Tag: seeds

Posted in Friesland Farm

A pub lunch 😁 eggs galore & a Fox attack 😩

Posted on by frieslandfarm

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.

Posted in Friesland Farm

More freedom for us and the hens 😀 some lovely weather & some of the best days for a long time 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th March 2021: Whoop whoop day 😂 today we are allowed a little more freedom, not much but enough to be going on with. I am not actually sure what are supposed to be doing now, meeting outdoors in groups of six I think or two households whatever that means 🤷‍♀️ it could be interpreted in different ways and does it includes children, who actually knows. The stay at home rule has ended, what does that mean, we have been able to go to the shops or on essential journeys, can we now go further to meet people, I am not entirely sure lol. The numbers seem to continue to come down which I assume means the vaccines are working in the limiting of the spread of the virus despite the children having been back at school for a few weeks. I find it nuts that I am even writing this let alone living through it.

It’s is overcast this morning but the wind has died down so it feels a lot warmer than the weekend, I think we have some sunshine coming his afternoon. Meanwhile the morning jobs all got done and then John went off to work, I went out and cleaned out the guinea pigs and checked on the lone cockerel before going into the greenhouse for the morning. In there I sowed some more beetroot, potted on sunflower seedlings and potted on some tomato and pepper plants. I watered everything that needed a bit extra moisture and all the while I am side stepping the torts. I was going to put them out at the weekend but it was too cold, they haven’t really got going yet either. They have food and water but at the moment are not interested, still warming up from the long winter sleep I suppose. I feel I must have done more in the greenhouse as I was in there a couple of hours but can’t think what else I did 😜 About 11.30 it was time for coffee but before I came i quickly nipped I to the tunnels to water the seedlings in each of those. I have spinach and rocket in one which have come up nicely and in the other various lettuce types and some spring onions which have also made an appearance. The strawberries in the tunnel are for an early crop, they are putting on good leaf growth and I have some escaped mint growing in there which is looks lovely and vibrant. The lemon and orange tree look a little worse for wear after winter but I have fed them and hopefully they will recover quickly with some warmer weather. The lemon verbena has tiny new leaves at the base of the plant, I was thinking I might dry some this year for a lemon tea which would be refreshing.

The signs of spring are everywhere, birds beginning to nest in the boxes, tiny buds on shrubs and trees waiting to burst, the daffodils bobbing a splash of colour all around us, dormant plants beginning to emerge from the ground, we are all just waiting for the sun to arrive 🌞

My expensive but necessary sun cream arrived this morning which is good, at least I know I don’t have a reaction to that one so I should be able to get on with life. The basic lotion isn’t all that expensive on its own but I ordered the lip balm and then a tinted one for the days when I have to go out in public and then a separate one for my face which is anti-ageing, every little helps eh 😂

We have loads of goose eggs, they sell slowly but we are getting six every other day, if you odds the seventh day that is about 27 goose eggs a week 🙄 I need to find another outlet for them I think lol.

The sun did come out in the afternoon and it was very welcome, I have to say it was truly delightful nipping out to the brassica cage to pick purple sprouting broccoli for our dinner this evening. Smoked haddock fillets, steamed sprouting and mashed potato mixed with the baby leeks which I chopped and sautéed in oil before mixing them in, wonderful. We have to make the most of the one nice day we are going to get tomorrow so dragging the paddocks is the first on the job list, fingers crossed we can start the tractor 😝

I bought some toastabags, biodegradable, compostable, steaming bags for the microwave, oh they are a game changer 😀 For smaller quantities of veg, i.e. enough for John and I, they are fabulous, the sprouting was perfectly done in less than three minutes and no extra saucepan to wash up bonus 🥰

It is 6pm and as yet I have not lit the Rayburn and I am wondering if I will, we will have to see how cold it gets once it starts to get dark but at the minute with the sun shining away there is no need.

Tuesday: It has just gone midday and I have come inside as the sun is blaring, lovely to see it but it’s all or nothing g at the minute. John is off today and so after getting all the morning jobs done as soon as possible it was time to drag the paddocks at last. I spent most of the morning on the tractor going up and down, round and round, it is one of my favourite jobs of the year 🥰 John spent his time cleaning out and power washing the chicken hits ready for their release on Thursday. It has been a long winter inside for them as well as us and they will be delighted to get back out on the grass. There is a part of the big paddock that needs going over again as we had bales of hay on in over winter, I have tried to get a lot of the trodden in stuff up but it got a bit hot for me, I do four wheelbarrows and the sun will dry off some of it then I can drag over it again. There are also some tiny hawthorn saplings that are growing and they need to be cut with the mower, hopefully it will be cool enough later to get back out there and finish the job off.

Once I couldn’t do anymore out in the open I went to get the torts and put them outside, big Billy was right behind the greenhouse door which took me a while to get him moved but they are both out in the sunshine and fresh air now. I checked the plants in the greenhouse and opened the vents and I turned off the propagators and took the lids off, it’s that warm in there, too much heat will do damage, as long as I remember to put it all back before the temps drop tonight they should be fine. The carrot seeds I sowed a couple of weeks back have finally started to show, carrots are pretty finicky here but hopefully they should continue on to a good crop. Once it’s not so hot I will sow another lot, you can’t have too many carrots 🥕

I do have my factor 50 on and a hat but spending too long in the sun is a no no for me, dipping in and out is not so bad at this time of year. Later on the trees will have leaves giving me more coverage and more time I can be out there without being in full sun. It is a pain really as I am sat in the shade thinking, I could be doing that job, hey Ho, we all have our trials and tribulations I guess.

It is ten to eight in the evening and it is still light outside 😀 I have had the best day, it’s been many months since I have had a day that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Tractor work in the morning, in the afternoon we went and had a cup of tea with Mum and Ken in the garden now we are allowed. My youngest sister also turned up with my niece both of whom I have not seen since last August. When we returned home we got the birds fed and collected eggs and then back out to the paddocks with the tractor. We dragged the part with hay on the ground again, at one point I got the tractor stuck as the ground was soft but after some shuffling back and forth I managed to get going again. We moved the two chicken huts with the tractor and then dragged the ground they had been stood on. After that we got the ride on mower out and cut back the hawthorn runners at the edge of the big paddock. Back inside to get the dinner cooked but in all honestly I would have been very happy to spend more time out in the paddocks on the tractor 🥰 It was a lovely evening and a great end to a fab days work. As a bonus the new suntan lotion seems to be brilliant, no sign of any sunburn or itchy spots, winner 😀

Wednesday: Another lovely day, not as hot as yesterday but that suits me fine 😀 Once the morning jobs were done, John is off again today, I got straight on with some weeding on the weedy bed in the front. The other two beds are fab but this one is going to be a pain I can see it now. After spending an hour doing that I went into the greenhouse to make sure everything is alright and also sowed some more tomato seeds. The ones in the first propagator have had a bit of an issue, there was a lot of water in the bottom of the tray, which I have now tipped out, and they have not liked it at all so that batch might end up in the compost heap 🙄 I am trying different things with them and at the moment they are not too bad but they just don’t look right. I sowed a couple more rows of carrots in one of he outside beds. Then Sam arrived with the twins so we sat in the garden for a couple of hours playing with them and had lunch. They went home and a customer arrived to buy hens and then we went off to the garden centre as there were a couple of things I wanted and of course ended up with more than that lol. Two of my lavender in the front bed died over winter and although I do have others I didn’t want to risk transplanting those and losing them too. I also wanted some flowers for the bed directly under the window as it is lacking in spring flowers at the minute. It is intended to be a summer flowering bed but it’s nice to have a splash of colour now as well. I bought some gladioli bulbs 😝 never in my life have I ever grown these before but there is a first time for everything and it is probably showing my age 🤭 I bought some more seed potatoes ready to plant on good Friday and a lovely primula that I couldn’t resist. After a cuppa when we got back I set about planting them all and a couple that my Mum had given me as well. I can’t wait for it all to start filling out and looking lovely.

After a short sit down it was time to crate up and move all the hens back to the outside huts, that was 56 to the front hut, 16 to the far side hut and 20 or so to the near side hut. Get fresh water and feed in there with them all and then John put up electric fencing while I collected eggs, put in clean bedding for the geese, clean water for everything else, box up the eggs and pick a bunch of daffodils for the kitchen. I forgot all about the daffs at the back and they are all out bobbing beautifully yellow in the sunshine 😀 That was a 6.30pm finish today and I’m knackered 😂 We have to make the most of it though as the forecast says the temps are going to plummet over the weekend and we could even have snow! Drat it, it was lovely while it lasted and hopefully it won’t be too long before the warm weather comes back again 🤞

I have got a lot of plants to sort out for selling, I have broad bean plants waiting to go in the ground, sweet peas waiting to go in somewhere, plants to pot on in the greenhouse but I am kind of waiting until this next cold patch passes, I always seem to be waiting for it to be the right time for something.

Thursday 1st April 2021: It is noticeably cooler today but the poultry don’t care because for the first time in four months they are allowed back out 🥰 Happy, happy birds, John said when he let them out they got their heads straight down pecking at the grass. They have been shut away due to avian flu and we were legally obliged to keep them away from wilds birds which for us meant they had to live in the stables, nice to see them back out in the fresh air again, not doubt they will be causing trouble before too long 😜

Stopped for a quick coffee at 11.30 but I have mostly been in the greenhouse. I have sown the first lot of squash seeds, I have standard pumpkins plus banana squash, spaghetti squash, crown Prince, butternut squash, and three other types of smaller edible squash that the names I can’t remember now lol. This is the first sowing of three seeds of each type and once they come through I will sow some more, I am planning on having lots of squash this winter 😀 I also potted on the toms and peppers that look a bit worse for wear, I can’t quite work it out but I think it’s too much moisture, anyway I have put them in bigger pots and got them under cover of some bubble wrap and we will see how they go, some of them I discarded but most look like they will recover ok.

Some of the hens have already escaped from their temporary compound and are wandering round the farm and garden 🙄 I think I am going to try to be more relaxed about that this year 😂 until they dig things up of course.

John came home at lunchtime and we popped round to see my Mum, it’s her birthday today so it was nice to be able to go and see her and have a cuppa and a slice of cake 😀 After that we popped to the shop to get some fruit and some hot cross buns, drop some eggs off at Shelley’s door and then back home.

A sight rarer than hens teeth could be seen today when John cut the lawn, I know he cut it earlier this month but seriously twice in one year is a record 😂. The small birds are still getting in the fruit cage but I think I have discovered an oversight, the wire all round is small but on the door the holes are about an inch, easy enough for them to get through I think so I will be stapling some mesh over the top to see if that is where the problem lies. We have looked all over and can’t see any other points of entry so that has to be it.

I lit the Rayburn about 4pm, the last two days we haven’t bothered but it is colder today, I will only run for a couple of hours though, just enough to take any chill off so that by bedtime it’s not freezing in here.

My new factor 50 clothing arrived, I have to say I love the neck cover, I may even order a second one. It is brilliant, it covers the top part of my chest where a top is usually scooped, that always gets caught by the sun, it covers my neck and I can use it to cover the lower half of my face to prevent the sun getting to it when I am working. The top is also lovely and again it is factor 50, expensive for working outside in but needs must 😜

Good Friday: Traditionally the day you put your potatoes in, that’s what Dad always told me, this year he is not here to ask if I have done it yet or not 😞 As I have said I am going to be trying out growing them in straw, never done it before so it’s a first for me, I will be keeping some back to grow more conventionally just in case it doesn’t work 😜

We had Mia for the day today as Sam and Luke had to go and collect something they bought from quite far away. We had a lovely day and took her over to see my Mum, they haven’t seen each other for nearly 15 months! We also went to get a smoothie as a treat and apart from that we didn’t do much outside apart from checking and topping up water for the animals.

Saturday: I finally managed to sort the potatoes today, as I have said I am trying out a totally new method and we will see how it goes. I have swift, Charlotte and Vivaldi as my first earlies and cara as my maincrop, I also have another bag of maincrop to plant a bit later on. Hopefully you can see from the pics how I have done it, I have raised beds that are not filled, placed the tubers on the soil and covered them with straw, that’s it. Once the foliage appears I will cover with straw again and again and hopefully we will still get a decent crop of spuds. I have also placed the environmesh on top of this is to stop any hens getting in there and scratching back the straw. I have also planted some cara a little more conventionally in a raised bed that has soil, that way I can see what the difference is and which way is better. I am hoping the straw method is good as it is easy and not much effort is required, always a bonus 😜

Lay chitted seed potatoes on the ground, cover with a layer of straw, as the shoots come up cover with more straw. The third picture is the more conventional soil grown method, again covered so that the hens and cats don’t scratch it up.

We cleaned, hoovered and washed the car today, worthy of a mention as that is not something that gets done very often 😂 There is never enough time (or perhaps inclination) to fit it in as a routine job and so it’s rare, however it was getting to the stage where it was desperate, it still had pine needles from the Christmas tree on the back seat 😜

The tomato plants in the greenhouse that looked a bit iffy have recovered really well with potting on and some feed, I am confident they will grow on to be good plants. I have onions garlic and shallots growing that I planted last autumn but I have also ordered some red onion sets today. I like red onions although John does not 🤷‍♀️ I actually don’t know what the difference is except that they look good in salad and coleslaw 😂. I am pretty sure that after this artic blast we are supposed to get on Monday, things will start to warm up and then veg growing will step up a pace. At the moment I am holding back on planting out anything including the broad beans, they are fine in pots at the moment and I don’t want them to have a massive set back from really cold air. I still feel like I am always waiting but I guess it will soon be time for all systems to go. Last year we had unseasonably hot weather for weeks and the year before that I think, so maybe this is a normal spring and I have just forgotten what that is really like 🤔

I went out and picked some of the purple sprouting, the more you pick the more it produces. It tastes lovely and is a welcome fresh vegetable at this time of year though it does take a long time to grow it is worth the effort I think.

Easter Sunday: The weather this weekend has been so much better than I thought it was going to be, according to the forecast last week it was not looking very nice at all but today has been glorious. We spent the morning and some of the afternoon outside working on the front, John on the tractor levelling the driveway and me planting some more things into the beds. I have gone through all the plants I have potted up and either planted them, discarded them or fed and labelled them for using later on. I have probably emptied around 50 plant pots including Johns Mums agapanthus which is now in the front triangle bed. I was thinking about how many of the plants have real meaning one way or another, some are cuttings given me by Martin’s Mum, some from my Mum, some plants were from Johns Mums garden and some from our old garden, those have been in pots for 11 years! Some of the plants I had bought from the house before that, I have been taking them round with me for years, other plants are what the children ah e bought me or friends for my birthdays, there are a lot of memories in the garden now 🥰

I used some hazel pruning to make some natural plant supports in one of the front beds, I think they look quite good and hopefully will do the job.

We finished at 1.30pm and then went to see Josh and Flo to give them their Easter eggs, on to see Mia, Lucie & George to give them their Easter eggs and then back home to feed the hens and collect eggs before going to Charlie and Macca to see them but I forgot to take their eggs 🤦‍♀️

Because we have been out and about we haven’t lit the Rayburn today and hopefully it won’t get too cold over night lol, we have only been lighting it for a couple of hours lately, for hot water and to take any chill off the air. I have a feeling we will be lighting it tomorrow as the temps are set to plunge, it was about 15/16c today if not more and tomorrow is forecast 5/6c bit of a difference isn’t it 😝

Have a fab week x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hollibob booked 😀 an allergic reaction & and a tractor that won’t go 🙄

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 22nd March 2021: What a ridiculous morning and not even smallholding related 🙄 Holidays were being released from 8.30 this morning and so I was ready and good to go, an hour later and it’s obvious the website had crashed spectacularly, nevertheless I continued to refresh, refresh, refresh meanwhile I could see the prices going up meaning they were selling the lower priced accommodation to someone at least. In between all this I was cleaning, cleaning the bathroom, changing the beds, polishing, hoovering, washing, re making the bed. By midday there was still no way to get on the site despite continually refreshing and trying to book, my sister was also trying and she managed to get in the phone queue, as I type this I don’t know how successful she is going to be. It is going to be a nightmare this year for anyone trying to book a holiday, the prices have rocketed, I guess they need to get some revenue back somehow, I think anything you want to go to is going to cost a lot this year and that’s providing we don’t have some sort of monumental relapse 😕 All those that normally go abroad and wouldn’t dream of staying in this country will be competing with those that always holiday here, good luck in that scrum 😂 I did think we should rent out the front field to campers 🤔 The demand is going to be huge wherever you want to go.

Meanwhile on the smallholding 😜 not much different today than other days so far, John did the animals and went off to work, I did the housework as above, the sun made an effort to come out but only for short bursts and that’s about it. John is at home for most of this week after today so hopefully we will get some jobs ticked off the list.

Whoop whoop, all booked for a week in August, after the year we have had it is nice to have a few things to look forward to especially a holiday where someone else does all the work and we relax 🥰

I wish it would warm up just a tad, I know it’s still only March but I do think the country could do with something good. It feels like it has been a long slog through the last 5/6 months, we are luckier than a lot of people, I am always reminding myself of that, but still it doesn’t stop you wishing for things does it, some sunshine would lift our spirits no end and help carry us forward I think.

