The Geordie Smallholder

The bluebells are out. It’s like a blue carpet. The valley reminds me of fairies. And it smells glorious.

Bunty and Ginger laid one brown egg each today. STILL NOTHING from Fifi and Trixabelle. They are getting bigger though, so they maybe need to mature longer. Like cheeses or fine wine lol.

Other news: the polytunnel has arrived. We will try to get it up as soon as possible. We found some newts in a stagnant pool we were goi g to clear, so we are leaving it as a feature. We have planted comfrey to use as fertiliser and possibly winter fodder. Sadly for us, the farm cats have dug up our lovingly planted seedlings so no leeks or carrots. Geordie Smallholder and son are making frames out of chicken wire to protect our next lot of seedlings.

Today, Geordie Smallholder and son went for a walk along the river at the edge of our property. We wanted to share these pictures.

They arrived on Sunday, so truly Easter chicks. So far we have had one wee brown egg per night.

Bunty on the left and Ginger on the right. These two are gallus lassies.

This is the hen house.

Fifi and Trixabelle are very shy and have not laid any eggs yet. I’m getting their job descriptions from HR to go through with them tomorrow.

Our first eggs.

Trying out the steps. One small step for a chicken….

Farm cat is completely unimpressed by the new neighbours.

The seedlings are doing well, but it’s still frosty in the mornings so they cant go out yet.

We have been baking with eggs from our next door neighbours, so really wanting the chickens to come. We made boiled fruit loaf and a Victoria sponge.

Earlier we made rhubarb crumble from the patch in the vegetable garden and we tried to make potato scones from the potatoes. They were delicious but not photogenic so I’m showing you the potatoes prior to mashing not the mush I fried up from them!

We planted the raspberries, strawberries and rotovated the other beds for planting out the seedlings. We ordered a polyrunnel and hope it will be here soon. We marked out where it will go and have sprayed the ground prior to digging it over. There is an old dump under the polytunnel site so goodness only knows what we will find.

…are blooming lovely! But I keep standing on them when walking in the woods.

Our animals have been very relaxed this week whilst we ran about getting the chicken run tidy for new arrivals next week. We are looking forward to fresh eggs.

I thought it would be good to start a record of our progress.

So we have a garden, fields and wood, and a stream at the boundary with two wee waterfalls.

Fields

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton