Monday 30th January 2023: I decided today was the day to start getting on outside well in the tunnels actually. The weather is fair for the time of year and it’s not raining so it seemed like a good idea. I did all the bits that needed doing inside before venturing out to cut back all the chrysanthemums in the small tunnel, they will go back outside once the weather is a little better and I will feed and water them then. In the big tunnel the anemone and ranunculus are coming through slowly, it’s still a bit too cold for them to be doing much but they are making an effort and the anemone have even started to flower although the stems are short. I did some weeding in there as well but in all honesty there was not much to get my teeth into. Onto the greenhouse and that’s when the deflation set in as a mouse has eaten pretty much everything that I had growing 😏 try as I might I cannot keep the mice out of there and I even put things up on racks to try and stop them but with no success. Some tulip bulbs and elephant garlic has been eaten along with seeds and seedlings. I reason with myself that there is plenty that has survived the winter but still it is a pain in the proverbial and a set back. I have decided that I will not do autumn sowings again though as it just isn’t worth the hassle better to concentrate on spring sowings and hope for better success. It is a constant battle against nature and better to pick the battles you might actually win I suppose. It is too early to tell what exactly has survived in the garden yet but I suspect most things are ok, those that didn’t make it will perhaps need some rethinking, do I try again or not bother and find an alternative that will, I think I know the answer to that one 😁
A quick look round the garden areas and I can see plenty of spring bulbs pushing their way upwards, there is a lot of cutting back to do but I am reluctant to start that just yet. Insects are still hibernating and all that dead stuff is providing cover not just for them but for the roots of plants as well, the temptation is strong though 🤪
Yep it was too strong 😂 so I went out and did a good few hours of cutting back dead stuff, I chop a lot of it up and leave it on the ground and I did find overwintering insects, some good, some not so good, for my plants anyway. I had to really force myself to stop, it’s like going to the gym after you haven’t been for months (or years) I am using muscles that have not been used all winter and they were feeling it.
I did go back out and mulch a few pots with some wood chip, I have a peach tree in a pot that has never produced a peach, a couple of small leaved lime trees and a winter flowering clematis which is just about to flower. If I mulch a few things a day they will all be ready to face whatever the weather throws our way 🙄
Tuesday: Another good session outside and I was able to get more washing dry on the line, winning 😁 I spent a good amount of time cutting back, tidying areas and mulching with woodchip. I got the slow cooker on the go first thing with some left over chicken and vegetables so I didn’t have to worry about stopping to sort the dinner later in the afternoon. The temperatures are pleasant for the time of year and I even have to take my coat off now and again when I get too hot. A few more days like these will mean I will be on course to meet spring 🥰
Wednesday 1st February: The weather is looking good for today again, dry and reasonable enough temperatures so I am planning to be outside a fair bit. I need to cut some foliage and anything else I can find as I have flowers arriving tomorrow ready for week end sales. These are grown by a family run business here in the south so although they are not mine they are still supporting the UK economy and hopefully my tulips, narcissi and hellebores will not take too long to appear.
Thursday: A sweet and sour morning lol, we had good wins on the premium binds, sweet 😁 news that the bird flu has jumped species into foxes and otters, sour 😏 the bad news keeps coming, interest rates going up again and water costs going up by 7.5% 🙄 the cost of living is getting higher and higher. The mass strikes are doing nothing but add to the problems, I have no doubt that each strike is for the right reasons but surely anyone can see that there is no way on Earth that all of these demands could ever be met across the board even if the government wanted to (I am not denying that they don’t) It boils down to the fact that the unions are wanting to bring the government down, fair enough but is the alternative going to be any better 🤷♀️ I seriously doubt it and somehow, someday the next generation will be paying for it. I guess it is like cooking dinner for a big family, you can please some of them some of the time but not all of them all of them time 🙄
Friday: I was awake early so figured I may as well get up and get on. I woke up and everything I needed to get done first thing was going round in my head so there was no way I would get back to sleep for another hour. I had flowers to organise for the Friday flower launch, four bunches composed, one hand tied for a regular customer sorted, three lots of jam jar flowers arranged. Then it was on to getting everything out to the farm gate and the sign at the end of the driveway, I got cramp in my hands when I was trying to jump it down there 🙄 Once that as done and all the tidying up done I had time for half a cup of tea before shooting off to get blood tests done. Six vials today 😂 as the hospital wanted to test and see why I am getting cramp all the time. I am pretty sure they will come back with no apparent reason and that I am just getting old 🤪 but you never know. The infection I had finally cleared up so there will be no need to drop my immune suppressants, yay. Back home for a cup of hot sweet tea to compensate for all that blood gone and then back on with the day.
It was all going so well and then not 🙄 I had decided to give some flowers away on the Facebook page, a simple question to answer and then names go into a draw, easy you would think. Then hackers started messaging everyone who had commented that they had won, I literally could not keep up with the notifications that kept rolling in from the hackers 😢 I had a mad half an hour or more of trying to delete it all and then change my password, put a message out so that nobody followed the fake links. I hate these people or more likely bots, not only do they damage a business reputation but make the business owner feel like crap. I thought I would do a good thing but it ended up shite so I won’t be doing that again sadly, I found it all rather deflating not to mention stressful.
At dusk John was putting the birds away and I was getting the flowers in when our dog started barking furiously at the roadside. We had a look and a car had stopped because there was a dog on the road, I didn’t recognise it but took it back with me into the yard to keep it safe from the traffic. It actually lives over the road but I had never taken any notice (note to self be more aware lol) We could hear our neighbour calling for it and reunited them, another strange dog episode as she said the dog never gets out, first ours then theirs, strange goings on.
Friday flowers 🥰Jam jar flowers
Saturday: A busy morning first thing with customers coming for flowers, I am so chuffed that the first week has gone so well and excited for the rest of the flower year to see what that brings (no more competitions though 😂) John did the feed run after he had to go and fix a burst pipe that is. In between customers I sorted out the ranunculus corms to soak, some I planted in Autumn and they are coming up nicely in the tunnel along with the anemones. Then I sorted the pots of hyacinths which are just breaking the surface and will be some lovely first flowers for using in various ways. The temps are set to dip low again in the first part of the week, it is still winter I suppose 😏 but hopefully after that they will steadily climb upwards and everything will start to spring into life.
Sunday: A frosty start but the sun soon melted that away and it was a lovely day. I spent the morning in the garden, tidying, weeding, cutting back plenty of dead stuff. I can see new growth coming through on plenty of plants which is fabulous. I checked over the bulbs I had planted especially for cutting and most of them are breaking the surface nicely, one bed is suspiciously devoid of any growth and the bulbs have probably been eaten. Ranunculus are particularly tasty to mice and although I do have some coming up I suspect a lot of them have been snacked on. However I did keep some back and they are currently on the windowsill soaking in water to rehydrate them, they will then go on a shallow tray of soil and be pre sprouted before being planted up. I hope to guarantee a crop that way but you never know. It always seems that the loveliest of flowers is also lovely to every other living thing around 🤪 John has been cleaning out the birds and also working on the workshop area, someone has already asked about using it to teach a bee keeping course so I am thinking it was a good decision though I have yet to work out how everything will proceed.
Monday January 23rd 2023: It’s still bloody cold outside 🥶 I can’t wait for it to warm up a bit, the areas in the shade are not even thawing out during the daytime at the minute. Mentally I am ready to get on with the work outside but physically I know my hands and feet will suffer so I am holding off.
Apparently between 5 & 6pm tonight there will be a big demand on energy due to the cold weather, if you are signed up (and you need a smart meter) you can get paid to reduce your consumption considerably during this hour. Even if you are not signed up perhaps it would be a good idea to help reduce the load anyway, going forward I think we will be seeing a lot more of this kind of request. We are quite careful with our energy consumption but there is always more we could and should be doing. One problem I find is that the damn plugs for everything are always behind the appliances meaning it is difficult if not impossible to get to some of them and switch them off at the wall.
Tuesday: Still cold 🥶 around -8 last night and I am officially sick of the freezing temps now lol. Luckily there is nice bright blue sky and sunshine today but it still feels very cold indeed.
I had a phone call mid afternoon from a vet to say that someone had picked up Mia on the road near the Cotswold wildlife park and taken her to them. This is so weird, Mia never goes anywhere as a general rule. The only time she has run off before is when I used the staple gun and we soon realised that she didn’t like that noise and so were always careful to shut her in if anything like that was ever going to be used. So for her to have not only run off but to have gone so far down the way is odd. I imagine she has gone across the fields which eventually ends up on the A361, luckily she was just sat there, a man watched for a while to see if anyone was with her and decided they weren’t so put her in his car and took her to the nearest vets. The horses were also a bit frisky in the paddock so I am wondering if there was something or someone out there 🤷♀️ but I couldn’t see anything at all. I will have to watch her all the time now for a while just to make sure she doesn’t do it again. It could have been that she heard me talking to John about giving her a bath last night 😂 she really needs one but it’s a bit cold at the minute.
Thursday: It’s definitely a little warmer than of late but not much, the sun made a splendid appearance though which was a welcome sight. I have been keeping a very close eye on the dog and I have had to call her for quite a while a least once. Goodness knows what she is up too but is obviously in the furthest part of the farm 🤷♀️ Charlie and Oscar visited today, they are looking after the place tomorrow through to Saturday while we go away over night. Sam also came over and we popped to town for a mooch and a coffee. Once back home I sorted out the Guinea pig who is on his lonesome now his friend has died and sorted the horses water as well as plenty of other general jobs before the twins arrived for their Thursday sesh. Last night I had a zoom meeting for an hour and a half and I have another one tonight on growing flowers in the polytunnel. There is plenty of info out there about growing veg in a tunnel but very little on extending the flower season in a tunnel, something something that the group I am with is trying to change 😁
Friday: We went away overnight, not very far but it was nice to do something different. We went to Chipping Cambden which is only about 40 minutes away, never been there before but it is a delightful Cotswold town full of lovely old buildings, boutique shops and places to eat. It is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in the area and I can recommend the Eight Bells for great food, great service and great atmosphere.
Chipping Cambden
Saturday: We retuned home just before lunchtime, Charlie and Macca had been looking after the place and done a great job. We had the afternoon to sort ourselves out before Josh and Florence came over at tea time for a sleep over.