I have ordered another electric propagator, I kept looking and thinking about what I am growing and what I need to get growing and the outcome every time was that I needed more enclosed heat for at least another month and so I have ordered one. It will mean I can get the courgette and more cucumber plants on the go and give them a good head start.

John came home mid afternoon, then had to shoot out again, then came home again fifteen minutes later 😜 All the while he is waiting for a phone call from the doctor, that is the only way you get an appointment these days, initially at least anyway. He has a big problem with his shoulder which has been going on for a few months now, I think it’s a rotator cuff problem as it does not cause him any trouble during the day but when he sleeps it is extremely painful, so much so that he shouts in his sleep. Finally I got fed up with him moaning and shouting so I made an appointment to get the ball rolling and hopefully get it sorted.

Tuesday: A tad colder today, lots of cloud cover, no sun in the morning but the minute I lit the Rayburn and got it going the sun came out and hung around all afternoon 🤷‍♀️ John was home today and so after the usual morning jobs we sorted out the remaining bit of the bean frame. We needed to put something over the top so that the beans grow up then across, this way the beans should hang down for easier picking. Last year they grew across the top of the fruit cage and I couldn’t reach them. We then had a few things to tidy up and put in the skip and the garden gate to sort out, it had dropped and was dragging on the ground which meant lifting it every time I went through it. There always seems to be stuff to tidy and sort and throw away, probably because I always think, that might come in handy, and then it doesn’t and so eventually it gets thrown out.

Late morning John went to the docs, it is not a joint problem so that is good news, we were a bit worried it might be arthritis but in fact it is a damaged muscle. He really needed to find out what it wasn’t so that he could get it treated properly if that makes sense. Now we know it’s not the joint and it is not ligament damage he can sort out getting some therapeutic massage for it as well as using pain relief gel. Of course he told me the doc said he needs to rest, take it easy and watch the snooker, I’m not buying that though 😂 yep a little less of the hard physical jobs but there is always plenty to do that does not involve heavy lifting or digging. My diagnosis is that he lifts a cup of tea too many times a day 😜

We didn’t really get much else done except the basics and absolutely have to do jobs and tomorrow we are planning on dragging the paddocks before the rain comes on Thursday.

A year ago today is when we first went into total lockdown, it was a bit of a shock, stay home, don’t see anyone, panic buying, not really knowing what the future holds. One year on and we are slowly creeping forward, we have vaccines, we have a bit of hope, we have had one of the hardest years for a generation according to Boris. It has been tough, it has been devastating but it has also at times been uplifting to see courage, bravery, compassion and the sheer determination of people of all ages to get through and help others through as best they can. I hope that future generations learn from the things that went wrong and the things that were right, mostly I hope that they understand that this could easily happen again and most likely will at some point and to always prepared for the ‘what if’. My advice would be to have transferable skills and a bit of self reliance and by that I don’t necessarily mean grow your own (though its useful to know how 😀 ) but be adaptable, learn how to take care and provide for yourself. John has always been self employed, I am self employed, many of my extended family are or have been self employed, you don’t have anything to fall back on, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no cushion whatsoever. You quickly learn how to be self reliant when you choose that path and I really think that has put us in good stead to weather a storm like this one.

Wednesday: Not a bad day, over cast to begin with but mild and then the sun came out in the afternoon and it was lovely, in fact it was 4.30 pm before I came in to light the Rayburn and sort out some dinner. Today’s job was supposed to be dragging the paddocks but the tractor would not start even though the battery had been on charge all night. John had a look at it and decided he had no idea why it wouldn’t start so he went to ask someone who might. He came back had a little tinker but still it would not start, I gave Ken a ring and he called over to have a look at it but it still would not start. By now it is mid afternoon and so that job has gone out of the window, but as ever there are always plenty of other things to do. So I got John to fix the poly tunnel doors, they have dropped and the birds get in and eat any fruit that happens to be growing. Meanwhile I dug up a whole load of strawberry runners and plenty of weeds, I spent a while trying to decide exactly what to do in the garden. Ken had called in with Mum on their way back from the garden centre so over a cup of tea in the garden while they looked at the tractor, we talked about what I could do and what not to do. It is always good to have someone to bounce ideas off (well mostly moan to actually 😂) We have a dilemma with the tractor, we ought to sell it really and just get a quad bike but I like sitting on the tractor dragging the fields. Likewise we could always get someone in to do them but again I like doing it and feel it is part and parcel of what we are about here. Anyway we can’t sell it when it doesn’t go so first things first, I think Ken is coming back tomorrow in his work clothes to have another look. Most of the problem is that John is not very mechanically minded, he has plenty of other strings to his bow just not that one, but that means we have to either know someone who is or pay to get it sorted, neither of which help when you have planned to use it that day 😜

I completely avoid using weedkiller for the best part but there are some occasions when you don’t have much choice. The ménage is overrun with weeds of all kinds including dog rose, I made the decision to weedkiller it today. It is so full that there is not a hope in hell of doing it by hand, the only other option might have been getting in a couple of pigs but we don’t eat pork very much at all so no point having them for that purpose. Hopefully it will just take a one off session, possibly two, to get it back to manageable, it is a space we don’t use for what it was intended for and so gets left to its own devices which is mainly weed growing.

Big Billy woke up this morning, I say woke up, he has probably been awake for a few days but he actually came out of the hut this morning and then in the afternoon, Voldertort came out. I have given them water and a few bits of dandelion but I don’t think they are quite ready for either just yet. I have got their outside run and house already and I am thinking that at the weekend they can probably go outside. Hopefully this year the grandchildren will be able to give them their annual bath, they couldn’t do it last year because of the lockdown but I think this year perhaps around May they could.

I also had to move one of the light Sussex chickens, a cockerel that so far has been fine in with his Dad but just lately he has been sat up high as he is getting picked on. I imagine he probably wasn’t getting much food and water because every time he came down the dad would bully him, so I have moved him to a hut on his own for a few days until I decide to either sell him on or prep him for the freezer.

John was home all day today, he couldn’t go anywhere, well not to work anyway, as his van was in for an MOT, glad to say it passed 😀

Thursday: I think it’s Thursday anyway, one of those moments in the week when I have no idea what day it is 😜 The morning started off with beautiful sunshine but that soon disappeared, it made the occasional appearance in with a shower or two in the morning but by the afternoon the rain was more of a permanent shower for a while.

I had a lovely morning though, I have mostly been digging up and transplanting plants or potting them up for sale later on in the year. I picked a good haul of rhubarb put some out for sale and some is for crumble later. We have some smallholder reared beef, our own leek and purple sprouting which I will slowly cook altogether and with the crumble it will be a proper smallholder feast for dinner tonight.

Ken came over to take another look at the tractor, in his work clothes this time, the upshot is that he thinks the fuel injector pump is not working. We were hoping it would be something simple but it doesn’t look like it and so I have phoned our tractor repair man and he is popping over later this afternoon to give his verdict and hopefully he can mend it. I think once it’s mended we will sell it and get something a little more useful to us, the tractor is wonderful but it’s big and not very manoeuvrable in the fields. Still not entirely sure yet as I just had a thought, we move the big heavy chicken huts with it and I am not sure anything else would be up to the job quite honestly.

The micro veg are doing splendidly and are probably ready to cut and eat, I added a strip of foil to the side furthest from the window to reflect light back so that they didn’t keep leaning towards the light outside, seems to have worked a treat. I would definitely do this again though probably autumn and winter as I have a lot to be doing at this time of year plus I have already sown salad leaves. Early in the year salad leaves are no trouble but later they tend to get greenfly and also they bolt so that might be the time to do the micro veg.

The seeds in the greenhouse are all coming on nicely, the beetroot, turnip and swede are up, you may wonder why I have not put them straight in the ground. For me here it is easier to raise the plants than sow because once the chickens are out they get on the garden and disturb the seeds even if they are covered they find a way of messing up my lovely straight rows so I have given up on that. You have to find the way that works best for you, I don’t sow pea and bean seeds because they get eaten by mice, the only seeds I tend to sow direct are carrots, parsnips, long rooted veg. You can transplant them but it’s a right faff with hundreds of seedlings lol, carrots are spasmodic at germinating anyway so leaving them in situ when they do germinate is best I find. The tomatoes and peppers are doing well though coming to the time I need to pot them on again.

John came home mid afternoon then went back out again 🙄 pit stop for a cup of tea I think. In the afternoon as the rain had moved on and the sun came back out I cleared the debris from the strawberry beds. I have had to pull a lot of runners up, some I have potted up and some have gone to good homes. Halfway through doing that I remembered I had the rhubarb on the stove 😜 luckily it was on low so no damage done. I had two pots of baby leeks that were supposed to get planted last year and never did so I took them all out of the pots, threw away the ones that were too small and took the others indoors for use at a later date.

Baby leeks, or rather leeks that got left in a pot instead of being planted out, still too good not to use though 😀

I am going to have to be much more careful, the sun was shining this morning so I put on factor 50 but as I have come in now I can feel the side of my face itching and burning. It is early in the year but there some real heat in the sun when it does appear. Oh the trials and tribulations of this flipping condition are vexing at times, I have wondered in the past if the sun tan lotion makes it a whole lot worse, not sure if it’s my skin reacting to it or not 🤷‍♀️

Late afternoon the tractor man came, his name is Dave, he spent until the light faded taking bits apart, testing bits and then putting things back together but he will have to come back tomorrow afternoon to see if he can get any further with finding out what is wrong. The fuel injectors were loose but the glow plugs were fine 🤷‍♀️ I have no idea what that means, well I kind of do now as it was explained to me but until he can get it all back together we won’t know if that was the problem or not.

My face is really itching and coming in from outside to the warm indoors makes it a whole lot worse, I’m thinking this is not a good suntan lotion to use, I will have to find another one. None of them seem to work very well so maybe I will have to work with a huge floppy hat on 😂

Friday: Now normally I love Fridays but today I am feeling very sorry for myself and a tad weepy. This is definitely an allergic reaction to the sun spray and my face is red, itchy and swollen in places 😞 I will have to wait until reception opens and see if I can talk to a doctor about taking antihistamine. Jeez it’s a pain in the arse, I have to be so careful about what I use on my skin, face creams, makeup, sun screen, body wash, body lotions, the list is endless, that I usually don’t use anything at all, because this is what happens when I do 😜

Looking out of the kitchen window this morning and spotted a pair of red legged partridge on the beds, first time I have had them this close to the house normally they are out in the paddocks.

Had to take the photo through a rainy kitchen window, if I went outside they would have run away.

So I spoke to the doc and I can take a certain antihistamine which is good, during the conversation he mentioned that my blood results showed my thyroxin level is now up at the borderline level 🤷‍♀️ I have had an under active thyroid for about twenty years and never had an anomaly before, weird.

I just ordered some sunscreen online, it is one I could get on prescription if I asked but I don’t mind paying for it. I had it once before and it is quite thick which is why I stopped using it but looks like I need to up my game a bit. With that in mind I also ordered a new factor 50 top and a face covering, flipping expensive though 😂 I figure as we are all using face coverings I am not going to look out of place anymore 😂

Shelley collected the antihistamine and dropped it over for me and within an hour of taking it most of the heat and puffiness had gone out of my face, just left with the red blotchiness now.

Saturday: Most of my face is fine again now just a little irritation up around the eyes but much better than yesterday. John was up with the lark this morning and had got a lot of jobs done before I even got up 😜 We talked about the jobs for the day and as often happens the job we thought we were going to do didn’t get done but a different one did instead. First we tried to see if the ride on lawnmower would pull the drag chains, we took it out to the field but the chains were too heavy and the back wheels of the mower kept lifting off the ground. Abandon that job and have a coffee, have a wander over the paddocks and we decided that a lot of the growth needed cutting back away from the boundary fence so that what we spent most of the morning doing, we now have a big pile to burn. Mid morning the tractor man turned up, he had come in and got started on the tractor, he turned it over and it fired up, yippee. We went over to talk to him and it seems that at some point the hydraulic lever had been put in the wrong position and that’s why it wouldn’t start. Bless him he had gone home Thursday and thought about what could be wrong, came up with this thought and yep that’s what it was. Simple enough but it probably helped that he cleaned and tightened the injector pipes as well. He is coming back at some point to give it a service as the filters all need changing and it is a bit smokey when it’s running but it’s all good. We will drag the paddocks probably tomorrow now or sometime in the week, we had heavy rain yesterday so it is best to wait for it to dry out a bit otherwise you end up with mud clogging the drag. The drag by the way is a pair of very heavy chains that sit in a square attached to a pull bar, they have prongs I suppose you would call them, they point down and just moved the sods of earth and any poop, it spreads it around and evens out the land a little. Once we finished pruning bits of the hedge-line we came in for lunch, a cuppa and a sit down.

I harvested some of the micro veg today 😀 I had it in a pitta with cream cheese and some green grapes.

I took this photo the other day to show you the difference between forced and unforced rhubarb. Forcing rhubarb gives you earlier, sweeter stalks but also saps the strength from the plant, very vibrant in colour too. I have harvested from both types and now I will let the forced rhubarb get some light and some strength back, if I force next year I will choose a different plant and give this one a rest.

Forced rhubarb on the right, vibrant in colour, sweeter in taste but strength sapping for the plant itself.

I thought after Friday the weather would get a bit warmer but although it’s dry today the wind is cold, I am chomping at the bit to get more things growing and can’t wait for all the front beds to start filling up and out so I can see what else needs to go in there.

Sunday: The clocks sprang forward early morning and we had a lay in until nearly 9am, that should put us right for tonight’s bedtime lol. The morning jobs all got done and we had the day off, no jobs apart from the things that have got to be done. It is still quite a cold wind and so not much fun outside and there is always tomorrow 😜

A gallery view of how the micro greens got on, I am now eating them at every opportunity 😀 That was only 10 days from sowing the seed to ready to harvest, that is a full seed tray which I reckon would do one person probably four days depending on how often you ate them and how. I tend to use in with salad or in a pitta with cream cheese. So in theory you would want to sow every four days to keep a rotation going, more often for more people and of course it depends on the seeds you are growing. Definitely a great growing system for fresh home grown 😀 Now all I have to do is sow some more 😜

That’s all for this week, have a good one.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Micro veg masterclass, pricking out & the first crop harvests of the year.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th March 2021: It’s Florence’s 3rd birthday today 😀 it is such a terrible shame that we have not been able to spend the time with all our grandchildren the way we would want to 😞 hopefully this coming summer we can make up for lost, precious time.

March 15th is synonymous with ‘beware the ides of March’ the warning given to Julius Caesar before he was assassinated on that very day but did you know there is an ides of every month. It is the full moon of the month and in other months falls between the 13th and the 15th, it was also the deadline for settling your monthly debts. So it was a dark and gloomy day for Caesar and anyone who owed anything but not so much these days, we can overlook any foreboding I think 🤔 🤞😂

The weather is not too bad this morning, we had heavy rain during the last evening but the sun is out this morning though the cold wind is still here, it has abated a little today mind you so that’s good. John did the animals and went to work, I did some housework bits and my plan is to go into the greenhouse and sow some flower seeds this morning. It should be nice in there, out of any wind and warmed a little from the sunshine. As with the vegetable seeds I seem to have amassed a lot of flower seeds too, I might as well sow them and either sell them or use them where I can. My favourite time of the gardening year is seed sowing I think, like Christmas Eve it’s the anticipation of wonderful things to come. Once everything has grown it gets a bit manic planting it all and then tending it all so seed sowing is the calm before the storm 😜

I did sew a few seeds, some more broad beans some of which will go out for sale when the plants are big enough and then some flower seeds. I need to sow flowers that don’t need the extra heat at the minute because I need the propagators for the tomatoes and peppers etc. But I did sow some orange poppies, cornflower, red flax and some sweet rocket. I have moved some of the plants that are growing nicely outside to the cold frames, lupins, some cuttings of hardier plants and some broad beans that are already a good size, these will all harden off, which basically means get used to the outside temperatures, before planting. There wasn’t as much to do as I thought I could because the timing is still not quite right for a lot of things. The tomato plants, although some of them have their true leaves, can do with a few more days before pricking them out and moving them to the bigger propagator, the same applies to the peppers and chilli plants. I have got some flower plants to pot on and after a coffee I may well do that job, first I had to replenish the egg shed. I rarely see customers arriving unless I am out there and then I go to the shed and it’s nearly empty 🙄 I forgot to get some garden canes at the garden centre so I have ordered some online, I have seen a good set up for growing peas that I want to try. Peas grow pretty straggly unless you are constantly moving the growth to where you want it to go. This neat little system also allows easy access, well easier than I ever make it anyway, in my mind it will work well, we shall see. The cardboard hack I am impressed with, that works a treat, definitely a keeper, if you are sowing rows straight into the ground you can use lengths of wood which work the same way. I do still have to work out where everything is going to go this year which is not something I have put very much thought into yet, I need to get my skates on with that one. The notebook that shelley bought me I am going to use to write down all the things I want to do with the produce this year, I often have ideas but then forget all about them and then think, oh I was going to do that. So far in the book is mint jelly and drying more herbs, I am sure I will think of plenty of other things along the way.

