Making a Dead Hedge

When you use the word hedge, most people envisage a vertical wall of box, privet or laurel, pruned and clipped to perfection to create the illusion of a solid wall of greenery. That's pretty much a modern idea though, as hedging of one sort or another has been about since prehistory. The earliest ones were probably all about defence, made of sharpened stakes and thorns, but even so their use as boundary markers goes back to the Bronze Age when farmers had to clear the ancient forest to make field systems. Handy things, hedges.

Enter a problem, here at the Hollow. When I dropped the idea of a polytunnel into the garden plan, I was at pains to make sure that I understood how it would relate to the rest of the garden; I thought about access to water and power, about how it would stretch zone 2 away from the house, and about shade and reflected light. There was something that I missed, though, which is that in placing it so close to a parallel hedge I created a wind tunnel when the wind comes in from the east - not a common event here, but every year since the tunnel went up there has been a strong easterly just as the pumpkin patch is getting going - and every year I've lost plants.

A windbreak near the tunnel end seemed to be the way forward, and hedging is the simplest natural way to provide it. The trouble is that conventional hedging takes two or three years to establish, and I want the windbreak effect straight away. Happily the answer lies with those early hedges, because they weren't the high-maintenance topiary creations given to us by the Tudors; they were "dead hedges" - simple barriers made out of the least usable pieces of timber when an area was cleared.

The simplest (and least skilled) form of dead hedge involves hammering in a row of upright stakes. Happily I still had a handful of old fencing posts, rescued from a dump when a local farmer replaced a line of fencing and still in good condition, but stout lengths of any slow-rotting wood such as alder would work just fine. The stakes are spaced two or three feet apart in a row, and then a second parallel row is hammered in two or three feet behind the first. A few pieces of supple growth such as ash or hazel are woven through the stakes to create rough sides, and if you like you can push smaller timbers through them to make a more defined side. Now you have two very rough hurdles, and into the space between them you can drop felled or rotting timber, hedge cuttings, and any other twiggy or woody garden refuse that you don't want to shred for the compost bin; very handy for the likes of bramble and ivy!

Over time, the enclosed timber will begin to rot down and the hedge will get shorter, so you simply pile more stuff on top; that, and replacing any uprights which rot through, is the only maintenance the hedge will need. In terms of ecology it's very similar to a woodpile, so you can expect to see various wildlife make use of the shelter and food - I'm holding out for a hedgehog in our little hedge, and I'll be planting some poached egg plant at the base to prevent couch grass moving in - and perhaps a perennial sweet pea on the east side to bring in the bees. Happy hedging.

The Opportunistic Ecologist Rides Again

So. What does it mean to be an Opportunistic Ecologist?

Well, the western world is in for a bit of a shock over the next decade or so. Now that we're past peak oil, the prices of fuel and energy are forecast to rise quite sharply - and unlike previous hikes which have been due to supply hiccoughs or local wars, these increases aren't going to go away. They're going to get worse. But knowing this before it happens gives you a slight advantage over those who walk into it blindfolded; you have a few years to figure out a way to lessen the impact on yourself and your family. We could perhaps consider making our own biodiesel, carpooling, or cycling to work; but the truly smart money has to be on moving closer to work - or working closer to home.*

But this is only one example in a highly complex web of effects, and it doesn't make sense to consider it in isolation. For example, the drugs I supply on my pharmacy days are largely derived from petrochemical feedstocks - so the job itself will change in time. Close-timespan futurologists must be pissing in their pants right now.

And so I'm off to the Dorchester Transition Town inaugural meeting with high hopes. I may even shave. I am, however, taking along a Kentucky Fried Bargain Bucket of cynicism because the local Chamber of Commerce is already involved and this is, after all, a town that recently won the accolade of "worst Christmas lights in Britain" from a national newspaper - that's how proactive we are around here. But heck, this is important and we have to start somewhere. My own angle is the Opportunistic Ecologist argument; this isn't about saving the planet any more. This is about saving ourselves.

Something else that's caught my attention in the past few days is the upcoming launch of pay-per-play audio advertising, which could possibly be the Next Big Thing. There are various rumblings of "scam" rolling around the net - largely concerned with the poor track record of the previous launch attempt - but I've done some research of my own and concluded that while the earnings estimates are undeniably over the top, if the scheme floats it should make some highly useful money. Added to that, while the scheme works to establish its "market footprint" the organisers are offering a perpetual slice of income for referrals - which really can't last.

So heck, I'm going to give it a try. Either it'll take off properly and there'll be context-targeted 5-second voice ads, or in a few weeks we'll all get bored of it and down it will come. It was very easy to set up (and I even read the boring small print - note, use a disposable e-mail address with a spam filter because their privacy policy is missing, presumed dead), so nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you'd like to give it a try there's a button in the sidebar, or you can follow this link. See you all the other side of the geekfest!




*In my case, that means Thursdays and Fridays are presently less than ideal because I have to drive to a neighbouring town. Mondays to Wednesdays are OK because on those days I'm working in my study, and the only thing closer than that is the bathroom where there is no power socket and anyway if I stay in there for more than five minutes Number Two Son bangs on the door and demands to be let in. Exactly why he wants in is something of a mystery to me, because once he actually comes in he merely sings a silly song while wobbling about on one leg until he bangs his head on the sink - and then blames me for it.

What keywords would you use to find this steaming pile of...?

I have a slight problem chaps, which is that I'm trying to identify what keywords people who would enjoy the blog content might use to find the place. After all, one fellow blogger asked me recently "are you gardening or ecology?" to which I answered "Yes. No. Both?" But thinking about it afterwards I thought to myself - is there really a difference?

