Monday 18th April, Bank Holiday Monday: Taking it fairly easy today , every day is a work day but some are more work than others 😂 John spent a couple of hours burning all the rubbish, that is cardboard rubbish and tree clipping rubbish from a few weeks ago then he spent the rest of the time on and off finishing the coating on the fences in the paddock. I spent most of my time pottering in the garden doing things like weeding, sowing seeds and taking cuttings. My sister and brother in law came over and I went with them over to Dads grave to put some flowers on (he died two years ago today) but that was mostly all we have done. It has been a lovely sunny day again although slightly cooler and a bit more cloud today.
I picked some flowers this morning for the purpose of trying out some photography, I find it difficult to get good shots so I asked online and got a few tips.
Tuesday: The sun has disappeared today and it’s a tad colder but not too bad, no sign of rain yet though and everything is getting a bit dry 🙄 After a week of working outside, a holiday weekend of socialising (and some more work) I thought it was time to get some housework done 😏 I spent the morning hoovering, polishing, washing and wiping down, I have scratched that itch for a while 🤪 I have also spent some time recording a podcast ‘extra’ which is all about my journey into the flower side of things and how that is going, I was contacted by a listener and they asked for it specifically so I was happy to oblige 😁
It is our granddaughter’s birthday today, Mia is the grand old age of six, which feels pretty grown up to a five year old. It never ceases to make me chuckle how children can’t wait to be the next year older and adults are always yearning to be younger 😂
We had a conversation yesterday with my Sister and Brother in law, the topic was, if you could travel back in time, what time would you go to? I found this interesting because both the fellas decided that it would be good to go to the sixties, and the reason, because you could buy up lots of old run down properties come back to now and be rich 🙄 My sister and I on the other hand thought the post war years would be interesting, nothing to do with getting rich though 😂 more to do with observing how people lived and managed after the war, not only do different generations have a different take on things but it would seem different sexes as well 🤔
It’s raining which is great as the garden is dry, not so great is that I hung the washing out about half an hour ago 😬
Wednesday: I spent the morning cleaning out the Guinea pigs, quail, light Sussex and turkeys before going on to plant up mange tout. Ted the Turkey is a bit bothersome for his lady friend at this time of year and so we have had to separate them so she gets a break 🙄 The problem is he then started attacking the light Sussex cockerel through the fence 🙄 so had to beef up the fencing so he couldn’t get near and hope that works, turkeys, nope never again lol. It has been disastrous to be honest, the females get too much attention and can’t handle it, the males (Ted in the case) spends his whole time trying to find something or someone to mate with 😬 Everything else is doing fine and the quail have started laying in abundance which is good.
I thought I would tackle one thing at a time and so peas were on the agenda, I had some more sweet peas to plant up, some in the ground and some in pots with hazel sticks to climb up. Then the mangetout into one of the vegetable beds, they had to be covered with mesh straight away or the cats will get in and dig them up, anyone would think I lay on toilet areas especially for them. It’s not like they don’t have plenty of space to go and do their business elsewhere.
I did a bit of weeding in the front and then looked after the twins while Mia went for her birthday treat at a riding school. After they had gone it was hum drum things like get the dinner and do some shopping.
Thursday: Another lovely day and a tad warmer than the previous couple. After the usual morning jobs I got my bucket and snips and went out to cut some flowers and foliage. I made up three little jam jar posies to go out and also cut a couple of buckets to make some flower bunches up to put out tomorrow. Had a message to see if I could do a bunch of flowers today and luckily as I had just cut everything I can do that no problem.
I spent a couple of hours in the greenhouse pricking out seedlings before it got a bit hot in there and then checking on all the plants I have already planted up giving them some water if it looked like they needed it. We have had no April showers so far this year 😏 we really could do with one or two as everything is very dry. I think it has been like this a couple of years in a row now, very dry spring, John thinks we may have a drought this year 🤷♀️
Friday: I spent the morning in the greenhouse, no sun today so it wasn’t too hot to work in there. Plenty of pricking out and potting on plus moving some plants over to the poly tunnel as I am fast running out of space in the greenhouse. Just a couple more weeks and everything will be able to go outside and harden off or get planted up.
Then I spent the afternoon with Sam, Shelley and the kiddies at a local Bluebell Wood called Bradbury Clump, the carpet of Bluebells was amazing and the smell was delicious 😋 It was quite cold mind you but as long as you keep walking and it was ok, the children had a fab time running, climbing and playing.
Bluebell woods 🥰
When I got home I had two deliveries, one was florist buckets, I quickly worked out I needed more than one bucket 😂 so I ordered another five. The other was a plant delivery 🤪 a wholesale order of 84, yes 84 penstemon plug plants!
Saturday: More of the same as every other day lol, plenty to do in the greenhouse and in the garden, I wanted to get the dwarf beans planted up and they are now in situ. I had to get Biscuit in from the paddock and section her a small area off as she is lying down a lot which is a sign she is having too much grass. That means getting the electric fencing out and the tape, John put the tape away at the end of last year 🙄 and if you have ever tried to untangle that stuff you will know why I was 😡 if I get it in I do it properly so that it’s easy to use next time, not John he just gathered it up and dumped it 🙄 Once I had done that I wanted to get the front paddock cut before any rain (chance would be a fine thing) Last year we didn’t cut it and then struggled at the end of the year and had to put the horses on it. This year I want to cut a good inner circle of it and leave the outsides long for the orchids which will mean that we should be able to cut the long grass more easily at the end of the year. The problem is out mower does not like long grass 😂 but if it’s half on short grass then it copes more easily, that’s the plan any way.
Sunday: Busy day today, for me anyway, not so much for John. He has had a painful elbow for a few weeks but though I keep telling him to get it looked at he did nothing about it. This morning he could barely move his arm so he tried to call 111, long waiting time, called the minor injuries they don’t want to know because it’s been so long since it first happened, back on the phone to 111, long phone call and finally get an answer to call the surgery in the morning 😏 I fully support the NHS but talking to other people they say the same and that is, not sure what has happened to the service since covid, people are struggling to get phone appointments let alone face to face ones and don’t even get me started on the chemist in our area 😬 I am sure it will all sort itself out in time 🤷♀️
Anyhow, while John was laying on the sofa 🤪 I spent most of the day outside working on all aspects of the garden. Some watering as it’s bone dry 🙄 some planting up of tomatoes in the big tunnel and some flowers in the veg garden area. I also planted up 6 small shrubs which will eventually be used for cut foliage, they are now where the bed between the tunnels used to be, hopefully they will do well there. They will never get too big for the area because I will constantly be trimming them lol. Did I tell you I had decided to use the small tunnel for flowers 😊 well I have and I planted up some flower plants yesterday, more of the same will go outside it is just so that I can get some earlier blooms of a few things. Planted up a grapevine that I got from the sale area at a garden centre back in late winter, bargain as it has now come into leaf. I picked the first lot of asparagus for dinner tonight along with some spring greens, not sure what else I did but it was plenty up to mid afternoon when we decided to visit my Mum. I took her some flowers because I can 😁 and I made her pose for photos 😂 she tried to hide behind them. Beautiful aren’t they, the flowers and my Mum 🥰 Back home, cook the dinner then out to the greenhouse to water that after a day of sunshine. Another week done, I hope you have a great week and get to do at least one thing you love x
Wednesday 13th April 2022: Ooo it’s Wednesday and so far I haven’t written a thing 🤪 That’s because I was pretty busy Monday doing all the usual jobs, some bits in the greenhouse, watering everything that was looking dry, housework and some paperwork bits. I had to get that all sorted because late afternoon I went to Shelley’s to look after Josh and Florence overnight while Shelley and Martin went away. We had a fun time with pizza and movies plus board games and lots of talking. I had an early start on Tuesday morning with Florence stood by the bed at 6am saying ‘Nana I need a poo’ 😂 it’s been a lot of years since that has happened to me! I came home mid afternoon Tuesday to find John had not even bothered to wash up while I was away nor do the eggs from the night before so I got those jobs done quickly. After that I needed to get a few things sorted as quite a few of my lot were coming round to see Sue’s daughter before she flew back to America. We shared memories and thoughts, pizza and cider and my youngest sister lit a candle which we blew out before we all left which seemed quite symbolic. Sue opted not to have a funeral but I think sometimes the people that are still here need to have some closure and that was a lovely informal way to do that.
We finally arrive at Wednesday 😁 my first thought the morning was for the flower bouquet I needed to get ready for later this afternoon. So after getting the essential jobs done I got my bucket ready with clean sterile water in it and went round with my snips cutting the flowers and foliage I wanted to make the bouquet. All of the material needs to be conditioned beforehand, that is basically stood in clean water for a few hours in the dark so that it can take on board as much as it needs to survive as long as possible in the vase. There will be some extra conditioning to do on the woody stems prior to making up the bouquet but then it will be ready to go 😁 That will be my first paying customer and I have a second tomorrow, I have six Jam Jar posies to do for a wedding in June which has been arranged, paid for and is now in the diary 🥰
The rest of the morning I have spent in the greenhouse potting on seedlings and small plants. I have discovered that mice can indeed climb and it has eaten the sunflower seeds 😡 so I had to redo those and put them under something secure so they can’t get eaten again. I also had to rescue some blue lace flower seedlings that have been munched on, again putting them under cover so the rest don’t get eaten. I think a mouse is getting in under a tiny sliver at the bottom of the door, it’s the only place it can get in so I need to see what can be done about that because it’s tiresome to say the least 🙄 The mousetrap does not seem to go off, just feed the little fecker 🤪 That brought me up to lunchtime, a quick sit down and regroup before starting again this afternoon.
Busy couple of hours early afternoon, I worked till I got hungry 😋 I planted the remaining broad beans plants and all the kohlrabi plants. I made sure I covered them before finishing, I haven’t grown the kohlrabi before but as it looks like it’s from the brassica family I don’t want the cabbage white ravaging it plus I don’t want the cats digging newly planted veg up. I still have plenty to get planted and sown, some, like the runner beans are not ready yet but I do need to get on with the beetroot and carrots 🙄 In for some lunch then out again to sow a bed of carrots, these are all autumn king so once they are in they will basically stay there until autumn and what isn’t used fresh will be used for freezing or drying. Again I have done a decent job of covering, cats and carrot root fly this time, always something trying to get your goods 🤪
Back inside to get the bouquet done, this didn’t quite go as planned and I wasn’t 100% happy, I have a few things that need more practice. One of the hardest things I am finding is that I have very small hands and so holding the bouquet while I put it together is difficult and I don’t really know if there is a cheat way to do it but if there is I will find it.
So I thought to myself if you are not happy are you going to leave it or do something about it, so I did something about it 😊 I wasn’t happy with the way it looked once it was wrapped and so I unwrapped it added a couple more bits and voila, happy me. It’s fairly free form and didn’t look so good trussed up in paper so I let it be free and it works much better. Still got to figure out some good photography angles but I will get there eventually.
In the evening I had an online event which was really interesting, it was all about the psychological aspect of gardening for all different groups of people. I was also fascinated to learn that in WW1 they made gardens behind the lines, on both sides, they would get seeds sent over from home and sow a garden 😯
Thursday: Once all the routine stuff was done I went out with my bucket to cut flowers and foliage for todays bouquet which was being picked up later in the afternoon. I also gathered some flowers to make some jam jar posies to put out tomorrow and did a bit of farm social media stuff. Sam and the kiddies arrived just before lunch and left later in the afternoon, once they had gone I put the kettle on, made a cuppa and did the bouquet which was then collected. John arrived home and went to do the birds while I cut some areas of grass on the ride on mower. Once that was done we went in and as I hadn’t got anything ready for dinner we were wondering what to have when the phone rang. It was my sister ‘do you want some dinner, I have cooked for four but now the other two can’t make it’ yep we will be there in two shakes of a tail 😂 perfect. Back home in time to put the birds to bed, John will be playing pool with Martin while I watch an online spring floristry workshop with one of my groups 🥰 great day 😁
Saturday: You can tell it’s been a busy week as I have missed out Friday as well 😂 Good Friday, a lovely sunny bank holiday and I mostly spent the day doing stuff, I can’t actually remember what stuff but it would have been to do with plants, flowers, shrubs, veg 🤪 That’s the trouble if I don’t type it up at night, I completely forget what I have done. One thing I do know is that it was Charlottes birthday and so mid afternoon we went round to a BBQ at hers along with Shelley and family and Sam and family 🥰 then we went down to my sisters as it was her birthday as well where we stayed until it was time to come and put the birds to bed around 8.30pm. Also food available at hers and so no cooking today 😃
A little Tussie Mussie I made to give to Charlotte.
Actual Saturday 🤪 A busy day again today and another hot, sunny one. First thing I went out and cut flowers and foliage for an ordered bouquet today. I then got another of the cut garden raised beds filled with soil before moving on to plant up a bed of delphiniums. John has made some good support frames for these and I have used jute netting secured to the top for them to grow through. I also planted up some ami Majus (bishops flower) and some lupin in the bed next to it which already had some liatris, astrantia and gladioli in it, I put another support frame over that and put the jute netting on top. By this time it was getting pretty hot and I had to keep going back to the shade to cool off as I could feel my skin beginning to prickle 🙄 I am not exactly disabled with Lupus but it is disabling at times 😏 Meanwhile John was hanging the field gates which are now finished and it’s looking good, just need to take down the old fencing. There is always so much fencing to do and we really wouldn’t bother but you have to keep the horses in somehow 😝 I carried on planting up spare plants wherever I have space for them, the garden will be full to the brim this year I think, that’s good though, not too much room for weeds 🤞 I have bought quite a few shrubs lately and am contemplating making a shrubbery in the front paddock, it’s a strange thing when you have a lot of space but only certain places that you can plant things due to animals either eating them or scratching them up before they get established. Mid afternoon I came indoors to get the eggs sorted as I did it do them this morning, better to get the outside jobs done first when it’s going to be hot. Then it was time to get the ordered bouquet made, I was very pleased with this one, it was beautiful but my photography skills are letting me down as I can’t seem to get a decent shot that shows them off well 🤷♀️ Time for a sit down before the animals need doing and then we are off round to my other sisters whose birthday it is today and another BBQ, happy days.
