Tag: runner beans

Posted in Friesland Farm

Courgette soup, new hens, stormy weather & Tussie Mussies.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Sunday eve: I took a couple of ibrufen and as John was watching the F1 I decided to go outside and do a bit of pottering. Firstly I watered the tunnels and was delighted to see that the cucumbers and melons have begun to grown quite quickly, then I potted in some plants, blackcurrants, lupins and a few other bits, they will all be left to overwinter and hopefully be good strong plants next spring.

Monday 5th Aug: I feel like s**t 🙄 no other way to put it lol, I have a cold, I think, I can’t breathe, well obviously I can a little or I wouldn’t be here typing this but I can’t breathe through my nose at all, it’s blocked which makes my head feel thick and heavy. I got up had a shower had my breakfast laid down and went back to sleep for a short while, got up had coffee, put some chicken, bones and veg in the slow cooker to make a broth. My throat gets dry then I start coughing away 🤧 sneezing, the works, urgh. The insult to injury is that I can’t take cold and flu remedies due to other meds so the broth mix contains garlic, turmeric and ginger along with chicken, veg and herbs, hope it helps 😜

Tuesday: Feeling a bit better today so I cracked on outside with an early start. I thought I would concentrate on flower gardening so I started with the front area, weeding, deadheading, cutting back and digging up any self seeded things and anything that is struggling. I had a happy time listening to the radio in the greenhouse potting up foxgloves, huechera and a couple of struggling lavenders. Then onto cutting the lawn and hoeing the paths around it, a bit of weeding and taking out the borage which has gone over and a few weeds from the herb bed. Sit down and have coffee and a bagel 😀 Going well and it’s only 10.30!

Shelley came over with Josh and Flo and picked some runner beans, Josh and I dug up potatoes and then Shelley made courgette soup which was delicious and I would definitely make it again.

500g courgettes (we used yellow)

Garlic chopped or minced

Olive oil

450ml of chicken stock, could use veg stock

Fresh parsley

Fresh basil

Salt

Pepper

Pinch of nutmeg

Chop courgettes and soften in olive oil, add stock and cook until soft enough to blitz or mash, add chopped parsley and basil and the pinch of nutmeg. Serve warm with Parmesan cheese and crusty bread 😀

Simple and good for you.

We popped over to see Sam, Mia and the babies.

Rain on and off all afternoon and into the evening but we have to get the fencing up ready for the chickens arriving tomorrow 😜

John finally got the strimmer working, I had sprayed the carburettor with cleaner but couldn’t start it, John had a go then he cleaned out the end of the pipe going into the fuel tank and voila it now works 😀

Wind is predicted for Friday, my first thought was ‘oh no’ that won’t be good for the runner beans, nor the fruit and nuts on the trees 😏

Wednesday: A bits and bobs day, flitted about doing various things but not one big job. First I burnt the paper feed bags and any paper rubbish we had lying around, then I put sawdust and feeders in the POL for sale pen, then I collected a few eggs, washed out and filled up Jacks water trugs, got the mower out and cut some areas that needed doing ( I tried starting the strimmer but I couldn’t get it going 😤) weighed out some veg to put out for sale, picked a few cucumbers, hoed an area that was getting overgrown, weeded the carrot bed, watched the kittens catch their first mouse, fed the rabbits/guineas and torts with the weeds all before noon 😀 Quick sit down before the afternoon begins.

I am trying to get my head around Instagram at the minute lol, not much to figure out I am sure but I never have more than a few minutes to glance at it #clueless 🤪

The new hens arrived in the afternoon, John gets a bit cocky with new arrivals and puts them outside saying ‘they will go in when it gets dark’ well nine times out of ten they do but not this lot! We had to catch all 50 in the front pen and put them inside on the perches, once we had done them we separated off to do the others, I went up the back and John did the side paddock and the duck pen. The other new lot (20) were in the sale pen up the back but they had all collected on the floor near the front of the cage, we have had this before and the fox can nip at them through the mesh, I called John to help but he had already buggered off indoors 😲 Eventually he came looking for me, just as I picked up number 20 😜

Thursday: We have had weather warnings for a storm, quite a big one by all accounts, they have actually cancelled some big events by the coast so they are taking the threat seriously, and so am I. I have been picking as many runner beans as I can manage because the wigwams will be the first thing to be blown down if the wind is that strong, I’m hoping that inland we won’t get hit so hard. With the runner beans I have made some chutney, I will freeze some beans, sell some and give some away to family. I have picked more courgettes 😜 and I’m contemplating having another go at jam, I reckon it would taste really nice but I don’t want another non set disaster, maybe I will make half the quantity as a test run.

