Great Eggspectations

Delighted to introduce you to four camera shy balls of fluff. Not a great success rate from fourteen eggs I know, but they did prove to be the perfect ‘visitor attraction’ for my little niece and her family who stayed with us last weekend.

Maisy accompanied me umpteen times a day, full of anticipation, to check if any more chicks had hatched. She has a cherished pet Labrador at home and reflected, that.... 

“if you have a dog it makes you happy, and if you have chickens they make you happy”. 

Wise words.... as long as my chicks aren’t all cockerels!

Never a truer word spoken....

"This little space which scented box encloses

Is blue with lupins and is sweet with thyme

My garden all is overblown with roses,

My spirit is all overblown with rhyme,

As like a drunken honeybee I waver

From house to garden and again to house,

And undetermined which delight to favour,

On verse and rose alternately carouse."

Vita Sackville-West 1917

The ultimate chicken take-away

After all the nervous anticipation, Diesel is the only surviving chick from the clutch of eighteen eggs laid under the oil tank. Three more hatched and perished but alas nothing came of the remainder. Diesel is now a curious mix of fluff and feather, keeping close to mum’s side as it learns to forage and peck. 

Comical as he/she(?) is however, I had been hoping to enjoy a whole family of downy offspring bobbing about the garden.

Two broody bantams got me thinking. In a repeat of last year they seem content to sit in the coop all day, oblivious to the fact they're not sitting on any eggs. So the least I could do for them was to sneak a few fertilised eggs under their warm yearning breasts.

I googled “hatching eggs” and it threw up a tantalising menu. 


Silver Spangled Hamburg, 
French Black Copper Maran, 
Black Red Auracana... 

Trying not to have eyes bigger than my stomach I settled on fourteen eggs.
Some I collected locally and the other half dozen arrived the next day in the post.

But unlike most fast food deliveries, these will have to simmer away for 3 weeks... 

June

A new month... a new calendar page, 

and a new magazine with a new illustration...

with thanks to Bluehillfarm and Country Living Magazine