I did go back out to the greenhouse, I got the bigger propagator in place and then pricked out the tomato seedlings and the jalapeños, the pepper are a little too small at the minute. Once I had a bit of space in the smaller propagator I sowed some outdoor cucumber seeds. I also potted on a couple of the outdoor plants I have left over from planting the beds up and watered the seedling in the poly tunnels that I sowed last week, the spinach is already coming up. I am not sure if I just don’t have the energy today or if I feel the weather in not ideal for working out in the open but I have no inclination to do anything on the beds at the minute 🤷‍♀️

Remember the little red areas I said I have on my finger tips and around the nail bed, well a discussion with my Mum leads me to believe they may be chilblains. I never knew you could get them on your fingers as well but yes that is what they look like so I will look after my hands accordingly and see if they go.

Tuesday: The sun was out for a bit this morning, the wind has dropped and so it felt pleasant enough, when the sun disappears behind cloud it is obviously not so warm but still warmer than it has been in that cold wind.

John had a text from the local surgery offering a vaccine so he has taken that offer as it is for tomorrow and will cancel the one next week on he other side of Oxford, he was t really looking forward to driving back from there after he had it, this is five minutes from home rather than an hour round trip.

The micro veg on the windowsill didn’t go very well but I think I have learnt a bit from doing it. The lettuce seed was too sparsely sown and the peas kept drying out consequently I kept giving the peas water which was soaking up into the compost do the lettuce. The compost got too wet and in the end so did the pea seeds and although some of them grew, some went mouldy. Back to trying to get a balance, keeping different types of seeds in different trays is what I have learned I need to do. I have found a supplier of bigger quantities of seeds and have ordered some more and will keep trying until I can get somewhere near the desired result. You think it would be easy enough but I think there are things like ratio of compost to seeds and then watering techniques to take into account to get a good even growth rate.

I watched an hour long masterclass on micro greens and what I had thought I had done wrong was exactly what I had, plus I picked up a few other tips including this new (to me at any rate) idea of excluding light initially. So now I have set up another tray as per the video and I will monitor it to see how it goes. I had about five packets of half used sprouting broccoli so I have used those seeds for the trial. They are one of the most nutritious micro greens you can have and growing brassica to their full size takes up a lot of room and they have a lot of pest problems so if I can successfully grow them like this it’s a win, win situationist reckon. I have bought them in onto the kitchen window sill which is not necessary it it means I can monitor them more easily and a daily basis. Looking at the lists of micro greens most of them don’t need any extra heat which is a bonus, they are all crops that would normally grow without being under cover. There are so many types you can grow, turnip, beetroot, brassica, chives, nasturtiums, sunflower, peas and of course various lettuce, a whole lot more besides. One of the best things is the tiny amount of space you need to grow a good crop of nutritious greens, a small area of sideboard space and you are away. If you wanted to do it a little more seriously, a small shed so that you could keep them growing on rotation and a cheap led light would be all you needed I think.

I ordered some larger quantities of seed yesterday but looking at the array of micro greens you can grow is quite exciting really, it difficult not to get carried away, first steps first, let’s see how well this trial goes. It will be up to 10 days before I can harvest it but that is insane compared to how long you wait for your big veg to grow. I can see it is definitely the way forward to feeding ever increasing populations, plus as you will probably have seen, they can be grown in disused underground areas but for me there is nothing better than traditional veg gardening, outside in the fresh air, a bit of hard graft now and again and nature all around 🥰

I will just add to what I have learnt this morning, there are a couple of ways to grow micro veg, one way is without soil at all, actually three ways that I can think of. Hydroponically, that is with a pumped water system, they usually use fish in the water as well for cleaning and nutrients, the roots grow in water not soil, that tends to be a larger system than most people have room for. Then there is a soil based system like I am trying, which I prefer, and finally the sprouting type system. Probably twenty years ago or more it became trendy to sprout seeds of all types, a jar or special unit was used and the same principles are applied to the micro veg except that you allow the seedling to grow a lot bigger. Sprouting is exactly that it is the tiny shoot from the seed and you eat the whole lot. Two problems I found with this, one, that you have to remember every day to wash the seeds so that you don’t get a build up of pathogens in the water turning it sour and two which is relevant to me and my disease is that I can’t have Alfa Alfa which is one of the most popular sproutings, it increases inflamation. In a slight twist it’s one of the reasons that John mainly does the morning feeding, the chicken feed contains Alfa Alfa and does give off dust so the more I avoid it the better.

Rubbish micro veg beginner method, then after a masterclass a much better result. I will keep you posted on the process but as you can see after only a few days the seeds are sprouting.

I did go back into the greenhouse (because it’s such a nice day) and sowed some more flower seeds and a couple of small trays for micro greens, garlic chives as I already had them.

I had a few invoices to do for John and get those sent off and tidy up some old files on the laptop which I rarely use any more (the files and the laptop)

John came home just after lunch and we had a new batch of POL delivered at 2pm luckily no one is collecting any today so we went off to get a bit of food shopping. I have said it before but I am not sure how ‘we don’t need much’ transfers to a small trolley full 😂 I guess it’s mostly perishables and then things to stock up on plus we seem to buy a lot of cat milk 😜 Back home and I unpack everything while John goes and does the afternoon rounds, we had already lit the Rayburn before we went out. It is getting to that time of year when it can be warmer outside than in especially if the sun is out.

Wednesday: Not sunny, not raining, not windy and not cold, whoop lovely day for working outside which is exactly what I have been doing. John did the morning rounds and went off to work, I went out and put in clean bedding for the geese, ducks and the chickens in the stables plus topped up the grit and oyster shell. Then on to getting the Guineas some fresh greens, it’s a bit sparse at the minute but I found some sorrel, chard and dandelions plus some hazel twigs so they were happy. Someone came to pick up some point of lay hens. Then onto gardening which I spent the rest of the time doing. First off we have an area that is umm difficult shall we say, it is a triangle in the front but over the year everything had been put there, hard core, gravel, wood chip, if it got delivered that’s where it went and so digging plants in is difficult. Not to be deterred I got the shovel and moved stones and hardcore out and managed to plant the things I was hoping to plant. A forsythia, a buddliea, some ornamental grasses and a few other bits that look dead so I can’t actually remember what they are 🙄 This is not a formal bed and the intention is for it to look a bit wild. Then onto the other garden and I have lots of things that have self set so I have been digging them up and either transplanting them to the beds or potting them up for selling later in the spring. A couple of plants that have got big I have dug up and divided, they will also be put out for sale unless I need to fill a space. I took down the arch area that I put up last year, the metal arches have broken in so many places it’s not worth trying to cobble them back together. I was delighted to see that the mini kiwi is still alive though and have put an ornamental metal trellis there for it to grow up this year, hopefully we can get something else in place by the time it gets bigger. Plenty of weeding and hoeing got done and so I am happy with progress today 😀 A quick sit down mid afternoon

John will be home late afternoon as he has his vaccination today 😀 and I have two more lots of people coming for hens at some point.

I lit the Rayburn, John came home, he did the egg rounds and then went off to get his vaccine. He had the AstraZeneca, although there is controversy in some countries he said he places his faith in the science not the politicians lol, my brother noted that with the numbers vaccinated and the numbers affected by blood clots the chance is 0.0000005% chance of an issue, so the chance of getting covid is far, far greater 🙄 Just after he arrived home the next lot of people came for their new hens and then we just about managed to get a cup of tea before the next lot came for theirs. We still have 14 left to sell, this time last year they would have been sold just like that, I think we sold around 250 hens possibly more I haven’t done the books yet and so haven’t totted it up. Then it was time for some dinner and a restful evening, fingers crossed John doesn’t have any side affects.

Thursday: Up and about early this morning, John did the rounds while I did the inside jobs and then it was off for the first appointment of the day to get my bloods done. Grabbed a takeaway coffee on the way back and on with the rest of the day. Most of the day, until mid afternoon, I spent pottering in the polytunnel and greenhouse. I had some bits to tidy up and sort out in the tunnel, pots with things that had died in them and pull up the radicchio. I tasted it but I don’t like it, it’s too bitter for me and so I gave it to the Guineas, the space is now being used for a big water butt that I will fill from the tap to water any seedlings in there. In the greenhouse I have sown some basil seeds and utilised a rack unit to place over the top of the propagator so that any rising warmth will benefit the plants above it. I picked the first crop of the year, the forced rhubarb, a bunch I put out for sale and some I will stew down with some honey and have that with custard for my pudding later 💕

I know I keep banging on about it but I can’t tell how impressed I am with using this cardboard technique, seriously, the germination rate is nearly 100%, compare that to sporadic germination of around 70% of previous years and you can see why I am cock a hoop with it 😂

Seedlings grown under the cardboard, I took the cardboard off the beetroot on the left yesterday and the night scented stock this morning, tomorrow the stock will be upright and have colour now they are able to photosynthesise.

I was struggling to upload photos to the blog, for the last ten years I have been using the free site, in order to continue being able to have photographic content and not have to delete previous photos, I have had to start paying to use the WordPress site 😂 At the moment I have not engaged with any advertising or traffic payment but I may do that in the future to cover costs, I am loathe to as I personally find it really annoying to have pop up ads everywhere. I may try it and then undo it depending on the annoyance 😜 The blog will now appear under a new domain name of http://www.frieslandfarm.com instead of the WordPress appendage. I do have another website but I rarely use it and so I think I will close that one down and use this one instead.

Apologies if in previous blogs any pictures did not appear.

Friday: Fairly non weather again, to be honest I was expecting a plunge in temps but that seems to have changed which is great. I spent a large part of the morning doing some paperwork, it’s the time of year for renewals, cancellations, updates, mot, tax etc etc, all costly of course 😜 Towards midday I went into the greenhouse and spent an hour pricking out seedlings, dill and coriander. Dill is not something I have used much until last year when I discovered how tasty it is, I even dried some for use over winter.

I have two electric propagators on at the minute and I am thinking I need a third one 😜 I really want to get off to a flying start and quite a few things that could be started early need the heat. We don’t have constant temperatures indoors so another propagator seems the ideal solution. Any plants that get too much for the greenhouse can be transferred to the polytunnel to wait until planting time so I have the space to move them on, maybe I should just do it instead of thinking about it 😂

Tonight sees the long awaited return of Gardeners World and the soothing tones of Monty Don telling us what we should be doing at the weekend, always my favourite bit 😀 I have still been listening to podcasts on and off, mostly garden or environment related, I was astounded to find out that mowing the lawn with a petrol mower for an hour relates to driving 100 miles in carbon emissions, that is a shocking statistic 😱 If we had an electric point out there I would definitely change to an electric mower.

I couldn’t find the motivation to get stuck into anything much in the afternoon, consequently I felt the cold and so I lit the Rayburn early afternoon. I will probably have a busy weekend so I guess a gentle afternoon is allowed. Thought I didn’t do anything physical my mind is constantly whirring, all kinds of things rattling around, things I want to get done when the weather is slightly warmer, this to sow, plant, things I want to do with the harvests I hopefully get, yep plenty going on in my head 😂

At some point though the dates escape me, we will be allowed a little more freedom to see people which will be fabulous, as I say we have booked our spa stay and we have discussed a holiday which we can hopefully book first thing Monday morning. It is exciting to think we may leave the shire in the not too distant future, I can’t wait for some r & r or even just to sit down in a cafe for coffee would be nice.

Another exciting time on the distant horizon is 2022, from a genealogy point of view anyway, it’s the date the 1921 census information gets released. That will mean that I will be able to look up information on my grandparents and build a better picture of where they lived. Back to the now and we have the census this Sunday March 21st, do fill it in won’t you, it makes life so much easier for descendants who are researching you 😂

Saturday: Another non weather day, would have been nice to see the sun though. After the animals were done, John got the water taps sorted out, they get turned off over winter as they freeze and burst otherwise. We may have to watcher the forecast in case the temps dip below freezing but hopefully we should be fine now. After that I wanted him to sort out the runner bean frame, last year he put it up but not quite how I wanted it and consequently it didn’t work as well as it should have 🙄 now he has altered it to the way I wanted it in the first place. Meanwhile I laced back together any holes in the fruit cage netting and some other things though I can’t remember what now 😂 Mid morning someone bought us a shed that was going to be burnt but luckily they recognised it was too good for that. It is almost like new and so we will use it here for something no doubt, love a free shed 😀 John felt tired in the afternoon so he had a rest while I carried on pottering out side. This time of year it’s all about getting reading for the season ahead and so I have put in rows of canes and string for the peas and sat and had a look at the garden to see where everything is going to go. I remember what else I did earlier, I picked more rhubarb and some purple sprouting, the first picking of that.

And today I took the cover off of the micro veg and they now look like this:

Good germination over all, no damping off as yet, I will take photos every couple of days to compare the change but it seems like a successful trial, all I need to do now is sow some more so that I have a continuous supply.

Came in mid afternoon to light the Rayburn, John did the egg rounds, got some wood in, sorted out the rain tank tap and then had to shoot out to a call out.

I had a wander round the front paddock this morning, the hens will be allowed back out on April 1st so I thought I would just check it over. I was delighted to see the wild garlic leaves have made an appearance, I will wait until they get a little bigger and maybe pick a few for a salad one evening.

Sunday: Weather is the same, occasional peek from the sun but not much. Did the usual bits and pieces, went to get some food shopping. In the afternoon I did some weeding a bit of planting and sowed some leek seeds in the greenhouse but apart from that not a lot else really.

One more week finished and one more week nearer to some kind of freedom albeit small, at least the weather should keep improving. We aim to book a holiday tomorrow morning, that’s if the web site doesn’t go down with all the traffic 😂 fingers crossed because it would be nice to have a holiday to look forward too x

Have a good week 👋

Posted in Friesland Farm

Nice weather to begin with, then wind and rain and then just continuous wind 😝

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 8th March 2021: Good morning and good morning to all those children who are finally returning to school today and big high five to the parents who have been home schooling ✋ Hopefully today marks the beginning of the road to some kind of normality later this year 🙏 When I think about the last year of our lives it all seems surreal, governments have ordered people to stay home and paid them to do so, made travel illegal, isolation and quarantine have become normal words in a conversation, furlough is a newly invented word for being paid to stay home, shortages of toilet roll and other vital supplies 🙄 No seeing your family, no hugs, no birthday celebrations, no weddings, funerals that couldn’t give people the send off they deserved, people dying by the millions all over the world, scientists working flat out to come up with a vaccine, NHS working round the clock in extreme circumstances, shops, bars, clubs, pubs, theatres, sports grounds all closed for the duration, and this time last year we had no idea what was coming!

John was up and did the animals before going off to work this morning. I swung the hoover round and did a bit of polishing, that will make me feel better when I go outside and spend most of my time in the garden 😀

Good grief is it still Monday 🙄 seems like a very long day today. Been busy in the garden first thing, raking up and burning garden debris, nothing quite like a garden bonfire in Spring. Then I was digging up more deep rooted weeds before they start to flower and set seed. Sam came and I looked after the twins for an hour while she went food shopping. Carried on in the garden after she left and John came home, we got the last bit of compost riddled and what didn’t fit in the new compost bins went on the garden. It will all end up on the garden I am just not ready for it yet. I cleaned the small poly tunnel cover with the algae remover, did a few more bits before sowing the first two rows of carrots for the year 😀 covered them with environmesh because the cats are getting round to playing in the garden and we have a storm coming Thursday apparently, so if they are covered nicely the seeds should not get to disturbed. Environmesh is an expensive outlay initially but it is very long lasting, I have had mine for years and it can be used for a multitude of coverings including brassicas. Checked the postbox and Johns call up for the vaccine had arrived, he was invited to go to the Kassam stadium but booking it online was a right ole rigmarole 🙄 by the time you had chosen a date and pressed next, the times had all been allocated and it was back to square one, in the end he phoned and spoke to a human and got it all booked 😀 Then it was time to get the eggs done and light the Rayburn, get the dinner sorted etc etc. I did pull up a few good beetroot today so I need to decide what to do with them, normally I would leave them in the ground to get bigger but I really wanted to clear the area for a fresh start.

In this area there is the apricot tree a cherry tree which is out of shot then rhubarb, a thornless blackberry some horseradish and asparagus but I have plenty of room to plant other crops, I am just not sure what that will be yet. To the right you can just see the runner bean frames so they also grow here. Last year I grew pumpkins in this space which just meandered around everything else which worked well.

It won’t be long until I can start picking some of this years produce, the rhubarb I have been forcing is looking brilliantly vibrant and there are enough stalks to pull, I really need to have custard with mine 😀 The purple sprouting broccoli has a few little heads appearing, I think by next week there will be enough for a picking. The leeks I planted last year have been slow but they are just about big enough to be useful if pulled from here on in, it’s all looking promising and I can’t wait for that fresh, home grown, full of flavour goodness. As a side note there are plenty of things growing that we could eat right now but they are from days long gone and are mostly considered weeds, plantain, dandelion, goose grass, chick weed, nettles, but always worth remembering just in case you ever need to know 😜

This forced rhubarb looks amazingly vibrant (no filter needed here) can’t wait to have some with custard 🥰

We are getting near to the end of the veg I froze last year but I still have loads of frozen fruit left mostly plums. The plums won’t be ripe until late August, early September so no rush to use them but I will probably make some more jam with half of them, there are also a few bags of mixed berries which again I will use to make jam as we have run out.

