Tag: winter

Posted in Friesland Farm

Preparing for the year ahead.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

The weather has warmed a little but it’s still only around 3/4c most days, sometimes with a heavy fog, plenty of conspiracy theories online about this 🙄

We have managed to do a bit outside although there comes a point when fingers and toes are protesting a lot and that’s the time for me to come inside and do something else. I try to wait for it to warm up enough in the morning but it’s not really getting anywhere near the nice 12/14c we had between Christmas and new year, can’t expect much else really in mid winter 🥶

The work we have been concentrating on is where we took the old fence down after putting up the new one. Over time there have been hazel and sycamore saplings that have self set and they need to come out plus clear any weeds/debris and get the area clear to start again. We have decided that some new compost bins will be good down there as well as extending all the existing beds down to the old fence line. We are building the compost bins out of old pallets and these will be lined so that the material can heat up well and hopefully destroy and weed seeds. Home made compost is fantastic stuff if you can avoid spreading weed seeds everywhere and you do this by making sure that the material gets enough heat to kill off anything lurking in there and rot everything down really well. Turning the compost is key because not only do you make sure you incorporate everything but it also helps to reignite those warmer temperatures that you need.

There are a couple of things in pots that I have been wanting to get in the ground for a few years. One is a fig that has been in a pot for about 4 years and we actually do have enough space to get it in the ground I just was never sure where I wanted it, now it is in the ground I might get a good crop of figs next year 🥰 The other shrub I have planted is next to the decking and is for floristry, it is a eucalyptus parvifolia. It will give me two things, some dappled shade on the decking area which gets full sun in the late afternoon and evenings and cutting material for bouquets and arrangements. Eucalyptus is a winter foliage and used during the winter months, we stop using it around May and start again in October/November.

We have had a few fox visits this week, I spotted it this morning and it’s a big healthy specimen 😬 John saw it yesterday right outside the back door when he went out there. We have had to start keeping the door closed and not let Mia have free range and I think that because if that Patch is staying in more and so there are no dogs out there to ward it off.

The reason we have had to keep Mia in is because she can no longer see or hear anything so when she goes outside she can’t find her way back on her own. I explained this to John and said if she is out with you then you need to watch her at all times 🙄 This did not happen on Friday and consequently when he went back outside he couldn’t find her. Luckily Sam and Shelley were here and so a search party was sent out and she was found just over our boundary in the field of the farm behind us. But she is also getting pretty infirm especially after walking all that way and they had to get a wheelbarrow to bring her back. She wanders aimlessly but can’t find her way back so she has to be constantly watched.

We are people who when the time is right will have her put to sleep but at the minute she is eating, drinking and isn’t incontinent, she enjoys sleeping most of the day and that’s not a bad life for an old dog, I am hoping she just goes to sleep quietly and gently here, in the meantime we just have to make sure she doesn’t wander off!

I have been organising the greenhouse ready for the big seed sowing race in March. There are only a few things you can sow now, broad beans (not decided if I want to grow these yet or not) Sweet peas (I have the seed soaking and chitting as I type) Onion seeds and I am growing perennial onions this year so as not to take up too much room and I have also sown some verbena seeds for cut flowers. Apart from that I am just waiting and watching the weather, it’s good that we had some freezing weather as that triggers many plants including the tulip bulbs into growth and I have 600 of those planted 😂

I bought a job lot of beer traps to try and tackle the slugs this year, hopefully as we have had the cold they won’t be as prolific but if we have another cool wet spring they will be back. I did a bit of research on which slugs are the good guys this week because not all of them are pests. Some only eat decaying material and some eat other slugs so we want to keep those if possible which is why it’s not a good idea to use slug pellets, killing all of them is counterproductive. Cellar slugs which are the bigger greeny coloured ones are good and leopard slugs are also useful. Neither of these pose a threat to my plants and so they can stay, the rest need to be knocked back in numbers so I will be giving them beer to drink and that’s not a bad way to go is it 🤪

Getting as much preparation done in the garden at this time of year will make the rest of the year much easier to manage but there are jobs that need to wait until the time is right. I don’t cut back any dead foliage until the weather has warmed up a good bit, the beneficial insects need somewhere to overwinter and the birds need the seed heads and the coverage if it’s cold. As much as I would love to start clearing it all I know that the whole garden will reap the rewards if I leave everything alone until those mentioned can survive sufficiently.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Cold 🥶

Posted on by frieslandfarm

That’s a bit of an understatement! It has been freezing this week, not by some standards around the world but definitely by ours. The thermometer in my greenhouse registered -5 on the coldest night which means it was at least -8 outside and that didn’t really let up during the day either. Needless to say I think I have lost my Runuculas which is a pain in the proverbial, each year I try with them and each year something destroys them. The first year it was mice, the second year it was slugs and this year it’s the cold. I can get another batch in but they will flower much later now. I thought I had nailed it this year as I got them in on time, they grew nicely, I moved them into the greenhouse, put them up high out of the way of mice but crucially forgot to cover them 😣 I was so annoyed with myself but I have to move on, no point dwelling on it so I will put it down to experience and maybe try again next year or maybe not 🤷‍♀️

We got off to such a good start in the week between Christmas and new year, the fence went up well and we were able to get some of the old fence line tided but that all stopped when the cold snap came and so no more progress on that as yet. John has been out every day trying to burn under the stump of the huge willow that came down. As there was not much else to be done at least that was one warm job but it has taken days and days and it’s not burnt away enough to be able to pull the stump free yet.

I am always reluctant to go outside when it’s cold unless I have a job I can get my teeth into, one that is going to keep me warm while I do it. As everything was frozen solid that was not much of an option and so I have mostly spent my time inside doing the usual household chores. I did do a bit of batch baking and we now have four lovely fruit cake in the freezer for another day. I also had a go at making crumpets, just because I wanted to see how easy they were to do. The mix was easy enough and the end result was edible (with a few air holes too) but the cooking process was a bit hit and miss. If I had the heat up high, I got great air holes but the bottom would burn, if I didn’t have it high enough there were very few air holes and they took ages to cook through. The jury is out on these, yes they were ok but they were a faff to cook and I am not sure it was worth the time spent. The flat bread I decided to have a go at later in the week though, they were definitely worth it and something I would do again. What I was trying to do was see if I could cook them on the top of the wood burner but I think the combination of the cast iron casing and the heavy bottom fry pan meant that the heat did not transfer quick enough to cook them well. So I changed to the hob and they were perfect, especially as we ate them warm with some butter that melted deliciously when it made contact with the flat bread. It is something I would think about doing with the children outside on the fire pit at some point. Got to teach the younger generation that simple food is good food and easy with it.

I have been watching the whole Bovear debacle closely and we had to go to the supermarket to get things like cat food at the weekend. It is very evident that consumers are boycotting products they believe have come from cattle that have been fed with Bovear, if you have no idea what I am talking about then I would Google it, just make sure you look at both sides of the argument. Personally I have moved away from buying any of the products and I have considered ‘the science is good’ argument BUT it’s about choice. I choose not to buy food that didn’t need messing with in the first place, if companies are so concerned about the amount of methane released by cattle then ration the product to reduce the amount we need. Of course they are not going to do that because that would dent the profits and so instead they decided to meddle with the food. What they didn’t bank on was the backlash from consumers, and yes I will admit that there is a lot of misinformation out there but I also have got to the age in life where I don’t trust them to tell us the truth anyway 🙄 follow the money, it’s always all about the profits. Stick with the smaller producers, the small farms, the small businesses because the only profits they are trying to make are for a decent living for themselves and their families and not for the shareholders and the big bonus bosses.

