Sourdough disaster

I spent two days lovingly kneading, proving, re-kneading and caring for my first attempt at sourdough bread and all looked well until they were shaped into loaves and left to prove for the last time:



Disaster!!

 I scooped up the gloopy mess and threw it into some loaf tins, which seemed to do the trick. The resulting loaves are quite tasty, if a little crunchy. Will probably make good breadcrumbs if nothing else :) And the chickens like it too.



Must replace the breadmaker I think. Lazy perhaps, but at least they will be cooked properly. I don't have the time or the will to spend two days making bread again...

Neglect

I am guilty of complete neglect - not of the garden or chickens, but of this blog. Life just gets in the way of the things I would like to spend more time on!

Lots has happened in and around the veg garden and with our flock - I will attempt to remember some of the highlights and write about those at a later date...

In the meantime, we have a bad case of bullying and I suspect our Speckledy is the ringleader. We had to move one of our last ex-bats to the Chicken Hospital whilst her cuts and scabs heal. We do let her out every day for exercise (they go off their legs very easily if confined), and this is what I saw from the back door yesterday:

She was coming to pay me a visit :) 

I would have let her into the kitchen but Meg, our Greyhound, gets very nervous when the hens look at her 'the wrong way', so I left Ginge outside and she happily scratched and pecked away for ages, until Hubby found her in the alpine garden. Back to the Chicken Hospital she went.

We will try to reintroduce her back to the flock when she is a little stronger.

Completely homegrown meals

Our favourite kind!



Before



After - Veg Fritata - yum!

Will be even better when we start rearing our own pork  =D

Beans! (or lack of)

I only managed to gather six runners and five french beans from the garden yesterday for our evening meal. At this rate we will never be self sufficient!

=D

No chirpy cheep-cheeps for us

We recently bought some fertile eggs for Blue, our Maran whose favourite pastime, it seems, is being broody. She hatched some lovely chicks last year, and was determined to starve herself recently until we relented and got her some more eggs. Only one problem – she abandoned them after five days, whilst we were on holiday. Our lovely chicken sitting neighbour replaced Blue with a broody hen of her own, and we hoped for the best.


Around Day 18 we found a broken egg which Mama Hen had pushed out of the nest. The chick had formed but there were no signs of life. We continued to let her sit on the remaining eggs but Day 21 emerged and passed without any muffled cheeping sounds from under Mother’s plumage. Devastated. Although probably not as devastated as the poor broody who has been dutifully sitting for all this time.


And to rub salt into the wound, after a couple of weeks Blue became broody again! Bad hen!

Blue on her eggs

Apparently I've been upsetting my worms

I am an obsessive composter and have been for several years. We currently have four bins on the go and I would happily have more, space allowing.

Last weekend I met a composter even more obsessive than me, which I thought was impossible... He runs an Allotment Group and is the President of a local Leek Society (!!!) and so very experienced and qualified to teach me a thing or two. He even goes go to the trouble of collecting seaweed and sheep poo for his bins and makes usable compost within one month.

So we chatted about the contents of our bins, as you do, and apparently my worms have been trying to escape their bins because I've been adding onion peel. Poor buggers! There I was thinking I was feeding them lots of lovely stuff, and I'm poisoning them :(

Gutted.

I'm so sorry wormsies! Only good stuff from now, I promise.

Happy Easter from Bertie

We received an email from Christine, the lady who gave our Light Sussex boy a new home. She sent us some Easter pics of Bertie with his ladies.

I'm so chuffed, he's turned into a very handsome boy.

Here's another pic of him crowing, but Christine reckons he looks like he's smiling ;D