This post is well overdue, as I’ve been a chicken owner now for over a year. I think I was waiting to take good photos of the living set-up, but that has changed quite a bit since, so best to just get on with the writing.
I’ve always wanted chickens but I generally stick to animals that can be left on their own, for at least a weekend (hence the cats) and ideally a week (with the neighbours keeping an eye out for me). But after the arrival of the guinea pigs, which can’t be abandoned for long, it didn’t seem to make much difference to add chickens to the mix and the big bonus is that three of my immediate neighbours are chicken keepers and so are wonderfully helpful when I do need to go away.
I remember now why I didn’t write this post earlier, as I only had crap photos to share…
like this, for instance!
and this not very good photo of our original set-up,
which you can see better in this later photo (different chickens, more in that later).
This is an Eglu Go, from Omlet, which is an eye wateringly expensive but totally brilliant chicken house. I’m not going to do a massive review as quite frankly, I’m not qualified to do so and there are already so many good ones online. I asked my lovely Sister to add to the cost for my birthday gift (this was back in early 2015) and I paid the rest. It is brilliant. Really no hassle to keep clean, looks good and I just couldn’t add any more wood that needed preserving to my home, as I already can’t keep up with the decking, fence, window and greenhouse maintenance. I figure that it will eventually earn its price in longevity and if I ever need to sell it, the Eglus sell well on Ebay at not much of a loss. My only regret? I debated for some time over the Go or the Go Up and should have got the Go Up straight off, but more on that in the next post.
I paid to have the Omlet set-up (a chap in a van who comes and puts the entire thing together for you) complete with two chickens, regular hybrid Ginger Rangers, aptly named Doris and Mabel.
Doris and Mabel were (past tense, do you see where this might be going??) ridiculously tame. They partly came that way, but I do like to think the time and effort we put into interacting with the pets in this house helps.
We had eggs the very next day, which I was stupidly excited about.
(Obligatory cute child holding eggs pose).
The whole thing is a winner for me. Yes, the initial money outlay for the Eglu is rather frightening and if you split that out on the eggs you get, versus some good quality organic eggs from the shops, you realise that your eggs are coming in at quite a high price, but there really is nothing like fresh eggs from the garden and given time (OK, so a LOT of time) I think the Eglu will eventually pay for itself.
I also just love watching the chickens. Ours were free range, I let them out every day and they would potter about the garden causing havoc in the flower beds (they are quite damaging, even just two chickens, if you’re very garden proud you might want to fence them into an area).
Would I have done anything differently? Yes. As above, I’d have bought a Go Up immediately. I might also have gone for ‘prettier’ chickens. Hybrids are a must, for my needs; they lay eggs nearly every day (in our case all through winter too), they don’t go broody, they are vaccinated and super hardy and don’t mind the weather and very importantly for me, they are friendly. But, there is a wide range of hybrid chickens and given the choice again, I’d go to a local breeder (there are so many here in Kent) and probably have got three different coloured hybrids, just because.
So why all the past tense? Well the inevitable happened, and I should have known better and poor Mabel was munched by a passing fox. We got to watch the entire thing on video (there is a camera on that part of the garden, due to a garage break in some years ago) and Mr Fox just ran into the garden and stole her whilst she was having a nice dust bath. I had clipped the wings of both chickens, to keep them in the garden, and if I haven’t I think she would have made it as she did try to fly up and away. The end was quick and thankfully, the fox didn’t kill Doris too. I should add, the fox came by at 11 in the morning on a busy Saturday when we had all our doors open and the kids were in and out of the garden so it’s not like it happened at dusk of when there weren’t humans about. Shame. Nasty fox.
I’m splitting these up, so more in the next post….
The little yellow violets all over the fields above Grass Woods were just stunning
I take pretty crap photos on my phone, I just don’t have the knack, or the patience, and I always find that the flowers, which look amazing in real life just look a bit flat and unexciting when I’ve attempted to capture them.
I also seem to photograph my lunch a lot, more because my own daft choice of food always makes me laugh (at myself, I should add). On this walk, it was a pork pie (bought in Grassington as it’s a bit of a highlight to stop by the butchers, for me), some beef jerky and an entire bar of Lindt chocolate!!!???
I remember I’d saved it for the ‘top’ of the walk (Mossdale Scar), as a kind of reward but when I got there, it was all a bit eery and somber. It was the scene of the 
The only other couple I saw out walking that day had clearly had the same plan, as they stopped briefly, then changed their minds and walked back some distance to shelter under a wall to eat with me. We all had a chat about how grim it was and who in their right mind enjoys potholing (it’s honestly not for me, squeezing through small holes in the ground and crawling through water, nope, the idea makes me shiver).
I often think of my Dad when we are walking. We walked a lot as kids (I remember him walking us up to Mossdale Scar, actually) and he usually had his camera with him, which considering it was a huge thing to lug about back in those days must have been an effort. I blame him for my not enjoying having my photo taken, he made us pose at every available opportunity. The nice thing is, I have many scanned slides of us in familiar places where I also walk the boys. I believe this is Tom Lee’s Cave (Cove Hole??), Grassington, where we go often (although we can’t seem to get to cave itself any more, only view it from below).
And on our last walk, I tried to get the boys to replicate one of Dad’s usual posed shots by standing on a stile…
with mixed results, mainly them trying to shove each other off!!
That’s better boys.
One I wont be asking them to copy is this…. Dad, what were you thinking!!!
The below post was written some time last year, since then I have bought a larder cupboard, which was a great investment for me as the kitchen here has very little storage (due to the two walls of glass, that give an amazing outlook into the garden, but at the price of space to put units). I painted it myself to save money (it was a bit of a labor of love), in ‘Elephant’s Breath’ Farrow and Ball paint as I had two unused tins that were supplied about 10 years ago as part of the kitchen fitting (it’s the colour used inside the wall glass units in there).
