Update on Ginger..10 days in...

Ginger is well and recivering from her fright and illness..she has finished the antibiotic and the liquid Calcium ( boy did she HATE the liquid Calcium!)

She is now scratching and furtling around on the ground as normal and looks much more her usual self... although she is still isolated from all the other birds by a net fence for her safety while she recovers. Henny ( of course) has been in with her, as has Attilla ( ah, bless!)

She has not laid an egg yet...but it has been so hot and humid that a number of the other hens have gone "off lay" so I am not worried ( and neither is our vet Tamsin...)

So...Ginger seems ( fingers crossed) to have got away with it, this time...but I have advised her NOT to take on any more foxes, if at all possible!

Can't help feeling she has lost a life, though...!

DO hens have multiple lives like cats, do you think? ;-)

And the winner is.....

No, not a tennis related post!

I have shamefully neglected to tell you ( and, indeed, her!) the winner of my 500th post giveaway.....

Compostwoman hangs head in shame...

My only ( non) excuse is that it has just been manic here for the last few weeks, and I simply forgot to post the result...

So, without further ado, the winner is................( cue drum roll...........)

Aromatic

Congratulations Jane, and if you email me your snail mail address I shall post you a parcel of goodies.

I shall not put up a picture of the contents until I know you have received the parcel, so as not to spoil the surprise....

And thank you to all the rest of my lovely readers who put their names down, I am just sorry I couldn't send all of you a small token of my appreciation ....

:-)

My (almost) zero waste day..cont...

Thank you to all of you for posting such encouraging, enthusiastic posts!

I am SO glad that you feel inspired to have a go at this as well!
And I would say GO FOR IT!!

And to those of you who though 20 g wasn't enough of a waste to do the forfeit...

well I DID produce some waste so I AM going to do it!

I shall sit in one of my compostbins, as promised...and I shall put up photographic evidence that I have done so..

But perhaps I shall sit in a relatively clean bin, as it WAS "only" 20 g of waste...?

;-)

My Zero Waste Day

As I have already blogged about here, I promised to go waste free for a day and if I failed I said I would sit in a Compost bin...

We already reduce our purchase of "stuff" by growing our own food and making meals from scratch, etc... reuse containers and tubs for other purposes rather than throwing them "away" ( not that there is any such place!) compost everything which can be composted, buy stuff in the recyclable option if at all possible, and generally produce very little waste.

Typically we "throw away" into the Landfill bin about 200g of waste a week, usually plastics we do not have the ability to recycle here.

So when I went on to the Recycle Week 2009 website, I found it hard to find a challenge that would, well, challenge me! Recycling, composting, food waste reduction, re use etc etc , we do all those already!

Then I saw the "go waste free for a day" option... hmmm well I thought, "why not?"

So...I signed up and my forfeit, if I failed, was to sit in a compostbin. And Compostman was emailed by the Recycle Now team, to check I actually did it!

I decided Sunday would be a good day to do my challenge, for no special reason other than I had been too busy the rest of the week to make notes or take photos! I also decided I was NOT going to make a special effort, I was just going to do my usual stuff and see what waste I generated.

So breakfast on Sunday, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, and toast and butter and tea. Fruit from garden, stored in old containers of soft fruit bought from shops in the past - ideal for re use as that is what they were designed to hold!

Bananas, as usual, bought in compostable packaging or "naked".



Bread, home made, stored in the freezer in re used ( many many times) bread bags. Ingredients bought in bulk and the packaging ( paper and foil) recycled



Butter from foil or a tub, which is always washed and recycled or re used as a storage/freezer container many times...

At 11 am, so far, so good!

I fed the cats with cat biscuit from a cardboard box ( recycled when empty) and cat meat from cans or foil trays.



You may remember I agonised and ranted a bit over this in a previous post? Well we made a decision to only buy cans or foil trays as a result of our calculations and have stuck to our choice ever since. Likewise the cat biscuit is ALWAYS in card or paper containers so it can be recycled or composted after emptying.





I made some tea, composting the tea bags as always and rinsing and recycling the milk container.

Sometimes I reuse the containers as watering spouts for plants in the garden too!

I did some vacuuming, emptying the bag into the compost bin, and went to clean out the chickens ( all three houses!) and yes, everything went into the compost bins! All this is normal practice for us, I didn't do anything special!

Lunch was tomatoes, cucumber and cheese muffins for Compostgirl and shop bought quiche and a piece of left over home made pizza from Sat night for Compostman and I plus some home grown salad and some shop bought tomatoes. The quiche was in a foil container and a cardboard box, both of which were recycled. The tomatoes were in a card container, which went in the compost bin.

