The Smallest Smallholder

WOW - it’s a long time since I was last in here and I apologize for that. Shortly after my last entry we came across a house for sale, in our price bracket, in the perfect little village. It had more space than the smallest smallholding, and a much larger garden. Seeing the opportunity to expand our lifestyle and get a bigger house we pushed on and tried to buy the place. Its been 6 months of misery. The house fell through, we lost the buyer we had for ours, blah blah bloody blah.

Through it all our self sufficient plans faltered – the garden was left to go wild (“whats the point of planting stuff – we could be moving in 8 weeks” we kept saying to each other) and the usual winter tasks were left undone. 2 days ago we cracked and decided to stay put. I’ve just rang the estate agent and taken the house off the market, and for the first time in about 4 months I feel like there is something to look forward too. 

So between stints at the 2 jobs we both now work, we are going to spend the next few days tidying up the garden and then it onto another season of growing. I cant bloody wait – im so eager that I just spent my lunch hour down the garden centre buying a few packets of seeds. So – we are back. Expect more blogs very soon, once we get back into things.   

Take care folks, and dig deep. The weather mans claims the weather is gonna be better than last year, so lets get those veggie beds planted up and, then we can all look forward to a nice big, tasty, healthy, and home-grown harvest.  

Gary

ITS SUNNY!!!!

Feels like ages since I last said that. Anyway - sorry its been a looooonnng time without an update. As well as the constant rather horrible unseasonal weather, ive been ill and so things have fallen quite behind. I shall try to remember everything that has happened.

Hmm where to start. The chooks. It always seems I have something new to deal with and this time is no exception. Everything was going wonderful - we finally got a dry sunny weekend and i was able to shovel out the run (after the constant rain had created a 6 inch deep layer of slop), and eggs were almost magically appearing from all the chooks everyday. Then came the day of my birthday, about 4:30 in the morning to be precise. Me and the OH were rudely woken up by the sound of crowin and squarking from the hen house (which sits outside our bedroom windows). I quickly got dressed and prepared to go outside - my first thought was that one of the hens was in distress or, worse, had taken the role of a cock bird in our little flock - its rare but not unheard of that a hen will learn to crow in the absense of a cock. So, I open the back door, step outside, turn toward the hen house and stopped...gob smacked. I must have said something I wont repeat here, because from the open bedroom window I heard the OH ask what was wrong. Before answering her I looked again, just to check my rather sleepy eyes were not deceiving me. Next to the hen house was my wheelbarrow. Sat on my wheelbarrow was a small white cockeral, happilly crowing his dawn chorus across the estate at a million decibels. All down the street I could here muffled complaints and angry tired people slamming shut thier bedroom windows. A few minutes later and I was joined by the OH and the Lodger (who has also been woken up). The 3 of stood staring in disbelief and after a while i couldnt help but to begin laughing - ive always had a fear that someone might steal our chooks during the night, but ive never considered waking up to find that we own another one!!

