Tag: poly tunnel

Posted in Friesland Farm

Sunny days, tidying up and ‘surprise’ x 3 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday Evening after publishing 😜 I forgot to update you in last weeks blog that Diesel returned just in case you were worried. He had a good feed, some extra treats and is fine. He is getting on though so I guess one day he won’t come back but for the time being he is around again 😀

Monday 14th September 2020: A glorious day with high temps and for me that means staying inside or shade dodging 😜 I chose staying in and had already decided to do the cleaning, mainly the kitchen. Normally I start in the bathroom and then do the living room and bedrooms and by the time I get to the kitchen it gets a quick going over. So today I started in the kitchen and gave it a good clean, all the walls, cupboard doors, move everything, clean behind things, I didn’t go as far as cleaning out all the cupboards but I did clean the windows and the grill, probably give myself a B+ 😂 I had a phone call from the surgery and I need an phone appointment with the doc to discuss blood results, crap, that won’t be great then 🙄

We need more trees in this country, I know there are groups that have been saying this but I can tell you from personal experience that we don’t have enough. When I travel any distance in a car or try to go for a walk on a sunny day I note the complete lack of trees for shade. If the climate prediction is anything to go by the world will get hotter, another reason to have more shade available and of course it would be great for wildlife. But let’s not plant any old tree, make them native or food trees, I never understand why new housing estates don’t plant a better combination of trees and shrubs than the non producing, standard type they go for, cheaper I guess, I would like to think it was more than lack of imagination 🙄

I did decide to clean the food cupboards out in the afternoon as well as the cutlery drawer, we only have one small under counter cupboard and a shelf in the other cupboard for tins as most of it is in the freezers or the satire cupboard. At least I now know what is in them and for some reason I seem to have three pots of cardamon, I hardly ever use it so I don’t know why 🙄 Then John arrived home and we did the eggs, had dinner and I went to babysit Mia, Lucie and George while Sam went out for a meal with Luke for her birthday which is on Thursday. That’s Monday finished, as a bonus John is at home tomorrow after a job he is on isn’t ready yet.

Tuesday: As I said John is off today after he has gone to do a small job that is 🙄 I got on with some picking and finally had a decent haul of runner beans, lots of people have been saying how poor they are this year so if yours were good you are in the minority. I picked a couple of courgettes, some raspberries & nuts, did a fair bit of watering as it’s so dry and getting pretty hot during the day (ah that Indian summer 😀) then indoors to sort it all out and decide what’s for dinner this evening. Meanwhile John returned and got on with some more work on the front of the building.

Last night a delivery of bulbs arrived, snowdrops, tête-à-tête daffodils and dwarf iris, these will all go under the newly planted shrubs in the new border. Hopefully they will spread and give a good show in early spring when nothing else is growing, that’s the plan anyway along with some taller willowy drifts of things like verbena, Dierama (angels fishing rods), guara (bee blossom) and red flax.

After school finished I left John to work by himself while Shelley picked me up and took me back to hers to do my nails. I rarely (that is only once ever) get my nails done, I don’t like false nails as they are too thick and I can’t always do things with them on and besides it’s little bits of plastic 😏 and I can’t (or couldn’t) have nail polish because of the UV salons use. Shelley recently did a course to qualify and during the course looked at options for light sensitive skin, LED can also be used and is less likely to cause problems (though you should still be careful) so today was a good day to give it a go. Shelley also bought gel polish that didn’t need curing with light but after applying it all it didn’t work terribly well so we took it back off. Then we tried the proper nail polish and using the LED lights. The base layer was cured with hands under the lights for 30 seconds, the colour layers I kept my hands just outside of the light box for 60 seconds each layer and the top coat was also for 30 seconds inside the light box. This worked a great 😀 the idea was not to over expose the skin to the lights in case a reaction occurred. Nice to have lovely looking nails, a real treat for me so thank you Shelley 😘

Wednesday: Another lovely sunny day ahead 🙄 don’t get me wrong I like the warmer weather rather than the cold but wall to wall sunshine means I can’t get out and about much.

I started off in the big tunnel as it needed watering, while I was in there I harvested about 5 cucumbers, accidentally pulled up some raddicchio (which I will now have with my dinner later) and cut back the monster that is the cape gooseberry. It has got huge so I cut plenty of it back and picked a load of the berries, not sure what I will do with those yet, I might freeze them and think about it. At the back is a wonderful smelling lemon verbena, it’s smell is divine so I cut some of that and will probably make a syrup which I can then use in lots of things. When I finished in there I cut back the lavender in the garden and now have a huge bunch of lavender drying. I pulled up some swede, cut some chard and picked some courgettes which will all be prepped one way or another for the freezer (probably soup mix). I came in and de husked the cape gooseberries and made a coffee. I felt tired just doing that bit this morning which is not a good sign, I have noticed I feel more tired over the last few days, I’m guessing that’s the white cells dropping again 🙄 pants! It’s a condition called Leukopenia and it’s caused by the medication I take for the Lupus which is why they will probably take me off of it so the body can repair BUT the Lupus can also kill off white cells and so they need to be sure which one is doing it and the medication suppresses the Lupus, it’s catch 22 by the looks of it.

Thursday: A lovely morning, sunshine ahead but that lovely fresh September start to the day is something I love. Today is Sam’s birthday, my eldest, 35 years, where the heck did they all go 😜 and now she is a mother of three herself 🥰🥰🥰 I always say being a Mum was the most rewarding and important job I ever had, I loved every minute of it and now I love every minute of being a grandparent too 😀 Happy Birthday Sam x

I whizzed round and got a few things done this morning, picking runner beans and raspberries, grabbing a few hazelnuts along the way. Prepped and froze some bits and pieces that have been hanging around on the side for a few days including some cooking apples which are now cooking down with the raspberries. Some swede, courgettes, chard and onion are open freezing for soup or roasted veg, more swede frozen separately with some runner beans, swede chopped for dinner later along with runner beans. Took all the off cuts and ends to the guineas, other softer bits to the torts, also picked them some lettuce and tomatoes.

Sam and Shelley came over with the little ones that are not at school and we had lunch together. Florence insisted on getting me some flowers in the shop, pink roses for Nana 🥰

Late afternoon we went over to see Sam the reason being that Mia had been at school all day and I didn’t want her to think we had missed her Mums birthday 😀 She had made some little chocolate covered fairy cakes for everyone bless her.

Friday: Another sunny day ahead. I started off getting some wash loads on, picking raspberries and planting 220 bulbs of various descriptions in the front border. Snowdrops, dwarf iris, crocus and tête-à-tête , hopefully that will be lovely and cheery from Jan through to March when not much else is around. I sorted dinner for later and made an apple and raspberry crumble, had a coffee and typed this up while waiting for the washing to finish spinning so I can get it out on the line. The postman came with parcels, cauliflower plants and an expandable hose, hoses are a big bug bear for me as they catch and kink all the time which drives me mad lol. The cauliflower I will have to get planted up ASAP, I need to work out where they will go, I think the best place will be where I had the broad beans, in fact yes that’s defiantly where I will plant them.

The pumpkin patch almost ready to harvest now the foliage has all died back. I need to get them in before the birds start pecking at them 🙄

Just before lunchtime I planted the cauliflower plants, 10 in all which will be all we need. First I hoed the area and raked it over, riddled the rakings to get the stones etc out and then planted the plants. I have covered them with environmesh not to keep off butterflies but to stop the pigeons and chickens eating the greenery. Then I spent a little while husking walnuts they are now drying in the greenhouse.

10 tiny cauliflower plants

Hopefully come late winter, early spring, I should have cauliflower, purple sprouting, leeks, winter spinach and chard all growing fresh, plus a freezer full of beans of all types, peas, swede, turnip and many types of fruit. I have garlic dried and stored, nuts that will be dried and stored, potatoes, butternut squash and pumpkins in store, jars of jam and chutney in the store cupboard, tomatoes/passata puréed and frozen, soup mixes already chopped and frozen, we have a store of chopped and dried wood ready, yep I am all good to go for 10ft of heavy snowfall 😜

Saturday: Martin came over to help John again today and as Shelley was working I entertained Josh and Flo. First we cooked egg and sausage sandwiches for the workers then we went to check on the horses and clean out and fill up the water buckets and then we made raspberry and chocolate chip cakes. After that in between making cups of tea and coffee we watched a bit of tv and played some superhero games, I get instructions from Josh as I have no idea what I am doing having had three girls 😂 Shelley came over mid afternoon and they all went home at 4pm. At 4.30 Sam arrived with Mia, George and Lucie as Mia is staying for a sleepover tonight 😀 John went to the chip shop and got some fish and chips and the it was bath time, we played tunes on Alexa and had fun getting her to burp and sneeze, then story time and bed, I’m knackered 😂 Apart from a bit of painting the cladding first thing this morning I didn’t get anything else done on the farm 😜

Sunday: Mia stayed over and slept well 😀 I did think she may want to go home but nope she was fine. This morning we got up had breakfast got dressed and went out to see the horses, after that we picked raspberries, collected a few eggs, picked up some hazelnuts and found some conkers, those are all for her to take home with her. The blackberries we picked up in the back paddock she ate en route 😜

After Sam collected her mid morning I went out to do a bit of picking, runner beans, courgettes, chillies and tomatoes everything has slowed considerably now. I got three lovely surprises as I was going round, one, the carrot seeds have already started to sprout so I should get some for Christmas even if they are baby carrots 🥕 Two, I have a loofah 😀😀😀 I had given up on these and even stopped watering them, I was watering the peppers and thought ‘that’s a funny shape pepper then realised it was a tiny loofah. And three, my oranges are beginning to ripen 😀😀 whoop whoop, we are moving towards orange season, late winter, early spring so fingers crossed, I hope they taste good.

If you look closely you can just see the carrot seedlings appearing.
My first ever loofah, it won’t be big but it’s an achievement 😀
Oranges beginning to ripen whoop whoop 😀 Also a big achievement in our climate though this year has been ideal for them.

We have had no rain for what seems like weeks, everything is very dry although the overnight dew is keeping things going I do have to water every now and then.

John has been busy again on the front of the house, when it’s finished I will post the before and after pictures. I am reserving judgment on the colour,

Posted in Friesland Farm

Autumn pickings, a smack in the eye and a house of horrors (bit dramatic Dawn) 😝

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 7th September: We’ll here we are again back round at Monday, the children have either gone back or are going back this week. Seems like life is returning to normal except the daily reports of the virus numbers which in some countries are scarily huge 🙄 Cases are rising here, well they are going to with everyone moving around more freely but the deaths are not as staggering as they once were, though that’s not much consolation if it happens to be your family member 😢 Life hasn’t really altered much at all for me in particular, never been one to go shopping or to the pub or do much socialising at all really 😂 life is pretty much as it always was except that now I can see the children, grandchildren and wider family members which is fine by me. I must admit that I was wondering when we could go to a live music event or theatre again but in all honesty I doubt we will be going anywhere before next summer. We have got to make the most of what we do have, it’s the only way to get through this whole episode 🤷‍♀️

This morning I have been doing a bit of hoovering and polishing and listening to tunes while I do it. My teenage years were the second half of the seventies and I have some music on the iPod from the ‘Jackie’ album so I was listening to some of that. They were good times, the youth club discos would consist of ABBA, Showaddywaddy, The Jackson Five, Paul Nicholas, The Rubettes, Hot Chocolate, Barry White, Status Quo, T. rex, Slade, Suzi Quattro, Lief Garret, Mud, The Osmonds, Bryan Ferry to name a few, a real eclectic mix totally representative of the seventies 😀 We wore platform shoes and Oxford bag trousers, layered skirts and cheesecloth tie up blouses, we used the phone box down the road to call friends or we went round and knocked on the door. We spent weekends staying at mates houses, going home on their school bus instead of our own and we listened to the Top 40 run down on a Sunday night on radio Luxembourg I think it was. Yep they were great times to grow up for sure 😀

I picked some Autumn raspberries, this is the first time I have been able to pick a decent amount and now they will produce this everyday so I shall be freezing some of them. I cut down on the amount of bushes I had by about 2/3 because I couldn’t keep up with picking lol maybe I should have just done a third 🙄 I stewed some cooking apples and made a batch lot of apple and raspberry crumbles for John, for me I froze some batches of stewed apple unsweetened which I can add other fruit to or cinnamon and maybe a sprinkle of truvia until I get used to no sugar at all lol. John has cut out his one sugar in tea and is now a no sugar tea drinker but I can’t quite let go.

Autumn Raspberries

Tuesday: Not a bad weather day, overcast but warm enough for only one layer 😀 Apart from the usual bits and pieces I have been chopping and cooking down tomatoes ready to purée. This will then go into the freezer as a base for soups, slightly different to the passata as it’s just tomatoes. I have begun to stress my tomato plants, I do this every year and all it means is less watering, much less, this then tricks the plant into thinking the season is over and will hopefully ripen what fruit is still on there. You still end up with some green tomatoes but not as many.

Went for a walk with Sam, Shelley, and the grandchildren this afternoon, we walked round the village which was lovely. Plenty of nice looking apples on some of the trees, might have to go and raid some, the ones on the roadside of course, my scrumping days are long gone 😂 In a village I lived in when I was about 10 there was an orchard over the road from where we lived (now a housing estate 😏) but we would often go over the wall for an apple or two. I am not sure who the land belonged too but they didn’t pick the apples so we helped ourselves lol. It’s funny is t it that people go blackberry picking but you don’t see people picking apples or nuts 🙄

Wednesday: Well it’s happened and the country is back on restrictions, gatherings of people are down from 30 to 6 and no more than two households indoors or outdoors, I think 🤔 Anyone who is surprised by it must have had their head in the sand, the groups that have been gathering in bars, certainly local ones, have been ridiculous and there seems to have been no policing of the rules either by the bar staff or the authorities. Most of the pubs and restaurants I know of have been sticking to the guidelines but the micro pubs and bars have had large gatherings outside on the pavement which is indeed difficult to police, hopefully these new restrictions will stop all that and still allow the pubs and restaurants to continue providing the excellent service that they have been.

Meanwhile I have been doing a few bits this morning, picking some apples I missed on the last look, some courgettes and a couple of pears. Watering the poly tunnels and picking the tomatoes, I have had a good haul of toms this year and there are still plenty on there, I just hope we get the weather to keep them going and ripen them, especially the indigo ones which are always slow to ripen I find. I watered all the plants in the new bed out the front and the ones in pots and tided up the front a bit as we are expecting the wood delivery today for the cladding.

