Tag: self sufficient

Posted in Friesland Farm

More rain 🌧 some planting up & my 2nd vaccine 😁

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th May 2021: OMFG! I have just typed up today’s page and accidentally discarded it 🤬 so I have to start again, I was initially distraught then I realised it was only Monday so I hadn’t lost that much 😂

The weather looked promising this morning, not cold, not too warm, not too sunny and not raining, breezy which rose to pretty windy during the afternoon but all in all an ok day.

I started off this morning cleaning the boot room surfaces, sorting out the dehumidifier, putting out eggs, putting on washing etc etc, then as per my plan I went into the greenhouse.

Sorting out plants was my main objective, moving them to the tunnels, moving them to the cold frames, discarding anything that hadn’t made it and resowing anything that had gaps (mostly dwarf beans) I rang John who was working in Oxford and asked him to get some compost on his way back as I have plenty that need potting on. The rest of the time I have spent in the big tunnel planting cucumbers and tomatoes. They have had plenty of tlc as I don’t want to plant them up half hearted and not get a good return, so each plant has some spent mushroom compost at the base, some pelleted chicken manure, more mushroom compost on top and then I have covered the soil with black fabric weed membrane which will not only keep any weeds under control but keep the roots warm and some moisture in as well. If I don’t get a good haul from that lot then there is no hope. The tomatoes have had the same treatment, firstly I had to put in some pallet collars as raised beds because when I dug down the clay was just under the surface. When we sited the tunnel years ago we didn’t do a test dig (big mistake) and soon realised it was on a wide clay seam 🙄 I have tried for a few years to improve the soil but to no avail, so enter pallet collars and raised beds. The collars are great, these are 1200 x 1000 and just the right height to grow in, we also use them stacked to put sieved home made compost in as well, they can then be taken down as we use the compost and they fold so stack neatly away.

I have got some tomato plants left so I will squeeze them in where I can, you can never have too many tomatoes 🍅 I have rather lost the plot when sowing tomato seeds though as I have another tray coming on in the greenhouse, I will have to put them out for sale as I really don’t need any more 😂

There is always a sense of satisfaction when you turn garden trimmings, duck bedding and old plants into useable compost 😁

I have now put the runner beans and sweetcorn plants out in the cold frame they should be fine, the only plants not out there yet are the squash plants because they are quite fleshy and any frosty nights will not be good for them, they can wait a while longer. That will just leave the pepper, chilli and aubergine plants in the greenhouse which is where they will stay to grow on and produce fruit, they like the incredible heat that the greenhouse gets in the summer months.

Planted up the other box with tomatoes in the afternoon, John came home around 3.30 so I stopped for a cup of tea and a sit down, then someone came to get some plants I had put by, then it was time to get dinner sorted. I have had dinner and am toying with the idea of doing another stint this evening, as yet undecided, I may get too comfy sat here 😜

May 10th is World Lupus Day, I have Lupus, it does not have me, it is the wolf within, rears it’s ugly head sometimes but with fabulous Doctors and Consultants we manage to get it under control. Before I was diagnosed I had never heard of it 🤷‍♀️ if you haven’t, look it up 😁 🦋

Tuesday: John has gone to work again today but did the feeding and letting out of the birds before he went. Meanwhile I sorted a hotchpotch dinner for later, not really that much of a mash up but various bags of half used veg and a previously cooked chicken leg have now gone into the slow cooker with some frozen chicken stock. Then it was onto getting washing sorted, rubbish out, eggs out, feed cats and dogs, go out and feed the horses and Guineas before starting on watering the tunnels. After that I finally got into the greenhouse and potted on the peppers, some cucumbers that have gone out for sale along with some tiny tomato plants. I sowed some more squash, runner beans and French beans, might as well have too many than not enough. Then onto the front beds and plant up some quick filler plants I bought, snapdragons, pinks and verbena. I also planted some flowers I grew from seed in a different bed, Californian poppies, cornflower and sweet rocket which have all gone in the flowering shrub bed. That bed will look as near to ‘woodland/wild’ as I can get it to look and it is full of nectar rich plants for the insects. Then it began to rain, up to then it had been a nice day, some sunshine, not windy and not cold, at least the rain will water everything in but I was hoping to get some weeding done, that will now have to wait. I will have a quick lunch break and then probably plant up the melons in the big tunnel.

It’s 2pm, to be honest I thought it was later than that, I didn’t do the weeding, instead I have spent two hours filling up the last raised bed which is by the new fence and gate at the back. We still have the drive to finish but John built the bed a while back, today I put down weed membrane and then filled it with soil. The soil came from various places, leftover mushroom compost, leftover topsoil, pots that had bulbs in them and left over soil (ones I didn’t plant in the other beds) and then a couple of barrowfuls from the compost heap. Then it was onto planting, there is an elderflower and a sumac that grows there and I wanted to leave those in, everything else was just plants I had lying around waiting for something to happen to them. I am going to call this the Bertie Basset bed as it has all sorts in it 😜 There is no plan to this bed it is just what I have lying around, stocks, achillea, crocosmia, viola, Hardy geranium, a couple of things I have no idea what they are yet, some pots of cornflower and poached egg seeds, dill, coriander, a tamarisk, and another shrub that I think is an ornamental currant but time will tell, there are also some sweet peas for good measure. All plants I had potted up to use at some point, I also dug up some forget me not which will readily self seed over time. I then netted it over for a day or two because the cats will think that ‘the lady that feeds’ them has built a new deluxe toilet area for them 😂 It will be interesting to see how this bed develops, some things are thuggish but they can be dug up or dug out in the autumn if they take over too much. The seeds I have put in pots and then sunk the pots, this is because there will be weeds growing in this soil and so if I know where the seedlings are they won’t get massacred in the weeding process. Job done it is time for a sit down, my feet are hurting, always a good cue for time out.

I did go back out with a cup of tea and did some hand hoeing on the broad bean and onion bed just before John came home.

Did you know that Oxfordshire is probably the most historically rich county in England, no nor did I until I was reading up about a few things. My brother has made an exciting and potentially important discovery near to where he lives, he was tidying a hedge and trying to get water to run away when he made a find, most people would have thought it was just rubble. The potential is great so much so that geophysics were done and now some trenches are being dug and explored, can’t say much more than that at the minute but the experts are excited and if it turns out to be what they think then my brother will get some of thecredit for the find, how fab is that 🥰 I got interested when geophysics were mentioned lol, I love the thought of what is under our feet from hundreds if not thousands of years ago, we bumble along with absolutely no idea of what has gone before which I find fascinating. I remember the point I became intrigued when I discovered that although the Romans built extensive settlements here and had all kinds of statues and monuments, by the time the Vikings arrived, a difference of around 3/400 years, nobody really knew who these artefacts belonged to, mind blowing, you’d think the knowledge would have been passed on but we seemed to go into regression, again I find that fascinating. I guess it goes hand in hand with my interest in the apocalyptic because of course that is exactly what would happen if civilisation was brought to its knees, we would have to start again and that would take hundreds of years to rebuild current systems by which time a lot of knowledge is lost 🙄

Wednesday: Whoop whoop 2nd vaccination day 😁 I felt quite emotional getting that done which took me a bit by surprise must have had some tension even though I didn’t realise it. We were up early as I had it booked for 8.40, it was busy when we got there but the efficiency was incredible and I went straight in, waited my 15 minutes and then left, job done.

Back home I decided not to do anything strenuous, I had two big glasses of water and some paracetamol just in case 🙄. I have spent the last two days in the garden so today I can take a more relaxed approach to jobs. Yesterday I got some frozen plums and some elderberries out of the freezer so this morning I made some elderberry syrup for Charlie and three small plum crumbles, one for Johns dessert later and two for the freezer and then an extra batch of crumble mix to freeze for later use. I know I am trying to get the freezers emptied but converting produce into easy grab items will work the same way. I intend to harvest a lot of elderberries this season, they are so good for you and can be added to crumbles, smoothies, or made into syrup for a good winter vitamin c shot everyday, very beneficial.

I went out and watered the greenhouse and the tunnels then apart from cooking the dinner I haven’t done anything else really. My arm is a little sore from the injection but so far so good 😊

I ordered another radiator, for our bedroom this time.

