Tag: rain

Posted in Friesland Farm

‘Timeless simplicity’, tortoises & pasta sauce.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday August 6th and the year is rolling on😜 By 9am this morning I had already done a 4hr stint in the garden! Watering the bits I didn’t get done last night and tidying away pots, I have a place where I keep them all over winter then as they get used I tend to chuck them down by the front of the greenhouse along with anything else I have been using 🤪 I figured it was time to tidy it all up, I also demolished one of the narrow raised beds in front of the greenhouse. Over the years it has had various different things growing in it, mostly flowers but the trees have got a bit big and it’s too shady, I did however shove the potatoes in there when I could finally get them in after the wet spring, they have not amounted to anything so that was waste of time, the wood at the bottom was rotting and coming away so it’s time to remove them. As always I didn’t take a before photo so this one is of the remaining bed so you get the idea of what I am talking about and the nice clear space I have now made. I contemplated doing the other one straight after but sitting here having my coffee I’m thinking that was probably enough action with the lump hammer and spade for today.

You can see that I have mounded up the soil in the background and covered it with black plastic, the soil was dead, there was hardly any life in it at all so covering will help to bring it back to life and get some composting done.

And then I finished my coffee and thought, sod it, in for a penny, in for a pound, and got on with demolishing the other one 🤪 although as fast as I was trying to rake up the chickens were in there scratching it all about! The asters that were growing on the end have been put in a tub of water, each year I kept meaning to divide them as they have been struggling for a couple of years, so now after a good drink I will pot the, up ready for selling or planting in various areas. Once the soil has broken down a bit I will be re using it on other projects I have in mind or to top up any existing raised beds, that area is going to have a small compound and house built for my new arrivals so that they are nice and close for the grandchildren to help feed and watch.

After collecting some eggs, as trade is brisk this morning, and finishing tidying stuff away it was 10.30 and time for a well earned rest and catch up with my fave tv programme at the moment 😀

Tuesday: Lay in, Up at 6am 😜 I only did a small amount of watering today I will do more tonight but the night are much cooler and full of moisture so it’s not as needed as it was. Picked a good amount of veg, 14 cucumbers lol, they have been hiding I think, beans, mangetout, tomatoes that will ripen out in the open sun and some baby corn. Then I got on with removing another raised bed that is under the trees and doesn’t get much light or rain so things struggle, actually the hens all scratch in in too so most things have died off. I moved it to the front, dug up all the soil, added some rotted manure and planted it up with the plants I bought ages ago and haven’t been able to sort yet and gave it all a good soaking. Then I made a coffee and sat down for five minutes peace, I got to about three and Sam, Mia and Alfie arrived. Sam and Mia helped to put the run up and move the ducklings outside for the day, they had great fun splashing, washing and preening themselves, the bigger ducks came to have a look and it’s got me wondering if I could get them to adopt the same way the geese did, it’s worth a try I reckon. Then we fed the rabbits a couple of the cucumbers and the light Sussex chicks some spinach and a few weeds, I collected up some eggs as customers keep on coming this morning and then it was time for Sam to go to work and Mia and I to entertain ourselves 😀

We have some roast chicken left over so I am going to make a curry with that today, John won’t eat curry so I will have to come up with something else for him.

While Mia was asleep I made a chicken and broccoli bake for John, the recipe suggests breadcrumb on top but I will just use potato and cheese. When Mia woke up we went outside to hang out the washing and pull some carrots to go with Johns dinner and then we fed the chickens and collected the eggs, Mia very carefully carried the quail eggs back and put them in the egg box, none broken 😀 Then we had a well earned rest and watched Wisspa 😜

Not many eggs to put out this afternoon and we had completely sold out, they have dropped in numbers by about 20 a day which is a lot!

Oooo when is it ever going to rain again, just keeping everything alive is bloody tiring, sometimes I look at how dry the ground is and think shall I just stop? The paddocks have now gone from brown to starting to blacken, I know they will come back as soon as it rains for long enough but honestly I don’t want another summer like this one!

We made a decision to put the ducklings in a hutch outside with the run around them, they are only three weeks old but they haven’t been under the lamp for the last week and the nighttime temps are not cold, in springtime I wouldn’t have taken the risk but at this time of year, with the weather as it is, it should be fine.

Wednesday: Noticeably cooler this morning though the rain forecast for the end of the week has disappeared off the radar again! Did a bit of watering and Mum arrived early to do some more hoeing, it’s great because I would never keep on top of it all otherwise, so thanks Mum 😘 I tidied up the small bed in front of the front gate, a bit of chopping and cutting back, clip the grass edges (the only bits of grass growing) planted up one of the lime trees in a pot and put that out there and pulled out no end of shasta daisies they are so thuggish and take over entirely. A quick cup of coffee and then set about sorting out the greenhouse, throwing away stuff I don’t need, taking down the staging that is in there, it will be burnt, it’s not very good as it had to be screwed to the frame to stop it falling over! Plenty of stuff to keep but I need to sort out the shed so I can get it in there lol, always a knock on job, once it’s cleared it will be ready to take down then John can put the base down and I can get it ordered, we have some very large tree branches to remove as well so that will be quite a big job. We pick up my new pets tomorrow and they will be living in there temporarily until we get sorted for them. Molly the cat has disappeared again, sometimes she does this for a few days but as she is quite ancient I know one day she won’t return.

The evening sky was totally awesome tonight, we were driving back from my brothers (another birthday 😀) and the view across the Windrush valley was fantastic, it reminded me of a Wild West sunset (not that I’ve ever seen one except in films) I did say to John that we are lucky to see things like that, people living in cities and big towns don’t get to see it very often and we see great sunsets every evening, I did try and get a photo but my phone camera just does not capture the magnificence of it at all.

Thursday: Awake early because it’s become the norm and I can’t turn it off now 😜 This morning we are off to pick up the two new members of the menagerie 😀 I will introduce them later.

On one of the smallholding pages during a discussion about meat production and all that comes with it, was a quote from a book, a book that I have now ordered and look forward to reading.

‘The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking his pipe.

“Why aren’t you fishing?” said the industrialist.

“Because I have caught enough fish for the day.”

“Why don’t you catch some more?”

“What would I do with them?”

“Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats, even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.”

“What would I do then?”

“Then you could sit back and enjoy life.”

“What do you think I’m doing now?” ‘

from ‘Timeless Simplicity’ by John Lane

The hens are looking decidedly worse for wear with this continuing lack of rain and consequently a lack of green grass! In the industry they are kept for 52 weeks from point of lay and we are nearing that point so have some decisions to make, difficult because around 60 of them are still laying and I think if we had better ground the others would probably still be but the relentless heat has taken its toll as well, do we get a new batch at a cost and retire the others but that means twice as much work, do we sell off the older birds cheap even then we would have a cross over period of waiting for the eggs to get big enough, hmmm we will ponder on it for a while I think. It will be better to get new birds later in the year so that they carry us through the summer months when demand is higher but that means keeping more birds than would be ideal through the winter months. It is not just the hens, the ducks have dropped off too, with this in mind I have ordered feed with wormer in the hopes that keeping them in the best condition possible will help bring them back into lay, then of course you have the added problem of the daylight hours getting shorter all the while, it’s not easy 😝

So we went on a road trip, not long, about an hour and look what we bought back with us, meet Billy, who we shall call Big Billy and Voldertort or Voldy for short, currently they are in the fruit cage on weed patrol. Their owner is relocating out of the country and was looking for new owners and we were chosen 😀😀😀

In the afternoon I carried on clearing out the greenhouse, goodness knows why I’ve got so much stuff in there but I do use most of it at times, I have tidied up the shed a bit so I can get some stuff, that shouldn’t be getting wet, in there, the rest is outside! Hopefully I can get John started on taking it down this weekend and then the base can go down ready for the new one.

