2010 – A Really Good Year

Posted by louisa on Friday 31 December 2010 in meta | 2 comments

Everyone else is doing end-of-year round-ups and it’s inspired me to do one too. Feel free to skip if you don’t like introspection ;)

While my life as a whole has been up and down (mostly up but some deep downs), 2010 has been a fantastic year from a simple/DIY living point of view.

Growing

Our first growing season in our new house, this year was one of experimentation. We had fresh produce from the garden from March through to October – and have a cupboard full of preserved goodies as well as potatoes in store. I’ve written about our growing successes and failures before – our overall output was disappointing but my, my, I learned so much. I’m pretty jazzed by the potential of what we can achieve now we know more about the conditions etc.

Chickens

Our first four chickens arrived in June and we got another four (which soon depleted to three) in November. They’ve been ace!

They’re a lot of fun – such personalities! – and the egg output has been awesome. From the day they arrived in June until the middle of December, the first four provided about 3.6 eggs a day (ie, most days one each but sometimes just three between the four of them) – they’re still laying now just less than that (especially as one has entered an early moult). The new girls have yet to start laying but hopefully they’ll start soon – and that’ll provide cover for when the rest of the originals going into moult.

Aside from the extra winter workload, I’ve been stunned by how little work they are – food & water are topped up once a day (they always have more than enough), quick visual inspection of the coop every day-ish (remove any giant piles of poo/top up straw & shavings as appropriate) and a full clean out once a week. It’s an hour a week in total, max. I do typically spend more time with them though – because as I said, they’re so much fun. Their arrival has been one of the highlights of 2010 for me.

Cooking

About Buff, our buff Leghorn chicken

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 December 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

Here are a few fun facts about Buff, the optical illusion-tastic chicken:

She’s a pure breed – a Leghorn – a buff coloured one hence the unimaginative name.

She’s about 21 weeks old at the moment but since she hit point of lay at the coldest, darkest part of the year, she’s not actually started laying yet. When she does, she’ll lay about 280 white eggs each year.

She’s the most flighty of our birds (the rest of bred-to-be-calm hybrids) and by far the smallest – this photo shows the difference in size between her and one of the ISAs (Ms Blue – admittedly they are older though).

Her best friend in the coop is Ginger, the Black Rock who looks like she’s had ginger highlights put into her feathers. When they first arrived, they were the bravest of the new ones so stuck together to explore. Now the other Black Rock, Blacks, is bravest of them but these two still stick together most of the time. (She’s in the background of the photo above too.)

When she first moved in, she used to eat out of my hand – very timid pecking – but now she doesn’t at all. She’s the only girl who doesn’t run towards me when I enter the run to say hello and check my clothing for hidden caches of corn. But she didn’t seem to mind me stalking her for a photo session this morning.

The other chickens don’t like it when I’m trying to take her photo though: look at me, mum, look at me!!

Optical Illusion

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 December 2010 in chickens | 2 comments

I had a lie in this morning. Not only is it the do-nothing week between Christmas and New Year, I’m self-employed so my boss is very, very understanding when I want to stay in bed rather than start work on time. It’s also been well above freezing for the last few days so I’ve not had to worry about the chickens & their frozen-solid drinkers for the first time in a month.

Or did I have to worry about the chickens after all?

When I finally woke up, I did so with the air of getting up, weeing, getting a cup of tea and returning to bed for a leisurely morning. Then I looked out of the bedroom window and noticed that Buff, the Buff Leghorn, seemed to be outside the chicken run – in the airlock space between the run and the rest of the garden. The run is enclosed as completely as it can be (some rats have made incursions over winter – we’ll see them as soon as the soil is workable), with a full (wire) roof to stop them escaping or foxes/cats/dogs jumping in. There was no way she could have got out. Or was there?

Still blurry eyed, I went to a different window – she still seemed to be outside, stood on top of the metal food dustbin. There is an old patio chair of a similar height just on the inside of the run’s wire but I couldn’t see any wire between me and her. I began to panic. They’d be no weeing or teaing for me!

I dressed as quickly as possible and ran down through the house, gathering John along the way. He asked my first questions: “how did she get out? how are you going to get her back in?” She’s considerably flightier than the others so doesn’t usually let me within a few feet of her, let alone pick her up.

How long had she been out there? Overnight? Unprotected and cold? Had a fox got in and made an exit? Was she hurt? Were the others hurt? The questions raced through my mind as fast as I raced through the house.

She was still there when we reached the first level of the garden – standing on one leg, a little chilly, looking a little lost. I ran faster.

Then as I hit the bottom of the steps – the two flights of stairs between the top of the garden and their coop – the perspective changed and she was clearly perfectly comfortably perched on the patio chair inside the wire.

Bloomin’ chickens.

Frozen egg

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 21 December 2010 in chickens | 2 comments

Like Frugaldom & her quail eggs, there was a frozen egg waiting for me in the nest box this morning.

I suspect it was laid later yesterday, after my collection run, so was in there overnight.

Needless to say, I felt the pathological need to crack it open (albeit after it had been sat in the house for about 15mins). It was like frozen jelly inside.

Butternut squash rind soup for the chickens

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 8 December 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

I made some spicy butternut squash soup for our lunches this week and as usual, cut off the rind before cooking.

If the rind is thin, it doesn’t really need cutting off – but the soup is so deliciously smooth that I don’t want to risk coming across bits of tough rind in it.

There isn’t really enough squash meat left on the rind for the chickens to be able to pick it off but I decided to boil up the small pieces of the rind in some veg water from earlier in the evening and see what happened.

What happened was I didn’t put enough water in then forgot about it and burnt it. Sigh. It’s the first thing I’ve ever properly burnt on the stove – it smelled like Halloween & Sunday roasts from childhood (when the carrots caught occasionally).

But at least some of it was salvageable – I took out the worst of the burnt bits and added a little more water. The result was a fairly thick soup (made from the squash meat left on the rind), with soft rind pieces.

I served it lukewarm as their warming lunch treat and the chickens loved it. Next time, I’ll try not to burn it.