Man with a van...

Someone's pleased it's pancake day!

Idyllic rural retreat for mini-breaks or long term let

…dreaming of a WHITE Christmas

P.S.

One of the young hens laid her first egg this week. 

Yes, I'm pleased for her. 

Mary however can hardly contain her excitement. 

It's like Christmas has come early... simply because the eggs are blue… green? bluey-green? greeny-blue?

Mary turns each egg over in her palm, stroking its perfectly smooth surface, tilting it this way and that to catch the light. At the same time she's wrapping her tongue around a string of fancy syllables like ce-ru-le-an, eau-de-nil and cy-an in an effort to describe the colour to anyone who is within earshot.

If only she'd paint a picture of the jolly thing that would put us all out of our misery.

I lay white eggs. 

Do I feel upstaged? Maybe.

Once Mary has calmed down I'll remind her that blue is actually quite a bold statement. 

White, on the other hand, goes with everything!

Have a Happy Christmas, love Hulanicki 

Now we are six...

Hello, Hulanicki guest blogging for Mary. Mary thinks it’s spring already. She’s busy hopping round the garden in light woollens photographing pink blossom, clumps of snowdrops and her broad beans that are a foot high and already in flower.

I suppose it is unseasonably warm, which is why we have decided to start laying again.
Mary thinks this is marvellous. She loves her scrambled eggs for breakfast on Saturday. 

Let me bring you up to date on the coop reshuffle.
Three weeks ago Berlinda sat down on her haunches, sunk her beak onto her breast and simply expired. All very neatly accomplished I must say. Then again, she was a classy bird despite never having laid an egg in her life. I suspect she was one of those “too posh to push” types.

Knock me down with a feather, the following week Peggy MBE keeled over too. Now this did worry Mary. She shot over with her chicken encyclopaedia and thumbed through the diseases glossary. I don’t think she realised she was reading out loud but we could all hear this terrifying list of horrid symptoms. Most of them concluded with “usually fatal”.

Peggy really was 'king pin', so now the rest of us are jostling for position. Consider this blog my UCAS 'personal statement' (for those grappling with UK university applications at the moment), hopefully I can impress Mary enough for her to elect me as 'top flock'.

A couple of weeks down the line, so far so good. Our main problem at the moment to be honest, is the two cockerels. They hurtle out of the coop in the morning firing on all cylinders. We girls try to creep out unseen, call it an attempt to have breakfast in pyjamas. But we’re usually chased and hounded, subjected to the cockerel's clumsy foot stamping dance, before we’re pinned to the ground... and the rest is disgusting. It sometimes takes me ages to realign my feathers after that indignity, and, sigh, breakfast is taken late again.

Last night however, I had a nightmare. 

The coop door creaked open in the middle of the night. Torch light flashed in our eyes. A strong hand grabbed first one cockerel then the other. There were squawks. Then hush. A deep voice muttered “you got string?” “hold sack open”. Then heavy footsteps dissolved into the darkness.

This morning there was an eerie calm. It wasn’t just a dream. The cockerels had simply vanished. 

Oh well, they lived life in the fast lane, but perhaps they didn't realise that when soup is your destiny it’s down hill all the way to the pot!

Ten hens, no eggs…again

I’ve been here before. Completely egg-less because my little flock are not laying. 

Two of the ten are definitely excused. They’re cockerels. Hatched earlier this year we now hear a strange co-ck-a-d-d-d at dawn. It sounds like an eager learner driver crashing through the gears but no doubt fluency will come with practice.

The remaining eight I suppose are excused because they’re either too young, too old or mid-moult and too dishevelled to lay. 

Hulanicki’s discarded tail feathers, white tipped with black, are looking lovely in a pot on my desk. Meanwhile she is wandering around tail-less, like some poor dear with dementia unaware that her hemline is caught up in her knicker elastic.

Bare necked Peggy on the other hand, reminds me of a child who has been rummaging around in the dressing up box and has emerged in an over sized vest, already slipping from her shoulders.

Oh well, at least I have the perfect excuse to scrounge some beautiful eggs from a chicken keeping friend...

