Tag: Vegetables

Posted in Friesland Farm

Autumn is here but I am preparing for Spring 😊

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 18th September 2023: This month seems to be rattling past 🙄 the weather is up and down but there is definitely an autumnal nip in the air in the mornings and evenings. Last night there was a big storm, I have to say apparently because I didn’t hear it 😂 John said it lit up the room and was really loud, I was busy sucking up 💤 flat out and didn’t hear anything except at me point heavy rain woke me but that’s it. I must have been tired after our long walk during the day.

It may seem early and I am not one for acknowledging the festive season until the beginning of December usually but I am starting to advertise wreath workshops lol. The spaces are already filling up and so if I can fill them well beforehand then I don’t need to think about that again until nearer the time.

Meanwhile there is still a lot of preparation for next spring to be done first as well as ongoing flowery and gardening stuff. I have been soaking the Ranuculas and anemone bulbs and will hopefully get those planted today along with some daffodil bulbs. I have hardly annual and biennial seedlings and plants to constantly pot on or plant out and perennials to divide to increase my flowers for next year. I try to keep the seasons extended for as long as possible which includes drying flowers and making lovely wreaths or things with those, all of this plus everything else in life keeps me pretty busy on a daily basis.

We have the new hens and we had 32 in, yesterday we got 31 eggs from them which is fabulous, we just need the customers to return to buying them now. To be fair they are going well but it needs to be a constant turnover and at least I have enough eggs now to do some baking, everything was going out to the shed before 😂

The sun is shining today despite the storm last night, John is mostly going to be at home for the next couple of weeks, having said that he has gone to do a small job this morning 🙄

So far I have had a very productive day, I have planted up some of the bulbs that needed doing, sown some seeds and started another dried flower wreath. John came home and we went out to get some evergreen shrubs from the wholesale place, I can only do this during weekdays as they are not open at the weekend so I have to wait for John to be available. I got a nice haul of rosemary, pittosporum, photinia euonymus, griselinia and some white astrantia that I have been trying to find all summer, I will definitely be going back there.

Then Charlie picked me up and we went over to Upton Smokery where once upon a time they had a fabulous bbq restaurant and is now a much bigger shop with all kinds of fabulous ingredients and fresh fruit/veg and is a much nicer shopping experience than the supermarkets 🥰 I bought some wild mushrooms some other veg, smoked chicken and other goodies.

Once back home I made some mushroom soup for later, put some fresh tomatoes, carrot, onion and celery in the slow cooker to make another batch of soup for another day and made an apple and sultana sponge pudding. We are feasting on natures bounty tonight and there is nothing more I like than using fresh home grown or locally grown ingredients.

Tuesday: A blustery, grey day today but I had Oscar and so didn’t have to go outside.

Once Charlie had finished work and collected Oscar I decided to brush Mia the dog. She has long hair and is short in the leg which is not ideal on a farm 🙄 she has been moulting a lot and so giving her a brush would help it on a bit, there are clumps of fur all over the place from her at the minute. She is not keen but I managed to get quite a lot of fur off her and the wind was blowing it away which is useful. Meanwhile John is trying to stack wood that he has been cutting and, this is hilarious, Patch is trying to hide behind Johns legs wherever he goes thinking any minute now it will be his turn 😂 I didn’t have my phone on me but it would have made a great photo, the thing with Patch is that he is short haired and tall so he doesn’t need de fuzzing at all, somehow he always manages to look clean and tidy 🤷‍♀️ I came in and hoovered the boot room which was full of clumps of hair and now I keep feeling that I have a hair in my mouth which is highly likely 😜

I got my dahlia order in, no good waiting until next year to do it otherwise the ones I want will be all gone, they will be delivered next year in Spring.

Wednesday: Windy (very) rainy and altogether horrible, trees down in various places and I don’t think it is going to improve much more. Off to deliver an order first thing, then pop into costa on the way back, Johns treat, I understood why on the way home, can you just do me a couple of invoices when we get back’ 🙄

I am on a downer today with technology, it’s all very well ramping it up but when the systems don’t work correctly or you do everything it asks for and then find you didn’t need to do it after all because the bod on the gate says, oh yeah your name is on the list just go in, it’s bloody annoying. It is more annoying when I have to do all of Johns online stuff because he can’t (or won’t) and then there are crossed wires when logging in because it is all from the same iPad 🤪 and the algorithms don’t like that, one of us must be an imposter 😣 Then there is our upcoming holiday where everything is done online beforehand, check in, booking activities, booking bloody dinner, all the joy has been taken out of a holiday by this point and what about those who are not so tech savvy. We are all being herded into a technological cell, one that we will not be able to escape from before long, rate your delivery, rate our customer service, rate our rate app 🤦‍♀️ Collect points for shopping, collect beans for coffee, all very well if when you get there you can actually connect to the internet or the app is working correctly, it’s like a giant dysfunctional toy asking you to play but the parts don’t all clunk into place. I admit we have come a long way, I am the age that was there at the birth of the World Wide Web, dial up was slow and painful and very frustrating. It has all moved very fast but I am not sure the systems are up to it and I am not sure a lot of humans are either 😂

I spent the best part of the day in the small tunnel, I have some bulbs planted in there and I planted up the anemone as well. Next job was to clear the cucumber and tomatoes harvesting everything that was any good while I was clearing. I have a lot of tiny toms and will make more soup with those, a lot of green toms that hopefully will ripen, a lot of toms went to the torts as well as a hidden away cucumber that was huge, I also bought the last of the cucumbers indoors. Once that was done it was time to bring in the chrysanthemums, they now go into the small tunnel to flower and they are in there so that the weather does not spoil the flowers. I got soaked just getting those inside and had to come in and change my top putting the one I was wearing into the dryer for 10 mins. Some of chrysanthemum plants have got huge nearly 5ft tall, I really need to have a good research on how best to grow them because they need some hefty staking the way I am doing it. I think I should have split them in the spring but of course I couldn’t, my plan is to cut right down the stems that are flowering and see how they recover, it might be a good plan, it might not 🤷‍♀️ I do have some in the big tunnel too but they have also got big and the staking is not great meaning they flop over and then begin to grow bent which is not much good for a vase 🙄

It has been hammering down for most of the afternoon but I thought I would be safe in the tunnel and I was until I needed to go and get scissors, string etc 😂 Never mind it’s a good job done now and I can have a cup of tea.

Thursday: Up, jobs done, out to get blood tests by 9am, John had to have some as well so I had booked us both in at the same time, I also got my flu jab. Then it was on to Witney to get some bits for holiday, nothing exciting really, tights, socks and a 2024 diary. We saw Gerald from Jeremy Clarksons programme, he was leaning against the wall out side WHSmith, I gave him the thumbs up and he laughed 😂 We bumped into Sam and Charlie while we were there too lol. Next it was off somewhere else to get some new trainers and a new top I rather liked while I was at it. Back home and back to getting some work done, John has been doing an excellent job of clearing all the old wood we had lying around in a heap, I have no idea where it all comes from sometimes. We now have a pile of logs from the ash tree that had to come down, a pile of kindling from the hazels we cut back last year, a pile of pallet wood ready to make boxes for jam jars and the rest which was mostly old fencing etc has been burnt, looking good.

Sometime in the afternoon I finished a dried flower wreath that I started yesterday and then I started another one and eventually finished it halfway through the evening. A full round wreath takes a long time to do and a lot of materials, no wonder they are expensive to buy, the largest one I have done I definitely wouldn’t sell for less than it’s worth, soo much work and my back was aching after doing them because you can’t really sit down to do it otherwise you can’t see it properly.

Friday: The weather seems to be developing a pattern, nice in the morning then rain in the afternoon (usually around school run time as always 🙄) This morning I got some social media sorted and then some flower cutting and then onto a bit of gardening, potting up, dividing, propagating. Now is a good time to divide or propagate and I have this great gadget that I was given for my birthday.

It is inside my back door so if I take a cutting I can just pop it in here and wait for the roots to develop as they have in the bottom left tube, simples 😊 once the roots are good I take it out and pot it up carefully as those roots will be fragile, voila a new plant 🥰

Sam came late morning and we went off out to get some lunch leaving John working here, I did offer for him to join us but he declined (garden centre 😜) I did bring him back a slice of Victoria sponge though.

The rain started while we were on the way home and pretty much stopped and started all afternoon making it difficult to get anything half decent done outside. I did manage to plant up a few things and dig up some plants that were in the wrong place and pot them up for re positioning in Spring. I have a lot of this kind of work to do, re position plants and propagate lots of the plants that do well as cut flowers. I went to the wholesale nursery the other day and bought some evergreen shrubs, rosemary, you can never have enough of that and my big one split and died a couple of years ago so time for some new ones. Pittosporum, I lost both of mine in the cold last Winter, this is a much bigger shrub and along with a couple of photinia red Robin, Portuguese laurel, parvifolia and euonymus (which by the way I have no idea where I am going to put 🤪) I also have other evergreens in pots that all need to go into the ground 😣 I have tried buying the small plants and waiting for them to grow and now I am going for the bigger ones instead, the problem with that is our ground or rather lack of soil depth. I am sure I will work something out, we did discuss moving the fence between the garden and the paddock and pinching around 10ft x 50ft which would be a lot of space but then I thought about deer, rabbits, horses etc. At the minute the deer and rabbits cannot get in although the horse regularly leans over and nibbles on anything nearby. The reason for this way of thinking was that the fence needs replacing but there are self growing hazels and sycamore growing through it, take the fence out dig out anything that should not be there and move the fence a little. Sounds easy but it is still a fair amount of work and then the new fence would need to be animal proof, ducks, geese, chickens, deer, rabbits, horses and dogs would all be in there given half the chance 🙄 I might have to think about a plan B 🤔

And if anyone reading this locally is cutting back evergreens near the end of November I am more than happy to come and collect from you, I can use it for wreath work and it saves it from going into your green waste bin. I often wonder if people realise just how useful their cuttings would be, there is plenty to be foraged but there are also plenty of out of control shrubs in gardens 😂 and I am always looking when I am out wondering if the owners even know how useful the shrubs are 😜

Saturday: I spent the morning doing a dried flower arrangement while listening to John trying to start the ride on mower. Eventually I went out to try and help, well actually first off I told him to move it out into the sunshine in case it was just damp. When that didn’t work I went out to help him try and work out what was wrong. He had reversed it about a foot and it had cut out so we were thinking it was an air lock in the fuel line. John I did the first pipe and the fuel was getting to there (and by the way we had checked fuel levels, battery was fine as it was turning over well and all the fuses) The question was ‘is there a safety mechanism we had forgotten about?) I called the mower man and he said most likely an air lock further down the fuel line and did we have any easy start we could use. The answer to that was no and that’s because John would always refuse to use it even though my dad had said many, many times to him, you need some easy start 😂 Off he went to get some 😜 he came back we unbolted everything to get to the end of the fuel line, sprayed some easy start, started it up and voila it worked 😊 I have no idea what easy start actually is or what it does but from now on we will make sure we always have some 🤪

I then cut the front paddock, the side walkway and the back walk way and not sure what John did because I couldn’t see but it was something useful I am sure. To be fair he has been really busy this week and so much has gone done and tided so it’s looking much more loved than it has done.

