I’m so proud…
Yes, okay, so one was laid on the lawn.
And yes, yes, they’ve both been pecked and have holes in… (I bet there was a ‘WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!’ moment, don’t you?)
And yes, they’re a bit misshapen and rather dodgy in overall appearance…
But my babies laid an egg – each! – and on the same day!
I’m so proud.
Wisteria and chickens
Wow it’s been beautiful, hasn’t it? We’re really starting to feel at home in this house now (well I am, the kids were settled pretty much straight away). Here at English Towers II our little garden is actually a bit of a revelation, what with the gorgeous Wisteria that’s emerging, draping itself over the wrought iron arch that leads to the vegetable patch and the greenhouse:
As you can see, I’m still working on that vegetable patch, hence the weeds, but I’ve planted some peas:
…and a little herb border:
…and underneath all those weeds and nettles, I was delighted to find old strawberry plants and raspberries already there, both of which are happily flowering. This, it seems, is the benefit of inheriting a garden off an older person – it may be slightly overgrown, but there are treasures just waiting to be discovered:
…like this beautiful old lilac tree which leans, like the Wisteria over the ancient brick garage:
What’s the old saying? You plant Magnolia for your children and Wisteria for your grandchildren? I have no idea how old this beauty is, but walking under its blooms to potter in the little greenhouse has become one of my nightly pleasures. And then, after plenty of swearing, I put together the chicken ark (the more eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that at this stage I had forgotten to slide the little door into place and had to take the whole bloody thing apart again):
and yesterday we picked up our chickens, a beautiful, lavender coloured Bluebelle and a white Sussex Star (and look at the Wisteria now, just a couple of days after the first shot):
My only concern is that they haven’t been introduced to the Ninja Cat of Death yet, but seeing as she’s still quite small, I’m hoping they’ll keep her in her place. Still, as with all things in my life, it has the potential to go horribly wrong. I’ll keep you informed…
Five little things for 2010
Happy New Year! We spent a happy evening with my lovely friend Jules, her hubby and her two little rugrats. We drank wine, giggled, played scrabble, watched Bob the Builder and ate beef stew and dumplings followed by chocolate brownies topped with splodges of double cream, butterscotch angel delight and chocolate sprinkles. Heaven.
I’ve no resolutions for this year. I’ve probably got a bit of extra flesh on the ol’ spare tyre, but I won’t be dieting. Why? Well for one thing I have absolutely no willpower, and for another, I love baking (and eating the results), and for anotherer (what? that’s so a word), my Hubby still thinks I’m sexy. Well, he doesn’t actually vomit when he looks at me. So it’s not going to happen. Uh uh. No way.
What I will do, though, is ask you to join me in doing five little things. These five things won’t make us better people, nor will they save the planet. No, these five little things will plant a little smile on your face. And what’s more important than that?
1. Buy free range chicken and eggs. Okay, so they might cost a little more, but do what I do and buy them slightly less. Having owned and loved a little gaggle of my very own chickens and got to know their quirky characters and intelligent natures, I can categorically tell you that a battery/barn/intensively reared hen has lead a miserable life. And we can’t live with that on our conscience, can we?
2. Cook something that you’ve never cooked before. Go on, be a devil. I’m going to try my hand at marmalade this year. It might be a disaster as I am possibly the most cack handed person in Hertfordshire, if not the world, but hey, it’ll be a new skill. Oh and send me a photo. You know I love that.
3. Buy stuff that’s in season but don’t be precious about it. Let’s face it, we all eat pineapples and bananas and drink tea and coffee. Air miles are always going to be part of the equation, and with the advent of Fair Trade we can salve our consciences at the same time. No, I mean buying fresh English (or Irish – wherever you happen to live) produce where you have the choice and cooking it with love. Hubby arrived home on Christmas Eve with three proper ‘trees’ of sprouts. The children actually didn’t realise that sprouts grew like that.
