Pre-autumn activity
Technically we are still having late summer (season of eels *), but we’ll optimistically call it early autumn. We haven’t had any real rain yet – literally just a [...]
Permaculture
C is for Corn and Cucumber
This season we just seem stuck in A, B, C. I mean you can still call a capsicum a pepper, a courgette a baby marrow – oops, that doesn’t help much; I mean a zucchini – [...]
Fowl maths
I was really intrigued by an image I saw recently that stated a “free-range” chicken needs at least 2sq feet, while a “pasture-raised” hen needs more than 108sq feet [...]
Efficiency vs Regeneration
It is very noble to drive for sustainability, using permaculture approaches to work with nature and growing as much of your organic food as you can. It’s fun, healthy and [...]
RIP Millie
In a previous post I mentioned we had 4½ Light Sussex chooks… Unfortunately now we only have 4. So what did half a chicken look like? And what happened to it? This is [...]
Morning chicken routine
Every now and then, when it is still early morning, I will go out and softly make my way to the chicken coop. It is not yet fully light but the chickens are all awake, [...]
H is for honey
OK this isn’t about a full-on harvest as such. But it’s a bit like picking those first five apricots off a young tree. It’s a bit of a celebration. Especially if it’s [...]
Freedom!
Saturday was coldish (for summer anyway), very windy and not the most pleasant day to be out and about. But at Dreamland it was Freedom day! For the ducks, and most of [...]
Under-planting a patch
We’ve been spending a lot of time, effort and also money getting everything right for how we want to operate the ducks and chickens. In fact, apart from switching on (and [...]
Amalgamating the tribes
I have no idea why these seemingly “political terms” keep cropping up as headings for my chook-related posts, as chickens are typically not the most politically correct [...]