The Great Outdoors

You have been warned!

When visiting Grandpa Southwellski's Garden you should be aware of the risks posed by our animals.

Please heed the warning signs. (left)

This sign, at Longleat Safari Park is a classic, the look of surprise on the guys face is precious.  'Oh dear here I am outside my car, and oh no the lion is attacking me.'  He never saw that coming!'


The strange thing is that the wardens in the Lion, Wolf and Tiger enclosures still had to tell people to keep their windows closed. Amazing eh?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

We have a few creatures here and you should be wary when approaching  the Borps, (Buff Orpingtons) as they can be very affectionate!

In fact all of our animals are very happy to be stroked and if they don't like it they'll just wander away.

We have been blessed with a few beautiful autumn days of late and today was one of the best.

Warm sunshine, few clouds and just a light breeze which was warm as well made it just a perfect day to be outdoors.

We spent the afternoon outside sorting out the chicken run and putting the finishing touches to the chicken house.  The chooks and chicks now share a luxury mansion size hen house with all mod cons except water, heating, lighting and furniture.  They do have two roosting poles and four nesting boxes though.

I love you!

Catch!

 As always Coco was in the thick of it, making sure each chick got a cuddle and was shown it's new home.

She also fed them to get them back into the run ready for bedtime in their new accommodation.



Bedtime was an event in itself, have you ever tried to get 18 birds into a new house?

They were going here there and everywhere, the more we pushed in through the hole the more came out,  I counted 27 chickens at on point, and we only have 18!  But we did it.

We have always encouraged Coco to touch and pick up the animals, although this is always supervised, and she has grown in confidence with every encounter.  Now we have to work on the same approach with the veggies.

It has come to something when I come out of the polytunnel and say to Nanny Southwellski the 'P-E-A-S's are flowering', knowing full well that if Coco got wind that we had peas in there she would be climbing out of her bedroom window and making night-time raids!

The first wind turbine!

We have been toying with alternative energy sources, in quite a serious way to be honest.  We looked at wind turbines but apparently we are not in a windy enough location.

Is this not the same location that saw the wind flatten my polytunnel?

Solar was another consideration, but a lot of the schemes only save you £80 to £100 pounds a year so the payback period is very long.

We have a woodburner on its way hopefully it will be here in the next few weeks.  We will keep you posted on how that works out.

We are also looking at John Seymour's books ( The New Self Sufficient Gardener, and The New Complete Book of Self Sufficiency) for inspiration about how we can be more self sufficient than we already are.

We have already reduced our food bills by a at least a third, and only buy the essentials such as dairy products, loo rolls and sugar etc.

We are drinking more and more herbal infusions, Mint and White Dead Nettle is rather nice and is good for all sorts of things such as earache, stomach cramps and is refreshing to boot.

Say 'Layers Pellets!'

We take many photographs of our home, garden, animals and of course Coco, and there are few days that are not recorded.

Nanny Southwellski is getting very good with her camera and it's well worth a visit to her Flickr pages to have a nose, just google 'Southwellski' and it will pop up.

On the garden front we are clearing the plots and preparing them for the coming season.

Preparation under way.

The growbags we used for our tomatoes and cucumbers have been spread over the cultivated areas and the chooks and chicks have done a great job of mixing it all in.

Now we are planning the crops for next year and looking forward to even more fresh veggies than we had this year, chickens permitting of course.




And finally, Nanny Southwellski made some Pumpkin Soup using a Delia Smith recipe.  It was delicious.  If I said there wasn't a little trepidation at the first spoonful I would be a liar.  But we took a deep breath and swallowed hard.

It tasted like a really expensive and creamy chicken soup, in fact I am going to see if there is any left!

Cherry leaves.