Over the last week Vonnie had been involved with a battery hen ‘rescue’ that involved getting 1500 battery hens from a farm in the south of England and distributing them all over the country. We were supposed to be getting 170 of the hens yesterday morning for distribution around Scotland but due to a variety of reasons the Scottish leg of the rescue was called off at the last minute. Hopefully the next rescue will get some birds up our waybut it got me thinking.

In England from what I’ve read the Battery Hen Welfare Trust buys hens from the farmers for around 35-40p per hen usually and passes them on to chicken keepers all over for the cost of £1 per chicken which goes towards care, food and petrol costs. They seem to have no problems finding homes for all these chickens as at very short notice they rehome thousands of birds with great success. In Scotland though there is a waiting list of 1500 people waiting to help out. Farmers just don’t want to sell their chickens to them. Then the Lanark auction came up last week and a good 30-40% of the poultry there were ex-battery hens. I’m caught in two minds about this. Yes it means they get a new home but with auction prices rising it also means the farmers are doing it for a quick buck. I know they have to find cash where ever they can these days but it’s the sudden increase in back garden chicken keeping they are taking advantage of. On one hand they are still selling them on to be looked after but they are doing so at much higher prices than before.

Well the chance to move to the North of Scotland fell through so the thought of using the garden as not just a place to store my potato plants has came flooding back.

photo credit: southgeist

Between our front garden basically being a moss bed and our back garden being a sodden lump of clay we have our work cut out for us. I’ve always known the front garden, under the living room window at least, was very shallow. I had a great deal of trouble planting the roses last summer as I just couldn’t find anywhere that didn’t have hardcore or concrete less than 6 inches under the surface. With this in mind I set about building a raised flower bed under the window to give the plants something to grow into. I think it’s not bad but it could have been built far stronger if I’d thought about it more. For instance the top soil is pushing the frame out from the wall as I only built 3 sides to it and didn’t anchor the corner pegs in well enough. It seems to have settled down now though and after a friday night of planting bedding plants at 10pm with my wife it looks not bad. Now we just have to hope the grass seed we sowed comes through OK and helps cover up the mess that was made. Thats one tonne of topsoil used up and 2 more to go. I’ll get those bags moved from the side of my house one of these days. Vonnie also tried to plant our cherry tree thats been languishing on our patio since last summer. Every place we come up with to plant it ends up having problems. We have a corner of our garden that the kids use as a short cut all the time and that has worn away the grass over the years and we hoped that by planting the tree they’d stop cutting that corner but as we found out the shallow topsoil covers our whole garden and not just under the window.

In the back garden we chopped down the rest of the hedge and hired a chipper so that we could use the waste on the chicken run floor as well as a mulch for the rest of the garden. We were expecting a small almost useless shredder for the price we were paying but as the hire company had got a new model in they gave us that for the same price. For an electric shredder it was a beast and my hands and arms are covered in small cuts from the branches as it ate them up. That will teach me not to wear gardening gloves and long sleeves! We were caught out with the weekend hire though and so only managed two thirds of the hedge but we plan on burning the rest over the coming week.

On Saturday we decided to build up the kids swing set which had been hidden in our loft for the last 18 months. Everything was going fine until we had all the sections laid out and had started building it. The rain started. Then the thunder came. I’m not sure just how safe building a metal frame in my garden which backs on to an electrical substation during the thunder storm is. Needless to say I panicked a bit when the first flash of lightning came.

My cucumber and tomato plants are are coming on well but unfortunately the fw that I managed to plant outside really didn’t like the weather last week and didn’t make it. My pepper and chilli plants are coming along now although they are still very slow in growing. As for the potatoes, I only planted 4 tubs as I ran out of containers but they are growing like wildfire. I’m having trouble giving them enough water I think as they just soak it up.

Our chicks are now coming up on three weeks old and we’re starting to wonder about the sex of each chick. Unfortunately none of our chicks are auto-sexing so we’re having to do it the hard way. Between checking the wing feathers and waiting for their colours to appear we think we’ve finally managed to nail one of them.

Faverolles grow different coloured feathers depending on their sex but without photos to compare to it can be a bit tricky to say for sure. The best description we’ve had so far to separate them is that cockerels have black feathers on their wings and pullets have biscuit coloured feathers. As you can see from the photograph it certainly looks like a female to me.

That leaves us with the Silkie to sex and both the Peking Bantams. I’m reliably informed that to sex a Silkie means to wait until it either crows or lays an egg. That will be fun. I’m also informed that by three weeks the Peking’s combs would be very evident if they were cockerels which they aren’t at the moment so fingers crossed it stays that way! I’m not entirely convinced by how accurate that would be at his stage though but only time will tell.

