Tag: rain

Posted in Friesland Farm

Home sweet home 🏠 plenty to catch up on and the flipping dodgy internet again 😏

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Well hello everyone 😁 we are back from our holibobs which was a mixed bag of weather and destinations, the one consistent thing was the excellent food and service. The holiday started well enough two days at sea and then an announcement about very windy weather meaning we were unable to dock at two of our stops 🙄 Another two days at sea 😬 We finally arrived at Stockholm and it was raining, cold hard rain 😏 After that the weather settled to mild and sunny for the other stops until we reached Oslo when it was ridiculously hot 🥵 We have seen some great places and learnt a lot of history, my favourite place had to be Sweden 🥰 In Lithuania we had a fabulous opportunity to go to a Smallholding with the tour guide that lives there, self sufficient, living the good life and sharing it with us. Fab trip with nettle tea, homemade cheese and honey on offer, it was right up my street but all the others really enjoyed themselves as well. One thing that was evident throughout the Baltic countries was the negative impact Russia has had on each country over time and you can clearly see why they don’t want them back. Historic architecture destroyed and replaced with grey, drab, concrete slab buildings, seems like nothing has changed with their mindset for centuries 😢

Once back home it was a marathon of washing and weeding, I literally did not stop except to sleep for the first two days! Shelley did an excellent job of keeping everything going while we were gone but I knew it would be the weeds that got the better of her, they are insane and with rain and sun alternating it’s not surprising 😂 Two more days of constant weeding and we are now at Sunday evening with plenty more to do over the next few weeks, never ending.

One thing Shelley wasn’t sure about were the mangetout (or were they sweet peas) so she didn’t touch them. They were mangetout and there were loads so I set about picking them, some had gone from being nice flat pods to developing tiny peas but in order to keep them coming they need to be picked regularly. What do you do with lots and lots of gone passed their best mangetout, you make soup of course. So today I have made a batch of pea pod and potato soup, modifying it with mangetout pods and some other extras as I always do. I have told John he will have to eat it as I am not wasting food, this year of all years when the prices are rising constantly. My inspiration for self sufficiency was reinvigorated by the trip in Lithuania, they basically live on what they grow, they had five healthy children and were all full of energy. The whole trip made me realise, as if I didn’t already know, that we don’t eat healthily here in the UK, even when we think we do, we fall a very long way short of good simple, nutritious food and yet again the supermarkets are a fraction of the size of ours with far less convenience food on sale.

Monday 13th June 2022: John went to work today that’s the first time we have not spent a day together for four weeks and I think we are both relieved 😂 Since we got back we have mostly been playing catch up with things, we let the hens out to free range again and promptly lost 3 to a fox 🙄 so today they are in until later in the day, these attacks appeared to have been around mid afternoon. I don’t really know what we are going to do because to keep on fighting against it is becoming hard work, it’s constant and I think there is definitely more than one including a family which must be living close by. I am thinking the time will soon come when we give up the ghost and call it a day on having lots of hens keeping just a small flock that can be safely kept 🤷‍♀️ The main thing I have been doing today is picking which is a whole nicer topic 😁 Mangetout, broad beans, carrot thinnings and self set potatoes are on the menu with chicken tonight as well as strawberries, raspberries and red currants. Red currants are the jewel of mid summer, delightful shiny red globes of goodness 🥰 I think I will make a compote to have with Greek yoghurt and keep some for breakfast maybe with mini pancakes and yoghurt. I picked quite a lot of red currants so I will freeze some and use them for jams or jellies when I have enough or just add them to pies and crumbles. Red currant jelly is a great thing to have to hand as it can be used in gravies and stews for flavour or basted on meat for a sweet sticky coating, I am sure there are a hundred and one other things you can use them for as well. I know the obvious one is summer pudding but although I like almost everything, summer pudding is one of the few things I really do not like, the fact that it is cold is one thing and the texture is the other, not for me thank you very much lol. The weather is perfect for me today, warm but overcast which means I can move around easily and not worry about dashing for shade in the middle of the day.

Popped over to take Mum some rhubarb late afternoon when we got back I got the dinner on and then spent the evening watering pots and anything in the tunnels and greenhouse plus a freshen up for the veg and plant beds. Out into the paddocks to clean out the horse water buckets and let biscuit into the bigger area before finally coming inside at 9.30pm 💤

Tuesday: Sunshine right from the beginning this morning so a hot day ahead and you know what that means for me 🤪 I don’t have flowers to cut this morning and I did the watering last night so it is less of a ‘rush around’ morning and more of a gentle amble about. I had put the washing on last night so hung that out early, got the eggs sorted and put out for sale, messaged the lawn mower man to get that fixed and serviced, invoiced one of Johns customers, had two cups of tea, a banana and then made a yoghurt smoothie all before 8am. The yoghurt smoothie was supposed to be yoghurt with fruit compote. I made the compote yesterday from the fruit I picked and then last night I made some yoghurt. A few years ago I bought one of those easy yoghurt makers and use the sachets for Greek yoghurt because making it yourself involves something like three strainings for Greek yoghurt texture and flavour, this method is much quicker. Or it would be if it had set 😂 I think (well I know now) that the water was too warm and so the yoghurt did not set to the thick consistency I would expect, it was still runny. I had been looking forward to that combination for breakfast but not to be deterred I put some of each in the blender and had a yoghurt smoothie for breakfast instead 🥰

Next job on the list was working out what to make with some pork I got out of the freezer last night. I really need to start using up as much as possible from the freezers before I start loading it with this years pickings 🙄

Out for the afternoon to Shelley’s which was lovely as we picked Flo up from school went back got my nail varnish taken off had a general chat looked at the garden they are just redoing (a mammoth job) and then picked up Josh from school before being dropped off at home 😁

Had a rest before starting the dinner, John had pork casserole and I had pork and peas fried rice so that used up the pork nicely. I had to wait until around 8pm for it to cool down enough to get some watering done 😏 but I need to keep on top of it for the next couple of days as the temps climb. I dug around in the freezer for tomorrows dinner and also found some cherries and strawberries so I will use those to make a couple of crumbles I think and maybe some more compote 😁 They were labelled up for jam but John has gone off jam on toast for breakfast lately preferring scrambled egg which is much better for him 😝 I shall be up very early tomorrow morning to get some flowers cut for a bouquet, get as much done as possible before it gets too hot out there 🥵

Friday: I missed a couple of days days writing but as it was hot I spent most of the time inside 😝 Early yesterday morning as I took the eggs out to the shed and just as John was going up the back to let out the hens I spotted the fox running down the side of the hedge in next doors paddocks 😏 I shouted fox and luckily John heard me and so they didn’t get let out. Yesterday evening Charlie came over with Macca (he played pool) and she went for a wander up the back, when she came in she said she had seen the fox in our little paddock (as well as a large hedgehog 🥰) at the back and so had called the dogs up to see if off. This morning I had just finished cutting flowers and picking broad beans and mangetout when I heard the fox bark up in the little paddock at the back so I took the dogs up there and there was definitely something the other side of the wall judging by the way the dogs were bouncing up and down the boundary and the way a magpie was screeching away. It is a serious problem at the minute and I don’t expect it to get any better, the only thing we can do is be more vigilant and pro active in scaring it or them off. With that in mind I dug out a small solar powered radio and sat that on the fence at the back where it will be on all day hopefully making the fox think there is someone around 🤞 If it doesn’t work I can see our hen numbers going down and down and this time we will be throwing in the towel I reckon 😢

On a happier note I have been busy cutting flowers for orders 🥰 There is a great range available at the minute and I am beginning to see what is worth growing and what is not, I am also working out what other flowers would be great to grow and in what quantities. My mistakes are also becoming apparent now, mostly not staking properly to get maximum stem length or growing too close together which means plants are fighting to space, it’s all a learning curve. I had more plants arrive while I was away which Shelley potted on and then some more arrived yesterday which I need to get in the ground. The problem at the minute for me is the sun, I quickly run out of shade at this time of the year when it’s hot and although I would love to be out there working it is better for my overall health if I avoid it. The flowers love the sun though so I cant grow in the shade which would be the ideal option 😂 It will soon be time for the ‘big guns’ to start blooming, dahlias mainly and who can resist those 😍 I have, I think, made good plans for a continual flower supply right through to November, December, January but only time will tell, I have also been drying some flowers, not many but I will keep doing them and hopefully will have some great material to use if and when I need it. Flower petals have also been drying nicely though you do need a massive amount of those to do any thing on a sellable scale.

We have been eating broad beans and mangetout with all our meals as they are in plentiful supply right now as well as red currants which reminds me I need to pick more of those tonight when it’s cooler (maybe in the dark 😆)

I was up early today to beat the heat and get flowers cut, a couple of ordered bouquets and some wedding jam jars which I am really excited to do. Initially I was asked for green and white and I explained that I couldn’t guarantee a colour so if they definitely wanted that then they might like to try elsewhere. The customer then came back and asked how it all worked and I explained that it would be flowers that were available at the time of cutting to which she replied ‘oh that’s fine, whatever is available then’ great to have customers that understand. As it is I am happy to say that I did indeed have plenty of white and green and so am able to fulfil the original brief. I really had no idea of what would be ready this year, next year I will have a better idea of what is likely to be ready and when 😁

With it being so hot at the minute I have the windows and the curtains closed all day to keep the house cool which it does I am pleased to say. Then overnight I open the windows to let the cooler midnight air in but leave the curtains/blinds shut to keep the bugs out 😝

The rest of today I will be doing mostly not a lot especially outside at any rate and there is only so much I can be doing indoors. Better to use the time reading up, researching, catching up with all subjects that are remotely interesting, to me at any rate, such as gardening, flower arranging, recipes, the walking dead 🤣 yep I am a mixed bag of a personality but it keeps things interesting 🧐

It was an all or nothing day today as predicted, nothing for most of the day as it was too hot for me to get outside and I really couldn’t be bothered to do much except read etc indoors. Then mid evening it was full on getting the flowers and jam jars ready for tomorrow morning plus the two other bouquets ordered. It’s now 10pm and I am sat outside where it is soooo much cooler than it has been and much cooler than indoors. John has gone to bed already because if he has told me once that he is shattered he has told me at least a hundred times 😂 Hopefully we will get the predicted rain showers tomorrow 😁

Saturday: What a drop in temperature 😂 the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction it’s unbelievable, the hottest day of the year so far yesterday and today it’s very much colder and wet, wet, wet. I for one am glad of the rain it replenishes the water tanks and means I don’t spend hours watering the garden. With the amount we have had today I won’t have to water it for a good couple of weeks I would say.

I was up early and outside getting some weeding done before the rain came, also a bit of cutting back and seed collecting. The cerinthe needed some attention and some of it is already producing seeds so it was time to collect. Part of the sustainability angle is to collect the seed from the plants to use in autumn sowings or next spring, it will save you a good deal of money, I will also sell some of them on if I can collect enough. Once I had done that and watered the poly tunnels it was time to deliver flowers, some were collected yesterday evening which left two lots to deliver. One lot of jam jar posies for a wedding and one bouquet to a different customer. I was really chuffed with the jam jars they looked amazing and the smell was divine from the lemon verbena which I included.

In the afternoon Sam came over for a few hours with Mia, George & Lucie, but apart from their visit we didn’t do much else except the usual jobs. Popped out in the evening for our Saturday night fish and chip supper with my sister and brother in law.

