It’s still dry!

This morning, the sunshine continued from yesterday with a little more warmth to it. We both headed down keen to finish off the digging and to sort out a few other jobs. As we arrived, I spotted Sarah, Liz and Andy busy on their greenhouse and bumped into Geoff in his coop. It’s my favourite time of year, when everyone comes out and enjoys the first sunshine of the year.

I walked down to the main coop and was greeted by the usual hubbub of noise which only stopped when their beaks were full of sunflower seeds. I cleaned them out, washed out and topped up their water. Upon opening the nest box, I found two eggs. The usual Cream Legbar one and a dark brown one. This was exciting because it means Millie is laying now. The dirth of eggs in the shops along with almost everything else, means an increase in egg laying from our girls means we don’t have to struggle to get eggs in. I walked up to the main path and caught up with Geoff, Cliff, Michael and Alan. Alan had found a beautiful but dead peacock butterfly on his plot and came to show us. It was absolutely stunning!

Next I ambled up to the greenhouse and let Leia and Rey into their outside run whilst I cleaned out the greenhouse. With the drier weather, it was quicker and easier to sweep out the old bedding and clear the floor. I put in the new bedding, topped up their food and water feeder. They weren’t particularly keen to come back in but I managed to entice them inside with sunflower seeds. As I lugged out the sawdust back to the main coop, I spotted that each of the trees are starting to throw out their leaves.

As I was sorting out the chickens, my husband was busy digging. He had made significant progress by the time I joined him. As we made a start, I got chatting to two visitors form Brookfield Allotment. Their site runs a cooperative shop, selling produce from the site. It seems very successful and it’s may provide an important source of vegetables for those struggling to get hold of food in the shops. We had a good chat before they pottered off to look at the community garden. After another half an hour, we gave up, leaving the last bit of digging for tomorrow.

Some of the guys were really happy to have a copy of their official allotment photograph taken by a local photographer last year for a project about allotments. They were superb! I decided to try my hand at a couple of photos – some weren’t too bad!