Tag: Nature

Posted in Friesland Farm

A lot of rain, a lot of wood-chip & a few celebrations 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 14th October: Not raining this morning and it hasn’t rained overnight 😀 although by 12pm Mother nature just couldn’t help herself 😜 However I did manage to get some good jobs done before the rain started, John had cleaned both the big hen huts over the weekend and so it was my turn to clean out some pens. I started with the duck hut, got all the wet soggy straw out and put nice clean stuff back in although it won’t stay like that very long 😐 next it was the turn of the quail, clean out all the wet, dirty soggy stuff and refresh with clean, dry straw. I also got a piece of polycarbonate (which actually was for another job but I can get some more) and stapled it to the side of the hut, putting the dogs away first of course otherwise Mia would take off 🤪 The polycarbonate is to stop the rain blowing in and this making a nicer environment for the quail, it’s see-through which is perfect for letting light in but keeping the wet off. They seemed pretty happy with it all, I also gave them a bit of a treat with some wild bird seed. Next onto cleaning out the Turkey pen, I let them out to roam as it’s easier to do it without them in there, there are signs of rats so I need to sort that out.

After that is when it began to rain so I tackled the small poly tunnel, Monty Don says the tomatoes won’t ripen anymore and I am inclined to agree with him, so I picked all the remaining tomatoes, green and ripe ones and cleared the plants from the tunnel. I have put the basketful in the shed as he says they may ripen in the dark, I’ll give it a go and if they don’t it’s green tomato chutney time 😀 I put in a top dressing of fresh compost and planted the left side with garlic bulbs, the two small tubs I have sown some giant winter spinach and hopefully they will all grow well. I did notice some mouse activity in there, clusters of eaten hazelnuts and tell tale holes so I have set the mousetrap 😏 I don’t want the garlic bulbs all eaten before they get going.

With that job done I then picked some broccoli and purple sprouting spears for dinner tonight and picked a few bits that had gone to seed and gave them to the rabbit/guineas who squealed with delight lol.

I took a couple of other photos while I was out there, the first was a little ‘shroom village’ I love his time of year when these appear all over the place, I like to imagine that they are indeed little villages 😜 The second photo is of our ducks making the most of the recent downpours which has left a small lake in the corner of the paddock. The river that goes with it has now gone but it has left a playground for them to enjoy. Late last night when we were stood out there we could hear wild ducks also enjoying the temporary feature.

Lunchtime 😀 then tidy and clean the boot room, I have been looking at ways to improve this room, gently showing pictures of a built in thing to John lol. Ideally I would like a bench to sit on when getting boots on and off, mostly for the grandchildren 😉 and I have a few other ideas that would make the room more workable than it is at the moment, we will see, it may never happen but it just might if I’m lucky ☺️

Well that took me all afternoon and then some to tackle the boot room 😜 I managed to bin a black bag full of stuff and a black bag full of old coats, gloves etc for the clothes bin and now it looks a whole lot better than before. I have also secured a date from Martin to do some carpentry out there 😀 Hopefully I will eventually get a room that works rather than a room I have to work around 🙄 The only problem with getting it sorted is that a lot of it got put out into the next undercover bit lol so guess what is on the jobs list for tomorrow.

A bonus of tidying and sorting was that in the preserves cupboard there is mincemeat and I found a couple of bottles of sloe gin I have made either last year or the year before 😀

It hammered down again this afternoon and John came home early to a few jobs lol, the eggs and feeding because I was still knee deep in boot room junk, then rod the drain out the back because the water was starting to come in, change a light bulb (not an ordinary one or I would have done it myself) haha no peace for the wicked 😜

Dinner, animals shut away, dogs washed so they can come into the clean boot room and the day is done. And still it keeps on raining 😏

Tuesday: So as stated the job on the list this morning was the undercover back area but first the animals all need feeding and letting out. On my first trip up to the small back paddock I can see that Jack has let himself out into the large paddock, Biscuit, bless her has stayed where she should. She is a very sweet little Shetland pony, they can have the affectionate term of ‘shitlands’ 😂 but she is not of that ilk…..not yet!

Onto the job in hand and starting to sort out what needs keeping and putting away and what needs throwing out. Over the years we seem to have accumulated a huge array of gadgets and gizmos that do various jobs around the place, sometimes they may only get used once a year, sometimes they are in constant use just depends on what needs doing. One thing we do have a lot of is horse paraphernalia 🙄 anyone who has horses or has someone living with them will know that they don’t throw anything away. They also get given old stuff from people giving up the horses and so it continues until the place is stuffed with numnahs, bridles, head collars, saddles and rugs of every type, one for the wet, one for the cold, one for a bit wetter or a bit colder, one for -5 -10 -15 one for the summer, one for the flies, its endless, pretty sure the horse couldn’t give a flying **** about being trussed up and would love to just run free 😜 That said I have found spaces for it all and the rest of the stuff and it’s looking a whole lot tidier out there which in turn gives me a clear mind and a happy disposition, objective achieved 😬

Yesterday when I was tidying up the boot room I was sighing at the amount of alcohol that was in the preserves cupboard, we don’t drink that much, some of it came from Johns Mums house, most of it from birthdays and parties that didn’t get used and is still there. Then I looked in another fridge we have out the back that is not plugged in and more bottles of various alcoholic beverages, I’m thinking of having a bottle stall 😜

I have discovered a leak in my greenhouse 😏 not a big one but with all the rain we are having it’s finding it’s way in, I have mentioned it to John and it looks like a roof window so as soon as the weather backs off we will fix it.

The sun shone beautifully this afternoon and it was most welcome in fact I went out to the front and just stood there letting it warm me, it had a good bit of warmth in it too considering the time of year. It made doing the afternoon rounds a pleasant job instead of drudgery.

Wednesday: Turned out to be a lovely day full of sunshine. In the morning after the rounds I did a bit in the big tunnel, I can’t do as much as I want to get done because I want to protect the pathways with the wood chip before I start barrowing manure into there, so I did some cutting back and tidying up. I sorted out some tomatoes and the little bit of remaining veg to go out for sale and found a bucketful of greens for the rabbit/guineas.

The guy came with the wood chip which was handy, the pile is huge and he has more if I want it. I got stuck into moving some of it straightaway, 15 shovel fulls in each barrow, around 30 loads, backwards and forwards until I was a bit pooped lol, and hot because the sun was still shinning fiercely. It should easily do all the pathways in the veg garden with a good thick cover which will kill off the weeds and make walking round the garden a lot less messier after the rain 😀 a quick rest and cool down before the afternoon feeding gets done.

It took me half an hour to cool down and another 15 mins to be able to move 🤪

I did think that after doing the rounds I wouldn’t be able to do any more woodchip moving but I found a bit in the reserve tank and did a few more barrowfuls. The sun was beginning to sink lower and lower, as it was still sunny the gnats were up and dancing into the night and I have enough issues to process without all over bites adding to the mix so I called it a day.

At dark John usually puts the animals away to bed, when the clocks change and it gets dark early it will be my job but for now it’s his. Tonight he called on me to help him as Ted was up on the roof, who is Ted I asked him, Ted the Turkey he replied 😂 I had no idea he had named him, just him it seems as he is the only one of the three that won’t go to bed nicely lol.

Thursday: A cold night and a ground frost this morning, I made the mistake of thinking because it was sunny yesterday it would be warm enough not to light the Rayburn, wrong, it was cold and a tad damp which is even worse 🙄 So it will probably get lit every night from here on in and eventually will be running all day and night.

I did the morning rounds and then went to check on the torts as I do each morning, I can’t find Billy 😏 he was there yesterday and they can’t get out, I will do another good search later but judging by the ground disturbance where I last saw him something has taken him, he is pretty heavy mind you and I wouldn’t think an animal would get far with him, also he would be pretty difficult to eat if not impossible.

I went out to get my hair cut with Shelley and when we came back Sam was here with the twiglets. Shelley went to have a look for the tortoise and crisis averted it seems I didn’t look hard enough 😂

The chap with the woodchip came with a second load 😬 and now I literally have heaps of it.

Did the afternoon rounds, lit the Rayburn got the dinner ready and sat down with a cuppa 😀

Friday: Repeat blood tests this morning so up and on with it 😀 I went to Shelleys afterwards where we put together a new toddler bed for Florence and then had some soup before returning home. Shelley stayed for a bit and barrowed some woodchip with Josh and Flo helping until they got bored and cold lol. This evening we are going to Sams for tapas so I made those, I did dates stuffed with sheep’s cheese and wrapped in prosciutto and some gluten free mushroom pin wheels, I also roasted a bunch of grapes to see how they would turn out 🙄

I bought some kefir the last time we went shopping and I had a sup today but I have found it makes me feel sick, it’s the second time I have tried it and the same result so I maybe won’t be trying that again. Kombucha I can tolerate so will stick to that I think.

Saturday: A dry start to the day, John did the morning rounds while I did housework, a bit more in depth than a run around of the hoover and a flick of the duster this time 😂 So that took up a large part of the day and I can now see the top of the kitchen table which had got clogged up with ‘stuff’ John meanwhile did some cleaning out of the hens and cut back some tree branches that snapped off last winter and were overhanging the neighbours field.

In the afternoon we watched the live parliament debates wondering what the heck is going to happen with Brexit and hope that they sort something out sooner rather than later.

It was Johns 40 year school reunion this evening which was great fun, considering it wasn’t my year or even my school I knew quite a few people there, having never moved away we both still see a lot of old school friends locally.

Oooo yes and Charlie and Macca got engaged today 😀😀

Sunday: A clear night last night meant a cold start to the day this morning 🙄 John did the morning rounds while I did some mundane household jobs 🤪 Then we went out for breakfast which made a nice change. John went off to visit his Mum and I took the time to get into the greenhouse and pot up a few plants that my Mum had bought over, some stocks (a nice cottage garden flower) and some dancing ladies which are rose campion but in various different colours. I just need to decide where I am going to plant all these flowers lol and also decide if I am going to totally rearrange the garden (which will be a mighty task) or just to modify it.

Tea and cake in the afternoon at Mums for my niece Zeraphina’s 3rd birthday and not is that another day done but also another week.

Take care and take time to enjoy something everyday however small.

Posted in Friesland Farm

A fledgling, a rat, hopscotch and turkeys 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday again! 15th July: A pleasant enough overcast morning so great for me to get some stuff done. I mostly did picking and weeding, courgettes, French beans, broccoli , a pepper 😀 some cucumbers, raspberries, a few strawberries and blueberries and some flowers for the kitchen. I potted up a few strawberry runners for next year and pulled up the onions and garlic. I have no idea what I was thinking was with the garlic as there are only 6 lol, that won’t keep us going very long. I only have about 15 onions but that’s fine because I have welsh onion, which is perpetual and babbington leeks which are also perpetual. The welsh onion and the bab leeks have seeded so I collected those to grow some more next year, with the welsh onion you just pull what you need and they grow like bunch onion so more will grow and the leeks you just cut off at the base and they will regrow 😀

Then I decided that before the sun made an appearance I would cut back some grass areas with the ride on mower, well it started fine and I got it out of the stable block to where I wanted it, engaged the cutter and it stopped 😜 I couldn’t get it going again so I sat for a while waiting for it to do whatever it was thinking of doing and hoping by resting it that I could start it again, suddenly I heard patch yelping and some squealing (which I knew was a rat) I went round the corner, patch had a bleeding nose and the rat was dead 🙄 I took patch inside, cleaned his nose with, dettol, then hibiscrub then I sprayed it with purple spray, moved the rat to the burning barrel, went back to the mower and it started 😀 Patch 1 rat 0, Dawn 1 grass 0 I call that a successful morning.

The Sun appeared so that will do outside for now unless it clouds over again.

Tuesday: John was up late! That meant I was on my own this morning and the Sun was already out 🙄 I didn’t mind though and quite enjoyed myself, making sure everything was well fed, watered and clean and tidy as I went. I did a bit of watering in the tunnels and that was pretty much it as the skies were blue and not a cloud in sight. Sam and Mia came over and we went to visit Charlie and Macca who have a week off work, then we met Shelley, Josh and Flo at the shake shop before coming back here for the afternoon.

Did a bit of grass cutting in the evening and watched the partial eclipse of the blood moon.

We also had a very tiny chap appear right by the back door late evening, seemed too small to be out but we couldn’t find any sign of a parent bird so I put it in a box in the greenhouse and will let it out first thing in the morning, hopefully it will make it, I think it’s a baby goldfinch judging by its beak and a tiny flash of yellow on its wing.

Wednesday: First job of the day was to let the little bird out, I put it back where I found it, went in to make tea and when I came back out it was gone 😀 The general advice if you find a fledgling is to leave it alone, this was late in the evening and it was at ground level so I was worried it wouldn’t make it alive through the night so I did what I thought was the best thing for it and hopefully it will thrive.

It’s overcast but muggy this morning, it meant I could get on though so I did a bit of hoeing, raking and tidying up. Then I put up a temporary fence between the orchard and the garden so that I could let the younger light Sussex out into the orchard to scratch and forage which is what I had always intended they should do. We had a temporary fence there before but eventually it fell over so I took it up and it has taken me this long to put one back 😜 The weeds have grown high in there so I might as well make use of the birds to clear it, save me doing it.