We have been having a proper fox problem though and this afternoon John caught the fox chasing my geese. It seems like the same one I saw the other morning, a youngster I think which means it’s no match for full grown adult geese but still it’s a problem as it is stealing hens on a daily basis, we have lost around six since we came home 😏

Just sat typing this up at 10pm when I heard the cat bowl by the back door rattle, thinking it might be the fox I opened the top half of the stable door quickly to surprise it, the cat was sat meowing while a hedgehog was helping itself to cat biscuits 😂

Sunday: Fathers Day, we were up and about fairly early, John went to do the morning rounds and I cut some flowers then Charlie came round to cook her dad some breakfast 🥰 After that we went over to Dads grave where we met the others and I put the flowers I had cut in a jam jar. My brother from Australia and his family came, this is the first time he has been able to visit the grave and see where Dad is laid to rest. I gave them all a family history tour around the graveyard as lots of family members are buried there including Nan and Gramp and Great Grampy Charlie. On to the garden centre, not to but plants but for tea and cake with Shelley, Martin and the kiddies as well as my brother and his family. Back home and Sam and the kiddies arrived with a card and chocolate for John, all about the Daddies today 😁

One annoying thing that has happened twice today is that a bird keeps getting in the egg shed and pecking at the eggs in the egg boxes 😠 twice I have had to clear up in there. One of the problems is that the door doesn’t get closed properly when customers have finished, also though the catch does work it’s not really strong enough and bounces back open. I imagine it’s a magpie as we have a few of them around at the minute and they are pretty resourceful and good at repetitive behaviour.

I am having real trouble with the internet today, well since Friday actually, this happens quite a lot at the weekend and I have a theory that it is to do with that massive cock up of our telephone lines a couple of years ago. Every time it happens I check to see if there is a fault but it always comes back clear from BT but there is definitely a problem somewhere I just can’t figure out where, either that or our router is on its way out 🤷‍♀️ answers on a postcard please. I have tried and failed multiple times (+10) to upload photos for this blog, it’s just not happening so I am sorry about the lack of them 😏

Have a great week and thank you for reading, take time to enjoy everything, even the little things 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Eggs, bee swarm & a million and one jobs to do.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 16th May 2022: Unlike a usual Sunday evening, I didn’t sit down, instead I made cakes 🙄 simple 2lb loaf cakes, four lemon and two chocolate. The chocolate ones were made with oil instead of butter because I ran out of that. I definitely managed to use up a few eggs though and as it stands I will have 9 cakes in the freezer for future use 😂 Always handy when we don’t have any eggs in the winter, if we still have loads of eggs when I get back from holiday I shall start among other things, not sure what yet but I will find some recipes I am sure, and I will also start freezing them, might as well. John was also busy out strimming until it started to rain, hopefully we will continue to get some showers over the next couple of days, we really need to replenish the water table.

Actual Monday 😁 I spent nearly all of the morning sorting out clothes ready for packing, all of mine anyway, still have Johns to do yet. He was supposed to be just popping out to replace a set of taps, by 1pm he had not returned, I phoned him and he had had multiple phone calls from customers for various small jobs so had decided to get them done. That’s all well and good but I was waiting to go into town and pick up a few last things for our holiday. Eventually he returned and off we went. Went we got back we had a quick rest before cracking on with some jobs in the evening, mine mostly involved cleaning the washing machine and hoovering the boot room😝 nothing very interesting today.

Tuesday: Started off well with getting some things done in the garden areas, putting up some trellis for a couple of climbers that will ramble over the dog kennels. They have dual purpose, cover the shape you looking kennel structure and provide some lovely foliage for flowers next year 😁 Meanwhile John was fixing wood to the bottom of the gates to stop the bloody geese getting through, they have been ducking under and coming into the front area and then round to the lawn if the gate is open. I then went on to do a bit of weeding and planting the squash plants that had been growing, I also planted up a couple of cucumbers outside and some tomato plants, might as well get them in if I have got them. The reason being that the Bank of England is predicting apocalyptic food prices by the end of the year and inflation at 10%, grow everything you can and make sure you use everything you grow. With doom and gloom on the horizon I thought I would try and experiment, freezing eggs in a muffin tin. You crack them open into the tin, pop the yolk with a cocktail stick, cover and freeze, then once frozen take them out of the tin and freeze in freezer bags. I think this will work fine for any eggs you want to use in baking once they are defrosted they should be like any other egg you have just cracked. Not sure about poached and fried but I can’t see why they would be much different and certainly will be fine for scrambled. Come autumn when the hens are all moulting the egg number reduced drastically and this way I should always have plenty.

Freezing eggs for the inevitable shortage in autumn

Sam came over with the twins late morning and then Shelley and Florence, we spent a pleasant enough hour in the garden although first George got stung by stinging nettles and then Lucie 🙄 They had both finished crying and we were chatting again when Sam looked across to the house with a look of concern and said ‘what’s that’ I stood up to look and immediately shouted to everyone to get in the house. I then shouted to John to get the dogs in now, every one did exactly as they were told which was great. The reason was a swarm, thousands of bees had decided that somewhere nearby they were going to settle, they were not high up either but low down at face level which is why I thought it was better to get in out of the way. They settled in the cider apple tree next to the house and I phoned around to get someone to come and collect them. Dave, one of the bee keepers who we sold honey for last year came over, he got his bee suit on and collected them up, much to the delight of the children, it was exciting for them. He waited a fair time to gather them all up but there were a lot he couldn’t get to go in the box and so he left with the ones he had which must have been thousands, it was a big swarm apparently. The rest were still flying around and clustered on the tree for a while but we went out to get some shopping and when we came back they had dispersed. Early evening I went out to water the poly tunnel and as I got near to the small one I could hear exactly where they had gone 😂 hundreds of them in my tunnel. Hopefully Dave is coming back late evening with some pheromone to gather them up.

The swarm settled pretty quickly fairly low down in a tree right next to the house.

Dave came back with a box that previously had a swarm in and some syrup in the hopes they would go in but they were quite docile but this point and reluctant to move, he gently brushed some of them in and is leaving the box overnight to see if more can be encouraged to go in. I need to water the tunnel 😂 so I am waiting until almost dark before going out to do it, don’t want to make them angry 🐝

Wednesday: I was up early this morning 5am, I needed to get quite a lot of flowers cut for orders today and I didn’t want to be disturbing those bees in the tunnel 😂 They were still mostly all sleeping 💤 I went about my business in relative safety 🙄 actually they are apparently not hostile when they are swarming as they have nothing to protect, no hive, no honey and no eggs, that’s reassuring but still when there are thousands of them it’s a bit scary. The ones that have been left behind number around 200 which is a tiny fraction of the amount of bees in a hive, still it’s a lot of bees in my poly tunnel 😂 I got all the cutting done ended up with wet feet and arms as the dew was pretty heavy after the rain yesterday. Then I went on to getting some weeding done in one of the front beds, I wanted to get them out before we go away or they would be triffids by the time I get back. I got stung on the arms and feet by long stinging nettles, I had changed my shoes for flip flops, what the heck was I even thinking 🧐 numpty. After doing that job it was round to the veg garden, which is rapidly becoming a flower garden 😝 to plant up, you guessed it, flowers. Grasses this time actually, specific types that are great for flower bouquets, they add movement and sparkle. Then I planted up some scented pelargoniums, not my usual thing but the foliage smells amazing and again good for flower posies.

Back indoors and I got the eggs from the freezer, they took a little bit of persuading to leave the tin, bang, bang, bang, but eventually I got them out and popped them into a bag and returned them to the freezer for use later in the year. Back outside to potter a little bit more and to observe the bees, I am quite fascinated by them to be honest, their behaviour patterns under the circumstances are interesting, they clump together quite a bit and appear dozy. Here is what I have learnt, if they don’t go to the box Dave bought, they will die, they need to feed and they are not getting any instruction from the rest of the hive so they don’t really know what to do without all the others 😢 As I said before they are a tiny fraction of the hive, a couple of hundred out of a swarm of 40/50,000 so are dispensable as far as the hive health goes. But they are bees and we need bees so trying to gather up stragglers is a good idea. Those that don’t go to the box will definitely die, this is ok though because they then become part of the food chain for other insects and small mammals such as beetles and mice, it’s just sad. Some of the younger ones could gather pollen and go to a different hive and because they are young and have the pollen they would probably be accepted, old bees or bees with no pollen will not 😏 Nature is both amazing and cruel at the same time isn’t it.

Indoors early afternoon to make up the flower orders and then a sit down before going out late afternoon to deliver flowers and eggs today 😁 Then I have a flower bouquet collection late afternoon.

It’s definitely swarm weather, the chap that collected our bees has collected another three swarms today! He came back to get any of the bees that had gone into the box by dusk, sadly the rest that are clustering in the polytunnel in various places will now die off and be part of the food chain. A queen bee can lay up to a thousand eggs a day apparently so they will soon replenish and he also said ‘our swarm’ is now in a hive and working really hard, yay go bees 🐝

More rain this evening, I for one am not complaining, we really needed the ground water levels to get back up to decent levels 🌧

Massive thunder storms with lightning and heavy bursts of rain.

Thursday: I spent the morning getting my hair done while John was busy at home sorting and tidying his van.

When we returned home we watched the lunchtime news and I can’t help but comment on a couple of things. First is the fact that potentially there will be food shortages due to goods not being able to be shipped from Ukraine. It is a fertile and abundant country but don’t you think it is a bit ridiculous to rely so heavily on one country to provide vast quantities for the rest of the world. Obviously Ukraine needs all the support we can give it in anyway we can but if it teaches us one thing it should be to look at worse case scenarios and see how resilient we are going forward.

Second is the rate of inflation and the rising cost of living, well I just can’t shut up sorry 😝 Back in the 80’s (yes I know I am going to sound like an old fossil) inflation went above 10% and mortgage interest rates climbed up and beyond 15%, 15%! Just let that sink in if you are in your 20/30’s and have a mortgage, I am not age bashing but seriously it was a tough period for our finances and guess what, there wasn’t any talk of help in any way from any direction at all. You got on with it by working more hours or taking a second job and dispensing with any little luxuries, you rode the storm basically and yes some people sank under the cost of it all, some people lost everything and had to start again. I can tell you countless stories of the types of jobs people took that wasn’t their usual line of work because it was a necessity to do so. But also back in the day hardly anyone was in debt up to the hilt, mostly we had a mortgage and that was it, we had a second hand car that was bought and paid for not on tick and our lifestyle was not as extravagant as they are today, that extravagance has become the norm 🙄 it seems to have become an entitlement. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, I know things have changed a lot and I know that there is genuine hardship out there but from observations there are also a lot out there who do not know how to cut their cloth either that or they couldn’t possibly give up what I would consider luxuries at a time like this 🤔

We had a busy few hours this evening, I wrote a list of jobs that need doing just in case John was not aware of all of them 😂 He started off by cutting the grass in the driveway then the paddock and finally the lawn. I potted up some chrysanthemums that arrived today, these will extend the flowers available right through to Christmas 😁 I did the watering in the tunnels, cleaned the horses water buckets out and filled them all up, did a bit of weeding, sorted all the eggs after John fed the birds and collected the eggs. In-between all that we had the twins and then I had a live online workshop to attend, my eyes are very tired 🥱 Up early tomorrow to cut flowers for a 100th birthday bouquet 🥰

Friday: Still rainy lol after all those dry months it hasn’t stopped raining on and off for a week now. Up early and I cracked on with cutting flowers for todays birthday bouquet 🥰 Then it was on to cleaning and then just before lunch ironing johns shirts. The only time I do ironing is for occasions and though I don’t mind doing it I was glad when it was finished 😂 Meanwhile John had to pop out to get a small job done and then once he was back there were jobs on the list for him to get his teeth into. Shelley said make sure I leave her some jobs to do, so I definitely will 😝

I made up the flowers at lunchtime and then delivered them and when I got back I thought I would have a go at a corsage. I quite liked doing one, it’s a different skill to try out.

