Rural Life

Death and new life and all things in between

On the chicken front, there is sad news to report.  After 5 days of making the new chickens' lives miserable, it all got too much for White and she had a stroke.  She lost all control of one leg and one wing, but was still able to give a hefty peck if you were in the wrong place, so John did the needful.  It was such as shame as she was a fine bird - large, stately and big enough to cope with the cats.  I don't know if it was serendipitous or not that we bought two new chickens, and hopefully the new supplier that we got Salt and Pepper from has provided birds with a longer life span, but we are now back to three in the run.  Here are Salt and Pepper - you can see the combs are still under-developed, but Salt has pale and stern eyes.  While I thought Pepper was going to be a bit of a sop, she has just fought Black for a cherry, so that is a good sign for the future.  It is a rough and tumble world in the chicken run and you have to fight for the best worms, slugs and chaffer grubs.

Did I mention a fight over cherries?  Yes, the cherries are starting to ripen and the blackbirds are starting to be a nuisance.  We need to get the scarers into the tree, as cats cannot be relied on to keep them off - they don't have the attention span for a concerted 3 week campaign.  The big worry is rain next week, which could make the fruit split...

I did a bit of bird scaring myself, as I spent a happy half hour sowing sweet corn.  We are sheltered enough here to not get cross pollination from the huge maize fields at the end of the village, so we can get away with sweet corn and not end up with too many smuts or hybridised cobs.  I sow into loo roll centres, using our own compost, and the seedlings should be ready to replace the broad beans in their raised bed in about two to three weeks.  My patent method for filling loo roll centres with compost is the cut off top of a bottle of Quezac mineral water and a used bamboo skewer.

If only I was as good as Frayed at the Edge on doing action shots of crafts...

A few posts ago I was complaining at the challenges of gardening here, and wondering whether or not to bother with peas.  Well, I decided I could be bothered and now we have two lovely rich rows of peas with baby pods and should be stealing our first pods for eating raw by the middle of next week - can't wait!

And finally, a word on snails and slugs.  Our neighbour (feckless Joel) can be relied on to take snails off our hands if we can summon the gall to offer them to him - he has been known to lean over the fence and rummage in the irises for them.  He likes to eat snails, we regard them as a pest, and yet there is still something a bit difficult about offering them to him.  I have read with amusement articles about how coffee grounds, broken egg shells and other pointy things can create a barrier around tender plants.  We have a rather savage door mat at the front door for getting mud and grass clippings off John's boots when he gets home from work.  It doesn't keep out the muck and it doesn't have any effect on snails either - see the evidence of the trails on the photo below.  You are better off with a hungry neighbour I think!

Of course, such a long and varied post means that I have rather scuppered myself for something later in the week - and I used to be a Planning Officer too!

 
 
 
 
 

Catching up on things here

Life has been a bit hectic recently, hence the dearth of posts, and the lack of nice photos for this one too.  Looking at the statistics for hits on this blog, it would appear that others have been busy too, with broody chickens the main area of concern.  Last week there were 42 searches for advice on broody chickens - get a grip folks.

Herewith my final wisdom on broody chickens:

• Spell broody correctly! It is broody, not broddy, or other permutations.
• It happens and it is natural, and yes it is a bit of a pain, particularly if you only have one or two chickens, but it is a bit like saying to women don't do the PMT/curse thing. There are ways around it - ISA browns do not seem to go broody particularly, but I find them rather boring chickens and they fall apart quickly (see this post on my thoughts on this type of chicken).
• Some people find broodies useful if they have fertile eggs and can't be bothered with an incubator - ask around among your local chicken fraternity.
• Look after your broody - she will neglect herself a bit.
• My way round it? Once the others have laid for the day, take broody out of the coop and lock it until just before dusk - it saves between a week and 24 hours on the normal brooding time.

On a slightly different note, we do tend to use a period of broodiness from one chicken to introduce new birds to the flock as then you don't get two chickens picking on the new bird(s) at the same time.  This comes to mind as rather sadly our Speckled Hen (imaginatively known as Spot) succumbed to sudden chicken death.  For about 24 hours beforehand she was a bit depressed - but I don't go in for chicken psychiatry, so I told her to pull herself together.  Sadly she just keeled over in the evening and I found her dead the following morning - the other two were unconcerned but hungry, and have shown no other symptoms, so we have bought a replacement, or rather two replacements - another Light Sussex type and another Black one.  Black is brooding, so only White is bullying the two newbies (Salt and Pepper - many thanks Dick Willis for the names).

On other fronts, the peas I procrastinated about are up and starting to flower, while the cherries are fattening up and starting to turn colour.  Fortunately they are not too red as we are forecast rain in the next week and rain and ripe cherries means exploding and split cherries.  Nice for chickens and a pain for us.  The aubergines and pepper plants are in, as are the first batch of tomato plants and now I need to concentrate on courgettes, chillies, pumpkins and sweet corn.  The iris I hoped/thought would be jet black turned out to be maroon - very handsome, but I must find some black ones.

Next post will have photos - promise!

The last frosts of Spring

Well, not actually frosts but a cold and miserable period here in the Loire Valley.  I am stuck with aubergines, courgettes, peppers, chillis and tomato plants that need to be in the ground.  The wise women of the Baugeios are shaking their heads however and say don't do anything until after "les saints glace".  I nod sagely with them (my ambition is to one day be a wise woman of the Baugeois - nothing to do with being a midwife incidentally), but have been a bit confused by this.  Note the clever use of language there - sagely in this sense is wisely, and the french for wise is sage, however a sage femme is a midwife - so now you know!

Anyway, I needed to understand a bit more about this Saint Glace thing, so followed the link on the Meteo France website - here is what they have to say on the subject, translated into English.

There are three ice or frost saints, St Mamert (11th May), St Pancras (12th May) and St Servais (13th May).

According to popular tradition, they had the reputation for bringing cold and frost, the signature of a final  attack by Winter, hence the saying “Saints Servais, Pancras and Mamert – these three bring a brief winter”.  According to popular belief, once this period has passed, there should be no more frosts.

Most modern calendars however mention three other saints for these three days – Estelle, Achilles and Roland.  This change dates from 1960, when the Catholic Church decided to “replace” these 3 famous saints associated with the seasonal problems of gardeners.

I think it was a bit mean of the Church to get rid of this important calendar link for gardeners and probably rather bad marketing as well, and however much they try, everyone is still talking about the Saints Glaces.  While I am not totally convinced by a St Servais, he sounds more probable than a St Achilles as well, but what do I know?