Tag: self sufficient

Posted in Friesland Farm

Lunch in the City 😲 plenty of plums & RIP Benny 😢

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd August: This morning I whizzed around and got a few things done ( made two banana loaves and a greengage and vanilla tart) before going out for lunch in Oxford with Charlie as a birthday treat. We went to The Alchemist, the food was delicious and it all felt very safe and social distancing was well in hand. I haven’t been to Oxford centre for a least 6 years if not a lot longer. The new shopping centre is light and airy and the rooftop terrace where all the eateries are is a delightful place to eat. Afterwards we went on the tourist trails and into the back streets to find lovely park areas and beautiful architecture. A lovely way to spend an afternoon 🥰

My birthday treat at The Alchemist

When I got back John was already home and had been working on the new fence which is very nearly finished.

Early evening I went out into the paddock John is working in and had a look round. We discovered bees in a hollow of the apple tree, these might be bees that have swarmed and set up home here or they may be native bees but they are definitely honey bees 🐝 happy days, hopefully it will start oozing out lol.

We still have no internet and it’s due to be connected tomorrow, the equipment arrived safely yesterday morning due to the fact that our postie knows everyone so well that he delivers it to the named recipient not the address which is just as well. Trying to bounce off the hot spot on my phone is very tiresome I can tell you and I do find the reliance on the internet more than a little disconcerting. As I have written before in previous blogs, an apocalypse (disaster, pandemic) was always on my radar and one of the worst would be if the internet went down, we would be totally screwed I can tell you that so it would be prudent to look at what you use the connection for and always make sure you have an alternative 🙄 That is self reliance 😀 One other way to make sure you stay connected is the telephone line. We have cordless telephone handsets but I always keep a corded set in the cupboard because if we have a power cut we still have a phone, you may think that’s ok I have my mobile but trust me the amount of time I have no battery when the power goes is nobody’s business 😜

Tuesday: Picking produce was this mornings task, more plums, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, dwarf beans, beetroot, turnips, snowball radish and a few potatoes, I am quite literally drowning in veg lol.

1.30pm and I’m sitting down to give my back a rest lol, I have spent all this time prepping nearly everything I picked this morning. Beans, carrots and turnips chopped and open froze, beetroots and radish peeled and chopped for a few days of salad meals and greengage plums stoned and made into jam. Lots of the veg were weighed and bagged up to go out for sale and I still have Victoria plums to make more jam with but not today 😜

After a short rest I went out and cut back one of my two sage bushes, the leaves are now drying in the dehydrator ready for putting in a jar and using over Winter. The other bush I will leave for now and cut it back later in the season and continue to use the fresh leaves when I need to. John came home just as I had finished and put the kettle on, I swear he must hear it being turned on as his timing is impeccable 🤪

Early evening I had a phone call from our neighbour, we have travellers in the area and they have been doing what they usually do and targeting work vans. They tried to break into her husbands van and when challenged by her Hubby the person lunged at him with a screwdriver, threw a walling brick at him (which missed luckily) and jumped into a waiting car which drove off. There is a serious problem here at the moment and it seems the police are not getting on top of it at all, I have seen reports on Facebook all day of people/vans/businesses being hit in broad daylight 🤬

Wednesday: Phone saga: So this morning I had an email to say we were good to go, I checked the phone, dead, I looked at the hub, red light, not good to go 🙄 I phoned them (another hour on the phone) and they said the line is live, no it’s not I told them. Another transfer to a different department and to cut a long story short we now have to wait until August 14th for an engineer to come out, meanwhile they will send me a 4G mini hub so I don’t have to use data on my phone. Well that’s good because I am using it as a hotspot and that is painful as I have said before, 3G is all we get and that drops out pretty frequently 🤪

When I finally got off the phone to them I thought I ought to try and get some work done. I can’t remember what else I did but I did make six more jars of Victoria plum jam 😀

We had to take Benny to the vet early evening, luckily I had got him in at lunchtime and shut him in. We put him into a carrier and set off, 10 minutes down the road the cat pooped, 🤣🤣🤣 OMG it was hilarious, I thought John was going to be sick, he was actually gagging, he pulled a mask out of the side pocket and put it on and then we found a safe place to pull over. John held the cat while I sorted it out and we went on our way. The upshot is that it looks like he has been clipped by a car and it has put his hip out ‘Ouch’ this is going to be expensive 🙄 he has to go back tomorrow for an X-ray and they will decide if he needs surgery (possibly amputation depending on injury) 😏

Thursday: Funny kind of a morning, it’s warm but as I was out picking plums it’s started a fine misty rain and just as I am typing the this the sun is coming out and I think it is going to be hot 🥵 (10 minutes later it has gone back in again)

John did the rounds and then went off to work with Wonky Benny to drop him at the vets this morning, I do hope he doesn’t poo again as John is on his own this time 😂

First jobs on the list were watering the pots, the tunnels and the greenhouse as the forecast is anywhere up to 30c+ over the next few days. Then making sure the animals all have got plenty of fresh water just in case, they have fresh water anyway but we tend to double up when the weather is very warm. After finding food for the torts it was on to a bit of plum picking, if I told you the trees are dripping with plums it would be no lie, it’s a bumper crop this year right across the varieties. The Victoria tree is always abundant, the greengage not so much, except for this year, the damsons, never seen so many on there and the new tree (the variety escapes me) is also loaded and very tasty they are too.

At this time of year my kitchen just isn’t big enough for all the produce I am bringing in on a daily basis and I always have baskets and trays of it stacked in various corners until I can get round to sorting them out. At the minute I have cooking apples to be sorted as well, the ones that are damaged will be peeled and cooked for the freezer and any that are in good condition will be stored out the back. This is when I could do with some cool storage as the back area heats up quickly due to the tin roof out there. It would be nice to have a little brick built store shed or at least a heavily insulated wooden shed, but I like the brick shed idea better 😀

So what am I going to do with all these plums? Good question 😜 some will be frozen for winter puddings, some will be made into more jam I think, always good for presents or exchanges, some will be given away to family and friends and some will be sold in the shed. In the past I have made plum sauce and plum chutney and if I get the enthusiasm I may do some this year.

As if I didn’t have enough to do I have come up with another job lol, I have ordered Almond oil as a carrier which arrived this morning and I am going to infuse it with lavender as a quick way of making it, I haven’t done it before so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. You can then add the oil to the bath or use it on your skin.

I harvested some lavender and tied it in bunches to dry on the rack in the kitchen ready to use when it has dried out.

My drying corner

The phone rang and it was John, I figured at 11am it’s not good news and I was right. The vet had called him and Benny’s hip socket was smashed to bits, they couldn’t amputate because they would need to remove too much. The next option was a specialist and even then there was no guarantee he would walk again and so John made the decision to put him to sleep which is exactly what I would have done. The vet said she couldn’t believe he had been walking on it and she had never seen any bone that smashed 🙄 So RIP Benny, I am so very sorry that your wonderful life as our farm cat was cut short and I will miss your very vocal presence. I am done with cats for a while, we still have Diesel (who is getting on in years) but we have been through a few other cats over the last few years, they either get hit by cars or disappear never to be seen again! Molly was the only other cat that saw her last few years out here and died peacefully.

Pretty sure patch will miss you annoying him as well 🥰

I am waiting patiently for this 4G mini hub to turn up from BT it comes with a sim and unlimited data until the problem is sorted. I have tried uploading last weeks blog but like the photos there is not enough umph to do it.

We went over to Sams late afternoon and took Mia out for ice cream and a play at the park just to give Sam a bit of a break from three children to two 😂

Friday: Today the temps are set to rise well above 30c not hot for some countries but not what we are used to here in the UK 😜 I opened the windows early to let the cool morning air in and then shut them as the sun came round, closing the curtains at the same time to hopefully keep the worst of the heat out 🙄 I was up early and outside picking first thing, marrow, beans, peas, mangetout, carrots, cauliflower and a bucketful of eating apples from a dwarf tree! As soon as the torts were fed I was off inside to start prepping. The veg have all be cleaned chopped and open froze, and the apples have all been wiped over sorted into perfect and blemished piles. The perfects will store nicely for a few weeks and the blemished (which won’t store well) will be either used in chutney etc or fed to the animals as a treat. The marrow I am undecided about, many people eat stuffed marrow, I can’t see the point personally 😂 my Dad always told me to make marrow rum, your pour rum into the marrow, hang it for a few days and then let the liquid out from the bottom, again I can’t see the pint, just drink the rum! I will say that I have never tasted either of these so I may be missing something wonderful but I somehow doubt it 😜 Why grow the marrows you may ask, I had the seeds, it’s as simple as that, and if nothing else the hens will enjoy a good feast on them 😀 They will store for weeks mind you so I may decide to have a go at a curry or even use them in a chutney, I don’t have to decide just yet.

I have just received notice that my 4G mini hub will be delivered today thank goodness, it’s a hub supplied by BT (when you have connection problems 😂) that has a sim and unlimited data (free of course) so I should then be able to upload pictures etc. Last weeks blog randomly uploaded while I was typing this up, I have been trying to upload it for days and gave up in the end 🙄

I made plum chutney, love a bit of chutney in a cheese sandwich 😀 Apparently the temps at Heathrow are already 31c and it’s only lunchtime, however Charlie has just sent me a video as she is on the way home from Devon and it’s pouring with rain, ah gotta love the extremes of our climate, it’s not like it’s a big island in comparison to some but the difference in weather from one end to another is hilarious sometimes 😁 It’s nearly 1pm and still pretty cool in the house hopefully it will stay that way 🙄

Yay the mini hub arrived, very mini, not much bigger than a business card in size I was expecting something bigger lol. I now have full WiFi signal 😀 hopefully I can now upload photos.

Saturday: Set to be very hot today so we were up early to get a bit done first thing, John went off to get a few and al supplies and order some bits of fencing he was short of. In the afternoon we went over to my brothers for the first real birthday BBQ this year. John came back mid evening to put the birds to bed and then came back and we stayed until late evening with the fire pit lit and watching the stars, lovely day. Luckily there was a lot of shade and a good breeze so it was t too u comfortable.

Sunday: A bit late up today lol, 8am which is late for us. After the feeding rounds John cracked on with the last remaining bit of fencing and I went out to pick plums and do a bit of weeding. It was overcast for a good part of the morning and although it was still warm it gave me a chance to get some things done. Mum and Ken came over after lunch to pick some plums , I gave them a bagful of dwarf beans a marrow to go home with as well. It is at that stage where I have so much produce I either don’t know what to do with it all or I am sick of processing it all so start giving it away by the bagful 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm

Plums, Lammas & plenty of produce 😀

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Apologies for the lateness of this we are still having problems with the landline and internet and uploading is difficult 🤪

Monday 27th July 2020: It’s wet this morning and we have had some terrific downpours over the weekend, great for the garden not so great for getting outside 😜 The phonline saga still continues because as it was left, we were to be disconnected in order to reconnect the cottage and then we could place a new order for a line. The disconnection was supposed to happen on the 28th which is tomorrow and we couldn’t put in an order until that had been sorted out BUT I have received messages from BT to say our order was going through and would be connected on the 5th August? I wait to see what actually happens here as I am convinced this is all going to go t**s up as well 🙄

Tuesday: An mixture of weather, overcast sometimes but warm and then when the sun comes out it’s pretty hot! I did a bit of cutting back, a lot is now going over and looking quite scruffy, time to tidy it up a bit, I always think that at this time of year the garden has the ‘morning after’ effect, the oomph and brightness of the party has gone and you are left with the clearing up 😂

Shelley messaged to see if I wanted a ‘shake shack’ ooo yes please and she came to pick me up, we sat in the car with our shakes watching the world (well the town anyway) go by, a lovely distraction from the norm.

I had a wander round to look at the plum trees today, they are laden with fruit 😀 however they seem to be nearly ready to pick which is about 4 weeks earlier than normal 🤔 I can only assume it was weeks of wall to wall sunshine earlier in the year. Plums can be picked and then ripened off the tree but they do need to be ‘on the turn’ as it were.

Wednesday: A warm and sunny day ahead and you know what that means for me 😀 get on early and avoid the uv rays later 😂 I had a definite job in mind this morning, picking plums, but first I had to get the other bits of picking done. The photo shows the haul today and to be fair I could do that every day now for a good few weeks, I also spotted our first cauliflower that is almost ready to harvest. But as I said the plums are my main focus at the minute, ripening earlier than usual, they can be picked and ripened indoors. Two reasons why this is a good idea, number one, wasps 🙄 the riper the fruit gets the more the wasps feast on them and the more likely you are to get stung, number two, you can pick in succession so I don’t have to pick them all at once, I will do it over a couple of weeks, by the time I get to the end of that time the plums will be ripe and I will be competing with the wasps but by then I will have plenty in store or in the freezer. They are looking pretty good this year too and by that I mean no damage, no sign of plum moth so the pheromone traps have worked well 😀

Once all the picking is done it’s indoors to prep it all, the beans, peas and carrots all chopped and ready for open freezing, I don’t blanch them, they turn out just as good if not better because they have no excess moisture on them which causes frosting. The potatoes will store readily enough for a while, the beetroot got roasted and then they will be frozen ready for use when required and the fruit is for pudding later. I was given some windfall apples (also earlier than usual) so I have peeled and cooked them and will make a sponge mix to go on top as we have plenty of eggs at the moment. The produce is coming thick and fast and it’s always a decision as to what to use that day, tomatoes and cucumbers don’t keep and don’t freeze so it best to use them first while all the veg can be frozen so they can be frozen and used another time. Some of it I will put out for sale, as I say, it covers the costs of the seeds so effectively apart from my time, the food is all free 😀

The phone line saga continues, I have had messages from BT to say our order is in and we will have a line on the 4th August all good except that as I understood it the last order was cancelled and I was going to have to make a new one once the cottage up the road had their number back. That was supposed to be yesterday but we still have it and today openreach called to ask what the problem was as they were at the junction box, so who knows how this will pan out now!

Sam, Mia and the twins came over for a couple of hours, we had a wander down to the paddock to give biscuit and brush and pick out their feet.

Almost immediately after typing the paragraph about the phone we lost the line and consequently the internet connection and even I had forgotten just how much runs on WiFi 😂 It’s a bit of a warning to us really about how dependant we become on some things and that we should always have a back up plan 🙄 We have now lost touch with the rest of the world until next Tuesday unless I can pick up 4G outside but we are rural and so that is not always possible. Luckily I can still type this up it will just be the upload that I need a connection for.

