And more eggy tales.....plus a rant about rubbish

It seems there have been more eggs laid than we thought. I thought the last remaining Shumen had been a bit late laying this year and put it down to age. She is four this year and I thought she was slowing down. But no. After Dave saw her coming out from under the goat platform he moved it to find a multi coloured clutch of fourteen eggs, including a few white ones which can only be the Shumen. (I had mentioned that some hens had been coming out from under there a while ago, but the platform was too heavy for me to move!) Unfortunately we had no idea how long they had been there, and though I had frozen so many and had few in the kitchen we decided to scramble the fourteen and feed them back to the chickens. They looked fine when broken as it happens....but there are a lot more where they came from.

Secret nest

Six Shumen eggs amongst them

Scrambled eggs for the chooks

And they keep coming.....

Banana egg custard

Frittata to take to my sister for lunch

Eggy dough to make fruit buns...they were yummy

After a visit to a friend in the next village we also had a couple of goose eggs given. I had never had goose eggs before and assumed they would be a larger version of duck eggs, with very thick white and a yolk a bit bigger than a hen's egg. But actually they were nearly all yolk and with thinner white than the duck, more like a hen. I forgot to take a photo but they made a great omelette for two! Interesting.

Goose eggs and one of our large hen eggs

Still no eggs from the ducks, but a friend of our's with several different ducks says his aren't laying yet, nor are the ducks the goose people bought from us last year. By the way, for those who remember Ducky, he has grown into a splendid drake, and very virile!

All the fowl were let into the garden for a nibble of grass and they were ecstatic! Busy busy. We decided all that was in there was plants which would survive a nibble and they are unlikely to bother with the garlic. What we didn't reckon on was that they would sniff out a trough of recently sprouted salad leaves at the top of the outside steps! Not sure how many of those will recover.

Meanwhile the Sussex chicks are huge! They are dwarfing the other two. They have their door open now when the weather is dry but with chicken wire over the door so they can't get out. We think they might be too big to get through the holes in the run so when the weather warms a bit they can go out and start being proper chickens. Next week they should be joined by the next batch so will have to share the light between two pens.

Dave has been busy in the garden, widening the borders for more flowers, clearing and tidying and fixing the outside sink tap which froze and blew off in the cold spell. How we've missed that tap! We managed to get most of the bits he needed but eventually had to get the neighbour's help to get a short length of pipe with threads on each end. Anyway, all done and we needed a new tap on there anyway. Encouraged by another blogger I would like to get round to tiling the outside sink and making it look nicer. Concrete sinks have a peculiar smell.....

One of our favourites, Veronica, has come through well

The cornel is in full blossom

Dave has put the new cover on the polytunnel, a bit loose but OK

Posts supporting the roof....just in case

And under all the mayhem the peas are sprouting!

We have been round to my sister and BIL's house to collect some of their unwanted furniture and very grateful we...and the animals... are to have it. There is a corner sofa with the added bonus of a spare bed which is firmer than the squishy one which came with our house, and with nice high back for Dave, if he can get a space. Bella particularly likes to be able to watch what the neighbours are doing from her new spot. We also have a kitchen table which is outside and covered for the moment till we decide how we are going to use it.

Charlie trying out the high back

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My sister's daffs

After one visit to my sister's we stopped off at one of the places by the river where we like to photograph birds. The side of the river has long been a site for the locals to dump their manure and building rubbish, as well as digging small pits for the sandy gravel. It took a while to get used to the piles of rubbish, but over the years the pits created have developed into small habitats full of insects, frogs and terrapins, which in turn feeds such birds as the iconic white stork, herons and rare black storks. The bigger excavated pits have colonies of sand martins and bee eaters nesting in the sandy banks. Last year the rubbish was flattened and things were looking a bit tidier. But now it is an absolute nightmare. There seems to be a lot of building work going on locally and the rubbish from renovations is being dumped in huge amounts, as well as general rubbish including plastic sacks and bottles, masses of plastic box strapping, valuable stone, concrete and general rubble. Not just at the regular site along the river, but at random sites including where the sand martins and bee eaters were nesting. The consequences of all this on the wildlife and sheep, goats and cattle which graze there, will be dreadful. So terribly sad. I dread to think what might be leaking into the river, Dave will have to resist going in from now on.

The pictures say it all

And how it should look