After five whole days of our broadband and phone being fixed it’s back to dropping out again so that more time wasted contacting BT, seriously they are shockingly shite! I would change provider but that doesn’t really solve the problem as Open Reach service the lines anyway not matter who the provider is so I can’t imagine it would be any better 🤷‍♀️

Tuesday: A sunny morning with a frost, it should burn off and be a pleasant day. I am trying to get as much done as possible during this dry period, we have wind and rain approaching in the second half of the week so making the most if it. Once the weather turns I can do a bit of baking, haven’t done any in a long while so John will be pleased. BT are coming out tomorrow to fix the problem, just like they did the last three times 🙄 not holding out much hope there 😜 We had another power cut the night before last, not for long but still, our services seem to be getting worse and worse with each passing year.

The big news today is the Megan and Harry interview, I am trying to avoid it but it crops up everywhere 😂 suffice to say my opinion, for what it matters, is that there are better ways of dealing with things than airing your dirty linen on a worldwide scale, they haven’t done themselves any favours. I had supported them in everything they decided to do until now.

It’s 1.30 and I have just come in and had some lunch after a very pleasant morning in the garden. I have been doing various bits but nothing too hard which is why it was so nice I think, pottering is the best term for it. I have sown some more seeds, firstly some flowers, sunflowers and echinops to be precise and then in the big tunnel I have also sown some little gem and winter gem lettuce, some spring onions and some white radish. I have cut back some of the hazel that overshadows the small tunnel, I think looking at them they need a really good cut back, I will have to sacrifice nuts this year. Then I thought I ought to sort out my seeds, they seem to be in complete disarray and I am forever going through all of them to find something. Now they are all in tubs for various types, root veg, squash, salad, you get the idea. The one thing I haven’t got is courgettes, none at all so I will have to get some and some more broad beans while I am at it. I have made sure that any flyawayables are secure for this wind we have coming, shame the weather is going to break but we have had a good run over the last week. It doesn’t sound like I have done much but I have done other bits as well such as retrieve the goose eggs and fill up their water bucket, sort out the eggs and the returned egg boxes, not much but it has filled my morning with only a quick coffee break when John came home to get something he needed. Yep a very pleasant morning indeed.

My guilty pleasure on such a lovely day 😜

I spent another hour in the greenhouse, I didn’t intend to, I went in to give the next size up propagator a clean ready for moving seedlings on but I got listening to a story on radio 4 and so I couldn’t leave until it was finished 😂 I found plenty of little things to do while I was listening 😀

Wednesday: It’s not as cold this morning but we have drizzle and a slight wind, worse to come later according to the weather forecast 😕 John was up and down the animals before going off to work, the builders merchant lorry arrived with the remaining top soil for the last bed, it has taken 15 of the big builder bags, I am not sure how much they weigh but that’s a lot of top soil. John arrived back home as he saw the lorry passing him and came back to help unload which was great as I was not looking forward to that. They hold the bags up on a grab over the bed and then cut underneath to let the soil fall but even so I struggle to cut the bag with my rusty old Stanley knife 😂 They all left and I came in to finish the washing up and then out to take the soil as flat as I could, we have a small mound left in the middle and I will let John decide wether to rake it over or take it off (heavy work lol) I seem to have lost a lot of strength over the last year, I keep trying to build it back up but then everything hurts, at the minute I have shooting pains now and again up the middle of my lower palm and into the wrists. I need to book some more blood tests for next week to see how the white cells are doing, hopefully they have not gone too low, that could be causing the problems I am having which are only minor but still inconvenient. I am also waiting for BT to arrive again today, we will see what they can find this time 🙄

As the weather is not favourable I had decided I will probably do some baking today, it will keep the kitchen nice and warm and keep me busy. It also means I will have things in the freezer that I can just grab to defrost once the gardening season is well under way and I have less time indoors to do stuff like cooking 😜

I have baked scones, biscuits, two fruit cakes and a mincemeat slice pudding for dinner tonight to go with out delicious looking shoulder of lamb 😀

I will freeze a fair bit of this for another day 😀

It was nice and warm in the kitchen while I was cooking and moving around but a short while after I had finished I could feel the cold so it was time to light the Rayburn. Another valid reason that I will be glad when I no longer have to do that is this scenario: It is pretty windy today, the wind is coming up from a south westerly direction and whipping past the back door, the Rayburn is next to the back door and when I empty the ash pan I go straight outside, you can put two and two together there can’t you 😝 And also a good reason for lighting it mid afternoon is to do with the wind, we already had one power cut this week and one the week before I think it was so the potential for another is high. The winds are forecast to reach up to 70 miles an hour on the coast, they will be less fierce by the time they come this far inland but still could reach 50 miles an hour and that will be more than enough to bring down a tree onto a power line. If I warm the house up now at least we won’t be freezing if it does happen later 🙄 Always pay to have a plan 😉

Thursday: Good grief what a night, I was going to sit and blog at 4.30 this morning but decided not to bother. Due to the winds I was awake at 1.30, 3, 4, 5 which is when I made a cuppa, went back to bed and the alarm went off at 6.30 but I went back to sleep as the winds had subsided a little by then. Seriously it was roaring all night, the metal roof occasional banged, the wooden building flexed, creaked and groaned, each time I nodded off there would be a loud creak or bang and I would be wide awake again. By 6am my eyes were stinging where I was tired. The local station recorded 47mph peak, their elevation is 88m ours is 101m with an open west aspect which is the direction the winds came from most of the night so I reckon we probably could have recorded 60mph or more at times here. Loud is an understatement, I was trying to compare it, I think it was mix of a big waterfall and a fast speed train 😂 It never let up all night long and this morning is lighter but still blowy, it changed in speed and direction around 6am. On a good note though it’s not raining this morning no yet anyway, I had expected a lot more rain than we have had 🤷‍♀️ By contrast, John slept through the lot 🙄 Amazes me because if he can hear the second hand of a clock he can’t sleep apparently but rip roaring winds not a problem, he was the same when the children were little, never heard the baby cry or the dog bark to go out but would complain that the clock on the oven downstairs made a noise!

John was up before me and do the animals, I got up and had a cuppa, then I made another one and thought, John will be in any minute from doing the rounds so I made him one, I drank mine and thought, where has he got to? I then realise that his phone and glasses were no on the table and so I looked out the window and his van was gone, he had left for work before I even got up 😂

I whizzed round and got a few things done, made an appointment for bloods next week, sorted out the eggs, the Guineas, cats and dogs, put the rubbish out, give the place a check over to make sure no trees had come down then had a coffee. After that I went to town to get some fruit from the market, takeaway coffee and a pastry from the local coffee shop musing over how lovely it will be to be able to go in and sit down for coffee eventually 🥰 A quick trip into the supermarket and the bakery, I haven’t managed to make bread so I bought some. Then over to see Sam and the twiglets in time to help feed lunch. Back home for 2pm and I could have lit the Rayburn but then I am tied to it for an hour so instead I spent an hour in the greenhouse checking things over. I also sowed some night scented stock seeds, these flowers are vital to things like moths and night flyers, they need nectar too. I got caught up listening to another afternoon story and couldn’t leave until it had finished 😂 The cardboard over the seedlings hack is looking promising, so much so that I have mow covered all seeds with it. I am not sure why I have never come across this before but if it works well it’s a keeper hack. I thought I then ought to light the Rayburn but first I had to get a few barrowfulls of wood into the back, saves going out in the dark and cold to get it later on. We will have two extra areas once the Rayburn is gone, one just out the back in the undercover area where we bring the wood into and then the big undercover area outside where we keep all the chopped wood, it’s big enough to fit a horse box or tractor in so quite a decent size, I am sure we will figure out what to do with them pretty quickly.

Friday: Friday again already 😜 John did the morning rounds and then went off to work. I had lots of little things to get sorted before the farrier arrived at 10am. All sorted indoors it was outside to get some hay in nets to hang for the horses on the hard standing and then into the paddock to get them in. As always Biscuit was a good good and came biddingly and Jack was an arse 😜 finally managed to get his head collar on and lead him in. I picked out their feet and waited for the farrier who was running late. Just as he turned up so did Sam with the twins, got that sorted and the twins had a little sit on the back of biscuit which they both seemed to like and then it was time for a sing song before lunch. A while after lunch I went with Sam in the car to sit with them while she got some shopping, it was around their afternoon nap time so that worked in well. By the time I got back John was home and he had even got the Rayburn lit. The wind is rather cold today but at least not as fierce, we have had a good bit of rain which has refilled some of the water tanks so that’s good, it’s amazing how quickly it gets used during a dry period. We have not got much else done this afternoon but we have a busy weekend ahead of us weather permitting so it’s fine to have a little rest now and again.

Early evening and it’s raining, it think we have rain for most of the night.

Saturday: Pretty windy again this morning, we got the morning jobs done including moving the light Sussex back out to their outdoor enclosure so that we could move the hens from the point of lay pen back into the stable ready for the batch of POL coming in this week. I also completely cleaned out the Guineas pig run and observed them for a while, I don’t think it’s mites that the guinea has got I think it’s being bullied by the other one. The reason I came to this conclusion is that the other one shows no signs of mite and he is constantly chasing the other one off, need to monitor that and do something about it soon. We also have one cockerel bullying another, it was fine while the other one was young but now it’s grown and on someone else’s territory it’s not so good, also need to do something about that 🙄 It’s always the male of the species that are a problem 😂 the females live together in relative harmony 🤔 We then went to the garden centre so that I could buy some plants for the final bed, I have a lot that I have previously grown ready or already had but I wanted a few more smaller plants for infilling, this bed is (hopefully) a nod to a cottage garden style, roses, Hardy geranium, delphiniums, dahlias, stocks, saxifrage etc, each bed should have a different look eventually.

While I was out there planting things I had a look at something I planted in the other bed, it hadn’t made it through the winter which was strange as it’s a huechera which are fairy Hardy. I dug it up thinking I might be able to recuse it and was horrified to see lots of little grubs in the soil. My first thought was cut worm and if it is in the topsoil then we are buggered as it will undone all the work we have done already, chewing through the roots of everything and killing it all off. I lifted the plant, and all the surrounding soil making sure I found every little grub that I could, this all went in the skip, there was another plant that was similar so I dug that up and yep one or two grubs in there to 🤦‍♀️ My next thought was that if it’s in the compost I am also buggered as I have used that for everything! A quick scan round and everything else is fine so I think it is localised luckily, I googled it and it’s not cut worm but vine weevil grubs which will be easier to deal with, they like pots of things so I imagine an adult has crawled in when I had stuff in pots and laid it’s eggs. Not so bad because it means it’s not in everything and I can get nematodes to water in and deal with them, panic over 😅

Besides that I had a lovely time planting everything in between hail storms and rain that is and of course the never ending wind. In the end I got fed up of being buffeted and went into the greenhouse for some respite from it lol.

Once I had finished that it was indoors to do a quick bit of hoovering all round and get the Rayburn ready for lighting. John had been out the back giving the POL pen a power wash so it’s all ready for next week and then came in and made a cuppa.

We booked our first post covid overnight stay away 🥰 when I say we, I don’t mean John and I 😂 Ever since our eldest turned 30, the three girls and I have a new tradition of having a spa break at a 5* boutique hotel in the Cotswolds. Last April we were booked to go for Charlie’s 30th but it got cancelled due to the pandemic and so after a whole year of waiting we were able to book it again for the end of July 👏 So looking forward to finally being able to go so fingers crossed the rest of the year goes as planned 🙏 I will have to look for somewhere for John and I to go, it’s only fair 😂

Sunday: Still windy, getting tedious now lol, it’s more tiring working against the wind all the time 🙄 Still, not to be deterred we got up, I have to say I had the most amazing breakfast by strength_chef delivered from Charlie and Macca, then got the animals done and then out the front to get some more bits tidied up. Sam arrived with Mia to do the horses and bought some beautiful primula to plant in my new flower bed along with some seeds for the butterflies and bees. Mia went home with a goose egg for her breakfast 😜 Shelley popped over to drop off a present and that was a lovely little recycled notebook that is impregnated with seeds that you can plant when you have finished using it and some amazing blondies from Indulge by Amy, find her on Facebook, fab cakes 🥰 Feeling the love today from my amazing girls, love them all to the moon and back 💕 💕 💕

Mia with her dippy goose egg 😀

We did a bit more outside after I lit the Rayburn, it’s pretty chilly today, John laid a few slabs and sorted out some of the driveway, it needs raking off and levelling, I collected empty flower pots that had blown around and we moved the fig tree and the olive tree to the fruit cage. The birds pinch all the emerging buds on both so I never get anything, hopefully in the cage I will stand more of a chanice of a harvest.

Eventually in the early afternoon we had both had enough outside and so a well earned Sunday afternoon sit down was in order.

Not long until the spring equinox 👏 👏 👏 happy days ahead 🥰 Have a fabulous week whatever you are doing x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Weeding, tidying, plenty to do.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday March 1st 2021: An altogether different day today, the heat and the sun have disappeared and it is quite a bit colder, the sun came out in the afternoon but there is still a distinct chill in the air. February has been a crazy month weatherwise, we have gone from days and days of below zero, to a lot of rain and then at the end highs of around 15c with plenty of warmth. We don’t know if we are coming or going 😂 the last four days are what is known as a fools spring, we were looking forward to more sunshine and heat but wham it’s gone just like that.

Although there are things to be done out in the garden I really wanted to get some of the Lino prints that have been ordered done and a few more to put out for sale. So that’s what I did for the first part of the morning, Sam phoned to see if I could mind the twins while she went and got her food shop, that’s what I did for the second part of the morning, the wheels on the bus and round and round the garden mostly 😜

John came home around 1pm he had a dentist appointment to go to, lunch for me around 2pm after I had checked the egg shed and done a few bits and pieces.

Just after 2, as the sun was shining, I decided to do an hours weeding, a wise man once said to me, do a little bit every day and it will soon be done, actually it was my brother in law but still very wise words and I always think of him saying it when I chose that mantra. When I came in it was 4pm! It was so pleasant out there that I had got lost in time and thought 😀 I did a couple of other things out there as well such as moving some small clumps of ‘Johnny Jump Up’ which are viola, they had self set around the veg garden so I might as well use them in the front beds they will make good ground cover. I also checked the seedlings in the greenhouse, it was lovely and warm in there, the shinny backing I have used is working well as the seedlings are not leggy nor are they leaning for light. I checked the sprouting broccoli, remember I couldn’t actually recall what it was just that it was tall, well it’s purple sprouting and there are a few little heads beginning to appear. I sowed some seeds straight onto the ground in the tortoise pen, this is specific tortoise food, fingers crossed it grows.

By the time I came in I thought I better get the Rayburn lit and think about what we would have for dinner. John had gone to do an outside tap after his dentist appointment but he arrived home not long after I lit the fire, he went out and did the feeding and egg collecting.

Tuesday: Much colder today and not much hope of it warming up either, grey and overcast. John did the birds before going off to work, I did my jobs and then set about mounting the Lino prints I did yesterday, I put them out for sale, if they are not out there I will never know if anyone wants them or not lol. I have never really been one for ‘stepping out of the shadow’ is how I think of it, I would never push myself forward or raise my head above the parapet not unless I am 100% sure about whatever it is, then and only then I will. But as I get older I tend to think ‘f**k it’ what have I got to lose 😜 I think that is one of the pleasures of getting older, you give less of a damn about what anyone else thinks about what you do 😂

I feel like I have had a good day today and I wasn’t even expecting to 😀 As I said it was pretty cold this morning but around 11 I thought I would go out and do a few things that needed doing. The drops arrived for the Guineas, I managed to catch two of them and get them done but the third is elusive and I need John to help me corner him, no point only doing the two. Then I figured I would do a little bit of weeding/clearing and ended up doing that until 4 o clock. The sun made an appearance mid afternoon and it was rather too nice to give up so I carried on. I also checked the torts, we have legs out and movement when I touched them so that is good news, they have made it through the winter, they just need to warm up now before they start moving around, it will be a while before they go outside mind you. I have dug up and split plants that need moving, now is a great time to divide clumps of plants and re plant them where you want them, I have potted up several thornless blackberries that have rooted themselves, I have sown some rocket and baby spinach seeds in the small tunnel as a quick crop, yep I have had a lovely, productive day. Time to come in and do the house jobs, such as light the Rayburn, sort out washing, hang it to dry over night, dry up etc etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do only what you wanted to do rather than what you have to do 😜

Just a recap of what I have sown so far this year for anyone wanting to get going and not really sure when to do that. All seeds so far have been grown under cover of poly tunnel or greenhouse because I have found that my particular plot is around 2/3 weeks behind usual sowing times, this is due to the slight incline that faces west, as our winds are mainly westerlies this causes a chill area 🙄 Peas and broad beans sown in the greenhouse, the peas are in root trainer pots and the broad beans in seed tray inserts, I think they are about 2” inch square something like that. I have sown rocket and spinach in the poly tunnel straight on top of the soil, in this case in old recycling boxes. I have potatoes chitting in a dark box ready to plant out, traditionally that would be good Friday but a lot depends on the temperatures around that time as easter is early this year, if it’s cold I will leave it another couple of weeks. I have tomatoes, chilli and pepper seeds in the greenhouse inside a heated propagator, they need that warmth for quite a while so having a bigger propagator to move them to is also needed. I have dill, garlic chives and coriander in trays in the greenhouse with no heat, again because my plot is too cold and wet for them to be sown straight into the ground at this time of year. I have a good deal more to get sown but I also have plenty of preparation to do in the garden as well so it’s a case of weighing up what needs doing first and generally seeds will catch up easily even if they are sown late.

