Empty Greenhouses

The Last Of The Tomatoes
After the few mornings of frost we have had the tomato and chili plants finally gave up and it was time to pull them up and leave the fruits to ripen. Greenhouse one is now empty, which I suppose is better than it being full of wilting plants. We covered the potatoes we planted a few days ago with hay taken from the chicken coop, so Im hoping the chicken waste will help in the same way that manure does. Having planted out potatoes this week we also decided to plant some onion sets to see if there is any chance of them growing over the winter. John had a quick look in the bottom greenhouse to see if any of the peas or runner beans had started to appear, but came back telling me the only things growing in there were weeds.

There And Back With A Beak
When we arrived at lotty yesterday we could see Marge outside of the gate. With a bit of encouragement in the form of bread we managed to lure her back inside the confines of the fence and thought no more of it. Ten minutes later we found Marge hanging round the gate and watched for a while to see if we could figure out her escape route. It didnt take long before we were out of the gate to round her back up, though this time it was slightly harder as she hurried herself under a bush and headed off towards chicken Johns allotment. Finally back in I picked her up and took her down to the coop to be shut in the run for a while hoping this would stem her adventurousness for long enough for me to block any more escape routes. Id hardly turned my back on her when I realised that Marge was once more missing. This time she'd squeezed herself through the hedge into next doors plot which meant we'd pretty much just have to wait for her to come home by herself.

By the time we got to lotty in the evening to put the girls away she was in the coop, probably very ready to go to sleep after her busy day. I had worried her escapes were going to become a bit of a habit, but as we were there for a couple of hours this morning and she didnt get out once im hoping she's seen and done all the things she dreamt of and is now happy being a stay at home chicken like the others. When we were talking about Marge later in the day I hoped that she was going to write a travel guide for all the other allotment chickens, and John suggested that it would be call 'There and Back With A Beak.'

Quite a few people stopped and chatted with us today and the girls really do seem to be the biggest talking point. David came by and was telling us about when he lived on a farm as a boy, and how they used to supply eggs and milk for the whole village. My award for best chicken impersonation is going to David as he sounded even more chicken like than our girls.