Late afternoon I did some gardening as the weather was lovely, the sun was out but not too hot, I was weeding and planting and it was very enjoyable.

Sunday: If ever there was a full days work it was today, I feel like I have got lots done despite being a bit indecisive to start with. First I watered the small tunnel which had the chrysanthemums in and then onto planting up almost 600 bulbs! It sounds impressive but bulb planting for cutting is not quite the same as for garden display. The bulbs are planted very close together in tubs or pots and that’s because what I am after is stem length and flower not a pretty looking area. I have planted tulips and narcissi, all the tubs then need covering with wire so that a) the squirrel doesn’t plant nuts in there and b) so the cats don’t think I have made them some swanky toilet area. After a brief trip out to get some lunch I got straight back on with gardening, planting up carnations and sweet Williams into the spare area in the small tunnel. These are all flowers I am hoping will be ready as early as possible next spring along with some ammi Majus I planted the other day and some daucus (wild carrot) which I had grown from seed and now needed planting out. Then I went onto the delphinium bed, removed the netting that it grows through, cut them back, top dressed with some blood fish and bone, put some more wood chip on top, replaced the netting and stakes (oh also planted another one in the space I had obviously lost one over winter) and whoop that’s another bed sorted ready for next year. Next weed the small area next to it that does not have anything growing there except weeds, it is about half a metre by 1200 and is between the delphinium bed and another raised box that has a mock orange growing in it. I weeded the area and then put down weed membrane and pegged it down, that is another tiny bit under control plus it means I have a place that I can get from one path to the other without treading on the flower beds. By this time my shoulder was stinging, I have no idea what that is but I have had it for a very long time and once it starts I know it’s time to stop work 🤪 I feel as though I have accomplished a good amount today though and as a bonus I split a delphinium plant, planted one and then potted up three other small plants, always handy to have spare plants 🥰

This is how close the bulbs get planted when growing for cutting, they don’t need an air flow around them because they get cut as soon as they are ready and the bulbs won’t be any good for next year. Many people compost the bulbs but I don’t, in a couple of years they will recover enough to flower so mine will go in the raised beds in the front and if I get tulips that’s a result and if I don’t well I will wait.
Believe it or not almost 600 spring bulbs are in these few containers.

We had a chap come from Wales today to catch some rabbits, he has been coming for a few years now (although not last year) he usually comes with a friend but today bought his son to teach him and get him off the computer, his words not mine lol. Many people would not agree with it but it is free meat and yes they do eat it, curried mostly I gather from our previous conversations. It is living off the land and not out of the supermarket, which to me is the best way, and great to teach the next generation because you never know when you might need to catch your own food in my opinion. We don’t eat rabbit but that’s only because John doesn’t like it, if we didn’t have anything else then we definitely would.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Clear outs, dried flowers and a walk in the country.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 11th September 2023: A bit cooler today and def not as muggy thank goodness because I have spent 7 hours (yes you read that correctly) cleaning the kitchen 🙄 From top to bottom, every cupboard, every drawer pulled out cleaned, stuff I didn’t need thrown out and everything put back. I don’t know about you but my cupboards just get things stuffed into them 😜 and just exactly how many paper bags do I need to keep just in case 🙄 a whole bag full of them that’s how many, now in the recycling. Tubs without lids or lids without tubs, now gone, half used food stuff that is out of date, binned, I wish the manufacturers would realised that very few people can get through a colmans mustard powder tin within the allotted date 😂 smaller tins would be appreciated. To be fair I only used to buy it for when dad came or if I needed mustard powder for a gf recipe because for some reason the jar stuff is not gf or never used to be 🤷‍♀️ I have found stuff I had forgotten I had such as the special cleaner for the workshops and three bottles of windowlene with the price ticket of £2.59 on them, I have no idea how much it is now but these would have been from Johns Mums house and I do use it occasionally although a cloth and a squeegee are much quicker.

After I finished and steam cleaned the floor I had a quick cuppa waiting for it to dry and then onto the paperwork pile which (and I hate to say it) has been piling up for more than six months! It is all now in its respective years ready for the accounts (which I have yet to do) and I have plonked 22/23 in the office (another room that needs a total declutter and tidy) 23/24 is in the rack on the wall that separates it into plumbing, farm, household categories, John however can’t seem to get the hang of this simple filing system as I found plumbing stuffed into farm and farm stuffed into household 🙄 despite the fact that he is not supposed to file it at all, that only happens once it has been paid or dealt with, usually 😝

I think I can see just how poorly and lacklustre I had been for months now, sometime it is only when you look in the rear view mirror you can see what has been happening. To leave things for such a long time is not me but I was beginning to think it was, it is 5.30 and I don’t feel exhausted for once in fact I then hoovered the boot room too 😊 I will probably be tired tomorrow but that’s ok because I have Oscar and that is a different kind of day.

Tuesday: Although I was supposed to have Oscar today neither he nor Charlie are every well and so she is not going in to work. That gives me a day I was not expecting to have and so I spent most of it playing with flowers, I know I should have been doing other things but it was a bonus day so I took advantage of that lol.

One of the my favourite flower arrangement I have ever done was the dried flower meadows for Sam and Luke’s wedding. I used dry foam back then as I had no idea how else I would do it but I wanted to find a way without and so that’s what I set about doing. Using chicken wire topped with dry moss I got a pretty good result although I need to use smaller gauge wire (I just used what I had which was about 1 inch, too big really and would be better with much smaller holes because of the fine stems on dried flowers. I also made a fresh flower jam jar box, i also love doing these and think I will do workshops with these next year (just need to get John to make the boxes) and I had a go at another little flower fairy, these are very fiddly and delicate but great fun to make. This one reminds me of Nurse Phylis from Call the Midwife 😂 definitely capable of getting the job done 😊

In the evening we were going to pop along to Witney Feast which is a big local fair but my brother and his wife called in and we drank tea and chatted for the evening instead.

Wednesday: It is definitely a September morning this morning, dew on the ground and a slight chill in the air first thing but the sun is shining so I think it will be a lovely day.

Just gone 11am and I have another room sorted, the office/craft room had become a dumping ground for anything that didn’t have another home. I have sorted, recycled, bagged for the charity shop and binned plenty. It is where paperwork is supposed to get done but I couldn’t even get to the filing cabinet, it is where I keep the cot for when Oscar comes and I leave it up but it was hard to get round it. Now everything is tidy there is floor space again, cobwebs have been hoovered and surfaces wiped over, dusting done and I folded up the cot so I can now move around in there. I have a cupboard with Christmas stuff in photo albums, LPs and anything else that can’t be thrown out, though why we keep it all is anyone’s guess. The ironing board lives in there as does the steam mop and the hoover plus everything for crafting or sewing and a plethora of paperwork, pens, scissor, sellotape, card, glue, you get the idea 😂 I do have all the stuff I oiked out that needs to go to its final home to put away yet though and a lot of it is for the flower room as it is mostly for flower work, amazing how much stuff you can accumulate 😜

The weather is t as great as I thought it might be rather overcast but not raining at the minute so that’s good. We had a good couple of downpours yesterday so no watering needs doing for the time being 😊

Once I had put everything where it needed to be and could get to the desk I then needed to fix an issue with the laptop, it was connected to the internet but it seems there was something preventing it from accessing it. Cue a couple of hours downloading, restarting, installing, etc etc etc 🙄 While that was happening I decided to fill in the online forms and print documents for our up coming holiday and then phone the company to link a booking. While I was on hold to them I downloaded and printed off documents for Johns day out on Sunday, he is off to Williams Racing for the day to watch the Singapore race with hospitality. Jeez in the age of technology everything takes so bloody long to sort out, currently still on hold while I am typing this up listening to the music with the frequent interruption telling me ‘my time is precious so why not do things quicker online’ um because that does not seem to be an option in this instance 😂 Talk about multitasking!

Thursday: You can definitely feel the autumn chill in the air in the mornings and evenings now. The sun is shining this morning though and so I imagine it will be very much the same as yesterday.

I sorted out some dried flowers first thing, I have flowers to cut for orders and some to deliver as well. One of the reasons I tided the office was because I needed to get to some paperwork that was at the back of everything else as always. I had an official form to fill in online which I flipping hate doing anyway, I had until the 18th and yet they still sent me two reminders including a final reminder ffs, that’s enough to send the blood pressure up on its own. I had till the 18th and I was damn well going to do it before that and I don’t need you constantly sending out letters and emails 😂 I hate officialdom in any form, it always makes me nervous, when I was in the thick of it and doing it all the time I wasn’t so bad, I got used to it, but not having done it for years I was putting it off till as late as possible. Well now I could find the right paperwork I was set to do it and logged on, my anxiety levels were high (ridiculous I know but that’s the way I am) I started the online filing, gave details requested for the first couple of pages and that was it! What 😯 I had put off doing this because it would stress me out trying to find all the info and all they wanted was basic details not even official documented proof 😂😂😂 what an idiot Dawn, all that time worrying about it for nothing 😜

So now that is done I can get on with the rest of my day in relative harmony 🙏

I got flowers arranged for delivery later and then took flowers down to the local pub, nice walk down and back today, the village was much quieter than it has been the last couple of walks. Once back I did some flower pressing and then a lunchtime sit down.

Friday: Now I can get the ironing board up in the office I did a bit of ironing, I like ironing on the whole but don’t do it very often lol. I picked the rest of the ripe tomatoes while waiting for a customer to come and collect flowers. The variety I have this year has produced literally hundreds of cherry tomatoes and while they may be small they certainly do not lack that full tomato flavour.

In the afternoon I started a full dried flower wreath, that is a lot of work and a lot of flowers but it turned out beautifully and is so much better in real,life than the photo I took.

Saturday: The forecast was for hot sunny weather today but that did not pan out, not here anyway. It was however the perfect day for me to get some gardening work done, overcast and warm enough, perfect. I started off in the big tunnel, clearing, weeding, deadheading and cutting back. Then onto potting or pricking out some of the seeds I have been growing for next year, planting out was next, cornflowers and ammi majus. Weeding next, plenty of that to do, plus cutting back some of the perennials, next year I need to cut back harder and earlier I think. Quick stop for lunch and then out to help John clear up or pick apples from the cooking apple tree which has had hundreds of apples this year. I have been giving them away for weeks and there are still a lot left on the tree, I need to do some more for the freezer but not too many or we will never use it all up before next years crop, unless we don’t get one which is possible.

It rained a little in the afternoon but nothing that gave you a soaking, in the evening we went over to my brothers for a bbq to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries.

Sunday: An early alarm set for today, John is off on a F1 hospitality day which was a birthday present from Charlie and Macca. I hope he has fun Charlie messaged, um he is being fed all day and watching the racing it’s all his dreams come true 😂

That left me home on my own so I opted for a lazy Sunday morning, not in bed because that’s not me but in my pjs lounging around drinking tea, eating toast and catching up with watching Instagram posts and reels. Well I did that until I figured I really ought to get on with something because we are off out on a birthday ramble with Samantha and family today, hope it does not rain too hard but I a, sure we will find a nice pub at the end with something warm to eat and drink.