Stone the Crows

Week two at Wimbledon but that’s not the only venue where battles are being fought and results chalked up.

Up here in the country I am embroiled in a fierce competition of my own. 

More than a month ago I had noticed that my chicken’s egg production had become unusually patchy. Most days there wasn't a single egg to collect. I was very suspicious of a pair of crows hanging around in the top of the oak tree with literally a bird's eye view of the chicken run. 

The cheeky duo had sussed that there was not only a plentiful supply of food and water but freshly laid eggs in the coop too. Even better, after a chicken has laid an egg it will cluck triumphantly, thus sending out an alert to any loitering crow!

For a few days I found I only had one ear tuned in to the radio in my studio, the other was constantly cocked, listening for the cluck that was the starting pistol as I tried to out-sprint the crows.

Sigh. It’s no way to lead a tranquil, country life. 

After much research, (including watching Youtube clips of crows entering hen houses and exiting, egg gently clasped in beak), I tried a string of flapping bunting as a deterrent and stood a glassy eyed predator on sentry duty.

Completely ineffective. 

What I really needed to repel the thieves, according to local farming wisdom, was a dead crow to hang up in the run. Not easy to come by but after a few weeks of scouring the verges I spotted a fresh roadkill, still warm, beak cocked in the air. Perfect. I slung him in the back of the car, briefly marveling at the blue sheen on his sleek back, his strong beak and impressive talons.... but smugly rubbing my hands in glee.

Now he’s hanging on the gallows over the pop hole and the egg score so far this week is a satisfying Mary 6 - Crows 0! 

Diary of a Fluffy Bantam aged seven-and-three-quarters

It’s early summer and although I’m a menopausal bantam, or maybe because my hormones are all over the place, I’ve been feeling rather broody lately. Wouldn’t it be lovely to hatch out just one more clutch of chicks before I smooth down my feathers for retirement?

I haven’t got any eggs left to lay so I’ve been fluffing myself up and hopping onto any available egg in the coop. The trouble is, Mary barges in every day, slides her hand under me and snatches the egg away then tells me not to be so silly and anyway she doesn’t feel ready to be a grandma. She’s explained something complicated about not having a cockerel so the eggs won’t be fertile, but I don’t know, an egg’s an egg as far as I can see. 

24 May 

Mary came skipping along today saying “SURPRISE!” 
I don’t think it’s my birthday. 
She stuffed me into the cat box.
That was certainly unexpected and no way to celebrate... if it even is my birthday. 
I decided to go and sulk in the corner. 
SURPRISE!! 
There was a lovely pile of eggs all for me.

Evidently Mary had been talking behind my back with her friends who do have a cockerel and she borrowed some eggs for me. How thoughtful. Five beautiful pale blue ones from a Crested Cream Legbar and two small bantam eggs from “The Punk”... a quite ridiculous black and white bird with a brash tuft on her head. I do doubt Mary's judgement sometimes!

But anyway, I’ve got twenty-one blissful days for the news to sink in. 

Days 1-19

sit, shuffle, sit, sit, shuffle, sit, wiggle, sit.

Day 20

Mary will keep popping her head around the door and saying “peep, peep, peep”. 
I wish she’d give me some privacy. I’m absolutely fine, the last thing I need is a birth partner. She’d be much more use going to buy some chick crumbs.

Day 21

7am. For the past few hours I’ve heard faint peeps from inside the eggs.

10am. At first tiny holes and then big cracks and I can even see a beak.

Sometime later. Phew triplets before lunch and twins after lunch, all fluffed up to perfection and ready to meet Grandma. 
Sorry too busy now to write any more entries. 

P.S. Grandma is over the moon and is finally putting her nervous energy to good use. I can see her flailing around with hammer and nails making us a lovely new run.

P.P.S The bantam eggs didn’t hatch. I can only imagine the cockerel wasn’t going to be seen dating a mohican!

Morning treat

This morning at breakfast I celebrated the fact that Doris has started to lay again! 

Winter can be lean time for eggs.
Doris had taken some time out over Christmas to reorganise her feathers.
Hulanicki is still too busy fussing over her spring wardrobe to even think about resuming production. 