4. Love yourself. No, I’m not going all new-agey and ‘knit your own yoghurt’, I just mean give yourself a break. How many times have you looked in the mirror and hated what you saw? Criticised yourself in some way? Brushed off a compliment (‘what, this old face? Oh I’ve had it years….’? In 2010, look in the mirror and give yourself a big, sexy wink. Remember, how do you expect anyone else to love you if you can’t even do it yourself? And let’s face it, you’re gorgeous. Smile. Sing. Be a bit bonkers. Have a dance. Talk bollocks on Twitter (I’m @EnglishMum) – whatever makes you happy.
5. And finally, une petite challenge. This came from a silly Twitter conversation with my friends Jen and the presents queen. This competition is open to all comers and will last the entire year. It’s the grand ‘mental cookbook’ competition. Whoever finds (and actually owns) the maddest cookery book wins the prize (don’t worry, I’ll make it a good’un). If you reckon you’ve got a contender, drop me a line. I’ll be updating you with the action throughout the year. Obviously my Merry Kitschmas book doesn’t count. Ebay cruising will never be the same again. Bring it on, then.
Anyone got anything to add? Come on now, don’t be shy…
To Ireland, with love.
So that’s it, then. Packing has commenced, the chickens have been collected in a trailer and carted off to their new home, and in a very short time we shall land back on terra firma in the good old Kingdom of United.
I have mixed feelings, frankly. When we first moved to Dublin I was miserable. I missed my friends, my family, the familiarity of having lived in a place your whole life; bumping into people you know in Tesco (frankly, being able to even go to Tesco without an hour’s round trip). It was rotten. The children hated their new school (#1 was the only native English speaker in his class), everything was alien, everything shut for lunch, or on a Monday, or on a Wednesday or had to be requested in writing, and I lasted about 6 weeks before I fled home, leaving poor Hubby blinking in a bewildered fashion in a big empty Irish house.
Still, we made it back. And with a new school for the boys, a new dog (the wonderful and much missed Becks), a new friend in Jenny and a new blog to take up my time (EnglishMuminIreland.blogs.ie – where it all began), I started to settle in. The Irish are a wonderful breed: open, friendly, always up for a laugh, never too busy to help… With Hubby’s new job we found ourselves here in Cavan and from the moment we walked over the threshold of English Towers, we felt at home. With the lovely C next door already terminally ill when we arrived, a sad by-product of being able to help in small ways like minding children or fetching medicine from the chemist was that we (selfishly) felt needed and wanted very quickly. We made friends with The Lovelies, the Galway Cs and Poppy’s Mum and her family (if you’re new here, check out ‘All about me’ at the top of the screen for more info), all via D, who was unceasingly generous with both his time and his friends, and have felt happily and contendedly as though we were home for the past two years. D now has a new, lovely lady in his life. The children are delighted and so are we. We wish them all the love and happiness that they so deserve.
But things change. The Recession came and bit us on the bum and it’s time to move on again. I’ll miss the beautiful countryside, the wonderful people and the laid back lifestyle, but the hustle and bustle of town life is calling me back too. Living in this huge house with the dog and the chickens and the lovely garden has been a massive adventure for us all. The children have made lifelong friends, received a fantastic education and enjoyed some amazing life experiences. They have benefitted immeasurably from their time here, as have the Hubby and I. We’ve been lucky enough to share this fantastic place with our friends and family when they came over for our wedding blessing and have even been welcomed into the new community of the church by the kind and gentle Revd Craig - something I never would have imagined in a million years. I know we’ll return so much more open to new experiences, and with a fresh appreciation for all the people and places that we’ve missed over the last four years.
Onwards and upwards, then. Pass the bubble wrap. Goodbye Emerald Isle. It’s been a blast.
Chickenmum.com
So we’ve been away for a few days. And after disgracing himself by chewing on the house last time we went away, Bert was banished to the kennels (still no luck on the new home front) and Little C from next door was given chicken sitting duties in exchange for a small financial reward.
