Of Quail and Chickens and Bees and Boys

Quail and Chickens and Bees and Boys are really all that I have been thinking about these last few days although I was forced to consider DIY as well when my neighbour complained that if I didn't do something about the garage door it was likely to blow down on her car in the next strong winds.

On the quail front, Tiny Quail died as expected, shortly after I had written about her. I think this is is actually a picture of Una but Tiny looked exactly the same, except a little smaller and less lively. Here is a picture of the quails in the brooder before Mopsy and Cottentail made their disastrous bid for freedom. Now that we have only one of the Golden Quail left, Rosie says that she doesn't want to call her Flopsy any more so names are being considered on a yellow theme from plain Goldie up to Celandine and Jonquil.

I have noticed these last two days, that Una is not looking very lively and does not seem to be growing very fast. It might be because of her poor start in life. but I worry that  she is not warm enough since I raised the heat lamp so that we could slip a grid across the top of the box to prevent the bigger two escaping.

Regarding the chickens, I have to report the sad news, that no sooner did I get the two new Fenton Rose birds, than one has been got by the fox.

It is very frustrating that I had kept her in the coop for a week to get used to where home is, and then only on Saturday,  started letting her free range in the garden. On Monday I let her out at 6.30 and by 9 she had disappeared. An investigation on the valley revealed a handful of feathers.
I had recently gone round the garden fences, checking and where necessary, blocking escape routes so it was very annoying. Of course if chickens indulge in this sort of behaviour what can they expect?

This is Amelia perching on top of the hen coop which is 7 if not 8 feet high. I should point out that Amelia has had her wings clipped, which is meant to unbalance her and make flying difficult. I would rather she didn't fly into the valley and offer herself as a meal for a fox, as she is at the moment, my only layer.

I was intending to write about bees next as I spent most of Monday putting hives and frames together and then yesterday hoping the weather would be good enough for the first spring inspection. It wasn't but we had a bit of a crisis so had to go in anyway. However the Boy has woken up and come into my bed so that tale will have to wait until tomorrow.
Rosie and I missed the Boy one morning, he wasn't in his room or the bathroom  and he hadn't gone downstairs. We found him in my room where he had quietly got into my bed, found my kindle and settled down to play on it.

  

Back on the Quail Trail

Like getting back in the saddle after a fall, I thought it best to order more eggs and start trying again with the quail as soon as possible. Consequently I am back in the old routine of turning eggs every four hours.

One was damaged on arrival leaving eleven. They have now been in the incubator for 10 days. After 5 days I candled them and found no cracks and no obviously infertile eggs. All was going well. Around day 7 or 8 Ellie wandered into my room 'So how do you torch eggs?' she asked. I was taken aback, setting fire to them had never been my intention, She agreed that the word she had been looking for was candle. I chose one of the lightest eggs to show her, and she nearly dropped it, 'Aargh , it's moving!' she cried in a mixture of fascination and horror as if the tiny embryo was about to burst from the egg and attack her in a recreation of the scene from Alien. Sure enough though, the little red blob of cells, seen when a powerful light is shone through the egg shell, was moving of its own accord, probably put out by the brightness of the light.
So we know one of the embryos at least is alive and kicking.

The Day of the Snake

It was never my intention to go to Ikea yesterday to buy a snake.

Ostensibly we went to Ikea because I thought they might have baskets that I could use to display my soap in on Sunday.In reality we leapt at this flimsy excuse  because we were bored, and Oliver could do with some entertainment and there would be plenty of warm indoor space for him to run around in. Hmm, should have thought that through a bit more.
All went fairly well until we hit the children's section. Oliver was delighted to recognise his table and chairs and owl and a few other previous purchases. He loved the pop up circus tent that Rosie decided to buy him for his birthday and was happy trotting round examining everything. At some point happy turned to giddy and   seizing the above snake he started ricocheting round the department and also round the restaurant pausing only to take in the excellent children's area there, which allowed me to catch him (and also my breath). I returned him to the children's section and all seemed back to normal. Foolishly though, none of us had thought  to keep a firm grip on him and he was off again, still with snake in tow. This time, he found a short cut to the rest of the store and shot off out of sight. Instantly, I started worrying about paedophile abductions, imagining myself in the paper saying 'He was only out of my sight for a minute'. In retrospect this was needless, any paedophile would have to catch him first and Oliver is fast. I would catch the occasional glimpse of him, running out from behind a sofa, on his way to a room display or hurtling round the wardrobes, all the time trailing the snake. I have known many men who want to speed through Ikea, unseduced by the fantasy of what life could be like if only you had the right storage, and to them Oliver would be the ultimate hero.
 Eventually, I saw him run into what I hoped was a cleaning cupboard, near the restaurant. No such luck, it turned out to be the men's toilets. Ellie had joined me by then, and the two of us stared at the door, left open by about 6 inches, and wondered what to do next. Neither of us wanted to go in, especially as I had seen a man enter earlier. I wondered about approaching a sales assistant or if there was a passing father around (preferably one who looked as if he played rugby). Meanwhile Oliver kept appearing in the doorway and smiling happily at us, snake still trailing round his feet. We tried enticing him out 'Oliver, come and see Mummy now' and we tried commanding him out 'Oliver come out NOW!' but he was too excited to pay us any attention. Finally he decided to come out and was duly nabbed and imprisoned in the first shopping trolley we came across. He protested loudly at this loss of liberty for the rest of the visit.
So after his whistle stop tour of Ikea which mainly took place at floor level, it seemed wrong to return Snake to the display shelves and consequently he will be Oliver's birthday present from me. Suggestions gratefully received for an appropriate name, I'm thinking Speedy at the moment.