Wednesday: Grey, foggy, a bit on the cold side this morning but you never know it may burn off and be nice at some point. I have been out to do the egg shed and collect the milk and the sparrows are using the new nesting flats 😀 I was a bit worried they would be too upmarket for them but it seems not. They have also been investigating the old boxes which I have placed in various other places in the front area, I didn’t want to waste them but they were a bit tatty to go on the new house front.

Today is a day that is necessary but not nice lol, septic tank emptying day. I did learn the lesson in the first year, do not have it emptied when it is likely to be a hot day, the stench hangs around both inside and out for a couple of days 😂 A cool day in early Spring is a much better time of year to have it done 😜 Still, keep all windows and doors shut ☑️

The wagon came just after lunch (luckily 😜) and there is a lingering whiff but not too bad 😂

As it was a tad cold out I decided this morning I would take a look through the photos that I need to get sorted. We had some from when Johns Mum died and then some from when Dad died, some from an older relative a few years ago and plenty that were already here but stuffed in various places while we got the office sorted. Now it’s done I need to get them in some kind of order along with the bits and pieces of ancestry stuff. I also thought it might be a good idea to write the names on the backs of photos because although we may know who they are now, future generations probably won’t and that information is lost forever. I have plenty of photos of great Aunts and Uncles but on some of them I am not 100% sure who is who 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Dank, is the way to describe the weather today 😜 I spent the first couple of hours trying to upload the photos for the mid week surprise, doing jobs inbetween, seemed to take forever. Then it was on with the rest of the day. The first main job was a dangerous one, retrieve the eggs from the goose nest 🙄 I went up to see if they were all out but one was still on the nest so I left it until later. Instead I decided to clean the inside windows of the greenhouse and give the top shelves a clean and tidy up. It is a delicate balance at this time of year because there are lacewings and ladybirds overwintering in the nooks and crannies but there are also other insects you don’t really want hanging around such as wood louse, slugs, greenfly etc. I moved everything and gave the windows a clean, checked the heat mat as I thought it wasn’t working but it’s fine, watered anything that needed watering, sowed a few more pea seeds all while listening to Radio 4 😀 There was an interesting section about bread and how for centuries the whiter your bread the higher ranking in society you were, of course the whiter they made it, the less nutritious it became and the poor were left with the wholemeal bread which was obviously not as good 🤣 oh how times have changed. Once I had finished all the intended jobs I began to ‘faff’ a sure sign that what I was trying to do was not the right time to be doing it, luckily I recognised that behaviour and left the greenhouse 😀 Back to the dangerous job, the geese’s were all now out in the paddock grazing, good that means I can nip in and collect the eggs but this comes with the aforementioned danger element. The gander, quite rightly, is there to protect his ladies and their eggs but he has missed the memo regarding the fact that I feed, water and clean them as well as give them a lovely place to live and so those eggs are mine 😝 At the moment he is merely in the warning phase, he makes a run for you but not with any great intent, as the season goes on and his ladies decide they may like to sit he will become pretty aggressive and when he comes at you then he means every bit of it!For now a little bit of extra scratch corn and a stick with a piece of flapping bag on it keeps him at bay and he wanders back to the corn, another month and we probably won’t be gathering eggs any more, life is too precious 😂

After putting the goose eggs out for sale I went back to the POL pen where our ladies are still being held captive due to avian flu. I shovelled up buckets of deposited poop and dug over the soil area which had become wet and horrible due to the water being left on by John. There was much drier soil underneath and the hens will have a great afternoon scratching about to find any insects and seeds, back in for lunch, is it only lunchtime 😆

John came home just after lunch, that’s the nature of his work at the minute, bitty so I never know when he will be here, he was planning on staying but he had been waiting for the electrician to be able to fit in a socket on the job he did this week and he called and was available so off John went. He did get the flue swept when he first came back though which is good as it was getting a bit sooty. He has estimated we have about a months worth of wood left so we are hoping it has warmed up enough by then to stop lighting the Rayburn. That will be the end of an era here, I will be a little bit sad not to have that comfortable heat from it but I will be a lot happier not to have to do my Cinderella duties day in and day out 😝

I took a bit of time out to watch a few you tube videos on gardening hacks, a good one to watch is Huw Richards he has some really good hacks a couple of which I will be trying this year. Another good gardening you tuber is Liz Zorab, I have been following her since she started really as she was already on one of the groups I am in, she has built up a steady following and has just published her first book called Grounded. Both are experienced vegetable gardeners if you are looking for hints and tips. You are never too old to learn and I always say every day is a school day, the hack of placing a plank or cardboard over your seedlings until they emerge is one I will definitely try and the other is growing potatoes in a different medium. Basically you put the potatoes in soil but instead of using more and more soil to Earth up you use hay, straw, wood chip etc. As I am going to use pallet collars this year I was thinking it is going to take a lot of compost but if I use hay or straw that will be a whole lot easier and cheaper plus the potatoes will be lovely and clean when harvested.

Friday: Cold and grey but dry at least. John is off today and so he says ‘I am all yours, what jobs do you want doing?’ I start talking about how I want to get the garden cleared a bit and sort out the compost heaps, I just have to go and get feed first he says, and I have to sort out the van first. So that is half an hour sorting out the van, and hour round trip to get feed and half an hour unloading, half an hour for a coffee when he has finished that, that’s two and half hours down already and he will probably get a phone call at some point and have to go out to work. He wonders why I never bother relying on him to help me with what I have to do, sometimes I would rather he didn’t ask in the first place 🤦‍♀️

We did get some work done on the compost heap but not quite as much as I would have liked but there is always tomorrow. To be honest when I first went outside to get some work done it was so cold that my fingers and toes hurt so I came back in until it warmed up a little. I did sowed a tray of beetroot seeds, the nice striped ones, and I have trialled this covering with cardboard hack to see how well that works. The idea is that you dampen the compost, sow the seeds and then cover with cardboard, this stops the compost drying out so no more watering is needed until the seedlings appear, I am intrigued to see how well it works. While John was digging the compost heap over I was weeding one of the other beds, I am getting there slowly, I just have one and a half more beds to do and then they are ready for whatever I decided to put in them. I needed to top dress the asparagus as they will be one of the first veg to harvest, sprouting broccoli, rhubarb and asparagus are the first three treats to look forward too. This year I have forced some of the rhubarb and that is looking like it’s nearly ready to pick 😀

I have a little light reading to do ‘The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments’ 🤣 which is about how to achieve greater biological activity and mineral availability, increase resistance, yields and nutrient density 🙄 I do believe that every day is a school day and there is always more to learn, I will let you know how it goes.

Today is the last day that parents are having to home school, I know from watching my children with their children that it has been hard work, rewarding at times and fun but also stressful, fractious and emotional at times, well done, you did it, you should be very proud of yourselves it was a big ask 🥰 I imagine the whoops of joy on Monday morning will be very audible all over the shires 😂

Saturday: Busy, busy day, it will make up for all those days when I wasn’t busy 😂 First I started off digging up some deep rooted weeds and comfrey which seems to have spread itself everywhere. John was busy riddling the compost heap and tidying that up, then he went off to take a card to his brother for his birthday and onto a small call out job. I got tired of digging up weeds so I decided to give the outside of the greenhouse a wash. I have an organic algae wash, I found the bucket and the extendable brush and got to work on that, next clean out the gutters and then onto the cold frames, clean the tops and clean inside, move all the plants over so that next time it rains they get a watering. John came back and we attempted to lift the water butt which had fallen over sometime during the winter, it was wedged and still full of water so a heavy tricky job. With that finished John went back to the compost heap and I began the mammoth task of tidying up the pots 🙄 I have hundreds of them, literally, I asked for any plastic pots last year and people bought them all summer long and now I have so many I will never use them all lol. I have had to put a notice up saying ‘no more pots’. That took me all afternoon and I had five bags of broken, split, rubbish pots to put in the skip. At some point John did the egg collecting and when I came in around 4pm I lit the Rayburn. We had a cuppa and I said it would be a good time to give the grass a first cut, it had got long but today had dried out better than it has on other days. I got the mower out and gave it some wd40 but it wouldn’t start, the throttle cable had stretched and was not opening up whatever it is it opens up 😝 So John has to come and pull back the spring every time I wanted to restart it after emptying the grass box. It actually wouldn’t turn off either unless you put it back to choke, need to get the cable sorted as it’s a hard enough job without any added complications. The problem with our lawn is that it was once rough terrain, so it’s not level and the front of the mower tends to dig in, add to that the cramp I get in my hands and let’s just say it’s not a job that I find any pleasure in 😜 John kindly offered to do it again tomorrow, course you will, I’ve just don’t he hard bit doing the long grass first cut! Back indoors, and it’s do you want to do the washing up or the eggs, John chose the washing up, I get the eggs. Finally sat down at 5pm.

At the end of the season last year, one of the last crops to dig up are the Oca, they like a frost on the leaves before they are dug. I dug them and bought them in, my intention was not to eat them this year but to get increase the amount of tubers to replant. I kept them in the back, they don’t go green like potatoes and so are fine in the light, I noticed yesterday that they have started to chit, it’s a bit early for them to go in yet but I am glad they are doing well. Oca otherwise known as New Zealand yam or the ‘lost crop of the Incas’ are incredibly versatile, raw, baked, fried, roasted, grilled any way you like, it’s a wonder we don’t use them more in the UK. They are nutritionally rich and very easy to grow, they are not an invasive plant, tolerate our weather really well, practically the perfect vegetable.

Sunday: It turned out to be a nicer day than I thought it was going to be, the sun came out and soon warmed the air up but not too much. We have had another busy day and John has sieved around two ton of compost which is now neatly stacked in compost bins made from the pallet collars. It means I will be able to go and shovel into the wheelbarrow with ease and use it round the garden. I spent part of my time sowing more peas and mangetout and now I think I have sown too many 😂 I have also been digging up feverfew which has self set everywhere and trying to clear and tidy one of the beds. I made a mound of twigs and sticks and debris and tried to burn it, twice I had to light it but it’s kind of smouldering and burning the bits near the flame then just goes out. I wanted to get it burnt while it was dry because if it rains tomorrow I won’t be able to do it until it all dries out again. We have had lots of visitors by that I mean people coming to get plastic pots, people coming to borrow things and people coming to get other things I was giving away. Of course each time we stand and have a chat and so that lost us plenty of good working hours 🤣 however there is always tomorrow and it’s nice to have time to stop and chat with people maybe just not all on the same day!

At the end of each day there is always still more work to be done, the Rayburn, the washing up, the eggs, hanging the washing to dry overnight, the dogs and cats to feed and the dinner to get. At one point I was diving between getting the Rayburn lit and keeping the small bonfire going outside, back and forth between the two of them at least four times. That’s the end of another day and another week, hopefully we can get as much done next week as we have this one 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

Winter jobs, winter food, winter weather.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 18th January 2021: I like typing 2021 it feels very futuristic 😂 Monday morning again and the weather is ok, you can tell when the weather is just ok as the English don’t mention it, we tend to talk about extremes, isn’t it hot or it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, we mostly always mention the rain though, we state the obvious, wet today isn’t it 😝 We are definitely weather obsessed as a nation and that’s because it is usually all over the place, you can’t guarantee that Spring will be spring like or that summer will be warm and dry you have to wait and see what comes our way and we can change it but what we can do is use it as a conversation starter 😀

John has had to go and change a set of taps for an elderly disabled lady this morning but first we did the morning feeding and watering. Once he had left I did some household bits plus get some bread on the go, since the beginning of this lockdown we have not bought bread at all I have made every loaf.

I did contemplate going out to the front and cutting back dead foliage on the flower bed by the front gate but I think I will wait, there will be plenty of insects hibernating still and although I am keen to get tided up I don’t want to disturb them just yet.

We need to decide what job we are going to get sorted next, the side driveway is on our radar but that will be weather dependant, when it’s dry we can get on, if it’s pouring down (and there is rain on the radar) then there won’t be any point as it will just make more of a mess than necessary plus who wants to get a soaking when you don’t need to.

I am on a roll this morning, whilst having bread on the go I have also got some bits of paperwork done, Bill paying, filing, sending out invoices etc and lit the Rayburn and got soup on for lunch. One of the things I did last year for the first time was the bags of frozen mixed veg for soup and I am so pleased I did they have been great and will definitely be doing them again for next Winter. This mix has courgettes, celery, turnip, onion, carrot and runner beans in it, mostly they were odd veg that I couldn’t do much else with and so I chopped them and open froze then put them all in one bag to use as a soup mix. If you have the odd carrot or stick of celery in the fridge do the same, you will soon have a soup bag ready for when you need it, anything can go in even the odd potato. I tend to cook mine down until the veg collapse then whizz with a hand blender, add stock of your choice and voila lunch is ready in no time, we have ours with freshly baked bread today which is a bonus 😀

We got lots of little bits done in the afternoon, the door stop and door handle, I have a fold up table that we have hung neatly on the back of the door, that’s for when I need extra room for crafting or sewing etc. The next radiator got delivered and that was put up in the spare room. I know it is a little thing but I am loving the heat from these radiators, it’s hard to explain but the room feels all over gently heated rather than what we have now from the wet system 🤷‍♀️

Dinner tonight consists of left over roast lamb so John has a throw it in the pot dinner with lamb, potatoes, carrots and mixed veg plus stock and cornflour, throw it all in and put it in the Rayburn until cooked. Not sure why so many recipes faff about with preparation when these dinners always come out smelling delicious 😋 I on the other hand am having a healthy version of lamb korma made by marinating the lamb in yoghurt and a korma spice, I will add ground almond to it when I cook it, having that with whole grain rice, a cucumber and grape salad and a wholemeal pitta bread, together with a diet Cherry coke I can almost kid myself I have had a lovely takeaway 🤣

John did the afternoon rounds while I got the dinner ready and that is Monday almost done and dusted, just the evening to relax and enjoy, this lockdown lark is quite enjoyable really 😜

The vaccine rollout is well under way and over 4million people have already been vaccinated, they are vaccinating a higher number than those that are testing positive so that’s a great thing. They have started to call in the over 70s as well now, hopefully it won’t be long until we get ours. As I said before Shelley has been a volunteer at the local vaccination centre and she said people are very emotional about receiving their jabs, for some of them it has been their first trip out since last March 😔

Tuesday: Busy again today, it’s much easier to keep busy while the days pass than sit doing nothing though I appreciate some don’t have the choice. First up John did the morning rounds, I had a shower and then did some hoovering, fed the cats and dogs, put out the rubbish those kind of jobs. Then onto the main events of the day and we had two, John was on concrete duties, we have an areas just outside the double doors in the back bit, for some reason the paths ends before it reaches the doors and so I wanted to get it extended to keep the mud down when we come in from the yard. Meanwhile I spent an hour in the greenhouse sowing broad bean seeds and some peas, the peas will be for harvesting the shoots as I am rather partial to pea shoots in my salad. After that I decided the big poly tunnel could be done, the garden itself is too wet but the tunnel is perfect for working in at this time of year. I spent a good couple of hours, weeding, pulling up anything that was still growing, salad mostly, and then putting barrowfulls of mushroom compost on the beds. Last year I left things to grow on but I feel that was a bit of mistake as I never really had a starting point, I was always trying to work round everything, the salad leaves went to the chickens in the stable, judging by the scuffles they were very happy to have something to peck over. I have beds in there because after we sited it I discovered it was on a clear seam and a big one at that, year after year I tried growing straight into it but it was hard work with little return. We cobbled together beds out of what we had lying around and the difference was amazing, I get good crops now, the left hand corner near the doorway is fine, that has lovely soil and so does not need any type of bed, funny how the soil type can change within centimetres 😜

It’s mid afternoon and I haven’t lit the Rayburn yet, it’s positively balmy at around 11 degrees today 😜

I discovered that the kittens or at least one of them is as much use as a chocolate teapot 😝 I was digging mushroom compost from the big tonne bag when a couple of mice suddenly appeared. No sign of the cats outside so I went into the boot room and picked one up and took it back with me (Jack) I put him in the bag and he jumped straight out without even looking. I the tried to catch him again but he wasn’t having any of it so I caught the mouse, I put it down on the floor, the cat was looking, the mouse ran, the cat looked and only once the mouse had disappeared under the fence did the cat venture forward and sniff where the mouse had been 🤣 I said to John I am going to have to train them I think!

