Flowers, strawberry picking & a hydropod.

Monday 27th June 2022: Blimey where is the year going, shooting by fast 😝 We have a lot of family social events coming up over the next couple of months and so the time will probably shoot by faster than I would like it too, it won’t be a relaxed summer more a full on charge.

It was lovely and sunny when I first woke up this morning and that’s when I should have got up, but I didn’t, I fell asleep again and then when I woke up next time it was raining 🌧 I am happy to see a bit of rain but I also needed to cut flowers and I got soaked doing that, my own fault I should have got up earlier 🤪 I have plenty of flowers to do this week coming and am waiting patiently for the the summer blooms to appear, they are coming I can see the flower heads they are just not opening yet. I have plenty of veg and soft fruit to get out and pick too but I will wait until later in the day and hopefully I will have dried out a little by then. The rain is a double edged sword, desperately needed to get things growing but it hinders the harvesting, treading on wet soil will damage the structure of it and make a mess to boot if I try planting anything, damp soil is ideal. No matter I have plenty of other jobs to keep me busy 😂 Soft wood cuttings can be done at this time of year as well as things like carnations and pinks. It’s time for sowing biennial seeds though I am wondering if I should bother or not, jury’s out on sweet Williams, not sure if they are worth the bother and wall flowers well, not really my favourite. Rocket and honesty though, they are delightful additions and of course the honesty seed heads are a favourite for drying. My flower drying space is rapidly being filled up and I am already looking at other areas to use, I also need to do a bit of reading up about storing large amounts of dried flowers and grasses which I may do today as it is raining.

The fox got in to my neighbours hens and had the lot 😤 it’s pretty soul destroying when that happens, we are constantly on the lookout and it’s pretty tiring I can tell you. The fox we are seeing looks like a youngster probably last years cub, it is around at all times of the day and evening and raiding our compost bins over night. It is constantly around which means it is probably living close by somewhere, I can definitely smell it when it’s about.

The weather is changeable today, one minute sunshine the next rain, I am doing the hokey, Cokey 🤪 Actually I spent a bit of time in the greenhouse, I had collected some cuttings from dianthus, hydrangea and gaura so I potted those up and also sowed some honesty and sweet william as well as some more zinnia. There is soo much to do at this time of year that I don’t know if I am coming or going at times, just keep moving forward, that’s the key.

After a pit stop lunch I got on with doing the first lot of flowers that were being collected this afternoon. A new customer that wants regular flowers which is fabulous and has a client that may also want regular flowers (little happy dance here) I also just confirmed another order for early July 😁 With the orders coming in really well it’s time to think about next years flowers already and I have just put in an order for some beautiful Italian ranunculus in various colours. The problem is where will I put them 😂 Don’t worry I will find somewhere to squeeze them in, I was a bit late for these this year but oooo they are going to be stunning next year 🥰

Busy afternoon and busy evening it never stops 🙄 Late afternoon I was cutting flowers for drying then decided I needed more drying space so I found an unused welly rack and got John to put that up, even now it won’t be enough space and I am trying to work out where else I can get some hanging 😂 The problem is the boot room gets dusty as does the back area so they are no good really, I am using space in the pantry as well but I could really do with a nice garage with high eaves 😝 Then after dinner I went out to cut some dead stuff back, feed a few things that are struggling, plant a few bits to fill gaps, water the plants in the cold frame area and then pick some strawberries, raspberries and red currants before they go over. Finally sitting down at 10pm! It will be bedtime in ten minutes I reckon.

Tuesday: Up and about, jump in the shower, get the washing on, hang it out, pray it doesn’t rain 😝 Windy enough to dry it quickly today, mixed bag, some sun, plenty of wind, colder when there is cloud cover. Have a hair cut, crack on with the mornings work. The work was planting up anything I have in pots to fill gaps in the front beds. But first each pot needed a thorough watering as did the soil I was digging into, it is as dry as a bone despite rain last Saturday, I definitely need to dig in a good amount of well rotted manure, the soil is great looking but lacking somewhat in substance. I still have gaps, I think last year I filled them with lots of bedding dahlias some of which have returned this year I am happy to say. I may even take the chance of leaving my bigger dahlia tubers in the ground and cover them, it will save an awful lot of work and storing over winter. That took me up lunchtime when I came in for a good sit down, cue John coming home and ‘have you been sat down all morning’ 😤 It is always a working lunch unless I am really tired then it’s a nap 😝 but today I was reading up about dried flowers and storing them, mostly reading Bex Partridge’s blog, her dried flowers are awesome, the colours are amazing and she will have a go at drying anything, nothing ventured, nothing gained 😁 With the inspiration fresh in my mind I set out after lunch to cut flowers for drying.

Before I knew where I was it was 3pm and I had not only read a lot on dried flowers but also ordered a hydropod cuttings propagator, oops. Well as I am notoriously rubbish at cuttings I thought I may as well give myself a helping hand and the reviews are fabulous, I even know someone in person who has one and says it’s brilliant.

Greenhouse Sensations Hydropod cuttings propagator, I will give it a whirl and see how I get on.

A bit of cutting back, weeding and watering the small raised bed at the other side of the house while the dinner was cooking, then dinner, then deliver some flowers, then pop to the shop to get some meat for a bbq at my brothers tomorrow, pop to Mums for a cuppa and say hello to my Aussie family, back home, cut some flowers for tomorrow’s bouquet (because it is supposed to rain overnight and early morning) and finally cut some shade netting and tie in sausage shapes around the cherry tree branches so that I actually get some this year, and that’s another day done.

The Aussie family have been to Sardinia for a week to meet up with Monique’s Dad who is from Czechoslovakia and they flew back to the UK today. They are here until Friday when they will be going home and so tomorrow we are having a bbq at my other brothers house hence the shopping.

I am determined to get some cherries this year, normally the bloody birds strip the tree clean before I even get one. Josh said to me the other day ‘ are you doing cherry pie this year Nana, we have cherry pie every year don’t we’ 🥰 Well the fact is that we only ever had it once, the one year I was able to get some but if my Grandson wants cherry pie and thinks we have it every year then I am doing my utmost to make sure that is the case 😂 hence the sausage wrapped branches on the tree, I will get cherries for that pie 🥧

Wednesday: A busy day as always with an even busier afternoon/evening. I had multiple phone conversations about the ride on mower that went to be fixed, basically it’s so old they cannot get the parts anymore. We have had our moneys worth from it and so we are getting another second hand one. Flowers to do for the weekly delivery, once they were made up we went off to deliver them, then onto look at the mower we are going to buy and then straight from there to my brothers for a bbq evening with the family to say goodbye to my brother and his family who will be flying home tomorrow.

Thursday: A busy morning again trying to get everything done before 10am when someone was coming to collect some plants and then a friend arriving for a DIY bucket of flowers for a wedding she is doing for her friend on Saturday. We have not seen each other in person for about 8 years I think but it’s one of those friendships that just picks up where it left off. We met at college on an Organic Gardening course and so have a lot in common, she owns a very successful green roof company, Oxford Green Roofs, and we had plenty to catch up on and stories to tell. A good few hours of uplifting chatter and positive vibes, plus flower talk, brilliant. After she left I had just enough time to grab a cup of tea before the twins arrived for their Thursday afternoon visit while Mia goes swimming.

Friday: Up early again to get jobs done before going out for the day, such a busy social life at the minute 😂 all or nothing just like growing produce. I got the bouquet made up and some jam jar flowers to go out, did the eggs, plus numerous jobs that I can’t even remember. Then off to get some routine blood tests done, return home, eat some breakfast and hand over a bouquet to a customer. Whizz round and do any last minute things before Shelley arrives and we go off for the day strawberry picking with the three youngest grandchildren. As the twins are always eyeing up my strawberries I thought it would be great to take them where there are thousands of them to pick 🥰 They had a great time and Lucies very primal cry when she saw all the lovely juicy red berries was hilarious.

Back home mid afternoon and time for a sit down and maybe a power nap, if I didn’t then I was never going to function well for the rest of the day.

Once recovered I sorted out dinner, put that on to cook and did various jobs like soft fruit picking plus cherries as well, cut a lot of flowers that are too short for bouquets but will do beautifully in jam jars, got the eggs sorted and ready for the morning, watered the tunnels, watched a live online weekly round up with the flower growing group I am with and then gardeners world, day done. Both of the things I was watching reminded me that I still have a lot of jobs to do in the coming week 🙄

Saturday: Up early getting the jam jar flowers made up (still in my pyjamas) getting the egg shed loaded ready for the day ahead, sorting out household bits and then getting ready for the day ahead because I am out again today as well 😝 Hen party today, fancy dress 🤪 And it’s not like me to say this but I rather hope the weather warms up a tad as it’s rather cloudy and breezy today 😏

Just for fun, a little hand held for Sam to carry on her hen do today x

It rained most of the day but that was fine we had a fabulous day on the river 😁 Great fun was had by all, plenty of drink, food and silly games 😂

Unfortunately we lost 7 hens to the fox 🤬 John was one of those giving us all a lift and we left around 11am, he was gone for an hour and a bit and when he drove back in the drive he could see dead chickens all over the front paddock. We lost 3 yesterday as well, all from the front so all our young hens that we haven’t even had our moneys worth out of yet 😏 Totally exasperating, night time raids or even evening ones is one thing but in the middle of the bloody daytime is quite another, what a waste of time, energy and money, feeling deflated 😞

Sunday: I went to bed early last night, it was a tiring day lol, consequently though I woke early this morning 🙄 So at 4.30 I made a cup of tea and took it back to drink in bed while reading. I got up about 5.30 and cracked on with some jobs, might as well get an early start. We went out around 9.30 (kept the hens in the safety of their outdoor pens today) we had some breakfast out, bought some plants, bought an old book on growing flowers for cutting and then made our way home. That was harder than it sounds, first we encountered an accident that had not long happened and the traffic was backed up, once we got past that we headed home on the bypass. Got to the end of it to join the A40 and that was closed for resurfacing, now I am all in favour of them resurfacing the roads but the least they could do was put a sign at the previous exit to say you can’t get off further down 😂 There is a roundabout so everyone was going either all the way round and back on the bypass or off the first exit. We chose the first exit, thought we will cut through left to the nearest village and along the back roads and get back home the other way. Nope every Tom, dick and Harry was thinking the same thing and from the other direction too which caused a blockage in the narrow roads through. We headed back from the direction we came and took the next right through a different village to try and get back across towards home, well the traffic was heavy, every back lane we were driving along so was everyone else, blimey 😧 we didn’t expect that today.

