Half Term Handy Work

Sorry for the large gap in between posts and thank you all for the feedback on the last blog entry. It was particularly nice to hear from Auntie Joan and Uncle Peter with some useful hen knowledge. Since receiving their email I have also started to wonder about keeping some ducks for egg laying purposes. I have found some called Indian runner ducks which look quite fun as they stand upright rather than flat like a normal duck. They also lay between 150 and 200 eggs a year (yes they do Anne) which is not bad going is it? Joanna has not come round to the idea yet, but she will,she will.

We have not put the egg dispensary out again since the first time because we have sold all our eggs to random visitors. However this week we have managed to keep four boxes back so,it will out again today! The chickens coop is an absolute quagmire still, even worse now that the snow has melted. I will have to get out there today and try and do something or they are going to disappear under the water completely.

The thatcher is getting very close to completion now and I have been painting all the leadwork and window frames black so that they blend in a bit better. It is looking so much better than before. The next job is to get the trees cut back around the house and pond, especially the ones that drop their leaves onto the roof. The leaves tend to get caught in the gullies which stops the water running off and causes rotting of the first layer of reed. If we do not get that done immediately then the leaves will start to undo some of his good work come Autumn.

Bunting by Katherine Alice and Hannah Grace
Fox by Jonathan

Katherine, with a good deal of help from Hannah, has finally finished her bunting. It looks pretty good for a first attempt and we currently have it hanging in the dining room where it looks very sweet indeed! The girls said it was quite easy in the end (don't know why it took so long to finish then! ) so please email,your orders in and I will get them cracking on another batch. They are also about to start making some bath creamers which Katherine has found in her new Kirsty Allsop craft book which she got for Christmas from Auntie Sonya. We picked up (and ordered via Amazon where necessary) the incredibly expensive set of ingredients (thanks for that Kirsty) and we are now ready for the apocathery to begin. I will, of course, provide pictures of the finished results.


Bunting Detail



Last week was half term. Brodie went to Saltzsburg ski-ing for the whole week (yes I am very jealous) and had a great time and says that he wants to go again so that gives me twelve months to convince Joanna that a family ski trip,is what we need next winter. Back at home we received Grandmother and Aunty Anne as overnight visitors for the first time. Granner slept in Brodie's bed and Anne slept in Liz's room and we all had a very nice time indeed. On Wednesday we went out for both breakfast and lunch, very extravagant but very nice! Carluccios for breakfast and Loch Fyne for lunch. I know! How the other half live eh?

Felt Hearts by Katherine Alice and Grandmother
(Yes Anne you might have done a little bit too)

The girls had a lovely time doing crafty things things with mum and Anne. They made some lovely little felt hearts, decorated with lazy daisies and filled with lavender. They also made some paper hearts which I think still need to be finished off (Hannah ....)



Now then,about this feedback request. Having received both good and bad I realise that what I meant to ask for was positive feedback. For those of you that think it is too long please treat it like a long letter from a relative - just skip read to the interesting bits and ignore the rest. Also be grateful for the fact that this "letter" is typed, so much easier to read than a hand written affair. For those of you that said nice complimentary things, thank you, flattery will definitely get you everywhere. In advance of any comments I apologise if this post is too long, too short, too boring, too exciting, all or none of the above and in particular I apolgise for the alleged overuse of the word "consistently" (which I refute I might add!)

Right then, off to the quagmire.....

STOP PRESS: Just before I publish I must tell you that on a total whim we have bought four more chickens! Mostly from the proceeds of a car boot sale that we did last year from which we still had fifty quid in a box and also from egg sales which again went very well today - all four boxes sold! I will show you pictures next time. The pecking order is being established as we speak - ouch!!

Winter Wonderland

There is nothing quite as beautiful as fresh snowfall early in the morning before the children have had chance to get in amongst it. Bricket Wood is absolutely spectacular and looks exactly like Narnia. The Old Fox is a picture postcard (or Christmas Card more to the point) with the thatched roof helping the snow look like a thick coating of sugar icing on a gingerbread house in the middle of the enchanted forest. I was going to show the progress that the thatcher has made with the ridge but that is not possible now and both he and you will have to wait for a thaw before we can see any more. The children are not yet up so they haven't seen the full glory of the snow. I am sure they will be extremely excited and I dare say there will be a new family of snowmen before the day is out.

