Vegetables – Page 15 – frieslandfarm (flowers)

Sowing and growing, reading & Easter 🐣

Posted on April 12, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th April 2020: And here we are again back round to Monday 😜 The weather is fair to good and so we were again working outside while we can.

I spent the morning watering the greenhouse, moving things around, potting some bits on etc and then planting the first lot of mange-tout out in a bed. I put a load of manure on the flower plants I put in the other week and then I did some watering because although we had a bit of rain last night it wasn’t nearly enough and the ground is really dry. Who would have thought that after weeks and weeks of endless rain we would be complaining 😜 Meanwhile John was cutting wood lol, burning some of the stuff that is no good and separating some of it, there are some big pieces that will make good raised beds but they are attached to ply and each other as they were from some type of shuttering. The nails I’m told are a right b*****d to get out so it’s kept him busy.

You may have noticed that I have slowed down a bit from the first week we were off, mostly this is due to the fact that I have had to stop the meds and it plays havoc with my systems, I feel tired a fair bit, my muscles get stiff and I’m am bloody freezing even when the sun is out lol, to the point I am sat writing this with three layers on 🙄 I generally do my work up to about 1pm and that’s it for the day, I have lunch, I read for an hour and then I have a nap if I’m really tired. Good job John is here though to be honest when he is not (in more usual times) I still do the same if I am not feeling up to it but everything has to wait if it can.

The turkey hen is still with us and I’m hoping she recovers fully, at times she must feel like me and does a lot of sitting around and then there are times when she is wandering about, I still can’t see anything that is physically wrong with her 🤷‍♀️ The torts are enjoying the warmer temps and have started to eat now, I’m picking any dandelion flowers I find as they love those.

Tuesday: Another nice day weather wise, not too hot but warm enough. We’ve done the usual jobs, I made bread and hovered and polished this morning then outside to water things in pots and the young veg plants, water the greenhouse and the polytunnels. It’s crazy all the rain we had a month or so back and now I’m watering because the ground is so dry. John meanwhile has been….you guessed it chopping wood lol, we have slipped into the easy routine of working till around 1pm and then lunch and a gentle afternoon which consists of a nap or some reading before egg collecting and feeding around 3pm ready for putting out at 4pm. After that we usually come in grab a cuppa and watch the update from Downing Street, of course we are all wishing Boris well and hope he makes a speedy recovery, whatever your politics are it’s not nice to fear for someone’s life at a time like this especially when he is the Prime Minister 🙏.

I have had a phone consultation with a friend that knows all about birds in the hope he can shed some light on what might be wrong with the turkey hen. She has no neurological symptoms, no respiratory problems, no mucky bum, she is not crop bound and she is not egg bound so I am struggling a little to work it out. She is pooing dark green and he tells me that’s because the stomach is empty (at least I learnt something new in all this) He suggested checking her over for ticks and mites and so John and I went out and picked her to check her over, she is a big bird and to double check she wasn’t egg bound and to get a look under her wings we carefully tipped her upside down. At this point clear fluid began to run out of her beak so I massaged her crop some more and more fluid came out, one of my suspicions was that she had a blockage further down which seems to be borne out by the fluid emptying out. The blockage must be further down possibly in her intestines and if that’s the case I won’t be able to do much more for her, I have given her a fair bit of vegetable oil in her water in the hopes it can help to move any blockage and it’s possible that gravity may have dislodged something, we will try again tomorrow and see what happens. Its such as shame as she was going great guns laying her eggs, and all of a sudden she stopped so it makes sense as nothing else fits the symptoms.

Wednesday: Another fine, dry day and we got a couple of jobs sorted, I started off by watering g the greenhouse and the newly planted stuff, I don’t know what John was doing but I couldn’t hear him cutting wood lol. Then I roped him into helping me, I had an elder tree that had started growing in one fo the beds, Mum tried to get it out last year but the roots were quite big so got John to dig it out 😜 The next job was to build a frame for the runner beans to grow up. For the last few years I have grown them the same in a dedicated bed up wigwam hazel poles but each year they grow well and then the wind blows them over eventually. This year I have decided to move them and I had a plan, this needed some muscle so John was on hand. We now have long lengths of wood leaning against the side of the fruit cage and stock fencing nailed to it, this will do three things, first, the wind can blow as much as it likes they won’t blow over, second, they will give shade to the raspberries and stop them drying out too much and third, the beans should hang down inside the frame so that I can pick them more easily 😀 It doesn’t look pretty but it is strong and functional and eventually will be covered by foliage 😀

The other job was to re cover the fruit cage with netting, quite a task which takes two of us and gets caught up in every single pokey thing around 😝 It has a few holes in which I will have to mend and sadly a bird had got tangled up in it at some point and died 😢 But it is now up and secured which is great because the Bush cherry I bought last year has flowers 😀😀😀 so I may get cherries this year.

I’m enjoying my ‘book hour’ it’s so quiet and totally relaxing. I sit and contemplate for a while after I finish reading and It occurred to me that if ever there was a moment in life to stop and re evaluate your life or areas of it, then this ‘situation’ is the perfect opportunity to do so. It has pushed to the front those that are considered lowly in their work and those that were taken for granted by many, and rendering useless those that are put on a pedestal or consider wealth/status to be the aim of life. I have always looked to the past to consider what is important in a ‘society’ take a large estate for instance, the people sat in the ‘big house’ on the whole were always mindful that without all the, ever decreasing in size, boulders underneath them they would be bought crashing down in an instant, they are nothing on their own, we are nothing on our own, we all need each other and each other’s skills (mostly 😜) for life as we know it to run smoothly. Long gone are the days when we each held all the skills needed to get by in life, those skills are now spread among all of us, we should remember this going forward.

Thursday: This morning began with a Group FaceTime call to our nephew in Australia who has his birthday today, they are practising social distancing but his friends came to the street to sing happy birthday and have cake, at a safe distance from each other of course 😀

Yesterday afternoon I had a FaceTime call from Mia and she cried and said ‘I miss you’ damn near broke my heart and definitely made me teary. So this mornings mission was to do a video of the farm and the animals so that the grandchildren know that everything is as they saw it last, I walked around chatting and showing them everything including Grampy cutting wood and then I tried to send it lol, too long apparently so I had to cut it into sections and send it and hope they came through in sequence 🤣

After that I got on with doing some bits in the garden, water the greenhouse had moving stuff around, it’s going to be hot today and I need to make sure everything gets it’s chance to grow well. I did some potting on, the squash family are doing really well and needed re potting. After that I planted a row of petit poi outwice, might as well get them out while the weather is good. I’ve just realised I haven’t sown and runner bean seeds yet so I need to do that later, I like to get them going inside as the mice usually eat them otherwise. I picked a couple of bunches of rhubarb to go out for sale and by that time the air was really heating up and I could feel the sun started to make my skin itch so it’s time to duck inside. Sometimes I hate this disease, just when I could really be getting on outside I have to go in, then I think the weather is bound to break eventually and I will be able to spend longer outside. Yesterday it was warm but cloudy so that was ideal, not many clouds today though so too risky for me. Had I known I was going to end up with this I would have sited the veg garden more in the shade but then you have the problem of what to grow as some things really would struggle.

I am in the middle of making hot x buns, well trying anyway the dough doesn’t seem to be rising 😏 at the moment I have the dough in a low oven to see if I can activate it a little, shame as the dough smells amazing, fingers crossed it rises a little other wise it will be hot x flatbread 🤣

Friday: Easter weekend, bank holidays, lovely weather, normally everyone would be over the moon but this year is very different, we need to stay home and help the NHS to save lives, I seriously hope people are doing just that.

I’m struggling a bit today, I can always tell as I go out to do some jobs and tend to end up just looking at things that need doing lol. This, I’m sure is because I am off the meds and normally I would take some anti inflammatory but I’m not quite sure about the information that is flying around about avoiding it at the moment 🙄 I came indoors and sat for a while and then decided to make a chocolate cake for the weekend, I hope it turns out better than my flat x buns which were a disaster, I baked it anyway and we have eaten a slice of it this morning, it tastes fine but is heavy.

Saturday: I have decided to take ibrufen, it’s definitely inflammation due to coming off the meds and as my blood test is not until next week I have to do something inbetween and with the ibrufen at least I can carry on. So this morning I have been very busy, watering everything and then I looked for my runner bean seeds and couldn’t find them anywhere, I am without runner bean seeds 😳 I looked online and some places are charging three times the amount they normally cost, my regular supplier haven’t even got any nor any seed potatoes and demand overall for seeds is huge. Two conflicting things I feel about this, one, I’m obviously delighted that people are growing their own, after all I am always banging on about it, two, I’m a bit peed off that I can’t get what I need lol. That will teach me to save far more seed in future years, it’s part of food security and I need to observe it more closely. So I have sown extra peas and dwarf beans, some basil, cauliflower and purple sprouting plus some seeds I saved from the welsh onions. I have planted more petit poi’s out and earthed up the potatoes I have growing in sacks. I sent John to get some more compost, luckily they sell it at a farm just up the road from us and I will carry on sowing and planting just in case we need it, if we don’t it will feed the animals so nothing lost there.

By 11.30 it was too hot for me to work on the garden so I came inside and to be honest didn’t do much inside either 😝 At 5pm I decided it was ok enough for me to go out and cut the grass on the lawn and the driveway. John offered to do it which is rare as in the thirty something years we have been married he has hardly ever been the one to mow the lawn, he thinks I’m stupid and don’t know that he was hoping I would cook dinner while he did it 🙄 Nope I can manage now you run inside and do the dinner, something else he has rarely done over the years, we had boiled eggs 😝

Easter weekend, definitely different to all the other Easters we have ever had and the same for everyone else I’m sure. Still the main thing is that we are staying home, protecting the NHS and saving lives, though many have lost the battle already 😢

I must include this in my blog, it was written by my middle daughter and it’s just so lovely 😊 and totes approp. Written by Shelley Silver 🥰🥰

Nana, when you watch the sunrise, we also watch it too, we also feel the same spring breeze that passes over you.
The buzz of the first few Bees, we know you hear the same, and in the sky when you look up we see the same grey plane.
Even though it’s been too long since we have played at yours, know that we are still connected through the great outdoors.
When you go to bed tonight, just look at up the moon and keep forever in your heart that we will see you soon.

Sunday: Easter Day, we have decided to have a day off apart from feeding the animals of course but the rest of the day we have done nothing but sit around enjoying some leisure time. I could get used to this way of life very easily except for not seeing the family bit. We did pop out to see if we could get some bananas and some carrots, had to go to two different places but both were fairly quiet and there was hardly anything on the roads. We also went to de bunk the theory that we might be the only ones left in the world as it is soooo quiet 😜 I have a leg of lamb in the oven for dinner later, then we will have it cold tomorrow, I found some pastry in the freezer so will also be making a pie, living it up today 😂

The weather has been amazing, very warm, very dry but to be honest I’m looking forward to it cooling a little so that I don’t feel so tired and can get on and do some more in the garden and if we could just have a little bit of moisture so that the rhubarb and asparagus come on a bit, that would be perfect 👌

As always have a good week and stay home, stay safe x x

Friesland Farm

What day is it? 😂 a missing guinea pig, did the cat do it? 🤔

Posted on April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 by frieslandfarm

I Monday 30 March 2020: And just like that it’s Monday again 😜 albeit different Mondays to what we once had as obviously John is at home. This morning he went out first thing to get the van an MOT, the government announced, the day after he had booked it in, that MOTs would be extended for 6 months but as it was already booked he went ahead with it as once things get back to normal he can just get on with work. It went through without any problems so that’s a bonus. He had to walk around outside for an hour while they did it and he was freezing when he got back, we went through the usual questions, did you wipe everything down before you touched it, 5e handles, the steering wheel, the gearstick, the keys 😂 such a lot to remember to do, but yes he was thorough he said. Meanwhile I did the morning rounds and once he was back he cut up some more of our (now shrinking rapidly) mountain of wood. I spent the first half of the morning sorting out the hazel trees at the side, they are grown and pruned the old fashioned way, I know this because I was told by an arborist that ‘you don’t see them done like that these days’. I have tried to research it but there is not much information out there, they have six trunks each and any growth is pruned off at the bottom third. They were like this when we came so we have kept them the same except the odd trunk that has fallen or the ones we pruned right back to allow summer light to the poly tunnels. They end up with a fair amount of debris under them so I pruned all the new unwanted growth out and then John helped me to shred the prunnings, rake out underneath, sweep the pathway and find nails 🙄 The nails are from the ash which is riddled out of the Rayburn, we use all kinds of wood and a lot of pallets so there are nails, screws, staples etc in the ash. We have a big magnet and the idea is to go through it often and get them out but as it’s usually cold over winter that job gets overlooked and so it ends up a spring job and today was a good enough day to do it. We came in at 2pm for some lunch and then John went to deliver some eggs, doorstep delivery, stand back and wait for the customer to put the money on the step and go back in, strange times but necessary distancing.