I picked a few blackberries this afternoon from the hedgerow lining the back paddocks, there are more but I’m pretty sure the horses will start mugging me for them if I go into their paddock. Then wood delivery arrived and I called John to let him know as he was coming home early to do some of the work. That’s when we found out that our phone number (new one) comes up on the receiving phone under the old owner which was a business in Carterton under the name of fitfigures! Great so when I phone out if someone has caller ID they may not answer it, bloody unbelievable that this saga continues. On the funny side John quickly quipped ‘I’ll know it’s you darling’ 😂

I had a small accident, John was on the house phone in the kitchen calling the wood yard as the delivery was short, I was in the kitchen and going into the boot room. You make a very fleeting assessment of the path you are going to take without even realising it and that’s what I did, the pathway was clear and I walked toward the boot room door, at the same time John got up from the chair with the phone still in his hand up by his ear, finished the call, turned round, went to put his hand down and bang it caught me on the corner of my left eye, worse I had my glasses on which seemed to clout the corner of my eyebrow. It all happened in a split second. How the glasses hit the eyebrow I don’t know as I have tried to manoeuvre the glasses to see but they are rigid so it must have been a heck of a clout, I ended up on the floor as the stop was so abrupt and I reckon I will have a black eye tomorrow 👀

Oh a had a wander and looked at the bees in the tree, loads of bees going in and out so they are definitely thriving, no sign of honey oozing out yet though 😂

I made dinner, John worked on the front of the building, after dinner he carried on doing some more. Meanwhile I fed the dogs, why is this relevant I hear you ask, well John has been doing it but I kept telling him he was over feeding them. Every time I looked at their bowl it was FULL of biscuits, we feed them a decent dog feed which I researched thoroughly and they only need a third of what he was putting in there. Naturally being dogs they were eating it all but I could see that Mia in particular was putting on weight. Despite being asked (told) he still kept over feeding and so now I am in charge of doing it 😜

My eye hurts, I have a small, hurts to touch, lump on the eyebrow 🙄

Diesel still hasn’t appeared that’s a week now, not having much luck with cats at the moment. He has been here ten years mind you and been more and more absent lately so either found himself somewhere better or met his demise 😏

Thursday: A lovely morning, warm but mainly overcast, I had already decided as I was falling asleep last night that I would get out and tidy up the fruit cage. One of the support wires had snapped and there were quite a few weeds that needed pulling. So that’s exactly what I did, a very pleasant couple of hours of weeding here and there as well as the fruit cage. Then I watered some things because the ground is very dry again, luckily there is plenty of rain water in the storage tanks at the minute. I picked a few ears of corn, might have to have one for lunch 😀 I am going to try the microwave method, you leave the corn in the husk (un shucked is the term) and microwave it and apparently the husk is then easier to remove, we will see 🙄

The corn was delicious and very easy to do in the microwave, I was impressed with the ease in which the husk came off and the tenderness of the corn, winner 😀

Lunch, freshly picked corn on the cob, hard boiled egg with mayo and home grown salad 🥰 life is good 😀

My eye didn’t blacken thank goodness and it is less tender today but still a lump there and a little bit sore.

I did a walk around the perimeter of the paddocks just for a bit of exercise and picked up some walnuts. I can tell the squirrel is fearing on them already this year because there are peelings and bits of shell all under the tree, occasionally he must drop one that he has peeled and that’s a bonus for me as it means I don’t have to do that one 😂 Hulling walnuts is my least favourite job, there is no easy way to do it and I have tried multiple methods over the years. The main thing is to wear gloves otherwise you have brown fingers for weeks afterwards. As with the hazels this year, I am not planning on gathering all of them, just enough to keep me going, we have them growing so might as well use them in cakes etc.

Shelley and the children called late afternoon and we went up to the back paddock and picked a good haul of blackberries 😀

Friday 11th Sept: I put the date in today because of course it’s a day that we can never forget. Long before we bought the smallholding a terrible day unfolded in the USA and the whole world watched the events as they happened, not something I will forget in a hurry, I remember exactly where I was sat and how the room looked as I watched the news reports of the Twin Towers being attacked and the horror as I watched live when the towers began to fall 😢 RIP

I started the morning with that Friday feeling 🥰 and got on with some picking, cucumbers, sweetcorn, runner beans, beetroot, hazel nuts and walnuts today. You can tell what time of year it is without a calendar by the shift in what you are gathering in, early Autumn is a time I love.

I have a couple of marrow and I decided to make a marrow cake, they are the same as a courgette just bigger. I sort of followed a recipe, this is a healthier version of what I found, it’s still in the oven so hopefully will taste just as good as a version with fat and sugar in it.

Marrow cake: 300g Marrow, grated 2 eggs 150g whole wheat flour, 150g SR flour 100g coconut oil (melted if you are in a colder climate 😂) 1tsp baking powder, 1tsp cinnamon 1tsp vanilla extract 3tbls Maple syrup (or to taste) put it all in a bowl and mix thoroughly, bake at around 160c for approx 40mins or until you get a clean knife. I figured it would be about 12 slices from a loaf tin and so each slice is around 200 calories a slice which is not bad when you ‘NEED CAKE’ 😜 You could add nuts or chocolate chips or even add cocoa powder if you want a chocolate version but obviously that increases the calories. I think I will mix up a little icing sugar and lemon or lime juice to drizzle on top as an extra treat.

Saturday: Busy day today, we started off with the usual rounds and I did a few bits while John started on the second half of the front of the building. He pulled off the cladding and horror, the main timbers at the bottom were rotten through and through, I mean crumbling rotten and some of the timber that goes going under the building 😏 He kept saying ‘oh dear this doesn’t look good’ no shit Sherlock, I was starting to panic a little and to be honest felt like crying. I came indoors and had a word with myself then went back out, ‘right then, instead of being negative how about we look at it properly and see exactly what is what and then decide what we will do about it’. So John went underneath the building as there was space (just about) for him to get under and assess the situation fully. Turns out that only the first couple of foot of the timbers were gone and the rest was fine which meant we had something solid to attach new timbers to 😅 thank goodness for that. Martin arrived to help and as Shelley was working I looked after Florence and Josh while they got on with some work. Me and the kiddies went and picked raspberries, had a good look at the pumpkin patch, I think they were impressed with my efforts, which is good because that’s who I grow them for 🙄 we fed the guineas and the torts, went for a walk in the paddock to look at the bees nest, picked some walnuts, had some snacks and some chit chat and then it was time for them to go home. Martin came back in the afternoon and carried on helping John and now we have half the building sorted and the first layer of ply has gone on. John and I couldn’t decide (agree) on the colour to stain the cladding when it’s finished I wanted a brown shade, John wanted grey which I wasn’t keen on. He bought home a tin of the grey anyway (to my disgust 😂) but actually now he has done a sample I quite like it and think it will look great. There is a first time for everything and John was right, which is a first 😝

You can just see Johns foot as he scrabbles about underneath to assess the extent of the rotten timbers 😱

Sunday: Lovely sunny day, John did the animals and then got on with the front of the house. Luckily the rest of the timbers are not as bad as that lot yesterday and so he was able to get on well. I did some watering in the greenhouse and tunnels and then decided to clear one side of the small tunnel. There were a couple of tomato plants that have all but gone over a sorry looking parsley and a large cape gooseberry in the bed. I had decided previously to take out the gooseberry as it’s got too being, I don’t get many from it and it casts a lot of shade. Once cleared I had to top up the beds with some fresh compost and then I sowed some forcing carrots, I have no idea if I will get any but it doesn’t cost much to give it a go so I have nothing to lose. They are Amsterdam forcing carrots, quick maturing and so I might be lucky enough to get some for Christmas.

One filled the other waiting to be filled then sown with carrots for a Christmas crop hopefully. There is parsley growing right in the middle too lol.

It’s twilight and I went out to collect a delivery that just arrived, I can hear an owl in the hedgerow between us and the next field, twit twoo 🦉🥰

Posted in Friesland Farm

Changeable weather, plenty of produce, especially plums 😂

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 17th August 2020: Up and about this morning get some veg picked, I think I need a bigger basket 😂 loads of tomatoes this morning and the conference pears were ready to pick. After sorting it all out, putting some out for sale, finding homes for the rest of it, I got started on the front area we are creating the border in. There were bramble bushes growing which needed digging out and then shredding any material from the existing bush that I cut back yesterday. I had a go at a few of the perennial weeds as well but there is still plenty more to do. That took me up to about 11.30, that’s when I heard the first crack of thunder and felt the first spots of rain. Honestly we seem to dive from one extreme to another as far as the weather is concerned, I’m pretty sure it ought to be a little more constant than this 😏 A customer arrived to collect the last of this batch of hens, the next batch is nearly all sold already and they are not due in until October 🙄 The rain got heavier but that’s fine as I have a bit of tidying to do indoors, I haven’t done any all weekend and things get plonked down all over the place, I have looked at the forecast for the rest of the day and it’s a washout so might as well stay in.

Although staying in was my plan it didn’t actually carrying on raining and so all I did indoors was the washing up, a quick phone call to Sue and then outside again. I wanted to dig up the rest of the carrots because the rain we are forecast all week will not do them any favours so might as well get them up and into the freezer. I found a marrow that had escaped my eye as they often do, it’s not too big but big enough, some of the smaller courgettes had rotted at the ends so I cut those off and threw them to the chickens and I picked a few berries from the fruit cage and some cape gooseberries from the tunnels. The clouds were intermittent and you know what that means for me, diving in an out of shade areas lol, it’s pretty strong when it makes an appearance 🙄

This mornings haul, under the tomatoes and pears there is a good layer of beans as well 😀

Someone gave me some packets of chilli seeds back in spring, I am not a fan of spicy food as it causes my acid reflux to play up but I grew them anyway and now I have loads of little Thai chillies lol. Not sure what I am going to do with them apart from put them out for sale. It’s the first time I have successfully grown chillies though, must have been the high temps we had back in spring and a decent greenhouse, I might try growing some with less heat next year.

I am running out of available space in the kitchen, there are tomatoes and plums everywhere 😂 I think a good amount of tomatoes will be ripe enough to pick again tomorrow as well, I really need to do something with them.

Tuesday: I decided to make today an ordinary day, that is nothing out on the farm or in the garden except the essentials, a day pottering around indoors, a bit of cleaning, washing, tidying away and anything else I fancy doing. I started off with good intentions and got the boot room hoovered and tided and a few bits in the kitchen, then got side tracked by chatting with customers. One couple I was chatting to come once a year when they are down in their caravan on holiday, they always come and get their breakfast eggs here which is lovely 😀 A bit more hoovering and put the washing on the line though I’m not sure how long it will be out there before it rains 🙄 I am not picking anything today as I have plenty still to sort out before I get more in, I have ordered a food mill/purée maker so that I can purée the tomatoes etc for passata. I made some last year if you remember and I experimented with one jar in the fridge and one in the cupboard to see how they did, well they are still both fine so that’s a year they have kept easily, really ought to use them up lol.

Wednesday: On reflection I should have done some outside things yesterday! It’s 7.30am it’s already raining and it’s set in for the day according to the forecasters 🙄 There are plums on the trees still to pick and there are seeds to collect, none of this couldn’t wait until the next dry day except that there are strong winds forecast after that, the plums will all be on the floor 😦 Hopefully somewhere in between our demented weather I will get an hour or two to do these jobs. They say make hay while the sun shines and I should have heeded the old proverb 😏 Having said that there is only so much you want to be doing or you would be totally submerged in the processes of self sufficiency, maybe you should be, I don’t know. What I do know is that to be totally self sufficient in food you would have to work from dawn to dusk at this time of year. We are ss in fruit/veg/nuts/eggs and that keeps me busy enough imagine if we had a house cow as well, I’m not sure there are enough hours in the day even if I really would love one. Imagine on top of those two you grew your own grain as well and reared meat in what ever form you decided, that’s a very busy, full on life, I salute anyone that manages all of those!

I could bake today, I always used to say, rainy days are baking days but to be honest we are trying to eat healthier and cakes and pies don’t fall into the healthy category 😂

I was delighted to see The Guardian report that the interest in allotments soared during the pandemic, our fragile food security was exposed during those early days and people recognised the need to have home grown food (and by that I also mean UK grown) instead of relying on imports. My aim is always to encourage people to have a go at growing your own even if you just start with a tomato bush and some herbs, it’s something and you never know, you might get hooked 😀 There are so many gardens in our wonderful country, town gardens, country gardens even some city gardens and the potential to grow food is massively overlooked. Even small spaces have potential with the idea of vertical gardening, get creative, you don’t need masses of ground area and the taste is amazing.

In my blog I try to keep it simple and non reactive (on the whole anyway) because it’s a diary blog after all but there are a lot of topics that I research or follow in much more depth than I write about. One of those is the fragility of how we live, not just the climate but our fundamental way of life, which is pretty fragile as shown by the pandemic. That was a disease and on the scale it’s not a bad one either, of course to those affected it is catastrophic but at least it wasn’t airbourne, can you imagine how cataclysmic that would have been and who’s to say that won’t happen sometime in the future with a different disease. Now you are beginning to see why I keep it quite neutral aren’t you 😂 The government stepped in and kept the country ticking over by ploughing money into the system because to them that’s the most important thing and even I was grateful for that. Now imagine that airbourne disease and how it is affecting everyone, people are dying by the tens of thousands and the systems that we rely on can no longer function, what are we going to do? Anything is possible as we have just witnessed, how well are we equipped to manage?, on the whole, we are not and that is the scary part. Electricity & Water, outside of the basic food system, are the two biggies to focus on, at the moment they are pumped to our properties with uninterrupted supply, on the whole. We don’t think about it until the supply stops for whatever reason, but if you really think about it you will begin to realise just how much we rely on it, electric especially. If the power plants closed, because there was no one to run them, EVERYTHING shuts down even your water supply 🙄 If you want to learn more then there are plenty of pod casts out there, Permaculture for the future is a good one to listen too, and far from giving you nightmares I think the knowledge builds strength within you to cope with whatever life throws at you, I hope so anyway.

Does anyone have the address for ‘offmet ‘ I want to write a complaint about the weather 😜 Seriously, this time last week we were sweating our nuts off, today it’s umbrellas and rain coats all day and then we have high winds coming, nothing resembling a ‘normal’ late summers day in sight 😒 I think I need to stop watching the forecast and just be surprised by whatever it is wet get thrown as us, it’s just depressing otherwise.

Thursday: A nice morning so far, not raining and not too hot. The first job on my list was to pick plums, with the high winds forecast later today and tomorrow, most of the weekend in fact, the plums would be all on the floor pretty quickly so needed picking pdq. I now have many kgs of plums to sort and process 😂 I also picked a few other bits, the tomatoes are coming in thick and fast, I picked beans of various variety’s and of course courgettes, marrows and cucumbers. This is where we move from the ‘grow your own’ into the self sufficient realm, definitely self sufficient in fruit and veg that’s for sure and so many things can be made from the basics that we won’t go short for the next few seasons 😀

A snapshot of some of the produce this year 😀

There is still plenty to harvest, the sweet corn I checked today but that’s not ready just yet, butternut squash still growing nicely, plenty of turnips, beetroot, swede and leeks still in the ground, cauliflowers coming on, there are also Oca in the ground that won’t be harvested until after the from and the yacon, I have no idea when to harvest that but I’m sure it will become evident. There are chillies continuing to grow and ripen along with the cues and toms, next will be nuts and blackberries 😀 busy times ahead!

