A sword and a gun, nuff said. As we sat there trembling waiting for the performance to happen, I noted that perhaps we looked like we might fit in, after all, I was in my normal weekend bag lady outfit, dad had on a lumberjacky type shirt and what with a crew cut and tattoos, slotted right in but poor old Beech. I figured if the crowd went bad, we'd throw him to the hoards. Him in his brand new fathers day pink and blue polo shirt and bright white trainers, we'd fend them off with preppy boy.
Im sure its probably one of the best father's days my dad has had, the icing on the cake being the rotund lady who came out of the pub at one point to shout very loudly at all the FAMILIES to 'f**k off playing card school in the pub and to come outside and spend time with their kids seeing as it was f*****g fathers day'. Lovely. As soon as the 1 dance that lasted 2 minutes was over, we panicked at finding out the gate was locked and we couldnt get out that way, so drew straws to see who was brave enough to go through the pub first. At a run.
Unfortunately I didnt get to try these, they were whisked off to Beech's work, but I did get a treat with the order, last time was two very nice fruit tea bags, this time a canvasy type carrier bag with Manchester Tarts on. Very cool. I do like the little personal touches like that, that come with the cakes. Tara and I ordered 2 boxes to trough on for ourselves mid week (unfortunately having been told I was at risk of redundancy that day I thought it pertinent not to stand in the office and get my camera out so no photos) but those arrived looking as fantastic as ever along with two chocolate hand bags, one strawberry flavoured, one orange flavoured also handmade by Amanda. Fab.
I also found time to make a card or two last weekend, this one a special request of butterflies..
Not a very good shot Im afraid, bit of a colour cast, it was taken first thing in the morning in crappy light. The colours are much more like this one, taken later in the day.
Course I also made a couple of fathers day cards too, but I forgot to take photos of the finished cards.
Thank you Amanda and Daz, it did indeed cheer me up. In fact I was feeling quite cheery that afternoon right up until the fiat shed died on the M60, just yards from my exit.
Oh oh oh, my first tomatoes! How Ive not noticed them before I dont know, I swear they werent there last weekend. They make me smile.
My other first was my very first order with Manchester Tarts.
Manchester Tarts is a new company who supply, as their leaflet says, beautifully decorated, home baked cupcakes and muffins.
This was the Pink Princess themed box I ordered with Bethany in mind. She loved them so much in their little white box tied with red ribbon that she kept kissing the lid.
Fabulous. Bonus was, they tasted as fab as they look. Giddy with cupcakes Ive also got some coming into the office next week for a midweek treat (Chocolate box, which includes Rocky Road, orange chocolate, belgian wafter and caramel curls, and Rock Star, with black wings, red hearts and glitter, how cool!). With free delivery in South Manchester and Trafford, (yes I am shamelessly advertising here but there's a good reason for that) I urge you to treat yourself to a box. Im thinking thank you gift for teachers, with the millions of teaching assistants now, a box of cupcakes is the perfect gift that doesnt leave anyone out.
Best bit is, guess who is founder, owner, maker and washerer uperer at Manchester Tarts? Amanda Magpie - woo hoo! Woman of many talents, Amanda can also do larger quantities of cupcakes for weddings, new births and birthday parties. The Manchester Tarts website is still a work in progress, but Amanda can be contacted at the email address on then if you want to make an enquiry about her cakes.
Not much else has been happening although getting wet putting the chickens to bed seems to be the norm at the moment, how much thunder and lightning have we had this week??Cinnamon seems better for yakking up a tonne of horrible yukky stuff this week although she isnt eating as much as she should be. She prefers instead to stand next to the newbies run issuing threats and telling them not to eat the food because its hers and not to drink the water because its hers, despite being in their run. Can see some scraps coming in the next few weeks as gradually they are intergrated, firstly by free ranging, then a few weeks later, sleeping in the same house. Not looking forward to that bit at all. What I am looking forward to is the first egg from the newbies, which will actually be, their very first egg. Wonder what its like laying your first egg, can you imagine how scary it must be the first time it happens??? Bless.
Its what makes chickens look like they have lovely fluffy puffy chests after they have eaten. Unfortunately whatever poor Cinnamon has eaten, has stuck in her crop and started fermenting making her crop enlarge into a large squishy lump and giving her wind. Bad chicken burps are not nice let me tell you. She’s a bit miserable, off her food which is worrying, but still moving about and drinking which I'm taking as a good sign. They only problem is, that food needs to move from her crop one way or the other.
In that she’s turned her beak up at the common foods given to help this condition, yoghurt, olive oil, olive oil soaked bread, its obvious it wasn’t taking the downward route which means she needs to become bulimic in order to help herself.
Clearly this isn't possible so Ive taken on the role of ‘Chief Chicken Vomiter’. Basically this morning it meant picking up my miserable chicken and gently tipping her arsey end up so that her beak pointed down, and waiting for her to chuck. Which she did.
Which surprised me because I really didn’t think I could do it.
Which is why the brown gooey smelly stuff landed on my crocs.
Obviously not best chuffed at being tipped up, when I put her down she swore at me and tried to give it legs towards the drinker in the newbies run. Which was daft because theres a small wire fence stopping her from getting to it. In the end as she looked so forlorn I clipped a treat cup full of water on her side, where she stationed herself, taking a sip every minute or so. I gave her another tip before leaving from work, but despite the loud gurglings of an upset crop, not much else came out. Carried her back to the run and shut both oldies away for the day.
