We've got a hatchling!

Tall Barn Maternity Wing: One little chick out of four eggs sat on by two hens,  et voila, le petit:



There is something absolutely delightful about watching a mum hen show her little ones how to feed. She clucks, chuckles and coos, then when tums are full under her they go to snuggle up for a sleep. Anyway, these two will have to be moved today, and they are going into the now abandoned hen run, the other chickens preferring to go to bed up in the fig tree which gracefully arches over the run. Well it was graceful in shape and form at one time, but having the flock, including a few hefties, clambering up onto its branches has bent it all out of shape and made it raggedy:

Eventually it will be the place for a shady hot afternoon snooze for us....



...see how the dappled sunlight seems to lend itself to a feeling of wanting to leave all activity behind and stop for an hour or so, maybe to lie down and look  up at the enchantment of the leafy canopy overhead, maybe to let one's eyelids drift down, maybe to have a quiet snooze to recharge one's batteries. Of course you have to disregard the chicken run and the rather raggedy leaves of the fig,  but I hope you get my drift of thought. This, then, is the plan for this space in the future. For now, it is chicken territory.

Hey! Look at this cool gadget!......

It's a Brinsea egg incubator, and what a fangly dangly bit of kit it is! Takes seven eggs, and acts as the hot botty of a hen, keeping the eggs surprisingly warm and in a moist environment. Presumably this moistness acts the same as does the sweaty environment of the hot hen - as I say, the temperature is surprisingly warm, so much so that at first I thought that we were going to end up with hard  boiled eggs, and I can quite see that if this is the same temperature as that of the hen's undercarriage, that indeed it would be quite a damp place.

So this incubator is the model which turns the eggs as well. Took us a couple of days to actually see the machine do this, and in fact I was manually turning the eggs  to make sure that this was being done. And the marvelous thing is that the eggs have already grown in size. But I have a bit of a bother in my head - it feels quite a thing to be actually giving life. 

An egg, you see, arrives from the hen, but it does not immediately start growing into a chick. In fact it can sit around for up to a week with nothing happening inside providing the external temperature is fairly cool. Now this is because the hen needs to sit on a few eggs to make it worth her while. And these eggs do not come out in a wadge, no, they come out at the rate of one per day.

So she lays an egg, then goes off about her business for the rest of the day, then makes a return to the nest the following day to lay another egg, then goes off, etc..., until she considers that enough has been laid to warrant her efforts at sitting in one place for twenty one days, which is a bit of marathon. Then she plonks herself down on the pile of eggs, the temperature of her bottom half increases, the sweatiness must also surely increase, and this triggers the movement of life within the each egg. All of the eggs, then, start building life at the same time. And that is what this incubator does. but I am very aware of the life that is possibly being created within these egg shells.  

We have six eggs in the incubator, one of which is a handsome size so we had high hopes of being able to hatch a good sized chicken. However...this hen has just started laying, so this is her second egg. I don't know what has happened to the first egg. I suspect Hubs 'borrowed' it to make an egg sandwich when I wasn't looking. But the third egg I cracked open today for breakfast, to find a double yolk. And a thought: what happens if there are two yolks inside the egg in the incubator. Is it possible to have twins?

And another thought: why has one of the little brown hens suddenly decided to start crowing? She, who has been one of our best egg layers. And why oh why, did she decide to jump on the back of one of the new little hens this morning and 'give her one', just like the cockerel does. Are hens able to cross-gender? That question I leave with you.

Have had a bit of a trouble with the sheep. Why are they so naughty when they are able to move between the Home Field and their home in the Sheep Paddock, but yet are docile and undemanding when put over the lane in the Side Field. What goes on in their heads, that when they are across the road, which is when they should complain, they don't. It would seem that the more fuss you make of them the more demanding they become.

Anyways, the farmer who cut the grass for hay last year visited again. Said he would cut the fields at eight the next morning. So up early. Out to take the fences down across the drive through which the sheep travel to and fro betwixt field and paddock. Sheep out in Side Field, even though the grazing is minimal due to lack of rain, but the Home Field needed to left clear for the farmer and his machine.

No farmer, cloud and showers arrive instead. Cross about having to take those fences down, as tricky to put back up again, the ground being as hard as iron. In a mood with it all, was Hubs and moi.

So we hatched a plan, and decided to make the sheep stay out in the Home Field all the day long, and would move them if and when the farmer turned up but that he would have to wait while we did so. No travelling to and fro is allowed now. 'Twas their fault we have arrived at this decision. Out in the field they have to stay until night fall.

Checked up on them a while ago. They were having adventures in the hedge, and have eaten the vegetation away in one spot particularly sufficient for them to have a hideaway. But at least they are quiet, and not busting through the temporary fencing to eat in places they are not allowed to eat from, nor are they pushing open the gate to get into the Courtyard, nor are they yelling their heads off at each other. For today, the plan is working!

And for lunch, the first pickings from the beans and mangetout:



The size of one's personal halo does quite an inflation when one surveys the outcome of a raid into the veg plot. And it might not be much, but it gave us lunch.