Easter Sunday: Oh gosh I am so out of sync this week that I forgot this goes out today lol. We spent the morning working, I got the last couple of raised beds ready and then John filled them all up with the top soil. I planted a few crazy daisy plants and then pricked out some seedlings, grasses and plumes for the cutting garden. Sowed more tomato and pepper seeds as well as some more courgettes. I made sure everything that needed water got some both in the greenhouse and around the garden. Just after lunch we went over to see Sam and the Kiddies and take them some Easter eggs, we stayed for a cuppa and then came back home. I did a bit of weeding in the front beds, sorted the eggs and then had a sit down for a hour or so. We had a lovely roast dinner at Shelley and Martins, and took the kiddies Easter their eggs. On the way home we called in to Charlie and Maccas and dropped an egg off for them and a tiny one for the bump lol. By the time we got home it was getting dark, time to put the birds to bed and that’s another day and week done. Though we have Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow which always feels like a luxury even if we will be working for some of it 😂
Monday 28th March 2022: I spent most of the day doing bits and pieces, pottering, call it what you will. I got a few plants in the ground in various places, watered some of the pots and watered the greenhouse but apart from that nothing major. There was plenty I could have got done but was a little tired by lunchtime, quick sit down and a rest then some more pottering, that’s my day, potty 🤪
Tuesday: I can’t even remember what I did for the first part of the morning 🤷♀️ but probably the usual jobs such as eggs, rubbish, washing up, social media posts lol. Mid morning I checked the post box and I had some plug plants delivered, some I had forgotten I ordered 🙄 One lesson I really have to learn is writing down the orders and keeping the book with me at all times so I can double check when I think ‘ooo look, I think I will order those’, doubling or tripling on flower orders is not a good thing 😂 These are chrysanthemums and I am aware I have others on order, they are perennial however and so I will have them year on year. I can propagate from them to increase stock and either use that stock or sell it on so it’s ok, that’s what I am telling myself anyhow 🤪 As soon as I unpacked them I made a coffee and went into the greenhouse to pot them up, they will stay in there until this cold snap moves on and then I will put them in the cold frames until the danger of frosts has passed when they will be planted out. These are early to mid season chrysanthemums, I also have some mid to late ones on order, most are spray chrysanthemums which will be fillers but some are single bloom and beautiful shapes and colours.
It is quite a bit colder today, the sun has gone and we have grey cloud and drizzle, by Thursday we will have minus temps overnight and even the threat of some snow 🙄 It’s the see saw season with swings of up 10 degrees in each direction at the moment.
Lunchtime some bare roots shrubs arrived so I soaked them in water for an hour before going outside to plant them up. There should have been five but in fact there were six 😁 I planted up four of them in various areas, one out in the front paddock where I have some other small shrubs trying to grow. Another on the edge of the orchard area, one near the pirate ship and one down in the difficult area of the bottom bed, should do ok there but veg don’t. The remaining two I potted up and put in the cold frame area where they will stay until they form some good roots and then will go out for sale. Then I decided to sow some runner beans and some dwarf French beans, these will be grown in the greenhouse for quite a while before they are ready to go out. After that a bit of pricking out, Ami Majus, which is a great filler flower a bit like cow parsley. I will direct sow some seeds for that as well but as always I like to hedge my bets and get some started under cover. I can definitely see me thinking about bigger under cover areas in the future, I am filling up every available space I have at the minute 😂
Wednesday: Very much colder today than last week, today I decided not to go outside and do any work, I stayed in the warm instead. I spent the best part of the morning baking cakes 🍰 two Madeira cakes, one chocolate and almond and one everyday fruit cake, I also made up some batches of Yorkshire pudding mix to freeze for the times when we don’t have many eggs. The reason I did that is because we have so many eggs that I really need to do some thing useful with them. I am trying as hard as I can to sell as many as I can but with all the pullets laying like crazy, we have a lot so might as well turn them into something for the freezer. Went outside early evening it is positively Baltic 🥶
Plenty of cakes for the freezer, got to use the glut of eggs we are getting.
Thursday: Today should have been the highlight of the year so far for me but it wasn’t, gutted does not come close. On Monday I tested positive for covid and today I was supposed to be going on the course day with Sarah Raven but am unable to go 😭🤬 Yeah, it sucks, worse there is no cancellation policy for covid, worse still they didn’t even acknowledge my email to say I couldn’t attend.
The day got worse as one of the Turkey ladies has died overnight so now Ted only has one lady friend. It is even colder today than yesterday and we have had quite a few snow flurries on and off through the day though none of it has settled so far. One good thing that happen though, the card reader arrived today so I can at least take card payments in the future plus get some QR codes up and running.
Going back to the covid, that is obviously why I felt quite tired last week, I also had a very sore throat (but didn’t know that was a symptom) I tested on Friday because of the way I felt but it was negative so I thought I just had a bug. Sunday evening I had a really bad headache that I still had on Monday morning so I thought I would test again. I checked the test after 10 mins, nothing, five minutes later it had a faint line 😳 Because I am on immune suppressants I have a specially issued PCR test that I then had to do and send off, that result came back positive as well on Tuesday morning 😩 However by Tuesday the illness seemed to have ‘broken’ and I had nothing but by this time the wheels had started in motion and so I was awaiting a phone call from the next stage of the chain. That was a call from a Dr from infection control 🤪 we had a discussion about when the illness started, what symptoms I had and how I was now feeling, the upshot was that he didn’t think I needed the anti viral medication that I could get to lessen the effect of the virus. I agreed with him, it seems that my immune system has done the job after all which is good news 😁 I need to watch out for the next couple of weeks apparently as breathing complications can appear well after the virus has gone 🤷♀️ Today I was amazed to find in the post box a replacement PCR test kit, I am impressed that the system they put in place works exactly as they say it will, good job, well done 👏
Friday: Still testing positive but all I have is a ‘fuzzy’ head and I often have that anyway 😂 I thought we might wake up to snow this morning, yesterday late afternoon and evening there were flurries of snow some of them pretty intense but they haven’t amounted to anything and the sun is shining beautifully this morning though it is still cold and frosty.
We had the final window fitted today so now they all match lol, before it was even in I was looking at decoration ideas. It is the spare room and was last done around 8 years ago, now a new smaller window has been fitted it will need some making good and so might as well be upgraded at the same time 😁 I love a project 🥰
I potted up some scented pelargonium that I had ordered. I am not a geranium type ordinarily but scented ones, yes please 😁 If you are ever planning a sensory garden then you have to include these, apple, lemon, mint, all the wonderful smells you can get with these little gems are amazing.
I have been watching Bridgerton 🥰 Shelley said to me ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen it’ so I thought I would see what it was all about. Well I love it, it is multifaceted, relatable on so many levels and comparable even to modern society, social media in particular. It is refreshingly easy to watch, witty and the characters are likeable, beautiful and downright handsome. Scandal, love, unrequited love, deception, plus the costumes and sets are perfectly gorgeous, what more could you want ❤️ I think writer was particularly clever, a large family of boys and girls spanning a good few years in ages will give you reams of storylines for future series and I for one cannot wait for the next series 😁
Saturday: John spent the day taking down old fencing, mowing the lawn and getting a bit of shopping. I spent the morning in the greenhouse, moving things around, moving plants over to the poly tunnel, putting some things out into the cold frame, I actually don’t know exactly what but we did do some things 🤪
Sunday: Finally having negative tests mean I can go out, I know you can anyway these days but I wouldn’t because I didn’t feel it was very responsible so I stayed put. I wanted to go to the diy shop to get some particular flowers that the website said they had, they didn’t 😏 so we went to the garden centre to see if they had them, they didn’t and worse we thought we would get breakfast but they were not cooking 😏 called in to see my brother on the way back for a coffee and he said go to this other shop they have loads of bargains, they had sold out 😏 not a terribly productive morning on the plant buying front 😂 Called in to see Mum and Ken to wish her a belated happy birthday and then back home. I did pick up some half price lily bulbs so I planted those when I got back, I also spent a good couple of hours in the greenhouse pricking out tomato seedlings (pretty big seedlings 🙄) and potting them up. I potted on some crazy daisies, Californian poppies and some China asters. Meanwhile John cleaned out the hens at the front and the back.
I took my very first card payment now we have a card machine 😁 hopefully that will be a useful addition, since covid people don’t carry much cash anymore. I need to set up the QR codes for another easy way to pay.
Monday 21st March 2022: A new week and I will try and keep my fat fingers under control 😂 The temperatures are looking great for the week ahead climbing up to 19c which will be great on the one hand but on the other I will be monitoring how well I feel out in it. I will be applying, and indeed have already started with, the factor 50 everyday to keep things under control as much as possible 🙄 Today my plan is to sort the rest of the beds for the cut flowers and see if I can start the ride on mower to cut the front paddock. I don’t hold out much hope on that score as it is difficult to start so I might have to wait for John to come home although he will be late today and I am on animal duty but I might get time before dark fingers crossed.
The avian flu is still a problem having had some outbreaks only last week. It is looking as though they will not be lifting the lockdown until we’ll into April 😏 This causes a massive problem for the industry as they will have to change all their advertising and packaging from free range to housed. Legally they can still call them free range for up to 16 weeks but after that they cannot so unless they lobby hard to get the birds released it is going to cost them a lot of money.
Well I didn’t do any of the jobs that I said I was going to lol, it was quite chilly to begin with so I decided for some weird reason to clean the bathroom 😂 A full clean, cupboards out and everything, clean everything, throw anything we don’t use or is out of date, change the towels, wash the used ones and put them out on the line to dry. A spot of lunch and a catch up with the news and then around 1pm I decided to clean out the greenhouse. It was still overcast and John had said he would be late tonight so I figured I had about four hours to get the job done before having to do the animals. I moved everything out and put it on the lawn which took about an hour, the sun started to make an appearance and I thought oh no this is going to be hot work 🥵 but luckily it clouded over again. I then spent the next three and half hours cleaning the windows, sweeping the floor and sorting out rubbish before putting everything back in again. Luckily John actually came home earlier than he had expected and he did the animals because by this point I was running over schedule 🤪 I still have the outside of the windows to wash along with the polytunnels but that is a good job sorted. Indoors to sort the dinner, it was going to be a shepherds pie but due to lack of time it was mince, veg and potatoes all in the same pot to cook and tasted just as good. Plumb crumble for dessert and that is today done and dusted except for the washing up of course.
A whole lot tidier then it was before 😂
I wanted to get it cleaned out before it got too full of plants, I thought there was a mouse living in there but although I could see signs of one having been there, none are in there now. There was however a big fat slug already so that is what has eating the tops off my sweet peas 🤬 I evicted him along with the tortoise who I have put in the outside hut and stuffed it with straw. Billy has been awake for a while and outside but Voldertort is a bit slower being that bit smaller. On the back bench is the heat mat and everything on and above that needs a little bit of heat to get it going, then there are two propagators with things in that need a good amount of heat like pepper and tomato plants plus a few flower plants and then to the side are seedlings that do not need any heat such as peas and brassica. The shelves are to keep things up out of the way of any potential tiny footed nibblers but it doesn’t stop slugs who slime their way to anything 😏 Then under the staging are cuttings, out of the light but still in relative warmth, and any other paraphernalia that I need including sat pads for the outdoor chairs😂
Tuesday: Oh what a lovely day 🥰 it the first day of the year that I have stood and thought ‘I am one lucky person’ this is my office today and it is amazing 🤩 I spent the first part of the morning watering things in pots and digging up some huechera self sown seedlings. Then I got some of the pallet collars round for the stables and placed them on the ground where I think they will be going for cut flowers. After that I planted the remaining gladioli bulbs and covered them with a grille so they don’t get dug up. Samantha and the twins arrived and after playing and having lunch on a blanket in the garden Sam got the horses in for a brush and a tail cut. The twins were supposed to be helping but they wanted to play with everything else instead, there was the tractor that George is drawn to and the pile of ballast that Lucie was drawn to. At one point Lucie was completely undressed (this is standard Lucie) and then George, who had dug in some engine oil that was on the ground, smeared it all over Lucie 😂 Sam was not best pleased but I said it was a bit like swallows and amazons 🤣 Shelley and Florence came and we went back into the garden to leave Sam in peace while the kids played in the pirate ship, Lucie singing at the top of her voice ‘the big ship sails on the alley alley oh’ 🥰 After they all left I sat down for a while, watched the news, listened to a podcast and then ordered some chrysanthemums. They had largely fallen out of favour in gardens over the last few decades but they are making a comeback with some really zingy, modern shades so it will be good to add them to my cutting garden. The other bonus is that they flower right through to the first frost and some varieties even go to December/January which will be great for Christmas flowers. Halloween is a time I would love to have some colour appropriate bunches of flowers and so some of the chrysanthemum are a lovely burnt orange, I think black is going to be a no go but dark purple would work. John came home and we got the lawn mower started and while I cut the front paddock he fed the birds and collected the eggs. In for a cup of tea, some dinner and day done ✔️
🥰 Lucie has started to get herself dressed each morning so mostly her clothes are on back to front and inside out 😂 but good on her for being so independent 🥰
Wednesday: Another fine and glorious day with a fresh start. I went straight into the greenhouse first thing and potted on a few things, moved things around a little and moved the seedlings that were in the office out to the greenhouse so I can have my work space back in there. Once I finished that then onto the next job which was to get the edger and do the edge of the grass all down the driveway. I felt old today doing that as it wore me out for some reason, the sun was shinning mind you so that could have been the reason I found it hard going. That little lot took me up to early afternoon, then time for some lunch and a good long sit down. Back out to plant up a few bits into the ground, some stocks, curry plants and something else I have forgotten the name of 😝 Mum came over to drop off some plastic pots so we sat in the garden for a bit of a chat and just after she left John arrived home. Pop out for some shopping, come home, get dinner and another day done.
Thursday: Another blue sky, warm temps day and I had decided to have a more gentle day today. I began, as always, in the greenhouse checking things over, watering anything that needed it and also taking a few roots cuttings from the liatris plants that are growing well. My gentle day became punctuated with lots of things going on and people coming and going. First Mum arrived with some bits I am selling for her and the money raised is going to Ukraine, then I had a delivery of topsoil arrive after that my sister arrived to pick up some stuff going to a Ukraine, then John came home briefly, then a delivery of a specimen plant arrived lol. Meanwhile I was waiting for someone to collect something but they didn’t arrive 🙄 So much for a gentle day as that was all before 12 noon 😂 The specimen plant is a 7ft Clematis Armandii a vigorous, evergreen clematis that has gorgeous white flowers in spring that are scented, it is to climb over the old dog kennels and also provide me with some beautiful blooms in spring 😁 A spot of lunch, a sit down and catch up with the news and now we have another despot launching missiles 😏 what is wrong with these idiots, nobody wants to invade their countries so I find it difficult to understand why they feel the need to either defend themselves or invade others 🤷♀️
I had a second delivery of plants and bulbs, those I was expecting but a tall package came with them and I said to the delivery driver I don’t know what that is I don’t remember ordering anything else 😂 turns out I qualified for a free tree 🥰 well a pussy willow actually but it was nice surprise. I planted as many bulbs as I could before Sam arrived with the twins for our Thursday session. Mia goes to her swimming lesson and the twins stay here and play, I cook them dinner and then once Mia has finished they get collected and go home. Today as John was here I thought I would be a good idea to get them to help feed the chickens and collect the eggs. It’s a bit of a mission to watch both of them at the same time regarding the egg collection but I am pleased to say we managed it with no breakages 😜
Friday: Glorious weather again today so making the most of it while it lasts. This morning instead of going into the greenhouse I did some housework, quick hoover round, polish, wipe the surfaces, I thought I had better lol. Then my hairdresser came for a quick trim and then it was out with Sam, Shelley, Flo, George & Lucie to a local cafe near a big open space and a park, perfect for everyone 🥰 Once back home I went into the greenhouse and planted up the rest of the bulbs into pots. They are hyacinth and so should have been something I bought and planted last year but once it is time for them to flower they very often get sold of cheap which is what these were. There is still time however to force them and so they have been potted and are now in the polytunnel where the warmth will bring them on hopefully. I spent quite a while watering everything in the greenhouse and then planting one or two bits in the cutting garden.
