Lazy Bones

One of the luxuries of being (pretty much) retired on account of being made redundant is that the working days are your own. Nobody chases you to clock/swipe in or makes you book holidays out of your measly allowance if you fancy a day off.  I do work round here occasionally, obviously, but I find I am an expert at winding down when a big job is completed and that 'momentous' occasion of a 'finish' comes round.

A gorgeous brawn from the pigs' heads. There were 3 such 'tubs'.
One is gone already and one in the freezer. This one made
 a handsome contribution to breakfast. Not all of it, obviously.

The latest such completion was the pigs - reared, taken on their final journey, brought home and butchered and variously frozen as joints, salted down as whole legs, cooked into dog treats (ears) or some 'scratchings' and even brawn (heads). Finally all tidied away out of sight. That was Tuesday and I have to confess to sitting down at that point and not really achieving much till this afternoon (fencing). Like I said - too good at winding down. Lazy bones.

Horse Chestnut. Needs a good frost to do
proper colour but it is trying.

It is one of the reasons why the veg garden is such a disgrace at the moment; the other being that I am also expert in what I believe the behaviour experts call "displacement activity", doing something else to avoid doing the job you should be doing. Office workers, faced with a big pile of jobs will reach, instead, for the "to do" list pad and spend ages compiling one, even adding jobs they have already completed so that they can enjoy the buzz of ticking one or two off.

Three of the ewes waiting for the ram to arrive next month.

In my case, this spring, every time I looked at the scary forest of docks, creeping buttercup, grasses and plantain which was winning in the veg patch, I then looked to my left at the huge pile of tree 'rounds' from our felled spruces and the hydraulic splitter I had borrowed. Needless to say, the logs got beautifully split and stacked and the weeds were left to grow even taller. There was building too and archery, pulling thistles in the East Field, brush-cutting in the woods or through the docks, the poly tunnel, mowing and so on. No end of ways to avoid that veg patch. When I did feel like weeding, there was always the big raised flower bed. I think that won because it is so much smaller and you could see progress and sense the end of the tunnel.

Big field mushrooms in the East Field

And so it went on; all the nice weeding weather of summer (well, there was SOME at least) came and went and still the veg patch is an embarrassment where I dare not take visitors. We even toyed with the idea at one stage of fencing it round stock-proof and letting the pigs or sheep at it.  But no, I cling to the idea that I will get stuck in one day, in my "little and often" mode (like my digging of the pond - 20 barrows (1 hour) a day across 5 months).

Soldier out for a stroll.

Some of we smallholders use volunteer labour - lads and lasses who sign up for a working 'holiday' through one of the green/organic/ecological organisations and will come and do yay amount of hours per day for you for the price of bed and board. We have a smaller scale version of that happening in spring when a friend from Kent who loves digging, weeding and veg gardening is coming here for a week. Some people whizz round in front of their 'cleaning lady' so she never sees how bad it was. I will be getting stuck into the weeding well before this guy arrives so that I can show him that I "made a start" and didn't wait round till May for him.

Nugget earns a free ranging winter by doing such a good
summer job in the bee hive dept.

Meanwhile, one worker who has definitely completed her assigned task is our one remaining rabbit, Nugget. She has done such a good job keeping the grass short around the bee hives that she has barely a leaf left and so she has earned a free ranging winter. She is very sensible and hangs around the house and buildings and must be good at avoiding Mr Fox (touch wood) because she survived last winter when she escaped by mistake and took ages to recapture. This (free ranging) is good because apart from a chunk of carrot I give her at breakfast just to keep her tame and give me a chance to check on her health (and presence) each day, I do not need to worry about feeding her or keeping her drinker topped up. She also might help with the weeding in the veg patch though I doubt it - she's never down there!