The tortoises spent all afternoon trying to get out of the fruit cage, Billy is very astute, he knows where the door is and if I’m in the garden he comes over or follows me while I’m walking round the outside. He also likes feet lol, especially ones in flip flops and kept making a beeline for Sams toes. We just (by a whisker) got their hut sorted with dry bedding in it before the rain came down, they had taken themselves off to bed about 6, into the trug with the straw in it which wouldn’t have held off the rain, so they are now nice and cosy for the night.

I found a great list of what torts like to eat, it’s very extensive and we have plenty of most of that on and around the farm 😀

IT RAINED 😀😀 not a huge amount but enough to wet the ground and hopefully we will get a bit more before the night is over.

Friday: Still raining 😀 giving the ground a good soak, I did intend to get a fair amount done but with the rain to begin with then visitors it ended up with nothing, not outside anyhow, I made bread and used fresh tomato/basil/ garlic to make bolognese and a batch for the freezer for another day. Picked some veg and weeds for the tortoises who were slow to wake today with temps dipping so much, then picked more herbs and weeds for the rabbits.

Saturday: Dry and sunny today and after getting all the morning chores done I went off to Worcester with our next door neighbour to a sheep sale 😀 Yvonne has Oxford Down sheep and this was a special sale of that breed.

John had instructions to clean out the ducks, geese, and hens and we discussed creosoting one of the moveable huts so that we can move it to the side paddock and purchase some news hens to overlap the older ones.

By the end of the sheep sale if I never hear another sheep bleating again that will be fine 😜 it was a very interesting day mind you and the whole operation is very slick. I spent the day wandering around and watching some judging and some of the sales and people watching too, fascinating day all in all, and with a few purchases made and loaded we headed home.

Rain in the evening.

Sunday: Wet start maybe it will dry up later on, John did the birds then went off to work for a couple of hours. I made pasta sauce for the freezer, tomatoes, basil, onions and garlic all homegrown mixed with salt, pepper and olive oil then roasted in the oven, cooled blitzed and frozen. I also had some bananas to use up so I made a GF banana, chocolate (cocoa powder) and peanut butter loaf, a basic chuck in the bowl and mix along with maple syrup and some coconut oil, baking powder so it’s dairy free and low in calories as well 😀

Sam and Luke stayed overnight as they went to a function locally and we looked after Mia so we had Mia to entertain us this morning 😀

We are off out for a Sunday roast later with Shelley, Martin, Josh and Florence so depending on the weather we might not get much more than the routine things done today.

Molly returned.

Well as usual once it starts raining it doesn’t flipping stop, it always goes from one extreme to the other!

Posted in Friesland Farm

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

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

6 ducklings by mid evening and some more have pipped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week 😀😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Endless watering, plenty of picking and Cornish mackerel for dinner.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 16th July: The dry, hot spell looks set to continue with no sign of rain 😏 although as I have said there is moisture in the air overnight so there is some respite for the plants. We were discussing the last summer we had like this which was 2006, very hot and dry though not as prolonged as this one, the other that I remember well was 1976. A childhood memory of a long hot idyllic summer holiday, I would have been 12 and we lived in a village then, going off all day with a sarnie and a drink to play in the local park or abandoned railway line all day long, catching crayfish, minnows or bullheads, making dens on the edge of a crop field (naughty) water fights and paddling pools, a time gone by and lost forever for most children I fear 😩

I did a bit of watering in the morning and harvested some courgettes, everything is starting to ramp up a gear at long last, I can see the cucumbers beginning to grow bigger and the beans are getting longer so it’s all finally going in the right direction. While I am out there I am constantly planning for times ahead, I can’t do anything at the minute not least because the ground is so hard and anyway best time will be autumn to move things around, I really need to start a list so I don’t forget anything. The peach tree I ordered arrived yesterday so I have repotted it and stood it out the front which is south facing, it has one peach on it, hopefully many more next year, I also moved the orange and lemon tree out there and the fig, with all this sunshine I may as well make the most of it. The grapevine has loads of grapes on it, I’m very excited about that lol and I’m thinking the olive tree would probably do better out there to. I have ordered some big pots with handles so that they can all be moved back inside for overwintering as they won’t survive otherwise and I ordered some seaweed fertiliser as a bit of a boost for the plants, it’s full of minerals, shame I don’t live closer to the sea, I could harvest my own.

Dad and Sue popped in, they are en route to Suffolk and made an overnight stop here so we chatted for the afternoon and drank tea then went out for dinner in the evening, they will be back again on Friday. I obviously didn’t water as I was out so an early start in the morning.

Tuesday: Up early to get the watering done, at this point I realise I have left the polytunnel water on all day and all night 😝 uh oh, it won’t need watering for at least a week I should think, still at least I know it got enough!

I picked the first of the runner beans, not the traditional ones but the dwarf ‘yin yang’ ones, I grew them last year and kept them for the black and white seeds but this year I’m harvesting them in their young form, they are exceptionally sweet and juicy for a bean.

I may be getting carried away with the possibilities that this weather could bring but I have ordered a couple of random plants to try out, the first is kumquat which, according to most places, is pretty easy to grow here, the next is saffron crocus, can’t hurt to give it a try and thirdly but by no means a runner up is Camellia sinensis, tea! I thought, let’s just see how it does, the plant I ordered is small and so about £5 plus postage, worth a go, you never know Shilton might be just the place for a tea plantation 😂 or saffron fields, you never know until you try and I am always trying 😀

One of the benefits of feeding the birds through the winter is they drop seed and it grows, we have sunflowers randomly popping up and also flax (linseed) I used to have some flax growing at our old house and when I saw it I wondered why I hadn’t thought of growing it here, when you see fields of blue, that’s flax, it’s such a beautiful little flower and of course the seeds are hugely useful, and now we will hopefully have a bird seed mix growing of it’s own accord, bonus 😀

Wednesday: Up early to do some gardening bits, watering, picking and then sort out the brooder unit for the ducklings which will hopefully hatch on Friday. I had supper out with my girlfriends last night and even though it was a gentle evening it has taken its toll on me today, by 9am I was already tired and trying to get some extra bits done but eventually I decided to lay on the sofa 😜 That was pretty much it for the day until early evening when after resting I get a second wind and can do a bit more. Shopping was on the agenda, I have been sending John for bits and pieces while I was ill but you know you get to a stage when you need to replenish a few things and you know full well that what you put on the list will not be what he comes home with, a bit like the replacement items in an online shop! The reduced basket had pots of extra thick double cream reduced to 90p so I bought a couple of pots and I will make butter with them, I will have some buttermilk leftover from make it so it’s a win, win for me.

Watering again this evening, I can’t believe how much it dries out good job the hosepipe ban is not in force as yet though I don’t think it will be long before we get notification and goodness knows what we will do then, abandon ship I reckon 🤪

Last week or the week before, I can’t remember when, I said I was making an effort try eliminating plastics wherever possible and I had bought loofahs to use for washing up etc, well they are working out really well, I’m so pleased much better than the artificial sponge thingys. I did try growing them but they didn’t germinate, given how great I find them I will give them another go next year.