John arrived home just after I finished that with some bad news about the chicken feed, it is going up again! A whopping £1.20 a bag this time, that is on top of the 45p it has just gone up, that’s an increase of £1.65 in less than two months. We use a bag a day just in layers pellets so there is corn on top of that, we will need to sell just over £65 worth of eggs a week just to break even. Together with the lack of customers this week I am thinking we probably need to call it a day, I know I said it last year but back then I really didn’t think feed would go up as much as it has so I was willing to keep going. If you buy anything from a small local business, do me a favour and tell everyone about it because at this rate they will all be going under 😞 it really is a very depressing outlook to be honest. At one time I could put eggs up for sale on the local selling sites and get them shifted but the algorithms no longer allow it so we are relying on word of mouth really. It is not helped by the avian flu each year when the birds are locked down 🙄 they eat less when they are out and about scratching around in the grass and the dirt but when they are shut in it costs more to feed them, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place 😏
I spent most of the evening bringing the egg sales into the age of technology 😂 Up until the pandemic 100% of our sales had been cash sales, then nobody wanted to physically touch money 🤪 and so we had to look at other ways to pay for some customers, then spare change became scarce 😂 and now I think we lose customers because they don’t have cash on them. So it’s time to make other options available, I ordered a card reader and I have also set up QR codes for when I am not able to go out there, hopefully that will help 😁
Saturday: Fine and sunny again today and it has been a busy day. I started off taking fresh bedding up to the geese and collecting their eggs, the picking a couple of bunches of daffodils from the paddock they are in. Onto picking rhubarb, the first of the year, and putting it out for sale. Out to the front to pot up the clematis that arrived the day before and I was just finishing that off when Shelley arrived with Josh because he was staying with me while Flo went to a party. Josh and I cleaned out the Guinea pigs and went round cleaning all the water buckets and topping up with fresh water plus finding the rabbits and torts some nice greens. Meanwhile John went off to get feed before the price goes up and then unload when he came back. He also sorted out getting the water all back on in the garden and connected the pump for the rainwater to be pumped over to the garden area. We did lots of little jobs like sorting out hoses and connections ready for the year ahead, making sure everything was working and more importantly not leaking 🤪 The chap was also here doing the second lot of fencing which is now finished I just need to get hold of some field gates and get those hung. Once the fencing was finished we stood and had a long chat to put the world to rights 😂 a quick cup of tea and then it’s time to do the afternoon rounds to end the day.
The more I learn about growing flowers for cutting the more I realise exactly how much there is to learn 😜 I am getting there though, I just wish I had started earlier in preparation for the beginning of this year. The 1st sowing of gladioli are beginning to show tiny shoot tips which is great because I had no idea when I planted the second lot of the first ones we’re doing anything at all 😁 It is all moving in the right direction though and I don’t really want to go at full speed with it, a gentle approach will mean I have time to learn along the way hopefully. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and today I have been going round looking at what is available to cut for just one special bouquet, I think I will have just about enough to give something lovely to my Mum 🥰
Early evening bought some sad news but news I have been expecting. My Dads long term partner Sue, who used to own our place, passed away peacefully at home with family by her side, after a short stay in hospital. She had known she was ill for quite a while but she hadn’t told anyone at all until she absolutely had to. Rest in peace, I am sure Dad is there waiting with a gin and tonic in one hand and a roll up in the other for you x x
Good night Mrs M x
Sunday: Mothers Day, so much love today for some and so much sadness for others x x It was a fair bit colder today than the whole of the last week but we still got on with a few jobs outside. John spent the morning clearing old rails from the paddock and then dragging the smaller middle one. I spent the early bit of the morning going round cutting foliage and flowers for the bouquet of the day. Charlie came round early on with breakfast for me 🥰 pastries, fruit, yoghurt, smoothie and also a chocolate heart box made locally, beautifully made with delicious chocolate covered strawberries and chocolates inside. Near lunchtime I gathered the flowers and foliage that had been conditioning and I made my first home grown bouquet, and naturally it was going to be for my Mum 😁 I was excited and nervous putting it together but the result was beautiful, a home grown, sustainable bouquet, I even impressed myself 😝 Off round to see Mum, give her the flowers and have a cuppa with her before returning home as Sam, Luke and the children had arrived at ours. Sam got me some lovely new gardening gloves and a very professional looking pair of long blade snips for cutting flowers (I need a tool belt I think as I kept losing my secateurs this morning) We fed the tortoises and the horses then they went for a walk before going home. A quick sit down and a cup of tea before the afternoon rounds and then round to Shelley and Martins for a roast dinner which was amazing. Presents again, Hotel Chocolat choccies and a daily organiser for me to write all my jobs and musings down in, I have been spoilt rotten 🥰
You can find _sweetsoph_ on Instagram 🥰
I put out the first picking of new season rhubarb this week which all sold as quick as a wink, now I just need the eggs to go that fast lol as the birds are laying like crazy and we have plenty of them every day 😁
In the week ahead the temperatures will be much colder but I hope you have a good one anyway x
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
Monday 14th June 2021: Today we find out if any of the restrictions still in place will be lifted or not, not holding out much hope for a full lift 🙄
Another fine day with the temps set to climb up near 30c, you know what that means for me, early morning, so it’s 8.30pm I have stopped for a coffee after already doing a three hour stint this morning. Most of that was picking, peas & mangetout today, a bit of weeding while I was going round, sorting out some plants in the cold frame and picking weeds to feed the Guineas and torts. I also did all the usual jobs of feeding various four legged pets, putting eggs out, a bit of watering out the front etc etc.
This is the month where the harvests begin to come in, they start off slowly but soon there will be so much to pick I won’t know if I am coming or going. And then there is the processing of it all lol, at the minute my plan is to keep back what I want for the day and put the rest out for sale, this morning that only amounted to two bags of mangetout and a tub of strawberries but it will start to come thick and fast especially if we get any rain, doesn’t look very promising at the minute. Of course we have been here before and what will happen next is too much rain that spoils the fruit 🤣 there is no winning this swim only treading water and trying to stay afloat 🤪 I still have some squash to get in the ground but I am waiting until it cools a little first, they will be fine in pots for now. I also have a fair few pepper seedlings and runner beans, I tried selling them but no takers and I hate throwing them away so I am going to have to find a place for them to grow on.
After coffee I did another hour outside which will probably do for today. I have potted on the pepper seedlings, it doesn’t matter if I have 20 pepper plants, I have space for them so may as well grow them, there was a jalapeño plant too, the tomato plants that didn’t sell are also potted on, I may put them back out or plant them up outside who knows yet. I planted up sweetcorn that I had left over, I put those in a bucket for the kids to pick if they get big enough, the corn, not the kids and I sowed some more carrot seeds, some in a bed in between the rows that are nearly done and some in pots again for the kids to pick. They are round carrot so ideal for pots, I picked some of those from the bed for dinner tonight and I found a stray potato which had grown so that will be potato, carrots and peas from the garden as well as strawberries for pudding 🥰 That is what is called the good life and it really is.
I noticed, when I pulled the carrots that the bed was very dry under the initial damp surface so I gave it a good soaking with the rain water hose. It is always worth digging down a bit to see exactly how far the water has penetrated, you will be surprised at dry it really is. A good indicator are ants, if there are a fair few nearby then you can bet there is an ants nest and that will tell you it’s way too dry they don’t like damp soil.
Once indoors I decided to get some polishing, cleaning done and change the bed sheets, I found a great podcast to listen to while doing it, Self Sufficient Hub. There are some interesting topics so if self sufficiency is for you then have a listen or have a listen if it’s it’s not you may get the bug 😁 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/self-sufficient-hub/id1506405294
It’s 1pm and I am a little tired now so I have had a quick lunch and am now going to have a little rest and maybe listen to another podcast.
In the evening after some dinner we went round to Mum and Ken’s for a cuppa and a slice of cake, there is always cake at Mums 🥰
Tuesday: Up earlyish to get the morning jobs done as I have blood tests first thing, they are a little over due but not to worry. Back home and I just about go put the washing hung out when Sam arrived with the twins. She had come over to move the electric fencing and make a bigger restriction paddock that will also now house Jack as well as Biscuit. To be fair Biscuit is looking and doing well but Jack on the other hand is getting too fat, too much grass for him to eat all by himself lol. He will also now be restricted probably for the next 2/3 months depending on the weather. If it stays hot and dry the grass will die off and he can go back out but any rain that we have will ‘flush’ the grass and he will have to stay put. He won’t like it one little bit but he will get I’ll otherwise so it’s for his own good. That took up a couple of hours, once we had got the stakes in place and some electric tape plus the water buckets all filled I took the twins back to the house to get some snacks and a drink while Sam finished it all off.
The twins had such a fun time here that they had to have a bath before going home 🤣 George had by that point, played with horse poo, dirty water in the garden & soil in the veg bed which he delighted in putting all over Lucies back. Lucie had stuck her whole foot in the horses water bucket, sock, trainer and all, thrown her bear in there too and de planted some of Nannys pricked out foxglove seedlings 🤪 All good fun and because there are two of them it can be manic when one goes in one direction to create havoc while the other is off in another direction, hilarious at times as well though 🤣
Wednesday: I was up fairly early and got on with a few jobs before having breakfast, John did the animals and then left for work. Next came a first for me, a covid test, a lateral flow test to be precise, the reason being that I have a sore throat, similar to having swallowed sandpaper 🙄 which is making me cough. I checked my temperature and oxygen levels all normal, I didn’t think for one minute I had covid but I have to check. Two things struck me as I did the test, first on opening I couldn’t help but notice it was all made in China 🙄 if I was a conspiracist I would definitely be jumping up and down saying ‘I told you’ China is probably making a fortune at the minute 😬 Secondly I don’t know if it was just me but I suspect not, I could not help but sneeze, 4/5/6 times while doing the nostril bit. I was thinking good job I am not in a test clinic and positive or else those sneeze spores are going to be all over the place 🤷♀️ I have just checked my test as time is up and it’s negative, I kind of knew it would be but you never know. Actually I have a third point to add, all the pieces of the test are plastic, they go into a plastic bag when you have finished and then that goes in the bin 😖 In a time when we are trying to reduce plastic use this is disastrous really, I know there is probably not a way round it when they are needed so quickly and in great quantities but can you image exactly how many billions of pieces of plastic have been added to landfill over the last year and a half 😢
While I was waiting for the test to ‘ripen’ I went out to water and feed the plants in the greenhouse and then the small tunnel.
Pottered about a bit picking strawberries and peas, a bit of watering and then Shelley arrived with Flo. They had come over to help get some work done in the veg garden, they weeded around the courgette plants and then watered and put down some cardboard mulch as the relentless sun dries the ground so quickly. The we went onto tidying, weeding and sorting the area right inside the gate, I tend to dump pots and tools and everything else there on my way to and from the front garden and never get round to tidying it, well mow it’s all done and feels like a much nicer part of the garden. I have many spaces like that to sort out mind you 😜 Shelley had bought lunch and went inside to make that while I carried on a little more and then we sat down and ate in the garden where there was still some shade. We are forecast thunderstorms and rain over the next couple of days and we could really do it to be honest, everything is flagging a little.
I heard on the radio a report that in this country, and many more around the world I suspect, we are unprepared for the climate chaos that is ahead in the UK. This definitely rings alarms bells for me, I have been saying for a couple of years now that the weather is so much more unpredictable than it was even five years ago. It was never this relentlessly hot for days or even weeks on end, we seem to have our weather in blocks these days and it is nearly always extreme bouts of it too. I seriously need to get a handle on what it is I need to do in order to be able to continue to grow fruit and veg successfully. Trying to stabilise the soil is probably the main thing, the torrential downpours we get now wash the soil downhill. Next would be trying to work out ways to get through drought periods, I may have to use more drought tolerant varieties, I am finding that swede and turnips just keep bolting because of the lack of rain, I either don’t plant them any more or look for better varieties. One thing is certain, a change in thinking and planning is needed to combat whatever the future weather has in store.
I just signed up with a group called Arbtalk where you can register as a tip site for free woodchip if any members are working in your area 😁
After a quick dinner we went over to babysit Mia, George and Lucy for a few hours while Sam and Luke went out for a drink.
Thursday: It’s 9.15am and I have already showered, breakfasted, put on some washing, fed the dogs, cats and Guineas, sorted the eggs and put them out for sale, have three loaves of bread on a second prove and got a lamb stew going in the slow cooker. It rained a little over night but not as much as was forecast and no thunder storms, my plan was to be indoors today as it was supposed to rain heavily most of the morning but as yet nothing🙄 As I am already committed to timings and will have the oven on I am going to make some more rhubarb and orange jam. A couple of years ago I split my three rhubarb plants into six because I couldn’t keep up with the demand for rhubarb, it’s Sod’s law that nobody seems to want much of it this year 🤪 Nobody seems to want much of anything actually lol but that’s fine, more for us and less pressure.
I still feel a bit rough but the throat no longer feels like sandpaper so that’s an improvement 😁
11am and three loaves of bread cooked and cooling as well as five jars of jam and the washing up done. Time for a sit down I think.
Those loaves are bigger than they look in the picture 😂 they are 1lb loaves, I use half white flour and half granary to get a nice loaf, forgot to score the tops of these though 🤷♀️
I emptied, what was left in the small chest freezer, into the big chest freezer and have now turned the smaller one off to defrost. This will be cleaned out and moved to a new position and I will reload it with only what I want to keep and will use. Both of the freezers were half empty or half full depends on how you view it, and both freezers have things in them that I will probably not get round to using before the next lot of produce starts going in. The plan is to throw out what I don’t want, when I say throw out I don’t mean throw away mind you, there is a fair amount in there that I will feed to the dogs, gravy stock for instance, if I don’t think I will be using it within the next couple of months I will defrost and use it to mix with the dog biscuits. The reason being I am bound to be making more so I need to move it on. There are ice packs in there, a drawer full, they have arrived at various times with meat or fish orders and rather than throw them away I have kept them but I don’t need them, what I do need to do is get rid of them 🙄 There are things like frozen buttermillk, pesto, herb portions in there, I need to get good idea of what is available and plan to use it all up. Once the smaller freezer is cleaned and moved I will transfer over and then defrost the bigger one which we will be selling, I have a small under counter front loading freezer which is off most of the time but I will keep it just in case I need extra space 😜 It is always handy to use if you are stocking up for a birthday or bbq anyway.