Peggy MBE, my rescue chicken, however has a tremendous work ethic and has been laying all winter. 

So, two eggs a day now and I’m hoping that will soon increase to four.

I don’t think you’ve met my youngest. She’s a Vorwerk hen; a breed that originates in Germany (and coincidentally shares its name with a company that produces vacuum cleaners!).

Her given name is ‘Berlin-da’ to remind me of a memorable trip to the city last year. 
And of all my fowl I think she is the one, like dog owners who resemble their dogs, that I have an affinity with. She’s a neat brown bird with a black head and tail... and we converse in German. Take note, regularly speaking more than one language can apparently delay the onset of Alzheimers by up to five years. There is method in my madness!

Back to my egg... which features in the current Waitrose magazine. Over the last few months I’ve enjoyed illustrating some cooking themed snippets, like making dried apple rings and almond milk and, shhhh, how to spatchcock a chicken. 

Luckily for Berlin-da I don’t know the german for ‘spatchcock’!

London Fashion Week… for Chickens

Hello, I’m Peggy MBE *

To coincide with London Fashion Week I’m proud to unveil my latest plumage. When I arrived at Mary’s coop some weeks ago I’ll admit that after a year of barn life with no direct sunlight I was due for a bit of a makeover.

Hulanicki, (who's a bit of a diva), was only too eager to rise to the challenge of giving me a few styling tips. She's quite a stunner. Passionate about the black and white Op art of the sixties, she can carry off shockingly bold designs with her slim figure and catwalk swagger. 

For me, fortunately, she toned things down a bit. I’m at that stage in life where a 'tunic to cover the tummy' is so much more flattering. Call it real fashion, for real fowl.

So, tah dah... I hope you like my textured layers, topped off with cheeky dip-dyed tail feathers! 

…job well done!

* I am named in memory of a dear friend. Peggy had been awarded an MBE for a lifetime of fundraising for sick children. 
Mine too is for services to the community... an egg a day for as long as I can remember.

Change of Address

Hello, it's Hulanicki, guest blogging again, but oh my goodness me, where do I start? 

For the past month I’ve been a refugee in my own garden, shunted from camp to camp at the dead of night and waking up at dawn, holed up in another less than desirable accommodation.

It started around the time Mary set up a blind date for the cockerel. We all got up one morning to find the new girlfriend presumptuously making herself at home in the coop. To be honest, she looked rather drab, (I thought Mary was more discerning), plain brown feathers all out of alignment, a pale face and a limp comb. I could see she’d got potential but I’d definitely have to give her some styling tips.

However, once we got chatting over breakfast and she’d explained her grim lineage I really began to warm to her. Her entire life, to date, had been spent shut in a barn with hundreds of other hens popping out eggs regular as clockwork. 
At one year old she’d been spared the impending journey to the dog meat factory because Mary offered to give her a home. She’d been singled out as the best looking bird in the flock; most of her friends had barely any feathers left at all! 
Well, of course I felt dreadful now, to think I’d called her drab!

For the next few days I really enjoyed hanging out with my new friend and showing her all my favourite nooks in the garden. Johns Junior the cockerel was pretty chuffed too. So, happy families. Until, horror of horrors, a greedy mean-eyed fox slinks up on us one fine afternoon and with a snap of his jaws snatches Johns Junior from under our beaks. Panic, where to go, what to do. In the time it took the rest of us to leg it back to the coop there were two more casualties.

So, that was the start of our incarceration. Mary didn’t dare let us out at all now. After a few days I was beginning to understand what my new brown friend had been through. I suppose in hindsight it’s given us a real bond. 

A few days later we suffered the indignity of being shoved into the catbox and transferred to the empty dog kennel. Mary thought we’d appreciate the small concrete run. Well, ahem, I’m not a dog! 

She must have heard me complaining because knock me down with a feather, a week later, she’s fenced (watch out it gives you a nasty jolt if you touch it) off a lovely big patch of grass between the house and her studio. There are daisies twinkling in the sunshine, some lovely long swishy grass full of bugs and beasties and some dappled shade under a ginko tree. It’s heaven! I don’t even mind that we’re in temporary
accommodation... the rabbit hutch is quite cosy for four.

