The sound of silence?

It is 11.20am. Chris has gone to St Michael's and the Church bell has just finished its 10 minute solitary call to worship. I have finished the morning jobs on the field and the dogs are all sleeping after their two staggered walks around the village and country lanes a half hour ago.
The cottage is silent.
Usually on a Sunday I will be listening to Radio 4 whilst pottering around the house. I always listen to LBC talk radio as I feed and water the birds early in the morning, but right now, as I jot down a few notes for my chicken course, tucked carefully away at my desk in the bedroom, I am enjoying the silence.
Of course, there really is no silence , even when you are alone.
There is the dull whirl from the washing machine in the kitchen as it battles yet another heavy load of dirty, animal stained work clothes............
Even through double glazing I can hear the "QUARK! QUAAARRRK!" from a trio of runners as they squabble over something minor by the lane gate and beyond them the deep baying of Scotty the last remaining buff cockerel drowns out the lighter crowing of Rogo and Roger........
There is the intermittent patter of rain on the windows behind my head, the occasional sleepy sigh from Meg curled up on the bed nearby........and far in the distance (although they are only 50 yards away) the thoroughbreds from the riding stables are thundering around their paddocks rather too playfully and with very heavy feet.

Even though I spend 80% of my time at home, I think I don' t spent enough time with just the above sounds for company, I don't think that many of us do. The radio is often my constant companion, and although It stimulates thought and ideas, those thoughts and ideas are mainly of external things.
Just now, It is nice to zone away from the bigger stories of the day, and think of other things.......so I am thinking of my introductions to my chicken teaching course!, I have planned to re organise my vegetable plots in my mind and have daydreamed of perhaps obtaining a new plot of land (there is a small plot potentially free nearby which would be away from the crop destroying chickens)
I have planned to do an extra shift that would pay for the car being serviced and I am looking forward to catch up with old friend Nigel in Manchester on Thursday evening.
Other mental lists get added to, in these quiet moments......I need to chase up my volunteer job at the Scala cinema on Tuesday (The Burma VJ documentary that I missed a week ago is showing there too!!!), The Trelawnyd Flower Show committee meeting is on Wednesday, the last one before August's show, and we always have mountains of jobs to complete before the big day and to cap it all my sister's Prestatyn Flower Show takes place towards the end of next week and I have not even organised my entries for that as yet.......
I need to get some antibiotic powder for Susan who still looks a little wan and the back garden looks a mess and needs clearing and weeding........................................
sigh.......perhaps I shouldn't be thinking too much..................there are just too many things to be done....

Date afternoon

Sometimes we don't make time for some of "us" time....I guess most couples that have been together almost a decade can get into the routines of work and jobs! and don't slow down enough to do something nice.
Today we made the effort to go out. I had a bath and dressed up in a clean set of clothes and NO wellingtons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and we went over to Llandudno to have lunch at Osborne House!
The food and service was as usual top notch and the maitre' d, an efficient and friendly woman who could sell sand to Arabs, made a point of recognising us and served us personally.
I would love to stay at this small hotel just once, as the owners have restored it to it's original Victorian condition, and the individualised rooms look wonderfully ornate yet comfortable. After a nice meal there, you hate to get up and travel home....I could have sat on one of the overstuffed sofa with a wine,coffee and papers and made a day of it
I snapped a quick photo of Chris before his lunch but as you can see he absolutely hates his photo being taken.....

Chick updates

The baby bantams I was given a few weeks ago have turned out to be wyandottes and I hope they are two hens. I cut their wings, treated them for worms and housed them in their own rabbit hutch with Bunny,Roger and Mary.

Meanwhile Kate Winslett and her 6 tiny chicks have ventured out in their own run for the first time thanks to a break in the dismal weather. The chicks look slightly incongruous seeing that they are black (except one tiny yellow chick)..she remains a doting mother

Winter!

In an hour Autumn turned literally into winter. The wind got up and the rain lashed down in almost horizontal fashion, and all but the ducks scattered for the shelter of the houses on the field (including Halleh, who followed his flock into the A frame!
A huge tree on the outskirts of the village got caught up in the storm and came crashing down, right across the main road. Thank god it didn't catch any passing car! Apparently local villagers and farmers got stuck with chain saws and tractors and cleared the road before any of the emergency services could sort it out....yes all very Whisky Galore!

The weather seemed far too severe for poor Kate and the new chicks, so I picked up the entire broody box and placed it in the shed. I think that was the right decision because only an hour after the chicks started to show themselves. The two baby bantams that usually inhabit the shed didn't seem to mind being relegated to the cage roof, where they already like to perch. In a week or two the pair will be moved into the one spare small coop I have left!

This afternoon I made jam and finished Chris' expenses.....the rain has continued to fall

Autumn

The rain has lashed down all night, and this morning the field, as it did last year, has become a mud covered swamp. It is cold today, almost autumnal infact , and I have made sure that all of thew hen runs have extra cover as hens do not like to become wet AND cold!

