Sunbathing foxes and productive hens

I still have a house and garden in London from my days when I used to work there. I was there over the weekend and spotted this fox sun bathing on the roof of our garden shed. I quickly got out my camera, put on an appropriate lens and captured this picture. We are used to having foxes there and we often see fox cubs in the garden during the late spring and summer. Had this photo been taken on my allotment back home in Sunniside, in the North East of England, I would have been a bit less relaxed. Foxes and hens don't go well together, in my opinion, though the fox may beg to differ. We know there are some foxes near our village but so far we have not experienced any problems since getting the hens.

Talking of which, our girls laid 102 eggs for us during January. Productive little ladies they are turning into. It meant I was met by a large quantity of eggs in our kitchen when I got back from London.

The egg mountain

This photo was taken this morning. As you can see our hens have been rather productive recently. The eggskelter is now full so we are starting to use the hen shaped egg holder which we were given for Christmas. I'll be pickling eggs shortly to use up the surplus. Watch this space.

Sprouting broccoli and leek soup

This is about as frugal as it gets and is possibly the most extreme example of
my contention that nothing should be wasted. One of the neighbouring allotment
holders gave us a very large pile of sprouting broccoli for the hens. In my
opinion, much of it was in good nick so I chopped off the best bits for us to
use. The rest went into the chicken run for the hens to eat - they strip plant
leaves from the stalks leaving just skeletons of plants behind.

We were also given cabbage leaves for the hens from the other allotments. Some
of these leaves can be tougher than the hens prefer but we have found they like
them boiled and then mixed with porridge oats to make a mash. So when I boiled
some of the better leaves, I drained off some of the liquid to make a stock for
my soup. Into this went the chopped sprouting broccoli and a couple of chopped
leeks, a heaped teaspoon of marmite and a splash of worcester sauce. Once it was
boiled up, I blended it.

I don't think I'll win any awards with it but it was nourishing enough.

Letting out the chickens

We had a bit of an experiment with the hens today. We were on the allotment digging (well David was digging but following a rather painful slip on the ice on Thursday evening, I was supervising) and decided to let the hens out to wander as they thought fit around the allotment. It was interesting watching them do so. Generally, they kept together and rather enjoyed looking for bugs, worms and weeds. Eventually, they all decided to walk back into the chicken run of their own accord. So, we will be letting them out more often in the future, when there are more bugs around. What we have to watch out for however is stopping them eating our crops.

Our free ranger chicken

Our 5 chickens have settled well into their chicken run since we got them in the autumn last year. To protect them from foxes, the fence around the run is 2 metres high. The hens' wings are clipped so theoretically, they shouldn't be able to get out of the run. Snow White, our coral nick, however, has discovered how to fly even with clipped wings. A number of times now I have found her wandering around the allotment though she always rushes over to the gate to greet me (or more likely see if I have any food for her). So she doesn't wander off though I discovered today that yesterday, one of the neighbouring allotment holders found her on the path outside the allotment. He picked her up and put her back in the chicken run.

That was not what she had initially escaped from. Yesterday morning, I had put her in the fruit cage which has a 2 metre high frame with netting though we had removed the roof as a precaution against snow damage. Somehow through the day she had managed to escape from that. She doesn't go far. Her main concern is to explore the immediate locality to forage for food.

The danger however is that she is vulnerable to foxes if not in the chicken run or fruit cage. So we are going to have to check her wings and clip them again.

Self-Sufficient in Suburbia Nov/Dec

This is the latest video about how we are striving towards our goal of becoming self-sufficient. It covers November and December 2011, including our preparations for Christmas.

Extracting fat from game

Finding an alternative source of fats to what we would otherwise buy in the supermarket is a real challenge for us. We do have a friend who swaps game for jam and this gives us a small amount of fat. It has to be extracted however from the carcass.

To do this, we cut off any fillets we are planning to consume separately and then boil the carcass with onions, herbs and other vegetables to create a stock. Any meat left on the carcass after boiling is stripped and used to make a game pie. The stock is left to stand in a cold room or fridge for a day. The fat solidifies as a layer on the top and can be spooned off.