In the afternoon or what was left of it I made bread, and double choc chip cookies and lit the Rayburn while John did the afternoon feeding and egg collecting. Then it rained, only a quick shower so not too bad at least the ground will remain dry, it’s so much nicer without mud underfoot lol.

It seems that all this social distancing and closing of bars, clubs, restaurants etc has given a glimmer of hope in that the numbers going into hospital and the numbers that are dying has slowed very slightly. It’s a strange world we find ourselves in where we can’t see family members or friends, we can’t go out to places we normally would go, we can only do the necessary and that is shopping, an hours walk for exercise (and no driving to your destination), or going for medication/doctors appointments, work if it’s necessary and you can’t do it at home. Most people I know are adhering to this but I’m sure there are plenty out there who are not, I expect further restrictions will come soon.

Tuesday: The days are beginning to blur into any old day lol. Dry again today, sunny spells and warm when the sun is out but cold when it’s hiding behind the clouds. We did the morning rounds and then got on with moving the wood chip (it’s finished 😀😀) well actually John moved the wood chip while I did some hoeing/weeding and cutting back dead stuff, watering the greenhouse and the seeds I have sown, generally pottering is what I have been doing. The turkey hen looks a little off colour, I have given her a good check over and can’t see anything wrong with her, she isn’t egg bound and she doesn’t have an impacted crop, I’m hoping it’s a blip and she will perk up, she is still eating and drinking just a little unhappy looking. We have another anomaly that I haven’t worked out, a missing guinea pig, one disappeared a few weeks ago and we bolstered up the run to make sure they couldn’t get out and now another has gone 🤔 no sign of fur and it definitely can’t get out, my theory is the cat, there is a bit where the cat could get in if it really wanted to, we will be shutting them in the hut tonight which they are not used so that will be fun trying to catch them.

We did plenty of little jobs about the place in the afternoon, I did some weeding and tidying of borders and John did something though I’m not sure what. At dusk I went out to put the rabbits/guineas away and yes that was a mission, the rabbits went in fine but guineas a very fast when they want to be lol in the end I dropped a tea towel over the end of its tunnel and caught it li,e that bit I spent a good 10 mins trying to catch it before hand.

Wednesday: Dry again although it was pretty cold over night, the temperature was not bad though, workable. After the morning rounds I went and got the turkey a bowl of warm water with garlic powder, oil and cider vinegar as she is definitely not right, I also gave her some meds in case it’s cocci which it may well be and if it is we will probably lose her. There is usually blood in the poo if it’s cocci and she doesn’t have any, could be that she has eaten something that she didn’t ought to have but there is only her food and grass/bugs etc 🤷‍♀️

Then I spent a lovely morning tidying up some rough areas of the garden, we get a lot of broken branches over winter so I had a fire in the incinerator and raked up dead wood and leaves. I have unpacked and laid out my seep hoses ready for watering the beds, I bought three last year as I really don’t want to spend so much time doing it this year, they need to rest once unpacked otherwise they coil back up again, I found a mouse in one of the bags, nice little nest it had in there lol. John found some metal grill to cover up the hole into the rabbit run. We have never had a problem before and the hole is above waist height and very narrow so a fox couldn’t get through, however a cat well that’s another thing altogether. My suspicions got stronger later when I saw Benny slink along the paddock fence towards the back of the rabbit run, I watched from a distance but then he spotted me and came running over, I’m pretty sure the cat has been snacking on guinea pig 🤬.

We had a birthday FaceTime party this morning, for Mum this time, everyone recorded birthday messages and sent them via the family chat and then video conferencing took place lol, we can’t all get on at the same time but with people dropping in and out I think everyone managed at some point.

Thursday: Another day in paradise 🙄 we have slowed our pace a little now, still doing jobs but pottering rather than going full steam ahead. John is still cutting wood 😂 it will be great to see it all cut up and stacked for next winter. I am pottering doing household bits and gardening bits depending on how the mood takes me. This morning I have potted on some of the seedlings, patty pan, pumpkins and some morning glory. I keep looking to see what else I can start sowing but at the minute the greenhouse is pretty full. I will have to do some more cucumbers as I forgot to turn the heated propagator on one evening and they suffered because of it, some are hanging in there but some have had it, roll on some warmer days. Everything else is growing well, the aubergine, peppers and tomatoes are going strong g as are the peas and beans. I have salad lettuce on the go and some leek seeds I found have sprouted, plenty to keep me busy, on top of that there are flower seedlings and plants to nurture. The dahlias look like they are waking up which is fab as I didn’t think they would make it, these are the ones I left in pots, the tubers I stored have not shown any signs yet but it’s early days for them as they need to establish a root system first.

I had a phone call this morning from Dad to say that his partner Sue is in hospital after falling and smashing her kneecap, it’s about the worst time that could happen. I will be phoning him every day to see how he is doing on his own but he does have good neighbours who are already looking out for them. He can’t visit Sue as the hospital says no visits, they are probably going to operate and hopefully they will get her home again quickly. Its a worry as we can’t get to them to visit or help out 😏

I am making bread again today and spent a whole evening trying to find bread flour online in the end I managed to get 10kg so that will keep us going. I was disgusted to see people profiteering from the shortage, I have seen 1kg of flour for sale on eBay for £50 AND it had bidders, what is this world coming to, sheer greed, sad individuals 😢

We have taken to watching the live daily updates from Downing Street, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson is himself one self isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 so at the moment it’s other ministers delivering the updates. What is amazing is the way industries and companies that wouldn’t normally work together, are pulling out all the stops to get new products or products they don’t normally make, up and running, hats off to them and just goes to show what can be achieved in a short space of time when it’s really needed. Tonight the country will go outside and clap in appreciation of the NHS and all the key workers that are keeping the country running, it’s quite emotional to hear the sound of people uniting for a cause.

Getting the dinner tonight I realise that today is the first day I am feeling bored with all this which sounds petulant but it’s just how I’m feeling, I know we can’t change it but I am thinking how nice it would be getting a takeaway or going out to eat instead of doing the cooking every day lol. I am missing my family, FaceTime is not quite the same as real hugs. Tomorrow night I have Gardeners’ world to look forward to lol and tonight after dinner I may treat myself to a cherry coke and some chocolate 😝

Friday: Normally I love Fridays, they are the last day of the working week for us and a prelude to the weekend, now one day is pretty much like another 😜 and every day is the weekend! This morning we have done the usual rounds and then John fixed a few little things that needed doing, a gate that didn’t shut properly, the weatherboard on my greenhouse door before returning to cutting wood. Meanwhile I did one of my favourite jobs of the day now things are growing well and that is picking herbs and weeds for the rabbits/guineas. Today they had a mix of parsley, grass, dandelion, dead nettle, mint and sprouting broccoli that had gone to seed, the reason I love it is the smell, it’s amazing and then there are the delighted squeals from the guineas 😀 I did a bit of potting on in the greenhouse and sowed some more peas and some sunflowers.

In the afternoon I started off tidying up the front driveway, the edges get over grown and the debris from winter is usually stuck to the ground, John came and gave me a hand for a little while before it was time to collect the eggs. Charlie and Macca came over to drop off some shopping they got for us, just a few bits mostly for John, sausages, bacon and cheese, some bananas for me and a cherry coke.

I had a phone call in the afternoon and it was great to hear Sue on the other end, she has had her kneecap pinned back together and they have let her go home which is great news.

Saturday: A fine warm day is on the cards for today so we should get some jobs done. John did some wood cutting 😂 I did some seed sowing and some planting of seedlings outside. I am concentrating on fast growing crops such as micro greens (broccoli, celery, cabbage) which I mixed together and sowed into a container in the small tunnel and then covered with a pane of greenhouse glass so the mice don’t eat them. I sowed various lettuce/salad leaves in the big tunnel and covered with bubble wrap. I also planted a two rows of beetroots plantings and some mangetout outside. I spent a bit of time weeding the big tunnel and laying membrane down, it dose t look pretty but it will mean I can spend more time of the plants I want rather than the weeds I don’t. I found a froglet in there, that’s my slug control sorted 😀

I asked John to power wash the decking area as using it is his favourite job 😝 and he also reconnected the main water pipes outside, if it looks like the weather might turn to freezing we will have to undo them again but for now they will be useful for filling up water tubs as the big water tanks are getting low.

The longer this virus situation goes on the more bizarre it feels 🙄 hopefully a once in a lifetime occurrence but if not they will know what to or what not to do next time.

I made some yoghurt, well it is in the process of being made, I don’t make it from scratch I’m not that much of a yoghurt lover but I do have a yearning for something different to eat and I don’t have to go to the shops to get it. I bought a yoghurt maker over a year ago when I was eating it for breakfast regularly (a phase I go through now and again) I buy the sachets and mostly they are plain Greek yoghurt but I think there was a free trial of coconut and mango so that’s what I have on the go. I’m glad we already had food stocks and haven’t had to get very much at all, it’s fresh fruit and salad stuff that I yearn for, for John it’s sausages, bacon and cheese. We are lucky that the girls will get what we need and deliver it, charlie dropped off some bits yesterday but it’s not the same and strolling along the isles deciding what you fancy 😜

Sunday: Well what can I say about today that I haven’t already said for every day lol, eat, sleep, work, watch evening tv, repeat 😂 Actually it has been quite a nice day although the weather didn’t really live up to my expectations, wind wasn’t factored in to sunny weather. This morning we had a visit from my sister and her hubby, they came to gets eggs but it means we can have a chat over the gate. They bought their own mugs so we could make them a cuppa 🤣 the scenario goes something like this: she places the cups on the ground and steps back, I get the cups, I go inside wash hands (because I touched the cups) make the tea, put their cups on a tray, wash hands (now I can carry the tray) take it outside place tray on the floor, they pick up the cups by the handle, voila I think we got it covered 🤔 It was a nice interlude and a lovely chat in the morning sunshine.

Other jobs of the day included stripping the bed and getting the washing out on the line, good job it was breezy as it dried in no time, making bread and rock cakes and I took an hour off to sit outside on the newly cleaned decking to read my book. It’s an I interesting book, I got it for Christmas but it’s especially poignant now as it is a post apocalypse novel. When I say post I mean around 1000 years after something terrible wiped out society as we know it, the lastest clue (as I’m only a third of the way through) is that the ‘episode’ happened in 2025, how appropriate is that and it seems to be a disease that wiped them out though that remains to be seen 🙄 It’s now one and a half thousand years later and life has very much gone backwards! John as usual has been cutting wood 😂 and apparently (I haven’t actually looked yet) he cleaned and hoovered the back toilet, wonders will never cease.

