A messy polytunnel.

I shamefully left tidying up my polytunnel until December this season, just been too busy and too unwell and too stressed to get around to it.

Then of course DEFRA dictated that the hens had to be kept undercover so the Seramas, rather than just being housed in there at night and free ranging during the day, are now shut in all the time.

This means it's a tip in there.

I am going to have to get on and sort it out as soon as I am well enough, even with the Seramas in situ. 

I don't grow much in the polytunnel in winter, I have some herbs and a few different salad leaves on the go but we tend not to eat much salad stuff in winter! I DO use my poly tunnel to overwinter various pots of herbs and patio plants, and also as a sheltered place to put the Serama runs and houses to keep them warm at night.

I know the protection order is in force until at least 28 Feb 2017. I do hope it doesn't go on much longer, as I need the polytunnel in March to start  growing on my pepper and tomato plants for sale and for our use.

Busy in the garden

Algy the Serama. I love him, I do :)  He follows me around and sits at my feet :)

Moving the raised beds and making new ones - hard work but the end result will make Veg  Kingdom easier for me to manage I hope! Compostman did a lot of hard work to make 6 new,  2 x 3 m raised beds for me to plant up. Good job I make a lot of compost as that is a LOT of  space to fill!

Seramas settled into their new outside home for the fine weather.

I am making another new raised bed outside Veg World - so that will add another 3 x 2 m raised bed to the existing two 3 x 2 m beds in the outside growing area. Just need to fence it off from the marauding chickens!

Speaking of which ...Sweetie

Henny and Blackberry.

 Pearl.

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.

On the mend.

Thank you, all of you, for the good wishes and comments recently :) I am now mobile and out of bed and on the way to recovery - still on medication and still feeling general pain but the hand and arm now look like they are  my hand and arm, again.

So here are some of the things we have been up to in the last few weeks before the dreaded Blandford Fly got to me!

I only have two chickens now, but Poppet (aka Amber) and Sweetie are doing their best to create as much mayhem as a whole flock of hens!  With the various digging and weeding and new flower bed creating going on here they have had ample chance to dig up seedlings, dust bathe in new seed beds and generally be, well, hens.

And then they have to have a snooze, to recharge their batteries, ready for the next bout of naughtiness :)

 Annoying though their antics sometimes are, I would not be without them :)

I hope to have some more hens soon but am re thinking how and where to keep them to try to avoid more fox losses.

Hen stuff

I have been candling the eggs Nutmeg is sitting on

 Home made candling stuff


Tube, very bright torch, cardboard with hole cut out so egg sits on it ( and does not fall through!)

All four eggs seem fertile, possibly one is not.

We shall see, on day 22! (28 August)

Hen news - life, death and movement.

Nutmeg is still broody. And even more "in the zone" of broodiness than before. I got severely pecked today when I was getting her to go out and have a drink and some food. And I shall draw a veil over the GINORMOUS poo she did; lets just say it was VERY smelly!

I think she is going to stay this way, so I am investigating what fertile hatching eggs are available from my local sources. I fancy some more Cream Legbars. So, I have moved her tonight into the Broody Ark. She is furious and despite moving her after dark she is still trying to peck her way out through the wooden sides back to her Rightful Place in the Compostman hen house nest box.


This move has caused a Major Shake Up in the pecking order of the other Ginger Girls; having lost (temporarily) their Leader, there has been a coop ( no I didn't spell it wrong, I was being funny!)  and Babs has seized power. She is now ensconced in the Compostman built house and run ( where all the Ginger  girls were living and where Nutmeg was malevolently squatting, broody,  in a nest box) . She has Bunty as her deputy and side kick.

Titch (still mourning her friend Tiny Hen) took one look at the new dynamics and was having none of this so has joined the new girls in the Mega Hen Pen and Flytes House, along with a subdued moulty Marjoram.

Apparently the new girls are ok with all this, but sadly,  in other news,  Treacle the Partridge Hen was taken by something tonight - don't think it was a fox as it was very fast and right by our House :-(   The feather pile looked more bird of prey -ish than fox attack, and the other hens were not alarmed by whatever happened.

RIP Treacle hen, pretty and nervous and soft feathered. And too young to be dead.

All the girls are on "only out when I am there to watch" duties, as a result.

House hen?

Reminder! RHS Hampton Court Flower Show ticket give away. To enter you must  leave a comment on the original blog post. Do this before midnight on 30th June please. Good luck!

This is Amber.  She loves me. She wants to be a house hen
.
 :-)

She waits outside the back door, choosing to be away from the flock, so she can see me and accompany me when I come out of the house. She then follows me around, bwarking and crooning and chuntering, in that way hens do. If I sit down, she comes and sits next to me. And if I go out in the car, she droops around looking sad, until I return. Then she is happy again. She is the sweetest little hen :-)

And if she can, she comes in the house.

And if I am upstairs, and she gets inside the house

She comes looking for me :-)

In other news, I picked my first tomato today

 

and the strawberry rush has begun :-)

 

Wordless Wednesday - busy in the garden.

When the big hens are shut away....and don't forget to enter the Givaway!

Out come the New girls!

Pearl, Amber, Treacle, Marigold and Pepper, waiting to be let out.

Having a good poke around in the ground.

The potatoes coming through in the outside raised bed - fenced off from the chickens!

I managed to do some mowing today - still loads more to cut but it came on to rain so I had to stop.