We had a lovely walk today around Sherborne Estate and village, the rain held off until we were safely inside a local pub having something to eat, the heavens opened just after we got there 😂

Lovely village shop and great coffee 🥰

John got home before I did and he also had a great day at Williams F1 in Grove, good day all round and a great end to the week 😊

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hot & muggy, flower fun & everything else 😜

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 4th September 2023: Blooming hot today and set to be like that all week 😂 I got started early with watering, weeding, feeding, cutting etc, I haven’t had much time to do any of it and now the sun has made an appearance and is fierce so early mornings it is for the time being. At 11 the farrier turned up, earlier than expected so I had to get the horses in from the field, I just got them tied up and Samantha arrived with the children who do not go back to school u til tomorrow. Once the farrier had finished and gone Sam and her helpers gave the horses and nice wash down, tail and mane trim, hoof polish and fly spray before turning them back out and poo picking. We are in a situation where the grass has not stopped growing and you would think that is a good thing but it is growing so quickly (due to all the rain) that as fast as the horses eat it off, it grows back and it grows back lush with a high sugar content. Normally through summer it would die off a little due to lack of rain and be better for them to eat but not this year, this year is a tricky balancing situation for horse and owner. Ours have been restricted and at the moment they don’t seem to mind (due to the grass growing back so quickly 🙄) at least a hot dry week will bring the growth to a halt.

I asked Lucie if she missed me now she was back home with Mummy and Daddy, no 😂 I love kids honesty at that age.

I was out there for a while with them all but eventually came in and decided to give the bathroom a clean, the whole place needs a deep clean but by 2.30 I was exhausted (knock on from the weekend I think) so I will have to do a little bit here and there.

I tried doing a little bit here and there lol, first I had a go at doing the bathroom, not a deep clean mind but a descale, clean and hoover then I was pooped 🙄 so I sat down for a while to watch some of my online course, I figured that was still work and counts. After watching a couple of modules I finished off hoovering the living room and kitchen and then I was pooped. Seriously I want to get on but there is nothing in the tank, when I say I’m exhausted it is not a mind thing but a whole body thing. Fatigue is something that can’t really be explained to someone unless they have something like Lupus, Fibromyalgia, ME or similar and if you know what I mean then you know, if you think you know then you probably don’t know if that makes sense. With fatigue like this lifting an arm is not an option, sometimes I can’t even find the energy to talk and often I simply cannot find the energy to eat (although I know that is counterproductive) It is not laziness, the last thing I want to be doing is sitting down doing nothing and yet I cannot do anything else 😔 I want to be cleaning my house so it feels good to be in, I want to get the washing done and on the line to dry, I want to be in the garden weeding, planting cutting back, I want to do all these things and more but can’t and that is really frustrating. I try not to let it stress me though as that is also a recipe for disaster, I just have to wait until I can.

I saw a thing this morning around 7.30/8am, I walked out of the back door and directly opposite me is a small clearing in our hedge and I can see into the next field. I saw something fawn in colour with a cream patch so at first I thought it was a deer, facing away from my direction grazing. Then I realised it was not stood to graze so I went in and got the binoculars thinking it might be injured, unusual for a deer to be right in the middle of an open field was my train of thought. When I looked through I could see that it was eating something and it def was not a deer though I couldn’t distinguish what it was from that distance. As I walked down closer to the fence in the garden (so still a good distance away) it stood up and for a fleeting moment I thought it was the golden lab from across the road. Then it turned its head and looked at me, distinct pointy ears, rounded body and a bit of a tail with some bush to it. It walked off and try as I might there was no gap in the hedge to study it further. I know what it wasn’t, it wasn’t a deer, it wasn’t a dog and it wasn’t a fox, but I don’t know exactly what it was. I messaged a friend who is a keeper at the local wildlife park to ask if they had any escapees lately, nope. I asked the farrier if he had ever seen anything or heard of anyone that has and he said probably a bob cat as they are about 🙄🤷‍♀️ I hope I get to see it again but not too close up 😜

John came home and we got dinner and ate it outside as it was such a lovely evening and then John moved the remaining hens from the front to the back and will be cleaning out the front pen ready for new hens, I know I said we were not going to get any 😜 but people still keep coming for eggs 😂 I did a little bit of flower arranging practice with some of the flowers I cut today, might as well practise while I can as too often I need the flowers for orders.

Tuesday: Another blue sky day, it got very warm yesterday and more of the same today I think. Crazy that last week I put on an extra layer and even considered turning the heating on 😂

I have Oscar today, just until mid afternoon this time as he is having settling in periods at Nursery, I will still continue to have him on Tuesdays but other days he will go to nursery or his other Nanny.

Wednesday: I spent the morning having my hair done and then because the sun was blazing hot I spent the afternoon doing some of my online course. In the evening John did the last bit of cleaning in the front hen house ready for the new hens tomorrow. I did some watering, I am amazed at how quickly plants are flagging in this heat considering the amount of rain we have had all summer long, one week and they are pfft. I guess that is because they were actually gearing up for autumn and so winding down a little 🤷‍♀️

Thursday: Omg that was a humid night, it was still 29c at 6.30pm and 18c at 7.30am this morning, yuk. I had some flowers to cut this morning so was up early to do that and noticed that the elderflower is flowering again despite having berries on it 😂 even nature has no idea what is going on.

New hens arrived in the afternoon, I know I said I wasn’t going to have any but we literally have no eggs even for ourselves so we had 30 delivered and they were hard to get hold of. They were from an order that someone made but never confirmed so luckily for us we were able to have them.

Worked in the flower room on Thursday night getting tidied up ready for the workshop on Saturday morning.

Friday: We 18 eggs this morning, whoop, whoop 😊

I spent the first couple of hours cutting a lot of flowers for orders and the workshop tomorrow, it is horrendously hot still and I had to put up makeshift curtains (bed sheets) to try and keep the heat out, I can’t leave the doors open (not that it makes much difference) because the geese are constantly trying to get in there. I had left my secateurs in the garden went back to collect them, came back and the geese were inside the room bloody crapping everywhere like geese do 😂

I made an autumn wreath even though it does not feel like autumn, I usually do a flower arrangement to place outside the door for when people arrive but it would just die in the intense sunshine.

Saturday: I was up early to get some watering done as plants are flagging, it has only been a week of heat but it is so intense all day long that it’s detrimental. I looked up at the big trees and even the top of them have crinkled leaves, partly I guess because they were moving into autumn mode and wham along comes summer finally 😜

Flower workshop at 10am and I had six lovely ladies here to learn a new skill, luckily it was early enough in the morning not to be too hot.

In the afternoon after a short rest and tidying up I decided now was a good time to do something else I want to try. I had seen beautiful pumpkins decorated with pressed flowers and wanted to get some flowers pressed ready to do exactly that. It has been decades since I last pressed flowers and I had forgotten how relaxing it is 🥰

Is it still incredibly hot for the time of year, we don’t even get temps like this in summer usually, the humidity is also high, 91% overnight, yuk it is horrible. Trying to work in it and clothes just stick to you, I can see a boom in air conditioning in the UK if this keeps happening year after year.

Sunday: A tad cooler today but not much, the difference is more cloud cover. I made an autumn wreath for a customer order this morning and then at lunchtime we had a few spots of rain 😊 followed by a deluge and some thunder, whoop. I spent much of the day trying things out with flowers while John was cutting, strimming, chopping (an ash tree that has die back needed to come down and be chopped up) a pleasant day all in all.

In the evening I went over to baby sit Oscar while Charlie and Macca went out for a meal, I could see flashing periodically and when I looked out of the door a huge storm was going on miles away (80 miles) but it was clearly visible from here, it went on for over half an hour. I checked the live lighting strikes website and there were almost 68,000 lightening strikes today alone (77,000) in the last month so you can see that most were today!

Hopefully it will be a tad cooler this week although I don’t want it to disappear altogether 😂 have a good one.

Posted in Friesland Farm

An abundance of produce, grandchildren & flowers.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 28th August 2023: Bank Holiday Monday, we spent the morning working, John was cutting down stingers and mowing, always plenty of mowing to do. I did plenty of propagating either diving up plants or digging up plants that have got too big for where they are and dividing and potting them up. If done now they will hopefully put down enough roots to take them through the winter months. I staked the chrysanthemums as they are getting tall now too and it won’t be long before they are moved back inside the tunnel to save them from cold, wet or windy weather.

At lunchtime we downed tools and went to visit Mum, we made a detour to pick up some milk and that meant we didn’t see Mum who had driven to ours 😂 we waited for her to return to hers which she did about 10 minutes later.

In the evening after dinner we got working again, John mowing 😂 and me collecting plums, walnuts, hazelnuts and blackberries. This is a time of abundance and even if you don’t grow your own there is plenty of free food to be found if you know where to look and what to look for. Hazels are best found if you stand under the tree and look up, walnuts are beginning to fall to the ground and you can just pick those up. Hazels are easy to keep and use, even if they have the greenery still attached, that soon falls off as the nuts dry and ripen. Walnuts are more difficult so I would t blame anyone who would rather get them ready packed from the shop 😜 I have tried various methods over the years and there is no definite process that I can find on the internet but if you leave them in the green husk that shrinks and you can’t get it off, so the best thing is too put them outside (but not where the squirrel can find them) and wait for the husks to start splitting and then you can get them out. Once they are out they need cleaning and curing so that they can be kept without going mouldy, bit of a process as you can see but worth it for me at any rate. I know that nothing has been contaminated with any chemicals of any kind, with that in mind I am considering buying and oil press and pressing some for walnut oil. The abundance does not stop with the nut trees this year, everything seems to be prolifically fruiting, berries, soft fruit, some top fruit especially our plums and cooking apples but not our eating apples and pears although we have got some. That abundance may signal a tough winter ahead 🤷‍♀️ or it may just be all the rain we have had 😂 There is wild horseradish if you know where to look but we have some in the garden that can be harvested now, elderberries, wild blackberries, wild plums and plenty more. One thing I wish planning would insist on is incorporating food trees and shrubs at every opportunity.

Of course all the picking and gathering means a whole lot of processing ready for freezing because you can’t eat it all at once 😜 We will certainly have enough to keep us going and feed the family when they come for dinner in the winter months. We had Oscars party and bbq and the meat was what was not used at Johns birthday bbq in June, there were quite few sausages and some burgers left but they had been defrosted and so could not be frozen again. About thirty sausages and ten quarter pounder prime beef burgers, there was no way we could eat them all between the two of us and no way I was going to throw them away. I cooked all the sausages in the oven while the dinner was cooking and the burgers well they are just ground beef squished into shape so I broke them all up and cooked a big batch of mince and onions to freeze. These were quality burgers so perfectly good enough for turning into something else, waste not want not as always.

We have plenty of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers at the moment but not a lot else in the way of salad or veg this year sadly but next year I will hopefullybe well enough to sow seed.

Tuesday: Oscar day, playing, feeding, changing, singing, sleeping (for Oscar not for me sadly) and we went out for a walk in the paddock to pick some blackberries. My sister came over again with her granddaughter, I wouldn’t say they play together but at least this week Oscar acknowledged them 😂

In the evening my brother and his wife came over to collect a plant I had dug up for him and some plums for my great nephew who is their grandson and loved eating the plums at Oscars party on Saturday last.

Wednesday: I have Oscar again today for half a day, so more feeding, playing, changing, sleeping but he was a tad grizzly before his sleep and still grizzly when he woke up. So I decided we would go for a walk down into the village and have a look at the pond, it is actually a ford with a pond to the side but most people just call it the pond. I gathered a few bits of grass, yarrow and old man’s beard plus some honesty that was growing on the side of the road, I thought I might make a foraged dried wreath at some point.

