Automatic chicken keeping - Introducing the Eggmobile

 

I'm hugely excited about this new aquisition

Well that just looks like an ancient rusty horsebox I hear you say. And what's more, you add,  you don't have any horses. 

But look, I retort, it has a tow bar on the front and four reasonable wheels.

You notice it's lacking a back door and most of the floor...

However, undaunted by your negative observations, I'm still excited. These drawbacks are not a problem. This lovely old thing is going to be transformed into my new mobile chicken house - Introducing the Luxury Eggmobile!

I will explain how it will work.  But first let's look at the problems.

The Problems

Having kept chickens for many years now, I've tried all kinds of ways of making life easier. For them and for me. These are the major difficulties I've encountered -

1. Chickens scratching areas -the chickens' tendency to strip away the plant life from any area where they are confined for more than a few weeks. We don't want bare earth or worse, bare mud. 
2. Chicken perches and thereunder - chickens need perches to sleep on and what comes out of the rear end overnight tends to accumulate under the perch and has to be cleaned out regularly to avoid a build up of manure and associated smells. Although the chicken droppings can be composted for the garden it's not a pleasant job, smelly and dusty in the summer and smelly and muddy in the winter.
3. Red Mite - This horrible pest of domestic chickens hides in the cracks and crevices of wooden hen houses and particularly under the often used roofing felt, and comes out at night whilst the hens are roosting to bite them and feed on their blood. We want to avoid this. 
4. Predators- Chief amongst these for me are foxes and occasionally rats. We definitely don't want this as predators can wipe out our flock in no time at all. Possibly overnight. Ask me how I know.

The Solutions

I decided some time ago that movable houses were the way to go. I tried hen houses  with wheels on and moveable runs. Whilst it kind of works, the wheels were too small, the houses too heavy and with the rainfall we have were soon mired in the winter mud and difficult if not impossible to move. And there was still the floor to clean out.

We tried the Heras Panel chicken house copied from Kev Alviti on An English Homestead. This worked well in the summer for table birds and I'm definitely keeping it for that purpose, But for layers it's a bit heavy and impractical for me to move, though I would still recommend it as a low cost option for people with just a few birds.

So to the Eggmobile  -I cannot claim credit for the Eggmobile myself, it's a straight copy of Richard Perkins idea on the Ridgedale Farm You Tube channel. Richard's plans are intended mostly for people wishing to have a profitable business but the idea is scaleable for anyone, and has been replicated in many forms all over the world. 

I'm a huge fan of Richard Perkins and have watched his many and varied videos on You Tube about small farming. One of his best ideas is the Eggmobile which is essentially a hen house on wheels with a slatted floor. The advantage of this which you will immediately realise if you keep chickens, is that the droppings go straight through on to the grass fertilizing your land and avoiding the job of cleaning out the floor of the hen house. The house is surrounded by an electric fence, and being on large wheels the house can be towed to new area of grass on a regular basis. I think this will work for me. As all my hens will now be in the one house, I'm also investing in a new electric pop hole which will let the birds out into a protected area at dawn and lock them in at dusk. Additionally I will have rollaway nest boxes to make egg collection easier and cleaner. 

Richard's houses are made of metal sheeting for lightness, and my horse box is aluminium (under the flaking paint and rust), so quite light to move and unattractive to red mite, hopefully.

I will keep posting about the ongoing project,  as we go along, and hopefully I will prove your skeptical observations to be entirely groundless.

Making the Most of Things - Rick Stein Restaurant Dining at Home review

 Mr Wilkinson and I have been confined to barracks for what seems like forever, but I don't like to complain since I'm in a much happier situation than many people, living in the countryside, surrounded by open spaces and fresh air, and whilst we keep our health and strength,  it's not really much of a hardship.

But we've missed eating out, and so when I saw on Saturday kitchen last week that some restaurants are doing home deliveries I thought we might give it a try. We're not fans of fast food and anyway they don't "deliveroo" to places out in the sticks like us. But we do like Rick Stein's restaurant and have visited several of his establishments when visiting Padstow.

So all you do is peruse the menu online decide what and when, and place your order at Rick Stein Restaurant Dining at Home and lo and behold on the appointed day a nice man from DPD arrives with your dinner in a box.

The menus are three courses and serve two people, so you have to agree what you can both eat, and prices go from around £40 up to £100 if you go for the luxury option of lobster. We went for the hake menu. We decided that we would make an occasion  of it and dress up a bit, (not tiaras and elbow length gloves but yes I would take my wellies off)  and have a bottle of champagne and some candles on the table. 

So Friday morning arrived and Rick's smart looking box arrived bright and early. It even includes a printed menu with instructions on the back. 

To be honest the contents didn't look all that exciting and I couldn't help thinking how much more I could have got for the money. The thing about being a keen cook yourself is you can end up in a restaurant thinking to yourself, I could have made a better job of this myself, so I tend to order stuff that I either can't easily produce in my own kitchen or maybe haven't had before, or something that's a lot of trouble to do at home.  

I think Mr Wilkinson was a a bit disappointed too, but for a different reason. He's not a cook, and was surprised to find just a box full of stuff you have to do something with. I think he thought he would open the box and Rick would spring forth saute pan in hand! No such luck, but everything is prepared and ready to serve or cook, packed in little bags and plastic containers, properly chilled with a freezer pack and hefty foil insulating material. Even down to the salad in a bag and accompanying vinaigrette in a little pot.

 As I said, when I eat out I like to have things that I can't easily produce at home, or that I wouldn't often have. Since I regularly make smoked mackerel pate and sticky toffee pudding I had to do a little comparison.

I thought Rick's smoked mackerel pate was nicer than the one I normally make, lighter and more delicate my excuse being that Rick probably has access to better quality smoked mackerel than the ones I normally get from Sainsburys. 

The hake and the piperade for the main course were just delicious. My rubbish photo doesn't do it justice.  The sticky toffee pudding although very nice was not quite up to our famous family version, though the clotted cream was lovely. 

But putting such pickiness aside we had a lovely evening, it's really easy, everything's pretty well done for you, and you can put a lovely meal on the table without getting stuff on your posh frock. 

Plus it got us out of a rut, - we even put some Michael Buble on and had a dance around the kitchen. 

And Mr Wilkinson even loaded the dishwasher.

I highly recommend it. 

I'm not sure if the plastic pots are recyclable but I've washed them for re use and the cardboard box went out to the veg garden to mulch some weeds, the chill pack is in the freezer for re use for picnics. The foil insulation will make a lovely insulating cover round my beehive although I would need two to go right round the hive so maybe we will need to make another order...