managed to find some jam sugar in town today, it’s like gold dust at times. Put the bins out while John is putting the birds to bed and finally sit down around 9.30. Not finished there though as I have to order some predatory mites that feast on red mite, hopefully they will work as they are quite expensive! I am contemplating setting the alarm for 5am in the morning, setting it and actually get up at that time are two different things though but that time of the morning is really lovely so I ought to make the most of it.
Friday: I did t get up earlier 😂 I did get up just before the alarm though so around 6.20 and I got straight on with the day after breakfast, there was no ambling about this morning. I did a bit more picking, quite a bit of rhubarb and there is more to be picked, I need to start freezing some of it for winter use really. I also cut one of the lavender bushes, put some bunches out for sale, you never know somebody might like one, the rest I will either give to the girls or put indoors. The was just one lavender bush I have a fair few growing in different areas but these are in the veg garden to attract beneficial insects and to harvest for drying etc. I pottered about a bit more and then John arrived home, he is working today but he had also gone to collect feed while he was out and had a couple of hours spare when he came back. We got on with the job of putting the hen run together although I had to keep sitting in the shade when the sun made an appearance. It worked well though, me sitting there giving John instructions 😆 Even when I am reading them from the manual he is questioning what I am telling him 😂
Mid afternoon and the sun seems to be out for a while so I have come indoors, I am a bit cross with myself because I put the washing on yesterday evening so it was ready to put out this morning. I got it out of the machine and put it on the kitchen table so I didn’t forget to do it and then forgot 🤪 It’s nearly 3pm and I only just put it out, hopefully it will still dry enough for me to put into the airing cupboard to finish off 🙄 John had to go back out to do a couple of jobs but will be back when he has finished and we can get on.
John didn’t get back until gone 6pm which really annoyed me as I had three things I wanted to get sorted, we managed one of them in the time we had left in the evening. We got the rest of the run covered in mesh so that we can at least go out without worrying about the hens being attacked by the fox. We worked until it was dark and we literally couldn’t see what we were doing anymore.
Saturday: Rain to begin with but it cleared and stayed dry, at times it was muggy but still overcast. I had a list of jobs I wanted to get done today so John went off early to grab a few bits from the builders merchants so I could do them. Then he went off with Macca and the best men to collect his suit for the wedding. Meanwhile I put on a couple of wash loads, did all the usual morning stuff, let the ducks out sorted their eggs, did the horses electric fencing and back inside to start prepping the walls and ceiling for painting. I didn’t get very far as Sam messaged to see if I was in and come over with the twins, so I did the jobs I could get done before they arrived, feeding the Guineas and rabbit and hoovering. They stayed for a couple of hours and John arrived back, once Sam had gone we went to the diy store (finally) to get the paint for the kitchen and a couple of other bits we need to do the job, no idea when I will get chance to do that at the minute 🙄
Take a look at this lovely rose, the photo doesn’t actually do it justice , it is a rose that Shelley bought me on the anniversary of Dads death and it is called the simple life which is very apt.
Well we didn’t get much done the rest of the day once we got back from getting the paint, we made a cuppa, sat down and promptly fell asleep, me for over an hour, John a little less. He went and did the afternoon rounds while I was still sleeping, I feel like I have something coming and the cough and sinus thing still hasn’t completely gone away yet. I am wondering if it was a combination of the sun yesterday, although I did try to keep out of it, and working until late last night. I did say to John at one point during the evening, my leg is shaking and I have no idea why 🤷♀️ I hope it’s just a bit of tiredness and his whole thing is not going to flare up again or indeed the Lupus is not going to flare, I really haven’t got time for that at the minute and neither has John!
Talking of time, the year is whizzing past quickly I feel, already mid July, where has that gone.
Sunday: I regrouped and got on with the day, worked hard to get picking done early on and a plethora of other jobs before getting back out to the field to finish off the chicken run so that we can have some sense of being able to go out with out too much worry. To be honest it is not going to stop a full on attack but it will stop a chancer nipping in and picking a few off when we are not here, hopefully 😜
Now to the real topic of the day, the week, the month, the year, the century COME ON LADS, BRING IT HOME.🏴 Have a fabulous evening and I hope to report that England won in tomorrow’s blog 😁
Monday 21st June 2021, Summer Solstice: The birds will all be kept in today and possibly tomorrow and the day after that, actually for as long as needs be, I am hoping the foxes will move on and be a problem for someone else and that they manage to get them dealt with because so far they have evaded all our efforts.
Been keeping myself busy this morning with some picking, strawberries, peas, mange tout, chard, baby beetroot and some carrot thinnings, not a bad little haul, some has gone out for sale some will be for dinner tonight. It takes a lot longer than you realise to pick it all and it will only be ramping up from here on in but it’s a lovely job to do, very fulfilling knowing you have grown it from seed to feed 😁 I did a bit of weeding around one of the rows of beetroot and then I have sown another lot of beetroot plug plants, trying to get this succession thing successfully working this year. Then it was onto planting the last of the squash plants, five more courgette plants (lol I have no idea what I will do with that lot as I have nine plants in total 🤪) Then I planted the rest of the squash plants in the menage, more pumpkins, spaghetti squash, crown Prince, table king and musque de something or other (I really must learn the name) Again if all these growq and produce I am going to have an awful lot of squash 😂 I had a look at what else is coming on, the broad beans have good sized pods but I can feel that the beans have not swelled enough to pick just yet. The tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melon all have tiny fruits forming in good quantities, the aubergine are flowering, the runner beans, dwarf beans and French beans are all flowering. I am waiting for the onions, garlic and shallots to start dying off so I can pull them and dry them, another couple of weeks before that happens I think. I am picking a good big bowlful of strawberries every day and the yellow raspberries are starting to ripen as is the red currant. The blackcurrant bushes are loaded with berries still green at the minute though. The early potatoes are only just starting to flower, they are way behind 🙄 The rhubarb is still producing plenty though it will be time to slow down picking that soon. The sweetcorn are doing well and growing strong, I think that covers most things apart from herbs and salad which are tickling along nicely without much fuss. Next I will be panicking that there is so much I haven’t got time to sort and process it all 😂
I have started accounting for exactly what is put out on a daily basis and what has sold so that I can see what we should be taking, I say should because takings seem to be down despite selling well 🤷♀️ another depressing realisation that we are probably too slack and the honesty box is great for the honest but not so great for the no so honest 🙄
Despite the fact that we will not be replacing any more birds we still have nearly 80 in various forms so we will be continuing and I still will be growing veg so they will still go out for sale along with any plants I have grown. Who knows what other opportunities will arise or become apparent, today even though I am trying to chivvy myself along I feel as though I am going uphill backwards 😬
I did do a positive step forward job this morning, I booked our male cat, Jack, in for the chop 😋 he is not the father of the kittens but it wouldn’t be very long before he would be and I don’t want that. Besides we don’t want him wandering as they always tend to wander towards the road instead of the acres and acres towards the back 🤷♀️ Once Jill’s kittens are weaned I will book her in as well, this little accident was exactly that and we don’t want hundreds of kittens running around, that’s how populations get out of control. There is always a drawback though, we have spent hundreds on getting cats spayed and neutered only for them to either disappear or get hit by a car, another thing we may give up on if it all goes pear shaped again besides with less birds we won’t get as many mice hopefully. Lol I sound as though I am ready to throw in the towel on the whole lot but this time of year is the time I find I am furiously trying to combat one pest or another and trying desperately to keep my head above water.
After some lunch I managed to get the petrol strimmer working and strimmed the walkway between the menage and the big paddock at the back. One of the problems with the fox is that the grass is long enough for it to hide in, where I strimmed is exactly where John nearly tripped over the fox munching on one of our hens, neither of them saw each other until the last minute! I would have done more but it was making my arm ache from holding it and the vibration in my hand only stopped about half and hour after I did lol.
I prepped the bits of veg I picked this morning ready for dinner later, John will have fresh garden peas and baby carrots with chicken and potatoes and I am having a garden salad made up of chopped beetroot and the beet leaves, chopped baby carrots, mange tout, white icicle radish sprinkled with a few red currants I picked the other day which I will also have with chicken.
I have decided that his year I will use what I pick while it’s fresh, sell anything I won’t be using and not do massive batch freezing like I have in previous years. The reason being I grow so much we don’t get through it before the next lot is ready 😂 Also having now got just one smallish chest freezer and a back up under counter freezer I am not going to have the room to hoard 🙄 so I either use it, sell it, give some of it to the family or I process it to store in a different way by either drying it of jamming, chutneying it etc, I am not keen of fermenting we won’t eat it and I still haven’t had the courage to try canning, though I really ought to give myself a stern talking to in that department. One of the problems is in the UK they don’t make canning equipment it would have to be bought from the US.
This morning it was overcast but dry, no chance of seeing the sun rise on solstice day today 🙄 By mid afternoon it was raining, I’m not too bothered as I got the bit of strimming done and it’s watering in the squash I planted BUT it’s gone a tad chilly with it 🤪 the radiators are set at 18c and some of them have come on, I am sure I am feeling it because we had got used to nearly 30c and now it’s dropped dramatically but still 🤷♀️ There is definitely no relying on a standard weather pattern anymore.
So I did a fair bit of reading up about canning and decided against it lol, still,worries me and when I spoke to John he said ‘it’s a bit like having a bomb sat on the stove top’ 🙄🤪😂 which put me completely off even though I’m sure they are not that dangerous 🤷♀️ Anyhow I also researched vacuum packing and have bought a home use machine. I know this will use plastic which I didn’t really want to do but it will also preserve the food a lot longer than putting it into freezer bags as it does end up with freezer burn after a while. As I said before there is no easy answer to making the most of storing the harvest, I just have to pick what is going to work best for me. Shelley said ‘you can’t save the world everyday’ and she is right though I should still be mindful of what I am doing not just do it because that’s the way it’s always done. So methods of preservation I will be using are: dehydration, freezing including vacuum packed, it will also include jams and chutneys though for long term storage I will be processing the jars in a water bath to make them safer.
