I came face to face with the fox last Wednesday. I had spent all day outside guarding the chicks whilst renovating an oak card table, so there was lots of noise from the sander etc. At 5.30 I decided that I really needed to give the dogs a run, went down to the field and heard squawking when we were half way round. We ran back – as best as I could in sandals in a boggy field – was running up the path when the thing appeared from nowhere from the direction of of the garden. The dogs were confused as it dived straight into the brambles. I thought I saw something white in its mouth so I ran up to the house. The Orpington chick was hiding under a bush, Salt was standing on my newly varnished card table, Scruffy and Sage were perching on the drive gate, Pepper was snug in the coop as she’s broody, but no sign of Onion, the White Star. As I thought I’d seen something white in the fox’s mouth I feared the worst and locked the remaining birds up in the coop up. When I went out to check them at 7.30 I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at a rather annoyed Onion who was strutting round the pen, not understanding as to why she couldn’t get into bed. She was a bit quiet for the next couple of days we are more vigilant than ever. We have a few ideas for how we can better secure their area and the garden but if things carry on like this we may have to give up keeping hens as one of our neighbours eventually did when he lost the last of his 38 birds.

Onto a much more pleasant subject! My biggest blog hit rate was when we went to Rome and visited the Villa Borghese. I said at the time that I hoped that the renovation of Sefton Park would include reinstating the rowing boats on the boating lake. We went to Liverpool this weekend and strolled the dogs round the park on Sunday morning to clear our heads. Although, sadly, the boats are still missing, the rest of the renovation has gone fantastically well and, in my humble opinion, I think Sefton Park surpasses the Villa Borghese. Go see!

… and now we have a new patio area, a new chicken pen, new greenhouse, new herb patch and new hanging baskets! (Mustn’t forget the baskets.)

There’s no point saying: “I don’t know where the time goes …” because I hope it’s quite obvious, after another day of weeding, potting up, planting out etc. Pictures can speak louder the words so this is our current state of affairs:

The greenhouse, a.k.a. The Office, has been a fabulous addition. We didn’t erect it until Easter so we did lose out on some of the early good weather, but I’ve worked hard to fill it with as much greenery as possible. We currently have: lettuce, spinach, spring onions, cucumbers, leeks, sweet corn, cape gooseberry, tomatoes (moneymaker and cherry), chillies (jalapeno and one twilight), sweet peppers, mini bell peppers, Sweet Williams, forget-me-nots, basil, oregano, chives, parsley. Off the top of my head, I think that’s it but I do need to do more successional sowing.

The veg patch / pottager, that was meant to be provide us with a cutting garden, didn’t quite work out. My idea of growing scented flowers to bring indoors, and not just sensible edible stuff, didn’t happen. I nurtured through some sunflowers (although their seeds count as edible and useful) and Nicotiana (too few to cut!) but most of the others gave in to slugs, chickens or the vagaries of clay soil as soon as they were planted out. Or they were biennials like Sweet William so they have been moved to the perennial beds. Not that I’m confident of their success as soon as the chickens discover them. However, although some of the sweetcorn and cucumber is looking promising, the star of the show has been the mangetout, closely followed by the nasturtiums. The runner beans were immediately slugged as soon as they were put out although one of the plants has started to rally. The peas have been disappointing so I’m trying them out in another part of the garden alongside the tomatoes. The sweet peas have been soundly beaten by the mangetout in flower production and they don’t produce anything useful. My leeks and cabbages are still under cloche protection so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. And I have more flowers that I planted out today but they were free seeds given away with a newspaper and I’ve forgotten what they are at the moment!

The lemons are coming on nicely. The gooseberry bush was laden with fruit but when I went to pick them for crumble the blackbirds had beaten me to it and there was only one left, but it was tasty. The raspberries were good and, probably thanks to the blackbirds, they are now happily growing wild all over the place. As for the blueberries, they’ve been my favourite as I’ve been enjoying home made muffins for breakfast made with home grown blueberries and the girls’ eggs. Delicious! The apples are coming on nicely as well. They’re not great to snack on as they’re a bit sour, but in a salad with a stilton or strong cheddar they really come into their own. Plus they’re useful for ripening the tomatoes.

We’ve already harvested our early potatoes. There was about a bucket and a third of them, not an awful lot for the cost and effort, but they are really, really lovely spuds. We’ll dig out the main crop later this month before the slugs start in earnest in September.

Went a bit mad with the tomatoes but they are so satisfying to grow. We’ve now got flowers, but the plants I gave my aunt at the end of June are bearing fruit. Just shows you the difference that geography makes as she is north of us but closer to the coast.

The new herb patch, on a slope behind the greenhouse, was chosen because it was such an awkward place as it has decent sun, but very thin soil. The herbs I transplanted have done surprisingly well and the ones I’ve grown from seed are doing their best to hold on in there. However, the plants I’ve bought in have been a bit hit and miss, but I’m making the most of Tesco’s potted herb offers,

Chickens!