Sunday: I haven’t done much today apart from a few rounds of breakfast
Monday 14th February 2022: Weeee another week to slide into 😂 A sunny, mild start to the day but the actual forecast for this week does not look the best overall, time will tell. John has gone to work today and so I am on duty, once sorted indoors it was out to get the birds all fed and watered. I was hoping to find a goose egg today as traditionally this is the day they be in laying but no such luck just yet, I did put some nice clean straw in to try and encourage them 😝 Then it was onto the hens, the outside run needs a clean but I got on with the stable hens first, top up the water, top up the feed, I added some DE, seaweed and sunflower seeds to their breakfast this morning, raked over the old sawdust to check for any buried eggs and put in a whole bag of clean sawdust in one of the pens, the other only just had some the other day. Then onto let the ducks out and collect their eggs, they need a clean out but I am waiting for John to finish the compost area because that’s where the stuff goes. Onto the orchard pens, did I say that the fox had one of the light Sussex hens, the one that raised the chicks, only one chick made it to full size and now she is all on her own because mamma was taken by foxy, how the other one made it through I don’t know but as I found mums headless body in the paddock I assume the fox was disturbed by something. I put some fresh straw in for her and fresh straw in for the turkeys and the other light Sussex hens. I barrowed two loads of woodchip into their pen as well, the rain has made the ground deteriorate a fair bit and now all but the ducks and the outside hens are clean and tidy. I may go out and do those later or I may wait until tomorrow morning not sure yet.
Back inside for a coffee and a quick sit down before getting on with other things. It is Valentines Day today, not that it makes much difference in our house 🙄 probably the subconscious reason I decided to grow my own flowers at least that way I will have some. It is amazing how delightful a bunch of flowers can be, I remember one year a flower van pulled up and the lady got out with a big bouquet, it immediately lifted my spirits, then I realised they were for our daughter and not me 😏 😂
Valentine’s Day 🥰
Still no sign of the Lisianthus seeds sprouting (told you they were difficult) but others are popping up all over the place. The Ami and snapdragons are doing well, some lupin growing nicely and the sunflowers have just sprouted then there are some veg as well, beetroot, celeriac and tomato are all doing well in fact while I think about it I must sow some more tomato seeds. Oh and the rhubarb is beginning to appear so that won’t be long before the first harvest 🥰
Decided to do some paperwork in the afternoon as the rain began mid morning, simple enough task you would think, printer only has one job and that is to print 🙄 Low on ink it says, change ink, not genuine cartridges it says, I know yours are too bloody expensive, printing it says while making all the right noises but not actually doing anything 🤦♀️ Prints out, eligible, shall I clean the print head, ooo yes please do, cleaning please wait, just exactly how long for 🤷♀️ A simple task that should have taken a minute and that’s half an hour of my life gone and my blood pressure raised! Not to mention wasted paper and that was only the first of many 😝 I actually went away and made a cup of tea while waiting for it to perform the task of cleaning, came back, want me to clean the nozzles, oh go on then, seriously I can have a shower quicker than that thing can clean itself. And the blame of me gaining a lb or two this week lies fairly on the shoulders of Epson because what else was I supposed to while waiting other than eat the whole valentine blondie that Shelley bought me 😂
After printing out a reem of invoices (yes I know there is a better way but I like tangible paper copies 😝) I need to make yet another note to self: Keep a check on what plants you are buying or you will end up doubling up 🤪🤪 I think I could probably start a garden centre at this rate! I am not even going to begin to add it up yet, just keep telling myself I will make it back in sales 😉 Yes the most I print off the more I realise I need to get a grip on the order information including what, when and prices. No idea how many hours I have sat here now waiting for print outs, tried to make them more printer friendly, failed 😣
Tuesday: Pardon me but what a shitty day 😂 the weather is horrid, wet, cold and breezy, yuk. John was home for the morning and so he did the animals and then a couple of jobs out in the garden I needed done. The slabs down the side of the polytunnel which form a pathway have been down for about 8/9 years and have ‘walked’ so he took them all up p, shored up the side and laid them all again nicely 😁 He was brave working out there because meanwhile I found plenty to get done indooors in the warm 😊 Clean and vacuum the boot room, change the bed sheets and clean the bedroom, dig into the freezer and get ingredients for dinner tonight, a nice beef stew in the slow cooker for John, salmon for me 😝 I also got a chicken out to thaw for cooking tomorrow. We still have plenty in the freezers to get through yet, all that work back in the summer months prepping and freezing starts to pay off now that there is not much growing in the veg garden. I still have cabbage and kale available but nothing else really.
Wednesday: Storm something or other (we get so many these days I stop listening to the names) bought with it some pretty hefty gusts of wind and apparently tomorrows storm (yep one after the other) is going to be even stronger 🙄 I had ordered some turf which arrived first thing so John and I spent the morning laying that and repairing the edges of the raised beds next to it. We have done away with one of the pathways and the herb bed so have another 6mx5m of lawn or we would have if I had ordered enough 🤪 I had to order some more which will arrive tomorrow, but rather glad it didn’t all arrive today as working out in that all morning has been hard work. An afternoon of sitting down is definitely on the cards 😂 We sat down mid morning for a coffee outside and as a vehicle drove past a massive clatter occurred, it was towing a trailer with a tailgate which had come undone and fell with a bang onto the road, not something that happens everyday lol.
Thursday: The rest of the turf we needed arrived 😁 we now have a bigger lawn area for the kiddies to play on and less for me to weed and tend to. We scrapped the path down the side as well, I spent hours weeding the damn thing might as well cut grass instead. I have also sown a few more seeds today, more tomatoes (gardeners delight, Alisa Craig and tigerella) I have sown some basil and some dill as well, they are all in the greenhouse in a propagator. Still haven’t managed to catch the mouse, it has now eaten all the peanut butter so I have loaded the trap with maple syrup and wheat, my plan is to fatten it so that it is heavy enough to trip the trap 😂 The cats are doing a great job mind you, while we were out there today one of the cats had two mice for lunch. There was a lovely rainbow this morning, the calm between the storms, we are due a pretty nasty one in the early hours, storm Eunice is an explosive cyclogenesis which is a weather bomb apparently, instead of a storm building as it moves, the weather front moves and explodes into a storm. I hope we all come through it without any damage, watching the way they keep going on about it on the news I am surprised everyone isn’t totally terrified and digging holes in the ground to climb into 😏 I am not looking forward to the next 24hrs that’s for sure 😥
Friday: It is 10am just sitting here with a coffee thinking that so far it has not been too bad when a massive gust made the place groan and creak 😏 John has been here all morning but he now has to go and do a small job just when the winds are getting stronger, two points here, he is on the road when it is not so great out there and I am on my own here awaiting any catastrophe by myself 😣 I have some veg soup on the go for lunch and it occurred to me yesterday that we really need some kind of back up plan for any power cut. At least if we had a small gas stove we can boil a kettle, get a warm drink and make a hot water bottle. We have a generator but as I said to John I am not so good at starting it, so it’s fine if he is here not so good if I am on my own 🙄 I figured it would be a good idea to boil the kettle, fill a flask and a hot water bottle just in case 😂 To be honest the hot water bottle is much needed for my back, I woke up with a bad back on Wednesday and it hasn’t really got much better, stiff and slightly painful though not massively, I can move but with caution ⚠️ I would have gone for a walk to try and ease it off but today is not the ideal day 🤪
The winds got pretty fierce with some strong gusts, then it all seemed to die down again and then we lost power and the winds picked up once more. Good job I made a hot water bottle 😝 I called the power company but naturally they are only putting out a recorded message saying they have no idea when they will be able to get power back on and it could be off overnight 😣 I think a few layers of clothing will be needed, although I do have battery powered lights and a solar powered radio which is fully charged so that’s the evenings entertainment sorted 😂 At least I am not panicking about the Rayburn this year, every cloud and all that.
The power came back on for an hour or so and then went off again, but then came back on, how long this will go on for is anyones guess lol. The delivery of point of lay hens was cancelled for today, too risky to travel and we can wait another few days. At one point the wind was so loud it sounded like to door was open, it has died down somewhat now and I nipped out to the post box. I had a quick scan round to assess the place and apart from the bay tree in a big pot that has gone over it’s all looking fairly unscathed, plenty of reports locally of trees down everywhere though.
Judging by a lot of smallholders photos and videos I have seen online, we got away lightly, mostly I would say that is due to the positioning of and building robust pens and huts. We nearly always plan something with the wind direction in mind because it does get pretty windy here even on a regular day so stormy days are much worse. The older buildings are robust as well, Dad was a belts and braces person, there are straps on everything to hold it down luckily, the only thing that always worries me is the metal sheet roofing. Normally they would be fine but with constant winds at that speed they can easily be shaken so much they come loose, I said to John that once the weather calms we (he) needs to check the fixings and tighten any that have come loose.
Saturday: Weather was not much better but less wind and more rain. Didn’t do much outside at all and in the afternoon we went to a joint birthday party for two of our great nephews, 1 and 2 years old respectively. Nice to catch up with people we have not seen for a year or so and the children enjoyed playing together 🙄🤪
🙄
Sunday: Shocking again, almost as windy as Friday, raining most of the afternoon, cold and grey, yuk and more storms rolling in over the next couple of days 😏 It wasn’t raining first thing and John did the animals and then built the new compost bin area. The other has all been cleared and stacked ready to rot down more but we needed a new bay built with pallets which is what he did. Then he cleaned out the ducks, couldn’t do that until he built the bay as that’s where the duck muck goes. And finally he put the wheel back on the car, it had to be taken to the garage at the beginning of the week as the wheel rim had cracked and needed welding. Meanwhile I found stuff to do indoors, I didn’t really want to go outside in all that plus I still have a bad back so didn’t want to be lifting anything.
What is one to do on a cold, wet windy Sunday, well go and buy more plants of course 😁 When John came back in looking for a coffee I suggested we go out and get one accompanied by cake 🥰 and a mooch round at some lovely plants 🤪 I purchased more dahlia, gladioli and some anemone bulbs plus some sweet Williams, you can never have enough plants right 🤷♀️ My plan is to take cutting from all the dahlias I have so far which will increase my overall stock. Anything I can propagate I will have a go at, this morning I took some basal cuttings from the delphinium and I will be doing the same from the chrysanthemums and lupin that are coming up, it is a great way to get free plants and easy enough to do. I have used the carnations I bought from the garage a few weeks back (to have a go at an arrangement I wanted to try) to get new plants as well. They are easy to root just in water at this time of year, give it a go if you have any from your valentines flowers 😁 You are looking for new little plants coming from a leaf node, pinch those out and pop in water, they will soon form roots, don’t forget to change the water every couple of days to stop bacteria building up.
That’s is for this week, rubbish weather week I think I will call it 🙄 let’s hope it gets better during the week ahead, have a good one x
Tuesday 8th February 2022: Yes Tuesday 🤬 I have completely lost the draft I started yesterday 🤷♀️ I am having a mare with technology at the minute, slow to load everything although my provider says all lines in are working correctly. I began to think I had been hacked so changed all my passwords including the one for this blog (I had a spike in stats which seemed sus) and now everything is up s**t creek without a paddle as they say. I have done all the things they suggest plus updated all the security ware and the first thing I find when I log on this site is a missing draft and weirdly some of the posts have had dates changed, I bloody hate technology sometimes. It took me all afternoon to update every install and I haven’t really got very far forward, still having issues 😫 If by some miracle I find the missing draft I will continue with it below.
