On Saturday morning we picked up Gabriella and Monica to add to our little menagerie. After years of wanting our own chickens, and becoming progressively more jealous as chicken coops appeared in gardens up and down the valley, we finally bit the bullet and invested in an Eglu, a moulded plastic hutch that was recommended to us as a beginner’s introduction to chicken keeping. It’s produced by a company called Omlet and, whilst not as cheap as some wooden coops, is perfect for us novices.
By Sunday lunch time, they had produced their first two eggs (large and delicious) and are certainly doing their bit to fertilize the patch of grass they currently reside on. We need to keep them in their run for the first week, so they have been visited by the other animals: Megan desperately wants to play with them (and has been soundly told off); Sami’s a bit wary of them (presumably after being told off for trying to chase other people’s chickens); Minto was distinctly unimpressed and sloped off to find some smaller birds that were more his size; George stared at them then, deciding they were too big to eat, just ignored them.
The tadpoles are getting bigger and have been decanted into a bucket of clean water with pond weed. Many didn’t survive but that was hardly surprising as they had been hit by frost.
We actually managed to fit in some gardening as well! With much effort, I moved the fountain to the veg patch (I’ll have to think of another name. It’s new theme is ‘pretty, edible garden’ but that’s a bit of a mouthful.) when Jon took the dogs out for a walk, dug it over and fed it with Growmore. During the morning, we had bought more herbs, summer bulbs and grass seed as the last lot didn’t take, but they are tasks for the coming week(s), weather permitting. I also need to dig over and feed the bottom garden – now the heavy duty veg patch – where we are going to plant rhubarb and spuds. That is going to be really hard work. And I need to go through the seed packets and start sowing them instead of prevaricating (such as stopping to write this).
P.S. “Pretty, edible garden” is henceforth known as the potager garden. I’d actually written it down on the plan so don’t know why it slipped my memory. Must be all the excitement of the Girls laying two more eggs.