At the moment the weather is lovely outside, sunny, calm, not too hot just pleasant, and great drying weather for the washing, I figured get it done today as the next couple of days don’t look good lol.

Despite having plenty of other things to do I did decide to have a go at the courgette jam, 1/2 quantity just in case, it smells amazing as it has lemon zest in it as well and I picture a vanilla sponge with the jam and some whipped cream in the middle and a dusting of icing sugar on top, 😋 I also had a go at another recipe I came across, sugar free caramel sauce, I had a can of coconut milk in the cupboard, it’s been in there for ages and all you add to it is 7tbls of some kind of syrup like agave, or in my case maple, boil it and reduce it down, easy, it tastes good and I think if I had used full fat coconut milk instead of the reduced fat which is what I had, it would be thicker but it’s still a nice pouring consistency.

The new hens went into the hut early today because it was raining so it was an opportunity to shut them in and not having a repeat of carrying them in one by one 😂

Friday: Rather boring but I did the cleaning today, you know when it just starts to make you feel uncomfortable seeing the dust and dirt kicking around lol. I am sat typing this up and it smells lovely, in fact sometimes I just open a door to a room just to take in the fresh clean smell 🤣

We have had three people this week who were supposed to come and collect stuff they had asked for, chickens and veg, all of them no shows 😏 I’m sure people think we have nothing better to do than wait for them to finally decide they might bother, it is one of the reasons that on the whole I do not save eggs for people. Many have asked in the past but I won’t do it, firstly sometimes as above, those people don’t turn up and secondly we have many customers who have been coming for years and take their luck on wether there are any available or not and I feel I owe them that loyalty back.

While I am getting bugbears off my chest the other one is when we have sold out of eggs, in the past I have had huffs and puffs because the ‘sold out’ sign isn’t displayed, this is because I don’t have time to run out every five minutes to see if the last customer took the last box of eggs! While I am on a roll here….we are not a supermarket, we have what we have and when it’s gone, it’s gone 😜 Hopefully, very soon, we will have an abundance of eggs but until then they are a bit thin on the ground. One last small tiny bugbear 🤪 we have plenty of fair weather customers who come in the summer but again the loyal ones come all year long but it’s always the summer ones that complain lol.

The courgette jam, although it smells and tastes amazing, is a soft set and that’s using the term loosely 🙄 I may incorporate it into a cake recipe I think.

Went out for tea and cake with Shelley, Josh and Florence this afternoon, the weather today has not been as bad as I expected but apparently there is worse to come tomorrow 🙄

I have made enquires today about getting some more quail, hopefully I have found some I can pick up at the weekend, that will please the quail egg customers.

Saturday: Windy this morning but as yet no rain. We started off well got the animals sorted and then John got the tractor out and moved loads of muck from the pile at the back to the pile at the front lol. One of the reasons we decided to do this is because two mornings running there have been duck egg shells enroute from the stables to the muck heap so I am convinced there must be at least one rat in there, John thinks not but then he never believes that we have rats about even when the dog kills one 🙄 No rats appeared so maybe he is right about them not being in there but they are living somewhere round there for sure. I did a bit of picking, cucumbers and tomatoes are coming thick and fast now, I picked a few French beans and I planted out some more that will hopefully grow pretty fast and we can get a harvest at the end of September. I also put some in modules in the greenhouse just in case the outdoor ones get eaten by mice though I am hoping the kittens are onto them 😜 I have some cabbage and some winter spinach to sow at some point as well. I went to Mums last night and came back with a seed pod from a peony, I read up about growing them from seed and they can take up to five years that will be a long wait 🙄 I had a walk around the boundaries to see if there were any blackberries ready, nope still small, I have heard people saying they are picking but I don’t know where as round here they are not ready yet.

I clipped back the lavenders and made a few bunches, one each for Sam and Shelley, Charlie has lots of lavender in her garden so I picked some of my precious freesias and a few other flowers to make a Tussie Mussie (small bunch of flowers or aromatic herbs) for her.