Did a bit in the greenhouse first thing then Sam arrived with the twins, the farrier who was due at 12 was now coming at 10.30. We got sorted, got the horses in, filled up a hay net and a sack for the filled for when they went back out. Lucy and George helped (I say that loosely 😆) as helpful as two and a half year old can be at any rate 😁 The rest of the day was spent trying to sort the internet out, Shelley and Flo popped in for a cuppa in the afternoon.
Wednesday: I figured out why the draft is lost, because I didn’t save it before exiting doh, but all the other things still stand. I was still trying to sort it all at 9.20 last night and today it is still dropping in and out 🤪 No idea why or how to resolve it to be honest and losing the will to live trying.
No idea what I wrote on Monday and can’t remember what I actually did now either, some clearing up in the front beds I think, can’t remember what else I wrote but never mind.
I had a good day today in the garden, John was here for a while this morning, he did the rounds and then went out to finish getting the compost heap sorted. I know it seems like it’s taking ages but it had to be moved from one place to another and then again because there is not enough room to do it all in one hit. Plus he decided that he may as well riddle it after all so that takes time, he has now put all the available compost into the raised beds on the cut flower area though we still need to fill some more. I decided on four beds that way I can do four successional sowings and when one is finished in turn I can clear them. Meanwhile I sorted out plants that have been sitting all winter and are now starting to wake up, potting some on and putting some out for sale. After I finished that we stood and had a good look at the cutting patch to try and finalise where everything would be going, I think I finally have a plan. Not before time as a few things really need to go in soon so that they can start producing lovely blooms 😁 At this point, which was still only around 10am, John went off to work and I set about weeding some of the other beds. I was out there until 2pm happily weeding on my hands and knees. One of the beds is a difficult one, it has more asparagus in there and normally it is too wet to get on it and weed it, then the asparagus grows and that snaps pretty easily if you try to weed in and around it so I am pretty chuffed and more than a little amazed that I have done it already at the beginning of Feb 🙄 It has been such a dry winter that working on the soil is easy for a change. I came in and got some lunch, sat down for a rest and John came home, lol why is it always when I have just sat down 🤷♀️
I have a couple of deliveries coming this week, some more pallet collars to make raised beds and a peat free compost delivery. I should have some bare root roses arriving any day as well as more seeds 🤣 I think I need much more space than I have for these flowers, it’s becoming an obsession!
Note to self: don’t forget to save draft 🤪
Saturday: Yep I have lost some days but for no other reason that I haven’t written anything 🙄 Thursday John was home some of the day and so we worked outside as the weather was fair but that’s as much as I can remember, except that I went for my 4th vaccination and it stung this time so I came home had a cuppa and a rest lol. Friday, I did the morning rounds and pottered in the greenhouse a while then I had a compost delivery mid morning. An hour or so later Sam came over with the twins and Shelley came with Florence. I had a delivery of bare root roses in the afternoon. Back to Saturday, the wind is back and it’s cold but not freezing just feels cold and I had trouble getting warm today. Up early, because I was going out with my sister to a vintage fair in Cheltenham. I quickly planted some hellebore that arrived before I went, I wanted to get them in because it is going to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. Once I came back early afternoon, had a cuppa and a sit down, I went out to the greenhouse (not windy in there) I have been soaking some ranunculus bulbs for a day or so and now they are nice and plump I wanted to get them in pots to start them off. They will go into the cutting garden eventually (once the frosts have passed) but if I can get them ahead that’s good. I also potted up my dahlia tubers to wake them up as well, one of them has a tiny green shoot so now is a good time. The plan is to get them going and then take cutting from them before I transplant them into the garden and cutting patch. I also sowed some sweet rocket (1st sowing) Meanwhile John has also been busy today, some of the time in the garden area doing bits and pieces for me and then some other jobs on top (he told me but I have already forgotten what 😝) I haven’t put the bare root roses in yet, I am trying to decide where is going to be best to plant them 🤷♀️
I had a little play with some flowers and foliage from the garden, not a lot to work with at the minute but I enjoyed myself, I said to John I can’t wait to have loads of flowers to make big bunches with 🥰
Note to self: don’t forget to grow veg this year as well 🤣
It is just a couple of weeks now before seed sowing can start in earnest, I cannot wait lol, looking forward to the warmer, longer days.
Sunday: The weather started off ok, dry and mild but rapidly declined to bring rain for most of the day. Beforehand however we did manage to get a few things sorted, John did the animals and then a bit of tidying up in the garden, he also cleared the gully across the driveway so that any heavy rain can run away nicely. I sorted out a bit for roast dinner later and then went out to plant some bulbs that arrived yesterday and the rose bushes that arrived the day before. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to plant these because I need to get to them but I didn’t want them so close to a patch way that up I had to brush past them, they ended up within the veg area because that is full sun which they love and not going to be difficult to get to. Then we went off to get a bit of shopping, not much just the basics, we still have plenty in the freezers to live off yet 🙄 Popped into see Mum and Ken for a coffee before returning home, we met Shelley at Mums and she came back with us to get some eggs and stopped for a cuppa and then Sam, Luke and the children turned up for an hour or two. Once they had all left I prepped the rest of the dinner and then sat down for a couple of hours. Charlie and Macca are coming to eat with us later so we will have seen almost everyone today 😂
We are, like everyone else, watching the tensions on the Russian/Ukrainian border with extreme interest, hoping that it is all some puffed up, macho nonsense. I find it difficult to believe in this day and age that one country can think it can just invade another, seems we haven’t come very far in the last 70/80 years, in fact I would go as far to say the world is dumbing down in my not very expert opinion 😏
When I went to the supermarket this morning there were rows and rows of beautiful imported flower bouquets in the front of the shop for easy access. Inside the shop behind a stack of boxes (I kid you not) we’re a few bunches of British grown tulips and daffodils, I should have complained to management really but the shop was rammed and the staff had enough to do without me adding to their problems but I may send an email.
Monday 31st January 2022: The last day of January and while I would never be one to wish my life away I am certainly glad we are another month nearer to some warmer weather 😁 John has gone to work this morning which meant I was on the rota to do the rounds, it is squally out there. The wind is from the west but it is quite cold, there are some big gusts every now and then and it’s generally unpleasant though not as bad as they are having it further North so I am grateful for that. Unless I can find enough jobs to do in the greenhouse this morning I will not be going out there until the wind dies down 😂
I realise I now have a large amount of bulbs to plant for the cutting garden and I really need to sit down and fully apply myself to the plan. I need to go through everything I have ordered that is not here yet, every plant I have already bought that is here, every lot of bulbs I have ready to go in and every seed packet that I have ready to sow. I need to organise a sowing plan both for under cover and direct sowing and make sure I leave enough room for both and then a planting plan that is beneficial to all the plants and makes it easy to harvest the flowers. I seem to be stuck on the plan but that is because I haven’t collated everything yet, I am sure once I have it will be easier to look at what need to go where. That will just be the beginning because then there will be the soil improvement, maybe raised beds to build for some things, the planting up and the sowing at the right time. Growing flowers for cutting is certainly different to growing them for pleasure, with the latter it doesn’t really matter when the flowers appear as long as they do at some point, with the former I need a steady ‘bloom’ throughout the months in order to have the best bouquets and posies. All of this will be running alongside the veg growing lol, good job I have been doing that for years and it’s almost second nature.
I finally sat down with all the seeds, a list of plants and some note markers and plotted out the cutting patch. I needed to make sure I have pathways so that I can reach the blooms with little effort and I needed to get in some sort of order what is seeded when, with or without heat, undercover or direct sow 🙄 I think I have it sorted, until I realise I have either missed something out or for something in the wrong place 😂
Mum called round and I helped her to get something sorted on her laptop so that she can hopefully get her manuscript sorted and sent off to publishers, she has been writing it and re writing it for years, time to get it looked at 🥰
I heard a noise outside and wondered what the heck it was, looked out to see our hedge being cut in the driveway. We had it done for the first time last year and John decided it was so much easier and quicker to pay someone else to do it that he had asked him to do it again this year, he randomly turns up when he has got time.
And now I can tell you what I have known for a while, we are going to have another grandchild 😁🥰 Charlie and Macca are expecting their first baby in mid August and no they didn’t waste any time but that was the plan all along! Six grandchildren 😮 awesome, we are totally delighted and can’t wait to meet him/her when the time comes.
The egg numbers dropped drastically from the hens we moved outside, arrgghh just when I need them to stabilise, I should have given that a lot more thought 🤔 it’s colder out there and they had the light on for a couple of hours after dark in the stable block, doh.
Tuesday: Positively pooped by lunchtime 😂 I spent a very busy morning outside, first I did the morning rounds and then straight onto some gardening chores. I set up a map of the beds for the cut flower garden then decided that is wouldn’t work how I had organised it so I am back to the drawing board. I cleared a few weeds from the raised bed between the tunnels, it still has some small cabbages growing in there but I also found some self set aquilegia and a primrose 🤷♀️ so I transplant those. I planted some more plants I bought at the weekend, beautiful hellebores and very bright cheery primroses. I potted up the foliage shrubs I bought a few weeks ago and I potted on various bits and pieces. I also tidied up a lot of the plants I divided at the end of last year, I leave the dead stems until I am certain I can recognise what the plant is and then snip them off. Then I went over to one of the bigger beds and started raking up debris, I emptied the compost bin nearby and started to refill it with any uncomposted materials (quite a lot of that) I got halfway through and realised it was lunchtime and I was hungry 😋 It’s breezy but the sun is shining and it is quite nice out there today.
Wednesday: The day started off on the wrong foot, John went off to work and I went to do the morning rounds and found that the hens had eaten most of the eggs that had been laid already🤬 These are the hens we moved to the outside pen and I have no idea why they are doing it, they didn’t do it in the stable 🤷♀️ I have now split them up a little, it’s not the room that is the problem but once one starts they all start. I called the supplier and ordered 40 more point of lay because these lot are now around 2/3 and they have developed bad habits 😂 It’s fair to say that they have been a delinquent bunch from the off, we have had plenty of batches in over the years and these were trouble right from day one, going where they shouldn’t, laying goodness knows where, in house fighting and now egg eating on a mass scale, time to go, once the new hens are laying well these lot will be sold off.
