Chicks away! We're off to a flying start.

Last month I advertised our surplus eggs for sale locally. These aren't the hatching eggs that folks can buy to put in an incubator, but eggs for eating. The response was amazing (read about it here).

Since then we have found a gentle rhythm of folks who are now coming regularly to collect eggs from us. Today I have spoken with a lady who'd like the rest of our surplus eggs, so it seems that we are now going to just about break even in terms of feed costs and the chickens will be paying for themselves. At least until autumn arrives and they reduce or stop laying.

I have registered as self-employed so that our egg sales are all above board and as they should be and I've also asked about what I need to do if I want to sell any of our surplus fruit and vegetables. The member of staff at the local council was incredibly helpful and has sent me all the information that I need to decide whether that is a route I want to go down and in the next few days I will make that decision. So now I am officially a smallholder and trying to eek out a living. Thank goodness for Mr J working outside the smallholding as I can't see the smallholding making a profit for a goodly while, if ever!

But making a profit is not why we live here or why we chose to raise and grow our own food and as long as we keep our reasons for our lifestyle in mind, I don't suppose we can go too far wrong.

Back to the chickens; the older girls in the flock (those that we rescued last year together with Jack and Diesel) are definitely slowing down their egg laying activities. So that we can ensure a good number of eggs in the future we need to have young birds maturing throughout the summer and hopefully some of them will lay during the colder months.

The seven oldest chicks are now almost ten weeks old and have grown rapidly in both size and confidence since they moved into the mixed flock field. It's lovely to watch them scampering up and down the length of the field looking like they are without a care in the world. Taking a photo of them is now very difficult as they rarely stay still for long!

The chicks from the next hatch are now almost six weeks old and are going through that scruffy stage where they have most of their feathers but still have chick fluff on their necks and rumps. They are also growing well. I divided the hatch of eighteen surviving chicks into two houses, one contains solely white Jersey Giants (JG) and the other has some JG crossed with Australorps, Silver Laced Wyandotte and a couple of JG that are destined not to be breeding stock.

I advertised some of the JG chicks for sale and within a couple of hours agreed the sale of three of them. Inevitably purchasers only want the girls so that they don't have to deal with noisy cockerels, but that suits us very well. The boys are broader in the chest and longer in the leg than the girls and as table birds, they are ideal.

I'm relieved that these chicks are leaving us while still fairly young. Once they have moved from the nursery houses into the chicken field with the adult birds, I start to get to know their personalities and parting with them is a little harder.

The most recent hatch of chicks are still in the nursery pen in the stable and still need heat to keep them warm while they grow enough feathers to survive outside. We lost one of them, the weakest chick, after a couple of days, so that leaves us with twenty chicks racing around the nursery pen. There are Cream Legbars, a couple of hybrids (Big Red and Diesel's babies), some Australorps and more white Jersey Giants. All of these chicks are from eggs laid on the smallholding and I'm delighted to have such a healthy looking group of chicks from our own birds.

On Sunday I was contacted by a woman who helps to organise a 'hatching chicks in school' programme to see whether I'd be interested in giving a home to some chicks. Of course I jumped at the chance to have some other layers in the flock, even if they won't be laying for several months! She also organises duckling hatches, so I've expressed an interest in having some ducklings too and I'll wait to hear whether we can have any ducklings in the coming weeks and months.

So tomorrow we will welcome sixteen chicks that are almost four weeks old and give them a home in one of the nursery houses. While there are some Cream Legbars in the group, the rest are breeds that we don't have yet, so I'm excited to see the little bundles of potential brown, blue and cream egg layers. Of course, if there are males as well we will make a decision about whether to breed from them, find them new homes or pop them into the freezer at a later date. 

Our next hatch of chicks is due in a couple of weeks, this may, might, perhaps (probably not!) be our last hatching of chicks for this year. We also have the first of our ducklings due to hatch around the same time. I'm very excited about the duck eggs in the incubator, there are a couple of eggs that I bought in and eleven fertile eggs from our own ducks. I;m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a successful hatch of ducklings.

