It’s sad to see that after spending ages cutting all the grass back, it’s come back again with renewed vigour, but I guess it’s to be expect. The beds I dug over and covered with black plastic has deterred a lot of weeds, but not this one particularly stubborn variety. For this year, I’ll cut holes in the material then mulch over the top of it to supress weeds, but I’ve given it one last de-weeding before covering it up again ready for planting.

The broad beans we planted late have done well, though I admit I had absolutely no idea that broad beans don’t climb! Turns out they’re bushy plants; for some reason I’d assumed all beans climbed up. Oh well. I’ll interplant some french beans in our arch so at least that doesn’t go to waste.

Unfortunately, we found out just why our little corner patch wasn’t so popular. When it rains, the water all collects on our plot, at the lowest point of the allotments. I’m sure this’ll be good for some certain plants, but the potatoes we planted a few weeks ago are no doubt rotten:

To deal with this, we’re going to build some raised beds here just to raise the soil level up – hopefully this’ll mean the upper layers stay dryer.

Chickens also make for great natural de-weeders.

Onions are doing nicely, as is cauliflower and broccoli that I planted out a month or so ago. French beans, meh~ not so good. Just a little too cold for them yet, I think – that or the sun is is the wrong place. I know – this needs weeding too. Seriously though, the rain just wont stop right now.

Want to make your own? Head over to the site now and create your free account. You get one free HD download of your video, like the one I made above.

We also burnt all the brambles we’d pulled out so far. We had been slowly digging out brambles from all over the place, but realised the mass of overgrowth was going to need an actual strimmer to get rid of. So we decided to invest in one of these 4-stroke petrol strimmers from Ryobi. It’s a part of the “ExpandIt” range, which means you can actually detach the strimmer head, and swap it out for say, a rotivator head – so that’s the birthday present this year apparently. There’s a whole range of other attachments to buy separately, so if you’re looking for a good allotment investment that’s going to cover a wide variety of uses and not take up mountains of room in the shed, then I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

So here’s how it’s looking after an initial strimming.

And having started digging the rest over fairly roughly. It’s tough work, but I want to make it all useable this year – many people say just do a little bit at a time, but I figure it’s best to get something in there, growing, to work through the soil. Once I’ve dug it all over roughly, we’ll be putting the rotivator to good use.

We also cleared up around the random fruit bushes, and our site manager Jerry reckons they’re mostly blackcurrents, with one in the center a Gooseberry. Good stuff, I can’t wait to make currant pudding and wine this summer! In fact, we plan to turn this entire end of the allotment plot into a fruit area – and top of my list are hops, currants, and anything else I can make wine out of!

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Spicy Jalapeno and Cheese Bread

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Serves	20
Prep time	20 minutes
Cook time	3 hours
Total time	3 hours, 20 minutes
Allergy	Milk, Wheat
Meal type	Appetizer, Bread, Snack, Starter

A basic Jalapeno recipe ready for you to customize - the cheese and ham really makes this a meal in and of itself - great served warm, dipped in sour cream and chives. A firm favourite at our house. Don't worry if it collapses and feels a little soggy in places, as thats the copious cheese.

Ingredients

• 150ml Warm water
• 100ml Sour cream
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 2 tablespoons White sugar
• 3 tablespoons Jalapeno pepper (chopped, red and green mix is fine)
• 2 medium Sweet red chilli peppers (chopped)
• 400g Bread flour (Approx - adjust as needed by wetness of ingredients)
• 7g Dry yeast ((1 sachet))
• 200g Cheddar cheese (chopped, 1cm cubes)
• 6 thin slices Salami (chopped)
• 2 bulbs Garlic (crushed, and chopped)
• 2 tablespoons Tomato pureé

Note

Adjust amount of Jalapeno for a spicier dish, obviously, but this is what I find perfect. Mix in the breadmaker initially on dough setting, then remove to shape and bake in the oven.

The photo attached to this recipe was from an earlier version cooked in the breadmaker, but the oven version is far better.

Directions

Step 1

Add the water and sour cream to your breadmaker first, then add the flour, sugar, salt and yeast on top. Make a small well with your finger to keep the yeast dry.

Step 2

Set the breadmaker to dough cycle, and start it off. While that's mixing, prepare the other ingredients. Chop up the cheese into 1cm chunks; chop the chillis, jalapenos etc.

