Autumn hens and wood, lots of wood

October was a very busy month getting ready for the arrival of 20 rescued hens, followed by visits from family and the felling of the old beech trees in front of the stables and rotten sycamore in front of what would become our log store.  One of the stables was converted into a hen house, using chicken wire and concrete blocks to prevent unwanted guests with old apple crates for nesting boxes and a construction of old chair frames and branches for roosting.  I understood that unlike other birds hens prefer to roost with their feet as flat as possible so they can cover them with their body feathers and keep them warm in colder months.  The 18 month old hens were collected from a local poultry farm, where their alternative fate was to become pet food or chicken nuggets.  They were in excellent health but no longer commercially viable as egg layers.  The 20 hens we bought home lay every other day which provides us with enough eggs for breakfast everyday and spare for neighbours.

The rest of 2017 seemed to be full of wood.  We had originally planned to crown the larger trees at the front and remove a few stunted fir trees that were starved of light among the larger trees on the drive. We discussed the neglected beeches and split sycamore with our tree surgeon neighbour and the decision was made to bring the trees down as there was evidence of r
        
It is fair to say that we did not anticipate the sheer volume of wood these old trees would produce.  There were branches and rounds seemingly everywhere; the track in front of the stables, the patio garden beneath the log store, along the drive and parking areas.  Having inherited a huge amount of stuff with the property (our predecessors did not throw anything away), there was suddenly an urgency to remove as much unwanted junk from outbuildings as we could to create log storing areas.  We hired an 8 yard skip and filled it with old sofas, beds, about 40 tins of paint and a variety of junk from workshop and barn, old shower screen and broken glass panes and the contents of two caravans that couldn’t be burnt.

At first we created log stores out of pallets and spent all our time processing wood, manually splitting rounds and using the sit on mower as a mini tractor with a garden trolley towed behind. As winter approached it became an operation to simply get the wood under a roof so it didn’t rot in the wet.  This weekend we cut the last branch.  There are still a number of rounds to be split and some are so large they will need sawing first as we can’t lift them but we are cautious of the chainsaw and it is hard work with the bow saw.

December 30th, 2017