Tag: quail

Posted in Friesland Farm

Note to self, plants arriving & worrying world events 🙄

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Tuesday 8th February 2022: Yes Tuesday 🤬 I have completely lost the draft I started yesterday 🤷‍♀️ I am having a mare with technology at the minute, slow to load everything although my provider says all lines in are working correctly. I began to think I had been hacked so changed all my passwords including the one for this blog (I had a spike in stats which seemed sus) and now everything is up s**t creek without a paddle as they say. I have done all the things they suggest plus updated all the security ware and the first thing I find when I log on this site is a missing draft and weirdly some of the posts have had dates changed, I bloody hate technology sometimes. It took me all afternoon to update every install and I haven’t really got very far forward, still having issues 😫 If by some miracle I find the missing draft I will continue with it below.

Did a bit in the greenhouse first thing then Sam arrived with the twins, the farrier who was due at 12 was now coming at 10.30. We got sorted, got the horses in, filled up a hay net and a sack for the filled for when they went back out. Lucy and George helped (I say that loosely 😆) as helpful as two and a half year old can be at any rate 😁 The rest of the day was spent trying to sort the internet out, Shelley and Flo popped in for a cuppa in the afternoon.

Wednesday: I figured out why the draft is lost, because I didn’t save it before exiting doh, but all the other things still stand. I was still trying to sort it all at 9.20 last night and today it is still dropping in and out 🤪 No idea why or how to resolve it to be honest and losing the will to live trying.

No idea what I wrote on Monday and can’t remember what I actually did now either, some clearing up in the front beds I think, can’t remember what else I wrote but never mind.

I had a good day today in the garden, John was here for a while this morning, he did the rounds and then went out to finish getting the compost heap sorted. I know it seems like it’s taking ages but it had to be moved from one place to another and then again because there is not enough room to do it all in one hit. Plus he decided that he may as well riddle it after all so that takes time, he has now put all the available compost into the raised beds on the cut flower area though we still need to fill some more. I decided on four beds that way I can do four successional sowings and when one is finished in turn I can clear them. Meanwhile I sorted out plants that have been sitting all winter and are now starting to wake up, potting some on and putting some out for sale. After I finished that we stood and had a good look at the cutting patch to try and finalise where everything would be going, I think I finally have a plan. Not before time as a few things really need to go in soon so that they can start producing lovely blooms 😁 At this point, which was still only around 10am, John went off to work and I set about weeding some of the other beds. I was out there until 2pm happily weeding on my hands and knees. One of the beds is a difficult one, it has more asparagus in there and normally it is too wet to get on it and weed it, then the asparagus grows and that snaps pretty easily if you try to weed in and around it so I am pretty chuffed and more than a little amazed that I have done it already at the beginning of Feb 🙄 It has been such a dry winter that working on the soil is easy for a change. I came in and got some lunch, sat down for a rest and John came home, lol why is it always when I have just sat down 🤷‍♀️

I have a couple of deliveries coming this week, some more pallet collars to make raised beds and a peat free compost delivery. I should have some bare root roses arriving any day as well as more seeds 🤣 I think I need much more space than I have for these flowers, it’s becoming an obsession!

Note to self: don’t forget to save draft 🤪

Saturday: Yep I have lost some days but for no other reason that I haven’t written anything 🙄 Thursday John was home some of the day and so we worked outside as the weather was fair but that’s as much as I can remember, except that I went for my 4th vaccination and it stung this time so I came home had a cuppa and a rest lol. Friday, I did the morning rounds and pottered in the greenhouse a while then I had a compost delivery mid morning. An hour or so later Sam came over with the twins and Shelley came with Florence. I had a delivery of bare root roses in the afternoon. Back to Saturday, the wind is back and it’s cold but not freezing just feels cold and I had trouble getting warm today. Up early, because I was going out with my sister to a vintage fair in Cheltenham. I quickly planted some hellebore that arrived before I went, I wanted to get them in because it is going to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. Once I came back early afternoon, had a cuppa and a sit down, I went out to the greenhouse (not windy in there) I have been soaking some ranunculus bulbs for a day or so and now they are nice and plump I wanted to get them in pots to start them off. They will go into the cutting garden eventually (once the frosts have passed) but if I can get them ahead that’s good. I also potted up my dahlia tubers to wake them up as well, one of them has a tiny green shoot so now is a good time. The plan is to get them going and then take cutting from them before I transplant them into the garden and cutting patch. I also sowed some sweet rocket (1st sowing) Meanwhile John has also been busy today, some of the time in the garden area doing bits and pieces for me and then some other jobs on top (he told me but I have already forgotten what 😝) I haven’t put the bare root roses in yet, I am trying to decide where is going to be best to plant them 🤷‍♀️

I had a little play with some flowers and foliage from the garden, not a lot to work with at the minute but I enjoyed myself, I said to John I can’t wait to have loads of flowers to make big bunches with 🥰

Note to self: don’t forget to grow veg this year as well 🤣

It is just a couple of weeks now before seed sowing can start in earnest, I cannot wait lol, looking forward to the warmer, longer days.

Sunday: The weather started off ok, dry and mild but rapidly declined to bring rain for most of the day. Beforehand however we did manage to get a few things sorted, John did the animals and then a bit of tidying up in the garden, he also cleared the gully across the driveway so that any heavy rain can run away nicely. I sorted out a bit for roast dinner later and then went out to plant some bulbs that arrived yesterday and the rose bushes that arrived the day before. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to plant these because I need to get to them but I didn’t want them so close to a patch way that up I had to brush past them, they ended up within the veg area because that is full sun which they love and not going to be difficult to get to. Then we went off to get a bit of shopping, not much just the basics, we still have plenty in the freezers to live off yet 🙄 Popped into see Mum and Ken for a coffee before returning home, we met Shelley at Mums and she came back with us to get some eggs and stopped for a cuppa and then Sam, Luke and the children turned up for an hour or two. Once they had all left I prepped the rest of the dinner and then sat down for a couple of hours. Charlie and Macca are coming to eat with us later so we will have seen almost everyone today 😂

We are, like everyone else, watching the tensions on the Russian/Ukrainian border with extreme interest, hoping that it is all some puffed up, macho nonsense. I find it difficult to believe in this day and age that one country can think it can just invade another, seems we haven’t come very far in the last 70/80 years, in fact I would go as far to say the world is dumbing down in my not very expert opinion 😏

When I went to the supermarket this morning there were rows and rows of beautiful imported flower bouquets in the front of the shop for easy access. Inside the shop behind a stack of boxes (I kid you not) we’re a few bunches of British grown tulips and daffodils, I should have complained to management really but the shop was rammed and the staff had enough to do without me adding to their problems but I may send an email.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Goodbye January, a baby announcement & a Sloe Gin competition 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 31st January 2022: The last day of January and while I would never be one to wish my life away I am certainly glad we are another month nearer to some warmer weather 😁 John has gone to work this morning which meant I was on the rota to do the rounds, it is squally out there. The wind is from the west but it is quite cold, there are some big gusts every now and then and it’s generally unpleasant though not as bad as they are having it further North so I am grateful for that. Unless I can find enough jobs to do in the greenhouse this morning I will not be going out there until the wind dies down 😂

I realise I now have a large amount of bulbs to plant for the cutting garden and I really need to sit down and fully apply myself to the plan. I need to go through everything I have ordered that is not here yet, every plant I have already bought that is here, every lot of bulbs I have ready to go in and every seed packet that I have ready to sow. I need to organise a sowing plan both for under cover and direct sowing and make sure I leave enough room for both and then a planting plan that is beneficial to all the plants and makes it easy to harvest the flowers. I seem to be stuck on the plan but that is because I haven’t collated everything yet, I am sure once I have it will be easier to look at what need to go where. That will just be the beginning because then there will be the soil improvement, maybe raised beds to build for some things, the planting up and the sowing at the right time. Growing flowers for cutting is certainly different to growing them for pleasure, with the latter it doesn’t really matter when the flowers appear as long as they do at some point, with the former I need a steady ‘bloom’ throughout the months in order to have the best bouquets and posies. All of this will be running alongside the veg growing lol, good job I have been doing that for years and it’s almost second nature.

I finally sat down with all the seeds, a list of plants and some note markers and plotted out the cutting patch. I needed to make sure I have pathways so that I can reach the blooms with little effort and I needed to get in some sort of order what is seeded when, with or without heat, undercover or direct sow 🙄 I think I have it sorted, until I realise I have either missed something out or for something in the wrong place 😂

Mum called round and I helped her to get something sorted on her laptop so that she can hopefully get her manuscript sorted and sent off to publishers, she has been writing it and re writing it for years, time to get it looked at 🥰

I heard a noise outside and wondered what the heck it was, looked out to see our hedge being cut in the driveway. We had it done for the first time last year and John decided it was so much easier and quicker to pay someone else to do it that he had asked him to do it again this year, he randomly turns up when he has got time.

And now I can tell you what I have known for a while, we are going to have another grandchild 😁🥰 Charlie and Macca are expecting their first baby in mid August and no they didn’t waste any time but that was the plan all along! Six grandchildren 😮 awesome, we are totally delighted and can’t wait to meet him/her when the time comes.

The egg numbers dropped drastically from the hens we moved outside, arrgghh just when I need them to stabilise, I should have given that a lot more thought 🤔 it’s colder out there and they had the light on for a couple of hours after dark in the stable block, doh.

Tuesday: Positively pooped by lunchtime 😂 I spent a very busy morning outside, first I did the morning rounds and then straight onto some gardening chores. I set up a map of the beds for the cut flower garden then decided that is wouldn’t work how I had organised it so I am back to the drawing board. I cleared a few weeds from the raised bed between the tunnels, it still has some small cabbages growing in there but I also found some self set aquilegia and a primrose 🤷‍♀️ so I transplant those. I planted some more plants I bought at the weekend, beautiful hellebores and very bright cheery primroses. I potted up the foliage shrubs I bought a few weeks ago and I potted on various bits and pieces. I also tidied up a lot of the plants I divided at the end of last year, I leave the dead stems until I am certain I can recognise what the plant is and then snip them off. Then I went over to one of the bigger beds and started raking up debris, I emptied the compost bin nearby and started to refill it with any uncomposted materials (quite a lot of that) I got halfway through and realised it was lunchtime and I was hungry 😋 It’s breezy but the sun is shining and it is quite nice out there today.

Wednesday: The day started off on the wrong foot, John went off to work and I went to do the morning rounds and found that the hens had eaten most of the eggs that had been laid already🤬 These are the hens we moved to the outside pen and I have no idea why they are doing it, they didn’t do it in the stable 🤷‍♀️ I have now split them up a little, it’s not the room that is the problem but once one starts they all start. I called the supplier and ordered 40 more point of lay because these lot are now around 2/3 and they have developed bad habits 😂 It’s fair to say that they have been a delinquent bunch from the off, we have had plenty of batches in over the years and these were trouble right from day one, going where they shouldn’t, laying goodness knows where, in house fighting and now egg eating on a mass scale, time to go, once the new hens are laying well these lot will be sold off.

In order to work off my grumps I went out to the veg garden, it is a lovely day, fairly mild and the sun is out. I spent the whole morning sorting out the bed behind the fruit cage, it has the apricot tree (which doesn’t produce many apricots) the cherry tree (that the birds eat before I can get to them) the runner bean area, spare asparagus and the thornless blackberry. A bit of a mish mash and to be honest probably could do with a massive overhaul as comfrey and feverfew grow like billio in there and no matter how much I try I have a job to keep it all under control. After raking up debris and cutting down runners from the apricot tree I went on to sort the runner bean area out. This bit has some of the bindweed problem and so I have weed membrane down but I pulled it all up, cleared the bindweed roots that where surface and laid it back down. Then I did the other side of it, it seems like a bit of a wasted area really but for the time being it will stay like that as I don’t have the time or the energy to change any of it. I just need to make sure that it doesn’t get out of control because it is an area I don’t need to visit very much and so gets overlooked ( maybe call it the wild area 😉) The bindweed roots I pulled up will be burnt, don’t want to risk them in the compost otherwise the problem will get worse. I came in for lunch and a sit down, my legs got a bit wobbly, I was in need of sustenance. That’s when I sat and wrote this and I am hoping I find some energy to get back out there 😝

Thursday: I started off well, got all the morning rounds done and the hens are better behaved today, not munching on eggs, I have no idea what that was all about 🤷‍♀️ Then into the greenhouse to sort a few things out and pit some things up, I also tidied a few things, stuff I put down thinking I will move that later then before you know it there is quite a bit to move. I put some pots of tulips and allium out for sale, the green shoots are just pushing through the top of the soil so I know they are good and strong. Then Samantha arrived with the twins and stayed for the afternoon, normally she would then take the twins and go to pick up Mia from school, come back, drop the twins off and take Mia swimming. Today though she left Lucie with me and took George so Lucie helped me to feed the chickens and collect the eggs, she was brilliant, carrying a bucket with some corn in she fed the hens like a pro 😁 George was most upset that he didn’t get to stay and do it but he can have a turn next time though I don’t think he will be as helpful somehow. Lucie is definitely going to be an outdoorsy grafter type, George more of an indoorsy desk job type I think, he is already very precise with everything so maybe an architect lol. Once Mia came back from swimming and they had all gone home it was time to get dinner, John had pool night and I had an online masterclass about annuals, perennials and foliage 🥰 Will sleep well tonight.