Popped out early evening to pick up some plants that I had seen for sale, good sized plants that were too good to pass up lol. When I got back I put the dinner on then out to the paddock to get Biscuit in and confine her to a small pen. She hasn’t been bad it’s just that she will get bad if I leave her out on all that grass after the rain we have had so this is preventative.

A live meeting then gardeners world, lovely Friday night, almost, my jeans unexpectedly ripped across the front of the thigh area so I now have to quickly order new jeans for going away 😂

Saturday: A busy day today rammed with every type of job you could possibly think off both inside and out. John has been busy as well cleaning out the birds and mowing the grass in the front paddock by hand because the belt broke on the ride on mower 😝 Shelley came over in the afternoon and we walked through two lots of flower selection, conditioning and arranging, she did a great job and all will be well with that side of things I am certain. In the evening I printed of yet more paperwork for the holiday 😂 one more bit to do.

Sunday: Another busy, crammed day of things to do, mainly packing, I think I have packed way too much and then not enough at the same time 🤪 It’s all the little things to remember but hopefully I have remembered everything and what I haven’t, tough. John has been cutting everything g with the hand mower again, flipping typical that the ride on breaks just as you need to get everything up together. Then he had the front hens to clean out and power wash, that’s the last of the big clean outs, Shelley will then be able to just skip out and all should be fine. I have cleaned the spare room ready for the kids to sleep in, I still need to go and alter biscuits electric fencing to give her a bigger area for a week, then Sam is back from her holiday and will re jig the grazing again.

There is such a massive amount to organise on a Smallholding when you want to go on holiday, there are endless lists of daily, weekly routines for each and every animal, lists for the top priority jobs, lists for what, where, when, how and why, general lists for the household stuff, deliveries, customers and then there is all the work needed to get it all up together to make life easier for the person who is coming to take over. We are incredibly lucky to have the girls who always know how much we need a holiday and are willing to step in and help out massively, without them we simply couldn’t go away 🥰🥰🥰

Downloaded a few books to read and the Miriam Margolyes book in Audio form, that should be a bit of a hoot 😁

This afternoon I am having my nails, eyelashes and eyebrows, preened, tinted and polished and then a roast a Shelley’s 😁 Back home to get some watering done and water in some nematodes for the vine weevil, fill up the horses water, let a biscuit out for a day and a half before she gets confined for a week, and finally get a sit down. We will have plenty of last minute jobs and things to get sorted tomorrow but for the blog that’s it for almost three weeks. That just leaves me to say have a wonderful Jubilee celebration weekend, it’s not often a Platinum Jubilee is held, what an amazing lady our Queen is in every way, and providing we get a fit to travel result I will be back in a few weeks time. 🚢😁🥂🥳 🇬🇧

Posted in Friesland Farm

Workshops, meetings and finally some rain 🌧

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 9th May 2022: Woah what a full on morning I have had this morning. First though, after I published the blog yesterday afternoon we had a situation. John shouted, you better come out here the goose is not well, it’s backside is hanging out 🙄 I go out and sure enough the goose had prolapsed, yesterday I spotted her going into the stable block so I said to John you’d better check for goose eggs in there, turns out she was going in for other reasons 😏 We managed to separate her from the others and catch her, with some shouting from John 😂 I got m rubber gloves on and had a good look, hoping that she was just egg bound which I might have been able to do something about. She wasn’t and the prolapse was all fluid filled making the decision a quick one, sadly she would have to be dispatched 😢 Trying to reinsert a prolapse like that would likely end in rupture which would cause her death anyway so we had to do the deed. Very sad, no particular reason for it, sometimes it just happens.

Back to this mornings workload, it started around 7.30am with two hours of weeding, then onto panting up one of the cutting beds. John has now made the supports and so I decided to plant it up with some of the annuals I have coming on. I also have some of these direct sown as seeds so I should get a good succession providing we don’t have a hard frost and if one is forecast as long as I remember to cover them up. Then I had a message from a local flower shop asking if I would be willing to be a contact to supply locally grown flowers. I explained I was starting off small and that was ok they are looking for all sizes, so I said yes that is something I could do. With that in mind I thought I better get on and plant up more of the plants I have been nurturing, all annuals now so they need to go in but also be protected from the cold. That lot took me up to 1pm, in for a quick rest before a live online workshop this afternoon. Oh I also planted up the courgette plants so I did get a bit of vegetable stuff done too but I can see at this rate it is going to be mostly about flowers lol.

The online workshop was brilliant, it was an hour and a half of learning all about the value of the flowers we grow and sell, about how when we start out we nearly all undervalue ourselves, our work, our skills and our results. Without exception we were all nodding and laughing knowing we had done all the things we shouldn’t have and now need to rectify that in order to make a living from what we are doing. Very interesting, and very revealing but also empowering 🥰

Shelley called in so we did a walk round the garden discussing what will need doing while I away, I think the added cut flower bit is daunting but I know she will cope 😁

Tuesday: Bit of drizzle this morning 😁 not much but hopefully at some point we will get a splash more 🙄 we definitely need it the rain tanks are dry 😏 I have a regional meet up with the Flowers from the Farm South East group today which is being held locally so I am going to that. I am looking forward to meeting up with others, a couple of them are only a few miles away from me so it will be nice to make some connections. Just the usual morning jobs to get sorted before I go.

Well actually I got the wrong day 🤪 but luckily I double checked before going 😂 so with a spare day ahead of me I got on with the usual things out in the garden. John came home at lunchtime so we went out to get something to eat and pick up a plant I have been looking for.

Wednesday: Today I actually went to the meeting I thought was yesterday 😬 First in the morning though I spent about an hour printing off paperwork for our forthcoming holiday, in the age of technology and ‘E-tickets’ it confounds me that we are advised to print everything off in case the internet isn’t working on check in 🤷‍♀️🤪😂 So after I printed off a novels worth of pages it was time to go out for the day. What a day it was, the place that we met and had the meeting is a member also and her set up is truly amazing, inspiring and we all took photos with the intention of getting husbands and partners to build us something similar 😝 We talked about all kinds of flowers and growing them, types of compost, good and bad, had a good look round the whole flower farm (immaculate) and then went to the pub for lunch. All in all that was one of the best days I have had of late lol and it was lovely to meet up with other local area members from Flowers from the Farm 😁 Back home mid afternoon and on with some planting up, make up a bouquet, deliver it, dinner, etc etc, day done. We had a good lot of rain today which is fabulous as we really need it.

Thursday: I spent quite a bit of time sorting out eggs, plants for sale, cutting flowers ready for conditioning, a few household chores and then out to check on everything and water the tunnels and greenhouse. I am getting good enquiries about the flowers which is exciting and I am glad people are loving them 🥰 With the enquiries coming in I thought I had better crack on and get everything I can in the ground, I think I am going to need it all. John was home at lunchtime again and we popped out to get a few things. Shelley came with Josh and Flo after school so that I could show Shelley what conditioning the flowers is all about, plus a wander round the garden just showing her what and when to cut the flowers and foliage. As she will be living here while we are away and looking after everything that will include the flowers this time. It is a bit daunting but I have total faith in her ability to cope with whatever comes her way 😁 Sam arrived with Lucie and George, Mia went off for her swimming lesson, once everyone had gone home I sat down with a cuppa and thought about all the things I need to get done tomorrow, there is always a long, long list 🤪

Friday: Which all morning I actually thought was Saturday 🤪 That’s because John has been at home probably. He has been busy clearing and topping the paddocks while I have been Uber busy in the garden. Yesterday I had an enquiry for quite a large flower order eeek, at first I was ‘oh I don’t think I am ready for this’ and then I thought ‘absolutely I can do this’ and so that is what I replied. So I was up early to get cutting flowers which took me longer than I thought it would lol, then it was on to planting up everything I have that is ready to go in and and in every available space I could find. I also sowed plenty of annual seeds direct into the ground, these are over and above the ones I have already sown. Not ideal as flowers will be all over the place but the garden is going to look amazing 🤩 I had another small order to cut for which I also did first thing and then another order for four posies that came in for tomorrow, I am loving this and wish I had done it years ago 🥰 By early afternoon I was pooped and so inside for a bite to eat, a cuppa and a good long sit down, maybe even a nap.

These two pictures are for the big order, they are loose to be arranged by the customer, hopefully I can get some pictures from her when they are done.

And this is what my flower storage area looks like right at this minute 😂

In the afternoon I put in flower support jute netting in the small poly tunnel, I did want to get some wind break up but it was windy 🤪 so there was no chance of that. I did a fair bit of watering in the evening and had all the flowers that were ordered collected finally getting inside as it was getting dark.

Saturday: Up early to cut more flowers this morning for the hand held posies that were ordered for today. I wanted to do it early because I suspected it was going to get hot pretty quickly and I was right. Once they were cut and in the back conditioning we went to get some dog food and some peat free compost from the farm next door. I need more flower growing space 😝 I have two raised beds in the veg garden unplanted and so have now allocated those to flowers 😂 John barrowed the home made compost over and filled the beds 2/3 full with that, then as it is likely to be weedy we put a layer of cardboard on top, wetted it down and put the peat free compost on top of that. By the time the plants have established roots long enough to go down the cardboard will have rotted (that’s the plan anyway) I now have two more beds to fill up, I will have grasses in one, different types of grass, sparkling fountain, millet grass and bunny tails, all good for flower bouquets. The other bed will probably have chrysanthemums which will be arriving soon. If you think chrysanthemums are boring then watch this space, the new varieties are zingy and bright and as a bonus they can keep flowering right into the winter months making them an excellent addition to a flower farm.

Hand held posies for a customer this morning, there are three in this pot but they make an amazing bunch 🥰

I have already (asked 😬) told John what I want for my birthday in July 😂 I want a hydropod for cuttings lol. I fail miserably at cuttings no matter how I try, I just don’t think the conditions are right and so a hydropod will eliminate all of that and I might actually have more successes than failures 🤞

I have a quiet few days at the minute for flowers which is great because I have used everything that is blooming already, need to wait for the next flush of flowers.

Sunday: We have been non stop busy over the past three days really, this morning we were still busy getting things tired and sorted. John has been busy in the paddock taking down the rest of the fence, he is doing it slowly, changing to other jobs now and again so that he is not overworking his elbow and that seems to be working as the pain is much less now. He has also been giving the stable block a tidy up and we will probably have a bonfire next week sometime. Meanwhile I have been in the greenhouse potting on the last few things and sorting out the cold frame area. Getting rid of anything that did t grown over winter or is struggling to grow now and putting plants out for sale so that there is less work for Shelley to do while we are away. Not that she minds it’s just that keeping things on an even keel in the greenhouse is difficult enough as it is with the temps up and down like they are at the minute, if she can just concentrate on keeping the stuff outside watered if it doesn’t rain much and the stuff in tunnels watered anyway then we should be on a winner. Then it was out for the afternoon to visit Ken who is 80 years young today, plenty of cake and chat before returning home to get the afternoon jobs done. I was delighted to see that we had actually had a few eggs customers, I was starting to get concerned at the lack of egg sales 🙄 I was wondering what the heck we were going to do with all these eggs, not sure where everyone has gone but normally Saturday is busy and yesterday we only had one customer. Only one customer today up until we went out as well but thankfully quite a few while we were out which makes me feel better. I know it’s not just us that are struggling to sell them and I can’t work out why that would be 🤷‍♀️ Maybe everyone has gone away the same week or maybe they are just not eating eggs this week 😂 That’s the problem with egg sales they are all or nothing it seems lately but trying to get a balance is really difficult. If the egg shortages that are predicted come then we will be inundated with customers but then I will be thinking that it’s not fair on our loyal regulars, maybe time to introduce a loyalty scheme of some sort 🤔

It has rained today again, fabulous, there are thunderstorms and heavy rain predicted for sometime this evening as well, might get those tanks filled back up again yet 😁

The elderflowers are about to come out and I really wanted get some elderflower cordial made this year but what’s the betting they will appear when I am away. It is a very distinct smell and I am already getting a waft of it now and again 🥰 The asparagus, which has been slow due to the dry weather has now started shooting up after the first bit of rain, hopefully we will get a decent crop now it has rained again. I really need to look at way of preserving it so that we can have it later on in the summer as well.