Tuesday: It was raining when I first got up but the sun ☀️ made a breakthrough before 9am so it should be a nice enough day. I got some indoor morning jobs done, washing, cleaning the countertop in the boot room, putting out rubbish, breakfast etc etc. Then I did a bit of printing out for my Mum who was struggling to get her printer to work, I know how that feels 😂 see previous blogs for that story) I still don’t feel 100%, the cold is still lingering although the throat and the cough have almost gone now, I have a hair appointment this afternoon so anything I want to achieve today needs to be done this morning. We also have someone coming later to see if they can deal with the fox problem so that we can let the birds back out, it wasn’t so bad while the weather was cool and wet but if it gets hot I don’t really want them inside all day for any longer than necessary.
I spent the morning doing various bits including sowing some more seeds, his time I have sown dill, coriander and basil for continuity and also some pak Choi and Chinese cabbage for sale later on. The reason being that the little gem and oak leaf lettuce I have growing will soon be smothered in greenfly, that my past experience anyway, so if I get some replacements on the go now I should have some salad leaves once that happens. Pak Choi will grow in the tunnel even when it’s getting colder, I haven’t grown the Chinese’s cabbage before so it will be interesting to see how well it does, might become a favourite who knows. I also watered both the tunnels, it’s tempting to not do them when nothing growing outside needs water but that can be downfall of the fruit that has already set so best to keep doing it even if it’s only a small watering and not a soaking. Then it was round to the paddock to move the electric fencing out a bit for the horses, they soon eat off the strips they are given 😂 the idea though is that they are not able to just gorge on everything and anything, Jack was getting a bit porky and restricting him will slow that down. If, like last year, we just had weeks of sunshine it wasn’t necessary because the grass was dying off due to lack of moisture anyway and so it was more like hay but this year with the rain it is lush and green and full of sugar which is not ideal. He is not happy and tells me when I need to move the fencing 🤪 he sees me out in the garden, starts neighing at me and I think, ah time to move the fence a little, actually I did throw some hay in today as well because the fence is almost as far as I can move it without getting more tape and extending it but I also need to bring them in later when they come to deal with the fox and if I leave them in overnight I can extend it in the morning before I turn them back out again.
Went out for the afternoon to get my hair done. During lockdown, like everybody, my hair didn’t get cut, it got longer and longer, it also got greyer and greyer but I kind of liked it. When I was young my hair was blonde, as a young adult it was golden brown as a much older adult I had resorted to dying it light brown 🤷♀️ So now I had long hair that was grey on the top and light brown on the bottom, the dilemma was do I continue to grow the grey or do I return to the box dye that I had always done. I bought the dye and it sat there and sat there and sat there, it was a rolling decision not to dye each week and eventually I thought I like it like it lighter so I will stay grey. As I said the problem was the bottom of my hair was a washed out light brown that I didn’t want to cut short, so the answer was highlights apparently. I say apparently because I have no clue about these sort of things, seriously, I had my hair coloured once in a salon about 15 years ago and that’s it 🙄 So now after being ‘done’ I have long hair that is even in light colour all over, fabulous, let’s see how long I keep it up for 🤪
Once back home there is no time to enjoy swishing my new locks around as it was straight out to get the horses in while John fed the birds. Then a job that I imagine a lot of people would refuse to do including John but I am not squeamish, never have been, I am one of those weird people who rather likes getting maggots off a sheep’s backside or pus out of a nasty cut, I am quite happy to watch brain surgery or open heart surgery on TV so this job was a breeze. We have dead hens, you know how that happened, and I gathered up bodies in the aftermath of the attack and bought them in overnight. The chaps are coming later to see if they can help sort the problem out but they need bait, cue dead hens, they need bait that isn’t easy to run off with though and so we took out a hammer and tent pegs and yes I hammered the tent pegs through the dead bodies to secure them to the ground. I don’t see this as a problem at all but John flat refused to do it and wouldn’t even look 👀 Let’s hope the chaps get here before the fox makes a meal of the skewered hens!
We are pretty diverse here in terms of things going on, personal house things, veg things, flower things, poultry things, pet things, Smallholding things, family things, so sometimes I completely forget to double back and update on things I may have mentioned in the blog. One of those things is a Smallholding thing that we did a round four years ago, might be three, definitely three maybe more 😂 The front paddock we decided would no longer be for grazing the horses, it would be for chickens/poultry only and with that in mind we planted a few more fruit trees, plum, cherry and apple and we used a grass seed which was especially for chickens. The grass is shorter and so matures quickly and sets seed readily, the idea behind this is that it self sows as you leave it long enough. There were also a mixture of herbs and wildflowers in it, herbs in the form of things like plantain not sage or mint 😜 and wildflowers in the form of what most would call weeds not pretty cornflowers etc, we also added red clover separately. The idea was firstly to provide the hens with a good range of more natural forage and secondly to build up the thickness of the sward as it had got rather sparse from constant grazing and the fact that during the war there were buildings on there and the foundations are pretty much still there just buried under the surface and not that far down either 🙄 Three (or maybe four) years later it is doing really well, the variety in there is amazing, mostly just looks like grass but if you walk through it you can really see the variety of plants that are growing. It is buzzing with insects which again is great for the hens they love to run and jump and catch flying insects. It has been a successful attempt to get a much healthier paddock than it was previously.
The only problem is that we don’t have the equipment to cut long grass lol, the ride on mower would just give up on grass that long and thick. We discussed cutting it by hand when the time comes and then leaving it to dry before stacking it or making a home made box to bale it, something I will have to look into. John thinks a strimmer will do, it probably would but wouldn’t it be nice to use a scythe 😁
Wednesday: It’s nearly 12 noon and I am having a little sit down. We were up early this morning, the sun was shining and it looked like it was going to be a warm day so we got on. Cup of tea first mine you 😂 Then John did the feeding rounds while I went out to the paddock and altered the electric fencing to give the horses some more grazing, I had to get extra stakes and electric tape as we had got to the limits of the first lot. 6.30am out in the paddocks it was quite lovely though I could already hear the traffic from the A40, all those commuters buzzing backwards and forwards, glad it’s not me. Then it was onto looking for the bodies that we pegged last night, rookie error here as I only found one body, and only 4 out of 8 metal skewers 🙄 The chaps never saw a fox at all last night but they are definitely here otherwise the bodies would not be missing. If they stay active only at night then that’s fine but I have a feeling they are chancers and will come anytime we are not around. We haven’t let our new birds out but the older lot are back wandering around, I have no idea where we go from here to be honest, I fully expect more attacks but these foxes are as cunning as they are elusive.
That done it was onto sorting the eggs and the egg shed and then some picking of peas. I woke this morning with the cold I had now pestering my sinuses and if you have ever had inflamed sinus you will know how I was feeling. At this point I came in and laid on the bed for half an hour as I felt truly awful, I had taken some up the nose spray so was waiting for it to work which it did after a short while. Once I felt I could actually breathe again I went out to clean the dustbin, I had noted a while back that it was in a shocking state 😜 so I was determined not to forget to give it a power wash and a scrub out while it was empty. I used some Zoflora and now it smells lovely. The next job was fed the Guineas and give the light Sussex pen a spruce up and a clean out. I raked the floor to get up debris which was still there from the ash tree we cut down, cleaned out the house, sprayed it with some diluted jeyes fluid and put in fresh straw. I also hung a piece of shading on the door to the run, not to shade but to keep the damn magpies and rooks from eating the feed. The top of the door has a metal grid but it’s big enough for them to get in, but it seems they are way to stupid to get back out again and then when they land of the floor the chickens attack them. Hopefully that will sort the issue and I no longer have to listen to the racket they make. The rest of the morning I spent watering the greenhouse and potting on some plants that I had grown from seed. I also sorted out a few plants that I have been bringing on for a while and composted anything that hadn’t made it, gave it all a good feed and a drink and then in for my sit down which I think I have earned.
Well I have tried on and off to get a few bits done outside this afternoon but the cloud cover is sparse 🙄 I did manage to dig up a few verbena seedlings and pot them but that was about as far as I got. I am hoping it will be a fair bit cooler later and I can get out and do some more then.
We did manage to get out again after dinner, we wanted to get some of the grass around the front chicken hut cut to try and give the hens a bit of a chance to see the fox coming 👀 It is a bit too long for the mower so we only did a small bit, I need to order that scythe 😂 My sister and brother in law popped over and we had a cuppa in the garden, we did a bit of target practice with the air gun, turns out I am better than I thought I would be. We were only shooting at a plastic plant pot but it’s good to practise.
My vacuum packing machine arrived and I can’t wait to use it, it should make the space in the freezer a lot more useable plus we won’t end up with freezer burn.
Oh yeah nearly forgot, had a panic moment when John opened the post to find that we had not paid the electric bill and they were threatening action. I never had a bill in the post, nor a red letter I searched for it everywhere but we just haven’t had one so no wonder I haven’t paid it! Paid it now so all is well.
Thursday: I keep waking up each day expecting to feel better but it’s not happening and this morning I feel worse. All over body worse not just my sinuses which makes me think that it could be inflammation throughout. I feel cold too, not the kind of cold that putting on an extra jumper will sort out, it is one of those ‘if you know, you know’ feelings meaning only anyone who gets chronic inflammation will know exactly what I mean. My muscles ache this morning and bending down getting the oat milk out of the fridge my lower back muscles felt like they were dried out bits of leather someone had just bent 😕 I do hope this is not the beginning of a flare and that it is the immune response to this lingering cold. Only time will tell, in the meantime I will up the anti inflammatory foods and see if that helps. Most of what I eat does come under the anti inflammatory section, plenty of fresh veg and fruit, low fat Greek yoghurt, wholemeal or whole grain foods, olive oil etc etc but there are a few things I could ramp up on specifically such as turmeric and ginger, maybe a orange, carrot, ginger shake with a touch of turmeric or a banana, pear, blueberry & cinnamon or even spinach, pear, red grape, celery, all good choices.