I picked another load of courgettes 😝 I gave most of them to the young birds to peck away at but kept some as I intend to use them for cake and jam.

I had the best of intentions to make cake and jam however I used all the sugar I had in the jam 🙄 so no cake today, I made flapjack instead and that nearly didn’t happen as I had no syrup but I substituted maple syrup and treacle instead. The maple syrup was too runny on its own so I figured sticky treacle would help, its cooking at the minute I will let you know how it tastes later. The jam smells amazing, that’s the grated lemon rind that goes in but I’m thinking this will be a lovely light flavoured jam, it has to sit for a few hours for the courgette to absorb the sugar and lemon flavour so I will boil it up later on and see how it tastes.

I made bread as well today.

So I have boiled the jam and jarred it up but even though it reach the right temperature I can’t see it setting somehow, we will wait and see.

Thursday: It rained a little overnight, not much but enough for a wetting and again it will liven things up a bit plus keep the dust down. The jam didn’t set, I followed the recipe but I kind of knew it wasn’t going to, I couldn’t t see it being thick enough I should have followed my instinct and not added the water, courgettes are wet enough as it is. I have some added pectin sugar and may try boiling it up again with some of that in and see how it goes, if it doesn’t work that’s a bit fat fail 😜

I have Mia today while Sam goes for a scan and to see the consultant, she is now 36 weeks and huge, poor girl, she is only 5ft 1” so it’s quite a weight for her to carry around, although she is looking very well apart from that and swollen feet. Hopefully they will give her a date today as she is having a section due to the lowest baby being breech. It will be ‘all hands on deck’ when the time comes, one baby is enough to look after especially when you already have a toddler but two, that’s a whole new ball game 🤪

I showed Mia how to play hopscotch 😀 and we watched a caterpillar crawl and crawl and crawl, Mum came over and did some bits in the garden 😀 Once Sam had picked up Mia I went out and collected the eggs etc and then I went to water the polytunnel. The minute I had turned on the hose and walked into the tunnel the Sun, which has been absent most of the day, decided to blaze 🙄 it was boiling in there 🥵 and I had to crouch and hide behind any available foliage I could find 😜 You may wonder why I was watering so early (4.30) well I am going out for dinner with my girlfriends tonight (yes I have friends lol) and won’t have time later I also need a bit of time to make myself look acceptable for a rare public appearance 🤪

Friday: It’s raining this morning 😀 not a downpour but steady enough to get you wet which is very welcome. John did the animals so all I had to do was get some feed for the rabbits and torts, job done by 7.40 lol. I have a bit of paperwork I can get done today and also have a haircut, it’s got long and driving me mad so I think I will get it all chopped off.

Finally some proper rain, grey, cold, depressing looking day, lovely jubbly, I’m not a killjoy it’s just that the ground was in desperate need not to mention the water tanks 😜 The dogs have confined themselves to the boot room and I shall be doing indoor stuff like paperwork, filing, freezing produce, possibly some cooking and some cleaning without feeling guilty that I should be outside working lol.

I had the hair cut and blow dried and I did say ‘you know it is probably the only time it will look that good’ as I am not very good at blowdrying lol anyhow before long I was outside doing the animals it started raining and boom frizz bomb hair 🤣

As the weather had already ruined the look I carried on outside, this time of the year is the best time to dig up the ragwort, it stands out splendidly and is easily spotted. We don’t have much of it, I pulled about 20 lots over the whole 5 acres, it’s biennial so it grows the first year and flowers the next, it doesn’t spread fast unless you let it go to seed, failure to prevent the spread of ragwort is a criminal offence and can land you in court, I would say that the local councils seem oblivious to this ruling though as they never seem to clear their verges 🙄

Saturday: Up fairly early, John did the animals while I sorted out clothing for today I am off to the Fantasy Forest Festival 😀 I have to pack for every eventuality 😜 find loose but cover all clothing 🤪 pack sunscreen, uv clothing and umbrella in case it’s very sunny, and all the other usual stuff too. John meanwhile will be busy on the cement mixer concreting the hen shed in the front paddock ready for the arrival of new hens. We did contemplate concreting it when we first converted it and decided not to but we should have as now we are having to do it anyway.

The fantasy festival was fabulous what more can I say, the costumes on some were amazing, real labours of love and we loved the eclectic mix of people that all mingled with a happy disposition that gave the festival a great feel.

Sunday: Exciting day today as we pick up the turkey poults 😀 6 x 6 week old Red Bourbon turkeys, we have always talked about getting some but never have and then the opportunity arose this year so we jumped in with both feet. Before we went to collect them the animals needed feeding and letting out and I did a bit of picking as well, French beans and some tomatoes plus a basket full of courgettes 🙄

Turkeys collected and we housed them in the spare rabbit pen for the time being, there is plenty of room in there, it’s under cover so hopefully they will be very happy for a few weeks until we let them out to free range.

The temps are set to climb pretty high next week, 34c oh my goodness that’s hot for this country lol, I will be planning to get up very early and get done so that I can hide inside in the cool for the rest of the day 🥵🥵

If you have never been to the UK and live in a much hotter country than ours I apologise if I sound like a wimp lol I guess it’s just what you get used to 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Two days on ice, an irritated Jay & moving day.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th October: The year seems to be racing past now! Yesterday afternoon while just straightening cushions on the sofa my back twinged and now I am suffering with lower back pain, ffs does it never end 😝 It’s not massively painful, I can move but it’s a constant nagging even when I have taken numerous pills for it so today’s progress will be slow 🤪 This went from bad to worse through the day and eventually I couldn’t sit down for longer than a couple of minutes, luckily standing/Walking is fine but I hope after a nights sleep this has gone!

We need to sort out the duck situation, we have a lot of free loaders at the minute, the drakes that we hatched out, some older ducks that no longer lay and some who just refuse to lay no matter what we do.

I made a batch of ‘use it up’ soup which is basically anything that looks like it needs using, veg some chicken even 1/4 tin of baked beans, along with some herbs, mushrooms and tomatoes and that’s what is for dinner along with some freshly baked bread and an apple crumble.

Tuesday: Ok so this is sciatica I think! Very painful to sit down for more than 2/3 minutes, luckily standing, walking and bending is fine and mostly lying down is ok except it woke me this morning with lots of pain 😝 I have done some stretches and taken aspirin which has taken the edge off of it and I have contacted a fabulous lady that does massage and Bowen, hopefully she will be able to help sort it out. I have Mia today and tomorrow this week so that’s going to be a bundle of fun 🤪

Yesterday I got fed up with the hops that were in the kitchen drying on an oven tray, I have been waiting for about a month for some cotton sacks to put them in, no sign of them so I threw the hops away as the potency would be gone by now and guess what turns up today, yes, the sacks 😤 never mind I will keep them for the lavender harvest next year if I ever get a decent amount lol. I wanted to make slumber sacks with hops and lavender, maybe I still will I can probably order some online, mine did not seem to have much of an odour to them anyhow so maybe they were not quite ripe enough or overripe, who knows?

Thursday: I have spent two days with an ice pack on my sciatic nerve, oh my goodness how painful is sciatica, at times I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I asked for tips and was amazed at how many sufferers there were out there. After trying various things I settled with ice packs and anti inflammatories, plenty of lying down or walking around as I couldn’t sit up at all. Luckily in our waste not want not life I had ice packs from when the fish was delivered that I kept for just such an occasion lol. Poor Mia wondered what an Earth was going on when instead of sitting down with her I had to lie down, still we entertained ourselves by me pretending to be her baby, I have seen every episode of Baby Joy Joy, that’s a new one on me, and somehow we managed to get through the two days 😋 Consequently I have done nothing else, John even had to do the orchard lot.

Today it is so much better, just a small nagging which reminds me to be a little bit careful, I doubt I am going to be sitting down for long periods anyhow as I have plenty of catching up to do.

Charlie and Macca should, fingers crossed, complete on their new house tomorrow and so it will be moving day for them, their excitement is palpable and hopefully it will all go according to plan and by the weekend they will be in their own house and I will have a spare room back again 😀

I ordered some haricot beans which have arrived, 500g, I will use some of them for cooking and then save some for planting next year, that’s the plan anyway, now all I have to do is learn to make good baked beans 😝

The geese have finally discovered that they can get into the side paddock, it’s only taken them about three months! When the grass was scarce we opened up the rails for them to go through but they wouldn’t pass the tape that was up on the top, any other barrier we don’t want them to go through seems fair game but when you want them to do something they won’t, go figure, anyhow they are now wandering in there but seemed obsessed about getting into my garden as they linger, looking longingly through the fence for a large part of the day, there is no logic to a birds thinking I have learnt over the years 🤪

I wanted to let the ducks out of the duck pen to forage around under the crab apple tree but I needed to secure a few areas into the veg garden first to make sure they don’t get in there, the veg garden will be for the orchard ducks when I have finished harvesting everything. After that I set about harvesting some of the veg that needed picking, butternut squash, courgettes, some tomatoes, spaghetti squash and a token aubergine! I always have trouble growing aubergine and this year was no different really, I keep trying but for some reason they don’t like it here, except for one plant which is thriving, in fact it’s still flowering, I have only had two fruits from it mind you.

The butternut squash are all different sizes from very small to large but they will all be used one way or another. One of the things I love about growing is being able to bring it in and make something fresh with it, today it’s butternut squash soup, and I am proud to say that every ingredient bar one is Home produced, onions, garlic, carrots, sage, rosemary, and of course the squash itself, the only thing that wasn’t grown here is the celery, not bad and definitely from farm to fork or spoon in this case, with a freshly made loaf of bread that will do nicely for lunch 😀 I had a thought that I could put together all the items needed for the soup and sell it as a package, I wonder if it would sell?

While the oven is cooking bread I might as well make good use of it so I am roasting tomatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, and basil in olive oil and butter, this will probably be the last batch of tomato sauce for the freezer, It’s all chunky or whole as it will be sieved when it’s done.

Also made a quick fruit cake 😀

While I was mixing it I heard a noise that I haven’t heard before, a kind of squawking, a bird, I looked out and in the Oak tree was a Jay, I have never seen one before certainly not here, I was pretty sure it was a jay though and googled it to make sure, yep definitely a jay and to check the call it was making I Googled that as well, I found a video that was titled ‘irritated jay’ lol yep that was the noise it was making, obviously irritated about something, we seem to have a few animals and birds that we haven’t seen before, not sure if it’s the weather or something else but they are welcome additions.

Charlie cooked dinner for us tonight as a thank you, she moved back in with Macca in Feb in order to save a deposit for a house and tomorrow is the day they get the key to their new home 😀

Friday: Moving day 😀 you forget how much waiting around there is on moving day, packing everything up has mostly been done over the last few days and waiting for the go ahead seems like forever 😝

Ground frost this morning and it is a chilly start to the day, John did the main lot and I did the orchard lot then he went off to do some small jobs while I helped here and did a bit of cleaning, then we had a phone call to say that an ambulance had been called for Johns Mum, all the best laid plans and all that.

The move was smooth 😀 they got the keys around lunchtime and with the cars and van loaded up everything was in by about 4pm, we all helped with putting things away and getting it liveable.

Fish and chip supper at the new house.

Johns Mum is staying in for tests we will have to wait and see what the results are.

Saturday: Foggy, quite chilly this morning.

I knew it was coming and it finally arrived, I now have Johns cold 🤒 I think I will write this year off as far as health is concerned, it would be easy to just give up but I will chalk it up to experience instead and carry on regardless 😜 Besides the year is winding down now as far as the veg garden is concerned, and I have already decided not to tidy it too much but to leave it to nature and the ducks to process weeds and debris 😀

The torts have not been out of their hut for a week or more so it will soon be time to pack up the hut and move it to a winter location and leave them until March time.

John had to work first thing but when he got back we got the tractor out to spread some wood chip that we had delivered last week on the ménage. I had been burning some rubbish and some scrap wood and thought I would have a go at spreading it with the shovel, I soon discovered that it had built up heat and was starting to decompose so spreading it will stop that and using the tractor bucket is more efficient than a shovel. After that we went to pick up a sofa from Shelley as we had been using and storing Charlie’s and now she has moved we didn’t have one, a bit of shopping on the way back, then John went to see his Mum in hospital and the day is done.

Sunday: Foggy and chilly again today, I lit the Rayburn quite early, around 10 as it was noticeably cool and low and behold the Sun came out, it turned into a very warm afternoon. There are ladybirds flying around all over the place out there, confused by the warm weather I think. We popped out to collect a set of bedside drawers for the now spare room, when we got back I ordered some pork and a bit of goat meat from a fellow online smallholder which will arrive Tuesday. That made me think I better empty one of the freezers to defrost it so that I can sort them out, we have two large chest freezers and now one of them is rammed full, there is so much good stuff in there and once it’s all sorted I can a) see what exactly is in there and b) start using it to make some great things 😀

I also stood and shelled quite a few walnuts this morning and put them in a jar ready to use when needed or to snack on as and when, with all that going on I can feel a cooking sesh ahead 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hygge, Hops and a Hedgehog 🦔

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th September: The Autumn equinox has occurred, the end of the light time of the year and the beginning of the dark time is upon us. Time to reflect and look back at what has worked, what hasn’t and a time to look forward and think about what to do next year. A time of myths, legends and rituals of all kinds, harvest is one of my favourite times of year, the word derives from an old English word meaning Autumn. I like the fact that it gets dark early and you can hunker down inside all cosy and warm having fed everyone with a hearty supper, Hygge as the Norwegian and Danish would say.