Thursday: Up and about fairly early, John did the animals and then went off to work, I got on with the usual bits indoors and then out to feed the quail and Guineas, top up the egg shed and pick asparagus, rhubarb and lettuce to put out for sale this morning. I have saved some asparagus to have for lunch with a couple of hard boiled eggs and I will pick more lettuce to go with it, a self sufficient lunch 🥰 I have to pop out this morning to do someone a favour for an hour but as it’s raining already I won’t be missing out on outside jobs , it feels as though the rain is set in for the day. Everywhere is looking very lush and green, the hedges, the trees, the shrubs are all bursting into life and it looks wonderful.

John or rather Patch discovered a hedgehog nest the other night, very happy that they are still around, each year you never know if they have made it through or not and each year it is delightful to discover that they have 😁 The dogs can’t get at it as they have made it under pallets in the hay barn but they know they are there and John has seen them too. We are still doing no mow May though everything is looking a bit untidy I will persevere for as long as I can. The only problem will be that the grass will be long come June which will make it more difficult to cut, might even be hay by then 😜

I still have no side affects from the vaccine yesterday morning apart from a heavy feeling at the site of the vaccine, fingers crossed it stays that way 🙄

Plenty of rain today 🤪 I lit the Rayburn mid day just to take the chill off and keep the damp at bay.

Some torrential downpours 🌧

I had the twins at teatime while Sam took Mia for a swimming lesson, great for them to be able to do something a bit normal again, Shelley took Florence swimming the other day and Josh has started martial arts 😁

Friday: Heavy rain overnight and into the morning again, I thought I might wake up to find we had floated away 🙄 The overall temperature is slowly rising though, it’s no where near as cold as it was a week or so ago. Everything is looking very lush due to the rain but it would be nice to see a bit of sunshine to really show of the colours, I am not holding my breath, thundery showers are on the forecast again today.

Am feeling a little sluggish this morning, I think that’s the vaccine but it is difficult to tell as it is pretty much the same as an off day with the Lupus.

Apart from checking the tunnels and greenhouse for watering (with no sun appearance they won’t have dried out at all 😂) I doubt I will do much outside today, no point cleaning anything out in this weather, it just makes things worse, can’t really do much on the soil as again it would make things worse, so it looks like it might be cleaning the house, oh joy 🤪

I keep looking at the clock and thinking, has it stopped 🙄, I have had breakfast, put dinner in the slow cooker, topped up the egg shed, washed up, washed the duck eggs, fed the dogs and cats, put the bin out, whizzed round with the hoover and polish and wiped the bathroom round and it’s still only 9.30, I honestly thought the clock was wrong 😂 Better find some other jobs to do 😜

I cleaned out the fridge, always a great job to do lol and then as I had stuff to use up I did some baking. Two loaves of bread are now on the first prove and I have mixed up a date and pecan nut loaf ready to cook at the same time as the bread. I also had a chicken thigh in the fridge to use up and that is now in a mini roasting tin along with some asparagus, spinach, garlic, lemon, veg stock a knob of butter and some black pepper. Makes sense to make full use of the the oven heat once it’s switched on, I had better get used to doing this I think, with the Rayburn it didn’t matter as the wood was all free and some the heat was free but once that goes I need to be more energy efficient.

Omg the chicken smelt so delicious that I ate it for lunch and it was amazing, I don’t say that about many things, I cut a slice of freshly baked bread to mop up and I reckon it was a gourmet dish 👌 No pictures because I gobbled it up before thinking about it 😂

Saturday: Still damp with threats of rain and it’s not going to change much over the next few days it seems. This morning John has gone off to get feed while I sort out the usual bits and pieces.

Yesterday while I was getting the dustbin in I noticed how wonderful the lilacs were looking. We have three different colours here, a white (which is not so spectacular) a light lilac and a deep lilac which is my favourite, most of those blooms are double headed. I picked a few of each to bring some colour indoors.

The current rain and warmer temps are making the natural world look fabulous I think, it is like you have put a vivid filter on everything 😂

Looking out of the kitchen window at the minute is a pleasure 🥰 No filter needed on this!

John came back mid morning and we got the radiator on the wall and I sorted out ‘stuff’ more stuff that I have no idea why I keep it, half empty tubes of hand cream, body lotion, hair grips that have seen better days 😂 things I have had for years but also not used for years either 🙄 I need to be a bit more ruthless about moving stuff along, either to the charity shop or selling on. Then we popped out to get a bit of shopping and round to Mums to see Ken as it is his birthday today.

The rain was off and on, on more than it was off 🤪

Spent the afternoon trying to get my head around some online media pages 🤪 I am not a technophobe by any means, I come from the generation that started out on a manual typewriter, moved to a word processor and then onto dial up internet. I learnt to programme in the early days though it is way beyond me now, I wonder how many people reading this would even know what a punched card was, we used to have them in IT lessons, not that I could ever work out what we were doing with them mind you 🤣 Despite all this and trying to ‘keep up’, some of the more recent social media sites leave me a little bit fluffed 😬 The connectivity of some of them don’t seem to flow well, or maybe it’s just me 😜

Still no significant side affects from the vaccination.

The news around the world makes for depressing viewing at the minute, we’ll always but especially at the minute, I despair of the human race, I really do, peace and harmony is what I would like to see.

Sunday: A drier start to the day but still damp underfoot and still the threat of showers.

John did the morning rounds and then unloaded the feed he got yesterday and also cleaned out the ducks. Meanwhile I sorted out indoor stuff before going out and picking purple sprouting and asparagus for dinner this evening. After that I went into the greenhouse and pricked out some dwarf rudbeckia and watered the plants, gave them a check over to make sure all is well. The risk of frost should end mid May (which is now upon us) and looking at the forecast for the next week I think I will put the squash plants out to start hardening off. If I give them just over a week they should be fine but I will need to watch the weather forecast carefully just in case.

Talking about all being well and watching out for things, we have four ash trees here, I don’t know if you have heard but there is a big problem with ash die back in the south of the country. Potentially it will wipe out the ash tree population very much like Elm tree disease did with those trees, it is sad that there are generations of people who will not be able to recognise an Elm 😔 One of my ash trees is looking as though it may have succumbed but I am not entirely sure, I have been in touch with someone who will be able to tell me if it is dieback or natural splitting, my suspicions are it’s the first one of the two but I am no expert. This will mean the tree will have to come down which is tragic, I will however plant at least three or four more trees to try and make up for it 🙄

Have pottered about checking over the tomato plants and taking the side shoots off, watering, feeding them. Then planted up an aubergine in the big tunnel along with three sweet pepper plants, might as well spread things around a bit and see which gives the best results. I am surprised to see the tomato plants flowering already, that’s early in my experience usually is ma waiting ages for them to flower. The peas I planted in the small tunnel with the toms are romping along, already flowering and producing pea pods, I imagine these will peak quickly due to the heat but it’s an experiment and that’s what experiments are for, to see what happens. Going back to the aubergine, if you are growing them they do a little better if you hand pollinate them with a paintbrush, unless there are plenty of bees going in with them, doing it manually is a sure fire way to make sure they are pollinated. 🐝

Posted in Friesland Farm

A cold week, plenty of rhubarb & delicious mushrooms.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd May 2021: Bank Holiday Monday, in a normal year there would be plenty of days out to choose from but this year 🤔 add to that the weather forecast and well let’s just say we might as well stay at home 😂 Which is of course exactly what we are doing, I have stopped for a coffee break and John is out on the tractor trying to finish off the side driveway, I wonder how long it is before he gets rained off. Meanwhile I have been in the greenhouse, sorting out plants, tidying up, throwing stuff away, recycling spent compost, moving plants outside to harden off. I really need to move some of the plants on and so have taken the risk even though the temps are still down, they can’t stay down forever surely 🤷‍♀️ It is still only mid morning so I am going to have to find other projects to get my teeth into but planting up is not going to be one of them. I have got some potting on to do maybe that is the direction I will go in today.

I did go back into the greenhouse, might as well as it’s not bad in there, I put some of the basil seedlings into a big pot ready to move to the tunnel. I have grown red and green basil this year for a lovely contrast, I also moved the garlic chive seedlings all into one big pot and was just about to do the dill when Shelley arrived with Josh and Flo so we stopped for a cuppa.

Midday and I have lit the Rayburn, it is not very nice out there and it’s only going to get worse. It seems like we have had a very long winter and we are not out of it yet, I am starting to feel slightly suffocated by it all. where are the warm mornings and lovely spring days, not on the horizon yet sadly.

