Cheery's country living adventure

Pyxis

I once planted some duff potatoes, just for the plant. They have very pretty flowers, being of the solanum family. (Poisonous, of course).

themadvix

I planted supermarket ones last year and had a good (relatively speaking) crop. 

Great news about new chickens!

Whoops to the work meeting though!

rtandon27

Last year I planted some oddments of sprouting potatoes into pots with flower plugs from the grocery store, mostly for the promise of almost instant greenery.  They died back over winter, and I completely forgot about them until this spring when grocery deliveries were scarce & we were eating our way through the stores!  Two plants (potatoes) yielded enough baby potatoes for a meal for two & they were very tasty!  Never was OH so thankful for my theory of 'let's stick it in a pot and see what happens'!

themadvix

That’s a great story RT! 

Cheery_Daff

Lovely to hear all your potato stories! Anything I get from this lot will be a bonus - I've certainly had plenty sprouting up from compost before now though so no reason why they shouldn't work when I've planted them! 

Just done (rather belatedly) May's end of month budgeting. All looking ok, and we've stuck 465 into long term savings this month too (that's great, but Mr Cheery's pension was meant to be going all in there and that's £600... but then he has no other income at the minute so it's still not bad). 

Much excitement today - we nipped out for a take away ice cream from a local cafe. Very exciting! It was quite rainy and windy, and after a brief stint at a nearby picnic table we ended up sitting in the car... But still, it was nice to go somewhere else and look at a different view. Looks like we might have some more visitors tomorrow which is cheerful, although it's not going to be as pleasant as the ones we had on Tuesday when the sun was shining... Going to have to rig up some kind of giant umbrella/windbreak or something for this lot I think, brrrrrr. 

Cheery_Daff

Morning MSE chums

We had our second lot of visitors, and it was *lovely*. It had been raining in the morning, and we rigged up a festival-like shelter with a giant umbrella and a massive tarp over the washing line, and more tarps and blankets on the ground and even some bunting Fortunately it stopped raining after lunch, and the two small children in the party spent a couple of hours digging in my new veg patch - between that and the chickens they were entertained for the whole time and didn't want to go home. SO lovely to see our pals

We've been having a bit of a chicken palaver. Poor old Bessie this time, walking oddly and breathing really laboured. Local vet said 'there's definitely something going on in there' but didn't know what, and couldn't do anything other than antibiotics, and pretty much offered to put her to sleep there and then as there was nowt they could do We ended up going to a different vet listed on the Chicken Vet website - a three hour round trip (there is one closer but their chicken specialist is on holiday). They drained half a pint of fluid from her abdomen, gave use diuretics to give her, and there are blood test results due back on Thursday. Still might not be good news but at least she's comfortable without all that fluid and can breath and run around properly for the time being. 

Of course, that type of thing does not come cheap, and Bessie is now officially our Most Expensive Chicken. £50 ish the other day for quick consultation and antibiotics, and £162 yesterday And we've got to take her back in a week, and it might be that the blood test results indicate further medicine is needed. 

So this is definitely not a money saving week... And yes, I realise how fortunate (and daft) we are to be able to spend this on a chicken... 

themadvix

Glad you had a good time with your visitors - it's amazing how ingenious we can be with outdoor shelters!

So sorry to hear about Bessie though - your chickens certainly fell on their feet when they came to live with you though! We are all daft about our pets - just because yours give back tangibly, doesn't make them any less pet-like! (I'm sure we'd be the same!)

PurpleFairy26

Hope Bessie is ok. We do these things for our pets, even when trying to be MSE. And often it is being MSE that allows us to do these things. I assume there is no such things as chicken insurance?!?! 🐓 

Pyxis

Yes, Cheery, just imagine Bessie's eggs being a lovely gold-plated colour from now on! 😁😁

Cheery_Daff

Not entirely convinced either Bessie or Beaky are laying any more anyway - we're on about 2 eggs a week at the minute and I can't bring myself to buy them from the shop so no omelettes for us!

Someone else asked me about insurance yesterday! From what I've read it's not common, and can be around £300 per hen per year. We'd usually have 5, so that comes to over £100 a month (unless I lied of course and just used the same name over and over for various different ailments and miraculous recoveries...). These last couple of months have been expensive, but before Mildred got ill in March I think we'd only been to the vet a couple of times in the previous 18 months so I don't think it's worth it, especially as there's only a limited amount of things they can do to hens anyway (so they wouldn't end up with an operation costing thousands like a dog might). I definitely did investigate insurance yesterday though as it seemed like it might be a good idea!