Sunday: It’s 3pm and we have had a busy day and I need to sit down as my legs are feeling wobbly 😜 We started off doing the usual rounds and then an early morning trip to Bicester to buy some laying quail, a good journey and we made a great contact there, a butcher with a smallholding 😀 On the way back home we called I to the DIY shop to get a solar powered security light for the front, recommended by my brother who has some, quick pit stop for a takeaway coffee 😀 Back home and straight to work, John put up the light and then got on the tractor to move the last of the muck pile. Meanwhile I worked in the garden, flitting about between indoors and outdoors with the on off rain showers and cloud cover. I potted up some willow that I had taken cuttings of (very easy to strike) I intend to grow them on into trees to use around the place, I cut back the sage, it’s getting old and gnarly so I gave it a hefty prune, there were three pieces that had taken root so I dug those up and potted them. The high winds yesterday have caused a bit of damage but not much, a big bough has come down from my weeping birch tree and 4 lots of runner bean wigwams are down. I have picked all the beans I can from them as they probably won’t recover from the whipping 🙄 I picked cucumbers which are now coming thick and fast and a couple of courgettes lol. John picked up the eggs and fed the birds and I sorted and boxed them, that’s when I felt the need to have a sit down.

Later I went up the back where John was clearing and burning some wood, we heard a rumble of thunder then the heavens opened, proper thunderstorm 😀

We have been out then in then out then undercover, then out then in and have now abandoned trying to tidy up at the back, the bonfire is still going well but it’s so wet out there now I doubt it will go anywhere it shouldn’t !

Posted in Friesland Farm

Twins 😍😍 and most other jobs can wait 🤪

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 22nd July: Overcast this morning but muggy, I did the morning rounds but just before that and before we let anything else out we moved the ducklings, who are now 11 weeks old, round to the duck pen where they have more space and a bath they can get in if they want too 😀 I have sold 29 of them and have 22 left which I will probably now keep so we should have a never ending supply of duck eggs in about a month or so 😀 Ducks are pretty easy to move, even if they have never been out before, because they herd easily, so job done and onto letting out the rest of the rabble.

Then on with some picking, this morning it’s French beans, courgettes, broccoli, cauliflower, some berries, broad beans and a few peas, indoors to blanch and process them for freezing keeping a few bits back for dinner later today. The courgette jam didn’t set and I was going to re boil it but I have left it a bit long and so abandoned the whole pan 😏 Will I try again hmmm maybe but as other jams are far easier probably not.

Tuesday: I am writing this on Wednesday am as we had an eventful day yesterday starting with a 4am phonecall from Sam to say her waters had gone, so we gather ourselves together and drive over. I must say it was such a lovely morning, the mist was hanging over the valley and it was cool at that time of the day. Sam and Luke went off to the hospital, John went back to do the animals and I stayed and waited for Mia to wake up, she was good, she had been prepped and all she was worried about was getting dippy eggs and toast so that what we made 😀 Sam messaged later in the morning to say that the babies had arrived and were good weights and well, she had a caesarean due to the boy being a footling breech, she is also well despite some minor hiccups. I stayed with Mia for the morning at theirs and then John picked us up and we came back to the farm so that Mia could play with Josh and Flo in the paddling pool, we took her back to hers at bath and bedtime and then I waited until Luke came home, a 17 hr shift lol, knackered was an understatement 🤪

Wednesday: I’m still knackered 😂 Mia is going to Luke’s parents today but I need to catch up with a few jobs like the ever growing courgettes, it only takes a day and boom they are marrows. We had a terrific thunderstorm in the night, it seemed to go on for a couple of hours, I woke at 3 and could see lightening through the curtains then later I could hear rain hammering down. Hopefully it won’t be as hot today as it was yesterday but we still have hot days and thunderstorms to come apparently. Sweating has taken on a whole new level these last few days, I would hate to live in a hot country and I looked forward to the cooler days that are in the distance.

