Keeping up with the Jones'

The rain hasn't been kind to the chicken run, turning it into a slidey soup of manure, mud, and soggy grass clippings. The smell was not good!

The chickens were concerned that their frequent visitors would be put off, and wouldn't come to see them anymore. I discussed the limited budget, and we settled on a tarpauline! This covers most of the run, so with a bit of luck, the ground should dry out a bit, and stop smelling quite so much. The chickens themselves don't help. I put a load of straw down in the run on last Sunday which helped a lot, but they then spent Monday scratching at it, to reveal the squelchy mud below.

Not the most subtle colour! But B and Q don't have a great range of tarpaulines!

It's about time the new chickens were introduced as well.    I have discovered that chickens aren't very photogenic, they move around far too much for the slow digital click of my mobile, so as well as these picture, I have a lot of rather blurry pictures of chickens!

Our two youngsters are Ebony (on the left), and Freda (on the right). These two are only 2 - 3 months old, so won't lay for a few weeks yet, and because they are so light and small, are very good at flying over the lower parts of the chicken wire! When they are fully grown they will be the same size as the two warrens that we have, and much less likely to be able to fly over any of the boundaries of the run...hopefully!



Fiz, is our black and brown frizzle chicken, and daily lays a small white egg.  I have discovered that chickens aren't very photogenic, they move around far too much for the slow digital click of my mobile phone, so as well as these pictures, I have a lot of rather blurry pictures of chickens!

Digging in the rain!

 

Over at the allotment last weekend, Mark was disapointed to find that his strawberry patch had flooded, as well as another part at the back of the allotment where our weed pile is. He is contemplating rice and garlic growing now! Unfortunately, it seems this weather is going to continue for a few more summers, it might be a good idea...

We did well, and got some good work done moving the weeds we cut the week before, and clearing the path to get to the gooseberry bush and apple trees. But eventually, our luck ran out, and we hid under the trees at the back of the allotment. Beth isn't one for rain, and decided our shed would make a good dog kennel! It wasn't long before we had to join her as well.

I managed my first harvest of the year, and nearly all of it was fruit I hadn't actually grown. I picked a handful of gooseberries, a plant that was already in the allotment when we took it over. I also found a few ripe raspberries from the self rooted raspberry bushes that sprang up between the weeds this year. The only think I planted was a blackcurrant plant, which I got about a dozen blackcurrents off. Not bad really, usually I only get about 3!

At home I have had my first two ripe tomatoes, although they were barely big enough to be called cherry tomatoes! I have repotted the three plants I have in the mini greenhouse at home, so hopefully they will start fruiting soon.

The House That Rocked...

No chickens were harmed in the making of this blog.

I went outside to let the chickens out, and found the house had fallen off it's bricks in the night. Luckily it had happened when all the chickens were tucked up asleep, not when they were sat under the house sheltering from the never ending rain.

I don't quite know what happened, as it wasn't that windy last night. Maybe a fox tried to open the door and knocked it over in frustration!

Expect more photos tomorrow of me and Matt falling over in the mud, trying to balance the house on the bricks again!

People are strange...

As I mentioned before, we moved house. We moved in November and have a lot of families around as well as being on a short cut to a primary school. Although our fence is high people can see in and as usual, the chickens are very popular. I love that youngsters can see the chickens, but twice in the past few weeks we have found cooked chicken in the run.

I have checked them, and they don't have any bits missing! I just dont see why someone would think a chicken would want to eat chicken. I have been assured that it won't harm them, so maybe the weird joke will get boring and they will stop doing it.


On a lighter note I was going to add a photo, but this app is so poor, I can't do it. I will try again when I can use a pc.