One thing I have done indoors is take photos of the Rayburn ready for when we sell it, we had thought we would be finished with it by now but that is not the case. We will move to warmer weather eventually though and that’s when it will go up for sale, part of me will be sorry, the other part will be glad, and we move on to different things, hopefully some solar panels soon as well.

Tuesday: It is still very windy this morning but at least the rain has stopped. The day after a bank holiday is always a funny one I feel, you have relaxed a little too much to really get going like you would on a Monday morning. John has gone off to do some work so I am on my own today, I have two jobs in mind but as yet have not decided which to concentrate on. First is housework, needs a Hoover and a polish all through but I am also contemplating getting the big tunnel sorted and possibly planted up. A look at the weather forecast shows that it is not going to improve that much over the next week and we are now into May, time to stop dallying I think. I have half heartedly got the housework on the list as I am really leaning towards the tunnel just procrastinating 😜

The cucumbers will go into the tunnel along with some more tomato plants but I will also hedge my bets with peppers though most of those will stay in the greenhouse which gets the best heat over summer. The pots of basil and coriander will also go in there and the lemon grass once that is big enough to transplant, I already have some early strawberries growing and a few rows of little gem lettuce. The orange and lemon tree are looking terrible, I have fed them but I think the prolonged cold is reeking havoc and although I have tried to stabilise them I am not sure if they are going to make it to be honest. I may have to get them out of the pots to make sure there is no other reason for their demise such as vine weevil.

Melons will also be going into the tunnel and again I might have to cover the doors with extra fleece to keep out any draught. This year has certainly thrown up totally different weather patterns and trying to level the growing conditions is a challenge 🙄 Everything growing outside is fine on the whole it’s just the tender plants that struggle. The squash plants definitely won’t be going out for quite a while yet, maybe even next month before that happens

Yesterday I bought some mushrooms from my sister, I openly admit to having failed at home grown mushrooms but her partner has worked hard for the last couple of years perfecting the art of growing them. Look at these beautiful clusters, they smell amazing, the colours are beautiful and I am about to have some for breakfast so I will let you know how they taste.

They were delish, I had mine cooked in a little butter and black pepper on some wholemeal toast with a coffee, nice and simple but absolutely delicious 😋

I went out after breakfast and gave biscuit some hay and stored out their water buckets, generally speaking, these days John does most of the poultry and I do the others, the others are cats, dogs, horses, guinea pigs, torts, quail any other waifs and strays we happen to have at the time. I used to do all of them every day twice a day but on top of housework, cooking, paperwork, gardening, veg growing and prepping it got too much and stressed me out a little so with John easing back on his plumbing he began to take on some of the jobs, and still does them even when he has a days work to do 🥰

Jeez that is hard work out there, the winds are so strong, it 10.30am and I am done being buffeted, I look like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards! I did get a bit done, I decided that the cucumber plants are still way too small to go in the ground, we need the sun to come through, it wouldn’t matter about the wind and the rain if we had some warmth to go with it. In the tunnel I did get things ready for planting later in a couple of weeks time I think. I also had a good look at the orange and lemon tree, nothing in the roots that looks ominous but they are damp, considering I only watered them well once in the last couple of weeks this is not a good thing. They like a good long water just once a week but it is not warm enough for the excess to get soaked up and so they are sitting in damp soil, no wonder they don’t look well. To remedy this I have provided them with a duvet experience lol. They look ropey even to an untrained eye but on closer inspection there are lots of tiny new leaves just starting to appear so I am not too worried.

I have trimmed them up and wrapped them in bubble wrap and a fleece hat 😜 hopefully they will appreciate the tlc.

Sam popped in for an hour or so with the twins and when she left I figured I would get some cleaning done after all, then I will sort out dinner for later and get the Rayburn ready to light….again🙄

After Sam had left I got on with some hoovering, polishing and cleaning the bathroom, not a full clean but a whip round so that I feel it is clean enough for the next few days at least and I sorted out dinner for this evening. I pondered while I was hoovering, as you do, mulling over the last year or so and what if anything it has taught me. There is plenty I was already aware of more so than others I think, I was always aware that life could so easily go wrong on a big scale, a pandemic, a natural catastrophe, some sort of apocalyptic happening and so when covid hit it was no surprise to me, more than that, my previous musings on the subject were no longer a laughing matter for John 😂 It was a reality and all the while I have thought, as bad as it has been, it could have been a whole lot worse 🤔 That is something for future generations to remember, I hope they do but the chances are that it will be so far back in their history they won’t put in to place the lessons we have learned (and I’m not talking about stocking up on toilet paper) maybe they will, who knows. The one thing we have all learnt is that things don’t always go the way we think they will just because that has been the norm all our lives, things change, events occur and we have to adapt. Life in the here and now is important is what I have learnt, and the simpler the life the easier it is to adapt to change. I need to stop hoovering 🤣

As I have mentioned before, the past six/seven months have been the windiest I have ever known it to be, such a curious year weather wise and no chance of planning anything. At the moment we have a draught blowing through the back door, the whole building moves over time and as a consequence the doors end up either not opening or closing properly or a gap appears suddenly which is what has happened lately. I am trying to find the best kind of product to use for now as we are planning on getting a new door at some point.

I went out the the greenhouse with the intention of potting on, when I went in it was 36c the sun came out and within two minutes it had climbed to 40c, too hot to stay in there lol, can’t win at the minute. It did make me think though because I came back indoors and it’s cold, we should be using more passive solar on the house somehow, difficult when I can’t tolerate UV rays though 🤔

A friend messaged in the early evening to say there was a street food wagon parked up at a local caravan park, normally that is not something that we would go and get but I hadn’t put the dinner in yet and I thought, why the heck not, let’s go 😁 It was Sri Lankan and it was lovely and even John tried one or two things, ooosh it’s spicy he said 🤣 but he did eat it, there is hope yet.

Wednesday: It’s a promising start to the day, the sun is shining the wind has dropped to a breeze and I can feel that it is not as cold as it has been of late, though still below average. Whoop, the world is my oyster today and the weather is favourable now I just need to decide exactly what to do, or I may just glide through the day picking and choosing as I go.

I went out and began by doing some picking, 5 bundles of rhubarb that went out for sale, a good haul of purple sprouting some of which went out for sale and some I have kept back for dinner tonight along with a bundle of asparagus. The asparagus is slow this year I think I need to give it a good feed and mulch at the end of the season. I then had a job in mind but got waylaid talking to a customer and by the time I got back in the garden I had forgotten all about it and went on to something else 😂 That something else was pottering in the greenhouse again 🥰 moving things around, potting some things on, watering and feeding the hungry plants with an organic feed. There is still a bit of a chill in the air even though the sun is out but it is pleasant enough and warm enough for me to work which is the main thing.

Thursday: Late afternoon and I have just sat down after a busy day of bit and pieces. I started off by sorting out my jam jar stash ready for jam season. Sorting out what lids fit and what jars I have got, the upshot was that I needed to order more jars so that is in hand and they are arriving tomorrow. Then onto picking some rhubarb and some purple sprouting, the rhubarb I picked today were the thin stalks that I can’t really put out for sale but they are ideal for jam. On then to jam making, rhubarb and orange again as that has gone down well with people and especially Josh who said it was delicious. Mum came over to grab some material and then Shelley came over to get the purple sprouting, both of them went away with a bag full of stuff from my freezers, mainly fruit but also some pasta sauces I froze last year and a few other bits and pieces that I won’t get round to using for various reasons. Most years I can run one freezer down, give it a clean out and then turn it on again when the season gets underway. Last year however I could not feed the family for Sunday lunches etc and so the stock pile stayed piled up. We have used most of the veg but there was a lot of fruit and going through the freezer I can see I need to have a big cook up and use some of the contents up. Once that was done I made a quick rhubarb crumble for pudding later, sat down and John came home. What is funny about that is that when he comes in and I am sat down he says ‘just sat down then’ to which I always reply yes I have actually, this time I had literally just written the first line of this paragraph when he appeared 😜

I sweetened the rhubarb with honey instead of sugar, although there was still sugar in the crumble topping, it was lovely just the right balance, not sweet but not tart either, winner 😁

One of our hens is laying a whopper egg every day, 100g + 🙄 we had them for dinner tonight and of course they were double yolkers. For comparison a medium size egg would weigh between 57 & 67g anything over 66g goes in a large box and on avaerage they are around 72g so you can see what a huge difference the 100g ones are, xxl I think.