Step 3

When the breadmaker beeps the first time, it's time to add your additional ingredients - chillis, cheese, garlic, everything. After a few minutes of further mixing, check to see if more flour is needed. If it seems sloppy, add some more flour. It depends upon how much water was added from the chillis, but more than likely you'll need to add a little.

Step 4

When done, take the dough out onto a floured surface, and shape however you like. Dust with flour, and cover with a cloth to rise - an oven set very low can also suffice (although obviously, don't put anything flammable like a cloth into a gas oven!), or just in a warm spot by the window.

Step 5

Pre-heat the oven to about 180C, and cook for 30-40 minutes. Leave to cool, then slice up to serve.

The truth – at least in my local area of Sutton – is that there is actually a lot of plots going free all the time, as inevitably people give them up or move.

I decided that I may as well just call up the council anyway, and see exactly what the state of waiting lists was. I put name down for 3 sites close by, which the lovely lady recommended due to their high turnover. By my estimate – given my number in the queue and how many opened up each month – I reckoned the wait would be 6-9 months. Less than a month later I got a letter saying I could go and choose a plot, as about 8 had opened up. I went down that day, chose the scruffiest one there – a neglected corner plot that had a little extra land by the looks of it, and perhaps some hidden treasures in amongst the brambles –  and had my allotment key the following day. Here it is!

We’re making slow progress, but I’ve ordered a 4-stroke petrol trimmer to pull down the rest of the weeds. We also found 4 or 5 little fruit bushes, but won’t be able to tell exactly what they are until they get some foliage or start fruiting.

Anyway, if you’ve been put off by the thought of long waiting lists, I really would encourage you to get in touch with your local council – you might be surprised how soon you’re a proud new allotmenter (allotmenteer?). Stay tuned for more updates on progress!

Like most things I try, it’s become a bit of an obsession and I’ve gone all out for winemaking. Many people would be content with making their first batch as a test. I now have in various stages of fermenting, racking, bottling, and being drunk: 5l Elderflower from a pack; 5l White wine from the grapes on the fence; 5l Quince wine from the parents fruit; 5l of mixed apple/blackberry; and 5l of generic Chardonnay from Young’s set. My Christmas present was a huge 30 litre brewing bucket, and keg for secondary fermentation of beer and cider. More on that another time though.

Here’s what I’ve learnt so far.

It’s actually quite easy:

After reading around the topic, I had it in my head that making wine was quite a monumental task requiring vast amounts of precise scientific measuring devices, tables to look up starting “gravities” or conversions for the amount of sugar needed, PH levels, a notebook full of records… whatever!

The basic process of fermenting something is incredibly easy, and even easier when you actually know what the stuff they give you in the starter sets is. I wrote a separate post on what comes with a winemaking starter kit which you might want to read first if you’re thinking of giving it a go. You could get by without a starter set, but it’s just easier to get everything you need all at once.

So – How to make Wine:

1. Clean everything with steriliser
2. Get some juice (sometimes called a ‘must’), by either squishing, juicing, or diluting concentrate. Or just buy regular juice…
3. Kill any existing bacteria with 1 crushed up Campden tablet per gallon/5l of juice, and leave that for a day or so.
4. For every 5l, mix in teaspoon of yeast and test nutrient, and a teaspoon of pectic enzyme if you using something like grapes. Add about 500g of sugar, and test using a hygrometer to get a rough final alcohol content. I tend to just them as strong as possible (15% cider? Yes please)
5. Leave that in a sealed container, and stir a few times every day for a few days. This will ferment vigorously leaving a lot of scum on the top, and if you take the lid off you’ll be able to smell a distinctive ‘fizzy’ smell.
6. Transfer to a bottle or container with an airlock on it. Leave to ferment for however long required – this is now a slow fermentation that could take months, or just a few weeks.
7. If need be, “rack” the wine occasionally – this just means siphoning off what you have into another fresh container leaving the horrible bits at the bottom.
8. When you think it’s done (I don’t know – taste it?), crush up a Campden tablet to kill of any remaining yeast before bottling. This is crucial – if you don’t do this, your bottles may explode as the yeast continues to ferment. You may wish to adjust the taste too at this point.
9. After about 48 hours, bottle it. Leave to mature.

That’s it. I hope you can see, it’s actually quite an easy basic process. Of course, the difficultly lies in the details – such as what to do if the juice won’t clear (try some ‘finings’), or how to deal with a foul taste. Making things fizzy can be trouble too – it needs to either forcibly carbonated (with gas), or bottled with a little sugar and champagne yeast. I’ve yet to try either, but you can be sure I’ll report back when I do.