Extreme hedging

Over the last few days we have been "enjoying" the sight of someone else working hard - a local farmer brutalising his hedges with an impressive weapon. No flail-mower for him smashing the small branches in that so familiar way, leaving them shredded and a pale eye-sore. No this machine is a big and very fast-spinning circular saw on an arm that can pivot into every possible position. It slices through big ash trunks up to 5-6 inches thick with a loud "Ker-ANGGGG" and a roar of hard working diesel engine.

A 365 pic of, I think, a chunk of bog-oak but I don't really
know what species of tree it is. 

They use these things on hedges which have got away and grown up into tall rows of ash and sycamore. They slice up the sides to remove width and then buzz through all the tops sending big trunks and branches sliding and toppling down - OK if they fall into the field but requiring some rapid work with a grab to clear them off the road. In fairness these are mainly ash which coppices very well, so the hedges only look brutalised (all be it neat and boxy) round to spring time when they quickly bounce back in a healthy display of small leaves and shoots.

Nice colours from lichen and heather in Cloonargid Bog. 

The hedges don't need doing yearly when you do them this way but I can't help thinking they'd be better done little and often. Perhaps the lads have their own 'to do' lists and a rake of possible displacement activities.

Free Range

Currently AWOL, our turkey hen, Barbara. 

Tonight, one of the downsides of fully free range poultry came and paid us a visit - that is the ability of hen birds (in this case the turkey, Barbara) to go and hide up to go broody under a hedge somewhere. You are lucky if you see them sneak off, and even luckier if you can follow them and discover their carefully hidden nest site. There is no bird-proof (or fox proof!) perimeter fence here, these are fully free range birds. They are here because they want to be - we obviously have the best food, housing and TLC around.

"Full House" from the geese - 4 eggs from 4 birds. 

Barbara had come into lay at the start of the month and produced 4 eggs that we had found - she scatters them all over the gaff - but had then stopped (as far as we knew). Then she started to go missing during the day and 3 days ago had us out searching all around the neighbouring fields looking for her quite dark and well camouflaged shape. To no avail, that time. We gave up and came back 'home' only for Barbara to suddenly re-appear in the yard mid afternoon. We had seen tracks in the mud just outside our NW corner but not enough to follow her.

Gooseberry

For 2 days she stayed put (again as far as we know - we don't watch them all 24/7) but tonight at lock up, she is AWOL. We have searched the fields again, but no sign, not even of follow-able fresh tracks. She may wander back in - I am patrolling round every hour to see if she has arrived back and is trying to get into the (now locked for the night) coops but that is not very hopeful by now - it's 9 p.m. and quite dark.

Chestnut "sticky bud"

We are looking at a 28 day period of incubation when she could easily be snatched by a fox or, by some huge miracle of good fortune, successfully hatch the chicks and then bring them the marathon hike back home. We can only wish the girl luck and pray that we see her again with or without babies. Her husband Tom seems oblivious of all this and struts around the 'farm' displaying at everyone and strutting his stuff as if it has not yet dawned on him that she is gone.

Early sunrise breakfast for the flock

Meanwhile, not all our baby birds are living so dangerously, nor our broody 'Mum'. The latter is the first of our 4 geese to tip over into broodiness. She's been very clingy to the (indoor, safe) nest the last few mornings, sitting tight till gone midday before "asking" to be let out to join the gang in the orchard. Then just today she sat there all day and got quite stroppy when I went in to gently offer her a bowl of grub. In previous years this has been the sure start to a broody session, with geese being 28-33 days at it. I think she is sitting on last night's 4 eggs. She may be joined by other geese and they may also try to drop more eggs into her nest. We have a rather confused time with our goose breeding as regular readers will know. This mainly because we don't actually WANT to breed geese, but our efforts to steal all the eggs as soon as they are laid do not work out 100% towards this time of year.

The ducklings get a first feel of grass and sunshine.

The little clutches of ducklings and chicks are now at the stage (just under 3 weeks old and part feathered) where they get little try-outs in the yard in rabbit runs when it is warm. They get to feel the grass under their feet and the sun on their backs. If our judgement or the weather forecast calls for it, they are rescued back up in the early evening for another night indoors.

