No body does it better......

Blanche has sat like this for 23.45 hours. I have had to bodily lift her free of the duck eggs and literally throw her out of the house for a ten minute feed, water and poo, before she angrily stalked back to her eggs.
Hopefully a broody hen will be the answer to the the convalutto incubator disaster we are experiencing.. Still no peeping or hatching at the moment and its almost Friday, so things again don't look good.Poor little buggers.

Managed to ring Mike tonight in between duckling watch. Having a hard time with his poorly mum, it was good to catch up but sometimes I feel pretty impotent with friends' problems when I am so far away.Sometimes you just need to be there with a pint of star and a sympathetic shoulder.

arrrhhhhhhhh!

I have made myself go out for most of the day as I have been watching the incubator far too much for signs of life. No "pipping" at the moment, but the ever informative "Practical poultry forum" says that they can start just hours before a hatch. The forum also slags off my type of incubator ( saying that humidity levels are all wrong) so what do I do? I have chanced a quick candle of one egg and thought I saw some movement, but my nerves are all over the place. I have decided not to mist the eggs ( yet again) and leave well alone....so am off out to do some shopping and walk to the dogs...........
How do expectant parents cope?.I am wrung out

Allotment day

For those that do not enjoy news of vegetables,poultry and general country news should look away now, as after a rather wet morning I have spent the day planting up red cabbage,kos lettuce,spinach,main crop potatoes,broad beans and the remaining herbs.

Rabbit proof netting covers everything, which is a bind, but at least it's all done.. I have moved Blanche and her eggs (I actually moved them all in situ) into the big hen house so the main flock have their sleeping quarter back.

It feels like spring today, as my parsnips,onions,shallots and early sown broad beans are all showing in the allotment, and the dark soil is tinting a subtle shade of green.

Blue bells are coming out on the gop (top pic) which add to the feeling of spring.

No "peeping" as yet from the duck eggs.....I have checked the temperature of the incubator with an independent thermometer........everything seems ok.....my nerves are shot to pieces

From his cold dead hand

1924-2008.........now you have the chance...........

Stellet licht

Stellet licht (2007) (Silent Light) was a bloody hard slog. Beautiful visuals ( namely a Jaw-dropping opening shot -- a six-minute-long time-lapse image of a night time sky slowly giving way to dawn and then full-fledged daybreak ) are impressive but the story of a Latin American Mennonite community and the adulterous relationship of one arable farmer in particular was terribly tedious to say the least. Director Carlos Reygadas does like his Long, long,long shots and when you have seen one three minute shot of a barn, or a farmhouse in the snow, you have seen them all.

The beautiful cinematography ( including some wonderful Norman Rockwell-ish portrait studies of the isolated farming community) was just not enough to hold the audience attention, and several of them (like Hazel and I ) actually walked out before the end.

Duck news

Been busy today.The poultry empire is growing nicely, as this afternoon I have set up the final duck and (hopefully) goose enclosure and house, ready for the potential (!!!!!) arrival of the new ducklings. Batch two , (which are due early next month) have been arranged beautifully in the smallest coop by Blanche, who has sat steady on them all day, only popping out once to stuff her face with food and have the largest and most offensive crap in the history of Trelawnyd hens.(apparently large messy craps are a sign of getting broody!)
The batch of eggs in the incubator have had their last humidification and turns, and now will be left for fate and nature to take its course.
Risking sounding like a real old poof ( or even worse a middle aged square) I have baked a flan for Peter and Tracey instead of buying the baby a fluffy bunny,- my thinking is old fashioned:- that a new baby would leave you exhausted and not bothered with home cooked food so I will deliver that tomorrow on the egg delivery and Jess walking run.
Off out now to earth up my potatoes.....

Blanche is now a woman! and I get an award

One of the hybrids Blanche has gone broody. Hormones have taken hold, her arse has cemented itself to the "A" frame's single nest box and every time you open the nest door, all you see is a very indignant face , which almost says in a very Katherine Tate- way

"How very dare YOU?"

I hadn't planned to use one of my own broody hens as a surrogate mother for some more of the newly laid duck eggs, but I thought I would capitalise on this sudden gift of maternal closeness and have sneaked 6 of the spare duck eggs underneath her this evening.

Hopefully she will do better than I did with the first clutch of eggs.

Worked last night so ignored the phone when It went this morning. A message was left one of the senior sisters on ITU who said that I had won a hospital trust award for innovations in care! Apparently staff had nominated me ( this is news to me) for the work I did with teaching and promoting excellent standards of care related to a spinally injured patient recently.......

The "award ceremony" is in May.....tee hee......I can feel a Bette Davies acceptance speech coming on....

"Kill them! kill them ALL!!!!!!!!!!"

I have mentioned this before on my blog that I am not good in the mornings and yet again this morning, Christopher "Mary Poppins" Burton bounced awake, ready to walk the dogs at 6am,loudly banging on about the cold and the fact that he was letting out the hens "yet again".Oh ....

I dream for the morning where I can doze s-l-o-w-l-y awake with pretty blue birds twittering in whispers outside the window, perhaps with the faint whiff of bacon as a bit of background colour. The most important thing I love is silence. No banter , no chatter, just quiet time. It allows the body to re charge and acclimatize to the day ahead at a pedestrian pace and if I can't get that, my anger knows no bounds!

There are strategies to maintain the status quo, I usually make breakfast (silently) with a cup of full bodied Italian blend coffee on board. I go and potter in the field, I have a bath, anything to "gradually" wake up to the day.

As a junior nurse I often picked patients who were known to be uncommunicative to sort out first, and have in the past performed a full (and intimate) bed bath completely in silence! As I climbed the nursing career ladder, I could start work later, hiding in my office until 9am when the red mist had risen enough to allow for a more normal conversational discourse to take place with staff who knew to keep out of my way until that first coffee had been downed!

When I am at friends' houses or away in Broadstairs for example I can act Dustin Hoffman off the screen with the occasional dawn performance of "Mr Geniality", but underneath I am gagging to kill a bus load of small children.

I wish I could be a nicer person but that just aint gonna happen.......