Talking of myths we heard a lovely one in Guernsey, some of the older houses have a large stone protruding from the chimney of the building, a witch seat, the belief was that a witch out flying on her broomstick could rest on one of these stones and get warmth from the chimney and if you provided one of these you would be spared of any witchy spells she might inflict 🧙‍♀️

The temps plummeted last night and I think there was a grass frost this morning, good job the Rayburn is ready when we are although the temps are set to climb again during the week.

John did the main of the birds this morning then it was just the orchard lot for me to do, my main thought is to lock up the house while I’m out on the farm, sad times but I’ve heard another report from just down the road that occurred yesterday so there is still skullduggery going on and best to be safe than sorry.

There were plenty of walnuts all over the floor so I have picked them up, washed them off, rinsed them in white vinegar (to stop mould forming) dried them off and put them in open trays in the kitchen to dry off. Quick coffee then outside again to see what else can be done, Sun is shinning this morning though you can feel a real nip in the air.

Managed to get a good bit done, two loads of muck into the polytunnel, plant a shrub in the duck pen and secure round it, plant a bush in the orchard and secure round it, pick a trug full of greens for the rabbits, harvest all the small broccoli florets and collect eggs and put them out for sale, the biggest pain in the arse though is keep locking and unlocking the doors to go in and out!

Tuesday: Mia arrived early in the morning, I had managed to just get the orchard lot fed and watered so that was ok, we did go out about 10am to pick up some eggs but apart from that we spent the day inside. Mia is in the middle of potty training so it doesn’t do to venture too far from the bathroom at the moment although she is doing very well, amazing, as I keep telling her 😀

I am practising Hygge tonight, an extra cardi on, a nice cup of milky coffee and my Norwegian slippers which are very warm and cosy, I have already worn them out once and Mum kindly re-felted the bottoms so I could carry on wearing them 😀

Wednesday: Another sunny, dry day 😀 After doing the orchard lot and re filling some of the bedding in various houses, I decided to try and start sorting out the garden in preparation for the winter. The garden gets ravaged either by the weather, the ducks or the chickens and so putting everything away or securing everything is a must, especially any plants in pots that you want ready for next Spring. The ducks walk over everything squashing it all, the chickens kick everything over then scratch through it and the wind just blows it all around, so it seemed like a good day to start organising stuff. I now have two areas that have plants in that are cordoned off and covered with mesh, I have planted a few more bits along the edible hedge in the orchard, when I say edible that includes food for the birds and bees as well as the chickens and ducks 😀 A bit of egg collecting and sorting in between and suddenly it’s already lunchtime.

I have decided to pull the plug on the new greenhouse for now, we haven’t got round to dismantling it and putting a base down and to be honest I’m not sure I can justify the money really, so I will use the old one again next year and see how things go. No point spending a fortune on something if I’m ill again and can’t get out there to use it to it’s maximum so for now it’s on the back burner.

I’m quite tired after all that so going to have a sit down and maybe a quick nap 😀 I’m am very fortunate to be able to stop and rest when I need to if I had a regular job I think I would have got the sack by now 😝 Don’t get me wrong, what I really want to be doing is ploughing into jobs, the mind is willing, the body is most definitely not!

I tried a little shut eye but I couldn’t so I thought I would read the rest of my book instead, after visiting Guernsey the obvious choice for new reading material was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. What a delightful gem of a book 😀 I thoroughly recommend it if you are a reader, now I just need to watch the film and see if they managed to capture the essence of it? (I watched it, they didn’t)

I have been eyeing up the light Sussex chickens, they are pretty big now but need to put on weight before we process them, ideally I would like them to get a couple of months on the garden free ranging, some will be selected to hold back for breeding for the next batch and I think there are at least 4 cockerels in there. The joy with writing a blog diary is that I can look back and find out exactly when they hatched, on investigation I find that they are 16 weeks so plenty of growing time left yet 😀

Did a bit of hoovering, polishing and cleaning, the place needs a proper good going through really but I will save it for rainy/colder weather.

I’m still picking up walnuts and there are still loads left on the tree, I need to make a real effort to use them this year especially in cooking but by the time I have cracked them all open I have lost the will to cook 😝

Did the afternoon egg collecting, the pullets are laying really well now, at least half of them, though the eggs are small they are still mighty fine eggs 😀

I need to decide about Tuesdays, it proved quite a logistical event especially as its potty training time as well as having to lock the doors behind me, I can no longer, nip out so I’m contemplating putting a notice out to say there will be no egg collections on a Tuesday until further notice, it would give me a bit of a break from the pressure of having to get them out there on time and who knows we may be able to catch up with sales instead of constantly selling out.

Think it, do it, lol, that’s what I have done, put a notice out, no eggs on a Tuesday for the foreseeable future.

I lit the Rayburn 😋 just for a couple of hours to take the chill off the air during the evening and I must admit it will be nice to have dry, warm towels again. The problem with this time of year is that it’s not quite cold enough to have it full on but it’s too chilly not to have it at all, probably be sweating in bed later lol.

It will take a while to get to know how she has decided to perform this year but I’m sure we will all settle into a routine soon enough, the one regret I have is that there is not enough space to have a chair right next to her, that would have been perfick 😋 mind you, you would have found me sat there all Winter long 😝

Thursday: Fabulous morning, sunny with a hint of mist rising from the ground, beautiful. By 8am I had done my morning bits and was stood having a coffee outside. My neighbour had ask if I have anything for the harvest festival display so I went round and had a look, some hops, a few little pumpkins and some sweet corn stalks is about all I have this year, hopefully they will be of use. I cut down all the hops and put some aside and the rest I have harvested ready to dry, I want to make hop pillows and need to dry the heads. They are very tactile little things once they are off the vine and as light as a feather, I will leave them in the sun for today and finish them off drying indoors for a couple of days. I don’t have very many as I try to keep the vine under control, it’s suppose to grow along the fence but it keeps creeping up the pear tree and strangling it!

Did a bit of pottering about which was nice, I watered the shrubs I had planted on the front paddock fence line and the apple tree, collected a couple of ‘keeper’ apples there are not many this year, sat and ate the last pear I found hiding on the tree, beautifully succulent and tasty 😋 picked up some eggs and put them out, saw a dragonfly which made me smile, a fab day for pottering out there.

I have a large amount of tomatoes to use up so I’m going to roast them with some olive oil and garlic then sieve them and freeze them for winter use, it’s such a good year for them that you can’t even give them away let alone sell them lol.

I ordered a bulb planter for the daffs, it’s a good strong one which I was surprised as it only cost £24, I took it up the back paddock to have a go but the ground is still much too hard! It needs a bit of rain on it dare I say 😋

Friday: No sun as yet this morning but it’s still early, John was up and out to do the birds just as it got light, patch the dog was barking incessantly, I got up to investigate couldn’t see anything, when John came in he told me it was a hedgehog 😀😀😀😀😀 A hedgehog, I couldn’t be more delighted 😁 they are in decline here in the UK and I haven’t seen one on the farm for about 5 years now so it’s an exciting find and puts paid to any idea that I had about using roundup on the veg garden paths, it will have to be hoed instead 😝

The wildlife has steadily increased over the years, frogs, toads, hedgehogs (well at least one of each) multiple different garden birds, the sparrows that seemed to have gone over the last few weeks have suddenly all come back to check out the roosting areas they used last winter, dragonflies, butterflies, insects galore, it’s a great feeling to nurture nature.

I’m walking back from doing the orchard lot and what do I see in the middle of the driveway but a rolled up ball of prickles covered in leaves, the dogs must have managed to roll it out to play football with it! So I went and got appropriate hand wear and picked it up and took it to the greenhouse along with some cat food, it’s not hungry and I’m pleased to say it looks in good condition, no ticks. I watched it walk around looking for a way out and so went and built a quick hedgehog house out of wooden posts and a broken slab with some leaves and straw for bedding, and then popped it in there. Hopefully it will at least hang around, taking care to stay out of the way of the dogs in future 😋

Blood tests this morning, I was supposed to have them last week but didn’t ring up in time.

Popped in to see my Mum and Ken as they have just come back from caravanning in the south west, came home with lots of killer jars and a couple of shrubs 😀

Went for a walk along the downs road with Josh, Shelley and Flo this afternoon, we played hide and seek behind the trees, ‘room on the broom’, ‘pull me out of the rabbit hole nana’ and conker football 😀

The woodpecker is about, I spotted him hammering a tree trunk this morning, then when I was out doing the afternoon feeding I heard him and then saw him take off in the unmistakable, undulating flight back toward this mornings tree. It is a greater spotted woodpecker the green ones tend to stay more in the hedge-line at the side of the long paddock so I don’t see them as often, one day I will get a picture but they are very quick.

Saturday: Another lovey sunny Autumn morning, I know the bubble is going to burst eventually but loving it while it’s here 😀 Today we are off to the local ploughing match, heavy horses, tractors galore and plenty of ‘Old McDonalds’ for Josh to see 😝

Fabulous day, glorious weather and bone dry under foot, we have seen heavy horses in their finery, steam engines galore, tractors old and new, eaten ice creams, doughnuts, hot dogs and baked potatoes (some of us ate some of them, not all of us ate all of them 😜) had a beer, looked at the produce competitions, watched some old crafts, thank goodness there are people who keep these going and chatted to friends and acquaintances, all in all a great time had by all. I am pretty sure Josh will fall asleep early and not wake up till morning, dreaming of the vintage tractor parade 😀

I bought a Hardy plumbago plant while I was there, mine died over winter and it’s a plant that I miss.

Sunday: I almost forgot it’s blog day! Perfect day for me outside for getting some work done, pleasant enough, not much sun but a hint now and again. I have been planting, barrowing, weeding, covering and generally trying to get things in order ready for Winter. Plants that I have bought and needed to plant out or on, barrowing muck from the heap onto beds, weeding the pathways and covering bare soil that has been weeded. By 2pm I was quite exhausted but feel I have achieved something at least. I pulled some carrots, they are in a raised bed and so not getting waterlogged (chance would be a fine thing as rain is mostly a distant memory this year) I’m hoping to get some cooking and baking done this week and tomato soup is still on my radar, carrots add a great bit of flavour to the soup. I am still picking outdoor tomatoes though it won’t be long before the frost gets them, I would make green tomato chutney but we have enough pickles to last us a while. My Dad always says ‘you should try green tomatoes fried’ hmmm not sure on that one, maybe I should at least try them?

John has been busy, tidying up and burning the bits of wood that couldn’t be cut up for the fire, we always seem to have wood lying around that needs burning, then he cleaned out the front hens and he has a plan to move them off of the front paddock and make a bigger pen where the hens for sale used to be housed seeing as we won’t be doing that anymore. He has now gone to do his Mum and I’ve sent him with a shopping list so I don’t have to go 😜

I washed and dried another load of walnuts today, that’s it now I’m not gathering any more! It’s weird because when Johns Dad was alive he used to ask me for walnuts and we never had that many, the two years since he died have been bumper years and the squirrel has been nowhere near, coincidence? Or is he giving me a helping hand?

I saw a green woodpecker flying around the farm today 😀

Definitely going to light the fire tonight, it’s chilly indoors at 3pm already.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Grazing tables, runner bean chutney & and soup mix.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday night again: As I usually start the blog on a Monday morning I sometimes miss out something relevant or interesting, tonight while John was watching the F1 highlights I was reading a book I ordered last week.

Pretty interesting stuff and quite a lot of plants I had no idea you could eat, some of them are obvious and well known but a lot of them are long forgotten for instance we all know what Quinoa is these days, but the victorians were eating it long before we ‘discovered’ it and then it fell out of favour for many, many years. I have got quinoa seed that I was going to grow this year but when I got ill I couldn’t sow it, I will defiantly give it a go next year, along with some other grains, amaranth, millet, and wheat.

The sky, for a very brief period tonight (about 3 minutes) was amazing, it looked like someone had lit up the whole place with orange floodlights, I have seen some amazing sunsets in the years we have been here but that is a first, it was quite eerie, it was quickly followed by rain and dark foreboding skies.

Monday 30th July: It’s my birthday 😀 and as is custom I will be providing the food for any visitors today, I have decided to lay on a grazing table, look them up, they are amazing, I’m not saying mine is going to look anything like the artistic offerings on Pinterest but I will give it my best shot. My present is not arriving until mid August, I know what it (they) are and they will be increasing the menagerie by 2 but I will leave you guessing until then 😜

First thing I turned the water on in the poly tunnel then indulged myself with a coffee and a catch up with The Handmaids Tale, difficult to watch at times but a fascinating series.

We sold out of eggs yesterday and nearly every day before that and by the time John went to work the hens hadn’t laid so after a quick shower and another coffee 😝 I went to collect so that we will have some for sale today!

Top up Jacks water in the field, give the burning bin a kick so that it keeps smouldering away, lay out some cardboard on the garden, we have another heatwave ahead apparently, hard boil some quail eggs ready for later, FaceTime with Shelley! Josh and Flo, then with Sam and Mia, sit down with coffee 😜 I actually feel rather to tired today so I’m not going over do it although there are many jobs to get done, it’s my day, they can wait 🤪

Had a wonderful evening with some amazing presents, my family know me very well, I did the grazing platters for food and I was really pleased with how they turned out

Tuesday: Family funeral today and so it was just get the necessary jobs done first thing, I then watched a short tutorial on forest gardening, then out for a large part of the day, come back to get the necessary jobs done then out for dinner in the evening with Dad and Sue who came up for the funeral. Very tired by the end of the day!