In other news, all though still chicken related, I was delighted to see that Country Smallholding magazine have printed an extended version of an online article that included some of my input. This month's edition of the magazine has photos of the covered walkway that Mr J and I built, the metal pen that we use for the ducks and of the medium and low tunnels I built that safely keeps the birds' drinking water out of the reach of all but the most determined (and low flying) wild birds. It's nice to know that I've got our biosecurity right!

I am still vlogging daily and now that I am used to walking around with my phone (for the camera) and a small microphone clipped onto my top, it has become less time consuming and invasive of my daily routine. I record and edit one day and upload it the next, so if you'd like to see the new arrivals shortly after they've arrived, you will need to visit my YouTube channel on Friday 7th April.

I need to go and prepare the nursery house for our new arrivals, but first, as always, I think it's time for a cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Women, ducks and chicken

It's International Women's Day and while I was letting the birds out this morning I thought back to the first IWD celebrations that I remember taking part in, all the way back in 1986, over 30 years ago. I was thinking about how much life has changed, how many differing roles I've had in that time and yet, hopefully, I am still true to myself. I thought about some of the amazing women that I've met, that I've been inspired by, watched (and as best I can supported) struggle through adversities and still hold everything together. And I thought about another woman, one who has inspired me the most throughout my whole life, my sister, who if she wasn't my sister, I would choose to have as a close friend.

Over the last year or so I have met a group of adventurous, bold, brave and inspiring women who have chosen to live a life not too dissimilar to ours. Some are pig farmers, others keep sheep, most have poultry and some focus on plant crops, but all of them have a great sense of humour and a level of grit and determination that has allowed them to thrive in their smallholding lives. Happy International Women's Day to every woman everywhere.

Back to our smallholding.

Yesterday we took a trip out to Stroud in the Cotswolds to buy a secondhand incubator. It's the same as the one we use now, a Brinsea Octagon 20. It will allow us to incubate two sets of eggs at the same time, which means that we can hatch some ducks. 

As if the ducks knew our plans, this morning I found three eggs in the duck house, so all of our girls are now laying. I'll leave it a few days for the new layers to settle into a rhythm and then I'll check for fertility by putting a few eggs into an incubator and candling them after a week to see whether there are tiny embryos developing inside the eggs. As soon as I am sure that they are fertile, I will pop a batch of duck eggs into the incubator to hatch. We have one girl that is smaller and noisier than the others and I think she is a Cherry Valley bird rather than an Aylesbury (although I purchased the hatching eggs as Aylesbury), I don't really want to breed from her, so I will select the larger eggs laid by the other two for hatching and keep the smaller bird's slightly smaller eggs for eating.

Once we have had the first hatch of ducklings of the year (and I've got over the sheer joy and excitement) I will be able to offer hatching eggs for sale secure in the knowledge that they produce good birds. We will grow the hatched ducklings on, keeping a couple of the girls to increase our flock and depending on numbers, sell the other ducks and dispatch the drakes for our freezer. And we will repeat the process throughout spring and early summer to give us a small income and a well stocked freezer giving us some food security for the rest of the year.

We are now getting lots of chickens eggs each day, actually we have way more eggs than I know what to do with. The daily egg count is now in the region of 18 eggs and however much Mr J and I like eggs, even we couldn't eat that many. So I need to find a suitable way to sell some eggs locally. To that end, today I am going to put the feelers out a little more and see if there is a market in the next village for some fresh eggs from chickens that are raised on organic principles. 

I thought that I might do a weekly delivery of eggs to folks who have already ordered them. I would put an honesty box at the end of the lane, but I don't think that there is a safe place for cars to pull over to buy them and the last thing I want to do is cause an accident. I will put a sign out on our lane to show that we have eggs for sale at the farm gate, but securing a regular order of eggs is much more sensible. In an area of lots of smallholdings and farms, selling eggs is not necessarily as easy as it might be, but I hope that there are some local folks who would prefer that their food is raised organically and would like to have our eggs.

