Clinging, climbing, creeping… ivy certainly knows how to make itself at home! It scrambles up walls, wraps itself around tree trunks and, left to its own devices, it can get a bit too much. I know the temptation this time of year – grab the secateurs and pull the lot down. But please, don’t cut it yet – wait a little longer!
Life is sweeter with sourdough, that is what the proprietor of Hen Corner in Brentford, Sara Ward, would like to impress upon you this month. Sara has been baking sourdough, with her original ferment, since she started her microbakery in 2015.
To make great sourdough bread in real time, you need to do it over two days, she says. Read her guest blog on her new two day courses Making Cheddar, Stilton & Sourdough, on The Chiswick Calendar website.
That’s a wrap on our bee keeping courses, the honey is finally gathered in and this has definitely been my biggest honey harvest so far. A good job too as we’ve just won another Great Taste Award for our Brentford Honey – Hurrah!
Sara Ward is celebrating winning two Great Taste awards – one for her honey and one for her Garden Piccalilli – a ‘recipe’ she threw together ten years ago on the hoof, from what vegetables she happened to have available, while being interviewed by a journalist.
Well it clearly it worked, and both are available to buy from Hen Corner in Brentford as well as a range of courses on how to cook good food from scratch yourself.
Everything is reproducing, expanding and growing. We’ve gone from 3 colonies of honey bees to 10 within 3 months and doubled our headcount of chickens overnight. With all this warm weather and regular watering, the kitchen garden is covered with sprawling vines of grapes, cucumbers and melons. The red oak lettuces are magnificent as a living border to the tomatoes, and the peppers and aubergines are ready to fruit.
New Chicks on the Block!
Did you know that commercial egg farmers ‘change’ their chickens every year, as a hen will lay the most eggs between the age of 6-18 months? After 18 months, a farmer can only expect 300 eggs a year, rather than 350, so naturally would prefer to feed new younger birds. Since 300 eggs a year is more than enough for Sara Ward at Hen Corner, she has rehomed some very lucky birds who, like her, are now living the Good Life in Brentford.
Back last June, we hosted a special event for American homesteaders who were visiting the UK checking out how we keep chickens this side of the pond. A couple of the visitors, Rory & Rebecca Feek, invited us to visit their 100 acre farm in Columbia, Tennessee to join in The Homestead Festival that they’ve been hosting over recent years.
It was a delight to welcome Paula Reed of Good Housekeeping Magazine to meet our chickens!
We chatted about the joys and responsibilities of keeping hens and she enjoyed a cuddle or two.
Check out our course Urban Hens – Keeping Chickens in London
Hen Corner to the rescue
There is a flock of ten hens in Brentford who have no idea how lucky they are. The former commercial egg-layers are becoming less productive with age, but still have many egg-laying years ahead of them, says Sara Ward, so she is resettling them at Hen Corner as their ‘forever home’.
Today is World Bee Day, a time to celebrate our fabulous pollinators that have kept nature ticking over for millions of years. Without bees, we would lose a huge percentage of the foods we enjoy; fruit and vegetables, coffee and chocolate, not forgetting all that delicious honey. We rely on them to pollinate cotton crops so that we can wear t-shirts, jeans and linen blouses. Even our canvas trainers need bees to bring them about!