I made an orange, carrot, turmeric, ginger and, because I had it left from breakfast, half a banana smoothie, which was delicious and packed with beta carotene. Often over the years before I was diagnosed with Lupus I had researched my skin condition. It started when I was 21 and pregnant with out eldest daughter, the midday sun began to affect my bared skin, it would erupt in thousands of tiny blister like spots. I would look around and see who else had this problem and there was nobody, I could see heat rash but this was different. Back then there wasn’t really the wealth of information available like there is today on the internet so it was difficult and I ploughed through a lot of reading. I concluded I had polymorphic light eruptions, I didn’t go to the doctor back then as it was definitely seasonal but I tried a plethora of creams and oils including rose hip oil, beta carotene seemed to be a dominant ingredient in many things alleged to help. None of them really helped very much and so I just became used to either avoiding the daytime sun or suffering with the rash. The eruptions are the same as I get now if I am caught out but the Lupus diagnosis comes from the presence of a high level of antibodies which were obviously not there back then or they would have picked that up in blood tests during subsequent pregnancies. There are other symptoms they look for as well most noticeably the butterfly shaped redness across the nose and cheeks, actually it is not where near as pretty as a butterfly 🤣 and not much similar in shape but 🤷♀️ I plan to have a purely plant based day today, we don’t eat that much meat, well I don’t anyway and we had fish yesterday, I hardly ever eat processed food and I rarely drink so I should kick this in to touch pretty quickly fingers crossed 🤞 #igotthis 😋
Oh what a full on day I have had and not finished yet as it’s twin sitting day today 🤪🤪 I have been prepping and cooking, one of the things that happens when I, but probably anyone, who is not on form, is meals kind of go out of the window. Generally once I am hit by fatigue I can’t function but what I need more than anything is some goodness so I have been sorting that out today. I started off with the smoothie which as I said was delish, then I moved on to making a few things that can be frozen and easily thawed so that I still get some good nutrition. I have made a couple of batches of butternut squash soup, this one is just roasted butternut squash, sautéed onions, a teaspoon of make syrup and a grating of nutmeg, plus salt and pepper. I worried a little about what it was going to taste like but it’s lovely, and it’s nutritious and that’s the main thing. Then I made a large batch of roasted butternut squash and pasta, I roasted it with onions and garlic but also some pecan nuts and edamame beans, then cooked some wholewheat spaghetti and wilted spinach into it and mixed the whole lot together. One lot I have for dinner tonight the other two lots were vacuum packed and frozen. There were a few issues with the vacuum packing, user error I have to say but I got there in the end, actually ‘we’ got there as Shelley was here at the time. Again nutritious and easily cooked by reheating in a pan of hot water. I have also made some pork mince, which is exactly that with spinach, carrots, edamame (because I had them out) and a sweet potato mash to go on the top. John will have some for tea and any other portions I can freeze for another day. Of course there is always room for crumble in the freezer and so I made a blackberry and apple crumble, one portion for John later and possibly tomorrow and two portions for the freezer. Go me, and on top of all that I have been busy organising and booking a couple of things for later in the year and moving the rabbit hitch out into the orchard for Rosie (Shelley’s rabbit) to come and stay.
Literally just sat down with a cuppa and hope to get it finished before the bundles of mischief arrive 😂
Evening jobs were move the electric fencing for the horses, Jack was telling me it was time 😂 then watering the tunnels and the greenhouse before going back in to wash up do the egg sorting and feed the boot room crew, 9pm sit down, surprised I didn’t fall asleep.
Friday: Up early to get some picking done so I can put it out with the eggs, mange tout, peas and a punnet of strawberries today, not much today but hopefully soon there will be loads of produce available. Then onto a job I have been trying to get at for a few days but failed, cutting back the dying flowers on the lupin, delphiniums, geums etc, if I cut of the flowers that have gone over, they will make more, it’s like magic 😁 I also dead headed the roses and cut back the early flowering clematis as well as digging up a few self self verbena and planting them elsewhere. The clematis had quite a bit of foliage that I have taken some cuttings from, not too good at cuttings but nothing ventured nothing gained as they say 😜 Back indoors at 11 for a coffee that I really fancied, absent kindly made myself tea 🤷♀️ Absent minded because I was thinking I must find the cat (Jack) as he has his vaccination this afternoon at 2.30 and I haven’t seen him this morning yet 🙄 Need to give myself plenty of time to locate him or the vet plenty of cancellation notice if I can’t find him 😬
I couldn’t find the cat, not a sign of him and yet he is usually always there when I am gardening or pottering about, it’s like he knew 🙄 I have rebooked the appointment for next week and I will capture him the day before and keep him confined 😂
The weather turned out to be not as bad as I had heard, it was North winds and cold but it has been fine, great for me really because mostly overcast. When I was feeding the torts I spotted some lovely strawberries growing so I grabbed a pot and picked them. Along with others I had already picked I made some jam, Strawberry jam always smells amazing when it’s cooking 🧑🍳 I just made two jars both of which will never leave our kitchen as John is a strawberry jamaholic 😜John came home just after lunch, with some flowers I might add, it is our 38th wedding anniversary, after a cuppa he started taking up the broken tiles on the kitchen floor where we had taken out the Rayburn and the cupboard next to it. We managed to find some tiles that are almost identical, not an exact match but it will be difficult to tell the difference unless you know, apart from the fact that the new ones will be a lot cleaner 😂
The new tiles are now down and if you can’t really tell which are the new and which are the old ones so that’s good. The cat still have not a made and appearance at feeding time which is a worry as we have been here before, more than once and nearly always when we have a marauding fox about. They get to an age where they go a bit further around the edge of the paddocks, because they are not big cats, still only a year old and so fairly petite, I am convinced the fox has them, I mean I can’t be sure and I haven’t seen them do it but the cats disappear into thin air when they have been cats that are nearly always around 🙄
Saturday: I have the most ridiculous cough which has kept me awake a lot of the night and consequently I am not Mrs Happy this morning 😬 My sinuses are still playing up that’s the cause and the effect is constant coughing, whenever I sit down or lie down the coughing starts so I just have to be upright most of the day 😜 We started off with all the usual jobs then shot off to get a bit of shopping, stop and Shelley’s for coffee and to sort a couple of bits out then back home to get some work started. Moving the electric fence for the horses was first on the list and then John started digging up docks in the bit they have eaten off. Try the strimmer was my suggestion, it will be quicker, we got it out the line jammed, we took it apart and went back to digging them out because we couldn’t get it back together. I got the antique scythe out, John tells me I am doing it wrong, he has a go and breaks it clean in half, don’t why I bother sometimes, I left him to carry on digging them out with his spade 🙄 he is still digging mid afternoon 😂 Meanwhile I found other jobs to do, take down some bits in the kitchen ready for when John plasters the wall, a picture needed to come down and the ‘Shelia’ I don’t know if that’s the right name it’s what I have always known it as but it is one of those farmhouse airers that go over a fire and it has pulleys to lower it and higher it, anyway it’s down now. Then I went out and had a look at the onions, rather mortifyingly I find they have a ‘miner bug’ ffs, I think it’s allium miner, either way I have to pull them to stop any further damage. I will see what they are like when dried out a bit and see what can be salvaged and how. It means I won’t be able to store them but I will be able to either dehydrate them, freeze them or vacuum and probably a combination. The shallots are also affected though not as much and the garlic is only slightly affected but it has other issues. Where we had so much rain the garlic cloves have begun to grow again before the tops have died off ready for picking 😂 ha you couldn’t make this up, I seriously am considering having a year off veg gardening next year, it is too hit and miss with some things. The good thing is that the red onions I planted in spring seem unaffected, I am not sure if that is because of the colour or because they have not been in long enough to be affected. That is a problem with over wintered veg it has had longer to harbour pests, the struggle is real, oh well there is always next year 🤪
Sunday: An overcast day that, although rain threatened constantly, stayed dry until during the night. I am typing this up Monday morning so I’m a bit late but I actually couldn’t sit down without constant coughing so I spent most of my day up on my feet so give my ribs a rest (they ache like billio from all the coughing) I keep thinking, today it will move on surely, but nope each day here it still is like the unwelcome wasp buzzing round your head. It is getting a little better each day but I still feel thick in the head and sinus, once that goes I shall be fine 🤞
Between us we have grouted some of the floor tiles back in, cut the lawn, dug up docks, picked peas, weeded, hoed and swept the front driveway, investigated a collapsed manhole we found that we had no idea was there, I think it was from the MOD days as it doesn’t appear to be linked to anything current, as well as all the usual jobs that need doing daily.
I have cleared the peas that were growing with the tomatoes in the small tunnel, they worked well as an experiment, I had a good picking of peas shoots initially and then a decent crop of peas after but now they have got leggy and straggly and are blocking light from the tomatoes so it’s time to cut them back. One of two things will happen, they will either die off and release nitrogen into the soil or they will start to grow again, I suspect the latter and I will monitor that to see if I need to take them completely out or leave them for another crop it just depends on how well the tomatoes are getting on at the time.
That’s yesterday in a nutshell really, I still don’t feel well enough to expand on that lol.
Peppers, aubergine, melon, ginger are just some of the fruits beginning to swell in the greenhouse.
Have a good week, hopefully next time you read the blog the cough will have gone 🙄😬
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 24th May 2021: Starting the week after being out last night and a beer sounds like a recipe for disaster luckily it was at The Harry Potter Studios and it was Butterbeer 😁 so I am ok this morning 😂 All I can say was it is epic! I didn’t really know what to expect and it exceeded expectations by a mile, just realising the amount of work and talent that went into producing these films is mind blowing, the detail and the scale is incredible. As for the physical side of the the road trip all I can say is 😳 The traffic was so heavy it took us and hour and a half to get to stokenchurch (which normally would be approx 40 mins) let alone the rest of the way to Watford. Coming back at 10 was even worse but not because of the traffic this time, it was the horrendous rain, seriously it was like driving in a monsoon!
This morning started off with the sun shinning in through the window but that soon disappeared, from the looks of the forecast this should be the last day of crap weather. I think the jet stream is on the shift finally, for two months now I have been thinking, along with everyone else I’m sure, it will be better next week, next week arrives and nope it is no better and sometimes worse lol.
John had his 2nd vaccine on Friday and has not had any side affects this time round which is good. In my opinion vaccines are the only way out of this and if you are a non vaccine person well that’s your choice as well, historically though vaccines are what safeguard the population, I doubt there would be many people walking round on this planet without modern medicine and I for one am very grateful.
