Monday 27th January: Is it going to be one of those days or even weeks, January, the longest month ever! This morning started off with me still in my pyjamas stripping off the bed covers and putting them in the wash, I added a couple of drops of essential oil (Orange) to my softener as it’s a eco one and not highly perfumed. While I am doing this job (it’s still dark outside) one of the dogs starts barking furiously, I look out of the window and she is just stood there, I carry on and she starts again, I put on some shoes and go out the back to see the bloody horse in the yard again 😂 My plan this morning was to get a few bits of housework done before I went out to do the feeding but that plan was then scuppered and I get dressed quickly, load up a sack of hay and entice the horse back into the field, put back the poles that have been skill fully moved or just barged not sure which and head back indoors for a coffee.
It’s a very good job I am not a creature of routine, I hate routine, I feel trapped by routine, you can have a basic routine that needs doing but I don’t like to do it at the same time in the same way every day, I am the master of my day here (except when the animals play up) and it’s a good job I like the flexible type of day because things happen and you have to respond appropriately. I used to try and do routine but I just stressed myself out so now I don’t bother and jobs get done as and when they need to or when I have time to. At some point today I will endeavour to continue with the household jobs that need doing but for now my flow has been interrupted and I’m off in a different direction 😜
Outside jobs sorted I came back in determined to get on with the jobs I had planned, success, I am sitting with a coffee having cleaned, polished, washed, hoovered and tidied, I still have the Rayburn to sort and light although it is pretty mild today so I will leave it until later. I need to sort out tonight’s dinner, I don’t know about you but after 36 years of planning what’s for dinner I’m kind of tired of it, it’s an overrated pastime eating an evening meal I would rather graze through the day lol. The joy I have to see me through are these marvellous pod casts lol, seriously I am loving listening to things that interest me rather than the radio, this morning I have learnt about the job of a forensic linguist, yep there is such a profession and self healing, not in terms of medicine but mindfulness, it’s a revelation I can tell you 😀 the pod cast world is my oyster 😜
I made some breakfast oat bars, sometimes I like to just grab something for breakfast other times I will sit and eat just depends on what I feel like so I made some grab bars. I will admit I had been buying them from the shop but then after discussing making them with Sam I realised I have all I need and they are simple enough to make. These had oats, peanut butter, agarve syrup, dates and dark chocolate chip. The recipe called for almonds but I didn’t have any and I was going to use my shelled walnuts until I realised they had got mould in the jar 😏 The dates I pulverised in the nutri bullet and I put the oats in the oven to toast but got bored of waiting for that and wanted to get on so they were warmed lol, this in turn melted the choc chips 🙄 but also helped to soften the peanut butter and made mixing it all easier.
1 cup of oats, toasted lightly if you prefer
1/2 cup dates, blitzed
1/4 cup peanut butter, I used crunchy
1/4 cup agarve syrup, could use maple syrup
A sprinkle of dark choc chips
Mix until well combined and press mix into a dish/pan and leave in the fridge until it ‘sets’ Thats it, really easy, tastes yummy and probably much better for you than the shop bought ones 😀 I intend to keep it in a sealed tub, I cut it into 8 squares so I have one for every morning plus and extra for hungry moments 😀
Tuesday: Something in the walls kept me awake on and off for a good deal of the night 😤 I do hope the cat gets it soon 😏 That together with the fact that I turned the mattress yesterday and this caused pain in my hip as well, I think I will be heading for a nap later lol.
I quite expected to see the horse out again this morning but no, he was waiting patiently in the field along with Biscuit.
This is one of the paddocks they have access to and as you can see there is not much grass left, just a nibble really, the grass will begin to grow when the temperature reaches 6 degrees obviously the warmer the ground is the faster it grows and we did see some signs of growth during the unseasonable warmer spell we had a few weeks ago but as the temps have dropped again the growth will have stopped.