When we got back Sam arrived with Mia, George and Lucie and the job on the agenda was to confine the horses to the small paddock as Jack has got a bit fat. Normally over summer we would have sun and no rain which means the grass would be parched but not this year and it is as green as it is in spring 🙄 although we are moving towards winter Jack still needs to be a bit more restricted than he has been. Once the school term starts again all three children will be at school full time and so Sam will have time to come and do some work with Jack (which will be a bit of a shock for him 😂) and get some time back into his muscles.

Charlie arrived had a quick coffee and collected Oscar to take him home and a short while after Sam and the children left. By now I am exhausted lol but I only have a day and a half to recover before having Sam’s three for the weekend while they go away to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. You may find me rocking in a corner by Sunday evening 😜 We have some jobs planned to get them involved in but it will be weather dependant so who knows how that will go, hope

Thursday: I keep thinking it’s Wednesday 🙄 anyhow I started early and by 9.30 I had done my first shift. It was not raining when I went out but by the time I came in I was soaking. I had been in the fruit cage which suffered this year because I wasn’t able to keep on top of it, Mum did come earlier in the year and weeded it but they soon took over again especially the bindweed. Normally I would tie in the autumn raspberry canes and cut back the currant bushes when harvesting but I couldn’t do either this year and so it’s a jungle. The kiwi has gone mad as has the logan berry, but I have cut everything back as much as possible and will have another go in a week or so. I could have come in once it started to rain but I was on a roll 😂 and I hate stopping when I am halfway through something besides it’s a good excuse to come in for tea and toast (and a change of clothes) once I was done.

Sort out flowers for orders today and then a quick walk down to the pub to deliver theirs. Not such a quick walk on the way back as it is a killer hill, no idea what the gradient is but it’s pretty steep 😂 that last 10ft is the worst. I wore my raincoat but luckily the rain held off.

I was talking to a customer the other day who mentioned a website called ‘weather without technology’ since 1958 the chap has been using nature to predict the likely weather outcomes in the months ahead. The thing that was particularly interesting was that nature prepares around 3 to 6 months ahead which when you think about it is obvious but we hardly notice it. Given that I have noticed a fair amount this year I thought I would read the articles on the site and they coincide with my thoughts. There are so many berries and nuts this year that even the less observant can’t have failed to notice can they? The ivy is smothered in ivy berries, the hawthorn and rose hips are abundant and one thing that hadn’t occurred to me before is the height of things like teasels, very tall this year indicating the ground may not be accessible and the food source needs to be up higher, all pointing to cold frozen ground? Who knows but it certainly looks that way if you ask me.

One of my favourite sayings is: If acorns abound in September, snow will be deep in December. They are as it seems to be a mast year, this then makes me wonder if the weather is all part of a cycle or rotation that we just don’t see (mini cycles even) and if we are so fixed on technology telling us what is ahead or what causes it that we no longer see what is obvious 🤷‍♀️ answers on a postcard please.

I am contemplating putting an extra layer on 😆 the colder months are knocking on the door 🥶

I made some chicken soup for dinner tonight along with an apple crumble, the wheel is definitely turning. I quite like autumn though and winter (although it seems to go on for ages) they are slower seasons, a time that I can do other things instead of dawn till dusk gardening.

I did cut flowers this morning for tonight’s and tomorrows customers, one lot was collected the other will be delivered.

I did a bit of dried flower work in the evening but I wasn’t really feeling it so decided to watch tv instead.

Friday: Busy morning first thing, I had flowers that were going to a customer, flowers to cut for customers later today and for the weekend which took a couple of hours to cut, sort and prep for conditioning. Then inside to whizz round with the hoover and duster before sitting down with a cup of tea and some toast. That was the calm before the storm as I have Mia, George & Lucie coming this morning and staying until Sunday while Sam and Luke go away for the weekend to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

The children arrived and the parents departed and we had a full on day, apple picking, lunch, then blackberry picking in the paddock, watering the garden and plenty of other things inbetween. Grampy arrived home at around 4 which meant my ears could have a rest while they battered his 😂 after their dinner Josh, Flo and Shelley came over for a short while and they played outside until bedtime at 7.30pm. That was not sleep time though, no that was not until 10pm finally 😝

Saturday: I had turned off the alarm set at 6.30 because I didn’t want it to wake the children, needn’t have bothered they were awake by 6am 🤪 a bit of tv watching in bed before breakfast at 7 then washed, dressed and off out to do the animals with Grampy once he had finished his breakfast. I managed to get a shower without the bathroom being invaded which was a surprise 😂 and we are all set for the day ahead. Josh and Flo are coming over to play later with Shelley, fish and chips are on the menu for tonight. They want a bath because for some reason that is great fun at Nanas lol and they were playing too late last night to have one and so I have been constantly reminded this morning that they want one later.

I was indoors while they were out with Grampy and suddenly I hear Lucie shouting Nanny, nanny, nanny at the top of her voice, thinking there was an emergency I ran out only to hear Lucie say ‘we found lots of eggs’ lol. I am glad they find everything exciting even egg collecting 🥰

Sunday: Another early start at 6.30 this time, from the time they get up they don’t stop talking 😂 I had to juggle things a bit because I had flowers to get ready, I did most of it last night once they were settled in bed but I needed to do some finishing touches this morning so I left them watching a film with Grampy keeping an eye on them. After that we went out into the front paddock to help John, George is always especially desperate to help Grampy, I just hope he is always that keen. In for lunch and then some quieter play time until Mummy and Daddy arrived at around 2.30. Lucie couldn’t wait to go home, she was standing ready at the gate while we were collecting all their stuff together 😂 At 3 we popped down to the village dog show to support it, I had sponsored a class (fastest sausage gobbler) and given a prize of flowers plus some for the judges. Shelley, Josh and Flo came with us and we bought raffle tickets, ate ice cream, had a go at tombola and guess the weight of the cake. Then back home for a well earned rest and watch a film, I went out to water early evening but it was really hot out and so abandoned that till later, besides I am pretty pooped.

The weather is looking hot for next week, unbelievable, we have had no summer and now we get a week of it when the children go back to school. It will be early mornings for me for a while.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Flowers, birthdays & eye clinic again 🙄

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 21st August 2023: Up early to get flowers fixed onto hats and get them delivered and then the rest of the day is my own. It looks like the weather will be quite nice today.

For the next rainy day or when I am feeling a bit tired I have signed up for another online tuition course. I find the online ones great because you can fit them in around everything else and at your own pace but I still would like to do an in person weekend somewhere at some point. I think you always need to invest in your own learning even if you are teaching others and besides I love the opportunity to learn something new or how to do things differently.

Shelley came over with Josh and Flo and we went for a walk along the lane and picked blackberries while we were there. Not sure what else I did that day lol.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 it is a day of playing, feeding, napping and bum changes. My sister came over with her granddaughter who is three months younger, it was more successful this week as Oscar was not clingy and once he got used them being here he was happy to play 😊

In the evening I used some of the flowers I cut yesterday to do some arrangement practice, proportion be be precise which looks easy but only if the stems are behaving and going the way you want them to 😜

Wednesday: Eye clinic appointment day 🙄 now you would think that if I had an appointment time it would be quicker than the emergency eye dept but no, well not much anyway. A 9.50 appointment and we got out at 2pm 😂 shaved a couple of hours off the last two times but that’s it. I was sitting in the waiting room with plenty of other bemused patients watching the game of musical chairs going on. Not enough chairs for patients waiting many who came with carers or partners (because after all it does say that you should not drive yourself there in case you need something put in your eyes) the staff also moving along anyone who couldn’t find a seat and was standing, which is a fire risk. Not the fault of the staff I understand that but the system seems chaotic at best and a bloody shambles at its worst, still I acknowledge that we are lucky to have a system at all. More steroid drops for a further 10 weeks, blood tests and a chest X-ray this time too, all to do with checking for inflammation markers, oh yes and the doctor can see the beginning of cataracts, oh joy 😏

By the time we got home it was too hot outside for me to do much, John went off to get a couple of things sorted for plumbing jobs coming up and I should have done something indoors but didn’t 😜

Once the shade had moved to the front area I did go out there and do around three hours of weeding which felt like I had accomplished something today at least. I sat and watched a ‘knot, flutter, host, quarrel, or crew’ (take your pick as to what you call them) of sparrows feasting on the weeds in the driveway. I have no idea what they found so tasty but it did make me glad that we have weeds 😂 I wrestle between wanting to have everything looking tidy and knowing that the wildlife need me to not tidy everything. There are those that will say you can have both but the more I watch the more I disagree, we have never had so much wildlife as we do this year and as a consequence we have very few pest problems. If you give the pests their natural food to feed on they will leave the flowers alone it seems either that or we have so many birds and predator insects that the balance is good 😊

John was busy cutting grass in the front paddock again, it has been left long all summer but now needs attention, that and we have an occasion on Saturday and are hosting Oscars birthday party 🥳

We came in at around 7.30pm and then I had to start getting the dinner! We didn’t eat until around 8.15 which is way too late for me really, I like to have a good 12 hrs between dinner and breakfast. Apart from a cup of tea it’s a bit like fasting and gives the gut a rest. Finally sit down at 9 but not finished yet as I have to log on and order medication and

Thursday: I cut flower first thing for an order tomorrow then did some dried flower bits and pieces including some experimental pieces to see if they would work for real. One was a ‘vine ball’ that would be covers in tiny lights to hang from the ceiling, this was harder than it looks 😂 I guess the vines need to be on the turn but not brittle and you need vines that don’t have sharp angles growing in a different direction. I will get there in the end though.

Charlie arrived with Oscar as I was having him for a couple of hours while she had an appointment, Shelley also arrived shortly after with the children. We were going to go for a walk but Oscar needed his afternoon sleep so we stayed home instead.

In the evening I made up the flowers that are being collected tomorrow and had a play with the frog pin for flower arranging, not bad for a first effort if I do say so myself 😊

I am doing an online course with Willow Crossley, it is not entirely my thing but already I have learnt a fair bit and I am having a go and learning some new skills so that is all I want really.

Friday: It is 12.30pm and I have had a cracking morning getting lots of things done and only half an hour over the time frame I set myself. I had a time frame because I had two reminders set on my phone, one to take steroid drops and the other to get meat out of the freezer for tomorrow’s party, both set for midday.

First job this morning was to cut flowers for a couple of celebration bouquets for tomorrow morning. Once that was done I went out into the greenhouse to sow some seeds for next springs flowers. Then onto tidying up the cold frame area, to be honest it gets used as a store area for potted on plants or growing seedling/plants or an area to hold dormant bulbs in pots for next spring. I sorted it all, threw away anything that was only barely hanging on, emptied out those plants that were sat in water (normally in trays to catch the watering but so much rain this summer they are sat in it 🙄) I put another greenhouse shelf thingy in and got the plants up off the floor where there is a slugfest going on 😜 I washed out all the (now) empty trays and pots and put them away to dry. On next to the two buxus shrubs I have which flank either side of the greenhouse door, they are quite big now and I grew them from tiny little whips. They get a bit neglected and so it was time to empty them out replace soil, give them a good water and a feed before winter. They might even put on enough growth to clip them back into their ball shape which has gone a little bit askew. First thing I found in the first pot was a red ants nest, no wonder it wasn’t looking too good. I took both shrubs out, hosed off the roots, dug anything else that was growing in the pot that shouldn’t be, replaced the soil and gave them some blood, fish and bone, hopefully they will look splendid in a couple of weeks time. Sometime while doing those my reminder alarm went off and eventually I came in put drops in my eyes, got the meat out of the freezer and had a small lunch. The weather is great for me today, not too hot and plenty of cloud with some sunshine.