The chicks

Both groups seem to be loving it. The ducklings in particular have become a loud and clamorous gang of demanding 'gannets' who peep-peep loudly for food as soon as either of us show our faces at the back door. The chickens do not want to be left out, so they kick off too, but 4 chicks cannot compete noise-wise with 6 ducklings. They are all getting a good mix of chick crumb, cooked rice and finely chopped veg peelings/grated carrot offcuts and they are all wolfing it down. Thriving, they are.

Electricity pole covered in ivy.

Finally, I am now pretty much through my archery beginner's course. It was going to be ten weeks at 1 hour a week, shared with up to 5 other students but regular readers will know I got lucky. Not only did I get one-to-one tuition but also some weeks we carried on after the hour into the 2nd hour of club time in that hall. The instructor would have been well within his rights to say, nope, you had your hour... now I am off to 'play' my own archery. So, 6 weeks in I have ticked all the boxes (literally) and my form has gone into the national club to win me my membership card and number (and insurance cover) and I have been measured up and assessed to see what size and draw-strength bow and arrows I need to be buying. 62 inch bow, 29 inch arrows and a 40 lb draw, for those who are interested. Off to t'internet then and Quicks Archery of Honiton (Devon) to select £315 (nearly €400) worth of shiny new equipment. That will help distract me from waiting for Barbara to return.

F.U.N.E.X?

Did you ever play that game as a child? You had to try to say things but only using the names of letters and numbers, so 'Have you any eggs' became FUNEX (Eff-you-en-ee-ecks) to which my chickens, lately would be struggling to reply anything other than "I.F.N.10.E.X (I haven't any eggs). I assume kids now have no problem with this as they seem to mangle the English language well enough with 'text-speak'  (L8R for 'later' and M8 for 'mate') and it's not that different. But enough of this Radio-4 style introduction and link.

Over a year ago I was chatting to one of the users on the poultry discussion forum I used to moderate, and she suggested recording your eggs as they were laid day by day, so that you could know your monthly and weekly production figures. It seemed like a good idea to me, so we started scratching down any eggs collected on the kitchen calendar. With the turning of the year, I've been able to add them all up and here is how we did.

There were some good spuds among the latest, very late, harvest

You can see that our best month for chickens was March (211 chicken eggs) and the year's total was 1366 eggs. These are a bit variable in size but basically 'large' and Free Range, but are not organic. In old money, 1366 eggs works out as 228 'half dozens' and these are currently in the supermarket we looked in as €3.09 for the 6, or €4 for 2 boxes. Even going with the cheaper price, this is €456 worth of eggs (€704 at the higher price!). It's a bit difficult to work out the input costs, especially as in our Mickey Mouse economics we tend to leave out labour, housing, initial cost of birds and lots of other costs you would need to include if you were doing this as a real business. We also buy the wheat, barley and layers pellets as a gross amount for the whole 'farm', and the egg-layers only get some of it, shared with the growing birds and, in Winter, the rabbits. Even so, feed cost us €294 for the year and shredded straw for bedding €40.65, so we think we 'did OK' and we are happy to continue. The girls will live to see another Spring-time.

More knitting.

Our best day, incidentally, was a 10-egg score which is not quite 100%; we had 11 hens at that time. We have yet to record a genuine 100%. We had a few days where we discovered hidden caches of eggs in the hedgerows and "scored" 16 or whatever, but we don't count those to that day - we spread them across the preceding days as best we can. The best week was 46 eggs (more like 59%) but we know that many hens only lay every other day or less frequently, so the bigger scores only appear when all the planets align for whatever reason. We know we could do much 'better' by pumping the inputs or messing with day-length and lighting but that's not what we are about.

Sparks's newest 'toy', this 8 seater, disabled-access taxi. 

