Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Thursday 17 January 2013

Keeping the hens happy and a trip to Ledbury

As I said in my post yesterday, we decided to go into Ledbury on Thursday to do a few bits of shopping - not urgent, but stuff which we could do with in the next 10 days amd which we might not be able to get if we are snowed in...

But first I wanted to make sure the hens would be comfortble if a lot of snow fell and they could not go out of their run.

I decided to put down a lot more straw in the run - previously I have put down some pallets to keep the girls' feet off the nasty cold ground, but as we have a bit of a rat problem at the moment we have removed all but one pallet - the rats LOVE to use them as hiding places and "lurk" under them   - Yuk!

So straw it was. The hens LOVE straw - they cluck and croon and chirp to each other like they were calling chicks - and squabble like mad over "special" bits of straw. (Not quite sure what makes them special but never mind!)


Bunty hen eyes up the camera and wonders if it tastes good.


 Yarrow hen ( in middle) is still looking a bit sad and low but has improved since last week - she seems to be enjoying life, anyway.


We had a light dusting of snow but nothing to worry about, so later we went to Ledbury in the car and visited various shops and then the Co Op - and what a sight met us! Lots of empty shelves!

No bread at all ( even muffins etc had largely gone) hardly any milk, no veg at all apart from some salads and pinapples and grapes - toilet rolls virtually all gone ( good job I have lots!) and to be honest it looked like people were expecting a month of not being able to get tothe sops rather than a couple of days?

Still - at least they will have lots of food, although apparently lots of people came in very early and bought most of the stuff, leaving lots of later people with nothing...which is not so good I guess.

We didn't need any of the food which was not there ( if you get my meaning) so we just got the things we needed and came away home.



We had our evening meal and settled down by the fire to watch some tv and I did a bit more crochet. I siuspect we will be doing quite a bit of this, along with reading etc, in the coming few days.

Update  Thurs night

It started to snow at 8 pm and has kept on snowing solidly ever since - so I suspect the Met Office were correct and we really ARE going to get a bit of snow.

Hopefully you will all be ok, wherever you are. Stay safe and warm!

S xx



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