I think it was last Monday that I was deciding between baking and housework, well I chose baking last time so I figured I’d better do housework this time. Hoovering, cleaning, polishing, in the hopes that as the week progresses the weather will get better and more time will be spent outside 🙄
One of my aims this year is to have much more dried produce, I want to rely less on the freezer to be able to keep the produce I grow throughout the year. Obviously jams, chutneys and fermenting are one way along with bottling (canning) but drying is also a method that is underused, by me at least. So today I picked some herbs to get started, I want create mixes as well as individual dried herbs, an Italian mix being the most useful to me alongside the traditional mix that you would use for stews and casseroles. I also am going to aim to create dried veg stock mixes, I think meat ones might be a bit too far but you never know. I began with the picking, actually I began last week with cleaning the dehydrator, and once the herbs were picked it it just a case of arranging them on the different shelves and turning it on. I will give you a quick overview of dos and dont’s just in case you want to have a go : Do pick your herbs before they start to flower, this is when they are at their best. Ideally dry the same herb on all the racks but if you don’t have enough to do that you can dry mixed batches. This has a couple of minor problems, the thickness of each herb is different so the drying times will be different. I generally put the thicker stalked of leaved herbs near the bottom and the finer ones at the top, that way they will hopefully all finish at the same time and you won’t have to waste electric on empty racks. The main thing to remember is that herbs all look similar when they are dry and green 🙄 so do try to remember what went in which rack (write a list to remind you) also as they dry they get very small, teeny tiny some of them, if they fall through the gaps they will fall onto the next layer of herbs. If you don’t mind then that’s fine but if you wanted a pure blend then it will matter. You don’t have to use a dehydrator of course, you can use a very low oven or you can hang to dry, the problem with hanging is dust, it gets everywhere and it will get on your drying herbs lol. I intend to pot them all up separately to begin with until I have enough of what I want and then I will blend them accordingly. By the way, what looks like a huge bunch when you pick it will probably only fill a tablespoon or two when it’s dry so if you want a lot then pick a lot! This morning I have picked, lovage, fennel, oregano, chive and parsley to get going with. I mentioned the Italian mix I want to make but also I think something like dill with dried lemon zest and black pepper will make an excellent mix for chicken, fish or pasta. The vegetable stock mix can be an assortment of whatever you have, just make sure that the pieces are all roughly the same size for drying. I am thinking, onion, celery, carrot, leek, garlic to start with and whatever is to hand maybe sweet potato, turnip, parsnip. Once they are dried they get whizzed in the processor and they will be ready to put in a jar and store, you can add salt and pepper or even chilli flakes if you want, just go for it and experiment. All of these things can also be dried separated of course, you would be surprised how handy a jar of celery or onion powder is and I will be making mushroom powder again this year as a flavour enhancer. The dried herb world is my oyster 😁
Drying herbs, a word of caution, make a note of what is on which tray, once dried they can all just look like dried green stuff 😜
Made some rhubarb and orange jam in the afternoon, the rain showers just keep appearing and it’s a tad cold out there, ridiculous for the end of May.
We lit the Rayburn again the other day when it rained all day long but I can’t ever remember having it going this late in the year before. We are at the stage when, if I light it the house gets way to hot but without it the house is a tad cold and feels damp in this weather. We do have the radiators in four rooms now but I don’t really want to be turning them on 😂 they are set low at around 16/17c so if it gets too cold they kick in but at this time of year, seriously 😐
It was my one of my brother in laws birthdays today so we went round saw a few other family members and had the best laughs, so good to be able to get back to some kind of normal and enjoy ourselves again.
Tuesday: I started prepping for this mornings main activity yesterday afternoon. Out of the freezer I got a lamb shank, two packs of chicken thighs, minced beef and a lump which I thought was stewing beef and luckily it was. Overnight I cooked the lamb shank in the slow cooker while everything else defrosted and so this morning I have been batch cooking. I fried off a large pan of onions, garlic and celery first and then got organised with various dinners a ready for the freezer. I am waiting for some to finish and one lot will be in the slow cooker again today but so far I have four shepherds pies, three lamb and sweet potato curries, three chicken casseroles and two chicken in lemon and garlic plus probably four or five portions of slow cooked beef stew as well as a lamb casserole for Johns dinner tonight. 18 meals all cooked and ready to freeze which will save me a lot of time over the summer months, I have used up bits from the freezer such as turnip, swede and spinach as well as pulled a few leeks from the garden and I have used some of my freshly dried herbs, I could have used fresh but I wanted to try them out. It will save cooking time and it will mean that I have something I like as well, normally I just cook and eat what John likes to save time. I realised while I was cooking that I am going to need a lidded casserole pan suitable for the hob, this will be useful because it means I don’t have to turn the whole oven on just to do Johns dinner, it can be done on the hob which is more energy efficient. I am aiming for efficiency, not because I have to but because I want to for the sake of the planet and our bank balance 😜 I use the foil dishes with the cardboard lids but I also have small plastic containers with lids, it’s a toss up really over which is better for the planet. The plastic ones can be used over and over again but they are plastic and they can get fragile in the freezer. The foil and cardboard ones are one use and so less cost effective but recyclable and in that respect better for the planet. I haven’t really come across a complete answer yet, obviously the best thing would be not use freeze anything and use everything fresh but that is a tall order in today’s busy life. Once I have used up the freezer contents in one freezer the plan is just to have a single freezer. Until now we have run two large chest freezers but we no longer have the need, we don’t rear our own meat much any more and I plan on being able to store anything I can in the store room that is yet to be built. Mostly for me this is an exercise in ‘let’s see what is possible’ let’s see how much I can preserve/store without the aid of electric and always in the back of my mind is the rest of that sentence ‘because one day we might need to’ 🤔 Never say it will never happen, this last year should have taught us that much at least.
Yesterday was the first day of the Hazel, trees have important roles in ‘lore’ of all kinds, country, Norse, Celtic, pagan, Druid to name a few. The Hazel is no exception, it is a sacred tree, divining rods are often made of hazel, it is a tree of protection from all manner of things, a tree that is a gateway to spring and the bounty it’s brings with it including birth, plenty of catkins, plenty of prams was a well known country saying until a few decades ago 😁
Popped over to see Charlie and Macca in the evening and when we got back at 9pm the first thing we heard when we got out of the car was a fox calling. John said he heard it last night as well so good job we came home well before dark and shut the hens in.
Wednesday: The sun made an early appearance this morning, 4.50 I woke up thinking it must be later and the daylight was already streaming in through the curtains. Although the sun continued to make itself seen there was a lot of cloud as well which lowered the temperature at times. After doing the eggs, dogs, cats, milk bottles, breakfast, shower, stretching exercises, I went straight out to get something done in the garden. To be honest it’s overwhelming, it’s like a jungle out there and I really had no idea where to start, but start I needed to so I picked watering the tunnels first. Then I went onto covering a large bit of weedy soil that is behind the big tunnel, I have used weed membrane and pegged it down. This will kill off the weeds and keep them controlled until I get round to planting it up. Then onto weeding the beetroot and swede rows, actually I ended up just pulling off the tops as there are so many, I am really trying to just slow them down until I have time to get on there for a good hour or more. Sam arrived with the twins mid morning, she has no electric today due to some work in the village and it’s not much fun without electric all day and two toddlers. Shelley came over with Florence after lunch and we all went for a walk along the local lane. George was fascinated by a spider he found on the ground and trying to jump in puddles, Lucy and Florence were happy running along picking flowers (dandelions) and looking at the horses and sheep. I know there is a whole gender neutral movement but the difference is something that is within some children quite naturally and that shouldn’t be neutralised for the sake of over thinking or over compensation which is what happens in some society circles today in my opinion 🙄 They can be whatever they want to be but let them be what they want not what society thinks they should want. I am quite glad I never grew up with all the pressures that the media (in all forms) force upon today’s parents, I am glad that rightly or wrongly, I knew my own mind and I wasn’t reduced to a gibbering wreck when trying to make parental decisions, even if I say so myself my girls turned out to be amazing adults so I must have done something right 🥰
I did a bit of weeding before dinner, the peas needed doing (as does everything else really) and then after dinner I walked over the lawn and decided it was dry enough to cut. No mow May was almost achieved but really the lawn has got way too long and besides we are only a few days off 😜 I cut half of it and John cut the other half, Sod’s law the sun came out full on and we were sweating buckets trying to mow foot tall grass! The weather as always is unreliably British, half the day I felt cold especially when the sun went behind the clouds, the second half I was boiling trying to work in the evening sun 🌞 Not complaining though it’s nice to see it and we are getting more as the week goes on, but then……..there is another cold front plunging in from Scandinavia according to the long range forecast, goodness knows what weather June is going to bring us and I still haven’t got some of the veg planted up yet.
Thursday: Oh what a lovely morning, wall to wall blue skies first thing and warm sunshine 🌞 John had a couple of hours work to do after he had done the birds and I went almost straight out into the garden. First off I have covered some more bare soil with weed membrane, I intend to plant the sweetcorn there but until I do I don’t want hundreds of weeds popping up all over the place. I watered the plants in the greenhouse hopefully they will get some warmth today and shoot up a bit more, it mostly peppers, chillies and aubergine left in there apart from some smaller squash plants that are just coming on. Then I opened a package that had arrived about four weeks ago and I hadn’t had chance to use it but oh my it’s a game changer for me. I don’t know why I didn’t buy one years ago, it’s a UV pop up gazebo and today I have spent 3 hours on my hands and knees weeding in the sunshine and get this bit, in a short sleeve t-shirt which is unheard of! I had the best three hours lol, the only problem with it is that I can’t easily move it to a new area by myself, today John was around but in future I will need to plan a lot better to maximise the use I can get out of it.
I spent the three hours weeding the asparagus bed which is also interplanted with strawberries, three rhubarb plants grown at the end of the bed and the herb area is at the top. The weeds are insane , the constant rain didn’t slow their growth at all so it was good to be able to get down and really clear them out. The strawberries that grow there probably won’t get harvested, I have other beds in the fruit cage that shouldn’t get eaten but these are out in the open and it won’t take the blackbirds long to figure out they are there. At least I can see where the asparagus is growing now I have thinned it all out a bit, it was like looking for needles in a haystack before.