Egg production has reduced in the cold weather and I think we may have to put a blanket at the window to keep the draft out. The pecking order seems to have fully developed. Last night when I shut the chickens up, Sunday Roast and Biscuit were huddled up in the Fortnum's box whilst Chucky Egg and Shelly were on the floor in the corner. As I write this the cat has walked into the bedroom straight past us both into the en-suite where he is now standing with both paws on the rim of the bath. Now he is trying to climb into the bath! We think he is looking for Joanna,which seems to be his second favourite pastime after eating, but then I suggest that maybe he is thirsty as he is now sniffing around the toilet bowl. Joanna now has him up on the side drinking out of the sink! What a big baby!
Brodie is up and his first thought is that his mum won't be able to take him to school. She argues that she will. Nice try son.
Now I must tell you some history of our cat. Joanna does not like cats, despite much evidence to the contrary, so we had never really considered having one. However, the first summer that we moved here a flyer was delivered asking if anyone could take on three cats as the family who owned them were returning to South Africa and would rather their cats stayed in the lane rather than going to homes elsewhere. I can't remember the names of the other two but one of them was called Snatch which we all thought was a very odd name indeed. No more can be said on that.

I said to Joanna that we should take them on and that it would be nice for the children and nice for her to have some company and that the house needed some animals and that cats were really useful for getting rid of mice and many other sound reasons which now escape me. The answer was a resounding No on all fronts. But,like any man who is turned down at the first time of asking, I persisted. I decided to to pursue the "cats are useful" argument, particularly as we do have the odd mouse family ravaging the cupboards from time to time and cats are guaranteed to deal with that problem aren't they? Eventually after much persisting and a little begging it was agreed that we could go and have a look at them, after all it's just a look isn't it? When we visited we found that there were two young cats who were very lively and sly looking and one old boy who looked like a tiger; this, we discovered was Snatch.

Nothing much more happenned on the cat front apart from some sporadic nagging on my part and some negative expletives on Joanna's part until one day........
She bought the old duffer home and hid him in her office. Ahhhh bless her.

Here he is look, the handsome fellow. We think that he was over fifteen years old when we got him. Judging by the state of his teeth more like one hundred and fifteen! Still, most of his teeth didn't put up that much resistance at the vets although you wouldn't know that judging by the ridiculous enormity of the bill! Not too popular then were you Stitch? Stitch is the name that we wrote on the vets paperwork and labelled up his cat carrier with as we couldn't bring ourselves to to refer to him as Snatch. In actual fact now he has adopted a new name because she who does not like cats, and yet spends endless hours cuddling him like a baby, started referring to him as Moochie. Now this was allegedly because he spends all his time mooching around the kitchen looking for scraps, which he does not get I can assure you, but it has now been expanded to Moochie Snookles or something equally ridiculous which makes him sound like some overpreened poodle about to show up for crufts!

He is probably the most affectionate cat I have ever come across. He is never happier than when he is Joanna's arms being made a fuss of and he follows her up and down the house like a lost lamb. Unfortunately due to his age he seems to have lost the ability to work out where his toilet should be. When we took him on they said he was a house cat and would not go outside so he always used a litter tray. However, in the first few months we weened him off that and persuaded him to go outside which he did. He quite quickly got used to using the cat flap and now has made the boundaires of the Old Fox his territory. He is never seen beyond those boundaries - never! He will walk up to the gate but will not go outside. So, not just a house cat, now a garden cat as well. Anyway a little while ago he decided that the rug would make a better place to do his business, then the door mat, then the other rug, then the carpet in Brodies room, then the girls room, then the upstairs bathroom (slight improvement there I suppose). In the end we decide he would have to go out at night because he just couldn't be trusted in the house. Joanna bought him a nice little furry house thing with a little hole at the front for him to go in and out of and that seemed to be perfectly fine until it got a bit colder and then he spent all night trying to get back in the locked cat flap. Despite feeling a little sorry for him we weren't prepared to risk more deposits on rugs and carpets so we decided that we needed to provide a little more warmth in his furry house. The solution?

