From Rocky to Rockette...

Its been a surprising few days on the homestead. We've learnt some very important things...

1. No matter how many books on poultry you read your hens will always surprise you.
2. No matter how many books on poultry you read your children will always surprise you.

I haven't seen much of the chickens over winter. I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and BH sees to them in between. But I do remember that before the winter set in we had four fluffy young hens, a mixture of Buff Orpington Bantam, Wyandotte and Rhode Island Red - pretty little girls all of them - not any more.

As I was clearing up leaves, mini freerangegirl said 'mum, one of our hens is a cockerel' and it certainly did look like one. We called BH up to ask the same, but he insisted that it definitely wasn't as it had never crowed...

...and on that note the little fella stretched out his neck, shook his beautiful plumage and you guessed it...Cockadoodledooed. Not once, not twice but for the rest of the day and pretty constantly too. Needless to say we have a very embarrassed BH in our midst. Looking at him now its pretty obvious but then hindsight is 20:20 as they say...

My poultry princess got to name him and immediately called him 'David Beckham' which I thought was rather apt as he's got Spurs! But he has gone to live on a friends farm where he can cockadoodledo to his hearts content without driving my neighbours nuts. I think its back to chicken school for us - where my daughter is probably giving the lessons!

Workers teatime and a sad sunday...

The building is cracking on a pace. Its unbelievable how quickly things start to take shape once bricks are being laid. Finally our children dont think Dad's building a swimming pool - its going up instead of down at last!

For the longest time BH has been talking me through the finest details of the drawings and plans and managed not to throw them at me when Ive drifted off under the weight of all the technical detail. It was never that I was interested but I just keep leaping too far ahead to the curtains and cushions stage!

But now weve got holes for windows and doors, i'm practically giddy with excitement!  We've already practised sitting in various parts of the room to imagine looking out of the window - but I am under strict orders that if I buy any furniture before its finished tools will be downed in protest!

At least I can feel confident that at last we'll have a room with a view!

This doorway isn't quite as huge as it looks - BH is stood quite a way up the hill - either that or our Yorkshire mist is making him shrink!

Despite the rumours, builders dont survive on tea alone - they quite like a bit of cake to go with it. We had a rare trip to the famous Bettys tea rooms and couldnt resist these beauties. The French fancies have gone down a storm, Mr Kiplings won't ever seem the same again! Personally I'm quite quite taken with the chocolate chestnut conkers!

We'd planned a Sunday tea to serve these up at, but alas things didnt quite go to plan, not least but because we made a discovery in the chicken coop which knocked us for six.  We lost our favourite baby buff bantam this weekend to the pecking order. We noticed that the Marys (our bossy hybrids who we hatched earlier this year) were getting increasingly dominant with our oldest Buff Bantam offspring. She was beautiful and had just laid her first egg. They bossed her about but it seemed no more than that, only when we checked them Sunday teatime we found that she'd been pecked to death. I know, I know  - rural life can be brutal, but right now I could throttle the Murdering Marys myself. BH is really sad too as she was the first chick we ever hatched and he had hoped to show her next year. 

So heres to BB, our baby buff, we'll miss her very much.