Goldfish vs chicken

Happy New Year from RCC! Thank goodness that snow's buggered off.  Right, back to blogging business. Let's start the New Year with a bit of sarcasm.

I am always highly amused by the following statement on the Omlet (Eglu makers) website:

If you are looking for a low-maintenance easy-going pet then your search is over - chickens are seriously chilled out! No need to take for walks, chickens quite happily look after themselves and unlike a rabbit or goldfish, Omlet chickens come with a lifetime supply of eggs.

So, ‘seriously chilled out’ chickens are quite happy to look after themselves....hmmmmmm.....now that’s utter nonsense. I know what the wonderful team at Omlet are getting at here; Chickens do happily get on with their lives during the day whilst you’re at work. But they’re far from low maintenance and my ‘lifetime supply of eggs’ has, as expected, dried up for the winter.

As regular readers will know i have both chickens and  a goldfish - the much maligned, enigmatic Ron. Here are a few examples of where Ron wins hands down in the maintenance stakes:

1. I have never had to apply Vaseline to any of Ron’s extremities. I have, however, had to commando crawl through a muddy, poo-ridden run at 6.30am in sub-zero temperatures to apply Vaseline to Margot’s comb to protect her from frostbite (Of course, when I say ‘I’ here, I do in fact mean ‘Mr Swift’)

2. Ron has utter respect for hangovers. M and J have to be let out of their run at 7am every day, without fail

3. Ron has never performed a ‘brassica massacre’. M and J stripped my raised beds of every last cabbage and broccoli plant in under ten minutes thanks to Mr Swift’s half-arsed ‘supervised’ free-range session

4. Ron has never caught lice off the filthy local feral bird population resulting in thrice-weekly spraying sessions with Johnson’s anti-mite spray. Mr Swift and i have inhaled so much of that stuff that if we ever had children they'd have three heads and five arms each

5. Ron has never tried to tunnel out of his tank. M and J are digging holes to rival ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ in The Great Escape.

6. Ron has never wandered into the kitchen and laid an egg on the floor, much to the horror of the onlookng resident cat

Seriously, I love my hens and my Eglu to pieces but any would-be chicken owner should go into this endeavour with their eyes (and their wallets) wide open.

Speaking of the girls’ wellbeing, they have been less than impressed with the snow/ice conditions. My woes have started since the big thaw begun. Thanks to several weeks of frozen conditions rendering cleaning out their run utterly impossible what was once was a lovely, tidy space with plenty of wood chippings is now a muddy, stinking hellhole.

I can’t possibly let my girls live like this so next weekend ‘operation run improvement’ begins (really couldn’t think of anything snappier). This involves myself as chief engineer/site supervisor; Mr Swift (builders mate/chaiwalla); industrial paving slabs; one Eglu classic run extension; corrugated roofing panels; sand; bungee cord; plastic lawn edging; horse bedding; half fence posts; Ikea shower curtain and a pond liner*. Before and after photos to follow.... my DIY-obsessed father will be so proud.

*A prize for the person who produces a detailed expanation of how each of these components will be utilised, the use of diagrams will secure you extra marks.

Ho Ho Ho from RCC HQ

Hello everyone, just a very quick post to wish you a Merry Christmas. Hope your stomachs are as bulging as ours and your hangovers as mild.

I tried to gather the gang together for a family portrait but the bird/cat/goldfish logistics were too much to cope with. So, i leave you with a picture of my crimbo dinner which contains many RCC herbs and veg and a distinct lack of roulade. Happy Holidays!

Wool envy

I'm crap at knitting - there, I’ve said it. Phew, sometimes just being honest with the world is wonderfully refreshing.

It's not that I don't like knitting; it's just that there are several key skill sets to be a good at it that I simply don’t possess:

1. Patience
2. Creative flair
3. The ability to keep count

So, it's with great envy that I admire the handiwork of those more competent than I. Take for instance my amazingly talented colleague Rebecca. Now, that's a girl that can knit! Her pièce de résistance is tea cosies. This is extremely fortunate as I have a teapot in desperate need of a jumper. So, over our Departmental Christmas curry we struck up this reciprocal deal - one tea cosy for a supply of River Cottage Croydon eggs. Brilliant, everyone’s a winner.

Like most of these crafts Rebecca's obviously learned this skill from her Mum. I became aware of the full extent of Mrs Glover’s knitting talents when Rebecca sent me the following photos on Friday.

Mrs Glover and her fellow members of the Little Chalfont (evening) Women’s Institute knitted this incredible nativity scene for the children of St George’s school.

Wow – Ladies, I salute you. These are quite simply the most awesome knitted items i have ever seen! I'd like to single out the ginger Archangel Gabriel and the wise men with the wispy beards for a special mention.