Delivering the eggs to the local village would also limit the number of vehicles coming on the smallholding. I am still trying to restrict movements to reduce the risk of the spread of avian flu, although I've put a deep strip of straw drenched in disinfectant in front of our gate which, hopefully, would kill of any potentially harmful microbes from tyres as they drive through it. There's a fine line between suitably cautious preventative measures and utter paranoia about others coming on to the premises. I choose to stay on the suitably cautious side of the line.

I was pleased to see yesterday, that this article in Country Smallholding was published online. I made a contribution to it by sharing my thoughts and ideas with Kim, who wrote the article and by being a case study. You can read it here.

I now need to head outside and tackle some fencing issues, but first I think it must be time for a cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Chickens out, spring in

After all the excitement of the last week, a relative calm has descended upon our smallholding. The house is no longer filled with the cheeping and peeping of many little chicks and the cats have once again taken to lounging around in 'relax mode' rather than twitching at every sound of a small bird moving around their small cage behind a shut door.

I have moved the miracle chick together with the other eighteen chicks to the newly reinforced nursery pen in the chicken condo and today is the day that birds are allowed back out into their fields. 

The empty chicken fields have been a slightly sad sight for the last three months while the birds were in lockdown and now that I have completed the required self-assessment form (find info about it here), checked the bio-security measures that we have in place and checked the fields for signs of contamination, the birds are allowed out onto the grass again. We have to keep the ducks and chickens separated, but that's fine, we had done this months ago due to an overly amorous drake (Frederick) and there is now a 35 feet separation zone between the chickens and ducks.

We took the opportunity to use the time the fields were empty to have a think about how best to use the space and we have started to build a walkway from the chicken palace to one area of the field that the Jersey Giants will be using. This will keep the birds safe and also separated from each other because we don't want the breeds mixing unless we've decided that is what we want. 

The Australorps have their own house in one section of the field. The run that I made has been their only access to grass until today and I have now positioned the run so that the chickens can access the run but also their area of the field. Their food and water will be kept under the run, which is covered, so that wild bird poop can't get into their food or water. 

All the other birds will continue to be fed inside their indoor spaces. The mixed flock have a hanging feeder with a lid that is wild bird proof and kept under their covered walkway and the Jersey Giants had one inside the chicken palace, but they were so rough with the feeder that they tore the hanging toggle dispenser out of it, so today I will be making a new one with a smaller hole in the base, so that although it will dispense food more slowly, the toggle won't be able to to be pulled from the base. You can watch how I made the hanging feeder here 

Tomorrow heralds the start of spring and the beginning of the new growing season, I have done some preparation of the annual vegetable garden, but there is quite a lot left to do. We are still enjoying the harvests of last year's sowings, leeks, parsnips, red cabbage, swede and purple sprouting brocolli are still abundant in the garden and we still have food in the freezer and pantry that I preserved last summer and autumn. 

I put a planting plan down onto paper (and online here) which is a rough guide to what I will sow where, but it is not set in stone and I anticipate having to be flexible because some crops may not be out of the ground in time to plant whatever crop I had hoped to put in the space. But a few of the beds are now cleared and ready for seeds or young plants to go into them and it's all starting to look rather promising.

As I type the sun has come out and is beckoning activity, but it would be foolish to put seeds into the soil today. It has been freezing for the last few nights and a hoar frost this morning gave a hint of just how chilly the ground actually is. I think the average temperature outside needs to rise a good few degrees before I would want to put seeds into the ground. 

I can, however, continue to plant seeds in trays to go into the greenhouse. Last year the kitchen table, windowsills and work surfaces in the boot room were packed with seed trays, but this year we have Monty and Tabitha living with us and offering them what they would interpret as neatly laid out litter trays may not be such a smart move. Tabitha in particular is not terribly fond of going outside to empty her bladder when it is very cold, windy or rainy. We've kept a litter tray on the floor of the boot room since the cats arrived with us in December and I suspect that in the cooler months of each year, we may have to resign ourselves to a litter tray for her use.