On our return, Little C looked a little worried: ‘I think I lost one’, he said. Apparently the poor little sod had been hunting high and low in the torrential rain for Minnie the Moocher, sending the rest of his family out into the field to search for her, but all had returned empty handed.
‘Meh’, I said, knowing her penchant for roosting in ridiculous places, ’she’ll be around somewhere’. Well, dearest reader, we scoured and hunted, searched and… lots of other words that mean ‘to look for’, but she was nowhere to be seen. I was beginning to worry, I mean, she’s usually in the kitchen hoovering up the crumbs:
… or sitting on the office windowsill giving me a good telling off when I’m late feeding them, and this was unusual.
I did wonder whether she’d been birdnapped by the particularly evil-looking gang of pheasants that are currently inhabiting the field, but no, I spotted them out of #2′s window (sorry about the photo, but they were a long way away), and no Minnie:
And then #2 rushed, breathless, to the back door: ‘Ive found her!’. Long story short, she’d taken up residence underneath the beech hedge (you can see it in the bottom of the pic above – plenty of places to hide), but – strangely – she wasn’t at all pleased to see him. In fact, she burbled at him in a rather aggressive manner and looked all squashed flat and peculiar. We decided to investigate. And this is what we found:
Poor Minnie is broody. I feel so sorry for her. She’d made herself a little nest, and was happily sitting on a large amount of eggs: 17 in fact, although the white ones aren’t even hers, they’re Chilli’s (don’t know how she managed that).
I had to explain to #2 that of course they won’t ever hatch because we don’t have a cockerel to fertilise them, but that Minnie doesn’t understand that and thinks she’s keeping a future generation warm under her feathery bum.
‘Aw, poor Minnie’, said #2 as we took the reluctant Mama back to the coop and picked up all the eggs, ”I almost wish we could get her a boyfriend so she could have some real babies’.
Five minutes later, though, she’d escaped the coop and was back in her little nest, presumably hard at work producing the next 17. So the question is: who’s going to have the ‘birds and the bees’ chat with her? Hands up, now…
Minnie the moocher
Y’know, when we started this whole chicken thing, waaaaay back when the wondrous Hugh was starting his Chicken Out campaign, lots of people said to us how they have their own little personalities and you get quite attached to them. At the time we just laughed and thought ‘yeh, right, isn’t it funny how people always want to give dumb animals a personality’. But, dearest reader, it’s really true. Take Minnie the crap Rhode Island Red (they’re supposed to be dark red, but she’s a kind of pale ginger), for example. Her perpetual escapology drove me mental at first. Whatever kind of fencing I put up, however much I clipped her wings (they were practically stumps at one stage) I couldn’t keep her contained, but now I’m actually quite happy that she just wanders around. I love looking out of the window when I’m at the kitchen sink and seeing her bimbling round the garden with her best mate Chilli the Black Rock:
She’s also completely and utterly in love with Hubby, which we all find absolutely hysterical. I think it started when she first followed him as he mowed the lawn and uncovered all sorts of tasty goodies. Now, within two seconds of the garage door clanging, you’ll see Hubby pushing the lawn mower round the garden, followed by a hopelessly infatuated Minnie in hot pursuit, doing that ridiculously comical ’Lee Evans’ fast walk that chickens do so well. He had to take a strimmer to the garden heart today, and ended up having to put her inside the coop lest he gave her an unintentional haircut (see, he loves her really – he only swears at her when he thinks anybody’s listening):
I’m pretty convinced that she actually sees herself as a human, following me back into the kitchen after I’ve hung out the washing, and pootling happily around, pecking at crumbs on the floor whilst keeping up a perpetual little burble of contented clucking.
This evening she spent the entire time perched on the handlebar of #2′s bike. Eventually it got so dark that we had to gently lift her off and pop her into the coop.
Tomorrow I’ll have a chat with her and remind her she’s a chicken. After we’ve had our Cheerios together, obviously.