I went outside and did a bit of weeding in the bed on the side of the driveway, then some picking of peas and watering in the small tunnel. I pulled up the rocket which has now gone over and some early sown baby spinach which has now bolted. These were both in tubs in the small tunnel because they were sown so early, once it gets hot in there they just bolt. I gave the tubs (old recycle bins) a good soaking and then sowed some corn salad in one tub and some celery seeds in the other. The celery will be for snipping like you do with cress, I never was a good enough veg gardener to perfect the art of full grown celery 🤪 but this way is ideal, useful on salads and if I don’t use all of it the leaves will get big enough to pick and dry as celery powder or freeze in packets.
I keep looking at the sky and thinking ‘come on, rain please’ but as usual the weather forecast has changed somewhat and there is no rain in sight until later tonight, so much for heavy downpours, I may have to do a rain dance at this rate. It is seriously beginning to affect some areas now, not everything, some things are plodding away content with the sprinkling they might get when I hose at night or the spitting we had overnight which hardly wet the ground and certainly didn’t penetrate much further into the soil than a nano of a millimetre 🙄 Around the farm I can see the ground beginning to open up with fissures, dry, cracked ground, I think I have been here before 🤔 The water tanks are almost empty now and it’s very definitely going to become a problem is we don’t get some rain soon.
During the afternoon and then in the evening I watered, the signs of rain were there but I it wasn’t really happening and I know from experience that I may as well do it. If the rain comes then it’s a bonus if it doesn’t come then at least the plants get something to drink.
At teatime I looked after the twins while Sam took Mia for her swimming lesson and then in the evening Sue and Shane popped over for a cuppa and to let me know about a small business arrangement that I may be able to take advantage of, more about that later if it happens 😁
By the time we went to bed, still no rain, we were later to bed than usual as we have been binge watching Clarksons Farm, which is the funniest thing on TV all year, seriously it’s hilarious, definitely watch it if you live around the Cotswolds, the very real characters are worth a watch in their own and together with Jeremys humour it is side splitting 🤣🤣
Friday: Rain 🌧 actual rain, enough to wet the top layer of the soil 😁 hopefully we will get a fair bit today, it will enliven the plants and fill the water tanks. The problem will be getting it to stop 🤪 The forecast is possibly ‘a days rain in an hour’ 🙄 that is definitely climate change, we never had such volumes in such a short time years ago, whatever is causing the change it is undeniably here. Still it means that today I don’t have to water anything outside and as I did the tunnels and greenhouse last night and the sun is nowhere to be seen, it means no watering at all and I can concentrate on other jobs. I still feel a bit rough, still have a sore throat so I am thinking that I will probably have a good rest this afternoon to gather strength for the weekends work ahead.
It’s been steadily raining for a few hours now, nice and steady so far 🙄 which is what we want, heavy rain washes away the top of the soil because we are on a slight slope and that’s not good.
After doing the washing up I went out to mop up the defrosted freezer, what I could have done with was a pile of tea towels 🤪 I knew I needed them for something. I have cleaned all the areas I can get to, inside is done and the front and sides, I need to move it so that I can Hoover off the back and the side ventilation, that will have to wait until John is home, unless I am feeling particularly strong. Actually I don’t think they are that heavy once they are empty just cumbersome due to the size.
I was listening to a couple of podcasts while I was working and I need to get some more veg in for successional sowing, things like French beans and beetroot, but I also need to start off some veg for overwintering such as cabbage maybe. If you sow them now and keep them in modules until later then hopefully you miss the cabbage white butterfly which as you probably know will decimate a crop very quickly. Think I will have my first break now and peruse some catalogue to see if there is anything I haven’t got that I could be sowing for winter.
The business thing I was talking about has happened quickly and so I am able to tell you that from later today we will be selling local honey from the egg shed 🥰 I am delighted to be able to help a small local producer by buying any jars they haven’t sold and then selling them in the shed. It’s a win win situation and I hope it works out well. The bees live in a quiet area on the edge of woodland just 4 miles away at Grove Farm, I am very excited at the opportunity to be able to do this for our customers.
I popped into the greenhouse for half an hour and have sown some swede, turnip, peas, cabbage, cauliflower and French beans as well as some icicle radish. I know I said I wasn’t going to do some of these but I am thinking that later sowings might be better especially for the root veg. By the time they are big enough to go in the ground, then establish and finally begin to put on some growth they won’t have got so big that they need to bolt due to lack of rain or consistent sunny weather 🤷♀️ I will only know if it try it out, I will have the onion bed available at the beginning of next month and then the broad bean bed will also probably be vacant by then, both of these areas I can use to grow veg well into the Autumn or even winter.
The honey arrived and I got sorted making a little notice for the shed and putting it on the Farm Facebook page. I had some on the bread I made yesterday (toasted) I can confirm it is delicious 😋
I have been researching mulches, home made mulches to be precise, to see exactly what you can/can’t should/shouldn’t use as a mulch. Pretty much anything as long as it does have a seed head is the answer, I have plenty of raw material round here it’s just a case of deciding which to use, probably a mixture of a few things would be ideal. I need to get into the habit of shredding everything I cut back but you can even use a shredder to shred cardboard (as long as the blade is sharp enough and the cardboard is dry) Remember the jute I was trialling? Well here is my conclusion, yes it works well for the first year, it doesn’t exclude all light but it is not a bad alternative to plastic membrane, however as expected it does not last through to the following spring, even if you take it up off the garden, the weather has already started to degrade it. I would say if you can get hold of it easily or cheaply then use it but I wouldn’t buy it off the shelf unless you have plenty of disposable income. Next the biodegradable, compostable plastic membrane, this one had good points and not so good. It was flimsy, quite expensive (but hey we are trying to save the planet 😬) Not permeable which is a bit of a drawback if you are using it to grow crops in, however I would think if you made a ridge and furrow type bed, laid the membrane then planted into the top of the ridge the furrows would collect water run off and so water would get to the roots that way. Laying it on the top of a flat bed does not really work if you are growing through it but it is ideal as a weed suppressant on its own. As for it breaking down, I think you could probably get two years out of it, it showed no signs of disintegrating when it came to plant season again this spring though it didn’t feel quite so robust. It is also a bit like cling film, sticks to itself making for a very good comedy sketch if your sense of humour is present that day 😜 So the good points are, it’s good for the environment, not so good, fairly expensive and tricky to use. Cardboard is another one I use, this is pretty good, the thicker the cardboard the better, but slugs do like to have a festival gathering underneath it so make sure you have frogs and hedgehogs to help keep the slugs down. Mostly I am trying whatever I can to suppress weeds and prevent moisture loss, so far the woven weed membrane is ticking all the boxes except the most important one which is the environment.
Went and got some food shopping early evening, when we got back the geese were making a racket so John left the shopping in the front and ran up the back to see what was happening, he couldn’t really see anything and so came back in. When he went to put the birds away the fox has had two full grown geese 🤬🤬 Last night as he was putting away he nearly tripped over the fox who was busy eating one of our new hens 😳 It’s a f…ing nightmare, what are you supposed to do, full grown geese can’t be kept in a fox proof pen, they graze grass and cover large areas while they are doing it 🤷♀️ getting close to the ‘what’s the point’ point 😢
Saturday: It’s overcast and quite a bit cooler today hence why it’s now 5pm and this is the first time I have sat down all day long I even ate my lunch on the move. I spent the first hour or so doing the usual jobs and then picking, peas, mangetout, baby beetroot and rhubarb, while John did the morning rounds. After that I went out to move the horses restricted fencing just a tad so that they have a bit more grass. Then we moved the freezer into its new position and I went to inspect the damage to the geese from the fox last night. He had gone for the goose on the nest and the gander had tried to defend her but he had both of them. The eggs were scattered everywhere last night but this morning they had put them all back in a nest 😢 However we had already decided to get her off the nest as it was now obvious they were not going to hatch, we wait every year but they are nearly always duff. These were the same I threw them in the hedge and most of them exploded eww that stinks. I then said to John we need to get the grass cut in that paddock, one of the reasons they would have not seen the fox was because the grass was long and it could easily sneak up. Once we got the ride on mower going I whizzed round and round until it was done, found the remains of the female goose in the long grass, the fox has been chewing away on it overnight by the looks of things 🤬 John dug up any ragwort and docks for burning. I then went round to the side by the ducks and cut that grass, it’s a walkway really so needed cutting, John meanwhile dug up docks in the side paddock. He then went in for lunch and I made a sandwich while he got the strimmer going, once it was running I finished my lunch quickly and went out to strim. John had a bit of a sit down but not for long, once I had finished that we tided up some rubbish from the back area and sorted out one of the cupboards which had stuff in there I have been keeping ‘just in case’ five years later I haven’t ever needed it and so now it is getting binned. It is nothing special just things like nets that bulbs came in or plastic fruit punnets I had collected by the dozens 🤣 I also had some brewing gear in there but that is going to my niece and her partner, I said he could have it in exchange for a bottle of whatever it is he decides to brew. I did do some brewing once upon a time, not much, a batch of beer and some cider but as neither of us drink very much I haven’t really bothered for years so might as well give it to someone who will. Shelley came over with the children, my sister was here doing the caravan and then my Mum turned up, all at the same time lol so we had a cup of tea 🫖 Then it was time to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting which John did while I cleaned the kitchen up a bit and washed the floor and that lot took us up to 5pm 🤪 At least I can get a good days work in when the weather is like this, here’s hoping it is the same again tomorrow and at this rate everything will be ship shape in no time at all.
Ooo one thing I nearly forgot, I picked some tea 😁 Camellia Sinensis, not much but about 15 leaves, the tips of the plant (hence PG Tips 😜) will dry them out and then wait for some more to grow and pick them and keep doing that until I have enough for a cup of tea 😂 Actually what I need to do is propagate the plant so I have quite a bit to pick at the same time.
I took some pics in the week of all the lovely pink flowers that are coming out 🥰
I love the baby pink lupin, the rose is Hermione, the salvia is pink sensation and I had no idea I had this dusky pink delphinium 😁
And some of the pyramid orchids growing in the long grass in the driveway, that’s why I can’t cut the grass yet 😁
Pyramid Orchid, there are a few in the driveway and quite a few more in the front paddock, hopefully by not mowing they will increase year on year.
Sunday: Father’s Day, we got up and did all the early morning jobs as usual and then Charlie, Shelley, Martin, Florence and Josh came over. They bought all the necessary ingredients to cook a Father’s Day breakfast which we all sat and ate together, lovely. That was a couple of hours of a leisurely breakfast and some Sunday morning chat and then John went off to pick up some tiles we had ordered to repair the floor in the kitchen where the Rayburn had been taken out. A short rest early afternoon and then mid afternoon someone arrived as planned to take the Rayburn and all the fittings. So now Rosie the Rayburn has gone, I am going to have mixed feelings, we were getting to the point where it was bloody hard work, chopping and cutting wood all summer, loading and keep her going all winter but I will miss the cooking facilities and the amazing warm hug that comes from a wood burning stove that you just can’t replicate with any other heat. I have toyed with the idea of having a small wood burner but that is my heart tugging and not my head thinking 😂
Later we are off to Sam and Luke’s for a roast dinner 😁 and this evening a chap is coming to see if he can dispatch the fox for us. Actually it’s two more foxes, he was here last night and saw them but couldn’t get a safe shot as one was in the yard and the other near the goose hut. When we lost the chickens the other week, he got three foxes and now there are two more to deal with, when I say it’s relentless, it really is. And as I will always say we don’t just do it for the sake of it, the nighttime prowlers are perfectly entitled to prowl, the birds are locked away safely, but the daylight ones well they are a different kettle of fish, we can’t afford to just allow the fox to continuously take all our birds. Come the day that happens we will be shutting up shop as there is only so much of a bashing you can realistically take. I know there are people who don’t agree and that’s fine they are entitled to their opinions and while it is still lawful we are entitled to ours. Before we go out we will be locking the geese away, the new hens have been locked away for three days now, the ones out the front are still free ranging but I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose a few of those while we are out 🙄 people like free range eggs but they come at a cost one way or another 😕
Well we have arrived back home about 8pm from having dinner with Sam and Luke, to a massacre 🤬🤬 I don’t even know what to say to be honest, you know when you just feel hysterical and it’s going to go one way or the other, either laugh or scream. There are bodies and feathers all over the front paddock, side paddock and walkway. This is unsustainable, as I say I can’t see how you can keep a free range flock safe any more unless you invest a lot of money and fence them and then they are not really free range are they 🤷♀️ It is soul destroying and we are getting nearer to the end of keeping hens a lot quicker than we had anticipated, seriously we can’t go on like this much more, we can’t even go out for a few hours. The fox numbers are becoming out of control, they will be in competition with each other for food, I have already heard first hand reports of small dogs being snatched, I suspect at least two of our cats were taken when they were small, where does it end ? 😢 When we no longer have birds it won’t be our problem but at the minute it is and it’s a big problem 😡
Monday 31st May 2021: Bank Holiday Monday, Sam and Luke are coming over today, Luke is helping John with a few things round the farm that he can’t do by himself including taking down the ash tree in the garden next to the greenhouse 🙄 I was going to do a roast but it was forecast to be quite hot so we scrapped that idea, we do t really do bbq, neither of us like standing there cooking over hot coals when it’s hot 🥵 so we are having a picnic in style. I cooked a leg of lamb in the slow cooker overnight we will have that cold in rolls along with various salads including an aubergine and chickepea salad which I have prepped this morning. Great use of that aubergine I was given, cut into thick slices, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and grill, then do the same to the other side. Meanwhile rinsed a can of chickpeas, make a dressing from paprika, honey, olive oil and lemon juice, chop up some onion, I used spring onions but any will do, chop some coriander, mix all together and add the quartered aubergine slices, mix again, enjoy.
Before prepping food I went out and picked purple sprouting and a few asparagus spears that were long enough, John did the morning feeding and letting out before creosoting some rails. I am not too happy about creosoting these days but the preservative they use these days is awful and the wood does not last more than a couple of years. When you pay a lot of money for the fencing you really want it to last as long as possible. Some of our boundary fences are original and they would have been put up in the seventies, ore soaked in old oil, bad I know but that’s what they did then and they do last a very, very long time because of it.
This years bank holiday is definitely going to be a ‘spring’ for everyone, last year we were locked down, this year we have a lot more freedom and I am sure people will be taking full advantage of it 🥰 I just heard that next year we will have a four day spring holiday to celebrate 70 years since the ascension to the throne of our Queen, big parties will be planned all over the country I think.
