Zos Chikins Are Crazee!

Some of you may know that we keep chickens. Well allow me to introduce them to you (before they end up in the pot). I can't introduce them all, they don't all have names, but here are a few of the prominent characters:

Captain Hastings

Captain Hastings is our rooster. Named after the character from Poirot, on account of his demeanour and general ineptitude when he first arrived, Hastings has come on in leaps and bounds and now really rules the roost. Funny how they figure it all out without any training.

Fortunata

Fortunata is one of our few remaining original hens. Apart from Hastings it is Fortunata that is in charge. She often has to be chastised for her treatment of the younger hens, but seems a lot better these days. Her superiority is well deserved however as she is by far the most inquisitive and intelligent of the entire lot (even Hastings - but no suprises there). If a hen is going to escape this is the one to keep your eye on. She is first to the food especially the special treats, like black berries, when she will easily manage to get three times as many as any of the others just by being quick. Her self interest in this regard means she will probably live a long time. As a mother she is excellent and uses her higher chicken intellect to the advantage of her brood - until the become adolescent, when the competition is back on.

The Weird Sisters

The Weird Sisters are a pair of black hens, named after the pop group in Harry Potter, these hens are psychotic egg sitters if ever there were any. Happy, or miserable, they will sit for weeks on unfertile eggs and literally have a fit if you oust them and take the eggs from under them.

This Weird Sister eyes the camera warily, she is wondering whether this is the same fellow that takes her eggs.

Random Hen

This is one of the newest arrivals. Bred here in the coop, this girl has not been given a name, though I am toying with the idea of calling her "office girl". We had 3 hens with this colouring a while ago all with crazy hair-do's that we called the Office Girls. We gave them away to a friend and it would be nice to have another set of office girls back again.

Lunch Break

Here you see a few hens milling around under the ever watchful eye of Captain Hastings, our rooster.

So there we have it. I can't say that chicken keeping is always easy. Especially when mucking out, though the droppings make great compost activator if your compost bin isn't doing it's job very well. But in summer when they are laying eggs like mad there is something satisfying about collecting your own fresh eggs.

Harvest Season

While Lije was bouncing away merrily, I took a look round the part finished garden and found that the year has moved on. The signs of the season were all around me.

We have apples growing on next door's tree, but leaning into our garden - yum.


We have wheat, ripening in our compost heap, no doubt leftovers from mucking out the chickens have grown.


We have blackberries in our jungle behind the chicken coop - yum yum.


Well, I picked some apples, (left the wheat) and collected some blackberries to make a crumble. I prepared the fruit and put it in the oven for stewing, in prep for the next stage of the crumble. I then forgot about the fruit in the oven and burnt it to a cinder.

Maybe I will try again tomorrow - at least the ingredients were free.

Bounce!

Well we finally did it. M has been hanging on to a pot of money to buy a trampoline for the boys and we finally got round to buying one (8ft, with enclosure, and folds away by winding a handle).

Anyway, more importantly, it's great fun, and just watching Lije's face and hearing his giggles is well worth the money.

Tinkerings

A couple of days ago we were given a petrol lawnmower via Freecycle. Freecycle is a great organisation set up to help keep unwanted but useful items out of landfill. Anyway, the mower was working when I got it, but somehow in the transportation something must have jiggled it, because when I started it at home, it ran for about one minute, and then stopped.

It turned out that the wire from the coil to the spark plug had literally snapped off right near the sparkplug. On closer inspection the copper wire had turned green and become brittle, and broke.

I went to a lawnmower dealer in Ibstock but they did not sell mowers with this type of connection to the sparkplug, however, one of the mechanics was really helpful and gave me a hint on how to fix it. Basically, cut the wire down until it was back to being copper again, then reconnect it to the metal connector that touches the spark plug. When I got back I followed the mechanic's instructions, and found that I was not the first person to "mackle" this mower. It was not a proper connector at all, someone had screwed a screw down the core of the wire to act as the connection with the spark plug, and this had reacted with the copper and made it green. So I just cut the wire down, and put a new screw in. Easy.

The mower started and ran well.

There is something satisfying about tinkering with engines and making them work.

All I need now is a new blade, a sharp one. The mower make is more common in Australia than here, good job I have relations there... ;-)

Clone Wars, Clo-o-o-one Wars, Clo-o-o-one Wars, Clo-o-one Waaaaars

The Young Men's activity tonight was a trip to the Cinema, and, being a Young Men's activity they chose to see the new Clone Wars animation, the Star Wars spin-off. And as the group were short of a leader - lucky old me got to step in, and see it too.

Actually, before I went to see it I did check the review on Common Sense Media (an excellent review site if you really want to know about the film's content, and suitability for the audience). I have to say, the review wasn't that great, and made it sound really lame. After seeing it however, I didn't notice many of the criticisms, but do agree that some of the violence, albeit animated in a cartoon-esque style, is unsuitable for younger kids.

It started off in a rather hurried way, with none of the build-up you normally get with a Star Wars movie. I was a little disappointed by this, as I like to be warmed up into the action. As it was, it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. But once the movie was going and the plot became a little clearer I thought the story was fair - though a little childish. Think of this as the Monsters Inc. equivalent of Star Wars, only not so fluffy.

From a technical point of view I found the animation a little disappointing. It appeared to use a lot of Motion Capture to animate the characters, which has been used successfully in such movies as Monster House and The Polar Express. However in this case the captured movement didn't appear to be fine-tuned to a great degree, and movement looked unnatural and was much like the animation in the Bionicle movies.

Motion Capture for The Polar Express

Most importantly, J enjoyed it. And surely that is the main thing.

Child Prodigy?

Coming across one of your kids reading in this house is not rare. We are all readers in our house, fiction or non-fiction, and we literally have hundreds of books (M used to have over a thousand but had to whittle them down due to lack of space). But today I was really suprised, not by the fact that our youngest was looking at a book, but by what he was reading.

I mean, Steven Hawking is hardly light reading, not your normal bedtime story shall we say. After all, when was the last time your 3 year old asked you for the one about the Black Hole and the bend in Space Time? Yet there he was, chilling out in our bed reading A Brief History of Time. OK, I can forgive him for losing my place, but when I noticed he was on the last few pages, and I am still near the beginning, that is a slap in the face I can tell you.

I can see with a child of this intellect at his age I am going to have a serious run for my money.

Return of the J

For the last 3 days J has been at Deacon's Camp, at the Church owned campground in Norfolk. Dad drove him, a friend from another ward (KB) and Nathan on Thursday and collected him today.

He had a great time, including falling in the lake twice (one of the times being when his canoe capsized). A 2 Km run was also part of the activity (impressive I thought). But I will let J fill you in on the details tomorrow. Right now he needs to get clean.