New chicks

Some happy news in the midst of the pandemic lockdown: the first batch of eggs we put in the incubator has hatched. Seven eggs were incubated and 6 hatched today. The eggs were from our Barnvelders. We have a second batch of eggs in another incubator though these only went in a few days ago. They are for a friend who lost her hens over the weekend to foxes.

The first incubator will be given a rest over the next week and will then go into action. We will be incubating Rhode Island Red eggs though we will need to separate off our RIR cockerel and 4 hens to avoid cross breeding. This breed is both table and layer and the cockerels are a good size. We may therefore drop our plans for turkeys for Christmas and fatten up the RIR cockerels instead. No final decision has yet been made but were we to go ahead with keeping turkeys, we would have to create a separate run for them as they need to be kept away from chickens. Apparently, turkeys can fall victim to illnesses carried by chickens.

Until 2009 I was working in London, UK, but I gave it up to pursue a life of self-sufficiency. My aim is to grow or forage for all my food, produce my own power and live a healthier and greener lifestyle. I left London to return to my home village of Sunniside, near Newcastle, in the North East of England. I have a couple of plots of land there as well as the garden of my house. Our village is a commuter area for Newcastle but we are surrounded by countryside which we use for picking wild foods. My mission in life is to show that it is possible to live well without destroying the planet in the process. I am also keen to ensure knowledge of historic recipes and cooking is kept alive. I regularly try out recipes from old cookbooks using the food we have grown. I make videos about our progress and about how to cook home-grown foods. These can be viewed on www.youtube.com/jonathanwallace.
www.self-sufficientinsuburbia.blogspot.com