It’s 1.30pm and I am having a sit down, mainly to stretch my back out lol, I have spent the whole morning processing. It’s surprising how much time it all takes but I now have 8 jars of plum jam, and for the freezer two containers of tomato purée, two bags of plums and a tray of French beans, plus two plum breads in the oven. Seriously, that has taken me about 3 hours and there are still loads of plums left to do something with 🙄 Hopefully the plum bread will turn out ok, the recipe was a bit finicky but I just threw it all in a gave it a stir so we will see 😜

Plum bread was delish 😋 After a rest I did more plums then all the washing up, got some bread on the go, sorted the eggs, got the dinner, knackered now, over and out for today, writing anyway, still got to water the tunnels later!

I did spend a pleasant half an hour gathering some seeds from marigolds, cornflowers, love in a mist, poppies and morning glory. I intend to cast theses next spring, along with a few others that have not set seed yet, in a part of the veg garden that I struggle to get round to. Hopefully they will cover it and provide some lovely colour and nectar and save me weeding 😀

Friday: Oh my word they were not wrong about the wind, some of the gusts are savage 🙄 First job was to get the egg shed sorted with stuff for sale as Fridays are proving to be pretty busy at the minute. There was a lady at the gate who’s words were ‘I have a strange request’ that’s fine I said, you wouldn’t believe some of the requests I get 🤣 Turned out not to be that strange, not in my experience anyhow, she was after fertile eggs to incubate, all pretty normal so far 🙄 The embryo would not reach full gestation though as they would be frozen and used to help develop a new scanning system for animals, a cross between an x-ray and a scan, still in 2D but more detailed, I think I got the gist of it. We have fertile quail eggs and duck eggs but not many chicken eggs as our layer flock don’t run with a cockerel I explained. I also explained that what fertile eggs we do have are currently being sat on by broody hens, we went to have a look to see how many they were sat on and guess what, chicks 🐣 they had hatched! She went away with quail and duck eggs and my e-mail and she is going to send me the results of any scans that they get, exciting stuff, she asked how much she owed and I replied, it’s for science, they are free 😀 got to help science along as you never know when you are going to need it yourself.

I had Florence and Josh for a couple of hours this morning while Shelley was busy. She runs an eyebrow/eyelash business from home and has only just been able to start up again after the lockdown and so customers are queuing up. It’s funny really as when she left school she qualified as a beauty therapist but ended up in hotel management for years. It would always be something she could fall back on when she needed to and so once she had Josh and Flo she started up again so that she could work from home, it proved to be a great back up plan 😀

I asked Shelley to pick me up some brandy as she was popping to the shops before coming back here, I think I am going to make some plum brandy, might as well make good use of these plums. It might be a very nice warming, winter tipple if I add some cinnamon as well 🥃 I used the Rumtopf vessel I have as that’s as good as anything, gradually getting through the plums 😋

Plums, Brandy, Sugar, Cinamon, Orange zest, stir and leave for a few months until ready then strain and bottle or drink up 😀

After they went home I went outside to do a bit of weeding and feed the guineas some weeds but although the weather itself is ok the buffeting from the wind is as always pretty exhausting. When Shelley came back to pick the children up she said it’s not that noticeable in town, we definitely notice the weather extremes here because it’s fairly exposed.

I called John to tell him we will need some chick crumb and now I have to work out where they will go, the last mum and babies I moved out because of the holes in the ground if you remember, I don’t want them falling down crevices, not sure where I am going to move them too, I will need to have a good think about it.

I fed the chicks and there are five little yellow fluffy bundles in there 😀

We decided to go shopping, we didn’t need much but had run out of washing up liquid and cheese so off we went. Well I wish I hadn’t bothered, it was hammering down when we left and all the way there, got a soaking getting into the shop to start off with, then of course my glasses steamed up. The whole glasses and mask thing is a pain in the arse, I can’t see the labels clearly without them, they don’t sit on my head (they slip off) and no matter how I adjust the mask they constantly steam up. We were just about done and I remembered that I had forgotten something but I couldn’t think what it was and the bloody music they pipe over the whole place wasn’t helping with my concentration levels. I ended up being so irritated I decided I’m not going again, I will send John with a list and do without whatever I forget to put on it. I know I’m a grumpy cow lol.

Saturday: The weather is a bit on and off today. After doing the animals John got the tractor out to dig a trench for the new border, this will have a low fence to hold the soil in and keep the shingle separate. It was sunny and we were out there discussing the outline when out of nowhere it starting raining, 1st soaking. He got on with that while I went and did some picking, again it was sunny when all of a sudden it started raining, I dived into the poly tunnel before I got a second soaking, by now John was on the tractor digging and he got a soaking lol. No doubt that is how the day will carry on by the looks of things.

We had a busy morning, John on the new border and me sorting out the newly hatched chicks (6) and their Mums. I have moved them into Teds pen, there is a little hut in there and the ground is not full of potential pitfalls for small chicks. Both the mummy hens and the cockerel have been moved along with the chicks. That means Ted will have a new place to sleep tonight and that might be difficult encouraging him to change. I cleaned out Teds pen, sorted out food and water then caught up one hen dusted her for mites, moved her, moved the chicks, then the other hen, dusting her as well, then finally the cockerel giving him a dusting too. Then cleaned out then pen where they had hatched and burnt the bedding, where the hens had been sitting tight and the weather has been hot there were quite a lot of red mite in there, burning gets rid of a vast majority of them. I then used the DE to dust the hatching area and I will leave it a while before cleaning it out completely and giving it a wash down with some jeyes fluid. The pen was never intended for chickens (originally it was for the rabbits) so it’s a bit awkward to clean out. We never intended to have hatchlings, typical, if you had wanted them it wouldn’t have happened and now we have eight including the two that hatched a few weeks back!

While we were both busy patch started yapping incessantly, I could hear John telling him to be quiet but I also knew that the type of yap he was doing meant he was telling us something. Not all lassie like lol, there was no one stuck down a well or anything like that and usually it’s if the horse has got out. I went to investigate and found a large hedgehog, I’m guessing the dogs had disturbed from wherever it was sleeping. I watched it and it was trying to get along the fence line of my garden so I opened the gate and in it went, I turned round to see where it was heading and it was gone, they really moved fast when they want to. I said to John we need to make little hedgehog tunnels so they can move between fenced areas more easily.

Sunday: Another busy morning, the weather has been favourable, for me at least 😜 John got on with the front bed and I did a bit of cutting back in the garden and then some potting on of a few pots of things as well as some pricking out of lupins and huechera seedlings that have grown nicely. After that I went to help John in the front, digging out weeds etc. We are hoping to do the bed without weedkiller which is a pretty big task as it’s very weedy and not just easy to pull weeds either but some real tough rooted ones. I think I have settled on putting flowering shrubs in there and intersperse with some late flowering plants, then scatter some annual seeds for a wispy look. I also have some bulbs which can go for spring interest, hopefully hat will cover all the seasons and be changing all the time. Most of the shrubs I already have growing in pots and once they are in the ground they should tare off pretty quickly provided we can get them in fairly soon.

I took some photos of the flower bed in the veg garden as a few smaller plants have got lost in with the giants, there is a lovely little salmon coloured dahlia that can hardly be seen as it’s behind a much bigger yellow one, all things to consider for rearranging in autumn. The photos are to remind me once the plants have died down, it’s all very well having an idea of what height they grow to but seeing them gives you a much better idea of where to place things.

All looks a bit of a mess as I did just shove it all in this year but come autumn I will re arrange it all a little better 😀
Posted in Friesland Farm

Hot, hot, hot, wet, wet, wet & work, work, work 🥵 ☔️ 🏋🏻‍♀️

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th August: Monday again, it comes round with prompt regularity 🤪 I set the alarm for an early morning as it’s been so hot and I really need to get a few jobs done. I did hit the snooze button three times before I finally got up at 5.30am. The air was deliciously cool outside so I know I made the right decision. A quick breakfast and then straight out into the garden, I spend such an amount of time picking and processing at the moment that little time is left for maintenance aka weeding 😀 I cleared out plants from the greenhouse that were not doing well or that I hadn’t had time to pot on, mostly veg plants and I don’t really need any more veg than I have now. Then onto the weeding, the bean bed first, I got sidetracked on the way to the compost heap and ended up weeding random areas. I really wanted to have a methodical approach so that the results were obvious but it dose t really matter as long as it gets done. I spent an hour and a half at that before onto some picking, a small batch of petit poi, some runner beans, mange-tout and courgettes. I spent a good couple of hours last night watering so I didn’t have to do that this morning. Processing next so back into the kitchen and pod the peas, chop the beans, put the courgettes and some cucumbers out for sale, de stone some Victoria and greengage plums for the freezer and peel, chop and cook down some cooking apples I had been given. Once that was done I took the Apple peelings up to the geese and the other peelings etc went onto the compost heap, nothing gets wasted round here, if the animals don’t it eat it goes back into the soil system 😀

I need to have a good think about the veg garden, I feel it’s too big for me to manage (or at least to keep in good order) I thought about cutting out one whole bed and laying more lawn but that would mean moving the asparagus and it’s only halfway through it’s productive life so maybe not. I’m sure I will come up with some idea eventually 🙄 At this time of year I always think ‘what a mess’ but come Autumn when everything is spent or cut back ready for Winter it dose t seem so bad, maybe it’s an attitude adjustment I need 😜

We have point of lay hens arriving today, as with previous batches since lockdown, these are all sold before they even arrive and most of them will not be on the premises for more than a few hours. In more normal times we buy a batch of forty in at the beginning of summer and gradually sell them on, this summer we have sold 180 in various sized batches and the turnaround times have broken all records here!

I haven’t mentioned the pandemic for a couple of weeks, that’s because most things feel fairly normal or at least the new normal. It’s amazing how quickly we can change and adapt, I am avoiding the shops as much as is possible and everything else just seems like the usual thing to do. If we meet up with family it’s mostly outside because the weather is favourable, if we go out to eat, it’s a little bit different but everyone quickly got the hang of it and now it feels normal, yep I’d say we are definitely comfortable with the new normal lol. The cases are rising again slowly but then with more people moving around that is obviously going to happen, it’s just something we will have to get used to living with unless they find a vaccine.

I cleaned out the fridge, soggy celery, buttermilk I forgot was in there, a dribble of cream in the bottom of the carton. There is now room to put fruit in there because the fruit flies around the fruit bowl are doing my head in. I know they are only around for a short while but the little wafts of them every time you pick up a banana is annoying lol.

The chickens arrived and that meant an evening of people arriving to collect which in the blazing sun was hot work, for John anyway, I stayed in the shade 🤪

Tuesday: Is it only Tuesday lol. I have no idea what the temps are out there at the moment (9.45am) but I am already sweating. Up and at it, not quite so early this morning, I suspect like most people last night, I didn’t get a lot of sleep as it was so warm. As I said it’s 9.45 and I have already first proved the bread I made, it’s now on its second prove, I have sorted dinner for this evening and it’s in the slow cooker, made a plum sponge and cooked that in the oven so we can just reheat it later, put a wash load on and hung it out to dry, gone round and made sure all the animals have plenty of water, fed the torts and the Guineas some high water content bits such as cucumber and apples and slung the hoover round. I am just waiting for the bread to finish proving so I can put it in the oven for 25 minutes and then I don’t need to turn the oven on later when it gets very hot 🥵. I am on my third glass of water, got to keep hydrated especially as I seemed to have picked up a summer cold, fabulous, nothing more sinister than that as far as I can tell 😬 it’s all nasal and sinus. The plan for the rest of the day is to stay as cool as possible indoors. I do have jam to make but I am not even going to attempt that today 😋

The phone line saga: lol you thought it had gone away didn’t you, nope, we were expecting to be connected this Friday but I’ve just had a text to say it’s delayed until 26th August, are you f**king kidding me 🤬🤬 angry does not even come close to how I am feeling now and I have just emailed them to tell them. Bloody joke, if that’s what you get for being a loyal customer of thirty years plus you can shove it where the sun don’t shine!!!!! I went onto the BT Facebook page and I despair at ever getting the correct connection judging by the complaints on there 😏 at least I have the mini hub with unlimited data at their expense I suppose 😋 although we can’t connect the tv or Alexa buy hey!

The thermometer is registering 26c in the kitchen that’s with the windows closed and the blinds shut 🙄 outside a thermometer that is just outside the back door but under a sun umberella says 35c 🥵 We officially have tropical weather, apparently that is when the temps remain above 20c overnight for five days in row or something like that, most peculiar to us Brits no wonder we can’t cope, this time next month we will be moaning because it’s freezing 😂

We had our dinner early as we were both hungry, glad I made the slow cook decision. I had cooked the plum sponge earlier too so just needed to reheat in the microwave, do we have any ice cream left? I asked John, as he has been eating it all week. Yes there are two tubs, one nearly empty and a new one, have you started the new one? I asked, there was a look of horror on his face and he said, NO! that’s more than my life is worth 🤣🤣 37 years of training and it’s starting to pay off finally 😜

Wednesday: Well that was a hot night as far as the air temps go anyway 😜 Apparently there was an amazing silent lightning storm but it seems we were looking out of the wrong window, we have windows on the East and south side not the North and on the west side we would have to go out past the trees to get a view. The North was where it was all happening it would seem 🙄

Again the temps are set to climb and climb 🥵 Most of the birds freely roam around the place and so can find their own shade. The new arrivals that are waiting to go to new homes however are in a pen and most of the day there is shade but late afternoon and evening there is none so I have made a temporary shade shelter for them. Chickens are descendants of jungle fowl and so while they are used to heat, it’s shaded heat not blaring sunshine ☀️

I picked some tomatoes this morning and some cape gooseberries, you may be familiar with these as a ‘flourish’ on top of your dessert but they can be grown in good quantities even in the UK under cover. I say under cover as I haven’t tried them outside, I guess in a year like this they would be successful but they have a long growing season and I’m not sure if they would ripen in a ‘normal’ year. They can of course be eaten as they are or they apparently make good jam 😀

My goodness that got hot today lol, 37c was recorded in the south, we are south east by definition but right on the border of south west, so any way you look at it we are south 😜 Shelley, Sam and the children came over to sit under the shade of the trees in the garden. Who knew you could have so much fun with two washing up bowls of water and a sprinkler 😀 The twins had a mighty time splashing themselves and everyone else and thought it was incredibly funny 😂 Needless to say I did not do anything else except sit in the garden, keep hydrated and trying to keep cool. By mid afternoon it was too hot to stay out any longer, the girls went home and John arrived home and evening indoors was like a sauna, hot and muggy.