There is nothing, but nothing, like eating produce fresh from the garden. I will often say this, and so will everyone else who does the self -grow thing!

Now off to check on the sheep to see what they are getting up to, and to move that little hen and her littler chick, so saying 'bye for now'....

Recycling Sainsbury's Mincemeat pot

I have a general nervousness about looking inside the bee hive. I don't think I am nervous of the bees themselves, although as a newbie I naturally feel tentative about going amongst them. My nervousness is more, I think, because I do not want to do them harm rather than being overly worried about being stung although that is always a background thought when I am near them. I so want the bees to survive. I don't know why I do but I just do. It is not about being successful so we can then tell everyone how clever we are to have a hive of bees. It is not about wanting to harvest loads of pots of honey from the bees.

No, my general nervousness about looking inside the bee hive, apart from my lack of experience, is because I am afraid of what I might find: perhaps the queen is making lots of cells (whatever they are supposed to be!), perhaps the colony has become even more diminished in size, perhaps an 'orrid thing has invaded the hive and eaten everyone up, perhaps the queen is dead, perhaps all are dead.

I have been able to put off the internal investigation this past week because the weather has been sunny. I have kept an eye on the hive and seen bees flying to and fro. Not many. Just a few.

I have kept a bowl of sugar water in front of the hive most days, so they can have an extra boost of energy if needed. However the sun tends to dry the sugar water up after a while, so the bees can only access it for a few hours. A better solution was needed. Ahha! In the local supermarket I espied a possible gadget: a budgie feeder!



Worked a treat. However, it is too small really, especially the drinking part. I made a little platform so the bees could have somewhere to sit and drink, but it was not the best solution.

Today the sun is not shining. It is very windy and overcast, so they will not fly today unless the weather stops being inhospitable for them. They will need help with keeping their energies up. They need sugar water. And they need it inside the hive, not outside.

Ah so! Project Hive Feeder!

- Had empty carton of Sainbury's Mincemeat still with attached lid. Made holes in the lid with hot screwdriver.

- Filled pot with water. Put lid on. Inverted pot. Water dripped out quite slowly. Lid stayed on and did not fall off thus making the water leave the pot in a rush.

- Got bowl as need somewhere for the liquid to settle when it has left the pot.

Cereal bowl then! Good idea but realised that the bees would probably have difficulty scrambling up the sides of the bowl, thereby possibly being subjected to 'death by sugar water drowning'.

- A plate then. Flatter. More easily accessible for their little feet. 

- Pot upright. Plate on top. Inverted pot. But.... no liquid could I see. Ah! The lid of the pot had a small rim which had created a vacuum. So raided my bag of jam jar lids, 'borrowed' two, put them on the plate. 

- Ummm....now can't invert pot and plate as I had previously done because of the need to keep the lids on the plate. Not to worry. With swiftness I deftly flipped the pot over. A bit of a splash ensued. But it worked! A little bit of water oozed onto the plate. Perfect! 

- Repeated the process, but with sugar water. The 'splash' bit was messier though, sugar being sticky, especially if twinned with water.

- Syrup not coming out onto plate. Found it hard to ooze itself through holes which were jammed up against jam jar lids. So made more holes in lid of pot and removed one lid. A good drippy flow then ensued.

Now all I have to do is get that kit into the hive. So am now off to don my bee keeping uniform........Be back later on....

Two days later! Yes well, didn't do that too fast did I! But I have now done my task, the feeder is in the hive, and I had a slow look round the bees, couldn't see the queen, but the bees looked busy and well.

And I am glad that we only have a small colony of bees to learn on. If we had been in the UK then we would have had the local bee keeping association to fall back on, but here in France there is no such thing although there are plenty of beekeepers around, none of who we can seem to connect with. So, as with everything here, we are on our own and having to do the best we can and a small colony is easier to learn with rather than a humungously huge quantity of bees.

It was lovely fiddling about with the bees. Took my time. They were calm. Oh a couple of bees did do a buzz around me but were not a problem. The major problem was that my beekeeping hat kept getting in a tangle with the several bramble branches which were hanging down through the branches of the small oak tree beneath which the hive sits. But there were no ants. Cannelle (cinnamon) works!

So now our bees have their own inhouse larder. This should help them when the weather is not do-able for them. And 'thank you' to Eddie and Rita who donated the Sainsbury's Mincemeat pot, fully loaded with mincemeat and carried all the way down here from the UK in their car from the UK just before they closed up their French house and left for Singapore for I don't know how long and neither do they (work commitments for them). With sadness we waived them goodbye. With sadness they left.

But the Sainsbury pot continues on as a reminder of our friendship with them.