Friday 7th May 2021: I make a special note of the date today because it should have been Charlie and Macca’s wedding day, I should have been the Mother of the the Bride and we should have been celebrating. Covid has taken a lot of lives around the world which is tragic in itself but it has also taken lots of hopes and dreams which I know can all be postponed for another time but it still impacts on those that had their plans and dreams in place. The wedding will still go ahead it will just be towards the later end of the year and we keep our fingers crossed that things continue to move in a forward direction.

The sun has made an appearance this morning and it is warm enough to wander outside with my morning cuppa and have a look over the front flower beds which I duly did. Today is one of only two or three mornings where it has been nice enough to do that and this is a short interlude. Tomorrow’s forecast is horrendous, high winds and heavy rain, you gotta laugh or you would just cry. I am glad it is nice today as we are going out for a family lunch with Charlie and Macca as a way of marking the day, we couldn’t really ignore it like it was never booked.

I whipped out and gave the guinea pigs a quick clean out, fed them, gave them hay and fresh water, picked up the quail eggs on the way back through. Went to the hay barn to get hay for biscuit and found a goose egg under the hay, John said one had started laying there, first it was in the stable black now the hay barn but I have shut that off so she will have to go back to the stable. Three other geese are now sitting tight, one other is laying the other two, well if they are laying I have no idea where 🙄

A chap came to collect something I had up for sale and was saying what a lovely place and that he and his girlfriend would like to do something similar. As I always say to people, go for it, you get one life so do what makes you happy. Then I thought about our journey over the years, it’s never straight forward, you learn at lot, your emotions get battered at times but it’s hugely rewarding and it’s a great lifestyle choice, well I think so anyway. The only thing is you have to learn to move the goalposts if necessary, that does not come easily for me especially once I get into ‘ideology’ mode. Self sufficient to me was exactly that, nothing that you can’t produce yourself or swap/barter, self reliance is also a major factor, making sure you can do everything you need to. These ideals are of course ridiculous especially if it’s just one person doing it (which until the last year it has been, just me for 80% of the time) Still I busted a gut trying to do it until eventually you can’t and you take a step back and think ‘ah what the hell’ and suddenly life becomes more enjoyable. You stop busying yourself for 18hrs a day making sure you, plant, grow, harvest, process, make, bake, store, dry, as much as you possibly can and you do what you can when you can, it is a lot more harmonious and that’s how it should be otherwise you are still on that hamster wheel of life just one with different objectives. These days life is a lot more relaxed, I settle for self sufficientish and I think the pandemic and the lockdowns have had a lot to do with our attitude shift, what doesn’t get done today, will wait until tomorrow (obviously that does not include feeding animals 😂) I suppose what I am saying is, if you are starting out on this journey, here speaks the voice of experience, at times be prepared to take a different road to the one you had mapped out. If this last year has taught us anything at all it is that things don’t always go the way you think they will 🥰

Saturday: Urgh what a truly horrid day today, I heard the rain all through the night, it’s just gone midday and it hasn’t really eased up for longer than half an hour. At the minute rain is driving from south to north so at least it’s not as cold as it would be the other way round 🙄 At the moment we don’t have the strong winds I thought we were getting I may have been wrong about those or they may come later. We made a decision not to bother doing too much today, can’t really do a lot outside, except John has cut some more wood. We went and got some food shopping first thing, not much just mostly stuff that John eats. I want to start using up a lot of the freezer contents so I have warned him there may be some strange meals coming his way 😂 and probably plenty of soup which is ideal at the minute.

I lit the Rayburn at lunchtime to keep the damp at bay and just take any chill off, probably won’t have it going all day as it will get too warm. I need to order the next electric radiator and John is going to convert the ladder rails int the bathroom by filling them with oil and then they will be connected to the electric. The ladder rails will be so much better on electric because we can’t dry the towels over summer normally so it will be a great improvement on that score.

Sunday: Not too bad a day today, it was a little windy overnight but that has settled to a stiff breeze 😜 and no rain, mostly cloudy which is fine by me, feels a lot warmer than previous days. We or rather I, had already decided we were going out today to do something different, I am fed up of not doing anything away from here. So we went to an antiques centre for a shuffty round, had an ice cream from the van in the car park and then John sat in the car while I mooched a little round the garden centre. I found a craft area and bought a couple of bits for doing something with but I did resist any plants today, go me 😁

Back home and time to get the leg of lamb prepped, pick some fresh greens from the garden, purple sprouting, asparagus and some mangetout from the tunnel. Really they are undeveloped pea pods but they will taste great and there were only about five of them, I pinched out the tops of the pea plants to get more shoots from the bottom and waste not want not they will go in with the greens as well. By eck, people pay a fortune for straight to the table from the garden dinning and here we are doing it on a daily basis 🥰 With a flourless chocolate cake made for dessert we are living the dream here 😜

Have a great week, I am hoping the weather will be a little more seasonal than it has been of late but I don’t want it to go straight into wall to wall sunshine as I won’t get on very well in that either 😂

Posted in Friesland Farm

Jam, asparagus soup & May Day 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 26th April 2021: Still on the chilly side for April and no sign of it warming for the next two weeks. Best to dress for the cold and take layers off I think 🤔 This week John has a full week of ‘proper’ work so I will mainly be here on my own bimbling away. This morning I set to making the dandelion honey from the flowers I picked yesterday, if you are going to try then pick them from a place you know has t been sprayed with anything and preferably where animals have not been 🙄 Mine have come from the garden where no animals are allowed and definitely no spraying, pick them in the sunshine so they are fully open and warmed by the sun. You can either take your time and pull off all the petals or you can keep them whole with the green bits attached (not the stalks) because you are going to strain it so it won’t make much difference in the end. Just give the flowers a good shake so any insects have time to escape before you boil them 😜 Simmer for 15 mins with a slice of lemon and then leave overnight to steep. Strain and squeeze out all the juice you can, measure the liquid, you want a pound of sugar for every pint of liquid. Then simmer (a good simmer not gentle) for 15 mins before putting into hot, sterilised jars. That’s it, liquid gold, sunshine in a pot, it is not as thick as honey more of a sauce but still very delicious and worth having a go just so you can say you have done it. Back in the day dandelions were a very important flower/crop and far from removing them from lawns they were actually planted up. They are a great source of nectar for bees and other insects, a great food source for many small mammals and you can even make a reasonable coffee from the dried roots (I have read this but never tried) Part of what is wrong with today’s thinking is we want perfect lawns and grass areas, what is perfect, that’s the question 🤷‍♀️ To me a perfect lawn is full of wild flowers, they are not weeds, they serve a purpose just not to humans, unless you make use of them that is.

It is mid morning and one of my plans today is to get my tomato plants in the polytunnel. I have looked at the long range forecast and even though the temps are below average it looks like the overnight temperature will remain above freezing for most of the time. I may have to put an extra fleece over the plants if I think it’s going to go below 0c but it’s looking hopeful.

I spent the rest of the morning in the small tunnel planting the tomato plants, 14 in total a mix of sweet million, tigerella and cherry indigo. I have to confess I don’t know which plant is which because though I labeled the rows when they were growing I muddled them up once they were potted up, I didn’t think carefully enough and whoops error made. Still have more plants, some will go into the big tunnel and I always try some outside to see how they do. I have staked them all and tied them in and the run string from the stake to the crop bar in the roof of the tunnel. These measures will hold them upright and hopefully take the weight when they are loaded with tomatoes. Because the temperatures are not up to seasonal average at the minute I have taken the precaution of fleecing the inside of the door ways to provide extra protection from the night temperatures, I have also cut extra fleece to put over them at night. It’s nice and warm in there at the minute, around 25c but you can feel the difference once you step outside so best to Molly coddle them as much as possible at the moment, I don’t want to lose them after spending so long getting them growing from seed.

I came indoors then for a bite to eat, I am not sure if it was the heat in the tunnel or what but I didn’t feel too well, a bit sick. I have had it before and wonder if it is my blood sugars dipping too low for some reason. Usually if I come in and have something to eat and a sit down it passes after a while 🤷‍♀️ I have regular blood test so if it was a permanent problem I think they would have seen it in the results before now. It tends to be when I am busy but it doesn’t happen often, I always have a good breakfast of oats and banana so it’s not that I have skipped breakfast or anything like that.