Anyway, back to thoughts about the annual vegetable garden. There are tasks that I can continue to do outside like creating the last of five raised beds, laying down pathways and covering them with wood chippings, clearing away abandoned 'stuff' that I meant to put away at the tail end of last year, but didn't because other, more pressing, tasks needed our attention. I plan to move the Swiss chard plants and everlasting spinach into the food forest and then sow fresh seeds for them in the annual garden. I want to keep the older plants as they are useful duck and chicken food, but they don't need to be taking up growing space in the annual garden. 

It still feels a privilege to have so much space in which to grow food and having learnt a little about the soil (or lack thereof), the way the light moves around the garden, the natural flow of water through the area and the prevailing winds, I feel that this year the garden may well be even more productive. Mr J and I enjoyed trying different food crops and have been happy to admit that some things may have grown well, but that doesn't mean we actually like the taste of them. And there is little point in growing masses of something that we don't want to eat!

Except for kales, cabbages and squashes, I will be growing plenty of these this year, tucked into corners and empty spaces, into gaps between other crops and the old circles of love (the straw circles we put down for the chickens to scratch in). These kales, cabbages and squash will be used to feed the birds next autumn and winter. We will cover them late in the year to protect them from wild bird poop and then they will be suitable for feeding to our chickens and ducks during next winter's lockdown should that occur. And if it doesn't, well our birds will still eat well during the coolest months. Winter squashes will keep well for months in cool dry conditions, so I plan to store them in crates in the barn and then they should be available for both poultry and human consumption throughout the winter.

All this talk of food is making me hungry and it's not really a meal time as yet, so I guess I'll just have to make do with a cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Hatch day success

The chicks were due on Tuesday, but there was absolutely no sign of any eggs hatching, in fact, they didn't even pip. I felt quite low, storm Doris was starting to arrive at our smallholding and it was too cold, wet and windy to do much outside. I was getting a heavy cold and a lack of chicks just added to my feeling fed-up. On Wednesday morning I was feeling a little despondent and as though I had done something or not done something that had caused the eggs a problem, as it turns out it was quite the opposite.

By nine in the morning one egg had pipped and by mid-morning that a little chick hatched. 

It was early afternoon before a second chick hatched, a bonny little white Jersey Giant.

Then, in late afternoon, the incubator seemed to come alive, it started looking like a popcorn maker with chicks hatching one after another and by the time we went to bed there were nine chicks jostling about in the confines of the incubator. When I got up briefly at 3am, there were twelve chicks and when I got up for the day at 6am, I found what I think is fourteen chicks. 

It's become quite difficult to count how many chicks there are, partly because of they are all similar colours, but also because they keep moving around. In the moments that they are all resting or asleep I start counting and then suddenly one pops up from under a little heap of baby birds and they all move around again and so, I lose count. This is a good problem to have, I am delighted with the hatch so far.

As I type there are six eggs that haven't hatched, at least two of them have pipped, but a pipping is no guarantee of a chick. They sometimes pip and then become exhausted by the effort required to do that, so die. Sometimes they get much further into the hatching process and then die. Hatching seems an incredible process and I am fascinated by it.

I filmed one little bird emerging from its shell and included it in yesterday's vlog.

It is much too windy to work outside today (unless of course you absolutely have to), so I have the perfect excuse to sit and watch these little bundles of fluff as they dry their first feathers and learn to use their legs. And of course, first of all, I'll make a nice cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Chicken lockdown news

Hooray, DEFRA have made an announcement about what will happen from 28th February with regard to poultry being kept inside and under cover. For England they have published an interactive map which allows us to look at whether our poultry are being kept in lower risk areas or higher risk areas. Once we know which area we are in, we can then read their guidelines about what we need to do from 1st March onwards. If you are in England, click here for the interactive map

In Wales, where we live, poultry keepers will be required to complete a self-assessment of biosecurity measures on their premises and we will need to keep our birds separated from wild birds until the end of April. The mandatory self-assessment form can be found here

So for us this means that I need to look again at whether the disinfectant that we have in various spots around the smallholding need moving, whether we need additional foot dips, hand disinfectant bottles etc.