Just found Jack wandering around the yard, Sam had put him out on a bit of grass outside his field and he decided he would go on tour 😝 I have now put him in the little paddock where there is plenty of grass both dead and alive for him to munch on overnight.

Thursday: Usual routine of early morning watering, a bit of picking and then off for some more blood tests.

Mostly spent the rest of he day resting, though I did watch ‘An inconvenient Truth’ and apparently there is another film out which I will look up and watch that too. I briefly mentioned before about my thoughts on global warming and climate change, undoubtably we are contributing massively towards this and accelerating it at a colossal speed but I do believe there are natural cycles at force as well, after all Mother Nature is ALL about cycles, those cycles we can’t stop or slow down but the choices we make can have an impact good or bad on climate change. If you don’t know anything about it, learn, if you do know, learn a bit more and make the changes that you can, and make a conscious effort to work towards those that are a little bit more elusive. We only have one life, live it, but we only have one planet, look after it while you are here.

Friday: Up at the crack of sparrows 😀 there was a good bit to pick this morning, runners, beetroot, courgettes, a few apricots I missed, some mangetout but one thing I really needed to pick was a few remaining gooseberries. Dad and Sue are back this evening and we had arranged to go out to eat but I thought with all the amazing produce I have here I might as well cook. We are having the mackerel from Cornwall along with a medley of seasonal veg and new potatoes, I wanted to make a gooseberry sauce to compliment the fish so that’s what the gooseberries were for, good job there were some left. The sauce calls for horseradish sauce which I don’t have to hand but I do have horseradish growing, it was a measly woody bit but it will do the job so I made a tiny amount of horseradish sauce to go in the gooseberry sauce 😋 we we have Madagascan vanilla ice cream with homemade mixed berry sauce for dessert washed down with a Sauvignon blanc 😀

Oh my days it finally rained, thank you Mother Nature, it means I can have an extra couple of hours in bed in the morning 😝

My blood tests came back normal and the first of the duck eggs in the incubator has pipped, happy Friday 😀

Saturday: Well it was only a small amount of the rain that was needed but it was enough to mean I could have a lie in 😀 Having got so used to being up early I was still up by 6.30 😝 but the damp ground d meant I could get on with other things instead of watering. The first on the agenda was a proper clean out of both the rabbit cages, they actually were not as bad as I had feared they would be but now they are nice and clean. Then on to clearing up debris from the orchard pen and making a mini compost heap next to the light Sussex chicks so that when they are let out into the bigger pen they can scratch about in it to their hearts contents and hopefully that will lead to great tasting chicken. John also fixed a little hut up for the ducks so they don’t have to go in with the rabbits anymore and put a catch on the inside of the chicks hut so that when I go in the door doesn’t swing open and they all escape. He put a top on the water barrel that is connected to the gutter on the rabbit run so that the leaves don’t all fall in, the water we managed to catch yesterday was no good at all because it was full of debris.

As it is predicted that the temps will go up as high as 33c next week I really needed to get a handle on the garden so firstly we moved anything that is in a pot onto spaces on the veg beds so that they get watered at the same time, cutting down on having to water the pots by hand thus saving time. Then I got a bale of straw from the stable and mulched the potatoes, they were hastily planted into some raised beds that were previously used for flowers ( I dug them up last autumn and divided them, potting them up for future use, most have been put into the flower bed area now) The potatoes are struggling but there are some there, firstly they struggle because they are under a huge tree and secondly because they need watering separately to the rest of the garden and I often just run out of time, so they were mulched and soaked and hopefully we will get something from them later in the year. The rest of the bale I used to mulch anything in a pot, they will dry out pretty quickly and hopefully this will help, it includes the raspberry bushes that I potted up early in the year, I need to mulch as much as possible to make life a lot easier but by then it was lunchtime and then time for a rest. I am finding I need about and hour and a half sleep in the daytime and then I am good to go again. My blood results came back as ‘no action required’ which means the inflammation has gone down which is great and I no longer have any pain, also great but I guess this is a convalescent period where I need to build my strength back up, each day I can work a bit longer without feeling ill or tired so I am on the upward road touch wood.

Still waiting for the first duckling to hatch 🐣

The Large Fowl Light Sussex in their new run, I will be adding pots of foliage when the weather changes, at the moment I have lovage and a hazel tree ready but would like to get a currant bush in there as well so that they can forage for themselves, I have also been putting a barrowful of rotted manure in for them which they love scratching around in. We need to put in a roosting tree for them so that they can sleep outside if they choose to. In the Autumn, Winter and early Spring they will free range in the orchard and veg garden to help with pests, hopefully they will have as near to natural diet/life as possible.

Did a bit of picking in the evening as everything I put out today has gone! I picked 1kg of runner beans and that’s just the first picking once they get going there will be many more, the first veg I ever sold were runners and they continue to be the best selling item closely followed by the rhubarb. I picked a large punnet of berries, blue, raspberry, blackcurrant and Logan berries I might make a mixed jam with those, I found a cucumber that I had missed and it’s very fat lol, the tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and for the first time of trying I may even have some aubergines this year 😀

Sunday: Guess what I did this morning? Yep, watering I think I’m officially sick of doing it now, a ‘surprise’ shower would be just wonderful 😝

Apart from watering I also picked the baby corn, the stalks are around 8ft high and I thought there were no cobs but they suddenly shot through yesterday, I got John to take a short video of me harvesting them, which I will have to post separately as it won’t upload here, anyone who gets this emailed can try looking on Facebook under Friesland Farm 😀 hopefully it will be on there.

The first duckling hatched this afternoon, there are others pipping so fingers crossed for a good hatch 🐣

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cherry pie, apricot jam and still no rain 😏

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 9th July: Up at 4.30am! Needed the toilet, starving, that’s the steroids, there was daylight so I figured I might as well get up an on. It was so wonderfully fresh and cool at that time of the day, even better than late at night, a welcome break from the daytime heat. Diesel also ate breakfast with me, not too close though as his was a mouse 😜 Of course there are plenty of people who are regularly up then, but as a general rule not me, though I would love to be an early bird it’s totally forced 😜

By 7am I have hung out the washing, cleaned out the outdoor quail, sorted and boxed yesterday’s eggs, filled up the pool and sorted the outside duck pen, moved the sprinkler several times over, done the washing-up/drying and putting away, stripped the bed, put more washing on, starving again now 😝 more breakfast, trying to eat well, toast first thing now yoghurt, blackcurrant sauce and walnuts.

By 8am I have hung out the second lot of washing and put a third load on, done some hoeing, collected weeds and forage for the rabbits and moved the sprinkler two more times, I need a sit down, what I should have is a glass of orange juice, what I will have is a coffee 😋 So far it’s cooler than previous days, I hope it stays like that for a few hours.

So after my busy early morning things went a bit downhill ☹️ I am on a short burst of steroids tapering off by 5mg every 5 days taking 20 days in all, I have 7 days left and I feel that things are slowly sliding backwards again, consequently I sat down at 12, laid down at 12.30 and didn’t do anything else until 7 when the days steroids had kicked back in. At 1.45 we lost our electric 😡 again, luckily I called John he came home and set up the generator to plug the incubator in, we also had to connect up the electric fence round the hens as the farmer over the back lost 17 hens on Saturday afternoon to the fox, normally I would be able to do the generator myself but not at the moment.