It is very quiet here today, not much noise outside at all and we have probably had one egg customer all day 😔 We worked out that we need to sell £7 worth of eggs a day just to cover the feed costs that doesn’t even include bedding or our time and the egg boxes we buy and it certainly doesn’t cover times when we have to worm the hens (which we only do if necessary). If business gets much slower I think we will have to have a serious discussion about wether to carry on with it or not 🙄 We might have to come up with a different idea altogether. I think it is because we are used to not being able to keep up with egg demand lol and it has certainly dropped for some reason. Not that I am too worried, the intention was always to be self sufficient and the egg thing just started as a sideline to move extra eggs but it’s nice to have people come and have a chat and put the world to rights sometimes.

Cup of tea and a sit down mid afternoon, I have just finished making some rhubarb and orange jam. Hoping it will set, there is not much mystery to jam making except the set lol and a lot depends on how much moisture is in the fruit you use. Really once you get it to a rolling boil and a temperature of 105c it theoretically should set but there is always the unknown. I never do the freezer test because quite frankly I can’t be arsed, our freezers are right out the back so by the time I got the plate in it would have warmed up a bit and so no good anyway. I prefer to get it to temp and hope🤞 generally it’s fine but sometimes if we have had a lot of rain and the fruit has taken up a lot of water it can be more tricky but nothing a re-boil couldn’t sort out. I went with orange in the end as that is what I fancied doing, the vanilla option can work out a tad expensive as you are supposed to put half a bean in and they cost a fair bit plus to me that’s a bit of a waste of a vanilla bean 😜

The dandelion honey is a little runny so more of a pouring sauce, it will still be great with ice cream or even pancakes/yoghurt etc but no so good to spread. The one I made last time was a better, thicker consistency and was so yummy that finger dipping was a must.

The jam was a good set, I can tell after only 10 mins because even though in the hot jars it’s still runny, in the bottom of the pan it’s nicely cooled and thick and sticky. I used to wash the pan straight away but it is good way of finding out how the set has gone so I leave it to cool and then wash it.

I sometimes think it would be good to do it for a living but I am a bit of a perfectionist, there is no way I would sell anything that wasn’t exactly right. I can imagine if it was yays to the left and nays to the right (or which ever way round it goes) that I would have a bigger reject pile than a sellable pile 😂 That goes for anything I do really. I think another reason I would like to do something is because I love to look for new recipes for things I grow but half of it John wouldn’t eat so there is not much point making it just for me, I would look like a roly poly pudding (even more than I do now) maybe I will just start making it and hope that he likes the look, but no, I don’t think that will work, we have such totally different tastes in food it’s ridiculous 😬

Oo John saw a shooting star last night, there is meteor activity at the minute, the eta aquariids, so that’s most likely what he saw.

Just in case you thought I was finished with the making today, nope, I made some asparagus soup. I had a bunch that I picked the day before yesterday and put in the shed but it hadn’t sold and so I got it back in. It had gone a bit limp so no point leaving it out there, I picked another fresh bunch and made soup. A simple soup that is big on flavour and of course would be delicious with a hunk of fresh bread and some Parmesan shavings. You could add cream to the soup but I like simple soups and beside it’s less fattening 😬 Just chop up and onion and a clove of garlic, sauté in a knob of butter and a drop of olive oil, the butter gives it a richer flavour but you can leave it out if you want. Add pepper and the chopped asparagus and then stock of your choice, either veg or chicken. Simmer until the asparagus is soft then either serve like that or whizz it with a blender stick. I don’t add extra salt because of the stock cube but add salt to taste if you like. Simple, nutritious, delicious and can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. You can freeze this but not with the cream added, leave it out and add it later if you are freezing it.

Tuesday: I feel like I have been on the go fours and it’s only 9.30am. Mostly I have been doing household bits, the mundane stuff that has to be done also sort the egg shed, feed the dogs, put out the rubbish etc. Time for a quick coffee and contemplate what jobs I will do today, it’s still cold only about 5c at the minute, getting up to 14c at some point but at least the cold wind has dropped today which is a bonus. I haven’t checked the poly tunnel yet but I think the plants will have been ok, I have some out for sale in a little greenhouse and they are fine this morning so the Molly coddled ones should be cosy. The pepper plants and cucumbers are not big enough to transplant yet, they will go into the big tunnel, I had considered doing that today but they need to wait a while yet.

I decided as it was pretty cool outside I would sit and make some cards which is what I did for a couple of hours.

John came home as he had left his phone somewhere and had to phone around to find out where it was, eventually located it and will pick it up later.

I then went onto doing paperwork as I have got a bit behind and needed to catch up. Doing the household stuff and the farm receipts was the easy bit, doing Johns plumbing was painful. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ springs to mind. I took a lunch break and went back to it but I honestly can’t make head nor tail of some of it. It appears we don’t have all the statements, some of the invoices and I can’t for the life of me match up payments for one supplier 🙄 It drives me to despair the amount of times I have tried to get John to organise supplier and payment records might as well bash my head against a brick wall. I am sure we will get there eventually as it’s usually all filed in Johns head but that’s not much use to me when he isn’t here. He tells me he has a book that he writes it down in now, I can’t wait to see that! Probably won’t be able to make head or tail of that either, it will be in special ‘John’ code 😜

Typical of me as I can’t leave a job alone until it’s done even when I know I can’t finish it so I have been going back and forth to the paperwork 😂 I have managed to chip away at little bits so I have less of it buzzing round in my head. This is all just to get it straight ready for getting in order for the accountant, that is yet to come 😩

I lit the Rayburn around 3pm, we haven’t had it lit for the last few days and relied on the electric blow heater in the living room but it’s just too cold overnight and so today I have decided to light it. Chances are we will be roasting by mid evening but we can always let it go out again.

I have been saddened to read online that the whole shop local frenzy of last year seems to have died. Plenty of egg sellers wondering where the customers have gone 🤔

I just need to have a small moan and get something off my chest here: I have just seen a social media post regarding garden waste and the fact that you have to pay to get your waste taken away. A garden tax, was someone’s description, excuse me 🙄 but it’s your garden and your garden waste and yet you think you shouldn’t have to pay to get it removed kerbside, here is an idea COMPOST IT YOURSELF THEN! Thanks for listening 😜

Seriously though there is a mind set that is pretty ugly when you look at it, everything is someone else’s fault or responsibility, the wider picture is never looked at or considered 🙄

It’s 8.45, John has gone out to put the birds to bed and if I had any nuts I would be sweating them off by now 😂 bloody roasting in here even though we didn’t put any more wood on the fire after 7pm as it was already getting a bit warm, all or nothing!

Wednesday: It started raining persistently last night with a few heavy bursts overnight and it’s still raining this morning. This is about one of the only times I will put a smiley face for rain 😁 we haven’t had any for weeks and the ground was really, really dry. The beds we planted up were holding up just about, I had been giving the plants a quick pick me up sprinkling with the hose but they really needed a soaking and now they have had one. Of course, not only will the plants put on some lush growth but so will the weeds 😂 ah well you can’t win them all and at least they might be easier to pull than they have been lately.

I have been delighted with the tulips this year, we don’t have many but they have been bright and cheery and really lift the spirits more so than the daffodils I think. So I had a mad idea lol and thought it would be nice to plant up pots of tulip bulbs and perhaps sell them, they would make great Easter and Mother’s Day presents ours birthday or general have a nice day gifts. Of course one thing led to another and my enthusiasm spread to, wouldn’t it be nice to have the bed in front of the window filled with tulips so I bought 500 bulbs, yep 500 lol, it’s the daffodil episode all over again. Obviously I have missed the boat this year but next year they are going to look fantastic and there will be enough bulbs to pot some up for sale. The 1000 daffodil bulbs I bought and planted along with Mum and Ken are doing well, they come up each year in a block of beautiful yellow but they always seem to be a bit late pr than most. They are up in the back paddock too which means they can’t really be seen, on hindsight I should have planted them in the driveway grass, never mind I can always start dividing them, this is the third year of flowering so I could start lifting some later in the year.