At the start of the lockdown I put a bale of straw on the ground outside our front gate and soaked it with Virkon S, a DEFRA approved disinfectant and we have foot dip bowls outside each of the chicken and duck housing. We have the birds in their condo and palace and the ducks in their run, covered and inaccessible by wild birds and some of the birds have covered runs to give them access to grass. All this will continue, but we really need to create some more covered pens on the grass so that the birds can access to more fresh air and to be able to eat some grass, scratch around in the soil and get a better variety in their diet. 

The difference that having access to grass makes has been surprising. I took this photo while cooking breakfast this morning. The egg on the left is from the condo and covered run where the girls have had no access to grass since 6th December and the egg on the right is from the chicken palace where the birds have had access to some grass (although they razed it to the ground fairly quickly and since then they've only had little green shoots as the grass has regrown). The eggs from the birds that haven't had grass are decidedly watery in texture and the yolks are much lighter in colour and less rich.

Luckily I have had areas of grass covered to protect it from wild bird poop for some time, so I will be able to use these areas for the girls (and boys) to forage on. I learnt yesterday from reading the self-assessment form that the N5H8 Avian Flu strain can remain active in wild bird poop for up to 50 days, so only grass that has been covered since the start of January will be okay to use immediately. I wish that this had been more widely advertised earlier during lockdown, I could have covered more grass as early as December if I had known that the grass would need to be covered for so long to ensure it's safety for the birds.

Still, it is what it is and we know for next year and will cover areas of grass from early October onwards so that if a lockdown happens (and I suspect it will) at the end of 2017, we will be prepared for it and the birds won't have such a prolonged period in a restricted space.

Mr J and I have started to create a permanent walkway from the chicken palace towards one of the chicken fields. Working on the basis that protecting the birds overhead all year round may become the way forward for us, we are making another walkway, much like the one we created from the stable (read about it here). Unlike the previous walkway, this one is more or less free-standing, it is fixed to the palace wall at one end but there isn't a nice long supportive side wall to attach it to, so we will have to find an alternative way to ensure it doesn't get knocked down by the wind that whistles across this site. 

We will also need to build several gates into this new walkway as it will pass across our natural pathway from the Food Forest to the chicken's fields. Now gates are not our strong point, so I think I will probably buy either a tall pre-made gate or use pre-made poultry pen panels and strap them together with cable ties to make a gate as I have done on the chicken palace front door.

Poultry health update
Thankfully all of our birds have remained healthy throughout the lockdown period. The young Jersey Giant chicks that hatched in November have never been out on grass, so I am looking forward to moving them into the chicken palace with the other Jersey Giants and seeing them experience grass for the first time.

The seven chicks that hatched at the end of January are growing rapidly and all look very healthy. One of them (an Appenzeller Spitxhauben) had splayed legs, but I took advice from folks in an online poultry support community and treated the problem which now seems to be completely corrected.

The next batch of chicks are currently in the incubator and are due to hatch in a week's time. These eggs are a mixture of white Jersey Giants, Silver Laced Wyandottes and eggs from the girls in the chicken palace. They may be white Jersey Giants, they may be Australorp (although I doubt it as I don't think the males were active until very recently), they may be a cross between White and the Australorp girls or White and Dieselette (who is hybrid cross with some bantam genes). Dieselette is only in the chicken palace as she is the best friend of one of the Australorp girls and when I tried separating them, they both became impressive escape artists and found their way back to each other. Anyway, it means that we will have some chicks that we are sure of their breed and others that will be a surprise.

The ducks are healthy although very obviously highly frustrated at being confined to their covered pen. Mr J and I will be digging a pond and then covering it with a netted pen so that next time they are confined we can at least offer them access to a pond that we are confident has had no wild bird poop land in it. To date it is still only Mrs Warne that is laying eggs, she goes through phases of laying daily and then a week or two of laying every other day. We are still waiting for the young ducks to start laying eggs, I imagine that they will start in the next month. 