Mary says she’s going to move our coop down from the orchard eventually but it’s very heavy and she needs some help and anyway at the moment she’s too busy looking after her husband who’s just had a new knee fitted, or something. I don't know, men and their gadgets!

Hmmm, I suppose that’ll move us right down the pecking order for a bit! 

An unlikely couple

A month or so ago a nasty fox came to torment our happy little troupe. There's just four of us left now; a trio of diminutive bantams and Johns Junior the cockerel. I’ve had to handle his unwanted attention all on my own. I’m afraid I find him a little too eager, a little too early in the morning, not to mention the fact he’s twice my size.

The two fluffy bantams are no help. Fluffy by name and fluffy by nature, they just hide in the henhouse all day, breasts plumped, downy feathers quivering and temperatures rising. They think they’re incubating eggs but are too daft to realise that they’re not actually sitting on any. I expect Mary will eventually give in and buy some fertilised eggs for them to hatch. That’s how I started life... swaddled in bubble wrap, entrusted to the Royal (Mail) Stork and then tucked under the very same breast.

Back to the point, I overheard Mary telling J J that she’s been looking on an internet dating site. She wants to find him a couple of ladies, in keeping with his stature, who WLTM a handsome cockerel with a GSOH.

I don’t know what he thinks about Mary’s matchmaking skills but I can’t wait!

(Hulanicki is standing in for Mary who is too busy to blog this week). 

Happy Easter

OK it's Easter, time to give Mary a big clue.

Yesterday I’d just laid another secret egg when I spotted her on her ‘coffee walkabout’. She was loitering under the Indian bean tree, her gaze scouring the banks of the pond. Little did she realise, she was barely five paces from where I was sitting, smirking. 

So I slipped noncholantly off my eggs, ducked through the tangle of sedge and then shoulders back, strode across the lawn to join the gang.

Mary spotted me instantly…. I'm not very camouflaged against green! She retraced my steps and started to poke around in the undergrowth. She was getting warmer...

and warmer...

 and warmer...

and warmer!

Her prize?

The best kind of Easter Egg ever!

Easter egg hunt

Hello, I’m Hulanicki. I’m one of Mary’s chickens... a Silver Spangled Hamburg bantam seeing as you asked. 

I've made up this really good game for the Easter holidays. It's called an ‘egg hunt’! 

All the other hens in my gang are a bit middle-aged and indoctrinated so it wouldn’t occur to them to lay anywhere other than the hen house. But I’m a teenager in chicken years, so I’m going through my rebellious stage, obviously, duuh.

For over a week now I’ve been hiding my eggs and I’m waiting to see how long it will take Mary to find them! 

They’re all in one place so it shouldn’t be that hard should it? 

What I do, is sneak away when the cockerel has his back turned, make a dash for a secluded clump of sedge by the pond and pop another egg out. 

Hah, it’s driving Mary mad! 

She twigged immediately that my eggs were missing from the coop because my eggs are a   glossy white, while everyone else lays dingy brown ones.

I’ve been watching her. Every time she stops for a coffee she’ll have a wander round the garden. And I know she’s not just checking on her precious vegetables because she’s busy poking her nose under bushes, peering behind hedges and ferreting around at the back of the borders. I even caught her shouting at the crows, accusing them of stealing my eggs from the henhouse. 

I’ll let you know when she’s found them!

The perfect omelette

"I break some good eggs into a bowl, I beat them well, I put in a good piece of butter in the pan. I throw the eggs into it and I shake it constantly. I am happy, monsieur, if this recipe pleases you." Madame Poularde as quoted by Elizabeth David in “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine”

Now that the days are lengthening ever so slightly, the chickens have all started to lay again and I am relishing a simply cooked omelette... made with “good” eggs.

I love everything about an egg; nature's most perfect package. I turn each porcelain orb in my hand on the way back from the hen house, enjoying its unique shape and colour, speckle and lustre. Here's what I find.

Fig 1.
Nifty is a small, nearly white hen who lays an enormous nearly white egg. 
Biggest egg to date... 100 grams!