At 2pm we had a delivery of POL hens, most of these are our own new stock but there are 20 that have been pre ordered by customers. John dealt with the unloading of those and the feed delivery and around 2.30 I came in to get some lunch. We have the twins today while Mia goes to her swimming lesson and I have a massage booked early evening so I needed to eat before chaos ensues 😂
The twins came, we played a little bit and then it was ‘unch unch’ after that we went outside to feed the torts and play in the sunshine. Sam dropped me off for my massage on their way back home.
Friday: Dull today, no sun, but the temperature is just fine 😁 I stripped the bed and put that onto wash, went out an freshened up the roadside egg board and then into the garden where I have spent the rest of the morning. Finally getting somewhere with the veg planting, I have sown all the sweetcorn, I kept a few back in case of losses. They have been sown in a block because they are wind pollinated and I have cut into the weed membrane to plant them as this bed is tricky, very heavy clay and very weedy. I am doing all I can to minimise the weeding and enable me to concentrate on the growing and harvesting when the time comes. I covered them in environmesh because animals and birds like to eat young corn greenery 🙄 After that I had a search to find something for a hack I had seen on you tube, this again is a game changer for me. The plastic weed membrane is awful, but I already have it so don’t want to waste it, when the wind gets under it shredding occurs, I have pegged it down with the raw ends tucked under so this doesn’t happen and then implemented my hack for planting. You use a weed wand or similar burner, find a metal circle though you can use a wooden template, I used a cylinder spanner, the diameter is about 6” then place it on the membrane and use the burner to burn a hole. This is hugely effective because the heat seals the edges of the circle so no shredding 😁 and a lovely little circle to dig and plant into, the membrane stays in place to keep the weeds down and again it’s hugely time saving. I have planted dwarf French beans the other end of the sweetcorn bed and butter nut squash and spaghetti squash behind the big tunnel. I also planted banana squash with the French beans as they can ramble on the ground through the beans and sweetcorn, also a couple planted near the runner beans, making full use of all the space available. I planted some courgettes near the rhubarb bed and I still have more of those to go in as well as more dwarf French beans but they are not big enough yet. So as it stands I have most things planted, I just need to get the hundreds of pumpkin and other squash plants in the ménage and the remaining courgettes in the garden once they are big enough to transplant. Feet hurt now so time for lunch.
John came home just as I was hoovering mid afternoon, at least I wasn’t sat down 😉 he was waiting for a floor to go down before going back to he job to put the toilet in, we had a cuppa and then Shelley and Flo came, they were going to help in the garden but it had started spitting with rain by then. John went back off to work, Shelley went to collect Josh from school and I went outside to water the small tunnel and then did a bit of weeding. I came in and re made the bed before going out to do the egg collecting as John will be late back. It has tried to rain on and off but not really amounted to much at all.
There is talk about June 21st and if the full reopen will go ahead or not 🙄 the Indian variant is transmitting at a rate of knots but the vaccine programme is also romping along its a race between the two at the minute. Mostly it feels as though everything is pretty much getting back to normal, it would be hard if we had to go back a step now, I have booked a couple of days out and a hair cut plus we have a holiday booked along with most of the rest of the country. We are looking forward to being able to see people on their birthdays and maybe a couple of bbqs, fingers crossed we keep going forward.
I went out and did the egg collecting and afternoon feeding rounds, then I went back and cleaned out the guinea pigs and the quail, I also cleaned out all the water buckets in the orchard pen. I need to get that lot all sorted out, we have a hen and a cockerel living with Ted, a cockerel and four hens living together then a single cockerel living out in the paddock with the flock. Two of the cockerels need to go so that I can let the others back out, at the minute they fight like billio if they get near one another 🙄 And Ted is not happy living with them, I had found him some ladies but the chap had a problem with his phone on the day we were due to meet him and collect and so far I haven’t heard anymore from him.
Saturday: Overcast this morning with spitting rain but nothing much. John did the animals and then got ready to go out for the morning with Macca to get suits for the wedding 😁 I told him not to fall over at the price 🤣 been a long time since he bought a suit! That leaves me here to potter about which is what I have been doing in the garden, I bit of tidying up rubbish and broken bits, putting the squash plants in the trolley to take to the ménage and moving over plants outside to the cold frame. It was not until I started moving the squash that I realised how many I have 😜 if they all grow there will be a squash mountain here, banana, spaghetti, butternut, pumpkin, crown Prince, de musque, and some cute little ones that I can’t remember the name of. I have hedged my bets when putting them in the ménage because I can see something has been digging. If it’s fox looking for worms then that’s not too bad but if it’s rabbits then that’s a different story, the larger plants I have just sunk the pots into the ground, I figure that way they don’t get a growth check, the roots will still continue to find there way out of the pot and into the ground and they may not get damaged. The smaller plants I have planted properly, we will see what the difference is when they start growing, they all had a good feed and water beforehand. I hope it works well, if it does I may think about using that space again to grow things, the weeds are still there in force and I thought that I could get a couple of Pygmy goats to put in there next year and they would do well at eating it all or pigs but they would do a lot more rootling around which may be detrimental, I will ponder on that one. The plants I have now been able to move outside are garden plants I have grown from seed, I have some lupin, rudbeckia and a yellow daisy that seeds everywhere, I did have it labelled at achellia but I realise it is not that even thought the leaves are very similar.
Yesterday on social media someone was giving away some padron peppers they had received in a veg box but didn’t want, I said if no one else wanted them I would love them, in return I offered a jar of rhubarb and orange jam which was gratefully accepted. When the lady turned up with the peppers today she also bought an aubergine and a butternut squash that she didn’t want either so I did well with that swap. I just need to decide what I am going to make with them now 😁
Growing your own gives you the best ingredients for your meals and they don’t have to be complicated affairs. This lunchtime I popped out to the tunnels and picked some baby spinach, some pea tops, lettuce, dill and coriander, chopped it all up and added chopped baby tomatoes, grapes and blueberries, and a thinly sliced baby bel cheese, no dressing needed (I am not keen on dressing anyway) because it was packed with flavour, fresh, flavoursome, healthy what could be better than that 😁
Popped round to Mums for a cuppa this afternoon and did the birds when we got back. On Saturday evenings we have fish and chips with my Sister and Brother in Law, today it was nice enough to sit outside. We had finished eating and were sat chatting when Shane looked across the paddock and said bloody heck (or words to that effect 😜) a fox has just grabbed a chicken. John got up and ran across with the dogs but he was long gone with his supper, we settled back down and then could hear the fox calling out the back. John got up and ran off in that direction and a large dark fox went running down the paddock and into the next field. When John was putting them to bed he noticed that about 4/5 hens have been had, feathers in the paddocks in various places. That all took place around 7pm, two hours before the hens go to bed and he kept coming back.
Sunday: Lovely sunshine first thing this morning then it disappeared behind thick cloud and hasn’t come back as yet and it’s 11am. We got sorted and then went to get a bit of food shopping first thing, Sam and Luke are coming over tomorrow, Luke is going to help John get a few things done and we will have a big picnic 😁
I was thinking of going out somewhere nice today but the foxes have scuppered that idea, we can’t go out for a few hours and leave the hens unsupervised, we wouldn’t have any left when we got back probably. That’s the problem with a free range flock and predators, we are kind of tied to the place daily. We may start to think about winding down the egg sales altogether over the next couple of years, things have definitely slowed right down here anyway. We may keep a lot less birds that can be penned to keep them safe if we want to go out for the day 🙄
A friend told me it’s national hedge week this week, hedges are hugely important to our insects, birds and wildlife, they provide much, much more than people realise. They are an ecosystem in their own right especially hedges of a decent age, they provide shelter, protection, food, soil stability, flood control, wildlife homes for pollinators, pest predators, pests themselves (valuable food sources) they keep livestock in or out and are of course a carbon sink. When humans want to rip out hedges they are only thinking of themselves and not what else shares this world with them. Most of it is because they don’t understand fully the detrimental effect it will have on the wildlife, usually the wildlife they have moved to the country to see, I find it ironic that people rip out hedges to get a better view of the surrounding countryside, um, that is part of the countryside 😂 The times people have said to us ‘you should take that hedge out so you have a better view’ of what? fields without hedges 🤷♀️ I would rather build a platform to get up higher. Replacing hedges with garden centre plants that are not even native does nothing at all to help, it’s like sticking a plaster over a hole in the side of a ship. Thank goodness there are folk out there who are rewilding though I doubt they can keep up with the ones that are destroying, it needs a whole mindset change, education is key, understand how your actions impact your environment. I talked about managed hedges as well, anything that is managed is purely for human benefit and control. Though managed hedges look good (to the human eye) are they really beneficial? A hedge if left will grow, get old, break down and regrow, it’s a cycle that we no longer allow, we feel that we are doing the best thing for the hedge keeping it tamed and in ‘good condition’ but there is more to the cycle. The deadwood is vital to ground dwelling insects, which in turn are vital to airborne insects and birds and guess what the hedge will regrow by itself if left. We have a classic example down on the far side of the bottom paddock, once there was a stone wall, I guess the hedge wasn’t there when it was erected by farm hands many many years ago. A hedge has grown up over the years (by itself mostly) and now it has got old and is dying, there is a lot of dead wood and the wall is falling down. Trying to get John, or any bloke (sorry for the sexist remark but this is my experience) for that matter, that stands and talks about it, to see beyond clearing it right out completely and starting again is like pushing a stubborn elephant uphill! Why, why would you want to clear out an established multifunctional wildlife habitat that is thriving, there are companies that charge a small fortune to replicate that 😂 I stand there and point out the obvious, the hedge is regrowing from the ground by itself why scrub all that out and start again, better to leave a tumbling down wall, dead wood and let the hedge sprout up naturally surely, it’s not rocket science is it 😜 But no, humans seems to need to ‘tidy’ everything back to a clean area and then fill it up again with something no where near as useful 😬 Put it this way if the human race disappeared tomorrow completely the wildlife would carry on and thrive without us ‘managing’ everything in fact it would probably be much much better off, sad but true.
