Tag Archives: eggs

Bedding In

January and early February have seen an upturn in postive thoughts around here.  The early morning walks are punctuated by the sound of thrushes singing their hearts out from the tops of trees while woodpeckers drum on hollow branches and robins argue noisily below; all trying to claim their separate territories with spring just around the corner.

My attempts at my own territorial improvements have centred on transplanting the Acer from the pot at the back of the house, where it was looking rather sad in the atutumn.  It has now taken the place of the unsightly cotoneaster, which took some uprooting from the front garden.  The removal of the cotoneaster has naturally been delayed until the blackbirds had taken their fill of the red berries, just as my father would have insisted.  I follow his advice more now than I ever did when he was alive.

Elsewhere, I have been tinkering with some of the borders: pruning roses and cutting back the autumn bliss raspberries – though the latter was mainly to ensure that I could get to the hen house more easily.  There had been the usual hiatus in egg-production from Agatha (although she still claimed her free board and lodging).  Supervision of the hen house had become rather intermittent, so when I did finally check on the 20th January, I was astonished to see eight eggs in her nesting box.

Since then we have cleared the path to the hen house and check on her regularly to collect any more eggs, while they are still fresh.  But this hen has a sense of humour, it seems, and there has not been a single egg layed since the 20th.  It’s probably her way of protesting over her recent exclusion from the flower garden – a ban imposed on her after she destroyed some of the nascent daffodills.  Not all birds are welcome in the borders.

The main piece of garden preparation I have managed is to spread two tons of Viridor Revive compost on the raised beds.  Thirty-eight wheelbarrow loads to help improve the clay topsoil and top up the beds.  So far my efforts have simply created the biggest, most luxuriant cat litter trays in the village.  The feline equivalent of Andrex triple-ply quilted, they are soft and very deep, and not even my labrador is able to consume the quantities of cat-poo that are likely to be interred on my refurbished veg patch.

Last weekend storm Ciara blew her way through the country leaving us to pick up the pieces of her trail of destruction, although the greenhouse managed to remain intact (despite losing one pane of glass a few weeks previously).  Today I am sitting inside as storm Dennis repeats Ciara’s performance of a week ago.  It is the type of weather my old head of PE once described as so bad “I wouldn’t put a cat out in it”.  To this brown-fingered gardener, it is precisely the type of weather I would willingly evict any defacating feline.

The calm between the storms
Super Moon in the morning
Two tons…
…to be moved
Previous storm damage
Chitting
Egg frenzy
Storm Dennis watering the beds
Updated beds
Cotoneaster roots extracted
Acer going in

 

 

 

Chicken Run II

Where is that drill bit?
Where is that drill bit?

The major event this Easter has been the return of Chickens to the estate.  After a few site meetings Jim had delivered the posts and wire and between us we had dug three-quarters of the way around the area to be able to dig the fence in.  The gate was a slight issue as we needed to make one, so Jim and I suggested to the OM that he might like to dust off his old woodworking skills and throw one together.  He demurred although he did have what Jim and I both agreed was a good idea to hang the non-existent door from the end of the cow stall instead of securing a square post.  TOM decided to advise me on the size of drill bits, wood and other practical matters to aid me in my task.  “They are in the top shed” he told me.  Such instructions of little use.  He might as well have said they were on Mars.  I would have had more chance of locating them in outer space than in the heaps of old tools, wood and machinery in his shed.

“Do you think you can find them for me?” I asked.  He decided he could – and duly did – thus saving me a frustrating search and giving him another thirty yards of exercise.  A win-win, by my reckoning.

So by the Friday afternoon we had a wall plate and three trenches dug when Jim arrived for the main construction session.  Jim and I work well together.  He has the experience and the right  sanguine attitude towards the OM who pays him for his labour, and I am happy to agree with whatever Jim says and to offer what muscle I can muster.

Posts in
Posts in

It started reasonably well with the acquisition of tools:  metal spike and sledgehammer to the fore.  The OM was keen to tell us that the sledgehammer had been acquired from Yeovilton Air Base in 1962/3 when he was clearing the runway of ice (my first winter was a hard one I am told).  A legendary piece of equipment which promptly broke as we hammered in the first post.  We resumed 10 minutes later with Jim’s tools and cracked on with the job in hand.  Incredibly we managed to get posts and netting up and a strand of supporting wire too.   With only two lengths of wire to go, Jim left me to sort it the next morning but with a warning that it would be a two person job as the wire could get “twisted as fuck” if you did not feed it out carefully.  I took this as a serious piece of advice.  Jim does not often use strong language in my experience.