We had coffee ( filter paper and grounds composted) and Compostgirl had some juice ( from a tetra pak, which will go in the tetra pak recycling bin in Ledbury, which I helped to get put in place!)

Our Kitchen compost caddy.

I nipped out to do some shopping, take some recycling to the HWS and get some petrol, taking my shopping bags with me, so no waste there!



More tea was drunk during the afternoon ( tea bags composted) and other drinks of water were consumed as was some more fruit by Compostgirl. The scraps of strawberry she left over were composted.



Our evening meal was roast chicken, new potatoes, broad beans, sweetcorn and broccoli. We also had some wine. The veg was no problem, all but the sweetcorn had been grown by us or a neighbour so no packaging, the sweetcorn can was washed and recycled and the peelings were composted, the wine bottle was washed and added to the winemaking supplies

BUT the chicken came in a thin plastic bag!

Oh no, I had some non recyclable waste to dispose of! It weighed 15 g!

We then ate some grapes, the punnet was added to my supplies of containers I use to grow salads in, but the outer plastic film, again, was of a sort not recyclable in my area! Oh no, another 5 g !

So, at the end of Sunday we had 2 bits of plastic film to put in the Landfill bin.
:-(
weighing a grand total of 20 g.

In a week we usually put out about 150 g of waste, usually plastic stuff I can't avoid or re use in some way.

Does my only 20 g of domestic waste mean I " get let off" my forfeit? :-0 Personally, I don't think it should, , as "Every little hurts" to paraphrase a well know supermarket.....and we DID send stuff to Landfill, so it wasn't a zero waste day.

I COULD have made my life easier by choosing a different meal for dinner...but I didn't think of that! AND if I had, it would have seemed to be cheating , somehow! I wanted to do a zero waste day as far as possible on a normal sort of day!

I think I will have to try harder ;-)

Have any of you tried a zero waste day? How did you get on? Was it hard? or was it easy?

did I manage to keep my promise? a timely reminder about Recycle Week....

I just got this email from the Recycle week people....

Hi Compostwoman


Today is the last day of Recycle Week. Did you manage to carry out your pledge to have a waste-free day?

View your pledge here ( I pledge to have a waste free day)

If so, that’s great - thank you! Why not try to make it a regular thing - once a fortnight, or even once a week? Your efforts really do help to make a difference.

If not, well - it's never to late to start! But beware, your friend Compostman has been given a nudge, so watch out, it could be forfeit time!

Remember, you said that if you didn't live up to your pledge, you'd sit in one of your many compost bins!

Best wishes

Jane
and the Recycle Week team

Well...do I have to sit in a compost bin, or did I manage to end up with only compostable, recyclable or re-usable waste after a day? Did I put anything in the landfill bin, or did I manage to escape the steaming clutches of my compostbins?

What do YOU think ?

I will post more, anon...........

Day in my life - June

Time for my June post in this series. Well actually I wrote this a week ago but have only just got around to tidying it up to post (oops - sorry!)

This is actually describing an exceptionally busy day for me even by MY standards, its a very busy time at Compost Mansions at the moment! I am out teaching or doing a Forest School/Environmental Education/Eco club/composting/gardening session somewhere most days in these last few weeks of the Summer term, on top of my normal schedule of tending animals, veg patch, polytunnel, house, family etc..AND the house is covered in scaffolding and we have people re-doing our roof at the moment..and Compostman is up on the scaffold painting or repairing wood work or doing other stuff...so its even more chaos here than usual!

So...a (very busy) day in my life in June 2009

Got up early (before 5 am!), had a shower and dressed in manky clothes to go and do stuff in the wood and with the livestock. I was expecting a party of 30 school children arriving with their teachers at 9 30 am for a session in the Wood, so it was going to be a very busy day.



This is the sound I listened to as I went outside....



As I was up well before anyone else, I made some tea just for me and drank it whilst in the wood to check on the log circle, the perimeter rope and the general area to make sure it was all still as in my risk assessment of the previous week. I ticked off items on my pre session checklist as I checked them. I also started to take things down to the Wood ( buckets, trowels, tool bags etc)



At about 7 am I opened up the polytunnel for the day and went to let out the hens. It was a very quick session with them this morning as I was very pushed for time, however I was rewarded with some lovely eggs from 2 of the girls.

I said hello to Compostman who had now got up, we made tea and toast, I did morning stuff with Compostgirl ( hair, book bag, check homework etc...), I got changed into my Forest School clothes ( slightly tidier versions of the manky ones) steel toecap walking boots, rucksack with emergency kit, consent forms, risk assessments, other paperwork, waterproofs etc then I greeted my friend T, a fellow Forest School Leader, who was going to join me in the Wood doing the morning session with the party of schoolchildren we were expecting.