John had covered up his concrete as it’s right outside the door but as I am always telling him your defences are only as good as your weakest point, the dog went out and stood on the tiny bit that was not covered 🤣🤣 which caused some swearing 😜 To be fair he has been lucky with the weather today as storm Christoph is battering the UK and until about 4pm we hadn’t really seen any sign of it at all. As it is at the minute we have a bit of rain but nothing much, it may progress through the night mind you 🙄

I realised after looking through my seeds that I didn’t have any peas, I had a few, those I sowed this morning but nowhere near enough to grow a decent amount of peas for the year. I ordered, mangetout, snap peas and a dwarf early variety which I will probably sow in pots and then transfer to the tunnel. The carrots I was hoping to have in the small tunnel never got very far, they sprouted but something and I suspect that is a mouse, keeps eating the greenery so not much chance of anything developing underneath. I also ordered some lemon grass seeds, I really loved growing it though I didn’t use much of it and need to rectify that. I love the smell of anything lemony, the lemon verbena has survived the winter so far and it smells amazing even in the depths of the dormant season.

The onions, garlic and shallots are doing well as I said last week, I got a photo so you can see how they are coming along.

Onions, garlic and shallots, I thought it was a lot when I planted them but will probably find it’s not enough 😂

Broad beans sown, the others are plants I have had on the heat mat through the winter which seems to have worked well 😀

The weather took a turn for the worst during the evening, heavy rain and high winds, hopefully it will have blown over by the morning 😀

Wednesday: Ewww storm Christoph got going overnight, I think I was woken three or four times with the wind or the rain making a racket and all today has been nothing less than a washout with constant rain. John attempted to dig a hole for the first post of the fence that will run down the side of the new driveway but he gave up, too wet, who wants to work in the rain. Apart from the necessary we didn’t do much else.

We did spend a fair bit of the day watching CNN, the outgoing President and the incoming President, how different the two ceremonies were 🙄 I hope the USA manages to heal the differences that have set them so far apart from each other ❤️ 🇺🇸

Thursday: OMG excuse my language but that was fucking awful out there doing the animals this morning! After around 36 hours of constant rain and gusts of wind battering the place, it was wet, soggy, windy, raining, blowing a hoolie and bitterly cold to boot, one of the worst mornings so far. At one point it looked as though the sun was coming out and it was clearing up but just as I left the stable block to go and do Ted I did an about turn and ran back. The sky turned black, the wind whipped up from nowhere and the rain lashed down for all of around one to two minutes then it was gone again but I still got wet and windswept. I am so over winter already lol, we have the usual lake and river in the side paddocks, that is becoming a much more frequent feature as the years go by. Early on it was an occasional thing, eleven years later and we get it about four to five times a year, every year 🙄

We had decided to go into town this morning, the local market is on a Thursday and I wanted to get some fresh fruit and a few bits of veg. I got leeks, mine are still in the ground and still rather small, potatoes as I didn’t grow enough to last us and then fresh fruit for snacking on. We saw Shelley, Josh and Flo down there so we bought some cakes and went and got a takeaway coffee to stand and drink. I haven’t seen Josh and Flo except when they are in the car or on messenger so it was lovely to interact with them 😀 We went to the butchers where I got some chicken breast and then to the supermarket where we bought more than we thought we originally needed 🙄 I dropped off some leeks to Mum on the way back and a bunch of flowers , great news she had her jab yesterday and Ken had his today. Then it was back home to a warm house as we lit the Rayburn before leaving, I didn’t want to come home to a cold house on a day like today. It had stopped raining by the time we went out mind you but it was still a cold day. By the time we got back it was early afternoon and so not much point starting anything, I have chopped up some potatoes, leeks and celeriac and put that in the slow cooker for tomorrow’s lunch, it will cook the rest of the afternoon and all evening then I will turn it off overnight and turn it back on in the morning ready for lunchtime.

That will probably be it for today except for the afternoon rounds which John is doing as I type, an evening snuggled up in the warm either reading or watching a film maybe. Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and Sunny although still quite cold, I will spend some time thinking about what job I can be doing in the garden or polytunnels.

Friday: A sharp frost this morning. We went out to do the rounds and discovered that Jack had bust out of the field, the electric still had not been turned back on, big mistake 😜, and he had worked it out. He has had a good wander round the place and broken into the hay barn 🙄 We got him back in the paddock, sorted the fencing, turned it on and hopefully he will stay there for a while. They have finished their big roll of hay so I will have to get some more delivered, I doubt very much the grass will start growing anytime soon. In the meantime I will have to fill up sacks and drag them out to the field. John did most of the birds and I went over to do Ted and the Guineas, in with Ted are the two light Sussex that hatched first last year, the female has laid her first egg today 😀 it’s always lovely to get the first egg from a pullet (young female) no matter how many times you have seen it. I went into the small poly tunnel where I set the mousetrap yesterday and result, two in the trap 😀 I will have to reset it, and I tried but it kept going off, there are bound to be more around eating all my veg, these two are the ones that have been nibbling the carrot tops all winter long.

I came indoors to do the washing up, hoovering and get the Rayburn ready for lighting later, meanwhile John carried on with digging the holes for the side fence and he has now gone off to get cement to have a rest from the digging lol. I have a bit of a headache this morning, hopefully nothing but I can’t seem to shake it off, normally I guess, nobody would worry but at the minute you never know what you have picked up even being very careful on the limited times you go out 🙄

The pea seeds I ordered have arrived and so have the seed potatoes, I will get the earlies ready to chit and they will go in the big tunnel, also I will start of early peas and grow them on in the big tunnel as well I think. I have some garlic chive seeds that can be sown anytime so I will go and get them done later. The sun is shining beautifully now and the greenhouse will be a lovely place to be working in about another hours time I reckon 😀 It might even be warm enough in the to pretend it’s spring 😜

We have the leek and potato soup for lunch today so I do t have to stop and think about what I need to be doing for that.

I did go out into the greenhouse and sowed a few peas, I also tided up the small tunnel though it didn’t need much doing but it was still very cold on my feet and my toes began to hurt so I gave that up. Instead I set about fixing the egg board which usually sits out on the front of the driveway. It got blown over during one windy night a few weeks ago and the leg came apart so I fixed it back together re wrote it and put it back out.

Saturday: I have been feeling a bit urgh the last couple of days, can’t put my finger on it but I think it’s to do with the Lupus, I have tiny red hives on my fingers and toes and they hurt if I knock them against anything. I feel tired and lethargic and have a borderline headache, I actually didn’t realise that there is such as thing as a ‘Lupus headache’ and what I need to watch for is vasculitis, oh joy another thing to keep an eye on and not so easy at the minute when the doctors are really busy with a pandemic. It all seems a bit trivial to bother the doc with but if it gets worse I will have to get it looked at, of course with Lupus it can sometimes just clear up and go away of its own accord which is what I am hoping it will do.

It’s cold and frosty this morning, because I have been feeling sluggish John left me to sleep in and did the animals this morning 🥰 I am grateful that I have someone to pick up the reins if needs be. He then went out and started on the fence again while I did the usual household tidying bits, rubbish, recycling, milk bottles all those little jobs. I had just made coffee when he came back in, his feet were too cold working out there so he drank his coffee and went off to the merchants and the bank, hopefully the sun will have warmed the ground by the time he returns.

According to some news reports a hospital in Kent is trialling elderberry as a treatment for covid, I imagine it runs alongside other more conventional treatments but finally the medical world wakes up to alternative treatments. I make plenty with elderberries, pies, syrups and Pontack sauce, I will definitely be picking them and putting them out for sale this year lol.

I have had a lovely day, I have been in my little room designing cards for Valentine’s Day, I can’t make them yet as I am waiting for the recycled card to come but they are along the same lines as the button Christmas cards I made. It’s very therapeutic and just what I needed today when I don’t have the energy for much else.

I did go outside mid afternoon and attempt to fill the water buckets up at the back the the hosepipe was still frozen so I took buckets of water up. I also put down some clean bedding for the geese and the ducks. I am hoping the geese will begin to lay very soon, it’s a short season for goose eggs and like duck eggs you either love em or hate em and luckily we do have customers that love em 🥰 I also lit the Rayburn quote early and have been keeping that going all day as well as getting in a couple of loads of wood from the store, we are due snow tomorrow so best to keep it all topped up.

It’s a fish and chip supper tonight from the chip shop, I am really looking forward to it, one day when I don’t have to think about what to get for dinner 😜

Sunday: got up and had a look out of the window around 6.30am, nothing to report, went back to bed, got up at 8am and we had a good layer of snow and it was still snowing 🌨 The forecast says we will get around 5 to 8cm 🙄 and it will snow most of the day. So we donned our snow gear and went out to do the animals, I love pristine snow but the dogs always get there first at least it will clean their coats nicely. Then I made John go for a walk in the side paddock, a couple of snowballs thrown and we went back in. Snow days mean no days for us, we can’t do a lot outside and I am wondering what on Earth people do all day long 🤷‍♀️ it will a marathon tv watch or reading which I will be so bored of by the end of the day 🙄 I lit the Rayburn, John got some bacon sizzling on the hot plate and that will probably be it for us until the animals need doing later. In normal years the kids might have come over but this year the at is not an option sadly, we did get the sledge out but I couldn’t pull John on it 🤣 Years ago when we lived at a different house the kids had plastic ones and when they came in to warm up, someone nicked them so my dad made them a wooden one but we never really had any decent snowfall for years after so it never got used, we got it out today but it has woodworm 😝 it is still sound enough but too small for either of us to use, maybe one year it will get used by children again.

Afternoon rounds done and dusted, the snow is still on the ground only slightly melted and the forecast is for a very cold night possibly -5 so we made sure we filled up water buckets ready for the morning, we will have to break ice but at least there will be water. Dinner is in the Rayburn, the curtains are now shut and the house is nice and warm. Have a great week, stay safe and stay warm x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Seeds, avian flu & an amazing sunrise.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 9th November 2020: First thing this morning I have a repeat blood test as my last lot are showing low leucocytes again 😏 That means increased risk of infection so I need to be a bit careful.

Last night I was reading that the house sparrow is on the red list for conservation which surprised me greatly, we have a good flock of them here, around twenty I would say. I need to make sure they have everything they need, food through the winter and housing, I put up new sparrow flats for them when we took the old boxes down but they haven’t been seen in them as yet. What they have been doing is going in the roof where we haven’t put the capping back on (it’s ordered but not arrived yet) and I was complaining that they have pulled out bits of fibreglass which are now on the ground in the front. I think I will look to see where else we can put the old bird boxes until they decided to move into the new ones.

I was quite depressed at the thought that this is only day five of the lockdown, seems longer, and how I was going to pass the time but if this morning is anything to go by I needn’t worry. First the blood test, then Shelley walked over to get eggs so we had a chat over the gate (odd that last week they could all come in and this week they can’t 🙄 but rules is rules) then I thought I will phone Sue and see how she is doing, five minutes in and the straw and hay delivery arrived so I said I would call her back. Went out to sort where it was all going came back in to get the payment and realised I had left my soup on high, luckily it wasn’t burning, called Sue back for the rest of our chat, did some hoovering, sat down for my soup and John popped in between jobs. The time has shot past today and hopefully it will be like that every day.

I was feeling quite anxious and emotional this morning, mainly I think because of these white cells or rather, lack of them. It’s important because they lead to a condition called leucopenia and even when we don’t have a viral pandemic you are advised to wear a mask as you are highly susceptible to bacterial and viral infections as the immune system is not functioning. With the Lupus and the meds you take for it you can swing from a very over aggressive immune system to one that can’t even be bothered 😂 So you can see why it’s a worry, obviously the ideal would be a level system but that never seems to work because too many other factors can intervene. A morning of interaction and I feel more emotionally stable now thank goodness.

I had planned on doing a few things outside but the hours have passed and other things occurred instead, I did water the carrot seedlings, they don’t seem to be growing very fast though and I checked on the oranges which look nearly ready to pick 😀 I hope they are sweet enough and not sharp, that will be very disappointing.

I prepped dinner Nr lit the Rayburn, monitoring the time all the while but John came home early and he did the feed rounds and egg collecting so that was a happy bonus and with the extra time I made a raspberry pudding for dessert 😀

Shelley decided that through hers and Martin’s businesses they would like to spread a little cheer and have donated selection boxes, people can nominate someone they think could do with a little cheer either because they are alone, have lost their job or are struggling for some reason or other. The gift is in the giving and so we have donated from both the farm and the plumbing business as well and she is getting offers from lots of people to also donate, it’s amazing and so many people need to know that others are thinking about them at this difficult time and that although we are all socially distanced they are not on their own.

Helping people out gives you much more pleasure than you can imagine and is good for the soul and at time brings unexpected returns, some of my favourite memories are from people giving me things because I had helped them out. I have told these before but I love them so here they are again, one was when a chap stopped to get duck eggs when we first started out, duck eggs are difficult to find and so he was delighted but he didn’t have enough money. No problem just drop it in next time you are passing and we are talking about 40p or something like that. About 8 weeks later he arrived with his 40p and a trailer full of hay bales, would you like these he asked me, how much I said, for free he replied, I was flabbergasted, amazed, delighted 😁 The other times are also to do with eggs, people often want eggs for hatching but they don’t need many, one lot was for a Duke of Edinburgh award and some other lots were for children to hatch at childcare facilities, for activities like these I give them for free as they are learning opportunities which I am all for 😀 Never expecting anything in return I was humbled when I received chocolates/cards/flowers thanking me. They were such small giving moments but they grow of their own accord, the excitement and the chance to encounter nature doing what it does best and then the learning activities around it and finally the knowledge they gain from the experience, it’s all priceless and very rewarding. So you see a small gesture of kindness naturally grows into bigger things for everyone involved 😀

News just released of a real potential vaccine which gives us hope for the future, 90% effective apparently, obviously they will proceed with caution but it’s a chink of light on the horizon.

Tuesday: It’s lunchtime and it is lovely and sunny and quite mild out there, it wasn’t first thing mind you, the minute I put my coat on to go out it started raining but it soon cleared up. This morning I have spent a large part of the time rearranging electric fencing for the horses, during spring and summer we have an area fenced off for biscuit that she periodically goes into to prevent laminitis and that has worked well this year. Now we don’t need it for her but we need it for Jack, basically to keep him off the yard, as the grass gets more sparse he starts looking further afield which means he breaks out, plus I want to fence off the big side paddock so the hens don’t end up living in a bog. Horses feet churn up the wet ground and basically trash it and it quickly becomes a big muddy puddle, the ground recovers in Spring but it’s good to have some grass for the hens. I took all the fencing down from one area and then put it all up where I need it now, I connected everything up closely watched by Jack who was like my shadow the whole time, I went in to plug into the mains and when I came out he had got two of the slip rails down in that short time 🙄 I put them back up and then turned on the fence energiser, click, click, the minute Jack heard that noise he knew the game was over and he turned and wandered away. Up to that point he was probably thinking wayhay I can escape but the horses are very familiar with electric fencing and once they hear that noise they know there is no use hanging around anymore.

After that and a quick coffee I went into the greenhouse, might as well make good use of a nice day. I spent my time cleaning up the tubers I dug the other day, the dahlias still need to dry off a bit more and I brushed off the dirt from the yacon and Oca. Some off them will come indoors to be used in cooking and some will dry off and I will store them to plant next year. I have hedged my bet four ways with the yacon as I don’t know much about them, first I have put one lot in the ground and will see how they get on through winter, the next I have potted up and that will stay in the greenhouse, the third lot are smaller tubers that I will dry and store and the last lot are the plant roots that I will also dry and store, hopefully out of that lot one or more will be successful. I picked some of the runner beans that are now ready to store, the pod goes brown and papery on the vine, pick them, get the seeds out and dry before storing overwinter somewhere dry. I have dwarf French beans doing the same, and little piles of other seeds drying on the side waiting to be stored in the dry. I usually bring the seeds inside and keep them in the spare room in the dark, it gets too damp anywhere outside and I find that works well. I then did a couple of hardwood cuttings of my fig tree hoping to get a few new plants for next spring.

Collecting seed is a great way to get free plants next spring, it is also an important part of self reliance and sufficiency. We saw shortages of available seed and plants this year, propagating by various means can absorb the shock in times like these and help keep you producing vegetables and flowers 🌸

Wednesday: John knocked on the bedroom window from outside, get a look a the sunrise he said, Wow, it was fiery and orange and usually thats what the sunset looks like but this was first thing in the morning, breathtaking.

An unusual sunrise this morning more in keeping with a sunset.

