Chicken Run:

No, not the film, it's banned in our household just in case the ladies get any ideas. But the actual chicken's run.

We only have 9 chooks, so while they are not actually free range, they have a lot of space.

Our laying ladies have stopped for the winter. Bit depressing as we have not bought eggs for a year now. But they have done us proud, and I think deserve a break over winter to recharge their batteries. They haven't started to molt yet, but it will probably be soon.

We realised that they were drinking more water than we could fit in the drinker so it was out with the jigsaw and chopped the bottom off a 200 litre drum. This has been sunk slightly into the run and now they have more than enough water.

Autumn:

Blue sky, crisp cool air, the beatiful hue of leaves, plants dying back, woodland animals venturing into the garden in search of food.

I love this time of year!

It just makes me want to leave work, put on a pair of boots and clamber up a hill, more so than any other time of year.

But it's not my favourite season, I like them all, and am always trying to decide which is the best, but I can't. I love the hot balmy summer days, with the sound of crickets, and birds, I love the freezing cold winter snow, I love the fresh spring. I suppose all of the seasons are my favourite. Which is lucky as we live in Britain.

Avian Flu: Killer Zombie Chickens

Would everybody just shut up about this and realise that the press hype things up to sell papers.

You do not need to stop eating chicken, as I have heard many people are doing. If these idiots had a decent education and didn't read papers like the Sun and the Daily Mail they would understand a little better. You can not catch flu from a dead bird.

Also, people don't seem to realsie that bird flu has been around for 10 years now, and less then 120 people world wide have died from it. I worry more when driving my car to and from work than about killer super bugs eating flesh and creating zombie chickens.

But, I suppose we have to be thankful for these people, otherwise, when I took my kids to MacDonalds ^(TM) for their Happy Meals ^(TM), there would be nobody to serve us.

Too much rain:

Jeez,

when is it going to stop raining? It has been belting it down for a week now, and everything is getting just a little muddy.

Found out that chickens shrink in the rain as our poor ladies are now half the size they were and decidedly unhappy. But then they can always go inside to dry off. I suppose they are like horses, would much prefer to stand outside of their shelter looking miserable, trying on the guilt trip. Daft things.

On the way to work this morning I realised I have holes in my shoes. Why couldn't I have found this out during the summer? So sitting at work barefoot, wishing this town had some decent shops that aren't boutiques or fancy cafes. Neither are my type of thing.

Our new welder:

We have our new welder now!

It's an Olympic Bantum 180A oil filled arc welder.

We got it from a lovely bloke in Brighton, who used to use it for large sculptures (thanks Ivan!) you can have a look at his Blog here. It is a fantastic old beast, weighs a lot (needs two to lift in and out of a car) and is built to last. It even has that lovely gold transfer on the side.

I had forgotten how wonderful welding smells, I just love the sound, the smell, everything about it.

In addition to the arc, he also gave us a load of bits and pieces in a beautiful old wooden wine box. Think this is going to have to be used as a table in the living room.

Leaf Mulch:

It's that time of year again when the trees become the most vibrant and beautiful canvas of colours on the landscape and then promptly dump all the leaves on our lawn.

We have a large front garden, and when we moved in last year, all we had to deal with these leaves was a Flymo, which was pretty much useless as the grass had not been cut for a year. So we had to borrow a rake and a barrow and spent hours clearing up the leaves. Never again we said as our backs and arms slowly stopped aching.

This year, we were lucky enough to get hold of a superb Hayter Harrier lawnmower. It’s driven so no pushing around, has a large capacity box, and a 3.5 HP engine. And best of all, it came from a skip. Amazing what people will throw away. All it needed was an oil change, new plug and the filter cleaned and it started first go. This has made a huge difference, and now all it takes to clear the leaves is to put it on a high setting and suck them up.

So, the plan this year is to take these finely chopped leaves and mulch them. I have picked up a whole stack of pallets, so will probably just nail them together as a rough and ready compost bin and leave them. This will be our second compost bin, and we are even thinking that we may need a third. That way we can get a good rotation going. A good local site to visit about composting is Compost Works. They have a nice leaflet you can download on composting tips

Venison:

Busy day today, I had to pop down to the local feed store to blag some extra pallets for the new chicken house, then go down to our local school and help with the gardening.

We’d asked the farmer to drop off some old tractor tyres to make planters and raised beds for the kids, and we also wanted to make a bed for a sensory garden. There was a good turn out of parents and friends and it soon all took shape in-between cups of tea and chats.

Straight after this, we had organised with the farmer to go up to one of the farms and see the calves. The kids absolutely loved this. The calves ranged from just born and being born (one heifer was in the process of discharging the water sack as we watched) to others a few weeks old. Our timing was excellent as it coincided with feeding time. Great for the kids to see where food comes from, and realise that animals aren’t born shrink wrapped on plastic plates. My little one wanted to bring a calf back for the garden, but then he never makes much sense.

On the way back we had to drop off at the other farm and pick up a deer that had been knocked down earlier. The farm hand had very kindly gutted it (gralloch) so all we had to do was bring it home and skin it on the back of the Landover. Half an hour later we had a huge stack of lovely meat, a foot to make into a walking stick handle and a happy satisfied grin brought about by the imminent eating of free venison.

It was a lovely moment as we cleaned up the last of the meat, with our own eggs in the fridge, Bramble wine bubbling away and a freezer packed full of pigeon and rabbits. And all this with the Pheasant shooting starting soon. The season opened on the 1^st of October, but our shoot doesn’t start til much later, gives the birds a bit more of a chance, which I like.

