New addition: sheep

After eye drops, antibiotics and isolation Speckled Star seems to be fine again. Somewhat underweight but back with the other chickens and holding her own. Bluebell on the other hand is looking plump, content and hasn't laid an egg in a week. Perhaps I ought to threaten her with the pot. We certainly need some new chickens. I think we'll give Speckled Star a week to settle back in and gain some weight and then go and get a couple more. We desperately need eggs. I am going to have to buy some this week. A very rare event. Harriett's chicks are growing well too and hopefully soon they can join the others in the main run. If we're lucky they may even start to lay.

I found some slugs in the polytunnel last night. Not many but the last thing we need in there is slugs. I seem to have found that every garden we have has it's own particular gastropod that eats all the plants. In London it was snails. In Bovingdon it was weird green mottled slugs. Here it is those tiny slugs. I got about 100 off the plants one evening. There are only a few in the polytunnel, but I'd like to eradicate them as soon as possible. My current method is to collect them in a jam jar and take them with me as I take the kids to school. Then when we are a suitable distance from the school we let them go. I used to just chop them all up, but using secateurs on those tiny slugs is impossible, and well, as we can just let them go a safe distance away, why not? The peas and beans are also looking a bit sad in there. I'll keep an eye on that. I might have to get out the gardening books with those lovely pictures of diseased plants. I usually find that I read all of the ailments described and none come close to what is the matter with the plants I have. Always worth a try though.

The kitchen is now repacked and usable (almost) as a kitchen. Once I connect the extractor to the outside wall it's a fully functioning kitchen. It'll be nice to have a lick of paint on the walls too, but one thing at a time. The main thing is we can ditch the ready meals and actually cook. I have to admit the move from microwave only meals and onto oven ready ones was a big improvement. I think I overdid the Shepherds pie meals with Harriett as she is refusing to eat it for at least a month.

Zoe managed to let the pigs escape over the weekend. They are always quite boisterous at the gate as you go to feed them (see video below - sorry having technical issues will add it when I sort them out). However I am usually quite careful as they jostle to not let them out. Zoe however did. The Saddle back being totally ruled by her stomach just wandered back in following the food bucket. The Tamworth however is not such a … errm … pig. She was enjoying the taste of freedom and of fresh grass (of which there is now little in their run). I was upstairs about to have a morning shower. So then Zoe, Harriett and I tried to guide the pig back into it's run. It was not very keen and was having far more fun running in circles avoiding us and eating the grass. Eventually in desperation Zoe managed to get the dog lead around it's neck and guide it back to it's run. It went happily to start with, but then had a bit of a panic. We managed to get her back in though, and she was calm and happy once back inside. I am going to fence off an area of vegetables that is going to be a potato field and another for a squash and pumpkin field and let them in, to dig it over. They'll enjoy the fresh grass and it'll save me lots of digging or rotivating.

With trying to mow a field with a push along petrol mower our thoughts have been turning to automatic edible mowers, or sheep. We were just discussing this one morning and then as luck would have it, that afternoon someone appeared in the field next door delivering a trailer load of sheep. So I thought this is really not an opportunity to miss and went over for a chat. After a very helpful chat and a bit of thinking we now have dibs on four sheep. They seem to be some sort of cross between about 3 breeds but apparently have few health problems, eat grass and taste good. I was wondering about milk too but apparently that's a bit more specialist, so we'll start with just mowers and eaters. We are getting four and trying to work out how many Ewes we want (as mothers) and how many castrated rams we want (for eating). I think we might go for two and two. He is also going to lend us his ram so they can be tupped and have lambs in the spring. All we need to do now is some fencing work and we are away. After this discussion we then went to Hull fair (see below)

Well on top of all of that I sanded the kids bedroom floor, we've had the heating re-jigged and the leaking chimney fixed so it's been quite a bust week. As for now, the pipework has just arrived to connect the extractor to the outside, so I'd better go and fix it all in place. Then the cooking can really begin again.