Have a great week 🥰

Posted in Friesland Farm

Flowers, singing for Beltane and and bit of rain 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday: 25th April 2022: A new week, tad chillier this week in the morning but it did warm up as the day went on. John had to phone the doctor this morning about his arm, who sent him to the MIU (who didn’t want to see him at the weekend) for an x-ray, when he got there they said he couldn’t have one without a referral from the doctor (who had just told him to go there 🙄) so he called the doctor who sent the referral over, got the x-ray done, no break which is good but they said they would send the info over to the doctor next week. Next week! He was kind of left in limbo then as he has to get his job finished but he is having real problems with the mobility and pain in the arm, next week pfft. We had the conversation that many people are having about what has happened to the NHS since covid. Don’t get me wrong I fully support them and I think overall they do an amazing job and during the pandemic the strain would have been unbearable but the service does not seem to have come out the other side yet. Multiple factors I am guessing like massive back logs and workloads but the basic functions of connecting departments seems to have fractured leaving people in limbo and I know I am not the only one saying this. Having said all that John must have said something to them because in the afternoon he had a call from the doctor who was surprised at how quickly she got his results back 😁 Anyway the upshot is that the elbow joint is worn out, I told John that is lifting too many cups of tea 😂 didn’t go down well 😝 in all honesty it will be the years of plastering, grouting and heavy lifting that has done it and he is basically getting old and falling to bits. The doctor was great though and has given him stronger painkillers, told him that if after his holiday and rest it is no better, to go back and they will look at more options, can’t ask for more than that it was just the getting there that was difficult.

Meanwhile back here I was busy getting on with the day, weeding, pottering, watering, checking things over, all the usual stuff and nothing more exciting than that really.

Tuesday: Still a chilly start to the morning almost cold enough for a touch of frost I think. Once the eggs were done and out, the washing was on, the household bits done, I went out to cut some flowers for a hand held posy someone has ordered and collecting g later today. Doing a smaller posy is lovely because you can use the smaller flowers that don’t have the stem length needed for a bouquet and there are some delightful flowers to use.

I have started to wash my tops with the UV wash which gives me just a little added protection from the sun in the coming weeks. Every little helps as they say and I have already started to get itchy raised bumps on my arms so I need to be more careful going forward. We often think the spring sunshine is not strong but the UV rays are still capable of doing damage to my skin and it would be good to get it under control as soon as I can, that is the best way to avoid a flare up.

I went out to look over the plants for sale out the front to find something has dug out some of the strawberry plants. Judging by the smell it’s fox looking for worms 🙄 yesterday it stole the butter left by the milk man and it has been leaving its smell and making a mess tipping out various rubbish here. We have know it has been hanging around for a while because every morning when I open the back door it stinks of fox, it has tried digging in the run where the front chickens are as well. All of this does not bode well because the mandatory housing restrictions for the poultry is being lifted on May 1st, we will need to get something sorted before they are allowed out.

Another fiasco we have had is that someone has hit Johns van while it was in the driveway 😡 hit it and then just driven off, it’s not the damage so much as the not saying anything that is infuriating. He has been like a little rabid dog trying to figure out exactly when and who it was. I get it, I really do but chuntering on and on and on about it will not solve anything at all. It’s done, the damage is done, we have an idea of who it was but no way of proving it so 🤷‍♀️ what can you say except that some peoples morals are not very high 😏

I said back in the middle of the pandemic that I thought we were in for a bumpy few years ahead, not sure why I just had a sense of foreboding 😏 The pandemic was bad enough, the invasion of Ukraine by someone who can only be described as an out of touch despot made it all worse and the knock on effect of both of these events are food shortages, a fuel crisis and big price rises. Now to add to the misery we could well be heading for a drought year, a dry Winter, lack of rain in Feb, March and April and the longer forecast showing not much sign of rain for most of May 🙄 John and I have been saying for weeks that it’s not looking good this year, the water tanks are almost empty and no rain ahead to fill them up again. I know we have mains water but that all adds to the bills so we try and use as much rainwater as we can collect for the animals and garden. The soil has a deficit of 23mm of water at the minute which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is Spring and 51% of the rivers are below normal levels already. Hopefully we will get some eventually, probably a deluge just when we don’t want it 😂

A small hand held posy made to order today for someone who has lost a family member, this one has one small sprig of symbolic Rosemary in it which represents remembrance ❤️

Wednesday: I was up before the alarm went off this morning, at first the sunrise looked promising but it soon clouded over and was a tad chilly for a while. I had breakfast, got the usual stuff sorted, washing, eggs, rubbish, recycling and then it was time to cut flowers 🥰 I don’t think this will ever get boring 🌸😁 I have two bigger bouquets to make up today, one for a birthday and one is a weekly order going forward. The tulip season is going to be over soon but there is so much more coming on, I watch the garden every day to see what is coming next, in the words of Penny (Patricia Hodge) from Miranda (one of my absolute favs) it is ‘such fun’. Once the flowers and foliage are cut they are ‘conditioned’ this means sitting in a bucket of water in a cool dark place for as many hours as possible before arranging into a bouquet. Sometimes there is a little bit of extra conditioning to do for some things, woody or hollow stems but in the whole they are all pretty much treated the same.

The rest of the day remained chilly 🥶

I did a bit of pricking out and some potting on in the greenhouse and some pottering around. I spent way too much time trying to get something up and running online 🙄 I cut a load of hazel and soaked it in the bath for something I want to try out for a flower arrangement I have to do. I made two prototypes of the thing I had in mind, one out of paper and one out of wire to see how it would all go together. Then finally I tried it with the soaked hazel sticks, half of it went well the other half not so much, not at all in fact 😝 I have good ideas but I am not very good at executing them, on that basis I have asked if anyone has anything similar I can borrow that is already made 😂

Then it was time to make up the two bouquets, one to be delivered the other to be collected, it is just delightful working with such beautiful flowers and foliage 🥰

Thursday: It’s still cold, what’s with the lack of sunshine, mind you with the total lack of rain as well it’s probably not a bad thing, everything would be keeling over by now otherwise. I did say to John I would go out and give anything struggling a bit of the wet stuff but once out there I felt it seemed too cold and they wouldn’t benefit from getting even colder, tricky one. So instead of that and after I had done the necessary jobs, I decided to play with flowers 😁 I had a colour combination in my head and wanted to see how it turned out, rather splendidly I think don’t you?

Dark purple and white tulips, an allium and some pale blue Jerusalem cowslips together with mock orange foliage and some sambucus nigra make a winning combo 🥰

Friday, still a bit chilly but I got a few things done outside including mowing the lawn. Last year I left it for no mow May but this year we have the new lawn piece and I have to keep it cut to stop anything growing in it such as comfrey. The ground that we cleared still had a few roots left in it I think and so in order to kill them off we are going to have to keep it mown. Just before lunch Sam came over with the twins, the farrier was coming late afternoon and so she came to get the horses in beforehand. She couldn’t stay because it was right over school pick up time but it meant all I had to do was get them out of the stable and tie them up on the hard standing area. Biscuit had been a bit pottery on her feet but luckily she has not developed laminitis, her feet had just grown a bit long and she was footsore. She is now all trimmed up and on a restricted patch of ground so she doesn’t end up poorly. Jack is fine so he gets turned back out on the grass.

Saturday: Up and got all my jobs done because I was off out for the day with a friend 🥰 We went to a Beltane singing group day, it was lovely, we sat in a circle, the entrance was a May bower with foliage and ribbons and we sang songs about May and Beltane and the Green Man. We went to the woods and sang among the Bluebells and really connected with nature, I feel very ‘earthed’ now 😁 Or at least I did until I got back 🤪

We have what I can only described as the most incompetent pharmacy ever or so it seems. Month after month they never have my prescription ready despite having put it in well in advance, it’s always the same, you will have to come back tomorrow, I leave it to the last possible day as it is. This time John came home with it and it was only a bit of it, come back for the rest tomorrow 🙄 he goes back today while I was out and when I got home it was only a bit more of it and by now the place had shut and I am without some of my meds until they open again. They just didn’t give him the whole lot, nobody checked to see what should have been there and realised that was not all of it. I would t complain but this is all the time, it’s fractious going to pick up a prescription from them and it’s not just the pandemic it’s been going on for years. I would change pharmacy but from what I have heard they won’t have another company in the town 🤷‍♀️ how is that possible and how is it that they can give such poor service without any consequences. It’s not just me saying this either, ask just about anyone in the town and they will tell you the same thing, bloody useless and that’s on a good day!

I had to help John retrieve the goose eggs this evening, one of them is sitting but the eggs are not fertile so no point her doing that. The plan I came up with was to get the other three out of the paddock that way you only have one to deal with not the other three coming to her defence 😝 I tried a stick first to see if I could get her to move off the nest that didn’t work, so I got a bucket, put it over her head and manoeuvred her towards the door and off she went while I collected the eggs 😁

Sunday May 1st, May Day, Beltane, blessings to you all on this very special day. A day celebrated throughout time in many different countries and religions, a day to welcome the ‘growth’ of all things. One of the best days of the year I think 🥰 Except that it was cold and rainy, the rain I am not complaining about as we really need it but the cold side of it can do one 😂 Not much gone done today really, John did some burning and some cleaning out, can’t remember what I did but later in the afternoon I went over to look after Mia and the twins while Sam and Luke went out for dinner.

I did make up a small bouquet for the flower shed just in case anyone wants one 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Seed sowing, tree cutting and a trip to the Wildlife Park.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 7th March 2022: Weeeeeeee sliding into another week 😁 Today the weather has been lovely, the sun came out and although the breeze was a tad cold it was delightful working weather. So that is exactly what I have been doing, working outside, I had decided if it was raining I would do housework but lucky for me it wasn’t 😂 I had planned on making a small start on the hazel trees we have in the front, they have been kept in the traditional way for many years, six main trunks from each root but these will block a fair amount of light from my greenhouse and then evening sun from the font beds and so we cut them back each year. The six trunks remain it’s just that we keep the tops low and cut them back at the front as well. I will just do one or two I thought to myself but in the end I did the whole lot and at least that job is done for another year. While I was out there working I spotted a butterfly, my first this year, not one I have seen before though and I had to look it up. It was a green veined white, at first I though it was a cabbage white but when I looked at it close up it was all white and no black tips or spots and having not seen one before I had to find out exactly what it was.

After a quick sit down at noon I went back outside to the greenhouse, a plant delivery had arrived 😝 and I wanted to get them sorted asap. The delivery was from Farmer Gracy and the packaging was lovely I even had some free postcards in there. More dahlias ooops, cactus dahlias this time, I counted how many I have potted up and the number currently stands at 32 🤩 There was also a huge peony root, Sarah Berndhardt and an astrantia, all are now safely potted or planted. The greenhouse was a whopping 29c 🥵 and at this time of year you really have to be on your greenhouse ‘A’ game as the temperatures can swing massively from day to day. That means lots of weather watching, temperature watching, and making sure everything is not too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry. I checked the tortoises today, basically I find them in the heap of straw, touch a leg if I can see it and if it moves they made it through the winter, I am glad to say they were both responsive 😁

I then went out to the front beds armed with some pots of wetted compost and dug up a few self set seedlings to bring on, Jacobs ladder, campanula, Erigeron and also took some more basal cuttings of lupin, guara and chrysanthemum (although I found those a bit difficult as they are pretty woody) but nothing ventured nothing gained so might as well give it a go. I would go round and do hundreds more but where would I put them all, as it is my space is filling up quickly, dedicated space I mean, at this rate I might have to take over another area of the Smallholding (I do have my eye on the front paddock 🤪) Then is was inside for a sit down and a cuppa before I have to do the afternoon rounds, but what a great way to spend the day, days like this I think to myself, I really do have the best life 🥰

Tuesday: A cold start this morning though the sun was shining giving a false sense of a lovely warm day 😝 I spent the morning in and around the greenhouse, potting some things on and sowing some seeds. They are only small amounts of seeds at the minute in order to try and get ahead, this may work, it may not, a lot will depend on the weather in the coming weeks really. I also spent a bit of time today sorting through our rather large stash of outdoor gear. We seem to end up with quite a lot of outdoor coats, hats and thick socks, far more than we actually ever get to use to be honest. I tend to stash them away ‘just in case’ well the just in case has come but not for us, these items will be going to Ukrainian civilians that are fighting. I honestly have no idea how we have amassed so may spare weather proof coats and fleeces etc but I am very glad they will be going to someone who really needs them.