Well, of course there is. I'm getting rid of a useful series of gardening books called the "Expert" series at the moment. I'm sorry to see them go because production-wise they're a dream; clear format, concise information, no waffle. Trouble is, they're about as non-organic and non-permaculture as you can get. Trouble with wireworm? Drench the whole area in 4,5,6-triphenyl-poisonate (keep children and pets away from the treated area for, oh, a decade or so) then double dig the entire plot, stamping on any earthworms for good measure. Import new topsoil, and sprinkle liberally with nitrogenous fertilizer before spraying any new growth with agent orange. Better yet, move house and nuke the site from orbit!

Well, you get my drift. Maybe. Question is - what keywords (not links, mind) would you use to find a site like this if you didn't know the name Hedgewizard?* And remember, folks, this is a family blog.** I don't want you to actually try to find the blog, remember - just what you might use if you were looking for this sort of thing. Capiche?





*Because, you know, I have 8 out of the top 10 Google listings for Hedgewizard if you include indirect links. I'll have the others just as soon as my contractors carry out the hit on the corpulent American roleplayer who has stolen my name...

**Fuck. Whoops, was a family blog.

Transitions

Congratulations! You have purchased the limited edition new, improved Hedgewizard with added zip, ping and shazam. Now stays out in the garden 50% longer than the leading brand, or indeed anyone with any bloody sense at all.*

*snirkles distressingly*

Ahh, but a day in the garden, eh? I may not have quite finished the pruning, but I conned persuaded N1S to help me attack - and destroy - an unfortunately located buddleia and replace it with a dead hedge, of which more another day. So here I am, congested but triumphant.

I'm a busy boy this week, oh yes I am. I was due to go to a role-playing convention on Wednesday morning, in order to see how geeks like me eat, live and breed.** I'm always up for a bit of people-watching, so although on the face of it I'm there to game actually I'm there to make notes. There's got to be good comedy potential in watching people get incredibly worked up about something that is
a) not real
b) only a game anyway, and
c) not even represented by a scale model, such things now being considered passé.

However, my transition into uber-geekdom has to be delayed, since a chance encounter at the weekend led to me discovering that Dorchester (the nearest town to the Hollow) is launching its own transition town movement, and I'll be staving off the weregeek in me for long enough to attend. For anyone who hasn't yet encountered this concept, it embodies some of the sentiment of the Opportunistic Ecologist. Basically - we're entering the post-peak oil era so prices of fuel and energy are going to rise very sharply in the near future. A year or two is what we're looking at - certainly no more than five years. At the end of that time, what's going to happen?

Transition towns aim to think about these things before they happen. Personal transport now prohibitively expensive? No problem, transition towns will already have formalized car pooling and rationalized their public transport, and set up schemes to re-invite trade back into their empty town hearts. Supermarkets on the decline? Transition towns will already have encouraged grow-your-own and allotment use, and set up local trading hubs. Consumer goods breaking down? Transition towns will already be running courses on making spares and repairs. At least, those are some of the theories - you get the idea.

These ideas are right up my street. Or not quite, really, and that's why I'll be going. For although Dorchester is our nearest town and only ten minutes away by car, in the future it's going to further away than that - perhaps two hours by bike. I'll be wanting to make sure that the outlying villages get a say too, since ours is several miles away from the nearest shop and we have no public transport at all. Shouty? Me? No mate, you must be thinking of someone else.

Moving back to the new improved Hedgewizard, Witchypoo is demanding to know how it is that even though she married this;

she ended up living with this.

just lucky, I guess!

* Caution. This model not suitable for outdoor use. Failure to adhere to terms of warranty may result in phantom chest pains, cramping, or at the very least a nasty bout of sinusitis. Don't say we didn't warn you.

**Okay, hopefully not breed. I mean, I suppose geeks must breed, otherwise there wouldn't be any, would there? But I'm hoping that they don't do it in front of me. Or if they do, then I hope at least that I don't get caught watching. Er, moving on.

The Pond Killer

Poor Witchypoo. Inspired by a recent read, we set up a little wildlife pond at the bottom of the Slope this summer (it's about 6'x8' / 2mx3m) and for months now she has been tending it. It has marginal plants, a few floating ones, and a few deep-water plants too. It was colonized almost instantly by phantom midge larvae and water boatmen, followed soon by water beetles, water fleas and pond skaters. To help keep things balanced Witchypoo added a few ramshorn snails and a couple of freshwater mussels, and since then all manner of creatures including toads and dragonflies have dropped by, helped on by the fact that Witchypoo keeps to the golden rule for wildlife ponds; no fish. In a small volume of water even a single fish quickly troughs its way through the local fauna, so finny things are a definite no-no.

The pond has been a sort of passion for WP since its inception. She has read books, and fetched plants. She has learned about filament weed and pondweed, and ruthlessly controlled them both. She has netted. She has carefully fished out all but a few dead leaves. As a non-pondkeeper I've been fascinated by the little developing ecosystem, and how resilient it is. Having been there without needing topping up for several months, the water is free from chlorine and rich in any mineral naturally found in birdshit, which I suppose is why the Bleedin' Cats much prefer to drink out of it than out of their drinking bowl.

