To weeks of chickens and they are producing between 1 and 4 eggs a day with an average of just below two a day. We have had one more soft shell which is a shame but they all seem healthy and have the good food and vits etc... They are simultaneously malting and growing their feathers back at the same time!
They are becoming cheekier and keep sneaking into the kitchen when they think no one is looking - I am now of course writing a story for Jean and Mary about it!
They are also trying to enclude the rabbit in their peaking order - his response is to bound away and huffling sit in his run so we are making sure he gets some quality non chicken time in the garden - he on the other hand does run up and start sniffing at them and tries to get into their run so it is not a one sided thing.
The kitten watches them out of the kitchen door forlornly and even tries to pounce them with a run up leading to thumps and yowls as her head hits the glass! I let the chickens in to see what would happen and they flapped at her and she went and hid!
Of course the great escape onto the decking appears to be facilitated by a certain 2 and a half year old who opens gates!
Oh and given the chance I think she would move in with them!
Though she does announce they are naughty for pooing as it is not in a potty (the litter tray being the kittens potty you see).
Our chicken egg tracker is almost ready for everyone to see 🙂 And we've been planning on building the bigger run/avery sooner rather than later (I don't do chicken shit on the decking ok - just no).
Also I am finding that even on miserable days I am spending more time outside - there has only been one day when I was feeling really bad pain and fatigue wise that they didn't get let out of the run straight away when we got up and Al went and delt with it anyway and I still got to feed them and round them up. Alaric also seems to be enjoying the jet washing of the run once a week.
And Jeany is going to have a birthday party (yes I know her birthday was actually last month but well..) where all the cakes are made with home grown eggs 🙂
It turns out chickens like to sunbath - if it gets sunnier I will need to put sunblock on their bald bits!
So yeah we are still happy happy with our chickens 🙂
The cats are still making up their minds - the chickens seem to be winning the great stare down comps!
Mary loves getting herself ready for outings.
She knows we take supplies, like blankets and picnics and of course a walking stick!
So yesterday I did the village craft fayre all profits were for charity and yet it was the worst one I have ever done. It was slow - all of them are being slow at the moment but something else was going on, people were still buying the odd bit from the other stalls. Now I had Little Books of Poetry and art prints for sale rather than my normal stuff (which I'd given up as it wasn't selling) but it was not that change that was the issue, others were selling prints.
I watched the girl across from me sell pretty much all of her hare prints. They were lovely and she was lovely but I find that sort of thing boring especially since moving here to the Cotswolds as there are hare pictures EVERYWHERE. But people bought those. (And I bought some of her buttons as I loved the style she had done on them but the ones I liked were the ones that were left on her stall at the end).
People bought chutneys that I would never buy as I make my own and they bought ceramics and they bought fluffy hedgehogs from the hedgehog hospital stall but I sold one little book and that was to somebody who already had one. My science-art prints were looked on in horror by some with comments about them being creepy or scary. And then when asked what the actual pictures were done in I got sneers over 'fine liner' and as for my felt tip pictures such as Creativity and The Little Book illustrations... people kept asking if they were Jean's work.
And yes I have imitated children's drawings for the The Little Books but not drawn them childishly. The cat in the christmas tree was harder to draw than my space montage. I didn't think I really cared about what people thought of my art anymore but having it thought of as something a child could do upset me - this is in contrast with the reaction I had at the Tate Modern to a book that entitled Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That. My objection to it was that it felt children could not think the deep thoughts behind the art and yet I know Jean can and she had already won prizes for art works by the time she was five - the issue is that she does not yet have the dexterity and refinement for the finished piece but the ideas, the concepts are there.
To be fair it was said by people who know Jean but still...
I would feel completely crushed except two things came out of this a) I came to the conclusion that I am not mainstream, I can do fine art I choose not to I have my own style and yes it is not most peoples thing, b) Kids picked up the Little Book and read them avidly - the target audience loves them but unfortunately they do not have the ability to buy things themselves it is the parents who need to do that. So now the problem is how to get them to buy rather than the style of the book being wrong. I also ended up letting kids colour in my trilobite prints that went wrong at the printers - these are just line art and it was a keep my kids occupied thing but Jean's friends kept coming and joining and in the end I ran out of them! This has given me the want to produce a colouring book.
I also met some amazing artists, only one of which had a website but I think they live next do to each other.
I loved her camera man!
The other issue is that I need to make sure that people know the business cards are for taken as I had a number of people try to buy them! Go Moo.com.
Chickens, Uncategorised | sarah | 
Sat 21st Sep 2013 11:11 pm | 
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