I had notification of more plants arriving eeek this should be the tail end no paw but I did order a couple more flowering shrubs for filler foliage. It really does become a bit of an obsession, every time I see somebody recommend something I am on it 🤪 One thing is for sure my garden will be full to bursting this year with shrubs, herbs and flowers 🥰

Wednesday: Not bad weather, the breeze was a little cold but the sun was shining well enough for most of the day. I made a decision to move all the potted dahlias to the poly tunnel because I am running out of space with them in the greenhouse. I have more plug plants arriving any day and need room to pot them up and bring them on, every time I think the plant deliveries are coming to the end I get another notification 😂 For the rest of the morning I made support for the peonies, they are heavy plants and the flowers can easily end up on the ground. I have never grown peonies before, I remember we had them in the garden when I was a child, red ones all down the fence. For some reason I didn’t like them then and therefore never grew them as an adult. Then the year before last a customer gave me some tubers she had divided, they didn’t amount to anything last year and I thought I had lost them but this year there is good strong growth on them so I need to support them. They are a great cut flower and I had ordered (which has now arrived and been planted) a huge root for the cutting garden. The supports I mad out of the hazel I cut down on Monday, the whips where big enough to use to make hazel rings that fit over three hazel sticks pushed into the ground. I used a bit of twine to keep them altogether but they are sturdy enough to do the job and cost next to nothing 😁

Supports don’t need to be pretty they just need to be sturdy enough to do the job, foliage will swamp the framework and you won’t see it anyway.

Thursday: Another decent day as far as the weather goes, sunny, a bit windy but mild enough. I had one job on my radar this morning and that was to cut back the elderflower tree down in the paddock that has grown up behind the guttering on the field shelter and pulled it down. I took my loppers and wandered down thinking it will take me about a hour at most 🤪 Two and a half hours later I finally finished, the tree was bigger than I had recalled and I had to go and get the bow saw for some branches. Then the guttering needed re attaching in places and so I went and got my cordless screwdriver only to find that it had been nailed on. Back to get the hammer and then a wrestle to unclip the gutter from the brackets, I screwed the brackets back in place, got all the guttering clipped back in and job finally done. Although there is a big pile of branches I now need to move. On the way back I decided to have a go at a large willow tree that is near the field gate, some of the branches hang too low to get under it with the ride on mower so while I had the equipment with me I thought I might as well tidy that up as well. Just as I finished John came home to get some lunch as he is just working down in the village. Once lunch was finished I spent a few hours getting some plants ready to put out for sale and I made a living wreath for spring. Just about finished that when Sam arrived with the twins and Mia for the Thursday swimming session. George wasn’t very well today so not too active, Lucie was on form as always 😂 Dinner then a catch up with the news, type this up and then an online flower session at 8pm.

This elder has grown behind the guttering and pulled it all down so needed a good prune and the guttering putting back up securely.
Job done 😁 just a big pile of branches to move now.

Friday: Out early and into the greenhouse to pot up some plug plants that arrived, crazy daisys 😁 Then up to my neighbour to collect more plants that had been delivered there by mistake and stop for a coffee and a catch up before returning home and potting up some cuttings she gave me and the plants that arrived. Sam arrived with the twins and we went to town to meet Shelley and Flo for a coffee and some cake. That was pretty much it for Friday, nice and relaxed.

Saturday: Not such a relaxing day, we have worked hard outside all day long cutting back the hazel nut trees down the side of the garden. There are 15 of them in total and today we have cut back 11 of them, two we did last year to let more light into the poly tunnels and two are staying as they are to get me shade in the afternoon by the back door. The others have all had a chop, they were getting big, the boughs were getting heavy and gnarled and although I hate taking down mature growth it was a case of needs must. We took them down to around two feet high, there are six trunks on each tree so you can see it was a big job to get done. It all had to be cut and cleared as we went and we won’t get any nuts this year but they will all grow up nice and tall again at some point. We may have to keep them lower than they were as we are not getting any younger, these have not been done for around ten years, another ten years and we won’t be able to do the job at all 😂 Dan came to put up fencing in the paddock so that’s good to get that started, I think he will get one fence done today and not sure when he is going to be doing the other one and we still have to get some gates to go in 🙄

Sunday: After doing the necessary jobs this morning we spent the whole day with the children and grandchildren at the local wildlife park. Luckily the rain mainly held off though the wind was cold at times but a great day was had by all and no doubt there are some very tired children this evening and some very tired adults too 😂

Posted in Friesland Farm

Sowing, Planting & 2nd place (I will take that 😁)

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 28th February 2022: There was a beautiful pink glow in the sky this morning before it turned to drizzle.

To say I felt sick yesterday when Putin started talking about Nuclear alert was an understatement and I am sure that the vast majority of you felt the same. How is it in this day and age that someone with such power can (or even want to) play such stupid games 🤷‍♀️ A world where everyone lives in harmony is clearly not possible sadly, the events are unbelievable and the pathetic rhetoric he spouts is also unbelievable, he has lost touch with reality, if he really ever had a hold of it. Because of all that is going on my thoughts are dragged straight back to self sufficiency mode. Not just on a personal level but a National one, the reliance on other countries for vast amounts of supply be it energy, metals, wood or food etc is, in my humble opinion, a big mistake. We have seen how quickly things can change and if the last few years have taught us anything at all it should be that relying on others for our needs can at times see us limping along in survival mode rather than thriving 😏

I spent the morning in relative bliss in the greenhouse potting on plants that I started off at the end of last year. There are good signs of growth and so while we are in the calm before the storm period I decided to pot things on and feed anything that looked like it was in need. Most of these plants will go out for sale at the front but some of them will be used for the cut flower beds or to fill up any empty areas in my flower beds.

Rain stopped play outside in the afternoon.

Tuesday: Is it just me or has everyone got a morbid interest of turning the news on whenever possible? I like information and if I see something written or heard something I like to check it out from as many sources as I can. Nothing I have heard that has come from Russian propaganda has any merit whatsoever as far as I can tell. Things like the Nazi reference to Ukraine, does he have a point I think so off I go to check it out from the most reliable, independent source I can find, I have checked out many things and they have all been twisted to suit Putins purpose, so I conclude that the man is mad, I suspect most other people think so too and who knows where this will end. I am willing Ukraine to somehow beat off the might of the Russian army, their bravery is incredible.

I did a bit in the greenhouse, sowed a couple more seeds but that was about it really, I went to town in the afternoon with a Shelley for a mooch round the charity shops and a hot chocolate (weather is miserable). It was me doing the animals in the afternoon and while I was doing the rounds I realised that the fox had tried to get in the goose hut. One one of the roof rails is rotten and the ply underneath joins right at that point, I think the fox has got up there and tried to scrabble the rotten wood out of the way to gain access. What made me think this is that some things that were on the roof were down on the floor and they were not there yesterday evening. John had to go up and put an extra piece of ply on top of the roof as a temporary measure to make sure I don’t lose any of my lovely gooses 😁

Wednesday: More of the same weather wise though it is supposed to improve later in the week. For now it is grey, damp and drizzly so not much going on outside. I did sow some mangetout seeds (1st sowing) in the greenhouse, I think trying to sow direct would be a waste of time, there are the mice that pinch them or the weather that rots them so starting them off inside is a safer option.

I have been putting the final touches to my very first competition entry at the flower club tonight 😝 I really have no idea if I fulfilled the brief, in fact there wasn’t one really, look it up on the internet, well that produced thousands of different interpretations 😂 so I have done my best with what I had and what I wanted to achieve. I was surprised how nervous I am at submitting it later, but I am also excited to see what everyone else has done to get some ideas for another time and we have a demonstration which will be lovely. A pot et fleur is what was asked for and hopefully that’s what I have produced 🤷‍♀️ next time it’s a pave so I’d better get researching that next 😋

Thursday: I am bouncing around this morning with the biggest grin on my face because I only went and came in second in the ‘pot et fleur’ competition 😁 I was genuinely amazed and even more amazing is that the demonstrator who was booked was the independent judge and did the critique said that it was a difficult choice between the first and second place, whaaaaat 😁😁😁 seriously I can’t tell you how chuffed I am that I got it right. The demonstration itself was really inspiring it was titled ‘be kind to the earth’ and the arrangements were all made using compostable or recyclable holders so right up my street and she even made a heart similar to the ones I made with the weeping birch, obviously hers were amazing but it gives me something to work towards next year so watch this space lol.

My entry which I was totally amazed to find got second place 😁

Not much on the agenda this morning and I had a hospital appointment in the afternoon. The trip to and from the hospital took longer than the actual appointment 🙄 still it was nice to see a consultant face to face again, last time I saw anyone it was 2019 😮 All is well though so that is a good thing.

Friday: Not a bad day, a tad cold this morning but no rain and the sun made an appearance this afternoon. I did some baking this morning, just an oat and seed bar for me to snack on and a date and walnut cake for John to snack on lol. In the afternoon I went into the greenhouse and potted up some dahlias that had arrived, these were from Sarah Raven and are the William Morris collection 😁 there were supposed to be four tubers in there but I found five yay. I also sowed quite few annual seeds, amaranth (green giant) China Aster, phlox (crème brûlée) calendula (orange flash) some sunflowers, teddy bear, a multi stem and some large sunflowers, I also sowed some foxglove seeds, I think that was it but could have been a few more things 🤔 After that I made a cup of tea and sat out the front in the sunshine for a little while that was until,I spotted lots of sycamore seedlings sprouting so I did some weeding. Back inside to get the dinner sorted and then out to feed the poultry and collect the eggs. Back in to get the dinner in the oven and while it was cooking I had a live workshop to attend online. After we had eaten I had another live workshop to attend online and finally that was the end of the day and I could spend the rest of the evening relaxing (actually I was playing wordless unlimited 😝)

Saturday: I planted up plenty of gladioli bulbs today although not all of them, I will be successionally planting these so as to stagger the time that they come into bloom, I don’t want them all blooming at the same time. This will be the same for most of the annuals, the seeds will have a gap of at least two weeks between sowings so that I get a continuous flush of flowers rather than all at once (that’s the plan anyhow) I also potted on some tomato seedlings that I have been growing indoors, they are doing well and just needed to go into bigger pots to bring them on more. I sowed some more zinnia seeds and some sweet peas called ‘sublime scent’ 🥰 After doing that I went and helped John who had been giving the birds a good clean out, he did the ducks, the new point of lay at the front and the hens at the back. I went and did the birds in the stable block, we deep litter those so it was a case of raking it over, adding new sawdust and redoing the laying boxes and areas. I also added some sunflower hearts, seaweed and diatomaceous Earth to their food bowls. The new hens have begun to lay 😁 it won’t be long before we are getting lots of pullet eggs every day. Early evening I went over to Sam’s to babysit while he and Luke went out for the night.

