you can always say it with flowers

Impatience and my own desire to achieve 'closure' on the Valentine's chicken saga got the better of me today. (you will have to read previous 2 blog entries to see where I'm coming from.)

I had done a bit of detective work around the village, and now had a good idea who the dog's owners were and where they lived. Around 12.00 midday, I jumped into the car, and went round - a moment later and I'd have been too late. As it was, I met lady's husband just driving off, with dog, and he knew who I was straightaway (the wellies and green John Deere overalls might have given the game away.)

He apologised on his wife's behalf, who was out, saying they had been expecting me to go round. As I did not know the names of these people, or where they lived, I don't know how they thought I was going to manage this, but anyway, I had. I requested payment for replacement and politely pointed out that it was more than 'just a chicken' etc etc.

I said my piece, made my peace..and left.

Closure, lunch and an afternoon out with the children.

Later on, I'm in the kitchen, cooking steak and chips, when there's a knock at the door, and a very apologetic lady is standing awkwardly at the door, with a bouquet of flowers.

It is she, owner of the Valentine's chicken slayer, in person.

It must have been difficult for her to come round, but there she was. I had made her feel bad - bringing flowers made her feel better - and now I've received the flowers, I'm feeling really bad.

It was, after all, just a chicken....?

http://www.dovefarm.co.uk/

just a chicken...

So here's the sorry tale of the Valentine's chicken.

Feb 13 and husband Henry presents me with dead chicken, that has apparently been killed by someone's dog as they were walking past the farm.

Dog owner apparently admits what has happened, and says she will come round with money to replace bird. All this happens unbeknown to me, and husband Henry is in the middle of a conversation on his mobile at the time - so takes little notice and nods. (hmmm....)

I consider the dead bird carefully and decide that under the circumstances of free range campaigning, I should do the ethical thing and prepare it as food. It is, after all, as free range as a chicken can ever be. So I put aside the fact that she is 'Mrs Speckle' and focus on 'Coq au vin.'

I refer you to previous blog for the end results of that particular rustic culinary adventure.

Anyway, the days go by, and my somewhat philosophical approach is now turning to 'irritated and indignant', as there is no sign of the lady concerned. It's not so much a question of money to replace the chicken (between £20 - £40 depending on what type and breed) - it's more the dismissive message that is coming through of 'it's only a chicken...' and therefore it doesn't matter.

Well, Mrs Speckle was a pet, regarded with much affection by me and Natalie, our youngest, who takes a great interest in the poultry. Now the dog owner concerned does not know this, but that's the whole point, how can she know if she is simply not concerned...

not quite what I had in mind

Valentine's Day started with a creative flurry at Dove Farm. With it being half-term, me and the kids had got busy doing all sorts of craft-type things, including these valentine's hearts.

I think we were all mightily impressed with these little clay hearts - we poured left-over clay into a heart shaped ice-cube tray, and then went mad with candy colours, sequins, beads and glitter. Fab!

Even Joshua (middle offspring) is persuaded by his sisters, to decorate one for a particular young lady, we knew would be sending him a valentine's gift. Sure enough, her mum drove her down to the farm at 11.00 am. so she could run across the yard and push an envelope into my hand," to pass on to Josh".

If only he appreciated such lavish female attentions....aah, I feel a sense of forboding as I look ahead to the broken hearts and anguish that must surely come, as our little brood grows up to the ruthless and uncomfortably public, popularity contest, that is thinly veiled as 'Valentine's Day.'

husband Henry and I spent a pretty busy day. Henry being occupied with builders, finishing the roof on our new porch/utility room, whilst I went swimming with kids and called in on a few people, including nanna and grandad, who were also lucky enough to receive one of our hand-crafted hearts!

It was when we finally sat down to our valentine's supper, that things went a bit wrong.

One of our chickens was killed by a dog yesterday evening. (That's another story, for another blog) but anyway, I decided to take the practical self-sufficient approach - and prepared the bird for the pot within the hour, and had it in a casserole on a low heat for the rest of the evening.

This was quite a difficult undertaking for me, with it being a pet chicken and all - and also highly inconvenient on a wednesday night, with a million other things all waiting to be done.