Enter Number Two Cat, who is almost entirely tailless and a lazy shade of ginger. Number Two Cat is fat. Number Two Cat is stupid. In fact Number Two Cat is quite possibly brain damaged, and in last year's Growing Audit I was frankly unsure whether to list him under livestock or furniture. The only time when Number Two Cat really seems animated is when food is in the offing (or just mentioned, or sometimes even just thought about), and then he really excels. Whether it's scarfing down a live mouse in front of a bunch of interested four-year-olds or stealing crisps from unwary fingers, Number Two Cat is your man.

In this particular incident, though, Number Two Cat is to assume the role of "planet killer" to our fledgling ecosystem. To do this, he must pork his way through two generous portions of dry cat biscuits (kindly supplied by the meow-activated feeding system known as Number Two Son) and then, bloated beyond even his impressive capacity, waddle off to the pond in search of a drink. I hope you can see what's coming.

In the age of sail, merchant vessels carrying rice had to be very careful about shipping water; if the rice got damp it would swell, and unless the situation was dealt with quickly the expanding grains would split the seams of the boat, which would quickly founder. I have no idea what Number Two Cat's displacement volume is, but I can tell you he's deep in the keel and would probably sit fairly low in the water. Anyhow, when the water hits the biscuits the inevitable happens, and shortly thereafter the pond has an unscheduled addition of about half a kilo of pre-macerated cat chow. Tasty.

At least, the pond snails seem to think so. Witchypoo seems strangely reluctant to plunge her arm shoulder-deep into near-freezing pondwater to retrieve said cat vomit, but the ramshorn snails are extremely keen and seem to be multiplying. I can't help but wonder, in our tiny model ecosystem, if there isn't already a small but vociferous minory preaching to the others that this glut of free food can't last - and forming steering groups to handle the "post peak" environment. If so, they needn't worry. By the looks of Number Two Cat after breakfast each morning, further peaks are a distinct possibility...

<<-- wildlife gardening post

Get (Slightly) Rich Quick

I have a very busy spam inbox, very busy indeed. Happily Yahoo mail takes care of most of it for me*, and as we're registered with the Mailing and Telephone Preference Services and have a sticker on our door that says NO JUNK MAIL you might think the Hollow would be a fairly spam-free zone, right?

Wrong. There's one other way that spam can reach me, and that's through the Sons.

"I'm worried we might be paying too much for our car insurance," offered Number Two Son at breakfast yesterday, causing me to liberally coat the table with muesli.

"What's car insurance?" I asked him.

"Don't know," he mused. "But it has something to do with elephants."

"Ah," I said. "No elephants here, you see? I shouldn't worry about it then."

"Okay."

Crisis averted, but I had reckoned without Number One Son, who is four times as net-savvy as I am** but only one ten-thousandth as cynical.

"I earned fifty-six cents today," he told me, once all the muesli had been mopped up.***

"Cents?" I asked, sensing trouble. We've had conversations about get-rich-quick schemes before, as you might guess, which always end with me spotting the inevitable "but" in the terms and conditions and N1S subsiding with much muttering. I'm sure he thinks I'm the only thing standing between him and being as rich as Rockafeller.****

In this case, though, the "but" is fairly predictable, and after a stern chat about internet security and identity fraud I let him go ahead with the scheme. After some thought, and some persistant badgering on his part, I decided to go ahead with it myself too. The scheme's name is Bux.to, and it basically works by offering you 1 cent per click on a range of adverts, viewing them for 30 seconds each before moving onto the next. That's not as bad as it sounds with a browser supporting tabbed browsing, like Firefox, since you open the ad in a new tab and then just leave it in the background for a bit. So far, so dull - but the business model uses the fact that if you can persuade other people to sign up listing you as a referrer then you get 1 cent for every ad they click too. You can buy bundles of unregistered users from time to time, and that's where the bulk of the money is to be made.

Aha, thinks you, I can see where this is going. Anyway, I had a good look around the net to see what people were saying about the scheme, and specifically for people complaining about it. What I found is that it's free to join and it does pay out, but because people get bored after a few days or weeks the returns slowly fall off so you get much less back than their lovely forecast. The but that I mentioned earlier is that before too long the target market will be saturated, and without a constant stream of new users the system will just die. No doubt the organizers have worked that out too, but I doubt they care; for them this is a Get Rich Quick and Move On scheme. For the rest of us, it's a Get Slightly Richer Very Slowly scheme - but hey; from what I read it still has a way to go before it runs out of steam.

So I'm thinking, bloggers; thinking about how many people read this absolute blarney every day; thinking about how many people read you; thinking - give it a go if you fancy it. Just follow this link to join and you'll automatically be referring to me. I used a shell e-mail account to join (there's a verification system) on the assumption that, whatever they say about privacy, sooner or later there'll be spammage; meanwhile N1S is peering anxiously over my shoulder to make sure I spend my five minutes a day clicking ads in the background while I read my e-mails. And spilling my coffee - clear off, you! I'm clicking, I'm clicking!

*Titter ye not. I'm a technophobe, all right?

**Which is something of a worry really, given the objectionable stuff I accidentally wander into from time to time. I've been trying out a little add-on for Firefox lately called ProCon Latte, which acts like a sort of NetNanny Lite, refusing point blank to display anything that it thinks looks like porn. It's surprising what it won't let me see, though, and it takes a little while to whitelist all the sites you actually want to see - as for the profanity list, don't make me laugh. When I tried to view Kitchenwitch it just coughed politely and said "I take it Sir is joking?" Anyway, that's one of the reasons I like Firefox; you can add on hundreds of little applets to get yourself an alarm clock or a video-grabber or an RSS reader or whatever, without having to use separate applications. And of course, it's lots less vulnerable than Internet Explorer - there's a button at the top of the sidebar if you'd like to try it.

