bish blog

By chance, Miss found out that the local farm shop had some ‘Point of Lay’ chickens for sale and we picked up three new girls on Saturday. We now have two Marans – our original Speckledy from 2005 and a new Basic Marans, the two Welsummers from 2007 and two new White Sussex.

The picture is taken from my study, and no doubt we’ll get better ones once the new chooks are a tad less nervous. They’re getting one hell of a sorting out from the established crew – the phrase “pecking order” has very real and painful meaning behind it! Eventually they’ll either sort out their differences and get along or we’ll be burying the loser(s). Nature, red in beak and claw…

The naming of chickens is apparently mandatory (!) and a friend has suggested “tikka”, “vindaloo” and “madras”… The resemblance to our original chickens though means we will probably be recycling their names So welcome Spike-let, Scarlet-let-let and Clara-too, otherwise known as “the Sequel Chooks!”

Oh, and we’re still running the egg spreadsheet… Since we started we’ve had 2535 eggs at a total per egg cost including housing, chooks and feed of 54p each! [grin] Call it £3 per half dozen – you’d be mad not to.

Summer is in full swing now, and the garden is doing whatever it feels like – ’cause it’s too, too hot to worry about weeding! More pictures if you click the clicky ‘more’ (unless there’s no clicky, in which case there’s no more! Grin)…

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I’m not a twitcher, but I think this is a male Goshawk. Might be a Sparrowhawk, but the belly looks whiter and the feathering over the top of the legs indicates Goshawk (twitch, twitch!) That’s certainly no longer a fledgling blackbird, anyway…

It found today’s evening meal in our back garden close by the deceptive lure of the bird feeders… There appear to be no ankle rings so this one is a wild bird. Lovely to watch from the bedroom window as it tore into it’s supper, the picture was taken with high ISO and through the glass of the bedroom window so forgive the graininess. When finally I dared slowly open the window for a better look he glared at me for a moment and scarpered!

Finally the larger raised beds in the back garden are finished. It’s taken some time in a life currently far too short of free time but last evening I put the last dowel in the edging blocks and leveled the soil. The rest, as the saying goes, is up to Miss.

The bits you can see planted are of course the original beds which Miss found to be so miserly. The new ones come out nearly three metres and more than double the growing space available for shrubs and flowers. The next project in the back garden is to widen the path around the house and edge it grass-side with more wooden blocks.

I’m home today having worked through the night. Unable to actually sleep (I’ll catch up over the bank holiday weekend) I’m logged in here and at work pretending to multi-task (ha! Like that’ll ever work!). As I sat here working through work emails I saw a springer spaniel whizz past the window heading straight for the chicken run. With spring only just upon us it’s a bit of a battleground there at present, not much grass and the remaining leaves on the slowly establishing beech hedge are golden and falling away in favour of new growth.

Round and round the run the ragged rover ran and stop him I could not. Frantic chickens everywhere (well, only three currently but that’s still a lot of flapping believe me!) chucking themselves at the fence on the one side as the maddened mutt threw himself at the fence from the other! Finally an owner appeared and after a few minutes reclaimed the dog. ‘Sorry, he’s a house pet who got out.’ Um. Springer spaniels are not house pets, they’re gun dogs bred for speed and stamina. No wonder it went for it’s freedom. Still, nothing damaged eh.

After the crisis subsided I went in to gather the eggs and calm the girls. Two eggs… and two chickens! Not three. Um. Recalling the fun and games we had when we first got the Welsommers (read back gentle reader) I wasn’t looking forward to tracking and catching our missing presumed uneaten gal. I locked the other two in and left the door to the run open. After an hour I went out again and she’d come back! Ace! We have homing chickens! LOL

Blessings of the equinox to one and all, and (fair trade) chocolate loveliness to them as want it.

With a return to work (oh joy!) on the horizon after the midwinter break I’ve been playing with train sets in the garden. In other words I have several ruddy great ex-railway sleepers (not creosoted) with which I’m building raised flower beds. The ‘garden’ was just an expanse of mud back in 2001 when we moved in, and when I built the pond and the flower borders I was far too meagre with the beds. Now they’ll come out some 3000mm and stand about 300mm proud of the grass, with a path dividing the high growth at the rear from the low bedding in the front. It will also allow me, on the other side of the garden, to create a bed beside the shed and between it and the greenhouse, part of which I intend to use as a herb garden – a new project having been inspired by Jekka’s Complete Herb Book, which Miss bought me for Yule / Christmas. Jekka has an award winning herb farm near us.

But my, I do ache!