For my birthday Mike bought me an incubator, and of several dozen eggs, we managed to hatch a few.  We will have no problems with egg fertilisation next year.  So, alongside some beautiful random specimens hatched from eggs from the farmer’s market in Prague, we have four Aruacana and a La Fleche (devil chicken) female.  All the hope wrapped up in those packages of eggs from the UK – and we’ve actually got one bird from hundreds of pounds of investment in pure-bred eggs and equipment.  The reason we’d had to buy eggs in was that we wanted some interesting varieties, and we didn’t have a male to fertilise the eggs.

We also believed that our Universal Brown Chickens – ex-stock from a factory farm – would not go broody. This proved not to be the case and we put some pure-bred eggs under her. She is now a busy mother to three – a male Legbar and two Lavender Araucana. One of these is runty and about a third of the size of the other birds.  It’s about time that I let them out free-ranging – while the mum is still interested enough to protect them… but what if they’re immediately eaten?

The Countess of Chester is developing saddle feathers. This is not good as it means that she is a boy.  We were confident that we had mainly hens because nobody started to crow at six weeks, we fanned their tail feathers – which proved they were girls, and there has been no fighting meaning they were female. Now we know why our new flock has not started laying. Of the eleven chickens who hatched and survived (RIP Splady the runty Vorwerk who disappeared in mysterious circumstances – the same day as a beheaded duck, and poor Dundonald), we are now certain that eight of them are boys.  It just goes to show that so much of what you read on the net is excellent fertiliser when dug into the ground.

We did not provide artificial light, so nobody is laying right now. We didn’t buy eggs for a long time because factory farming of animals is such a monstrous, shameful thing. I did some research and, apparently, the local term for free range is ‘hens kept on hay’.  The price of these eggs is something close to three times the price of eggs from caged birds – I’m hoping this indicates that the birds have better living conditions, rather than the ‘wild west’ nature of business in these parts. Life without eggs is such a drag, and to think I was under the impression that we’d have excess to sell before the year was out.

At least next year the eggs we have will be fertilised.

We’ve been using nettle as a spinach alternative and making it into a liquid fertiliser, but it’s been gradually taking over more and more ground.  During the growing season there is just sooo much to do that, apart from having an occasional hack with the scythe, we’ve pretty much ignored it.  The animals ignore it too, so bigger and bigger patches are getting established in the back field. Interestingly, they’ll eat it once it’s wilted, but nettle is a bugger – I’ve seen bowls of young cut stalks waiting in the kitchen turn towards the sunlight instead of die. It needs to be drowned or suffocated or it’ll just keep on growing.  It is an admirable species.

Now though, the other vegetation has died back making the nettle more apparent.  We could feed a lot of people on a nettle diet.  We are really never going to need that much, so it’s time to think about where the wild garden will be, and what we’ll want to plant as an alternative to nettle.  It has a two year growing cycle, and flowers during the second year. It spreads by root and by seed. The roots grow close to the surface of the soil and are a turmeric yellow.  At this time of year, if you pull the dead stalk out of the ground carefully, so that the roots come too, you’ll see the beginnings of next year’s growth – an inch or two of compact nettle baby nestled onto the plant.    The eureka moment – if we can uproot these, there will be significantly less next year. Of course, this’ll be impossible once the ground is frozen.  All we need is a little more time…

1. Glassing in the front porch (which will provide a solar gain to the house in winter months).
2. Purchasing solar water heating panels and attaching to the boiler.
3. Solar photo voltaic panels for electric (we’re in a valley so not enough wind).
4. Insulation of walls – internal insulation will mean we can do this ourselves, and also not alter the façade of the building.
5. Taking down the derelict barns- it would be amazing to be able to convert some of these collapsed buildings into greenhouse space.
6. Disposing of the grey tiles.
7. Finishing the utility room floor.
8. Rewiring the electrics in the utility room.
9. Repair of ceilings in corridors where collapsed.
10. Shellac of beams in attic.
11. Renovation of windows in attic.
12. Stripping and polishing wooden floor in lounge.
13. Fixing the hole in the pond so we can put rainbow trout in.
14. Re-flooring the attic with layer of insulation underneath.
15. Bathroom tap stand.
16. Completing repaint of radiators we bought from the scrap yard.
17. Hand-washing sink for composting toilet (not just tap on wall).
18. Putting up fence for the sheeple so that they can graze on the other side of the pond (so giving the trees more of a chance in 2012).
19. The swimming pond.
20. A yurt.