Unfortunately, figuring out the reasons why they peck each other to such extremes is not so easy.

Reasons for Pecking:

Introducing New Hens or Trouble in The Ranks

If you’ve recently had some new additions to the family, the most obvious answer is that they’re still working out the pecking order. This is natural behaviour to establish ranks, and the best solution may be to simply leave them to work through it, only intervening if it goes to extremes.

If necessary, keep them separated but within sight of each other before slowly introducing them. Obviously this will be easier if you have a large walk-in-run or live somewhere where free ranging is possible, with a large net to separate them being sufficient.

Bullying

Worst case scenario, you have a bully. Not a lot more to say about this really, I guess some hens are just naturally bullies just like humans. Use whatever method you see fit to get them out of the habit.

Not enough food

If the food in their enclosure ever disappears, there’s going to be trouble. Don’t just fill it up when it’s empty – make sure it stays in constant supply to prevent fighting.

Boredom and Lack Of Space

Cooped up in a little cage is a boring life, and it’s why factory hens peck each other. Though your Eglu cube housing itself provides sleeping quarters for up to 8 hens, the 2 metre run alone certainly isn’t enough space for them to run around. I would estimate about 1 metre of Eglu run is needed for every 2 hens if you’ve planning on keeping them caged for most of the day.

Another problem is boredom – the space alone isn’t enough. They need to peck something – normally this would be the ground and any plants around. Make sure you have something hung up in the enclosure in addition to regular food pellets – hang up a nail and stick a cabbage on it, dangle a pecker block (cheapest I’ve found is £1 from Wilkinson! or try to make your own), or work out a deal with your local greengrocer to take his unsellable veg at the end of the day and hang that up. Obviously, avoid anything mouldy or rotten.

Stress

The behaviour could be triggered by some kind of recent stressful event, like a fox attack. It should naturally dissipate with time, but you may still need to take measures to prevent it in the meantime.

Dealing with the Pecking:

First Steps – Masking the Blood

If blood is being drawn, you need to act quickly. The sight of blood can send the hens into a frenzy, and a quick Googling will reveal many horror stories of people who have found one of their pack pecked to death with gaping holes. Act quickly – apply a Gentian Violet solution to the affected areas. It’s an anti-septic solution that basically colours the bloodied areas purple, making it not as attractive as blood. It only seems to work for that single purpose though, I found it doesn’t actually stop general pecking if applied elsewhere. Also, it stains like a **************** – so wear gloves, and an apron.

Separation

If you don’t have any spray to hand, separating the troublemakers may be the only solution. Since most of us don’t have a spare mini Eglu for these occasions, I found the garage worked just as well. They should be ok as long as you leave a little food and water, then put them back into the coop at night. My wife referred to this as “timeout”, and it seems to have worked quite well to break the habit – assuming the root cause has been dealt with.

Anti-Pecking ‘Bumper’

I found some of these on eBay, though opinions of them are varied. Apparently quite painless, they clip into the hens nostrils as well as slipping into their mouth, providing a bumper at the front of the beak to stop the pecking – in theory at least. They prevent serious pecking damage, whilst still allowing the chicken to eat regular pelleted food and drink water – but bear in mind it will also hinder their ability to naturally peck at the ground, leaves, and grass etc. Obviously, it’s quite an extreme measure, but they can be removed later and don’t cause any lasting damage.

[Photo from this thread on the Omlet forums]

Anti-Pecking Pastes and Sprays

A variety of pastes and sprays exist that basically stink to high hell. Nettex is one of the more well known brands, a noxious brown spray that should put a stop to the practice.

Beak Clipping

Some people resort to permanently clipping the upper beak by a few millimetres, but this is usually reserved for factory farming conditions. It’s a horrendously cruel procedure and has far wider implications that simply stoping pecking. Kindly don’t do it.

Container 1 – Sealed, no airlock:

This is used in the initial vigorous fermentation process or just as a spare to rack into. Your containers may or may not have a plastic thermometer strip stuck on them. Here’s the various containers I use:

Container 2 – with Airlock:

Depending on the set you have, your  airlock may be a single cylinder type like the one pictured below. One of your buckets will have a hole in the lid, and this fits into that. When you actually use it, you need to half fill the bottom part with water, then place the top back on. This allows air to escape (and therefore prevents the container from exploding), and stops nasty bugs getting in which might turn your wine to vinegar.

