Late autumn veg plot piccies.

Got a good frost this morning, with ice on the chicken houses.  I'd better get on and mulch the beds with compost, then I can forget about the beds until double digging time in the spring.

 The view from the pond to the chemin looks great now there are fewer leaves and more depth.

 View of the veg plot with leeks lazing about in the sun.

 Winter broad beans in on top of a trench full of compost.  Spring beans to go in on the left, and brussels down the centre next summer.

 Garlic waiting to go in.

 Savoys looking good (well, these two are).

 Romanesco looking too pretty to eat.

 New Chook looking a lot better.  Just need to give her some more room, somehow.

Winter salads all done in the polytunnel.

Chickens at last!

After months building one tiny coop and run, we've finally bought some chooks to live in it.
Cuckoo Marans - 3 hens and a cock, all looking a bit sulky out in the rain.

Looking a bit traumatised after sitting in the boot for an hour...

Marans are said to be very hardy, disease resistant, placid, and suited to wet conditions.  They lay about 200 dark brown eggs a year, and hopefully will go broody from time to time, or my efforts with chicken coop mk.2 will be wasted!  Meant to taste damn good as well.

The ladies settling in, which took literally 3 seconds!

Mr Lover Lover ...or you're in the pot, lad!

How not to make a chicken tractor.

After drawing lots of little designs and some larger ones on 1:20 scale with dusty scale rules, squares, and fancy pens from my old building design course which I bombed out of due to having not enough money for beer, I settled on a chicken tractor design that would cover half a veg bed and house four chickens in comfort. I could then rotate the tractor about the plot, keeping grass down, eating weed seeds and bugs, and harrowing the ground for me. I would have two tractors: one for eggs and one for meat. All would be simple, cheap, and easy...

...as long as I knew French and knew that cheap pine shrinks a bit when the weather's dry, which I didn't. I spent too much time explaining what I was after at the local builder's merchant and forgot to ask for untreated wood, and only remembered when I was taking the wood out of the car back on the Island. This meant planing the treated wood off every plank. The wood is pine from the Landes part of France - a vast sandy scrubland - and it grows very fast. This means the wood is sappy and expands with the weather. This means my nice smart coop, once tight as a ship's keel, is now sporting 5mm gaps between the planks! It's taken me weeks as well! I need a drink! I guess that the French aren't bothered about stable building materials - I used "volige", which are planks of wood used as roofing. Wish I'd just bought an "Eggloo" now and joined the trendy chicken set...