Thursday: It’s my birthday 😀 John had asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch or dinner and I said I prefer breakfast and I had just the place in mind. So we were up early and off out for waffles by 8am, they do lovely waffles, bacon and maple syrup and I was glad they were open again. The rest of the day was spent with visitors coming and going, Mum and Ken came round for coffee and cake late morning, then Sam, shelley and the children arrived, my niece and her little one came shortly after, then Charlie arrived. We had a short interlude before a chap came to give us a price to take down a few trees, then my brother and his wife called in, they went and my sister and her husband arrived and also my youngest sister popped in. By 9pm I was pooped 😜 I have had a lovely lot of presents befitting a smallholder/gardener from butter making equipment to garden solar lights and a beautiful hand drawn picture of the grandchildren, I’m very lucky.

I did do a few little jobs inbetween all that, picked the pears from my tree as it did have masses but something has been eating them and there two big ones on the path that had been half eaten. I don’t want to lose all of them so I had picked them and they will continue to ripen off the tree. I sowed a few flower seeds and repotted a plant but that’s about it.

My new winter wellies arrived, I buy Aigle wellies they are expensive but they last much better than any other brand I have tried over the years and so they are cost effective.

Friday: It is supposed to be a scorcher today 30c + 🥵 I got all the outside jobs done pretty quickly including hanging out the washing, might as well make use of the heat. The wood delivery arrived for a new fence out in the front area, it will be the same as the fence by the egg shed and hopefully discourage the hens from coming in the front as eventually I want to plant large areas of it up and don’t want them constantly ruining it.

I have just had an email from BT saying they have dispatched our equipment for the new landline and broadband connection, they have the right mobile number for me, the right email address, the right name but they still have the wrong address. No problem just give them a call and sort it, oh no not that simple as I appear to have no mobile coverage at the minute ffs I just feel like crying 😭 I am not worried about the equipment getting delivered because the cottage will just send it here if it goes there, what I am worried about is that after all we have been through they still don’t have the correct address and this will all start again with trying to connect the wrong line!

Bloody hell that was hot today 🥵 good job our place is nice and cool inside, the bathroom is the coolest of all so in desperate times I can always lie on the floor in there (I haven’t ever done it but I could if I wanted lol) I spent the day inside doing not very much, I did have Mia for a few hours and she wanted to play under the sprinkler but got bored with that quite quickly I’m glad to say. It’s very close this evening, I have watered the two tunnels and the greenhouse, there were a few spots of rain but as yet they haven’t amounted to very much. I do hope we get a storm it will clear the air and water the garden at the same time 😜 I had a lovely bunch of sweet peas given me today, they smell divine and have cheered the kitchen up no end 😀

Saturday: Soooo much cooler this morning and a lot fresher thank goodness 😀 We have both been very busy this morning, me picking, there is an awful lot to pick at the moment, it just keeps coming but that’s what this life is all about and the reason why we didn’t have or don’t have any fear of lockdowns 😜 After picking everything it was on to prepping, mostly for the freezer but I also made plum jam with some of the Victoria plums. I have my eye on a greengage and vanilla pie recipe for the beautiful sweet little green plums 😀 If you have never eaten them and think they don’t look ripe, they are and they are one of the sweetest tasting plums you can get. I am very proud to have a 50 year old proper Cambridge greengage tree here. The plums look amazing this year if a little on the small side but the plum moth traps have worked wonders and from 1.5kg I only found three plums with the grub in so that is good going. Meanwhile John has been very busy digging holes and put up a new fence in the front area. We watch the gardening programmes and laugh when they dig easily into their soil for projects, here on the edge of the Cotswolds it’s brash and that is hard going when you want to dig 🥵 not to mention the remains of footings from the old RAF buildings which without fail seem to be just where you need to dig as well 😂

Wasp season is well and truly here, the minute there is sweet, sticky jam about the wasps home in on it 😜 actually just one little wasp but it just would not let go of the spoon rest 😂

It’s August the first today and so it’s Lammas, the celebration of the first of the harvesting, last year I grew enough stalks of wheat to make a corn dolly but I didn’t grow any this year, I should have made a loaf of bread but I didn’t do that either, not doing too well am I. I could do an altar, I know lots of people do but I tend to just acknowledge the day and the turning of the wheel instead 😀

Sunday: An in between day today, when the sun comes out it’s hot but not as hot as it has been and we have intermittent cloud as well. John did the morning rounds and I got on with cleaning the house. Then John went out to continue the new fence which is progressing well 😀 I just hope it deters the chickens from coming in the front area as they are digging up my pots and anything I have planted in the ground suffers from their scratching around. It’s not like they don’t have enough other space to forage in 😂

We have two problems today, one is the water pressure, I have noticed that for the last few days it has been down, we needed to check that we didn’t have a leak on our side of the mains. We couldn’t see anything anywhere but best to check at the meter, when we have everything turned off the meter does not move so that’s good, we are not losing water we are paying for but the pressure is still down 🙄 The second problem is Benny the cat, he had been gone for 5 days and turned up last night but he is not walking right. He does not seem to be in pain, I have had a good feel and he does not cry when I touch him but it’s still not right. The other thing was that he was starving, he ate and ate and ate, he was pretty chunky when he was last here so I imagine he has got stuck somewhere, lost a bit of weight and wriggled out from wherever he was. At the moment he is in the boot room but we need to get him to a vet tomorrow, as I said he is not in pain and he is eating well but just not walking correctly and he won’t jump up or down either, I think he may have pulled or torn a muscle or something 😏 At least he’s is home and secured in the back for the time being 😀

I made butter today 😀 Last birthday my sister bought me a butter churn and this birthday she bought me some butter paddles and some cream so I thought I better try the churn out. It’s quite concerning at how many people (youngsters) don’t realise butter is made from cream 🙄 You May ask why bother, well generally I don’t but if there is cream that has been reduced in price I like to have a go, it’s not cost effective otherwise but the butter you get is far superior to the blocks you buy in the shop unless you are buying quality butter that is 😀

I am sorry about the lack of photos, I have taken plenty but I am using my phone WiFi to connect the iPad to and am barely getting 3G at the best of times so uploading them is failing miserably 😏 Hopefully when we are connected again all will be well 😜 It all takes me back to the days of dial up and how bloody frustrating that was!

Posted in Friesland Farm

A trip down memory lane, the twins 1st birthdays and the phone line saga continues 🤬

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 20th July 2020: John is working again this week, I am not sure when he will next have any time off now things seem to be getting back to normalish. Before he went he did the morning feeding and letting out, I did the horses water and found some greens for the guineas, quail and light Sussex. I had a little wander around the fields, no point having land if you don’t wander aimlessly round it now and again. I had a good look at the hedgerow, at the minute there are plenty of blackberries but if the horses get to them later in the year I will have to find another source. I did a little bit in the garden, some watering and I picked three good sized cucumbers. I then went down to the very front of the driveway on the lane, I needed to cut back some dog rose and over hanging tree branches that make it difficult to turn out as you can’t see traffic coming up the lane clearly and they do tend to go fast even though we have a new 30 mile an hour speed limit 🙄 After that it was indoors to make some bread and some biscuits although I made a bit of a mistake. I was reading one recipe and decided to follow another but put the amount of butter from the first into the recipe I was doing if that makes sense. I thought it seemed a bit short and my fear was that they would spread and be crumbly but as it happened they were fine, I’d say they were more like small cakes than biscuits but they taste great which is the main thing.

A better looking loaf today 😀

I also ordered a new kettle, if you go back in my blog about five years, maybe even six, you will read about my lovely new kettle. I had done some research because I was sick of buying £20 kettles that leaked everywhere within the year so I had splashed out and paid £100 for a decent one 😯 One that I hoped would last five years and so cost the same in real terms, well it has, did I should say, it still doesn’t leak water from the spout but the lid has broken and is unfixabke so I have ordered a new one. The only difference is that it is a different colour (black) as the new colours are about £30 more expensive and I’m not paying that just for a trendy colour 😂 I have gone for exactly the same model as it is a beautiful ergonomic design that is easy on the eye, can you tell how much I love it yet 😜 Of course at this point you will want to know which kettle, it’s a Delonghi and it’s the scultura model. I would have purchased a matching toaster but we don’t really need a new one of those so I will wait until we do 😀

Tuesday: Another sunny day ahead which is lovely if a little restricting for me. I do miss not being able to be in the sun for any length of time, quite often if I feel cold I will go and stand out in it to warm up not for too long though 😜 I would love to be able to go for a walk in the sunshine especially on days like today where it’s not unbearably hot just pleasant. In order to do that I would need to cover every part of me with some clothing and a hat, sunscreen is not enough to stop the rays causing havoc!

John did the morning rounds and I watered the tunnels and the greenhouse, I watered the pots out in the driveway and checked over the plants in the gravelled area out the front. The wood chip I nicely swept and tided last week has been scattered everywhere by some hens that have decided to escape every day 🙄 I’m trying not to let it bother me 🤪 John told me this morning that the duck I had noticed was missing (though I didn’t think the fox had got it) was sitting on a nest under the hedge at the side 😀😀😀 yay this makes me very happy indeed, in all the years I have kept ducks I have never had one sit on a nest and hatch ducklings successfully, fingers crossed it happens this time, I will be cock a hoop even though we don’t need any more ducks lol.

Up to lunchtime I haven’t really done much except pottering, I am still feeling tired 🤷‍♀️ but I’m not worried as there are times when I’m not, it’s hopefully a passing phase. I have plenty of phases during and after a flare especially when I go on to new meds, it’s always a delight figuring out what’s what 😜

John came home early which was nice, after spending weeks and weeks with someone here most of the time I think I have found it difficult being back on my own for most of the day everyday. After doing the afternoon feeding and egg collection we popped to town quickly to pick up my prescription and early evening we went to Sam and Luke’s to water the garden while they are on holiday.

So the medicine wheel thing is getting interesting 🤔 today the discussion was about Karma/rules and self concept. It’s all about how you see yourself and the boundaries you perceive to be there, either put there by you or your interpretation of what others have put there for you and more importantly exploring them and either mentally moving/changing them or accepting them, deep I know lol, but quite liberating actually 😀 It rather blew my mind to realise that I had created boundaries for myself over the years and just by thinking about them thoroughly I can change them 🙄

Wednesday: Another lovely day ahead, John did the morning rounds and then went off to work. I did some picking this morning, the French beans are beginning to produce good quantities now, I picked about 1/2kg of those, a couple of cucumbers, a few courgettes and some toms to ripen on the windowsill.

I went out for coffee this morning with Shelley, the kids and my Mum also met us there. It was in the village I grew up in and afterwards we had a walk around the recreation area which was a great playground for us as youngsters as it had a small stream running alongside, we spent hours down there catching minnows, bullheads and crayfish. Sadly these days there is not much sign of any life in it 😏

When I got back my brother phoned as he had acquired a plant and some seed heads from a lady where he was working. Salsify, a Victorian vegetable which is rarely used these days, it tastes like oysters apparently and is also known as the oyster plant. He was passing and so dropped off some seeds for me 😀 I will definitely have a go at growing these, they were a very useful winter crop when not much else was available. They belong to the dandelion family which is very evident from the seeds, so they should be great for wildlife as well.

I was reminded that although my veg seems to be really slow this year (which frankly has been depressing me) the wildlife has come on in leaps and bounds 😀 I am determined to be grateful for that at least 🥰

Luckily my appetite seems to have returned 😀 😅 I’m not sure where it went or why but it’s back again which is great because I can start looking through recipes with some degree of interest.

Thursday: I’m having a quick coffee break and a sit down, it’s 10.30 and I have been busy since 6.30 this morning. Firstly sorting and putting out plants for sale, I had a bit of a lull because during the lockdown I sold everything I had almost and so had to wait for things to come on again 🙄 After doing a few other bits outside it was indoors to do some cleaning, oh joy, but it did need doing, I am doing half today and half tomorrow to break up the monotony 😂 Going through the place I keep thinking I must get rid of stuff we don’t use anymore as it’s taking up space. I have a cupboard full of cushions and blankets that have accumulated over time, sometimes I use them outside for the children but I also have a load more in the airing cupboard 🤪 pretty sure I don’t need that many do I? One thing I put up for collection were some magazines to do with gardening and smallholding, the lady that wanted them turns out to have moved in nearby and is collecting them later, it will be nice to meet someone likeminded 😀

The telephone line saga continues and I now know who’s number we have, the cottage up the road! A service engineer called to confirm his appointment this afternoon, he thought I was the person from the other property, I explained the whole situation to him and he is also coming here later to see if he can help sort the whole mess out. Basically he says that someone has switched the wrong lines, I do hope he can help us because at the moment they have no phone line and we have theirs😏

It’s the twins 1st birthday today 🥰🥰 where did that year go! They are developing their little characters, both entirely different, Lucie is the happiest baby I have ever come across and George just wants crawl, walk, run, climb and is very cheeky lol.

Happy, smiley Lucie
Let me get at it George

All the grandchildren are growing fast, this summer was going to be the summer before the two oldest start school and so we were going to have plenty of farm time fun but the virus got in the way 😏 Never mind we still have a bit of time left.

I heard somewhere that it takes 10,000 hours to master something and so become a master in that field so to speak, if you do three hours a day it would still take you nine years to ‘master’ whatever it is. From this I realise that I am a master of many things 😀 Definitely a master gardener, It probably only took me three years to get that far, I am a master parent having spent at least sixteen years 24/7 parenting 😂 I am a master housekeeper, in fact I must be, along with many others, a supreme master at that having spent the last 37 years doing it! There are so many things that we spend almost a lifetime doing and so become masters, they may seem like trivial topics but let’s face it some people fail miserably at them so take your credit where it’s due 😘

The phone line saga: So the engineer came out, he was brilliant and went above and beyond the call of duty but he still couldn’t sort it for us although the two of us spent another two hours on the phone to BT. The upshot is that the cottage had their line de activated at the beginning of lockdown because it is a holiday let 🙄 then they re activated it, meanwhile we received a letter 9 days late due to the Swindon depot being closed due to coronavirus, consequently they had already sent out open reach to do whatever it is they do to the line BUT somehow they switched the cottage number to our line and disconnected ours, are you keeping up? The anomaly in this is why did BT think our line was theirs, no idea! They also sent the letter out addressed to us but have the owners name on file for the service call, you think someone would have noticed the difference, clearly not😏 So as it stands we have to wait until their fault is cleared that means their number connected to them and then we will be completely disconnected and have to apply for a new line, beggars belief doesn’t it, but it’s still not guaranteed that we will get our old number back because they are ‘Pooled’ for two weeks then reused 😯 WTAF! None of this is in anyway our fault but we are paying for other people’s decisions and incompetencies, not happy. Nor apparently is the chap in the holiday let as he was complaining that he was supposed to be working online and can’t, so I guess the owners will get grief from him, not that I am in any way sympathetic after all we have been jumping through hoops for the last two and a half weeks with no sign of it getting resolved very soon. All I am waiting for now is for someone to try and charge us for the other line then I will be f…ing fuming and the wrath will be unleashed 🤬

On a more gentle and country living note 😜 we saw a baby hedgehog tonight, about the size of a tennis ball, so not only do we have at least three adults we have babies as well, how good is that 😀 we are a hedgehog breeding ground 🥰

Friday: Up early to get things sorted, John did the rounds and I started on some cleaning. Sue is visiting today which will be the first time we have been able to see each other since Dad died. I had planned yesterday afternoon to go to the local Smokery and get some smoked chicken for dinner but BT put paid to that so thanks again, not that I am becoming bitter or anything 😜 The weather is not bad, I don’t think it will be hot today, it’s warm but overcast at the minute.