We haven’t really done anything else today apart from attempt to watch the Grand Prix which has had troubles of its own, luckily everyone is ok. What is funny is that we were sat watching the warm up programme and the Red Arrows went over our house and then 10mins or so later there they were on the telly at Silverstone 😝

I have spent a fair amount of time reading about sowing biennials, taking cuttings and Autumn sowing, plus updating my profile on the Flowers from the Farm page. I had a call from my sister to say that she was talking to a florist about 15miles away from us and telling her about me and my flowers and she asked where I was and then said oh yes I have heard about her flowers 😁 (I assume it was in a good way 😂) I am not really planning on doing much today to be honest, I think it’s ok to take a break every now and then isn’t it (even if there are tons of jobs to be done)

Have a great week, either enjoy what you do or do what you enjoy 😊

These poppies are absolutely gorgeous but even with the correct conditioning they will only last around 3 days in a vase. The way to get good value from these is to cut some of the stems in ‘cracked bud’ form so that one the first ones have gone over the next lot are flowering 😁

Happy New Year 😁

I hope you have all had a lovely festive time and I wish you a very happy 2022. We still have Covid (who would have thought it 🙄) but we are getting to grips with living with it on a daily basis, let’s hope this year coming is a little more like life used to be 😁

We have wined and dined, loved and laughed, rested and recuperated, felt grateful for what we have, watched endless Christmas tv and generally had a fabulous time. All the while of course, we have had to continue doing the daily routines with animal feeding and care no matter what day it was but that is ok it’s what we signed up for.

I have also spent some considerable time thinking about how we move forward with the Smallholding this coming year. I had mused over cut flowers and that is still very much part of the plan I just need to put it into practice now. As well as the usual bunches of flowers I saw a lovely jam jar posy while I was researching and thought ‘oooo yes, I like those’ they very much they fit in with the ethos here, the jam jars can be returned time and time again for refilling, they are small enough to fit on any table or surface if you don’t have a large enough area for a full vase of flowers and all kinds of up-cycled embellishments can be used including the customers own if they want a particular ribbon used, yep I really like this idea, ‘Flowers @ Friesland Farm’ is in its newborn phase 🥰 Locally grown, no pesticides or artificial fertilisers used, minimal miles, grown with love and pride, doesn’t get better than that does it 😁 Add to that the plants I divide or grown from seed to sell at the gate and the direction for the year is looking good, just got to hope the weather is kind 😜

Betwixtmas: 😂 We we’re not idle (not all the time anyway) over the holidays, the chickens and ducks keep on laying, the horses need checking over, the other non laying lot still need feeding and watering as do the dogs and cats as well as ourselves. We have been busy most days with cleaning out and cleaning up, the huts that the birds were moved out of when the avian flu came have now been cleaned and power washed. The hard standing has been cleared of leaves and debris and power washed, the leaves all over the driveway have been raked and piled under the trees and we have been moving woodchip onto the paths in the garden. We also moved plenty of barrowfuls to the orchard where the ground deteriorated very quickly once the rain came. When the weather permitted we worked on the veg garden to get ahead ready for spring, putting home made compost on the beds, harvesting leeks, carrots and beetroots, we still have kale and cabbages in the ground, the broad beans are growing nicely as are the garlic and onions. Flower bulbs are beginning to appear which is always a lovely sign that the wheel keeps on turning. There were also plenty of times when we sat and watched a film or saw family and ate up all the festive food 🥰 No matter how hard I try not to have too much food in, there always seems to be too much, none of it is wasted though. John had bubble and squeak on Boxing Day and I have three more portions frozen as well as cooked veg which will make soup at some point. I have some cake from an unexpected visit that I also froze because we have Christmas cake and Christmas pudding to eat up first and of course plenty of chocolate to get through 🤪

Once all the festive food is used up I have set myself a bit of a challenge (in fact I have started it even though we still have stuff left) I am not doing ‘veganuary’ but I am intending to make vegetables as much, if not the biggest, part of our meals. Sounds easy right but I also want to use seasonal and mostly what I have grown myself, this is a lot easier said than done. I searched for some inspirational recipes online but most of them overlook the seasonal and there are plenty of ingredients that have come from far flung corners of the world which I want to avoid. So you see keeping it interesting is a challenge. I will be using store cupboard goods that I have already such as rice and pasta (though I could make my own pasta if I run out) As it is winter then soup is the easiest go to lunch, packed with home grown veg, very nutritious and healthy which is what is needed after the indulgences lately.

The first recipe was lovely and lacto-vegetarian (it seems there are different versions of vegetarianism) John did not eat this 😂 but I fried off some butternut squash (cubed) along with some garlic and some dried sage in olive oil. Fry just enough to get them coated and then add a splash of water to flash cook until the squash is soft, then add chopped mushrooms until it all caramelises, add to cooked pasta and I crumbled blue cheese on top though you could use whatever cheese you like such as Parmesan. Twas delicious I have to say and what’s more it felt like comfort food which is all the more important during the winter months. I also got some vegetable soup going in the slow cooker, turnip, butternut squash, carrots and onions from the garden, I added celery (which I had bought for Christmas) some mushrooms and some peas, veg stock, bouillon powder and pepper. Cooked it down for a good few hours until everything was soft then turned it off overnight, blitzed it and reheated in a pan for lunch the next day, delish and I felt I had already had my five for the day 😁 Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum 😝

Butternut squash quickly fried in olive oil with garlic and sage, add water to flash cook, once soft add mushrooms and cook, add to cooked pasta and crumble cheese of your choice on top 🥰

New Year’s Eve went without a bang this year in fact we went to bed at 11.30 lol, well it arrives wether you wait up to see it or not doesn’t it and I think it was pretty muted everywhere this year. New Year’s Day we started off well, John started to build a plant table for me, for the plants I will have for sale this year coming and I sorted out all the pots of English Bluebells which will be the first plants to go out, and then it started to rain quite heavily 🙄 So we came in for coffee and waited for the rain to stop, it didn’t, so we took down the Christmas decorations and hoovered and polished instead 😝 Years ago I would have cooked a roast dinner on NYD but ever since the kids were late teens and too hungover the next day, I haven’t bothered. The place looks bare with the docs down and I can’t remember what went where beforehand 🤷‍♀️ but it’s a job done and quite literally ‘dusted’ 😝 sorry, not sorry.

I have been through all my seeds to see what I needed to get, turns out I have rather a lot of them and don’t need much else at all. For the few seeds I did want, we popped to the garden centre to get them there, I also picked up some first early seed potatoes. I am good to go now and as always I am chomping at the bit but I also know it doesn’t pay to get started too early. Our weather at the minute is ridiculously warm, 17c which is insane for Winter but I am also aware that it can take a real plummet at any point and if I have over sown I will be struggling for space so it’s best to hold fire and wait a while. There are a few things I can get started, some extra broad beans, there is still time to sow those and on the flower front, sweet peas can still be started off now.

Sunday: The weather was kinder today up until just after lunch, we got busy, John finished the plant table while I sorted out more plants to put out for sale. Once that was sorted and John cleared up the wet leaves on the drive he came to help me on the bed that was the herb bed and needs clearing. It has taken quite a while, many of the bigger herbs such as fennel and lovage had very big strong roots and I needed to wait for the ground to be soft enough to dig them up. There were a few other things to salvage, ice plants which I have potted up and will move to the tortoise run for them to feed on, a blackcurrant sage which I wanted to get out in good condition, that has now been replanted elsewhere and also a large patch of aster which has now been dug up and divided into many plants 😁 On the whole the area is now ready to clear ready to put grass down. The project after that which is also rattling round in my head at the same time is the cut flower patch, forming a plan on what to put in and how many of each plant. John and I also talked about putting the patch in the front paddock but we decided that for this year it will be better in the veg garden and we will work towards moving it next year. The idea being that it gets sun all day, it can be seen and even accessed on a pick your own basis if needs be plus it will look lovely but I need to see how well this year does before investing in fencing etc.

Have a great week, still one more bank holiday to go 😁

A busy week, harvesting and processing & the reason for the busy week 🥰

Thursday: Yes it’s Thursday before I even realised I hadn’t written a single thing for the blog 🤣 Thats because I ha e been so busy I haven’t even had time to think about it at all.

Most of the early week was wall to wall blue sky and it was pretty hot so that meant the usual scrabble round in the mornings and get done what I could outside. Picking and some watering, all the usual feeding, watering, cleaning out jobs. I did remember to take some photos mind you so something ran through my mind at least 🙄

This time of year is very busy with picking and harvesting and prepping everything ready for the winter, mostly chopping and freezing but it takes up a fair amount of time. I have made a couple of soup bags up as well, I was really happy with this one as it was very colourful.

Runner beans, tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, onion, garlic chives and celery leaves, should make a tasty, healthy soup in mid winter 🥰

This morning I picked some elderberries but I had to wash them and freeze them as I dont have time at the minute to make some syrup which is what I want to do with them. I also chopped up windfall apples and bagged and froze those. I cooked sweetcorn in the microwave, still in the husk, which is a fab way to do them. When they are done, cut the bottom off and peel of the leaves, easy and quick. I then vacuum packed these so they will last a long time in the freezer without getting frosted. I still have not quite got fully to grips with the vacuum sealer but I am getting the hang of it and it’s a great gadget. I weighed up the pros and cons of the fact that it uses plastic but it does keep the food in a better quality for longer and I can always re use the bags for smaller quantities another time.