In order to work off my grumps I went out to the veg garden, it is a lovely day, fairly mild and the sun is out. I spent the whole morning sorting out the bed behind the fruit cage, it has the apricot tree (which doesn’t produce many apricots) the cherry tree (that the birds eat before I can get to them) the runner bean area, spare asparagus and the thornless blackberry. A bit of a mish mash and to be honest probably could do with a massive overhaul as comfrey and feverfew grow like billio in there and no matter how much I try I have a job to keep it all under control. After raking up debris and cutting down runners from the apricot tree I went on to sort the runner bean area out. This bit has some of the bindweed problem and so I have weed membrane down but I pulled it all up, cleared the bindweed roots that where surface and laid it back down. Then I did the other side of it, it seems like a bit of a wasted area really but for the time being it will stay like that as I don’t have the time or the energy to change any of it. I just need to make sure that it doesn’t get out of control because it is an area I don’t need to visit very much and so gets overlooked ( maybe call it the wild area 😉) The bindweed roots I pulled up will be burnt, don’t want to risk them in the compost otherwise the problem will get worse. I came in for lunch and a sit down, my legs got a bit wobbly, I was in need of sustenance. That’s when I sat and wrote this and I am hoping I find some energy to get back out there 😝
Thursday: I started off well, got all the morning rounds done and the hens are better behaved today, not munching on eggs, I have no idea what that was all about 🤷♀️ Then into the greenhouse to sort a few things out and pit some things up, I also tidied a few things, stuff I put down thinking I will move that later then before you know it there is quite a bit to move. I put some pots of tulips and allium out for sale, the green shoots are just pushing through the top of the soil so I know they are good and strong. Then Samantha arrived with the twins and stayed for the afternoon, normally she would then take the twins and go to pick up Mia from school, come back, drop the twins off and take Mia swimming. Today though she left Lucie with me and took George so Lucie helped me to feed the chickens and collect the eggs, she was brilliant, carrying a bucket with some corn in she fed the hens like a pro 😁 George was most upset that he didn’t get to stay and do it but he can have a turn next time though I don’t think he will be as helpful somehow. Lucie is definitely going to be an outdoorsy grafter type, George more of an indoorsy desk job type I think, he is already very precise with everything so maybe an architect lol. Once Mia came back from swimming and they had all gone home it was time to get dinner, John had pool night and I had an online masterclass about annuals, perennials and foliage 🥰 Will sleep well tonight.
Friday: Brrrr cold and raining first thing this morning with some sleet thrown in for good measure, needless to say I waited a while before going out to do the animals 😝 Once it had stopped raining I went out and got that all done, I was just sorting the eggs out when John came home having finished work for the day and it was only 9.30! That kind of put paid to my plans for the day (which actually was just a fair amount of reading and resting because I still felt tired) After having a coffee we decided to go and get some shopping done, I had made a list the night before of a few things I needed. After shopping we went round to see Mum and Ken for a cup of coffee and got back home around Midday. We actually didn’t get a lot else done to be honest, except the necessary, by the time I sorted out the evening meal, John popped out to have a quick look at a job someone in the village wants doing, and a few household bits, there wasn’t much time for anything major. Just as well really as it never warmed up at all really and the lower temps are around for a couple of days more yet.
I have another masterclass online again tonight and then one on Monday evening as well, I love it and there is always something to learn 😁
Saturday: Not sure what we did to be honest, apart from the usual jobs I rather think we didn’t do much at all in the day 😂 In the evening we went to the Cotswolds 2022 Sloe Gin competition at The Fox Inn, Broadway which is between Stow on the Wold and Morton in Marsh. The event raised money for Maggie’s cancer care charity. What a fabulous evening we had, firstly the fact that the entries wereWith members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK. all from the villagers was indicative of a great community, secondly the pub and its staff were friendly and welcoming. It is very many years since I have been to a pub that has that traditional village pub feel and vibe, we had great fun judging the 22 entries and giving them a score, we had some great food and a good laugh with the locals who were a welcoming, friendly bunch, honestly I couldn’t speak more highly of the whole event. We will definitely being going back to the pub and most definitely for next years competition lol. And for anyone who watches Father Brown investigates, that’s the pub they use for filming 🥰
Sunday: Despite the gin tasting last night we were up and at it this morning 😝 The windy weather is still here, getting tedious now mind you 🙄 but it is a little milder today I think. I spent the morning giving a full clean out to the quail and Guinea pig runs, once the guineas were done I went onto the quail, opened the door and one flew straight out past me and up onto the Turkey run roof. It stayed where it was and didn’t move so I went and got the clean straw, told John and he came to help me catch it. He waved a long pole in the direction of the quail who duly took off towards the greenhouse and landed in an ungainly fashion on the lawn. John went round to look for it and shouted he could find it, I went round and said ‘you have to think like a quail’ 😂 what is the first thing you would do as a timid little bird out in the big wide world, hide, I went round to the area I had seen it land and there it was tucked in some long grass. I was hoping that I would have some more quail delivered today but the chap is having difficulty getting hold of them, I am not in a hurry so it can wait. We came in for some lunch and then I sent John off to pick up a vase I had seen on marketplace, meanwhile I went into the greenhouse. It seems I have a mouse again this year because some of the sweet pea seeds have been disturbed and one which was shooting has been chewed off 🤬 I have now primed the trap with peanut butter, I need to get this one as soon as possible or I will have nothing growing, it is not an ‘all you can eat restaurant’ ya know 😏 Mid afternoon I decided that was enough outside and came in to get some compost ordered. I am swapping over to peat free, it will be good once the whole industry makes the move to only supply peat free. The only reason I don’t always use it is because I often ask John to pick some up, multipurpose compost he can mange to remember, multipurpose, pear free would be pushing it too far 😉
Some spring hope appearing 🥰
This week I joined Flowers from the Farm, this is an organisation I first saw and heard a few years ago at an RHS show. I was tempted to join back then but didn’t really have a plan going forward about growing flowers, well now I have and so I applied and became a full member 🥰
‘With members from Cornwall to Inverness, Flowers from the Farm is the award-winning membership association for artisan cut flower growers in the UK.’
If you want to read more about the association, where you can see them, what they are all about then go to www.flowersfromthefarm.co.uk they also have a live map of all members who grow flowers here in he UK (including me😁)
Monday 24th January 2022: Milder than it has been, dry and the ground is not frozen yay that means I can get outside and get something done. First though I had to get the animals all sorted as John has gone to work for a couple of hours but will be back mid morning. As soon as I could I went outside to get the job done that I had gone to sleep thinking about, sad I know 😂 The job in question was cutting back the lilacs in the veg garden. Quite a few years ago we thinned out the lilacs at the front and heeled in some whips, they were supposed to be dug up at a later point. That was probably something like seven years ago so you can guess how big they have got. They are at the end of the bed where I will be growing the cut flowers and so I cut them down by half in order to get the maximum sunshine but still provide a wind barrier, I also hope I will get some good lilac flowers from them although possibly not this year. I dug up a fair few whips to pot up and there was just one big root I couldn’t budge. John came home at that point and we went off to the diy shop to get some paint for the roadside advertising boards. I want to paint them the same colour (or near enough) to the logo background and try to pull everything together a bit better. Once back home John had to go off to the bank to shut down an account we haven’t used for around ten years but still had a small amount of money left in it. I sorted out what would be for dinner this evening and then got the smallest board in to give it a clean up and repair some little parts that had got damaged in the wind. I realised I needed to re do the blackboard paint so called John who was on his way back, he turned around and went to get the paint from the diy shop, bad management from me there but at least I can get the boards sorted. While John was out doing the afternoon rounds I painted the smallest of the boards with new blackboard paint and once it has had a makeover it will look splendid. John also went out and dug up that last root for me 😁 tomorrow we will go out there and put everything through the chipper, tidy up and that bed will be ready when I am for planting up.
Last night while checking my emails I looked at a particular website and decided I might like to go on one of the courses they were offering. I talked it over with John because it’s not cheap lol, but I am so excited to have booked a cut flower day course with Sarah Raven 🥰 She is the guru of cut flowers in the UK and I can’t wait to go and do that, yep it’s fair to say I am ‘cock a hoop’ about that.
At times I think to myself ‘whoa, what are you doing’ and then other times I am full steam ahead with ideas and plans, the one thing I keep telling myself is to just roll with it and enjoy everything, I mean what could be better than growing flowers all summer long. The one thing I did think was that at least picking flowers is an early morning job 😁
The poultry are obviously all still shut away and it would seem that it’s particularly bad this year 🙄 On the one hand it is easy for us to do them every day and they are not all over the place laying but on the other hand I kind of wonder what is the point of having them if they can’t get outside for four months of the year and so far that’s two years in a row we have had to lock them down 😔
Tuesday: oooosh been very busy this morning, after getting the morning jobs done including the animals, I got straight onto painting the primer on the advertising board for the front of the drive. I figured if I did that quickly it would be drying while I went about the rest of the day’s business. Today on the agenda was chipping up all the prunings from the lilacs and the apple trees I pruned the other week. That took around three hours and all the mulch went back onto the ground under the lilacs and around the lavender. John meanwhile was working on the area that will now be grass, it was the herb bed and I have dug everything out and potted up or replanted elsewhere. The sides of the bed need removing and all the soil needs moving so it is level with the pathway (although the path will also be grassed) He has been doing a fabulous job, riddling all the soil as he goes and putting on the rhubarb bed which really needed a top up. Around 11 John went out to look at a couple of jobs and an hour later returned, I had some soup in a mug outside, I didn’t want to stop and sit down otherwise I wouldn’t get going again. John got himself some lunch and then came back outside where we worked until mid afternoon, should sleep well tonight 🤪
In between everything else I was also painting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the flowers.
Wednesday: Another busy day today, mild again which meant plenty of time outside to get stuff done. John carried on with the removing all the soil from the area we are putting down to lawn and while he was doing that I potted up all the lilac whips I dug up yesterday and I also planted 100 allium bulbs of various types. Some will go out for sale and some will be for the cutting garden. We then moved onto a different area, the brassica cage has been there for about four years I think, it is time to use it for something else before I end up with club root 🙄 I took off all the environmesh and hatched a plan 🤪 the plan involved re using items we already had to create a sweet pea growing area, I have some metal grid sheets that are pretty big and so I wanted one of those attached to the framework of the brassica cage and a narrow raised bed at the bottom for the sweet peas. It should be pretty successful 🤞 and a dedicated area for the sweet peas which have deep roots. I have now almost cleared the area where the rest of the cut flowers will be going and just need to make a plan of what is going where. I will get some pictures once it’s cleared properly and ready to go.
In between all this I was repainting and re writing the advertising chalkboard for the eggs, the boards are all having an overhaul and a refresh, I didn’t get before and after pics of the first board but I have of this second one.
I have also been trying to make hearts from the weeping birch branches, every year in winter it sheds lots of branches, they are very long and wispy, ideal for making things with.