The two geese managed a total of 92 eggs across the first 5 months before they both went broody. Min-the-Hin (our Guinea Fowl) scored 23 eggs on site plus the famous 16 egg clutch she laid in the hedge over the lane, which readers will know we rescued and incubated after the loss of her husband, Henry. One interesting aspect of these figures is that we have got into a strong annual rhythm now, with January 2015 already looking more like December 2014 than Jan 2014, so this winter drought is presumably something we will have to get used to. We think that perhaps the chickens in earlier winters were younger and coming into their first egg-laying season according to their age rather than the day-length. It remains to be seen how this spring goes, whether we peak in March again.

Red cabbage and sausage meat 'layer cake'.
The photo doesn't do it justice. 

On a completely different tack, one of the joys of the internet to us is the wealth of friends out there who are good cooks and who are happy to share recipes and advice with anyone who will listen. Liz was on an actual cookery discussion group the other day when someone threw in a request for suggestions of interesting ways to use up that left over sausage meat. There were plenty but one which caught Liz's eye was for a 'layer cake' of sausage meat and shredded red cabbage which you assemble like a lasagna and then bake for a couple of hours.

Clothes shopping - a rare treat!

Sausage meat and red cabbage are two ingredients we have no shortage of, so Liz decided to try it out very simply, with no extra flavours, no 'spicy', no other fruit or veg. nothing in the sausage meat but ground pork. It was nice enough like that but we both said that it would be a dish open to all manner of change and enhancement - both on the cabbage side (think spiced cabbage as for Christmas or the addition of other veg) and the meat ('posh' sausages, any kind of salsa or 'lasagna' type sauce or even different meats altogether). A world of possibilities.

Sparks Junior teaches Dad how you do Lego. 

Today saw us off on a rare adventure; clothes shopping! Other than replacement socks and knickers, we've not done a whole lot of that since being in Ireland but with a family wedding coming up (more on that soon) we have a good excuse for a bit of lavish retail therapy. Off to Roscommon Town, then and the respected 'Gentlemen's Outfitter', Donnellan & Co where we were well looked after and on to some boutiques to sort out Liz. We are very pleased with our day. On the way home a check point, and various Hi-Viz clad 'Guards' flagging us down and waving ominous 'bag and tube' equipment around. After the Christmas excesses we guessed it might be a drink-driving thing and I was looking forward to being able to spring from the car with my conscience and my blood stream completely clear, answering the Guard's "Have you had anything to drink in the last 24 hours, Sir?" with a resounding "No, Sir, I have not". Unfortunately these turned out to be Customs men and the bladder/tubes were only about checking to see if your diesel was legal, colourless. road DERV or dodgy red agricultural stuff. They quickly identified our little Fiat as being a petrol car and waved us through without even stopping. Ah well.

Day 84. A Good Day to Die?

Hubbard chickens at Day 83

For our Hubbard variety chickens, tomorrow is Day 84 from hatching. In the cut and thrust, hard nosed world of commercial free-range and/or organic meat production, this would be the target slaughter date; game over. Hubbards are the variety now widely used in Ireland for this type of system produced in commercial hatcheries (in this case one up by the Northern Ireland border) in their hundreds of thousands and sold to growers as day old chicks. They are then kept in conditions which pass (maybe only just) the minimum standards of welfare and feed to earn a 'Free Range' or 'Organic' certification to produce a big breasted, broad chested, heavy looking but still tender, oven-ready carcass. Even a small amount of research will tell you that 'Free Range' here does not quite mean happy chickens scratching in the sunny farmyard; these are still fairly intensive, crowded systems in which feeding is closely controlled and, although chickens must have 'access' to the run outside, they do not necessarily get out much.

Our 'Mini-Buffs'. 2 hens or one of each?

