Carol's Chickens

The last time we all got together at the allotment our friends from across the road provided a barbeque and drinks. There has been loads of produce for us all recently and my husband thought another get together would be good fun.

This time we provided a picnic of sandwiches, buffet bits and drinks for Sunday lunch time. There was D and S and their two boys,  K couldn’t make it as she was away on a weekend course, but there was T and their two girls.

We had a lovely afternoon. We had our picnic and beer, wine and soft drinks for the children and then we all picked some produce and then watered the plot. We all agreed that for the first year it was amazing and there is a plentiful supply of produce for all three families. At the moment we are planning our meals around the produce.

Some produce during the week

As the lettuce are now going to seed we have been giving them to the chooks. They love it and strip it to just the centre stem.

Wild flowers around the raised beds

More wildflowers

Nasturtiums

The first sunflower head behind the broad beans

The runner beans have started producing

A Lancaster Bomber flies over

D and T’s produce to take home

Our produce at home

After complaints it has now been ruled that we must change the orange netting for black netting but we are happy to do that. We are not allowed to have it over the top it has to be low level as it is now.

For our first year it has all been a learning curve and although we are really chuffed with how our first year is progressing we intend to fine tune next year for even better results.

The great thing is that it brings us together with friends and gives us a shared interest that is healthy too. I have been just buying meat or fish for our evening meals and using all allotment produce for the rest. That gives us a great deal of satisfaction.

Head feathers always take the longest to unfurl but at last Marmite has head feathers.

This was Marmite a month ago

Marmite now has feathers on the back of her head

This is so good to see.

I usually take photos of the garden looking up towards the chicken run. Yesterday I was in the chicken run pruning their shrubs when I thought what a lovely view they have of the garden.

Today I decided to stand in front of the chicken run and take a couple of photos.

A chook’s view of the garden

Again from a bit further over

I think they have a pretty good view from their run.

My lovely husband has been doing a lot of work to our Morris Traveller. I wish now that I had taken a before and after photo but he had already got stuck in before I had thought about it.

He has sanded down all of the wood and varnished it with several coats of clear varnish. It is a great improvement because the varnish was a bit orange before and he has got rid of most of the dark patches. He has fitted mirrors to the front and has replaced all the back lights. He has taken off the hinges, stripped them and spray painted them.

This has made a huge difference. I use the hinges to judge how close behind the Morris to park my van so I am very familiar with the hinges. When I line up the bottom hinges with the bottom of my windscreen I know that I have a gap of about a foot. The hinges were splashed with the orange varnish and looked really grubby. Now they really brighten up the back of the car.

Back view of our car

Side view

The car is looking really good and we are pleased with the improvements.

Not only have the leek flowers turned out to be spectacular after all but the bees love them. When I sit in the garden I see masses of honey bees all over the leek flowers. There is a constant busyness and some flower heads have six bees on at a time.

It is difficult to catch the bees in larger numbers as they are coming and going constantly but I tried to get a photo with a few at a time.

There are four bees on this leek flower head if you look carefully

More bees

My husband suggested we should grow some leeks, in groups, in the flower beds next year as they have been amazing and so long lasting.

The garden is amazing at this time of year.

The anenomes are huge

We chopped this down last year which has improved it’s shape

We now have fuchsia flowering in the chimney

We added this this year

The lavender has also got huge

The lilies have started to flower

More lilies about to open

And again a day later

And more lilies starting to open

Lilies seem to like this garden and I love the spiky foliage even before the exotic looking flowers appear. They seem to thrive without any help from us and the clumps get bigger every year.

That’s the sort of plant I like.

Ebony had been broody for four weeks and Flame for just over a week when we finished the new chicken shed. As we were in the run most of the day working on it I closed the nest boxes and this finally triggered these two girls out of it although Marmite continued to be broody for a further week.

Ebony, Flame and Speckles all started moulting at this point. A week later they stopped moulting and ten days after starting to moult Ebony and Flame started laying again.

In ten days Ebony has laid eight eggs. The first four were in the wooden shelter but the last four have been in various nest boxes so it seems that she has now accepted the nest boxes in their new positions. Flame has laid six eggs in ten days and is happy with any nest box.

I have never seen so much white on a black feathered head as on Ebony

Ebony still looks tatty feathered

I am amazed that a girl looking like this is laying eggs. I know that chickens can’t produce enough protein for both feathers and eggs. I think what has happened is that the moult has stopped and new feathers are not being produced but the fluffy underneath feathers are now on show due to the top feathers having dropped out.

I suspect that at the end of the summer egg laying will stop and the moult will continue. I have never seen a moult of two halves before.

Flame looks pristine apart from having a short tail

At the end of last year Flame looked a real mess while she moulted. The start of this partial moult seems to have stopped with losing the odd feather and all of her tail feathers. I am guessing that when her moult continues she will keep her new tail feathers.

Speckles looks pretty much like she always does

It seems as if Speckles shed a few feathers in sympathy because she lost some feathers but not enough to make her look any different. Speckles hasn’t resumed egg laying but that doesn’t surprise me.

Smoke has now been broody for ten days and Vanilla has been broody for two days. Vanilla had only laid six eggs in seven days before going broody again. Smoke and Vanilla have a pattern of three weeks not laying as they are broody and then recovering and then one week of laying nearly every day before going broody again.

