My kindling cutting “helpers”

Posted by louisa on Sunday 2 October 2011 in chickens, wood stuff | 3 comments

I had some company while cutting the kindling this morning.

Lily was taste-testing each stick as it came off the axe.

“Mmm, bit of a woody flavour.”

And a few minutes later, after Lily had gone into a sulk because she’d heard the fake camera click of my phone (she HATES all cameras for some reason), Lime the chicken came to see what was going on too — the first time she, or any of the chickens, have visited the top level of the garden, which is three flights of stairs away from the chicken coop/run.

She watched me chopping some kindling for a bit but she was more interested in John cutting wood in the woodstore though and spent ages stood behind him, head cocked to one side and making the occasional clucking noise, as he sawed up some logs. She seemed to have no interest in any of the many edibles on that level, just wondering what us crazy humans were up to. :)

(Appalling camera phone pics, sorry for the quality.)

Sunday morning chores

Posted by louisa on Sunday 11 September 2011 in chickens | 5 comments

(Blogging the little things to help inspire meh-me to doing both the little and big things!)

I’ve felt the same start of autumn/winter’s a-coming feeling that many of my favourite bloggers have touched on recently.

After the great red mite infestation of 2011, our chickens spent most of the summer sleeping outside – they clearly slept in the coop occasionally when it was raining or whatever but they got a taste for outdoor (presumably cooler) snoozing and since they were safe in the run, I got over my initial panic about it. I’ve been keeping an eye on the coop (for red mites and to make sure nothing else was afoot) but not had to clean it out as much. Now it’s getting darker/chillier/wetter though, they’ve moved back inside which means a return to Sunday morning poop-scooping for me. (With a good layer of wood shavings on the floor, it only needs cleaning out once a week at the moment but will need a mid-week freshener in the winter, when the nights are longer and they’re in the coop more than out.)

The chickens do like seeing what I’m doing to their house:

Except for Blue and the ever cheeky Lime who knew they could escape through the open nest box door to play out in the garden. Blue has been on a bit of a mission of late – whenever I leave open the chicken chest, she jumps onto the rim to look around. I think she knows the motherlode – the open 20kg bag of treat seed – is in there but can’t work out how to get down into it.

(Btw, the chicken chest – an old metal chest, about 3ft high by 3ft wide and about 1.5ft deep, has been one of my best purchases for the garden. It was £10 secondhand on eBay, picked up from just the other side of Bradford and it holds our bale of wood shavings, our nest box straw, the treat seed and sometimes a spare bag of layers pellets – all water-tight and pest-free. It looks rusty – one day I’ll paint it – but is very solid. The metal also gets pleasantly warm (but not hot) in the sun so the cats like sunbathing on the top of it. Win for everyone.)

Last winter, after my poop-scooping, my next job was always to fill up the kindling baskets in the living room & office so I did that today as well – we’ve used the stoves in both rooms over the last few weeks and used up the last dregs of last year’s supplies.

I also started to replenish the dustbin of kindling-size bits in the woodstore (it’s now a third full) so we’ve got some surplus if needed – if it’s too cold to work out there or if future Louisa can’t be bothered. I would have cut some logs as well if there hadn’t been an old sauna bench on the sawhorse (a lame excuse I know but an original one, yes?).

As chore-like as poop-scooping and kindling cutting are, I do quite enjoy them – fresh air, fun chickens and axes, what’s not to like? ;)

On my mind – unusual spaces, seeds & no kindling

Posted by louisa on Thursday 17 February 2011 in growing | 8 comments

Rhonda on Down To Earth has a weekly “on my mind” photo feature – an illustration about what we’re all thinking about today. She’s been thinking about handmade, handstitched linens today, I’ve been thinking about …

strange spaces in the garden, epitomised by this ledge behind the greenhouse. I want to increase the amount of things we grow in the garden, which means using all our space as efficiently as possible. This space is small but gets good sun – I could put herb pots on there or make a trough/window box to fit there instead. It wouldn’t be very accessible for picking things from it in the summer though – but I’d like some flowers in the garden to attract bees so maybe this is a good place for them.

I’ve been thinking about this today because this box is praying on my mind –

It’s sorted in planting order but I haven’t decided where everything is going yet or started preparing the beds…

Away from growing, I’ve also been thinking about our empty kindling boxes.

It’s my job to keep them filled them up but I’ve been slack of late… Must make time to refill them tomorrow!