Despite feeling knackered I have whizzed round with the hoover and done a bit of tidying, it’s proper clammy and I don’t know if it because it’s hot or I’m tired or both but getting narky with John over a few things 😜

We moved the ducklings and obviously John has been in charge because I wasn’t here or otherwise occupied with Mia, anyhow he says this morning that they are not eating any food and diving off to the end of the pen and staying there all day, firstly I note that he has just poured more food on top of the stuff they already haven’t eaten then instead of seeing a problem and rectifying it he decided to get the tractor out and start on something else 🙄 after words 🤪 we sectioned off the pen to keep them up near the food and water and hope they will get more confident. Yesterday when I got back in the afternoon, bearing in mind it was boiling, I checked with him that he had fed the torts and rabbits, no I don’t usually do that you do, yes but I wasn’t here was I 😬 another word exchange. Again in the afternoon yesterday he decided he would go an have a nap because he had been up since 4am YES PAL SO HAVE I, I know it’s not all men so I won’t put that label on it but oooosshh sometimes I could slap him lol, that said he has done a sterling job at everything else and everyone has their limits of thoughtfulness I guess 😛

We went to the hospital to visit and get our grandparent fix 😍😍 they are beautiful of course, when we came back we didn’t do much but nap, then some shopping later on in the evening before popping into Mums to give her an update. It’s a bit cooler tonight but not much. I watered the tunnels, the plants are like triffids at this time of year and taking up lots of water to keep them going.

Thursday: Well today was set to break the record for the hottest recorded temperature but I have been inside all day so I have no idea how hot it is out there. I got up at 5 and got on with watering the tunnels and picking courgettes, French beans and the first picking of runner beans, I fed the torts and rabbits while John did the rest. When I had finished I came inside about 8am closed all the windows and shut all the curtains and it has been fairly cool in here, I haven’t even had the fan on. I have got dinner in the slow cooker as I figured that would give off less heat than anything else and am feeling pretty comfortable. I had Josh and Flo for an hour this morning but the rest of the day I haven’t done anything at all except read and watch the news 😁 We did have a short burst of rain mid afternoon, it lasted about 2 seconds!

In the evening we went over to visit Sam, Luke and the kiddies as they have been discharged from hospital, we took the dog back, he has been staying here while events took place, I think the kittens will be glad he is gone 🤣 he likes to chase them so we haven’t seen much of them over the last few days.

Friday: Oooo so much cooler this morning after a very warm night, I got up and on with watering the tunnels, feeding etc John did the main of the feeding before going to work, I did a few domestic bits and sorted out some plants to put out for sale.

I hadn’t planned on it but I ended up going over to Sams and helping out and let’s face it I’d rather be helping out with Mia and the twins than doing stuff here 😂

Saturday: We had Josh for a sleepover last night so John did the animals as it was raining and Josh didn’t have his coat with him. Typical that it rained as we had planned to do some repairs to the driveway, over the years a hole has got bigger and bigger until it couldn’t be ignored anymore. We gave the customers a weeks notice that the drive would be shut and there would be no egg sales, the hole was right in front of the gateway so it had to be shut off. It stopped raining about 10am so John cracked on with getting that down while Josh and I did some tidying up in the covered back area. We went to see how Grampy was getting on and Josh stood straight in the wet concrete 🤣 I have now put a notice on the gate saying closed until 8am tomorrow, it will be nice to have peace and quiet, the dogs usually bark every time someone comes to get eggs 😀

After Josh went home John and I cleaned and tided the covered back area, it’s now an open space again (ready for dumping more stuff down probably 🤣) John burnt some rubbish and I gave the dogs a brush, Mia needed it most, she is long haired and a ‘fox poo roller’, Patch keeps fairly clean. John fed the birds and did the eggs while I picked courgettes and French beans, some beans went out for sale and some were prepped for the freezer, I picked a few tomatoes as well, they are delicious and it’s about the only time of year I eat them, I rarely get shop bought ones they just don’t have the taste of home grown ones.

It feels ludicrously cold tonight compared to the middle of the week, it’s at least 10 degrees cooler this evening than the night before last.

Sunday: Up and doing the usual rounds then we went out for breakfast with Shelley, Martin, Josh and Flo, came back and then I messaged Sam to see if she needed any help and while John went to visit his Mum I went to give Sam and Luke a hand, it’s like a tag team 😂 still no definite names to announce yet but they are trialing the two names that Mia has chosen lol.

Hopefully next week they will have names and I can show you some photos 😍😍

LATE EDIT: Lucie and George 😀😀

I am very sorry but I have been having real problems uploading photos to the blog for a couple of weeks now and not really had time to sort out why it’s happening, hang on in there and I will hopefully sort it soon 😀 thanks for reading.

Posted in Friesland Farm

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

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still waiting for the first duckling to hatch 🐣

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

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

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

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

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