This weeks blog will be short and sweet as I have forgotten to do half of it and I will not be around to do the other half of it 😜 We have Charlie’s hen weekend this weekend, so Friday I will be busy getting ready for that and then the weekend itself. John will be in charge here, I will be enjoying myself 😁

Friday: An unbelievable coincidence has occurred and I am very excited about it. My neighbour messaged me this morning about a watercolour she had seen on another site, she recognised it instantly and blow me down if it wasn’t our paddock with the old hen huts in and Jack grazing. It is beautiful and in a style I love. I am in touch with the artist, he has agreed to sell it to us and it should be here shortly, so chuffed, it’s brilliant and I love it so it will go for framing and hang in my kitchen 😁 Happy Days 😁

By the time this is published on Sunday eve, Charlie will know all about her hen do so I can safely write this on Friday 😜 The reason I can’t write much about the Smallholding is because this week especially we have been working absolutely flat out to organise a hen do extraordinaire, I asked ‘can we do this’ the reply was ‘with bells on’ and so we have pulled off a boho bell tent, hen do village, with a hundred and one little touches that Charlie will hopefully love, everything we have organised and arranged was with her love of these things in mind 🥰 no doubt there will be plenty of pictures coming up very soon. High fives 🙌 to everybody who helped, spending hours with planning and building the hen weekend, you are bloody awesome 🤩

Freezing 🥶 Thawing & Valentines 💘

Monday 8th February 2021: Morning 😀 it’s 9.30am and I have sat down to have a coffee. I have already been out and rolled a wheel of hay to the paddock with John and fed the horses, lit the Rayburn, got a loaf of bread proving, got lunch and this evenings dinner organised, put some washing on, fed the cats and dogs, made an appointment for bloods at the end of the week and a multitude of other little jobs that needed doing. It’s cold outside brrrr , last night the wind gusts kept waking me up, around 10 times I would say as the roof rattles with each one 🙄 It is a crisp, dry cold morning though with a light dusting of snow, actually not a bad morning, at least it’s not raining 😝 John has gone off to work this morning but he doesn’t have a lot on this week so he will be here quite a lot, he said the less he goes to work, the less he wants to go! Not sure what I am going to do today, I plan to sling the hoover round quickly and I have some bits of paperwork to sort out and file, too cold to do much outside so that’s off the list, maybe I will work out what I am going to plant this year and where also what I need to do in order to get going when the time is right. That last bit will be a long list as nothing has been done in preparation as yet, there is cutting back, weeding, mulching and re positioning to do. I had planted a flower bed in the veg garden, that’s because I didn’t have anywhere else to put flowers but now we have the front beds I could move a lot of the bigger stuff and just leave good pollinating plants behind. The calendula which readily self set everywhere are great for the veg plots but the delphiniums, rudbeckia, dahlias etc will be better in the front I think. Each week I wait and hope that the weather will be kind enough to get going and so far each week it hasn’t been, I am sure I will get there in the end 🙄 I have another raised bed to think about at the side now, this one is fairly small in comparison to the others, 8 x 4ft and only one sleeper high. There is a sumac that grows there which I would like to see back again, it has got ravaged when the trees came down but should recover, it’s just a small one but if left could get lovely and big, there is also an elderflower that self set and if I keep that smallish that will be nice too, under those I plan to plant hellebore, snowdrops, for winter interest and probably some good ground cover. I want that bed to be fairly maintenance free if I’m honest as I have plenty of others to keep in order. I also plan to have a bench the other side because we get some fantastic early morning sun there and in the early hours of a summer morning it would be nice to sit and have coffee before the sun gets too hot. If I remember I will get some pics today so that I have before and after, when it eventually gets finished that is 😀

10.30 and it’s trying to snow 🙄 good job I got some leek and potato soup out for lunch today 😀

Snow flurries all day but nothing much is settling so far luckily but by golly it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!

Mostly I pottered indoors, John came home at lunchtime and did do a bit outside but it was soo cold he gave up and came in. He did the animals in the afternoon while I got the dinner cooked and that’s it for Monday. I rather think that will be similar most days with these temperatures, can’t really do a lot out there and can’t go anywhere else 😂

Tuesday: Oh god it’s only Tuesday 😂 pretty much a Groundhog Day, or same shit different day type of day lol. John did most of the animals this morning before nipping out to do a quick job, I did the horses, Guineas, cats and dogs plus the normal household stuff. I spent a hour getting a shepherds pie ready for dinner this evening, all the while thinking, this will take John approximately 3 minutes flat to wolf down 🙄 Got some veg soup made from my frozen stash, made a couple of cards and did a Lino print. In the afternoon it’s feeding, egg collecting, egg sorting, dinner and that is pretty much the day. Very boring at the minute, can’t really do much outside, it’s freezing, very cold dry air and a cold wind to go with it, not nice and not much to be able to achieve really. John did have a little go at some more of the side driveway but even he got fed up and cold and came in for the afternoon.

I did a fair bit of research in the evening after watching Rick Stein in France where he watched someone pressing their nuts 😛 Walnuts to be exact and I thought well maybe I could do that with our nuts, why not, makes sense to use the resources we have here. What I already knew was that cold pressed oils are better than hot pressed though I wasn’t sure why. Now I know that as the nut meat is heated ready for extraction they lose a lot of their goodness , it was obvious really if I had thought about it enough. The oil industry uses heat as it can extract much more volume but the quality is poorer whereas cold pressed yields lower volumes of higher quality oil. I always buy cold pressed olive oil, we went to an olive grove once in Tuscany and I understood that cold pressed was the best quality you could get so ever since then that’s what I have bought. The harder part of my research was trying to find the best method of extraction, I suppose here in the UK it is not something that is done on a small scale. I imagine that in warmer a Mediterranean climate many homes would have olive trees etc and practise pressing 🤷‍♀️ but here in the UK I think that is rare 😂 I found a few worktop machines that are available, they vary in price and I could not decide if they were worth the investment or not. Then I started thinking about how you could do it with a ready made machine which would be a better option, the nuts need to be crushed and then pressed. Crushing would be easy enough, you could do small batches in the food processor, but the pressing is harder to work out. You can use a hand operated press but my experience with pressing is that you need good hand grip and wrist strength both of which are long gone for me 🙄 some kind of hydraulic aid is needed, I did ask John if it would be possible to convert the log splitter which has 400lb of pressure, it might be an option, I will keep looking to see if there is anything that might work, or I may end up buying a machine 😜

Wednesday: Still really cold, still dry but the sun is shining this morning which makes everything feel better doesn’t it. John did the morning rounds and then went off to do a small job. I had a shower and sorted a few bits before venturing out to sort out the rest of the motley crew. Two years ago today we went on holiday, as it turns out it was the last holiday we had to date 😔 had we known we would have booked in another one later that year lol. Still it was an adventure, we sailed the high seas, and at times they were high 🤢 we crossed the Artic Circle (tick that off the bucket list) and we went to right up to Alta in search of the Northern Lights (storm Eric scuppered those plans 😣) what I would give for a holiday right now 😜

Sorted out what I needed to outside then back in to light the Rayburn which was troublesome today 🙄 I took me over an hour to get it stabilised which is a pain in the arse quite frankly. John has left over shepherds pie for dinner tonight but I got out some gooseberries to make a crumble with and one of our home produced chickens for tomorrow’s dinner. Then I went online to order some more bread flour, during the first lockdown when it was hard to come by I ordered from a whole food company and it is by far the best flour I have used for making bread so far. I ordered bread flour and also plain and self raising as well as a few other bits and pieces. I had a good look through the range they offer and it was a huge range, I was struck by three things. First that 60/70% of the people I know wouldn’t have a clue what half of them were, second that 80/90% of people I know wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway and third that I 100% don’t make full use of everything I grow here! That actually all adds up to a forth and that is that on the whole we, as a ‘modern, white, first world’ population have entirely lost touch with good food ingredients, I can’t include ethnic minorities in that statement because I believe that they still know and do use the majority of these ingredients in cooking. Yes I realise that a percentage of people use fresh ingredients but I also think that they are very basic in their choices as indeed am I really, when you start to really look at what is available we use such a tiny proportion. I shall have to set myself a mission to widen my ingredient usage and really look at the things I grow and broaden the ways I can use/store/preserve them. If you are wondering what the hell is she on about (admit it you were 😜) it’s is things like drying kale and using the powdered form or de hydrating much more produce for use during the winter or really drying plenty of beans and pulses for the same reasons. I have dabbled a little bit, the fruit powders were not terribly successful as I found they burnt a little bit maybe I should try again, and I have done beans and pulses but I should do many more I think. There are so many things I grow both in the veg garden and the flower garden and indeed also includes weeds like plantain, cleavers etc that I don’t use fully and maybe I really should.

That’s what happens when it is too cold outside to get anything much done, I start thinking and looking and learning and then churning it out but it’s a good thing I think, certainly brightens up the day to have a project in mind 😂

I went out in the afternoon and did a few bits mainly defrosting the water tap and hose so that I could get a decent amount of water up to the horses, when they are on ad lib hay they drink a lot. I had to bring the hose connector in and run it under the hot tap, when I finally got it off the tap that was, nothing is easy when it’s freezing weather, I think the temps go down to around -5 at night if not lower. I filled up all the wild bird feeders, they are also eating a lot at the minute as there is nothing else available. Then it was on to putting fresh bedding in for the geese and ducks, I had a look at the hens, I will be so glad when they can get back outside but I’m not expecting that to happen until April really. The stables are ok but not the best environment for them and they need clean bedding every couple of days which has a knock on effect on running costs. Back indoors to top up the Rayburn although when you come in from outside it feels like a sauna 😂 Make a cup of tea and after that I will probably go back out to do the egg rounds and probably put clean bedding in for the hens too.

I had an online discussion about pressing nut oils and it would seem that I can use my Apple scratter and press to do the job so I will probably give that a go later in the year, I don’t have anything to lose by trying it out.

Thursday: I have no idea what the temperature went down to overnight but it was mightily cold this morning! John did the animals while I got dinner in the slow cooker and sorted out the washing etc then it was off to town to have my blood tests. Even though it was market day it was very quiet everywhere, we did a bit of shopping while we were there and then back home.

I wish this cold grip would move on, it’s getting tedious now, hard to get anything done outside, bloody freezing when you do go out and large parts of the day spent indoors where it’s lovely and warm but it makes you feel tired.

My new tree arrived today but I can’t plant it until the frozen weather moves on.

The news is all very depressing 😔 goodness knows when this whole situation will get any better, I think most people are really feeling quite low at the minute. I never thought I would hear the words ‘it is illegal to go on holiday’ 🙄 It is not looking like we have very much to look forward to in the first half of the year at least, fingers crossed for a few months respite in the summer.

I have 30 pallet collars arriving tomorrow 1200 x 1000 we will be using them to re organise the veg beds. Much easier to deal with smaller raised beds that great swathes of garden.

I feel quite despondent today, can you tell 😜 so I bought a gardening magazine to cheer myself up and I think tomorrow I will start writing a list of seeds to start sowing at the beginning of next month. There is plenty to organise really and I will have all these pallet collars to start putting in as well, organising what I will grow where might give me the boost I need at the minute to get me through the rest of this month.

Friday: I got over my self indulgent melancholy and had a pretty busy morning.

Last night the the wind was constant and the metal roof was banging about, for almost three hours I laid awake until I decided to sleep in the living room, that got a bit cold in the early hours so I went back to the bedroom where the wind was somewhat quieter for a while.