Wednesday: Lammas 😀 Up fairly early not for any other reason than the dogs barking to go out, they don’t normally but they were in for a good few hours yesterday and so it was only fair to let them out, mind you they were barking at 3.30am however I ignored that and they then waited until 5.

John did the feeding as normal (it’s fallen into normal anyway) and I did some watering in the tunnels, fed the rabbits some forage and hay, took the sheets off the bed to wash, still feel pretty tired this morning.

I potted on the honey berries, red currants and cranberry, the cranberry I actually potted into an old recycle bin, which I lined and filled with ericaceous compost, it likes to stay wet apparently so I need to remember to keep it watered. Sue and Dad called in for coffee before departing for Wales and after that I did a bit of housework and had a little rest.

By 2.30 we had sold out of eggs and when I was ill it had to stay like that until John came home but as I am on the mend I went round and collected them up, feeding the birds thief scratch corn in the process, a bit early in the day but I would never get anywhere near the hut without tripping over them or standing on them if I didn’t do it😝 While I am there I turn out the persistent broodies, we are down to about 4 now as apposed to 11 at one point!

Did a bit of watering in the evening just to keep on top of the bit of good the rain did.

Thursday: Had a bit of a lie in this morning, the dogs barked at 5 so I let them out but went back to bed till 6.30 and I feel better for it, I feel like I have some energy to get on. I turned the sprinkler on at the bottom of the veg garden and the pressure was down so I went round the farm and checked that all the outside taps were off, they were so it wasn’t that, I went back and took the sprinkler head off one hose and attached it to another, nothing wrong with the pressure there so I went back to the other hose and found a piece of wood chip lodged inside, problem solved 😀 Then onto foraging for the rabbits, this morning they had a selection of weeds and herbs, I have also got into the habit of giving some to the light Sussex chicks who love picking over it. There seems a huge difference between the hybrids and the pure breeds as far as forage goes, the hybrids would certainly eat chickweed and brassicas but they wouldn’t pick over the plantain or the herbs as I have tried it before so I am really pleased that the pure breeds are going to be able to forage, and therefore sustain themselves. much more widely than the hybrids.

I dug up a few bits that I want to bring on for the hedge lines, lemon balm being one plant as well as a couple of dog roses that have self set, there are hazel trees and elderflower that sprout up all over the place which I will also be using, the ground is still too hard yet though.

I am still looking for something to create another small pond with and trying to decide where to put it, it will have to be covered with wire in the winter or the ducks will just demolish it when they are free ranging. I intend to let the Welsh Harlequins roam over the vegetable garden at the end of Autumn, they will help to control the slug/snail population and the light Sussex will also have free range to control any pests both above and below the ground, all the while they will be fertilising the area, win, win.

I went for a gentle wander around the farm, I was in the hunt for butterflies because we haven’t seen very many this year, plenty of cabbage whites but not many others. I did encounter a few common blues, my dream one day would be to spot large blues 😀 I have seen a few over the last couple of weeks, a speckled wood butterfly, red admiral, tortoiseshell peacock but not very many, I’m guessing the weather is making it difficult for them. I need to print off a little chart I can carry so that if I see any I don’t recognise I can look it up there and then, mind you it’s quite difficult to get a good look when they are fluttering about.

I did find a good amount of blackberries that I will be able to pick when they are ready , we haven’t had many for a few years as John cleared them all out of the hedgerows when he was tidying up 😝 plus the horses used to eat them before I could get to them and as there is just Jack now hopefully he won’t get round to scoffing the lot!

I thought I ought to stop chasing butterflies and do a bit of housework 🤪 besides it was getting a bit hot out there for me!

I picked up the post and in there was an invitation for a health screening which always gets me thinking. The questions are pretty generic especially on exercise, I don’t go to the gym or go for long/brisk walks, I don’t swim (anymore) BUT I spend most of my time (when possible) outside in fairly clean air, put it this way, I can smell the fumes when I go into town, and most of that time is spent on the move so that can be about 6/8 hrs a day, some of that time is spent doing hard physical work. Scraping dried chicken poo off the floor is pretty physical even though it doesn’t sound it, I hump 20kg feed sacks up and down, straw bales, barrowfuls of horse muck and occasionally there is some hard digging to be done, at times I have shovelled 14 tons of shingle, mixed up tons of concrete and barrowed it to where it’s needed, carried heavy blocks/pieces of wood and pushed heavy chicken houses/horse boxes/trailers, who needs a gym membership? Then there is the food question, do you eat healthily? Well this one always gets me, depends on what you consider to be healthy, I do not consider fresh vegetables/salad/fruit to be healthy unless it hasn’t been sprayed with either pesticide/insecticide/herbicide ( and lettuce the most heavily sprayed crop there is) or treated with artificial fertiliser and growth hormones. I don’t consider animals that have been routinely pumped full of medication of any sort to be healthy either, I don’t really consider farmed fish to be the best option and I am beginning to wonder because of the state of our oceans if fish is actually a good option or not (and I rarely eat prawns because of their preferred abode shall we say 😩) I cook from scratch so I know what is in the dish I am eating and most of it is home grown, not every ingredient, that’s impossible, but those that are not, are on the whole responsibly sourced. Yes we eat pies, puddings and cakes but they are not shop bought (except if I am catering for lots of people a couple of times a year) have you looked at the ingredient list on a shop bought cake ?? 😩 there is barely a recognisable ingredient in them. I drink decaf coffee (haven’t quite made the leap to tea yet) I drink less alcohol than a nun who has taken her vows, mostly because alcohol does not mix very well with the meds I have to take, if I do, I have have two G & Ts (I prefer an artisan gin, should you ever need to know that 🤣) max so my unit measurement is a grand total of around 2 a month pushing the boat out if it gets to 4! Sometimes it can be 0 for months on end ( That does not include holidays away when it could be considered as binge drinking in context 🤪) So I think I do eat healthily, and sometimes heartily 😋 but always mindfully, PLUS I take very good care of my gut bacteria, a subject that the medical profession, in this country, on the whole has not woken up to yet. Now, back to the subject, where do you think I will find the tick box for that lot 🤔

The grains I ordered arrived today, amaranth, wheat and millet, oooo now I’ve been looking them up and milling at home is a possibility I am full of enthusiasm for growing it 😀 originally I bought them to grow for the chickens but we may as well benefit too.

The runner beans are coming in thick and fast, I think chutney is on the cards, the butternut squash are growing well I’m really pleased with them, last year they were very small and not very many of them either. The melons in the poly tunnel are also doing much better than any other year, and the tomatoes are looking like a good crop too. I grew three types of tomato, money maker, your average size tomato, beefsteak, giant ones, though they haven’t got that big yet and then plum tomato which will be for making sauces or cooking with, great because the basil is also doing exceptionally well, yum.

My dual pear tree, although it’s growing very well, has got scab, just on the one variety, the other must be more resistant, so I spent the evening reading up about it, how to control it and also how I need to prune it, there are lots of pears on it, it’s a shame that about 50% are no good 😏

Friday: I set to pruning the pear tree first thing, I need to make sure every leaf and fruit is picked up in autumn and burnt to try to prevent it happening again next year.

Going round the garden I discovered that something, either chicken or blackbird, has been pecking away at my spaghetti squash 😏 they are growing under the asparagus which has now gone to fern, so I had to cut the fern down low enough to be able to put environmesh over the whole lots to stop any more losses, if it’s not one thing it’s another, I thought they were well hidden away under there. Mum came over early and got started with the hoeing, it always looks so much nicer when it’s done but I hardly get time to do it so I’m very grateful 😀

We have had Samantha’s dog Alfie all week while she was away on holiday and he can be a real pain in the butt, he chases chickens (doesn’t hurt them it’s just a game) he chases the cats, same again, he will torment Jack in the field by trying to round him up, he jumps the gate when egg customers come and has even jumped into their cars when they open the door this week, he tears around from the back when he hears the back door open and barges through the gate nearly knocking you flying if you haven’t remembered he is there, he constantly carries the longest stick he can find in the hopes that you will throw it for him and you have to have your wits about you when he has that in his mouth, but he does have one use that the other dogs don’t have and that is that he barks at anything unusual. So when he started barking at lunchtime and it wasn’t in the direction of the front gate I went out to investigate. I found him down the strip between the duck pen and the veg garden barking away, I couldn’t see anything so I stood for a couple of minutes, then I heard someone whistling from the direction in the next field from us, up popped a familiar face, guess who has lost his hawk again 😂

Later on in the day I did some watering and harvested some of the potatoes that were growing in pots because it’s really hard to keep them going, there wasn’t much on them but a few boilings which will do us. I dug up some lemon balm and mint with roots and potted them up, I will be using some of it to plant in the hedgelines for the hens to forage on and of course the insects love them. They have both flowered and gone over now so I harvested the mint in big bunches and hung them to dry in the greenhouse, some of it will be crushed up and used for adding to the horse feed in winter and the rest will be dried for the rabbits. I will probably do the same with the lemon balm and both of them will put on some new growth before the end of summer, some mint that I already cut for feeding fresh to the rabbits has grown back and I have cut that to make mint sauce. I also harvested sage, again I cut it back after flowering and this is all new growth, that will be dried for winter use, I will probably give it a hard cut back in a couple of weeks which will then be dried for the rabbits in winter. I will also dry some mint for culinary use, I’ve not done this before I don’t know why it’s just not something I have thought about using dry, first time for everything 😀

Saturday: Got straight on with making runner bean chutney this morning and also some mint sauce both are pretty easy to do, if you have never had runner bean chutney give it a try it’s well worth it, very tasty 😋 I picked a few more runners and some mangetout, but that was about all I did outside. We went out for an impromptu lunch then of course the afternoon nap 😜 and out again this evening for a surprise party. Not achieved very much today!

Sunday: John got on with the feeding and letting out while I started the watering, had a bit of a lie in until 6.30 this morning 😀 It has been so hot again that the ground dries up fast, luckily overnight there is still moisture but not enough to keep everything going on it’s own. I did some picking, runner beans 😝 courgettes, baby corn and broccoli, although the brassica cage has kept the butterflies out it hasn’t kept out the flea beetle which arrived in hordes when the field next door was harvested. They make thousands of little holes in the leaves but eventually they will die off and the plants will recover with new shoots. The second lot of broccoli I planted, you will remember, kept going to seed and I had to keep taking the tops off, well they never produced anything, except seeds 😀) so I will let them go to seed and hopefully some self set plants will grown next year. The general rule is not to grow brassicas in the same place twice because of club root but I’m willing to chance it and see what happens.

Once it started to get too hot out there I came inside to prep what I had picked, firstly blanch the broccoli for open freezing, I soaked in in cold water after for a good while so that any beetles float to the top of the water and can be taken out. I finally got round to making my ‘Souper mix’ this is basically any veg and herbs you want to put in and blitz in a processor, in the photo everything except the celery Is from the garden and will make an excellent vegetable stock for soups or casseroles/stews, I can sneak things in there that John wouldn’t normally eat 😝 The original recipe suggests adding an enormous amount of salt and putting it in jars for storage however I decided to freeze it and the only thing I could find that would be about the right portion size was cake tins, so I used cake cases and filled them to the top packing down tightly and open froze them, when they are done I will discard the cases and pop them all in one labelled bag for use as and when.

I wanted to get some passata made as well but I haven’t quite got enough ripe tomatoes yet, I grew the large plum variety this year especially for this reason and as the garlic and basil have done really well I’m hoping it will taste divine. 😋

We had tickets for countryfile live today but as the temps are set to go above 31c and there is never enough shade at these kinds of shows we gave the tickets to Charlie and Macca, she reported that it was very hot and they were melting so I’m glad we didn’t go.

There is a very good reason why, when I but plants in, that I do not plant them up straight away, and today I am really glad that I don’t because the peach tree I bought has sprouted horsetail or marestail in the base 😩 an invasive weed that is difficult to eradicate, at the moment it’s one piece that I will break off and burn until such time I can take the tree out of the pot and clean the roots thoroughly. I could inform the place I got it from but as it spreads by spores it could have come from anywhere but I have never had it before and it is not growing anywhere else, yet!

An evening of watering, with the temps as they are it really doesn’t take long befor everything is dry as a crisp again! Rain forecast for the end of the week and I hope we get a bit more than last time, it’s getting a real struggle to keep everything going with the days shortening as well. A bit of tidying up in the fruit cage, the rabbits and Guinea pigs love raspberry leaves and so they had a bucket full of cuttings, and I’m done for the day 😀

Have a good week 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Ducklings, a Blood Moon Lunar eclipse & finally some rain ☔️

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday night: I’m officially exhausted tonight, it’s close looks like it should rain but I don’t think it’s going to. There were a few other things I should have written on the blog but the technology was playing up and I was too tired to bother! Firstly that I picked around 2kg of blackcurrants as well this morning, plenty that are going over went to the chickens and quail, when they have stripped them the branches will go to the rabbits to chew on and I need to get up early to process them before the heat sees them off. Secondly the sheep two fields away have obviously been separated from their lambs for weaning as they have been bleating for nearly 72 hrs straight poor things, not that the noise bothers us, it doesn’t but they do sound distressed 😩 I keep looking at the forecast for the next two weeks, it keeps changing, firstly it looked like thunder storms, now they have disappeared and the rain forecast on the one day is next Monday which happens to be my birthday, cheers for that 🤪 still it will probably change again before that.