Sunday: Not a bad day today although the sunshine was a bit deceiving, it looked a lot warmer than it actually was. We were up quite late for us as the babysitting was an early morning finish 🥱 but we soon got on with a few things. John did some tidying and burnt some rubbish meanwhile I prepped the dinner for later today and this time it was Sam, Luke and the kids coming for roast. I can’t think what else we did today but we were constantly on the go so must have got quite a bit done.

I need to wander across the paddock tomorrow sometime and see if the wild garlic is growing yet, I have seen other posts where people have handfuls, maybe mine will get to that stage one day 🙄

I hope you have a great week, the news on the world stage at the minute is not so good and every time I watch the news I feel heartbroken for Ukraine. All the more reason to really enjoy the little things in life, the Robin singing it’s heart out on the branch of a tree, that lonesome sunbeam that has found a chink in the clouds, the sound of normal everyday life going on around us, don’t take anything for granted, look, listen, love x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Valentines Day, Rhubarb appearing & stormy weather.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 14th February 2022: Weeee another week to slide into 😂 A sunny, mild start to the day but the actual forecast for this week does not look the best overall, time will tell. John has gone to work today and so I am on duty, once sorted indoors it was out to get the birds all fed and watered. I was hoping to find a goose egg today as traditionally this is the day they be in laying but no such luck just yet, I did put some nice clean straw in to try and encourage them 😝 Then it was onto the hens, the outside run needs a clean but I got on with the stable hens first, top up the water, top up the feed, I added some DE, seaweed and sunflower seeds to their breakfast this morning, raked over the old sawdust to check for any buried eggs and put in a whole bag of clean sawdust in one of the pens, the other only just had some the other day. Then onto let the ducks out and collect their eggs, they need a clean out but I am waiting for John to finish the compost area because that’s where the stuff goes. Onto the orchard pens, did I say that the fox had one of the light Sussex hens, the one that raised the chicks, only one chick made it to full size and now she is all on her own because mamma was taken by foxy, how the other one made it through I don’t know but as I found mums headless body in the paddock I assume the fox was disturbed by something. I put some fresh straw in for her and fresh straw in for the turkeys and the other light Sussex hens. I barrowed two loads of woodchip into their pen as well, the rain has made the ground deteriorate a fair bit and now all but the ducks and the outside hens are clean and tidy. I may go out and do those later or I may wait until tomorrow morning not sure yet.

Back inside for a coffee and a quick sit down before getting on with other things. It is Valentines Day today, not that it makes much difference in our house 🙄 probably the subconscious reason I decided to grow my own flowers at least that way I will have some. It is amazing how delightful a bunch of flowers can be, I remember one year a flower van pulled up and the lady got out with a big bouquet, it immediately lifted my spirits, then I realised they were for our daughter and not me 😏 😂

Valentine’s Day 🥰

Still no sign of the Lisianthus seeds sprouting (told you they were difficult) but others are popping up all over the place. The Ami and snapdragons are doing well, some lupin growing nicely and the sunflowers have just sprouted then there are some veg as well, beetroot, celeriac and tomato are all doing well in fact while I think about it I must sow some more tomato seeds. Oh and the rhubarb is beginning to appear so that won’t be long before the first harvest 🥰

Decided to do some paperwork in the afternoon as the rain began mid morning, simple enough task you would think, printer only has one job and that is to print 🙄 Low on ink it says, change ink, not genuine cartridges it says, I know yours are too bloody expensive, printing it says while making all the right noises but not actually doing anything 🤦‍♀️ Prints out, eligible, shall I clean the print head, ooo yes please do, cleaning please wait, just exactly how long for 🤷‍♀️ A simple task that should have taken a minute and that’s half an hour of my life gone and my blood pressure raised! Not to mention wasted paper and that was only the first of many 😝 I actually went away and made a cup of tea while waiting for it to perform the task of cleaning, came back, want me to clean the nozzles, oh go on then, seriously I can have a shower quicker than that thing can clean itself. And the blame of me gaining a lb or two this week lies fairly on the shoulders of Epson because what else was I supposed to while waiting other than eat the whole valentine blondie that Shelley bought me 😂

After printing out a reem of invoices (yes I know there is a better way but I like tangible paper copies 😝) I need to make yet another note to self: Keep a check on what plants you are buying or you will end up doubling up 🤪🤪 I think I could probably start a garden centre at this rate! I am not even going to begin to add it up yet, just keep telling myself I will make it back in sales 😉 Yes the most I print off the more I realise I need to get a grip on the order information including what, when and prices. No idea how many hours I have sat here now waiting for print outs, tried to make them more printer friendly, failed 😣

Tuesday: Pardon me but what a shitty day 😂 the weather is horrid, wet, cold and breezy, yuk. John was home for the morning and so he did the animals and then a couple of jobs out in the garden I needed done. The slabs down the side of the polytunnel which form a pathway have been down for about 8/9 years and have ‘walked’ so he took them all up p, shored up the side and laid them all again nicely 😁 He was brave working out there because meanwhile I found plenty to get done indooors in the warm 😊 Clean and vacuum the boot room, change the bed sheets and clean the bedroom, dig into the freezer and get ingredients for dinner tonight, a nice beef stew in the slow cooker for John, salmon for me 😝 I also got a chicken out to thaw for cooking tomorrow. We still have plenty in the freezers to get through yet, all that work back in the summer months prepping and freezing starts to pay off now that there is not much growing in the veg garden. I still have cabbage and kale available but nothing else really.

Wednesday: Storm something or other (we get so many these days I stop listening to the names) bought with it some pretty hefty gusts of wind and apparently tomorrows storm (yep one after the other) is going to be even stronger 🙄 I had ordered some turf which arrived first thing so John and I spent the morning laying that and repairing the edges of the raised beds next to it. We have done away with one of the pathways and the herb bed so have another 6mx5m of lawn or we would have if I had ordered enough 🤪 I had to order some more which will arrive tomorrow, but rather glad it didn’t all arrive today as working out in that all morning has been hard work. An afternoon of sitting down is definitely on the cards 😂 We sat down mid morning for a coffee outside and as a vehicle drove past a massive clatter occurred, it was towing a trailer with a tailgate which had come undone and fell with a bang onto the road, not something that happens everyday lol.

Thursday: The rest of the turf we needed arrived 😁 we now have a bigger lawn area for the kiddies to play on and less for me to weed and tend to. We scrapped the path down the side as well, I spent hours weeding the damn thing might as well cut grass instead. I have also sown a few more seeds today, more tomatoes (gardeners delight, Alisa Craig and tigerella) I have sown some basil and some dill as well, they are all in the greenhouse in a propagator. Still haven’t managed to catch the mouse, it has now eaten all the peanut butter so I have loaded the trap with maple syrup and wheat, my plan is to fatten it so that it is heavy enough to trip the trap 😂 The cats are doing a great job mind you, while we were out there today one of the cats had two mice for lunch. There was a lovely rainbow this morning, the calm between the storms, we are due a pretty nasty one in the early hours, storm Eunice is an explosive cyclogenesis which is a weather bomb apparently, instead of a storm building as it moves, the weather front moves and explodes into a storm. I hope we all come through it without any damage, watching the way they keep going on about it on the news I am surprised everyone isn’t totally terrified and digging holes in the ground to climb into 😏 I am not looking forward to the next 24hrs that’s for sure 😥

Friday: It is 10am just sitting here with a coffee thinking that so far it has not been too bad when a massive gust made the place groan and creak 😏 John has been here all morning but he now has to go and do a small job just when the winds are getting stronger, two points here, he is on the road when it is not so great out there and I am on my own here awaiting any catastrophe by myself 😣 I have some veg soup on the go for lunch and it occurred to me yesterday that we really need some kind of back up plan for any power cut. At least if we had a small gas stove we can boil a kettle, get a warm drink and make a hot water bottle. We have a generator but as I said to John I am not so good at starting it, so it’s fine if he is here not so good if I am on my own 🙄 I figured it would be a good idea to boil the kettle, fill a flask and a hot water bottle just in case 😂 To be honest the hot water bottle is much needed for my back, I woke up with a bad back on Wednesday and it hasn’t really got much better, stiff and slightly painful though not massively, I can move but with caution ⚠️ I would have gone for a walk to try and ease it off but today is not the ideal day 🤪

The winds got pretty fierce with some strong gusts, then it all seemed to die down again and then we lost power and the winds picked up once more. Good job I made a hot water bottle 😝 I called the power company but naturally they are only putting out a recorded message saying they have no idea when they will be able to get power back on and it could be off overnight 😣 I think a few layers of clothing will be needed, although I do have battery powered lights and a solar powered radio which is fully charged so that’s the evenings entertainment sorted 😂 At least I am not panicking about the Rayburn this year, every cloud and all that.

The power came back on for an hour or so and then went off again, but then came back on, how long this will go on for is anyones guess lol. The delivery of point of lay hens was cancelled for today, too risky to travel and we can wait another few days. At one point the wind was so loud it sounded like to door was open, it has died down somewhat now and I nipped out to the post box. I had a quick scan round to assess the place and apart from the bay tree in a big pot that has gone over it’s all looking fairly unscathed, plenty of reports locally of trees down everywhere though.

Judging by a lot of smallholders photos and videos I have seen online, we got away lightly, mostly I would say that is due to the positioning of and building robust pens and huts. We nearly always plan something with the wind direction in mind because it does get pretty windy here even on a regular day so stormy days are much worse. The older buildings are robust as well, Dad was a belts and braces person, there are straps on everything to hold it down luckily, the only thing that always worries me is the metal sheet roofing. Normally they would be fine but with constant winds at that speed they can easily be shaken so much they come loose, I said to John that once the weather calms we (he) needs to check the fixings and tighten any that have come loose.

Saturday: Weather was not much better but less wind and more rain. Didn’t do much outside at all and in the afternoon we went to a joint birthday party for two of our great nephews, 1 and 2 years old respectively. Nice to catch up with people we have not seen for a year or so and the children enjoyed playing together 🙄🤪

🙄

Sunday: Shocking again, almost as windy as Friday, raining most of the afternoon, cold and grey, yuk and more storms rolling in over the next couple of days 😏 It wasn’t raining first thing and John did the animals and then built the new compost bin area. The other has all been cleared and stacked ready to rot down more but we needed a new bay built with pallets which is what he did. Then he cleaned out the ducks, couldn’t do that until he built the bay as that’s where the duck muck goes. And finally he put the wheel back on the car, it had to be taken to the garage at the beginning of the week as the wheel rim had cracked and needed welding. Meanwhile I found stuff to do indoors, I didn’t really want to go outside in all that plus I still have a bad back so didn’t want to be lifting anything.

What is one to do on a cold, wet windy Sunday, well go and buy more plants of course 😁 When John came back in looking for a coffee I suggested we go out and get one accompanied by cake 🥰 and a mooch round at some lovely plants 🤪 I purchased more dahlia, gladioli and some anemone bulbs plus some sweet Williams, you can never have enough plants right 🤷‍♀️ My plan is to take cutting from all the dahlias I have so far which will increase my overall stock. Anything I can propagate I will have a go at, this morning I took some basal cuttings from the delphinium and I will be doing the same from the chrysanthemums and lupin that are coming up, it is a great way to get free plants and easy enough to do. I have used the carnations I bought from the garage a few weeks back (to have a go at an arrangement I wanted to try) to get new plants as well. They are easy to root just in water at this time of year, give it a go if you have any from your valentines flowers 😁 You are looking for new little plants coming from a leaf node, pinch those out and pop in water, they will soon form roots, don’t forget to change the water every couple of days to stop bacteria building up.

