The little chickie is trying to keep warm! :)

This is what the weather will look like for the next six months... :)

The chicks are two weeks old today and they are growing very quickly -- they certainly wouldn't fit in an egg anymore!

Yet another lunchtime harvest, including a RED pepper!

Sunrise at about 6:30 this morning.

This is the village of Talley!

This is the same shot, zoomed in. Our house is the one furthest to the right with the little light blue car in front of it!

That cluster of houses you can see in the middle of the photo is where we live! It looks like a village almost...

This is the holding tank for our water. The actual spring is further up the mountain.

Yet another cute chick picture... :)

Chickies are now 9 days old and nearly have proper wings now!

So this is Stella, the hen that ate/killed her chicks last time round -- but she has gone broody again, so I am going to give her another chance. Check this space in 21 days time...

It is starting to be like a production line in the barn now -- the box on the left has Mommy with her two chicks and the box on the right has Stella who is going to get some eggs to sit on tomorrow morning! Good thing we saved all the boxes from moving... :)

Now we have a tidy hedge like everyone else!

Hedge-tastic! :)

As if by magic... All last week I had been noticing everywhere I went that farmers were trimming their hedges. At the weekend Greg and I had a conversation about the practicality of trimming ours by hand and decided that it probably wasn't practical. Presto, today this guy materialized out of nowhere and asks if we want the hedge trimmed! £15 for the lot (okay, we haven't got much hedge at the moment). He just appears every year and does the hedges -- we don't know who he is or where he's from!

The chicks are getting big very quickly -- and they are already starting to get real feathers at the ends of their wings!

Final Broody Update

So I just opened the last egg (she wasn't really sitting on it anymore) and it was rotten, so that's it, two baby chickies for me -- but I am quite pleased as two is better than none! Now I have to wait about six weeks to find out if they are girls or boys... More eggs or roast chicken... :)

Surprise!

What's better that one chickie? Two chickies! :) Out of the four eggs, two chicks have hatched, one died, and there is still one egg which I will give until tomorrow to hatch. Aren't they so cute?!

Chick-tastic!

Chick movie now available at http://www.btinternet.com/~weckerphoto/Chick.AVI !!!

Proud Mommy!

I have a chick!!!!!

Broody Update

Just went in the barn to put things away and I can hear a beak tapping away at a shell! :)

Weeds

Have spent most of today weeding the raised beds. In the far bed, left to right, we have spring onions (scallions), beetroot (beets), carrots, swede (rutabaga), and cabbage. In the near bed, on the left is garlic, but we think it has rust, so are not sure if we should pull it out or what, and then a large gap where I just pulled out a load of tomato plants that had some disease, and then the never ending various lettuces. In case anybody is wondering, small baby nettles sting just as much as the big ones -- my hands and fingers are tingling!

Dinner...

...last night was a vegetable and beef chili -- made with our own tomatoes and peppers -- and let me tell you, the jalapeno peppers are HOT!

Broody Hen Update

Today is day 21 of our third attempt at hatching baby chicks. I am hopeful that this broody knows what she's doing -- yesterday morning when I opened her box she jumped out, had a poo, spent a long time scratching about before she settled back on the eggs -- and this morning, when I opened the box, she didn't move... So I think she knew yesterday that it was her last chance of some time on her own and now she is getting down to the business of hatching the eggs... I am going to leave her to her own devices and not check on her again until tomorrow morning, so further news then...

Tadpoles

Had given up on waiting for the tadpoles to turn into frogs -- but now it seems that it's finally happened with a vengeance! After last night's frog in the shed, this morning I went out to let the chickens out and found another frog in one of the nest boxes -- it's becoming like a plague! :)

We've suddenly got some red peppers -- but they're not green peppers that ripened and turned red -- they just suddenly emerged from the plant like this! I think there are four red ones now.

I've just gone out to put the chickens to bed, and I went into the shed to get their food, and saw a dark shape scurry across the floor. I ran for the torch in case it was a rat/mouse, but look what a cute little friend I found instead! He has now been rehomed outdoors in the vicinity of the stream... :)

Yesterday's lunchtime harvest...

This is a very odd egg we had the other day -- the egg itself is soft -- if you poke it, it feels like a water balloon -- and then the crumpled up thing on the left is the hard bit of the shell!

Some of the cows from up the road got loose and one of them walked across my spring onion seedlings... :(