So after my next dose of steroids I am able to function again, there was a nice breeze this evening though it’s still muggy, feeling better I got on with hoovering and polishing the bedroom, changing the covers, not that we need any at the minute 😝 and cleaning the shower, then outside to get some watering done. I had a good look around at the veg plants, tiny runner beans are beginning to grow, there are tomatoes and cucumbers just coming along I think it will be ‘al rite’ in the end. I made a mental note to pick the morello cherries in the morning, they are not quite as dark as I would like but from last years experience if I don’t get them now the birds will strip the tree while I’m not looking, the cherries are plump and soft to the touch, that’ll do for me, I am looking forward to cherry jam 😀 One year I made glacé cherries with them, that’s a long (2 week) process and well worth the effort but I’ve decided on jam (I think 😝)

The apricots are also nearly ready, my most favourite is apricot preserve, it reminds me of three weeks spent on a French exchange when I was a teenager, real French bread, butter and apricot preserve, delish 😋

Off to bed for another early start tomorrow.

Tuesday: Well I woke at 3.30 decided that was far too early 🤪 the alarm went off at 4.30 and I eventually got out of bed at 4.50! Straight out and turn on the watering, you are probably thinking ‘why don’t you get a timer’ well there are many answers to that question lol. I do have a timer but in the past it’s failed in some way, either water pressure issues or just not turned on, so reliability is the first reason, secondly, the way we set things out originally isn’t very ergonomic for getting the maximum watered by the minimum amount of movement from the sprinkler, basically the area is spread out too far with obstacles in the way blocking the water flow, so constant moving of the sprinkler is what I need to do. We never really envisaged ending up growing so much so never thought about a whole sprinkler system in the first place plus as the main source of water we use is harvested rainwater it’s more difficult to pump it and get the pressure needed. Soaker hose is the next best option and we do have one on the bean bed but that’s it and because the raised beds are all separated by paths we can’t run a continuous hose so I would still have to go out and disconnect the hose and reconnect elsewhere, all these issues need to be looked at.

There were a couple of jobs I wanted to get done, the cherries and picking the apricots, objective achieved 😀 That’s the best haul of apricots I’ve ever had, around 50/60 up to now there have only been about 10 so I’m well chuffed with that, I left a few on there for the birds and insects, same with the cherries. The trees will need pruning now that the fruit is harvested, I need to raise the height of the lower branches slightly so I can get a guild growing and I need to just keep the height and spread of the trees in check so that I can still pick the fruit. Established stone fruit trees are done in early summer to minimise any chance of silver leaf, a fungal disease that can affect them. I hoed the fruit cage which had got quite weedy and the rabbits had a huge haul of mixed weeds. By then it as 7am and I am already flagging and needing to sit down ☹️ not the direction I was hoping I would be going in by now 😏

I did, well, practically nothing until about 3pm, except rest and sleep. Sam and Mia came over and when I woke up from sleeping the cleaning fairy had been 😁 how lovely. I spoke to the doctor and he suggests not dropping the dose on the next change over in two days time but to carry on with the same level and it will probably be for longer, also need more blood tests to check the CRP levels, that’s C-reactive protein which are markers for inflammation.

I lost my glasses somewhere in the garden this morning, where my hair has got thinner (oh yes there are more joys to his than you can imagine 😜) they keep falling backwards off my head, and you know that feeling that you know are supposed to be there but they are not well I kept getting it thinking I must have left them indoors but nope they are lost, they are not my new ones thankfully 😅

In the evening after I got the watering under way I sat and pitted the cherries with the little cherry stone pitter which John thought was a very clever tool. I ended up with 5 cups of them so not a huge haul but enough to do something with, I said I would make jam BUT when I was FaceTiming Shelley and telling her about them and a pic I had seen of a lovely looking Cherry pie, a little Joshy voice piped up and said ‘ooo yes please nana’ 🤣🤣 so cherry pie it will be 😀 I have also got some mixed berries straining to make sauce for ice creams, yoghurt, jellies etc. I’m left with a couple of handfuls of cherry pits (stones) apparently you can process these and then grind they will be almond in flavour BUT stones contain cyanide so it’s quite a process, you can use the pits whole which will still have cherry flesh on them and infuse cream with them and turn into a whip or fool type pudding, I had already washed them though so I am going to keep washing them until they are clean enough, then dry them and make one of those little cherry stone bags for headaches or warming your hands on a cold day.

I finally plaited the first of the onions, the plaits are not expert and a bit loose but I’m not looking to win any shows with them just store them for use, I put around 12 in a plait, that’s heavy enough to lug around. I have more onions to bring in and cure but I wish I had planted double the amount given that the growing conditions and curing conditions have been perfect this year, still you never know how it will go, there have been years where the moisture in the air is too much and some of them end up rotting so I will take what I have. The garlic has also cured nicely, again I wish I had planted a whole lot more, I have hard neck garlic so they won’t plait but they will be cleaned up and stored in a net, they store well until mid winter when they are likely to go hard, (it won’t last that long anyhow) once the temperatures have cooled down in the house (Autumn) they will all hang in the boot room ready for use. A final bit of watering before it gets too dark to see and I’m done for the day, the cherry pie filling is cooling hopefully I will get the chance/ be able, to make some lovely sweet pastry in the morning and couple them together. I did read a recipe that said to drop in almond essence once it was cooked but I’m a bit of a purist with my flavours, I like to taste exactly what it is, I did look for some essence as I was going to mix a tiny bit and see what I thought but I don’t have any so that sorted that out 😋

Wednesday: Up and out to water early, it is noticeably cooler this morning meaning the watering will have much more effect than in recent mornings. I cleaned and netted the garlic, small haul but nevertheless a home grown one 😀 I have rushed about a bit this morning trying to get some stuff done, pastry for the cherry pie, cook the berry sauce with some sugar for keeping in the fridge, actually made the first loaf of bread in weeks, lots of washing up, you’d be amazed how much there is just doing a few little things, sort and put the eggs out. Towards the end of the jobs I can feel myself going down, I start to feel cold, get a headache then very tired, so I had a hot shower, and am now sitting on the sofa with a decaf coff 😋

I did manage to make the cherry pie and I think Josh was pretty chuffed with it, Mia had some after her sleep but has a sweeter tooth than Josh and preferred the pastry and the ice cream to the cherry filling lol

We had decided we were not going to go on holiday this year but we really need one so I booked one 😀 it is at this point I part with my ethics somewhat because we cruise, have done for over 20 years, John hates flying and on the three occasions in 35 years that he has it’s not much fun sitting beside him 😜we spent the early part of the children’s life holidaying in places like Cornwall but in all honesty that is not a holiday for me what with still having to do the cooking and tidying up, organising picnics etc etc. So we went on our first cruise in 1997, it was fabulous, we get to eat the different foods we each like, someone else does everything except get us dressed for the whole time, we can do as much or as little as we want to, yes there are environmental issues as with all forms of transportation, yes there are waste issues, there are issues in every quarter but the industry is working hard to counteract or remedy these and we have actually seen the difference over the years, so there you have it my Achilles heal as it were! There will be no shopping trip for new clothes though, I take the ones I have had for years, evening dresses from the charity shop (bargains lol) John has had the same tuxedo and shirts for 20 years 😜 though he did have new trousers two years ago, we’ve earned this and are looking forward to a relaxing break 😀

I’m watering the garden again this evening as it’s overcast I can start a bit earlier, dashing out to move the hose at half time, England’s hopes are riding high tonight with this game and I doubt there are many countrymen/women/children that are not watching it 😀⚽️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Thursday: Up early as usual watering, I think with the temps having dipped I am on top of this for a while a least, picked a very small amount of raspberries then went back to bed for 2 hours as I didn’t feel well, I have more bloods test this morning so we will see what the markers are doing and hopefully get sorted as I was doing well on 15mg but 10 is not enough.

One of the brown rabbits was dead this morning, there is no sign of fly strike, injury, myxomatosis and body condition is good, the others are fine so I am putting it down to age, we had them from someone re-homing them and I don’t know how old they are exactly though we have had them nearly three years and I do believe they were a few years old then.

Haven’t done anything else all day except rest and sleep and then watering in the evening ☹️

Friday: Alarm went off, I didn’t get up, not for another half hour anyway, so 5.30 I went out to turn on the water and the hens were making such a racket I thought there must be something in with them, I went over but nope they were just very vocal so I let them all out. In between moving the sprinkler around I pruned the apricot tree, just as bit so that the branches don’t get too heavy next year and break, well that was the plan but the tree has canker 😩 It had it in the trunk last year and I treated it with Bordeaux mixture but it has appeared on the branches, this is not good, the tree will have to be removed and burnt, gutted as it produced a good amount of fruit this year. There are no other controls available and if it was just in the branches it could be cut back to clean wood but being in the trunk already means it’s fate is sealed and it will come down so that it doesn’t spread to the other stone fruit trees 😪 I will probably order another tree, a more resistance variety, of course it cannot be planted in the same place and I have yet to think what I will put there instead.

One of the ‘news’ items currently circulating is regarding the government stockpiling food ready for Breixt, I have no idea if this is true, probably a nano comment made had been blown all out of proportion by the press as is usual and although I wouldn’t advocate storing large amounts of food, but given the ‘panic buying’ culture in his country it does make sense to have some reserves. I suppose as someone who strives for self sufficiency this is part and parcel of what we do, we grow, plant, harvest and process for the leaner months, obviously not everyone is able to do this but there are small changes you can make to your habits that would help in a temporary shortage of any kind. Just picking up an extra tin or dry goods packet when you shop, I’m not suggesting you do it every time otherwise you end up with a bulging cupboard but just making sure you always have 2 tins/packets instead of 1, things that have a long use by date on them are useful to have on standby, dried milk powder, jelly for instance, given the long, hot, dry spell, bottled water might be a good idea, things that if you don’t need to use in an emergency, will still get used, we don’t want wastage here 😀 It’s not scaremongering, it’s just good practice to think about how you would manage given an emergency situation, whatever that situation happens to be.

Needless to say I am monitoring this expected rain very closely today, I’m not sure why, I’m just hoping it doesn’t disappear off the radar and there is not much I can do about it if it does! Please rain, is not something I would ever normally utter but PLEASE RAIN 🌧🤪

I have to tell you what a total success the brassica cage has been, it was a belt and braces job, if you have ever tried to grow them you will know why 😝 I grew broccoli because that’s what we like and the early planted ones have done amazingly well, first a nice round head on each of them and now they are producing florets galore. The later planted ones have done nothing but keep going to seed despite me constantly cutting them back (continuous rabbit forage though) There is not one single butterfly in there and so no caterpillars borne out in the blanching water which has nothing floating in it except bit of broccoli, big success 😀

One thing I want to get made this year is a ‘souper mix’ it is basically vegetable stock, any combination of veg and herbs, blitzed to within an inch of its life in a processor then preserve with salt in a jar, the actual recipe can be found in the River Cottage handbook No2 but you can make it up as to what you have and I found it will keep longer than 6 months or you could always freeze it in batches, you need about 2 tsp per 500ml liquid, a great base for soups and stews and packed full of nutrients instead of preservatives.

I made apricot jam, I am functioning better today and really wanted to get it made, jam sessions are never the same twice and today was no different this came to a set point quicker than softer fruits. Tips, get your jars ready before you start, by that I mean if you are re-using jars, clean them first and get them ready for sterilising don’t put the fruit on to soften and then realise the jars you want to use need the labels soaking off! I have some sticky stuff remover which is fab but I really should have done it before I put them away lol. Secondly EVERYTHING is hot and I mean hot, especially if you are using kilner type jars with metal on them so be very careful in your procedures, thirdly always prepare extra jars, todays batch made more than I was expecting so I had to quickly find two more jars to sterilise, last but by not means least I find the right equipment is key to having continually successful jam sessions, heavy based pan, thermometer (one where part of the bubble has not gone on its own holiday 🤪) metal funnel, and never leave the jam to answer the phone or the door 😝 Oh boy am I looking forward to tasting this one 😀 one quick thing I used a large orange for pectin, just because I didn’t have a lemon or any lemon juice, it will work just as well, apricot have a medium amount of pectin but are low in acid meaning they need added extra to help the gelling process.

Although I feel a lot more with it today I still took it easy for the afternoon, blood results were back and had an appointment with the doc, the inflammation markers are up higher than they were before but with no symptoms, so no pain??? The problems I have had seem to be from the reducing of the steroids so we have slowed it down to see what happens and more blood test next week, in the meantime I carry on when I can and rest when I can’t.

The rain I was hoping for was nothing more than a ‘piddle’ and didn’t even wet the air let alone the ground so watering duties will continue for the foreseeable future 😋 I know we are far luckier than some countries where it’s a life or death situation but it does make life difficult.

Saturday: Well at 4.30 this morning it was very foggy, great because it means there was moisture in the air overnight for the plants to absorb however watering must still commence as the temps are set to be high again today. Other jobs included digging up a hardy fushia that isn’t doing so well where it was, I’ve potted it and will give it some tlc before repositioning it, to be honest I think the dog has been laying on it! I had a reg legged partridge right outside the kitchen window and a cricket on a plant out there too, pretty sure one was looking for the other 😜 I picked a random selection of different beans, they are just starting to come through but not enough of anything to sell yet, my best veg customer came and I gave them to him for free as a taste of things to come seeing how he has been so patient! I finally managed to move the quail from out of the back area to the orchard, it was a case of dismantling two cages to make one decent one, I put a ramp in so they can get to the top area, an upside down covered hanging basket which I’m hoping they will lay in and a dust bath, hopefully they will be very happy there. The odd silkie chick that survived a throwing against the trees stump as an egg is now pretty big, and a cockerel 😜 he has been living with the quail but he has also now got freedom to move and it in the orchard. We will probably allow him to roost in the trees and come and go whenever he pleases. I candled the duck eggs in the incubator, only one was infertile, they are due to hatch next week.

I picked a big bunch of basil, washed it and waiting for it to dry off a bit before I chop it and mix it with olive oil to freeze in an ice cube tray for winter use, I made bread, I’ve taken to making a traditional cottage loaf which I rather like the look of, and then had a well earned couple of hours sit down as my feet are beginning to hurt.

The last couple of days the air temperature early in the morning has been much cooler and then the fog today, you can see the difference in the plants just from that little bit of relief, they are suddenly more upright and not flagging so much, there is rain forecast next week, well there would be, bang on cue for the summer holidays!

We are directly in the airspace between the Royal International Air Tattoo and RAF Brize Norton and the air show is this weekend so it’s pretty noisy at times but we get random displays flying over every now and again so, the best one I have ever seen while we were here was a formation of about 12 helicopters flying directly towards us, it was a pretty awesome sight.

Standing at the back door a got a whiff of bonfire 🤔 had a look round and yep someone close by has one going, now we have had no rain for weeks, the ground is parched and as dry as I have ever seen it, personally I would think I was very stupid if I lit a bonfire in this climate, fingers crossed it stays under control!

We had a rare evening out, thanks to Shelley and Martin for coming over to shut the birds away, The Great British Summer Garden Party at Blenheim Palace, a wonderful evening, very relaxing, great entertainment and fireworks to finish with a round of Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory, perfick 😀

Sunday: Despite a long day yesterday I was still awake at 6 so I got up and went out to get the watering underway, the moisture in the air over night lately has done wonders for both the lawn and the plants, they are not needing quite so much watering as before. I used the lawn edger and tidied it up putting all the sods into the bucket for the rabbits, then cut the grass as it was looking rather strangely with long bits and dead bits all mingling in, at least they are all the same length bits now 😋 A quick cat nap after that just to recharge, I’m pretty tired today so will be taking it steady, I don’t want to be overdoing it, though there is so much I want to be getting on with, it can wait a bit longer.

John is out there this evening cleaning out the hens, he has to wait until it’s cooled down enough to be in there, just watching the countryfile weather and things are getting fresher, now if we could just have a touch of rain too please that would be marvellous 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

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

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhubarb Tea Loaf

• 300g sultanas

• 200g roasted rhubarb (see note below)

• 300ml strong earl grey tea

• 100g dark brown sugar

• 275g self-raising flour

• 1 egg, beaten

Method

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

Beginnings, progress and endings.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Bank Holiday Monday 2nd April: Still raining 🌧 rained heavily in the night and as a consequence we now have the lake we usually have AND a tributary stream flowing into it across all the side paddocks, the hay barn is flooded, the stables are flooded, in fact, everywhere is bloody flooded. I know I said we need it but this is beyond a joke and still rain forecast every day up until Thursday! The fact that the farm slopes downwards towards the side paddock is our only saving grace really as at least it doesn’t stay up the top here very long.

We did the mornings rounds and slopped everything out, can hardly call it mucking out today as it just wet runny s**t 😜

John can’t finish the fruit cage as he needs a bit more wood and the wood yard is closed today, and even if he had it the holes he dug are filled with water. There is no chance whatsoever of getting on the garden as that is waterlogged and the problem is that it will be all to do once it starts to dry up and I will be back to single manpower.

At least we don’t have the snow that other parts of the country have had, I think I would just about blow my top lol.

I decided to hatch out some more quail so I ordered eggs from eBay as ours are not laying enough to use those and besides I could do with new bloodlines. I got the incubator out, last time the automatic humidity pump packed up and we still can’t fix it, dilemma, buy a new pump which is 1/3rd of the cost of a new machine and find out it’s the incubator circuit board that is causing the problem or buy a whole new set up and test the old pump on the new machine, that way if it works we will know exactly which part we need to buy, opted for whole new set up, I will need to do lots of hatching and selling to get my money back 😜

John spent a lot of time making sure that any more rainfall has an escape route and we don’t end up flooded, then he cleaned out the front hen house, meanwhile I did lots of washing and some research on various topics 😝

Tuesday: Shall I mention the weather, no need really, I’m sure you can guess what it’s like 😝 I have look at the long term forecast and we are due a lovely week of sunshine soon, though we all know how things can change 😜 John did the animals this morning while I sorted out the recycling, washing up, Rayburn, washing, tidying, made bread etc etc, then he went off to his Mums and get some more posts for the fruit cage, I sure am hoping that it gets finished this week! We have been totally hampered by the weather, I was hoping that the cage would be finished at the end of the week as there are other jobs to get done, it does not look like they will now, then I was hoping that as all the jobs were finished John would then have time to help with the veg garden sometimes and I don’t think that is going to happen.

All the framework is finished and concreted in, ordered the wire online but it won’t be here until next week 😐 Oh and we had bouts of sunshine inbetween rain showers today so that’s what I call improvement.

Wednesday: A dull start but at the time of writing it’s not raining, however I don’t expect that to last as it is forecast! I have a hospital appointment today, normally it’s at the JR in the morning but the Professor has inconsiderately decided to retire and the clinic has been moved to the Nuffield in the afternoons 😜 ok while it’s Easter hols but in future it will be a nightmare on the road. It appears that the discoid Lupus (which is what I was originally diagnosed with) is active which is why I have a permanent rash on my arms and some marking on my face, the doctor was really lovely and gave me a prescription for lotions and potions to help get it under control, luckily the systematic Lupus is still asleep 😴

Picked up Mia on the way back home.

Thursday: Well the long awaited and promised sunshine day has arrived and not disappointed (first things first, on with the factor 30) John fixed the small rabbit run roof that blew off in the last lot of gales, then he replaced one side of the muck heap where the timbers have all but rotted away, our chap with the wood arrived with some more to add to the mountain. Meanwhile I went into the greenhouse to see how everything is doing, moved stuff around, potted on, sowed some cucumber seeds and watered. Watered both the poly tunnels, the peas are beginning to get some flowers 😀 I put some Guinness down in the big tunnel in the slug traps, cut back the Japanese honeysuckle and pruned the gooseberry bushes, a bit late but they should be fine and I don’t want them sprawling. Then John and I discussed how and where we are going to grow the brassicas but we need to wait for the fruit cage wire before we can do that as we will build something off the side of the cage. Next a job that I was not looking forward too and that was the dispatch of the poorly duck 🙁 got to be done as she could barely get about any more, and then onto dispatching and plucking one of the bantam cockerels, we have four, I tried selling them, nothing and so might as well eat them, not much on them but it will provide a meal for two and leftovers for soup or something. The man with the wood came back with a second load! And then time for a well earned sit down (didn’t last long)

Potted on some more tomato seedlings and melon, they are getting a bit leggy with the lack of sunlight up to now, I can’t hold them back anymore or they will be too spindly, fingers crossed they survive otherwise I think I will just give up!

The new incubator is now up, running and primed ready for the eggs whenever they get delivered 😋

The nice weather looks short lived according to the forecast, however the temperatures look set to remain above 6c for most of the time which is fabulous as it means the grass should grow and cover up the mud in the paddocks 😀

John went out to change a set of taps, beforehand he had unloaded the feed he got the other day, when he got to the job and opened the back of the van he had a stowaway, a chicken had hopped in while he was emptying it lol.

Friday: Hopefully another dry day today. We did the morning rounds, I cleaned out the duck house and the small rabbit run while I was at it. I took a wander round the fields to have a look and see what kind of state they are in after the endless rain we have had, not too bad and will come back quite quickly once it stays dry. John chopped up and stacked some wood and then went off to his Mums, today it’s the hairdressers and shopping so he won’t be back until lunchtime. The bantam I dispatched and plucked yesterday needed processing so this was a good time to do that. I have done many a chicken before but not a bantam and I did wonder if it was too small to bother, however people eat smaller birds than that so better not waste it. I found the gutting much more difficult than a standard size chicken due to the small body cavity and I have small hands, so in the end I decided to spatchcock it and remove the insides after cutting up the back. This is still a delicate procedure with the insides as the last thing you want to do is burst any of the intestines or bowel, so I was very careful and luckily successful. I was going to freeze the bird but figured I might as well cook it today now that it has been done as I haven’t got anything else out of the freezer anyway.

