In the garden and on the allotment

Our aim for this weekend has been to get the chickens together in harmony. We knew it wasn't going to be easy so we just braced ourselves. On Saturday morning we let them all out in the garden together, to give them space. There was a fair bit of fighting and each pair stayed at a good distance from the other but gradually they came together.



The "new girls" decided to explore the main run and we gradually herded them all in together.



You can see in this picture that they still stayed quite seperate for a while. The two "old girls" perching very helpfully at the front here to demonstrate.



They all got into the house together last night without any help and with relatively little bother. Rom and Hythe were very wingey this morning, I don't think they like having interlopers in their home, but they settled down. I am in the dining room and keep hearing little squarks from outside as Rom asserts her authority over Blue - which is quite mean as Rom is the biggest and Blue the smallest of the flock.

After her initial aggression Bell seems to have settled a little and, as promised, we managed to get a photo of her. The difference between them is the way their combs flop - Matt can't remember who is who so just calls them Left Flop and Right Flop at the moment. Bell is Left Flop:



In this photo she is taking after her older sisters and has taken a liking to digging in the strawberry bed, which is not very helpful.

The other update is on the allotment. We found some time to pop down there this afternoon. In fact, Matt is still there but I pulled my back this morning so have had to come home.

As you can see, we now have 6 raised beds and the fruit bed at the back as well as our "utility" area with the compost and water butt.

6

These are the fruit bushes that we have put in. Raspberries on the left (about 8) then red goosberry, 2 blackcurrants and a red currant. Not as evenly spread as I would have liked because some of the bed is waterlogged but this might help with harvesting later on.



We also took down the first of our stuff for composting - 1 week of kitchen waste and 3 weeks of chicken waste on a twiggy base to make sure it gets plenty of air. I think this should give our first compost batch a great start!

Quick allotment update

The other news of the weekend is from the allotment. We spent a lovely sunny few hours down there today - I took the raspberry canes and blackcurrant bush from the garden and planted them, along with a new blackcurrent, red current and red goosberry, into what will be our fruit cage. I was amazed that the 3 raspberry canes that we arrived in Tonbridge with are now 8!

I also dug a bit of compost into two of the beds to get them ready for potatoes in a couple of months.

Matt meanwhile built two more raised beds from pallet slats that we had salvaged from the back of Homebase (it was broken, honest guv) - we now have 6 raised beds (and the fruit cage space) and room for 4 more. We have also left some room in the middle for a bench and some cold frames - one of our neighbours is having some windows replaced next week so she is going to share her old windows with us as long as help her to build some cold frames too. fair deal I say!

I didn't take the camera so don't have any photos I'm afraid but I will try to get down there to take some next weekend.

When 2 became 4

Well, what an exciting weekend we've had. At 2.30 on Saturday afternoon we made our way down the A25 to Biggin Hill and Foal Farm which, according to it's google listing is a rescue centre for "dogs, cats, kittens and puppies" but this weekend was home to a Battery Hen Welfare Trust re-homing day.



We were there to collect 2 more hens for our little flock. You may remember that our first hens were named after the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway so it was only fitting that our second brood kept the railway theme and were to be named Blue and Bell after the Bluebell railway so imagine our delight when this sign greeted us on the way in to the farm:



We were lucky to get the hens because there had been a 2 hour delay bringing the bulk of the "delivery" down from Coventry but we had the first collection time so ours had already been at the farm for 3 weeks. Matt helped the woman but them into their box while I kept a rather inquisitive goat at bay and we started our journey home.

We got them safely home and left them largely to their own devices yesterday to settle in - they were eating and drinking straight away but needed some help getting into bed last night but obviously had a good night's sleep because we were greeted with an egg this morning!

Once I was able to get a good look at them it was really obvious how far Rom and Hythe have come on. Blue and Bell are really pale and have loads of feathers missing and look generally a bit scraggy.

My first attempt to get a photo of them this afternoon didn't work out that well:



I managed to get Blue (who is the quieter and paler of the two) to stay still to get this shot:



but Bell has discovered the joy of digging do didn't stay still long enough so I'll have to get a photo at a later date.

I also wanted to get a photo to compare RomHythe to BlueBell (it's easier this way - like Brangelina) but this is the best I could get which does at least show size and colour differences which is quite striking:



Now, I know you're going to be judging me for not trying harder but there is a good reason that I couldn't get a better shot...just after this photo was taken Bell started squaring up to Rom (which is bold because she is a big girl) and before we knew it they had their beaks locked on each others necks. I think we're going to have trouble with these two. We know that we're going to have to go through some pecking while the pecking order is re-established but we decided that, for now, Bell has ideas above her station so we are going to seperate them for a week so that she can properly get her strength up then next weekend let them face each other in the garden again and hope they don't make as much noise about it this time (it was mainly Hythe who I am sure was squarking something like "fight! fight! fight!").