Monday 23rd July: Up with the larks to get on, Ive decided I will keep all the curtains closed today to try and keep the house a bit cooler than outside but first thing in the morning it’s already warm in here though cool outside! I got on with extracting the juice from the blackcurrants and fruit I picked yesterday, not sure what I will do with the juice yet probably a few different things but there is plenty of time to decide while it’s straining. Another duckling had hatched and there are more pipping so hopefully I will be able to move them this afternoon, always a tricky thing to decide because a hatchling can go 24hrs without food and water as it has absorbed the egg yolk which will feed it for that amount of time, however the others are still hatching and it’s best not to open the incubator at all, instinct is all you can go on really.

I made a very stupid schoolboy error this morning, I wanted to clean the bathroom and have limescale remover which I thought was already diluted, when I was halfway round the bathroom I realised it wasn’t and the smell was overpowering, so much so that I had to get out. I went back in with a wetted towel over my face, seriously it was that strong! The other thing that happened was intense pain in the two fingers that still have not quite recovered, it’s like neuralgia, oh my days on a scale of one to ten it was right up there I didn’t know what to do with myself 😩 I can only assume it’s nerve endings responding to the undiluted limescale remover, what an absolute twonk, I won’t be doing that again I can assure you.

6 ducklings by mid evening and some more have pipped.

Watering begins as soon as there is a bit of shade covering and goes on until dark 😜 along with picking, I also planted up two things that arrived today, the saffron crocus bulbs and the tea plant 😀 I tasted one of the mulberries, not ready yet, too sharp but I need to keep an eye on them or the birds will have them before me. The tree itself has got a bit out of control and I need to give it a prune to get it back in order but it obviously likes it’s situation which is great, I bought it about 10 years ago and it was in our old garden but there was no way I was going to leave it behind so we dug it up and moved it hoping it would take and it did 😀 Mine is the King James cultivar and only started producing fruit about 3 years ago but they are very succulent and delicious 😋

John cleaned out the hens in the front paddock, normally he does it on a Sunday but was a bit tired so did it today instead, he has to wait until it’s cool enough to be able to get out there otherwise it’s like being in an oven, I can’t wait to be able to plant some trees in the front there but we will have to wait until autumn for the best results.

At 9pm I started making jam! It is just not cool enough to do it before that so inbetween moving the hose, washing up, tidying up I’m carefully watching for the sugar to dissolve then onto a rolling boil, then of course there is all that washing up to do as well because you don’t want to leave it till morning or you will regret it 😝

The late news is all about the heatwave and the impact it is having or will have especially on the farmers and of course we all rely on them for our food, it is severe, the fields are parched so no grass for the animals. I’m guessing the grain harvest was ok but the straw length will be short having a knock on effect for winter bedding, it all has an effect in food prices in the end 😏

As you will have worked out all my work is either done at one end of he day or the other so I’m off to bed for another early start tomorrow.

Tuesday: The air temp was deliciously fresh this morning at 5am 😀 so I cracked on with a bit of watering and some picking, the moisture in the air over night is still pretty good so what I had watered last night was still damp. At 7am Mum arrived to help with some hoeing and weeding and she dug up a fair few self seeded blackcurrant plants. I potted these up in bio degradable pots ready for planting later on in the year along with some Verbena Bonariensis which had also self set, this verbena is one of my favourite plants, tall, graceful and just keeps going, easy to cultivate and look after, what’s not to like, oh and the bees love it.

I moved the last duckling to the brooder, 7 hatched in all, they are sex linked and it’s looking like I only have two females, pants, never mind I’m happy with the hatch overall, I cleaned the incubator and put it away as that’s the last hatching for this year, then I made coffee and Mum asked what time it was, about 11 I said but I will check, 9.30 🤣🤣🤣 it’s only 9.30.

I have been surveying the veg that is lurking underneath thick growth, namely the squash, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, pumpkins and the other squash who’s name escapes me but tastes like sweet potato, and they are all doing really well, plenty of tiny fruits beginning to swell, the spaghetti squash already has two or three large fruits, looks like a good year 😀

I gave myself the night off of watering tonight, I may regret it but hopefully one night won’t hurt.

Wednesday: It’s very much cooler this morning, I felt a bit chilly in my shorts and t-shirt 😂 I did a bit of watering, not so much as of late because the ground seems to be holding it better for now at least, still no sign of rain though ☹️

The melons in the poly tunnel are finally getting bigger, they were peanut sized and for a while I thought they were not going to produce anything much at all.

Going round every night and every morning I can definitely see the changes that I need to make in order to improve yields and for the garden to be more sustainable, it is pretty sustainable as it is but there are a few areas that need looking at and rectifying. I need more height in the form of trees, not huge ones and they need to produce something either for us or for wildlife. Then I need a layer underneath them in the form of shrubs, again they must have a use one way or another which is why I think currant bushes are the ideal option, the layers below that are easier I have plenty of options from what I already have growing. The fence line needs addressing, it is just that, a fence, nothing growing on it, around it or up it, in fact I have a fair few fences like that which will also be getting some planting to produce two things, food and habitation for whatever decides to take up residence 😀 however none of this can be done at the moment, I tried digging into the ground, nope, not a hope, too hard so I wait and watch and plan. I think by far the biggest thing and the most difficult to achieve in terms of hard graft is the use of rain water, not from the roof into tanks, that’s easy but the surface water and run off, slowing it down so that a) it’s not causing erosion and b) it’s being held back long enough to permeate more slowly, on a small scale in the veg plot that’s not too bad, on a bigger scale over the farm it’s a whole different thing 😝

I have Josh and Florence this morning for a few hours so I won’t be getting much (anything) else done apart from entertaining and feeding them lol, if I manage to get a coffee or a wee I will be lucky 🤪 Then I had Mia in the afternoon, exhausted today.

Watering in the evening and while I was out there I thought I would take some photos of the flower bed I planted up, it is a delightful mash up of cultivated/wild/herbs/veg the bees love it and I have let it do it’s thing, I haven’t kept it in check at all because I want to collect the seed from it all this year so that I can plant up other areas like it next year. The tiny water pond I put in at the beginning of the year is also there though it’s totally hidden by vegetation, I haven’t seen anything in it yet but I’m sure in time there will be life 😀 I want to put another one in somewhere but haven’t decided quite where just yet.

I have been looking at IBC tanks for water storage they seem the cheapest option and they can be more easily moved should we need to, if I could collect another 4000lt from the roof that would help in times like this and even when we don’t have a heatwave it will be better to use rainwater.

Thursday: The alarm goes off, I don’t really want to get up but needs must 🤪 it’s cool again this morning either that or we have got used to the temperatures! I did lots of picking, runner beans, cucumbers, baby corn, mangetout, carrots and broccoli, some has gone out for sale and the rest I will process for the freezer. Then foraging for the rabbits and guinea pigs, it’s easy at the moment as there are plenty of sow thistles, plantain, dandelion some chard and half a bed of rocket that has been decimated by the flea beetle coming in off the harvested field next door. Their squeals of delight are pure pleasure to listen to when I start unloading the goodies in their pen 😀 I have also been feeding some to the light Sussex chicks, they too now look forward to what is coming and all wait at the gate lol.

I was reading a post on one of the Facebook pages I am on about raw diets for dogs, we used to feed ours a raw diet, we had 5 dogs at the time and a friendly butcher who lived over the road so the meat/bones were plentiful and free, he died, we moved and the dogs have been on kibble since then, they do get raw meat from time to time, but it got me thinking about putting them back on a fully natural, raw diet. It would be so much better for them, as it is we have to avoid one particular flavour of the brand we use because it dyes Mia’s underbelly brown!

Suns out so I’m in, I should be doing housework or something but instead I am researching, learning, absorbing, back to the permaculture and what we need to do, I have realised there is no definitive answer because every one has a different aspect/soil condition/ climate etc etc so it’s really down to the individual to observe, learn and implement. I have not used a mind map for very many years and there are a lot revolving around permaculture but for me to get my head around what I need to do I think I am going to have to use one 😝

My fig tree has produce a few fruits this year, about 11 or so, the first one is very nearly ready to pick, I shall savour the moment my teeth sink into it 😀 The grapes are also doing well this year I might get a few bunches. I potted on my citrus trees, I did deliberate as to when I should do this but with a full moon tomorrow I figured now was as good a time as any, I didn’t want to wait until they were dormant as they need a bit of careful treatment over winter and watering them to establish root growth wouldn’t be ideal then, besides they have outgrown their pots!

Very beautiful sunset tonight and I tried to get a photo but in all honesty it didn’t do it justice.

Friday: Up early, got Jack in ready for the farrier, even at 5 this morning the flies are awful so hopefully he will enjoy being in for a few hours. Watering begins, there were a few drops of rain last night, about 4 to be precise, and I thought this is it, great but nope nothing more than that, I think when I finally comes I am going to stand outside in it!

Some plants arrived this morning, redcurrant, cranberry and honeyberry, some of the red currant I will be using in the fence lines for the hens to forage on along with blackcurrants, the honeyberries will go in the fruit cage as will the cranberry. I cut some willow whips this morning and have put them in a bucket of water, hopefully they will sprout roots, if they do they will be for the formation of a ‘fedge’ along the duck pen, a living fence, the beginnings of my permaculture plan for the ducks.

The cat, Diesel, frightened the life out of me this morning when he leapt over the fence with his breakfast in his mouth (baby bunny today) at least he is helping to keep the rabbit population down.

Had a chat over the gate to a neighbour who had come to find out where his son had got to with the eggs, he was playing with our dogs, the carrier arrived an hour early and a workman who is with a bunch that are digging up the road in front of our drive came to ask to use the loo, lol all or nothing here that’s the way it goes. When I went back inside I realised I was hungry and that I had forgotten to have breakfast this morning, yesterday I had a hankering for some pancakes but didn’t make them so I made them this morning. As a general rule we don’t eat pancakes except on Shrove Tuesday so it felt like a nice little treat with a cup of coffee 😀

Well tonight I was hoping to write about the amazing Blood Moon Lunar eclipse but for the first time in weeks we had thick cloud and couldn’t see a darn thing 😏

Saturday: I got woken up by the wind, hoping it was rain I shot out of bed to look, barely a wetting, still the day is not over and showers are forecast I just hope we get at least one of them! After breakfast (I remembered this morning 🤪) I went out and picked a few kgs of runner beans, they are selling well as always, I picked a small amount of other things, courgette, cucumber, mangetout and baby corn and put them out for sale. I sell them for two reasons mainly, 1. to cover the costs of seeds and therefore what we eat and 2. we couldn’t possibly eat all that is produced even though it is not huge quantities, but mostly it is to give people a taste of what real veg should be, sometimes wonky in terms of shape and size but ALWAYS the best tasting veg you can get no exceptions 😀 Nearly everything you buy in the supermarkets is severely lacking in the true flavour, if you have never grown your own before make next year the year you try, it doesn’t have to be much, a small pot of French beans is probably one of the easiest to do or a raspberry cane in a pot and you would be surprised about how much you can get into a tiny area if that’s all you have, or plant in amongst your flowers and shrubs.

Had to pop to Witney to pick up my new reading glasses and some bits, on the way home the sky was black and foreboding, the rain fell freely and fast, but it appeared not in Shilton! Just another wetting, nothing substantial as yet, it keeps trying and thunderstorms are forecast for tomorrow, I hope we get a decent soaking soon, there are now more apples on the ground with this wind and lack of water, than are on the tree ☹️

When we got home John got on with cleaning out the front hens as it’s much cooler today and not raining it’s the ideal opportunity, he also had to repair the duck house pop hole ramp as it broke yesterday evening and we had to barricade them in. Some small brown envelopes had arrived in the post and I started collecting seed to put in them, I want to collect as much seed as possible (close the loop, at least as far as plants and veg are concerned) from almost anything I can this year and I found it oddly satisfying, more than I thought I would, some seed will be for me to propagate and some seed will be for sale should anyone want any. So far I have collected, white foxglove, white delphinium, salvia, love in a mist, viola, aquilegia and calendula, plenty more to come I just need to keep a close eye on them 😀

FINALLY a bloody good downpour and the sweet smell of petrichor 😀 That will fill up the water tanks nicely and give a much needed boost to the vegetation because although mains water keeps it alive, rain water brings oxygen, nitrates and carbon dioxide and when it comes into contact with the soil it helps to release minerals, win, win 😀

Sunday: More rain 😀 that means a bit of a lie in until 6.45 lol, I’ve got too used to waking up early me thinks. John did the feeding and watering while I did a few household bits then we went out and tidied up the stable block and the back area, they have needed doing for ages so now was a good time while I wasn’t preoccupied with the garden. The winds have been quite strong, blowing everything about, leaves, buckets and most of the apples off of the cooking Apple tree ☹️

Tomorrow is my birthday so apart from the stuff that has to be done and preparing food for the family then not a lot else will get done 😀

Have a great week 😀😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Forest gardening, Midsummer and a Harris Hawk

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 18th May: The weather looks set to be fair this week, no rain in sight which means lots of watering to be done! I’m pretty good this morning once I’ve taken something to help out so John did half the birds and I did the other half, we have 10 hatchlings in the final count, good strong chicks though so hopefully they will continue that way. Weeding and foraging for the rabbits goes hand in hand so I did some of that, there is plenty for them at this time of year. I made up a cutting compost mix as I have a few bits I want to try and strike, the mix is compost, sand and vermiculite and then the cuttings dipped in root gel and put on a lower shelf in a unheated propagator in the greenhouse out of direct sunlight, nothing to lose really so I will give them a go.