Friday: Brrrr cold and raining first thing this morning with some sleet thrown in for good measure, needless to say I waited a while before going out to do the animals 😝 Once it had stopped raining I went out and got that all done, I was just sorting the eggs out when John came home having finished work for the day and it was only 9.30! That kind of put paid to my plans for the day (which actually was just a fair amount of reading and resting because I still felt tired) After having a coffee we decided to go and get some shopping done, I had made a list the night before of a few things I needed. After shopping we went round to see Mum and Ken for a cup of coffee and got back home around Midday. We actually didn’t get a lot else done to be honest, except the necessary, by the time I sorted out the evening meal, John popped out to have a quick look at a job someone in the village wants doing, and a few household bits, there wasn’t much time for anything major. Just as well really as it never warmed up at all really and the lower temps are around for a couple of days more yet.

I have another masterclass online again tonight and then one on Monday evening as well, I love it and there is always something to learn 😁

Saturday: Not sure what we did to be honest, apart from the usual jobs I rather think we didn’t do much at all in the day 😂 In the evening we went to the Cotswolds 2022 Sloe Gin competition at The Fox Inn, Broadway which is between Stow on the Wold and Morton in Marsh. The event raised money for Maggie’s cancer care charity. What a fabulous evening we had, firstly the fact that the entries wereWith members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK. all from the villagers was indicative of a great community, secondly the pub and its staff were friendly and welcoming. It is very many years since I have been to a pub that has that traditional village pub feel and vibe, we had great fun judging the 22 entries and giving them a score, we had some great food and a good laugh with the locals who were a welcoming, friendly bunch, honestly I couldn’t speak more highly of the whole event. We will definitely being going back to the pub and most definitely for next years competition lol. And for anyone who watches Father Brown investigates, that’s the pub they use for filming 🥰

Sunday: Despite the gin tasting last night we were up and at it this morning 😝 The windy weather is still here, getting tedious now mind you 🙄 but it is a little milder today I think. I spent the morning giving a full clean out to the quail and Guinea pig runs, once the guineas were done I went onto the quail, opened the door and one flew straight out past me and up onto the Turkey run roof. It stayed where it was and didn’t move so I went and got the clean straw, told John and he came to help me catch it. He waved a long pole in the direction of the quail who duly took off towards the greenhouse and landed in an ungainly fashion on the lawn. John went round to look for it and shouted he could find it, I went round and said ‘you have to think like a quail’ 😂 what is the first thing you would do as a timid little bird out in the big wide world, hide, I went round to the area I had seen it land and there it was tucked in some long grass. I was hoping that I would have some more quail delivered today but the chap is having difficulty getting hold of them, I am not in a hurry so it can wait. We came in for some lunch and then I sent John off to pick up a vase I had seen on marketplace, meanwhile I went into the greenhouse. It seems I have a mouse again this year because some of the sweet pea seeds have been disturbed and one which was shooting has been chewed off 🤬 I have now primed the trap with peanut butter, I need to get this one as soon as possible or I will have nothing growing, it is not an ‘all you can eat restaurant’ ya know 😏 Mid afternoon I decided that was enough outside and came in to get some compost ordered. I am swapping over to peat free, it will be good once the whole industry makes the move to only supply peat free. The only reason I don’t always use it is because I often ask John to pick some up, multipurpose compost he can mange to remember, multipurpose, pear free would be pushing it too far 😉

Some spring hope appearing 🥰

This week I joined Flowers from the Farm, this is an organisation I first saw and heard a few years ago at an RHS show. I was tempted to join back then but didn’t really have a plan going forward about growing flowers, well now I have and so I applied and became a full member 🥰

‘With members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK.’

If you want to read more about the association, where you can see them, what they are all about then go to www.flowersfromthefarm.co.uk they also have a live map of all members who grow flowers here in he UK (including me😁)

Posted in Friesland Farm

Funny weather, lots of picking and slugfest in the greenhouse.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 2nd August 2021: It is actually Wednesday morning as I type this, I have missed a couple of days due to external matters that needed my time. On those days I have done only the necessary basics here, feeding and watering animals, picking and sorting veg and household bits so there was not much to report anyway. I did move the horses from the restricted paddock which is all but eaten off now, they are in the side paddock but at some point I need to put the electric fencing up in there so that they don’t gorge themselves.

Today I can get on and as yet I haven’t quite decided what I will do although the cloud looks quite thick at the moment so I should be able to get out for a good part of the day. I had been feeling down and disillusioned with everything as well as very tired, some of that was due to other things going on and some of it just whatever is going on in my body at the minute but today I feel I can bounce back a little bit and focus 😁

Wednesday: A did a really good stint at weeding the veg beds, most of the morning in fact. When we go away shelley will be living here and although I can tell weeds from the veg it’s not so easy for anyone else 😂 so I have made it easier to see what things are and what needs to be picked hopefully. I did a bit of picking, runner beans and some blueberries and Loganberry and then the grandchildren arrived at lunchtime for a couple of hours. We saw some deer in the field beyond ours which was nice for the kiddies (and adults) and the weather was pretty good, not too hot. After they left John arrived home early from work but I still had a lot that I wanted to get done. I needed to cut the lavender before it rains again as I want to dry it off for later in the year, I did some more weeding and then picked tomatoes ready for putting out tomorrow.

I forgot to let the ducks out this morning and didn’t remember until mid afternoon which is really bad of me and I’d better not do that again 😕

Thursday: Weather started off ok but by lunchtime it had turned cold and started raining quite a bit 🙄 First thing I did some more picking, courgettes, jalapeños and peppers, the jalapeños are growing thick and fast and I really need to find a good recipe for them as I don’t really eat them as they are. Once I had done all I needed to I sat down for a quick coffee and publish my weekly round up podcast and then Josh and Flo arrived as I was looking after them for a couple of hours. I love 4/5 year olds, the conversations you can have with them is priceless as are the things they come out with, under that age it’s a bit more basic and over that age they obviously know a lot and don’t need to ask you any more 😂 I think I would phrase it as the ‘conversation gold’ part of early childhood 🥰

Shelley arrived back and we had some soup for lunch before they left to get on with their day and I got on with mine. By this time is was raining heavily and I needed to get some paperwork sorted so an indoor afternoon.

Spent a ridiculous amount of time on the phone (with a very pleasant lady mind you) getting some holiday insurance and all the extra Covid cover we need this time round, but it’s done now all I have to do is think about packing, sort out the farm ready to leave it and not catch Covid beforehand 🙄 Oh and try and find some flat shoes as the ones I ordered are too small 🤪

It carried on peeing down most of the afternoon and into the evening so I found plenty of indoor jobs to be getting on with 🤪

Friday: It started off with rain first thing which cleared up but we still had these blustery winds with some pretty strong gusts at times 🙄 One thing I am glad of is that last year we changed how we grew runner beans as each year the winds would blow the ‘wigwams’ down when the plants were full of foliage and heavy with beans. John built a better permanent frame and this year I have not had to worry about them going over. These are the kind of modifications I am trying to get in place each time to make life easier. I did all the usual morning jobs but no picking this morning as I thought I would leave it and do a bigger pick tomorrow. That gave me time for a more leisurely shower and smoothie morning 😁 Mid morning Sam came over with the children and we went out for lunch to a local child friendly pub. There were plenty of toys to keep the children occupied and active and we ate outside, all part of re introducing the children to social activities that have been lacking, certainly for most of the twins 2 years of life, crazy isn’t it?

Later after returning home I had a quick nap, still feeling tired at times but not as much as before and no blips on my blood tests, well I haven’t been contacted so I assume there aren’t 🤔 John came home early again today and so after a cuppa and catch up we got on with afternoon feeding rounds, poultry, cats, dogs and humans 😁 Popped out to visit Mum in the evening but she wasn’t in so we went up to see my sister, while we were there my sister, John and my nephew fixed the car door. The passenger front door would not open from the inside or out and we couldn’t work out how on Earth we were going to fix it but between the three of them they did it. I have had to sit in the back for the last month so it was nice to sit in the front again. However when we got back home I couldn’t get out 😂 it wouldn’t open from the inside again, luckily it opened from the outside. We keep talking about getting a new car but John loves this one and although it’s old it is a really good car (apart from the door)

I had a notification from WordPress that 67 people now read the blog 😲 oh my goodness that is crazy, that is just on WordPress I know a fair few others read it straight from the Farm Facebook page or my personal page. I would just like to thank anybody that has ever read it, I think it has been going about 10 years now, it has only ever been about sharing the journey with anyone who wanted to come along. When I began it I didn’t have Lupus, life has changed in various ways time and time again, I have got older, grown an extraordinary amount of fruit and veg in that amount of time, probably baked tons of cakes, made hundreds of jars of jam and chutney, tried out a book full of new recipes, laughed, cried, been knocked down and got back up numerous times, I have enjoyed doing it and will keep blogging for as long as I can. I have recently dipped my toe into the podcast pool which I am enjoying as well though sometimes I wonder what on Earth I think I am doing 😂 but it’s just a different way of sharing this life.

Just listening to the late night news and weather forecast 🙄🤪 rain, thunder storms and blustery winds, are we sure it is actually August?? Time for bed and mull over tomorrow’s jobs before I fall asleep 😴

Saturday: Had to crack on this morning and get some picking done, tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper, chillies, French beans, some to go out for sale some to sort out for the freezer. I picked about 1kg of tomatoes 😲 and put a few punnets out in the shed, some are continuing to ripen on the windowsill and some I have frozen whole on trays to bag up once they are solid. I have done the same with the jalapeños, they will be fine for adding to soups, stews and sauces, I will probably make some tomato soup to freeze with the rest, I have made sauces in the past but I rarely use them, soup is more my thing. After picking and sorting I did a bit of slug hunting in the greenhouse, found about 15 of the little blighters, then it was indoors to clean the spare room, strip the bed and get that all washed before laying out the suitcases ready to fill for our holibobs 🥰🥰 I spent a large part of the afternoon trying on clothes and making piles of what to take. It’s been such a long time since our last holiday I had almost forgotten what we need so I’m just packing everything lol.

John has been to collect some hay bales today ready for winter feeding, I like to have in some of the small bales as well as the big round ones, they are easier to move around for the smaller animals, not much hood for the horses as they would it them in one sitting lol.

The red onions, I am pleased to say, did not succumb to the alium leaf miner so they are now pulled and drying off, they will store unlike the white onions which I have had to chop and freeze.

The rain just couldn’t help itself today and there were some pretty sharp showers at times, it is supposed to settle down after tomorrow with some warmer weather on the horizon. It has been the weirdest of summer seasons so far who knows what else is in store 🙄

The turkeys have been laying well, one more and I will be able to put them out for sale 😁

Jalapeños
Tigerello tomatoes

Sunday: Bit of a busy day off the farm today, after all the morning jobs were done someone arrived to collect the first of the kittens to go, I have had an update and she is settling in well her new home 😁 As soon as she had left we went to Witney to get a few bits of shopping for the holiday (did I mention we are going on holiday 😂) then back home again just after lunch to let the dogs out and do a few bit before going off to my brothers for the afternoon into early evening for his birthday celebrations. It is the first time that so many of us have been together and not everyone was there but we all had a lovely time. Once back home there was a bit to sort out, I took some hay to the Guineas and rabbit and got them fresh feed and water, and the quail. My main aim in the orchard was to separate the lonesome light Sussex hen that leaves with Ted and his ladies and get her in with the light Sussex flock. I watched her the other day and she has been plucking out Teds feathers that were newly growing through after his moult 😲 I managed to get her out but had to leave putting her in with the others until it was nearly dark. We had some other hens that have been in quarantine, they were also moved to the main flock once it was nearly dark, then on to do the water for the horses, feed the dogs and cats and then on to do another slug hunt in the greenhouse. The slugs are flipping getting to every pepper but I was able to see them by torchlight and get them out, probably still plenty more but if I keep doing it I might be able to sabotage their efforts.