So this photo is of the spatchcocked bantam (actually I am not putting the picture up because quite frankly it is the most ridiculous photo I have ever seen 🤣it should look like this

Except that I didn’t break the breastbone enough and it looks like this one but with attitude 🤣🤣🤣

I slathered it with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon 😀 it won’t look like a shop bought bird for two reasons, one, it is not pumped full of water to make it look nice and plump (as above)so the skin is quite dry and wrinkly, and two, it has not been bleached with a food grade bleach like they are in a processing unit, but it will taste 10 times better 😀 I cleaned up the feet and will roast those along with the neck and livers for the dogs. When I finished everything I used gets a wash in detol so as not to spread germs and voila, done.

Ok I will put the photo up but try not to fall off the chair laughing

I am aware that it looks a little like it’s sat there with it’s hands in the air 🤣🤣🤣

I went outside to burn some rubbish and the entrails of the bantam and needed to move the burning barrel as the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, sparks could either end up in the straw or burn small holes in my polytunnel. I tried moving it but it’s quite full of ash and heavy and hurt my shoulder so I thought that’s fine I will use the sack truck, looks for sack truck, nowhere to be found! Goes to phone hubby and his phone is on the side, bloody Nora, not even a simple task is possible when people don’t put things away or remotely even where they can be found! I really need that BIG shed with an even BIGGER paddock to stop things going walkabout 😡

Turns out the sack truck is somewhere under the mountain of wood, I ask you, ejit 🤪

John made the door frame for the fruit cage, I will try and gets some pics when I get a minute, and I did some bits in the garden including putting hoops over one of the raised beds ready for planting up, the chickens will be straight on it if I don’t cover it, I also planted some garlic bulbs and sowed some pumpkin seeds. Sam, Mia, Shelley, Josh and Florence came in the afternoon, Josh wanted to look for vegetables and so I introduced him to some bits in the garden, he happily chomped away on some chives and some pea shoots from the garden, Mia spat them out 😂

Made bread in the evening and set the quail eggs into the incubator, out of 48, three were broken in transit, not bad considering they have gone through the Royal Mail handling system!

Saturday: Did the morning stuff, John cleaned out the back hens and went to get sawdust and feed after going to his Mums, I got one of the hits ready for the ducks we are picking up later today, then I did cleaning indoors, bedroom, bathroom and living room, full move everything clean, not got time for the kitchen today as that will take a few hours it will have to wait for another day😜 Weather is not as bad as I expected it to be, had a small shower this morning but it has been dry since then 😀

Picked up the pekin duckies, in the end we were allocated eight rather than ten but that’s fine, these are ex commercial ducks, two years old and have never been able to immerse themselves fully in water! They have only ever had enough to submerge their heads into, as a consequence on their first time in water they are not yet waterproof, they soon will be once they start to preen and use their oil gland but for tonight they will stay in a stable so they don’t get cold. They are nice looking, clean (now they have been able to bath) healthy birds, I hope they enjoy their retirement with us and hopefully want to continue laying eggs 😀

Sunday: Today has been a fab day 😀 not particularly weatherwise but work wise it has been productive. Firstly the new ducks, we got 5eggs out of the 8 and they are big eggs at that, considering I didn’t think they would lay until they had settled in that’s a result. I moved into the outdoor run and closed the gate, the others had already been let out and gone off down the paddocks, however the drakes soon came running back up when they realised there was fresh talent around lol. I opened the gate later in the afternoon but they have chosen to stay where they are all day.

Next job was to go into the side paddock and remove all the electric fence stakes and tape and tidy it up, there was a few years worth of ‘bits of string’ which had been used to tie up various posts etc etc, all cut off and thrown away now. Then we cut a ‘gateway’ in the two fences to enable the chickens to move freely from the paddock they are in, we have put poultry netting up the length of the paddock close to their hut to shut off the front paddock so that we can drag it and seed it when the time is right.

I have drawn a lovely picture in the hopes it makes sense 😝

While we were out there we had a visit from a chap I have been in touch with on social media about the rats under the hut. Basically there is a group that take their dogs out and go ‘ratting’ it’s all done for free and watching the dogs work was an absolute treat, I say work, but they didn’t actually find any, the reason being that we have been so waterlogged that I think the rats moved out, it will only be temporary though as soon as it’s dry enough they will be back and so will the dogs!

Back to the paddock work and we then netted three sides of the bottom half of the side paddock, mainly to stop the hens wandering especially onto the roadside. It doesn’t sound like much but it takes forever to gather up fencing stakes and roll up the tape and we had to bring the poultry net down from the small paddock at the back so it took a fair amount of time all in all but very satisfying to get it done. Then John cleaned out the front hen house and burnt all the cardboard mite traps, while I went and took down some more tape and stakes (and oodles of string) from another part of the paddock, and neatly bundled and tied up all the stakes and tape, a fair amount of string and broken tape went in the bin. John did the afternoon feeding and the eggs then he lit the fire, Macca is cooking the dinner so I carried on pootling about outside, fed the horse, tidied up some more bits of rubbish and voila the day is done, almost, just got to put them all to bed later 😋

Posted in Friesland Farm

Naughty bunnies, rainy days and Winter celebrations. 

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday: 3.30pm just sat down with a cuppa after a bit of a day, I’m back on a daily dose of painkillers at the minute, hands hurt, muscles hurt, pain in the arse, not literally but it’s difficult to get stuff done when bits of you won’t work properly! Anyhow, this mornings shocker was, wait for it, two more baby rabbits just born, although they were both dead, this means that the rabbits were getting out for longer than I had suspected. Did the feeding rounds then went and gave both the rabbits and Guineas a good clean out and I really needed to round up these babies that are getting behind the boarding and out into the field. Samantha and Mia came over mid morning and we set about trying to catch them by means of lying in wait for them one at a time, We caught two and caged them, by his time Mia was getting a bit bored so we decided to wait until after lunch when she had her nap, to finish the job. In the end we managed to round up 5 of them, one has a chunk missing from its ear and one has managed to get a wound on its back probably from scrabbling in and out of the small gap, two are still on the loose. We think one of them is now too big to get back through the gap and as it could be seen on the other side of the fence nibbling grass, if we don’t manage to catch it, it will have to fend for itself. This morning I had to turn the horse out without a rug on because I couldn’t do the fastenings, see these pains are really inconvenient, but as the sun was looking like it was coming out Jack didn’t mind too much, Sam mucked out the stable then did his field and put his rug back on and all is well again. I planted the pea and bean seeds I had growing on the windowsill and fingers crossed nothing will eat them 😜

Caught another one when I was putting the birds to bed, just one more to go.


Tuesday: Rainy day 😕 on and off rain so bad luck if you get caught like I did doing the afternoon feeding. I had a 10 minute window to feed and collect the eggs as Mia was asleep and John came home before he had to go to the dentist. I quickly discovered that my waterproof needs reproofing, I was only out 10 minutes and was soaked through literally to the skin in places, urghh need to sort out wet weather gear as well as the cold gear. I remember why I hate the winter now, I could be heard muttering about having only a few chickens for self sufficiency purposes rather than a large flock. The rain is coming over the top of the guttering inside the stable block, I did tell John he needed to clear them a couple of weeks ago when I did the ones I could reach, need to start those lists again I think 😝 At least I had already lit the fire so it was nice and warm when I came back in. 
Wednesday: Cold this morning but at least it’s not raining. Did the morning stuff, put the eggs out for sale and had a conversation with a regular customer who is retiring to the coast next week so will no longer be coming. I wished him all the best and hope he finds a nice little farm to buy his eggs from where he is going. I have been remiss about making bread for the last couple of weeks, I just didn’t have the time or the inclination but I’m back on track with that again, I may even make a cake today 😀

Definitely got my cooking head on as I decided to prepare a lamb stew for tomorrow which will cook in the Rayburn this evening, an apple and blueberry sponge pudding, a batch of dumplings, some for the stew and some to freeze for another day and some fully loaded potatoes that cook in the slow cooker to go with the pork chops later. Stews are great because you just make it up as you go along with whatever you have, this one is stewing lamb, potatoes, butternut squash, onions, rosemary, thyme, garlic, salt, pepper, red wine, some pontack sauce, vegetable stock and cornflour. 