One thing I loved about my previous life as a city girl was libraries. I would regularly go and draw out as many books as I was permitted, and then start reading them all at once, finishing first the one that held my attention the most.  Though we have a book swap shelf at Nový Mlýn, and there are swap shelves in hostels and restaurants in Prague, this really hasn’t given me the range of reading material I needed.  Mike recently bought me a Kindle – and this, combined with Project Gutenberg has been my literary saviour.

Previously my genre of choice had been travel writers, however on Gutenberg I am beginning to explore authors who can help me here and now.  Gutenberg contains thousands of books which are out of copyright – meaning that the author died more than seventy years ago.   So far, I’ve found several books by people who have, like us, moved from city to countryside. To hear these voices ring out clear and true is a strange experience – they are long dead, but I am so grateful they wrote about their lives. We have so much in common, and I have so much to learn.

“The best things to scrub the churn and all wooden articles with, are wood ashes and plenty of soap.”

I was nervous at first – as most people would be, but I’m getting to know our new guests. I’ve cried with laughter on at least two occasions in the last twenty-four hours, and we have had some AMAZING food.  Rosie made a tagine in a Squash accompanied by a delicious beetroot and fennel salad – all from vegetables growing in the spiral garden. I’m cooking lunch. There are ten of us here right now and the standard has been set very high.

As we don’t have children, and the countryside in this area is depopulated of young(ish) professionals, without our volunteer visitors we would be rattling around this big old house alone.  It can sometimes be stressful coordinating the activities of so many people, however, in general, our visitors are creative, intelligent and willing, and committed to living a sustainable lifestyle. I am incredibly grateful to spend so much time amongst people with whom I can share ideals, and meals.

Last year was different – we had four rescued generic brown hens and four Partridge coloured Leghorns. They were terribly flighty and aloof so we called them collectively “The Models” who had mistakenly come to live on a common farm, in inappropriate footwear and the latest fashion in featherage.  They did, however, lay.  With plenty of eggs we could make delicious treats such as chocolate mousse, hollandaise sauce and entirely eggy breakfasts.   Though attractive, they were not as canny as the common hens, and so when a hawk struck – it was these creatures who were the victims, likewise when a fox visited.  The remaining model – Martha – decamped when next door got a rooster and has not been back since. And now, one of the remaining four has gone broody, so no more eggs from her for a while.

This spring we began experimenting with an incubator. With no broody breeds, this was our only option.  Hakin was our first success -  A La Fleche* (devil chicken) -  the only one to hatch from the batch. As a result she bonded with me, as her clan. A lone chick does not have a great survival rate, so she was somewhat molly-coddled and would make a distress call if I went out of the room.  She was happy in the house and would sometimes sit with us on the sofa in the lounge.  The adult hens were unwelcoming – Edna even cornered her and pulled feathers out.

We tried again with the incubator, but the second batch of eggs was lost for weeks in the post, and broken air pockets meant that they didn’t hatch, and a third time, when Mike picked up some eggs when he went by plane to the UK – but yet again they arrived damaged – they’d been put in the hold and only one hatched. We had some success with locally bought Auracana eggs – though only two of those made it. The best were some we bought at the farmers market in Prague. From these we have six mystery chickens – we’ve no idea what type, but they have beautiful colouring.   Hakin was recruited to become the teenage foster mum,  and was perfectly behaved with the babies. These are now her clan.  She has stopped following me around the garden and now will sit close to where her babies are located instead. I’m glad she is no longer a loner.

