The great Free range myth.

So my first Hens are here :D
As the kids are going through a Tim Burton stage at the moment they are names Emily and Victoria (From corpse bride) and Sally (From the nightmare before Christmas).
I thought I would use this post as an opportunity to debunk the free range myth.
In the UK (and else where I expect) Eggs are graded in 3 main ways, caged bird, barn reared or free range (lets leave organic out of it).
As everyone knows caged birds are kept in cages, unable to stretch, dust bath or scratch about as nature intended. Barn reared birds are usually free to roam inside a large barn but are not allowed outside. Free range birds get to frolic in the sunshine, pecking for worms and generally have a fine old time right?

Erm..no actually.

In THEORY this should be the way it happens but it has to be remembered that even free range commercial flocks have to be run at a profit.
The free range set up is similar to the barn set up but with ACCESS to enclosures outside. But lookie here, we have a barn with 300 chickens in it...but only 10 (or less) pop holes. What usually happens is that the dominant hens go outside the prevent the lower ranking chickens from leaving the barn, so your free range bird may never have seen the sun light and is no more free range than her barn reared cousin.

OH BUT ...its FREE RANGE!! So the price tag upon the box of eggs goes up steeply, but you the consumer are being played for a mug....you are paying for the box, the one that say's free range...the one that implies you care.

There is also the fact that as a commercial flock even the free range hens will be culled at the first moult. No farmer is going to loose money feeding a non productive bird that will then lay slightly fewer eggs.

I read a feature online a while back about the Battery hen welfare trusts work with farmers. Many farmers they are working with are moving away from caged hens and into barn rearing but are frustrated at the problems that go with it.
At great expense they convert their buildings for barn rearing, letting chickens spread their wings and scratch and interact with each other...but no one will buy their eggs...Why??

Well...the person who doesn't care will buy the cheapest and producers of food that include egg or egg products will also only use the cheapest (cakes, mayonnaise etc).
The people who DO care mistakenly think that free range is far superior to barn reared and so will bypass the barn reared eggs.

The poor farmer is left loosing money and then possibly his lively hood...all because he wanted to farm in a kinder way.

So for the record, the next time I have to buy commercial eggs I will save myself some money and buy local barn reared ones and hopefully support a farmer who is working towards a better standard of welfare for his flocks.










All calm so far :P

RHUBARB!!!

Ah Rhubarb!! Funny weed like vegetable...and I think it IS rather than a fruit but DO correct me if I'm wrong.
It starts to poke its head up this time of year and even though it does this every year we still get excited by it....and how quickly we forget how SICK we are of eating it, freezing it and turning it into jam.
If only all vegetable growing was thus easy.

THIS year I have rung the changes by trying my hand at forcing some to try the more delicate flavour of the paler stalks.
To start with I had two plants under buckets and freshly mucked out straw thrown over the top for heat and to block out all the light.
It quickly became apparent that this wasn't an ideal set up though. The straw encroached on the other rhubarb plants and the buckets where too small.
As luck would have it I was trying to think of something to do with my old council bought plastic compost bin.
This useless lump of moulded plastic was no good for making compost and in despair of 2 years of brown sludge and whole pieces of vegetable matter, I have gone back to the good old muck heap properly made and situated in the veggie garden.

But I digress....

AhA, I think..a perfect match! So compost bin with lid has gone over the top of the plants and for good measure I have heaped some straw around the sides to guarantee total darkness (poor little roooobarbs!!).
It is DEGREES warmer in there and the stalks are already stretching up to find their way out of the dark and are @ 4 times as far along as their outdoor brothers.
So we'll see what the next couple of weeks bring.




The forcing bin.




The outside rhubarb.

The Fertilisers aka the ponies ;)

Time to meet the ponies :)
If you want to read more about the equine part of Tor Croft visit http://ponymum.blogspot.com/
....BUT...Where would our garden be without the never ending supply of poo from what would otherwise be known as walking money pits. This way I get to pretend that what we spend on horses goes back to out pockets in saved grocery bills :)
Well I never said it was flawless logic but Im sticking to it ;)




Jo and Mouse..."stop taking photos and pick the damn stuff up WOMAN!!"





OH and Eldest breeze Badger and Mouse...gotta keep the guts moving!



Comet the ex-colt..no one told him about the EX bit yet though :P




...and it all winds up here...ready to help the veggies along...now..what WOULD we do without the horses?? ;)

Just for fun :)

Lock up your chickens.....

So last month we ...acquired a chicken.
Its a long story but in short, my neighbour runs an organic, free range**coughmehcough** chicken farm. He has day old chicks delivered then at 4 weeks old they get packed into crates and taken to the other farm for another 3-4 weeks before becoming someones dinner.
Everytime he packs them up he looses a couple...they scape and hide under the sheds then later the fox or the crows or (sometimes) my dog will pick them off.
Way of the wild blah blah blah.
However one lunch time I am sitting chatting to OH when what should I spy but a chicken in my garden, I slept up and set off in pursuit and with the OH's help managed to capture the beast! HAHA!
So I became the owner of a chicken the size of a cooking apple with very sparse feathering and now all alone in the world.
Should we have given him back?
Well, he would have been written off anyway so maybe I didn't technically STEAL him, just....picked him up?
Anyway he now has a run and is a cutie and loves a stroke and to feed out of the kids hands....all we need now are some girl friends and I'm on the case aiming to get some ex-battery girls.
More soon, in the mean time here is a picture of Lloyd the bird (sounds better if you come from Brooklyn I guess? ;)

The Hot bed!! (Not QUITE as much fun as it sounds ;)

Its been a long time since I posted here, there ARE reasons...1) it was Winter and nothing happend and 2) My camera broke and I was putting things off until I could take some pics ...so here I am...and spring has SPRUNG!! In Scotland for the last couple of years we seem to have got our summers at the end of March until mid may, then it rains until September so I am determind to make the most of all the good sunny weather I can.
So the hot bed has been made :)
We used an old concrete trough which for the last 5 years has done sterling service as a normal planter giving me an abundance of courgettes,peas and onions. For the glass top we used part of an old shower which we had aquired from freecycle some months ago and promptly put in the shed and forgot about it. Would you beleive it fitted exactly!
The OH made a wooden frame so the whole thing sat level, and made up the end peices. All that we need to do to it now is run a couple of bungee ropes over the top to secure from high winds.
The filling is made up of a straw and manure mix with @ 3 inches of potting compost on the top.
I'll let you know what I decide to plant in it this year. Next year I hope to have my eye on the ball and try to grow some early spring / late winter salad in it.