***It's essential to mop up anything cereal-related right away, of course, as once it dries out some weird kind of sub-molecular bonding takes place and it can't be removed without a chisel. One long-buried but still traumatic memory of my childhood was when my mother sneezed whilst eating a Bounty Bar. We had to redecorate the kitchen.

****Okay, that's the asterisk box empty, it's safe to come out now. It's just that I've remembered a little snippet of the late Ronnie Barker's work, as two scruffy old men talked in their allotment.
"'Ere, I've just realized - if I was as rich as Rockafeller, I'd be richer than Rockafeller."
"How's that then?"
"I'd do some window-cleaning on the side."

Energy Saving Light Bulbs

I hate ladders. I mean I really, really hate ladders. I blame my knees; for some weird anatomical reason I seem unable to climb up in a normal fashion, and instead end up mincing up with both my legs sticking out to the same side, like an Edwardian lady sitting pillion on a particularly unruly colt. The inevitable derision, however, largely goes unnoticed because by that time I'm above the second step and therefore clinging on for dear life with an unpleasantly sweaty upper lip. Oh yes, I hate ladders - but one of my new year's resolutions this year meant it was time to go a-climbing once again.

I made a couple of resolutions this year, and so decided it was time to tackle the lightbulb situation (it wasn't top of my list, but Keira Knightley hasn't yet returned my calls. Or letters, or e-mails). Like a lot of households we already have some energy-saving lamps around which we've been buying as the original ones die. They're not expensive now that the supermarkets have got hold of them, but our use of them has been limited because they cast a cold white light and tend to flicker a bit. Up until now they've been relegated to less-used areas; areas, in fact, where they do the least good. But thanks to an article I came across in the vaults, I realised that once again the entry-level products on the high street may not be the way to go.

Online, I found a handful of specialist retailers supplying excellent ranges of energy saving lamps, and prices have started to come down now that the word is out on the conventional ones. Warm light? No problem. Compact lamps that will go into my existing fittings? Natch. Dimmable lamps? Yes. Well, sort of (you may need to open the switch up and fiddle with the potentiometer, and they're not suitable for modular switches for now unless you can spare an extra switch slot. I also found out that the commonly-held belief that switching lights on and off uses more energy than leaving them running is a fallacy; "Switching on an energy saving bulb only uses the same amount of power as leaving it on for a minute or two", says the Energy Saving Trust. Bad news for my children, since I prowl through the house flicking so many switches off that it sounds like castanet practice, before finding and impaling them for their wastrel ways. A little drastic, you might say, but it's for their own good.

Having made the decision to eco-fit all our lamps, I realised quite quickly that it was going to be a substantial investment; £230 for everything except the halogen downlighters in the hall, which have to be ultra-compact because they're recessed and thus have to come from a different retailer. Coming right after Christmas this is a little gaspworthy, but piffling around with an online light energy calculator reveals that the energy savings pay for the lamps in around 18 months, so it was time to gag the bank manager and soldier on.

This news produced a collective gasp from the office. "You're paying how much?" I explained about the eighteen months thing, but my colleagues just couldn't get past the fact that the DIY superstore down the road is selling regular bulbs for fifty pence each. I tried again, but Janet had an ace up her sleeve.

"Sometimes bulbs blow the minute you fit them," she said. "What if the same thing happens when you fit your £9.50 dimmerable doodah?" Good question, I said - and this morning I found out. One of my candle bulbs (packaging intact) had a crack in it - no question about mercury vapour or glass bits by the way, since Megaman sleeve all their bulbs in silicone - and I phoned Lightbulbs Ltd to have a moan. No problem, says the nice man, we'll get replacements out in the post today. But if they refund the postage, would I mind sending the broken ones back so they can take it up with the manufacturer?

I wouldn't mind a bit. I'm pleased with how the lighting looks, and you don't get that kind of service when you buy an essentially disposable fifty pence bulb - no matter how much of your electricity it wastes.

How To Start Keeping Poultry 3

Chickens are remarkably hardy and self-sufficient birds, and once you have them in their house there is very little else that you need for them apart from food and water. There are, though, a few bits and bobs that will make your life much easier!

Chickenfeed is inexpensive - hence, er, the name. Feed for layers comes in two forms (pelleted and powdered, known for some obscure reason as mash), each of which should also be available in organic form. If you get deeply into chickens at a later date you might choose to blend your own feed, but the commercial feeds are blended to give a complete diet and should be the main daily ration for your birds. This is not to say that you can't give them scraps or a little handful of corn - I do - but don't overdo it, and don't feed them processed food or anything that's gone off. Other feed items are grit (which chickens use in their crop to "chew" with) and oyster shell (which provides calcium). Truly free-range birds are unlikely to need grit, but the birds go through such a lot of calcium that oyster shell is always welcome.

You will also need a feeder and a drinker to load up with food and water, and there are several different sorts on the market. Don't buy plastic unless your present budget dictates it - galvanized or enamel ones may cost twice as much, but will last indefinitely whereas the plastic ones will become brittle in a year or two and are quite fragile to start with. I recommend buying a hanging feeder whether for indoors or out, even if it means rigging something to hang it from, and the reason for this is our old friends the rats.* By the same token your feed store needs to be secure, so use a metal or heavy-duty plastic bin.