I got up and dressed and on with the day, various jobs to do, clean the boot room and the back toilet, sort out dinner for this evening, nothing very exciting on the to do list today. Shelley walked over and we stood and had a chat over the gate but apart from that and a hardware delivery nothing much eventful happened. I did decided to make a Slimming World Diet Coke chocolate cake, one word, don’t 😝 It went in the bin it was that bad, I think I would rather have a normal one and eat less of it 😂 It got me thinking about healthy bakes and trying to find recipes that look vaguely like they would taste good but they are all full of weird ingredients. I think the closest I find to a good recipe are probably diabetic recipes, at least the substitutions are usually honey or maple syrup not some reconstituted husk of a hitherto unheard of vegetable or grain 😏

John called, he will be later than normal can I put the birds to bed, looks like I will have to. I hate the early dark evenings when he comes home after dark and then goes to work before the light, it feels like you have no one to share the daylight hours with.

We have worrying confirmation of six different cases of Avian Flu in the country, more worryingly is that they are fairly spread out in different counties all around the UK, many more cases and there will be a lockdown for poultry as well as us 🙄

We went food shopping tonight, I just needed a few things but seemed to end up with a lot of things. When I was packing it away I began to wonder if I was subconsciously stocking up, genuinely not doing it on purpose but I have definitely more than three tins of baked beans in the cupboard 😂

Our egg customers have gone awol again, really weird how it goes through phases, each day this week we have had hardly any customers, other days we are inundated with them, one week we can hardly keep up with duck egg sales and this week they are stacking up in the shed 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Do you ever think that when things start to go wrong they go wronger and wronger 😏 This morning started off ok as far as the smallholding goes, jobs done, things sorted and all that. I need to get my prescription picked up and the plan was I would call the pharmacy to make sure it was ready then call John and have him collect it later, first fly in the ointment is that John has left his phone here 🤷‍♀️ so that plan goes out the window, luckily I call Shelley and she is in town and collects it for me, I will get John to collect from her later tonight (I need it for the morning). Second is the doctor calls re the blood results but only has half of them in will call again later when they have them, fine I go to the loo and the phone rings again, damn it, luckily they then tried the house phone and having finished my function I was able to answer. Terribly sorry but there has been a mix up at the lab and we will need to redo the full blood count, ffs, I am going to have an arm like a drug addict at this rate, your thinking that I could change the arm, nope the other arm doesn’t appear to have a vein that can be tapped 😂 so I now have to get over first thing in the morning for another blood test. On top of those life misdemeanours we have the more worrying aspect of the Avian Flu to sort out, it is now a legal obligation to make sure our biosecurity is in order. For the hens that means that we need to feed inside (which we do anyway because of the crows) and we will also need to keep their water inside away from wild birds. The ducks will also have to be fed inside but their water is a problem, ducks and water go together like bread and butter so more difficult to implement that, they need constant water to keep their nostrils clean after dabbling in the undergrowth. That is stage one, along with foot baths for anyone coming into the farm but that is not an issue at the minute is it 😜 The next is that I will have to stop feeding the wild birds, this is the saddest bit for me but the idea is to not encourage them to be anywhere near the flock as they will be the carriers/transmitters of the disease. We then need to make plans in case a full lockdown is required which given the spread of it is highly likely this year. That means all birds will be shut in for the foreseeable future, if they have an outdoor run it needs to be netted so that wild birds cannot get in. We have the POL run which is suitably netted after the last outbreak a few years ago, but the rest will be in the stables, luckily we have them spare, not ideal but at least they will have room. I remember last time we tried to tarp the orchard run, gee, we had the wettest, muddiest winter and it was soul destroying stuff but the stable block is dry and has windows so at least they can see outside 😜 Keep chickens they said, it will be fun they said 😏 Apart from all that, the sun is shinning and it’s not a bad day so I will take the good along with the bad today. Sometimes life seems like a scrabble, it’s like scrabbling up the rock face until you get to a level plateau again 🤦‍♀️

Went for a stroll round the village with Mum at lunchtime which was very nice, the sun was shinning and it wasn’t too cold, saw a couple of people to say hello to which lifts the spirits 😀

John came home early and spent a couple of hours cleaning and tidying out his van 🤷‍♀️ still it was nice to know someone else was around.

Friday: Another sunny and not too cold start to the day although it rained heavily during the night. Got a few bits done then off to get yet another blood test done 😜 hopefully this one will come back all in one piece and I can move forward in whatever direction I need to go.

I heard a couple of very strange wildlife stories this week, the first was of a fox taking a small dog somewhere near where Mum lives, this was witnessed by a gentleman although it seems they don’t know who’s dog it was. The second was the discovery of a dead otter, what is curious about that is that to my knowledge we don’t have otters around here, not for miles as far as I know. I have seen the photo and agree that it does not look like and English otter, it’s a mystery as to how it got there and why it died but it has been called in to wildlife experts and a university is taking it to do a post mortem to find out more if they can.

I have decided that I will keep feeding the wild birds but I will be moving the feeders to an area that is about as far from the hens as I can get it, it’s likely that the poultry industry will go into lockdown if reports of confirmed cases keep coming in anyway and once they are shut away there will be little risk of contamination. Worrying times with two major viruses in the country, if the two collide 😳 (and that could happen) we would be up shit creek without a paddle!

Saturday: The weather started off ok and then took a complete dive until it was vile out there. John was busy digging out the rest of the raised bed area on the tractor until it began to rain so heavily he had to stop, there is no cab so he was getting pretty wet. I went out and put new bedding in the geese, duck and light Sussex housing and then put up the hooks for the bird feeders and moved them well out of the way, hopefully the birds will soon find them. I also put up the remaining old nest boxes give them somewhere to roost over winter. I then spent two hours looking for something I knew we had but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s a leather stamping kit, so basically letters on the end of metal sticks in a box, you hit the stamp and it punches it into leather, marking it with a postcode or name. I wanted it to make some Christmas decorations but I can’t find it anywhere and I had pulled out boxes, opened drawers, looked inside everything, nope nowhere to be seen. I have ordered a new set but you can bet your bottom dollar it will now appear.

We came in for lunch and lit the Rayburn, drank tea and watched the news, hopefully the weather will clear a little and we can carry on outside. 😏

It didn’t clear up much but John went out to do what he could anyway, me I stayed in to stoke the Rayburn 😜

I spent an evening do a bit of Christmas craft, I sometimes wish I was more artistic as there are so many things I would like to have a go at. In my minds eye I see what I want but the reality is nothing like it, I still remember my art o level piece, I knew exactly how I wanted it to look right from the beginning but it was a big fat fail lol. Nevertheless I still have a go at a few things when the moment takes me, tonight it was gift tags, I have a large amount of buttons which were in Johns Mum sewing stuff, I doubt I will be sewing buttons on anything any time soon so I made gift tags instead 😀

Sunday: It was vile weather overnight and vile this morning but eventually the rain moved on and the sun even came out at times though it’s a tad cold at around 8 degrees. John did the morning rounds and then attempted inbetween rain showers to carry on with the raised bed, he almost abandoned it altogether when a stiff breeze came along and blew the rain along. Meanwhile I have been doing the usual morning jobs, a bit of washing and sorting dinner for later, I did pop out to feed the guineas and have a look in the polytunnels and then back in to get the Rayburn lit. No point me trying to help John as he is levelling and squaring p, not my strong point and I would probably be more of a hindrance than help on this job. So I supply the cups of tea, a sandwich, make sure there is hot water and a hearty supper for later on 😀 Slow roasted lamb shank today 🥰

Just sitting having a cuppa and have been watching a short video on biodiversity on the smallholding (or it could even be related to a garden/allotment) It became obvious that I have been doing everything that was suggested and this talk was given by someone who gets paid to advise large farms and parks with their biodiversity projects so I am quite chuffed that I am on point with my plans to increase wildlife in all forms. The only thing I haven’t ever done is record it either by writing it down or logging it with various surveys. I will start a log I think, I can recall right back to the beginning when we first came that even though we are surrounded by countryside, there was not much going on here, mostly due to routine spraying I suspect. I have seen a big increase in wildlife especially over the last four or five years and each year I am surprised by more arrivals, like the bees in the hollow this year which incidentally are still going in and out, and the snake, it’s a great feeling to be able to make a difference however small.

Quick update on the kittens, both are doing well, exploring further and further outside but they can often be found curled up on a cushion in the boot room. They get on well will the dogs, by that I mean they tolerate them and are not afraid of them, the dogs don’t take much notice of them unless they go to close to a food bowl with biscuits in or if they make a sudden playful dash, on the whole though it’s lovely to see them all sleeping in the same room together proving that cats and dogs don’t always fight 😀

I went outside about 2pm and helped John, we now have the raised bed finished (except the top soil) and the ground all levelled back out again. Only thing was with the shovelling and raking I have twinged my lower back 😕 Today I did the afternoon feed round and egg collection while John got the tractor round to finished moving and levelling the driveway. We have got a way to go yet, topsoil needs delivering and then we need to build the last bed which is much smaller, then a layer of clean gravel needs to go down, some cutting back of the hazel trees (the planting up will have to wait till spring) then there is the side driveway to start on 😂 always another job on the horizon 😜

Have a good week and stay safe, keep your chin up and keep smiling, we will get through this eventually (the winter & covid) 😃

Posted in Friesland Farm

Glorious days, another rabbit & work, work, work.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 23rd March 2020: I have had the best day of the year so far lol, the sun has shone beautifully, it was warm and I have spent a day as happy as the pig in the proverbial 😀 After getting the morning rounds done we set about sorting out the tractor and chains to drag the back paddock, so I spent the morning driving the tractor up and down until it was done. We did get stuck in a particularly poached area but got out of it pretty quickly. After that we took down the fence between the little paddock and the back paddock so that we could get the hen hut through and into the back paddock and the front chickens will move to here once it is ready, we put the fence back up and went in for some lunch. After lunch we got the ride on mower out and I spent the afternoon riding around on the mower cutting the grass in the front paddock. Later still in the afternoon John did the feed rounds and I went into the greenhouse to do the watering and then indoors to make some dinner. I love driving the tractor and would happily spend hours pooltling around on it providing the weather is just right. I say we of course because John is at home and we are self isolating, just as well as I had a call from the doctor to take me off my meds as my white cells have dropped again which means I am very susceptible to infection so we are taking this social distancing very seriously. We can of course chat over the gate providing we stand well clear and have had a few chats with egg customers as they arrive at 4 to get eggs.

Right now I’m wishing we had hundreds of chickens to sell as the calls and messages I have had to see if we have any is unprecedented, every one thinks they have had an original thought, they haven’t, everyone is after them 😜

Tuesday: Another lovely day and a day spent doing plenty of jobs around the place. With the morning rounds done John went up the back to put up electric fencing ready to move the hens up there tonight, give it a clean out, put in clean bedding and get the water on, meanwhile I got the outdoor quail house ready to move them outside again tomorrow. I did a bit of muck shovelling in the muck pile and then into the garden. I have planted out some of the seedlings that were growing in the greenhouse, normally they would have been sown straight into the ground but it was so wet I didn’t bother, I now have a couple of rows of swede and turnips planted up and covered so the hens don’t eat them, I also got some of the dwarf broad beans planted out. As I said I will aim to grow as much as possible this year and while I was looking around I realise I have lots of space to be able to do this so I need to crack on 😜 Tomorrow I will sow carrot seeds, I did a batch in the tunnel and they grew but then something ate them 😏 The other seeds are beginning to sprout, radish and lettuce, sow, sow, sow is the mantra for this year.

In the afternoon I gave the front paddock a second, lower cut, the plan is to wait until the grass clippings die off and then move the geese back there to keep it short. John power washed the POL pen (his favourite job for some reason 🙄) and then it was time to get the eggs collected and ready for sales at 4pm. This has become a less frantic affair but still brisk with a constant coming and going of cars. We have put precautions in place, the honesty box has a bag inside so we don’t need to touch the money just take the bag out, the eggs are put out and then we step away from the gate but monitor it so that people only take a dozen lol who knew it would come to this.

Then it was time to turn on the tv for updates and get the dinner, then at dusk out to load up 46 hens and move them to their new des res in the back paddock.

A pheasant and a partridge wandered up into the farmyard while we were sat out there earlier.

Shelley drove over to get some eggs and some hay for their rabbit, of course the children couldn’t get out of the car and so I spoke to them from a distance through the open window, when it was time for them to go Josh started crying, it’s heartbreaking not to be able to hug your grandchildren, I know it’s temporary and I want to still be here next year so for now it just has to be, but it’s hard 😢

Wednesday: It’s lunchtime and we are beginning to forget what day it is as they all seem like ground hog days 🤣 not complaining though as we have more than enough to keep us busy. I did some washing and a bit of cleaning this morning while John did the morning rounds, then I went onto getting some paperwork sorted and some bills paid, I think John was cutting more wood 😂 then it was time to get the tractor out again for a bit more dragging. I love sitting on there with the sun shinning and the smell of the Diesel engine 😜 with that finished I then went to water the greenhouse and plants I put in yesterday and hang out the washing while John took apart a fence that is all but knackered. We discussed putting it back up but have no nails to do the job and the local hardware yard is closed 😏 The greenhouse is taking a bit of managing at the minute as the temps are going right up into the 30s but at night they plummet and at the weekend we are forecast much colder weather, it’s a balancing act that takes a bit of experience but I hope I’m winning.

Oh man, it’s 7.30pm and we have just come in after an afternoon and evening of some hard graft. We moved the second hen house and all the electric fencing, plenty of jobs in between, putting the torts away, I am getting them outside in the morning and putting them away overnight while it’s still cold, get the washing in, wash the dogs, collect the eggs, feed the birds, light the Rayburn and then at dusk try rounding up chickens that are not quite sure where they are going. The chickens that we put up the back, although we left them in for longer today, decided that they wanted to go back home, well about 10 of them anyway. Overnight they are in their old hut but in the morning we will put them in a stable for a ‘reset’ these are the delinquents that always get out and into my garden, they will go back up to the back after about a week and we hope they stay there. The ones in the side paddock got out when we moved the electric netting and we left them to have a good wander but then it was time to start rounding them up 🙄 Cue John and two border collies that have never been taught to round up, although they have a bit of a natural instinct they are more hinder than help. In the end John resorted to rugby tackles 😂 diving on them and eventually we got them all in. At some point today we also moved the geese back to the front paddock as they were harassing the escaped hens. If we have walked around the paddock once we have walked around 20/30 times so I won’t be joining in the Joe Wicks PE lessons online. My back aches 😜 We also had a delivery of another rabbit, now I know it’s necessary trips only but I had promised the chap I would have it when it was old enough and, it’s a long story but his rabbits have been doing what rabbits do (the male is now neutered) but I didn’t want him left with offspring that potentially could start the process again so now we have a little boy rabbit, who is living separately from the girls I hasten to add. I will have a proper look at him tomorrow and FaceTime the grandchildren to get a name for him.

Meet Spotty Scar rabbit 🤔

Thursday: Another fabulous day weather wise and I have had probably the peak of best days this week, I was driving the tractor to drag one of the paddocks (my fave job anyway) and I saw a herd of around 20 deer in the next field. They stayed there for ages and in the end I went and got my camera to take a few shots, as we are in a bit of a valley I could only see them while sat on the tractor 😂 so I was trying to multitask lol. If I can get the pics from my camera onto my iPad (long story) they should appear below. As for the rest of the day it was pretty much business as usual, do the rounds multiple times a day, sow some carrot seeds, a bit of watering for newly planted stuff. I uncovered a raised bed and found loads of self set potatoes trying to grow, that’s a bonus so I will leave them in situ. John cut a bit more wood, we have never had the wood stash so big at this time of year. We had to fix the door on the quail hut but once we had done that we moved them outside to enjoy the sunshine. I can’t remember what else we have done today but it was a day full of things getting done which is great.

We went outside at 8pm to show our gratitude to the NHS not really expecting to hear anything or to be heard as we are quite far away from anyone BUT I could hear cheering and clapping from the village which was amazing 😀😀😀🇬🇧🇬🇧 we salute you NHS workers and all the workers that are busy keeping our country going during difficult times.

What day is it lol, oh yes Friday: Again a beautiful day and we made the most of it. We did the morning rounds and then I did some watering in the greenhouse, moved the torts outside and then onto dragging the last of the paddocks that need doing. We just have a few poached areas that need going over once they have fully dried out but apart from those it’s all done.

Charlie called in first thing she had picked up my prescription from the chemist and some antibacterial wipes as I could only get a little handbag pack when the rush started. We need them to wipe down handles on the egg shed and then the gates as we come back in.

I was now free to get on in the garden so I have sown two more small raised beds of carrots, you can never have enough carrots 🥕 I watered all the things I have recently sown, and I potted on 36 geranium plug plants, I don’t even remember ordering them but I probably got them to sell on. Most things are going well but we are due a cold snap this weekend, after that I’m hoping the temps climb back up so that things progress with a bit of speed. I also picked a large picking of purple sprouting broccoli which we will eat tonight with a piece of beef I got out, last night I made a pear and blackberry (fruit I froze last year) sponge pudding and we ate half, the other half will be eaten tonight. Meanwhile John has been cleaning his van 🙄 this does not get done often and so has taken a good few hours.

Around 2pm we had an amazing family FaceTime appointment with our niece Evie so that we could sing happy birthday to her, a cacophony is what I would call it but all good fun 😀🎂 This is how birthdays will be for a while.