A selection of veg plants growing nicely and lovely temps in the greenhouse 😀

Friesland Farm

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

Posted on March 29, 2020February 8, 2023 by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay safe everyone x

Friesland Farm

Muddling on, madness & Mothers Day

Posted on March 22, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday March 16th 2020: A cold start to the day but it yielded a glorious day which I took full advantage of. I started off indoors hoovering and polishing so that I could dedicate more time to outside 😋 Once the animal rounds were done I took the dahlia tubers from the back toilet and potted them up in order to begin waking them up, they are now in the large tunnel. The dahlias are a bit of a faff but I am enjoying growing them so until I get fed up of digging them up and storing them I will continue. I also potted up some of the freesia bulbs, I experimented by digging half up and leaving half in the ground, the ones in the ground have done well and not rotted so that’s a win. I’m hoping the temps keep climbing as sharing the floor in the greenhouse with Big Billy is proving difficult lol, and he keeps lying behind the door so it’s hard to get in, also I remembered that Voldertort likes to go for feet, luckily he hasn’t come out yet but when he does they will have to go outside I think. I did a bit of weeding and planted a couple of plants and some more garlic bulbs which have started to sprout. It was lovely working out in the warm, the kind of weather I have been waiting for 😀

The afternoon was a much more frantic affair, we had a delivery of 40 pullets and a large delivery of feed which will keep us going for a couple of months. To be fair if we ran out of feed the birds would just have to manage on forage, they would lay less eggs but they wouldn’t starve. At about this point, which was 3pm ish we ran out of chicken eggs, this is because within two customers this morning most of the eggs were gone! I’m hoping it was a fluke and that people are not panic buying them, the hens lay every day and so the same number are always available, no need to stash them. So while I am trying to get water and feed for the new hens (which will hopefully start to lay pretty quickly) a customer was shouting over the gate because we had run out of eggs. I hate being put under pressure and we have had a good run of being able to keep the egg shed stocked but I then had to think about doing the egg collecting sharpish.

The first of our daily updates from the government indicates that life is about to get difficult, we are advised to avoid social contact, unnecessary contact and travel, work from home if possible ✅ to isolate the whole house for 14 days if one person has symptoms, and that vulnerable people should be shielded for up to 12 weeks, that’s anyone who it’s recommended has a flu jab, that’s me 😏 I don’t mind telling you, it’s a real worry, I worry about Mum and Ken so far away from any of us, I worry about Charlie who is an NHS dental nurse, I worry about Shelley and Sam and the kiddies, strange times indeed. We are all trying as hard as we can to isolate ourselves, John is on a job for two weeks but when that’s done, if not before, he will not go to work anymore for the time being.

Tuesday: A duller morning but not too bad at the minute, dry but rain coming later. I did the rounds and put out what few eggs I picked up but they are getting snapped up quickly, even the duck eggs are flying off the shelf which is unheard of 🤔

I spent the morning in the greenhouse, watering and sowing a few seeds, wallflowers, ranunculus corms and some leek seeds I had saved from last year. I also sowed a row of little gem lettuce and some wild rocket inbetween the rows of garlic in the poly tunnel. I shall keep sowing as much as I can, it keeps me busy and hopefully will keep us fed.

The situation in this country and others is changing fast every day sometimes minute to minute. Many people I know are practising significant social distancing already and I imagine it’s going to get a lot tougher in the next couple of weeks.

Wednesday: I was determined to get outside and away from any media this morning, I’m finding that I end up with a headache at the end of the day probably due to heightened anxiety and some outdoor work is the cure 😀 This morning after doing the rounds I did end up with umpteen messages pinging back and forth but after that I went out and did some hand weeding. It’s therapeutic at the best of times and a welcome interlude today, I weeded and tided the asparagus bed as these will be the next veg to start making an appearance although I did notice a small artichoke forming so that’s good news as well.

I try and run my day so that I do outside work in the morning when I have plenty of energy and then come in for lunch and do household stuff in the afternoon before having to go back out to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting, it seems to work well enough.

I’ve had to put a notice on the egg shed as we are selling out of chicken eggs quickly each time I put them out, I have noticed a few ‘new’ customers I hope they keep coming even after the crisis is over 🤔

I get a lot of time to think about things and one thing I hope people take on board is having a buffer for future events, it strikes me that so many people spend everything they have on ‘stuff’ bigger houses, newer cars, more holidays, all the gear, that they are totally reliant on that pay check coming in to keep them going. I guess it will be a lesson well learnt to figure out that there are there are things that can put that all into jeopardy and in a short space of time to. I guess what I am trying to say is people need to be more self reliant across the board if you get my meaning.

Had a stressful couple of hours this afternoon, I had an egg customer sat waiting for eggs after I put out a notice due to the shortages at times, so was under pressure to get the eggs out in the shelf, meanwhile the carbon monoxide alarm was going off 😮 so open all doors and windows, I think a seal has gone on the flue. In between that I was trying to arrange a payment for something in Spain and probably because I was rushing I kept getting locked out of online banking 🤷‍♀️ All sorted in the end, I hate it when everything happens at once, I want my orderly days back lol.

Thursday: It’s raining this morning which is a bummer because I went to bed thinking about the jobs I would do in the morning and now they are scuppered as they were mostly on the garden 😏

At the moment although I am social distancing, John is still working, he is working at one house and limiting contact with anyone else, though I think by the weekend we will be more restricted. He did go out to the shop last night, I asked for oranges and bananas and some cucumber for the torts, there was 1 orange left, no bananas and two halves of marked down cucumber, he did manage to get two Easter eggs 😂 some bread rolls and some cheese. Although we are face timing, I miss seeing the children and grandchildren in the flesh lol, the kids kind of understand that we have to do this until the virus is gone but it’s hard going and we are only at the beginning. Mum and Ken have decided to sit tight in Spain, they might as well as driving through Spain and France at the minute would be extremely difficult and they would be going from one bad situation into another as it stands now they will be through this before us and at least they will have some nice weather 😀

It’s rumoured that the army are on standby to be deployed here, doing what is yet to be seen, the schools and colleges are closing from Friday only key worker and vulnerable children will attend, its all closing down slowly. I fully agree with the way the government are listening to scientists and doing what needs to be done at the right time, their strategy seems logical to me.

Not only have the chicken and duck eggs sales gone barmy now we have people looking for chickens to keep 🙄 Obviously I will not be selling hens to anyone that hasn’t kept them before, the hens welfare is always top priority but more so in times like these.

I’m going to have to change a few things around here as we have hit barmyville today 😝 First off as mentioned a sharp increase in enquiries of hens for sale, going to have to protect the ones we have I think 🤔 I had someone come to buy 4 I made them wait at the gate while I got them, standing six feet away while I left the wheelbarrow with the crate of hens then got them to put the money in the barrow, then I had an older customer who has been coming for years came and the only eggs I had were ones not yet put out so I hid them in an amazon box and took them out to her so anyone arriving would not see I had given them to her. Finally despite a note in the shed saying if we are sold out do not ring the bell, I had a customer come marching across the drive to the door, I went out the back and pretended I didn’t hear the knock, it seems no matter what you tell people they don’t listen, I say finally but after putting eggs out I was making a cuppa, I could see people who obviously had never been before, they had three boxes of eggs and when I checked the money later after sales it was short 😤 Could have been anyone but it’s bad form people. So I think tomorrow I will shut the very front gate with a closed until 4pm sign, take the roadside board in so we are not getting people who have not been before and then limit customers to a dozen eggs, not really what we should have to do, seeing the best and the worst of people at the minute.

History in the making is what we are witnessing in these fraught times, the interest rates here have been cut again to the lowest EVER 0.1% We see countries in lockdown all over the world, the armies are out on the streets in some of them, you can’t find a toilet roll for love nor money, crazy times people.

Unbelievable, I thought my day of fucktardness had finished but no, I asked John to shut the very front gate as we had sold out of eggs, a while later a car pulls up to the gate someone gets out realises the gate is shut and they can’t open it and then proceeds to climb over the fence and walk up the driveway!

Friday: Still cold but dry this morning. After yesterday’s shenanigans we made the decision to close the front gate with a notice saying ‘closed, eggs will be available at 4pm’ this gives me peace of mind that I am not going to be hunted down and that I am not constantly worrying about people arriving to no eggs. The fact that I have seen reports on poultry groups that people are having their hens stolen is another worry, honestly what the hell is wrong with people 😏 John is finishing today, he is in the middle of doing a bathroom but if he leaves it now it is still fully functional just not finished, if he carries on next week and the suppliers shut down he will be scuppered so makes sense to stop at a good point.

This morning I did the usual rounds then a few bits of tidying up on the yard and in the stable block, and took the horses some hay putting up at the far end of the paddocks so that they actually have to move from the front, right to the back to get it lol, since they discovered the side paddock was open they haven’t left it at all🙄

I’m sat here in the afternoon hiding again, a planned one this time as Sam has come over to get the horses in because the farrier is coming first thing in the morning. I am hiding because she has Mia with her and if she knows I am in she will want to come in and see me, she won’t understand why that can’t happen, it’s so sad that we have to do this but we are protecting not just myself but others in the family with health issues. I hate that this virus has deprived me of precious time with the grandchildren we still FaceTime but it’s not like real hugs and kisses

So the gate was opened at 4pm and it was mental, by 4.15 we had sold all the duck and chicken eggs, it was car after car coming in, add to that the amount of enquiries about point of lay chickens and people coming to get them, just bonkers today 🙄

Saturday: A cold start but dry and with the promise of some sunshine. We did the morning rounds, the farrier was here bright and early at 7.30am then onto the jobs of the day. John went off to get some fire cement for the flue and then replaced the broken fire cement and the fire rope of the flue. He then went to get some compost so I can carry on potting on and seed growing, after that he spent most of the day cutting up wood. I topped up bedding in the duck and goose house then cleaned out the quail, after that I was free to potter in the greenhouse, watering and potting on. I also had a look round at what I had, a few leeks that didn’t get planted last year, same with a tray of garlic and some welsh onions that I separated at the end of last year. All of these I have now planted, not wasting anything this year so spaces were found to pop them in. I also have some strawberry plants that I had put out for sale but I got them back in and potted them up, I will need as much as I can grow especially soft fruit for the grandchildren so might as well use them myself. I have raspberry/blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes that I potted up last year that I can also use to increase yields. We got ready for the 4pm onslaught again today but it was much less frantic more of a steady stream.

People are starting to understand that we need to stay home more and more but there are plenty out there who are not getting it (usually in a supermarket queue).

I am hugely proud, and also terrified at the same time, to tell you that our youngest daughter Charlotte, who is an NHS dental nurse, has put herself forward and will be working with a dedicated team in a dedicated surgery to provide emergency dental care for patients with confirmed covid-19. As soon as I heard there was a possibility that her practice had been designated I knew she would volunteer to be on the team, that’s my girl 🥰 and there are thousands of NHS workers doing the exact same thing so please don’t go out unnecessarily, flatten the curve and give them a fighting chance to deal with this crisis.

Sunday: A cold start again but that soon blossomed into a beautiful day, the wind was still cold at times but the heat of the sun could be felt which is the main thing. It is of course Mother’s Day and the 2020 version is very different to previous years, a quote I like is ‘who would have thought that the best thing you can give your Mother today is distance’ sad but true. Despite the distancing we have managed, I managed to find somewhere in Spain to get a pot plant to my Mum, my girls have managed to get an afternoon tea delivery to me (and some for John of course 😜) Charlie and Macca walked over and we stood in the driveway having a conversation with distance between us, we exchanged goodies by placing them on the floor then stepping back lol, the likes of these things only ever seen in movies before now.

Other than that John is still cutting wood, he said he ‘liked being forced not to have to go to work’ I think it’s different to taking a week off and feeling under pressure about the workload he would have to go back to. I know it will be stressful for a lot of people but for a few it will relieve the stress. Meanwhile I have been baking some bread and doing some bits of gardening, getting the beds ready for planting into when the time comes to plant out. We are keeping a very close eye on the weather so that we can drag the fields as soon as possible, the ground is slowly drying out which will make living conditions for the birds a lot easier than it has been all winter.