As I am obviously bored of food at the moment, struggling to decide what I what to eat is the best sign, I decided to have a look through my saved pins, make a list and go shopping. It’s all very well having a freezer full of frozen veg that I have grown myself and it great for Johns palette as he is happy with stews, casseroles etc but about this time of year I yearn for something fresher and more colourful even though the temps are nowhere near salad season. If I was a purist of course I would eat totally seasonally and save for a few things I do but seasonal produce is a little sparse this time of year (the hungry gap) and so there is only so much you can eat without getting bored. So I scoured the recipes I have saved, made a list and got a few things to liven up my dinners, now I just have to decide what to have lol. One of the things I pinned was an orzo salad, have you had orzo? nope nor have I, do you even know what it is ? 🤔 it’s pasta that looks like rice. Cooked with some chopped peppers, onion, garlic and pine nuts (and anything else I fancy) I think it will hit the spot, plus it’s a meat free dinner so ✅ I will feel virtuous 😀 Now I just have to figure out what to feed John 😜
It’s a tad cold today so I lit the Rayburn and then while I was in the freezer looking for inspiration (I chose some smoked fish) I spotted some blueberries so I made blueberry muffins. I had some Greek yoghurt to use up and the recipe I used was the following:
Sorry I’ve cut off the rest of the method but basically have the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry in another and then mix the two. I used agarve syrup instead of honey but even so don’t expect them to be sweet they are meant to be healthy lol, you could drizzle some lemon icing on these which would sweeten them slightly but they taste fine as they are.
Two little stories I will tell you about cooking the muffins, the first is that I had a tin of those danish cookies that Shelley bought me for Christmas as she liked the tin and indeed when I opened it so did I 😀 The biscuits all came in individual cases so I saved them all and that’s what I used for the muffins as they were totally clean and so no point throwing them away. The second story is a little sad, the muffin tin I have is one that was given to me by a friend of my Mums, Jane, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was putting her house in order and clearing stuff out. We went out for coffee one morning and she gave me the muffin tin as she knew I liked baking so it’s a tin with attached memories. Actually at this time of year I often think of her as she loved the new season Rhubarb which of course will be available soon, even when she was still alive, picking rhubarb made me think of her.
Wednesday: I started off the day with a cuppa and a homemade breakfast bar and I watched a vlog that’s video blog for anyone that doesn’t know lol. It’s a lady called Liz Zorab and as she gardens here in the UK I find we often have the same things going on at the same time. This weeks vlog was a timely watch as I have just ordered some archways for setting over the paths so that I can create some shade and get extra vertical growing space and she talked about what she used to set hers up when she first started, I did have an idea on what I thought I should use but watching that has confirmed it. I shall not be going into vlogging any time soon lol, I don’t have the patience to do it and I certainly don’t want to be listening to my voice and watching myself back 😂
It was a cold start to the day and as I had planned to do a few bits in the garden I dressed appropriately, boot socks, extra layer and thick gloves. I did the morning rounds and as an extra I decided that if I can’t physically keep these hens out of my garden I would try a diversion tactic instead. I took a full barrow of wood chip into their paddock and dumped it, they seem to be drawn to the wood chip paths so I figured give them their own to scratch about in.
The job I wanted to get done was the archways across the path, I had ordered four of them, they are not particularly robust but at only just over £8 each if they only last a few years that’s money well spent. The plan is to not only add height but to give me some extra shade to work in when it’s hot and hopefully increase the amount of time I can spend out there. I have beefed them up a little with some welded mesh that I got from the now unused dog kennels, eventually when any chance of snow has passed I will put some more flexible wire over the top. These won’t hold the weight of runner beans or anything but they should support something like sweet peas or other annual climbers. We could have built something stronger but that just adds to Johns job list and these I was able to put together by myself, I will need him to help make them a little stronger but the majority of it I have done alone.