The weather finally broke with thunder, lightening and rain, it was so nice we actually went out and stood in it lol, the only time I am happy to be rained on 😕 It was still uncomfortably hot indoors though so I kept going outside to cool off!

Thursday: It’s cooler this morning but I don’t think it’s going to stay cool as the day goes on. I have no idea how people in hot countries deal with this on a daily basis 🥵 and working in it, well that’s unfathomable. I guess developed countries have air con, not many places have it in the UK and generally speaking we don’t need it 😂 I have observed there are two types in this country, those who like it hot, the hotter, the better and then those who don’t, there don’t seem to be many inbetween. There are still thunderstorm warnings for the next two days and some places have had torrential downpours, it’s all very tropical at the moment. The one thing I am glad of is that I don’t need to water the garden 😀

I picked a few courgettes and then sorted out veg and fruit I had already picked before it got hot, I needed to process it all before it spoilt. I made some more Victoria Plum jam, always useful for giving and then plenty for the winter stores. The next lot of plums are looking ready and I haven’t finished picking the Victoria’s yet 😬 it’s been such an abundant year we will be sick of plums by spring lol.

I really need to get back a healthy eating regime, like large percentage of the population during lockdown my habits have slid down a slippery slope 😏 I am trying to re educate myself, I don’t really need to do that, I know what I should and shouldn’t be eating 😂 Two of the biggest problems I have is tiredness, when I cant be arsed to sort something good out and so reach for the easy things which are usually carb heavy 🙄 and the fact that I grow such a lot of my own. You wouldn’t think this was a problem would you but even though I grow a lot the selection is limited (to my mind at least) and I won’t buy anything lol. Things are not always ready at the same time, so a chopped salad of tomatoes and cucumber would look great with sweetcorn but it isn’t ripe yet, do you get where I’m coming from, and sprinkled with nuts, that are also not ready yet, now you are getting the picture 😜 I don’t do myself any favours by being such a purist I know! The other problem is that things come in such gluts they need to be frozen and that’s not much good when you want fresh stuff. I just need to get my head around it a bit I think. As a result of moving in that direction I have some Greek yoghurt on the go, freshly frozen berries and yoghurt make a great breakfast or pudding 😀

I took a photo of a plant I have grown, I grew it because the seeds came in a multipack with morning glory which I wanted to grow for the bees. The other seeds in there were something called Spanish Flag, Ipomoea lobata, I have never grown it or even seen it before but it has turned out to be one of my most favourite little flowers 😀 It is a climber and not a very strong or dominant one, it’s rather delicate, but it is exquisite especially when the sun is shinning on it. It reminds me of festival flags and its one of those that makes me smile when I walk past it.

Friday: I have just done a good mornings work, the weather is soo much cooler and we had heavy rain in the night but it’s not raining now. I cleaned out the quail and then the guineas, then spent ages looking for the animal nail clippers as one of the quail has grown a long bendy nail so it need soy come off. I couldn’t find them anywhere and so I have had to order a new pair and we all know what will happen once they arrive don’t we 🙄 the other pair will miraculously turn up somewhere unexpected 😂 After doing that it was into the jungle, that’s what I have been calling the poly tunnels for the last couple of weeks. The foliage from tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and cape gooseberries has gone mad and I could barely get into the big tunnel. I spent the rest of the morning cutting back long tendrils from the cucumbers/melons and lots of bottom leaves from the tomatoes, I also snipped off the tops of the plants so that they can put all their energy into the fruits that have already set rather than new ones. I thought I didn’t have many tomatoes but once I cut it all back I could see plenty 😀 I don’t hold out much hope for the melons, they seem to have tiny fruits which then die off and the same with the loofahs. It’s a shame as this was the year I was hoping to grow my own washing up scrubbers 😜 I may give them one more go next year but after that I will quit, I have spent far too much time on them already. There are quite few things I will scale back next year I have decided, I just need to remember that I had decided that come seed buying time 🤣 I am going to concentrate on things we eat a lot of, for instance carrots, beans, peas, potato, brassicas, leeks, onions, garlic, root veg and also things that the torts eat, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers but things like chillies, aubergines, globe artichoke I won’t do at all and courgettes I will just buy one plant, pumpkins I will still grow for the children but I might give the sweetcorn a miss as it’s only me that eats it, these are my mullings anyway, we will see what happens next year.

Do you ever think things have a way of finding you, John always says animals will find you if you are meant to have them lol. Anyway this ‘finding’ regards my previous paragraph and the wobbles I have been having about growing my own, if I was waivering about what I am doing and why a pod cast I came across has slammed home the message good and proper. GMO’s Glyphosphate and gut health, some of it I knew already but some I didn’t and it has given me a much clearer picture of how one affects the other. It’s and hour and forty minutes long but if you are remotely interested then do listen, if you are not then you should be because as the saying goes your are what you eat’ quite literally as it turns out 🙄 its The Rich Roll Podcast you can find it on you tube but I couldn’t paste a link sorry 😜

Saturday: A damp overcast morning but despite yellow warnings we hadn’t had any rain by lunchtime. John did the feed rounds and then finished off the last bit of fence. The whole job is not finished by a long shot as the rest of the old fence needs to come down and then start on the shrubbery that will go in front of the fence. He then went on to clean out the ducks and dig up the last few bits of ragwort before nipping out to get some guinea pig food.

Meanwhile I started some picking, beans courgettes, cauliflower, turnip, swede, beetroot and the more Victoria plums and some damsons which are not ripe yet but someone I know wants some and I had a bit of time to do it so I did 😀 Indoors then to sort out bits for putting out for sale and processing the rest. I have two trays of beans peas and cauliflower plus five purple carrots (that’s all that grew from a whole row) all chopped and open freezing. The turnip, courgettes, swede, beetroot, some carrots I already picked along with an onion and a stick of celery have all been chopped and bagged as soup mix for the freezer. Then I chopped loads of veg to go with some locally reared mince beef in the slow cooker for dinner later and finally I put the sage I had been drying into jars for storage and winter use 😀 Morning done sit down and have a couple of hard boiled eggs for lunch and a coffee 😜

Listening to that podcast has really sharpened my thoughts on what we eat and although generally speaking it’s good as far as home grown goes there is considerable room for improvement. I have decided not to waste anything and by that I mean eat even the things we don’t really like very much, hence the soup mixes, they will be a permanent feature as you can disguise the bits you don’t like but still get the goodness.

Sunday: Although rain was forecast it never really arrived and so in the morning we got plenty of work done. John has finished off the fence and we started clearing g the old fence and giving the bushes a bit of a trim. We debated about taking them down as they re very old and parts of the multiple trunks are rotten, however the bees and butterflies love them , the birds use them to roost in the winter and the decay is great for the insects so we decided they can stay 😀 We had the afternoon and evening off apart from doing the eggs, to recharge our batteries for a new week.

You can see the new fence that John has put up and now the job of creating a border begins 😜
Posted in Friesland Farm

Plums, Lammas & plenty of produce 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Apologies for the lateness of this we are still having problems with the landline and internet and uploading is difficult 🤪

Monday 27th July 2020: It’s wet this morning and we have had some terrific downpours over the weekend, great for the garden not so great for getting outside 😜 The phonline saga still continues because as it was left, we were to be disconnected in order to reconnect the cottage and then we could place a new order for a line. The disconnection was supposed to happen on the 28th which is tomorrow and we couldn’t put in an order until that had been sorted out BUT I have received messages from BT to say our order was going through and would be connected on the 5th August? I wait to see what actually happens here as I am convinced this is all going to go t**s up as well 🙄

Tuesday: An mixture of weather, overcast sometimes but warm and then when the sun comes out it’s pretty hot! I did a bit of cutting back, a lot is now going over and looking quite scruffy, time to tidy it up a bit, I always think that at this time of year the garden has the ‘morning after’ effect, the oomph and brightness of the party has gone and you are left with the clearing up 😂

Shelley messaged to see if I wanted a ‘shake shack’ ooo yes please and she came to pick me up, we sat in the car with our shakes watching the world (well the town anyway) go by, a lovely distraction from the norm.

I had a wander round to look at the plum trees today, they are laden with fruit 😀 however they seem to be nearly ready to pick which is about 4 weeks earlier than normal 🤔 I can only assume it was weeks of wall to wall sunshine earlier in the year. Plums can be picked and then ripened off the tree but they do need to be ‘on the turn’ as it were.

Wednesday: A warm and sunny day ahead and you know what that means for me 😀 get on early and avoid the uv rays later 😂 I had a definite job in mind this morning, picking plums, but first I had to get the other bits of picking done. The photo shows the haul today and to be fair I could do that every day now for a good few weeks, I also spotted our first cauliflower that is almost ready to harvest. But as I said the plums are my main focus at the minute, ripening earlier than usual, they can be picked and ripened indoors. Two reasons why this is a good idea, number one, wasps 🙄 the riper the fruit gets the more the wasps feast on them and the more likely you are to get stung, number two, you can pick in succession so I don’t have to pick them all at once, I will do it over a couple of weeks, by the time I get to the end of that time the plums will be ripe and I will be competing with the wasps but by then I will have plenty in store or in the freezer. They are looking pretty good this year too and by that I mean no damage, no sign of plum moth so the pheromone traps have worked well 😀

Once all the picking is done it’s indoors to prep it all, the beans, peas and carrots all chopped and ready for open freezing, I don’t blanch them, they turn out just as good if not better because they have no excess moisture on them which causes frosting. The potatoes will store readily enough for a while, the beetroot got roasted and then they will be frozen ready for use when required and the fruit is for pudding later. I was given some windfall apples (also earlier than usual) so I have peeled and cooked them and will make a sponge mix to go on top as we have plenty of eggs at the moment. The produce is coming thick and fast and it’s always a decision as to what to use that day, tomatoes and cucumbers don’t keep and don’t freeze so it best to use them first while all the veg can be frozen so they can be frozen and used another time. Some of it I will put out for sale, as I say, it covers the costs of the seeds so effectively apart from my time, the food is all free 😀

The phone line saga continues, I have had messages from BT to say our order is in and we will have a line on the 4th August all good except that as I understood it the last order was cancelled and I was going to have to make a new one once the cottage up the road had their number back. That was supposed to be yesterday but we still have it and today openreach called to ask what the problem was as they were at the junction box, so who knows how this will pan out now!

Sam, Mia and the twins came over for a couple of hours, we had a wander down to the paddock to give biscuit and brush and pick out their feet.

Almost immediately after typing the paragraph about the phone we lost the line and consequently the internet connection and even I had forgotten just how much runs on WiFi 😂 It’s a bit of a warning to us really about how dependant we become on some things and that we should always have a back up plan 🙄 We have now lost touch with the rest of the world until next Tuesday unless I can pick up 4G outside but we are rural and so that is not always possible. Luckily I can still type this up it will just be the upload that I need a connection for.

Thursday: It’s my birthday 😀 John had asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch or dinner and I said I prefer breakfast and I had just the place in mind. So we were up early and off out for waffles by 8am, they do lovely waffles, bacon and maple syrup and I was glad they were open again. The rest of the day was spent with visitors coming and going, Mum and Ken came round for coffee and cake late morning, then Sam, shelley and the children arrived, my niece and her little one came shortly after, then Charlie arrived. We had a short interlude before a chap came to give us a price to take down a few trees, then my brother and his wife called in, they went and my sister and her husband arrived and also my youngest sister popped in. By 9pm I was pooped 😜 I have had a lovely lot of presents befitting a smallholder/gardener from butter making equipment to garden solar lights and a beautiful hand drawn picture of the grandchildren, I’m very lucky.

I did do a few little jobs inbetween all that, picked the pears from my tree as it did have masses but something has been eating them and there two big ones on the path that had been half eaten. I don’t want to lose all of them so I had picked them and they will continue to ripen off the tree. I sowed a few flower seeds and repotted a plant but that’s about it.

My new winter wellies arrived, I buy Aigle wellies they are expensive but they last much better than any other brand I have tried over the years and so they are cost effective.

Friday: It is supposed to be a scorcher today 30c + 🥵 I got all the outside jobs done pretty quickly including hanging out the washing, might as well make use of the heat. The wood delivery arrived for a new fence out in the front area, it will be the same as the fence by the egg shed and hopefully discourage the hens from coming in the front as eventually I want to plant large areas of it up and don’t want them constantly ruining it.

I have just had an email from BT saying they have dispatched our equipment for the new landline and broadband connection, they have the right mobile number for me, the right email address, the right name but they still have the wrong address. No problem just give them a call and sort it, oh no not that simple as I appear to have no mobile coverage at the minute ffs I just feel like crying 😭 I am not worried about the equipment getting delivered because the cottage will just send it here if it goes there, what I am worried about is that after all we have been through they still don’t have the correct address and this will all start again with trying to connect the wrong line!