How weird is this after I wrote about thinking along the lines of winding down the chickens John came home from getting fuel and said ‘I think we might start winding down the chickens and egg sales’ lol, seriously. Now we are other completely in tune with each other after so many years together or, which is more likely, we are both astute enough to see the situation as it is. At times over the years we have been so rushed off our feet with all that comes with egg sales that we haven’t had time to stop but lately it has completely slowed right down, I am pushing them but the response is not there. There are two reasons I think for this, one, we sold a lot of chickens during the lockdown last year, some of these were egg customers though not all that many, two, the farm shop next door has taken off really well and they are also selling eggs. If someone is going to call in to get bacon for their breakfast they might as well get eggs while they are there, they sell a lot of other things too and again you may as well pick up eggs while you are at it. This will be sad for our loyalist of customers and we do have some very loyal ones but we can’t keep going at something that is not making any money much as we might enjoy it. It will free up our time hugely, the time spent looking after the birds isn’t even in the ‘profit’ entry because I am here anyway but if it was we would have been running at a loss for years 😂 It was never our intention to sell eggs we just kind of fell into it, have enjoyed it but the time has come to start thinking about giving it up. We have just had a new lot of hens delivered and so will be running for at least another year yet, don’t panic, but gradually we will be winding down that side of things.
I am not sure yet where that will leave my blogging, it probably won’t affect it, I will still keep blurbing after all it’s more of a life diary than anything. It is a way of getting things out of my head when necessary (see hedges above 😂) It’s a written record of day to day life in rural Oxfordshire, not very exciting but it is a snapshot of real life.
Late afternoon early evening we were down in the big paddock taking out a fence, this is one of two cross fences being replaced, it also meant we were down where the foxes (there were two different ones) were seen last night. Once we had finished that we had to stay on patrol for the rest of the evening, taking it in turns to come inside and get something to eat before swapping back over, John is still out there now. No sign of anything today but they are known as cunning for a reason, they will be watching and the minute you are not that’s when they strike 🤪
Enjoy the bank holiday, hopefully the sun will shine, if it does you will find me eating my picnic in the shade 😂
Monday 3rd May 2021: Bank Holiday Monday, in a normal year there would be plenty of days out to choose from but this year 🤔 add to that the weather forecast and well let’s just say we might as well stay at home 😂 Which is of course exactly what we are doing, I have stopped for a coffee break and John is out on the tractor trying to finish off the side driveway, I wonder how long it is before he gets rained off. Meanwhile I have been in the greenhouse, sorting out plants, tidying up, throwing stuff away, recycling spent compost, moving plants outside to harden off. I really need to move some of the plants on and so have taken the risk even though the temps are still down, they can’t stay down forever surely 🤷♀️ It is still only mid morning so I am going to have to find other projects to get my teeth into but planting up is not going to be one of them. I have got some potting on to do maybe that is the direction I will go in today.
I did go back into the greenhouse, might as well as it’s not bad in there, I put some of the basil seedlings into a big pot ready to move to the tunnel. I have grown red and green basil this year for a lovely contrast, I also moved the garlic chive seedlings all into one big pot and was just about to do the dill when Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo so we stopped for a cuppa.
Midday and I have lit the Rayburn, it is not very nice out there and it’s only going to get worse. It seems like we have had a very long winter and we are not out of it yet, I am starting to feel slightly suffocated by it all. where are the warm mornings and lovely spring days, not on the horizon yet sadly.
One thing I have done indoors is take photos of the Rayburn ready for when we sell it, we had thought we would be finished with it by now but that is not the case. We will move to warmer weather eventually though and that’s when it will go up for sale, part of me will be sorry, the other part will be glad, and we move on to different things, hopefully some solar panels soon as well.
Tuesday: It is still very windy this morning but at least the rain has stopped. The day after a bank holiday is always a funny one I feel, you have relaxed a little too much to really get going like you would on a Monday morning. John has gone off to do some work so I am on my own today, I have two jobs in mind but as yet have not decided which to concentrate on. First is housework, needs a Hoover and a polish all through but I am also contemplating getting the big tunnel sorted and possibly planted up. A look at the weather forecast shows that it is not going to improve that much over the next week and we are now into May, time to stop dallying I think. I have half heartedly got the housework on the list as I am really leaning towards the tunnel just procrastinating 😜
The cucumbers will go into the tunnel along with some more tomato plants but I will also hedge my bets with peppers though most of those will stay in the greenhouse which gets the best heat over summer. The pots of basil and coriander will also go in there and the lemon grass once that is big enough to transplant, I already have some early strawberries growing and a few rows of little gem lettuce. The orange and lemon tree are looking terrible, I have fed them but I think the prolonged cold is reeking havoc and although I have tried to stabilise them I am not sure if they are going to make it to be honest. I may have to get them out of the pots to make sure there is no other reason for their demise such as vine weevil.
Melons will also be going into the tunnel and again I might have to cover the doors with extra fleece to keep out any draught. This year has certainly thrown up totally different weather patterns and trying to level the growing conditions is a challenge 🙄 Everything growing outside is fine on the whole it’s just the tender plants that struggle. The squash plants definitely won’t be going out for quite a while yet, maybe even next month before that happens
Yesterday I bought some mushrooms from my sister, I openly admit to having failed at home grown mushrooms but her partner has worked hard for the last couple of years perfecting the art of growing them. Look at these beautiful clusters, they smell amazing, the colours are beautiful and I am about to have some for breakfast so I will let you know how they taste.
They were delish, I had mine cooked in a little butter and black pepper on some wholemeal toast with a coffee, nice and simple but absolutely delicious 😋
I went out after breakfast and gave biscuit some hay and stored out their water buckets, generally speaking, these days John does most of the poultry and I do the others, the others are cats, dogs, horses, guinea pigs, torts, quail any other waifs and strays we happen to have at the time. I used to do all of them every day twice a day but on top of housework, cooking, paperwork, gardening, veg growing and prepping it got too much and stressed me out a little so with John easing back on his plumbing he began to take on some of the jobs, and still does them even when he has a days work to do 🥰
Jeez that is hard work out there, the winds are so strong, it 10.30am and I am done being buffeted, I look like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards! I did get a bit done, I decided that the cucumber plants are still way too small to go in the ground, we need the sun to come through, it wouldn’t matter about the wind and the rain if we had some warmth to go with it. In the tunnel I did get things ready for planting later in a couple of weeks time I think. I also had a good look at the orange and lemon tree, nothing in the roots that looks ominous but they are damp, considering I only watered them well once in the last couple of weeks this is not a good thing. They like a good long water just once a week but it is not warm enough for the excess to get soaked up and so they are sitting in damp soil, no wonder they don’t look well. To remedy this I have provided them with a duvet experience lol. They look ropey even to an untrained eye but on closer inspection there are lots of tiny new leaves just starting to appear so I am not too worried.
I have trimmed them up and wrapped them in bubble wrap and a fleece hat 😜 hopefully they will appreciate the tlc.
Sam popped in for an hour or so with the twins and when she left I figured I would get some cleaning done after all, then I will sort out dinner for later and get the Rayburn ready to light….again🙄
After Sam had left I got on with some hoovering, polishing and cleaning the bathroom, not a full clean but a whip round so that I feel it is clean enough for the next few days at least and I sorted out dinner for this evening. I pondered while I was hoovering, as you do, mulling over the last year or so and what if anything it has taught me. There is plenty I was already aware of more so than others I think, I was always aware that life could so easily go wrong on a big scale, a pandemic, a natural catastrophe, some sort of apocalyptic happening and so when covid hit it was no surprise to me, more than that, my previous musings on the subject were no longer a laughing matter for John 😂 It was a reality and all the while I have thought, as bad as it has been, it could have been a whole lot worse 🤔 That is something for future generations to remember, I hope they do but the chances are that it will be so far back in their history they won’t put in to place the lessons we have learned (and I’m not talking about stocking up on toilet paper) maybe they will, who knows. The one thing we have all learnt is that things don’t always go the way we think they will just because that has been the norm all our lives, things change, events occur and we have to adapt. Life in the here and now is important is what I have learnt, and the simpler the life the easier it is to adapt to change. I need to stop hoovering 🤣
As I have mentioned before, the past six/seven months have been the windiest I have ever known it to be, such a curious year weather wise and no chance of planning anything. At the moment we have a draught blowing through the back door, the whole building moves over time and as a consequence the doors end up either not opening or closing properly or a gap appears suddenly which is what has happened lately. I am trying to find the best kind of product to use for now as we are planning on getting a new door at some point.
I went out the the greenhouse with the intention of potting on, when I went in it was 36c the sun came out and within two minutes it had climbed to 40c, too hot to stay in there lol, can’t win at the minute. It did make me think though because I came back indoors and it’s cold, we should be using more passive solar on the house somehow, difficult when I can’t tolerate UV rays though 🤔
A friend messaged in the early evening to say there was a street food wagon parked up at a local caravan park, normally that is not something that we would go and get but I hadn’t put the dinner in yet and I thought, why the heck not, let’s go 😁 It was Sri Lankan and it was lovely and even John tried one or two things, ooosh it’s spicy he said 🤣 but he did eat it, there is hope yet.
Wednesday: It’s a promising start to the day, the sun is shining the wind has dropped to a breeze and I can feel that it is not as cold as it has been of late, though still below average. Whoop, the world is my oyster today and the weather is favourable now I just need to decide exactly what to do, or I may just glide through the day picking and choosing as I go.
I went out and began by doing some picking, 5 bundles of rhubarb that went out for sale, a good haul of purple sprouting some of which went out for sale and some I have kept back for dinner tonight along with a bundle of asparagus. The asparagus is slow this year I think I need to give it a good feed and mulch at the end of the season. I then had a job in mind but got waylaid talking to a customer and by the time I got back in the garden I had forgotten all about it and went on to something else 😂 That something else was pottering in the greenhouse again 🥰 moving things around, potting some things on, watering and feeding the hungry plants with an organic feed. There is still a bit of a chill in the air even though the sun is out but it is pleasant enough and warm enough for me to work which is the main thing.
