Adventures of a lady in training » self-sufficiency

The end of an era

Vonnie — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:10:51 +0000

Two years ago – almost on a whim – I told Bob I wanted to start keeping hens, never expecting him to agree. Within a month we had our first two and fairly soon after that we began hatching chicks. In all that time we’ve always had hens in the garden. We’ve also had turkeys, ducks and a trio of quail during that time but the hens have been the staple.

Last night I let the hens run around the garden and since it was still light when we headed to bed, I told Bob just to leave them to put themselves to bed. Our garden is completely enclosed by a 6ft+ high fence and wall combination so I stupidly assumed that they’d be safe – after all, last year we never locked their coop up – but this morning we discovered a fox had got all six of our lovely hens. I’m absolutely devastated, guilt-ridden and horrified.

For two years we have happily co-existed with our lovely feathered friends. Our children know no other way. At Nairn’s preschool assessment a few weeks ago he cheerfully blethered on about his hens who live in his garden and I think of our four children, he will be the one who misses them most. Maybe we’ll get some more in time. Maybe.

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New additions to the household

Vonnie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:06:12 +0000

Since we started keeping hens, we’ve made two fantastic friends – Steven and Matt – who have kept us right and supplied us with hatching eggs, hens and bucketloads of advice and it’s been marvellous having that support. A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was thinking about keeping quail and Steven dropped me a message a few days later to say he’d picked me up a trio from a poultry auction he’d attended that weekend. What a star! Steven is also a gifted glassworker and I’m hoping to get some of his pieces from him soon to showcase on the site. I will keep you posted with this!

Right now, they’re in an indoor rabbit hutch as I’m waiting for their new house to arrive. As a result the photo isn’t great but hopefully enough that you can see them. They are so cute! Only about the size of my clenched fist

They’d only been home for an hour when I got this -

I’m a little daunted though after hearing that one quail egg is 101% of your recommended daily allowance of cholesterol! Wow!

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It’s the little things…

Vonnie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:00:33 +0000

Following on from my ramblings about our family’s environmental impact and our attempts at self sufficiency I thought you might like to see these photographs. First off, this is the first broccoli that we’ve harvested from our garden. We ate it in a vegetable lasange and it was amazing!

And these are my girls in their cloth nappies. We ran out of disposables last week and I realised that I had 20 bajillion* nappies that could be pressed into service, so I popped them back into cloth and remembered just how easy it is to deal with them when you’re in the house. My only criticism of cloth nappies has been how awkward they are to carry when I’m out and have more than one child because I have to lug the dirty ones around with me but when I’m at home there’s really no excuse.

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Attempted self-sufficiency

Vonnie — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:48:03 +0000

I went on a little tour of the garden earlier this afternoon with the camera and Erica in order to show you lovely lot how our first attempts at growing our own produce have gone. The vast majority of our garden has been trashed by the chickens (and admittedly by us) but we’re slowly plotting out the garden and getting things the way we want them to be. With luck, we’ll have done the majority of the work by the end of the Summer holidays and I’ll be able to show better photographs

We have an old coal shed at our back door and recently built a fence using the coal shed as the corner. This gave us a patio sealed off from the hens and once we’d laid turf this has given us a lovely area for the kids to play safely. This in turn has released the pressure on us as we couldn’t let the kids out to play before we’d done that. So! Without further ado…

We had to move this rhubarb from the bottom of the garden as it was flooded there, as a result we have the smallest rhubarb shoots in the world! Little person for scale.

This is one of our raised beds, the netting is to keep the hens out. The plants at the front are carrots, with two varieties of lettuce behind that and then onions.

In the next raised bed we have brocolli!

We went into the greenhouse to have a look and found some tomato plants…

…and some herbs…

..while Erica posed…

…and admired the peapods.

We took a photo of a few of our hens

and also our beautiful fuschia

The cherry tree that was planted after we had Greer is fruiting too!

Then we had a look in the coop to see if the hens had laid today

before heading back up towards the patio where we looked at the strawberry plants

and Erica posed again

We looked at our blueberry and blackcurrant “bushes” which were unfortunately damaged a few months ago by one of the children and therefore are unlikely to flower and bear fruit this year. Statler and Waldorf look after them

and finally our spuds. Our local authority recently gave us wheelie bins dedicated to glass after running a pilot glass recycling project which left the old sacks redundant. So! We’re growing potatoes in ours.

Next year we hope to add another 4 raised beds but of course this is all dependant on our successes this year. I shall keep you posted! In the meantime – are you growing anything? If so, what are you growing and what do you hope to achieve?

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Snow bad!

Vonnie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:45:47 +0000

Oh. My. Goodness.

Scotland was not supposed to get this snow dump! Scotland was supposed to have light snowfall today with sleet intervals. We weren’t supposed to get this!

I have spent most of the day panicking about Bob getting home and the babies all getting back from school & nursery but at 3.15pm the last of my clan finally walked in the door and I could breathe a sigh of relief. This was of course after I’d already had a near coronary when my car drifted across the street and nearly hit a van this morning. Ah well. The kids all went out to play in it (except the baby, who has been asleep for the last three hours and now won’t sleep tonight) and I got this brilliant photo of my biggest kid building a snowman…

ANYWAY! Onto other things – the eggciting giveaway from my last post! As a refresher, here is the photograph again and I asked you to guess which row was shop-bought:

The correct answer was – the back row! All the other eggs were laid by my girls, and to answer a few of you yes the last on on the right of the middle row is a real egg. It’s laid by Meatball who is my eldest son’s hen, she’s a Cream Legbar and her egg is a nice blue colour. As soon as she’s laid me a few more I’ll post better photographs for comparison.

