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.

Posted under self-sufficiency

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?

Posted under self-sufficiency, with the kids

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!

Posted under family, general crafty updates, self-sufficiency

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.

Posted under self-sufficiency

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?

Posted under self-sufficiency

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.

Posted under general crafty updates, self-sufficiency