Much better 😁
We popped out to get a bit of shopping once we had eaten dinner, figured it would be quiet in the evening. We got back just in time for a zoom meeting I almost forgot about 🙄 it was a cut flower meeting, very interesting and nice to see others who are doing the same thing.
Thursday: Making the most of John being at home because today is the last day for a while. So after the morning rounds John got straight on outside finishing the sweet pea box and I got on with chalking up the egg board for the roadside, looks pretty good and should just give a nudge reminder to anyone passing that we still sell eggs. Once I had finished I went out to help John, I lined the box, moved a few barrowfulls of dead and decaying leaves (I need to burn these as they are from the pear tree that has scab) Then once John had finished I laid weed membrane down over the rest of the plot to stall the weeds until I can get on it. We measured the plot and overall size is 12ft wide by 30ft long with some small areas already planted with the lilacs and lavender but the rest is ready to plan. It then started to rain 🌧 oh rain stops play says John, nope rain just means play outside stops but plenty to be done inside 🤪 So for the second time in as many weeks John got the hoover out 😝 that is worthy of writing as it doesn’t happen very often, not at home anyway, I am reliably informed by customers that he hoovers in their houses! Hoovering, tidying, wipe round done and time for a sit down, we have the twins later so need a rest in between. I have had to order a new vacuum cleaner, we have two, one is for the boot room and used to do the Rayburn, it’s gets that stale smell so it is the ‘outside hoover’ it has given up the ghost so the ‘indoor’ one moves to outdoor and the new one will be for inside.
I am feeling like my head is fit to burst with everything at the minute especially social media lol. But it’s an extremely useful platform both for getting information out and for receiving information. I just think that at the moment I have too many social media plates in the air 😂 online courses, zoom meetings, online workshops, relevant groups for flowers, Smallholding, self sufficiency, veg growing, gardening in general, personal, then there are the farm pages to run on Facebook, and Instagram and the blog and podcast, I think I need a PA 🤪 Still it keeps me busy right 😝. That and preparing the garden for spring, all of it not just the flower patch, growing seeds, potting up plants and planting bulbs not too mention keeping up with the weeds once they start in earnest.
In the past I have tried to find and trial other more environmentally friendly weed suppressants but I have resorted to the landscape membrane. I tried jute which was ok but only lasted the year which would make it pretty expensive, the cardboard method works really well and is cheap but to cover the area that I need to cover takes a LOT of cardboard so I can only use what I have. The biodegradable membrane is great (expensive) but not permeable and very flimsy so at the moment for large areas it is the landscape membrane I am afraid. Two reasons why this is the best option for me, one, the area is pretty extensive and there is a lot to do. I need to be able to be in control of what gets done and when, which leads me to the second reason and that is the Lupus. I have no idea how the year ahead will go regards the illness, if I am lucky and can keep on an even keel without flares, it will be smooth sailing. If it doesn’t go well I can be incapacitated for weeks sometimes months and then things will get very out of hand, it will stress me out massively and stress is something I need to avoid at all costs because it is a trigger. Sometimes you just have to do what is best for you and your health even if it goes against your ethics which in this case it does but I do need to balance one against the other and until they come up with something amazingly good that’s what I will be using. The good thing is that I use it over and over again but it does shred at the edges if the wind gets at it which is not great, if anyone has any tips on how to stop that I would be interested.
Friday: A frosty morning again but hopefully the sun will thaw everything quite quickly. John has gone off to work today but he did the animals before leaving so I got on with a few household chores. I am hoping to get outside once it warms up a little bit.
Last night I drew out the cutting patch to scale and am giving the layout lots of thought, I think that is the right approach because if I rush in with deciding where things will go chances are I will have forgotten something and have got change it all. The annual flowers are easy enough but the perennial flowers all have different needs and once they are in I don’t want to find I have got it wrong.
Update on the soil blocks and the grow lights: The soil blocks are definitely a winner, I need to get the level of moisture right next time when I use the block because if you have the soil too loose they can crumble a little when the edges dry out but I think that is more user error than design fault. So far I still think they are a brilliant concept, pricking out is a thing of the past with these as exact seedling has its own little bit of soil which you just transplant into the next size block, it’s genius really 🥰 As for the grow lights they have pros and cons, I bought a set with a clip that clip to a table or bench and four arms that have the lights in, the lights are red or blue or a mix of both. The pros are that they do work well, when I change the light colour, the leaf colour of the seedlings change as well. The seedlings also respond to the lights but you do need the lights directly over the seedlings, no point trying to squeeze an extra tray at the end of the light range because the seedlings just lean in that direction. I bought them because the lisianthus are difficult to germinate and grow and I wanted to give them all the help I could. I have seen set ups with trays and trays of seedlings on shelving each with lights attached to the under side of the shelf above. My thoughts are that although we are impatient to get growing, and so use these false environments, nature really does know best and waiting for the light levels to increase is probably better, you will end up with stronger seedlings. I wonder with big set ups, where are they moving all theses seedlings onto once they get big enough to transplant, another set up? You certainly couldn’t move them to outside, not in the UK at any rate, considering we are still weeks away from the last frost date that would be too risky. I imagine people must have a second stage set up that is perhaps under heated cover 🤷♀️ I am not sure, maybe I will research it to find out. Overall both the seed blocks and the grow lights are good but for the lights I personally wouldn’t go to a bigger scale not unless I had a good second stage set up to move them too.
John came home mid morning which I wasn’t expecting. I had decided to give the office/craft room a bit of a tidy up but as soon as I finished that I went outside with John to get some work done on the garden. The compost heap needed turning and the compost that was ready needed distributing. I decided that the beds in the big tunnel could do with topping up so that’s where the compost went. I moved two smaller beds that were temporary and put in some pallet collars to make two bigger beds which John also filled. I gave the tunnel a tidy up, put some membrane over the beds. That is the tunnel ready for the season apart from a good wash which needs to wait until the damp weather is finished otherwise the green algae will just come back. I don’t think I have ever had the tunnel ready for action this early in the year. John then carried on with turning this years heap, the more you turn it the quicker it breaks down but it’s hefty work. I tidied up some broken pots and bits ready to go into the skip and then I too sorted the compost bins at the other side of the garden. In the beginning we only had one compost area but I wasted a lot of time talking it all to the other end of the garden each time that I decided to have extra bins within the garden area. I have two big square ones and two darlek type, I emptied out the darleks and put all of that on top of the material in the square ones. Again the more weight on top the quicker it will break down, I quite expected to see some wildlife in there but nope not today. By 1pm it was getting colder and we had both worked pretty hard so it was inside for some soup and a sit down. The soup is from the soup bags I made up at the end of last year, very handy to pop them in the slow cooker with a stock cube in the morning, turn onto high and its ready to blitz and eat at lunchtime. It’s also great because there are veg in there that John wouldn’t normally eat but once blitzed he has no idea 😁
It occurred to me while I was in the poly tunnel that I could offer advice to anyone who is torn between a poly tunnel and a greenhouse. If you can only have one I would say go for a tunnel, they have different uses but a tunnel can be used similar to the greenhouse plus so much more and always go for the biggest one you can afford or site, whichever that is. If it is a greenhouse you really want above all else then by all means get the best you can afford but unless you want it for aesthetics don’t spend the extra on a posh one. It doesn’t work any different and doesn’t make you a better grower, there are better ways to spend the extra money on a greenhouse, such as ventilation, shading, decent staging, irrigation systems, electrics and decent propagators. Also a green house that is well put up will stand the test of time, doesn’t matter how good it looks if the wind rocks it will soon start to leak or worse the glass will crack. Our first poly tunnel has been up for around 10 years and the covering is still fully intact and functional, a lot of that is down to where it is sited, it doesn’t get battered by the wind, which improves the life span. In the tunnels I opted for an overhead irrigation system, which I don’t use, the reason being that too much water is wasted when it is watered from the top. You water areas that don’t need it such as the pathways, watering at soil level is far more cost effective and it is directed straight to the roots of the plants which is where it is needed most.
Another online flower workshop tonight, I am learning lots and loving it 😊
Saturday: Windy lol, that’s today, but mild enough and the sun peeks out now and again. After the usual jobs John asked what needed doing and so I gave him a verbal list, he chose the duck pen 😝 great because that was the dirtiest, muckiest job and I didn’t really want to do it 😂 We had to let the ducks out for a while in order to get it done, John shovelled out dirty, wet, smelly mud and shoved up plenty of duck poop, he then power washed the whole pen. Meanwhile I did the horses water and let them into the front side paddock, they now have three paddocks to roam over. Onto topping up straw in the hens laying areas and then to top up straw in the goose hut, I also found some site fencing (that plastic green stuff) and put that up all along the side of the little paddock that the geese are in. About four years ago Mum, Ken and I planted 950 daffodil bulbs, the first and second year they came up lovely, the third year we had to keep the geese in there due to bird flu and although the daffs came up they were short because the geese trampled all along there hampering growth. The same was likely to happen this year except that I have now fenced it off and hopefully I will get nice tall flowers 🤞 Once I finished that I made the decision to move the ducks back to their original housing, we were going to wait and get the hut moved and a new floor down but the hens in the stable could really do with some fresh air and so they will now move into the pen John has just cleaned out and the ducks will go back to their own home. One of the ducks is not looking very strong so I have ,over her to a stable on her own with food and water to see if she gets any better, she was quite light in weight and muddy I am not sure what has happened to her but if I can try and get her better then I will. I then went on to do some bits in the garden, I cut back all the autumn raspberry canes, potted a few up that I pulled up I also repaired and secured the posts that the canes get tied to as some of them were broken and wobbly. By that time it was lunchtime so I came in for some soup and a cuppa, John also came in for something eat. We had planned on a quick sit down and then carry on but Sam arrived with the children for a couple of hours.
I did another online masterclass about peonies in the afternoon, these type of classes are very good because they are specific and include information about using them as cut flowers rather than just in the garden borders. I have another three classes I think over the next week or so, I am really enjoying them and although I am not a novice gardener I am learning new things all the time 😁
This is the cut flower area it is approx 30 x 12ft 😮 the lilacs I cut back are at the far end and there are some lavenders in there already. The box on the right hand side are for the sweet peas and I need to decide how best to use the rest of the area, not that I am short of plants and seeds to go in there lol.
The weed membrane is to slow down and weed growth until I can get it sorted. This bed has always been a bit of a problem bed, rouge raspberry runners, comfrey and bindweed all have their roots in here, I may have to look at a few raised beds for some of it until they have all died off which could be a year or two 😏 The list of plants and seeds I have is pretty extensive from the favourites like roses, dahlias and peonies to cornflowers, poppies and snapdragons. The beauty of the mix I have is that the bouquets will not be like the ones from the shops, they need to use flowers that will transport well, I can use whatever I want and whatever is looking good at the time of picking.