I wish you all well this week coming and never have I written that before with more sincerity than now.

Friesland Farm

A pandemic, turkey eggs & the first rhubarb

Posted on March 15, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 9th March 2020: Well it’s me on me tod this morning and it’s been an interesting start to the day. Firstly, the horse was out, how come it happens on my shift? This time of the year the grass is growing but not very fast and to be honest there is not a lot of foraging left in the paddock they are the in so I have opened up the side paddock for them as well although by lunchtime they still hadn’t noticed 😂 The second event was the helimed trying to land, it came low over our place and our neighbours twice, at this point I had not let the chickens out so I waited to see where they wanted to go, they landed further up the lane. I messaged my neighbour to make sure she was alright and nothing had happened at her place, I later found out it was an elderly lady just up the lane and I hope she is alright.

Excitements over I finished the morning rounds and then did a bit of pottering round the place, a few barrowfulls of compost on the veg beds, moving the branches from the pruned apple tree, nothing much but a little bit here and there. At lunchtime someone came to get duck eggs, these I have been saving for them to hatch out as part of child minding activities fingers crossed they are viable.

Sam came over in the afternoon with the children, we talked about the corona virus situation as it’s on everybody’s mind (makes a change from the weather) I think it’s prudent to have at least some idea of the measures you would take if the situation gets worse, though of course we can’t make definite plans as no one really knows how this will pan out.

I made bread in the afternoon, turned out really well, not the usual bread flour I buy nor the usual yeast as none of that was available at the shop but a happy discovery of a better product 😀

Tuesday: A quiet morning rounds this morning, the rain was hard in the night knocking off the electric 🙄 but a flick of a switch and it was back on. The wind is strong this morning hopefully that will dry up some of the ground and we are forecast a sunny afternoon so I will wait with anticipation to see if that is the case.

The Coronavirus situation is worsening daily especially in Italy which is virtually locked down, is this nature’s way of getting its house in order I wonder sometimes 🤔 We can only watch and wait to see what happens, ‘keep calm and carry on’ is an English mantra we are used to guess it’s time to practice it 😀 Naturally I am worried as I am on immunosuppressive medication, I wonder if I stopped taking it, if I got the virus, it would kick it into touch, does it work like that? I have no idea, I guess I would find out if I do get infected 😏

In light of the situation and the fact I have plenty of room to grow food, I will be growing as much as possible this year, I think it’s prudent to do so. The ground is still too wet to be sowing directly into so module sowing is the way forward for me this year.

Tuesday: A morning where the weather can’t quite make up its mind, it’s mild so that’s a good start, sometimes sunshine, sometime spits of rain a little wind every now and again a mixed bag it’s fair to say. I did the morning rounds topping up the goose hut with new straw, then onto the rest of the feeding and I found our very first turkey egg (well chuffed). After that it was into the greenhouse to sow a few seeds and generally have a look how things are progressing in there (doing well) onto watering the garlic and then have a look at the potatoes in their sacks and we have greenery appearing already so I gave them some water. I wanted to get a particular area weeded so I tried hoeing but it’s too wet still so I hand weeded a couple of other small areas, I really want to stay on top of it so that there is not all to do at once. I also checked the tortoises as I would have expected movement from them by now, I tentatively had a looked and I am pleased to say that a foot moved so that’s a good sign, they are still alive at least. I am waiting for this elusive sun to move them outside and also the quail, they have been in the back all winter and I just need it to warm up a little before putting them back outside in the fresh air.

Wednesday: I seem to have lost a day lol no idea what I did today 😜

Thursday: I am so sick of this weather now, this morning was vile, yesterday the ground was beginning to show good signs of drying out and then in the evening the rain started and didn’t stop all night. This morning it’s raining and blowing a hoolie, vile and I am delaying going out to do the morning rounds.

An hour later and the sun was shinning although the wind is still blowing and it’s a cold wind, come on already we just want some warmer, drier days, it’s been a very long few months.

The turkey laid again today 😀 can’t wait to put them out for sale and see who is willing to try them, I need to eat one first just so I can say what they taste like. I’m not expecting them to be much different to a chicken egg to be honest but people do ask so best to be prepared with an answer.

Apart from the usual I have been watching the news bulletins and as I write this an emergency Cobra meeting is taking place to decide the next steps and measures. Today the USA has banned flights from Europe which has caused uproar but I’m of the opinion that they may be right to do so, I can’t understand the seemly lax attitude here to travellers arriving from affected areas 🤷‍♀️ Ireland has now moved to closing schools and colleges and banning large gatherings, I’m guessing we may be following suit fairly soon.

Friday: A glorious start to the day, warm enough to venture to the egg shed in just a long sleeved t-shirt but it hasn’t lasted and the sun has now gone in lol. Morning rounds done and dusted, eggs sorted, it was time to go and get my bloods checked 🙄. I think I can safely say that the nervousness is palpable especially in a doctors waiting room, interestingly, I have more than the usual bloods today, checking thyroid levels and blood pressure plus questions, a more overall look at my health I would say.

I make no apologies for continuing to write about the situation the world has found itself in, this after all is a diary blog and at the moment it is a very big part of life. Although we are not at the self isolate stage we are practising social distancing that means we will not be putting ourselves in a position of being with people more than is very necessary. A play I was due to see next week has sensibly been cancelled and we will avoid any social gatherings, we were due to go on a cruise in June, that will now be cancelled. To me this is not over reaction it is sensible precaution and I don’t understand why a lot of people are just not getting the potential of the seriousness of this pandemic 🤷‍♀️ We are apparently 4 weeks behind Italy and they are in a dire situation, life is not as we know it and we need to adjust our thinking. One thing I have found out about myself is that I am much more in the self sufficient group than the smallholder group, I realise they are two different things with some overlap but definitely different. Self sufficiency is just that, it’s about relying on your own efforts to maintain a living/life, it’s about having the skills to do what needs to be done and not relying on others to do it for you, paid or otherwise and fundamentally it’s about having an attitude of self preservation. With all that in mind I have ordered a large first aid kit the reason is that when this epidemic is at its height the NHS will be stretched to the maximum and beyond so it is prudent to have to hand a kit that will cover any emergency until help arrives or basics so that a trip to the doctors is not necessary immediately. I like being self sufficient/reliant I think it’s good for the soul to know you can manage if TSHTF 😜

Well it definitely feels more spring like out there today thank goodness. I did some pottering in the greenhouse, a bit of watering and turning, I also have some hardy fushia plug plants arrive that I have potted up. Fifteen of them lol, I won’t be keeping all of them some will be sold on but that will pay for the ones I keep. I am really pleased with how well the greenhouse is performing it’s made such a difference to getting things successfully started, I have high hopes this year, now if I can just stop everything eating it I will be very happy.

Saturday: If I open the top of my stable door in the kitchen, as I often do, and look out to the garden and paddocks, it seems like any ordinary day, like hundreds before, except it’s not and we are in unchartered territory. There are countries going into lockdown and panic buying in the shops 🙄 We went yesterday to get some bits (cat milk because he doesn’t know there is a problem and still yowls for his milk) and some of the shelves were just ransacked, not all there is still plenty of fresh fruit and veg but canned goods were sparse in some sections, there are no ibrufen or paracetamol to be had, no sanitiser or antibacterial goods, there were toilet rolls but only a few packs, still no bread flour or any flour for that matter. I’ve e no doubt the shop will have restocked by now but it’s flying out as fast as it comes in!

My Mum and Ken went to Spain for three months after Christmas, they were due to start driving home on the 30th March, it looks like they will be staying longer than planned. It’s a worry because we can’t get to them if they become ill but they have managed to get a few provisions and we will see how this pans out, it’s all we can do, I know she reads this blog so lots and lots of love to you Mum and stay well 😘😘

Meanwhile on the farm John and I have been working and if you don’t have the radio or tv on you would be forgiven for not having a clue as to the events unfolding. John went to get a new blade for his saw so that if he is off for any length of time he can cut up wood 😂 He also picked up dog and cat food to keep us going. When he came back he power washed the side pathway this is because as I was going out to the egg shed I slipped and fell with a thud. The path is east facing and in the winter doesn’t dry out much and so algae builds up and makes it slippery, I think I will ache tonight but luckily I didn’t break anything.

After that we spent a good couple of hours mending the roof on the outdoor tortoise house. I heard a shuffling in the greenhouse this morning and Big Billy has woken up proper and was trying to get out of the cage. I got him some water and some bits of aloe Vera in case he was hungry and then thought I need to fix the roof, so that’s what we did, and a pretty good job we did of it even if I do say so myself 😀 John then carried on cutting up wood while I lit the Rayburn and got some lunch. Charlie and Macca called in for a coffee and some eggs.

We were expecting patchy rain today but we are into early evening and no sign of it so we had a good run of getting some things done. The ground is beginning to dry out faster than it was before bough it is still soggy.

Sunday: It’s raining heavily this morning and so not a very nice morning at all, to be honest the weather is now the least of our worries 😏 John did the morning rounds while I did the indoor bits, we lit the Rayburn early and we are not planning on doing much today except visit Florence for cake later as it’s her 2nd birthday today 😀

I’m feeling rather vindicated this morning, if you have been reading my blogs for a long time you will have read about my thoughts on an ‘apocalypse’ 🙄 at times I thought maybe I was a bit batty going on about preparing for a ‘situation’ such as this but it seemed obvious to me that something would happen eventually. This situation is a virus but potentially it could have been war or a terrorist attack on the ‘grid’ both of which would have been much worse as far as human nature goes, at the moment it’s toilets rolls, hand sanitiser and ibrufen people are fighting over 🤔

Stay well people, I have a feeling that we will all be seeing a lot less of each other for a while, I am certainly minimising my contact with the outside world from here on in, I am in the lucky position to be able to do that and I have plenty to occupy my time so it will pretty much be business as usual for me 😝

Friesland Farm

Afternoon tea, potatoes planted & Jobs list ticked off.

Posted on March 8, 2020 by frieslandfarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week and stay well 🤞

Friesland Farm

Painting, pancake day, leap day and plenty of rain 🌧

Posted on March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th February 2020: Another Monday, another crap weather day, still blowing around and still raining on and off. Never mind though I had a project to do today, paint the kitchen, just the bottom end as the rest is tiled. It’s a good way to wonder where on Earth the hours disappeared too mind, I started at 9.30 after doing the morning rounds and the next thing I am listening to the 2 o’clock news thinking ‘what, where did the time go’ and no I didn’t do the ceiling 😜 It was a lick to freshen the place up a bit. I just about left myself enough time to tidy up, light the Rayburn and sit and have a cuppa while the fire bedded in before going out to do the afternoon rounds.

It will be interesting to see if John notices 😜

Tuesday: Pancake day, or more accurately Shrove Tuesday, we all know about pancake day the best day of the year when we were kids, we had no idea of any religious background to it in our house we were just happy to jump on the delicious bandwagon of pancakes, syrup, lemon and sugar, these days often chocolate spread as well. It’s is generally known that Ash Wednesday follows but did you know there are other named days in that week? Collop Monday when you used up your meat stores, Shrove Tuesday, eggs and flour stores, Ash Wednesday, depending on where in the country you were, Fritter Thursday, (apples and pears) or Bloody Thursday when you used up your black pudding and Kissing Friday. As with many traditions they have all got muddled in with different religions and regions but pancake day remains steadfast across all areas 😀

The morning started off damp and drizzly and I wasn’t really feeling it, I think I rather overdid it yesterday and consequently suffered with many aches and stiffness. I had breakfast, a couple of ibrufen and sat and listened to a podcast from Conversations of Inspiration with Holly Tucker founder of Not on the High Street. This podcast caught my eye because she was interviewing Robin Hutson who is the founder of The Pig hotels, if you have never been to one of these hotels I urge you to go, pricey but well worth it, the whole ethos of each hotel is fabulous and I loved staying at The Pig in the Forest.