Just gone 3pm and I am done for now, pooped, I went back outside after the quick pit stop lunch and got on with some more jobs. Everywhere you look there is another job and another job that needs doing but I needed to focus on one area at a time. I wanted to get the sweet peas out and the cornflowers (gather the seed from them as I go) get the bed topped up and covered which I did. I also found some self sown cerinthe which I potted up along with some verbena. Then onto weeding the other beds, collecting seed from the Burpleurum and some bunny tail grass plantlets oh and some seeds from the snow princess marigolds which have been lovely, a pretty pale yellow.

Literally just as I sat down Sam arrived with George and Lucie, Mia was at pony club for the day and they called in on their way to collect her as it is nearby. The twins then wanted to stay with me while Sam actually went to collect Mia which was fine, when they came back they all went out to do the horses water and check them over. Mia has been pretty dedicated to riding, she is always keen in all weathers which is what you need to be. When Sam was young she was the same, I would take her to lessons then as she got older she would stay and help and eventually she was there all day and evening whenever possible 😂

John came home and did some more grass cutting in the front paddock where the party will be tomorrow. I had flowers to make up into bouquets ready for collection first thing in the morning.

Saturday: Oscars belated party day 🥳 we were up early to get things sorted with Charlie and Macca, gazebo up, bell tent up, bubble machine, music, bouncy castle, bbq picked up (we don’t have one lol) meat, salad, bread rolls and drink all sorted. Hand over flower order to customer inbetween all that 😜 do some flowers for decoration just because I can, get changed and wait for guests to arrive.

It was a lovely afternoon, we had a couple of showers one of which was heavy and had accompanying thunder claps but mostly it was dry and sunny.

Sunday: Weather looks like it might hold today but who knows 🤷‍♀️ I spent the morning cutting a few dahlias which is a few more than I have been able to cut recently due to the rain. I then pruned two dwarf apple trees and a pear that are in the cutting garden, picking the fruit as I went.

In the afternoon we went over to a local country show where there was plenty going on including extreme horse riding which was brilliant to watch and mesmerising at times. I had a happy little find on a bric a brac stall with these little stone pots at a bargain price of £2 for all four, happy days. We spent the whole afternoon there and not one drop of rain, amazing 😂

Back home to a quiet evening and recoup ready for a new week, although it is August bank holiday Monday tomorrow 😊

My lovely little pot find 🥰
Posted in Friesland Farm

Plums, apples and sunflowers 🌻

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 14th August 2023: Another not so great summers day, I know it’s late summer but seriously it was more like autumn today. I am not sure we are going to get much of summer now, it would matter so much but Winter is loooooong and depressing enough on it’s own 😜

I decided to do something constructive today and as outside was a right off and I have spent more than enough time on flowers I thought I ought to clean the boot room. We have a proper boot room, not one of those you see in a glossy magazine that is all pristine and neat as if the occupant has no real idea what a boot room is for 😂 It is a working boot room and not for show or somewhere you keep clean wellies. The wellies still have mud on them, the coats would probably be thrown in the rag bin if you gave them to a charity shop and there is ‘stuff’ dumped everywhere. The dogs and cats eat and sleep in there and it gets pretty dusty or wet mud splattered on every surface. Saying I clean it is probably going a bit far, I hoover every nook and cranny, wipe down wipeable surfaces and give the dog beds a wipe over with disinfectant (because it smells like cherries and is lovely) it still takes me well over an hour to do just the basics though. I think the hoover is on the way out, we only use that hoover for that room and when that breaks we buy a new house one and the house one becomes the boot room one. We keep them separate because hoovering up pet hair and dust makes it smell a bit musty and I don’t want that lingering in the house. A couple of times after turning it off it would not turn on again until a few minutes later 🙄 I told John when he came home and he helpfully said ‘is the bag full’ ‘nope I changed that before I started so it’s not that’ looks like I will be buying g a new house hoover soon.

John did some more strimming when he came home from work while I got the dinner sorted and then we went to mums for a cuppa. When we got back a friend had dropped round two crates full of Victoria plums, the bough of her tree had snapped under the weight of them and she didn’t want them to go to waste. Our tree has not been that prolific this year and so I can definitely use some of them, the rest will be given away to various family and friends that want them. At one time I would have done a big batch cook up with them or made sauce or jam but these days I am not so inclined 😜 I will freeze plenty to use in the winter and probably make a few jars of jam.

When the bough breaks, the plums they will fall 😜

Tuesday: Oscar day today and he was very clingy and whingy all day lol. My sister came round with her granddaughter for a play date but Oscar was not having any of it and in the end I put him down for a sleep. We will try again another day but today was not a success 😂

In the evening I did a bit of dried flower work but really was too tired to do much else.

Wednesday: I whizzed round and got a few things done before Shelley came to pick me up and we went to meet Sam and Charlie at a sunflower field on a local farm. I didn’t even know it was there to be honest but it’s a little gem of a place, a lovely cafe with good food, great coffee, delicious ice cream and sunflowers too. Of all the cloudy days we have had over summer today was t really one of them 🙄 there was intermittent cloud but when the sun was out boy it was hot 🥵 not the best for me but I did have my hat and sun cream on because as you can imagine there is no shade where sunflowers grow.

We all had a wonderful time playing in the pathways that had been cut through the sunflowers and then ice cream while watching the harvested grain being sent up the shute to the silo. George was in his element with all the tractors and trailers coming and going, he is crazy mad about tractors and definitely wants to drive one when he is older 🥰

Pretty tired again this evening after today lol.

Thursday: I did quite a bit this morning in the poly tunnel, clearing dying mint foliage and weeds, trying to stake chrysanthemums which are leaning over and then dead heading anything that needed doing. Next I dug some bits of apple mint up to propagate, I had planted it with two other types of mint but it seems to be the weaker one and got a bit smothered. I definitely want much more of it for next year so need to propagate it now before it disappears altogether. I watered the small tunnel and then turned on the water in the big tunnel.

Sam arrived with the children and I was having them for a few hours while she did some work. They were full of boundless energy today and Nana not so much. We went and looked for blackberries in the small paddock at the back but the grass is so long the gate hardly opens so we came back down to find things to pick in the garden. We found tomatoes, cucumbers and a few logan berries, George had spotted the cooking apples and wanted to take some of them home to make ‘pudding pie’ 😂 It is lovely that they know they can find things to eat in my garden but there is not a lot left when they do!

Again in the evening I was tired but I really needed to do a few things, we are forecast thunderstorms and rain tomorrow and I wanted to get some flowers cut before then, and some orach cut for drying. The weather is really a pain in the arse at the minute, it is either raining or bloody hot, not much inbetween. I know it is much better than some places in the world but it is not great for the flowers, if you get sunshine it brings the flowers out and then the next day it rains and spoils them 🙄 If we get the rain tomorrow I have plenty of indoor jobs to do but it would be nice to have a couple of (not too hot or not raining) days in a row doing outside jobs.

Friday: It is 7.30 am and already heavy rain 🙄 it’s dark enough to need the lights on indoors, a snapshot of what lies ahead in the darker months. I quite like the seasons for that, even though we have not had much of a summer, when the time comes to close the curtains early and put the lights on it’s quite comforting. As I said I have a long list of indoor jobs to choose from so hopefully I will still have a productive day.

Oscar has to go to hospital today for an operation which is a shame because tomorrow is his first birthday and a party was all planned. That had to be moved to next week, it’s best to take the date you are offered in the current climate of strikes and post covid hangover problems.

I decided to get apples and plums prepped for the freezer, always takes a lot longer than you think especially peeling the apples when my hand is still not 100% yet. I would have gone the whole hog and made crumbles etc but there is no sugar in the cupboard so that will have to wait. I now have about 5kg of plums frozen 😂 and endless amounts of apples still to do, I am thinking of all the yummy puddings in the depths of winter and will be glad of them then. I keep toying with the idea of am,ing plum jam but John doesn’t like plum jam nor any other jam except strawberry, raspberry at a push so my efforts are wasted on him. The same applies to chutney, he won’t touch that at all no matter what is in it 😜 so not much point making that either 😏

While I was indoors it meant I could get a signal and wait to hear about Oscar and he has returned from surgery safely thank goodness 🥰 no matter what the operation it is one of the longest wait for parents especially when they are so little.

Saturday: We spent the best part of the day doing jobs around the farm, I have plug plants to pot up plus plenty of weeding and hoeing. I also spent a good deal of time hoovering the flower room, a quick sweep each time is ok but occasionally it needs more. I was thinking while I was doing it that it’s no good doing this if you don’t like spiders and creepy crawlies because they often can be found on the flowers and foliage and then get bought inside where they set up home 😂 Meanwhile John has been busy strimming and mowing, with all the rain everything has gone mad plus when we did get chance the mower broke. Now that is mended and the weather is more settled (mostly) we can at least get a handle on things and the place is starting to look much tidier than before.

1 already where does the time go 🥰

Mid afternoon we went over to see Oscar for his 1st birthday 🥳 He was asleep for the first hour or so when we were there but eventually he woke up and we were able to give him his present and sing happy birthday to him. I think he was a bit bemused wondering why everyone was looking at him and singing lol.

Back home in the evening and we watched a film rather than doing any more work.

Sunday: The weather was nice and we had a lot of work to do so got on with it early. I had a flower workshop at 10am for a couple of hours then some lunch before sorting out the flowers for the hats I needed to do. I was worried that the flowers were not going to go overnight without water, initially the customer wanted to collect them tonight for tomorrow but I rang and said I would be happier dropping them off early in the morning so that they could stay in water overnight and I can attach them to the hats just before they get delivered. I have tried to use flowers that will do well enough out of water for a few hours which is a challenge, things like sedum and Pom Pom dahlias have more of a tolerance than things like cosmos which would just keel over.