While in the UK I visited my grandfather in Cornwall. The journey took us within a few miles of South Yeo Farm – where we’d been ordering our purebreed hatching eggs. I decided to visit and ended up buying a few more Lavender Araucana hatching eggs to see if they would fare better travelling across Europe by road.  By happy chance we arrived home to find that one of the red hens had gone broody, so now she’s sitting on a mound of the blue-green Araucana eggs.  I don’t have high hopes for the hatching rate as the eggs are now at least two weeks old and did not travel in optimum conditions, but it would be lovely to have chicks with a real mother hen.

* We visited the town of La Fleche in France last week, partly  in search of more hatching eggs. In the tourist office there were t-shirts and tea towels decorated with La Fleche chickens, but disappointingly they said that this breed is no longer farmed in the area from which  it originates.

When we first arrived at Nový Mlýn, we were surprised to discover that our 130 year old house did not have a water treatment system or water supply… unlike our fully serviced neighbour who had built his new home downhill of the house.

Life was hard for the eighteen months it took us to get permission to pump water from a new well to the house, but it gave us ample opportunity to radically reduce the amount of water we use, and many of these good habits have stuck.

Mike immediately constructed a toilet – an inglorious outhouse that at first didn’t even have a door.  We were clear that we wanted to actually use the compost which was generated, so we would dig a new poo hole and move the structure onto it every few months.  This was not a one person job, and gave us the inspiration for the Teepoo (more later).

The use of drinking water for toilet flushing is extremely inefficient because then contaminants then need to be removed from the water.  Urine is a sterile, ph neutral  fluid which contains nitrogen, phosphates and potassium – the main macronutrients required by plants. It therefore makes sense to operate waste separation at source – something people soon get used to.

There is a university in Austria working on a urine only toilet – and it would be nice to have a bespoke design (a wiidet) , however, instead we installed ‘rock bogs’ inside the house, by filling the water in the bottom of the toilets with pebbles. This greatly reduced the amount of water needed for flushing (a single litre for a completely clean flush), and provided people with a very visual reminder not to use the toilet for anything other than liquid.  We then installed our WWUK reed bed – a plant based system of cleaning waste water, and connected the bathroom plumbing to that.

Any household with more than one toilet could instigate a rock bog (urine only toilet) and therefore massively reduce the amount of water needed for flushing. It’s really, really simple. It would be nice to have a toilet insert designed to take the place of the stones, but stones are simple,  freely available and aesthetically pleasing.

As well as rock bogs inside the house, we now have a more sophisticated composting toilet system attached to the house.  Composting toilets will smell bad if they get wet for any reason (urine or rain water) or if waste is not adequately covered.  We purchased an insert to catch urine – as well as the box and a supply of cornstarch biodegradable bags. We think this beats even Moule’s Earth Closet – though an earth ‘flush’ would be great.

We have hosted 75 volunteers over the last two years. They have all but one been able to operate the composting toilet without leaving any unpleasant surprises.  We would recommend leaving a vinegar spray in the cubicle to clean the plastic as you would need to with any other toilet.

While the job of emptying the soil box is not pleasant, waste is always dry and covered with a cup of ash or earth, you tie the bag shut and put the lid on the box before moving the box to a ready prepared hole. You tip in the bag, then cover it with earth by digging the next hole.  We don’t bury compost directly in the vegetable garden, but instead under the paths through it. This trench system means that we are efficiently closing the loop and returning nutrients to the earth.

*My very first unsuccessful business was the Vermenathon Forest project which I worked on obsessively during the last few years of the millennium. This was, in short, a tree sponsorship scheme which people could visit physically and virtually – I’m happy that more successful business people had the same idea.

The composting toilet attached to the house is a bagged system which must be manually emptied on a regular basis. This is fine when we are a household of two to twelve people, however we had been asked to host Global Agents for Change on their annual fund-raising ride though Europe. This would mean twenty four people, plus our current household.

Our solution was the beautiful, elegant Teepoo.  We did our online research, harvested wood for poles and found a canvas. For the internal structure we used a stack of old tyres, lined with a disposable cornstarch bag (bottom removed), and this was put over the hole in the ground.

We’d had little contact from the group since the initial request to host them – and no response to information we sent about Prague Vienna Greenways and the best route by bike to reach us – in fact they emailed to confirm they were on their way at 2.30 in the morning of the day they were supposed to arrive!

