Life in the shanty town!!

Well the ladies are thoroughly enjoying life in their 'shanty town'. They troop over every morning to go in for breakfast and then have fun and games climbing the umbrella and sliding down. Some do get down to the serious business of egg laying (the nesting boxes are under the umbrella with the sides of the house being used to create a nice cosy dark corner).

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If they want peace and quiet they sit on the roosting bars in the roof space of the old chicken house, last night Molly wanted to sleep there and it took a lot of persuasion by LH to get her to come down.

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At night time they troop over to their usual house, have a mooch about for a while and then put themselves to bed. Hopefully today will be the last day they have to do this as our new electric foxproof poultry netting should be delivered.

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And while they are playing.......I've been busy. Yesterday saw me planting this last raised bed with 53 Spinach Beets (Perpetual Spinach) under the net tunnels and 6 Chicory, 8 Kohl Rabi, 1 Aubergine, temporarily under the bottles and 1 Narsturtium .

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Good job I'm married to an ex- Royal Navy guy, him and Popeye both love Spinach!!

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Sue xx

Anything but foxes......

This morning I would rather talk about anything but foxes........but first a quick update for all my lovely followers and concerned folk. Yes, it was most definitely foxes, at least two, that have eaten my lovely girls. Yesterday morning I heard the girls making a LOT of noise and dashed out of the kitchen to find myself stood about twelve feet from Mr Fox, calmly surveying what had been his larder, but now safely behind the chicken wire. On my order Sophie gave chase and saw him off, he didn't come back!! This morning I have just been greeted by the sight of a large lady fox, bigger than yesterdays but just dashing through the field. I hope they realise chicken is off the menu.

My remaining girls are all well and safe, slightly disgruntled at being expected to live in a pen, you can see the temporary enclosure for the big girls at the top left of the photo above, it will later be the empire of the Lavender Pekin Bantams. We have placed an emergency order with the company that provided our hen houses and hopefully they will rush our new Fox-proof Electric Poultry Netting to us and then all will be well.

Runner Bean Wigwam (also 2 beans planted at each post) Now.....enough of that!! Yesterday saw us being busy, busy little bees, LH building his worm bed sections (very impressive!!) and me........I was turning the picture you see at the top of this post into the picture you see at the bottom. Cucumber Slope (with Pumpkins behind and to the left) Of course there were lots of other jobs along the way, including a marathon watering session for the Kitchen Garden and polytunnel, but in my mind my main achievement was the cucumber/pumpkin/bean bed. Nice to step back at the end of the day and see someting completed (well almost, I'm just going to add some sweetpeas between each of the uprights, LH has put some mesh there for them to grow up). I'm off to plant them now, that is after I've coaxed the girls into their daytime enclosure. Have a good day and I hope you all have some of this lovely good weather, it's Bank Holiday in the UK this weekend so we know it won't last!! Sue xx

Chickens

Little Lovely - a survivor.

At bedtime last night we managed to get back together fourteen of our thirty girls. We have lost 2 White Stars (Cappachino and Milly), 1 Welsummer (Coco), 5 Speckledys and 8 Red Girls.

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So of our original 30 we have left 5 Speckledys, 4 Reds, 3 White Stars (Molly, Little Lovely and Jemima) and 2 Welsummers (Fudge and Bourneville).

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They are now all living temporarily during the day in the old chicken enclosure and coming out at night under supervision to go back to their house. This will continue until the electric poultry fencing arrives. The new girls are confined to the other chicken house until then too, it's not a perfect solution but a safe one. 13 of them in a house designed for 24 gives them enough room to cope for a couple of days.

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The Lavender Pekin Bantams have been safe all the time in their Eglu, and are now sharing it temporarily with the 2 new New Hampshire Reds, who at just 6 weeks old were being bullied by the new big girls. At least they are the same size as the bantams at the moment.

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Life here on the farm is subdued but going on. The pigs (thanks to Butch) have discovered a liking for jam doughnuts!! They are all currently basking, with full tummys in their various mud wallows in the orchard enjoying this lovely sunshine. I'm off to the polytunnel to give everything a drink before it gets too hot in there and Lovely Hubby is busily constructing his worm beds, ready for the arrival next week of the main bulk of our worm empire.

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Thank you SO much for all your words of sympathy left yesterday either in the form of comments or the numerous private emails I have had from lovely blogging pals. It helps when folk understand.