Another week over and onto the next one, it will be a short blog as I am going on holiday (did I mention that 🤪) Only one obstacle to overcome and that is the testing centre at the terminal, fingers crossed 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Sunshine ☀️ a vaccine & finally some gardening.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 22nd February 2021: Just like that in a blink of an eye it’s Monday again. Another drizzly, grey morning, still quite mild for the time of year though. I do wish the weather would turn a little drier though, and if the sun could make an appearance that would be great. It seems like I am always wishing for different weather and generally I am, my ideal would be a dry sunny day of around 18c with rain overnight just in case anyone is listening and can do that for me 😜

John is working again this week and he did the rounds before he left. I sorted out the eggs, the hens are laying like crazy and we have plenty of them to try and shift. I did a few routine household bits and also phoned the septic tank company to get ours emptied, it did not get done last year due to covid so I really need it done this year to prevent any problems.

After chatting with our youngest daughter, Charlotte, I might have more of a go at growing micro greens. She is having a go at doing them for herself and she asked me what kind of seeds she needed to do it, I have plenty of spare seeds so I gave her a selection to get her going. It started me thinking that this would be a fairly easy way to grow a crop of tasty nutritious food, I just need to see if I can find a bulk seed company, buying the small packets is fine if you are doing it for yourself but on a bigger scale I need bigger quantities of seed to make it worthwhile. I have got pea shoots and garlic chives on the go for myself as mini salad leaves but the choice is huge really and so I think I am missing a trick here.

I take back what I said about it being mild, I went out to the greenhouse to do a couple of bits and to check on plants and it is colder than yesterday I think. I did organise a punnet of micro salad greens which are now on the kitchen window sill along with some peas that are just sat in the punnet, no compost, I have wetted the both of them and we will see how they get on. The peas I did in the greenhouse (which were in compost) have already started to rot, it’s just too cold for them at the minute, if at first you don’t succeed try something else 😆 The broad beans are coming up though and funnily enough the peas in the root trainers are too just not the ones in a seed tray 🤷‍♀️ too much moisture and too cold I think.

John came home just after lunch, I never know if I am coming or going theses days, I thought he was out for the day so was just hoovering the floors ready to give them a wash but that scuppered my plans. The reason becomes obvious when he is eating and drops some of it on the floor, why bother 😜

Boris set out the journey we are to take to come out of this long lockdown, it’s not quick but by 21st June we should be totally restriction free providing all goes well. On the downside it means that Charlotte and Maccas wedding will not go ahead on May 7th and restrictions will still be in place 😞 We will see if they are able to move it to later in the the year.

Tuesday: Not a bad day, slight frost to begin with but it soon warmed up a bit, grey and overcast mostly and windy but no rain 😀 John did the animals then went off to do a job, I got on with a bit of weeding and then moving some pots to clear the area where the next bed is going out the front. John came back and we carried on clearing the area, there were bags of compost, empty pots, pots with plants in, bit of debris etc etc and a pile of slabs. We cleared everything but the slabs and then set about giving the hazel trees a good prune, we didn’t do them last year and they have got a bit big and unruly. Now they are all cut nice and neatly, the branches all shredded and put back under the trees to put goodness back into the ground and give the mini beasts some cover. That pretty much took us well into the afternoon, the some lunch, a sit down, light the Rayburn, do the afternoon rounds and that’s another day over.

It will be March next week and that’s when many more seeds can be sown, I need to start in earnest making sure the beds are ready. I still have some flowers growing in some of them, once I can work out exactly what they are I will start transplanting them. We start the final bed out in the front area tomorrow, a smaller bed in a triangle shape, I am thinking this will be roses and romantic flowers like bleeding hearts, creeping phlox and agapanthus but I need to plan it properly first.

Wednesday: Blowy, grey, overcast, but not raining and fairly mild. John did the animals then went off to do a job and also pick up some sleepers for this last bed in the front area. It will be nice to get that done and I may have to have a trip to the garden centre to find some nice things to put in there.

This morning I have been preoccupied with a chance discovery, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place as it were. I can’t prove a thing but it all makes sense to me, I am talking about the theft of the honesty box and money before Christmas. This is what I think, we had a delivery two weeks or so previous to the theft, the delivery driver and his appearance and van rang alarm bells (your intuition is high when you live rurally on a farm, you recognise certain traits 🙄) When I went to the gate and realised it was a delivery I felt a little better, however I thought I recognised the driver from way, way back, I had said to John at the time, I reckon that was ….. but I couldn’t be sure. The person in question didn’t always lead a static life shall we say, except when incarcerated at her majesty’s pleasure. Two weeks later when we were out for about three hours we returned home to find the honesty box and contents ripped from the shed, there was also a delivery in the shed. At the time John said I reckon it was the delivery person but we had no cctv evidence and no way to prove anything. Then this morning a post on Facebook which made me look at the profile more closely and there is the delivery driver that came here! It was who I thought it was, as I say I can’t prove a thing but it’s all a bit coincidental in my eyes.

It’s mid afternoon and we have spent till now working out on the front area, I did a lot of weeding in the first bed and I have a couch grass problem there that I need to bring under control. John and I have moved slabs, positioned sleepers and started building the bed. Shelley came to get her food from the freezer now hers has been fixed and Sam came with the kids so they all played in the front paddock to run off some steam and get some fresh air. Indoors at 2 for lunch and to light the Rayburn, we’d to be on target this afternoon with jobs and dinner as I have my vaccination early evening 😀

The first bed is looking good, I mean it’s still a bit dead due to the time of year but I can see things beginning to bud and grow, the bulbs I planted have all come up, crocus, snowdrops and tête-à-tête, only a few this year but year on year they will multiply and it will look amazing. I need to wait and see how well the areas are filled with what I have already planted, the temptation is to cram a lot in but I really want space for plants/shrubs to look their very best. Each bed will have a different character and the first one is full of flowering shrubs and bulbs, fragrant, berries and plenty of nectar for the bees.

Thursday: Well it’s 2pm and so far I have had no side effects from my vaccine last night, hopefully it will stay that way. John did the animals this morning and then went to do a little job but was back by 10am. We got started out the front again, I added an extra job to Johns list of beds 😜 About two years ago or whenever it was he put up the new front fence, I made a temporary bed in front of the fence. By temporary I mean pots of flowers all stood behind a piece of wood 😂 This morning I asked nicely if we could perhaps make it into a permanent one, it didn’t actually take long, we had the materials, plants and top soil to do the job. Around an hour or so later it was ready for me to take the plants out of the pots and plant them in the bed, hopefully it will look lovely in a few weeks time. The beds will save me a lot of time watering, when things are in pots they dry out very quickly, with the beds a good soaking once a week should be adequate.

Oh and the weather was beautiful 🤩 sunny, mild, dry practically perfect.

It is so nice to have flowers I have waited a long time to have proper flower beds again and the reward today was watching the bees feeding on the crocus 🐝 and he cat trying to catch the bees in mid air 😂

We have moved down from alert level 5 to alert level 4 today, a good sign that things are going in the right direction and the pressure on the NHS has eased somewhat, it hasn’t gone but it’s good news.

Friday: Gorgeous morning, frosty start then lovely sunshine ☀️ I had planned to get out on the veg garden but I woke up with a rash this morning, arms and chest, not sure if this is the vaccine or being in the sun yesterday so I figured I better avoid it today. That leaves housework, oh joy 😜 Gave the bedroom a good clean, pull out the bed and dust everything within an inch of its life, then wash the floors in the living room and kitchen. I did think about doing more than that but the momentum left me 😆

Watching the birds at the seed feeder this morning I spotted one I haven’t seen before, a coal tit, it’s quick and I barely managed to get a pic of it but I am chuffed we have another new type of garden bird around 😀

John was back and forth between jobs today and I mainly pottered around not achieving very much, bit tired today and I have learned that when tired don’t do too much, I have the luxury of being able to do that I know but I still think it’s sound advice I give myself 😜

Continue reading “Sunshine ☀️ a vaccine & finally some gardening.” →
Posted in Friesland Farm

9 years of blogging, ‘dragons’ & storm Ciara

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd February: Oh my goodness WordPress has informed me that I first registered and posted 9 years ago, 31st Jan 2011 😲 It seems I have been banging on with my blurb for quite a long time 😜 My first blogs were short and sweet lol, they have got a lot longer over the years. You can access these old blogs by scrolling right the way back , I tried to find a search bar which would be useful but there doesn’t seem to be one 🙄

So we are safely into February a month that usually disappoints on a couple of fronts. Firstly we are always hopeful of some warmer weather we almost hold our breath waiting but it never quite comes and eventually we tell ourselves ‘well it is only February’ lol we do tell ourselves that at the beginning too of course but still we hope 😏 The second disappointment is Valentine’s Day, I think maybe this is the year I will get some flowers then usually nope lol. We have been married a long time and have got to the point where over the years at some point I have mentioned what a waste of money flowers are, indeed as is the whole frenzy surrounding any type of celebration 🙄 my mistake. We also hit the point years ago when John would say ‘well you don’t get me anything’ now we are at the stage where if I did get him something and he didn’t get me anything I am going to be bloody fuming 😂 so probably best to ignore it and leave it to others 💕

I take back everything I said about February 😜 I just spent a lovely morning outside, first job was to burn the pile of sticks that we failed to do yesterday, then I burnt the paper rubbish. Then into the garden where I spent a good couple of hours tidying stuff up, cutting dead stuff down, sowing a few early seedlings (climbers for my arches) making a new raised bed in the poly tunnel for salad stuff, generally looking over the plot to think about where I will plant stuff. I captured four chickens and put them back over the fence so I could work in peace and so they didn’t undo any tidying I was doing, pretty satisfied with my mornings work 😀

While I was out with the bonfire I noticed two little holes in the bottom of one of the buddleia bushes, if you look closely at the phot you can just about see them. I think this is a mouse home as the cat was pretty interested in the activity under the piles of sticks when they were there, they could be vole I suppose, I would have to sit and wait to see what came out of them to be sure. These bushes were planted way back in the seventies and have done really well to survive this long, the trunks are beautifully gnarly.

I met a lovely couple who have taken over the running of a local pub, The Carpenters Arms in Fulbrook, they are hopefully going to have quail eggs from us 😀

Tuesday: A colder feel to the start of the day 🥶 so I don’t think I will be spending the morning outside again today.

You may have noticed that occasionally I have a random thought 😂 and just have to get it written down to get it out of my systems otherwise I will be thinking about it all day. We watched Shrek at the weekend and on it there is a dragon, the conversation goes like this, ‘that dragon would never actually be able to fly with wings that small and a belly that big’ 😜 then I said to John ‘as there are so many myths around dragons is it possible that they did exist? Who can say if there wasn’t a pterodactyl or two still around back in the 6/7/8th century and that’s where the legends come from’. If there are any eminent palaeontologists reading this 🤣 please let me know if this is a possibility.

Now that is off my chest I’d better get on with the rest of the day lol.

I did the morning rounds, it’s a tad cold due to the wind but not as bad as I was expecting it to be however I hate trying to work in the wind so I will give outside a miss today lol. I got some wood in and will probably light the Rayburn earlier yesterday, I didn’t need to light it until 2.30 it was that mild. I have a haircut booked today, it’s that time again 😜 I’m not a regular, I’m the type that thinks, yikes I need a haircut and desperately tries to get an appointment before I let myself loose on cutting my own fringe 😂

We have roast pork for dinner tonight so I may make an apple pie/crumble as a treat for pud.

I had my first ever proper disaster with making bread today. First prove and it wasn’t growing in size particularly well, I put that down to the temp of the kitchen which was cool as I hadn’t lit the fire yet. I left it half an hour longer than normal until it had doubled in size, I was timing the whole thing to fit in with my hair cut so was now half an hour behind, second prove was on course but I had to take it out of the oven when the hairdresser arrived otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get it out. I took it out and thought, it looks ok, nope it was not cooked through as I discovered later. What I should have done was left it to prove and not put it in the oven until after I had my hair done but you live and learn.

I listened to a couple of pod casts while I was working today, the first was the Organic Gardening pod cast and the second was from Roots and all which was about Forest gardening, some useful information on both in fact I even started taking notes on the forest gardening one lol.