Bloody hell that was hot today 🥵 good job our place is nice and cool inside, the bathroom is the coolest of all so in desperate times I can always lie on the floor in there (I haven’t ever done it but I could if I wanted lol) I spent the day inside doing not very much, I did have Mia for a few hours and she wanted to play under the sprinkler but got bored with that quite quickly I’m glad to say. It’s very close this evening, I have watered the two tunnels and the greenhouse, there were a few spots of rain but as yet they haven’t amounted to very much. I do hope we get a storm it will clear the air and water the garden at the same time 😜 I had a lovely bunch of sweet peas given me today, they smell divine and have cheered the kitchen up no end 😀

Saturday: Soooo much cooler this morning and a lot fresher thank goodness 😀 We have both been very busy this morning, me picking, there is an awful lot to pick at the moment, it just keeps coming but that’s what this life is all about and the reason why we didn’t have or don’t have any fear of lockdowns 😜 After picking everything it was on to prepping, mostly for the freezer but I also made plum jam with some of the Victoria plums. I have my eye on a greengage and vanilla pie recipe for the beautiful sweet little green plums 😀 If you have never eaten them and think they don’t look ripe, they are and they are one of the sweetest tasting plums you can get. I am very proud to have a 50 year old proper Cambridge greengage tree here. The plums look amazing this year if a little on the small side but the plum moth traps have worked wonders and from 1.5kg I only found three plums with the grub in so that is good going. Meanwhile John has been very busy digging holes and put up a new fence in the front area. We watch the gardening programmes and laugh when they dig easily into their soil for projects, here on the edge of the Cotswolds it’s brash and that is hard going when you want to dig 🥵 not to mention the remains of footings from the old RAF buildings which without fail seem to be just where you need to dig as well 😂

Wasp season is well and truly here, the minute there is sweet, sticky jam about the wasps home in on it 😜 actually just one little wasp but it just would not let go of the spoon rest 😂

It’s August the first today and so it’s Lammas, the celebration of the first of the harvesting, last year I grew enough stalks of wheat to make a corn dolly but I didn’t grow any this year, I should have made a loaf of bread but I didn’t do that either, not doing too well am I. I could do an altar, I know lots of people do but I tend to just acknowledge the day and the turning of the wheel instead 😀

Sunday: An in between day today, when the sun comes out it’s hot but not as hot as it has been and we have intermittent cloud as well. John did the morning rounds and I got on with cleaning the house. Then John went out to continue the new fence which is progressing well 😀 I just hope it deters the chickens from coming in the front area as they are digging up my pots and anything I have planted in the ground suffers from their scratching around. It’s not like they don’t have enough other space to forage in 😂

We have two problems today, one is the water pressure, I have noticed that for the last few days it has been down, we needed to check that we didn’t have a leak on our side of the mains. We couldn’t see anything anywhere but best to check at the meter, when we have everything turned off the meter does not move so that’s good, we are not losing water we are paying for but the pressure is still down 🙄 The second problem is Benny the cat, he had been gone for 5 days and turned up last night but he is not walking right. He does not seem to be in pain, I have had a good feel and he does not cry when I touch him but it’s still not right. The other thing was that he was starving, he ate and ate and ate, he was pretty chunky when he was last here so I imagine he has got stuck somewhere, lost a bit of weight and wriggled out from wherever he was. At the moment he is in the boot room but we need to get him to a vet tomorrow, as I said he is not in pain and he is eating well but just not walking correctly and he won’t jump up or down either, I think he may have pulled or torn a muscle or something 😏 At least he’s is home and secured in the back for the time being 😀

I made butter today 😀 Last birthday my sister bought me a butter churn and this birthday she bought me some butter paddles and some cream so I thought I better try the churn out. It’s quite concerning at how many people (youngsters) don’t realise butter is made from cream 🙄 You May ask why bother, well generally I don’t but if there is cream that has been reduced in price I like to have a go, it’s not cost effective otherwise but the butter you get is far superior to the blocks you buy in the shop unless you are buying quality butter that is 😀

I am sorry about the lack of photos, I have taken plenty but I am using my phone WiFi to connect the iPad to and am barely getting 3G at the best of times so uploading them is failing miserably 😏 Hopefully when we are connected again all will be well 😜 It all takes me back to the days of dial up and how bloody frustrating that was!

Posted in Friesland Farm

A trip down memory lane, the twins 1st birthdays and the phone line saga continues 🤬

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 20th July 2020: John is working again this week, I am not sure when he will next have any time off now things seem to be getting back to normalish. Before he went he did the morning feeding and letting out, I did the horses water and found some greens for the guineas, quail and light Sussex. I had a little wander around the fields, no point having land if you don’t wander aimlessly round it now and again. I had a good look at the hedgerow, at the minute there are plenty of blackberries but if the horses get to them later in the year I will have to find another source. I did a little bit in the garden, some watering and I picked three good sized cucumbers. I then went down to the very front of the driveway on the lane, I needed to cut back some dog rose and over hanging tree branches that make it difficult to turn out as you can’t see traffic coming up the lane clearly and they do tend to go fast even though we have a new 30 mile an hour speed limit 🙄 After that it was indoors to make some bread and some biscuits although I made a bit of a mistake. I was reading one recipe and decided to follow another but put the amount of butter from the first into the recipe I was doing if that makes sense. I thought it seemed a bit short and my fear was that they would spread and be crumbly but as it happened they were fine, I’d say they were more like small cakes than biscuits but they taste great which is the main thing.

A better looking loaf today 😀

I also ordered a new kettle, if you go back in my blog about five years, maybe even six, you will read about my lovely new kettle. I had done some research because I was sick of buying £20 kettles that leaked everywhere within the year so I had splashed out and paid £100 for a decent one 😯 One that I hoped would last five years and so cost the same in real terms, well it has, did I should say, it still doesn’t leak water from the spout but the lid has broken and is unfixabke so I have ordered a new one. The only difference is that it is a different colour (black) as the new colours are about £30 more expensive and I’m not paying that just for a trendy colour 😂 I have gone for exactly the same model as it is a beautiful ergonomic design that is easy on the eye, can you tell how much I love it yet 😜 Of course at this point you will want to know which kettle, it’s a Delonghi and it’s the scultura model. I would have purchased a matching toaster but we don’t really need a new one of those so I will wait until we do 😀

Tuesday: Another sunny day ahead which is lovely if a little restricting for me. I do miss not being able to be in the sun for any length of time, quite often if I feel cold I will go and stand out in it to warm up not for too long though 😜 I would love to be able to go for a walk in the sunshine especially on days like today where it’s not unbearably hot just pleasant. In order to do that I would need to cover every part of me with some clothing and a hat, sunscreen is not enough to stop the rays causing havoc!

John did the morning rounds and I watered the tunnels and the greenhouse, I watered the pots out in the driveway and checked over the plants in the gravelled area out the front. The wood chip I nicely swept and tided last week has been scattered everywhere by some hens that have decided to escape every day 🙄 I’m trying not to let it bother me 🤪 John told me this morning that the duck I had noticed was missing (though I didn’t think the fox had got it) was sitting on a nest under the hedge at the side 😀😀😀 yay this makes me very happy indeed, in all the years I have kept ducks I have never had one sit on a nest and hatch ducklings successfully, fingers crossed it happens this time, I will be cock a hoop even though we don’t need any more ducks lol.

Up to lunchtime I haven’t really done much except pottering, I am still feeling tired 🤷‍♀️ but I’m not worried as there are times when I’m not, it’s hopefully a passing phase. I have plenty of phases during and after a flare especially when I go on to new meds, it’s always a delight figuring out what’s what 😜

John came home early which was nice, after spending weeks and weeks with someone here most of the time I think I have found it difficult being back on my own for most of the day everyday. After doing the afternoon feeding and egg collection we popped to town quickly to pick up my prescription and early evening we went to Sam and Luke’s to water the garden while they are on holiday.

So the medicine wheel thing is getting interesting 🤔 today the discussion was about Karma/rules and self concept. It’s all about how you see yourself and the boundaries you perceive to be there, either put there by you or your interpretation of what others have put there for you and more importantly exploring them and either mentally moving/changing them or accepting them, deep I know lol, but quite liberating actually 😀 It rather blew my mind to realise that I had created boundaries for myself over the years and just by thinking about them thoroughly I can change them 🙄

Wednesday: Another lovely day ahead, John did the morning rounds and then went off to work. I did some picking this morning, the French beans are beginning to produce good quantities now, I picked about 1/2kg of those, a couple of cucumbers, a few courgettes and some toms to ripen on the windowsill.

I went out for coffee this morning with Shelley, the kids and my Mum also met us there. It was in the village I grew up in and afterwards we had a walk around the recreation area which was a great playground for us as youngsters as it had a small stream running alongside, we spent hours down there catching minnows, bullheads and crayfish. Sadly these days there is not much sign of any life in it 😏

When I got back my brother phoned as he had acquired a plant and some seed heads from a lady where he was working. Salsify, a Victorian vegetable which is rarely used these days, it tastes like oysters apparently and is also known as the oyster plant. He was passing and so dropped off some seeds for me 😀 I will definitely have a go at growing these, they were a very useful winter crop when not much else was available. They belong to the dandelion family which is very evident from the seeds, so they should be great for wildlife as well.

I was reminded that although my veg seems to be really slow this year (which frankly has been depressing me) the wildlife has come on in leaps and bounds 😀 I am determined to be grateful for that at least 🥰

Luckily my appetite seems to have returned 😀 😅 I’m not sure where it went or why but it’s back again which is great because I can start looking through recipes with some degree of interest.

Thursday: I’m having a quick coffee break and a sit down, it’s 10.30 and I have been busy since 6.30 this morning. Firstly sorting and putting out plants for sale, I had a bit of a lull because during the lockdown I sold everything I had almost and so had to wait for things to come on again 🙄 After doing a few other bits outside it was indoors to do some cleaning, oh joy, but it did need doing, I am doing half today and half tomorrow to break up the monotony 😂 Going through the place I keep thinking I must get rid of stuff we don’t use anymore as it’s taking up space. I have a cupboard full of cushions and blankets that have accumulated over time, sometimes I use them outside for the children but I also have a load more in the airing cupboard 🤪 pretty sure I don’t need that many do I? One thing I put up for collection were some magazines to do with gardening and smallholding, the lady that wanted them turns out to have moved in nearby and is collecting them later, it will be nice to meet someone likeminded 😀

The telephone line saga continues and I now know who’s number we have, the cottage up the road! A service engineer called to confirm his appointment this afternoon, he thought I was the person from the other property, I explained the whole situation to him and he is also coming here later to see if he can help sort the whole mess out. Basically he says that someone has switched the wrong lines, I do hope he can help us because at the moment they have no phone line and we have theirs😏

It’s the twins 1st birthday today 🥰🥰 where did that year go! They are developing their little characters, both entirely different, Lucie is the happiest baby I have ever come across and George just wants crawl, walk, run, climb and is very cheeky lol.

Happy, smiley Lucie
Let me get at it George

All the grandchildren are growing fast, this summer was going to be the summer before the two oldest start school and so we were going to have plenty of farm time fun but the virus got in the way 😏 Never mind we still have a bit of time left.

I heard somewhere that it takes 10,000 hours to master something and so become a master in that field so to speak, if you do three hours a day it would still take you nine years to ‘master’ whatever it is. From this I realise that I am a master of many things 😀 Definitely a master gardener, It probably only took me three years to get that far, I am a master parent having spent at least sixteen years 24/7 parenting 😂 I am a master housekeeper, in fact I must be, along with many others, a supreme master at that having spent the last 37 years doing it! There are so many things that we spend almost a lifetime doing and so become masters, they may seem like trivial topics but let’s face it some people fail miserably at them so take your credit where it’s due 😘

The phone line saga: So the engineer came out, he was brilliant and went above and beyond the call of duty but he still couldn’t sort it for us although the two of us spent another two hours on the phone to BT. The upshot is that the cottage had their line de activated at the beginning of lockdown because it is a holiday let 🙄 then they re activated it, meanwhile we received a letter 9 days late due to the Swindon depot being closed due to coronavirus, consequently they had already sent out open reach to do whatever it is they do to the line BUT somehow they switched the cottage number to our line and disconnected ours, are you keeping up? The anomaly in this is why did BT think our line was theirs, no idea! They also sent the letter out addressed to us but have the owners name on file for the service call, you think someone would have noticed the difference, clearly not😏 So as it stands we have to wait until their fault is cleared that means their number connected to them and then we will be completely disconnected and have to apply for a new line, beggars belief doesn’t it, but it’s still not guaranteed that we will get our old number back because they are ‘Pooled’ for two weeks then reused 😯 WTAF! None of this is in anyway our fault but we are paying for other people’s decisions and incompetencies, not happy. Nor apparently is the chap in the holiday let as he was complaining that he was supposed to be working online and can’t, so I guess the owners will get grief from him, not that I am in any way sympathetic after all we have been jumping through hoops for the last two and a half weeks with no sign of it getting resolved very soon. All I am waiting for now is for someone to try and charge us for the other line then I will be f…ing fuming and the wrath will be unleashed 🤬

On a more gentle and country living note 😜 we saw a baby hedgehog tonight, about the size of a tennis ball, so not only do we have at least three adults we have babies as well, how good is that 😀 we are a hedgehog breeding ground 🥰

Friday: Up early to get things sorted, John did the rounds and I started on some cleaning. Sue is visiting today which will be the first time we have been able to see each other since Dad died. I had planned yesterday afternoon to go to the local Smokery and get some smoked chicken for dinner but BT put paid to that so thanks again, not that I am becoming bitter or anything 😜 The weather is not bad, I don’t think it will be hot today, it’s warm but overcast at the minute.

Saturday: Short and sweet report today as you can imagine I have been busy being sociable 😀 We had a very decent downpour or two today, a bit of thunder thrown in for good measure. All good for the veg garden.

Sunday: Out for breakfast this morning with Sue and then a visit to see the twins in the afternoon meant that apart from the essentials nothing else got done around the place. Although John and I did agree on a plan to re develop the front area once we have altered to access point to the yard behind the house which we are moving from one side to the other, I will take before and after photos this time 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

A pick ‘n’ mix of a week 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 13th July 2020: It was a sunny start though the sun seems to have disappeared behind clouds now which is great for me. I did a bit of picking first thing this morning, rhubarb, dwarf beans, courgettes, a marrow, beetroot, salad turnips, French breakfast radish and white globe radish plus a few blueberries and raspberries. The little birds are still getting into the fruit cage though I can’t see where they are managing to get in, i did think that the raspberries were not producing very much, they are being eaten before I even get out of bed!

It’s ‘Bees need’ week this week and there are five simple things you can do to help the plight of our most important creatures. Grow more flowers (the open type, not multiple petals as they can’t reach the nectar) Leave some wild areas, weeds are not favoured by humans but the bees love them and we need the bees to survive otherwise we won’t 🙄 Don’t cut the grass so often, I know it looks a bit unsightly but we managed without hairdressers and barbers for a while and it didn’t hurt did it 😜 Don’t disturb nests and hibernation places, if you find a bees nest just leave it, they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them, of course I am not talking about a swarm, that does need sorting but on the whole solitary bees will move on once the young have hatched. Don’t use pesticides, this in my opinion is the biggest problem for insects, nurture nature to get a good balance in your garden instead of resorting to pesticide. Those are the main five things but there are other things you can do to help when it’s really hot, leave a dish of topped up water for insects to find and quench their thirst. When it’s turning cold provide areas for them to overwinter, bug houses are all the rage but areas that have not been tidied are just as good, resist the temptation to tidy and leave it until spring 😀

This morning I have been doing a bit of this and a bit of that in the garden. I planted up the pak Choi and the chicory into the polytunnel for the colder months and I sowed a new bed of mixed lettuce leaves which will be quick growing. The bed I pulled all the carrots from has now got a layer of mushroom compost on it to condition the soil and I have sown some lambs lettuce and winter purslane (I think) in the bed that the radish were in. The bulb fennel seeds I sowed in there failed to materialise 🙄 After that it was onto re potting some plants I bought at the weekend, ornamental grasses. The area in the front that I cast lots of wildflower seeds onto has not really done much, I have some things in pots but I think the seeds and small plants I put there have been eaten by earwigs or woodlouse as it has a layer of wood chip covering, ideal for pests to live in 😜 So I bought some grasses and will put them in pots over there the idea being that they set seed and do the job for me, I can’t dig into the ground as it was an area used to put types of aggregate and now is a solid bed of stones.