Now we didnt have a cockeral for a very good reason - we live on a housing estate, surrounded by other houses, and knew a cockeral would be far too noisy, and would annoy all our neighbours. Guess what - everyone for a hundred yards has just been woken up, and is now rather annoyed with us. Q a few days where my most repeated saying was : "im very sorry, but we had never seen it before - here, have some free eggs".
So. I rang all my friends to see if this was a birthday present or joke from any of them - they all laugh. lots.
So, I rang the police to see if anyone had reported a missing chicken - I explain whats happened - I wait while the policeman stops laughing. They will file it but have not had any reports.
So. I rang the RSPCA to see what I should do - I explain whats happened - I wait while they stop laughing. They suggest I keep it a few days in case an owner comes forward, then if im able to provide a humane death, they suggest I should introduce him to the wonders of sage and onion stuffing. Hens are the useful birds and they can regularly re-home them, but not many people want a noisy cockeral.
So. I rang the council to see if there was any advice they could give. They cant help, but do find it a funny story - I wait while they stop laughing - Im then put through to enviromental health so I can explain the situation due to the number of noise complaints they are about to receive - I explain whats happened - I wait until the laughing stops and they tell me not to worry and make a note that it is due to things beyond my normal control. 
I have a theory that someone raised him as a pet, not really knowing what they were getting into. When he reached maturity and he started crowing, I think they thought it best to re-home him. As I already have chickens, I think he was 'kindly' donated over fence during the night. He smelled hens - and his natural instincts took over.
I left him wondering the garden for the rest of the day, admiring the hens through the wire of the run, while strutting up and down to show he was in charge and was protecting them. We put him in with the hens that night. The good news was that he didnt crow the next morning. When I opened the hen house, he was standing there looking a bit confused and alarmed. He was also no longer looking quite so regal either. He is still quite a young bird (or maybe even a bantam - i dont know), and it would seem my hens didnt favour his advances. He emerged from the house and ran through the door of the run before I could stop him - they had beaten him up and removed most of his long tail feathers - all he wanted was to get away from them. Luckily natures urges soon took control again, and has back to 'patroling' his way around the outside of the run, where he could see his hens but they could get to him.
That was several weeks ago. He has not crowed since that first morning so we have decided to give him a respite to enjoy life a little - it also means he is starting to bulk out a little. Each time we have tried putting him with the hens, the result has been the same, and he now seems content to roost outside, and look after them from his side of the chicken wire.
This has created 2 new problems however.
Problem 1) The mere presense of the cock-bird has sent 2 of my 5 hens broody. Ive managed to stop 1 from sitting but she has not started laying eggs again yet. The other is being much more stubborn. Everytime another hen lays an egg she rushes to sit on it. I spend a good chunk of each morning, lifting her off her nest and taking the eggs away, but all she does is wait till im gone and sits on the empty nest until another egg becomes available. Ive even tried shuting her out of the house for day, but nothing has worked. If the cock-bird manages to bulk up so he can defend himself, i may let him back in with the hens and then use the broody to hatch a few eggs - if i dont do that though, i may have a few problems.
Problem 2) If the cock-bird doesnt feel like he is getting enough attention from the hens he occosionally goes for a wander and this has led to him taking a few forays through the open kitchen door. Most of the time he would go un-noticed, were it not for the little 'presents' he leaves all over the floor. Yesterday he came all the way through the house, finally finding his way into the living room - once he spotted me, he prompty crapped on the carpet before running for the door.

So, thats the story of our cockeral. Now what else can I talk about. Hmm yes...guess what - more chock related stuff.

As well as being visted by the magically appearing noisy cockeral, we have also been visited by that the great chicken menace of 'RED MITE'! 
During the few hours it didnt rain one Saturday morning, I had to completelly strip down and scrub the house, before dusting with powder. To keep the chooks happy while I did this I let them have the run of the garden - was great to watch them running around after all the fresh grass. Then they found my cabbages. Then i quickly built a chicken proof fence. Then they found another way to get to the cabbages. Then I built a second fence. then the chooks took to tearing through my hops in search of snails and slugs, and that kept them happy for hours. Well at least until I had to catch them and put the red mite powder on them.
Long, long, morning. Thankfully the red mite incursion seems to be over though.  

And to think that one day I want to progress into other live stock. I must be mad.

I cant wait.

Right what else have we been up too.

One of this years big failures has been our fruit crop. The combination of the incredibly bad weather, together with me being ill meant that a large amount of our logonberrys and raspberrys, turned nasty before before we had a chance to pick them. DOH - 2 of my favorite fruit ruined - I also heard that a lot of the local pick-your-farms suffered the same fate. Double DOH!

We finally dug up the onions, shallots and garlic we put in last. Im calling it a success because our onions always come up really small, and we had never tried onions or garlic before. While none of them are exactly big, they are well formed and all taste really good - really please and will be doing the same during winter this year.

carrots. hmm. Im going to take a partial success here. It would seem that the only things that grew well in the front garden during the rains were weeds and poppys. lots and lots of weeds and poppys. Unfortunatelly they strangled some of the beds and 2 thirds of the carrot didnt even get off the starting blocks. The first lot we put in managed to fight through and we ate the first of those a few nights ago - fresh from the garden cooked with home grown new potatoes and a lamb chops. Hopefully the weather will now improve so im going to see about putting some more in. Fingers crossed.