John got started on the morning rounds while I whizzed round and did a few things inside before joining him on the yard to get going on cleaning out the hens. We moved the light Sussex from the POL pen into the stable that flooded but is now dry, we moved the hens that were in the small dark stable out to the POL pen so they can get some natural light and air, we then cleaned out that stable. Probably around seven to eight wheelbarrows full of sawdust and chicken poo 😝 We then put in all clean sawdust and moved half of the hens from the stable at the back into the smaller stable, the rest will stay where they are, the reason being that the fewer hens in one place the less meets they get in or at least it takes longer to get in a mess. They also tend to break a lot of eggs when there is 30 of them all in together, hopefully now they all have more space there will be less breakages as well. The other lot of hens in a different stable keep relatively clean as there are only about 16 of them, while I was in there putting in fresh straw for laying in one was about to lay, I got my phone out and took a video, it’s rare you actually see an egg being laid 😮

The chap came and dropped off the pallet collars I ordered and then it was time to come in and light the Rayburn, it’s still pretty bitter and the wind has not let up at all, hopefully it will be above freezing tomorrow as we still can’t use the outside taps or hoses🙄

Afternoon rounds consisted of egg collecting, feeding and bucketing water up to the horses and geese. John thinks the geese are getting close to laying as the gander is getting more fierce by the day, geese begin to lay around Valentine’s Day so hopefully they will be right on cue this weekend 🥰

Tomorrow we will clean out the remaining stable, ran out of time today and that will be them all done for at least a week 😝 We can also look at where the pallet collars will be going as I haven’t quite decided on a design yet.

Saturday: Up and about, John went out to do the feeding and I sorted stuff out indoors before going out to help with the last stable cleaning. My god it was bloody freezing, I mean freezing 🥶 the wind chill even at 9.30 must have been around -6, it is the wind that is the problem, even barrowing back and forth I could not warm up my finger tips and hips even with good clothing on. In the end I said to John I can’t do this its too cold so I came in to light the Rayburn and get dinner sorted for this evening while he carried on. I think this problem I have been having with the ends of my fingers is the problem, they hurt like billyo even inside thick warm gloves. Hopefully this evening the temperature is going to come up to 1c and stay above freezing, our average winter temps are between 1c and 7c so you can see why a whole week of continuous below freezing is unusual and hard work. Some where in Scotland it went down to -21 I think, that’s insane for the UK 🙄 Our weather seems to become more extreme year on year, record heat, record cold and record rainfall is becoming normal and the seasons seem to be shifting slightly too, any veg grower will tell you that they need to adapt all the time for growing and harvesting.

Sunday: Be careful what you wish for! The temperature finally came up above freezing sometime during the night and as a consequence we had a burst pipe out the back on the dog shower, good job we have a live in plumber 😜 It had drained all the hot water so the shower I was going to have didn’t happen, it was still cold this morning and I was looking forward to a hot shower. I lit the Rayburn first thing, not in the best of moods when it’s cold and I can’t warm up at all. It’s Valentine’s Day, not that it makes much difference in our house, although I organised a dine in for two on Friday evening and have organised afternoon tea for today, John as usual did nothing, no flowers, no card, no nothing, thanks pal, that has not made my mood any better I can tell you 😜 It’s no surprise really, I used to have tell John to take his Mum flowers or she would never have got any then he would take all the credit when his Mum was delighted 🙄 Like many women, for the first probably 25 years after we got married I always organised the birthday presents and cards etc then one year I said to him that he needed to take over remembering his Mum and Dads birthday and getting them something, that resulted in his Mum getting a bunch of artificial flowers and he never even noticed the difference 😂

It’s definitely warmer by a few degrees and guess what, it’s raining, jeez can’t we just have a nice day, Winter seems sooo long at the best of times but this year it is just endless.

We had our afternoon tea, although there was quite a lot of it so we have saved some for another time, then it was time to do the animals again and that is another week done and dusted. Time relentlessly marches on regardless of anything in its path, that is the one consistent thing in life, time and tide waits for no man 😜 same time next week, see ya 👋

Ooops forgot this one!

It obviously was a busy week because I totally forgot to publish this one 🤪

Thursday 2nd May: Today is the first time I have had time to sit and type the blog 🙄 I had a busy run up to the weekend with lots of flowers to get ready for delivery or collection on the Friday. One of the retirement homes I supply was having their first birthday celebration and I had bouquets and jam jars to get ready for that as well as other individual orders. When I delivered them on the Friday preparations were in full swing with staff blowing up hundreds of balloons 😊 I had great feedback from the home and it is a great feeling to be able to supply locally grown flowers to a local business 🥰

Monday was a day to catch up on jobs that we couldn’t get done at the weekend as we were away plus our new internet connection was finalised and so I had an engineer here for a few hours.

Tuesday was Oscar day and this week we were finally able to get outside for a part of the day. It was windy but it was dry and sunny and Oscar loved playing in the paddock with the dogs, he had spent the weekend here with Charlie and Macca who stayed to look after the place while we were away and by all accounts thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor life.

Wednesday was a lovely day weather wise, dry and sunny for most of the day and so I spent the whole day outside. Because it has been cold and wet up to now I have not been able to move any plants on and get them into the ground. It was May 1st and so I took the plunge if I didn’t do it today I had no idea when I would be able to do it. So I planted up around 100 different plants, I also managed to get some of the staking in place and mulch but I still have some to do. I will have to keep an eye on the temperatures overnight but I am fairly confident that all will be well.

I was still outside when the first spits of rain came, John arrived home from work and so that was then end of my outside time. It began to pour down and I was for once grateful because it meant everything had a good watering in, in fact it continued to pour down overnight and into the next morning 😂 with thunderstorms and lightening to boot.

Thurdsay: As it was wet first thing I decided to get a couple of invoices done and sent off and then onto cancelling BT 😊 That is easier said than done! One of the only times they want to actually speak to you instead of directing you to an online option is when you want to cancel. I called the number, found the option number for cancelling, pressed that and it said ‘please hold’ then went dead 🙄 I tried it a few times before getting peed off and rang the general customer service line, the chap was very helpful though and I have managed to cancel both the broadband and the landline. Our line has been terrible ever since the cock up they made a few years back when we lost our number of over 30 years and they could not get it back for us. I weighed up the pros and cons but they were mostly cons to be fair. I only kept the landline because it was a hard wired connection that would be useful if all else went down, now they are changing to digital it no longer matters. Our digital line from them (copper wire) is shocking, intermittent and has interference which means the line is not clear on the phone and the internet is constantly dropping out. I am convinced that somewhere along the line there is a cross over, on Fridays the connection is much worse and it is no coincidence that the line it got muddled up with is a rental property that is mostly occupied at the weekends 🤷‍♀️ just a thought of mine but it was such a cuffuffle that the engineers could not work out at the time it seems the most logical answer because before that we had no problems for 10 years!

Anyway move over BT and hello to Wurzel 😊 a local company specialising in rural broadband, I communicate with the actual people who do the installation and who I can call or message if I need help, not a call centre where one department has no idea what the other department can or is doing.

I think it is the beginning of tricky times ahead for large corporate companies that take your money but don’t give you the service you should get. It is more about making money than providing a good service and people are getting tired of that. I read a report on a national flower online delivery service, they have made a loss of 100million in their last year. Some of it they put down to consumers cutting back but I think it would be fair to say that the local flower growers have had an impact on that too judging by the record increases of British flower growers and suppliers. If people are going to spend their hard earned money they want a decent service with decent materials that are fit for purpose not something that is banged out and marked up for profit making purposes.

Turns out the weather wasn’t too bad in the end today and so I spent the first half of the day in the greenhouse potting on and the second half of the day in the big tunnel and outside, mostly weeding. I stopped when my knees were wet and my gloves were so wet that taking them on and off became tricky 😂

John came home mid afternoon as he had a dentist appointment and then on his return I sent him back out to buy a sack truck from Screwfix. It will make life much easier because at the minute I am dragging heavy crates full of spent bulbs or chrysanthemums around and I am past the age when that is an easy task 🤪

Friday: Wet lol. I had flowers to get ready for farm gate sales, not many because I don’t get many buying flowers like that but it’s great to put them out for those that do want to just come and grab some. I had flowers to get ready for my regular orders too and after that I decided to give the flower room a clean and tidy. Things just get put down and left and it always needs a good sweep so it was the perfect day for that.

Saturday: It started off with fog! What the heck, fog in May 😂 but it soon turned into a fabulous sunny day even though the forecast was for downpours 🤷‍♀️ We went off to make flower deliveries first thing and then back to make the most of a great day. Yesterday we picked up a brand new sack truck, we have an old one that really is ancient, heavy cast wheels and a wood wormed frame isn’t the best for manoeuvring 🙄 and though I do have this new found respect for old tools I really needed something lighter and easier to use. I have plenty of crates full of bulbs or flowers that always need moving and I usually have to drag them to where I want them. Now I have the sack truck it is sooo much easier and I am not getting any younger, so once those were all moved I got on with the rest of the gardening, I planted up over 200 gladioli, some in a crate and some in the ground, 100 more ixia, 100 had already been planted in a crate last week, 25 star flower and 25 different gladioli (can’t remember what now) I had weeded and tidied and planted right up to mid afternoon when it got too hot would you believe. It is a joy to see the sun but for me too much is not good and although there were clouds there were not enough for me to carry on outside, I did have a hat on but I could feel my skin begin to crawl and that’s a good sign that it’s too hot for me. I could do with some cloudy dry days that are warm enough but not too hot 😂 not too much to ask is it. I would get up earlier in the mornings but at the moment it’s too chilly first thing though there will come a time when I am out there at 4.30am and loving the cool of the early mornings. John meanwhile was busy burning the fencing we took down in the front paddock a couple of months ago, the wood has been too wet to burn before now. Then he was onto grass cutting, all the rain we keep having means the grass just keeps growing and this year we are aiming to keep on top of it a bit more.

I also let Biscuit out into the paddock with Jack today, she has been great in her little pen and her feet must feel good because she was running around and very happy to be let out. Jack joined in with the frolicking, I never tire of watching the horses when the get moved to new grass, they tear around running and jumping for joy, then there comes the obligatory roll 😂 It was a new paddock for Jack but I think he just got caught up in the moment!

I came in for a sit down once I got too hot, I think I earned it, I have been constantly busy all day.

I ordered some more dahlia tubers yesterday, why? Do I need them? No not really 😂 Do I have anywhere to put them? No no really 😂 Then why? Because it is dahlia sale time and there are bargains to be had 🤪 Most are half price now so it makes financial sense to buy them when they are cheaper doesn’t it 😬 I will find a space somewhere lol.

Flower orders, new internet provider & blacksmiths for the day 🥰

Monday 22nd April 2024: Sorry I forgot to blog last week but it was a week pretty much like most, work rest and play in various different quantities lol.

