You’ll know that I’ve had all sorts of problems with crows taking the eggs. I thought awhile ago that I’d got rid of my crows, but it looks like I hadn’t.

In fact there have been worse than ever. Some even sit on top of the chicken coop and wait for the chickens to go inside to lay their eggs before they swoop down, go in and take the eggs.

You wouldn’t believe how smart these crows are, I tried and tried to catch one but never managed to, until now.

Crows just to be one of the smartest birds in the world. People told me crows were smart though I never believed them. Now I believe them.

I even know someone who’s tried to shoot the crows around his house, and he tells me that every time he turns up in the garden with his rifle the crows disappear quick smart, and he doesn’t see them for a while.

But he tells me they always come back. Otherwise I’d be trying to get him to turn up at my place with his rifle, but I think I’m wasting my time because the crows come back.

But finally I managed to catch one. It was the silliest little opportunity, but I grabbed it with both hands, literally.

One of my chickens regularly gets out of the chicken yard and walks around the house. That’s okay, I don’t mind and she hasn’t been caught by a fox yet.

She’s been laying her eggs underneath one of my windows, amongst the bushes at the base of the window. Because the window comes down to the floor I can actually see her laying.

I realise that the crows were also getting interested in those eggs in the bushes, and a couple of times I saw a crow walk in and take an egg.

There’s a veranda over that spot, and one day I noticed a crow on the veranda looking over the edge at the eggs. Then it turned around with its head over the veranda and its tail hanging off, and as it couldn’t see me ideas reached up and grabbed it by the tail and killed it.

You should have heard the commotion. All the other crows in the surrounding trees must have seen it and there was all sorts of squawking.

From that day I haven’t seen a single crow, and I’ve been getting half a dozen eggs every day.

So finally, I hope, I’ve managed to avoid the problem with crows taking eggs from my chicken coop, and I’ve got eggs to eat again.

And I don’t even think it was me that did it. I think the crows went away or on their own.

I made all sorts of changes to how to chickens needed to get into the coop. I put up a wire entry run and they had to creep through the run to get into the chicken coop. And the chickens didn’t like that, so it took a little while to train them to use the run into the coop.

And I had a 2nd small chicken house as well which was movable so I move that through the front of the chicken run so that the chickens had to go into the small chicken coop, through the chicken run to get into the main house.

And I put large drums all around so they had to walk between the drums to get to the small chicken house.

It worked, but I suspect only because the crows moved on because I haven’t seen one for ages. They probably left all by themselves.

Either way I’m getting eggs again. It’s taken me almost a year to overcome the problem but now my chickens are laying eggs and we get to have omelettes all over again whenever we want them.

I love chickens.

I’ve talked before about how I’ve got a chicken coop and some chickens. I absolutely love keeping chickens, I adore eggs and I love chickens.

And my kids love chickens as well. Some time ago we borrowed an incubator and hatched 20 eggs. It was wonderful. You actually got to watch through the glass on the top of the incubator to see each of the chicks breaking its way out of the egg.

Some of them really struggled and some of them didn’t make it at all. However I was reading a book about keeping chickens and it said that if you are incubating chickens don’t help the young chicks get out of the eggs. Some of them will struggle to get out and some of them might make it but if you help the ones that won’t make it they will probably die anyway.

They are too weak to survive.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. What I wanted to talk about today was how crows are taking the eggs from my chicken coop.

Last summer we seemed to have a lot of crows around. Certainly a lot more than normal. In fact there was anything up to 6 or 8 crows in the trees around our house.

I didn’t think too much about it until I started to find that when I went out in the evening to the chicken coop there were no eggs to collect. It seemed very strange that my chooks had stopped laying because it was summer time and they generally lay right through summer time.

The only explanation I could think of was that I wasn’t giving them enough calcium in their food so they stopped laying their eggs.

But I eventually worked out that crows were landing on the ground and walking right into the chicken coop and taking the eggs. I couldn’t work out how they do it until we actually saw one caught carrying an egg in its beak.

Since then we have had a constant battle with the crows to stop them stealing the eggs from the chicken coop. Luckily however it seems to have stopped. About a month ago I started getting eggs again.

I suppose the crow that was taking our eggs has gone on holidays. There are plenty of crows around still, however they are not taking our eggs. All I can think is that one of them was taking the eggs and that one is gone.

If so I’m certainly hoping that the crow that was taking the eggs has left for good and won’t be back and our eggs and chicken coop are safe.

I get to go with a friend because my family all have some concert to go to and they can’t come so I get to go with a friend. It’s nice to take your family but sometimes you need to take a friend instead.

