Plastication Of The Nation

Monday 24^th August 2009 we started work on converting the land. This entailed strategic placing of plastic (courtesy of our good friend Guy) in the areas where we wanted to kill off the grass.

Here are a couple of pics of how it’s looking so far…………..

Oh and of course the truck had to make it into the pictures (Buildwas mud and all!)

I Name This Chicken ………

We have CHICKENS! Well……… at least we’ve bought them but have not yet made homes for them, more on this later.

After a trip out with my sister and brother-in-law to Leek livestock auction one Saturday and coming away empty handed we popped in to see a man about some chickens a bit closer to home.

As no-one really knew what to get Nik for his birthday, a chicken or two was looking like a good gift idea. So after some debate Nik decided on three chickens (Pekin Bantams) that he would like to keep, not only as egg layers, but as pets too (Ahh bless!) One was buff coloured, one black and one brown.

My sister and brother-in-law said they would like to buy the buff coloured one for him and asked if they could name it Ginger, this eventually led on to Nik’s sister’s contributing towards buying the black and brown hens and naming them Kiev and Speckle.

We have also acquired a brown hen who did a Steve McQueen from a local chicken farm (no name given yet and breed unknown!) that is currently in the good hands of our friend Andrew.

Now all they need is a home!

To Blog or Not To Blog?

that is the question! Well luckily for all you readers we've decided to set up this blog to share with you the trials and tribulations of our new mini farm.

Before I go any further I must say a huge thank you to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for starting up the brilliant Landshare scheme.

http://landshare.channel4.com/

If you wanted to skip reading about the Landshare project then, briefly, this is how it works: A landowner, helper or grower posts a listing on the Landshare site stating what they are looking for or offering, this connects interested parties in their area and before you know it the adventure has begun!

So after seeing Landshare introduced on the River Cottage TV programme we signed up. (I must add at this point for those who don't know us that we live in an apartment in Newport, Shropshire and thus don't have any garden/land to grow anything on). At the start of August 2009, we made contact with a chap called Paul who had a patch of land at Oulton, near Norbury Junction (about a 1/4 of an acre and just a few miles up the road) so after the initial look around we accepted Paul’s offer of the land and then went away all excited and not being able to sleep (Well Nik didn't sleep, I had no problems at all!).

Anyway here is a picture of the land (well some of it)