We had a bit of excitement inside the garage today - one of the cats caught a mole and let it go inside the garage, so we had a lot of fun trying to catch it to rescue it! Moles are very noisy!

Amber hen has decided she likes being my pet chicken and she follows me everywhere. She sits on my shoulder sometimes :-)

Off to do more gardening and growing - it is a very busy time of year!

Hope everybody is doing well - don't forget to enter the giveaway!

Sunny Saturday

Today was a busy day. I felt a little more human today so after getting up, having breakfast, shower etc I did the Ginger Hen Gang, put on a load of washing and stripped our bed. Compostgirl did her bed and tidied and vacuumed her room and cleaned the bathroom (these are her regular jobs, along with her guinea pigs and feeding the birds)
 
I cut Compostman's hair - he looked much tidier after! I also deep cleaned one of the hen houses and put new fresh bedding inside ( more on that, later) while Compostman did some more work to the Pink Bedroom.


Then after lunch we went out on a trip out, to do with my birthday present. We went to Malvern and on the way we passed signs for a Wildlife Trust Bluebell Day. I thought about how none of our Bluebells were anywhere near flowering

We did our birthday shopping, went to a Supermarket  and then came home


Compostman and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing lots of outside work, I mowed some grass and moved hen runs and houses around and watered the polytunnel plants. Compostman dug some of the veg patch and also did a bit of this, watched by bemused members of the Ginger Gang ( Marjoram and Titch, here)

(can you guess what my Birthday present is, yet?)

In the late afternoon sunshine we had a cup of tea outside and I went and had a look around the garden. And concluded that yes, Spring was finally here!

The Magnolias are in full bloom and unusually they are flowering at the same time as the Damson, Rivers Early Plum AND the Victoria Plum!

Lots of Cowslips and Daffodils including Pheasants Eye which I love.

And finally! Finally the Fritillaries are in bloom :-)

No apple blossom out yet so I do not know if we will have a good display for the May Bank Holiday "Blossomtime" event here, but at least we have blossom on the plum trees and have had no night frosts - so maybe this year we will see some plums on the trees.

 And when I walked in the wood at dusk what did I see but - the first of the Bluebells flowering :-)

Tidy-up Tuesday and more on the Christening robe.

Evening all

Another dry and sunny day here - Compostman has been incarcerated in the Pink (guest) bedroom all day Doing Stuff to walls, windows floors etc - this required all the contents to be removed and redistributed around the rest of the house, which was entertaining!

As a result I now have a car FULL of surplus stuff to take to charity shops/animal rescue centres. And I mean FULL. It's a Skoda Octavia  - which means it is quite huge - and it is FULL.

Ok, you get we have decluttered a lot of stuff out of the house, right?

I have also washed numerous sets of curtains, written some articles ( for money yay!) and negotiated for some items to be sent to me for reviewing here on The Compost Bin - stuff I would actually like and want to buy but now do not have to spend money on, and stuff which I hope you, my gentle reader, are interested in, well, reading about! And I planted many more of the summer flowering bulbs into pots and put them into the Polytunnel to grow.

So good all round I hope.

Compostgirl and I have tonight watched some of last Saturday's The Voice  and she had been doing all sorts of experiments ( Thank you Horrible Science box set...!) and leaning how to make toasted sandwiches. She has also been making us numerous cups of tea - Compostman because he Is Busy and me because my sinuses are infected ( again) and my face really REALLY hurts and I feel rubbish today.

Thank you dear, I really do appreciate the tea and sympathy and the hugs - they really do help :-)

I have also managed to get the wonderful Christening robe clean! It is now drying inside the house, wrapped in towels to protect it. My hands are now in a dreadful state, however, from all the washing I have done recently  and I have smothered them in some of my magic working, home made balm. It usually fixes most problems with skin!

The hens are not laying at all - they seem well enough otherwise (apart from old) so I think I may try worming them again, failing that new extra hens will have to be obtained so we have a reliable source of eggs. A trip to the hen stockist! Squee!

How has your day been?

Sunday seed potato planting, and a hen invasion

Hello lovely people!

Today had been another lovely day here in Herefordshire :-)

I started the day with a mass break in of chickens!

Cassi Cat wanted to get past them, but they were not going to let her though, oh no.
in the end she gave up and went the other way :-)

I have done yet more washing, tidying up, Compostgirl cleaned out the Guinea Pigs, Compostman painted more window frames and we had a visit from Kev of An English Homestead

And...we planted stuff outside today :-)

50 chitted Nicola and Charlotte spuds into the outside raised beds.

Covered over with geotextile to keep them nice and snug against the cold :-)

 The wood daffodils look beautiful:-)

This is what the linen tablecloth I was talking about earlier today  looks like - not sure what the pattern is called - anyone know? it is 5 ft by 10 ft so for a large table. It was bought when Compostman's grandparents moved from the family "old" farmhouse into their "new" farmhouse, just before MiL was born (in 1910). That was in 1908 so the fabric is at least that age, possibly older - and it was bought because the new farmhouse had a bigger dining table than the old one, apparently :-)

You can just make out the threadwork here - such beautiful, intricate work!

I have been advised by various Fb friends that the linens may well be worth a bit of money so I shall NOT take them to the charity shop but instead will visit a specialist fabric seller for a valuation .

Hope you have all had a nice day :-)