Im also going going to put some more potatoes in - I know its a little late in the year but with the way the weathers been, does that really matter. At worse ill waste a few spuds, but at best we will have fresh new potatoes for Christmas day.

thats it - ive had enough typing. I promise to blog again soon with everything else that is going on. Until then, I hope everyone is enjoying the sun and and lots of home grown food. 

Summers here!! Well, I say summer - its July at least. And its raining. Again. As it has been for almost everyday for the last few weeks.
Although our part of Ol'Blighty isn't flooded like many poor sods (we really feel for you - we would be devastated if it happened to us), the soil has been classed as 'mud' for weeks now. This has somewhat hampered our efforts in just about everything, as well as making us thoroughly miserable. We are now hoping that the weather will improve and give us a late Summer that stretches the nice warm days into October. This will at least give us time to finish this years projects and still take some time to fully enjoy our garden, our lifestyle choices and all that it brings us.

Its also been another month things have been busy as hell and I've not had time to post anything on here. Oh well - here goes - ill try to remember everything.

First up, a break from the smallholding and gardening for some sad news. As many of you know I also have a deep fascination with wildlife and the natural world. 10 years ago my brother asked me for some advice, and took in a very sick iguana named Bandit. Iguanas are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity, but my brother met the challenge and built him a huge tank, sorted out his correct diet and provided him with a comfortable environment to live in. For the last 10 years, bandit has been a fantastic family pet and a constant source of fun, fascination and wonder for anybody visiting my parents house. Unfortunately, despite my brothers best efforts, old age finally claimed Bandit earlier this week. Considering the condition he was in when he was rescued, I think my brother did an amazing job in bringing him back to health and providing a good quality of life, and I want to take this opportunity to say you made me proud with what you managed to do. RIP Bandit.

Now, on with the reason this blog exists and what you came here to read about....

The Chooks. Everything going good finally. Loads of eggs (4 or 5 most days) with people now starting to buy our excess. Only problem this month has been the wet weather mixed with the heat of summer - once again the chicken run is a sticky mud bath, but this time its also starting to reek a bit due to the heat. Have plans to board the bottom 8 inches and filling it up with wood shaving, but I cant do anything until the weather improves.

Fruit crop. Have been eating loads of strawberries, raspberries and loganberries, and there are more ready to be picked every few days. Blackberries, black currents and red currents are also coming along nicely. Hoping we get some nice hot summer days soon so my grapes ripen - this is the first year I've allowed the vines to bear fruit and they are covered in loads of little bunches - I need some nice dry days so I can trim the vines back and cut out some of the bunches - at the moment there are too many for the vines to support and ripen (especially if the weather does not improve)

The great carrot plan. As you know (or will if you have read previous blog entrys) we are trying different methods of growing our carrots this year. Already we had planted some straight in the ground, then we had made shallow trenches and filled these with nice soft compost. Both of these are meeting with limited success - we don?t know if its due to some bad seed or the unseasonably bad/cold/wet weather, but germination has been very poor, and although we have some carrot sprouting through, we have a lot of gaps in the rows where nothing is happening. Bring on the final part of the great carrot plan - METHOD NUMBER 3!
We cut a load of empty toilet roll tubes in half, filled them with compost, and planted the seeds in these. We then bunged the whole lot in the mini-greenhouse and these have been doing nicely and seem to have a much higher germination rate than those we planted straight outside. In a few weeks we will plant them out into the vegie bed. To avoid disturbing the plants and attracting carrot fly, we will plant out the complete toilet roll pot. Over the time it takes the carrots to grow the pot should naturally break down into the soil.

Carrots in bog-roll tube plant pots ready for the greenhouse.