The weather at the weekend was great and we got a fair bit done in the front area. The Parthenon is almost ready to paint into, just needs a bit more top soil. John has been busy clearing weeds and raking the top of the driveway off so it is a little more level than it was. I discovered vine weevil grubs in most of the pots I had in the front, I emptied the first one to plant up into the bed and saw the little blighters. I checked the rest of the pots and they were in about half of them 🙄 I have ordered nematodes to water in, these are expensive and time sensitive once you have opened the pack but they do work really well and so they are worth the cost because well established plants cost more! I also decided on the Sunday that I would do a giveaway with some of the tulips I have been growing. Because of the lack of sun they have been delayed by quite a few weeks and then when the sun came out so did all the tulips, all at once 😂 Far too many for me to use this week and they won’t wait for when I am ready so I may as well give them to someone. I put all the names into the spiny thing and had a winner who collected them this evening 😊

The rest of the day has been pretty rubbish to be honest, the weather has turned again, it’s wet and cold and will remain that way all week I think. I decided to try bottling some rhubarb, I haven’t ever done this before because without a canner I am not confident in the quality of the contents, botulism should always be a concern. I found a method that uses the Le parfait jars and seals and gave it a go, the first one was fine, numbers two and three cracked the glass of the jars 😒 So I have one jar that has been filled and water bathed and I will put it to store and see how it goes, it can be stored for two years potentially which would be awesome.

My greenhouse is fit to burst, I have so many seedlings, plantlets and plants that need to be moved on but the weather is still a bit iffy and so I dare not risk it just yet. We are going away for the weekend and I am hoping that next week I can really get going with the planting up.

Tuesday: Oscar day today 🥰 While he was sleeping I did do a few bits, stewed some rhubarb with vanilla for a pudding later and order a bulk lot of jam sugar, I have a lot of fruit still to use up from the freezer before this years bounty appears and so I will make jam. It’s always useful for gifting and it is one way of making sure you have something on the shelf that can be used in a quick sponge pudding. I will also cook up a lot of it and make some pre prepared crumble topping, another quick pudding option. I give up looking for different recipes because John doesn’t eat a wide range and I don’t need the extra calories from a custard or cream based dessert 😂 I am happy to stick to stewed fruit and yoghurt or a splash of cream. Besides I can always jazz up the crumble topping with chopped nuts 😊 I did get around to shelling the hazelnuts I collected last year so I have a nice jar full of them. I could actually save a lot of kgs as we have that many hazel trees but the squirrels need some so I just take what I can use and that’s all.

I am planning to dry quite a lot more herbs this year than I usually do, I always find in winter that I wish I had and so this year I will. I have lots of flat leaf parsley growing so aim to dry that as well as oregano, basil and sage. Maybe some dill (I don’t use much but maybe I would use more if I had it to hand) Rosemary is an evergreen so no need to dry that, the same goes for bay but again it might be handy to have some dried in a jar for the days when the weather is so cold/wet I’d rather not step outside 🤪 Coriander I need to add to that list too and I have lots of garlic chive (which does not die back) growing in the tunnel but again who wants to go out into the garden in winter to get it 😂

I have lots of flowers to do for Friday this week and I just had another big order come in, I can’t do any cutting today but I will be doing plenty of it tomorrow by the looks of things. The rest of the top soil also arrived today and so that is another job that will go to the top of the list this week, hopefully the weather will stay fairly dry.

Wednesday: A dry day and not too cold either which was just as well as I had lots of flowers and foliage to cut which took me most of the morning with a short interlude to do the horses water and hay. Then I grabbed a bit of lunch before having my haircut early afternoon. I had a bit of a sit down for an hour then out to start planting up the Parthenon 🤪 I have plenty to go in it’s just a case of getting it right, some of the plants are small but garden ready and some are bigger, I kind of want a cottage garden look so hoping I manage to achieve that 🙄

I was enjoying a gentle plant up when life suddenly got complicated, not in a bad way just lots of different jobs came at me all at once, it does not take much to scramble my brain these days plus I was hungry too which never helps with the brain fog. So I needed to get dinner sorted, I needed to get some flowers and change to the pub, I had a phone call to rearrange an appointment from early May to tomorrow and John wanted a whole load of invoices and estimates done asap (tonight that means) So I sent John off down to take the stuff to the pub and he managed to snap off two of the heads from the flowers on the way 😳 I got the dinner prepped and on to cook and then sat down to do the invoices etc, and then eat dinner.

The rearranged appointment is a biggie because it is the installation of our new internet so there is lots I need to move out of the way for them to be able to access the office and we are also having it on the outbuildings so that we have a good connection outside too. I am tired of BT and the old copper wire network hardly seems fit for purpose anymore yet they still charge and never want to look into problems. So it’s bye bye BT and hello Wurzel 😊 Wurzel are a local company specialising in rural internet and the signal is through the air from mast to antenna rather than underground, it has to be better than what we have now which at times is shocking to be honest. They were coming in early May but had a cancellation tomorrow and offered it to us so I said yes, I probably should have said no I will wait just because I already have a lot to do tomorrow and this just adds to my list 😂

Thursday: I thought it was actually Wednesday 😂 Anyhow I had a busy morning doing a hundred and one jobs including cutting more flowers and making up a couple of bouquets going out today. Jam sugar arrived in bulk 🤪 by the time jam making season comes there is never much jam sugar on the shelves so I pre ordered direct, free delivery 😁 and now I am ready for the season ahead. I wasn’t going to make much but we always have so much fruit so it seems like the right thing to do, besides once water bathed it will keep for a few years (prepping and all that)

On the preparedness topic there is a lot of chatter about food shortages ahead, the relentless rain has caused the farmers havoc with planting and soil structure and that will have a knock on effect. Grains and veg mostly as far as I can work out, don’t say I didn’t warn you if that particular event unfolds later in the year. Flour can be frozen in its paper wrapping and popped inside a plastic ziplock bag. Veg, I suggest growing some of your own this year, stocking the freezer with frozen veg or stocking up on dried goods, don’t forget to rotate your stocks though you don’t want to find a 2024 date when you clean out the cupboards in 2030 😂

Friday: A very busy day getting lots of flowers ready for delivery/collection later, birthday flowers, get well flowers, subscription flowers and a lot of flowers for an event. I had cut them all over the last two days and I spent all morning getting them ready. The afternoon I spent getting everything in order to go away for the weekend and making sure I have packed what we need.

Saturday: We were up earlier than usual to get on the road for our experience the girls bought us for Christmas. We were off to Hereford where we spent 5 hours being blacksmiths and forging our own tools. It was brilliant! We bloody loved it, John made a knife and I made a herb chopper and I found a new respect for hand forged tools and items, I would go back and do it again in a heartbeat and I can notch up another self reliant/survival skill 😂 They also bought us Dinner, bed and breakfast in a boutique hotel in the area which was friendly and relaxed serving local produce, excellent 🥰

Learning a new skill, it was amazing to make something useful from a block of plain metal and we absolutely loved it.

Sunday: A rare lazy morning for us as we were away, a leisurely breakfast and then a gentle meander back home where Charlie, Macca and Oscar had been staying over and looking after everything for us.

Out to get a bit of shopping, pop in to have a cuppa with Mum, back home to unload the shopping and then pop round to see my sister who was just dishing up dinner and had enough to invite us to stay and eat, cracking weekend 😊

Flowers, Grandchildren & Rhubarb.

Monday 8th April 2024: It is still the Easter holidays for the children and Sam came over with the kids today. The farrier was due out and so she came over to get the horses in. She was worried about Biscuits feet as they didn’t look right and she has had laminitis in a previous life, we did get her penned in a quarter of the paddock on Friday as a precaution but the farrier said her feet are all good which is great news. She will stay restricted though as the grass is growing much quicker now and that’s not good for her. Jack had a bit of a bath but he really needs another he was filthy from the winter weather. Hopefully as the weather warms up they can both have a good wash and scrub up.

Charlie arrived with Oscar at lunchtime, the children played for a couple of hours and they were able to play in the garden for a change as it was dry and not too cold. They decided to pimp the pirate ship with chalks 😂 looks quite good I think 😊

After they left I got on with some work, weeding and gathering up rubbish to put in the skip, tidying stuff away and then dividing some plants up, potting them ready for sale once the roots have settled and begin to anchor.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 He was unwell today so he was very subdued even refusing to eat chocolate which is unheard of 😂

Wednesday: Sam had asked me to go with her to get all the passports renewed but before she came I managed to get a few bits of housework done. When she arrived we went off to the post office to get the passports done, the twins had not had passports before, Mia needed a new one and Sam had to renew hers in her married name. Given that the twins can be a bit of a handful at the best of times and that they were very likely to get bored standing there waiting I had agreed to go with her to help. She got the twins done first and as soon as they had both had their photos taken I took them into the cafe to get them some lunch while they did Mias passport. She then joined us and had lunch while Sam got hers done. They were actually all really well behaved, I confess it surprised even me 😂

Thursday: There is plenty of work to be done outside and it is taking up any available time I have, weeding today. Then unexpectedly Sam arrived with the children late afternoon, she had bought them over for a talking too 😂 their good behaviour did not last long and they had given her the run around. When mine were young I occasionally took them to my Mum for a talking to, Nanas are wise and hopefully grandchildren will listen to them 🤪 I think I got through to them, only time will tell and once they I had finished talking to them they went off to swimming lessons.

Friday: I can’t remember what I did the day but late afternoon my sister picked me up in her Morris 1000 ‘Daisy’ and we went off to a classic car event at a local gin distillery. Wood fired pizzas were available and we had a very pleasant evening with other classic car enthusiasts, the weather was great which made it all the better.

Saturday and Sunday: We had a very busy weekend, the weather was good, sunny, warm enough, no wind and no rain. I spent most of the two days gardening, weeding, seed sowing, dividing, potting on and some watering in the tunnels.

Meanwhile John was busy getting the Parthenon finished lol, it is now ready for soil, he has put damp course all around the bottom and cut the metal grid for the climbing plants. He has also moved all the IBC tanks and levelled off the driveway as parts of it were high. He has cut the lawn, dug out thistles from the front side paddock and dragged it. In-between all we have been doing all the other jobs housework, cooking, washing, shopping, feeding the birds, collecting the eggs, a hundred and one jobs that always need doing.

At some point this week I pulled a lot of rhubarb and took some down to the pub along with fresh flowers. Some of it I used to make some rhubarb and vanilla jam, which is delicious. I had other flowers cut ready for customers, some collected and some delivered but I can’t remember which day that was.

Buckets of flowers being cut at the minute, finally spring has sprung 🥰

Jam jar flowers for a customer order.