Alternatively, you may have bought a demijohn – large glass 5l/gallon containers, which should be used with a rubber bung and this type of airlock:

Siphon Tube and U-bend:

The u-bend refers to the bit of the end of the giant ‘straw’ that means liquid is drawn from above rather than below, which is where all the nasty sediment settles. Attach this straw-like contraption on to the end of the siphon hose. You’ll use this to move the wine from container to container when you ‘rack’ it.

Glass trial jar and hygrometer:

These are to be used together. When it comes time to measure how much sugar to add to get the desired strength, you’ll ladle some juice out into the trial jar, then float the hygrometer in there to get a reading. Essentially, the more sugar in the juice at the start, the more the hygrometer will float, and the greater the final strength of alcohol you’ll have. A good hygrometer will have coloured markings to indicate a good starting strength for wine or beer, as well as a line that indicates when it’s good to bottle.

There’s also an assortment of chemicals in pots, so let’s examine those:

• Yeast and Yeast Nutrient: These will always be used together, and the nutrient will just give the yeast a little boost at the start. You need one teaspoon of each per gallon/5l of juice.
• Campden Tablet: This kills yeast. You may use it at the start to kill off any natural yeast first, or usually at the end of fermentation to ensure none is left. Failure to kill off the yeast when fermentation has mostly finished may result in your wine exploding as the yeast continues to work and air is trapped inside.
• Pectolase / Pectolytic Enzyme: These are the same thing – they break down the Pectin in your wines. Pectin is what makes jams sticky, basically. It’s like jelly. In wine, this is bad, because the wine ends of cloudy. Add it at the start.
• Steriliser: Kills germs. Don’t eat, drink, or get this stuff on your person. Basically just a cleaner, but you never add this to your wine. Instead, you only use this to clean out equipment before starting, and then make sure to rinse everything thoroughly. Makes things smell of chlorine (which it basically is).
• Finings: These didn’t come with my starter set, but they’re common in commercial DIY wine-packs and you may need to get some separately depending on what you’re fermenting. Finings are used to remove all the cloudy bits from wine when fermentation has finished. They stick to the cloudy bits, and drag them down to the bottom where the wine can then be safely ‘racked off’.

That’s it from me. I think you’ll be able to figure out the rest of the bits, like funnels and measuring jugs! These were the bits that troubled me, so I hope this may be of use to you too if you get one of these winemaking sets for Christmas. Next time I’ll detail a basic winemaking process / recipe.

Design And Build Quality:

First off, it feels like a well-designed and solid product. There’s clearly been a lot of thought that went into the Eglu Cube, and it’s reflected in the premium pricing. More on that later.

The run meshing is really strong – though would bend if you put something really heavy on it or fell into it – and clipped together using these simple but effective little plastic clips. You can of course replace or buy more of them if you choose to do some DIY expansion.

If you need to – though mine is fixed permanently in place – moving the Eglu Cube around should be a breeze. Just push down the levers on the back, the whole thing lifts off the ground. On grass, it should be relatively easy to push around, but I would advise two people. (Difficult to see in the picture, but here is one of the feet with the lever pushed down to free-wheel it around. The mesh has actually lifted about a few inches off the gravel)

Cleaning:

Couldn’t be easier – once every few days, the trays need emptying – I cover them in a sheet or two of newspaper, then they just slide out into the composter or straight onto the beds to be dug in. There’s a small metal clip underneath each tray which keeps in place.

For a more thorough cleaning – once every two weeks I’d say – the top slides back and the back panel then unhooks easily from two metal slide locks on the sides:

The top panel can be completely removed too, if you’d rather:

The roosting bars inside can then be detached too:

We pressure-wash the whole thing in less than half hour, but it might take slightly longer if you need to manually scrub it down (no more than doing a big pile of dirty dishes though!). We do the same for the large gravel flooring too – for the time being, the gravel is great for ease of cleaning – though they would probably prefer something easier to scratch into (they do attempt to scratch into gravel, mind, they’re just not that good at it).

Doors and Holes:

The main door has some kind of magic inside it – pull the handle to close the door – then twist the handle again, and it slides back in while the door remains closed. Reverse to open again! Genius, I say…

To get at your eggs, there’s an ‘eggport‘ on the left side (looking from the back). Just turn the handle to lift that right out, and you reach in and grab whatever happy little eggs they’ve left for you today.