After waiting for the ibrufen to kick in I went for a shower, seriously I was struggling to move but luckily the warmth of the water eased my overworked muscles and by the time I got out of the shower the sun was shinning ☀️ Well I was not about to pass up that little nugget of delight so I whizzed round doing the animals and then straight into the garden. Into the greenhouse to be exact because I knew it was going to be lovely in there with the rays of the sun. The sun didn’t actually last that long but it had the desired effect of firing up my engines and so there was no stopping me 😀 Seed sowing was the job I had in mind and this year I am sowing into smaller modules, most years I would wait and sow into the ground but it’s so wet that I am taking a different approach this year. I sowed beetroot, swede and turnip, 50 of each then 10 each of patty pan, courgette, loofah, pumpkin and butternut squash, 15 sweet corn and 50 each of mangetout and petit poi’s. I have bought in the metal shelves I had last year so that I can get layers of trays all going at the same time and use the excess heat from the heat mat at the same time. I am really pleased with the way the seedlings I started on the windowsill are doing now that they are in a heated propagator, I managed not to let them get too spindly and the cucumbers are putting on their second set of leaves. I had a hunt round for this elusive mouse and thought I had found its house but it was empty, I have moved everything that is high enough for it to move from the ground area up to the bench area and hopefully that will stop it eating any seeds I have sown. I also took the added measures of covering the seed trays with see through lids or putting them up on the shelving and unless the dear little soul is a gymnast it shouldn’t be able to get up there.

After doing that lot I checked on the poly tunnel and the carrots and peas are doing well. Then I picked some purple sprouting broccoli, kale and a few small Brussel sprouts which we will have with dinner tonight.

We will have some of the greens with mashed potato and lamb chops but some I will use for tomorrow as I have also got a chicken carcass out of the freezer, I never throw them away I always freeze them and use them for soups, broth or stock.

This is the daphne I bought the other week, I wish they would get round to inventing smelly vision as it smells amazing, you will just have to take my word for it.

The sun came back out in the afternoon and I popped back into the greenhouse to pot up the melon seedlings and put those in the propagator as well. I am chuffed that the melon seeds from Josh’s water melon have sprouted, I am going to give these a real good go which will please him no end as it’s just about his favourite thing to eat. The temperature in the greenhouse was a whopping 25c, amazing!

Wednesday: Not a bad morning, by the time I got out there the sun was shinning though it was cold but not too bad. Before I went out I watched Ben Fogle: A new life in the country, John watched it last night but I fell asleep and this morning he said you really need to watch it so I did. What an inspirational person Miss Puffin (not her real name) is, she moved at the age of 43 from London where she was a nanny to John O Groats to run a petting farm, farm shop, b & b with no experience of animals, business or Scotland, all on her own, now that is life changing, challenging and ultimately hugely rewarding despite the lows. The Facebook page is Puffin Croft if you want to look her up.

Feeling inspired and cheerful I went out to sort out our menagerie, feeding, letting out and topping up bedding etc. I sorted out the eggs and put some trays of duck eggs up for sale on the selling sites as they are stacking up again. The goose egg sales are a bit slow, I find this happens every year, then suddenly they take off and people continue asking for them well into summer when of course they are no longer available 🙄 Thinking ahead to next week when John will be here instead of his normal work and he will constantly want to eat 😜 I decided to bake a couple of fruit cakes using the goose eggs.

I took a photo of what is my favourite view at the moment, it’s our side window in the kitchen and there is normally not much to see to be honest but this week Mr Robin has shown his wife this little house and she has decided it’s a good place to raise her young so they have been very busy moving in 😀 This box has been there for about 5 years and never had any occupants before so I’m very excited to watch the comings and goings and hopefully catch sight of the fledglings when the time comes.

You can just see the bird box on the back of the shed where a robin family have decided to move into.

Thursday: What can I say about today’s weather lol, it’s wet but snowing, not settling thankfully. It was a thicker socks and thicker gloves morning and I got the rounds done early, I was back in lighting the Rayburn at 8.30 I figured I might as well feel warm all day before I have to go back out later on. This bug I have is lingering, one day I feel ok the next I feel washed out and tired, still coughing but not as much and still got a blocked nose and ears making my head feel thick 🙄 I may just have a rest day today or a mostly rest day anyhow.

What does one do on a rest day, well watch a film, pay a few bills and order new sofas of course 😜 I was thinking I should hoover and polish the living room and then started thinking that I need to wash the sofa covers but I don’t honestly think they will make it through in one piece so I went all in and ordered them lol We have had them for over 25 years so I think it’s allowed don’t you.

Friday: Back to the wet horrible weather and surprise we have a storm rolling in for the weekend. This one is called Jorge as it was named by the Spanish (it’s visiting there first 😜) I got on and did the animals first thing then sorted out the eggs to fill the shed up completely and then a few house keeping bits and pieces before having Josh and Florence for the afternoon. It’s Shelleys birthday and Martin is taking her out for lunch 😀

The Corona virus situation is getting worse, I’m not sure if they have declared a pandemic yet but they will be very soon if not. I include this in my blog because you never know what is going to happen world wide and so it seems a good idea to have a written record of what is happening.

Saturday 29th Feb: A bonus day 😜 all I can think it’s and extra day of rain! We had some real downpours through the night and we are sodden this morning with more heavy rain due sometime this afternoon. Couple that with high winds again and well it’s becoming a regular weekend thing. My cold is not shifting very quickly it’s now blocking my sinuses, so a constant thick head means I find it difficult to concentrate on much more than what I have to. All in all a pretty depressing outlook for the weekend 🙄 a

Well it’s midday and so far the weather hasn’t been too bad, the sun is shinning though it’s cold and the wind has just picked up though not as much as was predicted…..yet🙄

We went round to Shelleys in the evening for a joint birthday cake with my sister who had her birthday last week. I got to see my newest great nephew Theo, a beautiful little bundle of cuteness 😀

Sunday: I’m starting to feel better thank goodness, this has dragged on and on and I really want it gone as John is off for the next week so we can get some jobs done. I wanted to drag the fields but that is not going to happen as they are very wet still so we started with the rabbit run, boarding up the mesh so that little Dotty Iron Man rabbit can come out and be with the other rabbit and guineas. I did a full clean out while we were at it, over winter I deep litter them which basically means putting fresh stuff in on top of the old but eventually it all needs to come out. Then it was on to sort the ménage mirrors out and take the framework down, over the years the wind has rocked them and now they are cracked and one had fallen out and so we decided to take them out altogether. In between that I did a bit of seed sowing and moved the aubergines and peppers into a heated propagator, I now have a free windowsill again. We popped to the garden centre to pick up some compost as the seed potatoes are ready to go in the bags but the garden compost is soaking wet. We had visits from Charlie and then from Sam, Luke, Mia and the twiglets Lucie and George, I wonder how long they will get called twiglets for lol, we used to call Josh sausage but that didn’t stick lucky for him 😜 Some of the wood that was used for the mirror frames will be reused as sides for a long raised bed in the polytunnel, on one side there is a clay seam which is difficult to use given the heat in there in the summer so I am putting a bed on top of it to give the plants a better chance.

I’m hoping, along with the rest of the country I’m sure, that we will have a bit more sunshine next week 😀😀😀

Have a great week everyone.

Posted in Friesland Farm
9 years of blogging, ‘dragons’ & storm Ciara

Posted on February 9, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 3rd February: Oh my goodness WordPress has informed me that I first registered and posted 9 years ago, 31st Jan 2011 😲 It seems I have been banging on with my blurb for quite a long time 😜 My first blogs were short and sweet lol, they have got a lot longer over the years. You can access these old blogs by scrolling right the way back , I tried to find a search bar which would be useful but there doesn’t seem to be one 🙄

So we are safely into February a month that usually disappoints on a couple of fronts. Firstly we are always hopeful of some warmer weather we almost hold our breath waiting but it never quite comes and eventually we tell ourselves ‘well it is only February’ lol we do tell ourselves that at the beginning too of course but still we hope 😏 The second disappointment is Valentine’s Day, I think maybe this is the year I will get some flowers then usually nope lol. We have been married a long time and have got to the point where over the years at some point I have mentioned what a waste of money flowers are, indeed as is the whole frenzy surrounding any type of celebration 🙄 my mistake. We also hit the point years ago when John would say ‘well you don’t get me anything’ now we are at the stage where if I did get him something and he didn’t get me anything I am going to be bloody fuming 😂 so probably best to ignore it and leave it to others 💕

I take back everything I said about February 😜 I just spent a lovely morning outside, first job was to burn the pile of sticks that we failed to do yesterday, then I burnt the paper rubbish. Then into the garden where I spent a good couple of hours tidying stuff up, cutting dead stuff down, sowing a few early seedlings (climbers for my arches) making a new raised bed in the poly tunnel for salad stuff, generally looking over the plot to think about where I will plant stuff. I captured four chickens and put them back over the fence so I could work in peace and so they didn’t undo any tidying I was doing, pretty satisfied with my mornings work 😀

While I was out with the bonfire I noticed two little holes in the bottom of one of the buddleia bushes, if you look closely at the phot you can just about see them. I think this is a mouse home as the cat was pretty interested in the activity under the piles of sticks when they were there, they could be vole I suppose, I would have to sit and wait to see what came out of them to be sure. These bushes were planted way back in the seventies and have done really well to survive this long, the trunks are beautifully gnarly.

I met a lovely couple who have taken over the running of a local pub, The Carpenters Arms in Fulbrook, they are hopefully going to have quail eggs from us 😀

Tuesday: A colder feel to the start of the day 🥶 so I don’t think I will be spending the morning outside again today.

You may have noticed that occasionally I have a random thought 😂 and just have to get it written down to get it out of my systems otherwise I will be thinking about it all day. We watched Shrek at the weekend and on it there is a dragon, the conversation goes like this, ‘that dragon would never actually be able to fly with wings that small and a belly that big’ 😜 then I said to John ‘as there are so many myths around dragons is it possible that they did exist? Who can say if there wasn’t a pterodactyl or two still around back in the 6/7/8th century and that’s where the legends come from’. If there are any eminent palaeontologists reading this 🤣 please let me know if this is a possibility.

Now that is off my chest I’d better get on with the rest of the day lol.

I did the morning rounds, it’s a tad cold due to the wind but not as bad as I was expecting it to be however I hate trying to work in the wind so I will give outside a miss today lol. I got some wood in and will probably light the Rayburn earlier yesterday, I didn’t need to light it until 2.30 it was that mild. I have a haircut booked today, it’s that time again 😜 I’m not a regular, I’m the type that thinks, yikes I need a haircut and desperately tries to get an appointment before I let myself loose on cutting my own fringe 😂

We have roast pork for dinner tonight so I may make an apple pie/crumble as a treat for pud.

I had my first ever proper disaster with making bread today. First prove and it wasn’t growing in size particularly well, I put that down to the temp of the kitchen which was cool as I hadn’t lit the fire yet. I left it half an hour longer than normal until it had doubled in size, I was timing the whole thing to fit in with my hair cut so was now half an hour behind, second prove was on course but I had to take it out of the oven when the hairdresser arrived otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get it out. I took it out and thought, it looks ok, nope it was not cooked through as I discovered later. What I should have done was left it to prove and not put it in the oven until after I had my hair done but you live and learn.

I listened to a couple of pod casts while I was working today, the first was the Organic Gardening pod cast and the second was from Roots and all which was about Forest gardening, some useful information on both in fact I even started taking notes on the forest gardening one lol.

