Musing on The Stages of a Mother's Life.

It's all about the alimentary canal.

When it comes down to it any form of caring comes down to three things. The preparation of nutritious food, cleaning the body and the maintenance of a clean hygenic place to sleep. One way or another it all comes down to poop. The making of it, the removing of it, the disinfecting of it and the disposing of it.

The nub of it is that in order to do this well for any person or creature it must be done with altrism at least and love at best. I rather feel that caring for another whether our own flesh and blood or an animal causes a bond to be created. It is not possible to ferry around bags of poop daily without an affection for the animal or person. The pure inconvenience of it is irritating enough. Then there is the visceral response to both the texture and odour. 

We have the cutest kitten i've ever seen. She's frankly gorgeous. Huge eyes, fabulous colour, oodles of personality (or is that catonality-I apologise for anthropomorphism) but by george she really is the most flatulent feline I've ever encountered. Yet we feed her we tend to her, we clean up the litter tray after her and when she covers herself in muck outside we wash her (this doesn't go down well to be fair) Yet when she curls up on my lap I feel nothing but tender affection for her. 

The same can be said for our chickens. And my first job of the morning is to open run and let them out to play, sort out some delicious tit bit (Meal worms, sunflower seeds mixed grains and, as it turns out, washed baby spinach...) and then don the rubber gloves to clear out the night's poo from their sleeping quarters and the run itself. I even walk round the garden picking up stray piles. 

I had thought that once i'd got my children out of nappies I'd passed that stage. I see that, as long as you care for anything, at least a reasonable portion of your day will be concerned one way or another with what we will euphemistically call hygiene.

Musing over
Katherine

When Communities Work Together.

When life intervenes

I borrowed this image from the totally locally website (theres a link below) because I think it says it all when it comes to our communities and how we work together.

It has been over a week since my last post because life has been extremely packed. The lady from who I got the bees is a powerhouse of activity in the local area. She runs the shared garden, she runs the skills exchange and she is the energy behind the Totally Locally. If you click on the Totally Locally link you can see something about what's going on and about Karina Wells.

Karina is an amazing person but you do find that every time you have an encounter with her you suddenly have something extra to do. It is always something enjoyable and fulfilling but when your life is already pretty full it can be quite a challenge fitting things in. The latest project which she is apparently NOT organising (yeah right) is the Totally Locally pop up shop. 

In the local centre there are a few empty businesses. West Bridgford has become a very busy centre and as a result big national and international multiples want space and the prices they are prepared to pay is pushing local businesses and independents out of the m arket. There are, consequently, many empty units which is very sad in a blooming local environment. Karina spotted one particular space and approached the landlord. They agreed to let local businesses use it for free. She then negotiated a waiver on the business rates and now, for a very small fee, local businesses that cant usually afford a shop front can have a space in a lovely pop up shop that will be open from today till 21st December.

Wonderful people from the skills exchange have worked night and day making the insides usable and attractive and over the last couple of days we, the businesses have been filling the shelves with our artisan products. Everyone who has a space lives or works in walking distance from the shop. We are all donating 6 hours of our time and we will see what happens. The deal is you get a space at an astonishing price but if you make any money or need any supplies you spend it in other local businesses. 

I spent roughly 24 hours, with the help of my husband, bottling syrups, ordering packaging, and designing a brand identity. I'm pretty pleased with it mind you! Then yesterday Bob and I went down to the shop and put our our wares. I realised I needed some display items and nipped down the road to a local stationers who had the most perfect light weight wooden drums to stand things on. While I was there another Pop Up Shop person was buying pricing stickers so the trickle down effect begins.

Today at 12 the shop will be opened by the mayor of rushcliffe. I will let you know how that goes!

Meanwhile the weather is terrible, the kitten is growing, the chickens look sleek and the bees are taking any moment of sunshine to get out and about a bit. I don't suppose any of that is going to change very much in the next three months. However Snow is forecast. I wonder what will happen.

Lots of Love

Katherine 

Bees as Thermometer and Barometer

November 12th and Still They're Busy.