Well what a fabulous day we have had today, Luke came over and got some welding done and then moved onto cutting down the ash tree. Shelley, Josh and Flo popped in and helped to load the trailer and had a ride in it. They left then Sam arrived with the children, I was getting lunch ready when Charlie and Macca also popped in, together with my sister who was working on the caravan we all sat and had a lovely lunch in the garden. Sue went back to the caravan work, John and Luke carried on cutting the trunk up, Sam filled up a washing bowl with water for the kids to play in and I remembered we had a paddling pool from last year so we got that out, the kids stripped off and played the rest of the afternoon in there 🥰 Lovely day indeed, we are now knackered 😂
But it doesn’t end there for us lol, even if we are knackered there is still the afternoon jobs to get done, some tidying up left to do, a quick bite to eat and then out in fox patrol for the evening. Usually I do the watering in the greenhouse and tunnels, plus the newly planted veg. John wanders round checking on everything and then eventually we can get the birds into bed and relax. Tonight I have set up the wildlife camera to see if I can capture and footage of anything 👀 it will be interesting viewing in the morning hopefully.
Oh my feet hurt 🦶
Tuesday: Another lovely day, I was up with the early alarm even though we didn’t need to be as John is off today, still I find it’s easier to get on in the cooler mornings than later in the day. I started off indoors though as I wanted to get the boot room hoovered, the dust and debris on the floor was getting a bit much. Put some washing on and then outside, do the egg shed, water the plants in pots out there then onto some early morning weeding, hang the washing out at one point, prick out some foxglove seedlings etc etc. Once the heat gets up and the sun gets round I generally give up usually around lunchtime and besides I have work to do later in the day so I need some down time as well. Shelley came over with Josh and Flo at lunchtime, they bought lunch with them and then played in the garden for a few hours. We played a board game and then with the bubbles and then onto some drawing, they can’t use the garden at home at the minute as they are having building work done lol. All the while John was busy sorting out scrap ready to take to the scrapyard for weighing in. When he got back he came and sat in the garden with us all.
We had a rest in the cool in the afternoon before commencing with the afternoon jobs around 5, a quick bite to eat and some paperwork and then I went out to do some watering, the greenhouse, the tunnels, the newly planted squash, bean and sweetcorn plants. I then got some more straw and filled up the trial potato beds, I am not sure how this is going to work out, so far I’m not convinced but time will tell. One mistake I made was writing on the wooden surround the names of the potatoes, well that has all but washed off in the rain so it’s guess the variety time 😜 Last job of the day was to go and water the squash in the ménage, John did it last night for me but I think he missed a few 😂 not surprising really as he wouldn’t know what they look like anyway. One thing to note is that the plants I actually planted have faired a lot better than the ones I sank in pots so I may go and plant those properly tomorrow. Something has been digging near them again though none have been damaged so far.
It’s just gone 9pm, I have just come in to write this and John is still out of fox watch and putting to bed duties.
I have been trying to find an answer to a question I have about the hazel trees, at this time of year the leaves are sticky (if you walk, under a low branch it gets in your hair) I assume it is honeydew, everything I Google tells me it’s honeydew. Honeydew is caused by insect infestation of one sort or another and supposedly it’s not good for the tree, but and it’s quite a but, we have this every year and every year we still get a fantastic haul of Hazel’s and the trees are in great condition. Other observations over time include the amount bees that are attracted to the trees presumably because of the honey dew and birds that are attracted to them because of the insects. So my question was, is this a natural secretion? I can’t see any sign of infestations and the whole thing seems to be beneficial rather than detrimental. One year I actually thought there was a swarm there was such a hum but it was a lot of individual bees feeding 🙄 Is this natural, I mean, Google doesn’t know everything does it 😂 maybe it’s a long forgotten occurrence 🤷♀️ If you know then do tell me.
Wednesday: Oosh it’s warm today touching 26c, muggy with it and thunderstorms are forecast later. That will be good as I won’t have to do any watering. Apart from the basics we have both had the day off today, we got up early got jobs done and then went out before it got too warm. We had breakfast out and I bought a couple of plants, had a wander about before setting off back home. On the way back we called into a local village recreation ground where Shelley, Flo and Josh were having cake at the cafe. When we got home it was lovely and cool indoors, it’s like we have air conditioning 😂 nice when it’s so hot outside. Early afternoon we went off to another local park where Shelley, Sam and all the kids were meeting up for lunch and a play together, we played for a short while before leaving them to it and coming back home again.
The weather was really oppressive, enough to cause a headache or maybe it’s just me 🤪 We had the tiniest rain shower and then it stopped, I’m hoping we get a bit more overnight.
While I was out watering the plants that are out for sale I noticed the apple tree has powdery mildew 😖 there is always something 🙄 It is a combination of things that has caused it, firstly the mild winter hasn’t done any good because pests and disease haven’t died off. I know it was a long winter but it wasn’t that cold, secondly we had all that rain, again not the best conditions and thirdly we didn’t prune it back when we should have done which means the growth it a bit thick and the air can’t flow as it should, resulting in powdery mildew this time. I have pruned off the worst of it, the tree is huge and luckily most of it is near the bottom so I have done what I can for now. I need to spray it and I will either use milk which apparently works well or neem oil, I have both so a case of deciding which I think will be better 🤷♀️ I can’t spray the whole tree obviously but I can spray some of it and hope for the best.
John thinks we have lost a few more hens, seriously I am at the point where I wonder, what is the point.
Thursday: John is having a week off this week BUT it was Bank Holiday on the Monday, today he has gone to work for the whole day and tomorrow he is working the whole day and Tuesday he spent sorting out plumbing stuff, great week off!
He did the morning rounds before leaving and then it’s me on me tod so I sorted out washing to put on, the eggs to put out and then go some bread on the go.
While I was waiting for the bread to go through the two proves I did a bit of hoeing in the front beds and planted the two new plants I bought. One is a ground cover clematis which should look amazing once it gets going the other is a gorgeous low growing pink flowering shrub that the bees are already feeding on. Back indoors to decide on what will be for dinner this evening.
The bread is now baked and meanwhile I have been making a Moroccan rice salad to go with my lamb chop later, ordering a birthday present for John, his birthday is on Monday and organising a gathering for Sunday. Luckily we have plenty of room here for 30 plus other paddocks which could technically hold 30 more each 😜 We have a big family, if we all get together (which is rare) there are 60 of us 🤪 that is just Mum and Ken, their children (me included) their grandchildren and their great grandchildren, most of us live close by and so we see each other all the time especially birthdays 😂
I went out to the greenhouse mid morning, it’s overcast but warm today with the occasional peek of the sun. I potted on two tomato plants which I will grow on in the greenhouse, I have a bit of everything everywhere this year, I am hoping to find out which is the best place to grown certain things. Normally all the tomatoes go in the tunnels and one or two outside but leaving some in the greenhouse will give me an idea of if that is also any good for them or if it is too hot. The peppers and chilli love it in there, I think tomatoes might struggle a bit but we will see. I also planted out two more courgette plants and then some climbing French beans, nearly finished with the planting now. I do have two more small trays of runner beans though, no idea what I will do with them 🙄 I will keep them going just in case any that are planted out fail I think. I just have a few more squash to plant out once they have hardened off, crown Prince which are the lovely blue pumpkins and a couple of spaghetti squash and butternut squash, one table king and the musque de something or other 🤷♀️ that’s it for planting out then, but there will still be work to do. The purple sprouting is coming to an end, John and I had it the other night and the stems are getting a little bit too stringy for eating. The rest of the plant will feed the Guineas so no waste there, one I will leave to go to seed and collect that ready to sow some more for next year. It is such a useful crop to have when there is nothing else around even though it takes forever to mature. The ground it is on I will clear and leave to recover, I will probably put some home made compost on there and then cover it. I have been growing in that ground continuously for three years I think so it needs rest and rejuvenation. I dug up a mini kiwi that has tried twice to come into leaf in the garden but each time the frost has got it, I will pot it up and see if I can rescue it and then overwinter it in the tunnel before putting outside next spring well after the frosts have gone.
I picked some asparagus spears in the afternoon, I had spotted them earlier when I was planting courgettes and thought, I need to pick those. They grow at a great rate of knots and if you miss them they become a fern, we also have asparagus beetle here and so picking the spears is a good way to knock back the numbers. The beetles lay little tiny eggs on the spear stems but they can easily be wiped off with your finger, no harm done, to the asparagus at any rate 🙄 I dug up a few leeks earlier, they have been in the ground all year and need to come out before they spoil. I often use leeks in place of onion, no point going to buy onions when I have leeks to use up. On the side in the kitchen I now have leeks, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce and the acquired butternut squash, I need to figure out what I am going to do with it all. I think the asparagus will be a side dish for dinner later, I may cook it and stir it into my rice dish while John can have it with his chop and potatoes. The lettuce can go into salad which I will have with the rice and a chop, I can also use some more of the peppers I also acquired, that leaves the rhubarb the leeks and the squash to sort out.
I thought I would take a quick look in the small tunnel to see if any peas were ready, yes they were 😁 so John will have asparagus and peas with his dinner tonight. Peas need picking regularly, they will then produce more peas, if you don’t pick them they think their job is done 🙄 The pea pod is the seed for next years plants after all and once they have successfully produced some pods they don’t need to do anymore, as a grower (and avid pea eater) we trick the plant into making more by taking the ones they have already produced, damn and blast it they think, I will have to produce more flowers now and ultimately more pea pods 😂 This applies to a lot of veg, take away this years seed and it will do its upmost to produce more, good eh, well for us anyway.
A bit of a sit down after dinner and then I went out to potter around in the garden and do a bit of watering in the tunnels. I also watered the fruit cage, well the fruit in pots anyway. It keeps trying to rain but never really amounts to much. I took a few lavender cuttings while I was out there, I will take a few every now and again and see if they amount to anything. The setting sun was glorious tonight, it bathed the next field in a golden glow, it bathed everything it touched in a warm golden glow it was a sight to behold. How lucky are we to see that on a regular basis 🥰
Friday: Not a bad day again, overcast but warm most of the day. I started off doing the usual bits in doors, loading the egg shed for the day, watering the squash plants, making sure the horses had plenty of water and potting up some more lemon grass seedlings. I also watered a few of the things that have been recently planted just to keep them going, not rain forecast for a while yet. Then I had a quick half hour catch up with a friend over from the US before Shelley came to pick me up to go out for lunch. We went to Bourton on the Water, it was packed, Shelley said on the way there, it will be nice to see the place without hundreds of tourists 🤣 I have never seen it so busy, it’s one of those places we take for granted, we have always visited there right from when I was a child as my Aunt and cousins lived there, I guess you forget it is a tourist destination. We had a lovely lunch and then a wander round and an ice cream before heading for home again. Luckily for me it was overcast, a nice change to walk round without shade searching for once. When I got back I had to reload the egg shed, it had been busy while I was away and almost empty.
Saturday: Another wall to wall blue sky day 😜 I wanted to get some food shopping done as early as possible this morning so by 8.30 we were off to the shops, I am going to do a cold buffet for any family that want to come over tomorrow afternoon. It will be one of a very few times we have had the opportunity to do this at all in a year, looking forward to it.
Although it didn’t take long to get the shopping I am always aware that the temperature is going up and the sun is getting higher giving me less time to get stuff done outside in the garden. So after putting the shopping away it was straight outside to get on, a bit of watering, some potting on, John cut the lawn and suddenly I’m out of shade and so I have to come inside 🙄 I could move the gazebo but it’s already to hot for me to be out there moving stuff around, sometimes it’s just the moving between shade areas that I can feel the sun prickling my skin, nightmare really, John said I need an indoor job but I like being outside 😂
We are all waiting to see what is going to happen on June 21st, it’s supposed to be the end of all restrictions but I don’t think that will be the case. For us it’s fine as it is at the minute, we feel that we have all the freedoms we need, we can go places, see people and do the things we like doing. I feel that at some point we have just got to learn to live with the virus being around, if when the majority of people have been vaccinated we still can’t have total freedom then what is the point of vaccinating 🤷♀️
I put some lemon grass plants out for sale, not sure if they will sell or not, it’s not something people commonly use unless they do a fair bit of Asian cooking. But it is a beautiful grass in its own right and has an amazing smell to boot so what’s not to like. Lemongrass is a powerful antioxidant and anti inflammatory, it would make a great lemon tea, it would also flavour vodka nicely I imagine, refreshing at any rate. I was surprised at how well it grew the first time I tried growing it but it does need to be brought in over the colder months.
It is so peaceful here today totally blissful. I think having spent last summer lockdown and not much interaction the rest of the year I have forgotten how noisy places can get. Yesterday was busy and consequently noisy, today in the shop it was noisy and here all I can really hear is nature, birds mostly. Starting to go out in the world again a bit makes me thankful that we live where we do, not sure why we would ever want to go anywhere else to be honest lol.
We lost more chickens today while we were putting the shopping away this morning I think, the birds were making a noise but I thought it was because we had let the dogs back out but then we found a pile of feathers a bit later on.
Sunday: Overcast today and the threat of rain later in the afternoon, bloody typical, when you want it, it’s nowhere to be seen, when you don’t want it, whoosh he it comes 😂 We got the morning jobs done and then I spent a couple of hours, picking, watering, weeding, hoeing and at the same time diving in and out of the kitchen cooking food for later on. Meanwhile John was burning, staining, tidying, and then came round to help me edge the lawn and tidy that up. Then indoors for a rest before I start sorting out food and drink for 3pm, I already got a head start by slow cooking the lamb overnight again, it was delicious last time so may as well do it again.
June is a fabulous month in both the flower garden and the veg garden, the flowers are beginning to bloom so we have nice splashes of colour everywhere this month. The veg will slowly start to come on a s by the end of the month we should be picking a selection of peas and beans plus the onions and garlic will be ready to harvest, dry and store. One of the best things in June is elderflower, the wonderful heady smell on a sunny day is a joy, taking those heads and making cordial is a delightful treat, the taste of summer is around the corner.
Monday 3rd May 2021: Bank Holiday Monday, in a normal year there would be plenty of days out to choose from but this year 🤔 add to that the weather forecast and well let’s just say we might as well stay at home 😂 Which is of course exactly what we are doing, I have stopped for a coffee break and John is out on the tractor trying to finish off the side driveway, I wonder how long it is before he gets rained off. Meanwhile I have been in the greenhouse, sorting out plants, tidying up, throwing stuff away, recycling spent compost, moving plants outside to harden off. I really need to move some of the plants on and so have taken the risk even though the temps are still down, they can’t stay down forever surely 🤷♀️ It is still only mid morning so I am going to have to find other projects to get my teeth into but planting up is not going to be one of them. I have got some potting on to do maybe that is the direction I will go in today.