Update: something is eating the pak Choi and something has dug up a couple of the chicory plants, why do I bother lol

I was looking forward to lunchtime because today is the day I get to eat the first couple of ripe tomatoes in a cheese sandwich, that is always a day to look forward to 😀 as I always say grow/find yourself some home grown toms they taste a hundred times better than shop bought ones especially if they are freshly picked after being warmed by the sun ☀️

I’m not sure what’s on the agenda for the afternoon yet, I seem to run out of steam after lunch, definitely not got the ooomph I had when I was on the steroids 😏

I got this evenings dinner on the go, I like to do it either first thing or at least by lunchtime otherwise I feel disinclined to sort anything at the actual time. I don’t know how people come in from work and decide what to have, we would end up with something on toast every night 😜 Tonight’s dinner is lamb shank (just one is enough for the two of us) cooked in the slow cooker with veg from the garden, broad beans, dwarf beans, turnips, potatoes, peas, garlic I grew and is now stored and rosemary from the garden, along with some lamb stock from the freezer. The lamb is from a local smallholder so it’s entirely a smallholder meal 😀 For pudding (or dessert if you are posh) we have mixed fruit crumble, blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants and rhubarb, all from the garden, as I have said before, we eat like kings here 👑

John has gone to work today which enables me to get on a bit I think, I am certainly more organised when he is not here, I think it’s the fact that I can’t entirely get on with what I want to do as there is usually something to be discussed or looked at and he is inclined to come in for lunch and turn the tv on to watch the news so I sit down and watch it too, something I don’t do when I am here by myself (except in the winter months)

John has been in the wars at work today, a piece of tile he was chopping off the wall flew and caught his middle finger between the knuckle and the hand. He came home with a couple of bloody plasters on it. He went off to do the egg collecting and came back in swearing, he saw a rat in the duck pen, picked up an iron bar to whack it, missed and blood starting pouring out of his finger again, he says pouring I say dribbling. He is quite dramatic in his descriptions ‘ I had a bad accident at work today’ seriously, you cut your finger, ‘it’s really deep’ can’t be that deep or your finger would be hanging off! You can see I’m not the sympathetic type 😜 so when I had to clean it up and re dress it and he is hanging onto the sink saying ‘I feel sick and dizzy’ my answer is ‘strap a pair on will you’ 🤪 I don’t really understand those who feel sick and dizzy at the slightest cut, I am of a mind to think it’s all in the head but maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s a real thing that I have just never experienced being made of sterner stuff 😀

Tuesday: Today is a long awaited day, I get a hair cut 😂 not that I am one who regularly has a hair cut just when it gets on my nerves which it is doing at the minute. Two reasons, one it has got a bit long and is annoying when it’s wrapping itself round my neck when I’m sleeping 🙄 and two it is falling out, probably due to the new meds but I think a good cut will help a bit, I’m hoping anyway 🤞

John is working again today, this will probably be the norm now, mostly working with the odd day off here and there, even though he wants to spend more time at home, the phone keeps ringing, well his mobile anyway as the house phone you know about already! I have slung the Hoover round and done a bit of wiping over and topped and tailed the gooseberries I picked the other day ready for the freezer. Topping and tailing is pretty time consuming luckily it’s only gooseberries that need it, blackcurrants don’t really as the ‘bit’ is the remainder of the flower and so perfectly fine to eat, saves a lot of time. I feel tired today and lethargic, I am wondering what to do next and then wondering if I can be bothered 😕

A new law comes into effect next week and we will have to wear face masks in shops, some people already do but I never have, the choice is wear a mask or don’t go shopping 😜 hmmm I think I prefer the latter.

Shelley and the children came over and we dug some potatoes for their dinner later, picked some peas and ate them from the pod 😀 I love to teach the children about where food actually comes from. Josh and I had an interesting conversation about flies eyes and how they have 360o vision, I managed to get him off the subject of superheroes for a minute or two 😜

Wednesday: An overcast but pleasant enough day, some very slight drizzle first thing that soon went. First thing I did was water the greenhouse and feed the torts, then move the grasses I re potted to their position out in the front area. I decided to give the whole area a bit of a tidy up, weeding, sweeping, dead heading cutting back and mowing the grass in the driveway, it’s looking a lot better now. At times I feel overwhelmed by the weeds and amount of tidying it will take to get it looking immaculate, then I remind myself that it’s good for the wildlife and I shouldn’t be too tidy 🙄 It’s been a difficult transition that has taken years to let go, in our old place I opened the garden once a year so everything was immaculate all the time but that is exhausting as well as time consuming. Part of me likes a tidy well turned out garden but another part of me loves the overgrown look, if I could achieve a combination of the two that would be a great result, I will keep working on it 😜 A Gardeners’ work is always a life time road I think, it changes direction sometimes but it is a constant motion when it’s in the blood I reckon 🙂

I have just discovered the medicine wheel, literally just discovered it last night when I joined a balanced life group. I am curious to see how this can help with life and felt drawn to it for some reason so am following. I have talked before about how I see life, in circles, the minute, the hour, the day, the year, after some discussion and thought, the month is not seen the same but as part of a circle that forms the year. Apparently lots of people see these in linear form, so stretching ahead of you, have you ever thought about it? And if you have after reading this, which one are you? If you are a circle person you are much more in touch with your life balance than you think but you can have blockages which is where the medicine wheel comes in, I am looking forward to the discovery of any blockage I have and as a bonus it’s always good to learn something new 😀

In the afternoon the girls came over with the kiddies and we went for a walk up the local lane. I like to keep an eye on a couple of apple trees and a plum tree along there, we have had some very tasty fruit from those trees and they are loaded again this year I am glad to see. We had a few incidents, Josh turned the hose on and got Flo all wet, then on the walk Florence walked into a blackberry runner so had scratches all over her face, when we got back Mia turned the hose on and got Josh wet (that’s Karma we all explained to him 🤪) the only difference was that whereas Josh readily apologised to Flo, Mia has enormous difficulty saying sorry. It ends up with her having a total meltdown, by this time the twins are crying as well, poor Sam, Mia still won’t apologise no matter how much you try and coax her or tell her and then she melts down further because Shelley, Josh and Flo are going to feed the chickens but she is not allowed because she won’t say sorry. The horse pesters Shelley (she doesn’t like horses) so she feeds the hens but abandons the egg collection, Mia goes with Josh, Flo and Shelley to do the front hens, Sam goes to pick the eggs up where shelley couldn’t and the geese arrive and harass Samantha, eventually all situations are resolved but it’s pure carnage when it’s going on 😂 When they have all gone it’s time for a quiet cuppa before I start again.

We all commented on how cold it was for the time of year, it really is very noticeable especially if there is a breeze, it’s going to jump up 6 degrees tomorrow that is quite a difference from one day to the next.

We went to the supermarket this evening and although we have not worn masks before we thought now would be a good time to get used to doing it. I can tell you my future trips will be as little as possible, my glasses kept steaming up so I couldn’t see anything, resulted in keep moving them from my face to my head and that involves touching 🙄 I felt more at ease when I wasn’t wearing one, I may see if there are any delivery slots available yet 😏

Thursday: I did a bit of picking this morning, the usual culprits lol but it does look like I may have found where the little birds get in the fruit cage because I blocked up a hole and this morning I have quite a few raspberries 😀 After doing the picking I cut the lawn but I confess I am a bit tired today, I need to remember that though I have come out the other side of a flare and I am on meds, I still have lupus and I still get tired. So today I a, winky going to rest and hopefully build up some reserve energy for tomorrow. I bought a gardening magazine yesterday so I will read it at my leisure I think 😀

Remember the cuttings I took back in May, well I can report that most of them didn’t take 🤪 but some did 😀 I think I had eight pots of four cuttings and I have ended up with six plants 🙄 still, six free plants is better than none, a couple of them I am really chuffed about, a clematis and a climbing rose 😀 the others are a sage, a japonica, elderflower (nigra). The dahlias I took cuttings from took really easily and I now have four in a pot out the front so hopefully they will flower and I would definitely do those again but some of the other stuff I think is easier to grow from seed/root/dividing, still it was good to give it a go and I had some measure of success.

Friday: A beautiful summer morning, just how summer should be, a fresh but sunny start with the promise of more warmth as the day progresses but not so hot that you can’t function properly 🤣 I started with watering the pots out the front then onto the poly tunnels so that they can cope with any heat, the greenhouse and the pots on the decking and in the cold frames, in fact anything that is in a pot got a watering. I picked a few raspberries and blueberries and there are still a few strawberries to be had, a handful of tomatoes were ready as well. I did pick a coup,e of cucumbers a while back and the rest are still too small to pick but there are plenty of them. I had a good look round and although everything seems slow it is producing, just not in vast quantities, I’m not sure why but others have said the same this year, in contrast I see others who have said it’s a bumper year, I guess it just depends on where you are. I sat with a coffee and watched all the wildlife, goldfinches, blackbirds (pinching the choke berries) a wren that had got herself into the greenhouse and then couldn’t find the bloody great doorway to get back out 😂 I have noticed an increase in butterflies and I aim to get some photos at some point, I still think the smaller insects are a bit thin on the ground which is a worry, normally I would see hoverflies, dragonflies, lacewings etc but they seem to be absent, maybe now the sun is here they will come out to play.

I am feeling less tired today thankfully, I’m not sure what it was, could be anything from air pressure to the Lupus, who knows but today I feel as though I can get on which is great.

Saturday: I spent most of the morning picking, watering and cutting back. I picked all the peas/mangetout I could find and then gave the plants a good cut back. You can still sow seeds at this time of year so I thought as the plants are already growing I might as well just cut the existing ones back and see what’s happens. I have done it with the broad beans and they are flowering again already, hopefully I will get a second crop. I don’t sell peas in the shed, the reason being we use a lot of them, they are labour intensive mind you and you end up with much more empty pod than peas but worth the bother I think. You can make pea pod wine apparently but I have never tried. I picked about 1/2 kg of dwarf French beans, some out for sale and some in the freezer, the more you pick beans and peas the more the plant will produce, once you stop picking they will stop producing so it’s best to keep taking them off. I also,picked courgettes, tomatoes, radish, cucumber, peppers, quite a haul this morning. A bit of watering to keep everything going and then into the kitchen to process it all.

More pod than peas 😜

Sunday: A rainy start so I needn’t have done any watering yesterday 😂 We got the usual jobs done and then went out for breakfast, on the way back we popped in to see Mum and Ken and when we got home Charlie and Macca were here so we sat and had coffee with them. We sat down for a while and then my mobile rang and it was BT complaints dept about the complaint I made last Sunday after getting nowhere. I then spent two and a half hours more on the phone going form dept to dept, the upshot is we have been ‘slammed’ I think that is their term for massive cock up. Basically they disconnected the wrong line and now we are having to spend hours trying to get it reinstated, I reordered it once but that order has been cancelled because they have the line under the wrong address and the other person cancelled the order. I have been from the complaints dept to the faults dept to the ‘I have no idea’ dept and finally to the order dept explaining I have been through all this already and won’t it just happen again, they assured me it won’t, I somehow don’t believe them 🙄 Watch this space………

Consequently we have not done much else today except that John spent half an hour digging up ragwort from the paddocks before it goes to seed. He did start some chainsaw work this morning but the chain snapped, luckily it stayed on the blade otherwise it could have been a day spent at the hospital instead!

Have a good week and as always, stay safe x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hedgehogs…plural 😀😀 gremlins & the weather 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th July 2020: Oh my days where is the year going 😏 July already and the world is still in the grips of the pandemic. The UK has eased lockdown measures and at the weekend pubs opened their doors for the first time in over three months. We did not rush out to go lol, nor have we rushed to the shopping centres or anywhere else really, a good coffee somewhere nice is treat enough for me 🤪

First thing this morning I watered the poly tunnels and greenhouse, the garden could do with a water but rain is forecast Thursday and I will see how damp the ground is in the morning before I decide if it needs it before then or not. Meanwhile the task of the day was mostly cleaning, dusting, hoovering, polishing and putting things away, the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen all had a going over and at least I don’t have to think about that for the rest of the week. I also made a loaf of bread and an orange and sultana cake, got dinner organised and prepped and made a rice pudding with some milk that needed using up. That took me through to about 2.30, John went to work today but was coming home at 3 so I finished just in time. A quick cuppa and then when John came home we did the eggs.

I had noticed a damp patch on the wall between the spare room and the office and it was getting worse so I got John to have a look at it. This resulted in smashing holes in both walls to find a joint on the heating pipe had been leaking and for a long time by the looks of it 🙄 The whole thing now has to dry out before it can be ‘made good’. While he was sorting that out I did a bit of weed pulling in the garden and cut back some plants that have got much too big and were falling over squashing other plants.

It’s quite cold today I think, the wind has toned down to a stiff breeze but it’s still there, funny weather for July lol.

Nice loaf 😀 you can make the crust softer by placing a clean tea towel over it when it has just come out of the oven, also, always place your cooling loaf on a wire rack otherwise the underside will sweat.

The rat poison we have been putting down is taking effect, I saw one that was obviously dying as flies were beginning to land on it even though it’s head was still moving. Unfortunately Johns gun won’t fire and needs looking at so we couldn’t put it out of its misery. When I went back out to look for it a little later it had gone but it’s definitely not going to last long.

I have spotted the first tomato that is almost ready to pick 😀 it’s beaten the runner beans as they are no where near ready yet 🙄 The ladybird larvae I bought seem to be doing their job although I can’t see any of them nor adult ladybirds but the aphid problem has gone 😀 so they must be there somewhere.

Oh and after abandoning the aubergine plants outside, because they became pest infested and didn’t look like they were going to do much, they actually have baby aubergines on there 😂 Preening and cosseting them is obviously not neeeded just abandon them and voila lol.

Tuesday: I did a bit out in the garden this morning, the weather was nice, overcast but warm enough. I dug up some self set potatoes and some carrots that were in small raised beds, I have now cleared and weeded them ready for something else to go in. I did a bit of hoeing to keep the weeds under control and watered the bean bed as the ground is quite dry. At 10.30 Shelley arrived with the kids and my Mum arrived as we had planned to go for a walk somewhere different. We found a lovely village not too far from us and a lovely riverside walk under the trees. By lunchtime though the weather had turned quite cold, for July it’s freezing lol, not actually freezing obviously but it’s pretty chilly. All that hot, hot weather we had back in spring seems to have disappeared for summer 🙄 We came home for a nice cuppa and a slice of cake and Sam and the kiddies were here so we all sat outside enjoying the cold 🤣

Very excited to tell you that we have not one, but three hedgehogs, all spotted on the same night as John was doing his rounds, in three different areas of the farm, one in the orchard, one near the hay barn and one in the front. Whoo hoo that means they will probably breed or are breeding, this is fabulous news for a declining population. John, who is not normally on board with the whole ecological side of things said, well we have a lot of weeds but it’s definitely worth it 😀 I think I may have converted him 😀😀😀

Wednesday: It has been raining overnight and is still raining this morning, that’s great because the ground was so dry again, the wind really takes the moisture out of the ground when it’s that blowy. It means I don’t have to water anything outside and it will hopefully give the veg and fruit a boost of growth (also the weeds of course 😏) I have been out and watered and fed the poly tunnels and I sowed some autumn cauliflower seeds, hopefully they will produce heads around November time. I don’t normally bother with winter veg but you never know what this pandemic is going to do and so I am preparing just in case.