Chicken Project: re: Tall Barn broody chickens. Not looking good. The Buff Orpington hen took herself away from the nest never to return and has trundled across to sit beneath the rabbit hutches instead. It does not seem to have entered her head that she should have her eggs with her,  or rather, one egg, the other two having disappeared. Perhaps her inattentiveness to the needs of this solo egg was because I had subjected her botty to a jet of cold water straight from the outside water tap upon seeing that her undercarriage was in quite a dire state. Being very much aware of fly strike, I picked her up, turned her over, and jetted her rump. Perhaps that is why she is going on strike with egg sitting.

So the other broody hen has the egg. However she is only half heartedly sitting on it, preferring to donate all her body warmth to the one egg she is sitting on.

In truth, we are increasingly swinging towards using our so far unused incubator machine.

Pig Project: Max continues to be his grotty self, although is not in quite such a grot as he was when Tess was alive. But to liven his day I have invented games. Like spraying him with the hose pipe, which he pretends to hate but still stands rooted to the spot. Like singing to him in a chant-like fashion: now with this activity he still does grot-posturing and grunting, but his eyes look at me as if to say, "Well I quite like this but don't want you to know that I do!" And today I found a broken branch which had a nobbly bit at one end. I used that to scratch his back and tickle his chin, meanwhile he grotted away at me as usual. Little things, these are what makes him feel part of our team, which he wants to be but pretends not to want to be.

Piglets: Aw bless! They continue to romp around the Sheep Paddock when the sheep are out in the field, and today they toddled around the perimeter of the paddock with me and Boolie, keeping stride with us and generally being part of the team. We are growing in confidence that they can be led out into the farm when we need to rehome them. However, they have a tendency to nudge. Now this is OK when done on thigh, hand or foot, but not in the back of the knee which unfortunately seems to be their most favoured spot. It is surprising how quickly one can become pole-axed when this spot is nudged.

Sheep Project: Doing OK. Still have Bot fly problem, and three of the sheep need more medication to stop the infestation. Next year we will have to find a deterrent to those flies. But the sheep love being in the Home Field, as can be seen by their general cheerful attitude. They also love being in the hedge and are busy making tunnels through the vegetation. The Jacob ram is also looking friskier now. Still small though, but by not so much. To make lambs he might now only need a stepstool rather than a ladder.

So now off to make some bread, then down to the woods to cut a pathway through the vegetation to the river bank. This we need to do so we can get some water for the veg garden, the pond we were using to pump water from now having dried up. It is Midge Heaven down there in the woods, but needs must..... And the good thing is that once one has received a few bites from one particular type of insect one's immune system seems to be able to make a faster response so that the itch-factor is very much reduced. However, there are several different types of biting insects, but one's immune system will win through in the end. I hope.

Saying bye for now.....This seems to have been quite a gabble of a blog, so well done you if you have stayed to the end.

Harvesting

There is something really satisfying about building a stash of food for future use. Harvest time has started, and the first onion and potato crops have been brought in from the veg plot and the first twenty two pots of jam have been made from our fruit. Gosh!

And hard work it is. Many a time we have wondered about the advisability of expending the energy needed to produce these harvests. The plod of prepping the ground, planting the seed, watering and weeding. It is a long journey and one which at any time can fail that end harvest: not watering, or leaving the weeds to grow over the young plants, or not keeping an eye on how things are going, will fail that end crop. As I say, it is a bit of a plod.

Perhaps that is why I tend to spend more time out in the front garden amongst the flowers. A flower garden, I think, is more restful, perhaps because one tills the soil, one plants the seed, shrub or tree, one waters and weeds, and then the flowers come, relieving one of the necessity of then bringing in the harvest. But then one is also robbed of the immense sense of satisfaction when one sees the produce heaped up for future use. A good balance, therefore, is to have both, which I am gradually coming to terms with. It takes time to cross over between two lives and one has to patient with the process, this is what I am learning. I have an expanding life, and at sixty four, I feel lucky to have such a life. 

Sometimes, however, I do fall out of the saddle. Sometimes, just sometimes, I do sigh.  But not today! Because I have just made some pots of jam and I feeeeelllllll goooooodddd!

Five pots of apricot. Eight pots of peach and apricot. Nine pots of yellow plum. In the midst of winter they will bring summer sunshine into us. And I will have forgotten the ages it took to prep the fruit....

....although I did have help to clean up the stickiness of the 'testing for the set of the jam' spoon, which requires a spoonful of jam being taken from the hot jam pot on the stove, taking it outside and then waving it about to cool the jam down. If it all falls off the spoon it is not done, but if it sticks then it is. This, however, produces puddles of jam on the floor / ground which is why it is best to this part outside! And it's nice to have a bit of help now and again to clean up the stickiness.

Harvesting things is good for the soul, and makes one feel in charge of one's life, that is what I am finding out. Hope you have something in your life which makes you feel equally as proud of yourself,...... and saying bye for now. x

PS: Would that one of the broody hens in the Tall Barn felt the same. Her lack of effort at keeping all the eggs underneath her at the same time tells me that we are unlikely to have any little ones hatching from those eggs. She might, I am thinking, just be regarding this 'broody' lark as an excuse to have a holiday from life!