Saturday: Short and sweet report today as you can imagine I have been busy being sociable 😀 We had a very decent downpour or two today, a bit of thunder thrown in for good measure. All good for the veg garden.

Sunday: Out for breakfast this morning with Sue and then a visit to see the twins in the afternoon meant that apart from the essentials nothing else got done around the place. Although John and I did agree on a plan to re develop the front area once we have altered to access point to the yard behind the house which we are moving from one side to the other, I will take before and after photos this time 😀

Posted in Friesland Farm

A pick ‘n’ mix of a week 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 13th July 2020: It was a sunny start though the sun seems to have disappeared behind clouds now which is great for me. I did a bit of picking first thing this morning, rhubarb, dwarf beans, courgettes, a marrow, beetroot, salad turnips, French breakfast radish and white globe radish plus a few blueberries and raspberries. The little birds are still getting into the fruit cage though I can’t see where they are managing to get in, i did think that the raspberries were not producing very much, they are being eaten before I even get out of bed!

It’s ‘Bees need’ week this week and there are five simple things you can do to help the plight of our most important creatures. Grow more flowers (the open type, not multiple petals as they can’t reach the nectar) Leave some wild areas, weeds are not favoured by humans but the bees love them and we need the bees to survive otherwise we won’t 🙄 Don’t cut the grass so often, I know it looks a bit unsightly but we managed without hairdressers and barbers for a while and it didn’t hurt did it 😜 Don’t disturb nests and hibernation places, if you find a bees nest just leave it, they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them, of course I am not talking about a swarm, that does need sorting but on the whole solitary bees will move on once the young have hatched. Don’t use pesticides, this in my opinion is the biggest problem for insects, nurture nature to get a good balance in your garden instead of resorting to pesticide. Those are the main five things but there are other things you can do to help when it’s really hot, leave a dish of topped up water for insects to find and quench their thirst. When it’s turning cold provide areas for them to overwinter, bug houses are all the rage but areas that have not been tidied are just as good, resist the temptation to tidy and leave it until spring 😀

This morning I have been doing a bit of this and a bit of that in the garden. I planted up the pak Choi and the chicory into the polytunnel for the colder months and I sowed a new bed of mixed lettuce leaves which will be quick growing. The bed I pulled all the carrots from has now got a layer of mushroom compost on it to condition the soil and I have sown some lambs lettuce and winter purslane (I think) in the bed that the radish were in. The bulb fennel seeds I sowed in there failed to materialise 🙄 After that it was onto re potting some plants I bought at the weekend, ornamental grasses. The area in the front that I cast lots of wildflower seeds onto has not really done much, I have some things in pots but I think the seeds and small plants I put there have been eaten by earwigs or woodlouse as it has a layer of wood chip covering, ideal for pests to live in 😜 So I bought some grasses and will put them in pots over there the idea being that they set seed and do the job for me, I can’t dig into the ground as it was an area used to put types of aggregate and now is a solid bed of stones.

Update: something is eating the pak Choi and something has dug up a couple of the chicory plants, why do I bother lol

I was looking forward to lunchtime because today is the day I get to eat the first couple of ripe tomatoes in a cheese sandwich, that is always a day to look forward to 😀 as I always say grow/find yourself some home grown toms they taste a hundred times better than shop bought ones especially if they are freshly picked after being warmed by the sun ☀️

I’m not sure what’s on the agenda for the afternoon yet, I seem to run out of steam after lunch, definitely not got the ooomph I had when I was on the steroids 😏

I got this evenings dinner on the go, I like to do it either first thing or at least by lunchtime otherwise I feel disinclined to sort anything at the actual time. I don’t know how people come in from work and decide what to have, we would end up with something on toast every night 😜 Tonight’s dinner is lamb shank (just one is enough for the two of us) cooked in the slow cooker with veg from the garden, broad beans, dwarf beans, turnips, potatoes, peas, garlic I grew and is now stored and rosemary from the garden, along with some lamb stock from the freezer. The lamb is from a local smallholder so it’s entirely a smallholder meal 😀 For pudding (or dessert if you are posh) we have mixed fruit crumble, blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants and rhubarb, all from the garden, as I have said before, we eat like kings here 👑

John has gone to work today which enables me to get on a bit I think, I am certainly more organised when he is not here, I think it’s the fact that I can’t entirely get on with what I want to do as there is usually something to be discussed or looked at and he is inclined to come in for lunch and turn the tv on to watch the news so I sit down and watch it too, something I don’t do when I am here by myself (except in the winter months)

John has been in the wars at work today, a piece of tile he was chopping off the wall flew and caught his middle finger between the knuckle and the hand. He came home with a couple of bloody plasters on it. He went off to do the egg collecting and came back in swearing, he saw a rat in the duck pen, picked up an iron bar to whack it, missed and blood starting pouring out of his finger again, he says pouring I say dribbling. He is quite dramatic in his descriptions ‘ I had a bad accident at work today’ seriously, you cut your finger, ‘it’s really deep’ can’t be that deep or your finger would be hanging off! You can see I’m not the sympathetic type 😜 so when I had to clean it up and re dress it and he is hanging onto the sink saying ‘I feel sick and dizzy’ my answer is ‘strap a pair on will you’ 🤪 I don’t really understand those who feel sick and dizzy at the slightest cut, I am of a mind to think it’s all in the head but maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s a real thing that I have just never experienced being made of sterner stuff 😀

Tuesday: Today is a long awaited day, I get a hair cut 😂 not that I am one who regularly has a hair cut just when it gets on my nerves which it is doing at the minute. Two reasons, one it has got a bit long and is annoying when it’s wrapping itself round my neck when I’m sleeping 🙄 and two it is falling out, probably due to the new meds but I think a good cut will help a bit, I’m hoping anyway 🤞

John is working again today, this will probably be the norm now, mostly working with the odd day off here and there, even though he wants to spend more time at home, the phone keeps ringing, well his mobile anyway as the house phone you know about already! I have slung the Hoover round and done a bit of wiping over and topped and tailed the gooseberries I picked the other day ready for the freezer. Topping and tailing is pretty time consuming luckily it’s only gooseberries that need it, blackcurrants don’t really as the ‘bit’ is the remainder of the flower and so perfectly fine to eat, saves a lot of time. I feel tired today and lethargic, I am wondering what to do next and then wondering if I can be bothered 😕

A new law comes into effect next week and we will have to wear face masks in shops, some people already do but I never have, the choice is wear a mask or don’t go shopping 😜 hmmm I think I prefer the latter.

Shelley and the children came over and we dug some potatoes for their dinner later, picked some peas and ate them from the pod 😀 I love to teach the children about where food actually comes from. Josh and I had an interesting conversation about flies eyes and how they have 360o vision, I managed to get him off the subject of superheroes for a minute or two 😜

Wednesday: An overcast but pleasant enough day, some very slight drizzle first thing that soon went. First thing I did was water the greenhouse and feed the torts, then move the grasses I re potted to their position out in the front area. I decided to give the whole area a bit of a tidy up, weeding, sweeping, dead heading cutting back and mowing the grass in the driveway, it’s looking a lot better now. At times I feel overwhelmed by the weeds and amount of tidying it will take to get it looking immaculate, then I remind myself that it’s good for the wildlife and I shouldn’t be too tidy 🙄 It’s been a difficult transition that has taken years to let go, in our old place I opened the garden once a year so everything was immaculate all the time but that is exhausting as well as time consuming. Part of me likes a tidy well turned out garden but another part of me loves the overgrown look, if I could achieve a combination of the two that would be a great result, I will keep working on it 😜 A Gardeners’ work is always a life time road I think, it changes direction sometimes but it is a constant motion when it’s in the blood I reckon 🙂

I have just discovered the medicine wheel, literally just discovered it last night when I joined a balanced life group. I am curious to see how this can help with life and felt drawn to it for some reason so am following. I have talked before about how I see life, in circles, the minute, the hour, the day, the year, after some discussion and thought, the month is not seen the same but as part of a circle that forms the year. Apparently lots of people see these in linear form, so stretching ahead of you, have you ever thought about it? And if you have after reading this, which one are you? If you are a circle person you are much more in touch with your life balance than you think but you can have blockages which is where the medicine wheel comes in, I am looking forward to the discovery of any blockage I have and as a bonus it’s always good to learn something new 😀

In the afternoon the girls came over with the kiddies and we went for a walk up the local lane. I like to keep an eye on a couple of apple trees and a plum tree along there, we have had some very tasty fruit from those trees and they are loaded again this year I am glad to see. We had a few incidents, Josh turned the hose on and got Flo all wet, then on the walk Florence walked into a blackberry runner so had scratches all over her face, when we got back Mia turned the hose on and got Josh wet (that’s Karma we all explained to him 🤪) the only difference was that whereas Josh readily apologised to Flo, Mia has enormous difficulty saying sorry. It ends up with her having a total meltdown, by this time the twins are crying as well, poor Sam, Mia still won’t apologise no matter how much you try and coax her or tell her and then she melts down further because Shelley, Josh and Flo are going to feed the chickens but she is not allowed because she won’t say sorry. The horse pesters Shelley (she doesn’t like horses) so she feeds the hens but abandons the egg collection, Mia goes with Josh, Flo and Shelley to do the front hens, Sam goes to pick the eggs up where shelley couldn’t and the geese arrive and harass Samantha, eventually all situations are resolved but it’s pure carnage when it’s going on 😂 When they have all gone it’s time for a quiet cuppa before I start again.

We all commented on how cold it was for the time of year, it really is very noticeable especially if there is a breeze, it’s going to jump up 6 degrees tomorrow that is quite a difference from one day to the next.

We went to the supermarket this evening and although we have not worn masks before we thought now would be a good time to get used to doing it. I can tell you my future trips will be as little as possible, my glasses kept steaming up so I couldn’t see anything, resulted in keep moving them from my face to my head and that involves touching 🙄 I felt more at ease when I wasn’t wearing one, I may see if there are any delivery slots available yet 😏

Thursday: I did a bit of picking this morning, the usual culprits lol but it does look like I may have found where the little birds get in the fruit cage because I blocked up a hole and this morning I have quite a few raspberries 😀 After doing the picking I cut the lawn but I confess I am a bit tired today, I need to remember that though I have come out the other side of a flare and I am on meds, I still have lupus and I still get tired. So today I a, winky going to rest and hopefully build up some reserve energy for tomorrow. I bought a gardening magazine yesterday so I will read it at my leisure I think 😀

Remember the cuttings I took back in May, well I can report that most of them didn’t take 🤪 but some did 😀 I think I had eight pots of four cuttings and I have ended up with six plants 🙄 still, six free plants is better than none, a couple of them I am really chuffed about, a clematis and a climbing rose 😀 the others are a sage, a japonica, elderflower (nigra). The dahlias I took cuttings from took really easily and I now have four in a pot out the front so hopefully they will flower and I would definitely do those again but some of the other stuff I think is easier to grow from seed/root/dividing, still it was good to give it a go and I had some measure of success.

Friday: A beautiful summer morning, just how summer should be, a fresh but sunny start with the promise of more warmth as the day progresses but not so hot that you can’t function properly 🤣 I started with watering the pots out the front then onto the poly tunnels so that they can cope with any heat, the greenhouse and the pots on the decking and in the cold frames, in fact anything that is in a pot got a watering. I picked a few raspberries and blueberries and there are still a few strawberries to be had, a handful of tomatoes were ready as well. I did pick a coup,e of cucumbers a while back and the rest are still too small to pick but there are plenty of them. I had a good look round and although everything seems slow it is producing, just not in vast quantities, I’m not sure why but others have said the same this year, in contrast I see others who have said it’s a bumper year, I guess it just depends on where you are. I sat with a coffee and watched all the wildlife, goldfinches, blackbirds (pinching the choke berries) a wren that had got herself into the greenhouse and then couldn’t find the bloody great doorway to get back out 😂 I have noticed an increase in butterflies and I aim to get some photos at some point, I still think the smaller insects are a bit thin on the ground which is a worry, normally I would see hoverflies, dragonflies, lacewings etc but they seem to be absent, maybe now the sun is here they will come out to play.

I am feeling less tired today thankfully, I’m not sure what it was, could be anything from air pressure to the Lupus, who knows but today I feel as though I can get on which is great.

Saturday: I spent most of the morning picking, watering and cutting back. I picked all the peas/mangetout I could find and then gave the plants a good cut back. You can still sow seeds at this time of year so I thought as the plants are already growing I might as well just cut the existing ones back and see what’s happens. I have done it with the broad beans and they are flowering again already, hopefully I will get a second crop. I don’t sell peas in the shed, the reason being we use a lot of them, they are labour intensive mind you and you end up with much more empty pod than peas but worth the bother I think. You can make pea pod wine apparently but I have never tried. I picked about 1/2 kg of dwarf French beans, some out for sale and some in the freezer, the more you pick beans and peas the more the plant will produce, once you stop picking they will stop producing so it’s best to keep taking them off. I also,picked courgettes, tomatoes, radish, cucumber, peppers, quite a haul this morning. A bit of watering to keep everything going and then into the kitchen to process it all.

More pod than peas 😜

Sunday: A rainy start so I needn’t have done any watering yesterday 😂 We got the usual jobs done and then went out for breakfast, on the way back we popped in to see Mum and Ken and when we got home Charlie and Macca were here so we sat and had coffee with them. We sat down for a while and then my mobile rang and it was BT complaints dept about the complaint I made last Sunday after getting nowhere. I then spent two and a half hours more on the phone going form dept to dept, the upshot is we have been ‘slammed’ I think that is their term for massive cock up. Basically they disconnected the wrong line and now we are having to spend hours trying to get it reinstated, I reordered it once but that order has been cancelled because they have the line under the wrong address and the other person cancelled the order. I have been from the complaints dept to the faults dept to the ‘I have no idea’ dept and finally to the order dept explaining I have been through all this already and won’t it just happen again, they assured me it won’t, I somehow don’t believe them 🙄 Watch this space………

Consequently we have not done much else today except that John spent half an hour digging up ragwort from the paddocks before it goes to seed. He did start some chainsaw work this morning but the chain snapped, luckily it stayed on the blade otherwise it could have been a day spent at the hospital instead!