Well a Hot Water Bottle of course what else. So now before we go to bed we have to fill up his little hot water bottle and put it in his little furry house and give him a little cuddle and give him a little kiss and say "night night Moochie Snookles, sleep tight, dont let the bed bugs bite" before slinging him out into the cold dark night. Poor Moochie.......

Enough about the cat I think. Egg sales are going so well that we cant actually retain enough stock to put the Egg dispensary out so we are definately going to have to increase the flock, er herd, gaggle? Oh I dont know what the right word is, more hens needed that is the point. Right have to go, I have been summoned to carve the Sunday Roast. No not that one, a perfectly anonymous one from the supermarket. As if we would butcher one of our own. We wouldn't.

Would we?.....

Check out our Brood

This week I thought we could have a hen featurette. I have uploaded a picture of each of our four hens, or egg production operatives, as we affectionately know them. We have sold another dozen eggs during the week. Six were sold to the Thatcher who is currently replacing the ridge on the roof, he even bought his own box bless him - what a nice chap. Joanna's boss (and also friend) Margaret visited on Friday to discuss Joanna's forthcoming promotion to Business Development Manager. Joanna is obviously the best salesperson that they have because not only has she been promoted but she also managed to sell Margaret six eggs while she was here - brilliant!

This inquisitive little madam is Biscuit. She is a Rhode Island Red. She was named by Katherine and is the most friendly of our brood. She had a sniffle when we bought her which developed over a few weeks into some kind of debilitating disease that threatened to take her from us. Being the kind hearted animal lovers that we are we took her to the vet. They said she was unlikely to survive but we could leave her in a they would see how she got on. We had a word with our inside vet reception executive (Allie) who made sure they didn't just leave her to die. A couple of days later she was returned to us with a course of injections that Allie administered and now she is as right as rain which has made us all very happy as we would have missed her dearly - even if the vets bill was £99! and she only cost £13 in the first place!! But we love her see, cos she's one of the family so we dont mind a bit.



This beautiful Blue Maran is Chucky Egg. Named so by Joanna who many years ago used to have a cockatiel by the same name and wanted to relive her youth through her newfound feathered friend. I'll be she wishes she was back in her youth in those sunny days when she didnt have to feed four hens, a cat , a husband , children, one Bearded Dragon, ducks, moorhens, two lots of fish and anyone else who comes knocking! Anyway, Chucky Egg is very sweet and also pecks at anything given half a chance.





This rather grumpy looking White Sussex is the ruler of our roost and goes by the name of Sunday Roast. A name that was not without controversy at the time but has grown to suit her personality and general demeanour. She is very feisty and does not like anyone going anywhere near her. She is the only one that won't eat out of your hand. Nevertheless we love them all equally, although admitedly some more equally than others.





This is Shelly. She was named by Brodie rather cleverly and is a "Speckeldy" although I am not exactly sure that that is even a proper type of hen. Regardless here she is in her muddy glory. She will peck at absolutely anything, your wellies, your wedding ring, your finger, anything!

Today the Thatcher finished the front part of the house which is the part that passing public see. I think he was very proud of his work and very pleased that Joanna told him how good it looked. Allie said he had done a better job than the previous thatcher and a neighbour bought round an old newspaper cutting of the house when it was last rethatched in 1997 so we could see how it compared. I must say it does look fantastic even though I have only seen a picture on Joanna's phone because this morning when I drove off I completely failed to notice a thing! Most days it is pitch black when I leave but today I dropped Brodie to the bus stop so it was light but I still didn't notice the beautiful roof because I was too busy waving to my beautiful wife in the kitchen window. There is only so much beauty you can take in in one go you know.

Well that is a good look at our hens for you. They are living in a quagmire so we need to try and sort the drainage out. No Father I have not dug that ditch yet!

Next time a picture of the thatch progress I think and then maybe a featurette on Moochie the cat.

Thank you for reading and sorry for the trouble finding the blog. It was because I had to change the name because an extra "f" had appeared on the blog address. Nobody noticed of course except father, but once he had pointed it out I couldn't abide with it and had to remove it which completely changed the address and resulted in the blog not being where it should be!

That is what happens, dear boy, when you tell someone to get the "f" off. Lesson learned all round