Molly the chicken plucker.

Saturday 9Th April 2011
A really beautiful day today and all my various achy parts have calmed downso I went out to finish the chicken house. i will just have to getv it painted tomorrow.

I was even working outside without my pullover on, a rare thing in Orkney where I normally have a pullover and a windproof jacket welded onto me.

Peter came up to borrow the trailer to get some topsoil. He and Barbara are moving house to live next door to their old house but they are keeping a lot of the garden. He needs to till over the soil once he has got it down so we also lent him a cultivator. I am not sure how good the cultivator is. It is a little electric one that Pam bought from Lidland it is still in its box. It should be OK for turning over loose soil though.

On Sunday I saw my first bumble bee of the year and saw another bee on the rim of my teacup just as I was going to take a swig.

The MK3 hutch is finished now, all ready to be moved into chickenopolis in the field.





Pam bought a corner cupboard for the kitchen from an advert in The Orcadian, so we went and picked that up from Kirkwall and Pam spent a happy hour or two unpacking some of the remaining boxes of pots and putting them in the cupboard.

Molly had an excting day. WhenI was working outside she was on a long rope so that she could wander around.
Now you know how with children, if it gets quiet, you get suspicious. Well it got quiet so I looked round and all I could see was half of Molly's rope and no dog. The cunning little sod had chewed through the rope. Fortunately it did not take long to find her. I saw one of next door's chickens streaking across their garden considerably faster than they normally move even when food is put out. This was followed by a very excited dog trailing a length of rope behind it.
I shouted for Molly to "Come here" as per dog training class. Somewhat surprisingly she did not seem to hear me and she continued chasing the chicken.

The chicken must have been moulting heavily as I saw a lot of feathers flying off it on several occassions.
Eventually I managed to get my foot on the end of molly's rope and drag her in. At this point, the chicken realised that it had made a mistake. It had decided that the safest place to be was by my feet. This was sensible while the dog was running about but became less sensible when I was dragging the dog towards me.

I was quite surprised to see that although I had seen clouds of feathers coming off the chicken in its dog-assisted moult, there were no noticable bald patches.
Eventually, much to the relief of the chicken, Molly was hauled off home to be chastised and the chicken continued pecking aroundclucking in a disgruntled fashion under its breath.

We really need more chickens.

Monday 11th April 2011
At the moment we have four chickens that are laying eggs every day along with four youngsters and four totally useless ducks. We do not eat 4 eggs per day, largely because a fear of getting egg-bound.
Even allowing for all the extra eggs used in the baking that Pam has been diong recently, we are still left with loads of spare eggs.
I have one arrangement to swap some of the eggs for beer which is one of the better uses for the excess. Even after this though, we are still left with spare eggs which we give to anybody that we can dump them on.

Because of this, when we saw an advert in The Orcadian for some chickens, we decided to buy them.
This is maybe not as stupid as it seemsat first sight. The birds that we are going to buy are Black Jersey Giants, a meat bird, so we will not get many more eggs. It is a breed that had said earlier that she would like to have but we did not think that there were any up here and had assmed that she would have to get some from down south.

It is going to be a bit of an adventure for the chickens (a trio, 2 hens and a cock). They are coming from Hoy. The man selling them is going to put theminto a box and give them to one of the crew of the Hoy ferry. I then have to pick them up when the ferry docks at Houton and give the money to the ferryman.
I thought that you were supposed to have a penny from your eyes on your death to pay the ferryman but this particular ferryman is going to get a good deal more than a penny and I am not even dead yet.

The new chickens will have the brand new MK3 chicken house, so now I will have to build another 1 or 2 chicken houses. The bit of the field where the chickens are is going to start looking like a mini council estate or more probably like a rather run down brazilian shanty town.

Pam went to to work at the cafe in the Fossil Museum for the first time today. A minor mishap as one cake burnt because Pam is used to a fan oven and forgot to allow for hot spots in a non-fan oven. Over all though she seems to have done well and enjoyed herself.



The Fossil Museum










On Thursday I had a really bad leg and had to resort to strong pain killers. On Friday it was much less painful but had decided to attack both hips, both shoulders and one wrist. I considered this to be cheating as it normally only affects one joint at a time.
I sympathise with people who have normal arthritis. It must really grind you down knowing that every day the same joint is goint to hurt. At least I have the excitement of trying to guess where it will be on the next day and most of the time it just goes away all together.

Anyway, Friday was not good but it was drizzling all day so I had a good excuse to sit inside and do very little. I did manage to get some bits ordered to enable me to convert my little model train to DCC (a sort of computer controlled train set). It remains to be seen if I can solder the new bits onto the correct places without completely ruining the whole thing.

I got sent off to get some chips from the mobile chippy that visits Burray village every Friday evening but I was to late and he had gone when I got there so we decided to go rash and have a bar meal at The Sands.
Evelyn, the landlady at The Sands told me that Amy (you remember Amy, the big akita that Molly does not like in her obedience class). Well Amy had gone lame the other day. They took her to the vets and she had a damaged foot. Some of the bones are out of place. Evelyn was told that she has two choices, either leave it and see what happens or go to Aberdeen and pay £5000 for an operation that may not work.
Needlass to sa, they have decided to wait and see. This means that Amy will not be going to the obedience class anymore.
When I told this to Molly she did not seem to be really worried about Amy's plight but just jumped about wagging her tail.

Mk1 goose house and the incredible Mk3 Chicken house.