Anyway, as I type it sounds as though there may be a break in the rain, so I'm heading out to collect any eggs that have been laid and of course, as I will have to walk past the kettle, I was also make a cuppa.

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Christmas preparations

As with so many homes at this time of year, we've had a hectic week of preparations for Christmas celebrations. Just not for our own Christmas!  

We had decided to give a few of our ducks to our friends and family for their Christmas meals and so this weeks I've processed four ducks and a chicken (for our own use last weekend) and I've made more fudge and coconut ice.

I've also been searching through my favourite recipe books for a good recipe for Tosca cake, which is a traditional Swedish cake made with almonds. It is one of Mr J's favourite cakes, I haven't had it for years and although I will be cooking one for him, I won't be having any as I developed a severe allergy to almonds several years ago (which is probably what happens if one is greedy enough to eat marzipan straight from the block!).

On Thursday I gathered armfuls of greenery from the garden to make a door wreath for my sister. I kept it very simple, using holly, ivy and a variagated euonymous.

I made lots of small bunches of stems which I tied together with fine cable ties, snipping the excess off. I then wired each bunch on to the twiggy base using florists' wire making sure that I covered the stems of the previous bunch with the leaves of the next.

I was very pleased with the final result and so was my sister, who by now will have it hanging on the front door of her cottage.

While I had all the greenery in the house I thought that it might be nice to decorate our home with some branches of leaves, so I put a few branches around the mirrors and made a candle decoration with bunches of long cinnamon sticks tied with ribbon and dried fruit.

When my sister came to visit (with her husband) on Friday, she brought with her some more of the bedding that we use for the ducks. She buys it in bulk and with the last delivery, she ordered an additional ten bales of bedding for us. It means that we can have it at a slightly cheaper price than if we bought the bales individually. We had asked for ten bales as we thought that would probably be enough for four to six months. That was before the DEFRA imposed the lockdown of the poultry. When I built the chicken palace, we needed to add a deep layer of bedding on the floor which used up five bales of bed-rap and two of wood shavings and we refreshed the floor of the chicken condo, which used three bales. So it looks as though we will be ordering more bed-rap sooner than we expected.

Little White has now grown into such a splendid cockerel that we have renamed him Big White, this also helps us distinguish him from the younger white Jersey Giant cockerel. 

The oldest Jersey Giant female is now at point of lay and although she hasn't produced an egg yet, I am sure it won't be too long before she starts laying. Big White has certainly started taking an active interest in her which she is not entirely happy about, but also isn't running away from him.

The Australorps are down to just six in number, during the lockdown they are living in the same space as the Jersey Giants and Dieselette, who prefers the company of her Australorp friend than of any of the other chickens. I still have to choose which of the young males to keep and which to despatch. I thought that I had decided but then became unsure. I am more concerned with good behaviour traits than their physical perfection, but it would be nice to have birds that aren't too far from the standards of perfection laid out for the breed.

I suspect, although I should make it clear that I have no real knowledge, that a poultry lockdown may become a regular occurrence. If we need to protect our birds during migration of wild birds, then it would seem to make sense that there will be two periods of lockdown in a year. So with that in mind, I have been thinking about what I can do ready for next year or any future lockdown to allow me to continue feeding the birds green leaves from the garden.

Having carefully grown crops to feed to the birds during the colder months, I have a garden chockablock with lush brassica that can't be fed to them during the lockdown as it is not under cover and so could potentially have been pooped on by a sick bird. Next year I think I will create a couple of beds with a selection of brassica, chards and spinach that I can cover in early November to keep them safe from contamination from overhead. I will also grow some in pots and move them into the greenhouse towards the end of summer, then I can harvest from those too for our chickens and ducks. Then, if there is no lockdown, either we or the birds can eat the leaves and, if there is a lockdown, we'll have a good source of fresh vegetables for the birds. As I plan to grow plenty of winter squash next year, they should be able to have some of those too. If the girls have to be shut away for a month or so at a time, I want to be able to offered them a varied diet.