We got our birds on August 1st (as day olds), you will recall, mainly in order to give Broody Betty something to 'mother' when we took away 'her' ducklings. We took 8 of a batch collected by Anne and Simon from the hatchery, Anne kept a further 8 and the remaining birds went to a friend of Anne's. We had, therefore, the potential for a small scale simple comparison between the groups under our three different systems. We do complete free range (they can go where they like around the 2 and a half acres and beyond) and mixed with the other birds but have, as a result, limited control over diet. Anne does organic starting off indoors but then in a large pen, separate from her other birds so they have a lot less freedom to move but she can give them generous amounts of cooked rice and potato etc. At any given date they seemed to be a quarter to a third bigger and heavier than ours and feathered up much more slowly. The third batch are even more confined and we believe would be legally 'Free Range' but not organic and, says Anne, have put on a deal of weight even more than her birds and possibly been slaughtered by now.

Pure bred Buff Orpington cockerel and hen.

You can see from our first picture that ours look decidedly 'adolescent' and lanky rather than fat and wide-chested. Their legs look massive and out of proportion to their slim shape as if they have a lot of growing left to do. Just for the record we weighed some of them and got a weight range (live, obviously) of between 6 lb 3.25 oz (2.81 kg) and 7 lb and a quarter ounce (3.18 kg). We have decided not to slaughter any time soon. We will keep these as a living larder while they put on some more weight. Anne has warned me that because they are 'designed' (yoiks!) only to go the 84 days they may over run their 'tender' spec and become sinewy and tough, only fit for casseroles and coq-au-vin but that is not an issue for us - we LOVE a coq au vin! I know Anne is off weighing hers today or tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see how the little 'trial' went.

My 2nd and 3rd picture here are of the 8-Ball birds, now approaching 25 weeks and well into lay if they are of that persuasion. Our 'mini buffs' (some kind of bantam-y cross) turned out, we are sure, to be both hens. That is to say that we are both sure we have seen both of them being 'trodden' by roosters and I am fairly sure they are both laying eggs and neither has crowed. My uncertainty today is just seeing them both in this picture the bird on the right seems to have pink legs rather than yellow, maybe a bigger comb and wattles and a more upright tail? Doubts are creeping in!

The 2CV saga moves on one step. I managed to get my official form signed and stamped by a nice lady Guard in Castlerea Garda Station. Now I just need that mixture tweaked one last time by the boys in the garage for our real last, final, ultimate, tail-end, conclusive shot at the NCT emissions test. I have promised myself that this will be it. If it fails this time then I will take it off the road officially (on Statutory Off Road Notice (SORN)  and it can become an interesting garden feature till a better offer comes along. I may sell it. I may keep it till it is 30 years old and doesn't need an NCT. I will have run into the buffers, defeated by the system and fed up with having spent more on tests and re-tests than I have on the car.

The ex-Hastings fig cutting

A quick catch up on the gardening. This pic shows the current state of play on the ex-Hastings fig tree cutting. Grown in Faversham for a year or two in a half barrel, we decided to bring it over with us when we moved, so it was coppiced hard and root-washed. The remains lived with me at Pud Lady's in a fertilizer sack in her front garden till we moved. We planted it in the gravelly soil at the top of the front drive here but then it got driven over by a JCB laying drains. We thought we had lost it but Liz did some detective work using early photos and found it. It languished for a while, then just about managed to produce a few leaves where upon last years sheep browsed them all off and it went into winter as a bare, inch thick 'stick'. Again we were sure it was a goner. Spring came and no leaves emerged till way into June but then it suddenly put on a spurt of 3-4 small branches reaching the 18" or so you can see here. We will give it special protection through this winter. We dream of a bright future for this tree. May it do as well as it's parent which now fills most of the gap behind Pud Lady's garage and over-tops the roof gutters (OK it's a bungalow). I want to see it shading our terrace corner on the SE corner of the house, clearly visible as you come up the drive.

And finally, I know it has been a weird late season and I know these raspberries are Autumn Bliss, but I never expected to be starting to pick a decent crop on October the 22nd. They are not the sweetest raspberries, so maybe lacked sun, and they are very juicy (plenty of rain!) but I am hoping they will stay sound on the canes for just the next couple of days till Liz returns and can enjoy them with me.