Hopefully from today we are going to see a thaw and the temperatures go up a little to around 8c, that is perfect for the time of year I reckon. I am glad that the freeze will have triggered some natural pest control and definitely of those pesky slugs that invaded us last year but I don’t want it to go on too long because I have work to do 😂

I have spent this morning hoovering, cleaning and clearing out some of my cupboards, if I wonder why it is there then it probably needs to go, if I haven’t used it for a year, then it probably needs to go and I did managed to clear a couple of bags of ‘stuff’. Why we have so much stuff is beyond me, we have come from cavemen who spent all their time, hunting, cooking and keeping warm to people who have accumulated ‘stuff’ to fill our caves because we have too much time on our hands 😂

I still have my primal instincts as a hunter gatherer though, that’s why I love to grow and store produce, then cook with it. I have a lovely beef stew on the go for dinner tonight, we get our beef from a fabulous lady called Emma who is so proud of her cows and the quality of the beef they produce and rightly so. Grass fed cattle, grazing naturally on the water meadows makes for great tasting beef 🥰

Not much else to report this week, we have been busy in the evenings binge watching various tv series, with the wood burner going to keep us toasty warm, but that’s what winter is for isn’t it?

Posted in Friesland Farm

Happy New Year 🥳

Posted on by frieslandfarm

I totally lost my way when it came to the blog during the last year, I started writing a piece so many times that I have a plethora of drafts I now need to delete!

What was wrong? Writers block, lack of confidence, nothing to say? A combination of those and more I suppose but I really lost my way.

It is not that we didn’t do anything at all it’s just that I couldn’t work out what I was trying to say or how I was trying to say it, had I over complicated my thoughts? I think I did and so I decided to go back to basics, after all it’s the advice I give the girls when they have a problem. Think back to the beginning of the problem (and this works for all issues) try and strip back the layers until you can see a clear way forward and begin from there.

How does that work in reality? Well if you take a food problem, one that is causing you discomfort or manifesting in other issues such as skin irruptions then strip your diet right back to basics. Literally whole foods in their simplest form and eat nothing more than that, you should be able to work out which food group (if any at that stage) is the issue. You gradually add in other foods one by one until you understand how they are affecting you and hopefully you eventually work out what the problem is.

If a pet has a behavioural issue then think of the pet as its ancestral relative (wolf in the case of dogs) think about natural, wild behaviour. Is the behaviour a natural instinct that the pet is displaying? If it is then the problem doesn’t lie with the pet but the way you are expecting the pet to live and basically the problem is us, or more to the point our lack of understanding. And then there is the food we feed pets today, back to example 1 👆

Financial problems, granted they are not so easy to fix but is it a case of making the same mistakes over and over again resulting in the same problems over and over again? Take an honest look at things, this is stripping back all the excuses we give ourselves, and see where the cycle can be broken.

Issues are complex but trying to strip them back will help to see a clearer way forward with most things.

What does this have to do with my blog? Well despite the detailed musings I have just written I realised that I started the blog as a recording of my day to day life and somewhere along the way I managed to complicate things and I need to go back to basics.

I would be writing about a topic and would realise that the topic was huge and too big to get my thoughts down in a way that was coherent and was anybody bothered anyway? That then gave me a crisis of confidence and so I would abandon the piece I was writing.

So back to basics it is, possibly with a little extra thrown in now and again because I can’t help myself 🤪

And so I begin with Happy New Year to you all and I hope you had a great festive season.

I had a very busy year last year in fact when I look back at photographs I can’t help but feel blessed. We had some fabulous family times and the flower side of things was incredible.

It is a new year but there is not a stop to one year and start another, it continuous and so my preparations for this year began way back in the summer.

Over the holiday we have been putting up a new fence, the old one was dilapidated and needed to come down before the horses could just wander into the garden of their own accord. We have taken that opportunity to increase the growing area slightly, I have a few events already booked for this year that will need a lot of flowers and I don’t need any other reason than that to grow more. I also want to get back to growing a lot more veg than I did last year so I need space for that too.

The weather was pleasant when we started the new fence and we managed to finish it before the cold and the snow came, however it has been frozen for the last few days and so work on taking the old one down and clearing the ground has stopped for now.

In one of the named storms we had a huge 40/50 year old willow come down 😔 John has been busy cutting it up into logs but the stump, although partially ripped out of the ground, was going to be a beast to deal with. With a bit of lateral thinking he has been burning it from underneath, there was a huge cavity and some of the tree was rotten, it has been a great way to keep warm out there on the freezing cold days.

Yesterday we actually did nothing but the basics, the snow was still on the ground, it was cold and not pleasant working conditions so we stayed in and watched everything we wanted to catch up on. Did I feel guilty about not doing anything? Yes is the answer, to begin with I couldn’t settle but eventually gave in, not a bad thing to do because today I am eager to get on and accomplish something useful.

I had a plan but once I looked out at the weather this morning I realised I need to shift my focus slightly. So rather than digging up a few things I want to reposition, I will focus on working in the greenhouse and tunnels. I have some autumn grown plants that are overwintering well in the greenhouse but some are flagging and need attention, possibly a bit of bottom heat. At one time I didn’t want to use excess energy to grow plants but I end up losing too much so what is worse, a small amount of energy or wastage of time and resources 🤷‍♀️ I stripped back my thoughts and repetitive patterns and will go in a different direction. Of course it could fail again and then I will have three lots of waste but I have to try 🙄

We got some new laying hens last autumn, yes I know I said I wasn’t going to 🤪 but I had a long think about it and it had got to the stage where we didn’t have any eggs to use because I was putting them all out for customers and what was the point of that. So a new batch arrived and they have started laying well and I can bake whenever I want to now. We still have the same old situations where we either have lots of eggs or everyone comes at the same time and we don’t have enough but that is not something I can control so I am no longer worrying about it, it is what it is.

The geese, or one of the geese, has continued spasmodically laying throughout the winter, that plus plenty of other signs, rings my climate change warning bell. The climate is as unpredictable these days as the goose laying her eggs, we just have to work with whatever comes our way. I don’t think the powers that be will ever sort it out, there are a lot of meetings, conferences and innovative ideas but I am not sure they solve anything because it always comes down to the money. How much they want to spend, how much they can spend and how much somebody somewhere can make seem to be the driving forces behind never achieving the goals. Maybe they need to strip it all back to basics and start again 😬 That will not happen because for every person that wants to heal the world there is another that wants to profit from it and the money (greed) usually wins.

The ducks are getting old and are basically living out their retirement in the best ducky style. They don’t lay anymore but they do spend their whole day wandering around the place eating grubs and slugs with a few naps in between.

The cats are still busy catching plenty of mice, luckily they are not big on catching birds 😊 they also spend a lot of time sleeping but only after a busy night. Diesel is getting old, (he is 16 now) at one point I thought that he wouldn’t see winter out but he seems to have got a second wind and is back on form again.

Patch, the dog, is still daft as a brush and a constant companion when John is working outside. Mia on the other hand is showing signs of deterioration, we noticed back in the summer that she was stone deaf and now it is apparent that her eyesight is very poor. She is still eating and drinking normally but she stumbles a fair bit and bumps into things, we have to keep a close eye on her so she does not wander off and can’t find her way back. Her genetics are not great, something I didn’t realise until after we got her and I did a bit of research on the breed, specifically the merle gene.