Again John spent his time strimming and mowing 😜

Lately I have seen a couple of insects that I haven’t seen before, flying insects one I would class as a bee type and the other a moth but I didn’t have my phone either time so couldn’t get a photo. I don’t recognise either of them so I am hoping I will see them again when I have my phone with me. John is also sure he saw…..wait for it…… a door mouse 😮 if that is indeed what it was then oh my days that would be epic. He is used to seeing field mice and wood mice and it wasn’t the same though again we have no photo to clarify. The reason he saw it was because it was underneath the Guinea pigs bowl which had upturned otherwise he wouldn’t have. We do have plenty of hazel trees and when I say plenty I mean at least 15 all in one place and then plenty all around the rest of the farm so it is possible that we might have them, I will have to check the fallen nuts this year to see if they have been chewed. It would be very exciting but chances are it is some other type like harvest mouse or something lol.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Gathering the (tiny) harvest in, botanical dyeing & still plenty of rain.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 31st July 2023: The whole of July we have had rain every day, sometimes heavy, we have had hardly any sun but at least the temperature has been ok on the whole. It is topsy turvy at the moment, I am not complaining too much though as I have not had to water the garden at all this month 😂

I have had some pretty busy weeks with the flowers but this week is much calmer so it gives me chance to catch up with all the other jobs that have been neglected. I started off with tidying things away indoors, finding the right places for ‘stuff’ to live 🙄 Then outside into the greenhouse to sow some foxglove seeds for next year (lovely apricot ones) and pot on some brassica plants. They ought to be planted out really but I need to reorganise the garden and so no point planting them until they can go into the final place. They are curly kale and purple sprouting broccoli which I love to be able to pick fresh in the new year, it’s worth the wait when nothing else is around. I also sowed some carrot seeds and some perpetual spinach. Then I picked some purple French beans and some Logan berries and took those indoors to prep. The beans were blanched and drained then bagged up ready for the freezer and along with some apples from the tree the berries were cooked in honey ready for crumbles. I made two lots of crumble toppings, one traditional for John and one healthy one for me, oats, nuts and cinnamon. Both lots can be frozen for using as and when needed but the oat one will need coconut oil added to it before cooking. I made two crumbles for dessert later so I will see what it tastes like, John won’t like just honey in his apple and berry mix but he can add sugar if needs be whereas I prefer mine on the sharper side so just honey is fine. At this time of year I start to think about stocking up and making things for winter use, it’s that primal side of me again 😜 I will continue to add goods to my dried and frozen store and if we ever have to hunker down I am all in 😂

Had a visit from Sam and the kiddies in the afternoon, they have just come back from their caravan holiday in the New Forest and were full of stories of their adventures 🥰

We have lamb loin for dinner tonight with French beans, johns potatoes are sliced and roasted in the oven plainly while mine are made into a gratin with stock, crème fraise and Parmesan cheese. I have no objection to this while John is still doing all the washing up 😂 he is beginning to realise that when cooking everything from scratch you use a lot of bowls and utensils. He made himself scrambled egg at lunchtime and normally would not give the dirty pan another thought, I told him he would have to wash it up because I need it to cook the beans for dinner and as I still can’t do the washing up (shame) he would have to get it done sharpish 😜

I have Oscar all day tomorrow from early morning as it is Charlie’s first day back at work so I need to get tomorrows dinner sorted tonight. Slow cooker meals it is then, a chicken stew for John I think and a dhal for me, I will make extra portions of botthat can be frozen for another day

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 all went fairly well, takes a bit of getting used to having a little one all day again 😜 I did take him out for a walk in the pushchair when he clearly didn’t want to sleep in the cot, I foraged some cherry plums while I was out 😁 Hoping to go back for some more later this evening, I’m pretty sure they are early this year 🤷‍♀️ I have had conversations online with other country folk, there seems to be an awful lot of blackberry flowers this year to, we are wondering what the winter has in store for us 🙄

I have been stocking up my pantry with various dried goods and some tins, the news is full of doom and gloom about wheat at the minute. Wheat coming from Ukraine (or rather not coming) and the wheat harvest here because of the rain in July. My take on this is that we can (and should) adjust what we eat, be more resilient, more flexible but so many people are not which is a worry I think.

After dinner I went outside to cut flowers, they are not for orders but because the forecast for tomorrow is horrible, thunder, lightening, possible heavy downpours and high winds. I don’t want the blooms that are almost ready to get damaged and so it was a damage limitation exercise 🙄 I will use them one way or another, new orders might come in and I will have flowers good to go or I will see what can be dried or I can just use them to practise something new. I only have one Lily and I don’t even know where it came from but I cut it and ended up with pollen on my cheek. It was quite difficult to remove the stain and so I thought that the stamen might be useful for dyeing the silk ribbons 🤷‍♀️ nothing ventured nothing gained as they say.

Once that was done I was determined to get some more cherry plums from the side of the road, if tomorrow’s weather is correct most of them will end up on the floor and there are hundreds of them. I would have liked to get a lot more but the general rule is to take only as much as you need or can use and so I behaved myself 😜

Wednesday: The terrible weather that was forecast didn’t arrive 😜 so I spent my time making up some flower bunches with the flowers I cut. There are a lot of pinks around at the minute so with the Barbie movie current at the minute I made very pink jam jar arrangements and a pink bunch. Then I decided to colour code the other bunches until I had a rainbow of flowers 😁

No idea what else I did that day, (writing this up on Saturday) I think Sam and the children came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon. John has been off a fair bit this week so he has been tidying up the stable block and re boarding the walls. He tried cutting grass but the mower is broken, two of the blades won’t work so it has to go in for repair and is being picked up on Friday.

Thursday: Still not much of a clue as to what I did except I have been doing a lot of dyeing, it’s addictive 😂 Finding plants that I think will work well as a dye, researching so that I understand what I am doing with it. So far I have tried cold dye with no mordant to see what effect I get, loving the berry dye colours 🥰 I have used avocado skins, sage, mulberries, lavender (not much colour but the ribbon smells lovely) calendula, coreopsis, indigo powder and turmeric.

The one on the right hand side is the original colour of the raw silk.

The twins came over for their weekly session with me while Mia goes to swimming lessons. We played tig with Grampy outside in the garden and then got dinner for them. This is the last week we will have them on Thursdays 😔 as they start their own swimming lessons next week 😁

Friday: I had a phone call late afternoon yesterday for a large celebration bouquet to be collected this morning. It was a big one and I had to make three bunches and put them together to make one large bouquet as my hands are pretty small lol. I made that first thing along with another order that was being collected in the afternoon. John was off today so was working in the stable block some of the time and harassing me about shares the rest of the time. He has had shares for a while and just left them where they were but has now decided to shuffle them around, the only problem with that is it is me that has to do it because he doesn’t know how (and doesn’t do technology 🙄) He watches them on his phone and comes to find me when he wants to buy or sell them 😜 fine except that he expects me to drop what I am doing there and then to get the best price 😂 I did suggest he gets his own iPad (phone screens are too small at our age to see everything in one go) and do it himself but secretly I rather enjoy the thrill of buying and selling at the right time when possible.

Saturday: Started off in the early hours with torrential rain and basically has not stopped all morning, everything will be a washout today 😏 We went to get some shopping 🙄 drives me nuts going as I am quite sure we don’t need anything but if the biscuit tin is empty John thinks we need to go. I am definitely getting more tetchy as I get older either than or everything is going to the dogs. The shop (Morrisons) was flipping freezing and I know it’s cold for August but seriously I was so cold near the fridges I couldn’t concentrate on what I wanted to get. Last winter it was Baltic in there and I said to John (and the lady in the till) I am not shopping in here this winter coming it’s too cold. I have no idea what they are trying to do, save money I guess but it will backfire, if you are too cold to concentrate then people just won’t stop long, counterproductive if you ask me. Second bugbear is the bloody loyalty card system, it’s supposed to be geared to you personally, it is not, I will never be buying ginsters sausage rolls so don’t give me a discount, it seems more like they are trying to lead you to buying what they want you to buy and I am not that customer. To be honest I do not want to be a customer but John insists on going there, I am going to do my best to either avoid it or write him a list so he can go in future 😂 Johns shopping list is cheese, butter, bread, biscuits, crisps , jam, chocolate and ice cream oh and spring onions as a nod to something healthy 😜 If he doesn’t have those then we have ‘nothing to eat in the cupboards’ 🙄

We spent the rest of the day binge watching tv because the weather was so appalling it was not even worth stepping outside 🌧️

Sunday: I had flower to do this morning and so got straight on with those. The weather is better, dry at least but it’s still a tad on the colder side of summer. We are stuck in a weather dump that is going to move this week sometime but that has been nearly six weeks of crap in summer like weather we were stuck in 😂 the only consolation is that I haven’t watered outside at all 😁 Charlie walked over with Oscar first thing, he had his breakfast here and then they walked back, he was asleep before they even left the driveway. I then watered the small tunnel with the tomatoes and cucumbers in before cutting back a lot of the bottom foliage from the tomato plants so that the tomatoes can begin to ripen, even they are a bit slow this year.

We went out for lunch with friends midday which is something we rarely do, in fact I think it may be a first 😂 I lunch or have dinner with my friends or we do the same with family but not usually both of us out with friends. We had a lovely lunch in a lovely old Manor House that I didn’t even know was there but will definitely go back again.

In the evening I had a wander round the orchard area to see how the plums are doing this year. Not so good as last year but they can’t produce masses every year I guess. The plums trees really need some attention they are getting a bit straggly, it is difficult to get the pruning right on those as too late in the year and they could get disease but they are not looking great anyway then probably nothing to lose. The walnut tree has got huge this year and nuts are already dropping but I cracked one and it is still soft so no idea what is going on with that, they seem to be shedding early but not ready and the same with the hazel trees. It has been a most peculiar year mind you so anything is possible. I walked into the front paddock and was dismayed to find that when John had done some strimming he has strimmed a pussy willow whip I had been growing 😔 That is the third year in a row I had tried to grow something there and he has strimmed it down 😡 He has left a runner from the plumtree growing nicely though 😬 There was metal wire on the ground he said, yes I put that there to protect the roots from the chickens who like to scratch in dug over soil, ffs I give up sometimes, flipping trigger happy with that thing. We really need an odd job man to come once a week and do some of the jobs I think 🙄

Posted in Friesland Farm

It is still raining 😂 a trip to Diddly Squat & my birthday 🥳

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 24th July 2023: A rainy start to the day and week, I am a little annoyed with myself because yesterday was dry and I could have got a fair bit done outside and now it’s soggy. Goodness knows what has happened to our weather lol we are stuck in a cycle of rain but I am not complaining as parts of Europe are literally burning 😏

I am waiting for the rain to stop so that I can go out and cut the echinops. I have been watching them carefully waiting for them to colour up, the trick is not to let them go into flower if you want them for drying as they will start to fall apart once dry otherwise.

This patch started off a one small plant a couple of years ago! It has now got huge and needs dividing in autumn, it is swamping everything around it 😂

Although it is only the end of July I have already started taking bookings for Christmas wreath workshops so I need to be thinking that far ahead. I am also going to do a pumpkin arrangement workshop and all those dates are firmly in the diary but I do have the flexibility to add more if necessary. I need to do a post to advertise them but it seems a bit too early yet 🤷‍♀️

As it kept on raining I gave the pantry a tidy up, I still have a few apples but some of them have either shrivelled now or gone soft but the ones that are ok I will start chopping and freezing so I don’t lose any more. Our apple harvest was huge last year, this year not so many eating apples but still plenty of cookers on the tree providing the crows don’t eat them all that is 🙄

Cleaning it up made me start thinking about winter storing and prepping, we have seen that you never know what is round the corner these days 🤔 In the event of something catastrophic happening the food chain would break immediately and I like to be prepared 😂 it’s the primal side of me 😜

Tuesday: Dry today whoo hoo, I cut the echinops first thing along with some eryingyum they are so different to most things that are growing at the minute so they add texture to flowers. I then spent the rest of the morning doing some proper gardening, weeding, hoeing, deadheading, planting, potting on. I think if I ever get to a point of taking anyone on the first job would be for a gardener 😂 or at the very least, a weeder. I have potted on plants that have been waiting for weeks and now hopefully they can put on good growth before planting in autumn. I have a lot of re organising to do come autumn, I made some errors when laying out the cutting flower beds so they need turning round. I planted some things in places that, it has become apparent, they are outgrowing already 😜 It is all a learning curve.

