Here comes Autumn

Once again September seems to have crept up on us unannounced, we seem to have spend the whole summer busy with various projects one of which has been expanding the chickens domain. We realised pretty soon after getting them that their run simple wasn't big enough for the two of them, chicken need space to scratch and forage so it seems the kindest thing was to expand their chunk of the garden.

It has to be a bit of a budget affair as by this point we where pretty strapped. Rich bless him sacrificed 4 posts he'd been keeping on one side to build a fence, all the posts have either been given to him or scrounged of people who where chucking them. We did have to buy the chain link fencing new as we couldn't get enough second hand, we got a roll of 10 meters for £35 from a farm suppliers. The cute little wooden gate was actually from our old house two doors over and built by my Dad our of palette wood about 9 years ago, our friends who lived there had given it to us with a load of other scrap wood and as it had fall apart when we touched it we put it on the pile for burning, however when we realised we needed the bigger run Rich dug all the parts out and managed to glue and screw it back together, its a quite rotten in places but it should do until Rich can build a new one. I think Dad would have  really liked the chickens!

 We also moved the wormery bin down to the coop as well, it makes putting the poop into is easier plus the chooks now get a lot of the kitchen waste as a snack and the bits they don't want the worms get so it made more sense to have them all in the same space.

We have manage to really cut down on the amount of waste we produce, we of course recycle but now we also burning all paper and cardboard on our log burner which then goes to the chicken for their dust baths so we are now only throwing out about 1 black bin bag a month, much less if I can buy our veg from the local green grocers that use significantly less packaging then supermarkets.
It really helps that back in May Rich and I went vegetarian, something I had wanted to do for a while but Rich suggested it and we are now 3 months down the line and eating way healthier, having the chickens has helped with this as they do their daily egg which I still find amazing and contributes to our new way of eating.

Im not sure I could actually eat chicken now I have them as pets, it would be like we where eating the cat! Yes I have official become a crazy chicken lady!

One of my goals this summer was to start baking our own bread, something I finally devoted some time too and after about 3 months Im getting pretty good, I bake two loaves a week roughly and have been experimenting with rolls and naan breads (Rich does enjoy a curry) this again is helping us to watch what we eat, I can control exactly what goes into my bread so I know theirs no preservatives or anything else in there, only problem is its quite hard not scoffing it as soon as its out of the oven!

One last thing, I wanted to show you this really cool little original 70's lampshade we picked up for just £6 at the Green Park market in Bath on Sunday, its so cute and really simply made, I'd love to have a go at making a big one!

So thats it for now, as I have mentioned we have a huge big scary project lined up but we are waiting on planning, I don't want to say to much in case we jinks it! Hopefully more news on that by the end of the month.