2019

Poor Punky! Remember how we lost Caramello last month and how Punky stayed by her side right until the end?

Sad news on the chicken front, I’m afraid; our lovely Caramello passed away last month.

I am writing this on ‘Global Climate Strike day’ - did any of our readers get involved, too? This day was all about reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and to confront the growing climate crisis we face and to help secure a better future for all of us...

It is now time to start harvesting the fruits of my labour in the garden, and as always there have been some winners and losers this year. Let’s start with the winners: as I mentioned last month, the leafy vegetables are growing incredibly well.

On the first night we camped out I heard some scuffling outside the tent and was convinced it was a hedgehog, but getting out of your sleeping bag takes a lot longer than you might think, so when I finally emerged from the tent whatever it was had vanished

I am writing this just one day after Stirling had been flooded and people had to be rescued by boat from the Stirling County rugby field! In Glendevon we had rain, but nothing on the scale Stirling had - the whole of June’s rainfall in the space of a few hours, or so I heard. Crazy, huh?

There’s never a dull moment in our ‘glen’ - there’s always lots to tell! Plenty of battles being fought - over chicken food, chicken territories and gold finches.

I could start writing the storyline for a soap opera with our hens, the neighbour’s hens and Cedric in the lead roles! ‘East-henders’, maybe?

What does one write about when the stars of the show have not been doing anything worth writing about? You find another star, that’s what!

The weather definitely is changing, how much is down to natural processes and how much is caused by us humans, is another debate entirely!

What does one write about in the middle of winter? I don’t have any exciting snow or ice stories (just yet); the winter so far has been fairly dry and today in Stirling I think the temperature even reached double figures!

I was worried that after the illness of Mrs Feathers, our late white hen, the other hens may become sick too, but I am glad to say that our three remaining hens are alive and kicking!