Happy Easter!

Well what a sight to wake up to on Easter Sunday! It was trying hard to snow all day yesterday, and we did have a few flurries, but I didn't expect it to stick like this! The children can't wait to walk to church in it!

The poor chickens were in darkness as the snow had covered their run roof. So I let them out - normally they race out, but they look a bit bewildered today don't they?

Sunny gardening weather ... and a giant egg!

How lovely to get out in the garden again! Cool but sunny and dry, just the right weather for planting some seeds and cleaning out the hen house. Matthew helped. We planted parsnips, carrots, tomatos and salad leaves. And we noticed that the cauliflower and french beans we planted in the greenhouse last month are sprouting!

As soon as I started on the cube, the girls wanted to be let out, and they kept on chuntering at me until I gave in. They had a lovely time digging and dustbathing. Two of them even managed to break into the veg garden. So they had to go back in then. They then spent the next hour or so just dozing in their run. Here is Florrie trying to hide, but her bum's too big.

That earthquake certainly scared me, but look what it did to poor Little Bo! She laid this whopping 89g egg! Here it is next to Florries normal contribution - the equivalent of a supermarket 'large' egg.

Matthew had it for his tea - a yummy fried double yolker!

Racing Chickens

OK, so I'm not very good at keeping this blog lark up to date! But here, hopefully, is a video of how to tame chickens:

Happy Christmas!

Not much posting going on in the run up to Christmas! Preparing Christmas for the family combined with extra work, both the paid kind and that involved with being a church secretary, leaves very little time for much else! But all the urgent stuff is done now and I can take a breather before it all starts again in January!

We've had a quiet family christmas, just us for christmas lunch and the grandparents on boxing day. Good job really as the house looks like a bomb site :-)

Managed to make the most of the few nice bits of weather we've had and got out for a walk across the fields. Lovely blue sky, a hard frost on the ground and steam rising off the fields.

The chickens are thriving. Everyone is now laying - Bambi the cream legbar hybrid started laying lovely blue eggs. And Rosie the araucana hybrid - is laying beige eggs! Oh well, they did say there was an 80% chance of them being blue layers. Beryl and Bertha have all their feathers back again and have also started laying again, so nearly up to full production - lots of eggs to eat again!

Ruby Tuesday sings the Blues!

Ruby Tuesday


Whole Lotta Rosie
Finally - yesterday morning I found a blue egg in the nest box. At first I though it was Rosie's as she was sitting in the cube. But this morning I caught Ruby actually on the nest. Two lovely 50g, bluey-green eggs!What a lovely selection of egg colours I'm getting now! And Rosie and Bambi haven't started yet, so it can only get better.

Grown up time

Mr Owl and I have just returned from a wonderful short break sans children. Courtesy of my Dad and Stepmum (who also took care of the children) we have just spent two nights at the Blakeney Hotel. What luxury! We got out of bed when we wanted, ate when we felt like it and shopped without wondering where the children were or what they would break next!

We had a very grand room overlooking the estuary (you can see the windows of our room on the first floor, to the left of the chimney stack, in the curved roof). The bed was enormous, plus we had a lounge area with a couple of comfy sofas overlooking the bay. Dad and Stepmum had arranged a bottle of chilled champagne to be waiting for us in the room and the hotel provided a beautiful basket of fruit as a gift (it was supposed to be an anniversary treat, but we were a month early to coincide with half term). This was our room - behind where I stood to take the picture was the six foot bed! There were two more windows overlooking the bay to the right of the room out of camera shot, and three more windows to the left!

The food in the restaurant was wonderful, customer service second to none - nothing was too much trouble. On the way we had stopped at a pub for lunch. Mr Owl had a ploughmans with a tiny piece of bread and a huge piece of cheese. When he asked for another piece of bread he was told he would have to pay extra! He just had to try this again in the Blakeney Hotel! They serve beautiful, home made bread rolls with their meals. So he asked for another. And he got it, without a murmur. And wine on the house the second evening because our starters were delayed on the first evening. And after dinner coffee served in our room because we didn't want to go to the lounge. Completely pampered - bliss! This was the view from our window:

And Blakeney itself is a lovely place. We wandered the streets, browsed in the gift shops and went out on the seal boat from Morston.


But enough is enough and this morning I really needed a cuddle from my boys. It's lovely to have a bit of grown up time to ourselves and we plan to make this an annual thing - two nights a year in a posh hotel to touch base and rediscover us as grownups. But heaven is hearing that shout "Mummy and Daddy are here!" and feeling little arms thrown around your neck and legs around your waist and being hugged as if lives depended on it.

That feeling lasted approximately half an hour. Oh well, will have to wait 'til next year now!

More Moulting

Oh dear. Since all Beryl's feathers fell off, Bertha has come out in sympathy. Beryl has always looked a little tatty so I was pleased to see her finally moulting. But Bertha always had a beautiful, thick, fluffy coat of glossy black feathers. And now they have also fallen out! Admittedly not as drastic as Beryls, and already she has new little jet black feathers appearing on her neck.

But Beryl started to look worse before she will look better. She has now lost all her tail and was looking very unhappy (probably cold).

But today I can see that all her new quills are opening with little tufts of ginger feathers poking through. She'll soon be fully dressed again! In the meantime I could stuff a duvet with all the feathers around the garden!