Short But Sweetcorn

Letting The Girls Out

Most mornings when I go to let the chickens out I never see anybody else, and some mornings, like yesterday it can take an hour to walk from one gate to the other after talking to everybody. John the secretary was waiting at the first gate for the container to be delivered to the retainer plot yesterday. We had a chat about having two classes from the Blurs school in to see the chickens and how the allotment should have better links with the school. Being my normal short morning visit I let the girls out and made to leave. I then bumped into chicken George who was planting flowers in a bed along his fence. I stopped to see how he was and said hello to the man with the fancy dog when he came by. Then nearing the second gate I saw Jeff from the school and finally found out what the containers stuck in the ground were for (show potatoes).

Preparing Sweetcorn Field

Last year we had 60 sweetcorn plants at the top of lotty with a path in between the two plots and called it sweetcorn alley. This year we have decided to plant even more sweetcorn as it lasted nowhere near as long as we wanted it to, and instead of sweetcorn alley it will be called sweetcorn field. having finished everything I needed to do at home I made my way back to lotty in the afternoon to carry on with the planting that we started on Saturday. Once again by the time id finished chatting I only had around twenty minutes left, so I got stuck straight into what I was doing. As soon as the greenhouse door was opened and id gone to the hut to find the seeds the chickens were straight in there. I tidied up the floor a few weeks ago, so I was quick to get the chickens out before they made a mess again. After going shopping on Sunday we now have plenty of compost an seed trays, so I could plant to my hearts content. Firstly I picked out all of our sweetcorn seeds and there were exactly enough seeds to fill three seed trays, totaling 120. It was getting a bit late by this point but I was determined to get a little more done and hastily popped in a few shallot seeds.

Not wanting to go back after picking up the Blur from school meant having to put the chickens away by myself. The Blur is usually a big help with this but on my own I have to prepare well. I take a slice of bread which lures the girls (and boy) down to the run, then while they're busy eating I go round to the front of the coop and lay three canes between the fence and ramp to form a small fence. I round the chickens up the other side of the coop and being slightly puzzled by the little fence they hop straight into the coop. This usually work fairly well, but yesterday the cockerel decided it wasnt going to stop him, so he hopped over taking two of the canes with him. Luckily this was still enough of a barrier and the girls went straight in. The cockerel wasnt too much of a problem as once he'd seen the girls were all in he hurried in there himself. Seeds planted, chickens put away and everything put away I made it to school right on time. I will be back there this afternoon as I still have a long list of seeds that need planting this month, and the sooner they're done the sooner we can eat good, free food again.