Thursday: Late afternoon and I have just sat down after a busy day of bit and pieces. I started off by sorting out my jam jar stash ready for jam season. Sorting out what lids fit and what jars I have got, the upshot was that I needed to order more jars so that is in hand and they are arriving tomorrow. Then onto picking some rhubarb and some purple sprouting, the rhubarb I picked today were the thin stalks that I can’t really put out for sale but they are ideal for jam. On then to jam making, rhubarb and orange again as that has gone down well with people and especially Josh who said it was delicious. Mum came over to grab some material and then Shelley came over to get the purple sprouting, both of them went away with a bag full of stuff from my freezers, mainly fruit but also some pasta sauces I froze last year and a few other bits and pieces that I won’t get round to using for various reasons. Most years I can run one freezer down, give it a clean out and then turn it on again when the season gets underway. Last year however I could not feed the family for Sunday lunches etc and so the stock pile stayed piled up. We have used most of the veg but there was a lot of fruit and going through the freezer I can see I need to have a big cook up and use some of the contents up. Once that was done I made a quick rhubarb crumble for pudding later, sat down and John came home. What is funny about that is that when he comes in and I am sat down he says ‘just sat down then’ to which I always reply yes I have actually, this time I had literally just written the first line of this paragraph when he appeared 😜
I sweetened the rhubarb with honey instead of sugar, although there was still sugar in the crumble topping, it was lovely just the right balance, not sweet but not tart either, winner 😁
One of our hens is laying a whopper egg every day, 100g + 🙄 we had them for dinner tonight and of course they were double yolkers. For comparison a medium size egg would weigh between 57 & 67g anything over 66g goes in a large box and on avaerage they are around 72g so you can see what a huge difference the 100g ones are, xxl I think.
Friday 7th May 2021: I make a special note of the date today because it should have been Charlie and Macca’s wedding day, I should have been the Mother of the the Bride and we should have been celebrating. Covid has taken a lot of lives around the world which is tragic in itself but it has also taken lots of hopes and dreams which I know can all be postponed for another time but it still impacts on those that had their plans and dreams in place. The wedding will still go ahead it will just be towards the later end of the year and we keep our fingers crossed that things continue to move in a forward direction.
The sun has made an appearance this morning and it is warm enough to wander outside with my morning cuppa and have a look over the front flower beds which I duly did. Today is one of only two or three mornings where it has been nice enough to do that and this is a short interlude. Tomorrow’s forecast is horrendous, high winds and heavy rain, you gotta laugh or you would just cry. I am glad it is nice today as we are going out for a family lunch with Charlie and Macca as a way of marking the day, we couldn’t really ignore it like it was never booked.
I whipped out and gave the guinea pigs a quick clean out, fed them, gave them hay and fresh water, picked up the quail eggs on the way back through. Went to the hay barn to get hay for biscuit and found a goose egg under the hay, John said one had started laying there, first it was in the stable black now the hay barn but I have shut that off so she will have to go back to the stable. Three other geese are now sitting tight, one other is laying the other two, well if they are laying I have no idea where 🙄
A chap came to collect something I had up for sale and was saying what a lovely place and that he and his girlfriend would like to do something similar. As I always say to people, go for it, you get one life so do what makes you happy. Then I thought about our journey over the years, it’s never straight forward, you learn at lot, your emotions get battered at times but it’s hugely rewarding and it’s a great lifestyle choice, well I think so anyway. The only thing is you have to learn to move the goalposts if necessary, that does not come easily for me especially once I get into ‘ideology’ mode. Self sufficient to me was exactly that, nothing that you can’t produce yourself or swap/barter, self reliance is also a major factor, making sure you can do everything you need to. These ideals are of course ridiculous especially if it’s just one person doing it (which until the last year it has been, just me for 80% of the time) Still I busted a gut trying to do it until eventually you can’t and you take a step back and think ‘ah what the hell’ and suddenly life becomes more enjoyable. You stop busying yourself for 18hrs a day making sure you, plant, grow, harvest, process, make, bake, store, dry, as much as you possibly can and you do what you can when you can, it is a lot more harmonious and that’s how it should be otherwise you are still on that hamster wheel of life just one with different objectives. These days life is a lot more relaxed, I settle for self sufficientish and I think the pandemic and the lockdowns have had a lot to do with our attitude shift, what doesn’t get done today, will wait until tomorrow (obviously that does not include feeding animals 😂) I suppose what I am saying is, if you are starting out on this journey, here speaks the voice of experience, at times be prepared to take a different road to the one you had mapped out. If this last year has taught us anything at all it is that things don’t always go the way you think they will 🥰
Saturday: Urgh what a truly horrid day today, I heard the rain all through the night, it’s just gone midday and it hasn’t really eased up for longer than half an hour. At the minute rain is driving from south to north so at least it’s not as cold as it would be the other way round 🙄 At the moment we don’t have the strong winds I thought we were getting I may have been wrong about those or they may come later. We made a decision not to bother doing too much today, can’t really do a lot outside, except John has cut some more wood. We went and got some food shopping first thing, not much just mostly stuff that John eats. I want to start using up a lot of the freezer contents so I have warned him there may be some strange meals coming his way 😂 and probably plenty of soup which is ideal at the minute.
I lit the Rayburn at lunchtime to keep the damp at bay and just take any chill off, probably won’t have it going all day as it will get too warm. I need to order the next electric radiator and John is going to convert the ladder rails int the bathroom by filling them with oil and then they will be connected to the electric. The ladder rails will be so much better on electric because we can’t dry the towels over summer normally so it will be a great improvement on that score.
Sunday: Not too bad a day today, it was a little windy overnight but that has settled to a stiff breeze 😜 and no rain, mostly cloudy which is fine by me, feels a lot warmer than previous days. We or rather I, had already decided we were going out today to do something different, I am fed up of not doing anything away from here. So we went to an antiques centre for a shuffty round, had an ice cream from the van in the car park and then John sat in the car while I mooched a little round the garden centre. I found a craft area and bought a couple of bits for doing something with but I did resist any plants today, go me 😁
Back home and time to get the leg of lamb prepped, pick some fresh greens from the garden, purple sprouting, asparagus and some mangetout from the tunnel. Really they are undeveloped pea pods but they will taste great and there were only about five of them, I pinched out the tops of the pea plants to get more shoots from the bottom and waste not want not they will go in with the greens as well. By eck, people pay a fortune for straight to the table from the garden dinning and here we are doing it on a daily basis 🥰 With a flourless chocolate cake made for dessert we are living the dream here 😜
Have a great week, I am hoping the weather will be a little more seasonal than it has been of late but I don’t want it to go straight into wall to wall sunshine as I won’t get on very well in that either 😂
Monday 26th April 2021: Still on the chilly side for April and no sign of it warming for the next two weeks. Best to dress for the cold and take layers off I think 🤔 This week John has a full week of ‘proper’ work so I will mainly be here on my own bimbling away. This morning I set to making the dandelion honey from the flowers I picked yesterday, if you are going to try then pick them from a place you know has t been sprayed with anything and preferably where animals have not been 🙄 Mine have come from the garden where no animals are allowed and definitely no spraying, pick them in the sunshine so they are fully open and warmed by the sun. You can either take your time and pull off all the petals or you can keep them whole with the green bits attached (not the stalks) because you are going to strain it so it won’t make much difference in the end. Just give the flowers a good shake so any insects have time to escape before you boil them 😜 Simmer for 15 mins with a slice of lemon and then leave overnight to steep. Strain and squeeze out all the juice you can, measure the liquid, you want a pound of sugar for every pint of liquid. Then simmer (a good simmer not gentle) for 15 mins before putting into hot, sterilised jars. That’s it, liquid gold, sunshine in a pot, it is not as thick as honey more of a sauce but still very delicious and worth having a go just so you can say you have done it. Back in the day dandelions were a very important flower/crop and far from removing them from lawns they were actually planted up. They are a great source of nectar for bees and other insects, a great food source for many small mammals and you can even make a reasonable coffee from the dried roots (I have read this but never tried) Part of what is wrong with today’s thinking is we want perfect lawns and grass areas, what is perfect, that’s the question 🤷♀️ To me a perfect lawn is full of wild flowers, they are not weeds, they serve a purpose just not to humans, unless you make use of them that is.
It is mid morning and one of my plans today is to get my tomato plants in the polytunnel. I have looked at the long range forecast and even though the temps are below average it looks like the overnight temperature will remain above freezing for most of the time. I may have to put an extra fleece over the plants if I think it’s going to go below 0c but it’s looking hopeful.
I spent the rest of the morning in the small tunnel planting the tomato plants, 14 in total a mix of sweet million, tigerella and cherry indigo. I have to confess I don’t know which plant is which because though I labeled the rows when they were growing I muddled them up once they were potted up, I didn’t think carefully enough and whoops error made. Still have more plants, some will go into the big tunnel and I always try some outside to see how they do. I have staked them all and tied them in and the run string from the stake to the crop bar in the roof of the tunnel. These measures will hold them upright and hopefully take the weight when they are loaded with tomatoes. Because the temperatures are not up to seasonal average at the minute I have taken the precaution of fleecing the inside of the door ways to provide extra protection from the night temperatures, I have also cut extra fleece to put over them at night. It’s nice and warm in there at the minute, around 25c but you can feel the difference once you step outside so best to Molly coddle them as much as possible at the moment, I don’t want to lose them after spending so long getting them growing from seed.
I came indoors then for a bite to eat, I am not sure if it was the heat in the tunnel or what but I didn’t feel too well, a bit sick. I have had it before and wonder if it is my blood sugars dipping too low for some reason. Usually if I come in and have something to eat and a sit down it passes after a while 🤷♀️ I have regular blood test so if it was a permanent problem I think they would have seen it in the results before now. It tends to be when I am busy but it doesn’t happen often, I always have a good breakfast of oats and banana so it’s not that I have skipped breakfast or anything like that.
It is very quiet here today, not much noise outside at all and we have probably had one egg customer all day 😔 We worked out that we need to sell £7 worth of eggs a day just to cover the feed costs that doesn’t even include bedding or our time and the egg boxes we buy and it certainly doesn’t cover times when we have to worm the hens (which we only do if necessary). If business gets much slower I think we will have to have a serious discussion about wether to carry on with it or not 🙄 We might have to come up with a different idea altogether. I think it is because we are used to not being able to keep up with egg demand lol and it has certainly dropped for some reason. Not that I am too worried, the intention was always to be self sufficient and the egg thing just started as a sideline to move extra eggs but it’s nice to have people come and have a chat and put the world to rights sometimes.