Wednesday: Every morning once I’m up I open the top half of the stable door in the kitchen and I am greeted with the sounds of excited chattering birds. Over the years the number has increased and there are now a whole flock of sparrows we also get great tits, chaffinch, blackbirds, wren, robins, sometimes goldfinch, long tailed tits, greater spotted woodpecker, we have had a jay and I often spot a flock of greenfinch in the back hedge and wagtails in the paddocks. Crows, jackdaws and magpies. Other wildlife I have spotted here are frogs, a toad, a newt, a grass snake (although this had got caught in netting and had died but it indicates that there may be more) hedgehog, squirrel, rabbits, a deer in the paddock, bees nesting in the ground, leaf cutter bees, mason bees, ladybirds, lacewings, all manner of ground beetles and bugs. A real plethora of wildlife and I keep trying to encourage more by having the right kinds of habitat for them as well as not using any chemicals of course. One I want to concentrate on a bit more is the butterflies as I have noticed a decline, we have little blue in the paddocks when the grass is long but the garden butterflies seemed sparse last year compared to previous years, although we had a lot of caterpillars for the cinnabar moth more than I have ever seen before.

Again, another nice morning, sorry for being so negative February 😜 The shingle arrived this morning, it was supposed to come yesterday and John came home early to shovel it but after phoning the supplier they had forgotten 🙄 It arrived before 8.30 this morning so after doing the rounds I set about shifting it to where it needed to go. The driver was pretty helpful trying to drive and tip it at the same time but most of it ended up as far away from where it needed to go as was possible 😂 So cue Dawn, a shovel and a wheel barrow to spread it around, I did a pretty good job I reckon though I think we could have done with more than the three ton. The dog in the photo, Patch, although he looked as though he was ready and willing was absolutely no help whatsoever 😬

As I said, it freshens things up a bit and once the foliage starts to grow on the shrubs and flowers it will look quite nice, well nicer than it did before lol.

I was delighted to receive some feedback about the quail eggs, the chef sent this picture of his game scotch eggs using the quail eggs, don’t they look yummy, I might have to go a sample them lol

Thursday: An entirely different morning this morning, freezing fog 🙄 it was weird as it seemed as though daylight was early but it was the fog lightening everything up. It should burn off into a lovely day.

I wanted to get a couple of jobs done, the boot room needed a hoover and a wipe round, some washing needs doing so as well as the usual morning rounds I did those too.

I ordered a windowsill propagator, in the early days we didn’t have any windowsills so I never bothered but I do now and so I might as well use them to my advantage. I want to get some of the seeds going early but it’s still too cold even in the greenhouse for some seeds so a warm windowsill is ideal. There is a knack to raising seedlings indoors, light but not full sun all day, if the sun moves round that’s fine but they don’t want to be in it all day long. When the seedlings appear it’s important to keep turning the trays around this will hopefully stop the seedlings reaching for the light and getting too leggy, it also strengthens the stem. The next thing to consider is where you will move them onto, you have all these seedlings appear and then what do you do with them if it’s still too cold? That’s why I bought a heat mat for the greenhouse because that will be their next destination, after that it will be the greenhouse staging with no heat then depending on where they are going either to the poly tunnels or into the cold frames to harden off. I have sown tomato, cucumber, aubergine, peppers and melon, all these need a long growing season to produce anything useful.

The broad beans I showed in the greenhouse are coming up and the peas in the guttering in the polytunnel are also appearing. The carrots have still to appear 🙄

There are a couple of things you can sow now under cover, radishes and cut and come again lettuce. The other thing you can sow are micro greens, these are just seeds from broccoli, cabbage, celery, beetroot, peas, radish, rocket and you grow them like you would grow cress (which can also be sown) and snip them off to sprinkle on your salads or add to something cooked like a bolognese. Growing and harvesting like this gives you great little power packs of greens, full of nutrients and the kids will never know they haven’t just eaten something good for them 😜 I gave some packets of seeds to Shelley and she has been trying it with great success. The range is huge so even if you have a small space you can grow your own and it’s not difficult, if you can grow cress you can grow these there is no mystery to it. I found out accidentally many years ago when I sowed a tray of celery seeds intending to plant them out for full sized celery, I didn’t get round to it so snipped off the seedlings and they were really tasty. At this time of year I would probably use the hardier veg as mentioned above but as the season gets warmer you can start to use all kinds of greens including basil and coriander.

You would think that sowing a few seeds this morning would have satisfied my yearning to get on with preparing for the sowing season, but no, I am looking at the lovely sunshine and thinking what can I get done out there lol all the while I know full well the ground is too cold and too wet to do much at all so all I can do is plan. One part of my plan is already in motion, I have booked John a week off work in March so he can help with the heavy stuff 😜 I have compost to move onto the beds, the heavy strawberry troughs to move and any other job I can’t manage all by myself. I have identified exactly what area I will be using for the perennial cut flowers and they have all been growing in pots since last year ready to fill the bed up. I have chosen the area near my apricot tree, it has been a kind of non area for the last couple of years. Mum dug out all the raspberry runners and bindweed at the end of summer, half the bed will be for runner beans and the other half will be full of flowers hopefully. I have been going round identifying exactly what I have got to plant in there and I will be filling it as full as possible. Rudbeckia, lupin, delphinium, geum dahlia, sweet William, stocks, achillea, campion and a lot more that I can’t remember just now. At the moment it is weedy and I can’t really get on it to weed it until it’s a little drier but as soon as it is I will be raring to go 😀 And if I never get round to cutting them I will have a lovely flower bed to admire.

Friday: Another foggy morning but without the freezing bit however it is still pretty cold and the forecast is not much more than 6c so I will light the Rayburn early as I have the twins for an hour or so while Mia has her very first swimming lesson this afternoon.

I did the morning rounds and I have a missing guinea pig, there is no sign of it being attacked and laying dead anywhere, I assume it has got out somehow, it may return but if it has got out it may have been somethings supper 😏

I lit the Rayburn as soon as I had finished and come back inside, typically the sun cam out about half an hour later but I still don’t think it’s going to get very warm today.

I chopped up a load of veg to make some soup, tomato, pepper, leek, celery and carrot, should make a tasty lunch. I should do more soups as they are easy and packed with goodness all in one hit.

Saturday: A lovely day, the calm before the storm, and we spent most of it outside doing various jobs. John connected up the other ibc tank ready for the torrential rain and we moved the geese to the small back paddock where the grass is better for them and they won’t terrorise the hens now that they have started laying and are fiercely protective. Other jobs included cutting large tree trunks up and then splitting the logs.

Late afternoon I went off with a few family members to Aylesbury Waterside Theatre to watch a play called Ghost Stories 👻 I have no idea why we thought that would be a good thing to do lol.

Sunday: The storm rolled in at around 11pm last night and it has been noisy all night long, roaring through the tree tops. We are only on the letter C and this is Ciara so not too many so far this winter however they are saying that this is a once in every ten years storm and some areas have tornado warnings 🙄 If we get through this without any damage I will be surprised (and very relieved) We have discussed this morning the lighting of the Rayburn or not, I think not as we are bound to lose power at some point and indeed as I write this the lights have flickered ominously. John thinks light it now and if the power goes off at least the house will be warm, decisions, decisions. The storm is set to peak between 1 & 4 pm so we still have a while to go yet I have put a lump of beef in the slow cooker though and hopefully it will be in there long enough to cook.

Doing the animals this morning is going to be a task and most of the hens will probably not venture out very far from their huts, I am wondering how to get hay to the horses without it just blowing away 💨 I hate the wind, I almost hold my breath during storms, obviously won’t be able to hold it all through this one as it’s over 24/48 hrs. I can’t even begin to image how people feel in tornado/hurricane prone areas, I think I would have to move 😏 or have an underground bunker 😜

I went out to fill hay nets for the horses and take them down to the field shelter so that we don’t end up with hay blowing all over the place. As I got in there the wind blew hard, the roof of the shelter was loose and flapped and banged, the horse shat himself and so did I 😬 I went to get John, we found a roof strap, a hammer, nails and a ladder and went back down to secure the roof, crisis averted I reckon 🙄

I think smallholders are probably at their best in times of adversity, either alone or as a team they get out and sort it out. One of the things we tend to do is keep everything, it means we have a lot of crap but sometimes that crap comes in handy, like the roof straps, I have had them knocking around for years, I’ve used a couple for other things now and again but luckily I still had one left.

It’s just gone 4pm and we seem to be coming out of the other side of the storm, it’s still blowy but the strong winds have subsided apart from an occasional gust. Over the day we have had lightening, heavy rain, sunshine and of course the winds. I have seen Facebook updates of fallen trees all around us on the local roads and the new reports of the damage around the whole country is epic, fingers crossed that’s the worst of it over and in our little kingdom we have escaped unscathed 😬

We mostly spent the day inside hunkered down, we had bacon and eggs this morning and plenty of cups of tea, I have done some reading and John has watched the tv (when we had signal that is lol) Nov to have a day of not doing much every now and then even if it is forced upon us 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

Stormy weather, goose eggs & pod casts.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 13th January: I had a cracking evening last night, by that I mean cracking nuts not having a good time 😜 I thought I’d better get started on the nuts if I do half an hour here and there I will soon have plenty of nuts to snack on or use in cooking. Turns out that only approx 60% of the walnuts are any good but that’s still useful, I haven’t started on the hazels yet. John spent late afternoon getting the gate finished and hung, he is getting very good at gates now, if you put his first effort next to the latest you would laugh and wonder how on earth it ever kept anything in or out let alone shut properly. Our skill set has widened massively over the years, hopefully we can pass some of them on to the next couple of generations you never know when they will need them.

I did a few extra jobs while I was on the rounds this morning, topping up the duck house bedding, moving the electric fence for the hens out in the side paddock and I had to fix the turkey pen fence. Something, probably a Fox has had a go at pulling the fence and there was a gap in it next to the doorway, basically it had been pulled out of the wood pinching it together. I grabbed a hammer and some u nails and fixed it, good job I saw it other wise the turkeys would have been got.

When I finished that I thought I would see what could be done in the garden, the weather is nice enough this morning and I feel like these are bonus days and shouldn’t be wasted. I got the jute out that I ordered and set about putting that down on a bed I cleared last week. I have reservations about using it, on the one hand it’s natural and therefore environmentally friendly, biodegradable, compostable so plenty going for it, it also does not flap about in the wind like the plastic and it would stabilise the soil if left in situ with more compost put on top. On the other hand it’s quite expensive monetarily speaking and I doubled it up because I’m not sure it will exclude the light with just one layer. It is an experiment so we will see how it goes.

I then tried to dig up the blackberry and stingers that have taken hold near the far fence 🙄 hmm I found I wasn’t strong enough to get right to the bottom of the roots nor to pull them so I am going to have to get John to help with that as some point. It does need a new fence there so we will probably do both jobs at the same time. While I was mooching about I found a piece of guttering and had a lightbulb moment, I would use it to plant some peas into in the tunnel. Mice usually bugger up my plans for early peas but you can hang a piece of gutter from the cross bars and that means the little sods can’t reach the seeds 😀 Even if I just use the shoots for salad they will be welcome early greens. The gutter didn’t have any stop ends so I got two plant pots and used those instead, filled it with compost and planted the seeds, it’s not pretty but it is functional and will hopefully work well.

The weather is about to get a bit nasty, we have a very deep depression coming in from the west which will bring strong winds and rain according to the forecasters but the temperatures are still well above average for the time of year.

So I just joined the group NFFN which stands for Nature friendly farming network, I don’t normally randomly join groups but this one seems to be aimed at exactly what I am trying to achieve here which is living off the land but not to the detriment of all other living things that are also here, sustainable farming, not that I farm in the general sense but I do have land that needs managing.

In the run up to Christmas the egg sales went berserk and we couldn’t pick them up and get them out fast enough, the week between Christmas and New Year was pretty steady but since the New Year it’s safe to say it has slowed down considerably and non existent on some days. In order to have a good turn around I have been trying to sell the duck eggs on the sale pages, normally they get snapped up but nothing doing today so I need to look up ways of using them up lol.

Tuesday: It’s calm this morning but we have another weather front coming in apparently so we are in the calm between storms. Here in the UK the storms are named in alphabetical order yesterday’s was storm Brendan so we are only just into storm weather, it usually gets to around g/h/i/j/k but there are 21 storm names allocated each year, if they surpass that I don’t know what they do lol.

I did the rounds this morning, again doing a bit extra as I go, this time it’s a sack full of hay for the rabbit/guineas and two sackfuls of fresh straw for the light Sussex pen, a quick coffee and sort out the egg shed and it will be time to clean out the quail who are still in the back area under cover as they seem to be laying much better in there. Not that we need the eggs, as I said yesterday the customers seem thin on the ground at the minute, I have been plugging them on the sale sites though so hopefully we will get a few new customers to help keep the eggs turning over quickly.

Sat and watched the horses frolicking in the paddock, I don’t know what had got into them but they were having a fine time of it 😀

I have some strawberry plants and some pots of tête-à-tête daffodils to put out for sale but I am kind of holding off until the storms pass as they will just get blown everywhere 💨 The winds were quite strong last night probably around 55-60mph (not strong in comparison to some countries) further up country they were reaching 85mph, but coming up from the south west and from that direction they don’t seem to affect us hugely.