The Raised Beds. Things have generally been progressing well with the vegetable growing. For the first time ever, all over cauliflower came through and grow some nice big fluffy white heads. Due to the extremely heavy rain, these were all in danger of 'blowing', so the OH has harvested, blanched and frozen the entire lot - there loads of it, so we should have a decent supply to keep us going for a while. We also have loads of nice big cabbages too. We have managed to keep the caterpillars and slugs at bay this year (much to the distress of the chickens which seemed to revel in being fed the slug-ravaged remnants last year). We also have some rather unexpected but welcome additions to the raised beds - loads of extra tomato plants have sprung up. Would appear that either some survived in last years compost or the horses that 'provided' our manure enjoyed a few tomatoes in there diet. Either way, we are happy to let them grow - makes the vegie bed look a little more interesting too - random tomatos plants popping up between lettuce, cabbage etc

The main raised bed. You can just see the small narrow bed to the right of the picture, and the grapes vines growing up the fence at the back

On the kitchen front. We got on with some wine bottling. We have got loads and loads bubbling away in cupboard from last years fruit, and most of it is now ready. A few taste tests while we cleaned and sterilised the bottles, and then we topped up 6 bottles of raspberry, strawberry and loganberry and 12 bottles of blackberry. A few of these have already been drunk and, hangovers aside, they are very, very nice.

And finally. Despite the bad weather we have managed to make some headway with returning the garden to a more useable state. Thanks to Pete The Lodger, the patio is finished. We may need to move and reset some of the slabs later in the year (due to laying them very hurriedly in the rain), but the new concrete is down and the patio area is usable again. OH has been patiently continuing to paint the fence and as you will see from the photo's we have gone for what we think is a great eye-catching blue. We think it adds a nice bit of colour and fun to our home, and all the green plants growing against it look great.
 

Our final act of defiance (or stupidity or desperation - you choose which seems more appropriate) against the weather this month was to plant our small lawn area. I wont be surprised if the rain washes all the seed away and sod all ever grows again (it really is that wet), but we had to try and got bored waiting weeks and weeks and weeks for a decent dry period.

Well, thats about it for now. let all hope that summer arrives soon.

Been extremely busy, both at work and home, so have been rather slack in updating this blog. Ill try and fill in the main events now - be warned, there’s lots of it.

First up, my favourite subject of late, and the one im asked about the most - the chooks:
Happy to say that they are all now getting along nicely and laying lots and lots of eggs - we get 4 or 5 most days now and have started to sell some to our friends and family - 6 eggs for 60p and an egg box - getting people to reuse them is even better than recycling, and saves time, money and energy - brilliant . Only other problem we had for a few weeks was the newbie’s refusing to perch at night - they happily starting going into the house, but wouldn’t jump onto the perches, preferring to stand on the floor. 3 weeks of me picking them up every night and putting them on the perches and they now seem to have got the idea. 2 very stressful months - glad its over, and things have calmed down again. I love all the eggs but very nearly stuck all the chickens in the cook pot.

now, onto other things

I completed all the new raised beds and they are all now planted up - the main one has lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower and radish, the long narrow one has peas and dwarf beans, and the small one at the end has tomatoes. Everything seems to be doing really well except for the beans, which have hardly sprouted yet, and the tomatoes, which haven't done much at all. On the bright side, the first lettuces we put in have done extremely well and we started eating them a few weeks ago - so much tastier than the mushy bags of leaves from the supermarket. Have also had a few early pods from our peas too (even though the plants are still rather small), and we have taken to eating these raw, straight from the plant - very tasty. All the scraps and off-cuts have been going to the chooks and our tortoise, so there is absolutely no waste for the bin either

Unfortunately the rather unexpected wet weather of the last few weeks has meant that we have been unable to finish the patio. As we head into June im hoping things will dry out a little - much of the garden is currently mud. The chicken run is extremely bad after the deluge of the last few days - its about 5 inches deep, and no matter how much you try and tell yourself its just dirt and water, its clingy nature and power to suck your shoes off your feet, soon remind you that it also contains a good portion of chicken droppings - its been so wet ive been unable to fork over the run as I usually do and at the moment my shoes and several pairs of socks smell faintly of 'farm' (thought that sounded better than the many alternatives i could use). I’m now working on a plan to board the edges and fill it with 8 inches of wood shavings - this should help drainage and still allow the chooks to dig and scrap around.