The horses are still going strong, getting older every year just like the rest of us but they are healthy and happy and living their best life really with no expectations from them apart from mowing the paddocks 😂

It is a quiet time of year but I will try and do a quick round up on Mondays of what I have been up to and what I have planned. That was the aim of the original blog, a diarised snapshot of life on the Smallholding with one or two bigger issues thrown in because they affect life in general.

Ta ta for now.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Rain, cold and finally some sunshine.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 26th February 2024: Not frosty this morning but we have a cold wind instead 🙄 It’s lunchtime and I am just sitting down writing this up while I wait for my beef broth to defrost and heat up in the pan. Apart from the usual jobs one of the first things I did this morning was go out and pot up some more rhubarb plants. I dug up a huge root last year and divided it, potting some of them up and the rest just got left. I put the potted pants up for sale and had such a response I thought I better pot up the rest. Luckily rhubarb root weathers the winter well and then spring into life again which is exactly what all these have done so I might as well sell them on rather than compost them.

Next I decided to clean the kitchen, I had to wait for a few people coming to collect things so I figured I could do that and keep an eye out for anyone arriving. It really needed doing, there were cobwebs and everything in the corners 😂 Once upon a time I would have done a full clean weekly but not any more, life is too short for that, instead I tend to tackle one room intensely and skim the rest. That way everything gets a good clean every now and then and I get to do other more pleasurable tasks 😊

Tuesday: Oscar day, we did venture out for a little walk in the afternoon as it was not raining and the sun was trying, the wind was cold though so it was a short round trip of the village lol.

Wednesday: Have I ever said that February is my least favourite month of the year, I probably have 😂 It’s just that you seem to be waiting an age for things to warm up a little, even though this winter has been fairly mild so far. It is the dull, grey that is depressing and this year has been one of the dullest with only 36hrs of sunshine recorded apparently, I mean come on that’s bloody stingy isn’t it Mother Nature 🙄

Meanwhile I occupy myself with preparations for Mothers Day and Easter and hopefully the not too far away spring temperatures. It is the time of year when I try to do a good bit of learning and I often discover things I want to have a go at doing.

It is Shelley’s birthday today and she booked herself the day off, we are pretty much a family of self employed so she is her own boss and gave herself permission to enjoy her birthday 😂 We went out for a lovely lunch and a wander round the local upmarket garden company. When John comes home we will pop round to hers for some birthday cake 🎂

When I returned home I found a lovely delivery of plants, always a great cheer up moment on a dull, wet, cold day. These are eryngium, two different types to the ones I already have, a lovely white one which will be amazing dried hopefully and a blue one with more star like qualities than the blue one I have already.

Thursday: You know some days you just want to scream lol, no wonder mental health and stress levels are off the scale these days. A morning of trying to get things sorted or waiting for updates is crucial but so much time wasted 🙄 Trying to track a shipment that the tracking app wants to link to an email address I don’t use and didn’t use when I purchased the goods. So now I can’t find out the tracking number and have no idea when it will be delivered or even if it will. I tried several ways of rectifying the problem to no avail so I have to just wait and see what happens, if anything, not great.

Next was trying to ring and get a prescription 😣 Every day I think the NHS systems are broken just a little bit more and it just borders on ridiculous at the minute. Once you actually get where you need to be the service is great but ffs getting there is painful. I have been with the same practice since I was 5 yrs old, in all those years I knew who my doctors was and what they looked like, every one of them. Covid comes along and everything changes (fair enough) but things have never gone back to how they were and are so much worse now. You can barely even speak to a human being, go round in circles and just get left in limbo. First they put up plastic shields to talk through and now they won’t even talk to you, you are at the mercy of an answer machine or an online system that does not function fully 😡 Even worse for those who are not digitally adept or the elderly. To add insult to injury they then send you a ‘rate your appointment’ message well I rate my appointment, great but I would rate the system to get there in the first place defunct! 0, nil, shite to be perfectly honest. They are pushing people towards private health care which is all well and good but the elderly or someone like me with a long term chronic illness has no hope of that so we are just hung out to die I reckon, and that is how I feel today, I just want to cry.

I had Oscar for a couple of hours while Charlie went to get something sorted out (another system that has gone awry 🙄) I waited for my deliveries, one said delivered ( the most important one) but it wasn’t and I was just about to message the sender when the van turned up with it, so the delivery driver obviously pre programmed delivery which is fine but stressed me out. The other deliveries turned up at various points in the day.

Once Charlie had collected Oscar I made some lunch and then went out to the flower room to have a couple of hours doing flowery things. When I am doing that I am not thinking of anything else which is nice and relaxing. I have orders coming in thick and fast for Mothers Day as well as other orders, it’s nice to be working with flowers again.

British grown, on the bulb, muscari, a first for us 🥰

Friday: It rained a lot last night and looks like it will be the wettest February on record as well as the dullest 😂 I have been busy doing flower things today, I have had a lot of work come in this week and that’s on top of Mothers Day orders lol, I am not complaining though as I love doing it. I will have to balance it a bit more carefully once I am working outside more too or there won’t be enough hours in the day I am sure of that 🤪

Saturday: More flipping rain and quite a bit of it, the temperature is cold, wind chill even colder. I want to get in the greenhouse but I need ungloved hands for the work I want to do and they just keep going blue 🙄 pretty please can we have some sunshine soon 🙏 The spring flowers I have growing need a bit of warmth to spur them along, I was hoping to have lots of tulips ready for Mothers Day but I think they will probably make an appearance the week after 🤪 This flower farming lark is unpredictable at the best of times especially if you are not using heat and purely relying on Mother Nature which is more sustainable. There is not a decent solar heater on the market yet so that is not even an option, if you use bubble wrap you run the risk of mildew with all this wet damp weather, it is a no win situation at the minute so we just keep holding on and hoping.

I spent a quick half an hour making sure I have enough stems ordered for Mothers Day, I will have some flowers I can cut but I need to supplement with flowers from other British growers at this time of year and that is a bit of a balancing act 😬

Sunday: We had some sunshine and it was most welcome 😊 It started of foggy and frosty but the sun was trying hard to break through and eventually did so we made the most of the day. John spent the day cleaning out chickens, cleaning the car and mowing the grass. I spent the day potting up dahlias that had started to grow, some peony plants, strawberry plant plus some eryngium that need to go in the ground but we have another frost forecast so I potted them for now. Sam arrived for a visit with the children and they had bought some seeds they wanted to grow, strawberries and tomatoes. So we went into the greenhouse and they had a lesson on seed sowing, if they make it home still in the compost in one piece I will be surprised 🤪 but it’s good they have an interest and they can watch them daily to see how they are doing. Once they had gone a barrowed some woodchip put on the paths in the garden then cut some fresh greens from the greenhouse for our dinner later.

All the dahlias are now in separate pots and languishing in the kitchen for the next few weeks until it is warm enough to put the into the tunnels.

I had someone coming to collect some flowers, some rhubarb roots to drop to a neighbour, cook the dinner then I am done for the day, but it was a good, productive and fairly warm day.

Dahlias in the kitchen for a few weeks, it is a steady 16c in there so perfect conditions for them 😊
Posted in Friesland Farm

I found a frog 🐸 some flower work and plenty of outside jobs done.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 29th January 2024: First month of the year almost done we just need to get through February 😂

I started the day with a cook up, I am getting into a good routine with this and I have great freezer choices to show for it. We had roast chicken yesterday and so I wanted to make good use of the leftovers this morning. In the slow cookers are a chicken stew mix which could also be used for chicken pie. The other one has the carcass in with onion, carrot, bay and thyme, that will be stock, useful for gravy or soup. The last lot is in a pan and is chicken curry, I like a mild curry and use whatever spices I have available, a bit of this and a bit of that, as long as it tastes good too me that’s fine as John does not eat curry.