Its going to be a case of emptying the chicken for while I think in the hope I can release all the goo and hope that she starts eating again soon. I think with practice it will get easier and if I get her in the right place under my arm, it will be much like bagpipe chicken wont it.
Say ahhhhh for my bloated chicken.
Ooh looky at my vegetable patch in the background and its protected flourishingness. I think I invented a new word there.
Ben was adamant he didn’t want to camp out, mainly because there’s just no electricity in the back garden and once his DS was out of charge, why, what would he do?? Well Benj, get a life for one thing. In the end the threat of ‘Well its bedtime for you, but we’re going camping and eating chocolate biscuits’ that changed his mind. They look quite comfy don’t they.
They ate their goodies, we oohed at the camp fire (yes me, all on my own did a camp fire and DIDN’T set fire to a tent!) and read our books. Even Squeaky came to play..
I’d like to say once torches were out and we’d settled down to sleep that the night was uneventful and peaceful. It wasn’t. For me anyway. The children in one tent, me in the other, very comfy airbed it should have been.
Beech coming in at 1.45am in the morning and opening the patio doors woke me up. Ben crying with toothache and needing calpol at 4.10am woke me up. He was dosed and then went up to bed blaming the tent. The leak from the overflow in the loft pouring out of the gutter and landing on a plastic box kept me awake. Constant police sirens kept me awake (who knew Stockport was so rife with crime!). Why is it that birds feel the need to start singing at 4.30am in the morning when they have the whole bloody day to sing? The chickens getting up at 4.45am trotting down their ramp woke me up. The fact that I moved into the tent with Bethany after Ben had gone in and her snores and snuffles kept me awake. When I finally drifted off again, it didn’t seem too much longer after that than the sun streaming through the tent increases the temperature to 100000 degrees meant I was wide awake once again.
The moral of the story is? Bethany loved it, I was a wreck for most of Saturday because clearly the air bed is too soft for my dodgy back, Ben thinks camping gives you toothache but all this aside yesterday we purchased our bargain £35 Asda tent...
and shall be road testing it in a couple of weeks on a real campsite woo hoooo!Bluebell (who is a Bluebell Hen, hence the name)
continuing with the flower them, Rosie (was Poppy but Rosie suits her better) who is a Blacktail, cept you cant really see the black feathers in her tail here.
and finally little timid Snowdrop
who is a very very timid White Star and should probably be called Pansy because she's such a scaredy cat.
This time dad, Bethany and I went to Creag Mhor Poultry in Nantwich to pick out our newbies. The nice man there had pulled out a few of each type to show us and put them into little crates so that we could pick our own. Unfortunately he didn’t have any of the breed I wanted (Blackrock) but as soon as he pulled out Bluebell we all went ‘awwww!’ so we knew we had to choose her as her colours are just gorgeous. Unfortunately she’s camera shy so havent yet managed a decent shot of her on her own.
I also knew I wanted a white chicken and out of the two types there, the White Stars and the Light Sussex (white with black feathering in the neck and tail), Snowdrop won easily as she really is pure white. As her comb hasn’t developed much yet, both her comb and her beak are a very pale pink so the combination is lovely. I had thought about only having 2 but then when the chap showed us Rosie and fanned her wing out to show us the black feathers, couldn’t really resist her.
Very pleased with the purchases but Nutmeg wasn’t. AT ALL. In any way shape or form as she told me when we arrived back home with them. For the time being they will live in the back part of the shed, with a pop hole (thanks dad!) into an outside run. As Mr Chicken Chappy told me, ex battery hens by nature are very aggressive and would literally just beat them up. Specially as newbies are only 14 weeks old so half the size of the oldies at just over a year. Nutmeg was happily wandering around the garden when I bought in the interlopers. Least that’s what she said, LOUDLY. God did she make a racket about it, you’d have though Id shot her. In the end she was grounded and sent back to the run to think about her bad behaviour.
When I let her out a bit later on she sheepishly came out of the run and very quietly, I add, pretended they werent there at all. Until one of them, I think Bluebell let out a teeny squeak which sounds more like a kitten than a chicken whereupon she sauntered over to their run, made this big show of puffing up her feathers and allegedly just scratching in the soil at the side of it but I know damn well she was whispering threats through the wire. It was so obvious she was saying ‘hard in there arent you but just wait til you come out, you’re MINE pretty ladies!’
Cinnamon didn’t really offer her opinion, she’s a bit under the weather with what dad thinks is an impacted crop. Wha wha? In laymans terms a crop is a storage bag not far from chickens chops where food sits before moving into the digestive system. Her’s is blown up and puffy like its inflated on one side. Apparently the thing to do is try and get some castor or olive oil down her and massage it through.
I have to massage my chicken. We’ll see how that one goes then....
How tiny, thats ben's hand! Couldn’t get over the size of the teeny weeny weeny dice! Amused myself for quite a while comparing them to other objects making whatever they were next to look enormous.
Small things amuse small minds I spose.
I'm still dead impressed that you can order some lenses to see how they look before you buy. What impressed me even more is the free squishy edible eye ball you get with each pair!
My first Graze box arrived too, all the rage at the moment, pineapple (only if its cold, has to go into the fridge before consumption for me), burn yer gob off nuts and seeds (aka hot chilli almonds which frightened the life out of me because I didn’t actually notice the words ‘hot’ or ‘chilli’ before tasting, that was a shock I can tell later) and some yoghurt covered peanuts. Cept mine shouldn’t really be called a graze box, mine should be renamed a ‘trough’ box because it seems to have emptied very erm quickly. So more of a trough than a graze really.
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