Michelle Styles: Acquiring a hen as an editor

Gingernuts and copper black hens 

Getting new hens is always an exciting time.

I have kept hens since my youngest was 3 (he is now 22). It was supposed to be a short term thing as he had a big thing on a book about hens and I wanted to see if keeping hens would stop us from running out of eggs as often.

Copper black hen

 For a number of reasons (including being woken up at 3 am with crowing), we do not keep a cockerel. This means when we want to get more hens, I have to buy them in.  I get them as Point of Lay pullets rather than as eggs (hen eggs need to be continously turned unlike duck eggs which are turned twice a day) or chicks (at the moment we have kitten-cats who would undoubtedly love to play with chicks but I suspect the chicks would be less keen.) Hens in my experience are productive for 3 -5 years. Being a wimp, I tend to allow the old girls to die a natural death. Only 2 remained of our current lot and they both ceased egg production and I dislike supermarket eggs.

Columbines have feathered hats

Our usual supplier had gone out of business and so I needed to find someone else. As luck would have it, the UK largest supplier of poultry,Durham Hens is quite near us and had a wide range of available hens to choose from.  I was very impressed with the range and cleanliness of the operation. They had just won a major business award and it was easy to see why. They also offer poultry keeping classes, a hen holiday service (a bit like a kennel for hens) as well as poultry supplies.

My daughter and I chose 2 gingernut rangers, 2 copper blacks and 2 columbines. The hens settled very quickly and have very distinct personalities. This makes a change from the White leghorns which were just a flock of hens. They are the friendliest of the hens we have had.

Gingernut egg (lighter coloured) and Copper black (terracotta)

Yesterday I decided to write outside and one of the gingernuts decided that she in fact was an editor and was not particularly enamoured of my writing. Later one of the columbines decided to thieve a piece of cheese from the tapas plate my husband had put out for us to eat. This was a first as normally the hens are less bold.  

Hens are relatively straight forward to keep. Poultry layers pellets for food, water and mucking out the hen house every week. The manure goes on the compost heap and helps to fertilise the vegetables.

Gingernut inspecting my work!

 Our hens are completely free range but get locked up at night because we do have foxes about. They normally lay in the hen house but some do take to laying elsewhere and so I do check the known places…If you put an egg in a bowl of cold water, you can tell if it is fresh. Fresh ones sink. Rotten eggs float.  Proper free-range eggs taste that much better. There really is no comparison. If you can’t keep hens, do try to get them from a small local supplier, rather than from a supermarket.

We keep the vegetable patch fenced off but the hens do not really bother with the garden much…sometimes if we have been putting new plants in, the hens will scratch at the earth to get the worms and bugs. They like grass. And along with the ducks, they provide a bit of colour to the garden. And did I mention the eggs?

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romances in a wide range of time periods. Her latest Viking Sold to the Viking Warrior was published in February 2017. To learn more about Michelle and her books visit www.michellestyles.co.uk

In bloom - Kandy Shepherd

It's spring Down Under and this month I'm sharing some recent snaps from my farm garden.

I wish I could share the glorious fragrance of the climbing rose Zepherine Drouhin that grows near our vegetable garden

My dear husband put in a lot of work over the winter (I was too busy writing to share much of the burden!) and our cottage-style garden is looking its best.

Our flowering cherry - sadly no fruit!

We have a cool winter and a hot summer and fruit, iris, roses and spring-flowering bulbs thrive.

I love columbines

In the last weeks the iris have been superb and the roses have just started.

Our climate is perfect for iris

We had the threat of bushfire last week but thankfully all we could smell was the fragrance of roses.

I love the bold shape of artichoke, here with clematis and sage in flower at the front

We grow vegetables too though it can be a hit or miss affair as to when we actually get them planted!

Lots of lettuce!

The cats are constant companions in the garden and tend to photo bomb any opportunity they can.

Rhubarb, too - those are its flowers that I cut off so all the growth goes into the edible stems

The horses, little bulls and chickens all contribute to the garden with fertilizer. 

Cindy is always nearby

My husband often lets the horses into the garden but not so much at the moment as the lettuce is a huge attraction. They nibble on the camellias too which makes me rather cranky!

Ivy helps too

At the moment I’m writing a story that features a rather grand garden. Mine is not on such a scale but it is lovely to be able to walk outside and feel inspired.

My husband worked all his winter weekends to put in this new path

Are you of the green-thumbed or brown-thumbed type of gardener? Do you have a favorite flower? Do you enjoy growing vegetables or herbs? I’d love to know!

Make a comment to be in the draw for a signed copy of my Christmas book for Harlequin Romance Diamond In Her Stocking. Please include your email address in your comment if you want to be included in the draw.

Kandy’s third Dolphin Bay story for Harlequin Romance, A Diamond in Her Stocking, goes on sale on December 1, 2014 and is available for pre-order now

Kandy Shepherd is an award-winning author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She lives on a small farm in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her family and a menagerie of four-legged friends.

Visit Kandy at her website

www.kandyshepherd.com

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