Shelley popped in for a cuppa but as soon as she left I went outside as the weather is pretty good again today.

I have been tidying the area around the greenhouse, the winds we have had blew things everywhere and knocked over overwintering plants. I swept up all the leaves and righted the pots, picked up pots and rubbish that had been blown around and that is a great time to check on the health of plants that have gone through the winter. I only found a couple that didn’t make it so that’s great news, the others are all beginning to put small amounts of growth on, they will be left now to continue growing in until I can plant them up or sell them on.

I found a frog! This is fabulous news because I haven’t seen any since we had the snake a couple of years ago, funnily enough I was only talking to Mum about it yesterday and then today ta da 😊

Indoors for a quick lunch and a cuppa before going back outside where I decided to tidy up the plant pot section 😬 oh my days I have a ridiculous number of pots 😂 I found a clutch of eggs too but decided to throw them rather than test them but they didn’t pop or smell so we’re probably recently laid there. Normally I would test them and then we would use them ourselves or give them to the dogs and cats but I was feeling sure they would be no good, wrong 🤪 never mind. The hens are confined to their outdoor run at the minute because they scratch everything up and I want some of the plant growth to get stronger before they come back out. If they see newly mulched beds they think it is for their pleasure!

Tuesday: Oscar day, he was on fine form today lol.

Wednesday: I couldn’t really get stuck into much because I had a hospital appointment in the afternoon in Oxford 🙄 While I am grateful, getting to the other side of Oxford for 4pm is a mission. You need to avoid the school traffic and then avoid the work traffic on the way out. The first we managed by leaving here early, the second, nope, two hours to get back home 🤪 The appointment was a Lupus one and we had a good discussion about various symptoms, I had lots of blood tests for any vitamin deficiencies as well as monitoring vital organ health. Remember that blood test I had that means I am HLA-B27 positive? Well it turns out that it is a useful blood test as it elevates me to another level of medications should I ever need them, Biologics 🤷‍♀️ Useful to know, another thing I found out is that when I had blood tests for my eyes they tested my heart enzymes as well, along with a chest X-ray I think these are pre checks for the Biologics in case I need to have them at some point.

I did play with some flowers in the morning though so not a totally wasted day, I also cut some flowers for a test run. Hellebore can be tricky and I want to use some at the weekend so I tried different methods of conditioning for them to see which holds up best.

In the evening I had a zoom meeting to attend although by 8pm I was quite tired and by the time it finished at 9.30pm I was definitely knackered 😂

Thursday: Sunny but colder today and I mostly spent all morning trying to do an information reel that in the end was not how I wanted it to be 🤪 If at first you don’t succeed try, try, try again but it does take up a lot of time which is fine in the winter months, I won’t be doing it during the spring and summer 😬

I then tried to set up a new email with my Google domain, sign in, wrong password, really I only changed it two weeks ago 🤷‍♀️ hit the forgot password button, chose the text message option for a code, no signal, none, nada, so try again with an email option……we will send it in 5 days, 5 days wtaf! This is the age of instant information what in the heck could take five days? I could probably get snail mail quicker than that. So here I am stuck between a rock and a hard place at the minute unable to update my business page 🙄

Friday: I had some flowers to cut this morning then some flowery stuff to do, it’s nice to have that amazing smell again, everyone always comments about how lovely the flower room smells.

My tooth or more precisely the socket where to tooth was is still giving me a bit of gip but nothing like it was, I think everything around it is moving and settling now now it’s more of an irritating nag than pain.

The farrier came late afternoon and Sam had already called in and got the horses into the stable with some hay so I only had to get them out and tie them up. Once their pedicure was complete I took them back out to the field where they had more hay. I was hoping John was going to be around to help me (and he was) because the gateway fences are really bad and almost going over, I can just see the scenario if they went over while I was trying to get two great galahs through 😂 We had a delivery of new gates and fence posts the other day ready to re new everything and hopefully we can get that done soon. The price of timber has gone up massively since we last bought any and it was a bit of a shock at how much one fence post is these days let alone 50 of them! Needless to say we will be reusing every bit of rail that is remotely good enough 🤪

We went food shopping straight after the horses were turned back out and I am finding it hard to believe the cost of food these days too 🙄 John and I talked about how expensive it must be with a growing family, we don’t even need to buy much but it still adds up. John insists on giving the cats and dogs treats on top of what they already eat, personally I wouldn’t as I am not keen on cereal based food for animals that wouldn’t normally eat it, but no matter how much I say about it he still buys them, you will kill them with kindness I tell him 🤷‍♀️

Food has been high on my thought chart this week despite the cost of it, I have been watching or reading different things about what is in a lot of it and how to make better swaps. It amazes me that people understand so little about what they are eating and what is healthy and what is not. The industry has managed to convince shoppers that low sugar or low fat are better products, they are not, they are just lower in sugar or fat, something else has been included to counter that and in low fat it is usually sugar and in low sugar it’s usually fat! You are not getting away from either ingredient lol, and don’t even get me started on how harmful sweetness are 😳 Eat full fat just don’t eat much of it, eat sugar instead of sweetener just don’t eat much of it, better still cut sugar out altogether. I confess I am no Angel 😇 I do not cut out sugar, I should but I don’t, I might try for a while but it never lasts. Watching or reading these things makes me realise that we do well with our food really, yes we eat sugar and fats but I cook from scratch (and scratch is not a jar of sauce and some mince btw) and I know exactly what is in most of our meals right down to how much salt because I have put it in myself.

My next lot of cooking or baking is going to be breakfast bars and maybe breakfast muffins. I normally have a banana for breakfast, sometimes with oats and Greek yoghurt but often I would like something I can grab and get on or have it with a cuppa mid morning. Oats, yoghurt, banana can all be turned into bars or muffins with a couple of extra ingredients so it is basically the same in a different form.

Saturday & Sunday: Bust couple of days as the weather is holding and for Winter it was fairly pleasant so we worked outside. John has been taking down collapsing fencing and gateways and replacing with new posts, reusing old rail and hung a new gate. He also helped me to put in some stakes on the perennial beds after I had top dressed them and mulched. I then put in place some netting to help the stems grow up through and keep them upright. Last year I lost too many stems to the wind or that just fell over, this will help them grow straight, stay in situ and so be more useful as cut flowers. I also spent a good deal of time at the bottom end of the garden cutting back shrubs and pruning the apple tree. The blackcurrant bushes there have died (swamped by nettles) and I cut the gooseberry bushes right down, there is still a lot of work to be done there but I made a good start.

I had some flowers to do for a customer who was having a Ruby wedding anniversary party and I was able to use some beautiful dark red Hellebore. They are notoriously divarish and can just flop without warning so I hope they behaved themselves, I did do a test run a few days before and all seemed well and then I cut them the day before and they were still ok the next day when I delivered them.With Hellebore they respond well to balancing in hot water for a minute or two, you can see all the air bubbles coming out and that’s what you want, to displace the air so the stem can take up water.

The fragrance from these jam jar flowers was amazing.
Posted in Friesland Farm

The weather is up and down and my tooth is out!

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 15th January 2024: We had a beautiful warm glow sky this morning, it didn’t last long and when I stepped outside it was trying to snow. There was a good frost which is much needed but I prefer the days that warm as they go and I don’t think we are going to get many of those this week. I will definitely be using some of my ready made soups and stews, it is going to be the week for them I think.

