Another Day At Home

YD finally went back to school yesterday, but it didn't go well.  By 5pm she was on her knees and by 6pm she was in bed, fast asleep.  I kept her home today, she obviously wasn't quite recovered enough to cope.  It also turns out that her teacher kept her in at playtime because she was so tearful... there is a group of boys that terrorise her and her friends - she just didn't have it in her to run away from them.  

It has warmed up significantly so I was able to get out into the garden for a couple of hours today.  I cleaned out the hen coop (yuck) with minimal help from YD and sorted out the bird table.  Well it's not technically a table, more a series of staggered hooks on a metal post, but it does the job.

The Male Child and YD petting Poppy

I am sad to report that we have lost one of our lovely hens, Poppy, so we are now down to ten hens.  She was one of our original four, so she'd had a good innings.  When I say lost, I don't necessarily mean dead, just lost.  They do wander off sometimes.  Of course, she has probably been whipped away by a hungry fox - we have had some devastating fox attacks in the past... we lost 5 hens at Easter in a single attack.  As YD says, "it's sad, but it's life."  She was actually referring to the fact that we were eating one of her friend's dad's lambs at the time, but it's become a very matter of fact way to talk about death.  Especially when you live in the country, within a farming community. 

On the plus side, this does of course mean that I absolutely have to go and buy some more hens.  We get them from a lovely lady called Margaret in Tow Law.  She runs a business called Durham Hens where she breeds from her own stock.  The birds are kept so well and have a huge area to free range.  She's also DEFRA registered, so we were able to buy the school hens from there as well.    

I am invigilating for an hour and a half tomorrow morning, but if Margaret's around, I might just take a drive over in the afternoon and pick up some hens (you can't just buy one, it'll get picked on, three is the best number).  You never know, we might get some eggs then... we haven't had a single egg out of our flock since October, despite them being regularly threatened with the cooking pot!