It was a lovely morning, the sun was fairly warm to work out in, just the shade that was cold, beautiful blue skies 😀
I finished at lunchtime and tidied up aware that I needed to get in to light the Rayburn. I took the back flue cover off to clean them out and instantly wished I hadn’t as the fire rope broke off. Midway through the day is not a good time for that to happen as to fix it you need a few hours drying time which I don’t have otherwise the house will be very cold later. I have wedged it back in as well as possible and fingers crossed it does the job, I had earmarked the flues for cleaning at the weekend as the fire smells pretty sooty so if it holds until then I will be happy if not I will be doing it tomorrow 🙄
As I was saying last week there is always something to learn, today I learnt about multi sowing. Sowing more than one seed, multiple seeds so that they have each other, this actually makes huge sense to me and something I didn’t realise was an actual thing lol. I watched a Charles Downing video on propagation and he talks about multi sowing, I am not a precise gardener when it comes to seed sowing, my rows end up wonky and I often drop clumps of seeds, I don’t bother with thinning either and often the result is that the plants grow anyway. Beetroot especially definitely like to grow with close contact to other beetroot and you can always pull them as baby beets and let the others fill out. I shall be trying this with other types of seed to see how they get on, I always felt a bit lazy not separating seedlings fully, not any more 😀
Thursday: I did the usual morning stuff, feed cat no 1, feed the quail and collect the eggs, feed cat no2, take hay to the horses, feed the ducks, collect the eggs, feed the first lot of chickens top up the water then onto the rabbits/guineas, turkeys and light Sussex. Then into the paddock where the geese and second lot of hens are, before I let them all out I moved some of the prunings from the apple tree that was done in December. The prunings have been sitting on the grass in the paddock for around three months and I want to use them to put along the hedge line to stop the hens eating my wild garlic when it comes up and also round the base of the apple tree to stop them scratching the ground and exposing the roots which would put the tree at risk.
I made an interesting observation while doing this, vole holes, under the piles of sticks were little holes made by the voles, this then got me thinking about what we do with the paddocks and why. We deliberately left most of the grass in the paddock uncut it also hasn’t been grazed and won’t be, I wanted it to grow long and go to seed thereby seeding itself which obviously saves money. By doing this I inadvertently created an ideal habitat for the voles, then I got to thinking that where there are voles there are likely to be owls and so realised that cutting or grazing the paddocks is robbing the wildlife of an eco system. I thought that by doing the whole ‘organic thing’ of no pesticides/fertilisers etc was a great thing I was doing, and it is, but there is so much more that can be done such as leaving areas to re wild as it were. Now obviously I don’t want piles of twigs in the paddocks, well not in the middle anyway, but I can use them around the outside edges and I can leave the grass to grow long in certain areas.
That all then got me thinking about horses and wondering why the emphasis is all on meat animals grazing and releasing methane when there are hundreds of thousands of horses in this country that are grazing on thousands of acres of grass and hedges right down to the roots including ours, why is there no mention of them destroying the habitats, because they do and the majority of them serve no other purpose than pleasure, I am not for one minute saying that people shouldn’t have them I’m just wondering why they are not a hot topic of conversation like the meat animals? Is it because we don’t eat them which means that when someone is talking about climate change and the damage grazing animals do they are actually only thinking about wanting people to stop eating meat because horses are never included in those conversations or is it that they keep horses themselves and therefore don’t put them into the same category? A topic I will have to look into🙄
I went out with Sam, Shelley and the younger ones, the older two were at nursery, and we went to what is fast becoming our favourite cafe. Lynwood & Co use local and independent suppliers, the coffee is wonderful, the company make their own sourdough bread locally using local flour, the atmosphere is relaxed sophistication I think that’s how I would describe it, I went all out today and had brioche toast with maple syrup, mascarpone and blueberries and yes it taste every bit as wonderful as it looks 😀 No filter needed!
We had a quick trawl around the charity shops before returning home to light the Rayburn.
You need a treat or two in January don’t you think, a quite depressing month not only due to the weather but as a self employed person it means the tax is due, why on earth pick January as the month to pay it, July is the other month, both when you are likely to have had or about to have high expenditure, Christmas and Annual holiday 😏 keeps the minions in their place I suppose 🙄 Still, we are rolling on towards some warmer weather and that means seed sowing and planting which will make me a happy bunny 🐰 Imbolic is fast approaching, Feb 1st, that’s midway between the Winter solstice and the Spring equinox, the wheel is slowly turning.