In previous years I have had the January blues but not this year, this year I am just looking forward to all the that the year will bring, even though I reach a big birthday 🤪 it is just a number and besides it is a good excuse to get some things ticked off my bucket list.

A quick dive into the freezer this morning to get some ready prepared meals out for lunch and dinner. Veg soup for lunch and then bubble and squeak (Christmas dinner version 🤪) for John a Moroccan lamb for me and an apple and strawberry crumble for pudding, living the dream 😊

Some household chores for the morning then in the afternoon I cut back the chrysanthemums in the smaller tunnel. These are in old recycle bins and when the weather warms up they go out, when they begin to flower and the weather turns again in Autumn they come back inside so that the rain does not spoil the flowers.

I really need to divide them in spring and find a better or less heavy way of heaving them in and out of the tunnel because they do get heavy plus there is not much room in the tunnel once they are in. I will ponder on that over the next few days, for now they are cut back and new growth is coming from the bottom so they are doing ok.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 All my minutes are spent with Oscar but while he was asleep I got swayed by looking at seeds and ordered some more 🤪 normally I wouldn’t as I have what I need but then I thought, we’ll they would look nice with such and such, and then I was tempted 😂 oops 😬 sorry not sorry. I then signed up for another online course 🥰 I like the online ones because I can fit them in around me and my life and they usually have lifetime access so you can go back to them over and over again, plus this one was half price in the January sale, win, win.

When I get a minute or too I often read random articles and again while Oscar was sleeping I saw one that intrigued me. Dessert stomach, scientists have studied this and it appears to be part of that primal instinct that we have tucked deep in the recesses of our modern brains. You have had a hefty Sunday dinner and are ‘full’ but you make room for pudding, apparently this is not greed (you will be glad to know I am sure) but a primal need to include as many types of food in your diet as you can. The fact that modern society is addicted to sugar complicates things but put simply your body is after the fruit. You never need an excuse to have pudding again, you are pre programmed 😂

Wednesday: I had a dentist appointment mid morning so I knew I would not be getting stuck into any jobs that would take a great length of time. I had a filled tooth that had fractured and partly broken away leaving half a tooth and some filling and was going in to have it refilled but on further exploration the tooth was going to need to come out. I did have the choice of trying to fill it and see if it would hold but the best case scenario was a couple of years and the nerve was likely to be affected earlier than that so as I was already numbed up I decided to have it out there and then. It was tricky to remove as it rotated and had a slight hook on the end of the root but with quite a bit of effort it came out in the end 🙄

So that meant instead of getting on with anything I needed to go home and have a bit of a sit down for a couple of hours and some painkillers. Lunch was a no no and so a luke warm cup of tea was the best I was going to get for a while 😬

Thursday: I lost the day resting and taking care not to aggravate my empty tooth socket 🙄 I need to be extra careful obviously due to the immune suppressants and I can afford myself the time to do this. I had the online course to watch so that’s what I did and it is very good with plenty of new things to learn.

Friday: My goodness it is cold this morning 🥶 hopefully the temperatures will start to come up at the weekend but in the meantime it is cold and icy out. I didn’t have such a great night, I woke with some pain but once I took some painkillers and they kicked in I was able to get some sleep again. It is Maccas birthday to day and Charlie is taking him to London overnight so we will be collecting Oscar from Nursery and he will be staying overnight with us.

Saturday: A tad warmer today but we have a weather warning, as the temps come up we swing from cold frozen weather into very wet and very windy weather 🤪 I think I need to have a look back over the years at the weather in January to see if it has changed or it’s still fundamentally the same. It seems increasingly volatile and harsh but maybe it always seems like that when there is not much else to focus on. Having said that the volcanic eruptions in Iceland are signs of some kind of Earthly change 🙄

Oscar stayed overnight and he was a little star, we collected him from Nursery late afternoon, he had his dinner and a bath, played a while then went to bed as good as good. Slept 12 hours and was happy when he woke, had breakfast then we took him out to visit Mum and Ken. Back home for lunch and an afternoon sleep 🥰

The sweet pea seeds have sprouted roots, well most of them, the duff ones went in the compost bin. Tomorrow I will go and get some seed compost, garden compost is too rich for seeds and it needs to be sterile. I really ought to get into the habit of doing a leaf litter bin which would be ideal for seeds but I never get round to it. I do have more sweet pea seeds on order, not sure what possessed me 🙄 but I ordered a few different colours. I am not usually very good with them as I forget to pinch them out at the right time but I will try very hard this year and hopefully end up with lots of beautiful blooms.

Sunday: A pleasant enough start to the day, the temperature has improved a lot and it doesn’t feel cold which is great. We do have a weather warning though as I mentioned yesterday but was able to get I to the greenhouse and tidy that up a little. It was lovely in there to be honest and I tidied up, swept, cleared dead leaves and watered the plants that are in there. Now the freezing weather has passed (no doubt it will be back) I was able to give the plants a bit of water and uncover them so they have good light. By the time the temperatures dip again they will have used up the water, they only need minimal at this time of year but it will help to put on a bit more growth. We also went to get some seed compost so that I can get the sweet pea seeds (that I have pre sprouted) growing.

Hopefully my tooth, or rather the hole where it was, is healing nicely. Being on immune suppressants can mean things could go wrong as the body does not produce a quick response to healing but so far so good 🤞

It is the turn for some beef in a batch cook today. I had a large beef rib in the freezer that needed using and so most of it will be roasted for dinner but the smaller bone end has been used for a batch of beef stew. The butcher cuts through the bone so that was already done and then I separated the beef from the fat layers and ended up with some nice pieces of beef that I then cubed. I cooked that off with some leeks and celery and then into the slow cooker with seasoning, once it is cooked I will portion it up into the foil containers and freeze for another day. I have roasted the bones along with the bulk of the meat and they will be used to make beef stock which again will be frozen for another day. I have some mince to use up and tomorrow I will be making shepherds pies and chilli. All this preparation will be fabulous once the weather is good enough to be outside for a large part of the day, it means I don’t have to think too much about what’s for dinner I will just grab something from the freezer. The days when I don’t we will eat fish or have non meat or fish days, beans on toast or eggs are our go to quick meals lol.

It is scarily windy out there tonight 🙄

Posted in Friesland Farm

Sorting appointments, seeds and poly tunnel.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 8th January 2024: It is a tad colder now and at least the rain has stopped. This morning a flock of long tailed tits arrived which nearly always suggests a period of cold weather looming.

I spent the first couple of hours trying to sort out appointments etc, trying being the operative word as nobody seems to answer the phone these days, you are always on a call back or in a never ending queue 🙄 The queue would not be so bad if you knew where in the queue you were but just to be on hold with crappy music for 15 mins is not great, no wonder stress levels have risen over the years. The next call was again on hold but at least I spoke to a human in the first place 🤪 I discovered I could book one of the appointments online, great until I realised I had booked it for two weeks away instead of this week! The forth I resorted to an enquiry form online and who knows if they will ever get back to me. Life is just not the same anymore, no one answers the phone and no one replies to your enquires lol. I managed to get three out of four sorted eventually so not a bad effort, the other I might just go in person when I have a minute.

I did up the list of workshop dates for the coming year and circulated those yesterday afternoon and despite the fact it is mid winter I still have a few flowers blooming and so a jam jar went to the local home this morning and I have sold a couple of bunches of dried flowers so it is still ticking over on that front.

