Eggs For Sale (by sarah)

We are now selling the eggs from our chickens 🙂 They are 25 p each or 6 for a pound. I am buying some egg boxes that we'll put our logo on etc... but would still appreciate the egg boxes people have been giving us for the eggs 🙂

Being ex-bats they have had all the innoculations etc... they are now happy hens wondering around in their new home being stroked by small children and given lots of veg to eat as well as their special diet to help them recover from their previous existence.

We also now have allotment (phase 1) at Primrose Vale farm shop so we are hoping to up the veg production this year 🙂 I'm still going to badger the council as I would like one that I can get to easily on my own, as well.

We are composting the chicken bedding so will have lots of lovely fertilizer 🙂

2014 – New Year New Fear (by sarah)

The festive period has been trying - it has by no means been the worst one we've ever had but there are catastrophic Christmas's and then there are just bad Christmas's - this is the latter.

Lot's of medium and small things have been going wrong - washing machines breaking resulting in 3 weeks of hand washing, a pain flare up for me, boiler breaking so not hot water or heating for almost two weeks, vomiting kids (at various points and for various reasons), tiles flying off the roof, Al getting sinusitis badly resulting in headaches were he couldn't look at writing etc..., a misunderstanding meaning the work I'd done for college was all wrong and has to be redone, spam attack on blog breaking my emails so I then don't see the requests for the changes etc..., kitten is being duffed up outside and has over cleaned her fur as it itched in healing meaning she has bauld patches, garden water logged so emergency stuff has to be done for Chickens, workshop roof leaking (again), there is more but it's pretty trivial and is only an issue as it's all happening together :/

But you know we have insurance for the roof and insurance for the boiler and so it is being sorted and we where given cash for Christmas by a few relatives so fixing things for the chickens was too bad.

For every thing that has gone wrong wonderful things have happened - christmas jumpers appeared in the post, I actually managed to go and attempt climbing (huge huge break through for the pelvis especially as it was my shoulder that stopped the climbing and not the pelvis!), Jean and me are really enjoying going to Games Workshop together to paint her little hobbit figures, I met up with a dear friend I haven't seen in a long long time, I have a beautiful little niece, friends brought round hand knits they had made the girls and chocolate and stuff, I sold poetry books at a level I wasn't expecting, I won an advent competition and massage oils arrived in the post from the local college and so on.

So I am really stressed at the moment and really fearful that things will get worse but at the same time I feel resigned and also on finding our dinning room roof is leaking this morning - to cries of 'It raining in my house! Oh dear broken!' from Mary - I am awaiting the next good thing and yes I am writing this instead of finishing of my course work but I can't do anymore until my emails are fixed and that is chugging away in the background on my laptop so for now I am off to eat some cheese and biscuits and discuss plans for the year with Alaric.

Happy New Year everybody.

Arty Cobweb Shots (by sarah)

I just love dew and frost and rain drops on spider webs 🙂 These are the pots I have the blueberry

One Week of Freedom! (by sarah)

The chickens have been with us a week now and have so far delivered unto us 14 good eggs and one soft shelled mess. The kids are grumpy with us for imposing an egg limit in their diet of 2 eggs each plus what ever is baked into cakes, pastries and other sundries they might get down their gullets in a week. They both love collecting eggs and then eating them 🙂

Mary gets incensed if I go out to the chickens without her - to the point that when I was bedding them down for the night on Friday she got her welly's and coat on whilst I was out and cried when I came in and said I'd already dealt with them - I then had to explain that I had tucked them in as it was their sleepy tired time!

I also found her in the garden naked bar welly's talking to them - it was no nappy time. We can distinguish Doggy and Felix but Mario and Lilly are still interchangable unless we watch their behaviour for a while first! They are starting to grow feathers back and I have spent even more money on them getting supplements as I was concerned about the soft shell. Alaric is now writing a fun little application that we can use to track money spent verses eggs for academic interest as it were!

Yep I've taken to videoing them now 🙂

I found it interesting that they are perfectly happy to put themselves back in the run! Though we are still planning on building the bigger encloser as I just don't think this one is really big enough to be honest but should be ok for now - they seem happy and winter is coming so they will need each others warmth etc..

So far looking after them has not been that hard as though the cold is starting to hurt my joints and stuff again I can do the morning egg check quiet quickly and have the kettle boiling ready for tea when I come in. It is all on one level with the kitchen so no stairs or anything involved (something that used to do me in were we lived before for the veg plots). I do the proper inspection and food later on with the girls helping with carrying water, food and grit! I have to say they are a lot tamer and passive compared to other chickens I have known - I would say they are smaller too but I think that is just because I have grown!

So one week in and we are really chuffed 🙂 We are taking egg presents around to the neighbours today as they can be nosey etc.. some cake baking may also lurk in the future 🙂

Chasing Allotments and Organising Sheds (by sarah)

That horrible sinking feeling when you realise you now have a kitchen full of animal feed sacks and there is no room left in the cupboard under the stairs and you've been thinking this stuff should all be in the shed for a while for ages and it needs to be sorted so the table you bought for a fiver from the school for potting up and mushroom growing can be put in said shed (sounds far more exciting and illegal than what I actually mean!).

So we turfed things and sorted them and took some camping bits out to put in the cupboard under the stairs which were also sorting at the same time and some animal cage bits which are going in the eves of the house with the fish tank etc... and we put hooks in the sheds beams to hang the camping chairs, strimmer and jet washer etc... Found the grate of wine bottles I''ve been looking for to bottle my nettle wine and dandiion wine up in and a couple more demijohns to go on the shelves we built for the purpose in the kitchen etc...

Mary thought it was great - it was her house apparently!

Then we headed off to the Allotments Country Show in the hope of nabbing someone about the fact that I am now not even receiving email responses from the council about how long it is going to take to get one - I go blackberrying along there I can see the empty plots! I found a lady who said she would pass my details on after a long talk about making chutney and pickled things with me and Alaric so fingers crossed.

The weather was a bit pants by this point but Jean and Mary had a great time even though they didn't get to go on any rides - Jean went in her roller blades she picked up last year in a charity shop for like £2! She only fell over once and had her shoes in her rucksack which she changed into after seeing the zumba but by then it was too late to join in!

Mary was most pleased with her balloon dog - in pink as always - it is currently her favourite colour! I worry that people think I am one of those parents that makes their little girls wear pink!

And then I resisted adopting another bunny from the Windmill rescue people - the girls spent ages stroking a lovely little grey thing - Jean was concerned it wasn't walking and was informed that it is disabled with a twisted back paw - at the collected 'awww' from me and Jean Alaric took us by the arms and lead us away!

Apart from all that I cleared out and sorted the top shelf of the 'treats' cupboard (where all the cake making etc supplies are) and placed the chutneys and jams I've been making on there - so yeah guess what everyones getting for christmas! Something home made/grown anyway 😉