It’s important to know (and one thing I couldn’t find on the fantastic website) is that the orientation of the doors and eggport cannot be adjusted (unlike the smaller Eglu Go). The door side panel and the eggport side panel can’t be switched around, so you really do need some sort of access on all four sides. As it is, we have our’s mostly flush against the side of the house, with about a 30cm gap around the edge for the anti-fox part of the skirting, so that’s enough to squeeze in.

One point- they don’t always lay in the morning – at least mine don’t. I don’t know where I got this idea from that they would all lay in the morning before they come out to play, but I was wrong.

Slippery Ladder

This is perhaps the only negative point about the whole package – the ladder leading up to the house. It’s made of quite slippery plastic, and the chickens aren’t that good at either ascending or descending them. One of my has such a problem going down that she just gives up and surfs / flies down instead. Comedy aside, it’s actually quite dangerous and would hate to think of her breaking her leg one day (as some Omlet forum goers have reported before). In fairness, most of them are quite adept at it after some practice now, but I’d still consider adding some sort of texture to the surface, especially at the top lip where it meets the door.

The Price!

Yes, it is expensive. Our complete package for the standard 2m Eglu Cube and run, plus 4 hens, came to a total of about £750. At an average egg price of 20p, laying 3 per day, that works out to £219 of savings over a single year. Feed costs about £120 (£10/month, enough for 4 chickens) in total for standard layers pellets – the organic stuff that Omlet sells will cost far more. By my calculations it will be about 7 years before we cover the initial cost of £750. When you say it like that, it sounds a bit drastic.

A few things to bear in mind though:

You get an unlimited supply of fantastic manure for the vegetable patch. I won’t cost this, but I assume over the course of a year that works out to quite a large weight in chicken poop

The time savings over having a traditional wooden house are significant. I value my time, and I simply don’t want to spend ages washing out a wooden house, scrubbing it down. If there were a red-mite outbreak – common with wooden houses – that means additional time and expenses needed to deal with that.

We deliberately chose the largest Eglu (the Cube) as opposed to the 2-hen (?) Eglu Go or Eglu Classic as it would also for future expansion. I’d love to get a few more chickens at some point, especially those that lay blue eggs. We can do that now without any more addition outlay, as it could comfortably hold up to 8 I think. Having said that, I would invest another £100 in a 1m extension to the run, even if I do try to let them out into the garden daily.

Lastly, chickens make awesome pets. Would you put a price on your dog?

So.. Am I happy with my purchase? Very much so. It’s well-built, easy to clean, and I appreciate the design that’s gone into it to make a product that opens up the world of chicken keeping to anyone. I would easily recommend this to anyone looking to have chickens and become just that little bit self sufficient.

As it’s the end of the growing season, much of our new raised beds are sitting empty. I’m happy for them to scratch around there, as I’m sure it actually helps to break down some of the soil and the chickens then eat any insects hidden in the soil.

In the one bed we do have things growing that they can get to, a simple polytunnel effort stops them getting at that.

We’re using two pallets as moveable fences to block off certain parts of the garden, so it stops them getting around the side of the house to the ornamental garden, as well as letting me block off half the vegetable garden which is still quite active. I’ll replace these with some kind of actual fence or gate at some point, but it works for now. It’s quite easy to selectively herd them into certain parts if you’re creative – but the netting that Omlet sells would also work well.

One thing we discovered – they go absolutely mad for grapes, and are even quite keen on the leaves – beware if you have vines hanging down.

They can in fact jump quite high – the strongest of our lot is capable of getting up about 1 metre onto the pallets, but it takes quite a bit of effort for her. Generally she won’t try unless she actually has a damn good reason too – like, for instance, someone is standing there holding a grape. Unless they can see something fun or tasty just within reach, they won’t bother.

If you have pots and things about 30-50cm high, they’ll happily jump up on there and use it as a ladder to get somewhere more exciting.

I found this out the hard way when another of my makeshift fences turned out to just be a convenient playground for them to hop skip and jump over to the other side, where a bed of tasty chinese cabbage awaited them. Of course, once one had accomplished it, they all wanted to follow.

One thing they really enjoy is scratching up some ground and taking a dust bath. They even cuddle up and share the bath, rolling around and occasionally pecking for grubs. It’s mortifyingly cute:

Don’t attempt to do any form of digging with them around – it’s completely non-productive. One of our hens will even stand on the spade as I move the soil somewhere, the others just insist on inspecting anything freshly turned over that hasn’t already undergone a rigorous check.