Flares, dead ducks, coop extensions Disney monsters and aliens
So since we bought the two new pullets at the Mullagh Fair, Hubby’s new project, the Great English Towers Chicken Coop Extension, is going quite well. There’s been plenty of drilling and hammering (and swearing), but the finished item will double the size of their roosting/nesting space and hopefully stop Minnie, who was once the lowest in the pecking order and has now morphed into some sort of evil chicken bully, from pecking the new babies to death before they grow old enough to actually lay anything. As soon as Hubby can get ‘this f*cking bit to fit into that b*stard bloody thing there’, then the chooks will have plenty more room to manoevre.
Panini, the new little speckly one, who Mr Lovely thinks might be a Rhode Island Red after all, seems to escape pretty much unpecked, but poor Elvis, the slightly camp-looking Minorcan with the enormous flares (hence the gender dismorphic name) sadly gets the brunt of everyone’s aggression, rushing madly around cheeping and trying to avoid getting brain damage from continually being pecked on the head.
Talking of Mr Lovely, we went up to see their brand new ducks this morning only to find one dead. Poor Middle Lovely had only just put in a pond for them (he’s the teeniest, but most enthusiastic smallholder – it’s pigs next, apparently) and the one remaining duck was waddling about, quacking despondently. I know it’s part and parcel of this smallholding business, but I still felt quite sad. I tried not to cry in front of Mr Lovely though (I’m such a girl), as he and Hubby would never have let me forget it, the gits.
In other news, two more lubly pressies have arrived from the wonderful chaps at Disney (‘good grief’, said Hubby, ‘are you sure you’re not sleeping with anyone at Disney?’). First up was a new Blu-ray version of Monsters Inc. This caused muchas excitement as we’re all big fans, and last night a popcorn and Malteser-fest ensued whilst it got its inaugural viewing. I know I’m scathing about the Hubster’s big ugly monster telly that I’m not allowed to touch – not even to dust – not that I actually ever do dust anything, but still… anyhoo, you really could see every little strand of fur on Sully’s back with the combo of HD TV and Blu-ray disc. (Ooh, listen to me, I’m all technofabulous!)
My other pressie was a new Wii game called Toy Story Mania. Now me and the other Disney 7 girlies had a bloody ball on this ride at Walt Disney World. It changed even the mildest-mannered Dulwich Divorcee into a sharp-shooting, evil killer (‘die, m*therf*ckers, die!’). Happily, shoot ‘em up games are my lot’s absolute fave, and this one’s eye candy into the bargain (I love those little alien thingies – they’re soooo cute!). By the way, my #1 son just looked at this picture and said ‘Mum! You can’t put that on the blog, it says ‘great knob’!!’ Er no, that’s a J, darling.
Oh, and while Hubby’s been building and the kids have been happily killing aliens, I’ve been doing a bit of experimentation in the kitchen. Watch this space for a nice fruity teabread, coming soon!
All the fun of the fair and National Organic Week 2009
So after wondering whether this weekend would be a let-down after last weekend’s shenanigans, it turned out to be enormous fun. The sun shone, #2 had his mate D to stay, and we had a nice evening with D’s Ma, otherwise known as Poppy’s Mum ( my friend and gardening guru, originally from Cork and now from just down the road), her Hubby P and their other two lads. A nice evening was had by all.
Oh and just to explain the name, here’s her baby, Poppy the Peppy Puppy in all her glory. Isn’t she just adorable?:
On Sunday, Poppy’s Mum came to pick up D and mentioned that she was heading to the local Fair at Mullagh. When she mentioned there would be chickens, #2 was desperate to go, so we tagged along. I thought these two little stallholders (or should that be smallholders?) were absolutely adorable:
It was a curious mix, to be honest, from market stalls selling air guns (‘Mum….?’ ‘NO!’), to others selling ducks…
… chickens…
and even pigs and puppies. There was some really lovely Irish produce too. I picked up some of this fabulous Lavender Marmalade from a very nice lady called Ciara from Slievebloom Farmhouse Foods…
…and #2 demolished a couple of these:
Of course, you always get the odd idiot, like the pillock selling two little spaniel puppies out of a crate. I harangued him about leaving them in the heat with no water, and of course was completely ignored. I noticed that two little girls reappeared two minutes later with a bottle of water and he looked on, detached, as they gave the poor little things a drink. Generally, though, it was well run and the animals were well looked after. It was strange to see people heading back to their car with cakes, bags of home-made honeycomb and, erm… chickens!
