Public sector strike day 30 Nov 2011

If you have any doubts about the strike action being taken today...remember when nurses, physiotherapists, midwives, doctors, firefighters, teachers, social workers, care workers ..... crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax? 

 No, me neither.

I am a life long trade union member, former Dep Sec of a union, a union  H and S rep

etc etc , so you can guess my view on today's strike action!

Looking at JCB's...!

we have been looking, recently, at JCB's ..it is my idea as we have various serious land work which needs doing - involvomg lots of digging out and earth moving - I worked out that the work we needed doing would cost us as much with a contractor as buying a JCB, so I said " why don't we buy one and do it ourselves, but in our own time rather than clearing trees etc to the contractors timescale? ..." 

Famous last words...

so ...we have been looking at JCB's and, as they hold their value well  - hopefully we can sell it on when we have finished with it..well that is the plan, anyway.

So today we drove up to Birmingham to look at a very promising 3CX JCB in really good condition, for a very reasonable price.

Watch this space ...

V is for

VEGETABLE GROWER – I love to grow stuff - I take pride in providing ( with Compostman's help with the digging and heavy stuff)  fresh organically grown vegetables for my family for most of the year.

I really love recording what I have grown and harvested and evaluating how good it all was, deciding what was successful and what was less so, what to try new next year, what to drop off the growing list, what are best for which purposes - eating fresh, freezing, dehydrating, preserving in jam or chutney or what have you.

I love, at this time of year, to look at seed catalogues to see what old friends I need to order and what new seeds might tempt me.

I am a member of the Garden Organic Heratige Seed Library and every year about this time a 2012 seed catalogue drops through my letter box - with a selection of heirloom seeds to seduce and tempt me to order yet more lovely seeds. I also have a lot of seeds I have saved from open pollinated varieties - so I get all sorts of both true breeding and surprise results!

I can't wait for spring 2012... :-) I love sowing seeds !

Chicken stuff.

Is about to go outside turn a chicken upside down and give its neck a massage...then dose it with Epsom salts...

Oh, we really know how to live, here!

Coco chicken is a greedy guts and is always eating stuff she should not ( Aubiose, long grass, paper...) so she has had an impacted crop several times, but this time she has sour crop - thrush  - in her crop. Her crop is squishy and smelly and feels all wrong when I press it so, she is in a separate run, on no food for 24 hours and is having an epsom salt flush ( syringed into her mouth by yours truely) and then fluids only. 

Tomorrow and for the next few days I will give her small meals of pellets mixed with natural yoghurt, to see if that will help. If she does not improve within 48 hours OR goes downhill, I will of course take her to see the Vet.

Nora the ex battery hen died :-(

RIP Nora, rescued 13/11/11 by Homes4Hens.