Feeding the wild birds was on my todo list and prompted further by the arrival of the long tailed tits. I don’t generally feed the birds anymore, instead I leave everything that was growing, and has now died back, as a more natural eco system. I believe that there is plenty to be found and lots of hiding or overwintering places for insects that way and the birds can access those too. The exception comes when I know we are about to have a cold snap that will freeze everything and therefore either limit access to seeds/berries etc or kill off insects. Yes it does look untidy but we have to live in harmony with nature and not control it for our own vanity purposes, this helps to create a more natural environment for birds and insects and hopefully benefits me because they are sticking around and balancing themselves out 😊

I am determined to work my way through the freezers this winter and so today I have got out a leg of pork that needs using up, we will probably have that roasted tomorrow and then I will find a recipe for any left overs. I also got some chicken pieces that we had prepared for a bbq last year and didn’t use. I love a one pot recipe and so they are going on top of chopped celery, mushrooms and onions, brown rice is added to the dry mix along with seasoning and herbs and then water added to all of it, the chicken sat on top, covered and baked in the oven, easy peasy. I also got out a cake that I made and froze and some bubble and squeak (Christmas leftovers) for John along with one of the plum crumbles. I also made a batch of leek and potato soup (remember all those leeks John bought 🤪)

I made a batch of yoghurt, I don’t make it from scratch I use a yoghurt maker for that and I made a batch of doctored oats. I use plain quick cook oats, add anything dried that is suitable such as sunflower seeds and I have our own hazelnuts to start using so some of those went in as well. I also add cinnamon just because I like it and it’s good for you, mix it all up in a handy jar ready to use each morning. I use boiled water that has cooled a little to mix it and then add yoghurt and fresh fruit, sometimes with a drizzle of maple syrup or the blackcurrant syrup. You could mix in some nut butter instead (or as well as the yoghurt) Whatever you fancy really and it is so much nicer than plain oats with milk, healthier than sugary ready made cereals and good wholesome ingredients.

I love the apps that generate a recipe for you when you tell it what ingredients you have. I am using bing but there are probably plenty of others to chose from.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 I don’t get an awful lot done on these days, well nothing in fact 😂 but that’s ok because before you know it they are old enough to go to school and these days are gone forever so I make the most of them. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day I sing ‘the wheels on the bus’ or ‘twinkle twinkle’ but it is a lot 🤪

Wednesday: I decided today was a good day to sort out my seed box ready for the growing season ahead. Most of the seeds I want for this year were ordered back in Autumn, again in order to get the varieties I want I have to be on the ball and get the order in early. A lot are half packets from last year but I will be using those up and I have saved seed from a fair few plants too. Everything needed looking at and putting in the correct sowing month which is easier said than done because the time can vary over a few months for most of them but the ideal month to start them off and go from there. Some I sorted out for Mum and there was only one where the packet was empty and I re ordered. All in all it was a good hour or so spent doing that job.

It is very tempting to keep ordering more and more seeds or plants 😂 but I am trying to behave myself, I did spend the last couple of years investing in what perennials I wanted and so this spring I will be dividing a lot of them to increase my plant stock.

We have talked about the need for better staking so that is a priority this year and once that Easterly wind drops we will go off to the wood yard to find some garden stakes. Not point wandering around in the bitter cold is there 🤷‍♀️

John had been out to work for a couple of hours and then came back and we went off to see if I could find a dentist 🙄 For those readers not in the UK our NHS dentistry system has all but disappeared, well in this area anyway, it is even difficult to get appointments for children which is rather disgusting I think. You cannot get an NHS appointment for love and so you have to pay the money which is exactly what I will be doing. Everything went wrong when covid hit and I have not been to a dentist since 2020, I was doing ok and then after a toffee (because I can’t resist a toffee) half of a tooth came away 😝 It isn’t a problem yet as there is no pain but I do not want to get the that stage and so need it looked at. Once I had been in to register and book an appointment we went round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa.

The rest of the day was spent doing odd jobs, me around the house and John outside.

I have a zoom meeting tonight for social media, they are great and I learn a lot but I do wonder if I am getting sucked into the trap 🤪

January can be a pretty dull month, the sky is dull and there is not much going on but it is a great month to have a good think (in the warm) and decided what the year ahead is going to be all about. We have weeks to go but I can’t wait until the growing season gets going again and of course it will be warmer too hopefully.

Thursday: Getting bits and pieces done this morning, putting things back in their right places (I think they wander by themselves 🙄) Measuring and ordering muslin to make some curtains for the workshop, in summer it gets very hot as the sun shines directly in and last year I used some old bed sheets 😂 A quick reel for Instagram, which is never quick due to glitches 🤪 put out the rubbish, put on the washing all that sort of thing, nothing exciting but all necessary. I have a dentist appointment today but accidentally double booked it with looking after Oscar for an hour so I need to tweak timings, as long as the appointment is on time it should be fine but we all know how the best laid plans go! I also ordered some more business cards as I have used up the last batch 😊 to be honest I ordered them wondering if I would ever use them but each one went out on some flowers and I need more for the coming year.

Off to the dentist at lunchtime and I had the nicest dentist I have ever had 😊 Also very knowledgable about my medications and the impact they have on my teeth as well as how Lupus affects my mouth and teeth, impressed (even if it is going to cost me a chunk 🤪)

Straight after that I went to Charlie’s to look after Oscar while she went for an appointment, he went for a nap as I got there and didn’t wake up until Charlie came back. I had a lovely time as Charlie had left me some home made soup and I watched an hour of tv 🥰

I had taken this evenings dinner out of the freezer before I went out earlier as I knew I wouldn’t be here to make anything and that’s what the cook ups are all about. We had lamb stew and I made some dumplings to go in there too, nothing better on a cold Winters evening than a good stew and dumplings. That was followed by a fruit pie, slightly tart, I never like to overshadow the flavour of the fruit with too much sugar and surprisingly John didn’t even add extra sugar today either. I have a bit of a thing for evaporated milk 😂 and like to keep a small tin of it to have with a pudding occasionally.

Friday: I spent a good couple of hours making sure all my media was up to date and all linking with each other. Gone are the old days when you put a card in the local newsagent window 😂 or even just a straightforward website for that matter. Today social media pages need to link to websites, blogs, Google business profiles and vice versa, it is made all the more difficult because in my wisdom I set up separate ones for the flower side. In hindsight I should have just amalgamated it with the farm one which was already running 🤪🤪 I have updated a couple of the pages on this site to hopefully link with those social media sites so if you haven’t already had a look then please pop over and introduce yourself, you would be most welcome to follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frieslandfarmflowers?igsh=bDlqNmFmZ2w3Z21u&utm_source=qr

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dawnepearse

I still have some tweaks to make and one day I will streamline it all 🙄 but all in all you should find me one way or another!

I do have a podcast as well 😂 it started off really well and then when I changed direction it kind of fizzled out and I am floundering as to how to re invent it really but it was well received and I even have people who are now friends on Facebook from it 😊

Saturday: John spent the morning riddling compost, another 10 bags 😊 that will be very useful for topping up the beds come spring. Too rich for sowing seeds but good for everything else. Meanwhile I was in the workshop making some Muslim curtains for the windows, the sun shines strongly into the room in summer so if I can diffuse a little that will be helpful. I also collected up some of the weeping birch that naturally sheds when the winds are strong, I use that for making hearts. The hearts are then used as a base for grave flowers and in the past these are usually bought on appropriate calendar dates or for anniversaries.

It is cold enough today but we have an artic blast coming over the next few days, down to -8 at times 🥶 and that could potentially bring snow with it 🙄 All I think is just keep marching on and spring will be round the corner in no time, let’s just hope we get an early one lol.

