Impromptu long weekend

Posted by louisa on Monday 1 August 2011 in meta | 1 comment

We had a bit of an impromptu long weekend here – and it’s been a good one.

On Friday, we FINALLY completed on the sale of our old house in Leeds. I’ll write more about it in detail at some point soon but basically **does the happy dance**. We’ve been trying to sell it since we moved here in September 2009, although for one reason or another it only went on the market a year ago – a year ago to the day pretty much. We’d had a few offers but it took until now for one to go anywhere. Anyway, on Friday morning, we had to clear the very last things out of the house (mostly stuff we’d offered to leave but they said no) and handed over the keys, then spent all afternoon hitting “reload” on my online banking to watch the money appear in my account … just kidding ;)

Actually, what happened in the afternoon an invasion of sorts – John’s uncle & aunt who live in Hong Kong visited with their two kids, and then John’s sister & her two kids, and his mum arrived. The kids from Hong Kong met our chickens on their last visit to the UK last summer and apparently have frequently spoken of them since then, so they were keen to have some hen time on this visit. We spent a lot of time hand feeding the birds, and they enjoyed learning how to hold the hens too – I think the chickens quite enjoyed it as well, they happily sat in the kids’ arms for ages. I was reminded about the lovely comments people left when our other nephew met the chickens – about how we’re giving them childhood chickeny memories :)

And it comes back around again…

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 29 June 2011 in growing | 6 comments

I know it’s pretty obvious but it’s still nice to see it in practise.

Yesterday we had broad beans as part of our dinner, and a few minutes later, the chickens got the pods to snack on (they LOVE them); tomorrow we shall have manure (in the garden, not for dinner), and next year we’ll have more broad beans.

We should also get eggs out of the system too but it was too complicated to add that into my diagram ;)

A year of keeping chickens – 12 things I’ve learnt

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 28 June 2011 in chickens | 11 comments

As I mentioned in my blog birthday post the other day, it’s just about a year since we got chickens too – it’ll be a year on Thursday to be exact but what’s a day or two between friends? ;)

Before we went to buy the red four, I hadn’t had much hands-on experience with chickens – I’d read a lot of course, and gone on a LILI course (which was very good – although I think I asked about ten times as many questions as everyone else), but aside from that, I was new to birds.

Things I’ve learnt in the last year

1. ISA Browns are awesome for first time chicken owners

We got the girls from Edward Boothman near Silsden – he advised us to get the ISA Browns as they were good first-timer birds, and how right he was. Sure, they’re not the most exciting birds to look at but aside from Lime’s badly timed moult last winter, they’ve been incredibly easy to manage, are friendly and very productive. If we had more space, I’d prefer more variety but here I’m tempted to stick with good old ISAs – even their fellow hybrids, the Black Rocks have been more temperamental: Blacks here is pretty friendly most of the time but together, her and Ginger bicker like sugar-rushing eight year olds.

2. In comparison, the pure breeds are a PITA

I am very prepared to accept that we had bad luck, or did something wrong, but compared to the ISAs, the two pure breeds we’ve had – a Minorcan and a Leghorn – have been pains in the bum. The Minorcan died during her second night here (although I do think I did a lot of things wrong) and Buff the Leghorn was very flighty (so hard to health check etc), took ages to start laying (albeit possibly because she came of age over winter) and was noisy (because she was easily stressed) before her untimely demise earlier this month.

They were both very pretty and I do like the idea of supporting traditional breeds rather than the generic egg machines we have now, but they were a lot more expensive, more effort and not an efficient member of a small team.

3. Chickens poo all sorts of different shapes & colours of poo

This is one of my favourite/most visited sites on the internet these days. Oh the variety!

The chickens don’t like it when I talk about their poop on the internetz.

4. Our coop is a bit too big for our space/requirements

Payment for eggs? Or homegrown veg / homemade crafts?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 21 June 2011 in chickens, growing | 12 comments

Last week when John’s mum was visiting, she mentioned that she had been wondering about paying us for the eggs we give the family. I think we gave her/John’s dad effectively three half-dozens last week – which would cost about £5 in the shops, but cost us just under £2*. She tried to give us some money but John refused to accept it on principle, and bundled her out of the door before she could argue — it did lead us to talk about it afterwards though.