Cabbage white caterpillars!! The bane of my life last summer, have made their first appearance. Among the many things happening over the last few weeks, we have had neither the time nor money to net the raised beds. Last week, during one of the few nice dry days we had, I did my usual wander round the place, and found several leaves on 2 cabbages had been chomped down to skeletal remnants of their former selves. Several caterpillars sat nearby and I could swear they were laughing at me. I quickly set about swearing and collecting the little sods and tried feeding them to the chooks, but they didn’t seem impressed - obviously caterpillars are not up to the gourmet standards of slugs and snails. Although the cabbage whites had been spared the death sentence by the chooks, there was no way I was gonna let them get back to munching my cabbages, so I did the only thing that seemed fair - I stamped on the little buggers BEWARE all brassica munching pests - there’s plenty more where that came from. This is your first and only warning - our garden is not a freebie all-you-can-eat buffet - stay away.

Now then, what next....oo yeah, the front garden vegie patch.
We have made a change to our carrot planting plan - instead of making 3 plantings at different times to stagger the harvest, we are now making 3 plantings, at different times, using 3 different methods. The first lot of seeds went into the ground as-is and are now sprouting, BUT, so are the weeds and its been a little bit tricky to pull up the fledging weeds without accidentally ripping out our carrot seedlings. We have also had a low germination rate - whether this is due to the amount of weeds, the extremely wet weather or poor seeds I don’t know, but there are quite a few gaps in the row, we are going to try and fill with a second scattering of seeds. The second method we are trying started a few weeks ago - OH made some trenches and filled them with good soft, non compacted compost. Once again the weather has been against us here and we are waiting to see if anything comes up at all. Method 3 we are hoping to start this weekend - we have been busy saving our toilet roll tubes. These will be cut into 2 or 3 sections and filled with compost to make small pots we can plant with seed and place in the greenhouse - hopefully this will give the seeds a really good start, and when it comes to planting out, the whole tube will go into the ground where it will break down as the carrot grows. Will let you know how it goes as things progress.

Spuds. they were left chitting in the shed a bit longer than intended due to how busy things have been and I planted them all out last week - hopefully we will still get some nice spuds, just a month or 2 later than planned.

What next... arh yes. Now then, time for another of my dreaded nemesises-eses (must learn to spell these long words). Aphids. Horrible little blighters that like to live on, dine on, crap on, breed on and die on my plants and this is in addition to completely ruining the crop and/or killing the plant. They mainly seem to affect the various fruit I try to grow and last year nearly killed our young cherry tree. A few weeks ago I noticed the leaves on the cherry starting to curl up and went for a closer look. Sure enough, on the bottom of nearly every leaf on the end of each branch was a little colony of little black nasty aphids. I removed the worst leaves and then had a look around the rest of the plants - the damson tree was also badly infected and dropping leaves, as were all my red and black currents. Quick trip to the garden centre and i attacked them with more menace than a Texan would use against a middle eastern country, performing aerial bombing and strafing runs with a spray bottle of organic pest control. A few weeks after the initial conflict and it appears the battle is won, the enemy beachhead destroyed, although im keeping my eyes open in case they have another go.

Speaking of fruit - Strawberrys, Raspberrys, Logonberrys and red and black currents are all filling out nicely and it looks like its gonna be a bumper crop. I cant help but check them all everyday, looking for the first few to start to change colour. Mmmm Yum. I’m letting the grape vines fruit this year too - so far it looks promising, and as long as we get a good summer we should be enjoying our first bunches of home grown grapes later in the year.

Right then, that’s everything I can remember for now - been typing this for ages and ive had enough for now. Ill get some more piccies up soon to show you all the transformation thats happened since the last set, and get a reaction on the fencing we have been painting - its a bit bright, but does add a nice bit of colour to the place.

Take care, dig deep and hope for some sunshine.

Sorry there has been no update for 2 weeks - I had to go on a work trip to our offices in China, so missed 9 days (inc 2 weekends) around the place, although the OH has been hard at work on a whole bunch of stuff. The trip was useful, but has put a big dent in my plans to cut my carbon footprint this year. DOH!

So - now the good stuff. Came home to find that the OH and The Lodger have been laying the new patio - it looks fantastic. Will be lighting the BBQ up at the weekend to to give it some use.