Wednesday/Thursday: Forgot to type anything up and have no idea what I have been doing 😜 Working here is all I know as I haven’t been anywhere else, trying to catch up on all the weeding and tidying plus cutting anything that needs cutting. I did deliver flowers on Thursday I remember that much.

Friday: I had a fair amount of flowers to cut today for orders and for the flower workshop this evening, it started raining around 7.30am, wouldn’t you bloody know it 🙄 Nevertheless I had to get it done and so off I went out into the rain, it stopped raining almost as soon as I had finished 😜 We had the ride on mower collected this morning as the belt has broken plus it could do with a service. That is one thing John has been trying to do, get the front paddock cut but the grass is very long. It would seem that many are in a similar situation because of the constant switch between rain and sun and the chap has plenty of belts to repair 😂 I spent a good part of the day in the flower hut sorting it out and getting ready for later. The flowers are not drying as well as hoped in there and I am not sure if it is because of the humidity outside all month long. I can’t leave the door open because all and sundry will be inside before long, cats, dogs, chickens, geese 🙄 so I have rigged up a metal grill that can be tied to go across the open door to try and get some airflow in there. Schoolboy error not having a window up high!

I have decided to have a go at dyeing natural silk with plant dyes. Trying to find eco friendly ribbon is difficult and expensive so I thought I would have a go at making my own and see how they come out, you never know it could be another string to my bow 😁

Saturday: It started off sunny then clouded over and drizzled 🙄 I had the flower room to tidy up and social media posts to do and then mid morning deliver some flowers to a customer. It was near to Mums so we popped in for a coffee before heading back home. In the afternoon we decided to take a drive to Diddly Squat Farm which is only around 15/20 minutes away. It was heaving with people, seriously the car park was rammed, the other car park (field) was rammed and the queue must have been about an hour long just to get into the shop and then another similar queue for the food wagon 🙄 So we took the obligatory photo and left lol, we decided to call into Burford on the way back and grab an ice cream. Not a parking space to be found anywhere so we headed for Bibury instead, same story there 😏 We drove home through some lovely little villages and rural back lanes and grabbed an ice cream in Carterton instead 😂 Where exactly is the cost of living crisis because it is not here I can tell you that much 🤷‍♀️ You can no longer just walk into a pub and ask for a table for food as they are always booked up, you need to book in advance. The roads are clogged up with cars so no one is worried about how much fuel they are using, the shops are always busy, so much so that I can’t even be bothered to go into them these days unless absolutely necessary.

In the evening we had booked a table in the next town along for a meal out instead of our usual fish and chip night. We ordered fish and chips 😂 it was delicious though.

Sunday: It’s my birthday 🥳 Up and out for an early breakfast at one our favourite places, they start serving at 7.30am 😂 which is great for us as I think breakfast at 10am is halfway through the day 😜 Once back home we had a relaxed day, not sure why John was relaxing it wasn’t his birthday 😂 Plenty of visitors throughout the day, we had birthday cake and chocolates and I had lots of lovely gifts for which I am grateful 🥰 This just about sums me up, a goldfinch whistle, a giant cookie, a medieval cooking pan, plants, gardening gloves, essential oils, a book and a new top plus a few other things. In-between cups of tea, cake and visitors we watched a couple of films, perfect relaxing day.

Posted in Friesland Farm

A lot more flowers again this week 💐 a small harvest & what lies ahead 🌍

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 17th July 2023: Monday again already 🙄 I have been out already this morning and cut flowers for tomorrows orders, hoovered the house and now having tea and toast before I go out and check on my seeds and do any other jobs I spot that need doing, it won’t be hard to spot them 😜

Once of the biggest disappointments for me this year was not being able to get many seeds sown, flower or veg. This is the time I should be harvesting plenty of produce, so much that I never know what to do with it all! This year that is not happening but I have managed to get a tiny yield even despite this and I still have plenty in the freezer which is lucky. This morning I have picked a few broad beans and some dwarf French beans plus a fair few berries 😁 The berries have been cooked down and some have been allocated to a crumble for John later the rest will be compote for my yoghurt 🥰 The beans have been blanched and frozen and the cucumbers will be used up or given to the family for them to use. One of the things that crossed my mind today was more perennial veg, you can get perennial onions, kale, asparagus, artichoke, chard will grow happily for a couple of years before needing to be redone (if it doesn’t seed itself everywhere) fruit bushes are perennial as are fruit trees. It is definitely worth thinking about if you are short on time, have mobility issues or for when life restricts your growing ambitions.

Merge harvests today but still 100 times better than anything you can buy 🥰

I looked after Oscar for the afternoon so playing and blowing raspberries was the agenda until nap time. John came home early and made two people in the house napping 😴

Watching the news and the breakthrough in dementia medication which is great news. The bit that is worrying me is the dementia test, I can’t count backwards taking seven away each time when I am fully compos mentis so I said to John, make sure you tell them that if I ever have to go 😂 Seriously I have many strengths, numbers is not one of them especially odd numbers and taking away 🙄 words, yes, numbers, nope 😜

Tuesday: First job make up the flowers orders going out later. John always asks me ‘what are your plans’ when he is home, I don’t make plans because you never know what will come up and interrupt those plans. I usually do what I did today and think, that needs doing, I could do that, and then I have to do something different. I had a couple of notifications come through about van and car break ins in the immediate area 🙄 I had said previously to John that I need to cut the apple tree back because I can’t see down the driveway when people arrive, so that became a more important job to address today. It means I have a clear line of sight and can see what is going on, that may be customers arriving, deliveries or just randoms mooching around 😜

A bit of gardening for the rest of the day , so much that needs cutting back at the minute to encourage more flowers.

I have so many orders to get through tomorrow, Thursday and Friday and then a last minute order for flowers first thing tomorrow morning. By this time it is raining quite well and so an hour before dark I was out in the rain cutting flowers and getting soaked 😂 Back inside and change out of my wet clothes and into my pjs and a cup of tea before bedtime.

Wednesday: Up and out to cut flowers again this morning and then get the orders ready for customer pick up. Out mid morning to deliver an order then back to get the rest of the orders done. Customers arrived to collect various orders and then I had a two hour sit down around 1pm before cracking on again. More flower cutting in the evening plus watering the poly tunnels and finally sit down around 8.30pm. I have flowers to cut tomorrow morning and then orders to make up for afternoon collections so another busy day and I have had to say that I have no more availability because I literally do not have enough time to do any more😜

Thursday: Up and out to cut lots of flowers this morning, practically everything I have growing at the minute for the last orders this week. I will be having the weekend off from flowers 😂 Once they were cut it was time to make the first lot of todays orders that are being collected later on today. A short rest, then the twins and then I will will making up the last of this weeks flowers ready for collection tomorrow. I have a Oscar from early in the morning so I need to be done and ready.

I have been trying to think if I have actually left the farm at all this week, apart from a delivery of flowers (straight there and back) I think the answer is no not since last Sunday 🙄

Thursday evening was the time I needed to make up the last three bouquets for this week, I have Oscar from 7am tomorrow so won’t be able to do it then and they are being collected at lunchtime.

Friday: Looking after Oscar all morning until early afternoon, he was a good boy and we played and sang and he napped and fed, all good. In the afternoon I gave myself some time off, I needed it after that week which was fabulous but full on.

Saturday: Back to the rain and I hope it’s not too much today as one of my customers is getting married so I will keep my fingers crossed for them 🤞 I needed to tidy up the flower hut because a week long of arranging had left a bit of a mess to clear away plus I have left over flowers to deal with. They are now hanging up to dry for a different use later in the year. I had oak blocks to mark up ready for drilling as I will be doing lots more of these ready for selling as soon as I can get them done.

If you take time to really look and listen all around you there is another level of activity going on while we are all getting on with our lives. Yesterday I was stood by the back door and saw a leaf cutter bee with a piece of leaf, it disappeared next to the shed and when I looked there was a bamboo cane which is holding up some netting, I guess it went in there to make its little nest to lay an egg. It was a tiny thing but lovely to witness, this morning I saw and heard a fight going on 🙄 Again I was in the kitchen and heard birds making a right racket, normally it’s because the cats are around and we have blackbirds nesting close by as well as wrens. I looked out of the door and saw a sparrow hawk on the ground under the hazel trees trying to get the fledgling blackbirds 🥲 So I opened the door and stepped out, off flew the sparrow hawk closely followed by Daddy blackbird in pursuit, he was brave. I couldn’t see any sign of fledgling bodies so hopefully I foiled the plot.

It is not exactly an inspiring day today, rain, colder than average for the time of year and not at all like July. Saying that, John and I both agreed we would rather have this than be frying in the temps they have in Europe at the minute. I typed a whole paragraph early in the week on my thoughts about what is happening in the world climate at the minute, I read it back and thought, that’s a bit heavy and deleted it but I do think it needs addressing or I need to say it, one or the other. The problem is that a large percentage of the population think that it is geeky or whacky (just like they did with the then Prince Charles) It isn’t, it is far sighted that’s what it is, it’s being able to look further ahead and see what is coming and not burying your head in the sand, not living for today without thinking about the tomorrow. We are in for some difficult years ahead with the climate and it is happening faster than anyone expected. How do we deal with it? I don’t have any answers but we do need to start thinking about it PDQ. One question I posed to John before bedtime was, how do we prepare for living with extreme heat? What practical things can we do to make sure our house stays as cool as possible ? To be fair our place stays fairly cool, we have plenty of insulation and we have UV glass in the windows (more for the Lupus but coming in useful now) What else can we do? Maybe shutters on the windows 🤷‍♀️ The next topic was about water supply, all very accessible while things are running normally however I see problems in the years ahead so we should think about how we prepare for that. We already catch a lot of water and we have tanks to install which will catch more but that only works if it rains. What about drought, that will cause big problems for everyone eventually. We need to make sure that anything we are growing holds onto as much moisture as possible for as long as possible, mulching is the answer to that. We will need to change what we grow to eat, we are all going to be eating differently because some things we are used to eating just won’t grow in extreme heat, although we will be able to grow more exotic things probably. We were talking about exploring options for a bore hole. It is crazy to think that most villages and towns would have had plenty of wells and they have mostly all be filled in over the years. And then on the flip side what about flash flooding and deluges of rain, we have had it all thrown at us over the last few years 😂 we need to prepare for every eventually. I do think that where we live at the minute we are in a good position to cope with volumes of water unlike the folk at the bottom of the hill. So if you are looking to move in the near future I would suggest you get up as high as possible lol, high temperatures are going to cause a multitude of problems and rising water levels is one of them. None of this is fantasy, we are seeing the effects globally every day, it makes the headlines and yet it is not a topic of serious discussion for most people 🙄 You only have to look at the graphs since the Industrial Revolution to see what we have done to the world, that and applying harmful chemicals to every aspect of our lives 😏 We are furiously trying to either backpedal or outrun the consequences but we are not going to be able to so we need a plan. Governments and politicians are too busy trying to outdo each other with their manifesto’s, they are only declarations of intention it doesn’t mean they will get them done 🤔 Those that are not fighting with words are fighting with real ammunition 😡 humans seem hell bent on destroying each other or the planet one way or another, intelligent life, pull the other one!