Two nights ago it was my beloved husband's birthday. When our guests left the house there was a crust of frost on the grass and the bin lids. The following morning clouds of breath hung in the air as we wrapped up warm to perform our damp morning chicken ablutions. Checking the hive there was absolutely no activity. Nothing. Not a single solitary bee was straying into the freezing drizzle. I couldn't blame them really. I love to be outside but after I'd mucked out the chooks I felt chilled to the bone and retired to the kitchen with a cuppa.

Yesterday evening I popped out to put the bin out for collection and it was warm. I mean it was actually warm. You could have gone out in short sleeves and it would have been fine. This morning the sun was shining, the air was clear and when I went to let the chickens out they were queuing up to shout at me for not being quicker. They set about savaging the remains of the garden an I nipped down to see the bees. 

I really couldn't believe how busy it was. Even the night I dropped the sugar feeder there weren't so many of them out. The front of the hive was covered and workers were coming and going. The pollen they were carrying was very pale almost butter coloured. I've no idea which plant they were collecting from but as long as it's still coming in the winter stores look secure.

During the winter bees, which are naturally very clean creatures, take any warmer opportunity for what is delicately known as a "Cleansing Flight" basically you don't poop on your own doorstep you take to the air, en masse, and poop on any washing line in your path. this is one of the many reasons that new bee keepers are encouraged to point the entrances to their hives away from their neighbours. Stings are relatively unusual, cleansing flights are regular and there are few worse experience for the domestically proud than finding an entire colony of bees has relieved itself on your clean bed sheets.

This I can tell you. Whatever her colony might be up to, the queen bee's washing is always immaculately clean!

Have a snug evening.

Katherine

Eggs eggs and more eggs

Three girls a laying.

The season has definitely changed to autumnal. We've had the first frosts and the last of the tomatoes are frost burned and rotting on the vines. We've joined the local community garden but it's raining so hard right now that we're planning to go on another day. You will have noticed that blog posts have been a little scarce. This is because we've been so busy that even late in the evening when I usually sit with my computer on my lap we've still been clearing up and tidying. 

One of the biggest problems with having livestock in the garden, from a housekeeping point of view, is that whether it's wet or dry you still have to go out and feed them, clean them and tend to them. In the summer a clutch of chickens seems romantic and exciting. Watching the bees glide dozily around the flowers is hypnotic and beautiful. When you've had 2.5 cm of rain in less than 24 hours mucking out the chickens in wellies and a sou'wester in temperatures just above freezing is significantly less delightful. Not that I begrudge the girls the care they need. Far from it. BUT I do object to people "FORGETTING" to take their boots off and trudging chicken shit up the stairs to the bathroom. I sweep and mop the kitchen floor each day but by the end of it all our ground floor still resembles an archaeological site.

I am attempting to institute a regime of indoor and outdoor footwear. The idea is that outdoor shoes DO NOT come into the kitchen. Well.....nice in theory. In practice even I, wielder of mops and cleaner of floors, forget occasionally so for those for whom there is no sanction I'm not sure there is any way of enforcing the change.

Cats of course don't wear shoes. They just blithely plod through whatever might be around and then bring it in on their dainty pink little pads. Sid is not fond of the wet and as such is unlikely to make much of a mess. He does check the front door as well as the back in case somehow the weather at the front of the house might be a more palatable 25 degrees in the shade but as yet no such delight has been spotted. Merlin is a hardy beast. He intensely dislikes the litter tray so is prepared to go out in any weather. Goose, the destroyer of worlds (I apologise to Mr Oppenheimer-I'm sure he did less damage) generally isn't allowed out when it's wet. She hasn't had her cat flu jabs and is a bit little to be getting soaked. Her poorly leg is recovered and she only limps when she's been really stupid and gotten herself stuck up a holly tree.

The bees, quite sensibly, only come out when the sun shines. They don't do well in the wet and it appears they know this. Since we put bricks on top of the hive to prevent strong winds lifting it I've seen far fewer dead bees on their backs in puddles. The texture of the bricks stops the meniscus from trapping them. However the numbers of dead bees outside the hive are growing. This is cleared up effectively by the chickens who are omnivores in the same degree as goats. 