Wednesday: Every morning once I’m up I open the top half of the stable door in the kitchen and I am greeted with the sounds of excited chattering birds. Over the years the number has increased and there are now a whole flock of sparrows we also get great tits, chaffinch, blackbirds, wren, robins, sometimes goldfinch, long tailed tits, greater spotted woodpecker, we have had a jay and I often spot a flock of greenfinch in the back hedge and wagtails in the paddocks. Crows, jackdaws and magpies. Other wildlife I have spotted here are frogs, a toad, a newt, a grass snake (although this had got caught in netting and had died but it indicates that there may be more) hedgehog, squirrel, rabbits, a deer in the paddock, bees nesting in the ground, leaf cutter bees, mason bees, ladybirds, lacewings, all manner of ground beetles and bugs. A real plethora of wildlife and I keep trying to encourage more by having the right kinds of habitat for them as well as not using any chemicals of course. One I want to concentrate on a bit more is the butterflies as I have noticed a decline, we have little blue in the paddocks when the grass is long but the garden butterflies seemed sparse last year compared to previous years, although we had a lot of caterpillars for the cinnabar moth more than I have ever seen before.

Again, another nice morning, sorry for being so negative February 😜 The shingle arrived this morning, it was supposed to come yesterday and John came home early to shovel it but after phoning the supplier they had forgotten 🙄 It arrived before 8.30 this morning so after doing the rounds I set about shifting it to where it needed to go. The driver was pretty helpful trying to drive and tip it at the same time but most of it ended up as far away from where it needed to go as was possible 😂 So cue Dawn, a shovel and a wheel barrow to spread it around, I did a pretty good job I reckon though I think we could have done with more than the three ton. The dog in the photo, Patch, although he looked as though he was ready and willing was absolutely no help whatsoever 😬

As I said, it freshens things up a bit and once the foliage starts to grow on the shrubs and flowers it will look quite nice, well nicer than it did before lol.

I was delighted to receive some feedback about the quail eggs, the chef sent this picture of his game scotch eggs using the quail eggs, don’t they look yummy, I might have to go a sample them lol

Thursday: An entirely different morning this morning, freezing fog 🙄 it was weird as it seemed as though daylight was early but it was the fog lightening everything up. It should burn off into a lovely day.

I wanted to get a couple of jobs done, the boot room needed a hoover and a wipe round, some washing needs doing so as well as the usual morning rounds I did those too.

I ordered a windowsill propagator, in the early days we didn’t have any windowsills so I never bothered but I do now and so I might as well use them to my advantage. I want to get some of the seeds going early but it’s still too cold even in the greenhouse for some seeds so a warm windowsill is ideal. There is a knack to raising seedlings indoors, light but not full sun all day, if the sun moves round that’s fine but they don’t want to be in it all day long. When the seedlings appear it’s important to keep turning the trays around this will hopefully stop the seedlings reaching for the light and getting too leggy, it also strengthens the stem. The next thing to consider is where you will move them onto, you have all these seedlings appear and then what do you do with them if it’s still too cold? That’s why I bought a heat mat for the greenhouse because that will be their next destination, after that it will be the greenhouse staging with no heat then depending on where they are going either to the poly tunnels or into the cold frames to harden off. I have sown tomato, cucumber, aubergine, peppers and melon, all these need a long growing season to produce anything useful.

The broad beans I showed in the greenhouse are coming up and the peas in the guttering in the polytunnel are also appearing. The carrots have still to appear 🙄

There are a couple of things you can sow now under cover, radishes and cut and come again lettuce. The other thing you can sow are micro greens, these are just seeds from broccoli, cabbage, celery, beetroot, peas, radish, rocket and you grow them like you would grow cress (which can also be sown) and snip them off to sprinkle on your salads or add to something cooked like a bolognese. Growing and harvesting like this gives you great little power packs of greens, full of nutrients and the kids will never know they haven’t just eaten something good for them 😜 I gave some packets of seeds to Shelley and she has been trying it with great success. The range is huge so even if you have a small space you can grow your own and it’s not difficult, if you can grow cress you can grow these there is no mystery to it. I found out accidentally many years ago when I sowed a tray of celery seeds intending to plant them out for full sized celery, I didn’t get round to it so snipped off the seedlings and they were really tasty. At this time of year I would probably use the hardier veg as mentioned above but as the season gets warmer you can start to use all kinds of greens including basil and coriander.

You would think that sowing a few seeds this morning would have satisfied my yearning to get on with preparing for the sowing season, but no, I am looking at the lovely sunshine and thinking what can I get done out there lol all the while I know full well the ground is too cold and too wet to do much at all so all I can do is plan. One part of my plan is already in motion, I have booked John a week off work in March so he can help with the heavy stuff 😜 I have compost to move onto the beds, the heavy strawberry troughs to move and any other job I can’t manage all by myself. I have identified exactly what area I will be using for the perennial cut flowers and they have all been growing in pots since last year ready to fill the bed up. I have chosen the area near my apricot tree, it has been a kind of non area for the last couple of years. Mum dug out all the raspberry runners and bindweed at the end of summer, half the bed will be for runner beans and the other half will be full of flowers hopefully. I have been going round identifying exactly what I have got to plant in there and I will be filling it as full as possible. Rudbeckia, lupin, delphinium, geum dahlia, sweet William, stocks, achillea, campion and a lot more that I can’t remember just now. At the moment it is weedy and I can’t really get on it to weed it until it’s a little drier but as soon as it is I will be raring to go 😀 And if I never get round to cutting them I will have a lovely flower bed to admire.

Friday: Another foggy morning but without the freezing bit however it is still pretty cold and the forecast is not much more than 6c so I will light the Rayburn early as I have the twins for an hour or so while Mia has her very first swimming lesson this afternoon.

I did the morning rounds and I have a missing guinea pig, there is no sign of it being attacked and laying dead anywhere, I assume it has got out somehow, it may return but if it has got out it may have been somethings supper 😏

I lit the Rayburn as soon as I had finished and come back inside, typically the sun cam out about half an hour later but I still don’t think it’s going to get very warm today.

I chopped up a load of veg to make some soup, tomato, pepper, leek, celery and carrot, should make a tasty lunch. I should do more soups as they are easy and packed with goodness all in one hit.

Saturday: A lovely day, the calm before the storm, and we spent most of it outside doing various jobs. John connected up the other ibc tank ready for the torrential rain and we moved the geese to the small back paddock where the grass is better for them and they won’t terrorise the hens now that they have started laying and are fiercely protective. Other jobs included cutting large tree trunks up and then splitting the logs.

Late afternoon I went off with a few family members to Aylesbury Waterside Theatre to watch a play called Ghost Stories 👻 I have no idea why we thought that would be a good thing to do lol.

Sunday: The storm rolled in at around 11pm last night and it has been noisy all night long, roaring through the tree tops. We are only on the letter C and this is Ciara so not too many so far this winter however they are saying that this is a once in every ten years storm and some areas have tornado warnings 🙄 If we get through this without any damage I will be surprised (and very relieved) We have discussed this morning the lighting of the Rayburn or not, I think not as we are bound to lose power at some point and indeed as I write this the lights have flickered ominously. John thinks light it now and if the power goes off at least the house will be warm, decisions, decisions. The storm is set to peak between 1 & 4 pm so we still have a while to go yet I have put a lump of beef in the slow cooker though and hopefully it will be in there long enough to cook.

Doing the animals this morning is going to be a task and most of the hens will probably not venture out very far from their huts, I am wondering how to get hay to the horses without it just blowing away 💨 I hate the wind, I almost hold my breath during storms, obviously won’t be able to hold it all through this one as it’s over 24/48 hrs. I can’t even begin to image how people feel in tornado/hurricane prone areas, I think I would have to move 😏 or have an underground bunker 😜

I went out to fill hay nets for the horses and take them down to the field shelter so that we don’t end up with hay blowing all over the place. As I got in there the wind blew hard, the roof of the shelter was loose and flapped and banged, the horse shat himself and so did I 😬 I went to get John, we found a roof strap, a hammer, nails and a ladder and went back down to secure the roof, crisis averted I reckon 🙄

I think smallholders are probably at their best in times of adversity, either alone or as a team they get out and sort it out. One of the things we tend to do is keep everything, it means we have a lot of crap but sometimes that crap comes in handy, like the roof straps, I have had them knocking around for years, I’ve used a couple for other things now and again but luckily I still had one left.

It’s just gone 4pm and we seem to be coming out of the other side of the storm, it’s still blowy but the strong winds have subsided apart from an occasional gust. Over the day we have had lightening, heavy rain, sunshine and of course the winds. I have seen Facebook updates of fallen trees all around us on the local roads and the new reports of the damage around the whole country is epic, fingers crossed that’s the worst of it over and in our little kingdom we have escaped unscathed 😬

We mostly spent the day inside hunkered down, we had bacon and eggs this morning and plenty of cups of tea, I have done some reading and John has watched the tv (when we had signal that is lol) Nov to have a day of not doing much every now and then even if it is forced upon us 😜

Posted in Friesland Farm
Knowledge, pasties and twiglet sitting.

Posted on January 26, 2020January 26, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 20th January 2020: Morning 😀 another hard frost last night, lovely jubbly. John has gone off to ‘real’ work this morning leaving me to do the morning rounds which I don’t mind in the least when the ground is firm underfoot 😜

I listened to another podcast this morning, gardening related naturally, this one was about a innovative lady called Joy Larkham, she wrote ‘creative vegetable gardening’ but it was the journey in life she took that was quite fascinating and ahead of time, resulting in many of today’s well known vegetables/salads being available to everyone to grow/buy. I found a paperback version on Amazon for £3.20 which is a bargain I reckon 😀

You may wonder why I am pleased to have a frost, you may not wonder and if not scroll past this bit 😜 Frost, as we all know when we have lost some precious plant to it, can be damaging but it is also very beneficial to the garden as a whole. Frost is caused by cold air trapped close to the ground, this happens when there is no cloud cover (so the heat from the days sun escapes back up into the atmosphere) and no wind (so a clear, still night) if cold enough (freezing point) the temperature of the ground and the temperature of the cold air just above it freeze and tad dah, frost. (a hoar frost, which is my absolute favourite, is slightly different, if we have one I will write a bit about it)

You probably all remember the school lessons about freeze/thaw and thought ‘when am I ever going to need to know that’ 🙄 You were probably right, I mean do you a actually need to know, not especially, it happens, you deal with it and move on until it happens again 😝 The freeze/thaw bit is the bit that is great for the soil, the moisture gets in between the particles, freezes, bursts the particles apart and voila, finer soil which is easier to work with than lumps or clods. The frozen air and soil also interrupt the breeding cycles of soil borne pests keeping the numbers in check so that there is not an epidemic in the spring. So you see it is very beneficial in the gardening cycle.

I can’t really talk about frosts without mentioning ‘Jack’ we have all heard of the mythical being that spreads the frost, usually depicted as a mischievous waif having fun. There isn’t an awful lot on the web about how the stories originated but it is interesting that most countries that have frosts have a folklore character connected with it 🌬

It seems to be the day for discovery for me as I have just discovered someone else or rather something else that I will be looking into in more depth. John always says ‘you spend far too much time on that thing’ the iPad, but that’s because there is so much out there to read and discover and that’s mostly what I am doing. Even Facebook has a wealth of information that is shared, its true that some of it is utter crap, a lot of it is best to scroll on past but there are some gems and one thing it does do well is link together common interests wether that be friends, family or topics. My brother tagged me in a link he thought I would be interested in and he was right 😀 I read the link, which happened to be to plug a book but it was the topic and then the author that got me intrigued. Next step was watching a video that he had made and from there onto the website where a wealth of information is available. It’s not just the topic it’s his whole way of looking at things that I really like. Not a conventional path to where he is now and not terribly politically correct, and not out to build an empire from what he does, just to pass on knowledge (and pay the bills 😜) So what and who I hear you ask, well his name is Robin Harford and the topic is foraging and the website is eatweeds.co.uk just in case you want to look it up. I like to forage, I never let the seasons pass without collecting free food in the form of blackberries, elderflower/berries, wild garlic and nuts but there is a huge array of other plants that we have lost touch with or that we might know are edible but don’t know what to do with them, I will be delving into this site to glean as much information as I can 😀

I started off doing this blog as a way of journaling our change of lifestyle and the challenges we came up against, the stories of things that happened and then as I learnt more, a way of passing that knowledge on with no expectations other than someone, somewhere may get something out of reading it. You may read it because you know me and want to know what I get up to, you may read it because you would like or do have a similar lifestyle, you may read it for the occasional recipe or for gardening tips, there are many reasons why and hopefully somebody, somewhere gets something useful from it (I invite you to let me know 😀) My point really is that I like to share information about the things I know about, I like to read stuff and in turn share my discoveries with people who also might like to discover it. It’s important to pass knowledge in all forms on and I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about weeds, watch this space there will be a weed based recipe at some point in the future I’m sure lol.