Free Range Sheep

This blog is homing in on the landmark 30,000 visits since we started, with 29,054 as I go to post. Actually, we are now starting to find the "written by Deefer" thing a bit of a pain, so as we hit 30,000 we may just come clean and let Dad write it from Dad's viewpoint. We'll see. Please comment if you'd hate for this to happen.

Meanwhile as both Mum and Dad finish their holidays and the farm moves into Autumn mode (gathering winter fuel etc), the sheep are starting to get through the nice grass in their paddock and need extra ration if they are going to put on all that weight that's being asked of them. This was always going to happen and has been planned for. Grass we can do to beat the band and the front lawn has deliberately been left un-mowed. We had, in theory, only to train the sheep to love us and to come to the rattle of a feed bucket, and we could lead them out to the front lawn, watch over them for the hour or so it took for them to fill their bellies and raise their heads from the grazing, and lead them back again.

 And so it was. The sheep were quickly trained to the bucket and soon came stampeding across the paddock to get their sheep-nuts (some kind of extruded concentrated sheep food which is also, bizarrely, also delicious to kittens, dog and puppies. We will have to have a careful read of the label to see what's in it but anyway, we need a metal dustbin with lid to store it in!

It was Sunday 30th Sept when we first bit the bullet and tried this out. On the Saturday we'd had a visit from Steak Lady, Mr SL and Auntie Mary (The Nun) and we thought that might be one bit of confusion too many at once.

The sheep were brilliant. Dogs were confined to the house. Kittens were allowed out, being unlikely to chase or harrass sheep, and the chickens were out anyway. Dad opened the gate and Liz did the rattly bucket leading thing and the sheep trotted obediently round to the lawn, then put their heads down and ate, ate, ate, enjoying the long, lush, fresh, weekly-mowed since April, grass. After about 45 minutes they got full and started wandering but this seemed to be just to try out some bramble leaves or the herbs around the drive, a bit of ivy off a tree stump, or a curious look out through the gate. The rattling bucket was deployed and they chased Mum and Dad back to the field where they were shut in and everybody relaxed. There was one small hiatus when one found she could actually get back out UNDER the gate but she was quickly rounded up and the corrugated sheet replaced.

 And that is the way it's been every day since. The weather has conveniently played ball, giving us a dry sunny hour each morning to let them mow the lawn some more.

Dad has built them a rudimentary shelter out of the Roscommon squalls. In theory they are ruffty-tuffty animals who can survive the heavy rain and have good waterproof coats which they can shake the rain off, but we saw them standing in a downpour and they looked so miserable, Dad decided that a quick shelter made from our left over joists, corrugated from the collapsed hay barn and a one tonne builder bag wouldn't hurt

Mum and Dad are very much enjoying this sheep-minding and for Dad it has the delicious flavour of Kent/Sussex history. In those counties, especially in Romney Marsh, sheep were looked after by paid workers called 'lookers'  and these poor souls were given a pittance and a single room cottage called a 'lookers huts' as their base. Their job was called 'Lookering'. They didn't own the sheep, just watched over them on the bleak, featureless marshes. More recently, in the days of CB radio, Dad can recall being associated with one Sussex Farmer who had several hundred acres and many sheep down on the marsh. Each morning the 'lookers' (now properly paid farm workers living in proper houses) would go check their animals and 'report back' on the CB to all the other lookers simply by keying the microphone and saying "Baaaa!". To anyone listening in it just sounded like a load of blokes mucking about, but if you knew the voices you'd hear a variety of 'baaaa's and then one would say "Hmmmm, Ol' Fred's not about this morning, then" and someone would be off to double check he was OK and his sheep were all accounted for.

Mum knows how to 'looker'. Pink wellies on and feet up.