Anyhow, we taught them about the fruit, edible wild greens and mushrooms which grew in the area and together made a splendid hunter-gathered curry (though they did hunter-gather several ingredients from their car). In the end, because of the (inevitable) rain, sleeping bags were rolled out on every surface and everyone camped inside.

Despite the weird food and toileting arrangements they left a note to say:

“On behalf of the entire group, Thank You! 22 days into our journey, your home has been the most unique experience we have encountered thus far… aside from sheer kindness you and the others in the commune displayed, the sustainable living philosophies are (in short) completely admirable. The practices you implement every day are acts the entire world needs to consider much more and it is totally refreshing to witness individuals becoming the change we all wish to see… Thank You!”

The practice of giving up eggs for Lent used to confuse me – why eggs – of all things.  The real reason is simple. If you give up eggs for lent, your chickens will be able to hatch a new brood of baby chicks – providing ample meat and eggs for the rest of the year.  It’s interesting that Christianity colonised and incorporated earlier customs in this way – and after a while we forgot the purpose of them.  Chickens have been an important part of human existence for a very long time – this is clear from the many many turns of phrase we have which relate to them.

Yesterday we had a host of hens and potential chicks… now we have just two babies -one of which has a problem with it’s legs.  Today, a fox visited after I let the hens out in the morning – one Cream Leghorn is now on her way to soup heaven, and I have no idea if any of the others escaped.  Of the eggs, only one managed to make his way out of the egg without help. Two died in their shells – one after sticking out it’s beak and peeping for over 24 hours without moving and the other before it stuck it’s beak out.  There are two still completely in the shells – one I have heard making a tweeting noise but it’s not pushed it’s beak out, and the other is silent – we’ve not heard a peep (literally – this is the origin of the saying I suspect – listening for the peeping sound in eggs).

The first to hatch was Hakin La Fleche – he is a fine, strong little chick, but rather fond of pecking poor Milford on the head.  A pecking order of just two. Milford Lakenvelder is cute and yellow and fluffy – but I took him out of his shell after he’d made no progress in 24 hours – they’re supposed to be out in 12 – and his legs are not right – he’s doing his best to hop about – also his abdomen looks bad – we’ll see how long he lasts. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

As an adult I’ve always been somewhat vegetarian – either no meat, or only poultry – however as it’s been difficult in the past to find free-range chicken in the Czech Republic – I’d been vegetarian completely for a while. We recently found a free-range farm which sells humanely treated – if expensive – meat which I’m comfortable eating.  Likewise I’m not going to kill our chickens to eat them, however, in theory, those who have been killed by accident – for example by a fox, I’m happy to eat.  In reality, I’m sad to eat, but eat I will. I draw the line at Balut, though the dog does not share my high moral standards.

“Milford and Hakin are named after the home towns of Phil and Sam – our visitors from Wales.

Mike bought me the egg incubator for my birthday – a great spring present.  It’s the first time we’ve used it – we made amateur mistakes such as not weighing the eggs before we started in order to check levels of evaporation.  We’ll know for next time.  I’m finding the process of waiting for them to hatch almost unbearable – I can hear something tweeting away and from the instructions I’ve read all over the Internet – any attempt by humans to help them out is likely to only hurt them.

We have neither roosters or broody hens at the moment – so the natural method of chick production wasn’t going to get very far.  The Brinsea basic egg incubator looked great. It’s been simple to use, however I’m concerned that we got the humidity wrong because our kitchen isn’t so warm and because it was below zero outside, then the air could have been very dry going into the machine.

It’s a slow process – leaving an egg.  It can take them twelve hours to cut their way out of the shell, and there is a delicate balance – too little air and they won’t make it out in time, too much air and they’ll not be strong enough to get out. They have to make sure the leave in the correct part of the egg – the part with the air pocket – already one is not looking good because it’s gone through the wrong place.

The breeds we have are La Fleche, Araucana, Lakenvelder and Speckled Sussex.   I’ve now ordered a digital spoon scale so that we can weigh future eggs to the 0.1th g degree.