The Owl Family Diary

Today is a milestone day!
It's long been a dream of mine to be able to produce 'craft' items for sale. Following yesterdays absolutely miserable weather I was able to spend time playing with fabric. The latest trend away from plastic carrier bags inspired my design, and all made from old curtains or dressmaking fabric:

I posted a picture on a forum - and I have my first order!
This is really exciting - a great lift on a very miserable summer weekend!

Well I now have 2 lovely eglus, one purple one green, plus 2 new chooks - Bertha (a pepperpot) and Beryl (a gingernut ranger). They are 2 years old, compared to my original 4 who are now about 1 year old. They are huge! And of course they are terrorising my 4 (bigger and older equals top chicken)

Here they are sat on top of the eglu run - surveying their new turf (the other 4 are hiding in the shrubbery somewhere, wondering what the heck's happened!)
But they are lovely girls, especially Bertha (now renamed Big Bertha the Black). She doesn't like to be caught, but when I do manage to grab her, she sits in my arms for ages and croons! Just a big softie really!

Well it's been a while since I updated this - got a bit frustrated with it as I can't upload anymore pictures! So bear with me while I either delete some to replace with new ones, or change blog hosts!

I've been hankering after another chicken or two for a while now. As a family of five, we can certainly get through eggs. The boys love them scrambled, poached, fried, omletted, caked ..... You name it they'll eat it! And I would like a few extra eggs to sell to at least keep the girls in feed. But realistically, short of being able to afford an eglu cube, I cannot put even one more hen into the eglu. There would possibly be enough space for her to sleep, but we already have queues for the nest box! Anyway, my problem has been solved thanks to Fiona who has to move house and cannot take her two chickens and eglu with her. I have offered to give them a home and that offer has been accepted! I am delighted of course! We go to collect them on 4th June - they are a gingernut ranger and a pepperpot called Beryl and Bertha.

So now I need to find space for another eglu - no problem. Just need to rearrange the garden again! (And I still need to warn my neighbours that there will be two more chooks to babysit when we go on holiday!)

My lovely new vegetable beds are gradually filling with seeds and seedlings. There is a sturdy piece of chicken wire around the perimeter to deter inquisitive chooks and children. I keep going out to check progress but nothing is happening! It's like waiting for Christmas!

What a day! OH and I managed to knock together some boards and create some rather nice raised beds, one deep one and two shallow ones.  Managed to fill 2 with compost, but I think I need some topsoil to mix in. Funnily enough there was some offered on Freecycle this evening, so I’ve put in the request. Just hope I get some now. Also need some more chicken wire otherwise the girls will be all over the beds in no time! They were very helpful with the digging at least, scratching around and eating all the bugs and slugs that were unearthed.

The finished work

I’m quite proud of the results!

Have been worried about Fizz, my lovely blue egg layer, the last few days. Caught her sleeping outside in the run a couple of mornings, once surrounded by belly feathers. I've also caught her on the nest box a few times, but no egg. Then today she just lay down in the run and didn't move at all. Also she hadn't laid for a few days.

So I brought her in the house and fed her some porrige with grapes and raisins - whereupon she nearly took my fingers off! No problems there then. Did a humongous poop in my laundry basket - quite normal.

Decided to go for warming the undercarriage in case she was brewing a softie, so dunked her in a sinkful of warm water for a while then gave her knickers a blow dry. She didn't mind this too much - sat still and shot me the odd evil eye every few minutes.

That done, popped her back in the run and locked her in whilst the others were free ranging. She disappeared into the eglu and sat on the roosting bars in a major sulk, then shuffled onto the nest box to sleep again. That's when I realised that, rather than having a stuck egg, she might actually be broody - in which case warming her undercarriage was maybe not such a good idea.

But she finally pulled her finger out and layed an egg a couple of hours later, jumped up and ran out to rejoin her friends as if nothing had happened. Little madam!

I've got a small plastic greenhouse thingy with loads of seeds in it - tommys, peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, radish etc. As it's been such a lovely day I left the front cover rolled up. Went into town to take James for his drum lesson and when i came home 2 hours later the wind had blown the whole thing over and I was left with a heap of plant pots, compost and mangled seedlings.  I could have cried! In the end I did manage to rescue the tomato and pepper seedlings. Also rescued some lettuces that were nearly big enough to start cutting (rinsed them and served them up with tea! ). Need to do a bit more work tomorrow tidying up and replanting my radishes and cucumbers. At least the hens enjoyed themselves digging through the spilled compost for juicy lettuce seedlings. So they'll all have the runs tomorrow. At least someone enjoyed eating them!

Well, had to spend a morning working today, love my work but not so much when the sun is shining! But finished at 1 so rushed home to spend the rest of the day playing in the garden.

Had a rummage through the shed and found swingball, so Dan (4) helped me set it up and we had a game (his first!) He spent more time ducking the ball than hitting it, but at least we both had a laugh!

James (15) has spent the day doing his geography coursework for GCSE. When he finished that he came for a game of swingball. Then we both got the giggles and couldn't hit the ball for laughing!

Dan helped me to plant some radish seeds and we checked everything else that we have growing so far - 3 lots of potatoes in bags; lettuce; tomatoes; peppers and curled parsley. Just waiting for some cucumbers to start sprouting as well.

The old chicken run area has now been cleared and the chooks are on their new run area. They seem to like it there - it's in the shade under a cherry tree, on bark chips that merge with the adjacent flower border. At one point I caught them all lying down under a shady hebe having a siesta! I need to get on with converting the old run area into my new veggie garden now. 

The girls enjoying their new run area, and the new run complete with bargain log roll.

Now it's CSI time and off to bed!

So this is my first attempt at anything like this. It's easy to think of things to write until you actually have to type it in! So, a bit about us. The Owl family consists of Mum (me) and Dad, three sons, one dog and four chickens. This will be our diary, probably very boring, but hey, as long as it's fun to write, who cares?

So, where are we up to?
Great weekend. Done loads of gardening; cooked a roast for Sunday lunch so Daddy Owl very happy - got my own back by making him dig later though . Chickens now have a new bark chipped run in the garden. I am delighted as I got the log roll for a bargain price from the local garden centre - £1 per metre. And where the chickens used to be will hopefully become my new veggie patch. Home grown veg here we come! But now I ache all over and need to go to bed - work tomorrow.