He was lovely. I say, was, as sadly we had to have him put down a few weeks ago. He came to use with a rather John Wayne style walk, which turned out to be one fused hip and the ‘worst case of arthritis’ the vets had ever seen in a cat. He had a successful hip operation but a routine check up afterwards revealed him to be FIV+ and bluntly, he went down hill rather quickly with anemia and had to be put to sleep. I miss him. He was fantastically grumpy (I like grumpy cats) but at the same time my sofa companion, as he rarely left it, and he made a cute ‘priiit’ sound when you ticked his ears.
To add to the animal drama, Tuppence broke her leg just before Christmas. She’s recovered well, right now she’s running around the garden like a loon, which I hope the vet doesn’t find out about as she’s supposed to be house bound, but she just made a Houdini like escape when I opened the door to collect a parcel. Her fur is now growing back and she looks less like she’s had a chicken leg grafted on.
We still get ‘little gifts’ on a regular basis from the remaining cat that is allowed out (crazy cat lady – me? – noooooo). I manage to rescue quite a few, which seems rather stupid when I spend most of my summer cursing the mice for eating the contents of my vegetable patch.
We have hens now, which I think I did mention last year…I need to take some decent photos of the set-up and the hens themselves…I have tried, but they always seem to move just as I press the button. We did have two Ginger Rangers, but alas, Mabel (above) got eaten last weekend by a fox. We got to watch it over and over as there is a camera on that part of the garden. It was quick but I felt bad about my relaxed free ranging style as I do know there are foxes around here, but then I haven’t seen one in the garden for months, and they usually leave their little calling cards around when they do come in. Luckily, Doris (the other hen) survived and has now been joined by Beryl and Edna. Nothing like a good old fashioned and totally obvious hen name.
As it’s shooing season, there are a lot of pheasants around at the moment too, and they are quite nosey, I’ve noticed, often coming right up to the glass of our kitchen window to have a good look it. I do think Pheasants are rather handsome.
The house is full of ladybirds. We always have lots, I’m not sure if it’s linked, but in the early days here I did buy a few batches of ladybird larvae to keep the aphids under control. They do this thing when we get late warm days in late autumn or in early spring where they come out of hibernation and swarm all over the house, I did try to capture it (as above) one year, but it’s hard to see just how many there are and how they are flying all over the place as well as crawling on the house walls. 
In winter, I find them asleep in all corners of the house, the ones above were in the shell of the hen house when I recently moved it, there were some very happy spiders hanging out near by, clearly contented with their winter food larder well stocked, so I moved the Ladybirds into a bug house we have in the vegetable garden (partly as I wanted to scrub the henhouse down before putting the new hens in but also because I’m soft and the idea that they are happily sleeping away, all snuggled up together only to be picked off one by one by a spider makes me sad. I know, I need help).
Even my sewing work seems to be dominated by animals. I’ve been sewing quite a few blinds in animal prints – this Mark Hearld, Harvest Hare print from St Judes was lovely to work with.
And my Shop sewing is all rabbits,
and swallows (not to mention mice, little hanging robins, deer and many others….it didn’t occur to me just how much of my work involves animal images until writing this post!).
There were animals (and quite a lot of gin) finding their way into Christmas gifts this year too. I was a bit rubbish and only took the above photo, sorry. Weirdly, having given quite a lot of gin, I received a fair bit too, not that I’m complaining, I do like a nice bottle of gin.
The weekend has finally arrived, here in the Foster Zoo, and I think it’s time to get the seed boxes out and start planning,. I’m moving more towards low maintenance plants in the garden, ideally annuals (the above were an add on offer from Thompson & Morgan that I planted up in pots in the greenhouse last autumn, no idea of they are still alive!) and even in the vegetable patch I’m going to keep it simple. I have very little free time these days, but I really need to keep in top of things, so keeping it simple and tidy is the way to go 🙂
For the first year ever, I’ve hardly used any of the berries. The blackcurrants and gooseberries both went to the birds. The cherries, though, were eaten by us, as where the alpine strawberries. The apples, which I’ve managed to grow in decent amounts for the first time ever on my family apple tree have mostly dropped off, just as I thought to go pick them, are now laying bruised and rotting on the grass. On the plus side, I did manage to pick the redcurrants and hand them out to friends, they were too glorious to waste.
Back at home, I can’t help but notice the interest in healthy eating recipe books at the moment. I think it’s partly to do with my age and the age of my friends, we’re all busy attempting to look after our bodies as the reality that we aren’t spring chickens any more sinks in. The latest to be added to my collection is Helmsley Helmsley ‘The Art of Eating Well’ which I mainly bought because I wanted to make Paradise Bars. Oh. My. God. Best thing ever. Like top quality Bounty bars, although like many healthy recipes, I have to remind myself that just because the ingredients are ‘good’ the bar itself is still very calorific, even if it is all good fat, so I need to not chomp them all in a week. Which is hard.
The garden is ticking along nicely, although it’s wilting in the high temperatures we’ve been getting here in the South.
We then stepped back outside into tropical temperatures, decided we were too Northern in blood to cope and went home.
I did buy gin though and some AMAZING pies from 
In the garden the fruit is ready to go. I managed to steal some of the cherries from the birds and mice for the first time in years, they could have done with a few days longer, but I know the pesky pigeons will strip them in an afternoon, just as I’m about to pick them, as that always happens and I decided not to wait. The variety is Lapins and I planted the tree when we moved here after also planting the same variety in our old garden and being amazed be the fruit flavour.
Rock Cottage Year 
