Posted by: hencorner | March 29, 2013

Easter with River Cottage

Welcome back to Hen Corner!

As featured in Country Living Magazine

So it’s Easter weekend and I’ve just received an email from the Nation Bee Unit warning us that due to the cold weather our bees are at risk of starving, we were due to go on an exciting camping holiday with Feather Down Farm but have postponed until warmer weather and have brought home the School Chicks for the Easter holidays…

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Spring Fair at River Cottage

Today we took the family to Park Farm, Devon, to join the team at the River Cottage Spring Fair, I hadn’t been to the farm since 2009 when I did my first Bee Keeping Course and it was great to be back to enjoy all the fun of the fair! It was a long drive from London to Park Farm, but it was well worth it to meet the gang and enjoy a day in the beautiful spring sunshine. Head Chef Tim Maddam‘s session with pigeons was great fun and the Produce Exchange rewarded me with fantastic chocolate & beetroot brownies, some honeycomb & dark chocolate truffles and a jar of fresh lemon curd; a great swap for my apple & chilli jelly, courgette & cumin chutney and a box of eggs. Other highlights were the slow roast lamb for lunch with warm mulled cider, Craig giving me some growing advice in the poly tunnel and catching up with bee keeper David Wiscombe, letting him know how we’ve got on since that first course. We’re already planning our next trip back, watch this space….

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A Year of Recipes from an Urban Hen Keeper

A Good Egg – Genevieve Taylor

Book of the Month:

A Good Egg: A Year of Recipes from an Urban Hen-Keeper

By Genevieve Taylor

My mother in law recently passed on a newspaper article about urban hens, as she does, and I instantly recognised that it was about my twitter friend and fellow blogger Genevieve Taylor. The feature was to celebrate the launch of her latest book which is a diary of inspiration to other urban hen keepers and all round foodies in general. With a new recipe every few days throughout the year (you need to give the girls time to lay enough eggs for the next recipe) it includes favourites such as Purple Sprouting Broccoli with Lemony Hollandaise and Rhubarb & Rosewater Pavlova through to the more adventurous Malaysian Egg & Aubergine Curry and Spiced Nut Meringues with Marsala Cream. It is beautifully produced (feely touchy hardback), down to earth (read 6th Nov), and obviously a favourite for our Speckled Sussex chick (see photo)…

This book is available with many of our other favourite books from the Hen Corner Shop!

Other News:

  • Our almonds are in full blossom but the bees aren’t flying to pollinate them
  • We knocked up some orange liqueur (oranges, sugar & vodka) and it tastes amazing even after a week
  • The first Bee Keeping course of the year is nearly fully booked

Jobs for next week:

  • Get a wood chipper to recycle tree pruning into chicken mulch (good for scratching in!)
  • Paint the cold frame and patio edges; spruce it up for summer
  • Watch the weather; will it be warm enough for a shook swarm?

Have a good week yourself…

Join us on the Journey!

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Posted by: hencorner | March 20, 2013

First Day of Spring!

Welcome back to Hen Corner!

As featured in Country Living Magazine

Well it’s still pretty chilly and our bees are too cold to venture out of the hive but Spring is officially here. Today, 20th March, the sun has crossed directly over the earth’s equator giving us the same amount of day and night meaning that winter is over and the days will just get longer!  So with Easter just around the corner, we ask ‘Which do you love the most, new chicks or baby lambs?’

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Day old chicksRight on cue

As we said in our last post, we have been working with quite a few London Schools now helping children understand where their food comes from and studying life cycles with chickens and habitats with bees. Last week we were really pleased to have been part of an ‘Animal Day’ and packed up our largest and smallest chickens to take into classrooms allowing children to learn the responsibilities of looking after animals and getting up close and personal with our feathered friends. Whilst the four bantams stayed in a large cage for the day, Butternut our buff Orpington was more than happy to allow 120 children to stroke her in turn! Bunty, our chocolate bantam Orpington came to work with me on Friday for our Easter Danceabout – the perfect illustration of the new life we celebrate at Easter and today, the first day of Spring, has welcomed the first chicks hatching in the incubator at St Paul’s School. First out was the dark Andalusian chick, closely followed by three Speckled Sussex and on the far left you can see a Light Sussex at just an hour old! The first chicks out are helping their unhatched siblings by encouraging them out of the shells with cheerful chirping, so cute. The fertile eggs were sent in the post by Andy Cawthray at Chicken Street and Gillian Dixon at South Yeo Farm East, so very good breeding and I can’t wait to see which others have hatched in the morning…

If you know a school that would be interested in visits from us, please do pass on our details.

