Monthly Archives: April 2012

Gold Star for one Hen

Who's the Gold Star?

This week we had our first egg from our hens.  We have had them since Easter – 8th April – and our “point of lay” hybrids have been enjoying life at our expense for three weeks since then.  And not one egg has appeared.  Waiting for that first egg is like waiting for your baby’s first footsteps – you want to see it, but perhaps would like to share it with your partner more.  But life does not happen like that and Claire found the small but beautifully formed product of our Gold Star’s efforts on Thursday morning when I was at school.

In the past we have not messed around too much with breeds of hen – just the solid dependable Warrens.  This played well with the old man as, in the old days, when he was between a place in the Navy and a career in avionics, he briefly sold day-old Warren chicks to keep the family afloat.  So – as we were told – you need look no further than a good Warren hen.  After our first hens had passed on (Mr Fox had his wicked way) we flirted with ex-battery hens that came to us with the look of concentration camp survivors, traumatised and featherless, but they were not great layers and we have returned to pullets for better production and more healthy birds.

But we have stepped away from family advice and got some hybrids from Jane Gibson from Dorset Cottage Arks near Stalbridge who sells on behalf of Chalk Hill Poultry.  There was such demand for birds prior to Easter we took pretty much whatever they had – which sadly was not the Columbian Blacktail which we fancied, but instead we ended up with four fowl in various shades of monochrome. I am not altogether sure of their breed names – I think they are a Bluebelle, a Sussex Star, a White Star and a Speckledy.  Line them up in the correct order and you have an artist’s palette of white through to grey / black flecks.  I understand they will lay different coloured eggs, so we might be able to tell who is laying and who Imagenot.  So the fact that our eggs this week were white (another was laid on Saturday when – you guessed it – I was at school) points to the White Star having laid it.  This is does not take too much detective work, as she is the only one with a good-sized comb, but we will see what the others lay in due course.

So it looks like the White Star gets the merits this week and hopefully is setting an example the others might finally follow.

I poached the two eggs for lunch today .  Both were double yokers and were eggy perfection on toasted muffins. Mmmmmm….

First Egg – sitting a little low in a regular egg cup..

Positive Attitudes

On Tuesday morning Verity, my 17 year old, got up and said that she had realised in the night that she had got some of her answers in the previous day’s chemistry test completely wrong.  She realised now what the question was really wanting from her.  Just a little too late for Verity.  She was naturally displeased with this so my immediate reaction was to try and put a positive spin on this.

“Well”, I said, “at least you have realised your mistake, which is better than your teacher telling you later, and you not even understanding why you might have done badly.  And anyway – isn’t this why you are doing these tests?  So you will do well when it matters, later in the summer?”

Remarkably, my attempt at positivity seemed to work on this occasion and Verity seemed to appreciate my advice.  At her age I am not sure that I could have expected similar from my father who has always found it difficult to hand out praise.  I have never forgotten his first words after he had witnessed me being presented with an academic prize at school in year seven.  Instead of congratulation his first act was to criticise me for having round shoulders, telling me I had “slouched across the stage” to receive my book.  It is something that might be a generational thing or maybe it is just my dad, but I don’t think it was seen as particularly seemly to give overt praise unnecessarily.  I think we were meant to assume that he was proud of us.  Didn’t need to be said.

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Even now, he struggles to hand out praise to me or my brothers.  But I am working on this issue.  The amount of work I have done recently in the garden has produced an increasing sum of positive feedback from him, starting with a “well done you” at the end of a long rambling conversation about how the garden was “beginning to take shape” and after I had listed all the jobs I had done; to a “well almost ANYTHING is an improvement on what was there before” when I had tidied the plant pots and various shrubs outside his back door.  Both of these were delivered without direct eye contact and almost choked back as they were uttered.  The latter comment could be taken as a criticism anyway…just put the stress on to “ALMOST” and you will see what I mean.

But he is easing up.  Gladly telling everyone else that I am doing a “sterling job” in the garden, though as usual I am the last to hear it.  He still finds it difficult complimenting me directly.

But that is not why I do this.  Just as Verity is not trying to get high grades in her exams to please me.  But a little praise and positive thoughts always help and are one of the most effective means of motivation.  As Brucie always said “Didn’t he do well?!”