I have yet to see a chicken eat a pair of tights (and I have witnessed goats trying to work their way through a washing line full) but they have tidied up all those nasty plants in the garden. They've cleared up ALL the cabbages, I've hidden the sorrel in the conservatory, they've more or less finished the pepper plants and the corn flowers, while not AS delicious provide some entertainment. I've tried putting out various kitchen scraps. Obviously we avoid potato skins. Potatoes are from the same family as deadly nightshade and do not make good fodder for the chooks. That said they happily eat the pepper plants and the tomatoes, also solanacea, with gay abandon. I've heard that animals avoid plants that do them harm-I've also head that horses will eat hemlock water drop-wort which is a deadly poison so them's mixed messages thar....

Three of the girls are laying eggs now. We've had 9 so far in a week. One lays soft buff coloured eggs, one lays lovely speckled eggs and another lays warm burnished brown eggs. This came as a surprised to us as we'd expected them to be off lay till next year when the days got a bit longer. 

I just popped out to give them some mealworms. They're confined to their run while the rain is really heavy so we're making sure they get plenty to keep them entertained throughout the day. Henrietta came diving down the ramp and I looked in the nesting box where I found a perfect warm brown egg. At last I've put an egg to a face! In a way it seems a little disrespectful but we're going to have poached eggs for lunch.

Love 

Katherine

We Got Eggs!!

Good news

This morning at about 7.15 I was woken by my dearly beloved. "Nice" I thought, "but isn't it a bit early?"

It's never too early for good news! In his hand was one perfectly formed chickens egg. Light brown, slightly more knobbly than a supermarket egg but perfectly and beautifully ours!Bob put it in the kitchen in an empty egg box (we've been saving them a little while, rather prematurely as it turns out) so we can look at it and marvel at the arrival of the first egg from our beautiful feathered girls.

After a lazy morning making phone calls and sitting with the kitten and one of the cats curled up on me I finally got dressed and popped out to check on the chickens and let them out. As I'd not depooped the coop last night I had a look in the nesting box and blow me down if there wasn't another perfect beautiful speckled brown egg. So I put it next to it's friend in the box and sent a text to Bob. 

"Blimey" says he

"That brings down the average cost per egg to just £400"

The girls have a lovely bustle to them now. Their feathers have grown in and when you pick them up they are definitely more solid. As it turns out when you pick them up they often poo on you, however there's no such thing as a free lunch so it's all good. They have also worked out how to climb on the table to get at my flower pots. I'm currently still entertained by this but I think I may need to come up with a solution quite soon.

I plan to let Brinsley Animal Rescue know how well the ladies are doing!

Yesterday I met a fellow bee keeper. We were digging the bindweed roots out of a former raspberry patch at the shared garden. This is a group of alottments tended by a group of people who share the work and the proceeds equally. I asked how it was going and he said "I'm a very new bee keeper. More a bee haver than a bee keeper" I think this describes us new stewards of bees well.

So far a bee hive is in my garden. Bees continue to choose to live in it. I count myself lucky that my mistakes have not resulted in a wholesale departure. I read that a hive which is still collecting pollen is a healthy hive for it is pollen that feeds the growth of the brood. This means they are planning for the winter ahead. I hope they feel comfortable in their corner of the garden.

On an abstract note I have always tried to imagine what it was like to live in bygone ages. There's an idea that at the time it must have felt like the olden days. But really now is always now. In 1066 when the english were trying to repel the French invasion it felt as modern to us as the prospect of war does in syria. For the people who lived then every today was the most modern the world had ever been . They felt the way we feel now every day when they woke up.

I realise bees are insects but they have the most extraordinary communication skills. Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to be a bee, growing, cleaning, foraging, raising other bees, working for the queen. Does their reality feel like ours? Do they in fact feel that they are keeping People at the end of their garden in a big people hive?

Who knows. 