Took a walk round the place and was completely amazed at how much everything has changed - everything has masses of leaves, the strawberrys and logonberry are in flower, and the cabbage, peas and lettuce in the raised beds have doubled in size. Its great - i missed being here but coming back to such a great transformation is fantastic.

And Finally - it seems no update is complete at the moment without an update on the chooks. Things have improved and i feel confident that the 5 will learn to live together - the bad news is that the new 2 ones still spend most of thier day hiding. They have taken to perching on the chook house door and jumping down to quickly get food and water. Only one of the original 3 is still interested in bullying them but that is causing new problems. One of the newbies has started laying - however to avoid getting attacked, she lays from her perch on the door - which means the eggs have a 4 foot drop to the ground. Not good - I have smashed eggs, chooks that are starting to like the taste of the smashed eggs, 2 chooks that spend all day terrified, and 1 chook who is a really evil bully. If they were pets I would just leave them to it and enjoy them for what they, BUT, their not - we need those eggs, so i need to stop the bully chook, stop the new ones from being so scared and get them to start using the nest boxes.

The alternative is to either, a) kill and eat the 2 newbies which will return us to our original situation, or b) kill and eat the bully and hope the new 2 will adapt better without her around.

HO HUM. its all fun isnt it.

Took down the dividing fence down last night and let the chooks meet each other again - the fighting is still happening but its not as bad as before, so hopefully they will all settle into living together. Fingers crossed.

Have run into another small problem though - a snail or slug has got into the mini greenhouse and eaten all the seedlings. GGRRRRR. If I catch any, they are chook food!

Time to plant some more.

Warmest weekend of the year so far, so once more we stocked up with cider and beers (you might spot a growing trend here) and spent as much time as possible in the garden.

Had a good general tidy up and then built a new (smaller) raised bed next to the fence and planted it up with peas. We have not done peas for a few years - last time we tried, due to space restrictions, we just put 3 plants in a pot with a cane wig-wam to grow up. It worked OK but for the amount of work we only got enough peas for about 10 small portions. With the new garden layout, this time we have put in 20 seedlings so hopefully a bumper crop is on the way this year. Should be enough room in the bed for another crop too - thinking of trying beetroot.

Also got some more of the fence painted - its going to be a long ongoing project as most of the fencing has something growing up it, so we are having to carefully paint around all the plants. I will explain more when we are a little further along and I can put up some pictures, but for now lets just say that it adds some colour and fun to both our garden and end of the street - its attracting plenty of comments from those walking past anyway.

Update on the chooks - things are looking good and im hoping to try putting them all together again on Wednesday night.

And finally....

A big thanks to Derrick (our plumber) and Steve (our electrician) who both spent all day Sunday working on the brick shed im converting to an outdoor utility room (our kitchen is just too tiny for everything). The electrics are now finished and Derrick is coming back this weekend to finish the plumbing. Feeling really good about it - another one of our projects is coming to an end and the result is going to be so useful.

After the chicken problems I described yesterday, I thought Id let you all know how things are going.

First off - thanks to everyone who gave us advice both through this blog and on the RC forums. A great part of the lifestyle we now lead is being able to ask for help and getting good solid advice - everyone into this is type of living (wether it be full blown self sufficiency or just growing a few tomatoes in the garden) is striving to make a better quality life for themselves, thier family, and thier enviroment and its great how everyone joins in to help each other out.

Right onto the chooks. Got home last night to find the injured chook reaching through the dividing fence to nick food from the other (original) birds - very encouring sight, first because it shows that the wound is not too bad as she is obviously feeling pretty good and secondly because shes feeding well. Moved all the feeder against the dividing fence and all the chooks (new and old) seem happy to eat in each other company, without too much noisy arguing.

We are feeling much more positive about it all now - im still going to keep them seperated for at least a week while the wound heals (for all you not chicken keepers: if a hen see's blood or a good patch or red on another hen, they can help but peck at it - chooks have even died from this), but have a feeling its gonna turn out OK.

So, onward to the weekend. We plan to plant out our peas, paint some more of the fencing, plant more carrots and on Sunday we should have the sparky and plumber coming round to continue the work started a couple of weeks back. Hopefully after that I can put the patio back together and clear the garden up.

