Broome Park Farm, Farmhouse Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire

The mother hen and her chicks have been moved into their own coup beyond the main hen house. She is very protective, making it difficult to photo the chicks! They are growing at an alarming rate, consuming a vast amount of chick crumb. The piglets have finally been named by my visiting sister and friends - Spot, Diane and Lily!

Another busy weekend with a Band gig on Saturday and Dancing Out at Hartlebury Castle and Harvington Hall (both worth a visit) today. I have found time to make orange/lemod curd - delicious on granary toast! and elderflower cordial although it is a bit browner than normal and not so syrupy? I hope it will taste OK.

Unfortunately the Marches Energy Agency were runners up in their category for the Ashden Awards - but you can still see the video they made at www.ashdenawards.org/videoandphotos.

The hen finally hatched out 6 eggs so there are now 6 chicks running around in the empty calf pen. Here you can just see 3 of them - she is very protective if I try to get too close. In a few days time they will go in the small hen coop outside until they are old enough to join the rest of the gang in the main hen house. Hopefully more than 50% will be hens to increase egg production yet again!

John has hung the new hanging baskets either side of the front door and I think they really set of the newly repaired stonework. Those of you who visited recently will remember the damage wrecked by Rebecca shortly after passing her test - almost 12 months ago to the day! Hopefully that was a lesson learnt as there have been no further scrapes since.

One of the hens has been sitting on an ever increasing clutch of eggs for the last 3 weeks and we weren’t really expecting any to hatch. However John informs me there are 4 chicks but when I went out to take a photo I couldn’t get near the hen - and John says she’s really sweet! I’m not risking being pecked for a snap so you will have to wait!!

It has done nothing but rain here for over 24 hours which is great for the garden - the beans especially were looking very sad - but a bit depressing so I am cheering you up with a picture of one of my hanging baskets. I bought it from some of the Year 10 pupils at Lacon Childe School who have made baskets as part of their Vocational Studies class. John is not so keen as he now has to put up 2 more brackets by the front door to hang them on!

We collected our latest batch of weaners yesterday from Linda. They are the youngest yet at only 7 weeks and seem tiny! They are Gloucester Old Spots crossed with a Duroc boar which sometimes gives tehm a ginger coat but not this time - just lots of spots! No names so far - I am running out of inspiration - maybe Simon, Piers and Amanda but as they are all gilts (girls) maybe not! They seem quite happy anyway!