Sunday: We went out for breakfast first thing, there is a place not too far that starts breakfast at 7.30am, ideal for us early risers who want to get on with the rest of the day. We called in to see my brother and his wife on the way back and had a quick cuppa with them before returning home to get on with some work. Right through until early afternoon John spent his time riddling the compost while I cut back the chrysanthemums in the big tunnel. I then got the staking organise for them for the next lot of growth, I covered the doorway at the end with bubble wrap and put a protect wrap around the stocks that are also growing in there. John came in with wheelbarrows full of compost to top up the beds at times and I feel that we accomplished quite a bit today. The sun came out and the temperatures in the tunnel were lovely but I needed to make sure that if we get that artic blast, plants are not going to suffer too much. I am also determined to get the staking sorting early in the season as I lose too many blooms that fall over otherwise. Mid afternoon my brother came over to get some wood chip to mulch his beds also to protect them from the cold weather.

I put some sweet pea seeds on damp kitchen towel to get them sprouted, I had a successful sowing in Autumn which is still growing I am glad to say. It is getting to the time of the gardening year when I am chomping at the bit but know I need to hold off for a long while yet but every little I can do is a step nearer.

Have a great week.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Flowers, plants & seeds.

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 13th February 2023: Another reasonable day coming up, not much sign of any sun but it is dry and not freezing which is a bonus. I have a busy morning ahead of me doing flowers, the heart tributes are very popular 🥰 which is just as well because I love doing them. I am not doing Valentines flowers as most of my customers are women and although in the words of Miley Cyrus ‘I can buy myself flowers’ it is mostly men who buy them on this particular day. That is probably stereotyping a little but I imagine the numbers if collected would back that up. Men tend to go for the red roses which as we know are not seasonal at this time of year and so not grown in the UK in Winter, they are all imported. I don’t want to knock it but we really need to change attitudes, in Victorian times it was traditional to give small heart shaped boxes of violets, it would be nice to get back to that. I have a bit of an insight into how some of the menfolk in my family work though and they are definitely mow the grass within an inch of its life and are red rose people 😂 no matter how much I try educating them 🤪 So we have to reach out to those who are environmentally aware and get them to voice their preference ‘how much carbon was generated with those roses being imported’ ‘ I would prefer flowers that are grown here in the UK’ and then of course you have to hope they remember what you told them 😝 Joking aside there has been lots of chatter on social media pages about ‘them and us’ florists that use imported flowers, and growers and florists that don’t. It is not about bashing people for what they do it is about educating them to do it differently and besides I am pretty sure fifty years ago when flowers started to be imported in large numbers those growing the majority of flowers for sale in the UK felt exactly the same, it is just reverting back. A couple of florists with shops are backing the UK flower industry and selling nothing but British grown flowers so it is possible, there are high profile designer florists that are doing the same, we just need more of them to get onboard, after all it is the only planet we have and we need to look after it much better than we have done.

Busy morning so far, first get the ordered flowers done then out to feed the horses hay as the grass has pretty much been eaten off and with no sign of any rain or sun it’s not growing much then sort out printing QR codes for the flowers in the shed to make it easier for payment and then sit down and order some floristry supplies. Trying to remember everything I need to order is key I really should write it down as I go but no 🤪 I already have a slow stream of orders coming in for Mothers Day flowers and I need to make sure I have enough string and raffia, I also need to work out exactly how many orders I can realistically process before I get carried away 😂 By this time it is lunchtime and I am starving but I need to go through messages and emails first to make sure I don’t miss anything.

Seasonal, British grown cut flowers and pussy willow, Flowers at Friesland Farm.

Tuesday: A lovely day, I spent some time in the greenhouse in the morning dividing up plants then a little bit of cutting back dead stuff in the flowers beds. I have to confess that I have also been reading quite a lot, normally it would be reading up on things or learning something new but this time it was pure fiction. I tend to binge read 😂 I won’t read for weeks or even months and then once I start I don’t stop very readily especially if it is a series of books. In the last few days I have just read four, yes four books in a series that is new to me. I am one of those people who resent any interruption while I am reading so intensely too, stopping to do household or farm chores is a necessary irritation though. The only interruptions that are not resented are visits from the children and grandchildren 🥰 And yesterday afternoon Shelley, Josh and Flo came over and we had a lovely walk down the lane and back, it almost felt like it was fully spring (but I won’t be fooled) The kids then helped me fill a large sack of hay and take it out to the horses filling up the water buckets while we were there. Flo is definitely an outdoor girl happily helping with the task while chatting away, Josh preferred climbing things and dragging large branches around 😂

Wednesday: A frosty start but the sun soon came out and it was very pleasant for a good few hours. I did a bit of gardening, one new bed around the side got particular attention, bulbs planted as well as a couple of evergreen shrubs plus cutting back dead stuff and mulching with woodchip. It is only a small bed near the back of the building but it can be seen from the gateway so I thought evergreen would look nice all year round. I planted a skimmia and a lemon and lime nandina 😁 A delivery of ballast arrived at some point during the day and then late afternoon I went for some Bowen therapy which is always something to look forward too.

Thursday: A bit of a dank start to the day today the forecast is drizzle I think. There are plenty of jobs on my to do list but I think I should divide the list into ‘want to do’ and ‘don’t really want to do’ 😂 or ‘want to do but can’t’ and ‘don’t want to do but can’ 😝 I really want to be sowing seeds but I am holding off. The average last frost date range is April 11th – 20th in my location, that means I need to work back six weeks to find my optimum seed sowing date, if I go for a date in the middle of that range it takes me back to March 4th so I am a couple of weeks away from that. The reason for this timeline is that seeds that are sown are generally plants that are big enough to go out in six weeks time, the weather needs to be good so that the new plants do not get damaged or frosted which would undo all the hard work you did in the first place. Then there are the amount of daylight hours needed, the more there are the better the plants will grow, short and strong as opposed to weak and leggy. There are plenty of seeds that can also be sown direct in March and of course you can grow seeds with some sort of heat, even indoors with the domestic heating on but they do all need the light (once sprouted) for strength after all that’s how they produce the energy to grow. I know all of this and yet I am still tempted to get something sown 🤪 but I also know that later sown seeds will readily catch up 😁

I spent the evening getting flowers ready for tomorrow morning as I am off out for the day.

Friday: A busy couple of hours first thing getting everything done and the flowers out for sale, I then spent a lovely day with all six grandchildren and parents at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. This is just five minutes down the road from me and so it is quick and easy to decide if the weather is going to be ok enough for the day. It was a little windy but apart from that it was a great day out, it is a lot of walking and I was impressed with how even the twins managed five hours of wandering round. For anyone not familiar with the park and wondering if it is worth the trip it definitely is, I think it is one of the best value for money parks around. You can literally spend all day there and just about cover everything and there is a lot of different things to do, reptiles, bats, penguins, lions, giraffes, zebras, farmyard animals, train ride, play park and the coffee is decent 😁 I was whacked when I got home and fell asleep mid evening 😂

I am a lucky Nana 🥰

Saturday: Another decent day apart from a strong breeze, I spent most of the morning in the greenhouse which was pleasant and out of the wind. I have sown some seeds 🤪 sweet peas & snap dragons which are indoors on the window sill, I pricked out some sweet Williams that have been growing over winter and sorted out some seeds that I saved from plants last year. I did do a little bit outside that was mostly cutting back dead stuff and pulling up annual plants that have gone over, a little bit here and there will get me ahead.