As it’s wet I decided to give the boot room a bit of a clean up and then have a look in the freezers and sort those out. As I said before the thing about freezing small amounts at a time is that they add up to larger than you think amounts eventually. I was surprised to find that I had a couple of kgs of strawberries in there ready for jam, I had thought I didn’t have many. I also have quite a bit of fruit left from last year, mainly plums but also some blackcurrant so I will make a couple of batches of jam with those. I am just waiting for the jam sugar to arrive as it’s still not available in the shop, although I haven’t tried other shops to be honest so might just be the one I frequent 😜

The top fruit are looking great this year, no scab on the apples or pears and the plums are abundant in all the trees, the walnut tree is loaded and looks like a bumper crop if I can get there before the squirrel and even the cooking apple, that didn’t have anything last year after it’s trim, has some big, healthy looking apples on it., hence the need to clear out last years haul from the freezers lol.

I bought some gram flour which is chick pea flour, I bought it so I can make vegetable pakoras, I think they are great little snacks and an ideal way to get your veg intake up. They will freeze nicely and be ideal for gatherings (when we are finally allowed to have one).

I was supposed to go to the hospital for my consultant appointment today but it was changed to a telephone consultation so I had to wait all afternoon for that, the phone eventually rang about 3.30 and all appears well apart from the rash on my arms. I am using elocon ointment but have only started using it consistently for the last couple of days, if it doesn’t clear up I have to get an appointment with dermatology which apparently will be via video link somehow 🙄 how times have changed but it beats driving up to Oxford with all that traffic and if the system works efficiently enough I imagine they might continue with it.

Thursday: A quick whip round to do the necessary this morning and then a day spent with the grandchildren, Sam and Shelley at the local wildlife park. It was a great day and the only shower we encountered was when we sat down to eat our picnic lunch 😜

Friday: Today has been one of those uphill days 🙄 John was off and after we waited for a delivery to arrive we went out for a coffee and to have a look at a little project we were thinking of doing. The company whose goods we wanted to look at were no longer in the location they once were though their advertising still has that location lol. We eventually found them about 20 miles away and when we got there it was appointment only 😏 though they did give us some leaflets lol. Then on returning home I had a phone call, unusual on my mobile but apparently the house phone no longer works! Yesterday when I returned home I found a letter in the postbox that was dated 1st July informing us that another service provider was taking over our line and to call before 2pm (I got home at 3.30pm) We phoned BT and told them this was incorrect and that we hadn’t authorised this and they said that’s fine they would just cancel it, then today the phone doesn’t work 🤬 John phoned them (outgoing calls work fine) and spoke to someone she said it’s fine and that the change had been cancelled and that she didn’t know why our line won’t work and she will ring us back on the open line, it cut off and we still have no incoming call facility 😜 Then I had a new phone delivered and you know how that goes lol, I thought technology should get easier but no, not really, umpteen passwords and sign ins later and we are nearly set up. Then the tv box decided to pack up or at least unpair with the smart remote, wtf is going on today, gremlins everywhere!

I did do a bit of picking before we went out this morning, peas, mange tout, dwarf beans, a few tomatoes, a few blueberries and some gooseberries. I have left the gooseberries a bit too long and this morning I was in competition with plenty of wasps 🤪 Not only do I need to be careful of the thorns on the Bush but I also need to make sure I don’t grab hold of a jasper in the process, anyone else call them jaspers? I don’t know why we used to call them that or where the term comes from. One thing I have discovered is that wasps are useful after all, we saw one wrestling and winning with a fly, it gathered it up and flew off with it, so they eat flies, a winner in my book. Back to the gooseberries, I don’t want all of them just enough to put in the freezer for winter use, the wasps can have the rest along with the birds as there will be plenty of other fruit to use and I don’t want to be greedy lol.

I still can’t get hold of egg boxes that are not massively hiked in price, it’s disgusting they are three times the price I normally would pay for them. We have asked customers to bring any clean ones back so that we can re use them, we are not short of them at the moment but some of the wholesalers are saying no new stock until November. I might have to look at other ways to package eggs.

It’s still chilly for July, the Sun was doing it’s best to shine today but the breeze is cold, our weather is all over the place at the minute. We had the best weather during the main of the lockdown which was a good thing I suppose, can you imagine what it would have been like if it happened in the middle of winter, I imagine depression would have been at an all time high 🙄 Still, I would like it to warm up a tad, I don’t mind overcast, in fact I prefer it, but some warmth in the air would be most welcome. I was thinking it almost felt like an autumn morning this morning, I hope that doesn’t arrive too soon, this year has been a disaster as it is 😂

We bought one of those ‘ring’ doorbells for the front gate, it’s great, the picture is clear and I get a notification (tinkling noise) when motion is detected by the egg shed. I can see who is about without having to stop what I am doing as I can’t really see from the garden so constantly going out to the front when the dogs bark is a pain as usually they re barking at nothing. If anyone rings the bell I can talk to them from the house lol, I can talk to them even if they don’t ring the bell which might give them a bit of a fright 😜 If you were thinking of getting one I can highly recommend it.

Saturday: The weather is a bit more promising today and certainly slightly warmer 😀 I have been busy, 8500 steps worth of busy by 12 noon, cleaning out the guinea pig run. Total clean out, move the hutch and everything, then onto the quail hut, and then the other guinea hutch. We also moved the other hutch into the light Sussex pen, this is so that the guinea is more secure and we dont have to shut him up at night. The two guineas have now moved to the bigger run and the single guinea is in the hutch in the chicken pen. I don’t really want him to be on his own but introducing other boars is tricky and we dont want a female, so for the time being he is alone. John cleaned out the ducks and the geese and then went off to get a new Perspex roof panel for the guinea run as the wind broke it off awhile back, all in the dry again now. A quick rake over of the orchard ground and it’s all done.

A few views of the garden which is looking full at the moment 😀

Sunday: The weather is set to be fair again today although just like all week long the mornings are chilly, reminiscent of autumn if you ask me. We got the main routine done early on and the John started on cutting down one of the remaining conifers, this has been an ongoing job (a couple of years I think 🙄) the trees are huge with many multiple big branches so it has to be done a bit at a time. If we did it all at once there would be an awful lot to clear up, cut a bit, clear a bit is the best option. We are going to change the entry way to the yard, at the moment the driveway goes to the left and past our back door, it will go to the right of the building and straight to the back which will be a lot easier with less corners to negotiate for any vehicles. That’s the plan, how long it will take to implement is anyone’s guess lol.

I spent 2 hrs of my life on the phone to BT this evening, we couldn’t have any calls coming in, but could phone out, then suddenly the phone rang, it was BT checking the line, great I thought, it’s working again. I tried to call our number just to double check and nope still not working, so I called them and that’s where the trouble all began! It seems, and nobody can really explain why, that we have a different number now 🙄 plenty of discussion and being passed round and in the end we have had to order a new package as if we were transferring to a new property, not only that but we can’t have our old number back yet, unbelievable, especially when they wanted to charge for some things, luckily the ladies on the other end were fabulous and all the charges will be reimbursed, I should think so, none of this is our fault in any way what so ever. It means we are on a temporary number until the end of July and then a different number will be allocated and then after 24hrs I can ring and see if I can get our old number back, though there is no guarantee, we have had the same number for over 35 years, beggers belief. What I also can’t understand is how come it takes so long to sort it out, it didn’t take them long to cancel it 🤪 even though they were not authorised to do so! Technology, fabulous when it’s going right but when it’s not look out 😏

Because it is sunny and I still have a rash on my arms, which I am trying to clear up, I avoid going outside during the mid part of the day, even at 6pm it was hot enough for me to be able to feel the effect on my skin so I have to wait until it’s cool enough to go back out in the evening, it’s a real bind but there are worse things in life I suppose.

Sorry the blog is a tad late, have a great week and as always stay safe this thing is no over by a long shot in my opinion 😏

Posted in Friesland Farm

Curveball INCOMING……………🙄

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 22nd June 2020: And here we are back round at Monday again, still in the throes of a pandemic but hopefully coming out the other side slowly. We have had a constant day today, plenty of jobs and constantly busy. We started off with a bit of tractor work which John did, dragging the paddocks and then he decided to roll them, I told him it was too dry but he didn’t listen. When he came back in he said ‘the paddocks are too dry’ 🙄 I did a fair bit of picking, mostly veg for dinner tonight but also fruit. Most of our meal is home grown everyday at the minute and what isn’t home grown is from other smallholders 😀 Seasonal eating means strawberries and raspberries for pudding every day 😜 I’m not complaining. I picked cherries again this morning and the morello cherries are ripe, and the birds haven’t eaten them so far, so I picked the ones that were ready and started the process of glacé cherries. It’s a ten day process but well worth doing if you fancy a go. Picking and processing begins in earnest now for winter stores and any future pandemic 🤪

After a spot of lunch and a cuppa the next batch of chickens arrived, John sorted them out while I messaged everyone who had them on order. Then time to feed the chickens and collect the eggs ready to put them out and as soon as that was done customers began to arrive to collect their chickens. We squeezed dinner in between arrivals and then Samantha arrived to give Mia the dog a haircut. She has such a thick coat and with the temps set to climb over 30 this week it seemed like a good time to get it off for her, she is now scalped and bathed and I have ordered her a new bed as patch keeps pinching her nice plush one.

A little bit of work in the garden once it had cooled right down, in for a hot chocolate before we ago off to bed, the alarm is set for 5am so I can get some work done before it gets too hot tomorrow.

Tuesday: Up at the crack of sparrows 😜 actually the sparrows have been up for at least an hour already lol. Straight out in the garden to get some picking and weeding done. I managed to get another lot of morello cherries, last year the crows stripped the tree bare but this year they have left them alone and I only have a single blackbird helping himself so I don’t mind that. I also picked mangetout, rhubarb and artichoke, I sorted out a few plants to put out for sale, did the hoovering indoors and then we nipped out to do a few bits in town. Now it’s very hot out there and I can feel the uv rays causing itching on my arms already so it’s 12noon and I am done outside as there’s no more shade for me to furtively move about in 🤪

Generally any indoor time I spend looking up recipes or doing a bit of research on various subjects, or cooking etc.

A few more chicken customers this evening, dinner then pop to the shop to buy bread and come out with two bagfuls of shopping 🙄 pop round to Shelley and Martin for a quick cuppa and then home.

Wednesday: Up very early today as it is going to be hot and I want to get a bit done before I have to come indoors. Plenty of hoeing and weeding, some pricking out (spring cabbage ready for winter planting) some picking, more mange tout and cherries. Then indoors to stone the cherries and freeze them the mange tout went out for sale, do what needs to be done to the glacé cherries and make some blackcurrant sauce for ice cream. Tidy up and put a few bits away, put some washing out, Hoover the boot room and clean the dog beds, lunch. I saw a rat while I was putting food out for the torts so John got his air gun out and I sat with him for a while to see where they are coming from and going to, I have left him out there waiting ………..I doubt very much he will get any, he is far too impatient and keeps moving about, not quietly either 🙄

Thought I would take a photo of my arm and show you what just getting caught in the sun for a few minutes at a time does to me. You can see small raised bumps, that continues up my arms and is really itchy especially when I get hot. This occurs even when I am trying to spend as much time out of the sun as possible because even doing that I have to nip out to get the washing in or go to the gate and get a delivery, even in the car to appointments is exposure. The more I am exposed the worse it gets. At the moment I have the butterfly rash on my face as well, luckily that does not itch its just annoying as it looks like I’ve had one too many 😜 The itchy bumps come even if I have myself covered so the uv rays penetrate clothing easily and if I sat out in it my legs, back, neck and chest would all be affected, great isn’t it, that is why I avoid the sun as much as possible, even factor 50 can’t protect me enough. My medication is supposed to bring my immune system down to a ‘normal’ level in line with everyone else but it never seems to work like that with sun exposure. In a nutshell, I don’t do sunshine 🤪

Thursday: It’s bloody hot lol. It’s our 37th Wedding Anniversary today not that we can do a lot of celebrating 🥳 Up early got the outside work done and then it was blood tests for me, I had to wear a face mask this time which is something new and FYI your glasses steam up every few seconds 🙄 Then we got a takeaway coffee from a local cafe that has re opened, they do particularly good coffee and we sat out on the pavement (not actually on the pavement) and watched the town for about 15 minutes. It’s Market day and although it was busier than it has been of late, it’s not anywhere near as busy as it used to be before the pandemic. We popped in to see Mum and Ken where we had more coffee and then back home to spend the rest of the day inside in the cool. John nipped out late afternoon to do a sink for someone but that’s pretty much it, just waiting now for the weather to break a bit, it will probably hammer down and I still won’t be doing much outside, I should give up really, everything seems against me getting any outside work done lately.

Friday: Getting pretty peed off with the weather now, it was supposed to break and rain today but again we have wall to wall sunshine, John has been off this week but it’s been too hot to do much and I wanted to get a quick trip to a local nursery or the garden centre in but that has also not been possible. Most of the areas are obviously outside and by the time they are open it’s too hot for me to be walking about in it, so I’m sulking instead 😏 We got the morning jobs done in the cool of the day and cleaned all the furniture on the decking. We put the decking under a wild cherry tree, big mistake, at this time of year not only are the cherries falling but the birds sit up there eating them and do what birds do when something goes in one end 🙄 The cherries are nearly all gone now and tonight we are having champagne and nibbles with my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband, we were all supposed to be going on the cruise together and so I thought it would be nice to at least get together and lament 🤪

The new egg customers that were so desperate to have eggs during the lockdown appear to have abandoned us 🙄 that’s fine because it means that for our long standing loyal customers there should always be eggs for them but it does make you think about how fickle people are. John and I discussed the idea that if a second lockdown came we would only allow regular customers to have eggs we just need to work out how we would do it.

