Chickens, chickens and more chickens!

If there’s anything to remind us that Easter is on its way, surely the sound of a clucking hen announcing her freshly laid egg ranks a little higher than endless aisles of chocolate in the supermarket.

As the days have become a little longer and warmer, there’s nothing that the chickens love more than pottering around on freshly cut grass and enjoying a cuddle now and then.

Our girls enjoyed their trip to the Spring Market at Syon Conservatory earlier this month and we’ve got a number of other outings scheduled for them over the coming weeks.

Many would be forgiven for thinking that hens eggs just keep coming, as they are always available in the shops, but from pure breed poultry and slightly older ladies, our favourite breakfast (be that poached, scrambled or fried) is definitely a seasonal treat.

It’s all to do with the length of day and the amount of sunlight that hits the back of a chicken’s eye, and now that we’ve passed the spring equinox, and the days are longer than the nights, we are collecting more and more eggs each day. Nature is kind, expecting smaller eggs from smaller birds, and we can tell which egg has been laid by which hen as the colour of the shell is linked to the colour of the chicken’s earlobe. We are just waiting for our new season asparagus to start poking through and it’ll be time for hollandaise sauce…

 

Chickens on the telly!

Subscribers will have seen that our chickens were recently on ITV’s Jimmy & Shivi’s Farmhouse Breakfast 

It was great to welcome Shivi Ramoutar, a chef, author and broadcaster, to Hen Corner as she was especially keen to see examples of local Londoner’s producing artisan food. You can watch the film of us here.

We are looking forward to Easter at Hen Corner where we will be welcoming families to hunt for eggs, join in with Easter crafts and shape their own hot cross buns to take home with them.

This is always a fabulous event and we still have a few spaces left on Saturday 4th April, so book in quick to secure your tickets!

We are looking forward to bringing a taste of Hen Corner to The Edible Garden at this year’s Ideal Home Show

Our friends at Omlet are bringing us a sparkly new Eglu Cube, the team at Cultivate London have been growing a whole range of edible plants for us to incorporate into the garden and I’ll be giving talks each day about chickens, bees and growing your own food.

Win tickets for the Ideal Home Show!

This competition is exclusively for blog subscribers. The winner will receive a PAIR OF TICKETS, worth up to £32, valid any day 10th – 19th April.

If you’d like to be entered into this competition to win TICKETS, just check that you’ve subscribed to this blog (bottom of page) and leave a comment telling us your favourite thing about Spring

Competition closes Sunday 29th March, we will draw for the free tickets on Monday 30th and notify winners by email.

Coming up at Hen Corner:

March

Introduction to Making Cheese Wednesday 25th

Introduction to Easter Baking Tuesday 31st

April

Easter at Hen Corner Saturday 4th

Ideal Home Show Olympia London Friday 10th – Sunday 19th

Introduction to Making Bread Thursday 23rd

May

Full Day Bee Keeping Wednesday 6th

Family Feathers & Fun Saturday 9th

Making New Cheeses Wednesday 13th

Urban Hens – Keeping Chickens in London Wednesday 20th

Full Day Bee Keeping Saturday 23rd

Bees for Children Tuesday 26th

Pasta Together (Families) Friday 29th

Other news:

• I’ve painted our mini greenhouse and it’s loaded up with this year’s seedlings
• Some of our bees are already ahead of the game and have started making honey for us
• We’ve trained three fantastic new bakers to become Bread Angels and start their own MicroBakeries

Jobs for the week:

• Load up some chickens to visit a Drey of Squirrels (the youngest of Scouts)
• Help supervise some darling ducklings at our local church’s Experience Easter
• Put in a few hours down the allotment, cutting the grass and sowing some peas

Easter is definitely a time to celebrate new life – it’s springing up all around!

What are you most looking forward to?

I hope to see you soon,

Sara