Have a good week and as always, stay safe x x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hedgehogs…plural 😀😀 gremlins & the weather 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th July 2020: Oh my days where is the year going 😏 July already and the world is still in the grips of the pandemic. The UK has eased lockdown measures and at the weekend pubs opened their doors for the first time in over three months. We did not rush out to go lol, nor have we rushed to the shopping centres or anywhere else really, a good coffee somewhere nice is treat enough for me 🤪

First thing this morning I watered the poly tunnels and greenhouse, the garden could do with a water but rain is forecast Thursday and I will see how damp the ground is in the morning before I decide if it needs it before then or not. Meanwhile the task of the day was mostly cleaning, dusting, hoovering, polishing and putting things away, the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen all had a going over and at least I don’t have to think about that for the rest of the week. I also made a loaf of bread and an orange and sultana cake, got dinner organised and prepped and made a rice pudding with some milk that needed using up. That took me through to about 2.30, John went to work today but was coming home at 3 so I finished just in time. A quick cuppa and then when John came home we did the eggs.

I had noticed a damp patch on the wall between the spare room and the office and it was getting worse so I got John to have a look at it. This resulted in smashing holes in both walls to find a joint on the heating pipe had been leaking and for a long time by the looks of it 🙄 The whole thing now has to dry out before it can be ‘made good’. While he was sorting that out I did a bit of weed pulling in the garden and cut back some plants that have got much too big and were falling over squashing other plants.

It’s quite cold today I think, the wind has toned down to a stiff breeze but it’s still there, funny weather for July lol.

Nice loaf 😀 you can make the crust softer by placing a clean tea towel over it when it has just come out of the oven, also, always place your cooling loaf on a wire rack otherwise the underside will sweat.

The rat poison we have been putting down is taking effect, I saw one that was obviously dying as flies were beginning to land on it even though it’s head was still moving. Unfortunately Johns gun won’t fire and needs looking at so we couldn’t put it out of its misery. When I went back out to look for it a little later it had gone but it’s definitely not going to last long.

I have spotted the first tomato that is almost ready to pick 😀 it’s beaten the runner beans as they are no where near ready yet 🙄 The ladybird larvae I bought seem to be doing their job although I can’t see any of them nor adult ladybirds but the aphid problem has gone 😀 so they must be there somewhere.

Oh and after abandoning the aubergine plants outside, because they became pest infested and didn’t look like they were going to do much, they actually have baby aubergines on there 😂 Preening and cosseting them is obviously not neeeded just abandon them and voila lol.

Tuesday: I did a bit out in the garden this morning, the weather was nice, overcast but warm enough. I dug up some self set potatoes and some carrots that were in small raised beds, I have now cleared and weeded them ready for something else to go in. I did a bit of hoeing to keep the weeds under control and watered the bean bed as the ground is quite dry. At 10.30 Shelley arrived with the kids and my Mum arrived as we had planned to go for a walk somewhere different. We found a lovely village not too far from us and a lovely riverside walk under the trees. By lunchtime though the weather had turned quite cold, for July it’s freezing lol, not actually freezing obviously but it’s pretty chilly. All that hot, hot weather we had back in spring seems to have disappeared for summer 🙄 We came home for a nice cuppa and a slice of cake and Sam and the kiddies were here so we all sat outside enjoying the cold 🤣

Very excited to tell you that we have not one, but three hedgehogs, all spotted on the same night as John was doing his rounds, in three different areas of the farm, one in the orchard, one near the hay barn and one in the front. Whoo hoo that means they will probably breed or are breeding, this is fabulous news for a declining population. John, who is not normally on board with the whole ecological side of things said, well we have a lot of weeds but it’s definitely worth it 😀 I think I may have converted him 😀😀😀

Wednesday: It has been raining overnight and is still raining this morning, that’s great because the ground was so dry again, the wind really takes the moisture out of the ground when it’s that blowy. It means I don’t have to water anything outside and it will hopefully give the veg and fruit a boost of growth (also the weeds of course 😏) I have been out and watered and fed the poly tunnels and I sowed some autumn cauliflower seeds, hopefully they will produce heads around November time. I don’t normally bother with winter veg but you never know what this pandemic is going to do and so I am preparing just in case.

As it’s wet I decided to give the boot room a bit of a clean up and then have a look in the freezers and sort those out. As I said before the thing about freezing small amounts at a time is that they add up to larger than you think amounts eventually. I was surprised to find that I had a couple of kgs of strawberries in there ready for jam, I had thought I didn’t have many. I also have quite a bit of fruit left from last year, mainly plums but also some blackcurrant so I will make a couple of batches of jam with those. I am just waiting for the jam sugar to arrive as it’s still not available in the shop, although I haven’t tried other shops to be honest so might just be the one I frequent 😜

The top fruit are looking great this year, no scab on the apples or pears and the plums are abundant in all the trees, the walnut tree is loaded and looks like a bumper crop if I can get there before the squirrel and even the cooking apple, that didn’t have anything last year after it’s trim, has some big, healthy looking apples on it., hence the need to clear out last years haul from the freezers lol.

I bought some gram flour which is chick pea flour, I bought it so I can make vegetable pakoras, I think they are great little snacks and an ideal way to get your veg intake up. They will freeze nicely and be ideal for gatherings (when we are finally allowed to have one).

I was supposed to go to the hospital for my consultant appointment today but it was changed to a telephone consultation so I had to wait all afternoon for that, the phone eventually rang about 3.30 and all appears well apart from the rash on my arms. I am using elocon ointment but have only started using it consistently for the last couple of days, if it doesn’t clear up I have to get an appointment with dermatology which apparently will be via video link somehow 🙄 how times have changed but it beats driving up to Oxford with all that traffic and if the system works efficiently enough I imagine they might continue with it.

Thursday: A quick whip round to do the necessary this morning and then a day spent with the grandchildren, Sam and Shelley at the local wildlife park. It was a great day and the only shower we encountered was when we sat down to eat our picnic lunch 😜

Friday: Today has been one of those uphill days 🙄 John was off and after we waited for a delivery to arrive we went out for a coffee and to have a look at a little project we were thinking of doing. The company whose goods we wanted to look at were no longer in the location they once were though their advertising still has that location lol. We eventually found them about 20 miles away and when we got there it was appointment only 😏 though they did give us some leaflets lol. Then on returning home I had a phone call, unusual on my mobile but apparently the house phone no longer works! Yesterday when I returned home I found a letter in the postbox that was dated 1st July informing us that another service provider was taking over our line and to call before 2pm (I got home at 3.30pm) We phoned BT and told them this was incorrect and that we hadn’t authorised this and they said that’s fine they would just cancel it, then today the phone doesn’t work 🤬 John phoned them (outgoing calls work fine) and spoke to someone she said it’s fine and that the change had been cancelled and that she didn’t know why our line won’t work and she will ring us back on the open line, it cut off and we still have no incoming call facility 😜 Then I had a new phone delivered and you know how that goes lol, I thought technology should get easier but no, not really, umpteen passwords and sign ins later and we are nearly set up. Then the tv box decided to pack up or at least unpair with the smart remote, wtf is going on today, gremlins everywhere!

I did do a bit of picking before we went out this morning, peas, mange tout, dwarf beans, a few tomatoes, a few blueberries and some gooseberries. I have left the gooseberries a bit too long and this morning I was in competition with plenty of wasps 🤪 Not only do I need to be careful of the thorns on the Bush but I also need to make sure I don’t grab hold of a jasper in the process, anyone else call them jaspers? I don’t know why we used to call them that or where the term comes from. One thing I have discovered is that wasps are useful after all, we saw one wrestling and winning with a fly, it gathered it up and flew off with it, so they eat flies, a winner in my book. Back to the gooseberries, I don’t want all of them just enough to put in the freezer for winter use, the wasps can have the rest along with the birds as there will be plenty of other fruit to use and I don’t want to be greedy lol.

I still can’t get hold of egg boxes that are not massively hiked in price, it’s disgusting they are three times the price I normally would pay for them. We have asked customers to bring any clean ones back so that we can re use them, we are not short of them at the moment but some of the wholesalers are saying no new stock until November. I might have to look at other ways to package eggs.

It’s still chilly for July, the Sun was doing it’s best to shine today but the breeze is cold, our weather is all over the place at the minute. We had the best weather during the main of the lockdown which was a good thing I suppose, can you imagine what it would have been like if it happened in the middle of winter, I imagine depression would have been at an all time high 🙄 Still, I would like it to warm up a tad, I don’t mind overcast, in fact I prefer it, but some warmth in the air would be most welcome. I was thinking it almost felt like an autumn morning this morning, I hope that doesn’t arrive too soon, this year has been a disaster as it is 😂

We bought one of those ‘ring’ doorbells for the front gate, it’s great, the picture is clear and I get a notification (tinkling noise) when motion is detected by the egg shed. I can see who is about without having to stop what I am doing as I can’t really see from the garden so constantly going out to the front when the dogs bark is a pain as usually they re barking at nothing. If anyone rings the bell I can talk to them from the house lol, I can talk to them even if they don’t ring the bell which might give them a bit of a fright 😜 If you were thinking of getting one I can highly recommend it.

Saturday: The weather is a bit more promising today and certainly slightly warmer 😀 I have been busy, 8500 steps worth of busy by 12 noon, cleaning out the guinea pig run. Total clean out, move the hutch and everything, then onto the quail hut, and then the other guinea hutch. We also moved the other hutch into the light Sussex pen, this is so that the guinea is more secure and we dont have to shut him up at night. The two guineas have now moved to the bigger run and the single guinea is in the hutch in the chicken pen. I don’t really want him to be on his own but introducing other boars is tricky and we dont want a female, so for the time being he is alone. John cleaned out the ducks and the geese and then went off to get a new Perspex roof panel for the guinea run as the wind broke it off awhile back, all in the dry again now. A quick rake over of the orchard ground and it’s all done.

A few views of the garden which is looking full at the moment 😀

Sunday: The weather is set to be fair again today although just like all week long the mornings are chilly, reminiscent of autumn if you ask me. We got the main routine done early on and the John started on cutting down one of the remaining conifers, this has been an ongoing job (a couple of years I think 🙄) the trees are huge with many multiple big branches so it has to be done a bit at a time. If we did it all at once there would be an awful lot to clear up, cut a bit, clear a bit is the best option. We are going to change the entry way to the yard, at the moment the driveway goes to the left and past our back door, it will go to the right of the building and straight to the back which will be a lot easier with less corners to negotiate for any vehicles. That’s the plan, how long it will take to implement is anyone’s guess lol.

I spent 2 hrs of my life on the phone to BT this evening, we couldn’t have any calls coming in, but could phone out, then suddenly the phone rang, it was BT checking the line, great I thought, it’s working again. I tried to call our number just to double check and nope still not working, so I called them and that’s where the trouble all began! It seems, and nobody can really explain why, that we have a different number now 🙄 plenty of discussion and being passed round and in the end we have had to order a new package as if we were transferring to a new property, not only that but we can’t have our old number back yet, unbelievable, especially when they wanted to charge for some things, luckily the ladies on the other end were fabulous and all the charges will be reimbursed, I should think so, none of this is our fault in any way what so ever. It means we are on a temporary number until the end of July and then a different number will be allocated and then after 24hrs I can ring and see if I can get our old number back, though there is no guarantee, we have had the same number for over 35 years, beggers belief. What I also can’t understand is how come it takes so long to sort it out, it didn’t take them long to cancel it 🤪 even though they were not authorised to do so! Technology, fabulous when it’s going right but when it’s not look out 😏

Because it is sunny and I still have a rash on my arms, which I am trying to clear up, I avoid going outside during the mid part of the day, even at 6pm it was hot enough for me to be able to feel the effect on my skin so I have to wait until it’s cool enough to go back out in the evening, it’s a real bind but there are worse things in life I suppose.

Sorry the blog is a tad late, have a great week and as always stay safe this thing is no over by a long shot in my opinion 😏

Posted in Friesland Farm

Windy weather, picking and freezing & John returns home.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th June 2020: It very windy today, I’m sure we don’t normally have winds as strong as this in June 🙄 yesterday was the same, strong enough to damage plants and whip bits off of trees 😏

I spent the night on my own here which is only the second time in 11 years I think. I can be pretty scary as we are a bit out in the sticks but to be honest I was so tired that I went straight to sleep anyhow. This morning I was up early, showered and out to do the animal rounds, I walked round the garden thinking I would do a bit outside but the buffeting from the wind soon put me off 😂 I decided to get a few bits done indoors and at 9am John called to say he could come home. I arranged with Shelley to go and pick him up and by 11am he was back home again. They are not sure why it happened and not sure if it will happen again 😏 but in the meantime we go about life as normally as possible. John had something to eat, a cup of tea, a nice bath and at the moment is having a sleep, you know what it’s like trying to sleep in hospital so he is a bit tired today.

I am still doing the glacé cherries they take 10 days and I had missed a couple of days, which doesn’t matter as long as you continue the process for the number of days rather than in succession, I should be on day 7 but am only on day 6 in the process.

The last topic in last weeks blog was the link to the grow.foodrevolution.org and I did say I would come back to the subject. In my opinion anyone who eats 🙄 has children, grandchildren or cares about their future generations really ought to be looking more closely at how food is grown, what the processes are and why it should change. Remember way back in my blogs I always said I was prepared for an apocalypse of some kind and then the pandemic came. Up to that point even I thought maybe I was a bit barmy but it happened and life was not how we had always known it to be, to me it just confirmed that we shouldn’t be complacent, never mind being alert during a pandemic, we should be alert at all times, or at the very least awake to the problems in the world.

Declining soil fertility is a real worldwide problem, one that you should be aware of, the over use of pesticides, weedkillers and artificial fertilisers has depleted the soil of its vitamins and minerals and turned the vast growing acres into dust bowls with no nutrition in them or at least only enough to last a few decades longer. Years ago farmers would spread muck back onto the fields (and some still do) but the bigger the farm the less likely they are to do this and of course it’s the big farms that provide a vast quantity of the crops we eat in one form or another. Mono cropping is also an issue, vast areas with one crop do nothing for biodiversity, which should be all part of a healthy system. The fruit and vegetables you buy from the supermarkets, that you think are giving you a good healthy diet, are not providing anywhere near the amount of nutrients that they used to 50 years ago because of the reduced soil fertility. What can you do? It’s my firm belief that as individuals all doing our bit we make a strong collective, and that goes for any issue. You don’t need to be an activist or an ‘alternative’ or join a cause, all you need to do is understand the issue and adjust your thoughts and actions accordingly, in my mind it really is that simple.

