Hello. Hello. We finally managed to get in front of the camera during the day,
rather than at dusk. We're playing a game at the moment called 'that's not your
buzzard'. Yeah, just as we were turning the camera on, I got all excited
'cos the buzzard was out on the, was out on the fence, really close by.
But that's not your buzzard! No, it was a pigeon. So, I got very excited and very
animated and turn the camera around, started filming it. Said 'quick quick get the
binoculars'. And that's not your buzzard! That's not my catchphrase but it's
apparently about to become one. Yes, so that wasn't my buzzard and yet again I
made a fool of myself, but...What else is new? It's called being human we all do it!
Ooh I've been told! So today I thought we would talk about, drumroll. Why do you want to talk
about drum rolls? Flam paradiddle anybody? Okay we're not actually gonna talk about it. So yesterday, we managed
to pick the very first of this year's harvest, didn't we? We did and we'd show it to you
but we ate it there and then and it was lovely. So we got, we had one strawberry,
one whole strawberry. It was a big strawberry. It was a big strawberry
and it was very sweet and juicy and very delicious.
Having not add a strawberry for... Well since about November I think we had the
last one. That was raspberries. No we had a couple of strawberries. We had the wild strawberries.
Yes, Alpine is it? Yeah, well wild, or whatever they're called,
livid! The ones I remember as a kid. Mmm. So that was, that felt a bit special
didn't it? It was, it was a very nice thing to be able to do and it tasted lovely and
just looking at the the vista before us at the moment, I'm also seeing things
like the elderflower tree is getting very flowery, so that's good, that means
that we'll be able to start harvesting those soon I should think. Yeah. So elderflower...
Unless, unless we leave them to be berries and make all elderberry wine because
that was rather nice! Yeah it was, oh that was very good, particularly when we managed to hide a
bottle and forget about it for six months.
That was that was like a very, very good claret, don't you know. But I know you want some
elderflower cordial, syrup. Yes. So hopefully, particularly as we've got
extra elderberry trees in various parts of the garden now, because they've
self seeded or we've moved bits or whatever. There might be some
more fruit. That was when Jane help me move off-sets, I think that's the right
bit, runners or something, but anyway bits had grown out from the roots and Jane
dug them up for me and has dotted them around their homestead, which was superb!
And this year they're they're starting to flower and look like proper trees, aren't they? Yeah
it's been good, we've been spending quite a lot of the early evenings, actually not
that early, because the evening goes on very late at the moment, and as we're
going around putting the animals to bed and reading them their bedtime story and
stuff, we are also pausing and looking at how things are looking out there. That
doesn't make sense, and how well established things are even after a year
or two and talking about what it look like in three or five years time.
Which is quite exciting, but yeah the difference between the winter food
forest and how it looks in the summer, it's just polar opposite.
Yeah absolutely and obviously, you know, last year, at this time last year
the food forest was hardly there really. Yeah there were bits but, yeah you
know, but most of it had only been in for three or four
months and now it just, a lot of it, looks really established. Yes
especially once I've got out and whacked some of the weeds down and you can find out
what's meant to be there. The weeds have been very well-established, we've had
we've had a lovely crop of weeds this year and if you're looking for chopped
down nettles or excess grass, do get in touch! The one thing I have noticed is we
haven't got much of, in the orchard at the front or in the food forest, until it
gets a bit nearer the birds runs, is dandelions. I think we've got on top of
most of those and I know some people are gonna go 'ahhhh! Dandelions are prolific here.
Mmm. And horrific. I've been pulling an awful lot
of them out of the driveway. I don't make dandelion wine, I don't make dandelion
jelly. I don't like the taste of the leaves, do you? Not really.
I don't like doasted, doaste? I don't like roasted dandelion root, as a drink, so there's
nothing about a dandelion that is of use to us!
No, the only good thing about them is that the bees like the flowers.
Yes and we've left more than plenty. More than plenty? More than plenty for the
bees, but yeah, there have been less in front of us and more out the side so we have,
at least, got to grips I think with some of them in, say, in the orchard area.
In the last few days the farmer who farms the fields all around us, has been
cutting the grass to make either hay or silage, it must be silage because it's
been wrapped up in big rolls. Yeah we don't normally buy hay in rolls do you?