Tuesday: It’s been a busy morning so far, the farrier was coming first thing and so I needed to get all the morning jobs done first. Sam had bought the horses in late yesterday afternoon so when he came I just had to get them out of the stable and tie them up ready. While he was working I skipped out their stalls and replenished the hay and water, Sam is coming over later to give them a brush before they are turned back out. Just as I was giving Jack his hay I could see a post office delivery van in the driveway, I didn’t want him to drive off but anyone with horses knows full well that they don’t want to wait either 😂 Luckily the van was just reversing and not driving off and I finished what I was doing g and went to collect the parcel.

It was the bare root hedging plants I ordered last week, I have a few spaces in mind for these, I ordered forsythia, alder, June berry and a holly. Typically the ground is frozen solid so I won’t be able to plant them just yet, they are currently say in a bucket of water out the back. I need to remember to get them out of the water before the temps drop again tonight, I don’t want to freeze the roots.

Back indoors to sort the eggs (while listening to a pod cast, loving these) and then on to light the Rayburn, I got a barrow full of logs in while I was outside earlier. Once the fire had stabilised I set about making the pastry fro the Cornish pasties, I made a few errors with this project. Firstly, I thought I had the correct flour but didn’t so I couldn’t make them yesterday, Sam picked me up the correct flour yesterday afternoon so I could do them today. Secondly I didn’t look at the amount of beef skirt I would need and so only have 2/3 of the amount for the recipe 😏 Not to be deterred I prepped and weighed out all the vegetable ingredients I needed and then bagged half of it for another time, I will freeze this along with half the pastry. The other thing that was difficult was finding good old fashioned lard, I wanted to make a decent pasty and so lard is needed, hmmm that is not an item that is stocked where I shop so I bought an alternative. Unfortunately it contains palm oil and I didn’t read the ingredients until I had bought it, now I have it I have to use it up but will be more careful next time. The pastry is made and needs resting for three hours in the fridge, I hope these taste good as it’s been a task and a half lol, mostly because of my errors.

I also made some delicious soup made from tomatoes, celery and carrots plus veg stock, very tasty. The pasties look and taste great though they could have done with more seasoning and in the end I did use all the filling and pastry, I looked at it and thought there was enough meat to go round after all we are supposed to be cutting down on red meat.

Wednesday: Not so cold over night and we have fog this morning, got to love a bit of fog, the mysterious veil that can prod the imagination, wondering what is inside that cloak or what might come wandering out of it 👀

Today’s trivia, I learnt this on a pod cast lol, did you know that female ants can live up to thirty years!

I went out and did the morning rounds, before letting out the hens at the front I cut down some suckers from the fruit trees, they seem to be everywhere. And then I tried putting up some wire to keep the hens out of my garden. We are failing big time at this, John has put up a six foot fence they are still getting in, I put up another bit of fencing as they were going round the side and hopping over the lower fence, they are still getting in. I don’t mind admitting that two minutes after I had put the fence up and one hopped over a space further down, I wanted to cry 😭 I am getting exasperated by this, it’s not like there are just one or two of them, by the time I go to do afternoon feeding there are about fifteen of the f***kers in there 😤 I did think, well that’s ok we can just build mini wire frames to protect everything, and we can, it’s just that I can’t even rake the ground and sow the seeds without being swarmed by them. It’s got to the point that I bloody hate the things and it’s not even their fault 😜 Answers on a postcard please 😏

My seed potatoes arrived along with some more garlic bulbs. The garlic I planted in Autumn are doing really well in the small tunnel but you can never have enough of the stuff can you lol. The seed potatoes will be set now to chit which basically means that the little eyes you get on them begin to sprout growth. When they have done this it will be time to plant them up and as they are earlies I will be doing them in potato sacks in the big tunnel. I was thinking I probably won’t plant any main crop as we usually have a lot of self setters however if I want enough to get us through next winter I may have to rethink that.

I went out to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting and had a nice chat with a customer over the gate 😀

Egg sales have been brisk today which is unusual for mid week.

Thursday: I went out this morning to do the rounds and the first thing I see is a horse in the yard, he is supposed to be in the field 😜 Jack has broken out, to be fair I knew it was coming, he has been hanging round the gateways looking longingly at greener grass elsewhere but he can’t have it. For one it’s not that green it’s just greener than his paddock and for two the ground is soft and there are only so many paddocks I want him to trash 😂 The paddocks he is in have served well going this far into winter but they are running out of nibbling areas so we will have to take a roll of hay in for him to keep him happy until the grass begins to grow again. Biscuit will probably manage to steal some now and again but she doesn’t need a great deal. Anyhow, I got him back in the field with some big piles of hay and a carrot, the pictures you see of dangling a carrot are so true 😂

Onto the next jobs of finishing the feeding and letting out rounds and then as it’s mild again, which means I don’t have to light the Rayburn too early and therefore keep an eye on it, I decided to try and sort out this fencing malarkey to stop the chickens. I spent a good couple of hours fixing fencing to existing fencing to make it higher and hopefully stop the bloody things. I am not at all competitive but I don’t like to be defeated, I think they are two different things even if they don’t sound like it. Mission accomplished I went round the back washed off my wellies, went inside to grab the seed potatoes and a kombucha came outside and guess f*****g what, there was a chicken in my garden 😤 I grabbed hold of it and took it back to the paddock then waited to see where exactly it got in. A job is only as good as the weakest point and that ladies and gentlemen is the shed roof it seems 🙄 Damn thing surveyed all the fence line looked up and took flight onto the shed roof and down into the garden, not only that but it bought another bugger with it this time so now there are two in there. Two I can cope with I’m hoping the others are thicker and that there won’t be many more out there later, plus I can sort something out to stop them getting on the shed but it’s beginning to look like stalag 19 which is something I didn’t want.

I unpacked the seed potatoes and put them in a tray underneath the potting bench in the greenhouse, they need a bit of dark and that is a great place to put them, it’s dry and out of the daylight. They will spend a couple of weeks chitting before they are ready to plant. I need to identify exactly where the garlic needs to be planted but there is no great rush to do it today so I came in for lunch and to put this evening dinner in the slow cooker.

One of the reasons I want to keep the hens in their paddock is because I want to plant these bare root shrubs and I know from experience that they easily undo all the hard work once they smell some freshly dug earth. I planted a few plants last year along the fence line and only one or two have survived their constant scratching about.

In the afternoon Sam came over and we popped into town and then round to see Shelley for a quick cuppa.

On the afternoon rounds I found only five hens in the garden so that’s a start at least I have reduced it from fifteen 😀 Never one to be deterred I went and got some scissors and caught up the five as they tried to get some grain and clipped their wings. This doesn’t hurt them it’s like trimming your fingernails, you take the first six or so flight feathers on just one wing and cut them back by about 3 inches. It may stop them it may not but it’s another go at trying to deter them. The upside was that there were no hens in the orchard at all, until I went in there that is and they all tried to get through the bars in the metal gate, I found a piece of wire and fixed it over the top half of the gate, the bottom was already covered. Winning, still winning 🙄

When I went out to shut everything away there were no chickens in the garden whoop, I won’t hold my breath but it’s a start. This is of course the demented batch and they were all still out in the paddock even though it’s dark, we have managed to train them to follow us to the hut. They are fed in the morning then I put the food up out of the way so that when I go in at night and put it back down for them they all coming running in, simples.

Friday: It’s 5pm and I am plum tuckered, I was up early, couldn’t sleep so I got up and got on with stuff. Shelley dropped Josh off about 9am and he helped me with his favourite jobs, feeding Jack and Biscuit and then the Rabbits/guineas, we did some drawing and writing and Shelley came back around lunchtime with Flo, Sam arrived with Mia and the twins. We watched an old DVD of me when I used to do pantomime which was entertaining lol then Shelley, Josh and Flo went home. Sam offered to do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting, I stayed indoors with Mia and George and Lucie who were asleep, George woke up and was crying for his bottle which I started to give him, Mia went to the toilet and was shouting ‘Nana I’ve done a poo’ I put George down to go and help her, he is screaming then the phone starts ringing Oh my days, all or nothing lol, eventually all was sorted, but now I’m tired 😜

Saturday: Up and getting on with the jobs this morning as I have a different to usual day ahead, I have the twiglets for the day and overnight 😝 wish me luck lol.

Sunday: Just over 24 hrs of twiglet sitting and it’s been pretty good, they are very much on cue with their feeding and sleeping habits so we all know what’s happening and when lol. John has been on farm duties while I am on baby duties.

The weather is vile today so I’m rather glad I’m not out there 😂

I have my Nieces baby shower to go to this afternoon once the children have been picked up so it’s early feeding and egg collection which John will be doing 😝 🌧

Posted in Friesland Farm
Back to normal, stuff to sort & Winter flowering shrubs.

Posted on January 12, 2020 by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th January 2020: I have enjoyed having John at home for three weeks but this morning I am also happy to have the place back to myself as he goes off to work early. I think it’s the sense of back to normality and there is definitely a lot to be said for doing things the way I want them done instead of compromise or argument 😜

So what will I be doing with my time? Good question, I always say ‘I never make plans’ they go awry quite quickly I find so a loose idea of what I want to achieve with an indefinite time frame is a much better option lol, it also give me room to completely change my mind 😀 Today’s tasks are to get the morning rounds done, finish setting up the heat pad in the greenhouse now I have found everything I need, possibly move a bit more wood chip (nearly done) a few household tasks such as hoovering, dinner prep, lighting the Rayburn (they all take time) and probably a million other little things along the way. I have a couple of other jobs in mind that need doing such as cleaning out the quail and the ducks and they are the kind of job that are on the list but can be flexible as long as I get them done at some point within the next couple of days.

I did the animals, topping up the duck bedding as I went round, finding the rabbit/guineas some lovely greens and then figured I may as well strike while the iron is hot with a bit of outside work. I chose to do the rest of the wood chip laying in the fruit cage, the plan was to get the wood chip down, weed and mulch the pots of summer raspberries and cut back the autumn canes. I was about six barrowfuls in when I felt decidedly shaky, stupidly I had only eaten a banana for breakfast like I have been for the past couple of weeks but with some hard work on top the banana didn’t cut it 😜 I can only assume it’s blood sugar levels, I have had it before when I haven’t eaten enough to fuel the jobs I’m doing, I went in and had a large bowl of bran flakes, and a couple of shortbreads, 15 mins later I felt better but still a bit shaky so I made a coffee and sat down a while.

Once I had recovered I went back out and got the job in hand finished in the fruit cage, the areas that needed wood chip are all done, the summer raspberries have a mulch layer of wood chip on top of their pots, I have cut down the autumn raspberry canes and did a bit extra pruning of the blackcurrant bushes. I got half a trug of weeds out which will go to the rabbit/guineas for tomorrow’s snack. I secured the posts and canes and then shut the gate, that is all that will need doing in there now until well into spring except a bit of potash feeding for the strawberries to encourage flowering.

A midway through and finished picture of the fruit cage.

Indoors to light the Rayburn, John called in for a cuppa and I will have a quick sit down before a chap arrives mid afternoon to collect some hens.