Digging In

It rained today.  It was cold.  And I dug.

Apart from planting radishes, broccoli, parsley, peas and rhubarb chard, I could not help myself digging one of the large herbaceous borders which is getting strangled with ground-ivy and elder.

I never would have thought that I would find this therapeutic, but I am genuinely gaining immense satisfaction from the back straining labour.  When I was younger this would have been anathema to me, but not now, and the reasons are complex.  Before Easter I set out to clear the “Silver Wedding” bed (so-called as it was created from herbaceous gifts given to my parents when they celebrated 25 years together).  Now while I agree with Pippa that digging is very therapeutic, it also struck me that, while I found the clearing of ground and revelation of spring plants satisfying, I think that it goes deeper than that, to a sense of territoriality.  What I am really doing is laying claim to that piece of turf – taking away my father’s influence, if not ownership.

Before, I would only have been able to venture into doing work in the garden under his supervision and advice.  But now I am increasingly emboldened to take control and do it my way.  And interestingly, he seems to like it.  He does not – as a I thought might be the case – seem to feel threatened.  But, perhaps not surprisingly when I come to think of it, he seems to welcome my input and likes to seek my opinion on horticultural matters, which makes me feel good, but also reminds me how little I know.

It has been a year or two since these beds were really worked over, and images of ground elder and ivy have now supplanted cows in my nightmares.  I know I haven’t got it all out, but for the moment it looks pretty and tidy.  As to how you get ground elder out of the numerous clumps of hostas that are sprouting I haven’t a clue, but if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing quickly so I just nip the tops off the weeds so only the flowers show.

It looks good enough for now God only knows how many weeds will sprout back after this rain.

Mid Garden Crisis – How It All Started

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Best Brussels in years – destroyed in one night.

Last night I dreamt I woke to the sound of cows again.  It was a dream that has haunted me recently and it is a signifier of more than just a mad fear of bovine TB.

In November when delinquent Friesians from the next door field trampled the Brussels sprout patch in our garden I was more amused than dismayed.  Yes, we had lost the best crop of Brussels for many years even before we had eaten any (my father insists on not picking them till after the first frost) but the whole incident was somewhat comical in that the damage had been done under my old man’s bedroom window and he had not heard a thing.

But he was upset.  And only now am I beginning to grasp his depression at the destruction wrought by the hungry heifers as, in the fallout from the incident, we have agreed to take over a large part of the gardening duties from my father.

My parents had always been fiercely proud of their garden – and with some justification.  They had started it from not much more than a ploughed field and turned it into a well cultivated acre of land with herbaceous borders, trees and, most importantly, a fine vegetable patch.  All four sons had been required to do some digging, planting or harvesting, under a certain level of supervision, but it had never really left me with any feeling of satisfaction.

Until now.

Renting the converted barn off my father, we have a vested interest in the state of the garden, and since my mother died five years ago it has become increasingly difficult for him to cope.  But it is even more of a struggle for him to let go.  Any work in the garden is closely monitored from the control centre next door and is more than likely being done in the wrong way, with the wrong tools and at the wrong time of year.  I am approaching fifty (from the right direction, if one asks) but still get myself into adolescent sulks as I try to start the strimmer and hear the inevitable “is there enough petrol in that?” or the catch-all offer of  “a word of advice”.  I am unable to attempt the simplest tasks without the intervention and supervision of my father and it drives me mad.  But I say nothing.  Why?  Because I think that if I do I will upset him.  So I take the angst while he takes control.

But the cow debacle has given us a way in.  We have offered (nay – demanded)to actually take over part of the veg patch and that is what I am going to work on this summer – and perhaps even write about.  And it might just be the means I need to finally become a mature independent adult.  I have already made one step when I was given some advice by the Old Man on how to put chicken wire around the patch to ensure that the mower could still get around.  I finally felt compelled to tell him to back off and leave me to do it myself.

“I know how to do this thanks.  But if I want advice I will ask.  I would rather try things out my way and if I fail, so be it.  I would rather fail and learn from my mistakes than constantly have you telling me what do”.  There….I said it.  And felt so much better for it.

But now I feel I must NOT fail….