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Have a lovely day.

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Sue xx

Decimation and Disappointment

Usually when we get back from any journey off the farm we are greeted with calls, cackles and the general welcoming sound of our girls. Welcoming us back, (okay I know....they're really just after one thing.......FOOD!!), it's a lovely sight and sound. Today we arrived back from our visit to a Farm Sale to the sound of silence. Not one chicken to be seen.

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Worrying and quite scary.

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We quickly got out some corn and called the girls, from out of the bushes and the orchard a few appeared, in no great rush to eat, and more subdued than I have ever seen them. They peacefully all ate around one tray of food, all 6 of them.

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How many we have lost I won't know for sure until bedtime when I can do a proper head count. Our little flock of happy hens has been decimated by a fox or a couple of foxes. There are little clusters of feathers dotted around the farm. The only consolation is that they have been taken as food, most likely for baby fox cubs and not just massacred and left. Nature is sometimes hard to accept, but in the country you must.

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The reason we were off the farm......to buy some additional laying friends for our girls. These have now turned into replacements!!

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We bought -

6 Speckledys POL 2 (six week old) New Hampshire Reds 1 Light Sussex POL 1 Black Rock POL

5 Hylines POL

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These will all remain inside one of the houses, and our girls will be caged in the old chicken run during the day until we have delivery of our soon to be ordered electric poultry fencing. Mrs Fox is having no more of my ladies.

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And the disappointment..........it looks as though Betty the Berkshire pig has had a phantom pregnancy. Not a sign of any imminent birth (pigs rarely go past their due date). She is now in with Butch, the new Berkshire boar, a proven stud. Fingers crossed this time, if nothing happens there will be lots of sausages for sale at the Farmers Market.

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Sorry to all those of you who were waiting for pictures of little piggies, to say I'm disappointed is the biggest understatement of this year!!

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Saturday 22nd May, a sad day here on the farm.

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Sue xx

Discovering New Blogs

One of the best bits of Blogging on a regular basis is discovering new Blogs on your travels.

I 'follow' lots of Blogs, I have a list of good Blogs on my sidebar and nip by and visit lots more when I have time, but sometimes you stumble across a new one, usually through someone else's sidebar. After all if you like reading someones Blog it stands to reason you are on a similar wavelength to them and will enjoy some of what they enjoy. It is always a pleasure to 'dip' into someone elses life as a welcome guest.

Some of my favourites at the moment are to do with self-sufficiency and living 'the Good Life' for obvious reasons. When we dip into these we can tap into a wealth of ideas and tips, we can help solve each others problems and motivate each other.

My bestest Blog at the moment for reading daily, and one I have followed for quite a while now, has to be Rural Idiocy. Max is on a similar journey to me but in Brittany. He has the added pressure of foreign language, a family to support and a need to set himself up for his completely self-sufficient year next year. He is an inspiration. We have both helped each other (I hope) with ideas and suggestions and picked each other up when we've felt down about this life style. Through his sidebar I have tapped into many other lovely Bloggers writing about the same things.

Another very recent discovery has been Rebecca Bakes Cakes, a Blog by a lovely girl baking her way through the year, with a different cake or biscuit recipe each week, can you guess why I like it? This weeks recipe is definitely on the menu!

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The picture at the start of this post, is three of the new girls (Rhode Island Red Hybrids) also dipping, into a pig trough, freshly filled with water.

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Sometimes it's nice to dip, into cool clear water or into someone else's life, it can clear your head, inspire you, make you a better person, relax you........ or just quench your thirst.......all good!!

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Sue xx

Flowering fruits.......

So many of our fruit bushes, trees and plants are flowering now it is looking promising for a fruity summer.......fingers crossed, we even have rhubarb!!

There are FIVE Lavender Pekins in this picture, they are still so small two can easily hide behind the water pot when Mum approaches with the camera. The friendliest of them is Caldwell, the cockerel. He looks after his ladies very well, always being the first to explore new things and to check the house after I've cleaned it before he lets them in,and he's only ten weeks old. (He's the one at the left of the picture with the slightly larger comb.)

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Back to the planting.......today......lettuces.

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Sue xx

21 today...............

No, not me.......if only! 21 eggs today, our highest ever.

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It means more of the Rhode Island Hybrids are coming in to lay. It also means my fridge fills up VERY quickly!!

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Sue xx