On Saturday 7th May we had a special volunteering session from 10am till 5pm, to get as much of the new chicken fence up as possible. We are hoping to increase the number of chickens on the farm (there are 48 at the moment) by 100 by early summer, as we are currently unable to meet demand for our delicious organic eggs. The current flock also need a new patch of land to graze and scratch around on, to give their current plot a chance to regenerate.
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| Hugh and Andrew post-bashing while Sonja levels. |
Eight volunteers came along to help, which was a good turn-out, reflected in the amount of work we got done - the two remaining strainer-posts were put in the ground, half the strainers had their support struts constructed, and 100 intermediate posts were bashed into the ground, as demonstrated by Hugh, Andrew and Sonja above. Andrew came along by himself the following Saturday too and finished off all the support struts, so now we "only" need to bash another 100 posts in and we can start nailing the chicken-wire to them!
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| Hoisting a strainer post into position. |
What we will end up with is six plots each of 1000 square metres, enough to hold 100 chickens each (as stipulated by Soil Association organic standards). Each flock of 100 birds will have two plots dedicated to them, to allow rotation for grass regeneration, so that later this year we will have the capacity to have 300 free-range laying hens. That's why so much fencing needs to be built - watch this space for details of the next special chicken fencing session.....
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| Always time for tea and cake sat out in the sunshine! |
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