I sold 6 quail over the weekend 5 female and one male so the urgency to find them a proper place is not so bad now, my plan, I think, is to keep a male (and I have identified which one already) with a few females, that way I have two separate flocks and if I want to breed I can swap the males over for new bloodlines, the rest of the males I will probably let go and they can have a couple of days freedom before they become dinner for some other wildlife, it’s a dog eat dog world out there 😩 The POL sales also went crazy at the weekend, we haven’t sold any for a couple of weeks then all of a sudden 20 in one weekend!

Lots of pottering in the garden and a bit of planning for ‘forest gardening’ which I am going to have a go at, to be honest I already have bits of it in place I just didn’t realise there was an actual term for it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening

Harvested some potatoes from the self setter box I have, it’s a large crate and I have now grown self setters in there for about 4 years in a row with no problems whatsoever ever, basically I harvest as I have today, leaving behind all the tiny potatoes and they grow again, I will probably get some more in time for Christmas and do the same all over again.

Picked a few strawberries and raspberries, not many but I plan to plant strawberries in with the forest garden as I have found that the best plants are always the ones that have self set, I’m beginning to think all this preening, pruning, row growing etc is a complete waste of time, I think I will let nature show me how it’s done 😀

I have noticed a fair bit of ‘June drop’ from the fruit trees, I just hope there is enough left at the end of the season to harvest, one of my plum branches has already snapped under the weight and the plums are pretty small at the minute. I have an apple tree in the paddock that is struggling, it’s been struggling ever since I put it in but this year it’s just not managing at all so I need to dig that up and move it, I think I will plant a sweet chestnut out there instead.

On my down time I am continuously learning, today it’s all about ‘swales’ as far as I can make out, it’s basically a ditch dug out on the contour or slope and piled up on the other side to create a water catchment that is ‘level’ this collects the rain and then filters it slowly or much more slowly at least in the downward direction meaning the plants in its pathway can utilise the water more efficiently. I am definitely going to give this a try, Swales can be large covering a whole field or they can be smaller such as in a veg plot setting, interesting and pretty obvious when you think about it, and obvious that our ‘natural’ Swales run in completely the wrong direction! I have also been reading other bits and pieces that seem obvious but I had never thought of it, I seem to be having my eyes opened just recently to a number of things, maybe I had closed my mind and was just bumbling through. I couldn’t really get my head around permaculture being anything more than lots of people trying to make money out of writing a book about it but I am beginning to see exactly what it’s all about and how to apply it, looking, learning and applying. Sure we are doing the basics, collecting rainwater etc but I am still having to stand and water everything which takes time, and I am missing out on useful water such as the duck pond when it’s emptied just gets tipped out, all those duck poo nutrients going to waste waahh what was I thinking 😜

Sowed a bed of carrot seeds where I had pulled the onions from.

I have spotted, pardon the pun, many, many ladybird larvae all over the garden, on a positive note this is fab for my garden however they are Harlequin larvae so not so good for the native ladybird ☹️ firstly, parasites that attack native ones don’t attack harlequins and secondly if the harlequins run out of food they will eat native ladybird eggs.

Had a dental appointment then dinner then out to cut the front paddock, it’s grown so much since we last did it which doesn’t seem that long ago, while John was on lawnmower duty I did a bit of watering then went to help him, typically it’s now spitting with rain 😝

Ordered a book called ‘Permaculture in a nutshell’ hopefully it will help me see what it is we need to be putting in place, meanwhile I am looking at things with new vision, I also ordered an Alder tree as apparently it fixes nitrogen and will be planting that out near the fruit trees in the paddock, and some horseradish, the last lot I bought as dried foot failed to appear although (I had forgotten) there is some on the side of the road just a bit up from us so I may go and dig a piece up from there as well.

Found a baby bird dead in the water butt, how it got there is a mystery as there is a lid on it, the only thing I can think is that it has fallen down the drainpipe?

Tuesday: Apart from John carrying two feed buckets to the front for me it was, me, myself, I, on morning duties today, I don’t mind telling you I was worn out after lol. Mum arrived fairly early to do some gardening 😀 yay many hands make light work as they say and I am always grateful for extra hands. She did some weeding up on the far end while I did some in the middle, then I potted up a thornless blackberry and some black currant seedlings that had grown in the brassica cage. I cut some broccoli, one for Mum and one for our dinner later.

At the moment I am collecting eggs from the Welsh Harlequin ducks that I separated off they will be the last batch of eggs to go in the incubator this year, I should be able to fit about 12 in there hopefully.

Some trees I ordered have arrived, not any old trees but ‘sacred’ trees, small leaved lime or linden, multiple uses including using the young leaves in salads, linden tea can be made for blood pressure and the bark can be used for rope making if I ever need it 😀 They are small at the moment but will reach a great height eventually, I will pot them up and bring them on keeping a close eye on them for a year, they can be used as coppice for fuel so there’s an option, I will probably use one in my ‘edible forest’ that is the veg garden.

The summer solstice is fast approaching, why does is come so quickly when winter drags on so long, anyhow I have found a recipe for honey cakes which are used as an offering for the ‘faeries’ on Midsummers eve, a pretty simple recipe and something I haven’t tried before so I will be giving them a go.

Wednesday: Ooops totally overdid it yesterday and by the evening I was not too good so a dose of painkillers and a good nights sleep was in order. This morning John kindly did the morning routine before going to work bless him, I showered and by 8.30 I had started to clean the kitchen which has been bugging me for a while. A deep clean, drawers, cupboards, walls etc so at this present time 12.30 I’m having a break and still have plenty to do in there.

I noticed a grasshopper on the wall by the breadbin, thought ah that’s sweet and took a photo,

I thought about putting it back outside but forgot, now I have to live with the consequences because on my, hoovering the tops of the walls round, I found a spider had wrapped said grasshopper up for lunch 😩 so I hoovered up that bastard too 🤪

Went on clean the living room and the bedroom, knackered now and shoulders are killing me ☹️ still it feels nice and clean everywhere, well not everywhere there is still the boot room and the office to de clutter and deweb but they can wait for another day.

After some more anti inflammatory pills and a rest some dinner it was back to work watering, picking etc and I made the honey cake, I use the term loosely and I won’t put the recipe on here because there are probably far better examples out there. Honey cake, well it has honey in it and it’s definitely cake, it also has a fair amount of coffee, I used decaf so we won’t be bouncing off the walls after eating it, it’s edible, pleasant enough but not what I would call honey cake really.

Today I picked a small tub of strawberries and raspberries, 4 heads of broccoli, some beetroot, a courgette, rainbow chard and some new potatoes, most of which I have put out for sale as we have already eaten. The dilemma is what to charge for naturally grown veg, I always check the supermarket prices but I feel that if I priced them like that they are grossly underpriced for what you are getting, something that actually tastes like its supposed to, been lovingly tended, had nothing sprayed on it whatsoever, the best veg you can get to be precise 😀

Thursday: Up in the middle of the night to eat and take anti inflammatory! The trouble is when I feel ok I get stuck into jobs then pay for it later on 😜 Anyhow, John did the morning routine then went off to get feed then take the van for a service, I had some paperwork to do so got on with that as much as I could because for some reason my iPad and printer are not talking to each other 🤪

In the afternoon I used the cardboard, that I had put on the floor in the greenhouse over winter, to cut and place round the squash plants that are growing outside, it’s a start to the mulching I need to get done. Mulch, mulch, mulch is my mantra of the week, we are in for a serious lack of rain and some very high temperatures which won’t do the plants any good at all so best start preparing now. John came home and was on in ‘half a job John’ mode, at this moment we have everything pulled out from under the kitchen sink as he is putting in an outside tap but that’s as far as he has got, then we have tools out in the orchard area where he has half fitted some angle irons at the top of the fencing with wire attached to it to stop the fox getting over, at one point I wondered where he had gone and he was up the garden weeding in goggles due to the high pollen count!!! “There is medication available you know” but you can’t help those who won’t help themselves can you 😩

Just been informed after asking what the plan is, that every time he goes to do a job he needs a tool that is in the van that has gone for a service, I get it now, I thought he was just being unproductive lol.

My bit of bedtime reading arrived yesterday ‘permaculture in a nutshell’ and today I have been making a plan to start the polyculture, permaculture, forest garden approach, I have a pear tree in the orchard that I will start with. I have chosen plants that I already have available:

Comfrey – Mulch/insect attractor

Lavender – attractor

Borage – attractor

Fennel – attractor

Rhubarb – mulch

Solomans seal

Strawberry – attractor/stabiliser

Thyme – soil stabiliser

Peas – nitrogen fixer

I still need to have fruit bushes which will probably be currant and roots which may be onion or wild garlic or chives but this is the basic outline of my ‘guild’ I will observe and see what does well and what fails, either way I will learn a fair bit I think.

I’ve just read a blog on a forest garden hedge so that will be another project to think about, ooo so much to do and so little time 😜 Inbetween that I fancied a snack so I made some raspberry fritters 😀 mashed banana, flour, cinnamon, mash and stir then add the raspberries then fry in coconut oil, rather delish with some creme fresh though they didn’t hold shape too well, still it all goes down the same way 😝

So I asked for an outside tap under the kitchen window and this happened!

Well I wouldn’t mind so much except that John is a time served plumber 😩 there was a LOT of swearing and a bit of a puddle and apparently the kitchen tap (which admittedly we had been having problems with) was f**ked this is why it has been leaking even though John fitted new washers a while back. On the up side I now have an outside tap to water the front plants with 😀

A bit later I asked John if it was connected to the hot, “nope, it’s just a cold tap and before you say anything, a hundred years ago they would have delighted with that fitted” so I said, “a hundred years ago they would have been delighted with rabbit for dinner “ guess what’s on the menu tomorrow 🤪

Mowed the grass and used the mowings for mulches on various plants that are in danger of drying out too quickly when this hot weather hits us.

Friday: By mutual agreement I have decided to take it a bit easier today, I find that I am suffering a lot once I stop in late evening and then the joints seize up over night. Having said that there are a couple of jobs I want to get done, the first is my second ‘guild’ an Apple tree this time. It was growing out in the paddock but it has never been happy there so I dug it up and pruned it back, put in in water to soak for a couple of days and planted it elsewhere this morning. So far I have planted comfrey, strawberries and black currant round it, there is a pumpkin growing close by and some Welsh onions, I need a few other things in there, I will probably try coriander as a quick growing herb and some broad beans for fixing nitrogen. I have some b bean plants that I cut back after they had finished, they are in a pot so will transplant easily.

As I look at things with new vision so much of ‘traditional’ gardening seems pretty foolhardy now, most attributed to the victorians who liked neat and tidy rows but then they had plenty of man power in the kitchen garden which I definitely don’t have here. One of the practices I will definitely adopt is the ‘chop and drop’ I mean unless you want compost to plant into then why on earth spend all that time taking it all to the compost heap, turning it and hauling it back again, chop it, leave it where it is and let nature do the work for you seems obvious now, unless of course there is disease but even then burn it and use the ash on the garden. I am rather liking this new outlook, how can I save time and work but still reap the benefits. Another thing I have taken more notice of is how/where plants grow, one instance is a rogue strawberry plant that had escaped out of the fruit cage and is growing in the path, it’s not watered or fed or tended in any way and yet it is in much better health than the cosseted ones inside the cage? Another observation is of 5 sweet potato plants, 4 of them struggling 1 which is under the tomato plants is romping away, again the 4 had greenfly which I wiped off but the other one didn’t have any, that information will be consigned to memory for future years.

Today I picked raspberries and strawberries, in previous years we had an abundance but I dug three rows of raspberries up last year as they were getting out of control in terms of I didn’t have time to tend or even pick them properly and the strawberries had got in the same kind of muddle so we cleared them, sadly this year I don’t have very many so there won’t be jam!

Saturday: Up early to take painkillers again so that I can get up at the usual time and be able to do some work! I did the morning rounds with John then onto a bit of watering in the shady areas, then I put up a temporary fence in the orchard to let the Welsh harlequins have more room but not get on the veg garden or they will eat the courgettes 😜 Then I planted a lime tree in the duck pen and put some protection round it, we were going to change the duck pen and move it but actually all it needs is some greenery in the form of trees and bushes and preferably ones with berries that will feed them too such as elderberry and currant, they will provide shade, shelter and forage. Then onto foraging for the rabbits, willow, hazel, lemon balm, plenty of plantain, dandelions, clover, thistle and birds foot trefoil and grass. It’s getting quite warm out there now after a cool start.