It's almost time for us to head out to the local shop to buy a few last minute items, like cream and milk (and chocolate!). I hope that everyone has a joy-filled and peaceful Christmas.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Comings and goings

Although the weather has turned colder, the work in the garden continues. Not at such a speedy pace, but we have achieved quite a lot in the last month.

 The tree surgeons have done a splendid job, taking out five spindly sycamores at the back of the piggeries and one rather beautiful sycamore which unfortunately was going against the front wall of one piggery. We have kept the huge trees on the right of the photo and most of those on the left.

  I've continue to be surprised at the difference it makes, with a new sense of space and openess.

  And it creates an ideal space for some of the chickens to live in. We plan to move the Australorps to this area so that they can clear away the weeds and gorge themselves on the grubs and bugs that have been living here relatively undisturbed.

 At the start of the week was the Supermoon. It was overcast and cloudy as the moon first rose, but as it got higher in the sky the cloud cover was less and I took this photo of the moon over the sycamore trees and barn. I was rather pleased that I managed to include the lights of the Severn Bridge at the bottom of the photo.

 Inside the house, the latest chicks to hatch are doing well. The smallest one is a little Jersey Giant that is about two-thirds the size of these two. It had an issue with its umbilical cord when it hatched and I imagine that as it has survived a week, it will make it to maturity. But, I'm not holding my breath, these little chicks are vulnerable and their immune systems aren't fully formed yet, so there is every chance that the smallest, weakest one may succomb to infection. Usually by a week old I would have transferred them to the nursery pen in the stable, but as they were a very late hatch, I'm going to keep them in the warmth of the house for an additional week or so to give them more time to grow some feathers and get stronger.

Today two new Jersey Giant pullets arrive on the smallholding. They are coming from the breeder that we have had hatching eggs from, the girls are surplus to his requirements and very much wanted here, so it's a win-win situation. These girls will join our tiny flock of white Jersey Giants to help us increase the flock next year and to offer hatching eggs for sale.

Jersey Giants are lovely birds with docile, gentle temperaments and although very big, they have a grace to them. They were bred to be large meat birds, similar in size to turkeys but without all the gobbling noisiness. I now have two bloodlines of white Jersey Giants which means that their offspring should be strong and healthy (and we hope happy) birds.

My friend Kayt mentioned that she would be happy to have more chickens and I know that her girls also live in a large open space, so I asked her whether she wanted some of the hyline girls that we have here. They are producing far more eggs than we need for the kitchen and if we aren't careful, we will end up with too many birds and far too many eggs. So on Sunday she is going to have half a dozen of the layers that we have here to add to her flock. I know that her birds have stopped laying at the moment, so I'm sure she will welcome the eggs that our girls are laying.

I have started to think about ways to sell our surplus eggs, vegetables and fruit and to that end, today I will be researching and start approaching local food outlets and also finding out whether I need to register as a food business, take out specific insurance etc. if we find somewhere to sell the surpluses. As there isn't a huge amount of produce to sell, it may not be economically viable, so today's research will be to find all of that information to be able to make an informed decision.

And before I start the research I think it must be time for a cuppa!

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Covering up

What a blessing it has felt to have such mild weather at the end of October. I have spent a part of each day this week in the garden, some days more than others, but I've enjoyed every moment that I've been outside.

A local tradesman has been applying rendering to the external wall of our bathroom this week. When we bought the house the previous owners were going to put cladding on the small extension, but as it would have been the only part of the house with cladding on it, we asked them to leave it as blockwork and agreed that we'd get it rendered. Moving in during the stormy winter months, it didn't get done for the first few months, but we were keen not to let it sit exposed to the rain and wind for a second winter. So a couple of weeks ago, I got several quotes for the job and the local plasterer completed the job this today. And it looks great!

