18th - 24th October

Now that the veggie patch fence was finished, we could turn our attention to populating it. It is intended to be based on permaculture principles which, our book assures us, is a no-dig approach using a local resident workforce so we needed to make their quarters. This involved more geometry, lots of pipe and the ubiquitous white shoe laces.

Then add wire and a roost ...

... and get it into the veggie patch (ah, could have done that before we put the fence up).

Then, great excitement, get some occupants. We considered we were 'rescuing' these from the local battery farm and opted for 9 new entrants and 3 soon to be graduates (or worse!).

We let the geriatrics out first just in case there was any case of establishing a pecking order and, poor things, they looked rather exposed without any feathers.


Then out came the youngsters and all seemed good.


We decided the baldies needed some help and fitted them for the latest in hen fashion ...

... and soon they had some trendy new clothes.


And we invented a new version of 'Where's Wally?'

And we had some eggs.

We even tried to get some of the feathered ones to use the roost but perhaps that was a bit much to expect.

Then we left them to it while Dave prepared a pond and a strawberry bed - the latter very much non permaculture but we like strawberries and lots of them.


And finally we planted some new natives over the soak field.