Kate Winslett had to be prised off her nest this morning and would not eat and drink in her desperate efforts to return to her now six chicks.....not a buff amongst them as we have 5 black and 1 white baby, but all seem to be doing ok. I have put water and chick crumbs in small containers inside the broody box and will construct some sort of awning to cover the front poop hole as the house is tiny and driving rain could well get in with mother and babies.

The circle of life continues on its small way here: Poppy went yesterday and one of the very old hybrids, Rose (Blanche's sister) died in the night....yet we now have these 6 new babies, the 2 scruffy bantam chicks still in the shed and the 12 "teenagers" in the main run, which makes an extra 20 mouths to feed.

The turkey eggs in the incubator have not hatched as yet (they are due today!) I bobbed them in warm water earlier and no movement could be seen....shame! perhaps young Boris is firing blanks????

I will do the basics outside today and will, I think make some rhubarb jam and start to organise some of my teaching course which starts on the 27th!

night in

I was hoping to have a night out with a friend last night but it was not to be.....so I got absolutely soaked walking the dogs and locking the hens up! spent a boring hour or so organising Chris' expenses and ended up having a few wines watching cute Simon Pegg in Shaun of the dead

I felt rather boring and had a big sulk!....but good news of the day was that Kate Winslett now has three tiny chicks hiding under her big fat thighs!!!

Forgive another boring Veg and Hen blog

Kate Winslett has hatched out 2 chicks so far, and seems to be coping well juggling chicks eggs and sudden motherhood. She is a hefty fat hen , so I have worries that she may crush them as she did her own eggs, but so far so good! The sides of her nesting box seem a little steep for any unsteady chick to be able to climb back in if accidentally turfed out, so I have banked it up with sawdust, other than that I have left them all well alone.
The daughters of the lady that was buried last week have visited the allotment almost daily. They bring bread for the hens and biscuits for the pigs, and I think the peace that the animals bring them obviously helps with their grief just a tiny bit.- funny how that can happen eh?
Today's main job has been the broad bean harvest, an hour and a half sped by as I shelled hundreds of pods ready for the freezer whilst listening to Radio 7's production of It Had To Be Murder which was the original book which the film Rear Window was based upon. The book was ok but not a patch on Hitchcock's psycho babbling film production! And there was no Thelma Ritter character!
This afternoon I had a phone call from the girl from Penyfford asking if she could take Poppy off my hands. She is a nice girl with a mass of animals at home, who knows her stuff when it comes to hens, so of course I said yes. She collected him this afternoon and he was quite well behaved when I caught him. I will be sorry to see the boy go, but I must get a little less sentimental when it comes to the cockerels, I cannot have too many. So with a sign he is off to pastures new and I am left with the bouncy Scotty, the reliable Rogo and the diffident Stanley oh and not forgetting the bantam males Roger and Pirrie.

Farmhouse cooking and The Great Escape

Halleh has amused me all day by deciding to join the small flock of hens that survived the dog attack last year. As they moved around the field on their scavenging hunts, Halleh gamely waddled after them, rooting in the grass when they did and resting in the shade when they wanted to. Even Rogo seems to have accepted his presence with some alacrity. Below Halleh next to Rogo, Belle and Linda at feeding time

It is half past eight and I have just sat down after a busy day. This evening I have been jam making! (no one tells you that hot jam is like lava!) and I was pleased as punch with my four proud jars of strawberry jam! Before that I have laboriously picked all of the pods from the pea canes and with George for company shelled the entire bucketful whist sitting in the sun.

Shelling peas reminds me very much of my childhood. It was a job Janet and I sometimes did with my Grandmother, and the boring job was always livened up with her embroidered stories of wartime Liverpool!

Today I just had George and LBC for company. The other dogs couldn't brave the hot sun and lay in the shadow of the Church wall.

My sweaty efforts to cordon off the graveyard from the runners yesterday seemed to be in vain today as despite the fixed netting, all nine of the noisy buggers found their way amongst the gravestones time and time again!. I couldn't work out just how they were breaking through the netting, so after chasing them back into the field for the third time, George and I set up camp behind the turkey house to watch just how they did it!

The nine ducks were crafty, they grazed the grass on the field for a while, but ever so slowly they made their way to the top right hand corner which annexes the graveyard. Here they looked around nervously for a long time and then one by one, like commandos on a secret raid, they disappeared down into the ditch! (below)

I take back my usual inflammatory notions that runner ducks are thick as mince, as the nine of them negotiated the long and dangerous ditch and small brook like extras from The Great Escape. In true indian style they snaked their way silently with heads bowed, only to pop up 100 yards upstream in the middle of the graveyard chattering excitedly to themselves! It took ages to string another length of netting across the brook but at least they have now been contained!