I did go back into the greenhouse, might as well as it’s not bad in there, I put some of the basil seedlings into a big pot ready to move to the tunnel. I have grown red and green basil this year for a lovely contrast, I also moved the garlic chive seedlings all into one big pot and was just about to do the dill when Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo so we stopped for a cuppa.
Midday and I have lit the Rayburn, it is not very nice out there and it’s only going to get worse. It seems like we have had a very long winter and we are not out of it yet, I am starting to feel slightly suffocated by it all. where are the warm mornings and lovely spring days, not on the horizon yet sadly.
One thing I have done indoors is take photos of the Rayburn ready for when we sell it, we had thought we would be finished with it by now but that is not the case. We will move to warmer weather eventually though and that’s when it will go up for sale, part of me will be sorry, the other part will be glad, and we move on to different things, hopefully some solar panels soon as well.
Tuesday: It is still very windy this morning but at least the rain has stopped. The day after a bank holiday is always a funny one I feel, you have relaxed a little too much to really get going like you would on a Monday morning. John has gone off to do some work so I am on my own today, I have two jobs in mind but as yet have not decided which to concentrate on. First is housework, needs a Hoover and a polish all through but I am also contemplating getting the big tunnel sorted and possibly planted up. A look at the weather forecast shows that it is not going to improve that much over the next week and we are now into May, time to stop dallying I think. I have half heartedly got the housework on the list as I am really leaning towards the tunnel just procrastinating 😜
The cucumbers will go into the tunnel along with some more tomato plants but I will also hedge my bets with peppers though most of those will stay in the greenhouse which gets the best heat over summer. The pots of basil and coriander will also go in there and the lemon grass once that is big enough to transplant, I already have some early strawberries growing and a few rows of little gem lettuce. The orange and lemon tree are looking terrible, I have fed them but I think the prolonged cold is reeking havoc and although I have tried to stabilise them I am not sure if they are going to make it to be honest. I may have to get them out of the pots to make sure there is no other reason for their demise such as vine weevil.
Melons will also be going into the tunnel and again I might have to cover the doors with extra fleece to keep out any draught. This year has certainly thrown up totally different weather patterns and trying to level the growing conditions is a challenge 🙄 Everything growing outside is fine on the whole it’s just the tender plants that struggle. The squash plants definitely won’t be going out for quite a while yet, maybe even next month before that happens
Yesterday I bought some mushrooms from my sister, I openly admit to having failed at home grown mushrooms but her partner has worked hard for the last couple of years perfecting the art of growing them. Look at these beautiful clusters, they smell amazing, the colours are beautiful and I am about to have some for breakfast so I will let you know how they taste.
They were delish, I had mine cooked in a little butter and black pepper on some wholemeal toast with a coffee, nice and simple but absolutely delicious 😋
I went out after breakfast and gave biscuit some hay and stored out their water buckets, generally speaking, these days John does most of the poultry and I do the others, the others are cats, dogs, horses, guinea pigs, torts, quail any other waifs and strays we happen to have at the time. I used to do all of them every day twice a day but on top of housework, cooking, paperwork, gardening, veg growing and prepping it got too much and stressed me out a little so with John easing back on his plumbing he began to take on some of the jobs, and still does them even when he has a days work to do 🥰
Jeez that is hard work out there, the winds are so strong, it 10.30am and I am done being buffeted, I look like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards! I did get a bit done, I decided that the cucumber plants are still way too small to go in the ground, we need the sun to come through, it wouldn’t matter about the wind and the rain if we had some warmth to go with it. In the tunnel I did get things ready for planting later in a couple of weeks time I think. I also had a good look at the orange and lemon tree, nothing in the roots that looks ominous but they are damp, considering I only watered them well once in the last couple of weeks this is not a good thing. They like a good long water just once a week but it is not warm enough for the excess to get soaked up and so they are sitting in damp soil, no wonder they don’t look well. To remedy this I have provided them with a duvet experience lol. They look ropey even to an untrained eye but on closer inspection there are lots of tiny new leaves just starting to appear so I am not too worried.
I have trimmed them up and wrapped them in bubble wrap and a fleece hat 😜 hopefully they will appreciate the tlc.
Sam popped in for an hour or so with the twins and when she left I figured I would get some cleaning done after all, then I will sort out dinner for later and get the Rayburn ready to light….again🙄
After Sam had left I got on with some hoovering, polishing and cleaning the bathroom, not a full clean but a whip round so that I feel it is clean enough for the next few days at least and I sorted out dinner for this evening. I pondered while I was hoovering, as you do, mulling over the last year or so and what if anything it has taught me. There is plenty I was already aware of more so than others I think, I was always aware that life could so easily go wrong on a big scale, a pandemic, a natural catastrophe, some sort of apocalyptic happening and so when covid hit it was no surprise to me, more than that, my previous musings on the subject were no longer a laughing matter for John 😂 It was a reality and all the while I have thought, as bad as it has been, it could have been a whole lot worse 🤔 That is something for future generations to remember, I hope they do but the chances are that it will be so far back in their history they won’t put in to place the lessons we have learned (and I’m not talking about stocking up on toilet paper) maybe they will, who knows. The one thing we have all learnt is that things don’t always go the way we think they will just because that has been the norm all our lives, things change, events occur and we have to adapt. Life in the here and now is important is what I have learnt, and the simpler the life the easier it is to adapt to change. I need to stop hoovering 🤣
As I have mentioned before, the past six/seven months have been the windiest I have ever known it to be, such a curious year weather wise and no chance of planning anything. At the moment we have a draught blowing through the back door, the whole building moves over time and as a consequence the doors end up either not opening or closing properly or a gap appears suddenly which is what has happened lately. I am trying to find the best kind of product to use for now as we are planning on getting a new door at some point.
I went out the the greenhouse with the intention of potting on, when I went in it was 36c the sun came out and within two minutes it had climbed to 40c, too hot to stay in there lol, can’t win at the minute. It did make me think though because I came back indoors and it’s cold, we should be using more passive solar on the house somehow, difficult when I can’t tolerate UV rays though 🤔
A friend messaged in the early evening to say there was a street food wagon parked up at a local caravan park, normally that is not something that we would go and get but I hadn’t put the dinner in yet and I thought, why the heck not, let’s go 😁 It was Sri Lankan and it was lovely and even John tried one or two things, ooosh it’s spicy he said 🤣 but he did eat it, there is hope yet.
Wednesday: It’s a promising start to the day, the sun is shining the wind has dropped to a breeze and I can feel that it is not as cold as it has been of late, though still below average. Whoop, the world is my oyster today and the weather is favourable now I just need to decide exactly what to do, or I may just glide through the day picking and choosing as I go.
I went out and began by doing some picking, 5 bundles of rhubarb that went out for sale, a good haul of purple sprouting some of which went out for sale and some I have kept back for dinner tonight along with a bundle of asparagus. The asparagus is slow this year I think I need to give it a good feed and mulch at the end of the season. I then had a job in mind but got waylaid talking to a customer and by the time I got back in the garden I had forgotten all about it and went on to something else 😂 That something else was pottering in the greenhouse again 🥰 moving things around, potting some things on, watering and feeding the hungry plants with an organic feed. There is still a bit of a chill in the air even though the sun is out but it is pleasant enough and warm enough for me to work which is the main thing.
Thursday: Late afternoon and I have just sat down after a busy day of bit and pieces. I started off by sorting out my jam jar stash ready for jam season. Sorting out what lids fit and what jars I have got, the upshot was that I needed to order more jars so that is in hand and they are arriving tomorrow. Then onto picking some rhubarb and some purple sprouting, the rhubarb I picked today were the thin stalks that I can’t really put out for sale but they are ideal for jam. On then to jam making, rhubarb and orange again as that has gone down well with people and especially Josh who said it was delicious. Mum came over to grab some material and then Shelley came over to get the purple sprouting, both of them went away with a bag full of stuff from my freezers, mainly fruit but also some pasta sauces I froze last year and a few other bits and pieces that I won’t get round to using for various reasons. Most years I can run one freezer down, give it a clean out and then turn it on again when the season gets underway. Last year however I could not feed the family for Sunday lunches etc and so the stock pile stayed piled up. We have used most of the veg but there was a lot of fruit and going through the freezer I can see I need to have a big cook up and use some of the contents up. Once that was done I made a quick rhubarb crumble for pudding later, sat down and John came home. What is funny about that is that when he comes in and I am sat down he says ‘just sat down then’ to which I always reply yes I have actually, this time I had literally just written the first line of this paragraph when he appeared 😜
I sweetened the rhubarb with honey instead of sugar, although there was still sugar in the crumble topping, it was lovely just the right balance, not sweet but not tart either, winner 😁
One of our hens is laying a whopper egg every day, 100g + 🙄 we had them for dinner tonight and of course they were double yolkers. For comparison a medium size egg would weigh between 57 & 67g anything over 66g goes in a large box and on avaerage they are around 72g so you can see what a huge difference the 100g ones are, xxl I think.
Friday 7th May 2021: I make a special note of the date today because it should have been Charlie and Macca’s wedding day, I should have been the Mother of the the Bride and we should have been celebrating. Covid has taken a lot of lives around the world which is tragic in itself but it has also taken lots of hopes and dreams which I know can all be postponed for another time but it still impacts on those that had their plans and dreams in place. The wedding will still go ahead it will just be towards the later end of the year and we keep our fingers crossed that things continue to move in a forward direction.
The sun has made an appearance this morning and it is warm enough to wander outside with my morning cuppa and have a look over the front flower beds which I duly did. Today is one of only two or three mornings where it has been nice enough to do that and this is a short interlude. Tomorrow’s forecast is horrendous, high winds and heavy rain, you gotta laugh or you would just cry. I am glad it is nice today as we are going out for a family lunch with Charlie and Macca as a way of marking the day, we couldn’t really ignore it like it was never booked.
I whipped out and gave the guinea pigs a quick clean out, fed them, gave them hay and fresh water, picked up the quail eggs on the way back through. Went to the hay barn to get hay for biscuit and found a goose egg under the hay, John said one had started laying there, first it was in the stable black now the hay barn but I have shut that off so she will have to go back to the stable. Three other geese are now sitting tight, one other is laying the other two, well if they are laying I have no idea where 🙄
A chap came to collect something I had up for sale and was saying what a lovely place and that he and his girlfriend would like to do something similar. As I always say to people, go for it, you get one life so do what makes you happy. Then I thought about our journey over the years, it’s never straight forward, you learn at lot, your emotions get battered at times but it’s hugely rewarding and it’s a great lifestyle choice, well I think so anyway. The only thing is you have to learn to move the goalposts if necessary, that does not come easily for me especially once I get into ‘ideology’ mode. Self sufficient to me was exactly that, nothing that you can’t produce yourself or swap/barter, self reliance is also a major factor, making sure you can do everything you need to. These ideals are of course ridiculous especially if it’s just one person doing it (which until the last year it has been, just me for 80% of the time) Still I busted a gut trying to do it until eventually you can’t and you take a step back and think ‘ah what the hell’ and suddenly life becomes more enjoyable. You stop busying yourself for 18hrs a day making sure you, plant, grow, harvest, process, make, bake, store, dry, as much as you possibly can and you do what you can when you can, it is a lot more harmonious and that’s how it should be otherwise you are still on that hamster wheel of life just one with different objectives. These days life is a lot more relaxed, I settle for self sufficientish and I think the pandemic and the lockdowns have had a lot to do with our attitude shift, what doesn’t get done today, will wait until tomorrow (obviously that does not include feeding animals 😂) I suppose what I am saying is, if you are starting out on this journey, here speaks the voice of experience, at times be prepared to take a different road to the one you had mapped out. If this last year has taught us anything at all it is that things don’t always go the way you think they will 🥰
Saturday: Urgh what a truly horrid day today, I heard the rain all through the night, it’s just gone midday and it hasn’t really eased up for longer than half an hour. At the minute rain is driving from south to north so at least it’s not as cold as it would be the other way round 🙄 At the moment we don’t have the strong winds I thought we were getting I may have been wrong about those or they may come later. We made a decision not to bother doing too much today, can’t really do a lot outside, except John has cut some more wood. We went and got some food shopping first thing, not much just mostly stuff that John eats. I want to start using up a lot of the freezer contents so I have warned him there may be some strange meals coming his way 😂 and probably plenty of soup which is ideal at the minute.
I lit the Rayburn at lunchtime to keep the damp at bay and just take any chill off, probably won’t have it going all day as it will get too warm. I need to order the next electric radiator and John is going to convert the ladder rails int the bathroom by filling them with oil and then they will be connected to the electric. The ladder rails will be so much better on electric because we can’t dry the towels over summer normally so it will be a great improvement on that score.
Sunday: Not too bad a day today, it was a little windy overnight but that has settled to a stiff breeze 😜 and no rain, mostly cloudy which is fine by me, feels a lot warmer than previous days. We or rather I, had already decided we were going out today to do something different, I am fed up of not doing anything away from here. So we went to an antiques centre for a shuffty round, had an ice cream from the van in the car park and then John sat in the car while I mooched a little round the garden centre. I found a craft area and bought a couple of bits for doing something with but I did resist any plants today, go me 😁
Back home and time to get the leg of lamb prepped, pick some fresh greens from the garden, purple sprouting, asparagus and some mangetout from the tunnel. Really they are undeveloped pea pods but they will taste great and there were only about five of them, I pinched out the tops of the pea plants to get more shoots from the bottom and waste not want not they will go in with the greens as well. By eck, people pay a fortune for straight to the table from the garden dinning and here we are doing it on a daily basis 🥰 With a flourless chocolate cake made for dessert we are living the dream here 😜
Have a great week, I am hoping the weather will be a little more seasonal than it has been of late but I don’t want it to go straight into wall to wall sunshine as I won’t get on very well in that either 😂
Monday 26th April 2021: Still on the chilly side for April and no sign of it warming for the next two weeks. Best to dress for the cold and take layers off I think 🤔 This week John has a full week of ‘proper’ work so I will mainly be here on my own bimbling away. This morning I set to making the dandelion honey from the flowers I picked yesterday, if you are going to try then pick them from a place you know has t been sprayed with anything and preferably where animals have not been 🙄 Mine have come from the garden where no animals are allowed and definitely no spraying, pick them in the sunshine so they are fully open and warmed by the sun. You can either take your time and pull off all the petals or you can keep them whole with the green bits attached (not the stalks) because you are going to strain it so it won’t make much difference in the end. Just give the flowers a good shake so any insects have time to escape before you boil them 😜 Simmer for 15 mins with a slice of lemon and then leave overnight to steep. Strain and squeeze out all the juice you can, measure the liquid, you want a pound of sugar for every pint of liquid. Then simmer (a good simmer not gentle) for 15 mins before putting into hot, sterilised jars. That’s it, liquid gold, sunshine in a pot, it is not as thick as honey more of a sauce but still very delicious and worth having a go just so you can say you have done it. Back in the day dandelions were a very important flower/crop and far from removing them from lawns they were actually planted up. They are a great source of nectar for bees and other insects, a great food source for many small mammals and you can even make a reasonable coffee from the dried roots (I have read this but never tried) Part of what is wrong with today’s thinking is we want perfect lawns and grass areas, what is perfect, that’s the question 🤷♀️ To me a perfect lawn is full of wild flowers, they are not weeds, they serve a purpose just not to humans, unless you make use of them that is.