Fencing of some sort is usually necessary to make sure the birds don't free-range all the way into next-door's flower beds - because believe me, they want to. I sometimes read with envy the stories of folk who for one reason or another don't need to fence their birds, but these are the exception to the rule. For most of us, a fence is in order. This can be chicken wire tacked to posts, but poultry netting with plastic stakes provides a reasonably-priced alternative and has the advantage of being easy to move. Make sure that it is poultry netting, though - if you choose any other sort of livestock netting the birds will squirt through the holes with no trouble at all.

Foxes are traditionally the enemy of poultry keepers, and if you want to be absolutely sure that your birds are safe then an electric fence is probably in order. However, the energizers for electric fences are expensive, and even more so if you choose an option other than mains power. Bear in mind that a fox attack in daylight generally loses you only one bird; far more dangerous is a fox getting into the henhouse at night. In this situation a fox will kill all of your birds, so make sure the house is closed up promptly each and every night, as soon as the last bird is inside.

For chickens kept in a run, you need to make sure that their environment is kept stimulating by including a few diversions. Bored chickens bully, and bullies pull feathers; don't go there. Diversions can include a stump to perch on, a football (really tricky perch, that one) or even a peck block. I sometimes hang a bundle of greens quite high up for my birds to jump up to, which provides simply hours of entertainment.**

Finally, to understand a bit more about the whole chicken process and give you a bit of warning about possible problems, it's a really good idea to have a decent book. I've gathered together some titles that I rate in Hedgewizard's Bookshop (which I'll be adding to at intervals). The book I recommend for beginners is Choosing and Keeping Chickens by Chris Graham, because it's friendly, well-produced, and pitched just right. If you're after something a bit more detailed then Free Range Poultry by Katie Thear is also very good, and if you'd like "proper copies" of some chickenhouse plans then you could do worse than Poultry House Construction by Michael Roberts.

Right - you're all set! I'll do one more post about living with chickens, and I'm done.

*When you set up chicken housing you're creating an ecological niche that rats will be keen to fill, and if you aren't wary it won't be long before they find it. There are things you can do to make it harder for rats to get established, however. One of these is to raise the house well clear of the ground, but the single most important thing that you can do is to keep the rats away from the feed. This means a hanging feeder suspended as high off the ground as possible (that's determined by the size of your smallest bird) in an open area. Rats dislike open ground, since while they are out and about they are at risk from owls and other predators.

**Mostly for me. I have a theory that if I raise the bundles of greens a fraction of an inch every week, eventually I'll have superfit ninja chickens capable of leaping buildings at a single bound. Except that they'll have jumped out of the run by then, of course. Er...

Previous chicken article << ----- >> Next chicken article

More Sad Songs...

Updated!

How To Start Keeping Poultry 2

Before I get to the housing issue, there is one other option for getting your first flock and that's to buy yearlings from a commercial outfit. Yearlings - actually a little over a year old - are coming to the end of their commercial lifespan; it isn't that they're actually going to stop laying or anything like that, just that they're not going to lay with the near-metronomic regularity that commercial keepers have come to depend on. As in, they might skip a day now and again. Hardly the end of the world now, is it? This is the option that we've chosen to repopulate our run this year, and this evening I popped down to the free-range farm round the corner to rehome four of his one hundred birds at £1.50 each. Not bad, considering that point-of-lays (around 17 weeks old) seem to be fetching around £8 each right now.

There's one further refinement of this process that you might want to consider, and that's rehoming a hen from an intensive (battery) laying unit. I wouldn't suggest doing this without some support, especially for a first-timer, but happily there is a charity in the UK called the Battery Hen Welfare Trust that checks birds out and organizes pickup days. There are of course many such charities throughout the world and if you'd like to post a link to one near you in the comment box I'll be delighted to feature it here. Now, on to housing.

There really isn't anything mystical about chicken houses, despite the extravagant efforts that tend to get the advertising space in glossy magazines. Strip away all the jargon, and at its simplest a chicken house is just a weatherproof box with a pophole, a nest box, and a perch; there's no reason you can't use a small shed, and I've visited farms where they do just that. I've also seen a converted old children's playhouse, which was so suitable that all it needed was a nestbox, a perch and the windows painting out. Oh, and the frilly curtains taken away.

The chicken house that we use now came from a plan that I sent for by mail order; you can read a bit more about my chicken house here. I chose to make it because we were horrified by the cost of commercial chicken houses, but things have improved lately. As I write this, you can buy reasonable housing for "3 to 5 medium birds" from one of the click-ads on this page for £170 including tax and delivery. Given the price of treated timber now, I doubt I could make it for less.

When deciding on the house, be led by the size and number of birds that you want to keep. You will need to allow 18cm/7" perch space per medium bird (15cm/6" is the minimum for European free range regulations), and up to 30cm/1' for very large breeds. Avoid felt roofing and lap panels as far as possible, because they provide handy hiding places for red spider mite which can quickly make your birds miserable and are often missed by beginners. Instead opt for plain or close-fitting board (or seal any joins with sealant compound) and a corrugated or wooden roof.

Chickens quickly reduce the ground on which they are kept to barren scrub unless they have lots of space (one estimate I came across was half an acre for six birds, but this may be an exaggeration), so most keepers opt to enclose them in a set area (the run) using a netting or wire fence. The chicken house can sit entirely or partially inside the run, but some of the smarter houses are integrated with their own run. One design type (shown below) has the house above a small run which makes it perfect for people without much space, although you need to be realistic about how many birds you are prepared to keep in a run of this size, especially once you allow space for a feeder and drinker.

