Squashes and Apple Pancakes

Another very full weekend.

Yesterday was Malvern Autumn Show and we made our twice yearly trip. It was a great day and we managed not to spend too much, although we did buy a wormery (I've wanted one for ages) and 5 different types of garlic to try - This year I plan to grow it at home and the allotment and see which soil type it does best in.

Today I've spent quite a while down the allotment, I've started to harvest the squashes as the leaves have started to die on some of the plants and they've hardened up nicely. I also started to knock in the fence posts for our next allotment although I had to keep tapping the end of the sledge hammer as the head was threatening to fly off!

The chicks are growing up fast and becoming less cute by the day. Its funny how annoyed Claire now get when people question us for having chickens to eat, saying its cruel or they don't know how we do it, when we both see it as natural and how we'd prefer to get our meat. It's really nice that we both have the same values where food is concerned.

Allotment Open Day

Another busy weekend. Yesterday was our first ever open day for the allotments and Felix Dennis (the owner of FHM) was meant to come down to open it officially but couldn't make it due to illness (he gave the land for the allotment to be built on).

I managed to talk my mum into coming up and helping me weed the plot before people started to look round, so the plot was looking quite tidy. The day was really nice with Claire's family coming up as well, there was a little veg stall and a raffle as well as a guess the seed competition which I was gutted I didn't win (I'll never know which I got wrong!).

Yesterday evening I also managed to pick a massive bucket full of hazel nuts off of our single tree, not sure what I'm going to do with them but its a shame to leave them (any ideas?).

The chicken and her little brood of chicks are doing well, the chicks are so fast now its almost impossible to catch them. Its great fun watching the mother fuss over them and break food up so they can eat it, although she is quite rough when she scrats at the grass and knocks an unsuspecting chick flying!

Teenage Mother

Well our Teenage Mother of a broody hen has hatched out her random assortment of eggs and so far there are 10 bundles of fluff of all different colours keeping their mother busy. There are still a couple of eggs left which seem to have chicks in, but if they haven't hatched by the morning then it will be a total of 10 out of 16 hatched. Not too bad for her first time sitting on eggs.

I'm now a bit worried about what we're going to do with our new chickens when they grow up. I've planned where they're going to go in the garden (they're going to have the area under the hazel tree and some of the old garden shed to live in). The boys will be fattened up for the freezer, the ladies will have a longer future I think...