I would have done more cooking but I had Mia from lunchtime so Bing and babies were on the agenda instead.

Thursday: I plan to pack a fair bit into today so I was up early and got the bathroom and living room cleaned before daybreak came 😜 Then out to do the morning feeding etc, the grass in the back paddock particularly, is like a skating rink so we have decided to move the hens from there and put them into the POL pen for the winter as nothing else will be going in there. They will be let out to free range every day but not until mid morning that way we will hopefully get the eggs laid all in one place instead of all over the farm. But my first job on the list is to make a secure pen within the rabbit run for the babies, bit of a mission as they can seemingly squeeze through the tiniest of gaps, an hour later, a roll of chicken wire, staple gun, wire cutters, scratched hands, dirty knees and the sides of a run and objective achieved 😀 I can now let them out into a bigger area and assess their health etc. After that it was on to prepare the POL run for the hens, my plan is to get it all cleaned, put in a dust bath made up of diatomaceous earth, wood ash, louse powder and shavings, extra nesting boxes which will be plastic buckets and tubs, and lure them in at the afternoon feed with corn. I very nearly managed to get all but about 10 hens in so that’s not bad, the rest we will gather up when we have time or hopefully they may follow suit later tomorrow. 

Meanwhile I have been making a list of jobs for John to do at the weekend and a shopping list of things we need for the Farm, lightbulbs for the hay barn, rat poison, I’m determined to not have the same problem we had last year and the cats seem completely useless, feed, including wild bird feed because the little birds that have grown in number are raiding the rabbit food to the extent that there are bird droppings galore in there, might as well get something to feed them as it’s costing me which ever way I do it 😜

Josh and Shelley came over in the afternoon and helped me to feed the rabbits some fresh veggies and feed the horse, I didn’t get round to cleaning the rest of the house but there is always tomorrow😀

The stew, complete with dumplings was superb, only I forgot to get a photo before we ate it 😝

Friday: Up early again as I forgot to put the dustbin out last night so need to get it out before 6am, not that they come before 8 but on the day I don’t do it you can bet your life they will be early! John was also up early so he went out and cleaned out the front hens, fed the and let them out, saves me a job 😀 
The weather yesterday, by the way was cracking for early November, this mornings sky is dark and ominous, however it is windy so I’m hoping the dark clouds will blow around us and not towards us.

One of the jobs in the mornings that I do now is laying the fire in the Rayburn ready for lighting as soon as I think it’s getting cold, at the moment that’s usually around 1pm as the heat from the night before slowly ebbs away, we have been burning pure logs for a while as I have been saving the wood ash for the chicken dust baths and for the garden. It needs to be good wood and not wood with nails for obvious reasons and it needs to be untreated, then it’s perfect for all sorts of uses around the farm. 

I went out to do the rest of the feeding and discovered there are only 3 baby rabbits in the run, ffs! They have chewed through one of the ties, pulled the metal fencing forward and escaped, I think that’s my lot with them they can take their chances in the wild 😩

Gave the windows a clean, I say that rather loosely, not my forte, window cleaning 😜 I hate it but at this time of year with the low sun you can see all the dirt and eventually it starts to really annoy me so out comes the bucket, cloth and the window rubber thing, my windows are small and few but I do need the hop up to reach the top, and now I have cleaner windows with a few smears, that will do for me 😝😝 I have better things to do than spend an age getting them smear free 😏

I started thinking about the Mid Winter feast and the various components, the meat is in the freezer as are the veg, I have all the ingredients for making the pudding, I just need to pick a good time that incorporates, the soaking of the fruit, the children coming to stir it and the hours of steaming it will need, I went onto testing the sloe gin I made last year, yep 10am I’m on the booze, well a little sip at least, I think I need to add a bit of sugar syrup and I might add a cinnamon stick to give it a deep, warming quality, not that it doesn’t have that already 😀 but I fancied giving it a go. The mincemeat has been developing nicely for a few weeks now and in our house we traditionally start making, and eating mince pies from Dec 1st, I don’t usually make a Christmas cake as we are always still eating it for weeks after we have got fed up of it but we will have visitors this year so I shall make one very soon. Obviously we have the nuts I gathered and plenty of fruit in the freezer to make many a splendid dish with 😀 We shall eat like kings🤴 and queens 👸 

Once I began thinking about it I couldn’t resist getting the Christmas cake underway, so I dug out all the dry ingredients I needed and set them to soak in brandy, as usual I went off piste and used what I had so instead of currants I used dried figs and some sorry looking satsumas in the fruit bowl went in as well, I whizzed both lots up separately in the food processor, and in they went, along with sultanas and raisins, I don’t have glacé cherries at the minute but the soaking is a three day process so plenty of time to get some and put them in. I am loosely following a Mary Berry recipe just to get the weights and I didn’t have any oranges hence the satsumas, I also don’t like waste so the whole lot went in not just the juice, the membrane can be taken out once the flesh has fallen off and incorporated, just pick it out. 

Saturday: Today I thought it was high time to tackle the office come dumping ground! That was a big job that took most of the day, everything pulled out sorted out, piles for the charity shop, piles for the rubbish bin, piles for giving or selling on. It is a multifunction room really and most things are stored in there, grandchildren paraphernalia, Christmas stuff, photo albums, hoover, spare chair, fold out bed, a small chest of drawers filled with stuff we haven’t worn for a few years, cctv monitor, music system as well as the desk, filing cabinet, folders of paperwork, printer etc you get the idea, it’s pretty rammed. As a consequence when I am cleaning I kind of look in there hoover the floor and shut the door so it was well over due for a de webbing and dusting too. I felt it was a great and worthy achievement when it was finished, how long it will stay like that is anyone’s guess 😝 Meanwhile, John took care of all the outside work and feeding, cleaning gutters out, tidying the muck heap, burning rubbish, all the jobs on my list and a few more besides 😀

The rain has put us squarely back into winter mode and the dogs were filthy by the end of the day so they had their first bath in a while, they were not happy but what’s not to like they have a bath to stand in AND hot water to boot, can’t please some. 

Sunday: The weather is windy today so that should dry things up a little, I went out and checked the baby rabbits but apart from that John did the rest, including cleaning out the ducks. I came in and got started on mixing up the Christmas cake ready to go in the oven. 

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I’m on a roll with the Christmas eating ideas now and I think I will try a pork pie with hot crust pastry, never done it before so excited about giving it a go. 

Apart from the usual domestic chores and going down to do the horse that was pretty much it for the day and we are having dinner at Charlie and Maccas tonight so I don’t even have to cook 😀

The photos are the stages of the cake, it smells divine, now just got to decide how to decorate it in a few weeks time.