No I don't think you do. Anyway but it's been lovely,
it's been absolutely lovely to watch, they've made beautiful patterns in the
fields as they cut the grass in concentric circles .
It's been so quick, it has been quick, but it just look really countrified. It has
been quick it often feels I think when we're looking at the fields around us at
their massive and compared to the amount of land we've got, yes they are, but
actually in the grand scheme of farming fields,
they're not really that huge, are they? No, so the one in front of us is
about 20 acres. The one down the bottom is about ten. And yeah, and the one
at the back I think is, or allegedly, ten but I don't think it is, I think it's smaller
than that. I think so, I think the road's taken a bit out of it since it was
measured No, so they're not huge fields, but it gives us some
privacy, doesn't it? Oh yeah. And some distance between us and some of the
other homesteads around us.Yes and gradually, obviously, also
we're seeing that the hedge is shooting up in various places. We were talking
over dinner the other evening about a tree that is in view from the
kitchen window, which is, yeah I'd say, probably doubled in size since
we've been here. So, you know, that's also helping mask some of the noises, at
least from the traffic. It's not doing much about the wind. No. I think it'll be a few
years yet before our hedge... I think we're gonna need a dome to get rid of the
sound of the wind completely. Well possibly, I mean, as you will know from
many of my videos outside, even on what is apparently quite a still day, you can
still hear the sound of the wind because it does blow across this site. In every
direction at once. Yeah, I quite often get home from work and 'oh it's been
so still, it's been so hot' and Liz will be going 'But I've been blown in every direction'
So, yes, the first strawberry heralds the oncoming harvest
and fresh fruit and veg more often than stuff that we harvested last year, which
is rather nice. It is yes. And we're also gonna be able to shut down the
penultimate freezer, obviously we'll keep one freezer running, so that we have
fresh meat and stuff in there. Yep. But of the two freezers in the barn there's
still one that's what about half full and we were talking over dinner the other
evening, about the fact that that can shortly be shut down for the summer.
Unless, of course, you decide to go mad with the ice cream making. Well, well
there is that and we could do that we can do things like strawberry sorbet.
Yeah, raspberry sorbet and rhubarb sorbet!
You want rhubard sorbet? I can do rhubarb sorbet. I like rhubarb! Just because you don't! I really
don't like it, but we did have rhubarb and ginger I like that so. And your
rhubarb cake, you enjoyed that. Yeah it was only rhubarb cake because I put the
roof up and ginger jam in it.
Yeah, well, being as we don't eat bread, we
have to find other ways to have things with jam on, so pancakes and cakes, very
good for that. Yup, we had pancakes with blackberry and apple jam this morning.
We did. That was very nice, it was very nice. Was that you using
things up out of the freezer? It was me using things up out of the freezer, there are
only about 30 pounds of apples left and about 25 pounds of blackberries. And we'll be
picking more soon. So any that are unused by the time we're picking more
blackberries, won't get wasted, they'll then be made into wine.
Good! Yes. We are lacking in homemade wine at the moment. Well we say that and
we've got to to demi-John's behind us which I haven't put into bottles yet.
Isn't one of those, one that you decided was a bit... Well I thought it
was awful but you liked it. But there is at least one and I think there's some
pear out in the bootroom as well. Oh is there? Okay. But, you know all these
wines need to sit for a goodly long time to to be nice, don't they? To mature.
And the other thing we've had that we haven't had for a while, yesterday, we had
some chicken. Oh yeah, so we did!
There's something very special about having food that you haven't had for
quite a while. It's been a few weeks since we had chicken and I know it was
very nice to have some fresh home reared meet again, as opposed to frozen
home reared meat, which is also very nice, but when it's fresh - it's just that
little bit nicer! Yes.
Can you see? Look what the ducks are doing. Ohhhhhh!
The ducklings are jumping up to reach the cherries on the cherry
tree. I think they might be going for the leaves
rather than cherries. Oh possibly, it looks like cherries to me. So we've got
a very young cherry tree in there but it was absolutely, it was covered in
blossom and it's got loads and loads of fruit on it. Or had! And it's only about
four feet high, so the bottom branches are a two and a half feet high. We've got
quite tall ducks and obviously the lower branches are within the browse line and...