The builders arrived and Compostman took Compostgirl to school, while T and I used the wheelbarrow to take first aid kit, water, towels, loo roll, wash basin, soap, tool bag, craft items, buckets, clay from the wood, and other assorted stuff down to the wood to set up for the morning. I came back to the house and quickly ate toast and had a second cuppa, then breakfast stuff cleared away I went to gather up the last of the required stuff for the Forest School session I was about to embark on. The 2 other practitioners involved with the morning arrived and were greeted and then we all went down to the log circle site.

The children arrived at about 9.30 by coach, along with at least 7 members of staff plus a parent and the next 3 hours were spent with all of us having huge fun in the Wood, playing games, exploring, making dens, finding treasures, running around exploring, having a campfire and making popcorn.







The children went back to school by coach at 12.30 with their teachers and the rest of us sat round the fire and I made a hot drink. We discussed the morning, reflected on how it had gone and relaxed a bit around the fire.



Everybody left, I had a quick lunch with Compostman and then spent the next hour or so tidying up, which involved delights such as emptying and cleaning out the toilet (its just a commode type, so I can tip the contents down the loo as we have a septic tank so I really didn't want to use a chemical toilet!) taking everything back to the house, cleaning and checking tools, first aid kit etc. In the long term I will build a composting toilet and a low impact building but for now I make do with a tarpaulin shelter and a toilet tent.

At about 3 pm I sat down for 10 mins with a mug of tea, having made a round of drinks for the roofers and builders, and did a catch up with my emails.



Then Compostgirl came home, very excited and tired from a long hot day at school. She wanted to go down to the wood to see what had been going on, so after a drink, snack and a change of clothes we wandered into the coolness of the wood. We made some mud monsters and I made the Green Man and Summer Lady to honour the Solstice the next day.



The builders went away for the day and we all had tea, then I did some work in the garden (weeding and planting out more beans, digging potatoes) and polytunnel (watering, taking off side shoots from tomato plants, planting more salad stuff)

By 8 pm I was very tired, so I did bedtime with Compostgirl, got the hens back in the Orchard early and then had a shower. Compostman had been doing stuff on the roof and in the loft and workshop all this time and came soon came to have a shower as well. We watched HIGNFY on BBC1 and the News and then not surprisingly I went to bed! And not surprisingly Compostman wasn't long behind me as he is working very hard doing stuff with the loft and the roof as well and has been putting in some very long, hot days of work. I slept very well that night, I can tell you!

So, a long day but a very satisfying day, the Forest School activities at my site went smoothly, I got good feedback for the site, the teaching staff and children really loved what we all did and all in all it was a good day. The building work is also going well and Compostman is very tired but happy with the progress of stuff.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my day, I have certainly enjoyed doing it

SGF post on Getting crafty out and about.

I have just posted a Simple Green Frugal blog post on "getting crafty out and about"

Go have a read and let me know what you think.

Ginger - good news so far!

Ginger has perked up a lot :-)


We have moved her and the Broody Ark into the small paddock attached to the main Orchard chicken paddock. This means Ginger can see everyone else, but not get hassled by the cockerels.



Having Ginger in a separate place also means I can keep track of her eggs. This is important as she is on antibiotics for another 5 days and then there will be a further 21 day egg withdrawal period. Any eggs she lays will be thrown away during this time, as they will contain traces of antibiotic.

I am so pleased Ginger seems on the mend, I really was worried she would go downhill fast like Genghis and Cathy did and die on us; I guess not being an ex battery hen has given Ginger a much stronger constitution and better powers of recovery. She really looks much better today, she has been looking around, taking an interest in things, snapping at flies and suchlike and her tail is now perked up, as opposed to drooping down - always a bad sign in a chicken, is a droopy tail!

Ginger is NOT impressed to be separated from her pals at all though and was constantly trying to get through the fence to get back to them.



Henny was delighted to see her pal again and came charging over to the fence to say hello :-) and there was much clucking and crooning and mutual preening going on between them through the fence :-)

Update on poor old Ginger

As I detailed in late night fox activities, on Sunday I went out to shut the chickens in the Orchard, but there was no sign of Ginger, Capt Flint, no Henny and no Long John Silver.

The other hens were all very agitated and I finally found Ginger, unhurt but shaking, inside the Eglu, where she hasn't lived for 1 1/2 years. Henny and Long John Silver turned up OK late that night and Capt Flint was there the next morning. Capt Flint, especially, seems to have had a near miraculous escape as he was definately grabbed by the Fox on Sunday night and his neck looked very badly cricked....!