It is mid morning and one of my plans today is to get my tomato plants in the polytunnel. I have looked at the long range forecast and even though the temps are below average it looks like the overnight temperature will remain above freezing for most of the time. I may have to put an extra fleece over the plants if I think it’s going to go below 0c but it’s looking hopeful.
I spent the rest of the morning in the small tunnel planting the tomato plants, 14 in total a mix of sweet million, tigerella and cherry indigo. I have to confess I don’t know which plant is which because though I labeled the rows when they were growing I muddled them up once they were potted up, I didn’t think carefully enough and whoops error made. Still have more plants, some will go into the big tunnel and I always try some outside to see how they do. I have staked them all and tied them in and the run string from the stake to the crop bar in the roof of the tunnel. These measures will hold them upright and hopefully take the weight when they are loaded with tomatoes. Because the temperatures are not up to seasonal average at the minute I have taken the precaution of fleecing the inside of the door ways to provide extra protection from the night temperatures, I have also cut extra fleece to put over them at night. It’s nice and warm in there at the minute, around 25c but you can feel the difference once you step outside so best to Molly coddle them as much as possible at the moment, I don’t want to lose them after spending so long getting them growing from seed.
I came indoors then for a bite to eat, I am not sure if it was the heat in the tunnel or what but I didn’t feel too well, a bit sick. I have had it before and wonder if it is my blood sugars dipping too low for some reason. Usually if I come in and have something to eat and a sit down it passes after a while 🤷♀️ I have regular blood test so if it was a permanent problem I think they would have seen it in the results before now. It tends to be when I am busy but it doesn’t happen often, I always have a good breakfast of oats and banana so it’s not that I have skipped breakfast or anything like that.
It is very quiet here today, not much noise outside at all and we have probably had one egg customer all day 😔 We worked out that we need to sell £7 worth of eggs a day just to cover the feed costs that doesn’t even include bedding or our time and the egg boxes we buy and it certainly doesn’t cover times when we have to worm the hens (which we only do if necessary). If business gets much slower I think we will have to have a serious discussion about wether to carry on with it or not 🙄 We might have to come up with a different idea altogether. I think it is because we are used to not being able to keep up with egg demand lol and it has certainly dropped for some reason. Not that I am too worried, the intention was always to be self sufficient and the egg thing just started as a sideline to move extra eggs but it’s nice to have people come and have a chat and put the world to rights sometimes.
Cup of tea and a sit down mid afternoon, I have just finished making some rhubarb and orange jam. Hoping it will set, there is not much mystery to jam making except the set lol and a lot depends on how much moisture is in the fruit you use. Really once you get it to a rolling boil and a temperature of 105c it theoretically should set but there is always the unknown. I never do the freezer test because quite frankly I can’t be arsed, our freezers are right out the back so by the time I got the plate in it would have warmed up a bit and so no good anyway. I prefer to get it to temp and hope🤞 generally it’s fine but sometimes if we have had a lot of rain and the fruit has taken up a lot of water it can be more tricky but nothing a re-boil couldn’t sort out. I went with orange in the end as that is what I fancied doing, the vanilla option can work out a tad expensive as you are supposed to put half a bean in and they cost a fair bit plus to me that’s a bit of a waste of a vanilla bean 😜
The dandelion honey is a little runny so more of a pouring sauce, it will still be great with ice cream or even pancakes/yoghurt etc but no so good to spread. The one I made last time was a better, thicker consistency and was so yummy that finger dipping was a must.
The jam was a good set, I can tell after only 10 mins because even though in the hot jars it’s still runny, in the bottom of the pan it’s nicely cooled and thick and sticky. I used to wash the pan straight away but it is good way of finding out how the set has gone so I leave it to cool and then wash it.
I sometimes think it would be good to do it for a living but I am a bit of a perfectionist, there is no way I would sell anything that wasn’t exactly right. I can imagine if it was yays to the left and nays to the right (or which ever way round it goes) that I would have a bigger reject pile than a sellable pile 😂 That goes for anything I do really. I think another reason I would like to do something is because I love to look for new recipes for things I grow but half of it John wouldn’t eat so there is not much point making it just for me, I would look like a roly poly pudding (even more than I do now) maybe I will just start making it and hope that he likes the look, but no, I don’t think that will work, we have such totally different tastes in food it’s ridiculous 😬
Oo John saw a shooting star last night, there is meteor activity at the minute, the eta aquariids, so that’s most likely what he saw.
Just in case you thought I was finished with the making today, nope, I made some asparagus soup. I had a bunch that I picked the day before yesterday and put in the shed but it hadn’t sold and so I got it back in. It had gone a bit limp so no point leaving it out there, I picked another fresh bunch and made soup. A simple soup that is big on flavour and of course would be delicious with a hunk of fresh bread and some Parmesan shavings. You could add cream to the soup but I like simple soups and beside it’s less fattening 😬 Just chop up and onion and a clove of garlic, sauté in a knob of butter and a drop of olive oil, the butter gives it a richer flavour but you can leave it out if you want. Add pepper and the chopped asparagus and then stock of your choice, either veg or chicken. Simmer until the asparagus is soft then either serve like that or whizz it with a blender stick. I don’t add extra salt because of the stock cube but add salt to taste if you like. Simple, nutritious, delicious and can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. You can freeze this but not with the cream added, leave it out and add it later if you are freezing it.
Tuesday: I feel like I have been on the go fours and it’s only 9.30am. Mostly I have been doing household bits, the mundane stuff that has to be done also sort the egg shed, feed the dogs, put out the rubbish etc. Time for a quick coffee and contemplate what jobs I will do today, it’s still cold only about 5c at the minute, getting up to 14c at some point but at least the cold wind has dropped today which is a bonus. I haven’t checked the poly tunnel yet but I think the plants will have been ok, I have some out for sale in a little greenhouse and they are fine this morning so the Molly coddled ones should be cosy. The pepper plants and cucumbers are not big enough to transplant yet, they will go into the big tunnel, I had considered doing that today but they need to wait a while yet.
I decided as it was pretty cool outside I would sit and make some cards which is what I did for a couple of hours.
John came home as he had left his phone somewhere and had to phone around to find out where it was, eventually located it and will pick it up later.
I then went onto doing paperwork as I have got a bit behind and needed to catch up. Doing the household stuff and the farm receipts was the easy bit, doing Johns plumbing was painful. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ springs to mind. I took a lunch break and went back to it but I honestly can’t make head nor tail of some of it. It appears we don’t have all the statements, some of the invoices and I can’t for the life of me match up payments for one supplier 🙄 It drives me to despair the amount of times I have tried to get John to organise supplier and payment records might as well bash my head against a brick wall. I am sure we will get there eventually as it’s usually all filed in Johns head but that’s not much use to me when he isn’t here. He tells me he has a book that he writes it down in now, I can’t wait to see that! Probably won’t be able to make head or tail of that either, it will be in special ‘John’ code 😜
Typical of me as I can’t leave a job alone until it’s done even when I know I can’t finish it so I have been going back and forth to the paperwork 😂 I have managed to chip away at little bits so I have less of it buzzing round in my head. This is all just to get it straight ready for getting in order for the accountant, that is yet to come 😩
I lit the Rayburn around 3pm, we haven’t had it lit for the last few days and relied on the electric blow heater in the living room but it’s just too cold overnight and so today I have decided to light it. Chances are we will be roasting by mid evening but we can always let it go out again.
I have been saddened to read online that the whole shop local frenzy of last year seems to have died. Plenty of egg sellers wondering where the customers have gone 🤔
I just need to have a small moan and get something off my chest here: I have just seen a social media post regarding garden waste and the fact that you have to pay to get your waste taken away. A garden tax, was someone’s description, excuse me 🙄 but it’s your garden and your garden waste and yet you think you shouldn’t have to pay to get it removed kerbside, here is an idea COMPOST IT YOURSELF THEN! Thanks for listening 😜
Seriously though there is a mind set that is pretty ugly when you look at it, everything is someone else’s fault or responsibility, the wider picture is never looked at or considered 🙄
It’s 8.45, John has gone out to put the birds to bed and if I had any nuts I would be sweating them off by now 😂 bloody roasting in here even though we didn’t put any more wood on the fire after 7pm as it was already getting a bit warm, all or nothing!
Wednesday: It started raining persistently last night with a few heavy bursts overnight and it’s still raining this morning. This is about one of the only times I will put a smiley face for rain 😁 we haven’t had any for weeks and the ground was really, really dry. The beds we planted up were holding up just about, I had been giving the plants a quick pick me up sprinkling with the hose but they really needed a soaking and now they have had one. Of course, not only will the plants put on some lush growth but so will the weeds 😂 ah well you can’t win them all and at least they might be easier to pull than they have been lately.
I have been delighted with the tulips this year, we don’t have many but they have been bright and cheery and really lift the spirits more so than the daffodils I think. So I had a mad idea lol and thought it would be nice to plant up pots of tulip bulbs and perhaps sell them, they would make great Easter and Mother’s Day presents ours birthday or general have a nice day gifts. Of course one thing led to another and my enthusiasm spread to, wouldn’t it be nice to have the bed in front of the window filled with tulips so I bought 500 bulbs, yep 500 lol, it’s the daffodil episode all over again. Obviously I have missed the boat this year but next year they are going to look fantastic and there will be enough bulbs to pot some up for sale. The 1000 daffodil bulbs I bought and planted along with Mum and Ken are doing well, they come up each year in a block of beautiful yellow but they always seem to be a bit late pr than most. They are up in the back paddock too which means they can’t really be seen, on hindsight I should have planted them in the driveway grass, never mind I can always start dividing them, this is the third year of flowering so I could start lifting some later in the year.
BOO! I just want to conduct a little experiment lol to see how many people read the blog all the way through. So if you could add Boo to the comments I would very much appreciate it 😁
Don’t forget to Boo 👻😜
Went out mid morning to do the horses and the guinea pigs, I watered the greenhouse and checked on the polytunnel. Where my hands got wet I could really feel the cold it’s not much warmer out there and there is not much I can be doing at the minute so I came back in to organise dinner tonight. I did get chased by the gander and at one point I thought I was cornered but found a hazel stick on the floor, a wave of that and he went off haughtily with his women, 😅
I have avintage flower press that I picked up at a boot sale years ago just because I loved it. I have never used it, until now, this morning I have picked some tiny flower heads and pressed them, no idea what I will do with the yet but it will be fun to think of something.
Saturday May 1st 2021: May Day, Beltane, a time to celebrate the arrival of summer 🙄 (thats a bit iffy here in the UK 😂) Still it is the time to enjoy nature at its finest, the blossom on the trees, the flowers, the hedgerows, the lush green grass. Birds, insects and animals everywhere are busy reproducing. These days we barely give May Day a second thought which is really sad, there was a time when a maypole was a permanent features in towns and villages and May Day was a day of celebration.
I had a very productive morning and part of the afternoon. I have been weeding, digging out deep rooted weeds, raking, having a bonfire and putting down membrane on the difficult for me to get too bed. It’s a good job I had been busy as you will notice nothing written for Thursday and Friday, that’s because apart from basic jobs I did bigger all really 😜
Sunday: Productive again, I know, two days in a row 😂 On the job list this morning apart from the usual was to get a spot of shopping, we were there at 9.30 and gone by 9.55 😜 Luckily the supermarket we use allows self service before 10, as we drove past another supermarket they were still queuing to get in. Back home unload and put away and then off to the DIY store for some fencing. We have an area just outside the back door that the old drive way cuts through, across the drive is the gate to the garden. I wanted to fence the drive off part way down, firstly this will mean that the area is secure for the toddlers and children to move between the house and the garden. Second but no less important it means the dogs can’t get into that area, they knock the kids over half the time and the other half of the time they dig holes. The holes then become ankle twisting areas that you don’t always see, usually because I am carrying something. The dogs can come in when we allow them but it means we can also shut them behind the fence if we don’t want them there. The other reason is the free range mobster geese, they have no manners, crap everywhere and nibble on everything plus they are pretty scary to children being much bigger than them. In fact they are pretty scary to me at the minute so the last thing I want is to open the back door to find them there 😜
Have a great week, hopefully the weather will warm up just a tad and everyone will be happy 😃
Monday 19th April 2021: Monday again yay 😜 Today it is Mia’s 5th birthday so we will be popping over to see her later 🎂 John went to work this morning after doing the rounds and I have mostly been pottering out and about in the garden. I have had to do some watering as even the plants that like it dry are beginning to struggle a little. Most of the plants that are in the beds or in the ground are fine, anything I had recently planted needed water and plants in pots need some water. I don’t have many pots now as most of them have gone into the new beds but there are still a few that I haven’t put anywhere yet or that will stay in pots elsewhere. I watered the veg plants I put in last week and also the raspberries and blueberries that are all in pots. Everything else will still be able to get some overnight moisture or deep ground moisture hopefully. There is no rain on the radar at all 🥴 certainly no sign of any April showers 🙄
I dug up the few plants I wanted to move, the water I gave them last night has done well and the rootball was still damp this morning. Some I have planted straight in the ground and some have gone into pots to bring on either to sell or plant where I have a bare patch. I have tried to get a broad a range of flowering plants and shrubs as possible, this includes different heights, strength of fragrances, some with evening fragrance, different colours and sizes of flowers but nearly all are single open flowers which are what the insects need, I do have a few flowers that are double but not many. In other areas I have included grasses for the wildlife that prefer those and I have the small (tiny) pond which has water plants. I keep contemplating a bigger pond, the one I have is literally a large tub but it works well enough as a wildlife pond. As long as I have water areas around I suppose they don’t need to look like a pond just do the same job.
I had my lunch sat outside which was glorious, all I could hear were the birds and myself crunching on an apple 😀 beautiful day. John came home mid afternoon so we went over to Sams early so that she could go and pick Mia up from school while we looked after the twins, and then saw Mia and gave her some birthday presents.
Back home and I cut the grass in the front driveway, I have left some squares so that the grass gets long, the insects will appreciate that. John then cut the lawn before we had something to eat, we had a delivery of an old cupboard I have bought to put where the Rayburn is once that goes and then we popped round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa as it was such a nice evening.