Work, sun, rain, work some more 🤪

Monday 1st April 2024: April fools day, Bank holiday Monday.

We have had very few nice weather days lately, one was on Saturday which was great for the party and another one was today. A fair bit of sunshine and only a couple of heavy showers, we certainly could do with a few more hours of sun though. We spent the morning trying to get the last bit of the new bed dug out and tidied up, I am glad to say it is now all done and I am pretty sure John is glad to see the end of it too. We now need to fill it up with some well rotted compost and top soil before planting up, actually John needs to dig out a bit more for the posts that are going in for the climbing plants. There has been stuff dumped there over the past few months, some ibc tanks, heras fencing etc and the fence posts we had delivered a while back. They were supposed to be in by now but the fields are so wet that the tractor would churn them up too much so we have to wait. We moved a lot of the stuff but still have more to move but called it a morning at around 11.30am, can’t work all day 🙄 Today is my Mums actual birthday so we went round to visit, give her birthday presents and have cake. I did manage to get some washing on the line in the morning and we just about managed to get back before a downpour arrived hot on our heels 😂

I was watching the news about the shortage of water in Mexico City and here we are with a deluge of the stuff every day for weeks it is crazy, so I have to think to myself ‘don’t complain, don’t complain’ because I would rather have rain than no water at all.

Tuesday: A change to Oscar day today. I was with Oscar for a while but he had a paediatric appointment at the hospital and I had an eye appointment so I went up with Macca and Oscar for his appointment and then when they left I went to wait for my appointment. Mine was a couple of hours later but it made sense to go up with them so that John did not lose a day at work bearing in mind we just had a long weekend. I pootled about and had some lunch while listening to an audio book until it was nearer my time.

Once I had booked in it was the usual couple of hours wait until I was seen. I had the initial eye checks and thankfully the high pressure in my eye has gone down, I had scans on both eyes and then waitress for the consultation to find out how the eyes are doing.

At first all was well, with the eyes at least, there is no sign of active inflammation and the pressure has gone, all good so far. Then the discussion of what medication I am on, I was dumbfounded when the Dr had no record of my previous appointment, the last one they had notes on were for the appointment in December. This meant they had no record of the beta blockers they prescribed for the high pressure in the eye, no record of the continuation of steroid drops and no record that they had increased my immune suppressant medication and lastly no record that they were supposed to inform my Rheumatology consultant! I even pointed out to the Dr that it was her that I had seen after an initial consultation with another Dr because he wanted a second opinion on the change of meds 🙄 I had to convince her that I had actually had been to an appointment at the beginning of February 😳 So I now have little faith that they will inform Rheumy this time nor that it will filter down to my GP who is actually the one that signs off the repeat medication they have changed ffs 🤦‍♀️ I realise they are under great pressure but really, I should have thought that it was a basic chain of communication that was important to be relayed.

By the time I got out of the hospital it was 5pm, I had looked up the bus timetable online and there would be a bus that left at 5.20. So I made my way up to the bus stop only to see the bus going past me 😬 I get to the bus stop thinking, that’s ok the online time table says there will be another one along eventually. I read the time table at the bus stop to find that it does not say the same as the one online 🙄 I call John and he comes to pick me up, there was not another bus in all the time I was waiting 😒 We eventually get back around 6.30pm and pop round to say happy birthday to our son in law before eventually get home just before dark.

It was a broken systems day and I was knackered just from the thought of it all 😂

Wednesday: Rain again, every day we have rain, I won’t complain though as others are no so lucky but the spring sunshine is very little and not very often at the minute. It is Saturday now and I can’t actually remember what I did on Wednesday, I did cut flowers ready for Friday I know that much.

Thursday: I started early and got flowers arranged first thing then Charlie phoned to see if I wanted to go out and get a coffee, yes please. While we were out she wanted to see if Oscar would get his hair cut at the barbers and despite the heroic efforts of the barber, Oscar was not having any of it 🤪 We went and got coffee and a bit of breakfast then a quick bit of shopping before returning back to mine. We got Johns hair clippers out and had a go ourselves with Oscars hair which was a little bit more successful but obviously not as good. Then we went out for a walk round the village as the weather was dry today for a change.

I had a couple of hours rest in the afternoon before going back out into the garden and getting a few small jobs done.

Friday: Today I had Sam’s three while she went to work, we spent the day, colouring, crafting and playing in the garden. Hearing ‘nanny’ every two minutes from one is head filling enough from from three at a time is hard work. In the end I had to tell them I can only listen to one person at a time 😂 bless them. I definitely was tired out b the time they left so didn’t do much else until it was time to get some dinner on.

Saturday: An epic day of non stop work today, first job was deliver flowers to a weekly customer and then back home to get started on a lot of jobs that need doing. The rain held off all day and so we were able to get a lot done, pushing ourselves to our limit at times. John spent most of the day building the Parthenon 😂 that’s what I am calling it. It is the new bed for the climbing plants and it looks as though we are building a house but it is actually just a flower bed with uprights. The uprights will have mesh attached so that I can grow things like my chocolate vine, an evergreen clematis, jasmine and a climbing rose. Luckily there is plenty of room for other flowers too 😬 Meanwhile I planted up some of the flower plants that are now big enough to go into the poly tunnel. Snapdragons, stocks and China aster, I had to stake it all and put in some support mesh too which I made from string. Once I finished that I dug up a few self set plants and potted those up along with some excess sweet peas. Then onto the job I really had on my radar which was the fruit cage, this needed a few hours of work to bring it back under control and by the time I finished I was knackered. John got the ride on mower out and cut the grass in the small paddock at the back. We didn’t do it last year and it got too long to manage so we had to leave it, now it has died off a bit over winter he was able to mow it and hopefully we will keep on top of it this year. He did some more mowing down the walkways before mowing the lawn with the hand mower, we are well and truly pooped today.

Sunday: Another dry day 😊 so plenty of work to be done as always 🤪 I don’t think we will ever get to the stage where we are wondering what job we could do 😂 the list is always long and gets longer by the day. We did go out for a coffee in the afternoon and ended up getting a roast dinner instead, saves time cooking later 😬

I am in print 😊 a surprise party & Easter weekend.

Monday 25th March 2024: What a fabulous way to start the week, despite the early morning rain and grey skies, I had notification that I am in print in a magazine 😊 An article in ‘The Country Smallholder’ written by Jack Smellie, is all about the change of direction into flowers here on our Smallholding. I did the interview just after Christmas and had almost forgotten all about it but it is in the Spring edition should you wish to read it 😂 If anyone is a subscriber and comes across the article then do feel free to take a photo of yourselves with the article and tag Friesland Farm Flowers in on social media.

The other pleasures of a Monday morning consisted of cleaning the bathroom, hoovering and polishing the living room, hoovering and mopping down the boot room 🙄 Eventually I was able to escape my domestic chores and go out to the flower room. I had some tidying and clearing to do before getting out some dried flowers and making up some posies.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 It was supposed to be heavy rain mid morning so I decided we could go out for a quick walk down to the village. It always seems to be horrible weather on a Tuesday so it doesn’t happen every week. In the end it didn’t rain until much later in the day. Oscar had a good two hour sleep in the middle of the day and then Ayda came to play in the afternoon.

Wednesday: The rain set in last night and it is not much like Spring at all just at the moment. I had flowers delivered today from another grower because I have a lot of flowers to do at the weekend and not enough out in the flower garden of my own.

Thursday. The weather is atrocious, truly awful, cold, windy with burst of torrential rain in amongst the drizzle 🙄 I have been trying to cut flowers in the morning in these horrible conditions 🤪 I spent the rest of the day making up flowers for an order to be delivered tomorrow and an arrangement for the local church for the Easter Sunday service.

Good Friday: A quick trip to get some bits of shopping first thing before returning to load up with flowers and get them delivered to the customer. Then it was onto the next lot of flowers to be made up ready for Saturday. I had lefty of other things to get sorted because although she does not know it yet my Mum will be having a surprise 80th Vintage tea party birthday celebration. We have been planning and plotting for weeks and hopefully she has no idea. There was a bit of a spanner in the works last night when my stepdad ended up in hospital but luckily he came out today and so hopefully we are still on course.

Plenty of tidying up had to be done in the flower room as you can imagine which takes longer than you think it is going to especially when you constantly have to wash buckets out.

Saturday: Up early, John went off to get feed and then when he came back we delivered the flowers to the church. Today is party day and so I have spent the morning finalising all the flowers I am taking, the tablecloths needed ironing, and anything else I was responsible for on the list.

After days and days of rain we finally have some lovely sunshine this morning so let’s hope it lasts all day, we definitely need it for the garden and also for our sanity after a full winter.

We had a fabulous afternoon, team work makes the dream work and we certainly pulled off something a bit special today. Over the weeks, vintage china has been accumulated, cake plates made, tablecloths washed and pressed, hall and entertainment booked, arrangements finalised. Then it was cooking, baking, sandwich which making and flower arranging before we got to the hall and put everything together. Mum did not have a clue, Sue picked her up in her vintage morris and told her she was taking her out for afternoon tea with a quick pop in to a local vintage sale on the way there. We all waited in the hall and chorus of ‘surprise’ went up as she came in. We had a great afternoon, with a great vibe and some great food and entertainment, excellent job everyone 🥰

By the time I got home I could hardly walk but still had the car to unload, my feet and legs hurt from being on the, all day and my hips were killing after all the dancing we did. The clocks were going forward so it was a good excuse to go to bed early and get some well earned sleep.

Sunday: Easter Day, we don’t really celebrate Easter, well no further than chocolate eggs anyway 🤪 We are not religious and I have never put on Easter dinner or tea because when the kids were little we were usually on a family day out. We did a bit of work around the place before popping over to take chocolate to Mia, Lucie and George, back home before going out in the afternoon to take chocolate to Josh, Flo and Oscar (who was at Shelley’s for the day) Shelley had invite us for some dinner later in the afternoon so we stayed for that before returning home for the evening.

A few trips out, a couple of cream teas & flowers, flowers, flowers.

Monday: I have a week of social events ahead of me which makes a change from being here all week and working.

Today was the first event which was a regional meet up of Flowers from the Farm members from the South East. We met at Chippy Flower Farm which is about half an hour away and had a lovely morning talking about all things flower growing. The rain did try but the sun beat it off and so most of the morning the weather was pleasant. The last meet I went to was two years ago and so it was lovely to catch up with other growers from the area and discuss what everyone is growing, how they are growing it and what they are avoiding.