Sunday: John did a bit outside in the morning and I was indoors making hearts from twigs. Just before lunch I decided I needed a trip to the garden centre to see what is actually out now, of course that result in some spenditure 😂 I said to John, I am investing for this time next year and to my surprise he said ‘good idea’ well then there was no holding me back 😝 I bought some beautiful hellebores, nerine and anemones, I am determined to have naturally blooming flowers this time next year! We were speaking to someone we know who works at the centre and he said that I was onto a good thing, growing and selling flowers and plants, because importing them is about to get a lot harder than it was due to brexit, I hadn’t realised that when I decided to do it but it’s an added bonus I guess. We stopped at the garage on the way back because I wanted to get a cheap bunch of flowers 😮 to give something a try. I was pretty pleased with the result proving that you can even make these look like they are bespoke 😁
Garage flowers and some twigs can still make an artistic display 😁
Have a great week, we are one more week nearer to spring 😁
Monday 17th January 2022: Old twelvey, 12th night (pre Georgian calender) Wassail day 😁
Another cold and frosty morning and I was on the morning duties as John went off to work. After doing that (a little late as I spent an hour on FaceTime with my brother in Aus) I got on with making an apple cake for the Wassail tonight. I had a few paperwork things to sort out and then goodness knows what else I did but it must have been something 🤷♀️ John came home mid afternoon, the dentist had called and had a cancellation and so he was off to have his tooth out 🙄 I will be honest the timing was not the best, I had plans for him to help me with a couple of things for the wassail but he was incapacitated. So I got everything sorted and changed anything I couldn’t do on my own and it was all fine in the end. We had a fire pit, we made a lot of noise, we chanted, we poured cider on the apple tree roots and we put cider soaked toast on the tree, all under the Wolf Moon and we had a lovely time 🥰
I had a notification today that the blog had reached 10,000 all time views, whoop that’s amazing 🤩
I remembered what it was I did in the afternoon, I cut back (pollarded) the willows at the front of the drive. I now have a large bundle of willow whips and I want to use them for something, I would like a willow sculpture of some kind and I watched a few videos to see what I thought I might be able to tackle, maybe a small wigwam on the grass verge in the driveway 🤷♀️ I would quite like to do a big one but not sure where I would do that without the risk of it being eaten by the horses or the geese.
Tuesday: It was a very cold, clear night again last night and everywhere is white and frosty this morning. I don’t feel the best today and have been struggling a little bit more each day, my joints on my fingers have swollen and hurt, so much so that I have had to take my rings off 🙄 I can feel twinges in my teeth at times and I feel generally ‘meh‘. Hopefully it will be a passing thing, I feel quite emotional with it today as well which is not ideal, doing the animals is going to be a struggle and then I think I will do nothing for the day except rest, sometimes you just have to recognise your limitations and today is one of those days. When I mentioned to John about how I think I will struggle with the water buckets, his answer was to use another bucket with a little bit in and go back and forth, thanks for that, I define will not be making you any dinner today 🤪I have taken a covid test to rule that out and it’s negative.
Well the morning rounds, as I suspected, were difficult, not least because it is frozen solid out there and even the stable tap is frozen. I will have to go back out and try again later as I don’t have the energy to haul water from inside the house. Most of them have buckets I can just break the ice on, some are tiny water holder so hopefully the sun will thaw those quickly but in the stable although the water buckets are not frozen, they are half empty and I can’t fill them from the frozen tap so again I will wait until later and hope the tap thaws quickly. It feels depressing at the minute, mostly because I don’t feel fit and able but also because the egg customers have dropped massively 🤷♀️ We have the usual core of customers that always come but that’s it and we are hardly selling any eggs. I definitely wonder if it is really worth any of it to be honest, it is a fair amount of work for next to no return 😏
Yesterday (Sat) I thought I hadn’t written a single thing all week and so I started a new page only to find this one on the draft section 😂 I think I am losing the plot.
It is now Saturday afternoon, this is the point when I realised I haven’t written anything all week long 😝 (Or at least hadn’t remembered writing anything 😂) Today has not been that productive either, not outside at any rate. I had a hair appointment first thing and then went called round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa. Mum sorted through her lace and ribbon stash and I came away with a good deal of lace and ribbon in lots of colours, they will be for the tied bouquets and posies. The aim is to use paper and trimmings that are either up-cycled, recycled or at the very least recyclable, as with the veg and fruit garden, there will be no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers used, so when you sink your nose into a bunch of my blooms you can be sure that it is perfectly safe to inhale that aroma 😁 I have been thinking about flower bunches that have meaning, purpose or just say what you want to convey, to be honest I have done a lot of thinking and none of it can be tried until I have flowers growing 😂 so I just have to keep thinking at the minute.
Sunday: Milder today but we were up later than usual as well, once up and about John did the animals while I sorted out a few things indoors and then outside to get on. I spent a couple of hours potting some things up, a couple of shrubs that, as we about to have a fairly dry period, will be ok to pot on and leave. I sorted out a few plants that I have growing ready to go out the front but it’s all still a little early and a little bit slow. I spent a while taking some photos of various pots I have for sale and I also picked a few bits for the vase. There is not much about at the minute, not bright and pretty colours anyway but there are some lovely structural and architectural bits to be found and some winter honeysuckle which smells delightful.
I have got a new logo for the flower side of business, I am rather pleased with it, simple but effective I think.
New logo
Some more seeds are starting to grow 😁 zinnias and some lupin are all beginning to sprout, it’s all very exciting. I have spent a good few hours this week learning new things, soaking up all sorts of information and ideas and watching a couple of seminars. I feel really excited about the months ahead with this project, I can let my creative side loose for a change.
Zinnia seedlings appearing. Pots of English Bluebells going out for sale 🥰No flowers to be had yet but plenty of lovely foliage around.
Monday: Grey, dull but mild enough for Winter. John still has his tooth problem and it has got worse not better but he went to the dentist this afternoon and they have given him stronger antibiotics. Because he is not sleeping well he was late up this morning and late going to work, he had a little job to do and went off to do that which meant I was doing the morning rounds. Once those were done I was determined to get these sweet peas sown and so once I had put some washing on I went out to the greenhouse. I sowed 100 sweet pea seeds, some Ammi majus (bishops flower) some cleome seeds and I took a chance with some indigo rose tomato seeds. The last three of these are now in a windowsill propagator on the kitchen sill and the sweet peas are in the greenhouse, fingers crossed for some germination. I had planned to carry on and get some more done outside on the garden itself but by the time I had done those my feet were freezing so I came inside to thaw them out. It started raining so that put paid to that and then John came home and spent the rest of the day on the sofa, I figured I might as well get some indoor work done and so I cleaned the bedroom, bathroom and living room. Hopefully this next lot of antibiotics will start to work fairly quickly and life can resume to normal and I don’t have to work round John at home.
Tuesday: John still has toothache this morning 🙄 but he has gone to work and hoping that the new antibiotics start to kick in at some point today. I did the morning rounds which at this time of year and we the birds in lockdown takes about 50 mins to an hour and then I can get on with other jobs. I went into the greenhouse and used my new gadget, a soil block, how have I managed without this for so long 🤷♀️ I can make soil blocks for seedlings in next to no time and can fit 80 blocks for seeds in the size of my hand 😮 it’s a game changer, save on compost and space 😁 I sowed antirrhinum (snap dragon) seeds and another Hardy annual though the name escapes me at the moment. After that I pruned my wisteria and climbing rose out the front and then onto a bed at the back where I cut down the Himalayan honeysuckle, winter pruned an apple and pear tree, lifted the canopy on the mulberry tree and then winter pruned another apple and pear tree further up in the veg garden. A winter prune is just taking a third off each branch, the younger trees I have left the middle stem unpruned as I want them to get a bit taller even though they are dwarf varieties. There is a lot of work to do but it is still quite wet and so I am choosing jobs that don’t require walking on the soil, I don’t want to crush the structure of the soil at this time of year.
At lunchtime Shelley picked me up and we collected Flo from school and went for lunch 🥰 a nice couple of hours out and although I didn’t purchase any plants I did by some reduced christmas baubles for next year 😂
Soil blockers by Ladbrooke a great gadget that saves on compost and space. The small one makes 20 blocks and fits in my hand, the bigger one makes four but has the small square that clips into it and perfectly leaves a space the size of the smaller soil block to pop the seedling straight into, no pricking out 😁
Wednesday: There is such a difference between the temperature yesterday and then today 🙄 Yesterday I went to put the eggs out in just a long sleeved T-shirt and my gillet, today it is very much colder and frosty even though the sun is out it is not burning the frost away as yet. I did the morning rounds and was hoping that by mid morning it would have warmed up a bit but that didn’t happen and so I did some more research and learning for the cut flowers. There is always much to learn even when you think you know a lot already 😂 this morning I was watching videos on plant support and how to make your own. Bought ones are expensive and when you need a lot of them it can be very costly so I am looking for different ways to achieve different types of support. Last year I used hazel whips, they work pretty well when they are bent over but they need to be quite long and very flexible, they work ok for things like delphinium and lupin but I want something a little more robust for the dahlias and rudbeckia. Then I need different support for sunflowers and different again for things like cosmos, John is going to be making a lot though he does not know it yet 🤪 He has different antibiotics now as the first lot were not doing much and the pain has subsided though not gone entirely just yet but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
As the sun was shining I went out in the front area and did a bit of weeding and cutting back for an hour or so. John came home just after lunch and later in the afternoon we went out and did a few jobs, burn some rubbish, hang a gate, alter a gate that had dropped and covered up one of the beds in the veg garden with weed membrane. We had a look and a discussion about the duck area which needs modifying and by that time it was getting dark so John did the afternoon rounds while I came in and got the dinner sorted.
I am trying to decide what to do with the bed I covered, I plan to put the cut flowers there but there but it has always been a problem area. It has bindweed in it, raspberries canes that I can’t get rid of and comfrey that has sprouted everywhere plus a row of lilacs that are creeping further and further into the bed. For the time being I have covered it to stop anything growing, it is about 10ft wide by 25ft long so it’s a good size area. In order to get something growing there this year I think I will have to leave the membrane down and put some raised beds on top, the decision is what to use without it costing a fortune 🤷♀️
Thursday: I did the morning rounds and then Sam picked me up to look after the twins all day at theirs while she went to work with Luke, once they were all home I went with Sam and Mia to watch Mia in her swimming lesson which was lovely to be able to do. Consequently I didn’t do anything at the farm and John went home in time to do the evening rounds.
