Glanbrydan’s Weblog

I’m sorry we have been ‘off post’. Several things have happened in our lives:

We have been working our feet off.

I have tried to log on to the blog and been unable to.

The most tragic thing is we have lost Donald duck. I will post more on that subject another day.

My aim at the moment is to post once a week. The business has been doing well. We have just finished a wonderful weekend at the Royal Welsh showground and we have almost finished Vickie and Berties new home.  We have enjoyed our first ever proper wholesale customer only to find they want to continue with the products but made in their own kitchens – understandable under the current financial climate but I really could have called them a few names the day they told us.

We have also had our picture in the Brecon and Radnor express – which would have been wonderful if the article that went with it had been correct. There is an anual event known as ‘the true taste of Wales’ where food producers enter their products into categories and the judges decide who gets an award for their efforts. The article focused on entering the event headed up with our picture but had us down as entrants for last years event when Glanbrydan was not even thought of as producing pies and pasties……

Oh well, the power of the press as they say……………..

We let our chickens out every day, usually after lunch so they lay their eggs where they should as they have been known to lay elsewhere occasionally.  We have discovered the best way to get them home is to bribe them. They love porridge oats, cooked up with a bit of bran thrown in.

The trick, we have discovered, is to always put them in the same pot so they can recognise the container from the end of the garden. I feel like the pied piper with four chickens and a duck running after me.

I also give them the veg peelings, although I understand there is some question about this practise being legal after the foot and mouth problems. All this is topped up with a premixed corn feed and layers pellets.

I have recently read an article about selling eggs in the smallholder magazine http://www.smallholder.co.uk/ and I am thinking of trying to sell a few eggs using an honesty box and a table outside the house.

As well as our 4 chickens we have a duck, known as Donald. He is a Muscovy duck, which are tree ducks and are not so keen on swimming. They are very big compared to the Mallard family and we don’t get any quacks from him.

Until recently Donald shared his life with another Muscovy duck known as Ethel , she died of old age and since then Donald has not been himself. He has become very sedentary and given up washing!

 They used to bate the dogs, something they loved to do. They would walk up to the dog run and stare at Vickie and Bertie who would go mad running around, jumping up and down, barking and the ducks would just stand there watching.

Last year Mummy duck tried to start a nest in the Field next to our garden. She chose a patch mixed up in all the brambles and it took us a while to work out where she was going and block the fence. She was, to coin a phrase, a sitting duck out there.

Donald has moved in with the chicken, refusing to use his own house and happy instead to make a big mess of theirs. He will never come up to you but has never been aggressive in any way. He is always happy to be put to bed and enjoys the odd bit of bread.

We  have four chickens at the moment. They live at the top of the garden in a wooden chicken house along with Donald the duck. Donald has his own house, next door to the chickens, but he decided that theirs is much superior in some way and so has moved in.  They all live in the same run which so far, cross fingers, has beaten the foxes.

Most days, when we are here, the chickens and Donald are free range. We have a reasonably sized back garden in which they are free to wonder. They sometimes wonder into the lane next to our house and scratch the road surface and dredge the ditches. The other day we opened the front door and there was a chicken expectantly waiting to be let in. I told her ‘no chickens allowed’ but I still had to pick him up and deposit him half way up the back garden before he got the hint

The chickens are a constant source of amusement to us and get into all sorts of things. Sometimes I need a bit of time after the event to see the funny side of things. They have been known to pull up my vegetable seedlings just after I planted them, knowledgeably waiting until I had disappeared back into the house for a coffee. When I went back outside, about 15 minutes later, all trace had gone of every plant and the chickens had moved on!! Now even slugs aren’t that quick.

We have been naming the chickens for ages. This has been done with the aid of Amy, our 6 year old grandchild and Abi her little 2 year old sister who believe pink is a good name for one of them. The others were named over several evenings that involved red wine and older family and friends.

So in no particular order we have Pink, Chardonnay, Chelsea and Peaches.  I’m surprised they still lay eggs for us with names like that!