They tend to get stripped back quite quickly. The lower branches actually, of
all the fruit trees around the the duck area. Yeah. And then you get them standing
there with their bills open, waiting for a fruit to fall in. Yes, so for
those of you who have only joined us in the last the last six months or so, won't
know about our badly behaved ducks. We've got quite a lot of damson trees,
Mirabelle plums and Victoria plum tree and and the Victoria plum has grown very
tall and leggy and most of the plums are one out of our reach. So if we want to
collect them we have to collect wing, wing... so if we want to collect them we have to
get windfalls, but we have to fight the ducks for them. Because every morning I
let the ducks out, they rush over to see what plums are on the ground for them.
And if course, when the plums sit there for a little while in the heat, they actually
start fermenting. We did have a drunk drake, didn't we? We did. He was,
mind you pre-plum sauced!
But yes, the ducks get a little bit greedy over the fruit that falls
and most mornings I either have to pick it up before I let
them out in the morning, Or go round and have a look after
they've gone to bed, to see if any of fallen since they've gone to bed.
Yeah, drunk ducks, well, they're probably not really drunk but they look it!
That's just the way they waddle! When we were putting the ducks to bed last
night are the little ducks the five seven-week-old are they? Six and a half, seven weeks, yeah. They
almost went in with the big ducks. Almost. And then they suddenly went 'oh hang on a
minute'. They swerved off, but yes, it does look like they're integrating a lot better, which is...
That was close! That was a large bird, that was a crow or something! It was
a crow or a blackbird or something. So it does look like they're integrating
a little bit better. They spent the first week or so of being allowed to mix, where
the big ducks would be in one group and the little ducks would be in another.
They'd kind of take it in turns to be in the pond, but the others would sit a long
way away, looking and quacking disapprovingly, but now they do seem to
be merging the flocks a little bit. Which isn't necessarily what we want. No, not
necessarily.The plan for the five ducklings is to see whether we have any
girls which I think we might have one or possibly two. Mm-hmm.
But it might only be one, and the girls will go in with the adult birds and the boys will
go off to the freezer. And we've also got, obviously with the the chicks, they are
now integrating more with the flocks. You've been quite interested in that.
I have, I have been really interested because, I I don't know why, I'd always
got the impression that the chicks, the small chicks, could be in danger from
older birds and particularly from the cockerels. And it's nothing like that!
Big White actually protects his girls. Doesn't he just? Doesn't he just!
I mean we go in to shut the broody, the Brahma mama up with her two, that are
in Big White's field and he'll come beetling over to make sure that we're
not trying to do something that's you know. When he sees we're actually
giving them food or water, it's not a question of them him then trying to get
attention to the others and bring them to it, but he's like 'Okay, fine,
that's for them, where's mine?' Yeah I know, he's been
surprisingly good and likewise with the flock on the other side, that what was
Elvis's flock and that's got eight chicks in it. It's got seven with
the two Australorp mummies and then one with one Australorp mummy.
She's already moved into the shed with it. Yeah she has already
moved into the shed and at night she goes onto the second branch up and the
baby goes with her, it's very very sweet. They're not branches, are they, they're
perches, but it's a hazel pole so it looks like a branch. Anyway it's all
very sweet and they're all jolly safe and there don't seem to be
many escapees busting out of the netting anymore, which is good! after the fiasco on
Sunday. Yeah well maybe they've just learned that it's a safe place to
be and there's actually more space than they realized. And there's
more food there as well. Yeah it help, so it's all good! Things feel
very, things feel calm. I'm watching my cherry tree be decimated over there. It's a good job
we've got some that aren't in animal areas. Yes, yes absolutely! I might even go
film them being, being that naughty. And they'll stop as soon as you get near them with a camera.
I know they will, don't they always? You'll need your paparazzi lens for that. So I'm gonna go
and do that. What are you off up to? Oh I've got stuff to do. Stuff? Yeah the stuff
that needs doing, I just don't know in what
order I'm going to do it in yet. Well that's alright! I think the first thing is cup
of tea. Inevitably! Yeah and I'll go try and film the ducks being ducks. And
that's not your buzzard! No it's not, it's a big crow. And so, wherever you are
in the world and whatever you've got planned for today, I hope it's good one.
I also hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Bye!
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