I find Smoke and Vanilla’s pattern quite frustrating. They are the best layers when laying and both lay the biggest serama eggs but this is countered by their serial broodyness. Oh well, nothing I can do about it, they will do what they will do!

Yesterday I saw another pretty moth on our path. It’s also black and white but quite different from the other one.

Another pretty moth on the path

I googled it as usual. I think it’s a marbled white moth. The pattern is absolutely identical but the colour of our moth is much more faded than the photographs on google. Our moth was there a long time and I wondered if it was at the end of it’s life however when I next checked it had disappeared.

Edit

I have just googled again and now think it’s a marbled white butterfly. Both look the same but the moth is found from India to the Philippines and from Japan to Papua New Guinea  whereas the butterfly is found in the U.K. and flies in July so that fits.

Ebony and Flame have both laid four eggs in six days since they both restarted laying after a half moult.

This coincided with us finishing the chicken shed and moving the three nest boxes to their new position. Ebony is obviously not happy with the new positions of the nest boxes and is now laying her eggs in the wooden shelter. She has laid all four eggs in there.

Flame is happy to go in any nest box but lays her eggs in the same nest box that broody Smoke is in. Flame then lets Smoke sit on her egg while she spends her time following the little girls around waiting for a chance to sit on their eggs.

This is most peculiar behaviour. Flame isn’t broody because she leaves her own eggs to Smoke and she leaves the nest box once I have removed a little girl’s egg from underneath her. I have never come across this behaviour before. Flame just seems to like sitting on the little girls’ eggs.

Ebony’s current place for laying her eggs

Ebony reaching for pine shavings to put on her back

It doesn’t matter to me if Ebony wants to lay her eggs here as it is dry.

The girls have also been very noisy lately. There is a lot of shouting. The little girls shout before they lay an egg, if the nest box they want is occupied, when they have laid an egg and also when Flame is sitting on their egg!

Flame and Ebony shout before and after laying an egg and also shout while the other one is in the nest box/shelter and Speckles shouts if both Ebony and Flame are laying at the same time and are out of sight of her.

It is quite exhausting with all this shouting going on and I worry about the neighbours. As soon as the egg laying is over for the day the shouting stops.

Egg production has increased though. Before Ebony and Flame starting laying again we were getting one egg a day. We have had now had two, five egg, days. This has been Marmite, Vanilla, Flame, Ebony and Salmon today and the day before yesterday and Marmite and Jasmine on the day in between.

It is lovely having plenty of eggs again but I just wish the girls could be a bit quieter about it!

We went to a classic car show two weeks ago, the first, with our Morris Traveller. I took lots of photos but I had several posts in the pipeline and didn’t get round to doing a post. Then I forgot about it. Then I came across the photos and wondered if it was now too late to do a post.

I talked to my mum on the phone recently and said this to her and she said that she didn’t think it mattered that it was two weeks ago so I decided to do the post now.

The show was on from nine o’clock until six o’clock. It just happened that on that day we had to cater for a christening and needed to deliver the food at half past eleven. This meant we couldn’t get to the show until twelve o’clock.

We had no idea how well attended the show would be. It was local to us but apparently people came from afar. There was a huge queue of cars waiting to get in and classic cars were going in the opposite direction from us and winding down windows to tell us that the show was full and they were being turned away.

We decided to stick with the queue and try our luck as there were some cars leaving the show. When we got to the visitor car park we were held in queue and told that if we wished to wait that for every classic car leaving the show field another classic car could enter the show.

As we got to half way through the visitor car park a visitor left and we were told that we could park in the car park space if we wished. We decided to do so. Even though we couldn’t show our car at least we could see round the show.

Next year we will make sure we don’t take on a function and we will go early. It’s ironic that the first time we took our car to a show we had to park in the car park but at least we didn’t have to go straight home again which would have been much more disappointing.

So to kick start my photos I decided to take one of our Morris Traveller in the car park just to prove that we were actually there!

Our Morris Traveller In The Car Park

And on to the show.

A Row Of Cars

Mercedes

Our Neighbour’s A 30

Morris Traveller

Another Morris Traveller

And another

Morris Minor

A.C.Cobra

Highway Patrol

Beetle

Ford Anglia

Beautiful Maroon Car Not Sure What This Is

M.G. Sports Car

This Is Pretty, Not Sure What This Is Either

Ford Escort Twin Cam Which My Husband Wanted To Drive Away

We had a great time. It was a hot and cloudy day so perfect as no worries about too much sun. There were so many cars that I could only take a snapshot and tried to take some rows of cars to get more in.

Our neighbours about four doors up have the A 30 that I coveted and it was great to get to chat to them. We agreed we must have a bit of a street get together.

Before we viewed our Morris Traveller we viewed a black A 30 and I fell in love with it so was very interested in our neighbours car. They have had it a long time and have spent a fortune doing it up to an immaculate condition. They have replaced it’s engine with a Susuki  engine.

We were going to eat at the show but the queue for food was also a mile long so eventually we got back in the queue to get out of the car park and headed home.

It was an amazing show and every one there was so friendly creating an amazing atmosphere. We were so glad we went even though our car ended up in the car park.