More antiquey goodness

I've been slightly blog lazy over the past few weeks. It's been Matt's 30th birthday and last weekend I was on a hen do in Birmingham and this weekend it's Matt's turn - he's with the stag, also in Birmingham, so we've been jolly busy! While it is nice to have a little bit of time to myself (I rented the most recent Star Trek film last night. Matt isn't interested so I got to indulge and it was BRILLIANT!), I'm also not very good at it. It's my natural tendency for talking - I always end up talking to myself by the end of the weekend if he's been away! But this weekend I was lucky - it just happened to fall on a Detling antique fair weekend so my mum and Nick came over to keep me company for some antique shopping.

The weather was pretty miserable yesterday (although not quite as bad as today - we have some very soggy chickens outside!) so there were much fewer stall holders than normal but I still managed to pick up a few odds and ends.

This wooden drying rack, needed badly at this time of the year, was a bargain at £5:



I also managed to find some iron brackets for £5. These are normally £20 minimum and I've seen them as much as £75! Shown here with a kilner jar which I got for £2.



We sold a load of stuff on ebay last week and raised £150 towards re-doing the kitchen. The plan is to rip off the wall cupboards and replace them with shelves of scaffold boards on iron brackets. We did one shelf ages ago (see it here) and it looks brilliant so I've very excited about getting more done.

I also wanted to share a couple of things which joined our household recently. Firstly, this lovely chair was a find by my mum which she stripped down from a hideous black and white colour (here). Once it was done she decided that it would look more in-keeping in our house than hers and I have to say i didn't argue, it looks lovely! Shown here with a blanket that she made and a cushion from Ikea:



I also got given these absolutely beautiful Orla Kiely mugs from Simrat, who I used to work with, when I left my last job. I missed my last day because of the snow so only got to see her in January and these were such a lovely surprise - she knows me so well!



Finally, these flowers just caught my eye as I walked through the dining room just now. We got them from Sainsbury's a couple of weeks ago, which we do try to avoid as much as possible, but there were grown in Holland rather than Kenya so it alleviated my eco-guilt ever so slightly and they do make the room look lovely:



As I said, it was Matt's big-30 a couple of weeks ago so I obviously needed to pull something good out of the bag present-wise. We don't really do tangible birthday presents, but try to find a good "experience" instead. So, after much deliberation and google-based research I came up with this: We will be getting the train to Redditch, from where we will pick up our very own Moggy for the week:



Then we'll spend a couple of days traversing the A-roads of the Cotswolds, picnic basket in tow, hopefully with the top down (we're going in June). We're staying in this B&B, which really appealed to me because they have chickens and pigs. I think Matt is really pleased and I have to say I am unbelievably excited! Roll on June!

Egg Count - January 2010

Slightly deceptive this month because of course we have 2 more hens so it is probably more like 31 for comparison purposes but Bell has got off to a stonking start.



Blue still doesn't appear to be laying but is eating plenty so we are keeping our fingers crossed that she'll gain some confidence soon. We had 3 eggs today, from Rom, Hythe and Bell. We also had egg sandwiches for breakfast with lovely golden yolks.

P.S. Much excitement this week as our new copy of Home Farmer arrived and there, on page 41, was a quote from yours truly! I had commented on their blog about growing enough food for 52 meals a year and they obviously liked what I said. Hurrah!

The event of the gardening calendar...

...why, it's none other than the Whitchurch potato fair! For the second year in a row we made a quick trip to Hampshire to get our seed potatoes for the year. Last year we were growing them for the first time so didn't really know what to look for but we've tried to be much more strategic about it this time.

Having more space is going to be great - we're using 2 of the beds on the allotment for spuds, one for first early, one second early and one maincrop. We got 8-10 of each variety and will have two varieties in each bed. This is what we chose:

First earlies - Swift and Chopin
Second earlies - Kondor and Kestrel
Maincrop - Majestic and Navan



There really were so many to choose from, as you can see from this picture (each coloured label is a different variety) but we tried to get ones which were quite disease resistant and useful (last year we had some that just fell apart when boiled - completely pointless!). We mainly use potatoes boiled, mashed or chipped so we have some of each includign some lovely looking salad potatoes. Can't wait until they're ready!



Quite ridiculously for chicken keepers we have a shortage of egg boxes so we've just started chitting the first earlies. The others will have to wait a little.



In other news...since we found out that the chicken that we have been buying from the farm shop isn't free range we've pretty much stopped shopping there. Which is such a shame because it was lovely in other ways. Once we're over the shock we might go back for dried goods. But, it has brought one good thing. We have started getting a veg box delivered again, which we haven't done since we left London. This isn't just any veg box, it's a Kentish veg box (all produce is grown in Kent. Amazing!), from these people. We met the owner last year at a game cooking demonstration and he was so passionate about what he does that we thought we would give them a go. We haven't been dissapointed so far, it's been great, even if we are coming into the hunger gap. He keeps his customers up to date with a little newsletter each week, including a recipe and some information about what we can expect coming soon (tomatoes in February...from Kent! I kid you not).

The reason that I'm telling you this is because we made some good use of the root veg that we've been getting this weekend in some vegetable pasties. Yes, they were as good as they look.





I think that's all for now. The chickens are settling down (although Blue is still being a bit bullied) and we did a little bit of digging on the allotment this weekend but the ground was quite frozen so we just have to be patient.

January's egg count to follow some time this week...

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!