BOO! I just want to conduct a little experiment lol to see how many people read the blog all the way through. So if you could add Boo to the comments I would very much appreciate it 😁

Don’t forget to Boo 👻😜

Went out mid morning to do the horses and the guinea pigs, I watered the greenhouse and checked on the polytunnel. Where my hands got wet I could really feel the cold it’s not much warmer out there and there is not much I can be doing at the minute so I came back in to organise dinner tonight. I did get chased by the gander and at one point I thought I was cornered but found a hazel stick on the floor, a wave of that and he went off haughtily with his women, 😅

I have avintage flower press that I picked up at a boot sale years ago just because I loved it. I have never used it, until now, this morning I have picked some tiny flower heads and pressed them, no idea what I will do with the yet but it will be fun to think of something.

Saturday May 1st 2021: May Day, Beltane, a time to celebrate the arrival of summer 🙄 (thats a bit iffy here in the UK 😂) Still it is the time to enjoy nature at its finest, the blossom on the trees, the flowers, the hedgerows, the lush green grass. Birds, insects and animals everywhere are busy reproducing. These days we barely give May Day a second thought which is really sad, there was a time when a maypole was a permanent features in towns and villages and May Day was a day of celebration.

I had a very productive morning and part of the afternoon. I have been weeding, digging out deep rooted weeds, raking, having a bonfire and putting down membrane on the difficult for me to get too bed. It’s a good job I had been busy as you will notice nothing written for Thursday and Friday, that’s because apart from basic jobs I did bigger all really 😜

Sunday: Productive again, I know, two days in a row 😂 On the job list this morning apart from the usual was to get a spot of shopping, we were there at 9.30 and gone by 9.55 😜 Luckily the supermarket we use allows self service before 10, as we drove past another supermarket they were still queuing to get in. Back home unload and put away and then off to the DIY store for some fencing. We have an area just outside the back door that the old drive way cuts through, across the drive is the gate to the garden. I wanted to fence the drive off part way down, firstly this will mean that the area is secure for the toddlers and children to move between the house and the garden. Second but no less important it means the dogs can’t get into that area, they knock the kids over half the time and the other half of the time they dig holes. The holes then become ankle twisting areas that you don’t always see, usually because I am carrying something. The dogs can come in when we allow them but it means we can also shut them behind the fence if we don’t want them there. The other reason is the free range mobster geese, they have no manners, crap everywhere and nibble on everything plus they are pretty scary to children being much bigger than them. In fact they are pretty scary to me at the minute so the last thing I want is to open the back door to find them there 😜

Have a great week, hopefully the weather will warm up just a tad and everyone will be happy 😃

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

Snow! A hair cut & Mint jelly 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 12th April 2021: WTAF!

Woke up to snow, not just a few flakes but more than we have had in the wintertime 😂 As if this past year hasn’t been crazy enough 😜

John was up, fed and let out the birds and gone to work by 8am this morning, he should be back by lunchtime. I had the Rayburn lit by 8.30, not because it’s particularly cold, I always think it feels warmer with snow on the ground, but more because it will be soggy which means we will get soggy. Soggy gloves, hats, coats, and so it is useful to have somewhere to dry everything and warm up hands and feet when we get back inside.

I have so far only done the indoor bits and pieces but I need to get outside and bring the torts back in. They must wonder the heck is going on, they have already been digging themselves into the ground at night but of course the day time (especially if the sun comes out) they are wandering around. I left them because I kept thinking, it will warm up today, ha, so I give up and will put them back indoors.

Today we also get more freedoms in the form of non essential shops opening including hairdressers, barbers, salons and outside eating and pub gardens😂 What a day for it to snow, I feel sorry for those businesses that have waited all this time to wake up to a blanket of snow this morning, it was bad enough that it is colder than average and certainly much, much colder than this time last year! We should be having warm spring sunshine and be able to comfortably sit outside having some refreshments 🤷‍♀️

Just sat down for a quick break after cleaning the spare room, I have come to the conclusion (again 😂) that I have too much stuff. We make extra storage to store stuff we hardly, if ever, use, what is that all about. I hate to get rid of it though, you never know when you will need it 😜 In all seriousness I do need to find new homes for a lot of it, now the charity shops are open again at least I can take stuff there, someone else might be able to make use of some of it. Whatever ‘it’ is ai need to go through it all and thin it all out.

The next electric radiator has just arrived eeeek, I am looking forward to this one because it’s for the kitchen which means that on chilly mornings it should be warmer in there than it is when I haven’t lit the Rayburn 🥰

Time seems to be passing slowly today I don’t know why, maybe because I have been cleaning and they say time passes quickly when you are having fun so the opposite must be true too 😜

Tuesday: Totally different day today, cold start but the sun is shining and it’s quite warm 🥰 John has gone to work again today but did the animals before leaving. I spent the first couple of hours indoors sorting out some of the ‘stuff’ and also taking up a pair of curtains to hang in the spare room. Then outside to get on with the jobs of the day, first off the water buckets, it was frozen this morning when John went to do them. Another reason for getting the indoor stuff done first, by the time I go out pipes have thawed and it’s warmed up a bit. I water the plants growing in the tunnels, cut a couple of bunches of rhubarb but most of the time I spent in the greenhouse sowing seeds. This morning it was runner beans, dwarf French beans and sweetcorn as well as pricking out some echinops for the flower beds. I feel like I am really behind, I say that every year but I still have work to do on some of the beds as they are not ready for planting yet although it won’t take long I am still aware that they are on the todo list. A bit of weeding in the front flower beds and then inside to get the washing up done and a quick sit down before I get a haircut yay 😁

Hair cut done ✅ after a spot of lunch it was back outside to try to gain some ground, which I feel I have done. I have planted the peas and the mangetout, I just have a few pea left to find a space for, I also planted and covered two rows of beetroot (chigoya, stripey) and two rows of swede. The root veg I have sown in multi crop blocks which basically means more than one seed in each sowing, they like it apparently and you thin out later once they are swelling up. Each sowing was watered in with some organic plant food and hopefully they will get going pretty quickly. Most of the peas were sown outside, four rows, but two rows I have sown in the poly tunnel. I am hoping I will get an earlier drop from these, if I don’t and it fails at least the compost they are in will get some goodness from the nitrogen nodules. I figured that the tomatoes won’t be going in for a while and even then will take a while to get big enough to out grow the peas so we will see what happens. I also had some more broad beans left over so I have planted them next to the swede, might as well mix it up a little and see what results we get.

Wednesday: Not such a cold start this morning g and the sun was already out first thing. I whizzed round and did the indoors stuff before going outside around 9.30. Watering the veg I planted yesterday and then some pricking out of dill and coriander. Onto hoeing the onion bed and one of the asparagus beds. John came home at lunch time and we popped to the shops to get a few bits, it was manic, I had forgotten what it was like when everybody in the whole world was out shopping 😩 busy, manic, everyone fighting for a car parking space, queues, bring back lockdown 😂

Thursday: Still cold for the time of year and so I am holding off a few jobs, besides the fact it’s chilly to work outside unless you have a job that keeps you warm, the ground is too cold to plant much. Likewise I can’t move things on in the greenhouse because what would normally now move to the bench is still on a heat mat 🙄

We haven’t done much today, John has done a bit of tidying up, the wood store is now empty and John has cleared the ground ready to put the tractor in there, that will free up a bay in the hay barn, for what I don’t know yet. I have pottered about doing not much really, Charlie came over and bought lunch with her, it’s her birthday today so we had lunch outside but it was a tad cold when the sun went behind the clouds. Sam and the kids came over in the afternoon and the kids played with bubbles, a piece of board on the ground (jumping up and down) and the wheelbarrow, who needs expensive toys 😂

Friday: Temps are about a degree warmer than yesterday and for an hour at least this morning the sun was glorious, unfortunately it disappeared and as yet has not reappeared but the chilly wind has dropped and so it feels much better today. John went to work and I spent my time in the garden after going round and doing the water buckets which were frozen when John tired to do them first thing. In the greenhouse I am still waiting to be able to move things along but the constant cold nights mean I won’t chance it yet. I pot on some of the cucumber plants and the courgettes so at least something is happening. I have also sown some more flower seeds, rudbeckia and lupin, they will go out for sale once they are big enough. On the garden itself I have done some weeding, well that’s mostly all I did, weeding lol. I put out a couple more plants for sale but as yet it’s too cold to put some of the others out so they will have to wait a while longer.