That’s is for this week, rubbish weather week I think I will call it 🙄 let’s hope it gets better during the week ahead, have a good one x

Posted in Friesland Farm

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

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some spring hope appearing 🥰

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

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

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

Posted in Friesland Farm

Busy week, painting projects & preparing to flower farm 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th January 2022: Milder than it has been, dry and the ground is not frozen yay that means I can get outside and get something done. First though I had to get the animals all sorted as John has gone to work for a couple of hours but will be back mid morning. As soon as I could I went outside to get the job done that I had gone to sleep thinking about, sad I know 😂 The job in question was cutting back the lilacs in the veg garden. Quite a few years ago we thinned out the lilacs at the front and heeled in some whips, they were supposed to be dug up at a later point. That was probably something like seven years ago so you can guess how big they have got. They are at the end of the bed where I will be growing the cut flowers and so I cut them down by half in order to get the maximum sunshine but still provide a wind barrier, I also hope I will get some good lilac flowers from them although possibly not this year. I dug up a fair few whips to pot up and there was just one big root I couldn’t budge. John came home at that point and we went off to the diy shop to get some paint for the roadside advertising boards. I want to paint them the same colour (or near enough) to the logo background and try to pull everything together a bit better. Once back home John had to go off to the bank to shut down an account we haven’t used for around ten years but still had a small amount of money left in it. I sorted out what would be for dinner this evening and then got the smallest board in to give it a clean up and repair some little parts that had got damaged in the wind. I realised I needed to re do the blackboard paint so called John who was on his way back, he turned around and went to get the paint from the diy shop, bad management from me there but at least I can get the boards sorted. While John was out doing the afternoon rounds I painted the smallest of the boards with new blackboard paint and once it has had a makeover it will look splendid. John also went out and dug up that last root for me 😁 tomorrow we will go out there and put everything through the chipper, tidy up and that bed will be ready when I am for planting up.

Last night while checking my emails I looked at a particular website and decided I might like to go on one of the courses they were offering. I talked it over with John because it’s not cheap lol, but I am so excited to have booked a cut flower day course with Sarah Raven 🥰 She is the guru of cut flowers in the UK and I can’t wait to go and do that, yep it’s fair to say I am ‘cock a hoop’ about that.

At times I think to myself ‘whoa, what are you doing’ and then other times I am full steam ahead with ideas and plans, the one thing I keep telling myself is to just roll with it and enjoy everything, I mean what could be better than growing flowers all summer long. The one thing I did think was that at least picking flowers is an early morning job 😁

The poultry are obviously all still shut away and it would seem that it’s particularly bad this year 🙄 On the one hand it is easy for us to do them every day and they are not all over the place laying but on the other hand I kind of wonder what is the point of having them if they can’t get outside for four months of the year and so far that’s two years in a row we have had to lock them down 😔

Tuesday: oooosh been very busy this morning, after getting the morning jobs done including the animals, I got straight onto painting the primer on the advertising board for the front of the drive. I figured if I did that quickly it would be drying while I went about the rest of the day’s business. Today on the agenda was chipping up all the prunings from the lilacs and the apple trees I pruned the other week. That took around three hours and all the mulch went back onto the ground under the lilacs and around the lavender. John meanwhile was working on the area that will now be grass, it was the herb bed and I have dug everything out and potted up or replanted elsewhere. The sides of the bed need removing and all the soil needs moving so it is level with the pathway (although the path will also be grassed) He has been doing a fabulous job, riddling all the soil as he goes and putting on the rhubarb bed which really needed a top up. Around 11 John went out to look at a couple of jobs and an hour later returned, I had some soup in a mug outside, I didn’t want to stop and sit down otherwise I wouldn’t get going again. John got himself some lunch and then came back outside where we worked until mid afternoon, should sleep well tonight 🤪

In between everything else I was also painting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the flowers.

Wednesday: Another busy day today, mild again which meant plenty of time outside to get stuff done. John carried on with the removing all the soil from the area we are putting down to lawn and while he was doing that I potted up all the lilac whips I dug up yesterday and I also planted 100 allium bulbs of various types. Some will go out for sale and some will be for the cutting garden. We then moved onto a different area, the brassica cage has been there for about four years I think, it is time to use it for something else before I end up with club root 🙄 I took off all the environmesh and hatched a plan 🤪 the plan involved re using items we already had to create a sweet pea growing area, I have some metal grid sheets that are pretty big and so I wanted one of those attached to the framework of the brassica cage and a narrow raised bed at the bottom for the sweet peas. It should be pretty successful 🤞 and a dedicated area for the sweet peas which have deep roots. I have now almost cleared the area where the rest of the cut flowers will be going and just need to make a plan of what is going where. I will get some pictures once it’s cleared properly and ready to go.

In between all this I was repainting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the eggs, the boards are all having an overhaul and a refresh, I didn’t get before and after pics of the first board but I have of this second one.

I have also been trying to make hearts from the weeping birch branches, every year in winter it sheds lots of branches, they are very long and wispy, ideal for making things with.

Much better 😁

We popped out to get a bit of shopping once we had eaten dinner, figured it would be quiet in the evening. We got back just in time for a zoom meeting I almost forgot about 🙄 it was a cut flower meeting, very interesting and nice to see others who are doing the same thing.

Thursday: Making the most of John being at home because today is the last day for a while. So after the morning rounds John got straight on outside finishing the sweet pea box and I got on with chalking up the egg board for the roadside, looks pretty good and should just give a nudge reminder to anyone passing that we still sell eggs. Once I had finished I went out to help John, I lined the box, moved a few barrowfulls of dead and decaying leaves (I need to burn these as they are from the pear tree that has scab) Then once John had finished I laid weed membrane down over the rest of the plot to stall the weeds until I can get on it. We measured the plot and overall size is 12ft wide by 30ft long with some small areas already planted with the lilacs and lavender but the rest is ready to plan. It then started to rain 🌧 oh rain stops play says John, nope rain just means play outside stops but plenty to be done inside 🤪 So for the second time in as many weeks John got the hoover out 😝 that is worthy of writing as it doesn’t happen very often, not at home anyway, I am reliably informed by customers that he hoovers in their houses! Hoovering, tidying, wipe round done and time for a sit down, we have the twins later so need a rest in between. I have had to order a new vacuum cleaner, we have two, one is for the boot room and used to do the Rayburn, it’s gets that stale smell so it is the ‘outside hoover’ it has given up the ghost so the ‘indoor’ one moves to outdoor and the new one will be for inside.

I am feeling like my head is fit to burst with everything at the minute especially social media lol. But it’s an extremely useful platform both for getting information out and for receiving information. I just think that at the moment I have too many social media plates in the air 😂 online courses, zoom meetings, online workshops, relevant groups for flowers, Smallholding, self sufficiency, veg growing, gardening in general, personal, then there are the farm pages to run on Facebook, and Instagram and the blog and podcast, I think I need a PA 🤪 Still it keeps me busy right 😝. That and preparing the garden for spring, all of it not just the flower patch, growing seeds, potting up plants and planting bulbs not too mention keeping up with the weeds once they start in earnest.

In the past I have tried to find and trial other more environmentally friendly weed suppressants but I have resorted to the landscape membrane. I tried jute which was ok but only lasted the year which would make it pretty expensive, the cardboard method works really well and is cheap but to cover the area that I need to cover takes a LOT of cardboard so I can only use what I have. The biodegradable membrane is great (expensive) but not permeable and very flimsy so at the moment for large areas it is the landscape membrane I am afraid. Two reasons why this is the best option for me, one, the area is pretty extensive and there is a lot to do. I need to be able to be in control of what gets done and when, which leads me to the second reason and that is the Lupus. I have no idea how the year ahead will go regards the illness, if I am lucky and can keep on an even keel without flares, it will be smooth sailing. If it doesn’t go well I can be incapacitated for weeks sometimes months and then things will get very out of hand, it will stress me out massively and stress is something I need to avoid at all costs because it is a trigger. Sometimes you just have to do what is best for you and your health even if it goes against your ethics which in this case it does but I do need to balance one against the other and until they come up with something amazingly good that’s what I will be using. The good thing is that I use it over and over again but it does shred at the edges if the wind gets at it which is not great, if anyone has any tips on how to stop that I would be interested.

Friday: A frosty morning again but hopefully the sun will thaw everything quite quickly. John has gone off to work today but he did the animals before leaving so I got on with a few household chores. I am hoping to get outside once it warms up a little bit.

Last night I drew out the cutting patch to scale and am giving the layout lots of thought, I think that is the right approach because if I rush in with deciding where things will go chances are I will have forgotten something and have got change it all. The annual flowers are easy enough but the perennial flowers all have different needs and once they are in I don’t want to find I have got it wrong.

Update on the soil blocks and the grow lights: The soil blocks are definitely a winner, I need to get the level of moisture right next time when I use the block because if you have the soil too loose they can crumble a little when the edges dry out but I think that is more user error than design fault. So far I still think they are a brilliant concept, pricking out is a thing of the past with these as exact seedling has its own little bit of soil which you just transplant into the next size block, it’s genius really 🥰 As for the grow lights they have pros and cons, I bought a set with a clip that clip to a table or bench and four arms that have the lights in, the lights are red or blue or a mix of both. The pros are that they do work well, when I change the light colour, the leaf colour of the seedlings change as well. The seedlings also respond to the lights but you do need the lights directly over the seedlings, no point trying to squeeze an extra tray at the end of the light range because the seedlings just lean in that direction. I bought them because the lisianthus are difficult to germinate and grow and I wanted to give them all the help I could. I have seen set ups with trays and trays of seedlings on shelving each with lights attached to the under side of the shelf above. My thoughts are that although we are impatient to get growing, and so use these false environments, nature really does know best and waiting for the light levels to increase is probably better, you will end up with stronger seedlings. I wonder with big set ups, where are they moving all theses seedlings onto once they get big enough to transplant, another set up? You certainly couldn’t move them to outside, not in the UK at any rate, considering we are still weeks away from the last frost date that would be too risky. I imagine people must have a second stage set up that is perhaps under heated cover 🤷‍♀️ I am not sure, maybe I will research it to find out. Overall both the seed blocks and the grow lights are good but for the lights I personally wouldn’t go to a bigger scale not unless I had a good second stage set up to move them too.

John came home mid morning which I wasn’t expecting. I had decided to give the office/craft room a bit of a tidy up but as soon as I finished that I went outside with John to get some work done on the garden. The compost heap needed turning and the compost that was ready needed distributing. I decided that the beds in the big tunnel could do with topping up so that’s where the compost went. I moved two smaller beds that were temporary and put in some pallet collars to make two bigger beds which John also filled. I gave the tunnel a tidy up, put some membrane over the beds. That is the tunnel ready for the season apart from a good wash which needs to wait until the damp weather is finished otherwise the green algae will just come back. I don’t think I have ever had the tunnel ready for action this early in the year. John then carried on with turning this years heap, the more you turn it the quicker it breaks down but it’s hefty work. I tidied up some broken pots and bits ready to go into the skip and then I too sorted the compost bins at the other side of the garden. In the beginning we only had one compost area but I wasted a lot of time talking it all to the other end of the garden each time that I decided to have extra bins within the garden area. I have two big square ones and two darlek type, I emptied out the darleks and put all of that on top of the material in the square ones. Again the more weight on top the quicker it will break down, I quite expected to see some wildlife in there but nope not today. By 1pm it was getting colder and we had both worked pretty hard so it was inside for some soup and a sit down. The soup is from the soup bags I made up at the end of last year, very handy to pop them in the slow cooker with a stock cube in the morning, turn onto high and its ready to blitz and eat at lunchtime. It’s also great because there are veg in there that John wouldn’t normally eat but once blitzed he has no idea 😁

It occurred to me while I was in the poly tunnel that I could offer advice to anyone who is torn between a poly tunnel and a greenhouse. If you can only have one I would say go for a tunnel, they have different uses but a tunnel can be used similar to the greenhouse plus so much more and always go for the biggest one you can afford or site, whichever that is. If it is a greenhouse you really want above all else then by all means get the best you can afford but unless you want it for aesthetics don’t spend the extra on a posh one. It doesn’t work any different and doesn’t make you a better grower, there are better ways to spend the extra money on a greenhouse, such as ventilation, shading, decent staging, irrigation systems, electrics and decent propagators. Also a green house that is well put up will stand the test of time, doesn’t matter how good it looks if the wind rocks it will soon start to leak or worse the glass will crack. Our first poly tunnel has been up for around 10 years and the covering is still fully intact and functional, a lot of that is down to where it is sited, it doesn’t get battered by the wind, which improves the life span. In the tunnels I opted for an overhead irrigation system, which I don’t use, the reason being that too much water is wasted when it is watered from the top. You water areas that don’t need it such as the pathways, watering at soil level is far more cost effective and it is directed straight to the roots of the plants which is where it is needed most.