Cup of tea and a sit down mid afternoon, I have just finished making some rhubarb and orange jam. Hoping it will set, there is not much mystery to jam making except the set lol and a lot depends on how much moisture is in the fruit you use. Really once you get it to a rolling boil and a temperature of 105c it theoretically should set but there is always the unknown. I never do the freezer test because quite frankly I can’t be arsed, our freezers are right out the back so by the time I got the plate in it would have warmed up a bit and so no good anyway. I prefer to get it to temp and hope🤞 generally it’s fine but sometimes if we have had a lot of rain and the fruit has taken up a lot of water it can be more tricky but nothing a re-boil couldn’t sort out. I went with orange in the end as that is what I fancied doing, the vanilla option can work out a tad expensive as you are supposed to put half a bean in and they cost a fair bit plus to me that’s a bit of a waste of a vanilla bean 😜
The dandelion honey is a little runny so more of a pouring sauce, it will still be great with ice cream or even pancakes/yoghurt etc but no so good to spread. The one I made last time was a better, thicker consistency and was so yummy that finger dipping was a must.
The jam was a good set, I can tell after only 10 mins because even though in the hot jars it’s still runny, in the bottom of the pan it’s nicely cooled and thick and sticky. I used to wash the pan straight away but it is good way of finding out how the set has gone so I leave it to cool and then wash it.
I sometimes think it would be good to do it for a living but I am a bit of a perfectionist, there is no way I would sell anything that wasn’t exactly right. I can imagine if it was yays to the left and nays to the right (or which ever way round it goes) that I would have a bigger reject pile than a sellable pile 😂 That goes for anything I do really. I think another reason I would like to do something is because I love to look for new recipes for things I grow but half of it John wouldn’t eat so there is not much point making it just for me, I would look like a roly poly pudding (even more than I do now) maybe I will just start making it and hope that he likes the look, but no, I don’t think that will work, we have such totally different tastes in food it’s ridiculous 😬
Oo John saw a shooting star last night, there is meteor activity at the minute, the eta aquariids, so that’s most likely what he saw.
Just in case you thought I was finished with the making today, nope, I made some asparagus soup. I had a bunch that I picked the day before yesterday and put in the shed but it hadn’t sold and so I got it back in. It had gone a bit limp so no point leaving it out there, I picked another fresh bunch and made soup. A simple soup that is big on flavour and of course would be delicious with a hunk of fresh bread and some Parmesan shavings. You could add cream to the soup but I like simple soups and beside it’s less fattening 😬 Just chop up and onion and a clove of garlic, sauté in a knob of butter and a drop of olive oil, the butter gives it a richer flavour but you can leave it out if you want. Add pepper and the chopped asparagus and then stock of your choice, either veg or chicken. Simmer until the asparagus is soft then either serve like that or whizz it with a blender stick. I don’t add extra salt because of the stock cube but add salt to taste if you like. Simple, nutritious, delicious and can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. You can freeze this but not with the cream added, leave it out and add it later if you are freezing it.
Tuesday: I feel like I have been on the go fours and it’s only 9.30am. Mostly I have been doing household bits, the mundane stuff that has to be done also sort the egg shed, feed the dogs, put out the rubbish etc. Time for a quick coffee and contemplate what jobs I will do today, it’s still cold only about 5c at the minute, getting up to 14c at some point but at least the cold wind has dropped today which is a bonus. I haven’t checked the poly tunnel yet but I think the plants will have been ok, I have some out for sale in a little greenhouse and they are fine this morning so the Molly coddled ones should be cosy. The pepper plants and cucumbers are not big enough to transplant yet, they will go into the big tunnel, I had considered doing that today but they need to wait a while yet.
I decided as it was pretty cool outside I would sit and make some cards which is what I did for a couple of hours.
John came home as he had left his phone somewhere and had to phone around to find out where it was, eventually located it and will pick it up later.
I then went onto doing paperwork as I have got a bit behind and needed to catch up. Doing the household stuff and the farm receipts was the easy bit, doing Johns plumbing was painful. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ springs to mind. I took a lunch break and went back to it but I honestly can’t make head nor tail of some of it. It appears we don’t have all the statements, some of the invoices and I can’t for the life of me match up payments for one supplier 🙄 It drives me to despair the amount of times I have tried to get John to organise supplier and payment records might as well bash my head against a brick wall. I am sure we will get there eventually as it’s usually all filed in Johns head but that’s not much use to me when he isn’t here. He tells me he has a book that he writes it down in now, I can’t wait to see that! Probably won’t be able to make head or tail of that either, it will be in special ‘John’ code 😜
Typical of me as I can’t leave a job alone until it’s done even when I know I can’t finish it so I have been going back and forth to the paperwork 😂 I have managed to chip away at little bits so I have less of it buzzing round in my head. This is all just to get it straight ready for getting in order for the accountant, that is yet to come 😩
I lit the Rayburn around 3pm, we haven’t had it lit for the last few days and relied on the electric blow heater in the living room but it’s just too cold overnight and so today I have decided to light it. Chances are we will be roasting by mid evening but we can always let it go out again.
I have been saddened to read online that the whole shop local frenzy of last year seems to have died. Plenty of egg sellers wondering where the customers have gone 🤔
I just need to have a small moan and get something off my chest here: I have just seen a social media post regarding garden waste and the fact that you have to pay to get your waste taken away. A garden tax, was someone’s description, excuse me 🙄 but it’s your garden and your garden waste and yet you think you shouldn’t have to pay to get it removed kerbside, here is an idea COMPOST IT YOURSELF THEN! Thanks for listening 😜
Seriously though there is a mind set that is pretty ugly when you look at it, everything is someone else’s fault or responsibility, the wider picture is never looked at or considered 🙄
It’s 8.45, John has gone out to put the birds to bed and if I had any nuts I would be sweating them off by now 😂 bloody roasting in here even though we didn’t put any more wood on the fire after 7pm as it was already getting a bit warm, all or nothing!
Wednesday: It started raining persistently last night with a few heavy bursts overnight and it’s still raining this morning. This is about one of the only times I will put a smiley face for rain 😁 we haven’t had any for weeks and the ground was really, really dry. The beds we planted up were holding up just about, I had been giving the plants a quick pick me up sprinkling with the hose but they really needed a soaking and now they have had one. Of course, not only will the plants put on some lush growth but so will the weeds 😂 ah well you can’t win them all and at least they might be easier to pull than they have been lately.
I have been delighted with the tulips this year, we don’t have many but they have been bright and cheery and really lift the spirits more so than the daffodils I think. So I had a mad idea lol and thought it would be nice to plant up pots of tulip bulbs and perhaps sell them, they would make great Easter and Mother’s Day presents ours birthday or general have a nice day gifts. Of course one thing led to another and my enthusiasm spread to, wouldn’t it be nice to have the bed in front of the window filled with tulips so I bought 500 bulbs, yep 500 lol, it’s the daffodil episode all over again. Obviously I have missed the boat this year but next year they are going to look fantastic and there will be enough bulbs to pot some up for sale. The 1000 daffodil bulbs I bought and planted along with Mum and Ken are doing well, they come up each year in a block of beautiful yellow but they always seem to be a bit late pr than most. They are up in the back paddock too which means they can’t really be seen, on hindsight I should have planted them in the driveway grass, never mind I can always start dividing them, this is the third year of flowering so I could start lifting some later in the year.
BOO! I just want to conduct a little experiment lol to see how many people read the blog all the way through. So if you could add Boo to the comments I would very much appreciate it 😁
Don’t forget to Boo 👻😜
Went out mid morning to do the horses and the guinea pigs, I watered the greenhouse and checked on the polytunnel. Where my hands got wet I could really feel the cold it’s not much warmer out there and there is not much I can be doing at the minute so I came back in to organise dinner tonight. I did get chased by the gander and at one point I thought I was cornered but found a hazel stick on the floor, a wave of that and he went off haughtily with his women, 😅
I have avintage flower press that I picked up at a boot sale years ago just because I loved it. I have never used it, until now, this morning I have picked some tiny flower heads and pressed them, no idea what I will do with the yet but it will be fun to think of something.
Saturday May 1st 2021: May Day, Beltane, a time to celebrate the arrival of summer 🙄 (thats a bit iffy here in the UK 😂) Still it is the time to enjoy nature at its finest, the blossom on the trees, the flowers, the hedgerows, the lush green grass. Birds, insects and animals everywhere are busy reproducing. These days we barely give May Day a second thought which is really sad, there was a time when a maypole was a permanent features in towns and villages and May Day was a day of celebration.
I had a very productive morning and part of the afternoon. I have been weeding, digging out deep rooted weeds, raking, having a bonfire and putting down membrane on the difficult for me to get too bed. It’s a good job I had been busy as you will notice nothing written for Thursday and Friday, that’s because apart from basic jobs I did bigger all really 😜
Sunday: Productive again, I know, two days in a row 😂 On the job list this morning apart from the usual was to get a spot of shopping, we were there at 9.30 and gone by 9.55 😜 Luckily the supermarket we use allows self service before 10, as we drove past another supermarket they were still queuing to get in. Back home unload and put away and then off to the DIY store for some fencing. We have an area just outside the back door that the old drive way cuts through, across the drive is the gate to the garden. I wanted to fence the drive off part way down, firstly this will mean that the area is secure for the toddlers and children to move between the house and the garden. Second but no less important it means the dogs can’t get into that area, they knock the kids over half the time and the other half of the time they dig holes. The holes then become ankle twisting areas that you don’t always see, usually because I am carrying something. The dogs can come in when we allow them but it means we can also shut them behind the fence if we don’t want them there. The other reason is the free range mobster geese, they have no manners, crap everywhere and nibble on everything plus they are pretty scary to children being much bigger than them. In fact they are pretty scary to me at the minute so the last thing I want is to open the back door to find them there 😜
Have a great week, hopefully the weather will warm up just a tad and everyone will be happy 😃
frieslandfarm (flowers) 