So now, I was hoping to serve up some kind of gastronomic, hearty yet ethical delight, in true 'River cottage' style http://www.rivercottage.net/ but husband Henry, (who only eats white chicken breast at the best of times) pushes a few veg round the plate and that's it. Needless to say, I was annoyed. (please read this as under-statement in its purest form.) I leave the table and nearly leave home, and that's it really - and we would all have been emotionally better nourished if I had wasted raw chicken, instead of wasting it cooked, with the addition of many other ingredients. There has to be a moral in there somewhere. I'll try to think what it is... http://www.dovefarm.co.uk/

Things aren't always what they seem

Now, at first sight, this may be interpreted as a farmer in touch with his feminine and domestic side (not that I am linking feminine and domestic as a social statement on gender roles - it's just that a pink handbag and a hoover, happen to be in shot.)

However, do not be mislead. This is simply a case of husband Henry, grabbing a five o'clock cup of tea, after a long day, and not really caring what chaos reigns around him. I couldn't resist taking the pic.

Somewhat predictably, it's back to chickens again: (the ready-wrapped variety.)
More empty shelves at our 2 main supermarkets, where free-range, or 'freedom food' chicken should be.

This can be interpreted, of course, in a number of ways: Either there has been a sustained mad rush, and all the free-range chicken has flown off the shelves, or there is insufficient supply to meet even the tiniest increase in predicted demand, or no-one wants to buy the stuff, so none is ordered.

It's a case of 'statistics, damned statistics' and I am in no doubt that supermarkets will use poor free-range sales figures to support their status quo, on stocking, let alone promoting more ethically produced chicken, "but how can supermarkets properly assess demand, unless customers complain and ask for the products they want to buy?" I say to the woman on the customer service desk, as I fill in another of those 'we want to hear your comments' cards.
I have yet to receive any kind of response from either Tesco or Sainsbury's, despite their beguiling smallprint at the bottom of the card.

For anyone wanting an objective overview of the facts covering economic and ethical considerations, you could do worse than take a look at how the soil association has presented the case: http://www.soilassociation.org/.

If you find that you feel strongly, then I would urge you to lend your support to the 'chicken out' campaign. Register your interest on http://www.chickenout.tv/

In the meantime, my offspring are proudly horrified at what their mother will do as part of a family shopping trip. (where each of them places me on the 'horror - pride' scale is directly attributable to the age of each child) Guess where my 'pre-teen' puts me on this scale....

http://www.dovefarm.co.uk/

chicken out!

Thought I'd better get blogging again - people have been asking me "what's happening?" But what to write for the first entry of the year? - a significant start, without cliche, or subliminal messages about New year resolutions or personal goal setting.

Perhaps I needed to get angry about something, and today's the day. On the surface of it, a trivial thing: popped into Sainsbury's, to buy something to cook for tea... thinking roast chicken-

(this is the drawback of husband Henry doing the 'family shop' at Tesco - I know I'm on dangerous ground here, but at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I was struggling by this afternoon to find items that could be combined to cook a meal. Henry went shopping last night. We do however, seem to have plentiful supplies of DVDs, bakery products and branflakes.)

- only to find there are no free range chickens, or chicken pieces on the shelves. Nothing but those pinkish factory chickens in the meat section, and not only that - a prominent, end of aisle display of intensively produced, special offer packs of chicken breast.

Following the campaigning during this month from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver, about the less than acceptable methods of chicken production and our consumer buying behaviour - how can the supermarkets then say that customers don't want free range or freedom food options, when they are not on the shelves to buy? If these packs were displayed alongside the standard chicken, rather than segmented as a prestige branded product - with clear information about the welfare benefits, then surely more people would opt in to free range or high welfare chicken, in the same way that consumers are making choices about eggs.

Ordinarily, I would have been in a hurry, and simply put something else in the trolley - but today, I thought I would lodge my complaint and make my point in the name of consumer choice. A bit of a procedure followed at the check-out, involving calling over a supervisor and filling in a form, (with lots of people looking on, to my children's discomfort.)

I will report back on any feedback I am lucky enough to receive.