Friday: Josh is coming for a sleepover tonight and fish and chips, it’s 7.30am and I have had a message from Shelley to say that he is up, washed and dressed himself, cleaned his teeth and packed his bag already lol, he is very excited I hope we don’t disappoint 😀
11pm tonight is the hour we leave the EU, no matter how you voted, tomorrow is a new day and I have been listening to a blog on creative and energising thinking to carry you forward through ‘situations’ such as Brexit and climate change, we hear all the doom and gloom but there is a lot of positivity around as well it’s just that it doesn’t make the news so search for the uplifting stuff it is out there 😀
While we are on world issues it wouldn’t be a diary blog if I didn’t mention the Coronavirus that has broken out, it started in Wuhan, China and at the moment the world is not sure how much it will spread, what has caused it, though they have an idea, how many people will eventually be affected or how severe it will be. What I can tell you is that less than two miles from us the first plane carrying the repatriations of UK citizens that have been trapped in Wuhan (which is in shutdown) is landing here at RAF Brize Norton sometime today 🙄
I spent the morning outside, it’s mild but blowy (which eventually gave me a headache) for a change I wasn’t working on the veg garden lol. I have been concentrating my efforts on the front area, this is the area immediately out the front of the building and before the gates to the driveway. It’s a pretty big area in itself, put into perspective I imagine you would easily get 4/5 modern sized houses on there including gardens or about 40 cars parked nose to tail so it’s a large area. It’s mostly shingle or was it has now compacted and we are looking at putting some more down as the top is starting to get wet and mushy, some of it is hard standing, a remnant of the war time RAF base that was around here and a little bit of it is a hazel hedge and there are a couple of butterfly bushes (orange globe ones) but that’s about it for permanent features. I do have a whole host of pots with various things growing in them to brighten the area up but I am trying to increase the amount of bushes and shrubs so this morning I have planted a holly and a photinia both are evergreen both will get pretty big and fill their immediate space both will give me foliage for Christmas and hopefully both will provide shelter for birds and insects. They are not big shrubs at the moment the problem with our ground is that the digging is hard going so I usually start off with smaller specimens which will hopefully take hold quickly. I also potted up a climbing rose I bought, it’s called New Dawn and I didn’t get it just because it’s my name but because I have grown them before at our old place and I know it does what it says on the tin 😀 A word of advice, if you are planning on moving do take cuttings or dig up anything you would like to grow in your new place, I wish I had bought a lot more with me than I did (which was quite a lot including my mulberry tree)
Saturday: Josh stayed overnight and we went out to do his favourite job, feeding the horses this morning while John did the other stuff, it’s a cold wind today so we didn’t stay out any longer than necessary 💨 preferring to stay in the warm lol.
It is February 1st today that marks the start of Imbolic, halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, it marks the beginning of the awakening of all things spring 😀 As I walked around today I was delighted to see some tiny little crocus, that I planted last year, making their very first appearance in the driveway under the apple tree. There are buds on trees and shrubs waiting to burst open and the Winter Honeysuckle is smothered in flowers which smell amazing, I have yet to see a daffodil open but there are some that are ready to open any day now, if you are a fly on the wall you will definitely see me smile the first time a see one 🌼
Sunday: We have had a good day outside, firstly John had got new bits for his chainsaw to give it a service and so cutting down the broken bough and tidying all the debris up was the first job after the feed rounds. Then it was basically more tidying which actually took more time than we allocated for it and we couldn’t for the life of us get the stack of dead bits burning despite using a blow torch so that will have to wait until another day but at least we have piles ready to burn. After that, which took us until 2pm, John cleaned out the flue and I cleaned out the inside of the fire. He has to go up on the roof and disconnect the twin walled flue shove a sweep brush down it and connect back up again. Meanwhile I have covered up the Rayburn with a dust sheet and when he has finished I hoover it all out, we have it off to a fine art now and luckily it is pretty mild out today so we didn’t need to light it until around 3pm anyway.
We have a few ton of shingle coming for the front area which again will freshen the whole area up and I have some more shrubs to plant out there for interest and for the wildlife to shelter in.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 