Getting the fertility back into the soil is relatively easy on a small scale and should be done even in the flower garden, composting your own green waste rather than sending it to the council to compost is a great way to ensure that you know what is going back into the ground. With communal composting schemes they don’t ask you not to put waste that has been treated with weedkiller or pesticides in, that means there is a possibility that residue is left in the end product, the product which is then bagged up to be sold or sold in bulk, makes you think doesn’t it. Even organic compost only has to be organic in origin not organically treated. Once upon a time every garden owner would have had a heap and that would all eventually go back into the garden, it’s my belief that every garden over a certain size (a size that can accommodate a small compost bin) should not be allowed a green bin 😏 (and I did write to our local council to suggest that idea) I’m not sure where it all went wrong when as a nation of Gardeners’ we forgot the basics of gardening!

Tuesday: Not raining, not windy, not sunny, happy me it means I can get on. John did the rounds with me but he was tired afterwards and so went in for a sit down. I got on with some picking, mangetout, peas, carrots, rhubarb, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackcurrants and cherries. I wasn’t going to pick any more cherries but the urge to gather is irresistible 😜 The peas and carrots are for dinner later, the strawberries, blueberries, rhubarb, and raspberries are going into a mixed fruit crumble for pudding 😀 After doing a few other bits we went to town to get a little bit of shopping, but they still don’t have any jam sugar on the shelves, I will have to see if I can get a bulk buy. When we got back John had another rest lol and I prepared a shepherds pie and the crumble for later on. A quick rest and a cuppa and I got on with making some blackcurrant jam, I had some sugar in the cupboard already but will need more before the season is out.

Mixed fruit crumble mix

Be careful what you wish for lol, remember I said I was hoping to get some cherries, well the morello tree is loaded with them and although the black bird is having some there are hundreds 🙄 I have already picked quite a lot and today I couldn’t resist picking some more. The problem with cherries is they do not continue to ripen once picked and you can’t leave them to get the very dark colour (the birds get there first) but they are ripe at the cherry red colour so that’s when they get picked. I have some cooked and in the freezer, the glacé cherries are still on the go and now I have about another kg to do something with. I have told Mum to come and pick some tomorrow if she wants some, I hate to see them wasted.

You can see why they use these vibrant cherries to glacé 😀

Wednesday: First it’s hot, then it’s not, then it is again, one of those days when the jumper is on, off, on, off and sometimes a raincoat is needed too 😜 John did the morning rounds and I got on with some picking, as well as the things I have already been harvesting, I picked peppers, some small courgettes, some beetroot and a very small handful of dwarf beans. The beans were cut up and frozen along with the peas I picked yesterday and I also froze the mixed fruit. I still need to do something with the beetroot, I was thinking of grating it and freezing, that would be quite useful I think. The courgettes and peppers can wait and I may use them tomorrow or put some out for sale. One job I wanted to get done was to repot the yellow raspberry, it was getting a bit big for the pot it was in. When I took it out of the old pot the soil was really dry, even though we had the rain this week so I gave all the rest of the pots of raspberries a good soak. I grow them in pots because the runners take over the garden otherwise although you do get far more berries if they are in the ground, I think I should identify a raspberry patch and let them romp away lol. Mum and Ken came up to pick some cherries and blackcurrants, the timing was not great as it started to rain as they got here and slowly got heavier but with Ken on the cherry tree and Mum on the blackcurrants they soon had enough to be going on with 😀

Thursday: Busy morning for me again, John did the morning rounds then went to have a lie down. I have been working on the decorative side of the garden instead of the growing side. I edged all the lawn and then gave it a cut, cut back some overhanging branches, potted up some self sown plantings and put some bits out for sale. John bought coffee out mid morning and we discussed getting some fence panels for the decking area as the wind blows right across there from a westerly direction. He went off to get some now that the suppliers are open but had to get someone to help him lift them in as he didn’t have the strength on his own 😏 It takes a lot longer than you think to recover from something like that.

The rest of the day was spent pottering, some of the time in the poly tunnel where I dug out the flat leaf parsley, it had got huge and was taking over, I managed to save a root to pot up. I seem to be lacking momentum at the minute, I am ok in the mornings but by mid afternoon I’m flagging lol.

One thing I forgot to mention is that John saw a hedgehog the other night, I know we have them but rarely see them and then you wonder if they have moved on but nope they are still here, all part of my lovely little eco system 😀

Friday: Not sure what kind of a day it’s going to be weatherwise, at the moment it’s overcast and dry but the sky is moody and looks like it is threatening to rain. We could do with a bit, the wind that we have had has dried the ground so quickly and we have stronger winds tomorrow apparently 😏 What happened to summer? I am certain the seasons are shifting, the ants are on the move and they don’t normally start until the beginning of August but I think the next lot of warm sunny weather and they will be flying.

I have been doing various things this morning, picking mangetout and broad beans, then some sour cherries to put out for sale. I picked a big bunch of basil which is now in the dehydrator and smells amazing, I prepped everything I picked ready for the freezer, I am only getting small quantities at the minute but they soon become a big batch if you do it daily. I find open freezing the best way to do them and I have started mixing up the veg and fruit as I think I would be more inclined to use it like that besides it makes it easier for soups and stews. I pulled a few baby turnips, one I grated along with beetroot and carrots chopped a baby pepper and that with a hard boiled egg will be my lunch, all home produced 😀 I potted up a few bits I dug up in the polytunnel yesterday, some bits of mint, flat leaf parsley and aquilegia which had been growing in there for a couple of years. I seem to have a few things that have self set or have been sown but got huge and are happily growing in there but I really need to have a clear out as there is less and less space for the things I want to grow. I want to have a go at pak Choi (I have sown seeds which have come up nicely) this winter and also get some more salad leaves sown to take us through the end of the summer and into autumn. Looking at the weather forecast there is less than 50% chance of rain, much less at times, so I’m thinking I will have to water some of the veg growing outside, the courgettes and patty pan seem to be taking ages to get going so a bit of extra watering might help boost them along a bit. Really I should weigh everything I pick and add it up at the end of the season, that would give me more of an idea of how much is actually produced I think. Picking it daily and then freezing some, eating some or putting some out for sale, it doesn’t seem like a lot bit it probably adds up to much more than I think.

It struck me when eating my lunch that we probably eat as well as folks who dine in a fancy restaurant, without the price tag 😋 The presentation isn’t as good I grant you that, but it’s all fresh, hand picked and prepared, organic, yep we feast like kings here 😀 It also occurred to me that the phrase, you are what you eat, is not strictly true 🙄 I, we, have eaten fresh homegrown produce for 11 years, the ten years or so before that I bought organic and yet I ended up ill, I would probably be worse if it were not for the good food but it means that environmental factors play a part as well, in that I would include stress. Stress plays a very large part in your health as far as I can see, I was the person who worried about things, even little things and the big things, well they sent me into overload lol. These days I am more of a ‘couldn’t give a toss’ type 🤪, I learnt not to worry about things that hadn’t happened (nor were likely to) and only to worry and then deal with things that did actually happen. That’s a far better way to live and certainly better for your health, so if you recognise yourself in there take a tip from me, stop worrying. Be kind to others but be kind to yourself as well, Life is too short to spend it worrying.

Rain stopped play in the afternoon but at least I won’t have to water tonight 😀

Saturday: I have done very little outside today, picked some greens for the Guineas and clean out the water buckets for the horses and that’s about it. I spent a lovely morning with Charlie at a wedding dress shop trying on dresses, Charlie not me obvs lol. She was the shops first appointment since the lockdown and it was by appointment only 😀 Afterwards we went to a local independent coffee shop where the new normal is to give your details, when ordering for sitting in, so that they can track and trace if necessary, social distancing in place and it all seems to work well. Considering more shops and the pubs are allowed to open today, the town was still not very busy, I feel this is all going to take longer than we first thought to get back to the old normal 😏

Sunday: A very windy but dry day today. John put up the fence panels around the decking area, it was to hopefully reduce the wind but it has still blown the chairs around 🙄 I did some picking again this morning, rhubarb, mange tout, broad beans, dwarf beans, courgette and a few blueberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries. The it all had to be sorted and either put out for sale or prepped for the freezer. We went round to see Mum and Ken and have a coffee, not sure what else we have done today lol. I need to organise myself a bit better to get jobs done as I have slacked a bit lately. One job is to sort the freezers out, with the picking prepping and freezing I tend to just find any space for it to go but then everything is all over the place and I have no idea what I have. I usually use sacks in the bottom of the big freezers, one for veg, one for fruit at least that way I know which sack to look in, I might not know what is actually in there, but I know if it’s one or the other 😜 The white woven sacks (from the builders merchant) are ideal if anyone is thinking of doing it as they don’t stick to the side of the freezer at all.

Have a great week, I think the weather is going to improve, hopefully this wind will do one 😋 Stay safe, stay alert.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Curveball INCOMING……………🙄

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 22nd June 2020: And here we are back round at Monday again, still in the throes of a pandemic but hopefully coming out the other side slowly. We have had a constant day today, plenty of jobs and constantly busy. We started off with a bit of tractor work which John did, dragging the paddocks and then he decided to roll them, I told him it was too dry but he didn’t listen. When he came back in he said ‘the paddocks are too dry’ 🙄 I did a fair bit of picking, mostly veg for dinner tonight but also fruit. Most of our meal is home grown everyday at the minute and what isn’t home grown is from other smallholders 😀 Seasonal eating means strawberries and raspberries for pudding every day 😜 I’m not complaining. I picked cherries again this morning and the morello cherries are ripe, and the birds haven’t eaten them so far, so I picked the ones that were ready and started the process of glacé cherries. It’s a ten day process but well worth doing if you fancy a go. Picking and processing begins in earnest now for winter stores and any future pandemic 🤪

After a spot of lunch and a cuppa the next batch of chickens arrived, John sorted them out while I messaged everyone who had them on order. Then time to feed the chickens and collect the eggs ready to put them out and as soon as that was done customers began to arrive to collect their chickens. We squeezed dinner in between arrivals and then Samantha arrived to give Mia the dog a haircut. She has such a thick coat and with the temps set to climb over 30 this week it seemed like a good time to get it off for her, she is now scalped and bathed and I have ordered her a new bed as patch keeps pinching her nice plush one.

A little bit of work in the garden once it had cooled right down, in for a hot chocolate before we ago off to bed, the alarm is set for 5am so I can get some work done before it gets too hot tomorrow.

Tuesday: Up at the crack of sparrows 😜 actually the sparrows have been up for at least an hour already lol. Straight out in the garden to get some picking and weeding done. I managed to get another lot of morello cherries, last year the crows stripped the tree bare but this year they have left them alone and I only have a single blackbird helping himself so I don’t mind that. I also picked mangetout, rhubarb and artichoke, I sorted out a few plants to put out for sale, did the hoovering indoors and then we nipped out to do a few bits in town. Now it’s very hot out there and I can feel the uv rays causing itching on my arms already so it’s 12noon and I am done outside as there’s no more shade for me to furtively move about in 🤪

Generally any indoor time I spend looking up recipes or doing a bit of research on various subjects, or cooking etc.

A few more chicken customers this evening, dinner then pop to the shop to buy bread and come out with two bagfuls of shopping 🙄 pop round to Shelley and Martin for a quick cuppa and then home.

Wednesday: Up very early today as it is going to be hot and I want to get a bit done before I have to come indoors. Plenty of hoeing and weeding, some pricking out (spring cabbage ready for winter planting) some picking, more mange tout and cherries. Then indoors to stone the cherries and freeze them the mange tout went out for sale, do what needs to be done to the glacé cherries and make some blackcurrant sauce for ice cream. Tidy up and put a few bits away, put some washing out, Hoover the boot room and clean the dog beds, lunch. I saw a rat while I was putting food out for the torts so John got his air gun out and I sat with him for a while to see where they are coming from and going to, I have left him out there waiting ………..I doubt very much he will get any, he is far too impatient and keeps moving about, not quietly either 🙄

Thought I would take a photo of my arm and show you what just getting caught in the sun for a few minutes at a time does to me. You can see small raised bumps, that continues up my arms and is really itchy especially when I get hot. This occurs even when I am trying to spend as much time out of the sun as possible because even doing that I have to nip out to get the washing in or go to the gate and get a delivery, even in the car to appointments is exposure. The more I am exposed the worse it gets. At the moment I have the butterfly rash on my face as well, luckily that does not itch its just annoying as it looks like I’ve had one too many 😜 The itchy bumps come even if I have myself covered so the uv rays penetrate clothing easily and if I sat out in it my legs, back, neck and chest would all be affected, great isn’t it, that is why I avoid the sun as much as possible, even factor 50 can’t protect me enough. My medication is supposed to bring my immune system down to a ‘normal’ level in line with everyone else but it never seems to work like that with sun exposure. In a nutshell, I don’t do sunshine 🤪

Thursday: It’s bloody hot lol. It’s our 37th Wedding Anniversary today not that we can do a lot of celebrating 🥳 Up early got the outside work done and then it was blood tests for me, I had to wear a face mask this time which is something new and FYI your glasses steam up every few seconds 🙄 Then we got a takeaway coffee from a local cafe that has re opened, they do particularly good coffee and we sat out on the pavement (not actually on the pavement) and watched the town for about 15 minutes. It’s Market day and although it was busier than it has been of late, it’s not anywhere near as busy as it used to be before the pandemic. We popped in to see Mum and Ken where we had more coffee and then back home to spend the rest of the day inside in the cool. John nipped out late afternoon to do a sink for someone but that’s pretty much it, just waiting now for the weather to break a bit, it will probably hammer down and I still won’t be doing much outside, I should give up really, everything seems against me getting any outside work done lately.

Friday: Getting pretty peed off with the weather now, it was supposed to break and rain today but again we have wall to wall sunshine, John has been off this week but it’s been too hot to do much and I wanted to get a quick trip to a local nursery or the garden centre in but that has also not been possible. Most of the areas are obviously outside and by the time they are open it’s too hot for me to be walking about in it, so I’m sulking instead 😏 We got the morning jobs done in the cool of the day and cleaned all the furniture on the decking. We put the decking under a wild cherry tree, big mistake, at this time of year not only are the cherries falling but the birds sit up there eating them and do what birds do when something goes in one end 🙄 The cherries are nearly all gone now and tonight we are having champagne and nibbles with my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband, we were all supposed to be going on the cruise together and so I thought it would be nice to at least get together and lament 🤪

The new egg customers that were so desperate to have eggs during the lockdown appear to have abandoned us 🙄 that’s fine because it means that for our long standing loyal customers there should always be eggs for them but it does make you think about how fickle people are. John and I discussed the idea that if a second lockdown came we would only allow regular customers to have eggs we just need to work out how we would do it.