I cleaned out the quail, one of them gets hard little balls of muck stuck to its toes so I had to soften that and get it off, it only happens to one I don’t know why. Then I collect up the daffodils and strawberry plants took them into the greenhouse and gave them a tidy up before putting them up for sale on the sites. The minute I got into the garden I was swarmed by hens all thinking that hopefully it’s three o’clock and I am going to feed them, not a hope it’s only 11am. I don’t know why they do it as they have feed inside the hut so if they were really hungry they could go and get that 🙄 Then is was inside to get the Rayburn lit, the weather though it started off ok has declined and it’s now wet with a breeze, I can tell it’s colder because I wanted to light the Rayburn at 10am but held off to get things done outside first.

I got myself ready to leave the warmth of the house to do the afternoon rounds, I stood at the back thinking ‘bloody heck it’s rough out here’ when all of a sudden crack and a bough came down, good job the wind is blowing so that the bough went along the fence and not towards the house, this is exactly the reason we started taking these down, we really need to finish the job 😏 Just before I went out, as I was getting my coat on, we lost the electric, just for a minute and it came back on but I’m pretty sure it will go again at some point.

We lost power at 4.45 after a couple of flickers, I just knew it was going to go 🙄 luckily I had kept the Rayburn low so there was not much in the fire box which is good as no power means no pump to take the hot water away from the boiler!

John came home and we went out to get something to eat and called into my sisters to get a cup of tea, when we got back at 8pm the electric was still off so John had a bath by candlelight while I sat in the living room with a torch and did some reading. All good fun, this is when we could do with a small wood burning stove that would be like the 1970s when Mum used to make toast on the parkray during power cuts 😀

Wednesday: Is it only Wednesday lol, the power did not come back on until 10.30pm by which time we had given up and gone to bed, it was starting to feel a tad cold and likely that the torch would run out of power so called it a night at 10pm.

It is a calm pleasant morning again, and this mornings survey of the place found no other damage but we do have the big lake back in the side paddock. This normally appears after days of relentless rain and not overnight, there was nothing there yesterday. The chap was due to come Sunday morning for rabbiting but I have warned him it might not be worthwhile as the rabbits have either drowned or fled the burrows.

I keep thinking we must be able to utilise this transient feature somehow but you can bet your bottom dollar that the minute we decide to male it into a permanent wildlife pond we will have a drought 😜

One good thing is that I was unable to cook dinner last night so I am ahead of the game with what to have tonight 😂 I have also lit the Rayburn earlier than usual as you can feel the cold having had no heating during the previous evening.

Thursday: It was colder overnight and I thought we would see a frost but at 6.30 this morning I couldn’t see any sign of one.

Out to do the rounds once it was light enough and nothing untoward but I did find the first goose egg of the season 😀 John had said he thought he saw something when he was shutting them away last night and he was correct. This is nearly a month earlier than usual and I can only assume that the mild winters as contributed to that. Normally the winter would be full of days when the ground is frozen or at least frosted but we have had less than a handful of days like that so the geese have been able to steadily graze grass constantly which is unusual. It means that they have been able to get good nutrition throughout and therefore start laying early which is great for them and a bonus for us.

One of the things I started listening to when the electric was off were podcasts, the selection out there is phenomenal and every type of subject is available. This morning I listened to an hour long podcast about growing and storing enough food to feed your family for a year, it was interesting and the best thing is that on the phone it’s mobile, I just take the phone with me whatever I am doing and can carry on listening. I got dressed, I did the washing up, then out to sort and box the eggs, all the while taking the phone with me and listening to something that interests me, much better than listening to the radio or the cat meowing 😜 I think I will definitely include podcasts as a part of my day.

Friday: I have blood tests this morning, these are for monitoring the effects of the drugs I have to take, they are disease modifying drugs and can have all sorts of side effects so need keeping an eye on. When I feel really well, like I do at the minute, I question wether I even have anything wrong but in truth if I came off the drugs I think things would plummet pretty quickly.

So the weather has been pretty atrocious this week I think it’s fair to say, today is not much better but we do have some sunshine in the forecast for the weekend, hopefully it will make an appearance, if for no other reason than to bring a bit of cheer to what seems like a very long month. We have about six weeks to go before we can get uplifted by the fact that spring will actually begin to spring. I watched a programme last night and the clip with the birds singing and the green grass made me realise how much I long for that time of year. I said to John yesterday that I look forward to the weekends when he takes over the feeding, if I had to do it seven days a week I think I would give up the birds entirely 🙄 We have customers that say ‘don’t give up doing this, we love your eggs’ but I reckon if they spent even one day in the wet, wind and mud they might think differently lol.

After the deluge of rain we have had this last week one serious thought I have been having is about exactly how to stabilise the ground. You can visibly see serious amounts of run off (as we are on a slight incline) and consequently the erosion of the soil especially on the veg garden. If the past few years have taught me anything it’s that this problem is getting worse and I don’t really have the expertise or knowledge so I am going to have to read all I can and work it out. The problem would not doubt be easily solved if we did not have grazing animals on the land and by that I mean the horses and the geese. They would eat most of anything you plant unless it is well protected, heavily protected in the case of the horses. I think I need to, and indeed want to, increase the hedging especially in the side paddock at the front by the lane. We have discussed putting up a fence to keep the horses away from anything newly planted but the geese would get through that and so would the chickens and they would scratch up round the roots so you see what I am up against here, multiple procedures are needed. In the meantime if anyone can point me in the direction of some serious land management articles involving erosion and how to prevent it I would be very grateful 😀

Saturday: A good hard frost overnight whoop, nice and fresh and crisp this morning and we did need it. Those plants that go dormant over winter need the cold so that they recognise when to break dormancy as it gets warmer plus it kills off a few pests and diseases. Of course along with the frost generally come a sunny day and that is exactly what we got, cold but sunny. John did the animals then had to shoot off and sort something out on a job he is currently on. Meanwhile I sorted out the morning household jobs and then went out to give hay and some carrots to the horses, top up the wild bird feeders and feed Diesel who had actually bought his own breakfast along in the form of a dead mouse 🙄 glad to see he is still earning his keep. When John came back he got to work on the fence that runs along from his new gate, digging holes and putting in fence posts, not a great job for a cold day so I made a batch of biscuits to keep him ticking along. Shelley, Josh and Florence came over, Josh wanted to help with some jobs. Always keen to take up the offer of some help as you never know when they will stop wanting to, we put some clean bedding in for the ducks, checked the growing daffodils and fruit trees at the back, had a tour around the veg garden, Josh was very interested in what was growing he kept asking ‘what’s this plant Nana’ lol, we went to watch Grampy do a bit then they found a nice icy puddle to jump up and down in which entertained them no end 😀

Back indooors for a cup of tea and some lunch and we had an episode that is the only time it is acceptable to hit a child, choking, Josh got a whole hula hoop stuck and was choking, Shelley whacked him a few times nothing, she looked at me saying ‘Mum’ and I went round and took over, three hard whacks, nothing, rapidly going through my head was after this next one if it doesn’t budge I am going to have to do it much harder and roll my fist up under his rib cage, thankfully it budged and came out. It was probably seconds but it feels like a lifetime and so many thoughts are running through your head mostly what your next stage of action will be. Of course a hula hoop will eventually go soft but at the time, the child is panicking and in this case Florence was also screaming because we were whacking Josh. Object removed, sighs of relief, then come the lectures lol, don’t talk with your mouthful, chew your food properly, and sit still while you are eating, all the things countless generations of mothers have said to their children, there is a very good reason for that 😜

I listened to another pod cast this morning while I was sorting eggs, one from the RHS about Wisley, very interesting and it got me intrigued, I definitely want to go and visit this year if I can. They have an attraction called ‘The giant houseplant takeover’ I am not really keen on houseplants but listening to the pod cast I was thinking how very clever the idea is as they explained what it was all about. John will be delighted lol, I’m sure they have a good cafe he can sit in and while away the time 😝

I made a pan of vegetable soup, nice and warming on a day like today and obviously very good for you, get your five a day all in one hit lol. I will probably whizz it up as I have put herbs in there and what John doesn’t know won’t hurt him 😜

I really have a hankering for a Cornish pasty lol, I might just have to make some.

I cleaned the windows, I thought it would probably be better if I could see through them 😝

The sky is kind of purple tonight, love the spectacular sunsets and sunrises the cold weather brings.

Sunday: Another hard frost, harder than yesterday I would say, but again the sun is shinning brilliantly and it looks magical shinning on the frozen branches and ground. John did the morning rounds and cleaned out the front hens, I sorted eggs etc.

This morning we are going to Blenheim Palace for a walk around the grounds and a coffee. We are very lucky to have this magnificent stately home only 20 minutes down the road and this year I bought annual passes for us and the girls so that it can be enjoyed all year round.

Well that turned into quite a chunk of the day visiting ‘The Kingdom’ as Josh called it 😂 I bought family passes for presents and I think we will definitely get our monies worth going there regularly, there is plenty of ground to cover and lots to do as well as the events they put on.

We got back at 3 and it was then a rush to grab a sandwich (long story as the cafe was packed as were the palace grounds) and scoot round to visit Charlie and Macca for his birthday. A quick cuppa with them then back home to do the afternoon feeding, egg collecting and light the Rayburn. The place gets pretty cold when there is no heating all day 🙄

Posted in Friesland Farm

A happy and healthy 2020 🥳 to you all.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

New Year’s Day: We have had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. In between the two we have had Johns Mums funeral, an occasion which is always bitter sweet I think, on the one hand you are saying goodbye to someone you will never see again and on the other hand you meet up with relatives you probably haven’t seen for a while, there you have it, the good and the bad all in one hit lol.

The farm has mostly just tickled along, feeding, watering, egg collecting, cleaning out, the occasional mention of what needs doing over the next few months. Planning is just about all that can be done for the garden at the moment, I did go into the greenhouse and dig out the heat pad I bought back in summer. I need to get it set up and then decide what I shall grow on top of it, mostly peppers, chilli and aubergine as they need a long growing season and so the sooner I can get them started the more chance they will produce something at the end of the year.

I am always chomping at the bit at this time of year, raring to get going with seeds and normally I would have to hold off for quite a while but this year with the new greenhouse AND a heat mat I shall be out of the starting blocks early 😀 There are plenty of things to be done in preparation outside, I still have some clearing to do and some wood chip to put down (nearly done 😝) and maybe some changing around, I will see what I am capable of as I go.

John is busy finishing off the boot room floor today and at the end of the week Martin is coming to build a cupboard and a seat/storage in there, happy days, I will be getting much more organised which can only be a good thing 😀

I don’t make New Year resolutions, best not to set yourself up for a fall I reckon 😜 I just make a mental note of what needs changing (and then I usually forget all about it 🤣) Must try harder, where have I read that before 🙄 I do think it’s good to set yourself a challenge though, not dry January as we don’t don’t drink enough to warrant giving it up, and that is not denial it’s a fact lol. We probably have around 6 units a month and most months not even that. I object to being told which day to go meat free so we won’t be doing meat free Mondays, I prefer to choose the day we have eggs on toast for dinner 😂 All that leads me to the 2020 challenge of not buying anything new 😮 yeah, I’m contemplating it and then the first thing I think is what about the sofas 😂 I think I will challenge myself to get what I am comfortable with second hand such as egg cups (we only have one left) and try really hard at limiting everything else. Hmmm now I have said it out loud I’m not sure how this will pan out 🙄

Thursday 2nd Jan: The weather, yes you knew I would get back to it soon lol, the weather, after that horrible wet period which seemed to go on forever, has settled into some unseasonable stability. It’s mild, disconcertingly mild for mid Winter I have to say, but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I have been outside this morning moving wood chip (nearly done 😝) The fist thing I notice is how unfit I have got from not doing outside work for a while, I managed a measly 5 barrows today and then I was aching and puffed, not good. I need to do something every day to build back up to the amount of barrels I shifted a couple of months back.

Meanwhile John is in the boot room putting the units back together, I say units they are not ready made ones just ply that make up sides and shelves plus a worktop. Obviously as the floor was lifted (to get over the soil pipe) everything else had to be lifted as well and then the sink and washing machine needed plumbing back in.

