On Tuesday we lost Chippy. It was all rather sudden and unexpected, and we are very sad. The Friday before, we'd been to the vets with Bessie, one of our older rescue chickens. She has a hormonal implant, and it was showing signs of wearing off. We noticed Chippy seemed a tiny bit quieter than usual, but nothing to unduly worry about. We kept an eye on her over the weekend, and by Monday she was still walking around and eating, but out of sorts enough for us to ring the vets, who squeezed her in that afternoon. By the time we got there, she was looking rather more unwell, but had a hormonal implant, and antibiotics, and anti inflammatories. She had a few treats, and slept in the hen house with the others. She was no better the next morning, so we brought her into the house, and got her nice and cosy on a bed of hay near the radiator. She stayed there, occasionally having a treat, and letting us give her medicine and a little bit of water with a syringe. Later in the afternoon she slipped away. Chippy wasn't a rescue hen. We got her, and two others, as point of lay hens last summer, after we lost our two older rescues, Mildred and Maud, in quick succession. That was painful, and we thought if we got younger hens, they'd stay healthy for longer. The teenagers soon settled in, and eventually the older rescues stopped objecting quite so much, and they all got along reasonably well. The young chickens, or Imposters, as we called them, found their way around, and developed their favourite spots. They always loved the hay field, and spent most of their time in there, digging for grubs. Chippy was the friendliest of the three. In the first few days, she jumped on my head when trying to get away from one of the older ones. She didn't like being picked up, but would happily jump on a knee or even a shoulder to investigate opportunities for treats. Chippy had her own special little noise, a kind of toot, more owl than chicken. She was the fastest chicken I've ever known, speeding across the run at the first hint of a grape, knocking the others flying. She could jump pretty high if she spotted something exciting in your hand. She was quite a character. Which makes it all the more sad that she's now gone, at only a year old, with the last almost four months of that spent in chicken lockdown, shut in the run. I never thought we'd lose the younger ones first. Too sad. We've buried her under the fruit trees, like we did with the others, and will do our best to carry on her legacy, always investigating, chasing treats, seeing what's going on. We'll miss you little Chippy-O.
0 Comments
We're going through quite a bit of upheaval round here at the minute. It's like some kind of epic spring clean, except the weather is not very spring-like, and so far there's not been much cleaning. But there has been an awful lot of sorting out. This is our loft. Well, one of our three lofts (the other two contain mostly mouse droppings). Neither of us have minimalist tendencies, and as we've gone through life, we've collected many things that 'might come in useful one day'. Many of them have, and our propensity to buy things when we see them cheap and squirrel them away has saved us a fortune over the years. Still, times change, and we're getting to a point where carrying round old projects and endless tubs of beads, paperclips and crayons just doesn't feel quite so appealing. Many of those projects have been unfinished for a decade or more, and now feel more like sources of guilt than sources of fun. With our new decision to get the builders in to sort out the kitchen and bedroom, we're looking forward to a more organised space, and it feels like a good time to start clearing some stuff out. Of course, it does mean that things become yet more chaotic in the meantime, piles of boxes and bags for the tip collect near the back door. We're fortunate that we have two relatively local household recycling centres, and between them they have recycling bins for metal, plastic, wood, clothes, books etc, so not much is going to landfill. In another time, we would likely have donated to charity shops, but they are all closed now, and many of the donation bins have been removed. We might also have put stuff on Freegle, but that feels like quite a daunting task (and also we're not in a town, so I wouldn't want to be encouraging a flurry of special trips out here to collect individual items right now). It feels odd to be getting rid of this much stuff. Ornaments I've looked at for 15 years are disappearing, shelves are emptying, and the amount of space in the loft now is really quite shocking. Peter's been doing most of this clearing out. I'm focusing on the kitchen ceiling for now - but the more he clears, the more obvious the rest of my stuff is. I certainly won't be throwing everything away, but I've got a decent stash of fabric that I've probably had for 20 years and not done anything with for a start... The other activity at the minute is planning the kitchen itself. This has become more of a fun activity now we don't have the prospect of figuring out how to fill massive holes in the walls, and can instead thing about paint colours and tiles and where to put the kettle. The kitchen/dining room has four windows now, and I am loving the way the sun streams in. Can't wait to sit at the table with a cup of tea and a jug of flowers. It's a bit daunting making choices though. We've spent so many years making do with what we had, picking up what we could for free or cheap, that our decisions have usually been along the lines of 'how can we make good use of this?' rather than 'what do we want?'. 'What do we want?' feels like such a big question. (I should point out that I'm fully aware how fortunate we are to be in a position of deciding what we want, and I'm not remotely complaining about it - it's just interesting how difficult it is after years of having decisions bounded by other factors). This is the kitchen in our old house - it looks so empty because it's taken on the day we moved out. We just had one strip of work surface, and the fridge was round the corner near the back door. There never felt like enough space. This is the temporary kitchen we've been using for the last 18 months. It's pretty tiny, but if it was properly laid out as a permanent kitchen, it would still be a reasonably useable space. As it is, it's a bit of a nuisance to do anything in.