Deefs

Free Ranging

“Shhhhh!” whispered Dad on Wednesday (4^th July) morning, “It's doing it again! Early morning sunshine, I mean. It happened yesterday but I didn't like to say anything in case I frightened it”. Today then, is all about LAUNDRY and rattling about 6 loads of back-log through the poor aul' washing machine and via drying on the line in a lovely "breeze" (it's when warm dry air gently riffles your hangy up shirts and sheets, in case you've forgotten). Mum and Dad kept at this all day, patrolling the line impatiently, whipping down anything even vaguely dry and immediately putting something else up. By 5 pm when the clouds started gathering we had a zero pile of dirty and a MOUNTAIN of ironing but, not a bother, Mum assures me that Heaven is the Leveson Inquiry (Phone tapping and the conduct of the newspaper men) and a warm steam iron, so roll on Monday.

We had to have Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer) the Vet out to little Yorkie, Coco for a ticklish cough like he had a frog in his throat. Mum and Dad are still amazed by this lady's prices. The call-out visit, 2 injections, a major clean out of his manky ears while she was passing and some tablets only came to €20. Blimey! We loved our Kent vet to bits but you never used to escape visits to his clinic for much under £70. We invited her to stroll round the menagerie and she loved Rogers and the chooks; well, all our mini beasts really. Even me!

Dad did a batch of soda bread and measured up for the next three carpentering jobs - the car port, a log store and a wee housey for the gas cannisters just outside the kitchen window.

At half 7 and the sun was (shhhhh) still shining. We hope it is where you were.

On Thursday 5th we make good use of the unexpected sunshine, and throw caution to the wind with the Lovely Girls . It is, finally, a warm sunny dry day which has Mum and Dad both feeling the urge to garden but it's way too wet underfoot to get on the 'real' land, so they get the knee pads and kneelers out and take on the burgeoning forest of dandelions, cow-parsley, bramble and grass coming up through the gravel of the front 'terrace' (parts of which were created by spreading gravel over the pre-existing forest, which is never going to work as a weed control method. Some of these weeds were now tickling the backs of human thighs as they sat on the garden chairs! Several barrow loads of greenery later we have a neat, tidy seating area and a clean, swept, concrete apron in front of the house.

Meanwhile the Lovely Girls and Will' ze Conq' have almost annihilated the greenery in their run (as chickens do) and were going to need a bigger area but Mum and Dad were not sure how this'd work with we 2 terriers. In former lives they have had chickens and dogs happily inter-acting, ignoring one another and nobody getting eaten, but former dogs (Megan and Haggis) seemed to them a bit more chilled than us, Deefs and Coco, the current “feisty pair”. Ah well, they decided, we had to bite the bullet sooner or later. After lunch, we got our leads on and Dad got Mum to stand in the 'car-park' bit holding us while he pulled back to corrugated sheet at the gate. The chooks came straight out and having looked around unable to believe their luck, headed for Mum's kitchen garden.

Dad nipped back to where Mum was standing and held me while we watched for a few minutes. Mum and Dad realised that neither of us dogs was pulling to get at the birds so, a bit nervously, they loosed first one dog, then the 2nd. Nothing happened! I trotted past the chooks to go inspect the rabbits, Coco sat watching the birds with fascination.

And that, apart from a couple of quick charges at the birds by one dog or another, seemingly triggered by human 'attacks' trying to ward chooks off the new veg' seedlings in the raised beds, was how it went. We dogs seemed to enjoy one or two charges, sending squawking chooks scattering but then got bored. We are not 100% sure we are safe yet but it's better than we ever dreamed.

The Lovely Girls marshalled and protected by William the Conqueror had a good old explore for 2 hours or so while we supervised. They 'did' the kitchen garden first, and then down into the west field to visit the rabbits and back up through the car-park onto the front drive. They seemed to love the grubs in the spruce-needle litter under the huge trees. From there across the front lawn and then down the east side into the yard and back 'home' to the cattle race. 

A happy event. We now have properly free-ranging chickens!