This is the relatively abridged version  …

In April, we completed the pen, designed to protect and ward off the threat of buzzards or any other flying predators. Then, after many emails and Internet searches, we found more friends for the Buffs. We restocked with hybrids: Goldline warrens, Barred Rocks, Bluebells, Black Rock and a White Star, to take us up to eleven birds. Unfortunately, one Saturday night at the end of May, we didn’t lock up properly as Baby Buff was asserting her authority and playing musical coops. We got up the following morning and discovered three headless bodies and a load of feathers. All gone; it was absolutely heartbreaking. It had been a stormy night and the river was torrential so neither us nor the dogs had heard a thing.

We believed it to be mink, but decided after some soul-searching – not to mention the acquisition of a couple of traps – that we were not going to be deterred as we’d already invested so much in the pursuit of chickens. We’d learnt the hard way the importance of locking up each night (whether the chickens like it or not) but we set about restocking again. More Goldlines, Black Rocks, White Stars and, this time round, Speckledys. (Still with me?)

Anyway, one afternoon when I was hard at work in The Office, I noticed a flash of reddy brown at the top of the drive disappearing into the overgrown undergrowth. I ran up there, arms flailing, making the sound of a siren, then stopped and realized I was going mad. Still, I called the cats and dogs in, fed them all, and instead of taking the dogs down for their post-dinner walk round the field I followed my instinct and kept guard by the gate. Five minutes later, I spotted the fox heading up the track that led to the tunnel under the road. So we now knew who our predator was.

The following afternoon I was on guard, fully prepared in my wet weather gear as it was bucketing down. Rake, shears and hoe to hand to start tackling the ferns that had given the dratted fox sufficient cover to make its raid; a pile of stones as my armoury in case I actually spotted it to scare it off However, tt dawned on me fairly quickly that Thyme, a rather sweet Goldline, wasn’t with the rest. At first I thought she’d gone off to lay, but after half an hour I realized I’d already been thwarted and she wasn’t coming back. We went into lockdown. I got a glimpse of the fox again two days later so we went and bought a new heavy duty strimmer to clear a couple of metres of  ferns surrounding the garden a.s.a.p. as we didn’t know what else we could do. I’m totally anti fox-hunting, and respect that they were here in the valley long before we were, so any measures we took had to  be legal and humane.

Then we had a stroke of luck; they started retarmacing the road. Must admit, I didn’t think that when they started drilling at 7.30 in the morning and the house was shaking and the dogs went berserk … for hours and hours … but it did seem to disrupt the fox’s routine as the work lasted several weeks. That was back in June.

Last week we went to pick up the trio of Gold Laced Orpington chicks I had ordered a couple of months ago from my trusty main supplier, Janet. We returned with a quartet, provisionally named Columbo, Marple, Cagney and Lacey, but now we’ve got them I’m not sure that their names fit. They are now nine weeks old so they won’t mature for another four months. The other six hens have not yet been let loose with them so we have some hen-pecking to endure in the coming weeks as they don’t realise that Columbo, the cockerel, is going to grow a good three times larger than his current size and much bigger than them.

Chicken-keeping is definitely a constant learning curve of varying degrees of steepness!

We still have the two chicks, can’t call them hens because Big Buff is definitely a bloke and Baby Buff has yet to lay so we still have our doubts but, apart from that, they’re doing well. This weekend – weather permitting – we’re planning to erect a roof between the garage and house that will serve as a bike store and somewhere the chicks can take shelter if anything big and nasty flies overhead. We’ve also made initial plans and priced up the materials needed to fence off a safe area for them before we start to restock. Our biggest problem will be sinking the posts. The house is built on bedrock – as the builders constantly reminded us when digging the foundations for the garage – so that could cause a few headaches.

Now to my seed dilemma! Should I shop online where there is a wider range available so I can get the exact types I want, or should I patronise local businesses by trawling round the nurseries and making do with my second or third choice? I’ll definitely be buying the plants that are too much hassle to grow from seed locally so maybe some online shopping is not really letting the side down.

Big and Baby Buff

P.S. If anyone can tell from this photo if Baby Buff is really a girl or boy, I’d be most grateful!

So the remaining girls have been moved into the eglu, which has been moved to its original place on the top lawn as it is flat enough to accomodate eglu and run, and easy to reach. They can stay there for a couple of months  whilst we secure the sloped area by the  garage.

Planning the future layout of the garden has taken a backseat during the snow and Christmas preparations. However, Jon did come up with a brainwave. Our troublesome was-going-to-be-for-chickens-then-was-going-to-be-another-patio area will hopefully be a suitable site for a greenhouse! It’s just next to and below the veg patch so it should work out very well. And no more trays of seedlings cluttering up my conservatory. Bliss.