Gate - constructed by the author - not his father
Gate – constructed by the author – not his father

It only took an hour or two with Verity the next morning to make the run secure.  Which was just as well, as I had arranged to collect the hens that afternoon.  This is the third time that we have sourced chickens from Dorset Hens and they never fail to deliver.  They have a great range of hybrids of various hues, and although after a busy Easter there was not a great choice, we took an eclectic foursome of a Mottled Leghorn, an Amber Star, a Bova Nera and a Colombian Blacktail.   They were in a crate waiting for us when we arrived and the owner grabbed them two at a time to put them in the back of our car (in the dog crate).  As she took the Leghorn she muttered a warning under her breath that this was “a little bastard”.  Or at least that was what I thought I heard.  She actually said “this is the fastest”.  Ok – got ya.

VB and I returned with our clucking cargo and started to unload them. When the OM came up the yard I assumed it was to take a look at the new arrivals, but it turned out the more pressing matter for him was to print off a boarding pass for his impending flight to Newcastle – in three weeks’ time.  I politely suggested I would take a look later.  For the moment I wanted to get my hens settled in….

And so the hens are in.  And they have not hung about, with one already laying (three in total so far) and we have also managed to discourage either dog from getting too interested in the chickens too.  If Ella gets the wrong side of the fence, it will be carnage.  The last time we had hens she was only a puppy but managed to get into the old run, to which I was alerted when I heard one hen shouting “f-koff!, f-koff!”  Ella had the bird in her mouth, but fortunately did not deliver the coup de gras on that occasion.  I don’t think she would be quite so gentle now…

Fresh Produce

Ready for picking – runner beans

We are at the time of the year when I remember my parents would begin to repeat the mantra about fresh produce in the garden.  “The beans are ready for picking”, “plenty of courgettes” or “please help yourself to lettuces – or else they will go to waste”.

Waste – anathema to the generation brought up in wartime rationing and post-war depression.  Wasting good produce was deemed a cardinal sin in the garden.  All those delicious vegetables and we don’t seem to want to eat them.  Well, I am now in that happy position when some vegetables are coming to harvest time and the daily habit of picking them has started.  I say “some” because, frankly, this summer has been pretty crappy with the cold wet weather putting paid to many of the early veg like the peas (one bowlful from a row of plants).  But the runner beans are hitting their stride at the moment.

Harvesting runner beans is the equivalent of plate spinning: you check each row every day and try to pick every bean that is of the required size: not too skinny, but not too fat and stringy.  But somehow you always manage to miss a couple so next day you see a cucumber sized bean hanging in the green shade. If you left it another day, you feel it would pull the whole plant over, such is the apparent speed with which they grow.

So today I will be getting out there and trying to reap as many as I can.  And what will I do with all these beans?  Well, I will follow the parents’ example and start slicing, blanching and freezing as many of the blighters as I can.  Suddenly frozen veg in the winter seems a really worth while idea.  If it means they don’t go to waste.

Meanwhile, T.O.M. keeps informing me that the carrots in his patch are ready to pick.  I gladly took some last night – and they are delicious.  Carrots are right up there in terms of veg that truly taste so much better than shop bought.

Pull ’em, rinse ’em, steam ’em and eat ’em.  Stunningly delicious.

And in response to my pompous declarations to The Old Man that there are plenty of runners, he first of all said that he better make some runner bean chutney (what? from my beautiful fresh runners?) then, after we returned from our trip to the Olympics at the weekend, said he hadn’t realised there were any ready.

Now I know how he felt whenever I failed to heed his requests for me to pick my quota of produce.

What size omelette did you want?

Elsewhere, the hens continue to lay well, but who is laying what is a mystery as the three from the other day show: mummy egg, daddy egg and baby egg: double yoker, single yoker and, well, “could do better if she tried”.

The unpredictability of home harvests.

 

 

Shallots?

A final note on my previous post about labelling things.  I decided to lift the shallots, which I did under the supervision of T.O.M.  It was all going well, with him advising which were “banana” shallots and which the ordinary variety (pretty obvious really – no need for labels there) when I found one little clump which had not developed greatly.  We simultaneously realised that this was not a clump of underprivileged shallots, but was a garlic bulb.  How did that get there? I wondered.  Then remembered that all the shallots and garlic had been put in hurriedly at the start of the spring.  So, once agin, you need to be so careful to label things, you know.

Drying in the sun – spot the garlic