I collated the correct answers, allocated each person a number and ran the numbers through the random.org integer generator coming out with #3 as the winning number which was allocated to Gill from Hollingdale Designs. Congrats Gill, I’ll be in touch for your address details soon.

The owl swap I’d mentioned before will be completing this week as my swap partner Annie is finished her side too. It’s all very exciting as I’ll now be able to share what I’ve been slogging away on for the last few weeks. Wahey!

Hope you’re all safe and warm. I’ll be back later this week!

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How eggciting!

Vonnie — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:59:48 +0000

I always forget to post about the hens here, someone must prompt me and I’ll remember!

Anyway, my lazy girls went off lay in November so we haven’t had any eggs at all until the last couple of weeks. Their return to form is taking time and so on Monday I bit the bullet and bought eggs. Of course, today we’ve retrieved four eggs from their nesting boxes which isn’t a bad days haul from eight layers. Three of our girls are pekin bantams and lay very small eggs on a sporadic basis so they don’t count.

The timing couldn’t be better after I bought a snazzy new egg holder from Lakeland on Tuesday. A small prize shall be awarded if you can tell me which row of eggs are the store-bought eggs. I’ll draw a winner and award the prize on Sunday 1st February (don’t get eggcited, it won’t be anything outstanding!). Competition is now closed, winner will be announced on Tuesday!

I’ll be back soon with more crafty goodness – I really am plodding away but can’t post anything as my recent work has been for the owl swap. I do, however, have lots of new purchases to show off including the wool for what will be my first ever adult garment.

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Flylady

Vonnie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:39:28 +0000

I’ve done it again

I’ve signed up to FlyLady to try and get some order in my house.

For those of you who have never heard of FlyLady before today, it’s a relentlessly cheerful American site packed full of hints and tips to get your home organised and is supported by a mailing list. The mailing list sends up to 20 emails per day to inspire you to get up and at ‘em. With snappy catchphrases and merry mnemonics the help is definitely there if you can take it seriously. My inner feminist is screaming out at how gender-specific the concept is, but with many satisfied users the idea clearly has merit. So we’ll see if I make it to the weekend without unsubscribing from the mailing list!

Tonight’s little anecdote comes courtesy of my lovely hubby. We’re trying the baby in a bed tonight for the first time since we’re going to need her cot in a few months for her sister or brother. Hubby went to check and make sure she was in bed, stuck his head round the door and looked faintly surprised as he confirmed that yes indeed, she was in her bed with her duvet over her…

… until he picked the other child off the floor and almost herniated a disc. #2 has gone to sleep in the baby’s bed (in which I suspect he is tall enough to touch the headboard and footer at the same time!) and she was asleep in the middle of the floor curled in a ball with the duvet around her. I suspect it’s going to be a long night!

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Lay a little egg for me?

Vonnie — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:10:14 +0000

As the stereotypical auld wifey statement goes, “Och the nights are fair drawin’ in” and as a result, our hens are moulting. As a side effect of the lack of daylight and moulting, our hens have also gone off lay so despite having a dozen hens we’re having to buy eggs. I’m not happy.

That hen is Buffy the Buff Orpington who has recently left our flock to live with my good friend Steven. I dropped her off last week and Steven has worryingly cast aspertions on her sex, so I’m waiting to hear if (s)he starts crowing. Oh dear.

In other news, I finished my contract at work on Friday and have decided to take a few months off to consider my future and to be a Mammy for a wee while. I don’t think I’d really realised just how exhausting work was for me, and with all the drama we’ve had going on lately I’m so tired all the time. My husband and kids need me alive and well! But plans are afoot for a new career path which I may share at some point over the month dependant on how discussions go. How cryptic, eh?

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Typical!

Vonnie — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:42:41 +0000

This pregnancy has been utterly exhausting me for the last few weeks. Luckily, I seem to have woken up this morning without all the little symptoms that have been plaguing me – I don’t feel sick, I don’t feel tired and in fact I had a lot of drive today! I was going to get things done…

…until the baby woke up with a head cold. And she’s just miserable. Everything seems to have gone out the window since that point! I planned to make gingerbread men with #2, only to discover that the hens appear to be on strike and we have no eggs. I planned to go to the shop to get supplies, except every time I turn around the amazing naturist toddler has taken off all his clothes and stashed them somewhere. The worrying thing for me is that after this week, this is going to be my every day routine. I just hope we get more adept at keeping the clothes on!

I have a few different bits and pieces to update on but I’m cheating and keeping them for the NaBloPoMo starting this weekend.

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Changing lifestyles

Vonnie — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:05:00 +0000

I’ve neglected this poor blog of late; not through choice, just sheer lack of time. I haven’t really been crafting or experimenting with cooking recently because I’ve been back at work since January and we’ve had various family crises to deal with, including my lovely hubby being hospitalised this week for a suspected heart attack. Fortunately for us, it was in fact a nasty bout of pericarditis and he will make a full recovery as long as he listens to his Doctor and spends the next two weeks relaxing.

One aspect of our life I haven’t mentioned lately is that we’ve started keeping hens. Towards the end of March we collected our hens from a local breeder who has been very good to us in terms of support and providing us with advice (and hatching eggs!) and at the same time we collected some eggs. We now have seven hens, two ducks and 10 eggs in the incubator!

Last Sunday we got our very first egg. It was laid by our Silver Laced Wyandotte bantam and as such it’s the smallest egg I’ve ever seen, but the children certainly seemed to approve! I promise I will post some photographs of the hens, chicks and ducks soon but in the meantime I’ll leave you with our very first egg, and the happy recipient of that first egg.

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