For those blog readers who have not followed the chicken out! campaign, or watched the recent TV programmes, I am not going to re-tell the story here, but I do make an impassioned plea, to take a look at the campaign website http://www.chickenout.tv/ This isn't about posh celebrities, or whether we like their TV shows or not - it's about us and how we regard the animals that are our food. http://www.dovefarm.co.uk/

Christmas Day hide-away

So that's another Christmas safely negotiated. As well as being a fun, happy time, it can be a difficult time of year, every year, for all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons. We should spare a thought for them, and maybe actually do something to help, between now and next year?

Meanwhile, at the more trivial end of difficult, some of us will be racking our brains for gifts we will give to people, who neither need them or want what is given; some of us will spend money like crazy, and regret it for the next four credit card payments - while others of us will walk that familiar tightrope, of turkey, tinsel and family politics, in the knowledge that whatever we do, it will not be right.

Christmas Day for us, did not start off at all how I was hoping. Our son Joshua started proceedings at 5.15 am, by wishing us 'merry Christmas' in all its variants through his new 'voice changer' - which is, to all intents and purposes, a loud hailer. He then informed us, in a mutant kind of voice (still very loud), that he and his sisters were already more than halfway through present opening, and Natalie was asking 'should she put her party dress on now?'

For me, at least, it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything at that time in the morning, but it is Christmas,I say to myself, and I do my best. husband Henry manages to ignore both Christmas and loud hailer, and sleeps for an unfair amount of time longer.

So farm jobs and 'feeding round' happened earlier, than any other day so far this year. The animals must have thought it was Christmas or something. A farming friend always says how she enjoys the Christmas morning feed round, and I have to agree with her - probably sentimental, but I do tend to give everyone an extra helping, and sing a few Christmas carols to myself as I'm going along...

By mid afternoon, it became apparent that youngest daughter had not received a good number of presents that she should have. It would appear that 'mummy' had hidden a bag of presents so well, that it did not get sent to Santa when it should have done - and so Santa couldn't deliver the presents back to her.

This is not an unusual thing for me to do, having put many precious things 'in a safe place' never to be found again - and it took me until evening to locate the missing bag of presents. The ironic thing is that Natalie didn't mind at all. She was happy with what she'd got, even though this was significantly less than what her brother and sister had.

Ok, so Natalie is not all "I want, I want" in the way that some children are - but It was still a sharp reminder, that in our modern western society, too many of us really do live in a world of excess, and could manage quite happily with only half of what we've got. I vow to take this thought forward with me into the New Year: I just need to top up my wine glass and have another chocolate first...

http://www.dovefarm.co.uk/

on the first day of Christmas...

....the factory gave to me, a little chicken refugee.

On my way back from walking with Celine, our eldest, to catch the morning school bus, I was called over by one of the workmen from the foundry, which is just over the bridge from the farm.

I was duly presented with a small speckled hen, who had been discovered, crouching amongst the gas bottles in their yard, and had frightened one of their workers, half to death, that morning when she had squawked her way back into the world.

This little hen, (purchased from Leek market earlier this year, as a broody with chicks ) had been chased away from the farm, by a dog, more than two weeks ago. In fact I did not even know it was this hen - we just saw a chicken make its escape under one of the foundry buildings. We assumed it had made its own way back. Heaven only knows how this small bird had managed to survive for all this time.

The dog episode is a whole story in itself: Henry and I saw the alpacas racing around their field one morning, getting quite distressed, with a dog in eager pursuit. I recognised the dog, and knew it to be a friendly youngster, but in true adolescent fashion, it was determined to have its own way, and would not respond to any kind of human attempt to get it back under control.

Fortunately for the alpacas (though not for the hen) the dog was distracted by a bunch of chickens, and chased this one little hen as described above. After much patience and biscuit bribery from at least seven people, the dog was finally brought to a halt.

Even though these frolics were 'puppy-some' and without malice, the harm caused to livestock is serious and significant. Alpacas, like sheep can so easily abort from the kind of stress caused by a dog chasing about. I did ask the owner to imagine the financial cost of his dog's actions, if they were repeated in a field of pregnant alpacas or sheep. I hope he will keep his dog on a lead, the next time they are walking past our fields.

As for Little Miss Speckle? - she's relieved to be back with the rest of the girls, laying nicely. thank you.

www.dovefarm.co.uk