Saturday: Life has a habit of throwing you a curveball every now and then and that is exactly what happened last night. John started having chronic stomach pains and eventually was taken to A & E where he was kept overnight and today has been admitted to a ward. About 20 years ago he had the same problem over a period of four years and they didn’t know what it was until eventually it was so bad one day that they just opened him up to have a look. What they found was a condition called interception which is where the bowel folds in on itself causing a narrowing of the bowel, they think this was triggered buy the fact that he cannot digest mushrooms and they were lodged firmly in the narrowing. He hasn’t had mushrooms though so at this point I have no idea what has caused it this time 🙄 Obviously it’s not great timing with the whole pandemic, the system is much different to what we are used to, for a start you deliver them to the door of A & E and that’s it, you can’t go in, you can’t visit and so consequently most of the time you have no idea of what is happening 🙄 We managed to get through and find out what was going on at lunchtime today that’s a long time to wait with no news. As you can imagine, today I have done the morning rounds and that is it, I am waiting near the phone in case I get an update, I will do the afternoon rounds later but not much else will get done today. The covid distancing rules went out the window as my sister and brother in law took John to hospital and later Charlie and Macca came here to stay the night with me 🙄

Sunday: John is still in hospital though having spoken to the nurse on several occasions I can report that he is no longer in pain and is declining pain relief so that’s progress. He has had several investigations and at the moment they are waiting to see what happens when he eats, all being well they are thinking of discharging him tomorrow, we wait and see.

Charlie stayed over again last night and helped out with things this morning, there are still jobs to be done, feeding, watering, picking etc. Once everything was completed I sorted out the veg and shelley arrived so I gave her the cherries to process 😀 meanwhile I made something I saw on a Facebook feed and it intrigued me, a recipe that was hundreds of years old, very simple and a delicious healthy snack which is why I wanted to give it a go. Dried dates, soaked in boiling water for half an hour, pistachios ground up to make a powder and a tiny amount of butter, that’s it. Add half the pistachio powder to the soaked dates (discard the water first) add the melted butter and fork them together then roll small amounts in the remaining powder, voila, easy, nutritious and healthy snacks 😀 You thought power packed healthy food was a modern thing didn’t you, turns out our ancestors knew about them all along lol.

Mersu

That’s about it from me this week although I am all fired up after watching a film that I think everyone should watch if they eat, and that’s most of us isnt it. https://grow.foodrevolution.org/ watch this space I will be writing more about this once life has got back to some sort of normality.

Have a great week, stay safe x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Ladybird larvae, picking begins & pyramid orchids.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th June 2020: A few bits of catch up news that I have forgotten to update on: I am easily making 10,000 steps a day on my Fitbit 😀 so at least I know I’m not lazy lol. The chive flower vinegar is at last in the bottle, now just need some chips to try it out on 😂 I’d forgotten that I had taken a photo of the muck pile gates as they were and so I can show you a before and after picture.

Last night I ordered some ladybird larvae lol and now I have to make the brassica cage a des res for them hoping they will stick around. I am hoping to get a bug hotel that I can put up for them to hibernate in come winter. A bit of research tells me it’s better to get the larvae than the ladybirds themselves as the larvae will at least stick around long enough to eat a few thousand aphids before flying off 😂

An early start and a busy morning, picking mange tout, broad beans, asparagus and rhubarb, at last we are starting to get a decent return from the plants. Though I have heard people talking about their raspberries and courgettes, mine have not started producing yet, some small fruits but nothing more. I seem to have been constantly on the go but I can’t remember what else I have been doing, some weeding and planted a couple of small plants, feeding the rabbits/guineas all the weed pickings, a bit of watering, then indoors to do a bit of cleaning, all sparkly and fresh and time for a sit down I reckon.

I have ordered some things that hang in trees to keep the birds away from my fruit this year, I am also hoping it frightens off the crows. We have about 30 of them each morning squawking and cackling all morning long, they come for the crane fly larvae in the paddocks but roost in the trees making a right old racket.

Thinking about the easing of lockdown measures and not much has really changed for me, I’m not bothered by the shops opening, I don’t spend my time shopping for clothes and goods etc, the only joy will be to go out for something to eat preferably at a good garden centre 😜

The strawberries are coming thick and fast, not enough to make jam yet and besides we are eating them just as fast. I was going to make a French strawberry cake for pudding later but then I thought we might as well eat them as they are, almost 😀 they are sprinkled with truvia not sugar and I have taken a liking to having mine with marscapone 🥰 try it, delicious, fresh, home grown, seasonal, doesn’t get much better than that as far as I am concerned 😀

Just had the biggest rumble of thunder, I love a good thunderstorm and a bit of lightening too 😀 An hour or so later and we haven’t had any more thunder but we have had a good dose of rain 🌧 😀 no watering for me tonight except that I had already done the front lot about 2 hours ago 😂 Ah well it won’t hurt for them to have extra and the rate it’s coming down it will definitely fill the water tanks.

Tuesday: A misty morning after the rainfall last night and the weather is going to be humid 😜 with outbreaks of sunshine and possible rain showers, perfect for the garden not so much for us lol. The ladybird larvae arrived, that was pretty quick, I opened them up and there were lots of teeny weeny larvae in there, supposed to be 100 but I don’t know if quality control had to count them 😂 anyway they come on shredded paper and you tip them into a little bag that is provided and place the bag near where you want the larvae to eventually move to. So at the moment they are in the bag underneath a big cabbage leaf in the brassica cage. When I came back I and looked at the box they came in there were one or two still in there so I took them to the greenhouse and let them go in the pepper plants, I have had to keep wiping greenfly off these plants each morning. That’s what I spent the first half hour doing this morning, that and moving the aubergine plants outside. I keep trying aubergine each year but this year I think will be the last time, I have tried everything I can, various growing mediums and conditions and this year I bought grafted plants (they are not cheap) but although they flower, the flower just drops off, I even hand pollinated them with a paintbrush to no avail. They also seem to attract multiple pests, greenfly and whitefly particularly, so they have been put outside to either fail completely or by some miracle produce at least one fruit we will see which. I picked some mangetout, with the rain and sun there will be plenty of pickings every day, I also picked a few broad beans, I haven’t checked anything else yet but as the sun is now out and on the garden it will have to wait until later on or some cloud cover lol. I did check on the cherries this morning and so far so good the birds have not been at them, I am hoping he sun today will turn enough of them for me to pick a bowl full. Everything comes at once which is why you need methods of preserving the produce, I noticed there are a few raspberries to be picked and plenty of strawberries again today.

We have had a bad run with the rabbits we got back at the beginning of the year, all three came from the same place but all three have died, the last one died yesterday, he has not been anywhere near the other two so it’s not infectious and he looked completely healthy just like the others did and yet died so I’m thinking it’s got to be genetic. I know the chap we got them from and the same problem with all of his but he didn’t have this until after we had got them for him so he wasn’t to know.

The compost delivery came so that enabled me to get on with some potting on, I have a fair bit to do, shrubs and flowers I had put into pots and now need bigger pots, trees I have been growing need bigger pots before I decide what to do with them, seedlings that need pricking out and then there is the mushroom compost for soil conditioning.

I got a bug house from a friend who’s husband is making them and then they sell them for the Air Ambulance charity 😀 I am hoping the ladybirds will move in a hibernate over winter and then be around for next years growing season 🙄

A couple of things to report, firstly, I am impressed with the biodegradable membrane/mulch it really does keep the moisture in, I only wish I had got it early enough to plant into rather than having to cut round but will def get this at the beginning of the season next year. Secondly, the orchids are back 😀 and this time there are more 😀😀 I deliberately left some long grass around the edges of the front paddock as I knew that’s where they grow and success they are back. Another thing to report is that if you wear your Fitbit on the mower and the ground is rough it counts the bumps as steps 😂😂😂 Another thing I want to share is the pinching out of side shoots on tomatoes, I do this, I guess most tomato growers do it to. What I usually do is discard the bits but you can plant them up and they will grow, so this time I thought I would have a go and just pushed them into soil with the basil I have growing. I think they are taking 😀 that means that if you buy tomato plants normally, you really only have to buy one plant, wait patiently for the side shoots and pinch them out, there are always plenty of them. I have also done it with the indigo rose tomato as that is the only one I have bought the others have all been raised from seed, watch this space, Im hoping that one takes as well, more bang for your bucks as they say plus it means I could buy a few different varieties and not have hundreds of seedlings just a few plants instead, worth remembering for next year.

Pyramid Orchid

I went outside after tea to collect some Huechera seed, sow some into a pot and save some for sowing next year if the pot ones don’t come up. John decided that we should top the front paddock, taking off the heads of any plantain etc that’s when I noticed the orchids, we then did the small back paddock again leaving a large patch in the middle long, there were plenty of insects flying around so I thought it best to leave them something to feed on. Apparently we are due two inches of rain tomorrow so getting it cut beforehand is a good idea, at least the rain we get will be used by the grass and not the weeds.

I picked strawberries, blackcurrants and a couple of cherries, the rest are not ripe enough yet. The Blackcurrants are not as prolific as they were last year, I had to cut it back quite hard last year as the greenfly decimated the new growth, this year they don’t have greenfly, you never know what is going to happen from year to year. I don’t mind there not being that many as I think there are still some in the freezer I can use if I need to. I froze 500g of the strawberries as there were not enough in one picking to make some jam and they will spoil if I leave them too long. I picked a few raspberries that were ready too, I have sun gold raspberries as well as the regular red ones. I had three of these canes but I think I have lost one over winter so come autumn I will be propagating these as they are very reliable and more importantly taste lovely. I think it will be a real novelty to make jam with them don’t you? But I need enough to be able to do that so I need to increase what I have already.

Wednesday: Ooo I’ve had a lovely morning so far, I have been concentrating on bulbs, that is pots of bulbs that I planted up and now need thinning out. I ordered the bulbs a couple of years ago and just shoved them into big tubs, they grew well but not what I had intended to do with them, I just ran out of time or enthusiasm or something. Now I have the compost and lots of big pots thanks to my brother, I spent the morning sorting them all out. I now have smaller decorative pots with a few bulbs in and lots of little pots with bulbs in ready for selling on next year, I have had to use an old cold frame that has environmesh on it to keep them in as I’m not sure if the squirrels will eat them otherwise. There are ranunculus, tulips and English bluebells and probably some others but I will have to wait until they come up next spring to see exactly what they are. One more tub has yet to flower so I will leave that until they have and then sort them out too. I picked a few mange tout but nothing else this morning, there will be a good picking every day from them for a while, keep picking is the key, the more you pick the more they will produce.

You may read my blog and think, she spends a lot of time in the garden, well yes I do 😀 it’s what I love doing, it’s the lifestyle choice we made that enables me to be able to do exactly that. we made sacrifices along the way and we have had our struggles just like everyone else but eventually we got there. During the lockdown John was beginning to see why I enjoy it so much, it’s a more relaxed pace of life and certainly much less stressful than out in the workplace which I never really fitted into, I love being my own boss, making my own choices and mistakes with only me to account too. I love having my time to do what I want to be able to do (on the whole) if I want to do something I will, if not I won’t, having said that there are things that have to be done of course especially when you have animals, they come first and foremost. I don’t make a lot of money at it, it’s not about the money for me, never has been, it’s about quality of life, we only get one shot at it might as well spend it as close to how you would like it as you can 😀

Sam, Shelley and the children came round in the afternoon for garden time, the kids spent a bit of time running of some energy in the front paddock, it’s great that we have the space for them to run around especially in times like these. 4pm and still no rain yet though just as I am typing the thunder starts lol.

Thursday: Rain and plenty of it, I woke at 4.30am and could hear torrential rain and then when I woke again at 6.30 it’s was still going, 11.45 and it still raining though a steady rate rather than heavy and it’s supposed to move slowly on during the course of the afternoon. It is a very welcome decent load and will do the garden good, the veg will come on a treat now 😀

As working out side is not an option I decided to tackle the office 🙄 Paperwork which should have been sorted, has been dumped on the desk for the last 12 weeks, the room itself has had stuff just dumped in it with the idea of sorting it at some point and today is that point. So I spent the morning going through some of the bits, stuff for the bin, stuff for the charity shop, stuff to sell on and then there is stuff I have no idea what to do with so it goes back to where it came from 😜 I call it the office because it’s where I go to do paperwork and it has a desk but it also has the Hoover in there, some coats, a cupboard full of bits and pieces, photographs, Christmas stuff, children’s toys and books, I should re name it the multi room really 😂

Friday: It was still drizzling first thing but gradually the day improved. I did some picking, the rain has ramped up the growth so I will probably spend many hours picking from here on here. Mangetout, raspberries and strawberries this morning and cherries this afternoon. I cooked the cherries with sugar and cornflour to make a pie filling that I will freeze and use at a later date. We have plenty of fresh fruit for puddings at the minute so need need for pies and crumbles much to Johns disgust lol. Once it had dried up a bit more I did some hoeing, the weeds will also ramp up after the deluge especially if the sun comes out as well. I was showing someone round the garden this afternoon when they said ‘oh is that a lizard I just saw, or a baby snake’ 🤪 I guess breeding has been successful for my grass snake and now there are babies, not sure what I think about that 😂 as long as I don’t find any while weeding by hand I will be fine 🙄

John came home at lunchtime today and has a new plan for the hens at the back, he is moving them to the side paddock next to the others. First he had to go and get a battery for the tractor from the scrapyard and he also refelted the duck house roof (the wind ripped off the last lot) and then cleaned the ducks out as the rain lashed in there making a right old mess. It makes sense to move them to the side as I am out there more often than not during the day and in the evening we can nip out and check at intervals hopefully frightening the fox away.

Saturday & Sunday: I forgot to make any notes yesterday so I will have to try and remember what we did lol. John moved the chicken hut that was up the back, down to the side so that we can put the hens back out and keep an eye on them 👀 He burnt a bit of rubbish which now we have had some rain was safe to do. I can’t remember what I did lol but I was busy 😂

Solstice blessings to you all,. Today has also been a busy day, mostly with Father’s Day visits, I do a couple of hours in the garden this morning hen we went to get a coffee, pop in to see Ken, back here to see Samantha, then off to see Charlie and back here again to see Shelley, a full day of fatherly love 💕 This evening we had someone taking care of our disappearing chicken problem 😉 which I can report was mission accomplished so now at least John doesn’t have to spend all evening guarding them. Now we just have a couple of rats and a few dozen crows to deal with, the crows will hopefully move on soon, they are after the crane flies in the ground, once the hatch into daddy long legs they will move on to another food source and as long as it’s not my fruit trees I don’t mind. The rats, and I saw one this morning in the light Sussex pen, have been given a hearty meal 😜 I don’t like poison on the whole but they are being a bit of a nuisance and I don’t really want hoards of them. My elderly rabbit died sometime over night and by the time I got to her this morning the rats had eaten her eyes out, urgh horrible creatures. I thought the run was rat proof but obviously not so we will need to look that over and see what else we can do, though rats can chew through concrete so I’m not sure there is anything that will some them except poison or shooting them.

