Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Showing posts with label cleaning hens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cleaning hens. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

A busy day


Up early as Compostgirl was back at school today. A dull wet cloudy morning gave way to sunshine in the afternoon so I got on with cleaning out the Big Girls' hen house.

I said it was filled with poo!


 That's better!


I also had a look at the compost bins to make sure all was well looking right


and looking left



I am planning on adding a third outside raised bed here when the ground dries off a bit.


I also had a wander around the wood :)

As it is 12th Night we took down the Christmas decorations and moved the tree outside.







I am very impressed with the live tree we had this year, it hardly dropped any needles and still looks very good so we will plant it in the ground and it can become an "outdoor" Christmas Tree :)


I spent the rest of the day sorting out piles of stuff to dispose of - charity shop, freecycle, recycling, composting. Nothing went to landfill!


Later I took Compostgirl up to the Stables to see her favourite horse, Bob, he is poorly and has to have a serious operation this week. We took him a carrot and hope for the best outcome for him.

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

What we did while we had no broadband #2 Archery, cleaning and meeting a remarkable tree :)


So during August we did a lot of grass cutting and hen house cleaning.



I only had two hens during early August so I moved them into one run and small house and gave the Mega Hen Pen and the other houses a good clean and scrub and also sanitised the ground in the runs. My plan was to get new hens towards the end of the month, as indeed happened.


Some of the long grass was made into hay and the rest went into the compost.


We also, as a family, learnt Archery. We took a three day beginners course at Bromyard Bowmen at the beginning of July and joined both them and Lugg Valley Archery. It has been great fun and is something we do, as a family, several times a week.



We also had visits from friends :) This is Jan, a Forest School Leader friend from Scotland, with her lovely dogs Pepper and Saffron. She dropped in on us on her way back home from a holiday in Wales. After a long chatty lunch we went to see the Much Marcle Yew Tree and Kempley Church.



So just a few things we have been doing :) More to follow.






Saturday, 1 February 2014

Yuck what a fowl day

Ha ha did you get my pun in the title!?

Today was really horrible weather but the feathery ladies and the cockerel brothers needed cleaning out so, despite it  being only 3 Celsius mid afternoon and pouring with rain I set to,  to make them cleaner and more comfortable.

If we have animals we have to look after them, despite the horrible weather and our deep desire to just hide inside and drink hot tea and do crochet in front of the wood burner




Mud and water every where


So I togged up in waterproof coat, wellies and a lot of layers of clothes underneath.  As I normally am mostly impervious to the worst the weather can throw at me and wear a t shirt and jeans in the most wet and horrible weather, this will give you an idea of howreally horrible working outside was today.








After a lot of mucking out, the contents of the hen run and hen houses were added to the compost bins


 Creosote the cockerel was not impressed!


Normally I am much tidier with the bedding, but frankly in this weather I could not give a damn about spilled straw!


And the chickens were very pleased with the clean arrangements!

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

Doing some outside work, at last!






Today was dry, all day ! ! !  And we had sunshine ! ! ! This is the sunset we had at 4.45 ! ! !

Sorry about the excessive use of the exclaimation marks,  but for us here this is little short of miraculous - it has rained every day for months now and most days have been gloomy and dull as well.

So I took advantage of the dry weather to clean out the hen house and we finally did something about the rat "issue" which has arisen in the Mega Hen Pen (MHP).

The MHP has pallets down on the ground in two corners for the feathery laydies to stand on and keep their feet warmer. It also has a lot of wood chip down on the floor, for the girls to scratch about in. We regularly rake the chip up and replace it  ( we make a lot of wood  chip from felling trees here) and the used chippings eventually make fabulous compost .

But it has rained so much here that the ground is saturated and the wood chippings in the run are wet. Indeed there is a severe problem around here with ground water rising up, even though we are on top of a hill

Also the rats have been burrowing in to the MHP and hiding under the pallets, and although they have not done any harm, apart from forcing us to remove the food from the run at night, I do not like the idea of rats in with my hens!

So today we also removed the pallets , which were giving the nasty rats somewhere to hid under inside the run. We have dug out and filled in the tunnels and found a nest which we dealt with. I have sanitised the run with Nettex worm oocist powder ( I have just finished worming the hens, so this was due) and we have put down a thick layer of Aubiose, straw and dry leaves for the girls to rootle about in.  They seemed very pleased with their new floor coverings, it is much drier and more absorbant for them under foot and hopefully there are less places for the rats to hide under so they will not bother coming in the run again - there is no food there except during the morning when the hens are around the feeder and they keep the rats away.



The hen house is now also clean and warm and sweet smelling - I must admit I have just been adding more bedding on top so as to maintain a deep litter system over the last 3 weeks, due to illness and the appalling weather we have had, so it really was well overdue a deep clean!








Update at 9 pm tonight - Tabitha Cat brought a very large Rat inside the house - to show us - dead, fortunately and we praised her a lot as she, the most timid and smallest of the cat family has actually caught one of the nasty things :-)  The other two looked on in amazement but did not stir from their cosy beds!





UA-40361266-1