Good mother hens teach their chicks to eat broccoli

The Care Home has now tested all staff and residents and await the results. We might soon be able to go inside for visits with mum.

Geese on the pond and in the floating goose house

Mrs Silkie and her chicks. One is so tiny. If it was a puppy it would be called the runt of the litter.

Roses grow, unpruned this year, in the vineyard

The ducks enjoy an early morning swim in their bath

And Nigel is playing in the paddock and stalks a pigeon – which escapes

The newly turned earth at the perimeter of the field is gradually being brought into vegetable production. The potatoes, planted 10 weeks ago, should be ready to eat in two weeks time

This afternoon we prepared the ground for canes and then we’ll sow beans – beans to dry for winter.

Every day, in the paddock hen house, it’s a race to see who will get the newly laid eggs – me or the magpies. Cunning and clever corvids are adept at stealing eggs from other birds. They steal goose eggs but, since they are very heavy, they smash them with their beaks and suck out the contents. The hen eggs are lighter to carry and we find the shells shattered some way from the paddock hen house. The only way to beat them is to be more cunning than them. I saw a hen sitting and closed her in the house this morning

I checked on her regularly until I heard the loud clicking noises that told me she had laid her egg. When I opened up the house I found two eggs. Well done girls. 2 – 0 to me.

They played outdoors

They collected eggs and picked strawberries

They played with the goats

They took home some of the artichokes as well as hens eggs and quails eggs and the first of the broad beans.