We bagged a couple of new pullets, a rather pretty Minorcan, with blue black feathers and pretty little ruffled feet(right), and a kind of speckly little version of Minnie, our Rhode Island Red. Not sure of the breed but they’re both very cute:
Oh, and all this talk of Irish food brings me neatly on to my next subject. The lovely lads and lasses at Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, have asked me to tell you all about National Organic Week here in Ireland. There are tons of events and tastings going on right across Ireland (although none in Cavan…tsk, tsk) where you can go and experience a little bit of Ireland’s amazing organic produce.
Highlights for me would be the Organic Food Market, from 12 noon on 17th September at the Dublin Food Co-op, Newmarket, Dublin 8, or maybe an Organic Farm Open Day & Cookery Demonstration with Clodagh McKenna on 16th September at the Nano Nagle Centre, Ballygriffin, Mallow, Co. Cork. If you’re in Galway, the new Eyre Square Outdoor Food Market has its grand opening on 17th September (grand opening ceremony at 1pm) where there’ll be food demonstrations, sampling (yay!) and live entertainment.
Anyhoo, there’s a full list of events here and if you’re lucky enough to live in Ireland, try to head along to a couple. Meanwhile, I’ll be outside tending my ever-expanding chicken empire. Toodles.
In which Evil Stealth Chicken has her wings clipped
So chicken news, then. It’s all going very well, actually. Stig the cockerel went back to the chicken breeder. We were going to keep him, but he kept practice-bonking poor Minnie and she was getting quite flustered by it all (not to mention the questions this brought up at the dinner table: ‘does Minnie like it when Stig keeps doing that, Mummy?’). I’ve been promised another girl at some point, but the two we’ve got seem quite happy. Yesterday was sunny and warm and I spent a happy afternoon digging up the last of the spuds while my small feathery helper carefully inspected each freshly turned spadeful for any tasty morsels, and provided a bit of gentle clucking for some light background music. Minnie, the little Rhode Island Red is the friendliest chicken ever. Pop outside to hang out some washing and she bustles over, clucking and cooing, ready to take any tasty titbit gently from your fingers (she’s particularly partial to a marrowfat pea, incidentally).
Beautiful, enormous Chilli on the other hand has been re-labelled Evil Stealth Chicken. I do tend to let them out if I’m in the garden, but otherwise they’re confined to their quite generous fenced enclosure, which we move around the garden to give them fresh grass. But oh no, that’s not good enough for ESC. As soon as they’re out of the coop in the morning, she flaps over the fence and skulks away shiftily to the far corners of the garden, where she lurks, only stopping briefly to peck viciously at poor Minnie should she dare wander too close. She also keeps buggering off over the hedge to D’s garden and I’ve had several ‘oy! your bloody chicken’s in my garden again’ shouts over the fence. He doesn’t really mind, but still, it’s not cricket.
I turned, then, to Irish Times journalist, author, self-sufficiency expert and all-round chicken guru, Michael Kelly, for advice:
“Wing clipping is the most common method of controlling the flight of home-farm chickens”, says Michael, ” it involves using a sharp pair of scissors to cut off the first ten flight feathers on one wing. This causes a bird to lack the balance needed for flight and in theory discourages them from trying – it is also temporary because it lasts only until new feathers grow during the next molt (may be a few months in young birds or up to a year for older ones).”
But does it hurt? And is it mean to curtail their freedom in this way?
