Eggs and seeds

A welcome surprise yesterday morning - Gina is back into egg production! Yippee! A perfect brown egg was waiting for us nestled among the hay in her sleeping compartment. Now we just need Georgie to get back on track and we can forget buying local eggs until next winter.

Spring is obviously just around the corner. It's not just the eggs that give away the (slightly) warmer weather, but the onions and garlic are showing their first green shoots through the sodden earth (more garlic than onions though, but never mind) and there's buds on lots of shrubs and trees in the more sheltered areas around our home.

We got seed catalogues falling through our letterbox too at the weekend which make for lovely browsing with a cuppa and piece of choccie cake. Katie is keen to stock up on some unusual varieties of veggie - purple broc. and carrots etc., etc., but we have so many seeds left over from last year it seems daft stocking up on more. My friend has very offered me some runner bean and pea seeds she harvested last year. I'm going to plant her runners with my dwarf beans to get a really good crop (hopefully). Peas will be new to us - the birds love them apparently so I'll need to tackle that one.

Enjoying the winter sun

The weather today was lovely bearing in mind it's the middle of January. We all got outside for a bit of a kick around with the football to blow the cobwebs well and truly away. Kanda, the visiting cat, enjoyed chasing the footie too and chickens seem to hunt out the sunniest spots in the garden to catch a few rays. Ben helped cut up a few more sticks from our October tree pruning pile. We still have a long way to go, but we'll get there in the end.

Checked on the onions, which I've now covered in chicken wire as the hens keep pecking away in there and also the cats were beginning to consider the fresh earth as their next toilet! No sign of any onion life as yet. Also checked the garlic which was planted in December. Quite a few bulbs needed pushing back into the ground, again, probably the chickens scratching away in there. They love to have a good old nose in the compost heap, especially after I've thrown a fresh tub of veggie peelings and tea bags on there, so a good old scratch around in the veggie patch enroute is probably entertaining for them.




Spotted this lovely sign of Spring growing on our driveway.

Digging, raking and planting the garlic

The time bomb was ticking, just like last year. All the books say "garlic does best sown before Christmas", so I wrapped up warm, took the children out into the garden too, and got digging and raking and sowing. Actually, to be fair, Katie did most of it. Anyway, three huge bulbs split and sown. Can't wait for the rewards later in the year.


Also took the opportunity to give the two tomato plants a good trim. I can't believe we're still getting tomatoes from it as the conservatory can get pretty cold these days! It's looking much better now I've trimmed it into an small arch.

2 rows of autumn/winter onions ...

planted.


So I can now start my new sheet of what's happening in the garden!

Solid ground

Woke up to snow this morning. Naturally the garden looked very pretty before all the footprints from humans and cats changed the scenery! The ground was so frozen, even by early evening, that the leek I was pulling to accompany our evening roast broke in two! They usually pull out really easily!

Finally got round to buying the autumn sowing onions and garlic - just need to get them in the ground now. The waiting paid off as the garden centre had half price on all seeds and bulbs - bargain at £1.98 the lot!

Feathers are flying

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the chickens begin to moult. I always thought animals (and birds?) moult in the summer and then grow more fur or feathers in the winter for the colder months. It seems not. Apparently they shed their summer feathers ready to grow a thicker coat of feathers for winter.

Gina started shedding first, leaving a trail of rust brown feathers in the garden and then Georgie started to follow leaving most of hers inside the coop, in the area where she sleeps (usually on top of Gina!). There's feathers everywhere (they are really pretty in colour and pattern) and she looks practically bald on her chest. They look very unkept and scraggy, but I do believe the shedding is slowing down now, so hopefully they'll begin to look a little healthier.

I was a little worried about it all to begin with, this, plus the fact that they've both completely halted in their egg production. Having to buy eggs again is a bit of a shock, I can't believe how they've gone up in price in the supermarkets (I can't always rely on our local egg producer, obviously she's having hen problems too). However, I see from "Down the Lane" (one of my favourite websites/forum/blog all about frugal living), tells me this is all natural, so I worry no more.

Trimming the trees

I don't like doing this really, as I love trees, bigger the better. There comes a time, however, when they'll suffer if they don't get a hair cut. P and I spent most of the day keeping warm cutting the tops off our two hazelnut trees. An amazing amount of branches now litter the garden - great fun for the the children to play on and for the cats to play under! Katie rescued some twigs to do a spot of whittling. The garden seems so much lighter now and I'm sure the neighbours will appreciate the extra light pouring through their windows.