Welcome back to Hen Corner!
As featured in Country Living Magazine
Well it’s still pretty chilly and our bees are too cold to venture out of the hive but Spring is officially here. Today, 20th March, the sun has crossed directly over the earth’s equator giving us the same amount of day and night meaning that winter is over and the days will just get longer! So with Easter just around the corner, we ask ‘Which do you love the most, new chicks or baby lambs?’
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Right on cue
As we said in our last post, we have been working with quite a few London Schools now helping children understand where their food comes from and studying life cycles with chickens and habitats with bees. Last week we were really pleased to have been part of an ‘Animal Day’ and packed up our largest and smallest chickens to take into classrooms allowing children to learn the responsibilities of looking after animals and getting up close and personal with our feathered friends. Whilst the four bantams stayed in a large cage for the day, Butternut our buff Orpington was more than happy to allow 120 children to stroke her in turn! Bunty, our chocolate bantam Orpington came to work with me on Friday for our Easter Danceabout – the perfect illustration of the new life we celebrate at Easter and today, the first day of Spring, has welcomed the first chicks hatching in the incubator at St Paul’s School. First out was the dark Andalusian chick, closely followed by three Speckled Sussex and on the far left you can see a Light Sussex at just an hour old! The first chicks out are helping their unhatched siblings by encouraging them out of the shells with cheerful chirping, so cute. The fertile eggs were sent in the post by Andy Cawthray at Chicken Street and Gillian Dixon at South Yeo Farm East, so very good breeding and I can’t wait to see which others have hatched in the morning…
If you know a school that would be interested in visits from us, please do pass on our details.
Lambing Live
Something else to look forward to this season are the baby lambs being born around our beautiful countryside. With all the bad press of animals being farmed intensively indoors, do take the opportunity to breathe in some fresh air and delight in the joy of skipping lambs in green fields. We are off to a Feather Down Farm soon and are very excited to hear about all the new lambs that they are expecting over the coming months, we’ll be sure to tell you all about it when we come back. Don’t forget that we have a good collection of bank holidays coming up, so why not pack up your wellies and a jumper and get away to the country for a weekend?
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Book of the Month:
Lost in London: Adventures in the City’s Wild Outdoors
By Lucy Scott, Tina Smith
A wonderful hardback book that opens up the unlimited opportunities to discover quite a lot of country living within London. We especially love this book as we helped them with their research and are thrilled that the chapter on chickens tells the story of Hen Corner.
This book is available with many of our other favourite books from the Hen Corner Shop!
Other News:
- Hen Corner was very pleased to have been featured in Country Smallholding magazine
- Our rhubarb is ready and we’re collecting 9-10 eggs a day now…
- Our new season of courses have started, we had a great time with three other families last weekend.
Jobs for next week:
Decorate some eggs for our Easter Celebrations- Research pig-keeping – that’s still on the agenda!
- Check the mistletoe, has it taken on the old apple tree?
Have a good week yourself…
Join us on the Journey!
