Christina Hollis: A Little Bit of Peace and Quiet...

Fresh from the Garden

Lockdown has eased slightly here in England, but I'm in no hurry to get back into the human race. All the reports of prejudice, riots, pandemic, and financial problems makes life beyond home seem uncertain. The events of the past few months have changed life forever. Both my OH and son have health problems, so rather than put them at risk I've only left the house (apart from walking the dog around the wood) three times since March 18th. Here are a few things that have saved my sanity...

Gardening:
Luckily I had bought all my seeds before lockdown, so I had plenty of sowing and planting to distract me from not being able to leave the house and garden. 

This spring we had a lot of dry, sunny weather so in places, I've even managed to keep on top of the weeds. One patch of undergrowth has got away from me though, so I'm now calling that The Wild Garden!

University Work:
I had four major essays to complete within a couple of weeks, so for some time I did nothing but read, make notes and edit my work. 

With deadlines hurtling toward me, the time flew by. Luckily I managed to complete everything in time, and handed in my final essay last week. 

Now all I have to do is wait for the results, while writing my dissertation...

My Best Effort So Far!

Baking:
Once I'd finished my university work for the day I felt like leaving paperwork behind and doing something crafty. During lockdown I worked on perfecting my sourdough bread. You can read how I started here, and how I progressed here. How I finally solved all my problems and produced the loaf in this photo will be the subject of my next blog at christinahollisbooks.online!

Poultry:
We lost out last ancient hen back before Christmas. After that, it was so easy to buy eggs from the supermarket it was several months before I got around to ordering some replacements. I chose Beechwood Blue Rangers, partly because I liked the name but mostly because they are supposed to lay nice brown eggs. 

The New Girls

Although there's no nutritional difference between white, tinted and brown eggs, I think dark ones look nicer, so shell colour is my chief criterion when it comes to poultry. 

The new birds arrived on the 18th May, and we got our first beautiful white egg on 3rd June. We've had a further twenty-three eggs from them since then, and not one has had the merest speckling of brown!

Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women. She has written more than twenty novels, sold nearly three million books, and her work has been translated into twenty different languages. When she isn’t writing, Christina is cooking, walking her dog, or gardening.

Catch up with her at https://christinahollisbooks.online, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com

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