Friday: I had high hopes for today but they went south 🤪 We started off early, John went to get feed and I did the morning rounds, it was freezing this morning 🥶 Once I had finished and John was back we went to town as I had to have my routine blood tests first thing. A quick coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast and then back home. There was not a lot of heat in the sun today and so the frost and frozen ground never really thawed, bang goes my plans of working on any open ground. I also had a little wobble today, I felt really tired and a little unwell mid morning so I had to have a lie down 🙄 I recovered after a short while and went out to collect some seeds from the snap dragons and put in some plant supports for the plants like delphinium, lupin and achillea. Then I had to have another lie down 🤷♀️ I was just completely zapped of any energy. By mid afternoon I felt a lot better but carried on resting, Mum called in and we had a cup of tea and chatted about what we had been doing in the week and gardening of course 😁 Hopefully it won’t be so cold all day tomorrow.
I ordered a grow light which arrived today, I thought I would give them a go and see how well they work. Because we have low light levels at this time of year, seedlings benefit from extra light but it needs to be the right kind of light, a light bulb won’t do the job you need a full spectrum light with red and blue light as well. Early seedlings can get leggy without good light and they tend to lean in the direction of the light meaning you constantly have to turn them to promote strength in the stem, a grow light should eliminate that, that’s the hope anyway.
Saturday: Really cold and frosty again with no sun appearing for the best part of the day in fact heavy fog came down. No point planning any outside work today just as well really as I spent more than three hours trying to sort out an app that just kept crashing. In the end, after exhausting all possibilities and communicating with the tech team, I abandoned the app, their loss (well mine as well because I really liked it 😏)
Sunday: A different day altogether 😁 much milder, sunshine and no rain. That meant that we could get some work done outside, John did the morning rounds while I sorted the eggs and indoor stuff and then it was outside to get on. John spent the morning cleaning and hoovering the car and van 🙄 not really the jobs I had in mind but they needed doing so I guess it’s all relevant. Meanwhile I spent the morning right at the front of the driveway where I have a beautiful contorted hazel tree. This will throw up straight stems and a try to revert so in order to keep it contorted the straight stems need cutting off right down at the bottom. This is the best time of year to get that done, before things get manic and I completely forget to do it. I shovelled up leaves from the driveway and cut back encroaching ivy which was trying to grow across the drive and generally had a good tidy up at the entrance, not too tidy just yet but tidy enough. I now have a bundle of hazel whips to decided what to do with and I was going to do the willow but the secateurs are not up to doing the thicker stems so that can wait for another day.
I also sorted out some seeds that I collected the day before, snapdragon and love in a mist, I have put them into little envelopes and put some out for sale. There are probably thousands of snap dragon seeds, I am not sure what I will do with the rest of them yet, I might sow some to bring on as plants for sale 🤷♀️
This afternoon we are off out for dinner, it is a surprise 30th birthday lunch for Macca and just for once I actually had enough time to put something nice on rather than slinging on clean jeans and a top which is what normally happens, so it is a rare occasion, if you see me out wearing a dress you will know why 😂 Of course as soon as we are back it will be work clothes back on to do the afternoon rounds 🤪
Monday 29th November: Oh what a lovely Monday morning 🤪 snow on the ground, flipping freezing and as yet (2pm) it has not thawed 🙄 A different routine this morning, the birds are now all housed and so that means there is no point John doing them in the morning before he goes to work, it becomes my job 😏 I was glibly thinking ‘I don’t need to go out until mid morning’ but then realised that I actually would have to go out first thing of course (silly me) The horses need hay, the water buckets need the ice broken and although we had filled up the feeders in the stable block and for the ducks, the others in the orchard will still need feeding and watering. So I donned my big ‘duvet’ coat, my isotherm wellies (they keep your feet warm down to -10 🥰) and my leather gloves because if they get wet it doesn’t go through to my fingers and make them freezing cold. I did all the feeding and watering and then had to set up a small run for the light Sussex hen with the chick, everything needs to be enclosed and no wild birds should be able to get to the food or water, this is quite a task but luckily, as it happens year on year now, we are prepared. Once I had finished outside it was back indoors to divide up some blocks of mature cheddar for the freezer and get those in along with some blocks of butter and a carton of milk. I am not stocking up honestly lol, the milk I asked John to get on top of our regular delivery because he seemed to be drinking a lot of tea. In the end we didn’t use it and had our normal delivery this morning so I need to freeze it and save it for another day. The butter I am going to need when I start making mince pies by the dozen and if I have them in the freezer ready then I can do them when I want to. The cheese is because John only eats mild cheese which is not much good for flavouring something like cauliflower cheese so if I put it in the freezer I always have some handy and it’s not going hard in the fridge. I have been a Jack of all trades today because after that job I went and painted the pantry. I say painted and John is going to tell me it’s not finished but that is the look I am going for 😂 he will hate it, I will love it, it’s my pantry and once the door is on I doubt he will ever go in there 😂 Then I spent a bit of time trying out new bits of crafting, I want to make some decorations for myself and so have been having a go at cone trees, not pine cone trees but cone shaped trees, I haven’t finished yet but if I am pleased with the result I will take photos. A quick sit down with a cup of tea and then onto the next job of the day, caramelised red onion chutney making 😁
With the chutney on the go, the dinner prepped ready for this evening and an apple and blueberry crumble also made, I got all togged up to go outside and do the afternoon feeding and egg collecting. Luckily the outside taps had thawed and I was able to get more water to the ducks, geese and horses who also had more hay. The shift took me far longer than it did to write about it 😂 I had planned on coming in for a cuppa before shutting them away at dusk but by the time I had finished that, collected the post, checked the egg shed, fed the dogs and the cats it was getting dark and so I shut down doors etc before coming back inside and taking off my artic gear. I just got into the kitchen when John arrived home, typical that he arrives just as everything is done. He asked if I had painted the pantry, I told him yes but he won’t like it, he said and I quote ‘it’s your pantry, you can paint it how you like’ 😮 As we went through to have a look, John shouted at the dog who was busy helping herself to eggs from the bucket! Normally I put the bucket of eggs in the sink but there was the paint tray in there so I put it on the floor, I won’t make that mistake again 😂 The reason I don’t box up the eggs right away is because then the cat sits on the boxes which is ok-ish when the weather is dry but if it’s wet she gets the boxes dirty. Sometimes I feel the battle is already lost before I even get up 🤪 I complain all the time that the geese eat all the chicken food (because they should not be down in the stable block) the dog eats the cat food (he reaches up on the side to sneak it out of their bowl) the chickens eat diesels cat food (big no no) if the he hasn’t eaten it all and now the dog is eating the eggs, I need some sort of order back with the feed routine which will be easier now the birds are all shut away.
Hens on lockdown 😏
I think I am just going to relax this evening, once the dinner is made, eaten and washed up that is! I hope it thaws overnight, Smallholding life is a lot harder when it’s freezing outside.
Tuesday: i did the rounds again this morning and it has all thawed thank goodness, it was hard work over the last few days 🙄 The art of the job is getting in through the stable doors without letting any hens out 😂 this morning just as I opened the door and ducked down to go in, one of them flew straight at me from where she was perching, I did t have the heart to tell her she has a very long time until she can go outside again 😏
I didn’t have anything in particular planned for today which was just as well as Sam came over with the twins and Shelley and Flo came after Flo finished nursery so it was a few hours of chaos and cacophony 😝 Once they had all left to do the school run I sat in total silence enjoying the moment 🤪
I did have time to make a cake before anyone arrived though, it was a recipe I wanted to have a go at, pumpkin cake with a cream cheese frosting. The verdict from the little ones was ‘nah’ the verdict from Sam was ‘not bad’ I can’t decide if I like it or not 🤷♀️ I think if I did it again I would doctor the recipe somewhat as it is quite heavy, more like a pudding texture but chances are I won’t make it again lol.
Wednesday: Busy day today, first up, the morning rounds and sorting out fresh water, feed etc then onto digging up the dahlia bulbs and putting them to dry out in the greenhouse before storing for the winter. The smaller ones I have left in the ground to see if they survive but the big star ones and the cafe au lait I have dug up as I don’t want to lose those. Some of them have got massive over summer and so I should be able to get lots more plants from them in spring. I also found a couple of lupin seed heads which I have drying in the kitchen now, also for sowing again next spring. I had quickly painted the remaining bits I needed to do in the pantry before doing the gardening and so once that was dry I went back to get some bits of furniture cleaned and moved in there. The apple rack is going to live in there and needed the dust cleaned from it, also a cupboard that needed a hoovering to get the dust off. The rest of the day until feeding time I spent cleaning out screws and nails from the workbench which is also going to be going in there. The bench is one that we inherited at our old house from the previous owner, it is old, heavy and well used, it will look fab once it is cleaned up. But before I can do that I needed to clean out the little cubby holes at the back which were full of screws and nails, some of which have been there for well over twenty years I imagine 😂 I sorted through thousands of screws and nails of all different sizes and types, lots were rusty and so have been thrown away, lots are still very useable and indeed we are always looking for nails and screws so sorting them all out will be a good job, well done. I have now ordered a screw organiser thingy that will go on the wall and I can sort them out into sizes hopefully. I came in for a s quick sit down before having to go out and do the afternoon rounds and saw what I thought was an egg customer sat in the car, I went out with more eggs as we have had a few visitors to the shed today. He got out and asked for Samantha, my thought were now whirring as the horses were due to have the dentist visit but I didn’t think it was today, I asked him if he was the dentist and yes he was 🙄 A quick phonecall to Sam and it seems she had the wrong day written down 🤪 he agreed to come back tomorrow bless him, which is when Sam thought he was coming. The reason that I couldn’t supervise is because Sam doesn’t know how Jack is going to react, previously he had to be sedated to have his teeth rasped and it’s not something I would be confident overseeing. I finally got a sit down for about half and hour before starting with the afternoon rounds and egg collecting.
Huge dahlia tuber root, hopefully I can get a lot more plants from it next spring.
I am not quite sure where Thursday and Friday went lol or what I did on those days except that the horse dentist came back to do their teeth and it’s good to finally get a rough idea of biscuits age, apparently somewhere around 20 years old. She is in good oral health though which is good to know, Jack also has no problems and his lameness has gone so that is good as well. I have had the twins three times since Thursday morning so no wonder I have no idea what else I have done 🤪 Friday (I think) I went into town with Shelley and Flo for a mooch round the charity shops and to get a nice coffee. I found a few bargains including a gorgeous Rumtopf pot, I did already have one but this one was so lovely I couldn’t leave it sat there so I bought it 😁 I gave the other one to shelley so she can have a go at it next year. Traditionally you fill the rumtopf with layers of fruit, rum and sugar, the fruit can be a complete mixture which means to can add to it as the season progresses. You then eat the boozy fruit around Christmas time. I tend to use plums and brandy but any combination works just as well if you fancy giving it a go.