Another online flower workshop tonight, I am learning lots and loving it 😊

Saturday: Windy lol, that’s today, but mild enough and the sun peeks out now and again. After the usual jobs John asked what needed doing and so I gave him a verbal list, he chose the duck pen 😝 great because that was the dirtiest, muckiest job and I didn’t really want to do it 😂 We had to let the ducks out for a while in order to get it done, John shovelled out dirty, wet, smelly mud and shoved up plenty of duck poop, he then power washed the whole pen. Meanwhile I did the horses water and let them into the front side paddock, they now have three paddocks to roam over. Onto topping up straw in the hens laying areas and then to top up straw in the goose hut, I also found some site fencing (that plastic green stuff) and put that up all along the side of the little paddock that the geese are in. About four years ago Mum, Ken and I planted 950 daffodil bulbs, the first and second year they came up lovely, the third year we had to keep the geese in there due to bird flu and although the daffs came up they were short because the geese trampled all along there hampering growth. The same was likely to happen this year except that I have now fenced it off and hopefully I will get nice tall flowers 🤞 Once I finished that I made the decision to move the ducks back to their original housing, we were going to wait and get the hut moved and a new floor down but the hens in the stable could really do with some fresh air and so they will now move into the pen John has just cleaned out and the ducks will go back to their own home. One of the ducks is not looking very strong so I have ,over her to a stable on her own with food and water to see if she gets any better, she was quite light in weight and muddy I am not sure what has happened to her but if I can try and get her better then I will. I then went on to do some bits in the garden, I cut back all the autumn raspberry canes, potted a few up that I pulled up I also repaired and secured the posts that the canes get tied to as some of them were broken and wobbly. By that time it was lunchtime so I came in for some soup and a cuppa, John also came in for something eat. We had planned on a quick sit down and then carry on but Sam arrived with the children for a couple of hours.

I did another online masterclass about peonies in the afternoon, these type of classes are very good because they are specific and include information about using them as cut flowers rather than just in the garden borders. I have another three classes I think over the next week or so, I am really enjoying them and although I am not a novice gardener I am learning new things all the time 😁

This is the cut flower area it is approx 30 x 12ft 😮 the lilacs I cut back are at the far end and there are some lavenders in there already. The box on the right hand side are for the sweet peas and I need to decide how best to use the rest of the area, not that I am short of plants and seeds to go in there lol.

The weed membrane is to slow down and weed growth until I can get it sorted. This bed has always been a bit of a problem bed, rouge raspberry runners, comfrey and bindweed all have their roots in here, I may have to look at a few raised beds for some of it until they have all died off which could be a year or two 😏 The list of plants and seeds I have is pretty extensive from the favourites like roses, dahlias and peonies to cornflowers, poppies and snapdragons. The beauty of the mix I have is that the bouquets will not be like the ones from the shops, they need to use flowers that will transport well, I can use whatever I want and whatever is looking good at the time of picking.

Sunday: John did a bit outside in the morning and I was indoors making hearts from twigs. Just before lunch I decided I needed a trip to the garden centre to see what is actually out now, of course that result in some spenditure 😂 I said to John, I am investing for this time next year and to my surprise he said ‘good idea’ well then there was no holding me back 😝 I bought some beautiful hellebores, nerine and anemones, I am determined to have naturally blooming flowers this time next year! We were speaking to someone we know who works at the centre and he said that I was onto a good thing, growing and selling flowers and plants, because importing them is about to get a lot harder than it was due to brexit, I hadn’t realised that when I decided to do it but it’s an added bonus I guess. We stopped at the garage on the way back because I wanted to get a cheap bunch of flowers 😮 to give something a try. I was pretty pleased with the result proving that you can even make these look like they are bespoke 😁

Garage flowers and some twigs can still make an artistic display 😁

Have a great week, we are one more week nearer to spring 😁

Posted in Friesland Farm

Happy New Year 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

I hope you have all had a lovely festive time and I wish you a very happy 2022. We still have Covid (who would have thought it 🙄) but we are getting to grips with living with it on a daily basis, let’s hope this year coming is a little more like life used to be 😁

We have wined and dined, loved and laughed, rested and recuperated, felt grateful for what we have, watched endless Christmas tv and generally had a fabulous time. All the while of course, we have had to continue doing the daily routines with animal feeding and care no matter what day it was but that is ok it’s what we signed up for.

I have also spent some considerable time thinking about how we move forward with the Smallholding this coming year. I had mused over cut flowers and that is still very much part of the plan I just need to put it into practice now. As well as the usual bunches of flowers I saw a lovely jam jar posy while I was researching and thought ‘oooo yes, I like those’ they very much they fit in with the ethos here, the jam jars can be returned time and time again for refilling, they are small enough to fit on any table or surface if you don’t have a large enough area for a full vase of flowers and all kinds of up-cycled embellishments can be used including the customers own if they want a particular ribbon used, yep I really like this idea, ‘Flowers @ Friesland Farm’ is in its newborn phase 🥰 Locally grown, no pesticides or artificial fertilisers used, minimal miles, grown with love and pride, doesn’t get better than that does it 😁 Add to that the plants I divide or grown from seed to sell at the gate and the direction for the year is looking good, just got to hope the weather is kind 😜

Betwixtmas: 😂 We we’re not idle (not all the time anyway) over the holidays, the chickens and ducks keep on laying, the horses need checking over, the other non laying lot still need feeding and watering as do the dogs and cats as well as ourselves. We have been busy most days with cleaning out and cleaning up, the huts that the birds were moved out of when the avian flu came have now been cleaned and power washed. The hard standing has been cleared of leaves and debris and power washed, the leaves all over the driveway have been raked and piled under the trees and we have been moving woodchip onto the paths in the garden. We also moved plenty of barrowfuls to the orchard where the ground deteriorated very quickly once the rain came. When the weather permitted we worked on the veg garden to get ahead ready for spring, putting home made compost on the beds, harvesting leeks, carrots and beetroots, we still have kale and cabbages in the ground, the broad beans are growing nicely as are the garlic and onions. Flower bulbs are beginning to appear which is always a lovely sign that the wheel keeps on turning. There were also plenty of times when we sat and watched a film or saw family and ate up all the festive food 🥰 No matter how hard I try not to have too much food in, there always seems to be too much, none of it is wasted though. John had bubble and squeak on Boxing Day and I have three more portions frozen as well as cooked veg which will make soup at some point. I have some cake from an unexpected visit that I also froze because we have Christmas cake and Christmas pudding to eat up first and of course plenty of chocolate to get through 🤪

Once all the festive food is used up I have set myself a bit of a challenge (in fact I have started it even though we still have stuff left) I am not doing ‘veganuary’ but I am intending to make vegetables as much, if not the biggest, part of our meals. Sounds easy right but I also want to use seasonal and mostly what I have grown myself, this is a lot easier said than done. I searched for some inspirational recipes online but most of them overlook the seasonal and there are plenty of ingredients that have come from far flung corners of the world which I want to avoid. So you see keeping it interesting is a challenge. I will be using store cupboard goods that I have already such as rice and pasta (though I could make my own pasta if I run out) As it is winter then soup is the easiest go to lunch, packed with home grown veg, very nutritious and healthy which is what is needed after the indulgences lately.

The first recipe was lovely and lacto-vegetarian (it seems there are different versions of vegetarianism) John did not eat this 😂 but I fried off some butternut squash (cubed) along with some garlic and some dried sage in olive oil. Fry just enough to get them coated and then add a splash of water to flash cook until the squash is soft, then add chopped mushrooms until it all caramelises, add to cooked pasta and I crumbled blue cheese on top though you could use whatever cheese you like such as Parmesan. Twas delicious I have to say and what’s more it felt like comfort food which is all the more important during the winter months. I also got some vegetable soup going in the slow cooker, turnip, butternut squash, carrots and onions from the garden, I added celery (which I had bought for Christmas) some mushrooms and some peas, veg stock, bouillon powder and pepper. Cooked it down for a good few hours until everything was soft then turned it off overnight, blitzed it and reheated in a pan for lunch the next day, delish and I felt I had already had my five for the day 😁 Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum 😝

Butternut squash quickly fried in olive oil with garlic and sage, add water to flash cook, once soft add mushrooms and cook, add to cooked pasta and crumble cheese of your choice on top 🥰

New Year’s Eve went without a bang this year in fact we went to bed at 11.30 lol, well it arrives wether you wait up to see it or not doesn’t it and I think it was pretty muted everywhere this year. New Year’s Day we started off well, John started to build a plant table for me, for the plants I will have for sale this year coming and I sorted out all the pots of English Bluebells which will be the first plants to go out, and then it started to rain quite heavily 🙄 So we came in for coffee and waited for the rain to stop, it didn’t, so we took down the Christmas decorations and hoovered and polished instead 😝 Years ago I would have cooked a roast dinner on NYD but ever since the kids were late teens and too hungover the next day, I haven’t bothered. The place looks bare with the docs down and I can’t remember what went where beforehand 🤷‍♀️ but it’s a job done and quite literally ‘dusted’ 😝 sorry, not sorry.

I have been through all my seeds to see what I needed to get, turns out I have rather a lot of them and don’t need much else at all. For the few seeds I did want, we popped to the garden centre to get them there, I also picked up some first early seed potatoes. I am good to go now and as always I am chomping at the bit but I also know it doesn’t pay to get started too early. Our weather at the minute is ridiculously warm, 17c which is insane for Winter but I am also aware that it can take a real plummet at any point and if I have over sown I will be struggling for space so it’s best to hold fire and wait a while. There are a few things I can get started, some extra broad beans, there is still time to sow those and on the flower front, sweet peas can still be started off now.

Sunday: The weather was kinder today up until just after lunch, we got busy, John finished the plant table while I sorted out more plants to put out for sale. Once that was sorted and John cleared up the wet leaves on the drive he came to help me on the bed that was the herb bed and needs clearing. It has taken quite a while, many of the bigger herbs such as fennel and lovage had very big strong roots and I needed to wait for the ground to be soft enough to dig them up. There were a few other things to salvage, ice plants which I have potted up and will move to the tortoise run for them to feed on, a blackcurrant sage which I wanted to get out in good condition, that has now been replanted elsewhere and also a large patch of aster which has now been dug up and divided into many plants 😁 On the whole the area is now ready to clear ready to put grass down. The project after that which is also rattling round in my head at the same time is the cut flower patch, forming a plan on what to put in and how many of each plant. John and I also talked about putting the patch in the front paddock but we decided that for this year it will be better in the veg garden and we will work towards moving it next year. The idea being that it gets sun all day, it can be seen and even accessed on a pick your own basis if needs be plus it will look lovely but I need to see how well this year does before investing in fencing etc.

Have a great week, still one more bank holiday to go 😁