The rest of the afternoon was spent getting the Rayburn ready to light and getting the dinner prepped for later, doing the egg collecting and feeding rounds, I think we are going to have a bit of a shock with the temps tomorrow so we have enjoyed cups of tea sat in the sun today. Luckily at this time of year I can tolerate a bit of sunshine though I still try not to over do it.

Benny the cat has decided that this spot is the best place to soak up the warmth, it a bit tricky trying to get out of the door and not stepping on him mind you 😜

Blue skies 😀
Purple sprouting broccoli

Saturday: A cold wind today but the sun was still shinning this morning though those lovely few days we have had will quickly become a memory. We did the morning rounds and then I came indoors to hoover through, polish, clean the bathroom etc and then make a lemon drizzle cake. John spent a good couple of hours washing and jet washing his van which was filthy. He is now jet washing the hard standing, everything will be jet washed by the time this is over 🤣

How are you all getting on spending rather more hours a day with your loved ones than you normally would 🙄 It hasn’t been tooooo bad here although John questions everything I do which is rather annoying considering I do these things all day every day by myself normally. We have had to have words, I say we, of course I mean I 😜 It has become apparent that the dogs bark at everything John does from jet washing to chain sawing to even just putting on his wellies and coat in the mornings, and not just one bark but a constant bloody annoying stream of them! I don’t know why this is as they don’t do it with me, he seems oblivious to it but it’s getting on my nerves. This morning was the final straw, John was jet washing the van the dogs are constantly barking so eventually I went and got them in, only find that they are filthy as they have been playing in the water. Remember I only washed the dogs the other day as the weather had dried up and they should stay fairly clean……😏 not only that but I then had to shut them in the boot room wet and dirty and I had cleaned all that the other day to for the same reasons 🤬 So an explanation was given as to why I was a tiny bit peed off, I don’t understand why he can’t think these things through for himself. The other thing that is annoying is him asking me to do stuff, stuff that I would normally just have to get on with by myself as a general rule, I don’t shout and ask someone to open the gate for me if I am going through with things in my hand because there is only me here normally but John seems to think that it’s ok for me to stop what I am doing and go open the gate for him, no, no it’s not, do it yourself 😝 I’m sure by the end of this we will have ironed out all the little irritable things, either that or we won’t be speaking to each other much if at all 😂 On a good note he has learnt to use the washing machine, it was just to wash his work towels and dust sheets but it’s a start, it does seem however that no one ever taught him what a peg was for 😂 once his towels ended up on the floor instead of the line he worked it out 🤔 Back to the bugbears and one is food, how much food do you actually want to eat for goodness sake 🤣 I’m having to ration some bits! We are not living in normal times and eating whatever you want because you can get more is not an option at the moment, rant over 🤐

What is everyone missing during this lockdown? Obviously I miss seeing my children and especially my grandchildren 😢 I hope we get to spend some time together in the summer months. Other than that there is not much I miss except being able to spontaneously go out for breakfast or coffee and cake, it will seem like a luxury when life gets back to normal. In a weird way I have got the life I wanted, almost, I mean John is at home a lot and so we are able to get jobs done, not just packing them in at the weekend depending on the weather and on top of that there is no sport for him to sit and watch 🤣 happy days. At the moment all my family are fit and well, let’s hope that doesn’t change 😏 Of course we are luckier than a lot of people as we have a few acres to wander round and plenty of outdoor jobs to do, no need for specific online exercise classes here, I really feel for those that are in flats or apartment blocks as that must be very long days. I wonder if we will really learn to appreciate the freedom that we normally have in the end, I hope so. John, I imagine, is missing people, people to talk to lol, he is much more sociable than I am, he is that bloke who will strike up a conversation with you while you are stood in a queue, make a passing comment while out shopping in the hopes that someone wants to chat, he probably spends most of his ‘normal’ days talking to anyone and everyone so I imagine it’s more difficult for him than me. I am the type who, when stood in a queue would look the other way if I thought someone wanted to chat 🤣 I’m not rude, I would never ignore someone if I got caught off guard and they starting talking anyway it’s just how I am. We definitely are the ‘chalk and cheese’ in so many ways it’s hilarious really.

Sunday: Cor blimy guvnor that is a cold wind today especially after last weeks lovely warm temps 😜 we did the usual morning stuff and then guess what job John opted for? Yep, jet washing 🙄 this time it’s the front hit that we just moved the hens out of, I told you he is obsessed with jet washing everything 😂 I did a bit of pricking out in the greenhouse and some water I g but to be honest it was pretty cold so I only did an hour. We went and dropped some eggs off at Charlie’s door, did a knock and run lol, then went down to Mums to check her greenhouse and water the things in there. I’m not sure how much longer we will be able to move about, the police now have powers to stop and question people but we were going from a to c via b and didn’t have any contact with anyone. It perhaps was not a necessity as far as world health is concerned to water mums plants but I’m sure it is to her as she had not planned on getting stuck in Spain during a worldwide lockdown 😏

There was a post on Facebook about food security and the fact that imports are being held up or stopped and where that will leave us as a country. My thoughts are and always have been that we need to be more self reliant as a country, this is why I am always banging on about growing your own or if that is not possible buying seasonal/local/British. Watching a programme on tv about food in Istanbul, I mentioned to John about how bad our diet is here, it really is atrocious when you look at other countries especially the Mediterranean ones, our supermarkets are overloaded with junk and people think it’s normal to dish up this rubbish for dinner 🙄 I know it’s difficult to get people to change habits, I have tried so many times with John, but we really ought to take this opportunity to eat what is grown here. These days we can grow a much bigger variety of produce than we could 50 years ago so it doesn’t have to be boring you just need to jump track and inject some imagination.

I’m pretty tired and sluggish today, I think it’s the cold lol, my average body temperature at the moment is 35.5 so only half a degree off hypothermic 🙄 the low white cells added into the mix probably isn’t helping either so I haven’t really done much else in the way of work.

Stay safe everyone x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Afternoon tea, potatoes planted & Jobs list ticked off.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 2nd March 2020: The beginning of Johns week off, the weather is on our side for today at least. We both did the morning rounds then straight on with the job of the day, the fence at the end of the veg garden. This is a job that had to be completed in one day otherwise the dogs and the ducks would be all over it. We kept at it all day with a few interruptions by way of Johns phone, going to get some gravel boards then a quick trip to the solicitor to sign some papers, a few cups of tea and by 3pm we had finished 22m of fencing and tidied up. I am pretty pleased with the result, the fence had to keep the ducks/dogs out which it will and it looks a whole lot tidier to boot. I will look forward to working this part of the garden now, it has been a bit neglected in the last couple of years and so brambles and stingers have taken hold but I managed to dig most of them out, I will have to weedkiller any new growth but it shouldn’t be much and the area outside the fence is now clear enough to mow so that will keep them down on that side. I gained an extra bit of planting space as we had a gate halfway along the fence but never used it so have taken it out, now the pathway leading to the previous gate can become planting area. Indoors for something to eat, a cuppa and a quick rest before lighting the Rayburn, feeding the birds and collecting and sorting the eggs, getting the dinner. Day one, ✅ 😀

Tuesday: The weather is holding though it’s a tad colder today, we did the morning rounds and then got on with today’s jobs. First make a raised bed in the polytunnel out of wood we have lying around, the ground in the tunnel has a clay seam running thorough and one side is particularly difficult to manage when it dries out, I found low raised beds gives better results. I now have a 10ft x 3ft bed to fill with compost from the heap. Then onto moving the strawberry troughs, these are about 8ft long and a foot wide but they are up on legs, the problem is there is a lot of ground underneath that I can’t get too so we took them off the legs and moved them to the sides of the beds. This was harder than it sounds as they are very heavy, the second one we had to use bars to roll it along and get it in position. Then onto making the arches, for the morning glory etc, a bit more secure than they were, this still needs a bit more work but it’s nearly there. Shelley called in with Florence and bought cake so we stopped for a cuppa and then I had a phone call from a friend to see if I wanted to go for afternoon tea, yep, not gonna turn that invite down. I still had a couple of hours spare so I planted up the area that is now free of the strawberry troughs. I had potted up enough plants from last year to fill it, stocks, chrysanthemums, delphiniums, achillea, aster, campion, verbascum, huechera and some more that I have forgotten at this minute. The bed will be for cutting flowers for birthdays and to bring in the house 😀 John went off to do some tidying elsewhere, objective achieved today 😀 And now I am off out for afternoon tea ☕️ perfect day, it’s not normally something I would be able to take advantage of but as luck would have it and John is off to hold the fort and I’m going lol.

Afternoon tea was a lovely affair, plenty of tea, cake and sandwiches and of course chit chat with my friends, by the time I got back John had fed the birds and done the eggs so that looks like the rest of the day off for me 😀

The turkey stag has started covering the hen, hopefully eggs will follow soon. If you have never been close to a turkey come and get a look at ours, the stag is pretty impressive with his ‘snoods’ and the sounds are even better, the ‘gobbling’ that everyone knows but also a low ‘booming’ sound, at first I wondered what the heck it was then I realised it was coming from within him lol. A description I read referred to it as guttural which is pretty accurate and scientists don’t 100% understand how the noise is made. They are originally forest dwellers and love to forage for insects, slugs and snails, berries and fruit, seeds, nuts and green foliage or buds so a pretty comprehensive list.

We decided to call them Bonny & Clyde
(photos from Sally 😋)

Wednesday: Despite rain being forecast it didn’t arrive until about 1.30pm which meant we were able to get a fair bit done beforehand. With the morning rounds done by John while I put on some washing and did some general tidying we then set about sorting out the rest of the compost heap and tidying that up. John went off up the back to burn some rubbish and get the rest of the mirror structure down while I pottered in the garden. Making good the extra area we created by doing away with the path, filling it with compost, putting an edge board up and topping up the wood chip in that area. It looks good and I have decided to fill it with flowers, as you enter the garden at the other end it’s the long view down and it would be nice to see a splash of colour. Again I have plenty of plants, rudbeckia, lupins, geum, probably some aquilegia and maybe some foxgloves as it has the Mulberry bush for canopy.

We filled the bed in the tunnel with compost and I have put a washing up bowl at the end with a piece of gutter and a stone in there, this is because I know we have frogs (I found a few today while I was working) and I know they like to live in the tunnel during growing season when it has plenty of foliage and gets watered daily. The bowl will be filled with rain water and the frogs can help keep the slugs down, win, win 😀 I did a fair bit of sorting out, plants that never made it through winter and picking up stuff that had been blown about by the winds. In the greenhouse I did a bit of watering and had a look at the seeds I sowed last week, most are showing signs of sprouting so I’m happy with the progress so far.

When the rain came I came indoors to put on more washing, light the Rayburn and think about dinner later while John went off to get some diesel for the tractor as it’s nearly out. It looks as though rain will stop play as it’s pretty heavy and not much fun to be working out in.

I spent 4 hours, yes that long, trying to pair my new camera with my phone, eventually giving up after reading that the operating software on the phone has a problem with the app I am using to pair, an app created by the camera manufacturer so that’s buggered that, eventually I tried it with Johns phone which is different and voila, first time 😝 I have two choices as I see it, use the camera and download to the laptop as I did with the old one or wait until I’m due an upgrade and choose a different phone, for the time being I will just get taking some pictures. My old camera is around 30 years old and I love it but the quality of pictures on the new cameras is amazing and I want to start cataloging the wildlife here not just the birds but everything I see really.

Thursday: Still cold but not raining. John did the morning rounds while I got on with some household bits and got something out of the freezer for dinner tonight. John has been busy tidying up the back area and we had a lot of scrap metal bits, old tin sheets and chicken wire that has now thankfully gone to the scrap an and earned us a whopping £14 🙄 He has also been busy stacking wood in the back, you can do an awful lot of work and it doesn’t look like you have done much but we know it’s done so that’s what matters. Meanwhile after sorting indoor stuff out I went to the poly tunnel and planted up the chitted potatoes. I decided as these were first earlies, which I don’t normally do, I would grow them under cover, we have had a lot of rain and I would hate for them to rot away. They are now in 6 bags that have compost in and each time the greenery pokes its head above the compost I will cover with more compost, this way i am hoping to get nice clean early potatoes with very thin skins. I also moved a few things round, the citrus have now gone from the greenhouse and into the tunnel which gives more more room to move in the greenhouse. The bottom end of the tunnel is becoming my ‘exotics’ area, with the citrus, lemon grass (if it survives) cape gooseberries, grape vine, lemon verbena and a pineapple guava, if only I could grow bananas and avocados I’d be set for life oh and chocolate of course 😜. Other than that I sowed a few flower seeds, these were free so might as well give them a go, dwarf delphiniums, rudbeckia, dahlias and amaranth. When John went off to the scrapyard I came in and lit the Rayburn and got the dinner sorted for later, we have shepherds pie and an apple and blackberry crumble for dessert.

Chitted seed potatoes, Kestral, I think

Random thought of the day, how come the turkey stag only ‘covers’ his hen and doesn’t try it on with the chickens?

I have been listening to the radio talk about stockpiling, it never ceases to amaze me how much food people buy especially at Christmas or snow days, do people really eat that much or does a lot of it get wasted. I try very hard not to waste anything if I can help it, but I am aware of the need to have a few things in the cupboard just in case. For me it’s extra flour and dried milk because with what I already have in the freezers or cupboards I can pretty much knock something up, we don’t eat pasta or rice really so what I have will suffice and we seem to have accrued a few tins of fish in various forms so that will do us in a crisis. We did buy extra tea bags and coffee and I still have my 5ltr of olive oil from the Brexit crisis 😂 Luckily we are going into the growing season 😀 and I have plenty of seeds on the go for that so hopefully we should muddle through any problems in the supply chain. I agree it is a worry, I mostly worry about the grandchildren and that they will be able to get enough food, I’m sure it’s just people panicking and it will all be ok in the end 🤞‘don’t panic Mr Mannering’ I can hear the Dads Army cast saying lol.

On the topic of not wasting anything I had a net of clementines which were sour, you know the ones that make your face twist lol, not wanting to waste them I made a jar and a quarter of jam with them, hopefully it will taste better than the initial ingredient 😀

We made it all the way through to Thursday before John got a call out to an emergency, that’s pretty good going, this one was someone deciding to take the shower apart and now they can’t stop the water from flowing 🙄 He had his ‘not happy’ face on when he left lol, though I think he secretly likes to be a super hero plumber 😜

I am keeping an eye on the rhubarb, it’s getting there but it’s not quite long enough to start picking just yet, we could do with some warming sun on it after all the rain we have had, that would give it a spurt of growth I think. I can’t see any in the weather radar for a couple of weeks yet so just have to hope it’s not far away.

Friday: I can’t actually remember what we did in the morning but in the afternoon we had the twins while Mia went to her swimming lesson and then Shelley and the kids called in.

Saturday: Today’s the day, the new sofas are arriving and I’m a bit nervous that they won’t fit through the doorways lol. John did the rounds and then we got the old sofas out, I then cleaned the room while John did some outside jobs. We got a phone call to say that the delivery was only 5 mins away, they arrived, a lovely couple of chaps, easily got the sofas in, phew, put them together, tidied up and took the packaging, easy as that we now have new sofas though we are not allowed to sit on them in our work clothes 😂 Now they are in it is noticeable how shabby the old ones had got and I am delighted with the new look.

In the evening we went to get a few bits of shopping for Johns lunch next week, pretty bemused to see some of the shelves are empty of goods, not a piece of chicken to be had, no ibrufen and the toilet roll shelf was empty 🙄 I guess the panic buying is in full swing then, there was no bread flour and no yeast, this is a big uptake of people who are suddenly going to bake their own bread, I buy these all the time and never struggle to find them normally. I’m not sure which camp I am in to be honest, on the one hand it’s selfish behaviour because there are those that can’t bulk buy, either because they don’t have the money or they physically can’t get it home and on the other hand I think, what if we have to self isolate, you are going to need supplies. For the time being we will just carry on shopping as normal I think and if push comes to shove we will have to make do. On a bonus note I was looking for a lightbulb under the the kitchen sink and I found a box of face masks ( I had these when we had bird flu in the country and used them when cleaning out the birds)

We have in fact also taken around a third more on eggs this week, a good week or an indicator?

Sunday: More rain overnight and the wind is cold today but if you can stand in a sheltered spot when the sun is out there is heat in it so it won’t be long before we get some nice Springlike weather hopefully. John did the morning rounds and I did some potting on in the greenhouse, then I mentioned the ducks needed cleaning out which I had intended to help with, the next thing I know John has done it (I like having a helper lol)

We are on the last day of Johns week off and we haven’t managed to strangle each other in fact we have done quite well with hardly a cross word between us 😜 although he does do some things differently to me which I find annoying such as marking up the egg boxes the wrong way round (because he is left handed) I kept quiet 😝 I will miss having him around to do the daily tasks while I get on with other things but I will also look forward to having my space back 😋

We pretty much got everything done that was on the list though there are always many more jobs to do, they can wait until Easter weekend now. ✅ 😀

Have a good week and stay well 🤞