We lost two  birds in the space of three days. Duffy, the Light Sussex, was whipped away on Thursday night then Charles, our Rhodie cockerel, went on Saturday night. It appears that the hen-harrier / buzzard just waited in a tree until it was dusk and the chickens were making their way to bed, then swooped. I took the dogs out in case it was a fox but there were no fresh prints in the snow and Sami just stood and stared up into the tree although I couldn’t see anything. The remaining four are very subdued and nervy, not helped by all the snow, so yesterday we moved the coop to a more sheltered place at the other end of the garden. I’ve kept the girls in the run today but they’re happier to stay in the coop at the moment.

So, it’s back to the graph paper. The current thinking is that what was our chicken coop area will now be  a patio for the small table and chairs. As the area is ‘reclaimed’ we can’t grow anything there so the choice is to keep it as lawn or pave it.  The area where we have relocated the coop is on a mossy slope so we are very restricted as to what we can do with it. Using it for the chickens was something we have considered in the past but it was too slopy for the eglu. Time to pick up the pencil again!

I apologised profusely for my dreadful timing.  I mentioned something about calling me back when it was convenient fully realizing that was a non-starter so I needed another plan.

I called by the neighbours who told me several weeks ago that they were trying to breed their own chicks and were looking for fertilized eggs.   However, although there was no one home, I did notice a particularly fine looking Welsummer cockerel strutting his stuff round the field so I suspected that they couldn’t accommodate another cockerel.

Time for inspiration so I did what everyone does now when they have a problem and Googled it. Apparently as long as you collect the eggs every day – which we do -  and put them straight in the fridge -  we have one going spare in the garage – then the eggs can’t develop as they need to be incubated within a certain length of time. Hurrah! The threat of being overrun with chicks has been averted! The cockerel is also there to protect the hens, alerting them to potential danger and putting himself in the way of predators, something that resonates with us after losing several birds in a short space of time.

So Charles, formerly known as Camilla, has had a few cockle-doodle-doos now.

He’s starting to take his responsibilities seriously, making sure that the girls are safely in the coop before he goes in himself.

It also makes sense of a few other events. Cilla, our Black Orpington that we also thought may be a Cyril, took an instant dislike to the Rhode Islands when we brought them home, although as s/he was taken in a puff of feather two days after they were all let out of the coop, there was no real opportunity for confrontation. I’m also beginning to wonder if that’s  how Limpy, Charles’ “sister”, became limpy as they were practically identical. Ah well, we’ll never know but we are a bit wiser about hen-keeping now.

As for the garden, I haven’t done a tap. For a long time. I need to sit down with pencil and graph paper and devise a long-term strategy underpinned by a tactical approach that will ensure we have enough colour and produce to provide interest in the coming year. Sounds just the sort of thing to keep me occupied if the weather over the next few days is going to be as bad as the forecast predicts. Or I could just knit and watch ‘Come Dine With Me’ instead.

Her comb and wattles have developed greatly over the past week or so, I noticed yesterday that she was looking rather beautiful, or should that be hansdome. Then this morning I think the strangled cry as they chased me up to the garage for extra seed, was an attempt at crowing.

Back to the breeder ….

The bad news is that Limpy, the hen with the dodgy leg, is no more. Last week’s unexpected Indian summer in autumn suited her as she could stretch out in the warmth of the sun. Even though it was cold overnight, she could still get into the coop and cuddle up to the other hens. Unfortunately, the drop in temperature during the day on Sunday seems to have done for her.

Her sister, on the other hand, is thriving to the extent that she is now bidding to become ‘top bird’ even though she hasn’t started laying yet. We could never decide on names for her and Limpy before last week, but as she as behaving as “She who would be Queen” I’m going to call her Camilla. I think it rather suits her.

Meanwhile, the eglu is currently unoccupied as Monica – our first and current top bird – has abandoned it to go and rule the roost in the coop, to the annoyance of the others.  So, the other half has decided we need more hens as we’re not letting £400 worth of designer chicken home go to waste. Don’t know where we are going to get them from as I searched north Wales for the birds we bought this summer and several of my “chicken contacts” have been scaling down their breeding operations, often because they’ve lost birds for various reasons  and have become somewhat dispirited by it all. I know how they feel!

Anyway, although today’s weather was awful to begin with – the heavens opened as soon as I set foot outside to let the birds out – after a leisurely breakfast with my friend who was paying a short visit, it started to brighten. By the afternoon, the sun was cracking the flags so I decided to seize the opportunity to make a start on weeding the patch prior to the hard toil of turning over, adding in fresh soil,  then sowing the Grazing Rye.

The dogs were disappointed as they would have preferred to have gone for a walk, the cats were frustrated as they were waiting to be fed, but the hens thought it was absolutely marvellous as I unearthed all manner of wriggly things.

After removing four wheelbarrow loads, I have to admit it still looks a bit scruffy but I’ve yet to prune back the herbs as I haven’t made my mind up as to which are staying and which are going.