Martin, who is a carpenter, is coming tomorrow to build this cupboard which will store all the chutneys, jams, homemade liqueurs and a whole host of other stuff. Normally John would have built one but, truth be told, carpentry is not one of his strong skills, he manages with DIY carpentry but I want something robust, he is better off sticking to the plumbing, which he is excellent at 😀

I had to make a small sign to go in the grass under the apple tree at the front. Last year we planted crocus bulbs there and people tend to walk over the grass to the fence to look at the chickens etc, we love that they do that but didn’t think about the poor bulbs that are trying to push their way up this spring, so hopefully a polite notice will keep them off that particular area.

Friday: Just when I talked about how stable the weather was, it changed, last night and early this morning lashings of rain, a cold wind and a definite dip in temperature although still not that low. We got the morning jobs all sorted and waited for Martin to arrive laden with materials to build this storage. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see it getting built, I’m cock-a-hoop about the amount of storage space it has given me. I am definitely going to do much more this year in terms of dried herbs, beans etc plus much more jam and preserves 😀

Once the cupboard was finished I started filling it up, it not only stores what was in the old corner cupboard but I am able to get things out of the kitchen cupboards that have been stored there because there was nowhere else for them, freeing up other space and making life a lot easier in terms of finding stuff. There are bits that you end up with that you don’t really know what to do with but don’t want to throw them away in case they come in useful and I will also now be able to bulk buy should I want to as I never had the space before. Oh the possibilities are endless 😜

I also now have a storage box for hats and gloves etc with a lid at the height that the children (and me if necessary) can be sat to put their wellies on and off which will make life easier too, the option before was to sit on the mucky floor or trapse dirty boots into the kitchen.

While that was going on, John cleaned out all the chicken coops and I cleaned various areas indoors. I also started a to do list for the garden side of things and then a list for the farm side of things so that we both know what needs doing and besides a list is a great way to see what has been achieved 😀

Saturday: Martin came to finish off a few bits, a door on the cupboard that John built under the sink, a shelf over the top of the coat hooks and altered the door between the boot room and kitchen. I was going to have a new door but in the spirit of up-cycling or reusing and making an effort not to buy what we don’t need, we decided to put a wood panel over the bottom half of the door which was glass all the way down, a bit of primer and paint and it will definitely ‘do’.

I am not sure about you but January tends to be a time when I like to go through stuff and have a good old clear out, broken things, junk bits, things I no longer need all get sorted and dealt with appropriately. That’s what I spent most of the morning doing while John did a similar thing outside plus burning odds and ends of wood and paper feed sacks. At lunchtime Shelley came over with Florence and we went to Witney for a coffee and a mooch round. I confess I did buy some new shoes, waterproof pumps actually and a jumper in the sale, the next job is to go through my wardrobe and sort out stuff for the charity shop or rag bin. I don’t really buy many clothes at all and they are usually for working in 😂 but I had a favourite old jumper that is really only good for work now and I wanted to replace it with one for ‘best’ lol.

In the evening we went to a BBQ, yep you read that correctly 😜 an annual event by a couple in the village and it’s more fun than you would imagine in January, food cooked outdoors tastes even better when the temperature is low in my opinion.

Sunday: John did the morning rounds, that will be his last day until next weekend, tomorrow it will be my job from morning till night again 🙄 Meanwhile I got sorted indoors and also put a coat of paint on the door. Then we had Mia and the twins for a few hours, when they got back Sam and Luke had dinner with us and that was pretty much the day filled up.

I took a photo of some bulbs coming up, it’s great to see the wheel of the year rolling on towards Spring 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cat & mouse, cockerels & the Sky.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday evening Dec 1st: Sometimes on a Sunday evening after the blog has been published there are things I like to tell you about, tonight is one of those evenings. A real live game of cat and mouse was played out in the undercover back area. I think we don’t have many mice as I never really see any, however Benny the cat is a super duper mouser and he is always catching them. This evening I witnessed the classic cat catches mouse and then plays with the terrified little thing until he finally gulps it down in one go 🙄 It’s why we have cats here I suppose but we don’t usually witness the events as he mostly hunts out and about at night.

Monday 2nd December: So the first job on the list is obviously the animals, I made sure as it was a pretty cold morning, that everything had plenty of feed and water and the horses and the rabbit/guineas had a pile of hay to keep them going. I noticed a whole bunch of feathers in the front paddock, there were so many that I thought one of my geese had perhaps not gone to bed and been got by the fox but it was the lone cockerel from the school hatch back in spring. He roosted in the walnut tree, he chose not to live with 50 women 😜 and I assume he has come down too early this morning and been got 😏

After that it was straight inside to get the cockerels prepped for the freezer, three of them anyhow the forth will be prepped for dinner tonight. The cockerels we breed do not have a massive amount of meat on them but there is enough for a roast, then a curry or casserole and finally soup so you can get 3 good meals from them easily, then of course there is broth/stock to be made as well. I have been ‘doing’ our own chickens for over 10 years now, I went on a course along with Sam many years ago to find out how to do it properly and I think we pretty much have it nailed these days. I consider it a skill set, you never know when you might need it, and over time I have also taught Shelley and Charlotte, my sister Gill and her friend how to do it as well. I can also paunch a rabbit, without a knife if necessary so you see I am a very useful person to know 😂

The bird I selected for dinner tonight is now slavered in olive oil, sage, garlic and black pepper with onion in the cavity and that will be slow roasted, also cooking are the other bits that will go to the dogs, the feet, the hearts, the livers, the gizzards and the necks. Every bird is different, some are narrow some are wide, some carry more fat than others and of course even though they are the same age and have had the same life some are heavier than others 🙄 but all have had a good life, mostly free roaming and living a near to natural life as possible.

I may have to have a sleep at some point today, I seem to have got Johns cold and all the back of my throat and nose is inflamed meaning I didn’t get much sleep during the night as I could breathe properly and sleep at the same time 😜

Tuesday: Feel slightly better today and had a better nights sleep so that’s helpful. It’s not as cold this morning as the past few mornings and the sun is shinning, always a bonus. The long range forecast that I follow suggests that we won’t have a cold snap this side of the new year, even though I have read that I still sorted out my winter under layers just in case lol.

I did the morning rounds and also put in some clean bedding for the ducks and cleaned out the quail, who have now started laying again.

I watched a short film on gratitude and it mentioned that we rarely look at the sky, not true here, I am always looking skywards lol, it helps that we can see the sunset clearly and there are some spectacular ones to see at times, especially over the last few nights, I can also see the sunrise so I get a double bonus. I watch the cloud formations on different days and I like to look at the stars at night as we have very little light pollution here so a clear night is full of twinkling ✨ I usually think of one or two songs when I’m looking at the stars, Starry, Starry Night by Don McLean a fabulous song about Vincent Van Gogh and I only have eyes for you by The Flamingos, probably because it was always played at school discos in my youth and it mentions the stars 😂 I have been known to sing out loud on occasion and why not no one is around usually lol.

Had a quick meeting with the chap who pruned our cooking apple tree last year, he is coming to do the eating apple tree, hopefully on Thursday if he has time. The tree produces some great ‘keeper’ apples, some type of cox I think, but this year though there were hundreds of apples, a lot of them were tiny and so the tree could do with a good prune and hopefully we will get less apples but of a better quality, possibly not next year but the year after, sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to get better benefits.

Did some late evening gift shopping in Swindon, bliss without the crowds of people lol.

Wednesday: Another cold frosty morning, I am rather enjoying these mornings though as they are very pretty to wander round in. I did give out extra rations to those that need it, generally I don’t feed the geese as they graze the grass but when it’s frozen they need some kind of sustenance so they have layer pellets on mornings like this.

I have pretty much procrastinated this morning, kind of, I have done a little reading up or watching videos of regenerative agriculture which I think has to be the way forward, it’s basically using a combination of local ecology, permaculture and farm animals. It’s a no brainier but I think it will take many years before mainstream agriculture gets on board with it so in the meantime it’s up to the smaller producers/land owners and those farmers willing to stride out ahead of the rest to fly the flag, lets face it many people thought Prince Charles was a bit nutty 20+ years ago when he championed Organics and now its mainstream so there is always hope 😀

In the afternoon I thought I’d better do something rather than nothing lol so I got a hearty beef stew on the go ready for dinner tonight and then a bit of crafting. I had some polystyrene balls in a box, I’ve had them for about six years, no idea where they came from but I also had some wool packaging from some meat I had delivered back in spring, an idea formed 😀 At this time of year I get an urge to do something creative, I guess it’s not really wanting to do something outside as it’s too cold so needing to find something to do indoors preferably not cooking or cleaning 😝 So I gathered up all the things I needed and felted these Christmas baubles, I was pretty chuffed with how they turned out.

I went out to do the feeding then the shutting away for the night, another lovely sky, pink this time though the photos don’t really do it justice. As I was in the side paddock I looked across to the back paddock and couldn’t see it, the mist was rolling in and it was a complete white out, by the time I had gone round to the front paddock and put them away, walked back to the side, the long side paddock was also beginning to mist up, so it’s gonna be foggy tonight. I love a bit of fog, not if we have to drive anywhere obviously but if we are at home a foggy night has a magic all of its own.

Thursday: As predicted it’s a foggy morning this morning but not too cold. I got the feeding etc done then lit the Rayburn and I have got a blood test mid morning. I was telling the nurse about my cold and she said I need to be careful as my white cell count is low so I will be keeping a close eye on how it develops as I will struggle to fight off any infection that occurs, at the moment it has gone into my sinus and causing pressure in my ear and jaw, hopefully it will just blow over and I can get on with things.

This afternoon the chaps came to give the eating apple a good prune, it’s looking good and hopefully will bear some good fruit next year or the year after. I need to remember to do the plums trees next June but as that’s always a busy month I keep forgetting year on year 🙄 The pruning s from the tree will again be use as dead hedge especially now I know just how much the little birds love it and use it all year round either for roosting or nesting in.

We had a bit of a back log of duck eggs but I managed to sell them easily enough on the selling sites, if I hadn’t been able to I had made a contingency plan anyway, I ordered some big jars and some apple cider vinegar to pickle them in.

Friday: Ok so this sinus thing got worse I I felt like s**t I still dragged myself around and got the feeding done but that was about it for the day.

Saturday: Feeling slightly better today, I was worried that each day I woke up I was getting worse but hopefully the worst is now over and it will improve hugely, by Thursday pm I couldn’t even hear properly as my ears had blocked and could feel the pressure in my jaw as well as my ear. Onwards and upwards though and as it’s Saturday John is here and so he did the morning routine, then he went off to get some feed while I did a bit of cleaning, lit the Rayburn and got some bread on the go.

My seed order arrived in the post this morning so I had a quick look through and then stashed it away until spring. I am going to have a go at purple carrots and liquorice this year, radical hey lol.

I am feeling pretty accomplished as far as the big Winter Feast season goes, the sprouts are firming up nicely out in the garden, the rest of the veg is in the freezer, we have potatoes stored, the turkey is wandering around the farmyard, the cake and the pudding are done, we have a store of home grown walnuts and hazelnuts and I still have some jars of homemade mincemeat from last year to use when I finally get round to making mince pies. On top of that I have numerous bottles of slow gin, pear liqueur made with fruit from the farm so if by any chance we get so snowed it that we can’t move we will feast well 😀 something to be proud of I reckon, I just think I need that house cow to make the list complete with cream lol.

Sunday: Pretty much the same as yesterday really, John did the animals, I stayed in and did some indoor bits, he moved a few wheelbarrows of wood chip into the pen that the Turkeys have decided to call home so that it’s not so muddy. They get let out during the day so they are not trashing it but when I shut them in at afternoon feed it would be nice if the ground was clean and so that’s what that is all about.

There was a phonecall to say that Johns Mum had a turn and an ambulance had been called so that meant most of the late morning and lunchtime waiting for return calls to find out what was going on. The paramedics phoned to say she was now ok and that as all her obs were normal they were not going to take her to hospital after all.

I lit the Rayburn early afternoon it was a pretty vile day at times, the Sam came and we had the Twins for an hour while she went food shopping, by the time she got back it was almost time to do the bird feeding and the egg collecting.

Oh I did make some pickled eggs during the day but I stupidly bought 2 1/2 litre jars, do you know how many eggs you need to boil to fill that 🤣 I think I did 14 and that has only half filled the jar 🙄

Round to a family birthday once the birds had been safely shut away for the night.

