A catchup, hens, London and links
look at Beth's picture!
The new hen house is in situ! It has been immortalised especially for this newsletter by the genius that is Beth Spencer and I LOVE it - both the illustration, which is my absolute fave one so far, and the physical hen house, which I’ve ogled longingly online for about six years. Our patched-up, third-hand old one finally gave up the ghost, so it was time.
I find it so thrilling and magical that I send Beth a photograph of something here in Suffolk, England, and she creates these amazing images from her home in Atlanta, Georgia. They are always perfect. Look at the hens’ faces! Even the tree line in the background is anatomically correct (wrong words, but you know what I mean).
The new hen house is extremely fancy and really well-designed - the poo tray slides out, the legs mean you don’t have to bend much for cleaning (also provides a nice dust bathing area underneath), the nest boxes are at waist height, there’s a really good ventilation grille to the side - also useful for peering in to see the hens roosting on their perches, which I like doing - and obviously it’s really pretty, the chicken equivalent of a thatched cottage with roses round the door.
The hen house is this one, from here, also comes in bigger and smaller. It’s not at all cheap, hence the looooong wait, and yes, you could go and have a really nice weekend somewhere for the money, but I like weekending at home, looking out lovingly at a new hen house from the kitchen and having eggs for breakfast.
Some of our hens are old ladies now - there is a majesty to the older chicken, I think - but the newer ones are from Chickens To Your Door (they don’t literally come to your door, there are various collection points). Arthur Parkinson recommended them in his brilliant chicken book/memoir, and I follow his instructions to the letter on everything fowl-related (also flower-related).
In the past I have sometimes bought badly-kept hens from places that made me feel sad, more as an act of rescue than anything. The ones from Chickens To Your Door arrive happy and perky, practically beaming with health, fully vaccinated and with a jaunty aspect generally. They have fancy hens and sturdy, bog-standard brown hybrids. My love of ginger animals - as previously noted, ginger animals are the best animals, whether they’re a cow or a hen or a pig or a dog or a cat - means that we have about half fancy and half ginger hybrid. Rescues next.
Anyway - that’s the very happy hen situation. I meant to post earlier in the week but I’ve been in London since Sunday with back to back meetings and dates (and also overdue maintenance, this being hair at Gielly Green and tiny Botox care of Dr David Jack, both highly recommended).
Oh - one of the dates/meetings resulted in a seriously exciting thing happening on this newsletter very soon. Let’s just say, if you like inexpensive but well-made fashion and homewares, watch this space. And subscribe, if you don’t already, because I promise it will be worth it just for this.
So THAT is exciting. And so is the really beautiful cover of my new book, which unfortunately I have to sit on for a bit longer (like a hen).