I'm so inspired by your efforts I’m going to continue to add to the 3.5 inches of scarf I managed to cobble together back in Winter 2007. Wish me luck.

Dear Delia

Dear Delia,

Let me begin by telling you i'm a lifelong fan. Some of my earliest memories of food are watching you cook on Swap Shop with Noel and Cheggers. I’ve always thought Christmas at your house would be culinary Nirvana. However, having witnessed your televisual nightmare ‘Delia’s Classic Christmas’ on BBC Two this week, I’ve revised that assumption.

Right, let’s start with the Christmas pudding (as indeed you did). I love Christmas pudding Delia, i really do, and i agree wholeheartedly that more people would eat it if it was home-made. Saying that, who on Earth in these recession-hit times can afford to have the hob on for EIGHT HOURS steaming a pudding that contains 95 separate ingredients? Certainly not me; I’m sat here typing this in two jumpers and a scarf to save putting the heating on. Do you have shares in one or all of the four main UK energy providers?

Whilst we’re on the subject of vested interests i also believe you may have a substantial personal portfolio involving the UK spirits industry, because  that was a lot of booze i saw glugging into practically every dish. I’m worried for you and your liver.

I was also deeply troubled by your obsession with that large upright freezer. There was something distinctly eerie about your night-time trips into the garage to visit it. I half expected it to contain your Husband’s dismembered body neatly packaged in date-marked Tupperware boxes.

Ok, now let’s move onto the pinnacle of my disgust, that vegetarian abomination. I think we both know I’m referring to the Roulade, or as I like to call it, cheese and parsnip vomit roll. Who would possibly want that for their Christmas dinner, Delia? Please tell me which of your friends and relatives you think would enjoy seeing that beige, oozing, pus-like mess placed in front of them on Christmas day? I know you don't hate vegetarians because you produced a very lovely recipe book just for us back in 2002, so explain to me why this crime against cookery exists? I’ve been a strict vegetarian for 18 years and I would scoff down a Turkey crown in a New York minute before ever putting that thing near my mouth.

Saying all this, I just can’t bear to leave our relationship on a sour note. There were a couple of redeeming features; the braised red cabbage looked nice.

I still love you Delia, I always will. Please make it all better in time for next year.

Best wishes, Lisa.

This is not a good precedent

Mark my words, this is the thin edge of the wedge. By Christmas they’ll be sat on the sofa watching Morecambe and Wise re-runs.

Bird meets birdbrain

To the untrained eye this may look like a cat about to pounce on an unsuspecting chicken.

What's actually happened is Eli was minding his own business, pottering around the back of the raised beds, when he discovers to his absolute horror that he's four feet away from Margot – ON THE LOOSE. He's paralysed with fear, the daft animal.

I'll never understand how he’ll happily risk life and limb to chase a huge fox around the field in a Benny Hill-esque fashion but his feathered sisters scare the bejesus out of him.

One of my fellow Omleteers (Eglu owners) put forward the following hypothesis for Eli's behaviour:

I think it's a pride thing. Birds = dinner and dinner should not fight back! Chickens obviously haven't read the rule book and it isn't fair and the cats all go off and sulk. Foxes = competition and therefore they are fair game and expected to fight back.

Now, if only Ron the goldfish put up a tiny shred of resistance he may have a slightly happier retirement.

Seed porn

Mother Nature ensured that any quality time out in the garden today was reduced to zero thanks to the 80mph winds and torrential downpour. So, i remained in my pyjamas all day and resorted to my back-up plan – seed shopping (or as Mr Swift describes it,‘seed pornography’).

While i dispute my husband’s comparison of me to a sweaty loaner addicted to online porn, I will confess to scouring the internet looking for heritage seed providers. I’m determined to grow more unique and endangered varieties in 2010 rather than relying on the trusty Marshalls vegetable garden collection. Thankfully, Seeds of Italy and Thomas Etty have come up trumps. I’ve even gone as far as ordering a few varieties from Hugh himself.

I will admit to being somewhat of a seed snob (if there is such a thing). In my eyes you don’t have the right to call yourself a gardener unless at least one thing in your garden started off as a pack of seeds in your hand, in the same way that bunging a ready meal in the microwave doesn’t really make you Gordon Ramsey. I know not everyone is fortunate enough to have a greenhouse, but that doesn’t stop you chucking a few lettuce seeds in a window box and growing your own salad (sooooo much tastier and cheaper than those atrocious supermarket salad bags). If my argument has convinced any of you to give it a go, this variety is one of my favourites.

Let’s hope the weather eases up tomorrow long enough for me to plant my garlic and let Margot and Jerry out for a spot of free ranging. Otherwise both the hens and i may go a little stir crazy.