The amount of eggs the hens and ducks are laying is verging on ridiculous 🙄 we have about six trays to try and shift. At one time I could advertise on Facebook but the algorithms have put paid to that as soon as you mention any animal species, I even heard of someone having a horse manure post declined. I think I will have to make lemon curd, lime curd and orange curd and give it to people, then a batch of cakes for the freezer maybe some pickled eggs, John is already eating eggs for breakfast every day 😂
Tuesday: Beautiful morning 🥰 Last night driving back from Mums the sun was a fireball and early this morning it was the same.
By 7.30 I had breakfasted, dressed, got the first load of washing on and cleaned the windows. With the sun finally shining the dusty windows were getting a bit annoying, I am not fanatical about my windows but they have not been done all winter, we don’t have many and they are not very big so any light I can get inside is welcome. I don’t spend too long faffing just a soapy cloth over and then the squeegee any marks left behind can stay, they will soon get dirty again and I can think of better things to do than meticulously getting them to be perfect, besides, I don’t stay inside on a sunny day looking out of the window 😜
I spent the next two hours outside sorting out a few plants, re potting some shrubs that I have now placed in an area that is looking pretty bare. Under the Oak tree is fenced off because there was a hawthorn there, which has mow died off after years of cutting back and also a dog rose which I cut back hard each year, both of these have viscious thorns and I don’t want the children getting tangled in them. It means I have a fenced area with not much in it, over the years I have filled it with pots of things but now most of that has been planted in the beds. I did have mock orange, a dogwood, a euonymus and a white buddliea which I have grown from very small plants, these are now bigger, potted up and sitting nicely in that bare space. The white buddliea was quite big, about three feet but it was really struggling where it was and so I dug it up the other day, put it in a bucket of water with some feed ready to move elsewhere. It was only when I was looking around for things to fill the space that I decided it could go in a big pot and hopefully it will like it in its new place. I also scattered a few packets of flower seeds to see how they do, it should look nice and full by mid summer.
John came home mid morning, I hung the washing out and then we decided not to waste the day so we went out for lunch! Oh how fabulous was that to sit outside by the river having a pub lunch and a cold drink, very fabulous I can tell you 🥰 People were happy to be getting out and about and doing something normal, we went for a short walk along the river before returning back to town to get some shopping.
Wednesday: It’s mid afternoon and I have come in for a sit down after a very productive morning doing various jobs in the garden. I have to pace myself otherwise I won’t have the energy to haul myself around later this afternoon and get the dinner etc. I know when it’s time to stop as my feet hurt and my legs won’t carry me much more, definitely sit down time. So what have I been doing? Well I started off planting four rows of root veg, two rows of turnips and two more rows of beetroot, that’s four lots of beetroot at the moment and we don’t even eat that much but it does sell well and it makes a great chutney. After that I watered it all in and watered a few other bits and then planted more potatoes, that’s all of them in now so it’s just a case of waiting. I checked the carrots and as always they are spasmodic so I topped up the rows with more carrot seed, I am determined to have a lot of carrots this year. I have done some hoeing (a lot actually 🙄) I have fixed down weed membrane in unused areas like the compost area so that I don’t have to worry about weeds growing everywhere and I have tried to dig out the comfrey root on one of the beds that has not been planted yet. If you get comfrey, and it is a great plant, make sure you get the bocking 14 which does not readily seed everywhere and cause a big problem later on like the one I have 😂 I have dug up a trug full of dandelions to feed to the torts and Guineas and I have picked purple sprouting and asparagus for dinner later. There are probably lots of other little things I have done but can’t recall now that the time has passed. I feel like I have definitely made some headway and no longer feel that I am lacking behind. I have had a good look at the areas that are still to plant up and decided what will go where, I just need to wait for the tender plants to get bigger and the weather to stop plunging back into artic mode 😜
Everything in the greenhouse is doing well, although we are getting a lot of frosts the temperature over night in there must be staying reasonably above freezing which is great. I was tempted to plant the tomatoes in the tunnels but as they would be directly into the ground that might not be such a good idea so I will hold my horses. Talking about horses, I observed that biscuit was lying in the paddock this morning when I started gardening, a couple of times I spoke to her as she was just the other side of the fence, she didn’t seem overly unhappy, but after she had been there at least two hours I went into the paddock to give her a thorough check over. I gave her a nudge to see if she would get up, nope, I gave her a shove to see if she would get up, nope, so I walked a way to go and get a head collar to put on her and see if I could force her to get up that way. By this time I was slightly concerned that she couldn’t get up of her own accord, I turned and walked away and up she jumped 😂 little sod was just having a lovely sunbathe and resented my intrusion I think lol.
Oh my days we have so many eggs at the minute I am seriously going to have to do something with them. Not sure where all our egg customers have gone 🤷♀️ two regulars that always had a lot of eggs each we have moved recently so that makes a difference and I guess so does the fact that we sold so many chickens last year 😂 Right I am off to find out what recipes use an enormous amount of eggs up, I guess I could make pasta but we don’t eat that much of it so it will have to be cake for the freezer!
Thursday: Lovely sunny morning again, a tad cold first thing but soon warmed up. It’s 9.30 and as yet I have not done anything else except have my breakfast and make stuff. I have a batch of lemon curd on the go in the slow cooker, yep in the slow cooker, I could have stood and made it but I figured this way I could get on with other things. In the oven at the moment I have the fail safe Mary Berry orange and sultana cake and a lemon drizzle cake, 16 eggs used in total so far 😜 I know what will happen, I will use all these eggs and then the hens will go on strike and we won’t have enough eggs 😂 can’t win, it’s never a dead cert either way so I am just rolling with it. At the moment I have not pickled any eggs, I need to check I have enough vinegar to do a large jar full, not quite sure what I will do with them then as John doesn’t eat them and it’s not something I would think about having very often but luckily the boys in the family do like them so they will probably go to them 😀 Great with a pint and a packet of crisps I am told though never tried lol. I also made some little cakes for the children, light lemon flavoured ones. I know lemons are not grown here so technically not sustainable but I need to use up eggs somehow and so lemons it is 😜 On the subject of lemons, it is possible to grow them here so I’m not sure why it’s not done on a bigger scale to be honest, plenty of people have them in the conservatory and they produce half decent lemons, maybe it would cost too much on a commercial scale 🤷♀️
John has gone off to work again today, that’s two in a row lol he will be tired out by the end of the week. The semi retired thing is working well so far but I wonder how long it will be until he is booked up again.
The wind is a bit chilly and if you are in the shade or not moving around very fast it can feel colder than the impression the sunny bright blue sky is giving. In the greenhouse though the temp has hit 40c which is amazing, it feels lovely in there as long as you don’t spend too long inside 😜 You can definitely feel the difference when you come out again.
Sam came over with George and Lucie for a couple of hours over lunchtime, we went for a wander round the farm introducing them to all the animals, George spends his time saying cock-a-doodle do and Lucie gets busy exploring everything she can.
The cakes and the lemon curd are resting nicely on the side, I am hoping the curd does set, home made lemon curd is totally amazing, zingy, tasty and not over sweet like the shop bought stuff so if you ever get a hankering to make it then go for it you won’t regret it.
Lemon curd, sooo delicious 😋
I spent more time, much more time, than I would want to, trying to sort out a printing problem, basically I eventually found out that my iPad would not talk to my printer for some reason, kids 🙄 A few updates and resets later (and you all know how long they take) and I was back in business. The object of the printing was to print pictures of the plants I had out for sale, it’s all very well putting greenery out there but if someone has no idea what it will look like eventually then they probably won’t bother, well now they know 😊
Friday: Another lovely day of wall to wall sunshine (if you can tolerate that sort of thing) I never have a plan of what I am going to do, I may have a vague idea of things I want to get done but these days I don’t stress over it. I wanted to strip the bed and get the covers washed first thing and on the line, one bit of cleaning leads to another and before you know it the morning has largely passed. That is a bit of a school boy error for me because ideally I should get outside while it’s still cool. Anyhow I didn’t and so mid morning I decided to then get out on the garden. The birds, bees and beer bed has done well for around five years with hardly any work needed. Lately it has got a little wayward, stingers have taken hold and are big strong plants, I have a tree growing through a blackcurrant bush, the golden hop has gone berserk and twined round everything, the gooseberries are suffering due to not enough air circulating. It is time to address the problems, we began back at the beginning of the year by digging out one of the gooseberry bushes and trying to get the roots of the hop out but it was so wet and claggy it was near on impossible so I have left it. Today I started to tackle it again but it is incredibly dry 😂 and digging is almost impossible. The sun was getting hotter and hotter and there is no shade there, it is one of the beds that is most difficult for me to tend because it gets all day sun right from the off. There are four trees which are now pretty big, a cherry, an apple, a mulberry and a dual pear, plus three blackcurrant bushes and three gooseberry bushes, there are wild strawberries growing on the ground in one area but the rest has weed membrane down because I can’t get to do it easily. There is rhubarb and the hop as well, it is a very productive area and mostly I leave it for the birds and bees, the hop part was for the beer but that has never happened yet 🙄 Over time the trunks have got large and round and the membrane has come away allowing the stingers, docks, keck and dandelions to take hold. The idea was to get all those out and then adjust the membrane to cover the soil again, but I can’t dig a lot of it out as it is entwined in the fruit bushes, the dilemma is, do I forsake the bushes and start again or leave it for the time being and tackle it at the end of the year when the ground will be softer. I would have to make a proper plan as I will need Johns strength to help get those plants out, the roots will be deep. I was enjoying doing what I could but I could feel the sun and the heat beginning to affect my skin, (a kind of prickling feeling) there is nothing more I would enjoy than being in a vest top digging away and to be honest it pisses me off that I can’t but I also don’t want to induce a flare so I am limited in what I can do. For today I have now left it, I have been able to adjust some of the membrane and cover gaps but that’s about it, still, every little helps I suppose.
John was home mid afternoon, with flowers 💐 at this point I can here you asking ‘what has he done wrong’ because that’s exactly what I would think normally except that we had had one of those conversations the night before. You know the ones, long time married discussions, he says to me that I am a pessimist and so I explain that once upon a time I was an optimist but was regularly disappointed and eventually because a realist 😜 One of the points I made was that he prided himself on the fact that he bought me flowers ‘once every twenty five years’, each birthday, Valentine’s Day, anniversary I would hope to get flowers and they never came so eventually you stop hoping and face reality. I’m not sure if that shocked him to hear that but the result was a lovely bunch of flowers today so I’ll take that 😁
I picked a few bunches of rhubarb in the afternoon and a bunch of asparagus all of which went out for sale as I won’t be using it today. I noticed quite a few spindly stalks of rhubarb so I will probably pick those and make rhubarb jam either with vanilla, orange or ginger haven’t quite decided which one yet. Ginger might be too wintery and I don’t have an orange thinking about it so it will most likely be vanilla lol.
Saturday: Ooosh busy morning this morning doing various garden jobs, lots of potting on, putting plants out for sale, various other bits up for sale, trying to move on some of the ‘stuff’ we have lying around 😂 We had a tragic start to the day mind you as sometime overnight the fox has got into one of the huts in the paddock and slaughtered 17 hens 🙄 At first we couldn’t work out how it got in but further investigation shows that he has some how managed to lift a very heavy side panel and get through some tight bars to get access. That’s the end of that lot and I won’t show you the graphic photo of the aftermath I will leave that to your imagination 💭 They were our oldest lot of hens but they were still laying well and that’s about 12 eggs a day we have now lost 😠 Typically I literally just sold the 13 point of lay hens we had left otherwise we would have just kept those, the old law of the sod and all that.
John has been on the tractor moving heavy stuff around to tidy up and also cleaning out some of the other birds as well as the morning jobs of feeding, watering and egg collecting.
It is sunny with blue skies today but there is quite a breeze and it’s a tad cold. April is normally a month you can enjoy with warming temperatures and showers but this one has been cold all the way through, I do hope May has better things in store for us. There is no sign of rain for at least a couple more weeks and the wind direction is predicted to be either from the north or the east so it will stay chilly. Not until the first week of May does the wind start coming from the west 🙄
Blimey trying to get the washing off the line in this wind was a mission 😂
Sunday: We started off well this morning, no frost but still windy and it’s coming from the East but with the sun out as well it’s not bad. John did the feeding, no more Fox attacks, and then he got on with cleaning out the point of lay pen. This pen we built around five years ago at a cost of around £1000 and when the batches come in for sale that’s where they go. We have now decided because it is fox proof we will house one of the two permanent flocks in there and let them out in the daytime and use a stable for the point of lay when they come in. Makes much more sense to not loose our flocks overnight, the huts are great, they are over 100 years old though and they were used back in the day when foxes were controlled as that is no longer the case we have to move with the situation.
While John was doing that I started a bonfire to burn some paper rubbish, dirty shavings and some bits of wood. While I was doing that I noticed that biscuit was lying down again, this time I decided to get her in as that is not normal daily behaviour for her. She is a bit pottery on her feet, the ground is rock hard due to the lack of rain and her feet need looking after as it is so I got her into the stable. I didn’t want to leave her there because she is better off outside but I needed to put up the electric stakes and tape. This would have been a ten minute job if John had not just gathered it all up and dumped it in a heap when we dragged the fields. Anyone who has ever had to untangle electric horse tape will know this is a pig of a job 😂 I got that sorted and moved the water bucket, got John to fix a piece of the fence that was broken and got biscuit back outside with some hay. All the time she was in Jack was wellying up and down the paddocks making a racket, if you regularly see two or more horses in a field and then one on it’s own going a bit mental, the reason is because they have been separated from their friend 🙄 Once they were both settled again we shot off to get a little bit of shopping.
When we got back I went out to sort out the guinea pigs etc in the orchard. As I was in there I looked up to see a chap walking up the drive, he spotted me and then turned and walk back out and off down the lane. I said to John something doesn’t feel right and John went across the paddock to the wall by the lane to see where he went, he had carried on and then went off to the left down scrubs lane which is basically a dirt track that goes to a few properties and eventually out across the fields. No problem I thought, it’s just a walker and maybe my intuition was not right. However, 10 minutes later we were stood in the drive talking to Sam and Luke who had pulled up in the car and he walked back past the bottom of the driveway. This then does become odd as if he was out walking I wouldn’t expect him to be back 10 minutes later, it means he didn’t go far before turning round and coming back rather than continuing his walk. He was almost dressed like a Walker but not quite, dark clothes a flat cap and a small backpack, let’s just say he looked like he was trying to blend in with Walker but definitely didn’t. He may have been totally innocent but my instincts were telling me differently and you get a feel for things like that over time. I flagged it up on the rural watch page I am on just in case there are any other reports.
I then spent another hour weeding the front beds, I figured if he came back a third time I couldn’t really be seen until the last minute and might catch him coming up the drive again.
We nipped down to the local pub for a drink in the garden with Sam and Luke who had been to the wildlife park. I did pick some dandelion flowers beforehand and they are now sleeping overnight ready for dandelion honey tomorrow.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 