Brand New Chickens!

Wow, the chicken auction was crazy! full of hundreds of people, some who knew exactly what they were after and who could assess the hen's for their health and fecundity in one glance, and others who pointed and said 'ooh that's a pretty one'.

Unsurprisingly, we fell into the latter category, and chose our hens mostly because they looked cute and colour coordinated with each other.

We chose a lovely Lavender Orpington (Mildred) who is a gorgeous lavender grey colour (very Farrow and Ball), and a Cream Legbar (Betsy) because they lay blue eggs (I know!) and a pair of Partridge Brahma's (Mr Cock and Audrey), because every man needs a massive cock (so the boy tells me!) and this one is particularly impressive!

Above: Mr Cock looking mighty fine in his new home!

Outside the chicken house I painted myself linky here!

Above: Mr Cock and his brood -Audrey, Betsy and Mildred (l to r)

Above: Betsy, Audrey and Mildred's backside!

Already we have had 4 eggs (although one was trodden on in the excitement), and although I knew I was going to enjoy having them, I never realised how quickly I would become attached to them!

Betsy is the youngest and smallest, and was at first a little hen pecked by Audrey, but Mildred won't let her be bullied and stands up to Audrey on Betsy's behalf (I love a chicken with good moral values), and now things seem much more harmonious.

Mildred makes a great commotion for about 30 minute before she lays an egg, whereas both Audrey and Mr Cock both go crazy after Audrey lays an egg.

I am now really concerned that some sly fox will come accross them and get through the chicken wire - I had no idea they could do that, and so my next task will be to buy some heavier gauge wire mesh and try to make it all more secure - any advice on how to do this will be greatly received.

I also picked up a gorgeous vintage wire egg basket at the auction, and will be sprucing it up very soon with pictures to follow.

Right off to make an omlette! ;)

Framing Vintage Wallpaper

Forget vintage, antique most probably....

So we are moving the fake beam covers from the real beams (crazy I know, but another quirk of the previous owners taste), and generally re-vamping the littlest bedroom, and suddenly, from some dark corner of the room, hidden behind a panel that had been in situ for perhaps one hundred years, we spy a little fragment of colour:

Above: The wallpaper in situ, as we found it behind an old panel.

The style, and the age of the wallpaper immediatey gets me in an excited tiz and so the boy carefully extracts the rest of the strip as carefully as possible.

With a hessian back I'm guessing this is pretty old, and I LOVE IT!

Funny how tastes turn full circle!

So I brought a large white frame to display the wallpaper, and it is currently the centre piece over the fireplace in the snug. 

Above: The wallpaper fragment has pride of place on the mantel in the snug.

I love the fact that it is from the house - it feels like a present, and we get to preserve a little moment of the property's history. :)

My little secrets:
Frame fragments of wallpaper from your house - the weirder the better! Create a collage and they will great, and represent your house's past style (no matter how unlikely you would be to choose them yourself!).
Frame: Approx £10 from The Range
Ickle Teddy bear - Steiff (a much treasured gift).

Planting the fruit cage

So we went to a plant auction at the weekend - expensive move!

However we are now the proud owners of 12 raspberry canes, 3 redcurrant bushes, 1 gooseberry bush, 2 tayberry plants, 2 blueberry plants, an apricot tree and a cherry tree - phew!

Bidding on them was fun, planting them all was hard work! However, the lovely boy and I managed to do the lot and put up the new polytunnel too!

(The fruit cage is yet to be purchased, I have seen a nice big one online, and so made the fruit bed the same size as the fruit cage just in anticipation that the bushes will grow big and be fruitful and need to be protected! ;)

Here is the rather lovely new polytunnel (which was a massive bargain!)

and here is the fruit bed/cage (when it arrives!) planted with all the lovely fruit bushes.

Fingers crossed for some lovely fruity treats this summer!

My little secrets:
Polytunnel: only £35 from eBay!
Fruit area, planted with weed barrier membrane covering the area - hoping this will make it much easier to maintain!

My very own Vegetable patch/ plot of heaven ;)

Well it is kind of obligatory, you have a house in the country you have to grow veggies... But more that this, I have been wanting a proper vegetable patch for as long as I can remember.

When I lived in smaller houses with tiny gardens I would grow them in amongst the flowerbeds, the tomatoes dwarfed the other plants and the sweetcorn - well that just looked ridiculous, so to have a dedicated patch to play with, tend, grow and experiment in really is my idea of heaven!

19 sleepers, 4 tonnes of soil and lots of sweat, blisters and a hot bath later, we created this:

 Above: taken first thing in the morning there is even a little frost on our lovely veggie patch!

My little secrets:

4 tonnes of soil: Have a very fit and lovely boy to shovel and move it all ;)

19 sleepers: Same as above!

Fixings: Fix the sleepers together with nail plates and long decking screws (Screwfix - good for next day delivery!) 

Sourcing these items: google search lots of places, don't dismiss those that are far away as they sometimes have local distribution points. Ask for a discount - it worked for me!