The Urban Cottage

[Warning! One shameless plug coming right up!]

Have you enjoyed reading details of our lives with hens, but wondered what it is we're growing in our veg patch? Have you ever looked at the Egg Log but wondered what it is we use all those eggs for?

Have you ever wondered what our door bell looks like?

Then look no further than The Urban Cottage. Joe and I have started a new blog all about our garden, kitchen and crafting experiments, and if you want to know more, then it's the place to be. Maybe I'll see you over there?

Yet if all you want to know is which chicken was first in the race to get out of the coop this morning; then Bottom of the Pecking Order is still here to tell you just that!

p.s. This morning it was Frog.

Chickens and seedlings don't mix!

As much as we've loved having the hens loose in the garden, we do have one complaint. They seem completely incapable of distinguishing between an empty vegetable plot, and one covered in new plants. They scratch and dig their way through both, and given the time would happily dust bath in either. We've lost a few plants to their worm-hunting efforts, and have got rather fed up with chasing them away from certain areas of the garden. Unfortunately where one goes the rest promptly follow and the four of them can do a lot of damage in a remarkably short period of time!

Since we're starting to plant out salad crops we decided that this needing dealing with - and quickly. So I built a fence. The vegetable plots are now a completely separate, (hopefully) chicken proof part of the garden.

Chicken run, mark two

For the first five months we had the hens we've had them set up in a temporary position to help us clear an overgrown area of the garden. There are a few photos of what this all looks like in my posts about gardening and the chicken coop. At the start of this year we decided it was time to finish converting this area into vegetable plots ready for the spring and the chickens were moved to their more permanent location.

Three months later and the vegetable plots were coming on nicely, but the new chicken run was looking a bit sorry for itself. The area is entirely muddy, smaller than previously, and a strange mix of holes courtesy of the previous owners of the house. The area had been covered in gravel when we moved in and it was only as we shifted this to one side (now that was a fun afternoon) that we discovered concrete, hard core and cables from days gone by.

A new plan was needed.

So here it is. Fence posts rather than sticks, meaning properly tensioned wire, five foot tall rather than three, and a door. An actual door. No more climbing over the fence, losing my balance or getting stuck in the netting for me.

There is another stage - we want to remove the hard core and replace it with wood chippings. However we want to make use of the hard core elsewhere in the garden, so the chickens will have to live with it a little longer until we're ready.

And they're out....

I don't know about you, but this weekend we had a lovely sunny (if a little chilly) Saturday - perfect for doing all sorts of jobs in the garden. As the hens currently have no greenery in their run we made a little door in the side of the mesh and let them loose to free-range for the morning.

Pepper, in her wisdom and boldness, decided that pecking at everything that came her way was a plan - whether it be wire cutters as we created a door, or the string we used to lace it back up again. Clearly poking edible things through the bars of their run has been bad training!

Once the door was open they needed no persuasion at all. Off they went across the lawn to sample the delights of fresh grass, leaves, berries, dropped bird food and any thing else they could find. They supervised Joe turning the compost heap and tried to sneak a nibble on the new vegetable shoots while he wasn't looking.

Fizzy particularly enjoyed the autumn berries left on a few shrubs round the garden. We were worried that they might not do her any good, and kept trying to persuade her away from them, but she is a determined little hen. We even pruned away all the branches at pecking height, but she was still jumping to reach berries on higher branches. We still seem to have four healthy chickens however, so perhaps she knew what she was doing. I certainly shan't worry so much next time.

(A few pictures of the dust bath - but I'm afraid its hard to capture anything more than "bundle of feathers" in such scenarios!)

Their favourite pastime during the course of the morning was a dust bath. After months of wallowing in mud they found themselves a nice dry dusty piece of earth under our large hedge and dug themselves in for about an hour. Well, Pepper, Lemon and Frog did anyway, Fizzy mostly seemed to hover nervously round the edge and watch the other three bathe themselves. Since Pepper and Frog have started laying they have gained in confidence - and in pecking order position. Poor Fizzy has been seriously demoted and no longer pushes her way to the front of every queue. I'm sure she'll be back to herself when she starts laying eggs of her own though.

Clearing the Deck

When we got our chickens we had not long moved house. Our new place has a good-sized garden which had once had some shape, but had been neglected. We have lots of ideas for this space, some easy, others less so. For the time being we've made a hit list of areas we want to give life to sooner rather than later. One of these is a space that was once used as a child's play area; time and inattention however, meant that when we moved in we nicknamed it The Meadow.

A meadow is a lovely place I'm sure, but it went straight to the top of our list for working on. A series of beds we thought, some for flowers, some for vegetables. Perfect. First, however we needed to remove the grass and weeds. This is where the chickens come in.

We pulled up what remained of the membrane that had once held back the greenery and then set the girls loose on half of the area. They've loved it. In a matter of a month they have reduced it to some bare earth and a few dry stalks. Chickens: 1; meadow: 0. Once they were starting to look bored we moved them to the other half of the area and watched them tuck in with gusto to the delights of grass and dandelion leaves. I don't think that section is going to last long either.

Then came our turn to put in some hard work, marking out the first two beds, digging them up and filling them with earth.

Now all that's left is to decide what to plant. What are your favourites? Any pretty flower or tasty vegetable suggestions welcome!