Rude Fruit...

With just three courgette plants I could feed the nation!

A friend came to dinner recently and exclaimed at my rude veg! One courgette plant throws out boob shaped yellow fruit, another offers green boobs and the last plant has prolific jaundiced phalli pointing in varying directions. Along with being rude their other common attribute is their prolific production. Turn your back for an instant and Katie Price is right there in the proverbial veg bed! [Tsk!]

Yesterday the rude veg was processed into a huge ratatouille for the freezer. Yum. There is nothing better than finding a pot of late summer in the freezer in colder months.

Mostly I love this time of year, it is a close second to spring in my book. This time of year I begin the task of storage for winter; collecting berries or fruit for freezing or processing into jars of goo and hunting seeds for sowing now or storing till spring.

The blackberries are particularly good this year, probably because they were not cut back last year due to the fields being so wet. It was so waterlogged that the hedge-cutting farmer didn't dare venture onto our land.

The hedge-cutting farmer is a lovely elderly gent who, when he stops to chat, dispenses farming wisdom from his cab with the door open. Mid sentence he shoos wasps away from his sandwiches and tea flask with kindly words. 'Get away with you, you silly,' he says. I like that, I do the same. I can't be doing with all the arm flapping and histrionics. My children have inherited my approach though Hubby prefers the flapping method. The farmer told me that last year was the worst weather he could remember. He and his huge tractor had to be pulled out of muddy fields three times!

The blackberries seem to have appreciated the weather and their stay of execution last year, in this summer's heat they have swelled and sweetened beautifully and now reside in bags in my freezer after being tray frozen, making it easy to scoop a handful for a pie or milkshake.

The hedges are now all cut. The farmer was merciless, his huge tractor bore down on the land carrying his monstrous cutter which ate away at two years of wild growth. Now, from the top of the house, you can almost see into all the fields and down to the woods, can almost count the livestock.

I said earlier that I mostly love this time of year. There are two reasons not to love it completely; first it signals the beginning of the end of the year and second, the balmy dewy weather always seems to bring on a flush of red mite in the hen coops.

For those of you with sproglets you may or may not have enjoyed the thrill of head lice. I have once, it is awful. Awful, awful, awful. But I think the war against red mite in chickens is worse. I spray, clean, dust, change bedding and while this has an immediate effect on the chickens environment I am left scratching and itching until I can strip, chuck my entire outfit in a hot wash and lash to the shower to adorn myself in Vosene (which works a treat.) Ugh. The trouble is I have wooden coops with tons of nooks and crannies, places for red mite to lurk.

If a steam cleaner company fancies giving me a portable, powerful gadget to annihilate the buggers (mites, not chooks) I'd be glad to give a full review. Right now I feel I need to go and burn my underwear.... Over and out

If you'd like more on the mites at The Larches, try this blog post Death to Bugs.... by The Human Buffet...

Death to bugs.... by the Human Buffet..

I cleaned the chicken coop today and made it all gorgeous for the girls. I do it weekly (not weakly) so as to ensure they have a nice comfy place to plop the eggs. To be honest I don't know why I bloody bother; the Bantams have completely slipped from my radar screen, preferring to hide their tinsey-winsey white eggs somewhere within the grounds. Drives me bonkers. They have been warned and the market looms.

As if the fact that chickens seem to do all of their poo in the coop at night wasn't unpleasant enough, today I had to deal with yet more revoltingness. Leaning into the little coop to scoop up the sawdust, I noticed a little mass of squirmy red stuff near the perches.

Intrigued, I leaned in even closer, resting my head on the wooden boards above the back door and YUCK upon yuck!.. I could see that there was a mass of tiny red mites on the wooden slats, presumably having a bacchanalian party to make yet more mites..

The hot, humid weather has obviously been perfect for them. I have used mite powder before, dusting all the chickens just in case, but to see the little parasitic blighters was horrid.

I pulled back my head and started examining every crevice. That's when I realised that I had rested my head on another village of blood suckers, there were squillions of them but the moving mass was no bigger than a penny piece.