Still feeling stuffy and a bit rough at times.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Mud, wreaths & the Winter season.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 25th Nov: Firstly I must apologise for not proofreading last weeks post before publishing it, I was under a time constraint but that was enforgivable 😜

Today I am having Josh and Flo while Shelley does a course so I was up early in order to get everything done before they arrived first thing. I half did the rounds in the dark but it soon got light enough to double check everything was as it should be and it was except for one thing, yesterday’s eggs. John did the collection round last night and he has left the bucket of eggs untouched out the back there. So I gave him a quick ring at work to tell him I was thinking of him 😀 and exactly what I was thinking of him 😝 It may seem trivial but it is a bone of contention, when I do the egg collection, I also sort them, box them and put them out, when he does them he shouts ‘eggs are here’ meaning come out and sort the eggs, generally I don’t mind and will do them though if it played out the other way round he would have something to say about it, the point this morning is that he didn’t even say they were there and he had plenty of time to do them while I was otherwise engaged, so that’s why he got the phonecall 😬

Did you know you can eat dahlia tubers? No nor did I until this morning when I was reading a post from another group, every day is a school day 😀

Shelley came back had a quick cuppa and then they left about 3pm, my day was filled with Peppa Pig, Llama Llama (yeah that’s a new one on me too) playing chefs ? matching card games which Josh wins hands down every time 🙄 a bit of spot the difference, some writing and an animated film about Turkeys travelling back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get themselves off the menu 😜 A totally different day to most of my days but a thoroughly enjoyable one 😀

Once they had left it was time to get outside and round up my own turkeys, feed everything and collect the eggs, sort them and put them out for sale (John) a quick cuppa and a piece of Star Wars cake from a party Josh went to yesterday, sling the hoover round and it’s time to go back out and shut everything away for the night.

Whizzing round with the hoover and I’m thinking ‘it’s bloody hot in here’ the fire is going but I’m increasingly finding it stifling as it is pretty mild outside at the moment. Well that’s my thoughts on it anyway, of course I’m probably menopausal, I don’t have hot flushes but I seem to be hot all the time and I don’t mean in a deliciously good looking way 🙄

Tuesday: We had more rain overnight, not heavy but enough on top of what we already had to make it horrible under foot and more rain forecast today 😏 It’s mild for the time of year I think, up to 13c today, would be great if the wet stuff didn’t accompany it lol.

Now I am back on meds (a lower dose) I am not feeling quite as tired as I was which is a good thing, I have other issues such as rashes that appear 🙄 at the moment it’s on the tops of my ears and round my hair line, quite bizarre but only minor so not really a problem.

What did I do today, I’m not really sure lol, I did sort out some Christmas bits and pieces, I also sorted out some stuff for making wreaths at the end of the week, I cleaned off the dahlia & freesia bulbs and have stored them in the back toilet for the time being as it’s dry in there so they won’t rot. Apart from that it was the usual things like lighting the fire, hanging up washing, washing up, drying up, feeding, collecting eggs, sorting out tonight’s dinner, not a very exciting day at all. We do have someone coming tonight to buy some of the ex laying hens so that will be fun in the dark 🙄

Wednesday: Have I ever told you how much I hate this time of year, more than once I know 😂 it really is quite depressing with the endless mud and short days. You may wonder about the mud, you may not but I’m going to tell you anyway, mud to most people is what you encounter when you decided voluntarily to go on a walk with the dog or a wander across a park or a meadow to clear your head. Mud here is on, not just a daily basis but it’s a three times a day affair, it’s not your average mud either nope this mud is like a species all of its own that has found the right conditions to multiply profusely. Different mud particles have different attributes, there is the runny wet surface (very slippery) mud with the occasional puddle, then there is the trash mud, that is where either animals or humans or even vehicles are constantly moving over an area that used to be nice green grass with firm ground and is now trashed, it is often well over ankle deep and I have seen it deeper than that before now. This mud has the potential to be dangerous, how? I hear you ask, and even if you didn’t I am going to tell you 😜 suction, yes suction is your worst enemy and nightmare. Many a time I have been walking along minding my own business, well doing what I am supposed to be doing, and shlooooop there goes the suction 🙄 now at this point you are of course in mid walk and I can tell you from experience that suction is strong enough to relive you of your welly leaving an exposed, socked foot to go plundering straight down into the rest of the mud that is waiting gleefully for this to happen. I have known it to take prisoners, two feet firmly stuck in the mud waiting for the rescue party to come and help them out, that is trash mud. The wet runny mud has tactics of its own, it lies there looking all innocuous but it uses other animals to get you. There you are walking along again and the dog comes flying by flicking mud up all over you, but it doesn’t stop with the dogs, no, it uses the ducks as well, they get in a flap at letting out or feeding time and slip, slap, slop mud has been flapped all over you before you can make a run for it. If I had a favourite mud (which I don’t) but if I did it would be claggy mud, usually found on the veg beds, this mud sticks to you like a car salesman on a Sunday stroll round the garage forecourt, however it does give back which is very kind of it, being only 5ft 2″ I can easily be getting on for 5ft 5″ when I have finished 😝 So now you know about mud, it’s the smallholders nemesis, I keep trying in vain to work out how to turn it into a tourist attraction but so far I have failed. If by any strange chance YOU would like to fully immerse yourself in the experience of mud do come over and knock yourselves out, it will cost you a quid but it will be the best money you ever spent 😉

And on to today’s mumblings 😀 I did the morning rounds as per usual and then onto cleaning out the duck shed as it gets pretty dirty pretty quickly because of….you guessed it, the mud. The ducks don’t mind it in the least in fact they love it, give them wet sloppy mud and they are in their element. The chickens on the other hand are far more sensible creatures and they loathe the mud but can’t escape it. The light Sussex breeding group I moved only a few days ago, now have a trashed pen due to all the rain, when I put them in there the ground was firm and clean, now it’s a quagmire and it didn’t take long at all for it to get like that. I needed to move them to a pen that won’t get wet so I cleaned out the turkey pen and moved them into there. At this point the turkeys have no idea that I have evicted them 🙄 and I intend to herd them into the stable tonight where they will be based from here on in (famous last words as you will find out). Then as the day was fairly pleasant I did a bit in the garden, watered the garlic which is doing nicely although something has eaten the giant spinach I planted in the same tunnel. I have covered up some more bare ground to prevent weeds, the more I can do at this end of the year the easier it will be for me to get a handle on things come Spring and if for some reason (Lupus, I’m talking to you) I am incapacitated, I won’t fret about the rate of weed growth.

I did think to myself this morning that at this time of year we really are just limping towards the Winter Solstice and the promise of a few extra nano seconds of light each day 🙏 However, as miserable as I may sound 😋 I do try to find something wonderful to look at and in truth there is plenty out there, this morning I noticed the mist rising up from the paddocks as the Sun began to break through, I noticed the horse stood in the middle of the paddock bathed in a patch of said Sunshine and I always love the way the low Winter Sun peaks through the hedgerows at this time of year 😀 You will also be pleased to know that I am never alone here, I am followed constantly by those who think I may have something marvellous to feed them, especially the geese.

Thursday: I can feel that it’s a tad colder this morning and we are due some colder weather from tonight, I look forward to firmer ground lol. After doing the rounds and making sure all the water buckets are topped up, in case it freezes overnight, I set about sorting out cupboards in the kitchen. It wasn’t a job I had intended it just happened and clearly I haven’t done it since 2016 judging by the dates on some of the packets 😝

This evenings putting to bed was a bit of a Benny Hill sketch 🙄 the Turkeys realised they are not living where they were and gave me the run around, so much so that they are now penned up in the run that the light Sussex have just come out of. It never ceases to amaze me how birds that can easily pop over a six foot fence to get out need the bloody gate opened to get back in 🤬 The chickens in the front paddock were a total pain in the proverbial and I went round and round and round the hut so many times I got dizzy, eventually all but one was in and I have left that one to fate because there is only so much I can do, if you were in the vicinity I apologise for the swearing. (John caught it when he came home)

We have excess eggs now that the freeloaders have suddenly bucked up their ideas and that’s an extra 20 eggs per day so I put them on the local selling sites and we deliver them. It goes berserk and it’s difficult to keep up with the messages lol but I have sold 6 trays within half an hour so great result 😀

Friday: It’s Black Friday, oh what a joy 😀😀 I am gearing up to put my order in, no not for a 452″ wide screen tv that cooks the dinner at the same time but I will be putting my seed order in 😜 at £1 a packet I’d be foolish not to.

Noticeably colder again this morning, the cold was nipping at my fingertips and the end of my nose, the sun is shinning but I don’t suppose it will give off much heat at this time of year. All the morning rounds completed without incident and back indoors to get that Rayburn lit.

I got a large pan of vegetable soup on the go always a good idea through the Winter months, warm, comforting and nutritious what’s not to like about that 😀

Sam and the kiddies came over and she took Mia out to get the horses in, give them a check over and put rugs on them as the temps are set to be quite low tonight. It wasn’t long before Sam bought Mia back in, they had got the horses in easily enough, then Jack, who was probably trying to itch his backside, knocked over the wheelbarrow which startled Mia and set her off crying, game over trying to sort the horses with a crying toddler so she came in.

I gathered some greenery/foliage because tonight we are going to be making wreaths.

John came home just after I had finished putting the animals to bed and as it happens just in time. We had discussed that the job of the weekend would be to clean out the flues on the Rayburn as they need doing, just as John came in the flue caught, by that I mean we had a fire in the back flues, this sends me into a panic I hate anything fire related (long story) and I feel better when someone else is there with me when things go wrong 😝 We shut it down and it soon went out but we were right with our timing on the flues (or maybe not depending on how you see it 😂) so that will be the first job on the list tomorrow lol.

We made wreaths from greenery mostly gathered here and some from Shelleys holly tree, we had a great evening and tomorrow night Charlie will be coming round to do hers.

Saturday: As expected a cold night resulting in the whitest of mornings with the frost widespread and beautiful. Everything looks so delicate when it’s frosted even grass takes on a beauty all of its own. John and I did the morning rounds and then got straight on with cleaning the flues on the Rayburn after last nights oopsie. The job is pretty mucky and starts off with John going up on the roof to sweep down the main flue, that collects in the firebox and is then hoovered out (I have a separate hoover for the fire lol) Then we take out the very heavy cooking plate which is given a hoovering, the fire box is hoovered out and then onto the back flues which are the ones that caused the problem last night. There are five flues along the back all about 2″ sq, four of the five are never any problem, the fifth which is actually the first flue gets pretty blocked/choked up. We brush them then rod them to get as much off as possible, the rest of the Rayburn gets a hoovering and normally that’s it we put it back together. This time though we needed to re stick the fire rope around the back flue cover as it had come off, I should have ordered some new before we started the Rayburn up again for the winter but I didn’t, I have now so next time we clean it we will put a new rope gasket in.

Once that was all done and put back together John went to clean out the front hens while I did some bits then it was off to get some essential shopping and we picked up a Christmas tree grown in a pot at the same time. Hopefully as it will only be inside for just over a week it will survive enough to go back outside and in again next year, that’s the plan anyway 😀

Charlie came round late afternoon to make her wreath and I made another one which I will put out for sale and see what happens.

After Charlie had I gone I set about an idea I had, last years wreath base which had now dried out after being in the shed all year and some flowers from the summer garden that I had picked and dried out, pretty pleased with the result 😀

Sunday: December 1st and the first day of the Winter season, although many think we are already in Winter, December, January and February are the Winter months 🙄 A cold start but not as cold as yesterday. We had a good day all in all, we had decided to go out for breakfast this morning and went to Bampton Garden centre, there we met Shelley, Martin and the kids who had come to get their Christmas tree, and I did a little bit of buying (be rude not too) a couple of shrubs and some tree baubles.

When we got home we lit the Rayburn then went out, set up and got the last four remaining Light Sussex cockerels dispatched and plucked ready for dressing tomorrow.

I have ummmed and arrrred about the turkeys and what to do, in the end I have decided that one we will have for Christmas, after all that’s why we got them, but we only need one so the other two a stag and a hen will get to live on and hopefully the hen will lay eggs come spring. The eggs can either be hatched or eaten and it will be a novelty to provide turkey eggs for eating. John was concerned that nobody will buy them to eat but I know the customers well enough to know that there will be country folk who will eat all kinds of eggs and there will be people who are willing to give something new a try 😀

Over and out for this week, I have had a great week and hope you have too 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Minor mishaps, more rain & a jobs list 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 21st October: We are rattling through the year now, always seems slower at this end than the warm end 😜

Weekdays mean I’m on the duty rota for the feeding and letting out of the birds. I do it slightly differently to John and prefer to keep the birds shut in while they eat their feed and go back and let them out after. This is for two reasons, 1, they eat the feed otherwise they are off out to play and the feed is left meaning they are not getting the nutrients they need to be healthy or to lay well, reason 2 is that they are then not all under my feet while I am going from pen to pen, John lets them out as he goes.