John has another week off this week coming, we were due to go on holiday on Tuesday and obviously that’s not happening now so he might as well make himself useful at home 😀 Have a great week and as always, stay safe.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Lemon curd, routine jobs and another fox problem 😏

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday June 8th 2020: Its just gone midday and I have sat down for a sandwich and a breather, I have had a bits and pieces morning doing whatever needed doing. So far I have weeded the brassica, sweetcorn and squash beds, picked asparagus, mange tout, broad beans and rhubarb, poo picked biscuits paddock and done their water buckets, gone on the hunt for randomly laid eggs, given the boot room a quick clean over, repotted some Solomans seal, and sowed some little gem lettuce in the big tunnel, not a bad mornings work. Time for a quick rest before starting again this afternoon.

Lemon curd, remember I said I can’t make it, well someone in the family can 😀 Samantha made a pavlova for Johns afternoon tea party and used the yolks to make lemon curd, first time she had ever tried it and success, it taste amazing, I had it on toast for breakfast this morning, I am very impressed 😀😀 and a little jealous lol.

Samantha’s amazing lemon curd 🥰

Just as soon as I sit down, as always, someone wants me lol, and they always arrive in multiples, must be a radar system somewhere that lets people know I have a spare minute 😜

It’s the season of pests 😜 they are upon us in their millions and I have several infestations. The one I am most concerned about is in the brassica cage, the small plants are covered in whitefly, luckily I had ordered some neem oil (I still couldn’t find the other bottle) I made up a solution and sprayed everything. Neem is a great organic pesticide, it interrupts the hormone system of the fly and they ‘forget’ to eat and breed 🙄 Buy a good cold pressed oil, mix it with some mild liquid soap, add water and spray away, it definitely works 😀 N.B don’t use neem if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant as it can interfere with your hormones!

Tuesday: It’s 4.30pm and I thought I would come in and write a bit up, typically it’s been pretty cloudy today which is great 😀 so at about 3.30 I decided to turn on one of the soaker hoses and lo and behold the sun has been out ever since, can’t win 😜 Other than pottering again I have made bread and I made a batch of biscuits, choc chip, lemon curd and plain as Mum and Ken came up for a coffee and a sit in the garden mid morning which was lovely. It’s nice to be able to sit and take the time to enjoy the garden and surroundings rather than continuously working in it lol. 3pm and it’s down to me today to do the egg collecting and feeding, it didn’t take long for Johns work day to go from 9-3 to 7.30-5.30 did it 🤔

The ground is still incredibly dry, the rain we had was great for filling up the tanks and giving the ground a good soaking but a couple of days later and it’s as dry as a bone again already. We had a good conversation about compost, especially the stuff you get from the garden centres, over the last few years it has got worse rather than better I think, you find all kinds of bits in it including plastic 😔 We have a big compost heap and make quite a bit of our own that and the horse the horse muck will cover the veg beds in winter but it still leaves me short for seed growing and potting on so I think I will invest in a tonne of mushroom compost, I have tried the tonne bags of multipurpose but again it’s not that good. I was reading an article the other day and people have reported weedkiller damage to their crops from organic compost, the upshot is that compost can be called organic because it comes from organic material and not from an organic source that hasn’t been treated with weedkiller, seriously, you have to know the ins and outs of advertising to understand exactly what you are getting 🙄 like everything else it’s a minefield.

We spent most of the evening outside, John replaced the pump that sends the rain water over to the garden, the old one kept randomly coming on even when the tap wasn’t turned on and then wouldn’t turn off. Sometimes it wouldn’t come on at all until you weren’t ready for it then it suddenly spat out at you 🤪 meanwhile I did some watering and then went round and cleaned out and filled up all the water buckets for every pen and the horses. We let the geese out thinking they might be hungry as the grass is looking a bit brown in places but they just decided to ‘trev’ around the farm causing chaos, not that hungry then 🙄

Wednesday: We started off the day by me asking ‘what day was it’ and John replying it don’t know’ bodes wells doesn’t it lol. John did the animals while I collected all the burnable rubbish up and burnt that before doing anything else. After that I moved onto sorting out the light Sussex, three hens had gone broody and we had three chicks hatch although there were about twenty eggs. I would have left them except this morning the eggs had been scattered and one of the chicks was dead. In order to sort the situation I have separated one hen and the two chicks, they are now in a hut in the front paddock, the other two were determined to sit back on an empty nest (the remaining eggs I removed as they had gone cold) so I have shut the hit up and they can’t get back in. Hopefully they will begin to lay eggs again as we could do with them. Out of the egg I removed only three had anything in them the rest were all empty, sadly the embryos were all dead as they had been left to get cold. I hope I have put the hen who sat the longest with the chicks, I studied the comb to see which one of them had stopped laying the longest, she definitely hasn’t laid for a while, the other two, who have only jumped on the bad wagon in the last week, still had a tinge of red on their combs, not scientific but it’s all I have to go on. Any of the hens would look after the chicks and the chicks will go to any of the hens for warmth so it doesn’t matter in that respect, they don’t recognise mumma only warmth, food and water.

After that was sorted I did a bit of picking, some mangetout and the asparagus has livened up since the heavy rain so I can just about get a picking or two out of it before the season ends. It was coming through spindly so I had thought I would leave it now for the year but suddenly some nice fat spears came up, not going to waste those 😀 Then it was onto watering the raspberries (in pots) and giving them a feed, I also tied in the stems that are long enough, it’s surprising how heavy the branches get when they are fully loaded with berries, they can drag right down on the ground if not secured upright, which spoils them. Then onto pruning the apricot tree back a bit, the strong wind we had blew nearly all the young fruit off and so I figured I might as well prune. I am not going to get any fruit this year and I needed to raise the canopy a little and take out any branches that were not needed. The tree is diseased, it has canker but as it’s the only fruit tree there it shouldn’t pass it on to any others around the place as long as I am careful. By that I mean clearing the ground of cuttings and debris and not composting them but burning them and making sure I thoroughly clean my pruners with alcohol after using them. The tree can still produce fruit for the time being and it provides some shade and a place for the birds so until it gets too bad to keep it can stay. All the while when working in the garden I am acutely aware that there is a three foot snake somewhere 😜 at one point I give myself a right fright, thinking I had just stepped on it I looked down and realised it was just the soaker hose 😅 I finished that it started to rain, just a spit to begin with then a steady drizzle, at that point which was nearly lunchtime I decided to come in and whizz the hoover round before having a bite to eat.

Thursday: John is off today and tomorrow and so we started off doing the morning rounds and then he went into the paddocks as his job for the next few days is pulling all the docks/stingers etc, (I give him all the best jobs 😂) Meanwhile I did some hoeing and weeding in the veg garden and I sowed some rows of edible flowers, borage, nasturtiums and viola, it will be different using those in salads, they are packed with vitamins and minerals, good for you as well as pretty 😀

In the afternoon we went to a local nursery (needed a plant fix 🤪) I went with a specific area in mind but as usual what happens is I get sidetracked by what I see lol. The area is in the front compound and it is where we used to keep a trailer, it is also where hardcore would be delivered and then wood chip, the hardcore is pretty compacted over years of being there and so it’s difficult to dig into. We covered it with a layer of wood chip back at the beginning of the lockdown and I have planted some bits into it but they have to be small as I can’t get a trowel in deep enough. I want the area to be for bees and pollinating insects so I have planted some shasta daisies, some yellow daisies, toadflax and campanula, I did plant some cosmos but that got eaten by woodlouse I think. I planted some dog roses near the fence at the back and at the end of last year I put a holly in but it’s still fairy small. The plants I got from the nursery were coreopsis, scabious, nepeta and sedum, I have planted these into pots and tubs because they are quite big plants and I will never get them into the ground there, hopefully some of them will self seed. I also scattered poppy/love in a mist seeds but I’m not sure they will come up or if they will get eaten as well. What I got sidetracked by was a lovely little huechera that I hadn’t seen before, ballon flower which I have never grown before and another plant that at the moment I can’t recall the name of. All the plants are good big plants with plenty of roots so most of them I divided into four, that means I paid £6 each for them but once established I end up with £24 worth 😀, that’s a win, win as far as I am concerned. From the sedum I took bits that had already formed roots and potted up those as well, once established I can put them out for sale and cover my costs.

Friday: I have joined the Fitbit society and bought one for myself, I want to see just how many steps I do in a normal day plus it monitors my heart rate which is a bit jumpy at times, I think this is due to the meds but I can keep track and mention it to the consultant if needs be, I can track my sleep to see exactly what sort of a night I am getting as at the moment I feel like I am waking up all the time, plus it will spur me on to drink more water and up my steps if I need to, don’t want to get lazy 😂 It’s nearly 2pm and I have done nearly 8,000 steps apparently 🙄

The rest of the morning was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, John is off again and on paddock weed duty, I have done some watering and a little bit of picking as well as doing some of the feed rounds this morning and walking into the village to post a letter first thing. Shelley and the children came for a cuppa in the garden.

When they left we had some lunch and then I planted a couple of courgettes that I picked up yesterday (I only had yellow ones to grow from seed and so bought a coup,e of green ones as well) Then walking past a little raised bed approx 2 x 3ft which had self set potatoes in it, I realised that they were not doing very well, they got frosted early on and never really seemed to recover, now they have blight so the best thing to do is pull them up and use the bed for something else. It was not a bad haul of potatoes considering, there is enough to feed us for a few days at any rate and the bed can now be used for something else, I will need to have a think about what to put in there.

Self set potatoes, not bad for no effort at all 😀

Saturday: Eat, sleep, work repeat lol, seems like a lot of what we do is the same over and over 😜 Today was no exception, more weed pulling duty for John, more weeding and picking for me, a quick trip to a local landscapers to order a big bag of compost and another of mushroom compost. I need to use so much of it to repot everything it was costing a fortune buying the smaller bags, I should have done it in the beginning but with everything shut down it was impossible.

The ‘June drop’ is happening, that’s where some of the fruit on the trees drops off, don’t be alarmed it’s perfectly normal and good for the tree (as long as you don’t just have one apple or plum on there 😜) the next job will be to remove some more of the fruits if they are clustered together, this will help the remaining fruit get bigger and better, there will be less chance of disease with a good air flow between fruits.

John went out to put the birds to bed and I went to shut the poly tunnel and greenhouse door, I could hear a fox in the field next to us. John said it took two hens, he couldn’t get to them in time and it was as big as our dogs 🙄 Bloody pain in the arse, having free range hens is great but it always comes at a price. On the up side we also saw a barn owl swooping over our paddocks presumably hunting, shame they don’t hunt foxes 😜 And the bats were flying well tonight, I have no idea where they live, we have never found any sign of them here but I watched a programme and they will travel miles each nigh apparently so I assume they live in a stone barn somewhere around here.

Sunday: Pretty much a similar day to yesterday work wise, I was up early and gardening in my PJs 🤪 in the early morning sun. I did a bit of weeding, and put some of this new membrane round the melons and cucumbers in the tunnel to see how it does. I have had to cut it round the plants which is not ideal but better than nothing, I want to see how it performs and what the advantages are, if any. I emptied out the bags I have been growing potatoes in, there are quite a few and we will have some for tea tonight. We went round to have coffee in the garden with Mum and Ken mid morning and naturally I bought some bits back with me, a couple of miniature roses and a huechera that she had dug up and didn’t want, happy me, any plant fix is a good fix 😜

I spent the afternoon going in and out depending on cloud cover lol, that was mostly to hand hoe various beds. After tea I spent a bit of time wiping greenfly off the brassica plants, luckily the leaves are small and not too many at the minute but trying to keep the numbers down seems relentless. The netting keeps out the butterflies bit it also keeps out the ladybirds so I might have to buy some in to release in there as a control. I am just waiting for the heat to go out of the sun before I pick strawberries and water some of the beds. John has been getting a stable ready for the hens, we will have to move them back in until the fox problem is sorted again, it has picked a couple off in the daytime so it’s a problem. We had a good long run with no foxes and now all of a sudden we seem inundated with them. We have a wasp nest right by the kitchen window in the lap board so that will be another lovely job for tonight 🙄 best to leave it as late as possible, last time John had to go up a ladder to do it and they stung him, he said I can do this one 😏

Have a good week and stay safe x

Posted in Friesland Farm

Runner beans 😀 a snake and finally some rain 🌧

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday June 1st 2020: There is still a worldwide pandemic going on but life is trying to get back to normal albeit baby steps. John has returned to the bathroom he started 10 weeks ago to finish it off this week, it is still a little difficult getting building supplies but it can be done it just needs planning ahead. He is doing the morning rounds before he goes so that I can get straight on in the veg garden, this is because if I did the animals, by the time I have finished the Sun has moved right round and I am running out of time to get anything sorted 🙄 He will be home in time to do the afternoon rounds, again because it is so hot I would suffer badly having to go out in it every day. It does occur to me that we need to radically change how things are set up but we never seem to work out how is best to do it, you can’t really get instant shade unless you pay a fortune for it, we would need a forest really lol.

