Eggs and Bread

One of my rambling catch up posts today. First up, we are now well into egg production and we have at least 3 chickens 'on line' as evidenced by the fact that we can collect 3 eggs from the nest boxes (at last! No more laying eggs in muddy puddles!) each day and have started to build up a bit of an excess which Mum and Dad will be pleased to give away to visitors and to people we visit. These eggs can be a bit variable in size while the Lovely Girls are still a bit new to it, and we have also had the occasional double-yolker.

 In the process of finishing unpacking the cardboard boxes of "stuff" from the Tígín we came across two items with nice memories attached and which we are now happy to have here in Ireland. One is Dad's engraved pewter tankard presented to him by the Faversham Horticultural Society as a Thank for 10 years of being Treasurer. This has now been Christened with a couple of cans of nice cold, post mowing-the-lawn, hot day, Guinness.

 The other was a small clay house which Mum got from one of the children for whom she used to babysit. This is also a tea-light style candle holder although it's not wise to use it as such because it has no 'chimney' to allow the heat out from the candle flame. The family are great friends of ours. Mum babysat this particular potter's elder bro' and sis' and patted the pregnant bump of their Mum (Teresa M) when she was carrying this one (R). R was about 12 when she made this 'pot' and is now fully grown and a mother herself. We love that this 'pot' so nearly resembles the Tígín we have ended up with, so it has elements of prescience and romantic "See! It was meant to be!" about it

 Finally, pinned down indoors by the rain on the Diamond Jubilee week, Dad decided to re-acquaint with bread making. Dad prefers this done 'properly' without the aid of a bread maker, with all the kneading and rising that this involves. Mum was therefore dispatched with 'bread flour' and yeast added to the bottom of a shopping list and we have been quite pleased with the results so far. He tends to make bread rolls and plait loaves and has only so far tried plain white, not yet got back into the granary and wholemeal but no doubt these will come as he gets into it.

Deefs

Bunnies and Eggs

In the middle of last week, one of the "Lovely Girls" obliged us with a first egg. Being young birds and new to the egg laying game, the Girls are doing what you'd expect, which is laying infrequently (maybe every other day or every 3rd day), laying rather small eggs (they are about "medium" in terms of commercial shop-bought egg sizes) and not laying them in Dad's nice, warm, dry, cosy, nest boxes. By now, the 6th of June, we have, we think, 3 birds 'on line', so that we have now had a 3-egg day, with two laid in one of the feed mangers (where there is, to be fair, some hay so that it looks a bit like a nest box) but at least one of the numpties insists on dropping her precious cargo in a muddy puddle or the wet grass out in the run in the pouring rain.

We have been told that you can train hens to lay in the right place by keeping them indoors till lunchtime and by leaving an old golf ball in each nest box to give them the idea, but we have also been told that they eventually sort themselves out. Because the puddle-nester lays rather late in the afternoon, we cannot really leave them indoors till 4pm, so we are going with the 'sort themselves out' option but we may invest in some golf balls. Meanwhile, Mum and Dad assure me that the eggs are delicious and fresh with lovely firm whites and deep yellow yolks.

It is hard for 2 people to eat 5 eggs a day, so we will almost certainly be trying to give them away to visitors, people we visit, passing neighbours and any old waif and stray we can persuade to take them!

 Did I mention that we had inherited a couple of female bunnies? These guys are a grey and white sticky-up eared lady known as Ginny and a black and white lop eared dame called Padfoot. Formerly owned by J-M Silverwood, they have been re-homed to us to make space for Lily's pups and, if the truth were known, because J-M had kinda run out of steam on the "I will clean them out, feed them, water them" thing as do many pre-teenagers. Also, Padfoot had had an unfortunate scrape at the hands of boy-dog Maxwell when he escaped the decking where he was meant to be stretching his legs and thought he'd broaden his horizons into the dog-run outside the decking balustrade.  Anyway, the thoughts of all are that it will do Ginny and Padfoot the power of good to come and live here where they can run on real grass and keep the lawn short. Dad has built them a move-able run 16 feet square, which Mum and Dad can drag to a new site every now and then to keep the lawn-mowing thing active.

I love it, of course as they are a whole new potential prey animal to play with but Mrs S keeps coming up on Facebook with threatening comments like "I'm watching you, Deefer!" and "Grrrrrrrrr". Honestly, if they'd only let me play with one. I'd not break it! I am having hours of fun running round the outside of the run trying to get at them, and sitting watching them romp in the sun, waiting for one to accidentally leap the 4 foot fence.

A girl can dream.
Deefs

These are not just eggs

These are not just eggs. These are Sandra's allotment chicken, free range, organic eggs. This is not just a westie. This is a westie whose cheeks have been treated (the day after she was shampoo'd) with Thames Sailing-Barge sail dressing, a noxious mixture of fish oil, linseed, red ochre and usually something like horse-piss. A sailing barge keeps her sails up in the rig all year. They are never taken off the masts and stowed in a nice dry sail locker, so they are treated each year to preserve them from a year's worth of sea and salt and sun and rot, with this sloppy, oily mixture.

But they are beeeeeg. The SB Cambria had 5000 square feet of sails. So they guys spread them out on the quay side and paint the ick on with sweeping brooms. They go right to the edges and , inevitably, slop some on the surrounding grass and dirt. This is very attractive to westies, who can get a quick slither in on their cheek and chest before their Dad susses out what they are at.

Deefer 1, shampooers nil!

Deefski