Sunday: Again the weather is fooling us with its charm, a decent day that was really nice once the sun came out. We did the morning jobs and then went out for breakfast and got on again once we returned. I spent some time in the greenhouse sorting out seeds that I had collected from plants at the end of last year and then a good amount of time in the garden tidying up the cold frame area. This is where I keep plants over winter that I dug up or divided in Autumn, they end up covered in a blanket of leaves and now is a good time to get that sorted as it will start to harbour pests. I did find a bright green caterpillar that had been devouring some small plants 😏 and plenty of slugs and snails, they have all been gathered up with the leaves and deposited elsewhere away from the plants. Some of the plants I labelled up and put out for sale along with the seeds I had packeted up. Shelley, Martin and the children called in for a cuppa late afternoon, they helped Grampy with the feeding and egg collecting and when they left we went to Charlie and Maccas for a roast dinner 🥰

Another week over and a new one about to begin, have a lovely week everyone.

Posted in Friesland Farm

Plenty of hearts and flowers this week 🥰

Posted on by frieslandfarm

Monday 6th February 2023: The temps dipped to below freezing again last night but the sun is out so that makes you chirpy. I jumped in the shower after breakfast and when I came back to the kitchen John told me the horse had got into the front paddock. They are only allowed in there when it is electrified so that they don’t eat my fruit trees that have been growing for five years. I dried my hair in quick fashion and went out to get hay and get the horse back where it belonged, I needed to find a spare rail as it had been broken during the escape to pastures new, not greener as it was all frozen just like the rest of the paddocks. When I got back inside after getting that done I felt my hair, some of it was frozen where it hadn’t quite dried 😂 I was only out there for a maximum of 15 minutes.

Tuesday: Another frosty frozen morning but I was up early to get some tribute flowers done for a customer first thing then once I had done that and then the eggs plus feed the cats and dogs I sat down with tea and toast 😁

I got some hoovering and polish done and then the girls arrived along with Oscar and we went out for a walk. The sun was shining though it was still on the cold side but nice enough. We saw a small herd of around 10 deer in one of the fields, they all stood watching us from afar but you could still make out the stag with his antlers standing proud above all their heads. I think they were red deer, they looked dark in colour rather than pale like fallow deer but we were quite far away so couldn’t be certain. They were definitely big unlike the muntjac that we always see plenty of when we are driving around the lanes.

Natural, heart shaped, 100% compostable, sustainable, tribute flowers.
Natural and 100% compostable tribute flowers for a customer today.

I have another natural heart to make but this time it is for valentines to hang on the front door ❤️

Wednesday: It is like a Winter wonderland out there this morning, very cold but very beautiful. The fog is heavy and white and everything is frozen in time, beautiful frozen spider webs hanging everywhere 😍 The horses were vocal when I took their hay out to them, it was only 7.30 but I am sure they were saying ‘about time too’.

Not sure what I am going to do today, I am hoping the sun will come out and burn off the fog but it’s pretty heavy so I don’t know if that will happen. It is very cold out there so I am not planning on any outside jobs at the minute 🙄

Almost midday and the fog is worse I think 😂 and it is still freezing out there so I have spent the morning working on business posts and ideas for the flowers. I have a few orders coming in which is fabulous but it’s always a good idea to generate future work 😁 My head is buzzing with ideas and I often think about going on a floristry course but I also think that I love having the unrestrained free flowing ability to create things how I want to and not how it’s taught, the jury is still out on that one 🤪

The sun broke through mid afternoon ☀️ better late than never.

I have had some ranunculus corms soaking on the windowsill, I planted some in autumn outside in the tunnels but I kept some back just in case. The mice love to eat the corms and the weather reeks havoc with the foliage so I hedged my bets and saved some for spring planting. I planted them up yesterday into a shallow tray of soil and covered them, they are in the kitchen and hopefully I can pre sprout them before planting out in a few weeks time. That’s the plan anyway, ranunculus are the most beautiful flowers and it would be nice to get a really good crop this year so I am trying everything. I dug up a couple of stinging nettles that had taken hold on one of the raised beds. I couldn’t dig it out when everything was growing madly but I also had a job to cut the flowers near the stingers 🤪 so I have waited until all the foliage has died back and then dug them out. It’s surprising how quickly they become a strong plant very often growing away nicely through winter when everything else has died back. Nettles are of course a good indicator of fertile soil so that’s a bonus but even so I don’t want them there.

Thursday: Not frozen this morning yay 😀 I had looked at the weather and the sun will be out and so I got three loads of washing done so that I could get it on the line a d dry as much as possible outside. I also made two heart bases for flowers that have been ordered for this weekend, working with natural materials mean you never get exactly the same thing twice, that’s what makes them natural and bespoke.

These are the bases that the flowers are then attached to, same material, but two slightly different shapes emerge.

Friday: Up early to get the Friday flowers all arranged, wrapped and then out for sale. Once I finished that then tidied away and got all the other jobs done I just had time for a cuppa before Oscar arrived. I looked after him today while Charlie and Macca had some r&r which was Maccas birthday present.

Saturday: Not frosty this morning 😁 and some average temperatures for the time of year forecast today. Once again after getting all the morning jobs done and putting flowers out for sale I got on with an order for a year that is being collected later. I also did one yesterday that will be going on a door for valentines ❤️

I spent a very happy few hours in the greenhouse 😁 first of all cleaning down the shelving, sweeping away cobwebs and dust, sorting any rubbish and putting things away neatly. Then onto potting up some plants that had arrived at the end of last year and I hadn’t got round to doing. Luckily they are fine and there are actually signs of growth on them all, they are all perennials that will be part of the flowers for cutting. Flower farming is a combination of annual flowers which tend to be quick growing, bright and showy but short lived, perennials which are slower growing but flower over a longer period and of course come back each year. Then there is foliage which is generally perennial (evergreen & deciduous) but takes an age to get to any size which is where herbs come in, quicker growing, perennial and they smell amazing 🥰 Many gardeners grow a combination of all these the trick when you are ‘farming’ them is to make sure you have successional sowings and blooms, easier said than done 🤪

Sunday: Another decent day weather wise though we didn’t get much done outside. A quick food shop first thing followed by coffee and breakfast out, back home to unpack the shopping and get a few things done (I can’t even remember what) John tided up some bits in the front driveway and then once finished we went to the garden centre as there were some seeds I wanted to get (and I also got some I didn’t even know I needed 😂) I could not believe the price of seeds, mostly I save seed from what I grew before but there were a couple of annuals that I couldn’t get seed from because I left it too late. I do have a good selection of collected seed though and I think I might package some to put out for sale. Once back home we sat down for a cuppa just as Shelley, Martin and the children arrived followed not long after by Charlie, Macca and Oscar. Charlie had come to collect a heart that I had made for her for Valentine’s Day, this one will hang on her front door. Shelley and Martin had been over to Diddly Squat Farm, we have been binge watching the second series. Sadly I am not shocked at the way the planners and some of the locals have treated the whole situation. They need to look beyond the fact that he is a celebrity and wether you like him or not he is doing a fantastic job sticking up for British farming. Planning have thwarted him at every turn and the ridiculous situations and procedures that farmers have to follow regarding TB, bird flu, moving dirt from one area of the farm to another borders on hysterical except we know that it’s not funny because farmers are going under. We need to take a good long look at farming in the UK, remember back during the war when the country really needed them and their skills to keep everyone alive well it’s not beyond the realms of reality that the same could happen again 🙄

A heart for Valentines, for the front door this time 🥰