Bacon and egg

Lunch today. I normally have a sandwich. However, one of the duck eggs I collected in the morning had a soft shell. I decided to use it up, along with a bit of our Tamworth bacon and some mushrooms which would not have made it to the end of the day.

Homing chickens

One of our surplus cream legbar cockerels was rehoused a couple of days ago, along with a cream legbar hen. They had not been moved far. Their new home was a chicken run Liz, who has the neighbouring allotment, had set up. Alas, they did not stay for long and headed home to our allotment after just one night. They had hopped onto their new henhouse and then hopped over the hedge back into our plot. I think Liz feels a bit put out by their rejection of their new owner but these two homing birds are to be returned shortly to their new home. Liz and her husband Bob are to move the chicken run and install a Berlin Wall style fence to keep the chickens at bay.

The offending cockerel is pictured above. The hen is pictured below.

Roast pork

I found a pork leg joint from our Tamworth pig in the freezer recently. It seemed a shame not to thaw and roast it. The crackling is fantastic. Roast artichokes were a great finishing touch.

Omelette

The increasing number of eggs from our hens encouraged us to have an omelette the other evening for dinner. An easy way to use up 8 eggs, though they were small ones, produced by a hen that has just started laying.

Bacon and artichoke soup

Loads of artichokes still to use up. Time is running out. They are still in the ground and in about 6 weeks the tubers will start growing. So I dug some up recently and made them into soup, adding into it some of our Tamworth bacon and a few other vegetables that were not expected to last much longer. End result - not bad.

A hidden nest of eggs

When I opened up the henhouses this morning, I spotted a hen heading off for the hedge behind where we used to store the hay bales. I decided to check it and and discovered a nest there with 13 eggs in it. Most were small green eggs, suggesting one of the newly matured cream legbar hens hatched last summer has started laying and has opted to do so outside the henhouses. There was one brown egg and a number of full size green eggs. So clearly this is a popular laying spot for various members of the flock. All the eggs were brought back to the kitchen. As we are not sure how long they have been there, we are going to use them in an omelette tonight, cracking each into a cup to check it is okay.

Pinkie's growing waistline

Pinkie, our golden guernsey goat is clearly showing signs of being pregnant. Her waistline is growing and is so extended that I cannot get the strap of her coat around her. She has however still got three months to go before she is due.