Feather Down Lamb with girlLambing Live

Something else to look forward to this season are the baby lambs being born around our beautiful countryside. With all the bad press of animals being farmed intensively indoors, do take the opportunity to breathe in some fresh air and delight in the joy of skipping lambs in green fields. We are off to a Feather Down Farm soon and are very excited to hear about all the new lambs that they are expecting over the coming months, we’ll be sure to tell you all about it when we come back. Don’t forget that we have a good collection of bank holidays coming up, so why not pack up your wellies and a jumper and get away to the country for a weekend?

Lost in LondonBook of the Month:

Lost in London: Adventures in the City’s Wild Outdoors
By Lucy Scott, Tina Smith

A wonderful hardback book that opens up the unlimited opportunities to discover quite a lot of country living within London. We especially love this book as we helped them with their research and are thrilled that the chapter on chickens tells the story of Hen Corner.

This book is available with many of our other favourite books from the Hen Corner Shop!

Other News:

  • Hen Corner was very pleased to have been featured in Country Smallholding magazine
  • Our rhubarb is ready and we’re collecting 9-10 eggs a day now…
  • Our new season of courses have started, we had a great time with three other families last weekend.

Jobs for next week:

  • Decorate some eggs for our Easter Celebrations
  • Research pig-keeping – that’s still on the agenda!
  • Check the mistletoe, has it taken on the old apple tree?

Have a good week yourself…

Join us on the Journey!

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Posted by: hencorner | February 26, 2013

The Good Life – A New Generation

Welcome back to Hen Corner!

As featured in Country Living Magazine

Whilst it was sad to hear the news that Good Life actor Richard Briers had died, the legacy that his character Tom Good has left sees a new generation pull on their wellies. This week we look at a bride to be,  London school children and a nation of food lovers that want to know what’s in their food…

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A Hen with a Hen!

A Hen with a Hen!

Hen Party at Hen Corner
‘Oooh Sara, I’m organising the Hen Weekend for a friend, can we all come to Hen Corner please?’ said Jess one of the young graduates at church. ‘We all read Country Living and would love you to teach us!’ Well of course I’d love to help, but what can we do with 20 young ladies in their 20′s on a cold afternoon in February? I wasn’t sure what they would like to do and certainly wouldn’t be able to fit them all in my kitchen at once… So Jess and I got together and cooked up a plan, we designed a bespoke course that included baking biscotti, making marmalade and drinking bubbly. It all seemed to go rather well and, judging by the laughter and subsequent Facebook comments, everyone had a great time. Dr Seuss, our green egg layer, popped into the conservatory for a cuddle with Vicki (the bride to be) and made herself at home with all the other ‘hens’. For more info see here and if you’d like to talk to us about a bespoke course, get in touch!

Welcome Nursery

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Food Glorious Food!

It has never been more important to know where a child’s food comes from than today. With stories of horsemeat (potentially contaminated with the veterinary medicine bute (phenylbutazone) in everything from Tesco beefburgers, to Findus lasagnas, Bird’s Eye chilli con carne and Ikea meatballs, it’s essential for families to value their food, reduce waste and choose a healthy diet for their children. This week’s news tells of the high numbers of UK children living in poverty and the link to obesity due to cheap ready meals and junk food. Please, let’s raise another generation that has dirt under it’s fingernails not because of poor personal hygiene but a fresh fascination of growing our own food. This week, we are really pleased to be working with another London school; last year they came to visit our chickens and this year we are helping them hatch their own in the classroom. ‘Go to work on an egg’ was a healthy eating campaign of post war Britain; today, a three-minute boiled egg is one of the best fast foods you can get!

If you know a school that would be interested in visits from us, please do pass on our details.

Lost in LondonBook of the Blog Post:

Lost in London: Adventures in the City’s Wild Outdoors
By Lucy Scott, Tina Smith

A wonderful hardback book that opens up the unlimited opportunities to discover quite a lot of country living within London. We especially love this book as we helped them with their research and are thrilled that the chapter on chickens tells the story of Hen Corner.

This book is available with many of our other favourite books from the Hen Corner Shop!

Other News:

  • Hot chicks on page three! Our family and hens are in this month’s Your Chickens magazine
  • We’ve collected some berries and are trying to propagate some mistletoe on our old apple tree
  • We’ve started selling our spare eggs through Edible Ealing Box Scheme

Jobs for next week:

  • Keep an eye on the eggs in the incubator at school
  • Check out the holidays at Feathers Down Farm
  • Keep counting the eggs (we collected nine yesterday!)

Have a good week yourself…

Join us on the Journey!

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