Best Laid Plans Upset by Toddlers

Very little productive stuff has been done round here in the last couple of days as Oliver was sent home from nursery yesterday morning for being thoroughly sick. As nursery have a policy of barring children for 48 hours after any sickness, he will now be off until Thursday. Needless to say, he looked completely unaffected and was his normal boisterous self, the only sign that he may have some sort of bug was that he fell asleep in the car yesterday at 4, and slept on whilst I carried him to his bed and took his shoes and coat off. By 7 we had made the decision not to wake him up, but to let him sleep on, which then meant undertaking the tricky manoeuvre of putting a nappy on a curled up child, working by touch only, under the duvet so as not to wake him by exposing him to cold air. He then slept until 6 this morning, annoyingly waking just after I had braved the icy kitchen for a cup of tea and was hoping to take it back to bed and drink it whilst planning my day.
Another sign that he may have picked up some bug is that his mother is now lying wanly on the sofa, vomiting at regular intervals. She doesn't seem to have his robust immune system and definitely not his energy levels.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

The picture is for my girls. When they were young and we used to spend Sunday mornings in my bed, they would try to insert their heads into my armpits (don't know why) and demand to know which one of them was the cutest polar bear. As I have three children but only the normal number of armpits, this could get a bit boisterous. I would generally pick the polar bear cub that was hurting me least, as the cutest. These Sunday morning sessions also included Animal Charades. 'What am I?' said Maddie sticking her chin in the air and falling backwards off the foot of the bed. Turned out to be an impression of a giraffe falling off a cliff,although fair to add that the falling off the cliff bit was impromptu.

What the Don't Tell You About Small Children

What they don't tell you about small children is just how much longer doing the simplest thing will take.
Maybe when you first thought about having children, you had a lot of high ideals about how their upbringing would be educational and culturally enriching whilst still being fun and loving. They weren't going to be the children you read about, who spend their time slumped passive in front of the television not knowing what a cow is or where eggs come from. You would take them on country walks pointing out items of interest, they would scamper happily about, bringing you interesting things to identify. In reality you will be freezing cold, shouting 'Come on !'  while they trudge at a snail's pace through the mud until they fall full length, face first in it. You then have to carry the screaming, dripping infant the half mile back to the car as they are too outraged to walk, even after you have emptied their wellies of water and wrung their socks out.
Likewise you probably intended to teach them to cook from an early age, having visions of some rosy cheeked child gazing happily up at you whilst you demonstrate how to make a cake. You are probably wearing matching aprons. It doesn't happen like that , the child gets a chair and stands on it, positioning himself between you and whatever it is you are trying to reach. He insists that he can do everything regardless of what it is, this culminates in him resetting the scales as you are weighing the flour out. Whilst trying to stop him tipping all the eggs into the cake at once and causing it to curdle, it is more by luck than anything else that you keep his fingers out of the electric beaters. At last with a sigh of relief, you slam the thing in the oven and turn to clearing up. Once again you wish your arms were two feet longer as once again he is on his chair, this time between you and the sink. Time for slumping in front of the television. CBeebies is now your friend, you know every show and every presenter.
As you may guess, Wednesday is my day for spending quality time with Oliver. Very little gets done normally. This week I managed to sneak a loaf of bread into the oven and then we made a dozen buns together.

Whilst I was taking a picture of the bread, a little hand reached up and took a bun. Hence there are only eleven.

