The chickens did a great job in winter picking out the bugs and slugs from the borders around the garden and very prettily they did it too.

Eating the tasty new shoots on my herbaceous plants is a tolerance too far though, so our formerly very free range hens are now slightly less free range than they were. Their new, more moderate accommodation is a huge 25m x 5m outdoor pen, surrounding their magnificent hen house, which includes the old compost heaps rich with worms and woodlice – chicken heaven by any definition.

But our chooks have been spoilt with grand living, and their new two-up, two-down lodging has left them peevish, stroppy and impressively determined to escape. Nick Parks clearly did his homework on ‘Chicken Run’. Pete and I spent two days raising fences, burying wire under the hedges and blocking up channels through the compost before I finally gave in to the inevitable and clipped their wings. It’s no harm to the chickens – just like cutting fingernails if you don’t cut too close, but it seemed a shame to mar their beauty.

Still, it gave me an excuse to pick them up, and I am partial to a bit of hen-cuddling. Picking them up is a battle of wits though, a trade off between their greed for corn and their skills of evasion. Only the Rhode Island Red evaded me all day, never turning her back to me, no matter how great the temptation. But there is no escape – if she flies the coop tomorrow, I’ll simply pick her off the perch at night when she’s dopey and docile.

The first big plant delivery of the year arrived yesterday, always a moment of real excitement. Reading down the delivery list is almost a bit of a ‘soft porn’ moment as plant names fire off mental images of beauty forgotten about since last summer. It’ll take days to pot them up, but I don’t rush it. I want to still enjoy actually doing this in 10 years time, not dread it as a chore.

February 19, 2009