Fig 2.
Saffy favours a deep, coppery-brown burnished shell. 

Fig 3.
Darcy, the matriarch at 6 years old, (and the only surviving hen from our original four) leads by example and still lays a lightly speckled egg most days. 

Fig 4.
Little Hulanicki, hardly the size of a pigeon, lays a surprisingly large, pure white egg. Young and slim she struts around around in sixties style monochrome. I had been struggling for a name for her until I read Barbara Hulanicki's brilliant autobiography, 'From A to Biba'. The first Biba stores all had black and white chequerboard floors. Problem solved!

Fig 5.
Weighing in at a mere 12 grams I’ve no idea who laid this teeny egg. A phenomenon  called "fairy" egg, it didn’t have a yolk and was probably the result of a reproductive cycle getting slowly into gear. Not much good for the omelette.

Fig 6.

Binky lays a small roundish egg. She is a creature of habit with a passion for industrial architecture. She shuns the country-style nest box in the hen house and runs the length of the garden to lay under the oil tank. And the later I let the chickens out in the morning the faster she runs!

Who'd have thought egg collecting could be so much fun?

Dinner will be late tonight...

...I’m still plucking the chicken. 

Tuesday
As one does in the stodgy depths of January, I have been daydreaming. Perhaps 2014 should be the year when I attempt one new creative activity each week.... re-upholster an old armchair, make fridge magnets out of beach pebbles or, at the very least, cook a new recipe.

Plucking and gutting a chicken was not quite on my list (although it had crossed my mind). We do, after all, have a couple of spare roosters. I know a man who will willingly come and despatch any unwanted fowl. I’m sure he would have shown me the ropes, if the slinky red fox hadn't got there first! 

From my studio yesterday I heard a disturbing level of clucking and squawking at dusk. I raced out to the hen house, just as said fox slipped covertly from the scene. I was lucky. He had only killed one cockerel. Head dismembered, lustrous sheen drained from its limp feathers; I was boldly determined that the fox wasn’t going to have the reward of eating this one. 

So, my first creative challenge was thrust upon me. 

It’s a well known fact that birds are much easier to pluck while still warm. I got that done  swiftly, before dinner. Which left me the evening to do some research on crop removal, neck severing, 'powerflush lung removers', bile and the fascinating contents of gizzards. 

My rooster could hang until the morning and I could tuck into bed reading masterly advice from Elizabeth David on simmering tough old birds.

Wednesday
Strange how a good night’s sleep often clears the mind. There’s no way I can face dealing with that torpid corpse... the fox could have been carrying a deadly disease. The local butcher shook his head gravely at the very suggestion of coq-au-vin and what’s more the family have all flatly refused to have anything to do with the bird. I would have been dining alone on soup for weeks. 

So, I’m going to shove him in the compost heap and attempt some genteel upholstery this weekend instead.

November

1st..

A couple of weeks ago I mislaid Jennie. 

Negligent? Nay, surprisingly easy in a large garden. But today I discovered she was savouring the mild autumn from underneath a lilac bush. Underneath her fluffed up body were a dozen warm eggs.  

She had the radience of any expectant mum. From my studio window I could just catch flashes of amber through the leaves, as the sun burnished her feathers.

Hmm, what do I do now, leave her be and chance the perils of the night? 

2nd..

My birthday today was well timed. 

Gifts included one mincing sausage attachment for my Kenwood. 

Two pork cook books. 

Three piggy cards... 

Chorizo recipes make gripping bedtime reading... honestly

4th..

Booked pig a date at the abattoir.

5th..

Bonfire night. For a pig, (unaware that it might be the next sausage at the next bonfire party), that means one thing... leftovers! Viva called round this morning with ‘turnip a la rhubarb avec du pain'. 
It’s not every day Joan gets served from Le Creuset! 

6th..

Despite having survived many nights camping wild, this morning Jennie and her eggs had disappeared. I'm feeling horribly guilty that I didn't intervene and provide her with shelter sooner. A couple of bedraggled feathers are all the loose change the fox left behind... 

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!

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...