Frugal February Looking Forward to March Madness

White Rabbits once more! I know February is the shortest month, but it seems to have gone by very quickly despite a cold grey period in the middle, when I just wanted to stay in bed until it was warm again.
Now it is warm again, well, 8 degrees compared to 2, does feel warm, it's surprising how small a rise in temperature is needed to make the change from shivering under the bedclothes to being up and about doing things. Better still, it now gets light at a reasonable time in the mornings and the dawn chorus is singing away before six, encouraging me to get outside as there is stuff going on. This morning they encouraged me to hang my washing out at 6.15 am. It was still dark then, but it is a task out of the way and the washing should dry now, during the day, at no cost to myself or the environment.
February, was all about the February Frugal Challenge, which was very much about battening down the hatches and getting through the dark days of winter, spending as little as possible. On food spending I did pretty well, the total spend for the month was £72.83 nicely under our £80 budget, but overall I am £50 over budget. This is pretty well accounted for by £26 on a new tyre for the car, £12 on buying an extra pack of computer ink to gain a £4 discount and £10 more than budget on new pyjamas for Oliver. None of it is exactly frivolous stuff but I am still annoyed by the day I was late for my business course and was charged £13.50 for 4 1/2 hours parking by parking where I knew. The following week, a bit of time taken to research parking, found me in a nearer car park for £4.50. A total waste of £9.
I am not too concerned about the overspend though, as my overall spending was still pretty low, including mortgage, insurances, energy costs etc, the spend for February was about £800. Adding £200 as a security net for contingencies, I now know, that I need to generate about £1,000 a month to cover costs, which does not seem too unreasonable. My previous salary was £35,000 but I will be much happier on £12,000, having to watch the spending and make all the economies, is more than made up for by the freedom to spend my time as I please.
Looking forward to March, the emphasis will be on how I am going to generate that money, and hopefully will be a whirl of activity on the soapy business, ready to launch ourselves on the unsuspecting world in April.
As cold process soaps take 4 weeks before they are safe to use, (time for the caustic soda to become fully neutralised), this means I have to make all the soap I want for the launch, this week. Yesterday, I made a soap for the gardener. It has ground pumice stone in it to help clean off the engrained dirt after a gardening session and tea tree oil, which is a natural antiseptic for scratches and prickles. I wanted to colour it a subtle green using spirulina, a sort of dried algae, but I don't think I used enough and given the base colour from the beeswax, it is now an odd sort of dirty grey yellow. I'm hoping it will mute nicely over the four weeks as the lavender soap did. Today's Soap of the Day I think, will be lemon and lime, a nice zesty soap for early morning showers.

February Frugal Food Challenge

I was doing pretty well with the budget food strategy of not buying anything unless it was strictly necessary but then Lidl which is my main supermarket offered £5 off if I spent £35. I didn't particularly want to do this as it would mean I'd spent nearly half my monthly food budget (£80 for 2 adults and a child who eats a lot at nursery) in the first week but I thought if I plan this carefully I could buy nearly everything I need for the first three weeks. I shouldn't need to buy anything extra in week 1 which would leave me £10 a week in weeks 2 & 3 to buy milk and fruit etc and then £20 for the last week. This should be doable.
So this is what I bought:

I reckon there is enough meat there for at least 10 meals and then these will be mixed with pastas, soups, risottos etc. We will see.

It wasn't quite all I bought, I got to the checkout and found my trolley added up to £34.60. I was forced to add these to bring it over £35.

Life is tough sometimes.

Sledging

No talk about wildlife today, we joined the rest of the human race and went sledging. Although as we did it at 8 o'clock before taking Oliver to nursery, most of the human race were still at home.

 As you can see we had our hill and the other family (those specks in the distance on the photo) had theirs.
It felt great, the snow was deep and crisp and even, as they say, and despite age and weight (both numbers higher than I'd like), I felt like an 8 year old again. The photo is pretty blue because as well as it being still quite early, it was snowing steadily at the time.

Here is a rare photo of me for the blog taken by Rosie.
I like snow, it seems a necessary part of the seasons, that it should be cold in January and having a week or so of snow disruption breaks the monotony of winter. People like the drama of stocking up on soups and hot drinks and discussing whether they will be able to make it into work tomorrow. It takes our minds of the fact that Christmas is over, we ate too much and spent too much and it is still a long time until spring. It brings the children out to play that would otherwise be huddled in front of televisions and computers and brings an outbreak of neighbourliness in offers to clear drives or fetch shopping.
By the time this cold spell is over, January will almost be over too and then we can start looking for the early signs of spring with a clear conscience knowing that we have had a proper winter and that we are safe from all the things that a mild winter brings -growth in rat population, unchecked slugs and snails and mosquitoes and anything else the doom merchants want to revel in.

Tasty Treats for Frugal Families

No-one can be healthy all the time, everybody needs a small indulgence now and then. Also I find if you are trying to steer your family into frugal eating, it is much easier to keep them on board if you make them something sweet, tasty and unhealthy . For these times I recommend Toffee Popcorn.

Ingredients
40g popping corn
2 tbsps oil
40g demerara sugar
40g butter
2 tbsps golden syrup.

Heat the oil in a large pan with a lid (if you can't find the lid, a baking tray placed on top of the pan will do instead). Cover the bottom of the pan with the popping corn. Allow to pop, shaking the pan from time to time to prevent burning.Turn the popped corn into a large bowl. Meanwhile put the sugar, butter and syrup into a bowl and heat together in the microwave for several minutes. Drizzle over the popcorn, tossing the popcorn to try to distribute the  toffee sauce evenly. Remember that the toffee will be very hot and the coated popcorn should be left a couple of minutes to cool down before tasting. I didn't.
This will make a large bowl of popcorn at a cost of 38p, comparing favourable with the £1.50 or so it costs to buy it in the supermarkets. It also tastes delicious.