I got back home early afternoon and feeling inspired I had a quick lunch then went out to work on the garden finishing around 5pm, a very satisfying day.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 He loves the tale of the Gingerbread Man that CBeebies do with some of the Orchestra so I thought this week I would give him a Gingerbread man to eat while he watched the Gingerbread man get eaten 😂

Wednesday: Another trip out this afternoon but first I had some cutting to do for funeral flowers to be delivered on Thursday. I went to get some pussy willow from further up the Smallholding and when I turned around I saw the most gorgeous hawthorn covered in blossom. It was so beautiful I had to cut it but of course it is covered in thorns so I painstakingly snipped the end off each thorn just so I could use it 😊

Sam came armed with black sacks of washing as her washing machine broke down and won’t be fixed for a few days. With three children in the house the wash pile builds up quickly so I told her to come over and use my machine.

Then it was time to go and pick up Mum and set off for my second trip out this week. I had booked tickets as a Mothers Day treat to take Mum and visit Highgrove Gardens, it’s not every day you get to see the King of Englands gardens but today we did. As it is a private residence there are strict security checks and protocols including no photography in the gardens themselves. I can imagine that some people would think the gardens are manicured with shinning terraces, nothing could be further from that than these beautifully crafted, unassuming, natural and calming gardens 🥰 We had a cream tea in the tea rooms (where you were allowed to take photos) delicious warm scones and a pot of English tea rounded the visit off nicely.

Thursday: I did a few of the usual household jobs in the morning and then spent a couple of hours working on a seasonal, natural and biodegradable sheaf for a funeral. It is always lovely when someone understands what it is I am doing and the reasons I do what I do, even better when it is exactly what they are looking for. We need to move away from floral foam with great haste because it is perfectly possible to provide flowers in all forms without it. I think those that do not want to give it up are possibly just afraid that the arrangements won’t be as good. It is a different way of doing flowers but in my opinion so much more natural than the regimental arrangements that have been forced upon us for many years 🤷‍♀️ For those that have the same vision for the world and nature that I do there is an alternative you just have to look for it, green funeral flowers, natural funeral flowers, sustainable funeral flowers are out there so if that is what you want make sure you tell your nearest and dearest 😊

Seasonal, natural, sustainable, 100% compostable, British grown funeral sheaf.

Friday: Another day, another outing 😂 like buses my days out all come along at once and this was the last one on the last day of the week. Afternoon tea with Charlie and my Mum, Charlie had booked it for my Mother’s Day present and for my Mums birthday which is next weekend. We went to Aston Pottery and I can highly recommend it, the food was delicious, the service was fabulous and you get to have a mooch around at all the beautiful goods they have for sale too.

My amazing Mum who will be 80 years young next weekend 🥰

Saturday: The wind has changed direction and it’s flipping cold today despite the sun trying it’s best to shine. I had a few bits to get done early before Sam came over with the twins, they were staying with me while Mia went for her riding lesson as it was too cold for them to be standing around. John went out early to get some sleepers, more about that in a mo. Once he came back we went to get a couple of bags of multipurpose compost for potting up plants for sale. We can’t use our own compost as it has animal manures mixed in and that is prohibited for selling. After that we had a delivery of flowers to make before grabbing a takeaway coffee and returning home. John then got on with digging out the concrete area that we are going to put a bed with a pergola over (where the dog kennels used to be) this will be for climbing plants such as jasmine, roses, chocolate vine and clematis, all are useful in flower arrangements and bouquets. While he worked on that I got some seed sowing done before everyone arrived.

Later in the afternoon I was able to get on with a bit more potting up now that I had some compost to do it with.

Sunday: A cold wind again but the sun seemed a little stronger today and so it was more bearable. We went out as early as possible just to get a few groceries before returning home to carry on with much the same as yesterday. Digging out MOD concrete is a task and a half, the kango gave out towards the end so John had to finish with a pick axe and lump hammer 🙄 We have had the kango for well over 20 years so it has exceeded its life expectancy 😂 Luckily there was not much left to do although I dare say it was much harder work with hand tools 🤪 Once I had finished pricking out seedlings or potting on plants I did a good bit of weeding on the front beds and took a few basal cuttings of dicentra because you can never have enough of that fabulous early flowering plant.

This week coming I will be trying to work off those cream teas before Easter cakes are on the menu.

Rain 🙄 a new website and a demolition.

Monday 11th March 2024: I have a quieter week ahead which is always welcomed so that I can re focus and plan plus get some work done in the garden.

It was a tad chilly first thing so I did some household bits like change the beds and hoover, once it warmed up I went outside and got a few jobs done. Nothing major but all necessary, potting on, pricking out, dividing and planting up plus I took some basal cuttings from the delphiniums. I often do it with lupin as well but this year I have sown some seeds that I saved last year. I then spent a while tidying up the area in front of the old dog kennels. Originally I was going to grow climbers up and over it but it is disintegrating badly and so we have decided to take it down and replace it with a pergola, maybe even dig out the concrete underneath and create a proper bed. I could do with a tree out there to give some height to the area and a bit of shade would be useful for anything growing as it is always in full glaring sun. By mid afternoon the last few days work caught up with me and so I had a couple of hours resting while I watched a film lol.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 I said to John this morning that it would be nice if one of these Tuesdays it wasn’t raining or freezing and then we could go out into the garden but so far it has mostly been horrible. On the odd occasion we get some dry warmish weather I take him for a walk down to the village but that is not today ☔️ The forecast looks a lot dried after today and the temps begin to creep up slightly, spring seems slow coming this year 🙄

Wednesday: It was a decent day and so I worked outside all day long, weeding and tidying the garden, got to make hay while the sun shines.

Thursday: Rain again 🙄 luckily I had arranged to go out for lunch with Sam so I pottered around for the morning and then off we went. By the time I got back there was not enough time to get stuck into any major jobs so more pottering before getting the dinner. In the evening I had a zoom meeting which was all about websites, that gave me the shove I needed to get mine sorted.

Friday: I managed to sort out the beginning of the process for my website. I had a domain but that was set up with Google who sold it to Square so I needed to transfer it to my preferred platform which was Fasthost. I thought it was going to be a bit of a nightmare because I had an old website for the Smallholding and wanted to swap them over. For a change the lady in the other end of the phone was amazing, wry helpful and helped me achieve my objective, happy days. I now had my domain transferred, my old website closed down and the new one could be built and I got a great deal which cost me £4 less than I was paying already 😊

I began the afternoon trying to build a new site 🤪 it has been many years since I have done that and was a bit rusty which bought out a lot of frustration (not felt like that since giving up that kind of technology lol)

I left it and we went round to see Florence as it was her 6th birthday today, she was very excited to be 6 🥰

Saturday: We had an epic day work wise, the old dog kennels that we had built when we came were falling apart and needed to come down. So we spent the day taking them down but by bit, burning any wood that was rotten, saving any wood that will be useful another time. We had a big bonfire and kept going until it was all down and cleared, which was about 6pm, tiring day but it is now done.

Sunday: More rain over night and quite a lot of it, I spent the morning cleaning and tidying the flower room. Finding places for everything, cleaning buckets and general clearing out. Meanwhile John was busy digging up the concrete where the dog kennels were because we are going to build another raised bed 😂 this one will be more for the climbers that were attempting to climb over the dilapidated kennels. It was hard going because it’s MOD concrete and about 20ft thick, well not quite but it was put done in the days when they did the job properly.

In the afternoon we did nothing for a few hours, we had earned a rest I think. I then started the website again and carried on doing that until bedtime. I had managed to polish my rusty skills, it is not a great website but it does the job and I can carry in tweaking it when I get time. It is live but I still need to get an SSL certificate sorted so that it is a safe site to visit otherwise no traffic will be sent my way.

Halfway through taking down the dilapidated kennels

And then it was gone 😊

Traffic, flowers (lots) & Mothers Day.

Monday March 4th 2024: Chaos this morning, we have had increased traffic through our lane due to a closed road further across. Although the diversion sends them elsewhere they insist on driving down our small country lanes because it is a cut through, not a problem except that half of them have no idea how to drive on country lanes 🙄 They are not two way traffic lanes but having been in the car when they come hurtling towards you, you have to wonder what they actually see around them 😂 Where is the other car supposed to go when the other one won’t slow down 🤷‍♀️ Large deer regularly jump out into the lanes and I only hope nobody meets one of those at speed because it won’t be pretty. Add to that this morning and the main arterial road nearby was shut due to a bad accident, cue even more cars trying to find a way through, total chaos 😬 I don’t think I have seen nose to tail traffic in the village before, every small road around the village and into the next town was clogged with those on the school run or going to work. On top of that we have had three cars that I know of that have hit a pothole coming towards ours and ended up stationary with burst tyres right outside our driveway. We go out and tell them to get the car in the drive and off the road if they can, poor chap last night lost two tyres one front and one back, the poor chap this morning hit it at 5.15am and was still on our driveway at 10.30am! Meanwhile I had an appointment at the dentist and John had called to say they had closed another part of the road off that leads to our lane and he couldn’t get through so was going to have to go right round, yep right into all that traffic! We made our way painfully through the village and into the next town and I was half an hour late, I got out of the car and walked the last leg of the way as it was quicker, luckily I had phoned them and the person I was seeing was also stuck in traffic, crazy morning.

Once back home, the traffic having dissipated by now, the sun came out and so I spent the rest of the morning in the greenhouse sowing seeds. I was looking through my seed stash thinking ‘I am never going to be able to plant all these, I have no idea why I have soo many’ but I will give it a good go lol.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 Activities range from singing, eating, playing, sleeping to little walks and playing with his second cousin Ayda 😊

Wednesday: Busy day today and lots of different jobs to get done. First a quick whip round with the hoover and a bit of polish. Next nip over to the flower room and wash out a lot of buckets ready for flowers. Then a quick pit stop to have my hair cut before taking a flower delivery and preparing them for conditioning. Once they were all safety sat in fresh clean water it was quick lunch before going out to the greenhouse and pricking out some seedlings. Then onto weeding and clearing the flower beds at the far end of the garden, the area I originally earmarked for flowers. It is still for flowers but now so is the rest of the garden and the tunnels 😂 I think I earned a sit down so that’s what I did and a few minutes later John arrived home and made a cuppa. He got changed and went to see his brother as it is his birthday today and I filled up a bucket with some fresh water and went out to cut hellebore ready for Mother’s Day flowers. I have a few other bits to cut tomorrow and then I will be ready for a mammoth flower weekend 🥰

I will be juggling jobs like that for a few weeks now, seedlings, weeding, planting, flower arranging as well as everything domestic. My plan is to work smarter not harder and so I am trying to get any weed suppressing systems in place as well as staking and mulching, all of these should, should be hugely beneficial for time saving 🤞 Who knows I may even have time each day just to sit and look 🤪

Thursday: I did a few household bits first thing before going off to Witney with Charlie and Oscar. We had a mooch round, I bought some bits to put my hair up, when the girls were at home there were always bobbles about but they have long since disappeared. We had a coffee and a bit more of a mooch before heading back home. I had a quick lunch and then I went out to cut some pussy willow for the big flower weekend plus a few daffodils and some anemone. Then into the greenhouse to sow some seeds and I was going to do some work outside but it’s cold again today so I came back inside. I know what’s coming, it will be straight into hot weather I bet 🤪

I have a lot of orders to start getting ready tomorrow so I guess a little calm before the storm won’t hurt.