Saturday: I had the twins for a couple of hours while Sam and luke went to a meeting and then it was time to go to the family Christmas party. Each year (except last year) my sister hires the hall in Kelmscot and we have a big family get together, there are a lot of us and we need a big space for everyone to be able to come 😂 This year it was mainly centred around the children having fun so there was a disco and games and a sack of gifts for them all, we all did something for a buffet and as always there was plenty to eat and drink 🥰 It is important for the children to get together as a good few of them have only known pandemic conditions which is really quite sad.
Sunday: Up and about early this morning and after getting all the Smallholding jobs done, feeding, watering etc, and then the household things done, washing on, rubbish out etc, I could finally get on with the job I was excited to get started, the pantry 🥰 We had moved some of the cupboards in yesterday but we could finally get started on fitting shelves and fixtures. I am delighted with how it is going so far, I have plenty of shelves and storage space and I have lots of hanging space for drying flowers or storing onions and garlic. I have tried to use everything I already had here and have easily achieved that, I still have a fair amount to put in there but here is a sneak preview 😁 I can’t wait to start stocking it with goodies 😍
Monday 22nd November: The temperatures have dropped to normal levels now and so I think our run of mild weather is gone for good. I don’t mind a cold dry winter it is much better than a mild wet one 🙄 Even though it is colder the sun was out shining away and eventually it warmed the ground up enough to get rid of the frost, I had already decided I was going to be doing a bit outside and the sun was an added bonus. Bearing in mind it has got colder I filled up a tonne bag with straw and took it to the orchard where I used it for the Guineas, rabbit, quail, lovely gut Sussex and the turkeys. All the pens and huts are now filled with a good amount of straw for them to burrow into if they need it. I also filled up all the wild birds feeders so that they have plenty to keep them going on a frosty morning.
After that it was on to the big job of the day, planting all the tulip bulbs as well as some giant alliums. I think there were about 450 tulips bulbs if my memory serves me correctly, they have all now been planted in various places and should look splendid come the spring. Some of them I used to plant up some pots that will go out for sale next spring, most of them went into the raised flower bed in front of the house, a sprinkling of them went into various other pots and then a good amount went into one of the raised beds in the veg garden. Those ones will be specifically for cut flowers and once they have been cut the bulbs will be discarded. This is what happens in the industry, once the flower is cut it can’t send goodness back to the bulb, normally you would allow the foliage to die back so that the bulb can get a good recovery ready for the next year, but picking or cutting the flower means that doesn’t happen and so the bulbs are discarded. This means that once all the tulips have been picked I can clear the bed out and use it for veg later. The pots of tulips I have had to put under a metal run that we use for chickens sometimes, this is to protect the, from all and sundry, chickens from digging in the pots, squirrels from hiding nuts in the pots and this disturbing the bulbs, I know foxes will dig up bulbs, not sure if they eat them or just dig to see what else is under there. Best to try and protect them as much as possible otherwise all the work ends up being for nothing. I still have a small box of gladioli bulbs to plant as well, I need to decide where they will go. I had to books I ordered arrive today, ‘the flower farmers year’ and a flower arranging book, plenty to read and I will probably find I have already done something wrong but I had to put the bulbs in before the book arrived and certainly before I had chance to read it through.
I did notice that although the garlic I planted is coming up but that the same cannot be said for the onions, something has been pulling them out so I have now covered them with environmesh to give any remaining ones a bit of a chance. I also can’t see any sign of the broad beans I sowed, I am thinking that the mice may have got them, I really should have sown them in pots first and then planted them out 🙄
We had a rich beef stew in the slow cooker for dinner tonight and an apple and blackberry crumble, definitely getting into comfort food season now. The Christmas pudding has been boiling away on the hob for two hours, it has another two hours to go before allowing it to cool and then store it ready for its main event on Christmas Day. I also got a soup veg bag out of the freezer this morning and made a batch of soup, should be enough for the next couple of days and a welcome warm lunch on cold days. I think soup is the best thing during the winter months, full of goodness and it warms you right through to the core 🥰
Tuesday: Early morning appointment for blood tests this morning so I was up and at it as soon as the alarm went off. I had I intended to come back home and get on with some things but Shelley suggested a trip into town and so that’s where we went. We had a lovely morning mooching around and getting a few Christmas presents sorted, plus a coffee stop which is always a pleasure. We stopped to collect Flo from nursery on our way back and I spotted some amazing looking ginkgo biloba leaves, when I started gathering them up they made the most beautiful and natural pompom 🥰 The leaf collecter lorry arrived shortly after so we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time 😁
Nature is a wonderful thing 😍
Once back home I got on with sorting out dinner for the evening and then a bit of card making u til it was time to do the afternoon rounds. The day finishes early at this time out year (outside at any rate) by around 4.30 it is starting to get dark. I decided the dark evenings are a blessing and they give me time to make things and so this evening I made a dried flower wreath. The wreath is from last Christmas, I leave it to dry all year and you end up with a lovely dried moss ring perfect for adding dried flowers that I picked in the summer months and hung to dry.
I seem to have lost a couple of days in between lol, suffice to say that I didn’t do much outside stuff mainly inside. I have been filling any gaps in the walls of the pantry and my sister came over with a drawing she has done of how it will look when it’s done. I need to give the walls a miss coat of paint, just enough to take the blockiness out of the ply walls and make it look rustic.
I think it was Wednesday that the APHA announced that poultry must all be housed and bio security measures put in place from Monday, here we go again. To be fair we were expecting it as we do nearly every year now, one of the reasons it hardly seems worth continuing with poultry 🙄 Hardly good for them when they have to spend months locked away, let’s hope it’s only them this year and not us again.
Thursday: My plan was to paint the pantry but first I wanted to get some cleaning done, the low sun at this time of year drives me nuts as it shows up all the dust 😂 After lunch Shelley, Flo, Sam, Lucie and George called in after their morning at soft play. Later that afternoon Sam was back with all the kiddies including Mia and the twins stayed here while Mia went for her swimming lesson.
Jack (horse) is lame 😒 no apparent cause at the minute, no cuts or heat in his leg, it’s possible he has knocked it or kicked it himself. He will be monitored for a couple of days to see how he goes, no point bringing him in as he will just kick the stable door and that won’t do his leg any good as it is one of his front ones. He is bearing some weight on it but clearly has an issue, I cut him some fresh willow to see if that helps at all, he is better off to continue moving at this stage we think.
Friday: I still haven’t got the pantry painted and I had no intention of doing it today either, it’s blooming cold out there so I would rather be inside doing something else 😜 Mostly that consists of making Christmas cards etc, trying out new ideas, making bread and cooking. The weather took a dive at lunchtime, windy, rainy, cold, not nice today at all, I was not looking forward to going out and doing the rounds late afternoon. In a couple more days that will not be an issue as they will all be penned up in the stable block so I will only have to nip across the hard standing.
John has just phoned to say he is in the queue for a booster vaccination at a walk in clinic, that means I will probably have to go outside again to shut everything away for the night 🥶
Josh and Flo are coming to tea tonight and staying over, it’s been a long time since they have stayed at Nanas, before the pandemic they would regularly come and stay and then everything went sideways and we have never really quite got back on track with sleepovers 😏 Spaghetti Bolognese and a jam sponge pudding for dessert is on the menu.
You may wonder (or you may not) how I am getting on without the Rayburn, well I have a lot more time to do the things I like doing and I thought I would miss the heat but I don’t. The only thing I really miss is being able to dry the washing each night but it’s a small price to pay compared to the amount of work it took all year to run and maintain it.
Saturday: Oh my days what a night 🙄 gale force winds were roaring and kept me and plenty of other people awake half the night,seriously strong gusts at times, scary stuff but no damage though as I write this Saturday evening the winds have not actually stopped all day and are still pretty fierce. Add to that snow, yes bloody snow and it was not at all nice out there, the wind was bitingly cold. I had to go out and top up the horses water and also give them some hay, on the way back I made up the stables in case the snow didn’t clear and I had to bring them in. John went off to get feed once he had done the morning rounds and then in the afternoon he reluctantly went out to fasten down some of the roof that had come loose from constant buffering. At 4pm shelley came over with Martin and the kids and we walked up to the farm next door where they were having the Christmas craft Fayre ooosh the wind was strong and cold but it all added to the adventure, we met Mum up there, had hot chocolates and mulled wine, bought some raffle tickets and then walked home again. I will be glad when I don’t have to go outside anymore tonight 🥶
This is my pantry which at the moment is a blank canvass but it will look super and be a great place to store all my produce and things. Beautiful but could do without it lol
Sunday: It started off as a normal enough day, we did the animals, Sam and Mia came over to check the horses and rug up Jack. We had a discussion about where and when we will move them next but at the minute they are staying as they are. We went to the farm shop to get some bales of sawdust ready to shut the birds away and then we went out. Basically I dragged John round a couple of garden centres and a Christmas craft Fayre. I am doing well buying locally made gifts for the girls, I can’t really do it for the grandchildren but whenever I can I try and buy local. We bumped into Charlie and Macca at one of the centres so we stopped and had coffee and cake with them. Up to that point things were grand 🤪 We got home, unloaded and then the power went 🙄 I spent too much bloody time trying to get through to the power company, they are very busy due to the storm we had and so basically send you round and round in circles trying to report the outage and find out any info about when it would be back on. We had the big job of moving all the birds to do so we got togged up and went out to get that started. We put in clean bedding, blocked up any escape holes, put in water, feed, dust baths, perches and grit bowls as well as making nice little nest box areas. We also moved the ducks this time, they have gone into the point of lay pen, obviously they don’t roost so I made a little sleeping/egg laying area out of hay bales and straw for them. By this time it is starting to get dark and we have no lights 😂 we got the geese back up into the back paddock where they will stay for the duration and we herded the ducks from their current abode to their new des res. Then it was time to move all the hens, some of them had already been living in the stable block so they were easy enough. A few stragglers in the side paddock had gone to their usual hit and so we gathered those up a d put them in with the others. Then onto the big hut in the front paddock, we filled the first two poultry crates and took them to the stable, when we came out the lights were back on in the house yippee 🙌 We collected the last two poultry crates of birds and put those in the stable and finally we were done. It’s a pain having to shut the birds away for what is likely to be a few months but it’s what we have to do. On the flip side it makes them all easier to look after and of course they won’t get eaten by the fox plus we shall be able to find all the eggs. I have given them some extra treats, sunflower seeds and dried seaweed and I have used diatomaceous Earth in their feed as a wormer and in their bedding and dust bath, it’s like a five star poultry hotel 😂 Once that was done it was time to come in and get that cup of tea we had been looking forward to when we came home earlier in the day.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 