New chippings

The chickens are exploring the new run surface. It's ginger - they are well camouflaged!


Luckily we were around when a tree 4 doors up the road had to be lopped because its upper branches were interfering with the telephone line. The contractor sawed the big branches off and fed them into an industrial chipper. He was happy to dump half his load for the use of the village. We filled a huge sack which had come with a ton of gravel. We also took several barrow loads up to an elderly neighbour to mulch her flower beds. The rest will mulch the village flower beds.

The chickens had their run cleaned out this morning with their old chippings going to mulch our front garden (the woodland bit).

I wanted to take a picture of them rummaging around in the new chippings. We know there were small caterpillars and bugs because we saw some, but they have evidently found much to delight them. Can't seem to catch them with their heads up at the moment!

We have almost half a bag of chippings left too. They are covered over and weighed down because more gales are forecast this afternoon.

Chicken fun!

Autumn clear-up in the vegetable garden.

The chickens were allowed out this afternoon onto the back garden vegetable plot. They raked amongst the annual weeds and the remains of the tomatoes and the sweetcorn and courgette stalks. Then The Man started digging and behold! Worms!

The Man had to hang back a bit to avoid kebabbing a chicken. The Woman took over to give the plot a rough winter digging and pounds of worms were consumed by the feathered ones.

Eventually the intrepid Amber wandered off into the shrubs for a fossick around. She stayed under there grubbing about for 10 minutes or so, until the lure of the worm bonanza brought her back. This was such a successful expedition it might be repeated, but not too often. When they come out of the run now they trot over to their fenced off bit of grass. I don't want them to assume the veg plot is permanently theirs too!