This morning I got the dreaded work to find this on my desk...
A wonderful gift from a lovely work colleague who I often chat chickens and communes with (we all need a little dreaming to help get through that mountain of paper work..)
And all because I gave her a box of Maude and Mildred's eggs. (Those girls are starting to earn their keep!) It's a book I've always meant to get round to buying as it's such a classic and canonical work for wannabe Good Lifers. I'm desperate to get home and read it. What a lovely start to the day...
As I'm swamped with pre- PGCE schools observation, I haven't had much time for the good life lately (I hope this is not a taste of things to come..)
So here is a little update from the allotment...
The broccoli I thought had been destroyed by the slugs is making great progress. I was so surprised to see the lovely little florets and promptly steamed them and ate them with lashings of butter! yummy!
My sweet peas which are growing in reclaimed tyres- thanks KwikFit- are looking absolutely beautiful! The trick with sweet peas is to pick all the time to keep them flowering, well I'm running out of vases! They're just so beautiful and smell so lovely, I've got them all over the house making me feel all summery.
Also I finally got round to starting off my wildlife area. The wildflowers I've been planting are growing well but not blooming yet, apart from the stunning lavender which I don't think you can ever have too much of! I've also got perennial cornflowers, more perennial sweet peas, marigolds, budleia, meadow flowers, grasses and teasels. I think it will really come into it's own next year. I sunk my council approved healthy and safe washing up basin and filled it with rocks and rain water. I also surrounded with with logs and old roots and sticks and things so hopefully something that likes eating slugs will set up home there soon!
My name is Alfie, mostly Alf, sometimes Alfington Dogsburry...those humans are so silly. I am four years old and I’m a labradoodle. My mum tells me that a labradoodles are a bit wimpy and I have to wear a coat when I go out in the rain, but I think that’s just because she doesn’t want me to get the carpet muddy.
I spend my days living with my five humans and two chickens, if I play nicely and don’t bash about I’m allowed to play with them but they get in my way when me and dad are playing catch. And they poop in the garden. Animals. I pretty much love cheese and maltesers and I refuse to eat my dinner without gravy on it- imagine! I sometimes eat grapes but only if the chickens are eating them, I don’t want to miss out.
Sometimes I'm allowed to watch TV after my walk
I sleep. I sleep a lot. On the carpet, on mum’s favourite Laura Ashley blankets, on the sofas or on my mum and dad’s bed. They don’t seem to mind unless I’ve been swimming...
I'm sure, like me, you all enjoy a bit of Countryfile on a Sunday evening. It's my cup of tea and a cake programme...
Anyway, if you watched it this weekend you would have seen my little town on it. Box Hill and Denbies Vineyard are literally right on my doorstep and while I couldn't really care less about the Olympic cycling, wine...wine I like.
While I was watching the programme, I just thought, wow I really am lucky that I get to live here, surrounded by all this beautiful countryside. So when Alf the dog and I went for our walk at Denbies Vineyard last night I took some photos to share...
This weekend has been busy, busy, busy- despite the rain! A mini digger delivered on Friday night has had all the boys busy all weekend, smashing...I mean landscaping...the front garden- I will post photos once it looks like less of a war zone and more the wildlife haven it is meant to become...
I also managed to tame a few tonnes of weeds at the allotment and begin the installation of my wildlife area- the wild flowers already growing along the boundary fence are a good start. Again photos to follow (we got rained off on Sunday unfortunately)
Luckily we managed to leave with some allotment bounty which The Boyf decided to get all Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall on. He made a delicious allotment soup, one of my most favourite tea time treats with hunks of fresh bread, with red cabbage, broad beans, mange tout, marrows and anything else he could get his hands on. Despite the very 70's looking photo (blame the lighting and the dodgy car boot crockery!) it was lovely and I've got about 10 portions frozen too...so frugal if you don't mind!
And also a delicious pie using the teeny tiny first harvest of blackcurrants and a few bits of fruit harvested from around the allotment and garden...there's not quite enough of one thing to specialise yet- so we'll call this allotment pie!
I promise to update some more photos later in the week- weather permitting! Hope you all had a lovely weekend too...
Yesterday The Boyf and I went to visit an old friend. Rosa the pigeon. Bear with me here...
I’m sure you remember the very cold snap we had at the beginning of the year- when it was minus 10 degrees and snowed for a week- seems like a million years ago now doesn’t it? Well on a particularly blustery, snowy evening as The Boyf was walking home a pigeon literally flew into his arms. He put her down on the ground and tried to walk away but she flew to him, this time landing on his head. Well what’s a boy to do? He bought her home of course! Well that was the story I got when I opened the front door to a snowy boy with a pigeon on his head.. (seriously NOTHING surprises me with this boy!)
She was starving hungry and munched her way through handfuls of bird seed and bowls of water before settling down on The Boyfs lap in front of the TV. We decided to keep her over night, feed her up, keep her warm and let her go in the morning. She had other ideas. Over the next week we tried to release her about 20 times, each time she would sit at the back door looking at us. She stayed with us for two weeks, flying around the house, pooping, eating everything and her favourite activity...sitting on the arm of the sofa watching TV with us...
We would have loved to have kept her -she clearly wasn’t going anywhere- but the set up with her in a cardboard box in the spare room just wasn’t working and my mum was not loving her new TV buddy as much as the rest of us, despite Rosa’s attempts to snuggle up with her, so a friend offered to take her off our hands to live on their farm...and that is where we went to visit. Rosa is now living the life of a rural farm pigeon, up at the crack of dawn, doing the morning checks, following our friend Tom around the farm as he feeds the animals. She then spends the day fluttering around the garden before coming to the back door to go back into her cage at bed time. It’s made me see pigeons in a whole new light, that’s for sure!
Sorry I haven't posted for a while- I've been busy at that horrible place that takes up all my chicken cuddling and veg munching time- work.
However, while I've been tucked up in my concrete prison cell I have been keeping abreast of all your lovely posts and comments and have gained some new followers! Thank you guys, lovely to have you on board- I'm still a bit of a newbie and I still can't quite believe that anyone would want to read about my little bit of green, so thank you!
I thought I might share with you our triumph of the wet rainy weekend- my fat girl Maude laid another whopper! She does occasionally pop out a double yoker, but this one was a record breaker. 110grams- and boy did we know about it! Thanks Maudey! Mildred still only manages little pale eggs but I think it's because she's a bit of a worrier- she hasn't got time for eggs when there's grass to scratch, nest boxes to rearrange and me to chat to.
I also wanted to get some opinions from you guys. A friend of mine who works for a rescue centre has had a few chicks bought in recently who have been left over from class room experiments. Living Egg are a company which provide fertilised eggs and incubators to schools so the kids can learn all about the life cycle of chickens etc. The problem is that when the hens hatch, the schools don't want to keep them. The company promises that they will end up on free range farms but what about the boys? It sits very uncomfortably with me that children are essentially being taught: look at these cute little chicks, as soon as we're bored of them we can get rid of them and we don't have to take any responsibility for where they go. Surely a better lesson would be to re-home some battery hens and teach children about animal welfare, where their cheap chicken nuggets come from, as well as sustainability and responsibility. I'd love to hear your thoughts....
Now I'm sure a lot of you lovely, conscientious readers are familiar with the One Little Egg website and Sophie McCoy's mission for the British Hen Welfare Trust.If you're not then it's time to get involved! Sophie is on a one woman mission to raise a huge amount of money for the plight of battery hens by doing a massive online swap- starting with one little egg.. the swap is currently a 2 night stay, including breakfast in the luxurious Townhouse Suite at the Ramada Solihull. If you fancy this and have something bitter, better or wackier to swap it for then head over to the website!
There are currently 16,000,000 hens in the UK living in battery conditions. For those of you who have chickens, try to imagine your girls living in a space no bigger than a size of A4, no scratching, no digging, no sunlight, no cuddles, no treats...It really is heartbreaking. We need to stop it now so do your bit, help Sophie to help the BHWT. If you can't swap then donate. £3 can save a hen.
The always wonderful Bee Strawbridge has written a post this morning which is not so much of a blog post but a call to arms. It's time to wake up, be inspired, make a difference,and "roar for the earth".
This weekend it rained. Real, proper, hard, wet, rain. It was wonderful- I could practically hear the vegetables cheering in the allotment. I had to call off preparations for my mini wildlife sanctuary at the allotment, feeling that it would be better to do the rainy Sunday afternoon thing and curl up with a good book and a cup of tea.
While the courgettes and I were celebrating, the chickens were looking less happy. Within a few hours they were soaked through...it didn't seem to slow them down at first but soon they retired to the warmth of their eglu to fluff up and dry off. I stopped short of giving them a blow dry- but boy did I want to!
Here are some photos of a very soggy Maude and Mildred...
This week our garden has become a veritable haven for wildlife. The noise never stops. From around 4.30am the birds are at it- I love to wake up to the sound of birds, which is why even when its freezing I sleep with the curtains and the windows open...the tawny owls which are nesting in the woodland behind our house hoot and screech from about chicken bed time, till the time the other birds wake up. This week alone my garden has played regular host to four baby nuthatches, a great spotted woodpecker family, hundreds of baby starlings, parakeets and some gorgeous fluffy blue tit fledglings along with all the usual suspects.
I’ve also had some less cute and furry visitors. On Monday night a stag beetle practically ran into me. He was huge- like mega big. The boyf whimpered and scampered off- weed. Leaving me to catch the wild beast- he probably didn’t need to be caught but I really wanted a closer look! I released him into the woodland area and he scampered off happy enough. We’ve seen him a few times since flying around looking menacing. I love him.
Whilst digging over the compost heap the dad stumbled upon a slow worm, which I grabbed (I know- I just can’t resist, I’d keep them all in glass jars if I could!) and snapped some photos before returning to his warm cosy nest. Unfortunately this is the only beastie I managed to snap, wildlife always happens to me when I’m not carrying a camera or my phone- typical. I will endeavour to be more Attenborough-like and document the wildlife better- not just stand there going “Oh my god, oh my god!” with my mouth open...
My project for this weekend- all four days of it (oooh yeah!) is to build a wildlife area in my allotment. I’m going for log pile, little wash tub pond, rock pile, bee house...I may get carried away...
