Trouble today at seven months old.

She's definitely taking after her mum, the collie side.

This is a very nice bread I made yesterday. a mixture of light and dark flour 

Look at that crumb. It tastes really good. :D 

I'm in the mood to make a pudding. I just need to decide which one. I'm thinking a boiled syrup pudding.  

Monday.

We have our new chicken coop up and running now.

Its been in use for about four days and despite a few teething troubles with the gangway, the chickens love it. They have loads of space and its way more cosy than the old coop.
Happily the old coop found a new home, housing our next door neighbours guinea pigs.  :D

Trouble seems to have stopped growing now, I'm not sure if she's reached her full height yet but at seven months old she can't be too far off. She's a little bit obsessed with our chicks at the minute. We've been keeping the chicks in our small original coop during the warmer parts of the day just until they're used to/old enough to be outside. Trouble will lie next to their run all afternoon if I let her.
I've discovered that two forty minute walks per day and a day full of chicken guarding is what is called for to get her to sleep at night.

Today has been an exhausting one for me.
I've walked the dogs twice, walked into town, picked up six Kilos of chicken feed, dog flea stuff, wormer and baking essentials, (including chocolate) walked back. By God it nearly killed me.
Deep cleaned the big chicken coop ready for the lady next door to have it. Made soup with home grown patty pan (not mine- a guerilla gardeners) carrot, runner beans and shop bought squash. I cleaned out the incubator ready for some eggs that I thought would arrive today, but instead I got a call from the lady who I ordered them from saying that she was unable to get the eggs I wanted. :'( Never mind though. I'll be getting three Dutch Hamburg eggs (so cute) and three frizzled bantams instead of the two frizzled bantams, two Dutch Hamburgs, one Lemon pencilled Friesian and a Speckledy.
Now in all honesty I didn't need to have the speckledy. I wasn't that fussed about the speckledy, but I really, really wanted the Friesian. Never-mind though. I can get some when we've moved house and gained a bigger garden, or when I've got an allotment.
I prepared a slow cooker meal requested by my OH, flea'd the dogs, moved the chicks and their paraphernalia out of the house, and then in again, cleaned their paraphernalia too, and moved the big coop next door.

I will sleep well tonight.  

five weeks old.

My chicks are five weeks old now.

aren't they cute? >_<

Look at their little faces. 

Trouble being adorable.

Butters the snake. I can't believe how big he is now.

Mrs wiggle, who's even bigger now.

 And both with nice clean snake vivs.

149 Ducklings Move Day To The Barn #56 Hatching Duck & Goose Eggs

These videos are my new obsession. Check them out. They're wonderful.

gardening update.

Well, I can't truthfully say that the veg growing has gone well this year. I don't think the weather has been ideal, I am very unhappy with how shady my garden has turned out to be. I've not had time to weed/water/feed like I would have liked, what with having a new puppy, two jobs, and my first house to try and keep clean (this is the one that's killing me - I hate, hate, hate cleaning, and its always a mess) I don't have a social life so no-one can blame that. The puppy and cat shitting all over it hasn't helped and has certainly made me unwilling to eat anything.

Things I want to do to improve things for next year. 

• I want to mulch the soil with the lovely chicken poop and greens compost. I don't think the soil has ever been fed. I have a horrible feeling that the old man that owned the house before, only used chemicals to keep things going. D:

• I want to finally get the paths between the raised beds covered with weed suppressant. I'm thinking of covering the left side of the garden with grass to give the dogs more pooping space. The puppy seems to poo 5 times a day and my garden seems to be always full of poo even though she does 2 poops on her walks. (I know, sorry. I'm talking about poo) and I poo pick weekly.

• I need to trim the hedge that runs the length of my garden, which actually belongs to my next door neighbour. I personally would like to burn it, I hate hedges.

• I would like to fence off my beds to keep shit faced puppy off of them. Can you tell she's driving me insane. 

• And I would like to grow more flowers next year. I've felt no joy for my garden this year. I'm hoping things will be better in the next growing season as the puppy should be a little bit better behaved. So I want the garden to be beautiful as well as productive.    

• I will also see if the neighbours on the other side will chop down that 60ft bloody tree sitting smack bang in the middle of their yard, that shades all of my garden. 

The peas and potatoes have done pretty darn well this year. Not one lot of pea moth larvae. The broad beans did very well. The runner beans, although very late to start, are looking good. And the achocha is massive and starting to produce little achochas that I might actually be able to try before the frosts arrive. Hopefully I can have one to try and one to ripen for more seeds. The nasturtiums are lovely and trailing everywhere and my pumpkins are looking good. So its not all a total failure.   

Chicken update.

My three week old golden seabright chicks.

Its very hard to take a picture through dirty glass. :p

This is Blue. She was looking very puffed up and sad in the corner, so I've tried to give her a bath encase she's egg bound. Its hard to bathe a large chicken in a sink. I can't wait until we finally get ourselves a bath. 

We're getting a lot of eggs right now. Too many really. I've given the dogs some scrambled eggs today to get rid of some.

Discussion.

Ok. I know I'm a bit gloomy and depressing. Try living inside my head. But I really think its time that the house prices situation was addressed.

I think that I can safely say that the UK has one of, or even, the highest house prices in the world.
To add insult to injury though, the UK houses are tiny, ugly, grubby buildings with tiny parcels of land attached called gardens. Houses that are built cheek by jowl, with no privacy and  which are made with inferior building materials. And we're paying extortionate prices for them.
The building materials are not what are making the house prices so unreasonable, its the price of land. I really think that land prices should go down, and a lot, but the regulations for house building should be stricter with the main focus being on keeping environmental damage to a minimum. I think they should increase the size of the average back garden and increase the privacy of the individual home owner.

I am aware that we are a very small country with a very large population, which is why the price of land is very high. Perhaps if an effort to reduce our overall population were made it would make living here a little bit more comfortable.

A bit extreme I know but I think we would even benefit from a one child policy like the one in china, maybe if we encouraged people to move to the larger land masses, like America and places in Europe it would reduce the strain to the UK.
 I know this is controversial but we need to reduce the amount of immigrants we allow into the country. I am aware that there are a lot of people out there that need help, but we can't afford to help everyone and the ship of England, Scotland and Wales is going to capsize if we don't stop taking on cargo.

I didn't mean for this post to be so political, it kinda ran away from me a little bit. Its just so hard to take when two people. One a scientist working full time, and the other working 25 hours a week in any job that will have her, are struggling so very. very much to afford a tiny two bedroom ex-council house in a town that no ones even heard of.

How would a person living on their own survive? People in retail and other minimum wage jobs can't afford to buy their own house and have to rent for their entire lives. How is this fair? No wonder we have such a problem with people on the dole, with people feeling like things are hopeless and what's the point of even trying. Something has to change in this country, and before its too late.