Before coming in for a sit down at 3pm I picked some purple sprouting for dinner later and had a quick look at the asparagus which is just starting to appear above ground but not big enough to cut yet.

I have seen the forecast for next week the temps are going to climb nicely and then plummet with an artic blast again! I think I am just going to have to go ahead as best I can with planting up and moving on then try to protect the plants as best as possible and see what happens. I can always start sowing some more just in case the first lot get affected and if they don’t then I can sell the second lot of sowings when they get bigger. If I keep waiting will be at the end of the season before we know it lol, a difficult year but then every year seems to have its challenges nowadays.

Saturday: The weather looks promising today, despite a frosty start there is wall to wall blue sky. Today was one of those days when you have a plan and probably shouldn’t have bothered 🙄 A job that should have been first thing and 10 mins didn’t get completed until midday for various reasons. Last night I cooked up bramley apples and mint along with some cider vinegar to make mint jelly, that all went well and I left it overnight to strain hoping to get it boiled and jarred up first thing. I had just got the sugar in and dissolved when BT arrived and almost at the same time Martin, Josh and Flo called in to see us. As I always say, everything stops for grandchildren and so I set the pan aside to return to it later once they had gone. We had coffee outside and played with the kids, all the while the BT man is checking equipment. He goes off at some point believing he has detected this elusive fault. Martin and the children leave so I go back inside and get the pan back on the boil only it has developed a skin which I skimmed off first (I think it was from the vinegar) The engineer returns as I am carefully watching the mixture boil and get up to temperature, I barely look at him when he is telling me, he thinks that is now sorted and I shouldn’t have any more problems, yep I have heard that one before 😂 He leaves and I carry on until I am happy I will get a set and then put it into jars than have not been in the oven sterilising for over two hours 😜 Job done I go outside to get started out there as I haven’t had a chance to do that as yet. I go into the orchard to started getting water for the Guineas, quail, Turkey and light Sussex, only to find the water is not coming out of the tap, that means a leak somewhere. I go back into the garden and can hear it pouring out of the main tap, it has been going a while as the paddock has a slick of water across it 🥴 Luckily just as I discovered it, John, who had popped to the shop for some milk, returned, there were three joints in total that had popped off from the freeze thaw process 🙄 Once we got those sorted and I may say it wasn’t without incident as John lost one of the washers down a hole in the ground (yeah I know, you couldn’t make this stuff up) I finished getting the water buckets etc sorted and then it was onto watering some of the veg plants I have planted recently. It is not as bad as it was this time last year when we had record high temps and no rain for weeks but this year it’s cold and no rain for weeks 🤷‍♀️ always a situation to overcome, hopefully it will all be fine in the end and we will get veg!

Mint jelly, not quite as clear as I would have liked and I forgot to turn it when it was part set so the mint bits are all at the top but it will still be delicious 😋 The jelly you buy in the shop will have green food colouring added to it to make it more appealing 🙄 this is the colour it actually should be 😀

I checked the greenhouse and opened the vents, all seems well in there so there was nothing to be getting on with. I came in for a cuppa around 1.30 and did a bit of researching of various plants, we will watch Prince Phillips funeral later this afternoon though John is annoyed as the snooker is starting as well but I have already bagged the tv 😋

Sunday: Lovely day, sunshine, warm fabulous. Today is the first anniversary of the passing of Dad and so tinged with a little sadness, but not too much as there are so many things I remember that make me smile or laugh. I often wondered when people said they think of them every day, how that was possible but it really is, in the littlest things you catch yourself thinking about a chuckle or a ‘wise word’ or just the appreciation he would have had for something like a good home cooked dinner. We went to the grave and gave him a toast with his favourite tipple, had a little sing song and a jig, he would have loved that 😂

For the best part of the day I have not done much other than clean out the Guineas and a trip to the garden centre and a visit to my brother for a cuppa on the way over. I attempted to do something about one part of the veg bed that I had turned over to wildlife, it needs sorting but apart from pulling out nettles I abandoned the job, I will get back to it at some point but not today. John meanwhile has been doing the usual jobs, feeding, watering, egg collecting. He did start the very last raised bed at the side in the driveway, until I pulled him away to go to the garden centre that is but he didn’t offer up much objection to abandon tools 😜

Early evening I went out and checked the greenhouse to make sure everything was alright and then I watered the herb bed. It is so dry that nothing is really bursting into life like it should be at this time of year. There are a couple of plants I want to lfit and so giving them a soaking will help immensely when I go out in the morning to dig them up and move them.

I can’t quite believe that right at the very beginning of this week we had a covering of snow and now the days are bright, sunny and warm lol. I think we have a few more days of warm weather before it gets cold again 🙄 not sure how long that will last but these things are sent to try us and they certainly do!

Posted in Friesland Farm

Ash before Oak 😏 a bit of creativity and it’s still cold outside 🥶

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 5th April 2021: Bank Holiday Monday and you couldn’t have got a more different day than yesterday 😂 Yesterday we were basking in good temps with wall to wall sunshine and today there is a cold North wind and it actually snowed at one point! To be fair I am writing this at 4.30pm the sky is blue the sun is shining and it is not too bad but the chill in the wind is noticeable 🥶 We started off the day and the week with the usual morning rounds and jobs, I lit the Rayburn at around 8.30am as we didn’t light it yesterday and it was a bit chilly. John got the tractor out and was levelling the drive again although he tells me he is now happy with it, it had a few lumps and dips which he has now sorted out. Meanwhile I spent the morning doing a bit of pirate sewing 🏴‍☠️. I have sown pirate bunting, pirate cushion covers and a pirate table cloth. The sewing skills needed were not great, pinking shears eliminate the need turn over material, fairly basic but overall a good job done for the pirate ship and the grandchildren when they come to play. The rest of the day was spent doing not much at all really, we popped over some strawberry plants to my niece and had a cuppa with my brother and his wife. Then we went to the green with Shelley, Martin, Josh and Florence so that Josh could show us his bike riding skills 🚲 and then back home to do the egg rounds and water the greenhouse and poly tunnels. It is amazing how hot they are even though it’s cold outside, all it takes it the sun and they warm up massively, the greenhouse regularly reaches 30c on a sunny day.

Arrrrgh, all ready for pirate playtimes in the pirate ship.

Tuesday: Brrrr that cold wind is here still and it is positively Baltic out there we even had snow flurries again 🥶 John did the animals and then went off to do a mornings work, I found inside jobs to get on with as I didn’t fancy being out there today. I set about cleaning the kitchen and putting stuff away, throwing out of date stuff away, mostly stuff with 2016/17 dates on them 😂 Cleaning the tiled walls down as I went round, looks a whole lot brighter and less cluttered now. John came home late morning just as I was with a customer who was buying hens. He spent most of the afternoon doing something on the tractor though I am not sure exactly what 🤷‍♀️ I spent the afternoon making cards, the ones I had made and put in the shed all sold so I needed to restock and I might as well stay in the warm and do that. I lit the Rayburn at lunchtime as it was cold in here, no point freezing our nuts off just for the sake of it, I am here so I can keep feeding it every hour or so.

Late afternoon John came in and a delivery arrived, a gel topper for the mattress, John finds the memory foam too hot and I am inclined to agree so after talking to my sister about it we ordered this gel topper. She has one and says it is great, it’s supposed to disperse the heat more evenly, we will find out if it works 🙄

I discovered that John had been removing ivy from the hedge at the back, the trees and shrubs are being choked by it and a lot of them have died. It is a job that is on the to do list, it’s a big job though as there is a falling down stone wall, barbed wire, dead trees, lots of ivy and broken fencing, it is not a quick fix job but it is one that you can take up or leave whenever you want.

Apart from the afternoon rounds and egg collecting that is pretty much it for the day, not much going on outside in these temperatures 😜

Wednesday: Oooooo that was cold last night, we had thick snow flurries mid evening and the temps must have gone down to around -4 overnight. Everywhere was covered in a hard white frost this morning, John did the rounds and then went off to do a mornings work, I got sorted indoors and then out to feed the Guineas and check the torts. Billy was in the hut and Voldertort had dug himself into the ground 🙄 it should be milder from here on in but you never know. I came back in and got some household bits done and I lit the Rayburn, then I spent a good hour looking thorough seasonal recipes so I can make good use of the things I am growing.

