We’re very late this year (been having the kitchen done, which rather put other projects in the shade), but at last we’re hatching some Ixworth chicks.
We put 20 eggs in the R-com on Friday 24th May, so tomorrow lunchtime makes it exactly 21 days. We have 3 early arrivals:
Posted in Allotments, Poultry
Tagged hatching chicks, hatching eggs, Ixworth chicks, R-Com 20 incubator, R-Com 20 Pro
We’re looking after a friend’s hens again this week. When he went away, he left two broodies sitting in nestboxes, so we’ve been keeping a close eye. One abandoned her eggs without a single one hatching. She was being pestered by other hens getting in with her and laying further eggs, which we think might be the cause. Or it might be the recent bitterly cold nights. The other hen was a little more successful:
It’s traditional to plant potatoes on St Patrick’s Day – 17th March. Not so this year. The night-time temperatures have been well below freezing almost every night until this week. So, along with most other allotmenteers, we’re only just planting things out.
Seed potatoes are allowed to sprout, or “chit”, before planting. But normally the sprouts are less than half an inch long, not several inches. These have been waiting far too long.
Well, probably not Cornish Pasties, merely Pasties, now that they have European PGI status. But you know what I mean.
First, an admission. I’ve never been able to make a palatable Cornish Pasty by following the traditional recipes. That’s partly because I’m a poor pastry cook. Maybe I just don’t have the touch; my pastry always larks sparkle. But I now realise that it’s partly because the recipes just don’t work. But this was a success:
Posted in Cooking
Tagged Cornish pasty, pasty, pasty recipe that works, The Rev Counter
What with the bacon curing and branching out into salt beef, a new gadget was called for!
… is, of course, good bacon. We’re now curing our third piece, and it’s been a big success.
Posted in Cooking
Tagged cured silverside, home cured bacon, salt beef, streaky bacon
We’ve got away with it for a long time, but finally one of the many local urban foxes found its way in to the smaller run. It was housing two cockerels belonging to a friend.
Posted in Uncategorized
I know that there’s still a lot of rain about, but the temperatures aren’t quite as low as they have been, and the days are getting longer. At the weekend, the chickens had a good long run outside, which gave us the opportunity to change the straw bales in the run. They certainly enjoyed investigating the nice clean windbreak, although as we left they were already busily pulling it to pieces.
Here on the north-west edge of London we haven’t suffered too badly with snow compared with other parts of the country, but a good covering on Friday has been compounded by another one today. We went down after church to replace the chickens’ drinking water, and also to add a layer of Aubiose to the coop so that they had somewhere warm and dry to snuggle down.
The urban foxes had been busy! Not only were there tracks everywhere, but one hopeful had burrowed into a pile of woodchips that I’d temporarily stacked against the smaller henhouse.
Posted in Allotments, Poultry
Tagged chickens in the snow, fox attacks, hen house, hen run, Ixworth chickens, urban fox
The next experiment is making some home-cured bacon. I’ve sent away for some dry cure and wet cure salts. I bought a nice piece of belly pork, removed the few little ribs from it, and trimmed the skin, then rubbed it with a dry cure formulation. Here it is, newly salted.
In about a week, we should have a nice piece of streaky bacon, ready for Sunday brunch with our own fresh eggs. Or not. Watch this space!
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