Saging and Potting

I miss my Dad when it comes to gardening. Not that he was a great gardener- far from it- he would pull out the flower plants and proudly leave the weeds. No he was in fact a champion picker upper. You could prune and throw any amount of rubbish onto the lawn and within a few minutes the detritus would disappear. Now it's all up to me which is why it all tends to lie on the lawn until the grass begins to turn yellow. Saturday I got stuck into the giant sage plants on the western side of the garden. They've bloomed wonderfully for months but have begun to look a bit worse for wear, rather like Britney Spears after a hard night out. I clipped them back and already they're beginning to spring back into life so maybe I'll get another flowering before winter. However their remains are calmly decomposing on the grass waiting for me to get my act together.

I have also been planting out pots. I've replaced my burgundy violas from the pots on the front table with fresh blue lobelia. A thyme plant I was given is now planted and gray succulents are hidden under the jasmine vine to try and protect them for coming frosts. The rest of the garden is a jungle but I am hoping the piles of rubbish lying on the lawn fool people into imagining that I will get around to weeding all the beds eventually.

The little black and yellow chick has recovered its mojo and is a lot happier now. I now let Sarah and the two older chicks out in the afternoons but Sarah has begun walking over to Gine's cage and attacking her through the wire. Yesterday they had a full out fight, flying at each other and trying to grab each other's head feathers rather like two women grabbing each others extensions during a slap down. Obviously while they're stuck looking after their babies in their adjacent cages they're both indulging in foul/fowl language.

Damp, Drizzle and Dead Hens

Another four days of drizzly damp weather descended this week and finally it is beginning to take its toll on the animals. One of my younger hens died on Monday the 15th. She'd been fine the night before but when I went to feed them all her wings were drooping and within a couple of hours she'd passed away. I dug a grave in the garden near the back door andMishka and I held a Tangi for her before the rain chased us inside.

Thursday night it was so humid and hot I slept on top of the bedclothes with the cats positioned at the far reaches of the bed. However at 4am it became quite chilly and by the time I got up the wind had turned southerly so it became a pantyhose day. Everyone seemed fine but this morning one of the second family of chicks has droopy wings so I will take her out later and check her over to see if it's anything more than the cold
change responsible. It would have to be the cute black and yellow chick as well!


The mornings dawn in a sea of mist towards the hills in the east. The sheep graze or sleep depending on the temperature until the sun rises high enough to dry everything off. The wheat paddock next to me was harvested recently and the grapes are beginning
to ripen on the vine over my front pergola so it definitely feels as if we're skipping summer and heading into Keat's season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Prosaically it's also the season of toadstools, mould and facial eczema.

Bad and Good Bantam Mums

Most mothers and daughters have a falling out now and then, even in the chicken world. Sarah and Ella have been living in comparative harmony since they hatched out two chicks together but yesterday I heard shrieking from the woodshed and arrived to find Ella attacking her mother. Roosters are nasty fighters but hens can be even worse and Sarah was terrified so the only solution was to grab Ella and put her back in the big house with the other chooks. I was worried she'd fret at losing her baby but when I let her out today with the others she just wandered off to find a worm and didn't make any attempt to go and see her offspring. A real piece of work and a Jeremy Kyle show in the making.


The other chicks have an overprotective mum in Gine who loves to fly up and attack my hand when I attempt to put their feed dish in their cage. Then she clucks and fusses, breaking up bread for them or else crumbling their mash into even smaller pieces. And yet she treads on them without looking or else gets so excited when I put their feed in that when she scratches in the dish she sends chicks flying in all directions. However the babies soon learn to stand out of the way of their mother's wayward feet. For such small fragile creatures they have a remarkable sense of self preservation.

Gypsy squealed at the front door this morning and thinking she wanted in I opened it to find a wet half dead waxeye lying on the doormat. I scooped it up, put it in a box and shut in the dark and warm healing safety of the hot water cupboard. An hour later I was able to release it back outside where it flew away hopefully wiser about the perfidity and unscrupulousness of cats.

Diary Of A Mad Chicken Farmer

January 18th 2010

Sarah the grey hen and her daughter Ella have been fighting over who gets to sit on some manky looking eggs in the corner of the hen house. When I went to feed the chooks this morning I heard cheeping and lo a small brown bumblebee had appeared. Collected both hens, chick and remaining eggs and put them in a hay lined cage in the woodshed. The two hens proceeded to argue over who got custody of the chick for the rest of the day.

January 21st 2010


Went out early to feed the chick and discovered another egg was hatching and a small wet black creature was struggling to emerge. Four hours later and it was lying stretched out on its side puffing. Didn't expect it to live but by the end of the day it was all fluffed up and looking perkily out of its small dark eyes. Sarah and Ella are delighted as they now have a chick each.

January 22nd 2010

Gine the bantam has been steadfastly sitting on some eggs next to the hen house. This morning four chicks hatched including one fluffy yellow one. By lunchtime the sky was turning black and threatening thunder so prepared another cage in the woodshed and transferred Gine, two eggs and the now eight chicks (four brown, two yellow, one black and one black and yellow). Just as well as within half an hour a torrential rainstorm struck and the nest was flooded out. Overnight 110 mls of rain fell in Tikokino.


January 24th 2010

Friends came to see the chicks and I discovered the two oldest ones loose around the shed and a little brown one from the other clutch hiding beneath its cage. Every day from this point on the same thing happened although the two older ones soon learned to go back in with their mothers when I opened the cage door to put their feed dish in. I cannot for the life of me work out how the other one escaped but assumed it jumped on Mum's back and shimmied through the wider cage mesh higher up.

Over the next few days we had several more unseasonable heavy rainstorms often accompanied with thunder and lightning. The remaining eggs in both clutches didn't hatch which made me wonder about the old wives' tale that thunder kills the young chicks before they can emerge.

1st February 2010

Poor chicks. It has rained so much I think they will be terrified when the sun eventually reappears and will probably run around thinking the world is ending- or the sky is falling...