If I was to tell you just exactly what my hard work in the garden over this last week has produced you wouldn’t believe me. Well anyone that knows me might now that I think about it.

photo credit: clara & james

My plans for the vegetable patch have completely fallen through. An opportunity has popped up for my wife that should it pan out we would be relocating 200 miles before the end of the summer. With that in mind and after some ideas were thrown at me at the self-sufficientish forum I’ve decided to keep everything in tubs and pots for now. Far more easily movable and it means I can try and make the garden look like a nicer place in order to try and sell the house. I’ve managed to get a few pots of potatoes planted on the patio and the garlic that was planted was looking good as well. Not quite sure what to do about the onions and lettuces though as I don’t know just how big a pot they need to grow well. The tomato and cucumber seedlings are flourishing and as per usual I’m stuck with huge amounts of healthy seedlings that I have no real use for. The bell and jalapeño pepper seeds have finally started to sprout so I’m really happy about that although I’m now wondering just how they’ll survive outside of the propagator. We now have 75% of our hedge chopped right back and once again I’m left with a garden full of branches that I can’t compost and no local tool hire place will hire out chippers for non-commercial use any more. That will be another 2-3 days worth of tying branches up into 6′ bundles and hoping the local council will be nice enough to pick them up for us then.

Our chickens are not paying for their keep yet. No eggs although we are sure Bunty is laying them somewhere in the garden. We just can’t find where. We’ll here a squawk and when we go looking we’ll find her running about with Mac as if nothing happened and no sign of an egg. Could be anywhere in our garden right enough. We had some sad news the other night with regards our chicks. One of the silkies had splayed legs and despite splinting them one leg refused to strengthen up and was effectively lame. it wasn’t eating well and was getting bullied by the other chicks so there was no real chance of it making it much further. We’ll leave out what happened but after putting it to sleep we now have only four chicks left. We do now have 6 runner duck eggs in the incubator so I’m expecting the garden to completely go to pieces over the next few months!

I think I’m quite glad I haven’t spent any time in the garden these last two weekends. I got talking to one of our neighbours this morning on the way to work and he was saying that the recent frosts have basically killed off most of the vegetables and flowers he has spent this last month planting.

photo credit: Bill in Ash Vegas

I didn’t think it was that bad to be honest until I went out to let the hens out yesterday morning and mud underfoot had completely frozen solid. Our car windscreen was completely frozen up as well now that I think of it.

Managed to track down some seed potatoes yesterday so I’ll get them planted over the weekend as well as some onions. Of all the vegetables we’re planting this year these two are the ones I’m hoping work out well. They are the top two vegetables we eat, closely followed by peppers. And talking of peppers the seeds still haven’t germinated yet so I think wrapping the propagator in some bubble wrap and moving it somewhere warmer is the order of the day.

I’ve always been someone that loved the idea of renewable energy and long for a time where that is all we use. But as time goes on there seems to be more and more problems with them and it’s not really to do with the technology but how its implemented.

photo credit: Ross_Goodman

Take for example the wind turbine farm being built next to my home town on the Eaglesham Moors.

Going on the reports that have made the newspapers the farm is going to be the biggest in Europe. That accolade was claimed at the planning stage so I’m not sure if it can still lay claim to it. There were many fears over the impact it would have on both the local animals as well as Glasgow Airport as the farm falls under their flight path. There were also many fears that the farm would have a large impact on the migratory birds in the area.

For years, as far back as 1984 I believe, the towns skyline has seen 2 wind turbines on the south western horizon. And now they are building a further 140 turbines! I can only applaud the government, for once, for going ahead with such a scheme but the infrastructure involved in building these places never gets thought of. I used to cycle up to those hills during the summer and I know for a fact you would have struggled to get a car up to the top of some of those hills and now they’ve built the roads needed to drive the turbines right up to each site as well as get all the cement and other materials needed for the huge foundations each turbine needs. Whilst they haven’t decimated the area they have certainly destroyed a lot of the natural habitat! Everywhere I go and find wind farms it’s always the same story. They rape the land they build them on and whilst carbon emission reduction is a worthy aim there has to be some way for the ecological footprint to be reduced as well?

In saying that we have thought about getting a turbine to help power our home. Last summer it would have set us back £1,600 to get a turbine that covered a small percentage of our monthly electrical bill. Adding that up over the 10 year life span of the turbine and there would be no monetary saving at all and without that ‘carrot’ £1,600 is just too high a price to pay for your Average Joe. If the price comes down or the efficiency goes up or, and I know this is a long shot, the government subsidises them then I may be able to have one installed. Until then I’ll just need to be happy with the knowledge that at least the power going onto the grid to power East Kilbride will be 100% renewable.

I’m starting to get excited about the vegetables this year. Last year’s crop suffered because the only place we could grow anything was on the kitchen window ledge which just fitted 3 tomato plants and no more. I’ve got my cucumbers and cherry tomatoes to rehome as they are growing like mad in the propagator. Still waiting for the larger tomatoes and the peppers to break the surface yet though.

photo credit: aimaz

Gardeners World on the BBC are doing an allotment challenge this year where Joe Swift is trying to provide for his families vegetable needs by the end of the year. I don’t normally find Gardeners World that interesting as when I do what that kind of program I usually end up watching The Beechgrove Garden instead but this has just got me more excited for the months to come. That’s quite sad isn’t it?