Over the easter weekend i extended our chicken run and added 2 new POL chooks to our existing 3. There was the usual fighting as the dominant 2 (both speckledy's) made sure the newbies knew thier place. Fine, thats to be expected - but chickens can be evil minded things and this process can and often does go on for days. Things had been getting better over the last few days though - less fighting and the original birds seemed to able to spend at least 5 mins with the new ones without attacking them, although the new ones did take to spending most of thier time in the chook house instead of being outside, but i let it go as there was only a problem when one of the originals went in to lay an egg - quick scuffle, and both new birds quickly vacated the house and went into the run while she laid.

Until i got home last night - both new birds were cowering in one of the nest boxes, and one had a nasty cut on the back of her neck that was attracting the others to peck it further. I dont have a second house/run, or room for one, so divided my the run up again into the new and old sections and put the new chooks in the new section. The originals have the piece with the house in, so i had to use the best thing i could find for the newbies - a cat box i used to collect them in - lined with straw it at least gave them somewhere to sleep. Ive bandaged up the cut as best i could and both new chooks seem happy - they are eating/drinking fine and ill keep an eye on the cut.

Not sure how this will play out - they are all happy and safe for the minute but they cant live like this long term. If i cant rectify this the new chooks may have to go.

We could be looking at the first big failure of the year and a major setback to plans we have for selling a few eggs.

Not a good day

Its Easter. 4 days off work. perfect - time to sit back, relax, see the family and eat chocolate....NOT.

We have been meaning to extend the chook run for some time to make room for 2 new hens. I woke up early and full of life on Easter Friday (something must have been wrong with me), and decided that this weekend with its forecast of nice sunny days was gonna be that time. First though it was onto a local car boot sale in search of more demijons (can never have enough - theres always something to ferment), and then a french market in town where we picked up some fantastic cured meats and cheese (yum yum). Then finally, having enticed our lodger along with the promise of cider and food in exchange for his help we went off and got paint, wood, screws etc.

So, its now Friday afternoon, we have a fridge full of cider and ........ a plan.
The chook house sits on stilts, which allows the chooks to wander underneath, and there is a 4ft x 5ft run attached to the front. When i originally built the house & run I intended to move it around the garden, but built it too big and heavy so its had to be permanently sited - this means though that with my poor judgement and questionable carpentry skills i never put in a door that would give me easy access to the run area - its also only 4ft high, so when i do manage to get inside i have to assume painfull yoga-style poses to get anything done. So the plan was simple - stand the current run on its end so the 5ft part is upright and against the house, and the 4ft part is on the ground. Then, build a new 6ft high part on the front of this, complete with a door.

It sounded simple.

We built the frame. Well, most of it - i didnt buy enough wood. So looked at starting to put the chicken wire on - i didnt have enough of that either. OOPS.

So Saturday it was down the DIY place again for more wood and then the farm supply shop for some chicken wire. While there I checked the notice board - a local farmer/smallholder had a few POL hens for sale. Excellent - we knew we wanted 2 more but didnt want to spend too much and was just gonna keep an eye out for any that became available - didnt expect it to happen so quickly or easily. Quick phone call, some money changing hands, and we have too new hens. Really really need to finish the run now. Spend the afternoon finishing the framework.

Sunday - spend most of the day putting the chicken wire on and securing it to the original part. I shut the chooks in the house, cut away the wire between the sections, forked over all the soil, hung up some sprout stems, put down a tray of corn and finally let them out. It was great - they ran halfway down the ramp, stopped, looked around and then went nuts - they didnt know what to do first - eat, run around, explore the new section (that briefly contained a little piece of lawn) or dig and scratch around in the newly turned over soil. They are here to provide eggs and eventually meat - they are not pets, but a resource - but I see no reason why they cant do that and still be happy hens.

So we get to Monday - last day of the long weekend ( DOH - should have booked a few days extra holiday), and other than the noise from the chooks as they squabble over their place in the pecking order (always a problem when you add new birds to a small flock), its another great day. We set about clearing the area around the raised bed so i could build another, much smaller, one. We also started painting the fence, but thats for another time.....