Charlie is making smoothies with the few berries I have collected 😀 there looks like there will be plenty of black currants and gooseberry and hopefully I will get some jam made with those although John is not particularly keen on those flavours as that’s all there will be he may actually try them 😝

I watched a red legged partridge, that had somehow managed to get in the front paddock with all the birds, frantically running round trying to find a way back out while being chased by all and sundry, it must have eventually got out as peace was resumed pretty quickly. We get a pair visit the farm every year, I presume they are the same pair and it’s always the same time of year.

Picked some gooseberries (I know they are ready because each time I go up there the blackbirds are ferreting about underneath them) topped and tailed them and made some jam with a bit of elderflower cordial in for good measure. I went slightly wrong, don’t know what I was thinking when I put the sugar in at the same time as the gooseberries 😜 no harm done really it just meant I needed to cook them slowly to begin with then on to a boil. While I was waiting I put the contents of the under the sink cupboard back after John advised me to leave it all out and check for any leaks after fitting the new kitchen tap, we now have a proper mixer tap back. I always sterilise my jam jars in the oven, it’s just how I prefer to do it, I know it can be done in the microwave or with sterilising fluid but that’s my preferred method, wash with hot soapy water, rinse and then with the oven set at around 120/30c they can stay in there until the jam is ready to jar up, I use a thermometer rather than a plate from the freezer, mainly because I can’t be bothered to keep going backwards and forwards to the freezer which is out the back! I was surprised how quickly the temperature went up to setting point so I’m hoping it does actually set. It was only after I made the jam I remembered I had bought a proper jam pan last year, I had to search for it but I will definitely use that next time so as not to burn it which can happen in a thinner saucepan. I had enough strawberries and raspberries to make a couple of jars of mixed jam so that’s what I did, in the proper pan this time. This jam had quite a lot of foam, you can remove it with a spoon just before putting it a jar, you can use a tiny amount of butter or oil when you cook the jam or you can do what I do and leave it. It is said that it can shorten the life of the jam but as two jars will probably not even last a month in this house then I don’t worry too much, I prefer to take it off when I open a jar. If you take it off you can heat it in the microwave and it will make a bit of extra jam ready for instant use, the foam is just jam bubbles so nothing terrible. Obviously if you are wanting to give your jam as a present/gift I would recommend scooping it off, if it’s for home use then don’t worry unless you really want to.

I made a pineapple, turmeric and ginger blitz in the nutrition bullet tonight, I need to try and get this inflammation down and I’d rather try and do it naturally rather than continuous pills.

The sunset tonight was magnificent, Charlie took some photos 😀

Sunday: I’m not in very good shape this morning, I will have to relent and call the doctor tomorrow and see what can be done. John did the morning stuff while I hobbled around, had a shower got dressed etc then I did manage to go outside and pick a few raspberries and do a bit of watering of stuff in the shade. Then I heard a peculiar noise 3 times so I was about to go and investigate when I heard somebody shouting hello across the hedge. It turns out a chap who was hawking at the farm over the back from us had lost his Harris hawk, so that’s the noise I could hear. We eventually located it in the top of one of our conifers and he called it down with a tit bit to entice it, her name was Missie and she was a beautiful bird. I invited the chap to feel free to catch rabbits with her here and I hope that he will take us up on the offer at some point as we are getting over run with them.

Didn’t do much for the rest of the day except watering in the evening, John cleaned out the front birds and we had to move a duck that the geese have regularly been picking on for some unknown reason ☹️

Posted in Friesland Farm

Amazing smells of Spring, First pick of Rhubarb and new Guinea pigs.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th April : Damp this morning with fine drizzle 😐 however it feels ok temperature wise.

Did the morning rounds, 1 egg from the new ladies and evidence of eaten shell, I suspect as we moved them into the outdoor run, we actually do have a rat nicking them, no other reason for them to go from 5 to 1 egg so I need to remedy that and possibly move them back to the stable until further notice and see how many they lay there.

Put out the eggs in the shed which is looking very full of every type of egg we do 😀 and then went round to collect some bits for the rabbits, dandelion I have been growing into a big plant, bits of hazel, blackcurrant and some lovage. I have ordered a book called ‘beyond the pellets’ to learn about feeding rabbits naturally all year round with fresh produce but also ‘tree hay’ which is basically chopped and dried twigs, leaves etc for the winter feed. A mention of it of one of the smallholding sites sparked my interest in being able to feed the bunnies without buying pelleted feed, they get fed a lot of fresh greens during spring and summer but not winter so it will be an interesting read and hopefully a way forward to natural feeding.

I picked the very first lot of rhubarb 😃😃 that makes me very happy and now I just need to decide what I am going to do with it, of course stewed rhubarb and custard is a must as I always say, if you haven’t tried it since childhood do give it a go now you are older, it is delicious.

Then a task I wanted to try all spring but didn’t get round to it and I saw a quick easy way to have a go so that’s what I have done, tapped the maple tree, only I haven’t bored a hole in the trunk and done it that way, I have cut a small branch and taped a glass bottle onto it, fingers crossed I’m not too late for the rising sap and get at least a bit to try. I will check it later to see if I am going to get anything.

The smells this morning have been enough to lift the spirits, the black currant is very strong even just brushing past it, the rhubarb smells divine, the blossom on the trees is heavy, it’s all full of promise and deliciousness 😀

Now going to look at all the rhubarb recipes I have been collecting 😀

Made rhubarb crumble and extras for the freezer, a rhubarb tea bread (simple and quick (except soaking the fruit bit) recipe) and I have some stewed rhubarb and vanilla ready to eat with custard 😀 also made a loaf of bread today.

Rhubarb Tea Loaf

• 300g sultanas

• 200g roasted rhubarb (see note below)

• 300ml strong earl grey tea

• 100g dark brown sugar

• 275g self-raising flour

• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Mix the sultanas, rhubarb and sugar together in a large bowl. Cover with the tea and leave to soak overnight.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 150°C(fan)/170°C/gas mark 3. Grease and baseline a 2lb/900g loaf tin. Stir the flour and egg into the fruit mixture. Pour into the prepared tin.

3. Bake in the oven for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cover the top with foil if it’s getting too brown.

4. NB: to roast the rhubarb chop into 2cm pieces, toss with 20g caster sugar (or more if you prefer it to be sweeter – I don’t think it needs more sugar in this recipe), cover and roast for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, in an oven preheated to 200°C.

This is a recipe from sneakyveg.com as always I used what I had rather than what’s in the recipe so instead of Earl Grey tea I used a Green Tea and a Tetley tea bag and steeped them for about 10 mins, I used currants instead of sultanas and I added a splash of orange juice (just because 😜) I also did not wait overnight for the fruit to soak, I did two hours soaking because I couldn’t be bothered to wait 😝 it will still turn out fine I’m sure.

Tuesday 10th April 🤣🤣 spot the error, I figured I would leave it as it was and it’s turning into Groundhog Day round here as regards to the rain anyhow!

Wet, muddy, slippery, I’m beginning to think this is our lot, seriously, it has rained pretty much every day for nearly 3 weeks at least, how much more is there?

Although there is evidence of the grass growing through the mud so that’s a more positive outlook, more grass = more grass roots = something to soak up the rain 😀

According to the forecast (though it seems to change daily) tomorrow is the last day of rain for a while, fingers crossed 🤞

Cleaned out the duck shed with the help of Mia while Sam was doing the horse, Mia was plastered in mud by the time she finished but she enjoyed helping out, I think she will be a great asset as she gets older as she likes to get stuck in ‘I help’ is what she says 😀 After that we went for a well earned costa 😀

Fed the chickens late afternoon and collected the eggs, we are managing to keep up at the moment and we have some fall back in the form of pullet eggs as they are all laying now. We moved the new ducks back into the stable overnight to see what was happening with the eggs as I only got 1 yesterday, I think it’s because they don’t lay as early as my established lot, they have all laid by 8am which is when I let them out. The new ones seem to lay all during the morning and so yesterday they would have probably laid outside and the birds would eat them. I opened the stable at midday and they have gone for a wander so I may have to keep putting them in the stable for the time being otherwise I won’t get any eggs at all.

The book about feeding rabbits naturally arrived and I have part read it, very interesting, there is a lot of fresh food that I knew they could have of course but also some that I had no idea about. I think I have an abundance of assorted material that I will be able to feed them on and save money on pelleted feed, as I have said Spring and summer will be easy it’s the winter and autumn will be more difficult. With that in mind I have knocked up a herb drying screen, it’s rudimentary but it does the job and I made it with stuff I had lying round so free as well 😀 It will be for drying summer herbs that I can make a herb hay with in time. When I started researching it I was amazed that you can buy freshly cut willow sticks for your rabbit online at £12.99kg and dried raspberry leaves, two resources that I usually assign to the compost heap, not anymore, everything will be assessed for rabbit fodder!

Wednesday: A pleasant enough morning, early drizzle but that went and after the morning rounds I got on with some things in the garden. I put some water in a large bucket and then a sack full of manure in the water to make some manure feed, I still have some concentrate left from last year but no time like the present to make some more. Planted up some of the Pak Choi seedlings, some in the large tunnel and some in the small, the weaker seedlings I have planted in a square mushroom container to grow on for the rabbits, I doesn’t matter if they don’t survive but if they do that a bonus. Uncovered and moved the citrus trees into the large tunnel also gave them a feed, they haven’t done too badly over winter and two lemons are still clinging on in there, then tidied up the small tunnel where they have been overwintering. Pinched out the tips of the broad bean plants now that they have started to flower, the soft fleshy tops attract black fly and they are good to eat so they will be wilted and I will eat them with fish later today. Everything else is still a bit slow but hopefully once the temps climb they will burst into life 😜 Still all too wet to do much on the garden itself, too wet to hoe, to wet to walk on really so it’s a waiting game. I read an article about earthing up potatoes, ha, they haven’t even gone in the ground yet! I collected some forage bits for the rabbits to eat, I am looking at everything as potential rabbit feed now 🤣 I even thought about giving them the bean tops then decided against it, they can have the plants when they go over and I will have the tops 😝

Thursday: Got a little bit excited when my weather ap said 24 and sunny today, then it quickly corrected itself and went to 7 and light rain 😩 It’s grey and misty/damp out this morning hey ho beginning to get used to it now. Still waiting for the wire to arrive for the fruit cage otherwise I could have got on with that at least. The nighttime temperatures are no longer dropping so that’s a bonus, it means I don’t need to worry too much about the seedlings in the greenhouse as they should be fine, I can’t see a frost forecast for the next two weeks, famous last words 😜

Went in the greenhouse after feeding and pricked out the broccoli seedlings, once again I have about 50 plants lol don’t know what I’m going to do with all those! I also potted on the Aubergines and moved them into the large poly tunnel underneath another cloche, I have no idea if they will survive or not but they have got too big for the windowsill and there is no where else to move them to at the moment. I did the same with some pepper plants, the tomatoes I did last week seem to be holding their own, waiting for some warmth like the rest of us. The courgettes I had in the propagator on the window sill rotted away, I have never known a year like this one, normally things can be slow but this is ridiculous! There are things that are growing however so all is not lost, the strawberries in the tunnel have grown some flowers 😀 the garlic has sprouted that I planted out last week, the peas in the small tunnel have flowers on, the rhubarb is getting bigger, hope springs eternal, as Pope said.

Came in about 11.30 with the intention of doing some baking but the Sam arrived and we went out to clean the tack room and throw a whole load of crap away, then sorted out all the fencing stakes and electric tape so that it was all in one place finally. Then the rain came, again 😟

Came indoors to make an egg/dairy/gluten free cake, sounds like a recipe for disaster and may well be, it’s still in the oven but I’m not hopeful that this mix is going to bind together while cooking 😝

Then out to do the pm feeding and egg collection, take a couple of photos of the quail house on my way round for someone who wants an idea on how to build their own, then off to look at a property with Shelley and Martin, busy day 🤪

Friday: Road trip 😀 actually it was five minutes down the lane to the Cotswold Wildlife Park, so I got the morning rounds done quickly and off we went, picnic packed, plenty of layers on, had an exhausting day but thoroughly enjoyed by all of us😀

Back home in time to do the afternoon feeding but not before a well earned cup of tea and a sit down.

Did the feeding, collected the eggs, fed the horse then cleaned out the POL pen at the back, John came home halfway through doing it so gave me a hand and then we went to pick up some new pets 😀

You will remember the story of what a rogue ferret did to my guinea pigs back in November, well I have two news ones, meet Tinker and Tucker, two little boars from a friends of ours that breeds them.

I ordered 100g of wild flower seeds for heavy shade, we have put poultry fence all along the roadside of the side paddock, it has a lot of trees along there and we decided it was heavily shaded and as it is fenced off at the moment hopefully the seeds will grow.

Saturday: Cracking day, Sun, Sun, Sun all day long 😀 After feeding this morning we got on with wiring the fruit cage as the rolls had arrived finally. In my search for the right size hole and the right height and length as I wanted 25m long 1m high x 2 I didn’t check the quality of the wire and as a consequence it was not really a great quality, the top and bottom wires were pulled too tight causing bagging in the middle, however we have put it on and it dose not look too bad. Just got the netting to put over the top and the door to wire then it’s finished 😀

Grand National Day, and whatever your thoughts are on horse racing, in our house the GN has always been a big day, normally we would all be in the living room screaming at the telly (except last year when none of us had any horse anywhere near finishing) this year we had a group FaceTime as Charlie is in Italy and Sam was at her house, Shelley and Martin came to ours for the event, Martin and I both had the winner this year 😀 However I made the mistake of doing the bet online, not the same I would rather go and collect cash winnings from the bookies. And that was pretty much it especially as I had to spend a couple of hours on hold while trying to unlock my betting account (which I opened for the occasion) having cocked up signing in in the first place 😝

I was hoping tomorrow was going to be similar to today but rain is forecast ffs!