Do I feel better for getting that of my chest, not really it just opens up hundreds of other lines of thought 😜 But if it gets one person thinking about what lies ahead and how to deal with it then I will be happy enough x

Sunday: Yesterday late afternoon we went over to see the twins, it is their 4th birthday today but they are going on holiday so we went to see them beforehand. We bought back Josh and Flo with us to stay overnight as Shelley and Martin were off to a wedding reception that evening, the weather hasn’t been a great July for weddings and that one was no exception 😕

I had decided to mainly have the day off today, apart from looking after the children until they were collected I had no other plans. I did water the small tunnel though, the cucumbers and tomatoes are growing well in there and I am already harvesting plenty of cucumbers. We did pop out to a local plant nursery as there are still one or two things I am looking for, I didn’t find them but I did get a couple of other plants 😬 We had a roast at Shelley’s mid afternoon and then back home for the rest of the day. The weather was mainly dry and I should have done some work but I was tired and decided to recharge instead.

One of the plants I keep thinking about getting is a smoke bush or continue, I think it would be a useful addition and I wonder how well the ‘smoke’ would dry but I have no idea. If anyone has a bush they wouldn’t mind me snipping a few bits off to test I would be grateful 😁

In the evening Dave bought round a delivery of honey for the egg shed, I can hardly call it that now as the lack of eggs is fairly evident 🙄 We find eaten eggs around the place, that is either birds, the dogs or the hens themselves. The problem once hens get to a certain age is they develop bad habits like eating their own eggs, the months of lockdown don’t help as that is often when they begin with these habits which is why the industry turns them over quite quickly, approximately 2 years and then they are changed. Some of our hens are getting on for 3 or 4 and no longer productive but happily living out their days, as long as the fox doesn’t get them of course 🦊

Posted in Friesland Farm

Hospital, rain, rain and more rain 🌧️

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 10th July 2023: What a way to start the week 🙄 We we’re up early to get sorted before setting off for the hospital for my eye appointment. The traffic can be horrendous going to Oxford so we set off at 7 for an 8.30 arrival, we made it in good time and had a coffee before signing in. Then around 4 hours of our life went past just sitting and waiting to be seen, I finally got called in after three and a half hours. During the ten minute consultation, they examined my eyes and decided they were recovering well 😁 The doctor was wrapping up when I reminded him about the referral to the outpatient clinic that was mentioned during Fridays consultation, he looks at my notes, nothing on there so he emails for a referral appointment, all good so far. I then remind him that I don’t have enough steroid drops for the prescription they originally gave me on Friday taking 8 drops a day in each eye for seven days, dropping to 6 for the next week, 4 the next and then 3, 2, 1 you get the idea. You can’t just whack steroids in and then come off suddenly it has to be a withdrawal, I know that much and besides they told me that at my original appointment back in April. So he gives me a prescription and off I go to find the hospital pharmacy as they don’t have any in the department. I look at my piece of paper, that’s not my name and address, he has given me the wrong label, I go back and tell the nurse it’s wrong, he says, go and tell him 🙄 This is the same nurse that came in during my consultation to have short words with the doctor for sending another patient for some tests that the nurse had already sent them for previously 😳 So far, not so good and it doesn’t get any better! I go down the pharmacy and am given a pager, a pager 😂 it should be ready in an hour, sure enough just under an hour later the pager goes off and I go to collect my prescription. The pharmacist says ‘one drop in each eye, six times a day for six weeks, there are six bottles in there’ well at this point I know that is entirely wrong but we have now been there getting on for 5 hours so I take the prescription and run, well walk back to the car. I know what I am supposed to be doing even if the doctor doesn’t and thank goodness I do, someone elderly or not quite up to speed would get in a terrible pickle over that 😏 We pay for the parking which by now we are outside the 4-5 hours and into 7 hours and stay as long as you like bracket 😆 In the hospital I couldn’t get any phone signal or internet so the messages are suddenly pinging through, one (at 10.30) is from Charlie to say they landed safely after being on holiday. I message saying I have just finished at the hospital and she replies we are just going past the hospital turning if you need anything, we pull onto the ring road and they are two cars in front of us. What significance does this have you may ask, well they took off from Ibiza, landed in the UK, got their luggage, drove through the London traffic and made it to Oxford (near the hospital turning) in approximately the same amount of time I had been up the hospital for my appointment 😂😂😂🤣 FFS!

By the time we get home that is the best part of the day gone although I did receive a text to say I have an appointment at the outpatient clinic at the end of August so something went smoothly. I wasn’t planning on having to go back up Friday or Monday so that threw a spanner in the works with the jobs I needed to get done. I have lots of flower orders going out tomorrow plus more flowers to cut (which I will have to do this evening now, hopefully it won’t rain) and an introduction to beekeeping course which is happening here tonight and I was hoping to get everything ready during the day, nope lol, so I scort about for an hour or so once I got home and had a cuppa.

By evening the workshop was all set up and ready for the Introduction to beekeeping, we had seven participants tonight which is fabulous. Dave from Bradwell Bees teaches and I just do the meet and greet, admin and the refreshments so it works well. If you have experience in something then workshops are a great way to pass on knowledge and earn extra income. If anyone out there fancies teaching a workshop of any kind that is classroom based do get in touch to discuss, I have a room available and you may have the skills 😁 Once everyone is here and settled in with H & S, toilets and refreshment options covered, I get to go off for an hour and do other stuff, such as type up my blog.

A successful workshop, everyone seemed to enjoy it and were enthusiastic asking plenty of questions and even, when is the next one, which is fabulous.

Tuesday: Start the day with cutting flowers for orders and then straight onto making 12 thank you box posies for an order being collected this afternoon. I had a bit of a blip when the paper started drawing up water so I had to change the wrapping on the first four but once I sorted it out all was well 😁 They were collected later in the afternoon and the customer was really pleased which is what we like to hear, she took a handful of business cards with her, good sign. I spent the rest of the afternoon tidying up the office/craft room which has been a place that has also ended up with lots of flowers stuff in. Now I have a dedicated room I moved it all over there and threw out rubbish and recycled anything else.

As I type this it is chucking it down, belting down even 😂 we appear to have reached the rainy season as for the last week and a bit it has rained every single day, no idea why I was so worried about the lack of it 😜 I do need to cut flowers this evening for tomorrow, normally I do them in the morning but it was a bit wet so I did half and thought I will wait till everything dried out later 🙄

Wednesday: I had posy boxes to arrange again today for collection this afternoon as well as a couple of bouquets. I also sowed some biennial seeds ready for next year and a fair bit of weeding though you would hardly notice as the weeds are pretty much out of control with all this rain. In the evening I had some oak bars to drill out and arrange for an order.

Thursday: A dry start to the day so far, it’s 10am and I have just sat down for some tea and toast before starting again. I have been cutting this morning for Friday flowers but also a big order that came in yesterday. It takes a good hour and a half to cut a few buckets of flowers and foliage. All the while I am looking at what else needs doing, weeding, staking, dead heading and cutting back or pulling out. There is never enough time to get anything substantial done, we have discussed how we will rearrange this for next year but of course that cannot be done until this seasons flowers are gone over. Not all of the garden need re jigging, some of it we have already done but the area I initially dedicated to growing has not worked the way it is so re organisation is on the cards which will involve moving all the soil out of the beds, repositioning them and refilling before replanting or covering for winter. The other thing that we really need to get on top of is the staking, there is nothing worse than spotting a beautiful flower only to find the main stem is down on the ground and the flower is bending up off from it, fairly unusable in a bouquet but always considered for drying so all is not lost.

The amount of rain we have had has been great but it means the flowers have put on a lot of soft growth which also means they flop over, not enough strength in the stem or too heavy at the top. I often have offers of help the trouble is that people want to do the nice stuff and around 3/4 of it is hard, dirty graft 😂

I went out, weeded, hoed, laid weed membrane, and sweated then came back in and it was noon already. I don’t like weed membrane but it is the lesser of two evils at the minute. You might recall I trialled jute but that did not even last the winter into spring and so not cost effective.

1.30pm and I went straight back out after some lunch to crack on, I have my mojo and enthusiasm back the trouble is my stamina is still lacking 😜 that and every three hours I have to put drops in my eyes which means it is blurry for ten minutes 🙄 I have been weeding the pathways and non flower bed areas and am making good progress finally.

The twins arrived for their Thursday session at Nanas lol, John was home and they had great fun eating any raspberries they could find then a cucumber and finally their dinner out on a blanket on the lawn which they thought was super. Roly polys, hopping races, hide and seek, and handstands, not sure who was more tired them or us 😂

After dinner I went back out to do a stint in the big tunnel, weeding the path (one of the adjustments I will make in winter and then put the water on in there while I went and staked some of the taller plants. We are due rain tomorrow so staking is a priority otherwise they will fall over. After that it was into the flower hut to get Friday flowers ready, although some are already sold before they even go out 😁 Hopefully the rain will hold off first thing while I cut more flowers for Saturday, a rest day on Sunday before lots of flowers and grandchildren sitting next week. Tonight I am very tired 😴

Friday: Two showers this morning 😂 one nice warm one, one cold wet one from the rain. First I put out the Friday flowers although most have been pre sold I still had a couple of bunches to go out, not expecting any customers today mind you 🌧️ Next I had to cut for tomorrows orders and thats when I had my second shower 😜🌧️ I had looked at the rain radar and heavier rain is yet to come so I got out there while it was not pouring down but still raining. It feels like spring or autumn not high summer 🙄 In Europe they are reaching temps of 40c and we get the cold air meets warm air rain lol.

I had a look at the cucumbers yesterday and was surprised to find three or four full sized ones so I picked those, the twins munched on one while they were here and I sent Sam home with two more and then Martin took one home with him later in the evening. There are plenty growing which is great as the torts eat a fair few of them through the season. Last year I had so many I hardly knew what to do with them all so I peeled them, whizzed them and froze them in ice cube trays for adding to smoothies/juices.

Omg the weather is awful, truly awful, it hasn’t stopped raining yet and it’s now 1pm and we have worse weather coming tomorrow it would seem with high winds and rain together 🙄 There are quite a few big local events supposed to be happening this weekend, the Royal International Air Tattoo for one which is going to be a wash out, a few local festivals who probably thought mid July was a safe bet 😏 This time last year we were literally baking in record breaking temperatures and we’re on the verge of a drought 😜 I have put a beef stew on for dinner later 😂 and I think I will abandon everything and watch a film this afternoon 🤣

Flowers all cut and tied ready for delivery to one customer tomorrow morning.

Saturday: First job of the day was a flower order delivery, a nice big order all for one customer 🥰 Then once back home a few other jobs before Josh and Flo arrived at lunchtime. They were staying over night and so no more farm work for me today. The weather was shocking anyway 😂

Sunday: Up and make Josh and Flo pancakes for breakfast 😁 Once they had been collected and gone home John and I went out for some lunch and then back in time to watch an epic Wimbledon Men’s final, not much else got done today either 😜

I have a lot of flower orders this week coming 🥰 The sales are getting more and more which is fabulous.