So what do we want from our new kitchen? We can't move the drain without a big faff, so the placement of the sink is already decided. We want a four ring hob and a full sized oven (what luxury!), and I want plenty of worktop space, and enough storage day to day things and also empty jars and bottles for preserving food. Of course there are other decisions too. What type of kitchen? Should we have a tiled splashback above all of the work surfaces, and what colour? Shall we re-do the dining room floor now, or wait until later? Where should we put an extra radiator? I do know I want it to be a productive and welcoming space. I want to make cheese, preserve food, bake cakes, and batch cook dinners. We already have a big table, and I'm looking forward to having people sit round it. Maybe there'll be a window seat too, and a breakfast bar. Right now the prospect of other people in the house feels a lifetime away, but I do hope it'll come round eventually. The builders are coming in July, and in the meantime we'll keep sorting and tidying and passing things on. Between the building work and the space-clearing it'll be like having a whole extra house. If you haven't been round in a while, you might get a bit of a shock... February has been a very long and rather cold month round here, and I have been very grateful for some signs of spring. From my pictures, it looks like our last snow was around the 9th, although in my head it feels like it was much later. So what's been happening on the homestead, aside from all the snow? Preparing the greenhouse The greenhouse had become a bit of a dumping ground for pots, and I was using the floor area to try to dry some soil for chicken dust baths (not very effective). Early in the month I gave it a good clear out, and sorted all the pots that had accumulated down the side of it as well. I reduced the height of the shelves, which means they can now push right back against the walls, giving me a teensy bit more space. I didn't sow any seeds in February, but I did lay all my pots out ready. And there were some signs of life - a rosemary that I'd grown from a cutting from my old house is miraculously still alive, as is my fig tree. Some friends gave us some potatoes, so they're chitting away in the greenhouse too. I've never deliberately grown potatoes before - just occasionally planted some supermarket ones that I've left in the bag for too long. It'll be quite exciting to see what happens to this lot. The veg plot The veg plot has been largely uneventful. There are still a few leeks to harvest, and quite a bit of kale, although that's starting to yellow round the edges now. I finally got round to moving the raspberry canes - they were right in the way of the compost bins, and also far too tempting for a passing chicken to snaffle any available raspberries. They're safely within the veg plot fence now. Signs of life started emerging elsewhere on the plot, with some of the fruit bushes showing tiny buds, and the rhubarb persisting through the snow. Chickens Sadly, the bird flu housing order is still in force, so the chickens are still confined to their run. To our surprise, their temporary extension has held up well in the winds, so they do have a little more space. I don't think they're distressed - they don't even try to escape any more - but I really hate having them confined. Hopefully they'll be out before too long. We're getting three eggs pretty much every day now, which has been a bit of a job to keep up with, since we've not seen anyone to give them away to. Still, we're just about managing, and I've not yet resorted to any of the egg storage methods I've been reading about. Inside Inside the house there has been some progress - mostly on the kitchen ceiling, which is now roughly half way to being finished. We've now made a rather momentous (for us) decision to pay a builder to do the rest of the work. It's been dragging on far too long - we've been without a proper kitchen for about 18 months, and we're both tired of having half the house as a building site. We've finally found someone, and he's hopefully going to do the work in July. Not too long to wait, and once he's gone, we'll have a fully functioning kitchen, dining room, and giant bedroom, which currently looks like this at one end... And like this at the other... This was originally two rooms, divided by the chimney we removed a couple of years ago, and with a small hallway running down one side. As there are only the two of us here, there's no real reason to separate it back into two rooms, so we're going to have one giant bedroom instead. There's another normal sized bedroom upstairs (which we currently use), and my study downstairs (which has a sofa bed), so there will be plenty of room for guests, when we're allowed any. I was telling myself this room 'just' needs plastering, and I can do that myself - except I didn't, because there are all kinds of weird cavities to fill, including a massive hole in the ceiling where the chimney was. The two original rooms were on slightly different levels, so there's a step in the middle of this room, which makes things awkward. Anyway, the builder reckons all these issues are solvable (with the application of enough money, of course), and so we're handing the whole lot over to him. I have mixed feelings about this - there is part of me that wanted to have done it all ourselves... but there's another part of me that wants to do other things too, and also recognises that we *haven't* done it, which means we'd probably dilly dally about it for another few years. Time to move on. So there we are. I'm glad to be rid of February for many reasons, but looking back here it does seem we've made a little bit of progress.
And what will March bring? Well, currently it's bringing howling winds and a hint of snow, which has come as a nasty shock after a week or two of fine, dry weather. My garden pottering is currently on hold, and attention is turning back to the rest of the kitchen ceiling (can't ask the builder to finish off my No More Nails plasterboard/glue experiment). We're allowed to socialise with one person outdoors now, so I'm meeting a friend this afternoon - although given the weather I think we'll be sat in separate cars waving through the windows. Later in the month, we'll hopefully be allowed to meet another household, and I am SO much looking forward to seeing people again. Sadly our garden shelter has blown down in the recent gales, so we may spend some of March rebuilding that (if it ever stops raining). Hopefully the chickens will be released from their own lockdown very soon, and we may even have some seedlings to report by the end of the month... |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
All
Archives
February 2024
|