I wish you Joy of the day

Katherine

The Animals Went in Two By Two

It's been wet.

Wet with a capital W but the forecast winds have been nowhere near as damaging as we'd worried. The chickens have been kept relatively dry by their new roof and putting a second coat of gloss on the roof of their coop. Freinds are starting to enquire when Bob, no mean joiner I can tell you, will start work on an Ark. Unfortunately there's a shortage of gopher wood in Nottingham. We are unsure whether seasoned pine has the same properties. 

The bees have continued to search out pollen on any day when it's been warm enough to stray out of the hive though it's clear there are more dead bees outside the hive than before. The rain has taken it's toll on bees that were out flying at any point during the torrential storms we've had of late but very, very few larval bees have been brought out of the hive.The hive is definitely better protected closer to the wall though the cats seem to think it could be used as a spring board to get over the garden wall. 

The cats are getting on a little better. Merlin (senior black cat aged 9) has mellowed. He allows Goose (very junior grey kitten aged 10 weeks) to jump all over him till he looses interest. Then he flattens her till she slopes off to do something else. Curiously Sid  (aged 4 or 5) who'se full name is Cedric Obsidian Nighthawk Deathcat-(this is what happens when you entrust the naming of cats to 13 year old boys) appears to be suffering from depression. There have been lots of changes, not least to the weather and it seems to have done him no good. He is quiet, withdrawn, overeating and looking generally down at the whiskers. 

Gooses abscess has healed over and her little bald patch is starting to grow a little downy fur. Her limp is imperceptible except on waking from a long sleep. The hens are also much healthier looking. Their feathers have grown back and they are discovering bossy, gregarious personalities. They take their exclusion from the house as a personal insult. Ideally they would really like free run of the house. I fully expect to find the four of them sitting on the sofa watching the telly ordering up meal worm snacks from room service. Perhaps a little sorrel snack?

Please note this is not my sofa. We do not have pink floral loose covers. I'm fairly sure the chickens would eat them.... 

Ah yes. Sorrel. Chickens like sorrel. They will do pretty much anything to get their filthy beaks on my sorrel. It had started growing back over the weekend. I turned my back for five minutes while I de pooped the coop (and Bob rescued the kitten from next door's garden) and three of them had worked their way through more than 50% of the nascent leaves. I can tell you it's going to be a while till I get my sorrel soup!

Sorrel Soup Recipe

Found  on the Telegraph Newspaper website: Serves 6

4 tbsp butter

Olive oil

10 spring onions, chopped

½ bunch parsley, stalks and leaves finely chopped

500g/1lb floury potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes

1 litre/35fl oz chicken stock

250g/8oz sorrel leaves, washed

2 egg yolks, beaten

200ml/7fl oz sour cream, plus extra to serve

Chives and fennel tops, to garnish

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pan and add a splash of oil. Fry the onions and parsley with a pinch of salt until they are soft, about 3 minutes. Add the potatoes.

Pour in the stock and bring to the boil. Cover with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are completely tender. Roughly chop the sorrel leaves and add to the pan, then take off the heat.

Transfer to a food processor (or use a hand blender) and blend until smooth. Season to taste.

Beat the egg yolks and sour cream together in a bowl, then stir in two tablespoons of hot soup – you are doing this to prevent the eggs from scrambling. Very slowly whisk the egg and cream mix into the soup. Serve warm or chilled with a few snipped chives and fennel herbs.

Personally I'm tempted to warn the chickens that if they insist on flavouring themselves with sorrel they may well be more attractive as stock birds!

Happy foodie dreams

Katherine

I'm Away so a Quick Catch Up.

How do they grow.

Currently I'm at the Herbal Medicine conference at Crewe Hall. This is part of the Q Hotel chain and they have bee hives on every site. I find such an initiative encouraging in a world where money usually talks louder than the earth.

The chickens are being looked after by my son and his girlfriend so they are probably living the life of riley in our absence.

I've lots to tell you but so little time so watch this space! It's been a hell of a week. 

Hugs 

Katherine x