Since then I have mega cleaned the coop, I have dusted chickens, I have showered and scrubbed my hair and yet I seem still, some 10 hours later, to be being used as a human buffet by creatures that look like walking grains of ground black pepper, (or red pepper if they've feasted. Shudder.) They are in my hair, down my back, in the arms of my sweater and as I sit here trying to concentrate I feel sure they are about to penetrate my sturdy smalls. I cannot tell you how defiled I feel.

All my dreams of being a vaguely competent farmer in years to come are being dashed by something that is like red sand with teeth. [scratch, scratch, itch itch, SQUASH! SQUASH!  ... oh look a blood streak! smile..]

If this is how it feels to be a chicken in a coop with mites then I really hope reincarnation is a myth.

Tomorrow I'm buying this stuff; it's a bomb for the coop.... at this rate I'll be sat in there when it goes off... naked....

....Oh my goodness I can't take anymore biting, I'm off to throw my clothes on the bonfire and then I'm washing again and again and again...

Bet you can't wait for the blogs posts when we get sheep..... have you heard of dagging or crutching?????

Surreal Tea tonight...

The 6yo was most insistent that the Egyptians (present day) did not have TV.

'I think they do.' I said.

He put down his knife and fork.

'They do not!' he said. 'They can't get a signal because of the mountains!'

'O-kaaaaaay...'

We left it there, though I wondered if he'd been watching the National Geographic channel or something!! 'Cept he's not allowed to watch TV during the week (evil-mother rule or evil mother's rule, you choose.) Don't get me wrong I love telly occasionally, for instance hubby is currently glued to Time Team, jolly interesting esp. with that Baldrick bloke from Slack Bladder. I like a bit of Masterchef The Professionals myself and indeed I've learned a lot. For instance I've learned that I don't aspire to eat or cook fussy food and I've also learned a new language; quennells, jus, reduction.

Tonight I treated my family to a lovely deconstructed fish cake..... that's baked potato, chive butter and tinned tuna with mayo and lemon juice to you and I....

***

Regarding my previous post: I may have acted rashly, removing Whitey's eggs just because she's at 21 days + 3 days. A neighbour suggested that she may have needed to leave the nest to feed Archie but that the other eggs may still hatch. Bugger! I've put them back under her tonight.

Still on the subject of chickens, hubby was swearing like a rudee-rude person tonight.... he was constructing a new coop, bought online. Apparently grown men don't cry except when assembling self-build furniture. He's desperately clever. Lookee what he's built.

Sense of humour failure....

It is the third day. I want to go to bed. Instead I chase sodding pre-cooked roast dinners round the garden.

Tonight I have had a humour shortfall. The new girls are really confused by the 'get into the coop and go to bed' thing. My original 8 troop in, but the new girls just pace, stressed. I'd really feel more sympathy if I wasn't so blinking tired.

I walked into the football room, sorry I mean sitting room, and asked for help. Apparently THIS football match is a BIG one. Derrrr! that's why we have that Sky+ thing where you can pause live TV, (if you can get your hands on the remote control that is!) Anyhoo, dressed in his best business clothes, hubby came to help.

We chased, we waited, we herded, we clucked (CLUCKED!)

Finally 1 out of 6 got it. I nearly cried.

A blackbird started its incessant chirping in the half light. You know the one; the chirp of stress, on and on and on, flying towards us over a deep meadow.

'What is making that noise?' said hubby.

'Blackbird,' said I; nature woman.

We looked up to see a blackbird chasing a silent owl across the field beside us, perfectly visible against a violent pink-grey sky. Bats swooped in their wake. Gosh! A moment of calm..... ......before I remembered to be grumpy again....

'Get in the bloody coop!'

One by one we pinned them down and chucked them into bed. Hubby caught the most elusive of the bunch; he's my hero. I flicked the switch for my nightly electrocution and we were fox-proof.

Back indoors, supping a deserved glass of wine.... life is unpaused and the football persists...... I'd rather be chasing chickens.....