Egg Count - December

New month...new egg count! The girls are struggling with the cold and lack of daylight so aren't laying much any more, although in December we still had on average just over 1 a day so we certainly can't complain! I think January, with all this snow, is going to be considerably less. Bu then, that's the excitement of egg counting!

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Finally I have remember to take a camera out and about in Tonbridge to take some photos of it in the snow.

This is poor Resiwick in the snow (I took this from bed, which is the best place to be on a snowy day in my opinion!)



The garden is looking very snowy indeed, I think being so narrow is protects the snow that lands from melting so it's really been building up over the last few days:




I left my gloves on the train yesterday and hadn't managed to get out to buy some new ones yet so my attempt at a snowman was this little chap on top of the girls' old coop. his eyes are made from bird seeds and his arms from dead chilli plants!



We also tried to coax the girls out into the snow to see how they dealt with it. Corn encouraged them a little way but not for long, they soon retreated back under their cover:




These photos should show you why we are not intending to take the car out today. Out little house does look lovely in the snow




Tonbridge also looks really lovely in the snow. We didn't go to any of the really pretty bits to take photos today but even around the river and park it looked pretty:

Cheese Making

Matt's main present from me was a cheesemaking starter kit. It provided everything that you need to make soft cheese including starters for curd cheese, soft cheese and mozarella (which I am VERY excited about!).

For his first attempt Matt made a basic lemon cheese, which doesn't actually use the kit but is a great way to get to grips with the basic process.

To do this you need:

1 litre of milk
Juice of 2 lemons
Salt

1. Heat the milk to 38 degrees C



2. Add the juice of two lemons to make it curdle



3. Leave for half an hour



4. Strain through cheese cloth, keeping the curds (solid bit) and rinsing out the whey



5. Salt to taste

6. Eat the cheese! This first attempt cheese as a really interesting flavour - tart and lemony and quite salty (Matt likes things more salty than I do!)

We haven't eaten it all yet but Matt made some pasta and made some ravioli just to test it.



I think it would be nice in ravioli with some sundried toms so that mght be a job for today. This is also very similar to how you make the Indian cheese paneer, which I absolutely love, so that's Matt's next job!

Christmas present round-up

We both got some brilliant presents this year so I thought I would share a quick summary of some of them (I'm not going to say "favourites" because that would be unfair to the other presents!). While you're reading this I want you to be humming the tune from "the gallery" (think Tony Hart)

This lovely Country Living jug came with the utensils. Beautiful AND practical:



This jug was sneakily purchased under my very nose. It was made by the Hadlow pottery, run by adults with learning disabilities just down the road from here and I've been admiring it for ages. It's a pastoral scene and so beautiful with the fields wrapping around the jug:



This is a cider jug. Beautifully "rustic" and one day might hold our very own cider! (that's it for jugs now, I promise!)



Although the butter churn has had an outing in another post it deserves a mention in all it's glory so here it is:



This lovely cast iron cockerel door stop, now taking pride of place in our dining room:



A plethora of Cath Kidston books. The two big books have a project in each (both bags - one tote and one handbag) and the little book is stickers which I can't wait to use but also don't want to because they'll all go!



Hoe, Hoe, Hoe! Once all of this snow has gone and the soil has warmed up a little bit this handy tool will do brilliantly at preparing the soil for all of our summer sowing!



For the allotment we also got a rhino runner which we didn't manage to fit in the car so we will have to collect or have dropped off later. It's like this:



Katy also got us some wild flower seeds, which I think I am going to try to sow on the slope at the back of the allotment. There are brambles there so we'll have to try to keep them at bay but it would be great to have some wild flowers to pick. We also got a garden planner so that'll be great for planning out our plot.

We're all going on a...chicken holiday

The chickens had a special treat this Christmas...they got to travel round the M25 in a box! Lucky them! As we were spending 9 days away from home this Christmas and new year we obviously couldn't leave the poor chickens all on their own so we took them to visit their Grandma and Grandad in Hampshire!!

They had a lovely little holiday home, although the neighbours were a bit noisy...lots of quacking! But they loved it, and whenver they were let out they went on a bit of a rampage around the garden...






And they were even naughtier when we left them on their own for a few days...




...while we were enjoying ourselves in Devon in absolute luxury:





Looking at the photos of the girls makes me realise just how much they've grown over the past 9 months.

This is Hythe:



This is Romney:



This will be even more obvious when, next weekend, we get them two more sisters! All being well weather wise we are going to collect two more ex-batts next weekend and i think we'll be shocked at how skinny and featherless they are. I just hope the snow goes by then or we might have to knit them some woolly jumpers!