Because of the effect that chickens have on the ground in their run, it's a good idea to be able to offer them fresh ground every few weeks. For small houses with fixed runs you simply pick the whole thing up and carry or drag it to a new location, but for larger or fixed houses you can change the run by altering the configuration of the fencing - so make sure you locate the house appropriately! It's also a good idea to make sure that the birds have access to some shade in the hottest part of the day - and last but not least, give some thought to proofing the run against predators.

I have one final word concerning housing; rats. Sooner or later - and it's probably going to be sooner - the local rodent population will discover that there is chicken food about. There are several things you can do to make rat infestation less likely, and for that reason you'll see that many chicken houses stand on stilts, creating a rather exposed space underneath that is not a good site for a nest. Have a think where rats might decide to live, and take it into account when you site your chicken house.

Next time - accessories. A little shopping, and you're ready to go!

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How To Start Keeping Poultry 1

Chickens, as I'm very fond of saying, are the easiest bit of self-sufficiency that you'll ever do. A house, a couple of bits of kit, and the birds... and you're off, with eggs so full of flavour a strong man would weep (mind you, it depends what you do with them). But just what do you need to get started?

Space is rarely a problem even in the tiniest of yards, but you do need to know what you're getting into. Laying hens need to be visited three times a day; once for letting out, once for putting in, and once for egg collecting (if you're wise). It's quite possible for the canny keeper to set things up so that the birds can be left unattended for a day or two, but for trips of longer than a weekend you'll need someone to stop by for those three daily visits - not usually a problem if you add the magic phrase "and do help yourself to as many eggs as you want".

Let's start with the birds. Chickens come in all shapes and sizes, from hulking great Brahmas down to ridiculous little silkies. Which type to choose depends on your attitude to the laying process, and it's worthwhile doing a little reading when you find out what's available locally. For my first flock I went for a heavy, hardy bird - barred plymouth rock / rhode island red hybrids, which were excellent but laid such large eggs that we had to factor the size into cake recipes! Here are a few suggestions for starting birds.

ISA browns are usually easy to get and are good first-timers, being good layers and not all that fond of flying. A light-bodied bird, so not suitable for eating. Up to 300 medium eggs per year.

Rhode Island Reds are tough and resistant to illness, and are usually docile, quiet and friendly. Good free range birds, heavy enough for meat, and 275 large eggs per year.

Silkie bantams are tough enough to free range despite looking like someone has sneezed in a hat shop. They like to sit on eggs (making them handy incubators) and are extremely docile and friendly. They lay about 150 tiny eggs a year.

As you read descriptions of various breeds, you might be forgiven for wondering why everything hasn't been bred to lay as heavily as the ISA browns and RIRs above; the answer is that the more heavily a bird lays, the shorter its useful life. You have to decide what your attitude to laying is. On one hand you might choose White Leghorns and install a booster light into the house to extend "winter daylight" hours and squeeze out every last egg for a year or two; on the other you might prefer to have Cuckoo Marans laying only around 180 chocolate-brown eggs, but laying tolerably well into their fourth year. My personal take on the booster light issue is to have enough birds to keep us ticking over for eggs in the winter without light, and providing surplus for sale in the summer - which means getting about twice as many birds as our minimum eggs-per-day figure; in our case, three or four birds is enough. By the way, you don't need a rooster for your birds to lay - only if you want the eggs fertilized!

Next time - sorting out a chicken house.

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Avian Flu Hits Swannery

Hmm. Last week it was all about trees, and this week it's all about poultry... after the confirmed death of three birds at the nearby Abbotsbury Swannery, DEFRA have imposed a 3km control area and a 10km monitoring area around the place. Thankfully, there's to be no cull because DEFRA are concerned it would disperse the birds and make things worse. We're just outside the monitoring area, but our normal source of birds isn't.

The restrictions mean that bird fairs and auctions inside the area are prohibited (which will make sourcing new birds a little more tricky) and birds have to be housed in such a way that they are separated from wild birds - although I see that a close-netted run with a tarpaulin or solid top is still okay so it's not the end of the world for home poultry keepers*. Fortunately I bought a roll of small-mesh net a while ago just in case there was a run on the stuff, so if the control area is expanded I'm ready for it. My usual brand of disinfectant (poultryshield) won't cut it against avian flu - but Jeyes Fluid can be used at 1:20 so that's OK for housing; household bleach isn't on the approved list but that's probably because it's too variable to include. For drinkers etc, I'm sure it will work fine. I'm all set.

So - why are the government getting so excited about H5N1 avian flu when it doesn't usually infect humans anyway? Well... the point is that H5N1 will probably acquire human flu envelope proteins whenever somebody already infected with regular flu catches it. That will turn it into a completely new flu strain, something that happens about once every 50 years. So - it's probably going to happen somewhere, but keeping it out of the domestic fowl population greatly reduces the chance of it happening on your own doorstep. The further away it happens, the better your chances of getting your contingency plans up and running before it hits.

And the good news, slender though it may be? Once the flu actually happens, the restrictions on fowl housing are pointless. Allow 2-5 years for governments to work that out, though, because it's not written into their protocols.

This is slightly unfortunate timing for the Chicken Out campaign and for the rather more modest RSPCA campaign (sign them both, there's a love), because it will tend to pull headlines. Don't be fooled, though. If avian flu gets into a backyard flock it's sad; if it gets into a 10,000 bird unit - intensive or otherwise - it's practically a war crime. Over the weekend I'm going to chat a bit about how easy and practical it is to keep a few chickens yourself, even in an urban setting. In the meantime, don't forget that if you're in the UK you can see the rerun of Hugh's Chicken Run on Channel 4 at 17.35 on Saturday 12th January.

