Tag: hen house
Keeping Hens, in the Town or Country
The hens have settled into their new home and are all laying.
Happy clucks and soft singing emanates out from the hen house.
The secure enclosure promises to keep the Fox family away…for I have lost too many of my lovely hens to Mr and Mrs Fox.
Inside, the house is spacious and comfortable, with an upstairs and five windows in total!
The system is similar to the one I used in London for over a decade.
It is known as a deep litter system, using lots of straw.
The dirty straw is then used in the gardens as a mega-mulch!
The deep litter system allows the girls foraging in a limited space and I collect greens for them on days when they are stay at home.
Days when I am in the garden, the girls are allowed out under my watchful eye!
The mulching continues unabated, as the grass paths are mowed…grass clippings are piled onto cardboard as a weed suppressant, allowing newly planted trees to get a footing!
This is the system I have used for ten years and all the fruit trees are producing well.
Honesty is in full bloom now and being enjoyed by the bees.
Most of the early bees are bumble bees and are most prolific here at Bealtaine Cottage, where succession planting keeps all visitors fed from February through to the end of November.
The painted stone Cockerel stands guard by the front door of the cottage.
Newly mown paths allows everything alongside to look lush!
The Cherry tree, grown from seed, stands covered in blossom, with the promise of lots of Cherries, some high for the birds and some low for me!
Warm,Naked Earth
The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
~Julian Grenfell
…except, in Permaculture gardens, little is naked, most is covered, yet the earth beneath the green mantle warms just the same.
April has set Spring firmly in place, with early sunrise and birdsong to lift the dullest spirit!
The boys awaken to the sunshine…
Ribes sets the bees buzzing…apparently the Bumble Bee is losing numbers here in Ireland, as well as the UK, but certainly not at Bealtaine Cottage…the place is abuzz!
Amelanchier is coming into flower…yet more of the succession planting for the bees!
The playhouse is being transformed into a hen house…an upstairs~downstairs hen house to suit the due pecking order!
I’ve been busy with the brush and wood preservative, making sure that this little house sees another 10 years!
Chard has over-wintered well in the tunnel and will keep producing right up until the newly sown Chard is ready to pick…so very easy to grow!
Photinia, Red Robin has opened its new leaves…a burst of red!
Perennial Poppy has weathered the frost well!
Quince is in flower against the barn.
These gigantic shells have been moved to hang on sticks driven into the earth, making a contrast to the emerging green!
Spring is bursting forth into a riot of greens, as the first Cuckoo of the year heralds its summery arrival…earlier than last year!
The Fairy Wood is a mass of lime green Spurge!
The Lavender-painted Barn takes on a new look, making a wonderful backdrop to Spring.
Newly painted benches are ready to withstand another year of crazy Irish weather!
Primroses emerge in places where birds have dropped seed!
And the warm earth, no longer naked, continues to push forth magic!
Sustainable Food Revolution
Living in a time when the cost of food is rising day on day, it might be time to re-think the lawn! This is what Bill Mollison, one of the founders of the Permaculture movement has to say on the subject:

The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands…
Over the past few days I have been busy converting this little shed into a new hen house and run…food to swap and share…fresh eggs! it is going to be a simple enough barter, swapping a sack of logs for nine eggs. Most logs are traded at 3.50 a sack, so that’s a fair swap!
That makes a good swap as eggs are getting more expensive by the day and the logs will be delivered to my door! I just have to ensure that the hen house and run are secure against Mr ans Mrs Fox and family!
As Spring moves across the land, a drying wind is working its magic on the earth. The greening is under-way.
The view from the sitting room window is being filled in like a ‘Painting By Numbers,’ canvas. Ash trees are the last to get their leaves and so stand proud in all their silver glory against temperamental Spring skies.
This is the beautiful Field Maple to the front of the cottage.
Continuing my lifelong passion for trees…this is a wall tile I made from clay…complete with tree, a fairy tree.
The lone Fairy Thorn one often sees growing in the middle of fields here in Ireland served as my inspiration. They are often windswept and leaning away from the west.
This sits upon the dresser in the kitchen…a time when preserves were sold in stoneware jars. All containers were re-cycled, in that they were re-used…even milk bottles! Lemonade bottles had a money deposit attached to them and children would collect them up to return to the shop, as a way of earning pocket money!
Even cream came in little stoneware jars like this, as it kept cool in the pantry in the days before every home had a fridge!
“A sacred way of life connects us to the people and places around us. That means that a sacred economy must be in large part a local economy, in which we have multidimensional, personal relationships with the land and people who meet our needs, and whose needs are met in turn.”
― Juliana Birnbaum Fox, Sustainable Revolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide
A Year at Bealtaine Cottage…
Not in any particular order…pictures of the year that was…
With the oven hot enough to bake a cake…my beloved Stanley Stove in the kitchen…
Early morning mist sweeps up the valley…
One of the Plum Trees laden with fruit…
The moon rising over the gardens…
Salix Contorta, or Twisted Willow, with Hag-Stones hanging from one of its branches.
Back of Bealtaine, near the main production gardens.
The lower pond in the Bog Garden.
My darling Missy…gone from this mortal coil, but her energy is felt…
Firing up the Rocket Stove with a bit of an old fence post…wicked heat!
Early Spring in the gardens near the tunnel.
Apple blossom…a great apple harvest every year without fail!
The tunnel in May…seedlings in pots and trays everywhere!
Productive gardens, around the tunnel and herb beds, in May
The Hen house…I will definitely get some more hens in 2014!
I miss the girls…hens are very relaxing to watch.
Bluebells under the kitchen window…I shall post some more tomorrow
Happy New Year to you all XXX and Blessings from Bealtaine.