Friday: Wooooooosh I have worked solidly all day today making up the bouquets and bunches of flowers going out tomorrow and Sunday and I still have to wrap them all tomorrow. But what an absolute pleasure of a job it was even if my back was aching by the end of the day. I still have enquiries coming in but having used almost every single stem in the place I am having to say no 🙄 I d have a fair amount of foliage left thigh so if anyone wants a foliage bunch it’s a yes 😂 I was hoping to get outside and do a bit as the sun was out but by the time I finished checking and double checking that I had everyone’s order done and then cleared up it was too late for anything else.

Saturday: I spent the morning wrapping bouquets, John went off to deliver some memorial flowers and then in the afternoon I had customers coming to collect some of the orders, the rest will be collected tomorrow morning. In the evening we went out with Shelley, Martin Josh and Flo for a meal at a local italian restaurant. The evening was lovely and the food was great, it is not something we do often so it was a real treat.

Sunday: Yesterday the weather was lovely and today it was back to grey drizzle 🙄 With customers coming all morning I couldn’t really get started on any bigger jobs that need doing so I just pottered around. By noon all of the flowers had been collected and it was time for me to go and see my Mum, delivering the last bouquet to her which my brother in Australia had ordered from me lol. Sam, Mia and Lucie met me at Mums, my sister was there with her partner and little girl too. We had tea and cake and chatted then back home to let the dogs out before going out again. This time to Charlie and Maccas, they were cooking Sunday lunch for us as well as Maccas Mum and her friend.

A lovely weekend of happy faces and happy customers, I have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it 😊

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

Rain, cold and finally some sunshine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funeral flowers, fencing and frosty mornings.

Monday 19th February 2024: Decent enough weather today even if it is a little colder than the weekend. I was up early as I needed to deliver pedestal flowers to the church for a funeral today, John dropped me off and it was a brisk walk back. The traffic is still awful due to another local road being closed and our village turned into a rat run instead 🙄 I spent the rest of the morning in the flower room mostly washing out jam jars I had been given, also had a fair amount of tidying up to do and while I was there I did do a bit of flower faffing because, well why not 😊 In the afternoon I went to the funeral that I had done the flowers for, it was the funeral of a local lady that was well known, full of character and well respected. The turn out was good and all the cars parked probably added to the chaos in the village, especially after someone made an error of judgement and drove into the Ford 🙄 too deep especially after all that rain we had, needless to say they were stranded and then apparently three fire engines arrived to try and get the vehicle out which further clogged up the through road 🤪 The police have now closed the Ford off so that no one else attempts to go through.

Tuesday: Oscar day 🥰 we did venture out on to the farm for a little walk but for toddlers (who mainly stumble and fall over) it is not ideal with chicken and goose poop all over the place 😂

Wednesday: The weather is vile today, could hear heavy rain again in the night and this morning it has continued along with some windy weather as well.

One of the jobs high on my to do list is to empty out the greenhouse and give it a good clean and wash before putting everything back in. Obviously this needs a dry (and for comfort a fairly mild day) in order to complete it successfully, it looks like I will be waiting a while as rain is forecast forever 🤪

As I am in cleaning mode and as I can’t do the greenhouse I thought I might as well do the bathroom instead so that has had a descale, the walls wiped down everything cleaned. Then a quick hoover and polish around the rest of the rooms.

John informed me that the horses had got out over night, no surprise there as the fences are going over left right and centre. The amount of rain we have had has either rotted the posts or the ground movement has loosened them. We have the new fencing ready but are waiting for someone to come and knock them in with the tractor, it’s too wet for them to do it at the moment so we are in a catch 22 situation 🙄 At the end of this month lambing will begin in earnest all over the country and so farm workers will be busy doing that and we still may not get the fencing done due to the contractor we use having those other commitments. We might have to commit to a weekend and hire a hydraulic rammer and do it ourselves and just pray that the weather holds while we do it.

I did nip out to the greenhouse but it was not very nice out there so I came back inside. I needed to find a job to do, I have many but what do I want to do rather than what I should be doing feels right today 🤪 I had some bits of veg to use up from the fridge and so I made a veg stew in the slow cooker. I make plenty of soups, I had chicken and veg soup yesterday and then mushroom soup today both made from scratch, I wanted a side dish that could be frozen and then used with something like a lamb chop or even a piece of chicken. A veg stew seemed the perfect thing so I chopped up celery, carrot, leek, broccoli stalks, garlic and added spinach, broad beans and courgettes from the freezer some thyme I have hanging in the kitchen, veg stock and black pepper, put it all in the slow cooker and I will thicken it when is has cooked down a little. You could make this with pretty much anything you have and eat it like that or add dumplings or use it as a side dish like I intend to.

Thursday: I was determined to get the greenhouse cleaned this week but the weather this morning was atrocious nevertheless if a girl is on a mission, she is on a mission. I decided first up to wash down the outside because the rain would then rinse of the soap suds so I picked a dry moment dashed out and washed all the glass down. Then it hammered down which is fine because that’s what I wanted. Next I thought I may as well get in there and move everything from one end to the other and clean that end then move it all back and do the other end. Sounds easy but there was a lot of squeezing round or stepping over things to be done before I could put one end back again. I have swept it all down and cleaned all the windows, moved all the plants that are in there and checked for slugs while I was going, I found three big fat ones and slung them outside. I just started moving everything from the other end when the septic tank lorry turned up so I made the driver a coffee, had a little chat and then he was on his way again. He was telling me how his company has a scientist on board and she is making great strides setting up separate stations for them to take the sewage to and it is being processed in such a way that it is able to go back onto fields. It is all being vigorously tested and the fields are monitored and tested but it looks like it is a process that will work well. They are having difficulty taking it to the main sewage works because of the flooding at the minute and because the plants are not up to taking the amount that is produced, hence it has to go into the rivers. It is all very well moaning about it polluting the rivers but unless we all stop pooping then it will continue. The smaller stations dotted around would make much more sense and would be more able to cope by the sounds of things.

I went back into the greenhouse once he had left and continued with the other end and the areas under the benches. I had thought that I didn’t have any mice in there this year but as soon as I moved some stuff out shot a mouse. It was scared, I was surprised and I am not sure who moved fastest 😂 well actually it was the mouse 🤪 I carried on moving bits and another leapt out and promptly ran out of the door, still one little sod in there somewhere. They had been nesting in some soak mats that are used in the summer and there were holes in them plus they stank of mouse wee and now so do I. Eventually I had worked my way round the whole greenhouse and found some whopping great spiders while I was at it, shame they don’t eat slugs and mice really.

All the plants have had a good move round and the light levels are now better because the glass is clean and apart from the resident mouse everything is good and I can start some more seed sowing.

Friday: Much colder today and more rain overnight 🙄 I wanted to get some of the seedlings pricked out but I was not going to do it in the greenhouse. It was too cold in there and these seedlings have been growing on the windowsill indoors so the shock of temperature difference might have killed them off even if they were just there for a while. So I filled up the trays with compost and bought them into the kitchen to do the job, I just about found enough windowsill space to put them all. I did go out and do some support netting on the front beds but my feet got cold so I only did a small area. The sun came out so I thought I will go into the polytunnel and plant up some plants from the greenhouse, it was pleasant enough in there. I forgot the weed membrane on the floor lets the water through and ended up wet, dirty knees 🤪 Not much else I can do out there today really as the temps are plummeting to freezing tonight so best not to disturb anything too much. I came in and sat down to write the blog before having some lunch and the minute I sat down the doorbell went, It was delivery of canes which I was waiting for so I wasn’t too annoyed lol.

I have tried outside today but it’s too cold and wet so I thought I would be better off in the warm doing a bit more learning instead.

Saturday: A frosty start to the day and one of the first jobs was to get the horses back in their right paddock as they had escaped again 🙄 One of the problems is that we have had to shut them out of the biggest paddock at the back, we have a big problem with the fences this year. Due to the amount of rain and the rubbish fencing that was churned out a few years back they are now rotting and leaning or falling practically everywhere. We spent a chunk of money on new posts and are waiting for the chap to come and bang them in but the ground is so wet he can’t get his tractor on the ground without churning it up massively so we have to wait. Meanwhile the horses (or more specifically Jack) takes any opportunity to push through to other paddocks. The situation is such that we can’t get one lot of fencing up before another lot is going over, the high winds haven’t helped as some of the fence line has had hefty branches come down and take the fence with it.

John went to work first thing while I sorted out some flowers for Monday morning, burnt some rubbish and practiced making a dried flower, flower crown for an upcoming workshop. Then once John came home we went off to our grandnephews 4th birthday party where we caught up with extended family. Once back home we donned work clothes and went up the back to try and sort out (fix) some of the fencing that has gone over in the big paddock. Once we have cobbled it back together we can let the horses back in and they will be happier as they have more area to graze over. We worked out there until it got almost dark and we just have a bit more to do tomorrow.

Sunday: It was another frosty start but it thawed fairy quickly in the early sunshine. I cut some foliage for birthday flowers going out tomorrow then a few household bits while I waited for John to bring in the eggs. When he didn’t appear I went to look for him and he was down in the far corner fixing the fence already. Once that was done we were able to let the horses back in and they now have a new bit to graze on which was a sectioned off walkway. We don’t really need it now and the fence was falling down so we altered it for them to graze, it will save us mowing it.

I was doing some bits in the greenhouse and garden while John was trying to sort out a water butt on the end of the greenhouse. We have one each side but one keeps going over and so out came the sand and cement plus a few slabs and hopefully that will make it more stable.

By mid afternoon the sun had disappeared and it was cold on the fingers and toes so we called it a day, went in and lit the fire then spent the afternoon relaxing.

Early evening, I got the dinner, John did the animals then I had to make up the bouquets of flowers for tomorrow and finally we can sit down and not do anything at all 🤪