To be honest I haven’t done much else today 🥴 I always feel a bit guilty at the end of the day if I haven’t done much but sometimes I think it’s a case of recharging batteries. I did watch the seaspiracy documentary that is a hot topic at the minute, shocking, is the word. We don’t eat a lot of fish but will be eating a lot less now if any at all, if you haven’t seen it then as a consumer you really should 🙄 I watched it with an open mind, I am aware that this kind of reporting is often driven by the vegan section of society but it is undeniably bad even if you only think it’s half true.

Mid evening and still light, looking out of the back door I can see the two cats (that are usually so lazy they don’t go far from the food bowl) down in the hedge line stalking rabbits 😂 They have just got into their hunting stride, last week John said “did you put a dead mouse in the cats bowl”, why he would even think that is something I would do I have no idea! They had caught a shrew and bought it in and put it in to the bowl themselves 🤣

Thursday: Slightly warmer today in a cold sort of way 😜 if the sun had come out it would have been lovely but there is still a chill in the air. John did the morning rounds while I did the indoor bits, he went off to do a quick job in the village while I then did a few outside bits. When he came back we went off to get a bit of shopping from the local market, back home to put stuff away and then over to see Sam and the children and give her a bit of a hand if necessary.

When we got back from the market the sheep from the next field and got past their fencing, through the hedge and were stood inbetween that and our new fence lol, it took the first one a minute or two to work out how to get back but the second one took decidedly longer to work it out 😋

Back from Sams, lit the Rayburn then an afternoon of sorting out Johns van insurance which should have taken two minutes online except it wouldn’t recognise the email address even though they had emailed to that exact address 🙄 unbelievable sometimes. That then took half an hour to do it over the phone 😂 John went off to do another small job this afternoon while I sorted out some online payments and ordered the third electric radiator, this one is for the kitchen. We are getting to the stage that the Rayburn only needs to be lit for a couple of hours, unless it’s really cold, so if we slowly install the electric rads we can begin to use them just to take the chill off the air. We do have to sort out the back door as you can see daylight through it and so that’s not cost effective but we will get that done soon as well.

The blossom is beginning to be noticeable all around the place and the leaves on the trees are also bursting into life. Unfortunately if the old saying is to be believed we have Ash before Oak here which means a wet summer ahead 🙄 Oak before Ash just a splash, Ash before Oak expect a soak, time will tell.

Friday 😀 After doing the morning rounds we spent the rest of the morning doing the pirate ship. I have swept it out and put fairy lights up high in there, I have put the cushions and bunting and table cloth in and hung up some paper parrots. John and I then found some Perspex and put that in the windows, this will stop the wind blowing in and the leaves, make it feel a bit more like a playhouse and hopefully the children will get to play in there this summer.

Arrrgggghhh Jim lad

We came in at lunchtime to the sad news that Prince Phillip had died 😞 I know there were lots of varying opinions on him but he was someone’s husband, father, grandfather and great grand father and they will miss him dearly. He was the Queens Consort, not an easy job by any means, he devoted his life to supporting her and in turn everything she stood for, RIP

After a quick lunch John went off to look at a job and I planted the broad beans plants finally, as well as the Oca. I had to be very quick with the beans as the chickens could smell the Earth I dug for the holes and were there quick as a wink! I managed to get them in and cover them with hoops and netting though I had wanted to get some mulch round the bases but there was no way I would fend them off in time 😂 I can do that another day but at least they are now in. I had a few spare plants and where one or two garlic did not appear I have used the gaps up and put some in between and a couple of rows at the end of the garlic bed. Should be interesting to see if the garlic keeps the blackfly off of the bean plants.

Guess what, broadband and phone line issues again, this is ridiculous I think I will be going to ofcom this time 😡

Saturday: Still cold, not as cold as it has been but still no sign of the sun which we really need this time of year to get the veg plants going. After all the various morning stuff that needs to be done John went off to get feed and I went out into the veg garden. The planting and sowing really ramps up from here on in and this morning I have sown red onion sets. I will have a cracking haul of onions, shallots, garlic and leeks for winter storing hopefully. I then went into the greenhouse to do some pricking out, I have a mix of veg and flower seeds growing and this morning I have pricked out a couple of trays of achillea (summer berries) and I have also sown some celeriac and lemon grass seeds as well as some ginger roots but as I said we really need a bit of warmth soon for those to start growing. The lack of heat also means that the tomato and pepper plants that have come up are not able to move from the propagator to the bench yet, it’s just a tad too cold. I have cucumbers, melon and squash plants all coming on which also need to move out from under cover onto the benches, hopefully any day soon we will feel the temps rise. We also have a lack of rain at the moment 🙄 I can’t recall the last time it rained properly, at least a couple of weeks ago, it is the way things go sometimes and you can never know what kind of spring you are going to get so even the best laid plans get scuppered.

While I was in the greenhouse I was listening to the radio as always and the topic was the ship that blocked the canal holding up all the freight. It got round to the subject of self sufficiency of the country and if we ought to look into becoming more self sufficient 🤔 hmmm let me think, hell yes! I actually can’t believe that it is not on the ‘must do’ list, it is not rocket science is it 🤷‍♀️ if we produced as much as we could here that would give us food security and help the environment at the same time, why it is not happening as a matter of urgency I don’t know. I would have thought that the pandemic would have taught us big lessons in that department, it seems that we haven’t even felt the ripple effect that will be caused by the ship jam yet, I wonder what kind of panic buying that will result in, we will find out in a few weeks time 🙄

We have lived through history in the making over the last year and today we witness another at midday, a 41 death gun salute to HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, a very rare salute to witness especially as it was coordinated right across the UK and Gibraltar as well as HM ships at sea.

Just when I have stated the lack of rain situation we had a little shower, not much but enough to wet the ground which is all we need really 😀

Sunday: I hope we get a better second half to April than the first half, it’s been bloody cold today. At times the sun has made an appearance and it was nice, cool but still nice, but when it disappeared behind clouds the temperature plummeted and at one point it was trying to snow! After doing the morning jobs I went out into the greenhouse to get some bits done but after an hour I had to come back in as my feet were frozen and I haven’t been able to warm up all day. I did get a few things done in there, some rearranging, I sowed some more squash seeds and split and potted some pheasant grass I had growing. In the front I have resealed the bird bath hopefully with some success, it had a crack through it and before I try putting something in it I wanted to see if I could seal it.

I am struggling to function today because I am feeling the cold, I know that is a pathetic statement lol but it’s true. I think I am primed and ready for some warm spring days and they are not forthcoming and so I have gone into idle mode 🤣 I am currently huddled on the sofa, John meanwhile is busy outside tidying his van 🙄 I am literally shivering, hope I am not coming down with anything except ‘whereisspringitis’ 😜

Have a great week, a little more normality is creeping in, this week coming I am having a haircut and a massage whoop whoop, other shops will be open so we have a bit more choice when it comes to buying birthday presents 😜and the pub gardens will be open, not that I want to sit out in the freezing cold 🤣 one step closer to total freedom hopefully.

I think I will start a running list of what I have growing, what I am planting and what I am picking:

  • In the greenhouse:
  • Tomatoes
  • Peppers
  • Chilli
  • Butternut Sqaush
  • Banana sqaush
  • Courgette
  • Crown Prince
  • Pumpkins
  • Cucumber
  • Basil
  • Garlic chive
  • Melon
  • Runner beans
  • Dwarf French beans
  • Sweetcorn
  • In the cold frame
  • Peas
  • Mangetout
  • Swede
  • Turnip
  • Beetroot
  • Planted up outside
  • Broad beans
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • Shallots
  • Oca
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes
  • In the tunnels
  • Lettuce
  • Baby spinach
  • Rocket
  • Spring onions
  • Radish
  • Flat leaf parsley (already growing from last year)
  • Already growing and harvesting
  • Purple sprouting broccoli
  • Leeks
  • Rhubarb
  • Asparagus (just starting to come through)

Not included on any of those lists are perennials such as herbs, sage, mint, lovage, thyme, oregano. Nor any of the fruit bushes, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberry, blackcurrant, blackberry, Logan berry, chokeberry, olive, fig. And then there are the top fruit trees, apple, pear, plum, apricot, peach, cherry.

I will keep adding to the lists as I remember as I am sure I have missed a fair few things out already. The lists will change as I move things around and plant up but they will give me an idea of what I have and what I need to be doing such as getting on with sowing the runner beans 😀

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