2nd February 2014 - Of Children and Chickens...

Word of the day -  Aviaphilia: 

Delight in winding up friends' children before leaving.
Along with gin and Grandad, this is sometimes referred to as 'grandma's delight', due to the high number of sufferers in this category. Nevertheless, it is practised by many other demographics, including the childless, the homosexual and the middle-management virgin. Similar in outlook to chaophiliacs (delight in buying other people's children noisy presents), aviaphiliacs tend to treat children as if they are a set of those walking teeth toys; simply wind them up, put them down and laugh your head off as they annoy the hell out of everybody!

Not sure if it is real ...  but should be...

But we are now into the second month of year, and no nearer getting the house sold. Have new plans to get myself a store where I can keep all our property more effectively and possibly with less risk of ruining through damp and rot.. I have another flat to empty now - so - guess what - I am collecting boxes again !!

But as we still look towards our "Brave New World" an old article from 1997 caught my eye and seemed to be a rather good piece of planning for a market garden and chicken coup,,,

I have updated the text, but the source for the information is from this site Backwoods Home (Articles Index)  

How do you mix the requirements of gardening and raising chickens and making it as easy as possible??

Both chores are essentially feeding operations. You feed the garden to make it produce food, and you feed the chickens to make them produce eggs and, well, more chickens. So the best way to make both more efficient is to combine them and let them help feed each other.

To achieve this you need a "self-fertilizing" chicken coop/garden. 

What you need to do is build a chicken coop with two small access doors, one on the east side, and the other on the west side. Each door is for the chickens, and they lead to separate fenced-in yards.

 

On the north side of the coop is a regular sized door for people. On the south side is a wide window with a hinged wooden cover. That window looks directly out onto a compost heap. Each time the coop is cleaned, everything is shoveled out through that window.

That first year the chickens have the run of the yard on the east side of the coop. Keep the access door on the west side closed, and in that yard plant the family's vegetable garden.

By putting the yards on the east and west sides, both yards have maximum exposure to the sun. With the coop on the north side you can  minimized the shadow the chicken house casts over the garden.
Access to each fenced yard is through a gate in the fence. With the fences, you not only keep the chickens where you want them, but keep predators away from the chickens, pests out of the garden, the neighbors' dogs out of the compost, and they provide a lattice upon which beans and other climbing plants can flourish.

In the autumn, after that year's garden had been harvested, close the door on the east side of the coop and open the west side. The chickens now have the run of the old garden with its remnants of the harvested plants as well as the plants that have gone to seed.
Now you can turn over the chicken dropping-enriched soil in what had been the chicken yard on the east side. With its year of chicken droppings and the compost from the compost pile, you are setting the stage for a great garden the following year.
The chickens, now in the west side yard, will happily scrounge in the old garden and prepare the soil for next year's garden.

Makes sense to me - any reduction in gardening must be a good idea.. 

Glass of Chateau 41, The Muskateers and Country file - Sunday Evening !!!