When I have finished I look forward to a cup of coffee and I usually sit down and take the time to try and learn something new by reading up a topic that has caught my eye or ear over the weekend. Today though I am having an in depth look at quail, their natural habitat and feeding. Our quail seem a bit unhappy at the minute, they were fine until I introduced new males to the females and now the ladies have stopped laying 🙄 Potentially this is coincidence as the light levels drop and the temps drop but I want to make sure I am not missing anything vital. Having read up I am going to up the amount of seed in various forms and see what happens, I will also pick them up one of their favourite treats of mealworm for extra protein. If that fails to get them laying I may have to bring them in under a lamp as they may just be too cold and using all their energy to keep warm.

I did a trial growing of amaranth, millet and quinoa this year to see how they did, the amaranth was fine and grew well although it didn’t ripen, the un ripe seed will still get used to feed the quail probably, the millet was less successful producing only one stem though I think that has more to do with how I grew it (a trial bed was too small an area and got crowded with the amaranth and tree spinach) the quinoa was totally unsuccessful and nothing grew, again I think a larger area would have been more beneficial. If it taught me anything it’s that the amaranth can indeed be grown in a garden setting while the other two need more agricultural conditions I would say and that’s what trialling is for 🙄

A great spotted woodpecker landed on an oak tree bough outside the kitchen door with a beak full of grubs/caterpillars, I wondered if it had young somewhere nearby which would be completely the wrong time of year, I couldn’t find any information other than they lay eggs March to May so hopefully he was hoarding for himself otherwise any young probably would do well at this time of year. Having said it’s the wrong time of year one of my clematis have also reflowered? This one is an early flowering variety and had already flowered once back in April, further proof, as if we needed it, that the seasons are all over the place 🤔

I did a few hours outside including moving more wood chip 😜 I also moved the torts hut into the greenhouse where they will spend the winter in hibernation, I had to cut a pop hole a bit bigger as Billy was trying to ram himself through it without much luck. I potted up a couple of kiwi that had rooted in the pathway and a Japanese honeysuckle, I cleared some dead stuff and pulled some weeds for the rabbits/guineas.

Sam came over in the afternoon with the twiglets and Mia, we made some gingerbread men although I might find a different recipe next time as this one seemed to have a lot of molasses in it which overpowered the ginger so I guess they were actually molasses men 😂

Oh and I was really surprised to see the garlic I planted only last week has already begun to shoot 😀

Tuesday: It looks promising for a fine, sunny October day today 😀

Every morning when I come in after doing the rounds I make coffee and stand at the stable door in the kitchen for a bit having a look out, and everyday for the past few weeks I have been having a conversation with Cyril 🐿 A one sided conversation obviously 😜 not that far gone yet! ‘Morning Cyril, what are you collecting today’ at this point he either stands stock still hoping I can’t see him or he shoots off up to the top of the oak tree faster than the speed of light lol.

When I first went out this morning I could hear the Lions roaring really loudly today, I got my phone out to try and record it but by the time I had done that they had stopped. It must have been breakfast time for them or something and I thought, crikey if it’s that loud here (approx a mile away) how loud must it be stood right near them 🤔

First major job on the list was to put up electric fencing in the next paddock for the horses to eat off, we did put them in there last week but they bust through into the large paddock so they went back to the side paddock until I could get it sorted. Jack has been charging at me for the last two days so I’m guessing he is hungry. A few minor hiccups, the electric sockets in the stable block still don’t work so had to work out how to get the cable to the other side of the field and still get power. While doing this and feeding the cable along side the paddock, I got to the field gate pulled the cable and the plug end caught the top of the gate, flicked up and smacked me clean on the forehead, 😣 Next plug in the fence charger and make sure it works, yep clicking loudly, move the box so it can be covered from rain and doh second whack from the electric pulse 🤬 have I earned the rest of the day off yet 😜 probably not but I am going to find something pleasant to do 😀

So I spent a good few hours in the garden weeding and clearing, spreading wood chip, the asparagus bed was the main target, it was lovely out there and I have dirty knees to prove I did indeed do a bit 😀

Last year I did chop and drop but I’m not doing that this year lol, I found it was too messy come spring so this year I’m clearing but I have left a pile of asparagus fern choppings where the rhubarb is so that anything that needs a winter home has got one available.

You know when you think 🤔 ah well the day will get better I’m sure, nope, so after my two minor mishaps this morning I had a third (hopefully we are done now) I was doing the feeding and collecting eggs, I stopped to take a photo of the cat, Benny, drinking out of the horse bucket, I thought it would provide a little amusement 😜 I carried on with my rounds and tripped over fresh air, yes fresh air, well there was nothing else around and I hadn’t had any wine it was only four o’clock! That wasn’t the end of the mishap, oh no because if that wasn’t bad enough I put my hand out to stop my face from hitting the dirt and it went straight into the bucket of eggs I had just collected 🤬 and faster than a Kit Kat disappears at a weight loss meeting Benny was in the bucket snacking on broken eggs 😭

My thoughts went like this ‘ffs I’m done today’ ‘I want to cry’ ‘have I broken anything’ ‘nope, better carry on then’ My knee hurts and I have a bit of a headache, hoping that isn’t the head injury this morning 🙄

I am actually going to blame varifocals, I would like a formal inquiry into the correlation of varifocal wearers and minor accidents like mine 😬 I can’t see clearly without them but my spacial awareness is not as accurate as it used to be when I’m wearing them, hence I’m always bumping my head when I have to duck under something, seriously I think there is definitely something in this, either that or my glasses are just crap 🤓

Wednesday: I thought it was going to warm up today but the sun never actually burnt through the mist and by lunchtime I decided I should light the Rayburn. It’s dry though so I am not complaining 😀 Apart from the usual I haven’t actually done much today 🙄 I have done a fair bit of reading up on various topics, cut flowers, autumn gardening jobs and how many sexes there are 😜 a random one that but something came up on my news feed and I just had to look further into it lol, scientists have a blob that is neither a fungus nor a plant/animal and it has 720 sexes, what, how, those questions and more are what I asked myself so I had to find out. I actually didn’t get very far as the explanation was beyond my understanding so I’m leaving that particular topic alone for now lol.

Thursday: It’s 11.45 and it’s raining 🌧 fear not though it has been pretty dry all morning and I have been very busy 😀 After the rounds I went straight out to the veg garden and got stuck into clearing one of the beds. This one is behind the fruit cage next to the brassica cage and I have decided that this is where I will grow flowers, a strange choice maybe as it can’t be seen from the seating areas but there is method in my madness. The beds at the far end are difficult for me to manage, they get the first lot of sun in the morning and then all day until the sun goes down, I very often can’t get out there because it’s too hot and there is no shade. So my plan is to plant perennial flowers on most of it along with some annuals, this will be my cut flower bed 💐 I cleared the bed which had beetroot and fennel still growing in there and then a good few barrows of well rotted manure went on top, I didn’t weed because I then put on a weed membrane and secured it with pegs. By the time I got to the end it was beginning to spit but undeterred I then tackled the other end of the bed, this end I have decided to try a thick layer of wood chip, as I have plenty, and see how that turns out compared to the membrane and manure. It will be a good comparison, it might work better, it might not, only time will tell, the winter weather can now do it’s work and hopefully under the membrane all the insects will be doing their bit as well. Just as I had finished it started to rain heavily so that was good timing. One thing I realised this morning, in fact all this week is that I am only limited by the Lupus, by that I mean I can still do a good mornings hard graft, I was beginning to think I couldn’t and would maybe have to give a lot of it up but no, it seems that if and that’s a BIG IF, if I can keep the disease on an even keel I can do the jobs I want to get done. I have repeat bloods again tomorrow to see if my white cells are going back up before I go back on the meds but I am wondering now if the meds are too much as I keep see sawing on them, might be time to have a conversation with my consultant about the dosage.

This part of the garden by the way is where I was trying out the permaculture and I had my first guild, the comfrey did fantastically every thing else not so, the apple tree eventually died but it had been moved once already because it was failing so I’m guessing it just wasn’t meant to be. Never be afraid to admit when things don’t work out and you have to start over 😏

Friday: By the time I’d finished the morning rounds of feeding watering and letting out it was raining 🌧 hmm I was hoping for a dry day but it’s not to be so I turned my thoughts to chutney. Remember the basket full of green tomatoes that I was hoping would ripen, well they haven’t lol and so chutney making is on the cards. Luckily I had picked a bucket full of apples from the front tree, these are eating apples but they will be fine in a chutney as they are keeper apples and are pretty firm. I surveyed the tree while I was picking and it really needs a good prune and I’m wondering if John and I are up to it or if I get the chap who did the cooking apple last year to come and do it. It’s a case of money expenditure versus strength/energy expenditure, I will see what John says. It needs doing because most of the apples, around 60/70% were tiny and in clumps, a fair few were a double apple so an apple with an extra lump and out of the rest which were all ok there were quite a few with maggot.

Bloods this morning before I can decide what to get on with.

I didn’t get anything else done lol as Shelley and the children came back with me then Sam and the children came over, just as well as it wasn’t a very nice day out, Sam and Mia did the feeding and egg collecting in the afternoon so I didn’t even have to do that 😀

There were a large flock of long tailed tits in the oak tree today, I always say they arrive when the weather is about to get very cold (snow even) so we will see over the next few days if I am right.

Saturday: It was a filthy night last night, rain, wind, orrible, and it’s not any better this morning though not as windy. We did the morning stuff then John went off to get some feed and I sorted some bits in the greenhouse, beetroot and swede I had pulled up when I did the bed ready for winter. It doesn’t look like we will do much outside at all today but that’s fine, we need to get a list sorted of jobs that need doing eventually such as the greenhouse leak and the electric sockets in the stable block. I have messaged the chap about pruning the tree as John decided he didn’t want to do it and we have some beef arriving from a smallholder this afternoon.

I ordered a baby burco so that we can scald these chickens and get them done and in the freezer, I have got to an age where I don’t want to be doing it and I don’t mean because I’m getting too old but I am getting too soft 😏 It’s always been a fine line that you tread when raising your own meat and the older I have got the more I dislike doing the deed but I also am not ready to give up eating meat yet and so the option is meat from the supermarket or from another smallholder. I can easily get lamb and beef, we don’t really eat much pork except bacon and sausage, but chickens are more difficult to get unless you get them from a farm shop and then they are pretty expensive. The expense I have to say is justified as usually they are quite big chickens and you can get three meals out of it and of course they are much more tasty, not pumped full of water and not bleached either so worth the spend but not when you can raise your own.

It turned into an busy couple of hours in the afternoon, John decided to clear the drain that runs across the driveway because the water was not getting away, the rain has not let up at all and now we have the river and lake back in the side paddocks. My nephew and nephew in law arrived with a lorry full of wood for the Rayburn, it has to be cut up yet but it’s old oak from a roof and so it will burn nicely. Then my beef delivery turned up, we ordered from smallholder Emma’s Ewesful Acres ://www.emmasewesfulacres.com/news she does lamb as well but we already have some, I made some rock cakes as a treat and got the Rayburn going, then there was the feeding and eggs to do so rather than sitting down doing a bit of reading like I planned I was busy as a bee 🐝

We have a nice grass fed steak for dinner tonight 😀

Sunday: Clocks went back. A pleasant, sunny morning after a cold night and a frost bit at least no rain 😀 John did the morning rounds while I cleaned out the Rayburn flues and did some hoovering.

Yesterday I made a list of jobs that need doing and this morning we have got on with some of them, disconnect the water pipes from the veg garden before we get a big freeze and a pipe burst ✅ Put the horse box up for sale as we don’t really need it ✅ John has added a few of his own jobs and of course prioritised those 😏 so at the moment only one of the jobs on my list for him has been done 🙄

I am a little bit excited to tell you that I have booked a workshop for myself at a local organic farm and I will be learning about sustainable floristry, I am not planning on going into floristry in a big way lol but I would like to know a bit more about sustainable cut flowers and arranging them so I treated myself 😀

After identifying yet another job that was not on my list I managed to steer John onto one that was 😂 We have a 6ft wide gate by the side of the house that has a smaller 4ft one as well, in the spring the posts rotted away and the small gate post got done but not the bigger one, we don’t open it much anyway but when we do it has to be lifted off the ground so that post needed doing which I have managed to get him working on, he has also loaded up the wood store so he has earned some brownie points today 😬 Meanwhile I have been barrowing wood chip to the paths in the veg garden 🙄 I still have plenty left to do but I have managed to cover a large part of it already.

Sam, Luke, Mia and the twiglets came over and took Biscuit for a walk up the road and Mia had a sit on her back while she was led around the school. Biscuit was exceptionally good once we managed to get her away from the field, I think she thought she would never see Jack again, they have become firm friends.

Light the fire, get the dinner sorted and it’s dark just after 5pm 😏 roll on to the shortest day 🙄

Have a fabulous week everyone 😀