Wednesday 6th April 2011

It has just dawned on me that I have not put any photos up for a bit and they do at least break up the text.
I have not at the moment got any decent photos to put up so if you could just imagine an idylic scene that you would like to have a photo of and then imagine it in the space below, I would be grateful.



YOUR VERY OWN IMAGINATION





Thanks for that.

I have managed to get most of a larger mark3 chicken hutch built but it is overcast and permanently drizzling today so it will probably not get finished until tomorrow.
You will be amazed by the skill that has gone into its construction, not to mention the number of nails.

At a slightly more basic level I made a goose shelter out of some old palletts and asbestos roof sheets from Hamish's old shed. We are getting some goslings after easter and while they are fairly tough, they need a bit of shelter from the wind sometimes. While the shelter is not going to win any prizes for architectural beauty, it is at least to heavy to blow away.

Just to give a bit of light relief I will take some photos of the aforementioned constructional marvels sometime and you can sit back in awe and admire them. No comments will be necessary.

This afternoon Pam had a meeting here with Richard Thomas, the new chairman of the U3A. They have a full committee meeting here next monday and I have a sneaking suspicion that Pam's meeting with Richard may have had something of a coup about it.

A shopping expidition for the volounteer.

Monday 4th April 2011
Yesterday was Mother's day and I was lying in bed last night thinking that it is 4 years now since I had to buy a mother's day card. I would give anything to have to buy another. All of you who still have your mother, why not tell her how much you love her today just in case you can't tomorrow.

Anyway, cheer up Woodcock. I was also thinking that because I am always getting behind with the blog, it is getting to be just a bit like a list of things and dates. This makes it easier to keep up but is also boring. I shall in future say some of the things that we have done but not necessarily in the right order ( as Eric Morcombe once said to Andre Preview).

Just to spoil that idea however I shall start with what we did today. Ooh it was exciting. Not only did I get to go shopping in Kirkwall but I got to go to loads of different shops.
Now I can hear you asking if there are loads of different shops in Kirkwall but you would be surprised. It is a City after all, none of your small town stuff.

Mrs Featherstone (I can not get used to calling her Rhona, it seems over familiar but you may call her Rhona if you feel comfortable with it.)
Anyway, Mrs Featherstone had said that she had to get a load of provisions in for the cafe before it opens in a couple of weeks and because she needed to get a lot of stuff (stuff is a technical term for bulk buying groceries) then Pam had said that we would take her down in the Lucida as it has lots of space in the back. She had also kindly volounteered me as driver. You can imagine my delight on being informed of this.

Not only did we get to visit Lidl and "the dreaded Tesco's" but also the cash and carry of whose very existence I was unaware and the frozen food store. I had seen the frozen food store previously but had never felt the urge to go in. On entering it today, I was slightly surprised to find that as far as I could see, it did not sell frozen food. There may have been some up the far end but I did not see it.
It is of course possible that in a previous incarnation it actually sold frozen food and that the Orcadian way of not changing things at the drop of a hat has led to it retaining the name but now being a grocers.

On the positive side of things we have now found out that Pam has a very charitable nature and is not working at the cafe to earn lots of dirty money. She is classed as a volounteer as she looks to middle class so they are not going to insult her by offering her money. It is, I think only the full time cook and the young waitresses that actually get paid.
It is really Pam's own fault. When she applied for the job, she was trying to impress and said that she was not applying because she wanted the money but because she wanted to get to know more people and half the female population of Burray seem to work part time in the cafe. This was taken at face value so she is now numbered amongst the volounteers.

A couple of days ago (a bit vague on the day as I am getting old and senile) I went out for a walk with Molly down towards Hunda. It was a most beautiful day and I have written in my notes that I saw a small tortoiseshell rabbit. In fact I saw the first butterfly that I have seen this year, a small tortoiseshell and I also saw some rabbits seemingly just gamboling about for the fun of it. It seems that spring is now with us. All the daffodils are out everywhere and the bushes are starting to green up.

Pam has a phone marathon and I get younger.

Thursday 24Th March 2011
A few dats of masterly inactivity. Nothing much has happened at all, in fact Pam was so bored that she spent from about quarter to seven until quarter past ten on the phone solidly. Admittedly she spoke to about three different people but nearly three and a half hours on the phone!!!
If gossiping was an olympic sport then we would be in with a really good chance of a medal. All this time spent on the phone is apparently without anything being said as if I ask what she spoke about the reply is normally "Oh nothing really". I hate to imagine how long the calls would be if there was actually anything that needed to be said.

On a brighter note, I must be getting younger. A few weeks ago the medic put me on statins as my cholesterol levels were just above the recommended levels. I had a few aches and pains and so he has taken me off them, saying that I did not really need them in the first place and the cholesterol is now down below the recommended level.
When he put me on them I thought that it was just a sign that I was getting older and was not immortal after all. Having been taken off them my ideas about eternal youth and immortality have returned and I shall outive you all.

The medic was very good though, not like your silly southern doctors. He said that if I get a bit of cramp in the night then quinine is good for cramp and tonic water has quinine in it. His suggestion therefore was to have a gin and tonic before bed. Unfortunately though this can not be obtained on an NHS prescription so I will have to buy my own. Another result of the cuts in NHS spending I suppose.

Pam is going to the Fossil museum cafe tomorrow to show them what she can bake so she has spent all day today practising and we now have a kitchen full of a multitudinous variety of cakes. I am sure that we stand no chance of eating them all so maybe the ducks and chickens are in for a treat in a few days.