What surprised me about the rendering task was the difference in the quotes that I received. I asked four local tradesmen for a quote for the job, each was given the same information about what we wanted done, but the quotes were wildly varying. Three of the quotes were for over £800 and the last quote was for a little over £310. Needless to say, I declined the higher quotes and saved us well over £500. Normally at this point, I would rant about why tradespeople feel it's okay to charge so much for a job when clearly it can be done for less than half the price, but I guess I must be mellowing as I don't want to waste my energy getting cross about it.

Outside I have continued to move wood chippings into the young Food Forest to cover the pathways and build up layers on the planted areas. 

 The planting beds have now had the weed suppressing membrane cut away from them, cardboard placed on the ground and composted wood chippings and topsoil put on top of the cardboard. 

 I've placed wood around the edges of two of the beds which should rot down over the next few years, but in the meantime will provide some definition and support for the wood chippings as I build up the depth of the beds.

 I also placed some sticks in the body of this planting bed, they will add to the compost in time, but it was a useful way to dispose of some of the larger twigs and sticks that we have lying around.

Then the fruit and herb plants were planted. I had intended to leave the membrane down for a couple of years and then lift it around the plants that have been planted through the membrane, but I changed my mind and decided that doing this process now would stop the plants from being disturbed after they have put down a good root system. The Food Forest area is now about 30 feet by 70 feet and I'm very pleased with how it is beginning to look.

I've started to plant the trees that we bought last week. I've put in two cherries, a plum and three apple trees and have decided where the others will be planted. The soil is so poor and the ground highly compacted, so digging the hole for each tree is taking far longer than I'd like it to. I've also discovered two self-sown plum trees, one of which I think is a mirabelle (because of where it is growing). I'm using RootGrow mycorrhizal granules on the roots in the hope that this will help the trees settle into their new places more rapidly. The trees that are planted through the membrane and have chippings around them won't have to compete with weeds, but those planted into the other parts of the paddock are at risk of being swamped by clover, thistles or stinging nettles. So I have placed cardboard around them and covered it in a deep layer of wood chippings (taking care that it isn't touching the stem).

I've also continued to build up the layers of material on the most recent raised bed in the vegetable garden. Today I have added a layer of composted straw and brewery grains which have spent the summer in a compost bay with some summer squash growing on the heap. They aren't completely rotted down yet as I can still see some of the grains and the straw, but they are mostly decomposed and can continue to break down on the raised bed. The last layer to go on to the raised bed will be some topsoil, but the heap of topsoil got very wet in the rain last week and I've found it very heavy to move, so the final layer will have to be moved little by little as I have energy or will have to wait until Mr J can help me.

Elsewhere on the smallholding, the young chickens and ducks continue to grow but the chickens have all but stopped laying. Diesel is still laying around five eggs per week, Jack stopped laying some weeks ago and is now in full moult and starting to look rather sad for herself. The Cream Legbars have also stopped laying and are just starting to moult. For the winter period we have moved the Cream Legbars back into the main chicken field so that they can sleep in the large shed with the rest of the birds. This has two advantages, that more bodies in the shed will help keep it warmer and that there will be fewer houses for me to muck out. 

The Australorps will stay in their own section of the field until they are less in number. We currently have one female and six young males in the Australorp field and over the next couple of weeks Mr J and I will decide which two we will keep for breeding and the others will be our meat birds for the next couple of months. The young female and two males will either join the flock in the main field or we will move them, together with the older female Australorp to a new site on the smallholding.

Next week we are due to have some leggy trees cut down and removed from behind the piggeries, which will give us another area that the chickens could move into. I am quite keen to let the Australorps run through the area behind the piggeries because they have proved to be excellent at clearing weeds and scrubland. In the meantime, I will spend a little time over the next few days clearing some of the debris that is behind the piggeries. I haven't really done very much in that area since we moved in and there is plenty of rubbish that needs to be taken away from the back piggery before any chickens live there. 

I am looking forward to a weekend of pottering in the garden and with luck we will have another evening like today, when I can sit outside with a cuppa and watch the sun go down.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner