Frugal, cooking, growing and making link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 November 2010 in chickens, cooking, frugal, growing, meta, wood stuff | 2 comments

It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…

• Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
• One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
• Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
• Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
• Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
• And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.

(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)

New chickens settling in

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 November 2010 in chickens | 4 comments

The remaining three of our new intake seem to be doing ok – and are already showing themselves to be funny little chicks. Add your own captions/voiceovers for these pics ;)

When I went down first thing, they were running around outside and when I went back after lunch, they were trying out the coop perches (they slept in the nest boxes last night so hopefully they’re building up to perching). Admittedly, I think part of the reason they were up there was to have a break from the others – I was down there for about an hour, only one peck happened but there was certainly some intimidation. But it has also been chuffing cold today so I don’t blame them for heading back inside. (The frost lingered in parts of the garden/woods all day, despite it being pretty sunny, brrr! I thought I’d have to break the ice on the drinkers this morning – as I had to do on the outside dog bowl – but someone with a beak had beat me to it.)

While I know pecking has been taking place, these girls don’t seem to have any visible feather loss. All three of them ate corn out of my hand and while I was in the run, the two Black Rocks stretched their legs outside for a bit and both let me stroke them. As I said yesterday, it took the ISA Browns a week until they’d eat out of ours hands or stroke them/easily pick them up, so the new girls are ahead of the curve in some ways.

Where chickens go shopping for clothes

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

From an IM chat with my friend Katherine…

1. New Cluck
2. Debenhens
3. Clucci
4. Henley’s
5. Hennes (old school name for H&M)
6. Cropshop
7. John Flewis
8. Marks and Hencers

And for their underwear:

1. Bwarkissimo (for big breasted birds)
2. La Henza

(I’m sorry.)

(Mrs Mauve can’t even look at me any more.)

One down – Minnie the Black Minorca chicken died overnight :(

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, we had our first* chicken death here on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It was the little Black Minorca, who we only brought home on Friday. Sigh.

When I went down to see them on Saturday, she was hiding under the little shelter I’d built and wasn’t interested in coming out – she was next to the drinker and I left her a little pile of food nearby. It was damp and she’d had a scary couple of days so I wasn’t going to rush her. When we got back from Southport though, she was still under there. All the others had put themselves to bed but she hadn’t.

She didn’t try to run away when I picked her up from under there – which in hindsight should have been a sign something wasn’t right. I took her to the coop and tried to place her on a perch – but she was holding her legs strangely and wouldn’t grasp it, so I placed her on the coop floor instead. I went back into the house and told John I was worried about her because she seemed really weak – and it turns out I was right to be worried: this morning, we found her dead very near where I left her.

Expanding the tribe: four new chickens!

Posted by louisa on Saturday 13 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

After thinking about it then not getting around to it for a good while, we finally got around to expanding our chicken tribe yesterday.

We knew we wanted some more variety but didn’t know what – we went to see the wonderful Edward Boothman up near Silsden again, and he showed us all the options — it was very hard to choose!

In the end, we went for two Black Rocks – Edward Boothman is renowned for his Black Rocks so we thought we should get some. They’re photographed here getting up close and personal with Blue, one of our existing ISA Browns:

And we also got two pure breeds, who will give less eggs but are fun – a Buff Leghorn (who shall be imaginative known as Buffy):

And Minnie, the Black Minorca:

Minnie is hiding until the shelter I built them from pallets the other day – glad to see someone using it! Minnie looks unremarkable at this point – about 16 weeks old – but as she grows, her comb will get a lot bigger and redder, and her white lobes will grow huge — she’ll be a very interesting looking bird!