Just as I am about to get back into working outside the weather is on the turn, the forecast over the next couple of days is for warm temps but accompanied by rain and possible high winds 🙄 urgh. Not to be deterred I have rainy day jobs in mind including getting the big poly tunnel up together and ready to plant into.

And right on cue just as I wrote this, it began to rain 😂

Tuesday: I have enjoyed another great morning outside getting things done, I am really enjoying myself at the minute, the weather is fairly kind and I have the energy and strength, fabulous. First up as always was the morning rounds and this time while I was doing them I cleaned out the goose hut, I have to then close the door all day as the chickens would get in there and scratch it all out again 🙄 Then onto the garden or more precisely the big poly tunnel, I tidied it up a little, pruned the grapevine, tidied up the strawberries and topped up the compost they are growing in. I made sure everything else was tidied up and added extra compost, I have chard and flat leaf parsley growing nicely. The other things overwintering in there are the lemon grass and the Chinese gooseberries, I am hoping they come through the winter ok along with the basil and the lemon verbena. All look ok at the minute so fingers crossed. I cut up some old compost bags and used them for weed suppressant round the edges and then I topped up an empty raised bed and sowed some early carrot seeds. I have covered them with fleece and we will see if they germinate or not, nothing to lose as they are some seeds I found from last year so if they don’t grow it’s not a big loss. I sorted out the potato bags and I need to order some first earlies, I am going to grow these in the tunnel as well, I don’t normally do earlies but it’s good to change things about now and again.

Early in January it’s mostly about preparation for the months ahead, there is not much that can be sown until early next month. It’s a good month to get your crop rotation plan sorted and write down anything you would really like to grow. Sit with a cuppa and order your seeds, onion sets, garlic bulbs and seed potatoes. I have just ordered mine, the plants are despatched to you at the appropriate times for planting so you can’t go wrong really. I have also ordered some grafted plants, water melon and aubergine, two plants I find difficult to get going from seed as a general rule. Often with the amount I order I get a ‘deal’ of some kind, this time I have opted for 36 geranium plug plants for £2.99 I probably won’t keep them myself but what I will do is grow them on and put them out for sale for a couple of quid each depending on size, that way I will hopefully cover the costs of the veg I have bought. That’s what I always aim to do with the veg/fruit I sell at the gate, if I can cover the cost of the seeds, growing them and harvesting what we need then I am doing myself a favour plus providing some tasty home grown veg/fruit for customers, a win, win situation 😀

Indoors at lunchtime to grab a sandwich and get the Rayburn lit, decide what to have for dinner later and prep it.

Wednesday: The weather is holding beautifully which means after doing the animals I was able to get another morning out in the veg garden. I started off tidying the greenhouse a little bit, moving stuff around, sowing a few broad bean seeds then out onto the beds. I lay awake last night thinking about what beds I had done and what still needed to be tackled, a bit sad lol but at least I got up this morning knowing what I wanted to achieve. You may remember last year I tried the ‘chop and drop’ thing, well not this year, I didn’t really like the untidy look and more importantly it didn’t give a feeling of an end and a beginning if that makes sense, I also found that I felt I had a lack of control over the garden which persisted all season long. So this year I am clearing and tidying which is what I have been doing this morning, I am happy with what I have done and whilst doing it I am mentally making a note of what will go where which I felt unable to do last year. As it stands out there I just have two more areas to sort out, I do have to replenish the soil with homemade compost or manure but once everything is cleared I can get that done. Both the compost heap and the manure pile are very wet at the moment which in turn makes heavy work so I will wait a while and hope it continues to dry out some more. I still have a few bits of produce growing, the winter spinach and a few tiny cabbages that the birds have been at, I have now put protection over them so they can continue to grow. There is of course curly kale still in the ground and the sprouting broccoli which I am able to get a few bits off of. The babbington leeks are pushing up through, they are a perennial leek and at the moment I’m not quite sure how that works. With conventional leeks you plant one and pull it when it’s bigger the perennial leeks should keep produce off shoots I suppose but as yet that hasn’t happened. I pulled up some radish, I need to try and find out which variety these are as they are far better than the usual French types. They are white and grow to golf ball size, tasty and more importantly they don’t bolt and go woody, a winner as far as I am concerned and a definite to grow again. Oh and the rhubarb is beginning to grow 😀😀

I have to order some more weed membrane to block out the light on the growing beds so that weeds don’t become a big problem. At the moment I am using black plastic which I reuse each year until it falls apart so although it’s not the option I would like it’s the one I take. The reason being that the thin fabric stuff gets absolutely ripped apart by the winds up here, the thicker stuff is very costly and I need quite a lot of it. I will keep searching, I may eventually find an alternative.

So scrap what I have just written, I am going to trial jute, it’s a natural fabric, it will have a limited life span but it’s better for the environment, hopefully it will do a similar job to the plastic in cutting out the light. I also am thinking I can use off cuts of it as strawberry mats or cut holes in it to plant into, watch this space and I will let you know how it performs 😀

Thursday: The weather is a bit more feisty today lol but despite having lots of rain overnight, this morning it is dry and windy. I had already decided not to work on the garden today there are other jobs that are calling. One of those was my jam jar cupboard, I have a cupboard dedicated to jam jars, bottles, Kilner jars and any other glass container that might come in handy, some have been bought, some given and some had goodies in them made by others so it’s quite a collection. Over time they just get washed and stuffed anywhere that is not in the way and that means that I don’t really know what is in there 🙄 so sorting and tidying the cupboard was a job that needed doing, I can also then see what if anything I need to get for the coming seasons. I made a coffee, went out there and got so engrossed in what I was doing I forgot the coffee and it went cold 😏

That actually didn’t take as long as I thought it would and now I need to find some other jobs to get on with.

I’m not sure what triggered the next job but it took me a lot longer than I had thought 🙄 I think I started off by thinking I will tidy up the office, another area that just gets stuff dumped until you can hardly get in the door to find stuff. My aim was to get some of the things under the bed in the spare room but then I looked under the bed and pulled out stuff that was under there. Stuff that came from Johns Mums and to be honest I have no idea why we still have it, other stuff that we no longer use and have nowhere else for it to go, that all got sorted and out into piles, charity shop, free sites, selling sites. The space was then ready for the things like the travel cot which is stored in the office but can go under the bed. That then led me onto all the other stuff in the office lol, again things we no longer use or that are broken so more piles for recycling or selling on or putting on the free sites. I am not saying the office is now clutter free because there are still things in boxes to be gone through but I have made a dent in it.

Friday: Today has been an altogether different day, Josh arrived early morning to help with the morning rounds 😀 he was all kitted out in mud proof gear and keen as mustard to help me. We fed everything and let them out, collected a few eggs then took some hay to the horses. What made me laugh is that he is a little afraid of the chickens and ducks but no fear whatsoever of the horses. Once we had finished outside we came in for a juice break and chatted about the types of food he likes, then I asked ‘shall we make a cake’ ‘oooooo can we make pie’ he replied lol. I let him choose the fruit and he decided on apple, plum & blackcurrants 🙄 it actually tasted quite nice if a little sharp. He did a good job of rolling out the pastry and even made a pastry triceratops head to go with it 😂 Mid morning, just before Shelley came to pick him up, Sam arrived with Mia and the twiglets, everybody (except the twiglets) had pie 🥧 I looked after the twins and Mia while Sam went off to get some food shopping in peace and then it was time to do the afternoon feeding and egg collection. A lovely day.

When I walk down the driveway at this time of year I always stop when I am halfway back to smell the Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) that has been growing for a few years now. The amazing sweet scent of this otherwise unremarkable shrub is delicious and a real treat at this time of year. It goes by some other rather sweet names such as kiss-me-at-the-gate or sweet breath of spring 😀 I took a few sprigs indoors to put in a pot on the windowsill for a natural room scent and I also took a couple of cuttings, I’m not sure if they will take this time of year but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At our old place I had a Daphne and really wish I had dug it up and bought it with us as you could smell its lovely scent long before you got anywhere near it. I think sweet smelling winter shrubs are under used probably because by the time people go to the garden centres en mass it’s late spring and they have passed their best and don’t look particularly engaging but they are definitely worth a thought if you are looking for something to fill a gap and the reward is uplifting in the depths of winter.

Saturday: 😀 yay the weekend, great because John does the rounds in the mornings giving me a break from it. I get on with other things and besides the household chores I spent a small amount of time in the garden. A quick job of tidying the bird, butterfly and beer bed, I call it this because it has a pear, apple, cherry and mulberry tree in it as well as Japanese honeysuckle, blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes which pretty much feed the birds and hopefully some butterflies, the beer comes in with the hop I have growing there though I have never used it for that purpose as yet lol. It was a quick visit outside because it’s a bit blowy and a tad cold so my fingers soon felt the nip in the air. I had intended laying the jute weed fabric but when it’s windy trying to do that by yourself is a tricky job and John has gone off to get feed.

When he gets back the jobs on the sheet are to brush the flue and clean out the Rayburn and then he is building a gate for a new fence in the orchard as the one I put up keeps falling down. I need to stop these demented hens in the front paddock from reaching my veg garden. At first just a couple made it there then a few and now about 15 of them, most of the wood chip I put down on the pathways has been scratched into piles or onto the lawn 🙄 I want to get well ahead with keeping them at bay so that gardening is an altogether pleasant affair this year instead of an angry one because they have scratched up all my hard work.

The gate didn’t get built but John re loaded the wood pile in the covered area just out the back then we actually had a few hours off before starting again with the afternoon rounds, Charlie and Macca walked over for a cuppa, we went and got a bit of food shopping and called in to see Shelley, Martin and the kids to deliver a tray of eggs. By 8.30 I was asleep on the sofa, feeling tired after a busy week 💤

Sunday: The weather was filthy overnight, lashing rain and strong winds but all is settled this morning. Again, John did the morning rounds while I had a shower and did the household chores. A quick coffee and John went out to power wash the POL pen now that we have moved our ex laying hens on to a new home. I don’t know what it is about that job but as soon as it needs doing he moves it directly to the top of the list 🙄 still once it’s done it can be left until we buy in the next batch of POL for selling probably in March.

The plan for the rest of the morning is to go out for breakfast at a local plant nursery, John gets a cooked brekkie and I get to look round at the plants it’s a win, win 😀

I bought an evergreen shrub at the nursery, only a small specimen, I can’t bear to part with the amount of money they want for things when I can grow it on lol. If I specifically wanted something for a certain space then I would but this will go in a pot for now and be put out the front, I’m trying to get a bit of colour out there as it’s all very dead and brown looking. On the way back we called into my Sisters for a cup of tea, one cup lead to another cup and before we knew it we’d been there a couple of hours 😜 We booked a trip to the theatre while we were there, some sort of interactive ghost show 👻 it is billed as ‘not for those of a nervous disposition’ 😝 it will get the adrenaline pumping and blow away the cobwebs lol.

We got back, I lit the Rayburn, I had to pop along the road to get some natural fire lighters as we only had one left. These are rolled up wood shavings and I think they have a extremely thin layer of wax on them, I was finding it more difficult to get hold of newspapers as we don’t ever have them and so these are a great alternative, they also light first time and are very easy to use. Meanwhile John went and finished cleaning the POL pen then he fed the birds and collected the eggs then he finally got on to making the gate and I got tonight’s dinner sorted which is shepherds pie.

The long range weather forecast shows no freezing temperatures in sight so looks like we are going to have a mild winter (famous last words) I must admit that although we always think we need a bit of freezing weather to break dormancy and kill off any pests, I am rather enjoying a milder season. Though it does means I am really wanting to get my teeth sunk into some sowing, I’m like a race horse that is being held back at the minute 🐎 I have learnt from many years experience not to be too hasty in that department though as it can all go horribly wrong 🤪

Whatever you are doing this week have a good one, do something outside your comfort zone if you can, as I say to Josh ‘put your brave hat on and go for it’ TTFN 👋

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