So all was well first thing Monday I thought, until I realised Ginger hadn't come out with the other girls....She was still inside Peckingham Palace, didn't look very happy, a bit miserable, a bit hunched up and she didn't lay an egg. I checked her over, she had no obvious injury and seemed ok, and she settled down to her usual routine in the Orchard that day. She was a bit quiet but eating and drinking OK so I assummed she was upset by the fox incident and the lack of an egg was because she was due her 6 weekly day off laying ( seriously, she lays continuously in the summer for 42 days then has a day off!)

But Tues morning there was no egg, when I would have expected her to lay very early on and she seemed even more hunched up and withdrawn and worryingly I didn't see her do any droppings...this was serious as if there was an egg stuck in her enough to bung her up to that extent, she would rapidly die of the effects of not being able to pass out her waste products,

So...I had a gentle feel of her abdomen, it didn't seem unduely swollen BUT it wasn't "right" SO, as I had no medication to hand which might help, we used old fashioned methods. We filled a box with warm/hot water (body temp for a chicken) with some lavender essential oil and lavender soap added and I lowered her in. The idea beind this is the same as a soak in a hot bath when you have a back ache, it relaxes the muscles and hopefully would allow Ginger to expel any retained egg stuck inside her oviduct. It usually works well and quite quickly! ( and I would have gone to the vets asap if it hadn't!)






I let Ginger soak for about 20 mins while lovely Compostman got the Broody Ark out and put it in the sunshine for her. Ginger seemed to enjoy the unusual experience, well she crooned and purred a bit, anyway and nibbked at my hand.

I lifted her out, wrapped her in a towel and dried her gently and then put her in the Ark. She strained a bit



and then produced a misshapen egg shell and some egg white! and then a poo.....!



She perked up a lot after all this and ate and drank a bit, including a good portion of bread soaked in olive oil, (as I was a bit concerned about her crop feeling a bit impacted) and I left her to recover away from the other hens. Ginger perked up during the rest of the day and, although not right, was a lot improved by Tuesday evening.

BUT early on Wednesday morning she looked much worse again, hunched over, refusing to eat, and very wobbly. I rang the vet and took her straight down to see Tamsin the vet. She admitted her heart sank a bit when I walked in with ANOTHER ginger hen in a cat carrier, and when I said this was my best layer, most favourite hen and the matriarch of the flock she said "so, no pressure, then"

Ginger had no obvious retained egg stuck inside her BUT had a high temperature and a lot of albumen came out when Tamsin examined her, which was not good news. She had a shot of antibiotic, one of oxytocin ( yes, like some women have during labour to speed up contractions during childbirth!) and a dose of liquid calcium ( this helps smooth muscle movement, like the hot bath) I didn't have any liquid calcium at home so I got some to take away, and Tamsin was approving of the hot bath idea as a good one to try.

Ginger hasn't passed any egg products yesterday or today but IS looking brighter and has done some huge poos, so fingers crossed all will be well with my favourite hen.

BUT she does NOT like her daily syringe full of antibiotic OR calcium and I have a struggle to get them down her beak....

Please can I have lots of good thoughts for my hen? I know she is "only a chicken" but.....we are very fond of her and Henny, particularly, will be lost without her friend Ginger ( and YES hens DO have friends.....)

Recycle Week 2009

Recycle Week is an annual event to kick-start new habits that can help us all to all waste less and recycle more. In 2009 the theme for Recycle Week is 'let's waste less...' encouraging all of us to try something new in an effort to go greener and cut back on the waste we all produce. As the WRAP website says

From recycling more of everyday items like glass and plastic bottles to reusing carrier bags or composting at home, there are lots of opportunities to promote how we can all reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill.

"Recycle Week is now in its fifth year and this is the first time we'll be promoting a waste reduction message" said Jane Hall from Recycle Now. "As part of this we're encouraging people to sign up and pledge to either try something new or do more of what we already do".

Across the country there will be lots of events taking place to highlight local recycling services and ways that can help us all do our bit.

You can find out what is happening in your area by entering your postcode on the Event finder.

Whatever pledge(s) you choose to do - your efforts really will help to make a difference.

Thank you

I found it difficult to pick a pledge from the short list, because I already do all the stuff they list! I wanted to write my own pledge, which involved salvaging as much as possible from the builders skip in the garden , but there didn't seem to be that option.

So I finally went for promising to have a waste free day, which seemed a little more challenging than, say, promising to compost all my waste veg ;-)

It is all a very good idea, and if I fail in my promise, I have said I will go and sit in a compost bin!