Week 6

Planting has been our main past time this week - with the weather being warm followed by wet, we've been 'hardening off' our runner plants grown from seed, french beans, and corn on the cob.   In the Poly Tunnel, we have been thinning out tomatoes, planting rows, and planting some mixed lettuces.  We hope to have quite a good selection of herbs and veg plants to sell at the Car Boot Sale, followed by our Open Days.

Rows of Flower Pots given to us
recently

The chicks started hatching in our incubator on Wednesday!  We have five so far - and one still in the incubator, that is not looking too good!  I had to call on a friend to come and help 'hatch' it yesterday (it had been struggling for 24 hours and the egg shell had got stuck to it) and today she came back to help 'bath' it to get all the dried egg gunge off it!! Back in the incubator for another few hours to 'fluff' up its feathers, and then hopefully into the 'chick' box with the others!  This is a bit of a trial incubator session, to see how well it works, then we hope to get some more 'specialist' fertile eggs to incubate...

hard at work!

Yesterday we had a visit from South Cerney Barracks - 18 extremely fit soldiers turned up to help us again!   They strimmed, weeded, tidied, turned the muck heep(extremely hard work!) and fenced part of our hen run - it's FOX time again, and we are trying to keep them out / ducks in / and lambs away from the hen netting!!  We really appreciate them giving up their time to help us.

The bantam is still 'sitting' on her eggs safe inside the poly tunnel - they should hatch over the next few days.

We have been very fortunate recently, to have been given lots of plant pots from a friend, and a boot full of wonderful herbaceous plants from a volunteer friend - thank you so much!

Last but not least - someone entered us for the 'HEARTS OF THE COMMUNITY' Awards, organised by The Gloucestershire Echo and Citizen Newspapers, and we have got through to the finals!  We will find out if we have won on 12 June - so watch this space.....!

Update on bantam....her first chick has hatched - Tuesday 21st May!

Update on incubator chicks - only 7 hatched out of 24 - unfortunately a lot of the other eggs had full sized chicks in, but didn't hatch so died....if anyone has any experience of this PLEASE GET IN TOUCH!