I spent the early morning watering the plants that needed doing, poly tunnels, newly sown seeds and pots, then I had time to go round and sort out all the odds and sods I have in pots around he place. Some of them are pot bound, mostly bits I potted up last year and then left to get on with it, I had lovage in a pot and I have now divided into four pieces and potted those up, I had straggly bits of plants here and there, all are for putting out for sale eventually but they need a bit of tlc first. A couple of dog roses I had in pots have now been planted next to a boundary fence that had gaps and I dug up bits that had self set in various places, free plants 😀

Next job was indoors to do a bit of hoovering and polishing, it’s easier when there is only me around plus it stays clean and tidy for a while which is nice. I have so many things to sort out indoors, the spare room now seems to have become a dumping ground as well as the office 😏 I need to have a good clear out I think as there are things I am never going to use just waiting there, just in case 😂

Guess what I just found! My jar of runner beans seeds, I bloody knew I had a jar somewhere 😂 I keep the seeds in the spare room over winter as it’s dry and cool, when I took the rest out I must have left them behind, then I had lots of spare cushions from the old sofa which I had put down the side of the bed and there under them was a jar of runner bean seeds 😜 The first lot I ordered still never turned up and now (unless I have catastrophic failure) I don’t need them 🙄

Sorry for the blur, I was so chuffed to have found them that I didn’t look at the pic I had taken 😂

Foxes are the bane of a chicken keepers life but I had a phone call this morning and heard an awful story of bees killing chickens. A hive was being relocated but apparently they didn’t get all the bees when they moved it, the ones left behind, realising their hive had gone, got angry, swarmed and attacked the hens next door killing three of them, poor hens 🙄

Tuesday: It’s 10am and I have sat down for a coffee, I drink a few cups of coffee in the mornings but usually on the go lol. I woke at 4am did consider getting up, I opened the curtains and the windows then thought it’s perhaps a tad too early and so laid back down and must have fallen asleep waking again at 5, this time I was up and about. First job after breakfasting was to go out and turn on one of the soaker hoses, I decided after poking my finger into various beds that the peas and bean bed would benefit most. While that was watering I picked veg for tonight’s dinner, carrots, the first of the new potatoes, mange-tout and asparagus we are having that with some lamb steaks. I also picked a few stalks of rhubarb and some strawberries, rhubarb and strawberry crumble for dessert 😀 I have chopped the mange-tout up smaller so John doesn’t notice, I also chopped the asparagus and carrots so we are having a ‘medley’ of veg. The rhubarb and strawberry crumble has been tweaked as well with a tiny pinch of vanilla power and some oats in the crumble mixture, I shall await the complaint from John but have decided that if I’m cooking, I’m doing it how I would like it sometimes 😜 I know he will still eat it anyway, he just likes to utter his objections 😂 I had a couple of over ripe bananas (that’s a novelty after weeks of not being able to get any) and so I also made a banana bread loaf with a twist. I substituted an ounce of butter with an ounce of peanut butter and added a few chocolate chips, again John doesn’t like peanut butter but his compulsion to eat cake will be greater 😂 The struggle with fussy eaters is real people, but I’m slowly managing to get him to comply. I am going to marinate my lamb in mint, oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, I will do Johns plain, he would have a hissy fit at that and definitely wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry he was lol.

After the picking and before the prepping and cooking I cleaned out the two rabbit/guinea cages and the quail hut, sorted the horses water and hay and put out some plants for sale at the front. John has gone to work again today but as always did the animals beforehand, after so many weeks off he is more than a little reluctant to go back, and if you know John in the workplace you will also know he is a worker, always loved going to work. He has enjoyed being home much more than he ever thought he would and hasn’t missed work one bit, well maybe a little bit as he does like to chatter, drink tea and get fed cake, with customers 😋

My blood tests all came back normal, yay, that’s the first time in about three months, I am slowly coming down off the steroids and increasing the new medication, next week it will be at full strength. So far it has been ok, I keep getting the sweats but the same thing happened with the methotrexate and eventually it subsided so I’m hoping the same happens with these tablets. At my time of life you would be forgiven for thinking it was menopausal but, and this is a stroke of luck, I was late to the meno, and have had hardly any of the problems that other women suffer with, I’m grateful, I mean there is only so much shit one person can handle and I think I have my fair share already 🙄

After coffee it was time to feed the torts, in weather like this they eat a lot lol, they can easily eat 4 big tomatoes a pepper, half a cucumber and two large handfuls of weeds a day if not more. Normally it would be hotter later in the year and I would have plenty growing to feed them with but this early in the season I have to buy toms, peppers and cues for them. They only really get those as seconds as the first thing they are offered are weeds and leafy greens but not lettuce (well a tiny bit) Their favourites in order of preference go like this, Tomato, peppers, cucumber, dandelion, thistle, garden weeds, aloe vera, ice plant, cabbage. They adore banana and strawberries although both are given in very limited quantities only occasionally as a treat, not so different from humans wanting the goodies all the time 😂 They have pretty much exhausted their forage now coupled with the lack of rain it’s a bit sparse although there is plenty of clover they don’t seem to be that interested in it.

Big Billy
Voldertort

They haven’t had their annual bath yet as the grandchildren normally do it so I’m waiting for the day they can start working again 😜

In the evening we went to Shelleys to have a cuppa in the garden with them but before we left I wanted to get the runner beans watered so I connected up the soaker hose ready to leave running while we were out. I moved a piece of black weed membrane that had blown across where it shouldn’t be and got a right surprise as something slithered across in front of me and dived back under it where I had moved it to. I carefully lifted it up and found a rather large grass snake looking at me 😀 I am quite delighted to see it as it means my little eco system is alive and well although they do eat frogs 😏 and eggs apparently 🙄 I also just read that the females are larger than the males and as this was around 3ft long I’m guessing it was female, and may have eggs in the compost heap 🤪

Did you know?

When threatened by one of its many predators, the grass snake often ‘plays dead’, perhaps making itself less appealing to eat. Predators include badgers, red foxes, domestic cats, hedgehogs and a number of birds; when caught, grass snakes hiss and release a foul-smelling substance from their anal gland. Although they may also strike with the head, they do not bite and are harmless to humans. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/reptiles/grass-snake

Wednesday: Oooo I have had the best of mornings 😀 firstly, it’s about 8/10 degrees cooler today and overcast 😀 secondly, we have had some rain, just a wetting so far nothing much but coupled with the cooler day it will do a little bit of good and I didn’t have to water early this morning. That left me to get on with other things, the bed that I can’t normally get to in sunny weather, I have moved the rhubarb that was there, it was really struggling so I dug it up and out it where we keep the muck ready to go on the garden. Instead I have planted another pumpkin nearby, I had to soak the ground beforehand as it’s rock solid, I put in plenty of well rotted manure, pumpkins are hungry plants, and hopefully it will grow nicely and give plenty of ground cover until I can decide what to do there come autumn. I planted some plum tomatoes in the big tunnel, still a few more to plant but they are still a bit small just yet. I have pottered and hoed and pottered some more 😀

Early this morning I spotted something unusual and thought it was a bee, I took photos and asked online and discovered it was an emerging cinnabar moth, I know what these look like but have never seen one that was just about to unfold itself before. It was a real treat to keep popping back and watching the process 😀

Emerging cinnabar moth
This is when I can see the hard work starting to pay off 😀 #selfsufficiency

Well it’s been kind of raining on and off all day so far, not enough to even start filling the water tanks but enough of a wetting to perk up the veg garden, not enough though to give them a proper soaking so far, I’m hoping that somewhere they are getting a good downpour as it will at least increase the available ground water levels 🙄

Although we are in full swing with the growing season it’s now the time to think about Winter veg sowings, this year I am going to try pak Choi as a winter crop, I thought about peas and broad beans but actually they only arrive a few weeks earlier than a spring sowing so I am undecided on that at the moment. I feel the garlic does much better over winter than spring sowings so will definitely do that again, I haven’t done onions this year and may not bother, leeks are just as useful and I have the perennial onions which I need to increase. I am also going to try forcing some rhubarb next spring for early, sweeter stalks, not all the plants but maybe two of them, never done it before it will be new and exciting to me 😀 Now is also the time to start preparing any beds, where the crops will soon be lifted, for next year, plenty of rotted manure on them and plenty of cover, though I have not decided what to use for that yet as the weed membrane gets ripped to bits but the wind. I did consider sewing the edges so it doesn’t happen 🙄

Thursday: Altogether a much cooler day ahead and I for one am grateful. We didn’t get anywhere near enough rain for anything but to perk up what is already growing, we still have some on the horizon for tomorrow but I think this years growing is going to be more difficult as we haven’t even got to the summer months fully yet 🙄 With the knowledge that we are only in June and it’s already a challenge I set about looking for an eco friendly weed suppressant, I found bio degradable mulch film, this will suppress weeds but also trap moisture in the ground for the plants to make use of, it can then be dug in at the end of the season. I have to weigh up the fors and against in costs, watering and the time spent watering and weeding versus the cost of the material. I will see how it goes and how cost effective it is.

As I said yesterday I am already planning for autumn/winter growing and this morning I have sown purple sprouting broccoli, one of the best hungry gap fillers you can get. I have also sown radishio (chicory) which will give a crop well into late autumn under cover and I have sown more dwarf beans and peas to extend the season, if the weather is favourable I should get a second crop. There is still plenty you can sow at the moment although space is obviously an issue as existing crops are still taking up space. One of the experiments I am pleased with is a tub of brassica leaves. I had a lot of seeds for cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower and I don’t have space in the garden for rows and rows of individual plants so I sprinkled them in compost in an old recycling box and will pick the leaves as needed, you don’t need to wait for them to get to their usual form they are edible as they are, tasty young leaves.

In the afternoon I had a look over the three rows of swede, turnip and beetroot I sowed a few weeks back, the beetroot are doing ok, the swede have a long way to go yet and hopefully with some rain they will swell eventually but the turnips are like bullets 🙄 so I will cut my losses pull them up, give the tops to the rabbits and re sow with something else I think.

When I took some of the the tops to the rabbits I could hear cheeping from the light Sussex pen, we have chicks, well at least one anyway, I went and got some chick crumb and a small drinker to put in and hopefully in a few days time they will all be running around in there. I took a photo and you can just about see a tiny beak if you zoom in close enough.

I made some garlic bread before going out to do the turnips, I hadn’t intended on doing them but just started weeding and pottering away, completely forgetting that the bread was in the oven 😜 luckily I remembered in time and I didn’t burn it 😅

The garlic that had been drying needed dealing with, it won’t store and if I leave it too long it will start trying to grow again and when you get a green shoot in garlic it makes it bitter. I peeled about 6 heads and have stored them in oil, I get two things, ready available garlic cloves and of course garlic infused olive oil to use 😀

Friday: Again, once John has done the morning rounds, it’s me on me tod here, I was enjoying lockdown with him home and hopefully he won’t book too much work in 😜 The weather, yes it’s always about the weather, is colder and pretty windy to boot 🙄 honestly couldn’t we just have a little something in-between blazing hot days and cold windy days not even any wet days to compensate. It is a least cold enough to let the plants make use of any watering I do, in the heat it was as much as they could manage to just keep going I think so with this cooler spell they should put on good growth, that’s if the wind doesn’t knock them back too much. I spent a pleasant hour or so sorting out my plant labels, the little white stick type, I have tried wooden ones but the writing runs or they rot very quickly so the next best thing is to keep re using what I have already. As the year goes on I tend to toss them into a tub and have to spend ages searching through for what I need, now they are all bagged up in their various cultivars so I should be able to access what I want quickly. I watered the big tunnel and went round securing anything that had the potential to fly in this wind, I don’t want plants to start getting broken by flying buckets etc. The three rows of carrot and one of beetroot I sowed last week have started to emerge, I am happy about that as carrot seems to be hit and miss over the last couple of years I don’t know why. With that in mind I looked up the Moon phase to see what is best sown now, we have a full moon tonight and the next phase is suited to sowing root crops and doing cuttings and division as the sap is pulled down, it’s all about the ebb and the flow just like the oceans. I will try and get some more root crops sown and I have just taken cuttings of one of my dahlias to see how that goes.

It’s early Saturday afternoon and we at last have rain 🌧 a decent enough amount so far to penetrate the soil 😀 happy me, happy vegetable garden.

This mornings work consisted of cutting back a few bits that had gone to seed such as the winter spinach and sorrel in fact I pulled up the spinach stumps and have sown some salad turnips and spring onions in there instead and late yesterday I sowed some bulb fennel in the bed next to it that had garlic in it. I also did a bit of picking, there was quite a bit really considering it’s early in the year and we have not had much rain. I pulled all the early carrots that were in the polytunnel, we have been eating them when needed but I decided to get them all up, some are now chopped and in the freezer, some in a pan along with peas and asparagus for dinner later. I picked mange-tout and pod peas, some baby beetroot, Swiss chard, and some self set potatoes, not a bad little haul for the day.

I have done a little bit of dividing up of a couple of plants, one lot were the primroses from the beginning of the year, I now have three new pots of them as well as the original three and a plant I picked up at the garden centre for half price has now been divided into four, a Tiarella, hardy perennial, spring flowering. I will put them aside to get going and I will have plenty of new plants to either sell on or fill my flower beds with 😀 As I’m typing, it is still raining 😀 I’m hoping it will at least half fill the water tanks, that would be a bonus, oh it’s raining harder also most hammering down 😀 I know I should be careful what I wish for but 🤪

Whoo hoo lovely jubbly, early evening and we have had some pretty heavy downpours, this will not only fill the water tanks , water the garden but also swell the ground water which is the most useful of all for the bigger trees 😀

It’s Johns birthday tomorrow and I have made a batch of blueberry muffins, we are hoping to have a socially distanced afternoon tea with the children and grandchildren, I have scones and sandwiches to make tomorrow, Charlie is making birthday cake, Shelley is bringing crisps and dips and Samantha is making pavlova so I think with some beers or Prosecco we have things covered 😀 just hope its dry 🤣🤣

Tonight’s job was to move the hens from the pen back to the paddock at the back and hope that the fox has found other quarry. The sunset tonight was magnificent, you will have to take my word for it as I didn’t have my phone so couldn’t get a pic but the sun was fiery orange and the billowy clouds were all different hues of stormy grey, the sun rays were streaming through the clouds, lol I wish I had got a picture now.

The hen with the pecked bum has now fully recovered and she has a fluffy bottom again and so she has gone back out with the batch we moved. Q

Sunday: Johns birthday 🍰 even when it’s your birthday there are still jobs to be done, I had set Alexa to play Happy Birthday at 6.25 and then forgot all about it until she starting up this morning, in a sleep daze I thought ‘ what the heck is going on’ 😂 We got up had breakfast and then out to do the feeding, watering, letting out and collect the duck eggs. I then went into the garden to get a few things done, the good thing about the rain is that it means I don’t have to water and so can do other things for a change instead. My brother had given me lots of big pots he no longer wanted and I spent some time potting bigger plants on. I have a Nandina (heavenly bamboo) that has been struggling for a couple of years, when I got it out of the pot the drainage holes were blocked and so I made some more, took away some of the old compost from around the roots and repotted it with some fresh compost, hopefully it will begin to pick right up now. I have two box balls that I grew from tiny plants that also needed repotting and freshening up as they have been struggling, those are now done and had a trim. A tamarisk tree in a pot that other things have self seeded alongside (foxgloves and verbena) has also had a clear out and some new compost, the foxgloves and verbena have been potted up to go out for sale once they establish. A strawberry tree that was in a broken pot (didn’t hold water very well🙄) is now in a new pot and should perk up quickly.

My sister and brother in law called in mid morning and we had coffee in the garden which was lovely, the weather has improved massively today and so it was very pleasant. When they went I made a batch of scones ready for afternoon tea later, as long as the rain holds off I think we will have a socially distanced afternoon tea picnic in the front paddock 😀

That’s where I will leave for this week, I can then enjoy the rest of the afternoon and evening helping the birthday boy to celebrate. Have a great week and as always stay safe x x