*The polytunnel would do too, if it wasn't already full of plants. For commercial operations things are not quite so rosy, as if it's not possible to wild-bird-proof the runs and the beasties need to be kept inside, they lose their free-range and organic badges. Which is pretty much the end, given how poorly the supermarkets pay them.

Chicken Out!

I've been watching the God of Self-Sufficiency on the telly.

I'm talking about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who is of course no stranger to the small screen. This time round though, he's not been talking about cooking; Hugh's Chicken Run is all about the appalling conditions endured by chickens in the name of cheap meat. I must confess I was surprised to learn that there are still people out there who have no idea what's involved in producing a "standard chicken" - the industry term for an intensively reared bird - and if you're one of them do please make an effort to see Hugh's programme (repeated on Channel 4 at 17.35 on Saturday 12th January) or at least check out the website.

HFW has clearly taken a leaf out of Jamie Oliver's book when it comes to running such a campaign (and indeed the Painstakingly Tousled One did put in an appearance in the third and final episode to lend his support), for it was straight into an ordinary housing estate for Hugh to tackle those for whom the change to free range meat would be the most demanding. The approach was simply to get some of the residents involved in collectively taking care of both meat birds and layers on some nearby allotments, and then to show them how commercially raised birds are housed. Hugh's hope was that the case would make itself - and by and large it did.

There was one phrase I was waiting for as I listened to the residents of the Millwey estate; "We'll have to eat less meat". Sadly the programme makers didn't include anyone making that point, and instead opted to skip lightly around the issue of affordability. Hugh did, however, give the residents a quick demonstration of how to make a risotto from the leftovers of a single roast chicken feed six adults (and they were big portions). There was general astonishment and it was evident once again that, as a nation, our amnesia regarding how to cook is wasting food and costing us - and the environment - dear.

I'm hardly unbiased on this one, though. Our own experience of raising chickens in a smallish run in the Hollow Garden had already been raising some troublesome ethical issues for us, and when we watched HFW's River Cottage Treatment last year our minds were made up. "Standard" chicken was a thing of the past. Like most people though, our food budget couldn't take the strain of switching over to free range, and so we ate less of it. Our chicken consumption fell dramatically, and these days we buy only free-range chicken from a local farm. In 2008 we're planning to raise half a dozen meat birds here in the Hollow, in two batches to keep the freezer use down, but until then chicken is quite definitely in the "treat" category.

As the final programme of Hugh's Chicken Run wound down, Dave and Jane from the Millwey confessed that the chicken they were having for lunch was not the chicken that they had inadvisedly named, and that Dave had taken responsibility for killing - no, Chuffey was packed away in the freezer, waiting for Christmas Day. That's what I call getting the message - and that's why I'm hosting the Chicken Out! banner here.

Start the Year

I've not had a lot of peace at home this past few weeks with the children off for the school holiday, so it was with some relief that I managed to get the lounge to myself for a while yesterday. Ostensibly this was for the purpose of catching up with some ironing, but really it was to dip into my secret stash of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.* Guilty pleasure? Sure, but a touch of junk telly is the only way I can get through the ironing without wishing to gnaw my own leg off out of boredom. But I digress. Again.

Enter Witchypoo, using that Tone of voice that husbands all over the world recognize as Come The Fuck Here, Right Now, Something Bad Has Happened. Generally when I hear that Tone I'm on my way to sort out the emergency before I've even registered what it is; that Tone means that something or someone has caught fire, fallen off, been partially disembowelled, jammed good and tight in a corner you can't even reach, or has suddenly and unexpectedly mutated into something else.

"What's wrong?" I asked en route to the kitchen.

Witchypoo, somewhat muffled by the two doors between us, said something that sounded like the onions are full of bees. But that couldn't have been it. Often when you catch some speech on the edge of hearing it takes a moment or two to even work out what language you're hearing; this was like that. But clearly, the onions couldn't be full of bees.

Except that they were. When I got to the kitchen it was to find Witchypoo, Number Two Son clamped firmly around her knees in search of reassurance, fending off about a dozen bees with a teatowel. Well, when I say "fending off" I probably mean "flapping at"; the bees were clearly very drowsy and not in the least bit interested in towel-wielding witches or hysterical children. The sound of a door slamming upstairs indicated that Number One Son was officially not helping. So much for machismo. Hedgewizard was quite definitely on his own.

It took around twenty minutes to lure the bees down from the vaulted ceiling with the aid of some spotlights, and to suck them up in the handy-dandy spider catcher and relocate them outside; and maybe another ten to be finally able to guarantee the day's dinner 99% bee-free. It turns out that the interest that masonry bees have in the garage each autumn is more than casual, but actually a search for overwintering sites. This year, the professional-looking onion strings we hung up in there had proved just too tempting. The bees have crept up into the woven stalks to sleep, and hadn't posed any problem until Witchypoo, coming to the end of a string of onions, had carried the whole thing inside rather than cut the onions off in situ as per usual. Instant swarm - just add heat!™

*Not in a pervy way, you understand - I leave that role to my friend Mr Squint**, who has an interest bordering in the unhealthy concerning anything that might conceivably feature teenage girls in cheerleader outfits. Porky's, Buffy, American Pie... you name it, he's got it. He has some convenient sociological argument to justify his obsession with American teen drama but, as I pointed out, this does not explain the way his mouth goes dry and his palms get sweaty when he's watching them. I mean, Bring It On simply shouldn't do that. To anyone!