Saturday: Life has a habit of throwing you a curveball every now and then and that is exactly what happened last night. John started having chronic stomach pains and eventually was taken to A & E where he was kept overnight and today has been admitted to a ward. About 20 years ago he had the same problem over a period of four years and they didn’t know what it was until eventually it was so bad one day that they just opened him up to have a look. What they found was a condition called interception which is where the bowel folds in on itself causing a narrowing of the bowel, they think this was triggered buy the fact that he cannot digest mushrooms and they were lodged firmly in the narrowing. He hasn’t had mushrooms though so at this point I have no idea what has caused it this time 🙄 Obviously it’s not great timing with the whole pandemic, the system is much different to what we are used to, for a start you deliver them to the door of A & E and that’s it, you can’t go in, you can’t visit and so consequently most of the time you have no idea of what is happening 🙄 We managed to get through and find out what was going on at lunchtime today that’s a long time to wait with no news. As you can imagine, today I have done the morning rounds and that is it, I am waiting near the phone in case I get an update, I will do the afternoon rounds later but not much else will get done today. The covid distancing rules went out the window as my sister and brother in law took John to hospital and later Charlie and Macca came here to stay the night with me 🙄

Sunday: John is still in hospital though having spoken to the nurse on several occasions I can report that he is no longer in pain and is declining pain relief so that’s progress. He has had several investigations and at the moment they are waiting to see what happens when he eats, all being well they are thinking of discharging him tomorrow, we wait and see.

Charlie stayed over again last night and helped out with things this morning, there are still jobs to be done, feeding, watering, picking etc. Once everything was completed I sorted out the veg and shelley arrived so I gave her the cherries to process 😀 meanwhile I made something I saw on a Facebook feed and it intrigued me, a recipe that was hundreds of years old, very simple and a delicious healthy snack which is why I wanted to give it a go. Dried dates, soaked in boiling water for half an hour, pistachios ground up to make a powder and a tiny amount of butter, that’s it. Add half the pistachio powder to the soaked dates (discard the water first) add the melted butter and fork them together then roll small amounts in the remaining powder, voila, easy, nutritious and healthy snacks 😀 You thought power packed healthy food was a modern thing didn’t you, turns out our ancestors knew about them all along lol.

Mersu

That’s about it from me this week although I am all fired up after watching a film that I think everyone should watch if they eat, and that’s most of us isnt it. https://grow.foodrevolution.org/ watch this space I will be writing more about this once life has got back to some sort of normality.

Have a great week, stay safe x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Ladybird larvae, picking begins & pyramid orchids.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th June 2020: A few bits of catch up news that I have forgotten to update on: I am easily making 10,000 steps a day on my Fitbit 😀 so at least I know I’m not lazy lol. The chive flower vinegar is at last in the bottle, now just need some chips to try it out on 😂 I’d forgotten that I had taken a photo of the muck pile gates as they were and so I can show you a before and after picture.

Last night I ordered some ladybird larvae lol and now I have to make the brassica cage a des res for them hoping they will stick around. I am hoping to get a bug hotel that I can put up for them to hibernate in come winter. A bit of research tells me it’s better to get the larvae than the ladybirds themselves as the larvae will at least stick around long enough to eat a few thousand aphids before flying off 😂

An early start and a busy morning, picking mange tout, broad beans, asparagus and rhubarb, at last we are starting to get a decent return from the plants. Though I have heard people talking about their raspberries and courgettes, mine have not started producing yet, some small fruits but nothing more. I seem to have been constantly on the go but I can’t remember what else I have been doing, some weeding and planted a couple of small plants, feeding the rabbits/guineas all the weed pickings, a bit of watering, then indoors to do a bit of cleaning, all sparkly and fresh and time for a sit down I reckon.

I have ordered some things that hang in trees to keep the birds away from my fruit this year, I am also hoping it frightens off the crows. We have about 30 of them each morning squawking and cackling all morning long, they come for the crane fly larvae in the paddocks but roost in the trees making a right old racket.

Thinking about the easing of lockdown measures and not much has really changed for me, I’m not bothered by the shops opening, I don’t spend my time shopping for clothes and goods etc, the only joy will be to go out for something to eat preferably at a good garden centre 😜

The strawberries are coming thick and fast, not enough to make jam yet and besides we are eating them just as fast. I was going to make a French strawberry cake for pudding later but then I thought we might as well eat them as they are, almost 😀 they are sprinkled with truvia not sugar and I have taken a liking to having mine with marscapone 🥰 try it, delicious, fresh, home grown, seasonal, doesn’t get much better than that as far as I am concerned 😀

Just had the biggest rumble of thunder, I love a good thunderstorm and a bit of lightening too 😀 An hour or so later and we haven’t had any more thunder but we have had a good dose of rain 🌧 😀 no watering for me tonight except that I had already done the front lot about 2 hours ago 😂 Ah well it won’t hurt for them to have extra and the rate it’s coming down it will definitely fill the water tanks.

Tuesday: A misty morning after the rainfall last night and the weather is going to be humid 😜 with outbreaks of sunshine and possible rain showers, perfect for the garden not so much for us lol. The ladybird larvae arrived, that was pretty quick, I opened them up and there were lots of teeny weeny larvae in there, supposed to be 100 but I don’t know if quality control had to count them 😂 anyway they come on shredded paper and you tip them into a little bag that is provided and place the bag near where you want the larvae to eventually move to. So at the moment they are in the bag underneath a big cabbage leaf in the brassica cage. When I came back I and looked at the box they came in there were one or two still in there so I took them to the greenhouse and let them go in the pepper plants, I have had to keep wiping greenfly off these plants each morning. That’s what I spent the first half hour doing this morning, that and moving the aubergine plants outside. I keep trying aubergine each year but this year I think will be the last time, I have tried everything I can, various growing mediums and conditions and this year I bought grafted plants (they are not cheap) but although they flower, the flower just drops off, I even hand pollinated them with a paintbrush to no avail. They also seem to attract multiple pests, greenfly and whitefly particularly, so they have been put outside to either fail completely or by some miracle produce at least one fruit we will see which. I picked some mangetout, with the rain and sun there will be plenty of pickings every day, I also picked a few broad beans, I haven’t checked anything else yet but as the sun is now out and on the garden it will have to wait until later on or some cloud cover lol. I did check on the cherries this morning and so far so good the birds have not been at them, I am hoping he sun today will turn enough of them for me to pick a bowl full. Everything comes at once which is why you need methods of preserving the produce, I noticed there are a few raspberries to be picked and plenty of strawberries again today.

We have had a bad run with the rabbits we got back at the beginning of the year, all three came from the same place but all three have died, the last one died yesterday, he has not been anywhere near the other two so it’s not infectious and he looked completely healthy just like the others did and yet died so I’m thinking it’s got to be genetic. I know the chap we got them from and the same problem with all of his but he didn’t have this until after we had got them for him so he wasn’t to know.

The compost delivery came so that enabled me to get on with some potting on, I have a fair bit to do, shrubs and flowers I had put into pots and now need bigger pots, trees I have been growing need bigger pots before I decide what to do with them, seedlings that need pricking out and then there is the mushroom compost for soil conditioning.

I got a bug house from a friend who’s husband is making them and then they sell them for the Air Ambulance charity 😀 I am hoping the ladybirds will move in a hibernate over winter and then be around for next years growing season 🙄

A couple of things to report, firstly, I am impressed with the biodegradable membrane/mulch it really does keep the moisture in, I only wish I had got it early enough to plant into rather than having to cut round but will def get this at the beginning of the season next year. Secondly, the orchids are back 😀 and this time there are more 😀😀 I deliberately left some long grass around the edges of the front paddock as I knew that’s where they grow and success they are back. Another thing to report is that if you wear your Fitbit on the mower and the ground is rough it counts the bumps as steps 😂😂😂 Another thing I want to share is the pinching out of side shoots on tomatoes, I do this, I guess most tomato growers do it to. What I usually do is discard the bits but you can plant them up and they will grow, so this time I thought I would have a go and just pushed them into soil with the basil I have growing. I think they are taking 😀 that means that if you buy tomato plants normally, you really only have to buy one plant, wait patiently for the side shoots and pinch them out, there are always plenty of them. I have also done it with the indigo rose tomato as that is the only one I have bought the others have all been raised from seed, watch this space, Im hoping that one takes as well, more bang for your bucks as they say plus it means I could buy a few different varieties and not have hundreds of seedlings just a few plants instead, worth remembering for next year.

Pyramid Orchid

I went outside after tea to collect some Huechera seed, sow some into a pot and save some for sowing next year if the pot ones don’t come up. John decided that we should top the front paddock, taking off the heads of any plantain etc that’s when I noticed the orchids, we then did the small back paddock again leaving a large patch in the middle long, there were plenty of insects flying around so I thought it best to leave them something to feed on. Apparently we are due two inches of rain tomorrow so getting it cut beforehand is a good idea, at least the rain we get will be used by the grass and not the weeds.

I picked strawberries, blackcurrants and a couple of cherries, the rest are not ripe enough yet. The Blackcurrants are not as prolific as they were last year, I had to cut it back quite hard last year as the greenfly decimated the new growth, this year they don’t have greenfly, you never know what is going to happen from year to year. I don’t mind there not being that many as I think there are still some in the freezer I can use if I need to. I froze 500g of the strawberries as there were not enough in one picking to make some jam and they will spoil if I leave them too long. I picked a few raspberries that were ready too, I have sun gold raspberries as well as the regular red ones. I had three of these canes but I think I have lost one over winter so come autumn I will be propagating these as they are very reliable and more importantly taste lovely. I think it will be a real novelty to make jam with them don’t you? But I need enough to be able to do that so I need to increase what I have already.

Wednesday: Ooo I’ve had a lovely morning so far, I have been concentrating on bulbs, that is pots of bulbs that I planted up and now need thinning out. I ordered the bulbs a couple of years ago and just shoved them into big tubs, they grew well but not what I had intended to do with them, I just ran out of time or enthusiasm or something. Now I have the compost and lots of big pots thanks to my brother, I spent the morning sorting them all out. I now have smaller decorative pots with a few bulbs in and lots of little pots with bulbs in ready for selling on next year, I have had to use an old cold frame that has environmesh on it to keep them in as I’m not sure if the squirrels will eat them otherwise. There are ranunculus, tulips and English bluebells and probably some others but I will have to wait until they come up next spring to see exactly what they are. One more tub has yet to flower so I will leave that until they have and then sort them out too. I picked a few mange tout but nothing else this morning, there will be a good picking every day from them for a while, keep picking is the key, the more you pick the more they will produce.

You may read my blog and think, she spends a lot of time in the garden, well yes I do 😀 it’s what I love doing, it’s the lifestyle choice we made that enables me to be able to do exactly that. we made sacrifices along the way and we have had our struggles just like everyone else but eventually we got there. During the lockdown John was beginning to see why I enjoy it so much, it’s a more relaxed pace of life and certainly much less stressful than out in the workplace which I never really fitted into, I love being my own boss, making my own choices and mistakes with only me to account too. I love having my time to do what I want to be able to do (on the whole) if I want to do something I will, if not I won’t, having said that there are things that have to be done of course especially when you have animals, they come first and foremost. I don’t make a lot of money at it, it’s not about the money for me, never has been, it’s about quality of life, we only get one shot at it might as well spend it as close to how you would like it as you can 😀

Sam, Shelley and the children came round in the afternoon for garden time, the kids spent a bit of time running of some energy in the front paddock, it’s great that we have the space for them to run around especially in times like these. 4pm and still no rain yet though just as I am typing the thunder starts lol.

Thursday: Rain and plenty of it, I woke at 4.30am and could hear torrential rain and then when I woke again at 6.30 it’s was still going, 11.45 and it still raining though a steady rate rather than heavy and it’s supposed to move slowly on during the course of the afternoon. It is a very welcome decent load and will do the garden good, the veg will come on a treat now 😀

As working out side is not an option I decided to tackle the office 🙄 Paperwork which should have been sorted, has been dumped on the desk for the last 12 weeks, the room itself has had stuff just dumped in it with the idea of sorting it at some point and today is that point. So I spent the morning going through some of the bits, stuff for the bin, stuff for the charity shop, stuff to sell on and then there is stuff I have no idea what to do with so it goes back to where it came from 😜 I call it the office because it’s where I go to do paperwork and it has a desk but it also has the Hoover in there, some coats, a cupboard full of bits and pieces, photographs, Christmas stuff, children’s toys and books, I should re name it the multi room really 😂

Friday: It was still drizzling first thing but gradually the day improved. I did some picking, the rain has ramped up the growth so I will probably spend many hours picking from here on here. Mangetout, raspberries and strawberries this morning and cherries this afternoon. I cooked the cherries with sugar and cornflour to make a pie filling that I will freeze and use at a later date. We have plenty of fresh fruit for puddings at the minute so need need for pies and crumbles much to Johns disgust lol. Once it had dried up a bit more I did some hoeing, the weeds will also ramp up after the deluge especially if the sun comes out as well. I was showing someone round the garden this afternoon when they said ‘oh is that a lizard I just saw, or a baby snake’ 🤪 I guess breeding has been successful for my grass snake and now there are babies, not sure what I think about that 😂 as long as I don’t find any while weeding by hand I will be fine 🙄

John came home at lunchtime today and has a new plan for the hens at the back, he is moving them to the side paddock next to the others. First he had to go and get a battery for the tractor from the scrapyard and he also refelted the duck house roof (the wind ripped off the last lot) and then cleaned the ducks out as the rain lashed in there making a right old mess. It makes sense to move them to the side as I am out there more often than not during the day and in the evening we can nip out and check at intervals hopefully frightening the fox away.

Saturday & Sunday: I forgot to make any notes yesterday so I will have to try and remember what we did lol. John moved the chicken hut that was up the back, down to the side so that we can put the hens back out and keep an eye on them 👀 He burnt a bit of rubbish which now we have had some rain was safe to do. I can’t remember what I did lol but I was busy 😂

Solstice blessings to you all,. Today has also been a busy day, mostly with Father’s Day visits, I do a couple of hours in the garden this morning hen we went to get a coffee, pop in to see Ken, back here to see Samantha, then off to see Charlie and back here again to see Shelley, a full day of fatherly love 💕 This evening we had someone taking care of our disappearing chicken problem 😉 which I can report was mission accomplished so now at least John doesn’t have to spend all evening guarding them. Now we just have a couple of rats and a few dozen crows to deal with, the crows will hopefully move on soon, they are after the crane flies in the ground, once the hatch into daddy long legs they will move on to another food source and as long as it’s not my fruit trees I don’t mind. The rats, and I saw one this morning in the light Sussex pen, have been given a hearty meal 😜 I don’t like poison on the whole but they are being a bit of a nuisance and I don’t really want hoards of them. My elderly rabbit died sometime over night and by the time I got to her this morning the rats had eaten her eyes out, urgh horrible creatures. I thought the run was rat proof but obviously not so we will need to look that over and see what else we can do, though rats can chew through concrete so I’m not sure there is anything that will some them except poison or shooting them.

John has another week off this week coming, we were due to go on holiday on Tuesday and obviously that’s not happening now so he might as well make himself useful at home 😀 Have a great week and as always, stay safe.