Bramble Wine:

Started off our second batch of Bramble wine yesterday. We thought the season was well and truly over until we discovered a south facing hedgerow that was covered in lovely ripe berries. Going to name the wine "White Pheasant" as on the way up the dirt track, we spotted the one white Pheasant the keeper puts down every year.

The idea is that any of the party that shoots this pheasant has to pay £200, it's a tradition at this shoot. I don't think it happens very often, firstly, they don't shoot many birds as it's quite a relaxed estate (one of the reasons I beat there) and secondly, white Pheasants are quite often eaten by foxes long before the season starts due to being slightly conspicuous! Wouldn’t it be a nightmare to be the only pure white one among loads of camouflaged birds.

Anyway, back to the wine. It’s been years since we last tried our hand at wine making so it has been a bit of a learning experience all over again. The recipe we are using is basically just 3 ½ lbs of brambles, 3 lbs of sugar, yeast and a dash of grape concentrate. The first batch tasted ok when being racked, so hopefully after 6-9 months it should be fairly decent. Just wish we had some newer books on the subject, as everything we have is from the 70’s and the days when Boots dedicated whole areas of their shops to wine making.

There are enough brambles in the freezer for one more batch and then it’s on to the beer brewing. That process is a whole lot quicker so we should have some more immediate results while we wait for the wine. Come next spring we are going to try nettle wine as there are a lot of them about. Don’t fancy any of the vegetable recipes like Potato or carrot etc. Would have to try one first before making our own.

Posh Ladies:

The new pure breed Light Sussex have settled in nicely now. We introduced them to the hut at roosting time so they could get used to each other a bit before the morning. This went well, apart from two of the Sussex deciding they wanted to roost on the same branch as the others, and being bigger birds there wasn’t much space. I still laugh at the site of the 5 Isa’s and Lord Eggward (An Araucana) all crammed on the branch, probably thinking what the hell are these interlopers doing in our house.

In the morning there was the expected pecking of the new birds by the Isa’s, and Eggward attempting to show who was boss, but it quickly became evident that the size of these birds (about 7lbs when mature) was an advantage, and they were not going to be pushed around, by lowly hybrids or by a cockerel. Group dynamics are fascinating!

As they are Point of Lay, we expect to see some eggs soon as they become settled. And next spring we hope to breed from them. Pure breed are more likely to go broody than hybrids as the behaviour hassn't been bred out of them over the years. So roll on next spring as the kids would love to see chicks about. We will use these to increase our stock, keeping the hens and fattening the cockerels for the table. Our target for next year is to have a Sunday Roast, where everything on the plate has come from the garden.

Wildlife Pond:

Being next to woodland and fields, our first attempt at growing veg lasted a few days before the midnight marauders had munched their way through the delicate tasty shoots leaving their slimy silver trails as proof of their visit. What we needed was an organic and natural way of keeping on top of the problem, so we thought a pond might attract hungry frogs and toads.

A quick trawl through some builders skips and we came up trumps with a whole stack of damp proof membrane, ideal as our pond liner. I had an idea of how I wanted it to look and not one to plan and mark things out, I just started to dig.

It's not too deep, only about a foot as we have young children, and has naturalised well (this picture was taken only a week after it was built/dug.

The Millstone was our very first Freecycle acquisition, which we picked up from a lovely bloke near Dunsfold, the plants have all been donated.

We bought two fish, Red Rudd, as we didn't want any goldfish or Koi (they look naff) but I never saw them. I did see a piece of bread moving to the bottom of the pond, but not the fish pinching it. It now looks as though they have been removed by our cat, as when clearing it out there was no sign of them, and they have not been seen floating belly up.

So, we will give up on the fish, their not really suitable for a wildlife pond as they eat frog spawn, and stick to just being a haven for Dragonflies, frogs and toads.

Scrubland:

We live in a rented house owned by the local estate (farming & shooting estate) and are in a lovely location with woods at the bottom of the garden and a patch of scrubland to the right. It is this land that we have earmarked for our veg patch, more chickens and perhaps pigs (the pigs might just be a dream).

But before we could do anything, it had to be cleared. We managed to get hold of a very old strimmer which required a bit of work on the engine to get it running, but now works a treat. The cutting blade made short work of the 15 years of brambles and bracken that had taken over this area. And after a few weekends of work, and one huge bonfire. We can now see what we are doing.

We found all manner of treasures and rubbish buried. The best items were a lovely Butler sink and some old bottles. The not so fun 'treasures' were miles of tatty rusting chicken wire, lino and assorted trash. The after picture shows you how it looks now. The tree next to the plastic bin is a very sick looking pear, I think the deer have had a go as the bark is stripped off down one side. Thats one thing we have to account for here, is the deer. Every winter they come out of the woods and take a liking to our tender plants. It's lovely to see them, and even funny watching one chase the cat (she's called Pushka, seems it's Russian for Cannon) accross the front lawn last week. But not so funny when they start munching on my food.

New Chickens:

We collect our new chickens tonight. We decided to buy 3 Light Sussex hens to add to our Isa Browns and cockerel.

The light Sussex, while not hybrids, are still good layers and not too flighty and are ideal for children to handle.

They will go in the exisitng pen while we make their new house (out of reclaimed timber and broken pallets). Once this is completed, all 10 chooks will be moving to the scrub area next to the house in an effort to clear it and prepare it for veg next spring. By the time they have pecked and scratched the land, there won't be a single slug left.