**Because he's an optician, you understand, not because he has a face like a baboon's undercarriage. Which he hasn't. Er.

Hedgewizard Bows to Public Pressure

Thanks everyone for all the kind comments and best wishes on the unexpectedly popular* 2007 retrospective - I'm glad you all had a laugh. I know I did, but you can't see what I'm up to.

Tinkering with the coding is always going to piss a few people off, but I'm trying to get to grips with Dreamweaver at the moment so I can assure you, it's all temporary; give me a while and I'll fuck the whole thing up beyond all recognition. I'm afraid the one-post-per-screen thing is here to stay for the noo, but I've pulled "The Vault" archive up a bit to make it easier to flick back a page without straining your poor, feeble wrists - and I'll include e-mail feeds as soon as I work out how. Colours are easily sorted out though, and an overnight poll pointed out that people didn't much like the new scheme (if you're upset you didn't get a chance to vote, the results were very clear). The readers have spoken!




*Talk about money for old rope - so much easier than actually writing anything. My theory is that in a few years I'll have written so much crap material that there'll be no need for anything new; I'll just rotate it endlessly in no particular order. No-one will ever notice - it'll be just like The Tellytubbies except without James Gandolfini.***

**Under a disguised link, obviously.

***What, you didn't know? He was the purple one. For the first two seasons of The Sopranos he had to fly into Stratford-upon-Avon by private jet for weekend recording sessions. That's why he kept collapsing; they weren't panic attacks, the man was just exhausted.

A Year's Progress

As a commercial grower said to me lately, "You can't learn anything from 2007, so don't try." Well, we'll see. It certainly was a year for shower-dodging, which at least saved me from the temptation of buying a weather-station gizmo, since all summer the general rule was this. If you can see the far side of the ridge, it's going to rain; if you can't, it's already raining. Climate scientists are very fond of arguing with each other about the effects of climate change on the UK's highly complicated weather system, but I'd be quite happy to shoot all the ones who are predicting that this summer may become the norm. We don't need anyone thinking like that, thank you very much.

So - what's been happening in the Hollow in 2007? I'll start by having a quick look at the photos from 2006, which make me feel a whole lot better about this past year.

Well, I started the year in January by felling a leylandii on purpose, and ended it with a walnut tree falling by accident. There's something oddly symmetrical about that, which I'm not sure I voted for. Then there was the edible hedge moving from dream...

...to plan...

...to reality in February. I also told a crap joke.

Around March I got all thrifty, looking at how to avoid being hammered by sneaky charges on oil bills and telephone calls. I had an abortive attempt at setting up a food co-operative, but I'm going to try again on the back of a local "transition town" movement when (not if) it starts, which is why it's still lurking on the sidebar. I also planted more apple trees and added two more raised beds, five rows, a row of asparagus and a strawberry patch to the garden, which reminds me... a task to add to the "to do" list. Witchypoo juggled with bunnies, and I took an unexpected shower.

In April thanks to Kitchenwitch I bagged my first writing gig producing a weekly blog post for The Ecologist Online (which has proved more work than I originally thought). We also learned how to clean polytunnels; make plant pots out of newspaper; predict the weather using seaweed, a small mirror and some human hair; and make yogurt. There was also a failed experiment featuring live underwear.

May saw me putting up a polytunnel for some buddhists, having something nasty done in hospital, doing a garden audit and reflecting on biodiversity - all unsurprisingly sedate stuff - while June saw the much-welcomed (by Witchypoo) return of HWz to homebrew, kicking off with elderflower champagne. There was a general landscaping of Slopes, and just time to squeeze in a quick border dispute with Wingco. Even with all that going on, Number Two Cat was going great guns at his Nouvelle Cuisine class.

In July my convalescence came to an end and I posted a picture that McBurro used to make an office girl cry to mark the end of the Cardex of Doom. A Chilean love song made, er, interesting reading, the fate of the solitary cherry was closely argued, blight struck me and about 90% of the rest of the UK, and I lost my jerky virginity. Oh, and I was reduced to talking to the weather.

In August I wrote an ode to my mistress, encountered Mafioso Mouse for the first time, officially ran out of money, was a little too honest for one reader, and learned to string rather a lot of onions (which are lasting very well, by the way). I was also forced to address the Hollow's Clampett factor.

September saw my number one horror of the year, no contest - and the advent of Keats Weather, which prompted me to invent a new exercise program and remember Uncle Sam fondly. The pile of shame finally disappeared too - note the interesting angle of the walnut tree - and Mafioso Mouse attempted to frame me for sexual deviancy.

October naturally saw the start of the mushroom season, and I learned how to make papier-mâché on the bus to Hobbiton where I eavesdropped splendidly. November saw me hiding behind a tapestry begging for a wee and subsequently getting very lost indeed. And December... well, there was Bob's tetchiness, Alexandru's fond memories of bacon, chicken murder, walnut trees biting the big one and - oh, that reminds me - contributions are still coming in for Window In Your Heart. What with that lot and crow courts too, it's a wonder I found any time to write my book. Oh, look - I didn't. So - coming up in next year's retrospective, Deadlines and How to Miss Them.

There are a few changes afoot here too, as I've recently seen two fine blogs bite the dust because of the time they take to keep up; if the blog's going to run it's got to pay its way. For that reason I've put in a few pay-per-click ads for the first time, and I'm also making moves to increase traffic and (adopts smoothiechops voice) enhance your reading experience. I hope you don't hate them too much, and if you have enjoyed the blog then please use the little envelope button below to tell your friends. Happy New Year all!