“Clipping their wings doesn’t hurt the bird at all and it isn’t noticeable when they are walking around since the primary flying feathers are hidden underneath when the wings are folded… If you feel bad about clipping wings (and you will), give yourself a stern talking to – the reason you keep hens in the first place if you are a home farmer, is so that they will provide eggs. If you can’t find the eggs because they are laying in a ditch or in the neighbour’s garden then you are wasting your time. Also, it’s your responsibility to keep your flock safe – if they are able to leave the garden at will, you are putting them at harms way. ”
Okay, so I was sold. The next problem, of course, was getting it done:
“Here’s how to do it – you will need an attractive assistant to help you (to hold the hen and keep it calm). ”
Check: one small child grabbed from in front of the XBox360
“Once you have spent three hours running around after your hen to catch it, spread one of the wings out to display all the feathers.”
Check: It only took us an hour an a half of Benny Hill-type running, swearing, clucking and flapping, and we finally managed to nab her in the bushes (ooer). Next?
“The feathers you want to cut are the primary flight feathers which are the longest ones towards the front of the wing. You can leave the first one (the one closest to the scissors in the pic) if you want as it is visible when they tuck their wing in to the body). Cut the other nine at the level shown in the pic – for most chickens this means cutting about 6cm, to bring them in line with the rest of the wing. Keep apologising to the hen in the process for the inconvenience you are causing. Voila – your work is done. You will need to carry this out again in about a years time after they have moulted. ”
The result: one extremely cross chicken (check out the chicken death glare in the pic at the top) who seems to have had her stealth escape attempts thwarted. Watch this space.
Oh, and one more thing. Apparently some people think that clipping means a hen is less likely to be able to escape a fox.
” Believe me”, says Michael, “a hen wouldn’t escape a fox if it had ten sets of wings and a jetpack…..”
Oh right. Mind you, I wouldn’t fancy even a foxes chances against Chilli. She’s evil.
Some say he isn’t machine washable: all we know is, he’s The Stig
So happily, some semblance of peace has been restored this weekend in the garden here at English Towers. I have to take most of the credit for this (well, me and several small children) as, finally, the coop has a run. Oh yes, don’t say I’m not handy with a hammer… well, a couple of electric fence poles (not live, natch), some chicken wire and a few cable ties anyway (one upside of living in a rural farming community – the Co-Op has everything you can possibly imagine and incredibly cheap too – 10m of chicken wire for €8 for instance). Laydees and gennlespoons, I give you… the run:
And yes, alright, before anyone’s sarcastic (Moon), I appreciate it’s not exactly chicken Central park, but it’s relatively sturdy, easily moveable (when they wreck that bit of lawn, it’s onwards and upwards) and fine for a little tootling, rootling, pecking and clucking before one retires to the coop to lay fabulous eggs (not Stig, natch) and bed down for the night, securely double-locked away from nosey foxes (or should that be foxy noses).
Happily, now they’ve all got a bit of room, the girls have decided that they do quite like The Stig after all and have decided he can stay. Now they’ve stopped pecking him, he’s stopped bleeding everywhere and everyone seems a lot calmer. Bless him, we’ve worked out he’s actually about eleven weeks old – I can’t send him back, I haven’t the heart. Plus, he makes lovely little chirrupy tweeting noises at me when I’m hanging out the washing, and picks all the peas and sweetcorn out of our leftover veggie rice in the most adorable manner. Plus, as I was debating with my cousin Bugs over in Canada, when he grows up, he might turn out to be a very fun way to annoy D next door, should the mood take me. Cockadoodledoo!
Minnie and Chilli, for their part, are making like veritable egg machines and churning out their golden-yolked wonders at a rate of one each a day, although Patrick, the nice man that we got them from, said that due to the trauma of being moved this could stop at any time for any number of weeks. Dread the thought. We’d stop being able to have lovely scrambled eggs with home-grown spring onions, little red spikes of chilli and a sprinkle of parsley out of the garden for breakfast:
Get me eh? I’m practically a farmer. Ooarr.