When we got the extra girls last year and it made it easier for us to regularly give away boxes of eggs, John & I talked about taking a nominal charge for them to pay for the extra feed and that sort of thing – but never actually got around to doing it. With the six girls now, we are really just giving away our spares; I think if we had enough chickens to warrant doing a “garden gate” stand to sell them (or sold them at our workplaces), we’d be more inclined to take money from friends but for us right now, while we’re ok for money and it’s just a casual thing, it feels a bit petty to ask good friends and family for £1 here and there.

Even if we were selling them though, John said he wouldn’t accept any money from his mum and dad because they’ve given, and continue to give, us so much – over the last fortnight, John’s dad has put up a fence for us, supplying all the wood (some free; some paid for) as well as labour — that is surely worth a few eggs!

Expanding from that, we realised that at least half of the people we regularly give eggs to frequently give us they’ve made/do something for us in return – and we like that idea of unofficial/unspoken bartering because it stops it being just about money and becomes about time/effort instead. There are a few people to whom we regularly give eggs that don’t really give us anything in return – and we’re not bothered about that (if we cared, we wouldn’t give them eggs so often!), but if they ask to give money towards feed now, we’re more likely to say “bake us a cake sometime instead”.

Something related: last year or so, I realised that I’m always more inclined to give produce or crafty things to other growers & crafters etc. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if I had a mega glut of things – but at the moment while my output is more limited, if I have to choice between giving stuff to a grower/maker or a non-grower, I’d almost always lean towards the grower. They realise that homegrown/homemade things aren’t necessarily always aesthetically perfect and they know the effort that goes into producing the finished fruit or project.

Someone who doesn’t grow their own veg may see as courgette as something worth (say) 60p, which may be a few minutes of their working time, the same price as a Mars bar or can of Coke, but a grower (or someone who has grown in the past) sees the ongoing care and attention that went into growing it, and that’s far more valuable. (I think that’s why people who grow/cook/make etc are generally less wasteful too – it’s easier for them to see/imagine the effort.)

What do you think? Do you sell your surplus at a “garden gate” or to friends and family? Or do you give everything away for free? How does it work for you?

* our per egg cost is usually around 9p, so £1.62, but has been a little more lately because of expenses to do with the red mite infestation last month; I’m putting it at around 11p or 12p an egg at the moment.

Monday & Tuesday

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 14 June 2011 in chickens, frugal, growing | 2 comments

There were some ox-eye daisies (yes?) in the horses’ field yesterday – they confused John, made him think he’d shrunk or was suddenly in the land of the giants. He picked one and carried it home for me.

The garden looked very fresh and green after Sunday’s rain; the chickens, on the other hand, looked slightly bedraggled in the drizzle yesterday morning. They have three dry places that they can go when it’s wet but what do they do? they stand out in the rain. Also, Ginger the chicken seems to be thinking about going broody AGAIN. She only came out of being broody at the start of May. Apparently it’s not unheard of for chickens to go broody again if they didn’t set any eggs the first time round. I’ve poked her out the nest boxes two days in a row now, bah.

We’ve had very little slug damage this year – presumably because it’s been so dry – but the bloomin’ things have found our ripening strawberries. *shakes fist* Strawberries have now been relocated to the balcony and I’ll steal some of the chickens’ bedding straw to use if the attacks continue.

Yesterday, I ordered us a monthly meat box from Swillington Organic Farm. They’re not cheap but they tick a lot of the important sustainable/organic/local boxes for us. We should receive our box at the end of the month – can’t wait.

And I actually did two mini-goal things today: got a new phone deal (which was a May mini-goal – only 13 days late) and got a new gas/electricity arrangement too. On the former, I got a new phone & new inclusive mobile internet allowance just by asking – didn’t have to play any “I’m leaving, convince me to stay games”, which was nice. The gas & elec isn’t going to be quite as cheap as it was last year (when it was very cheap) but we decided to go for an 18-month fixed price arrangement – we don’t usually like fixed price things but it was barely any more than the variable so seemed worth it. I did think about play the cashback game – swapping suppliers every six weeks or so, and picking up the cashback deals each time – a friend of mine (who may not want to be named..?) pays for more than half of his yearly energy costs doing that – but decided that I’m a bit too disorganised to do it and I’d probably mess it up by getting locked into a more expensive deal etc, so it wasn’t worth the effort/risk for me.

How has the start of your week been?