Sunday: Well it’s not too bad to wake up to, it’s dry at the moment and though obviously a lot cooler than yesterday, it’s not bad at all. Got the feeding done, cleaned out the geese and put fresh bedding in for the ducks, then it was on to finish the fruit cage. We joined together the two lots of wire, top and bottom and then got the net out to put over the roof, John had tensioned two wires across to support the netting. Almost immediately it became apparent that the net was a bit too short, we turned it round and nope it was not quite going to stretch, umming and arghing we decided to put up what we could and we would have to get another piece and stitch it together, not ideal but we had already bought this piece. At this point John decided to measure the length and width, now I did ask him to do this in the beginning and he told me it was definitely 8m x 5m, on measuring it properly this time he admitted it was 8.5m long, no wonder it won’t reach 🤪 I made an executive decision to reorder a piece big enough to cover the whole thing and will use the other netting elsewhere.

After we couldn’t finish that, John went to clean out the hens at the front and I did some hoeing on the veg beds, the asparagus is just starting to poke through so I weeded that bed and a couple of others. I no longer think weeding is a chore as it is now seen as rabbit fodder, I always used to give them the dandelions but now they are having nearly every weed and tuft of grass, two birds with one stone comes to mind. Then I did a bit of work on a new bed I have made at the bottom of one of the raised veg beds, I decided I don’t have enough flowers and so marked that area off at the end of last year for the purpose. I have a small raised bed in front of it which is also filled with primula, cowslips, dwarf lavender and a rose, I put some tete a tete bulbs in there so it will mostly be a spring bed and the first to give colour. Most of the plants I have chosen to go in there will be single flower because that is best for the insects and especially the bees, they can’t gather pollen from double headed flowers. There won’t be much uniformity to it, it will be what I have got already and planted haphazardly (until it gets on my nerves then I will re arrange it all 😜) It began to rain while I was doing this last part but it wasn’t cold so I carried on until the rain became a bit too heavy, no point damagingthe soil by treading it down.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Butterflies, pitta bread & Countryfile Live 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday: I was a bit preoccupied last week what with visitors and John off and forgot to mention that I got some bantam eggs and they are now in the incubator, we also had no hot water as the immersion heater went on Friday so cold showers all round until its fixed, I have ordered the part and hope it arrives soon. Strangely enough we suddenly have some luke warm water this morning?? No idea what is going on with that (found out later John had fixed it) 

The sun is shining this morning and the two buddliea globosa, which have orange ball shaped flowers, are dancing with butterflies, mostly painted lady and red admiral, the odd peacock and also plenty of bees, all feeding on the nectar.

Well the day went a bit pear shaped when my neighbour shouted to me over the fence, she thought someone had dumped rubbish in her field but turns out that someone had been trying to nick Johns well hidden scrap from behind the hay barn, they had 30 bags of it lined up ready to go. Luckily John had heard the dog barking around 12.30 last night and got up, turned all the lights on and let the other dogs out, I guess they scarpered! He had to come home and retrieve it from the field, sure hope they don’t come back again it makes you feel very uneasy to know that people are prowling around. Activity has been high in the last couple of weeks as we have had some undesirables move in just a couple of miles down the road. 

Tuesday: All was well overnight thank goodness. A bright sunny start to the day, I did the feed round and then took Kai up to the back paddock for a grooming session, he is moulting like mad at the moment and the field looks like something has been massacred but it’s just fur. Mia arrived and sat out in the garden for a bit while I picked some tomatoes, which she kept pointing to and saying ‘egg’ lol, pulled up some weeds for the bunnies and guinea pigs, then she got bored of that so we went inside. 

Another couple of showers again later on in the day, I really think that might be it for summer now😝 the seasons seem to be all different the last few years, usually the ants start flying around early August but they have already gone a few weeks ago and this mornings mist was definitely autumnal.

Made bread once Mia had gone home, while I was at it I made a batch of ginger biscuits and something I wanted to have a go at for the first time, pitta bread. I don’t like the shop bought pittas, they are at the very least, disappointing 😏 and I have never had one that has been made by someone so I thought I would give it a go. They take 5 mins to mix up, an hour to prove the dough and then 1 and half minutes each to cook, brilliant, the results were mixed, some puffed up, some didn’t but apparently that doesn’t matter unless you want to fill it, but for humous non puffed is fine and they will freeze fine so don’t have to be eaten all at once lol. They are quite delicious and nothing like the cardboard things in the supermarket, they would easily lend themselves to dips, mopping up curry, chilli, stew yep a definite winner. 


Wednesday: Filthy day from start to finish! Didn’t really get much done outside apart from the routine stuff and a bit of picking early on, Mia arrived and Shelley and Josh came over to play and that was pretty much how the day went. Sure hope the rain eases of soon 😜 

John spent the evening outside moving the woodpile to fill the gap that the nighttime visitors were obviously trying to use.

Thursday: Not raining but windy and spitting and overcast, the jet stream is too high up for good weather it seems 😝 Nevertheless jobs need to be done so did the usual feeding routine, sold out of eggs by goodness knows what time this morning 8.30 I think, the earliest customer coming around 7.30! The chap a couple of miles down the road has given up his 150 hens due to ill health and I guess some are coming here however we don’t have enough hens to supply them all. 

After feeding I did picking, runner, dwarf beans, courgettes, tomato, swede and beetroot, the veg suddenly seems to be getting snapped up at a great rate too, maybe new customers? I pulled up some weeds and perpetual spinach plus some herbs for the rabbits and guinea pigs and a tub full of herbs for the chickens to peck over. I saw a programme where the local chicken farm was feeding a mix of chopped up leftover herbs from a herb farm so I thought I would try it on mine and see how they like it. Then onto the POL pen as it is getting very muddy with all the rain, I think it is still coming in through the roof and I will have to watch it to see what is happening as John appears not to have fixed it with his two bits of wood propping it up 😜Cleaned up the floor, chucked in some bits for them to scratch around for and changed the low water trough for two buckets as this may be part of the problem, when emptying it you can’t help but tip it all over the floor, better to have buckets that can be carried away for emptying. 

I had to look up two potential problems, one, blood in chicken poop but a chart analysis reassured me that it was just the shedding of lining and normal, thank goodness for that, the hens are all vaccinated but coccidiosis is always a worry, technically they shouldn’t get it but it’s possible one may have escaped the vaccination process and the second problem is the yellowing of the leaves on the tomato plants, it’s not blight and it doesn’t appear to be a nutrient deficiency, at this time of the season it is more likely to be the plants beginning to shut down. They have done their job, grown, produced flowers, then fruit (which is starting to ripen) and that’s a job done as far as they are concerned, I think it’s a little early but then so is everything else this year! 

In the afternoon I cleaned out the quail and then the ducks, both huts are mucky from the wet weather, at this time of year they shouldn’t need cleaning out so much! Then I went on to burn the paper feed sacks etc and remembered I needed to check out the greengage plums. Normally I don’t pick anything until it’s ripe but the greengage are the exception to the rule this year, I usually leave them until they are just about ready but find that the wasps get there first. Gages are the sweetest of plums, there is a scale measurement for fruit sweetness but I can’t find the reference now, gages come pretty high on the scale even though they look like they might be sour, trust me, they are not. I usually end up with a couple of handfuls but this year I have hit the jackpot with them, the damsons on the other hand are not so good and as I still have some in the freezer from last year I may leave them all for the wasps 😀 I also have Victoria’s but they seem, contrary to everything else, well behind schedule ?? Plums grown commercially are picked before they are ripe, then stored, then pumped with ethylene which is the same gas given off by bananas and some other fruit so all I need to do with the gages is leave them on the side next to the fruit bowl to ripen. I will probably put a few out for sale but mostly I will be eating them in their natural state 😀 I just realised that they are also free of coddling moth grubs this year so the traps I put up last year and the sticky bands have done the job, in fact all the top fruit is free of it so well done me 😝 

Friday seems to be lost somewhere 😝

Saturday: Whoop whoop we are off to Countryfile live today so up early to do the animals then off out for the day, Shelley is in charge at the farm 😀

We had a fab day out, it was one of the best shows of that type I have been to, something for everyone, everything to do with the countryside and a little bit more. I learnt a lot, ate a lot, walked a lot and talked to a lot of people. So many people are very passionate about their breed or their product or their skills it was the perfect place to showcase them all. The rare breeds, bees and using a scythe really caught my interest and we both thoroughly enjoyed watching the Stihl Timbersports British Championship. 

Sunday: Lol, John was up early this morning and when he was dressed realised it was Sunday and not Monday as he had thought 😝 The weather looked set to be fair and so we got on with feeding and then a bit of picking for me while John cut up some of the wood from the pile that seems to be multiplying while we are not looking. I swept the front driveway and cut the grass, it does look so much better when it’s done but I can’t help thinking it won’t be long until the Autumn leaves will be making a mess. There are little villages of mushrooms sprouting up all over the place, they look fabulous when they first bloom and add another dimension to the garden areas. 

Posted in Friesland Farm

Why?

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Now I know what some of you are thinking ‘what’s Hubby done now’ sorry to disappoint you, he appears to be blemish free this week! The ‘why?’ are genuine musings that I have pondered over while going about my work, I work alone all day, every day for at least five days a week and so with only myself to talk to (not out loud, I hasten to add) questions pop up all the time and none more so than this week.

Some musings are more intelligent than others such as why are we trading with China? and do we have more to fear from the controlling president of that country than we do from thousands of immigrants pouring into Europe with the only agenda for them being a decent life for their families? Sorry, that’s probably a bit deep for a smallholding blog but it is what goes on in my head along with why do flies make that irritating buzzing sound when they fly? Birds fly, but they don’t make a sound like you instantly want to swat them every time they come near, come to think of it they do not dive bomb you every few seconds either. They are not very clever, I mean if they went silently about their business we wouldn’t be reaching for the fly spray in the height of summer would we?

Other musings range from, why did we lend our new 1m blade electric hedge trimmer out and why didn’t they notice that the flex was dangerously close to the blade that chops thing off? I actually know the answer to this, because said person is an idiot that is why, and now we have a lovely piece of blue tape covering up the joiner (exasperated sigh) Shall I continue? Why when there are five acres, and a considerable amount of countryside thereafter available, does the cat want to **** right where you have just planted seedlings?  Why wont the geese go to bed on the only night there is no one around to help? Why would you think it is perfectly ok to go and get your eggs from the local smallholding honesty shed at 11.30pm? Why didn’t anyone bring me chocolate home today? they must have known I needed some 🙂 It is at this point you are probably thinking, yep, she spends too much time on her own with only the chickens to talk to lol

Why is life so cruel sometimes? that applies to humans and animals alike, this week it all went very wrong for one of our new point of lay hens, life was ticking along nicely for her, she had been reared in a shed for the best part of 16 weeks then she arrived here and had her first taste of outdoor life, the smells, sounds, and new sights such as dogs and horses, in her prime she laid her first egg and disaster struck. A prolapse is not something I have had to deal with before and so I turned to Google to find out what to do, first bathe the prolapse in antiseptic, then using Vaseline and gloves push the prolapse back to where it came from (not for the squeamish I can assure you)  use Witch Hazel to bathe it afterwards in the hopes that it will retract and deflate. Leave the hen somewhere quiet overnight with water only and see what happens, the hen went into shock, that’s what happened and so the kindest thing to do was ‘the deed’. Normally I don’t get sentimental feelings over the hens but I really felt sorry for this one, she was only a youngster and hardly had a chance at a happy life.

The tidying up of the veg plot has continued this week and this morning I began to venture out further onto the farm and identify areas that needed doing, one main area being the hedge along the front driveway. So that is where I was, trimming the hedge with my blue bandaged electric trimmer when today’s Why? came along, actually I wonder this one every year and people who do it seem to think it is a very reasonable thing to do, I however, cannot see the point, except under certain circumstances (which I consider to be ludicrous anyway). Why do people feel the need to spend most of Autumn and the first part of Winter gathering up all the leaves that have been shed from the trees? Do people not know that the worms and the weather will do most of it for you without any sweat being broken at all? Perhaps its a case of that shiny red/green leafblower in the corner of the garage is calling and you cant wait to play with it or it might be that the only bit of earth that actually belongs to you (so to speak because I bet a pound to a penny if it came to it you would not own the fracking rights under your driveway) has been entirely covered with block paving or slabs (that’s the ludicrous bit as far as I’m concerned and a topic for a whole blog of its own one day) and understandably you don’t want to slip on the wet soggy leaves. If you leave those leaves they will enrich the soil beneath them, ok so I know it will look untidy for a few weeks but its far better for the ground than buying lawn feed or soil improver surely, you don’t have to break into your wallet or that sweat, you can sit in the evening sun, sipping your glass of cider/ale/prossecco smug in the knowledge that those worms are working for you 😉

Have a great week 🙂