We are going to take a tent and camp, as I would normally do with my family. It’s a really good canvas tent, about 12 foot square and canvas and really good quality so worth taking. Its heavy but I have a lighter tent that’s smaller but it’s forecast to rain and I want a good tent that will keep the rain out which is important.

I don’t like getting up early, I resist it when I can, but we have to go at 5 am Friday. It’s a 4 hour trip to where we are meeting up with some others, and we meet at 9.

But it’s not that much of a drama getting up early if you’ve got a holiday to get up for. And I’m looking forward to it so it’s not that much of a problem, so I’ll be up when I need to.

Unfortunately my car is really old and I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed hoping it makes it up there. It’s done 450,000 miles so it’ done a lot of work, but it goes fine.

Saturday will be a day of doing nothing which is how I like it. It’s planned that way so that’s how it is. I want to go fishing because I really like fishing. So I’m intending to take the fishing gear along, though it is forecast to rain. In fact I bought a new fishing rod today, because I broke my old one a while ago.

I made a new fishing rod many years ago. I bought a fibreglass blank and all the other gear and made it totally myself and I was pretty pleased with that. That was the rod I broke the other day and I was really disappointed.

I have no idea how it broke but it did. I was just walking through a patch of trees and then I looked at it and the tip was broken off. What happened? Who knows. But it was a pretty sad day as I had used that rod so much and it had caught some good fish.

I found out today that it wasn’t worth a lot of money either. That’s because I went to a fishing shop and bought a new one and it wasn’t expensive. But it still had sentimental value to me, after all I made that rod myself.

And I couldn’t believe. 35 bucks for a new fishing rod. They certainly aren’t expensive now to buy. But the new one isn’t the one I made. I’d rather my old one than a new one.

So there’s the news about my weekend to come. It won’t rain will it and I will catch a fish won’t I?

Here’s hoping.

And it was a great weekend too? I loved it, though getting up quite so early was a little taxing. Way too early for me. I’m not a morning person.

I got up at around 5 am, really really early for me. It was way dark and it felt like the middle of the night. Wow was it hard to get myself out of bed, but I got out because I knew that I had a good weekend to look forward to, so that made it a little earlier.

So I got up, headed over to my friends place and picked him up and off we went for the trip. There was quite a bit of stuff to load up and the car was packed to the rim and it took quite a while to get going, longer than I expected and as we were meeting other people we had a time limit. So we couldn’t hang around a lot.

And by the time we got there it was raining which was really such a shame, I hate rain when you’re on holidays. We’ve had such good weather over the last few weeks to have it raining the exact weekend that I go away is pretty annoying, but there’s nothing you can do about it is there? What can you do about weather?

We were camping so rain isn’t ideal and so we had to get there and put up the tent and so on. We were lucky that by the time we got there most of the rain had stopped. There was still a little but nothing like the rain we had on the way. It’s not nice putting up a tent in the rain is it? And it was a long drive there.

And most annoyingly when we were driving there seemed to be all sorts of new speed limits to annoy me. So we had to go slower than I’d anticipated.

But even despite all this it was a good weekend. I did some good fishing and caught a few fish and we had it for dinner which was nice. Fresh fish tastes great.

Fishing is so much fun when you’re away, and it’s so nice to be able to catch your dinner too.

And I love birds too, and one of the best things about living in the country is the birds that you get.

Out here there are just so many birds. Dozens of birds. It must be because they like the trees around me because there’s always lots of birds and they sit in the branches of the trees and pick off the pods with  their beaks and hold them in their claws and eat them one by one slowly but surely.

I love birds but it is a shame to see them damage all my trees, and they do damage them breaking all the bits off. If you look under the tree you can see all the tree lying there. Well not all of it but a lot, there’s broken tree all around, and the trees don’t like it.

They’re lovely parrots, and parrots have strong beaks so they can do all this. But on the positive side they have great colors and they look great. I get them sitting around the veranda that goes around my house, they sit on the railings and look at me inside. And I love to see them sitting there so I sit really still and watch them. If I sit still they don’t go away.

There’s damage to the trees but it’s still great having them around and I love it. I could frighten them away when they start damaging the trees and then I wouldn’t have the damage but I’d rather let them come and sit on my veranda. If I shoo them away they might leave for good.

That’s why I love the country, things like parrots. And other animals too. You don’t get parrots in the city and that’s sad, there’s not enough trees and too many people. Far too many people. Nothing for the parrots to eat and people to scare them away.

And it’s not just birds, there’s so many other animals, and as I love animals I’m happy. I’m surrounded by animals and birds too. And I have chickens.

I think it’s good for you having animals and birds around your house. It’s nature and nature is important to everyone. It’s like life for everything else around us. So give me birds and animals around me and I love being around nature. Ha. I’ve just had one of those parrots perch on the veranda right in front of me right now and I’m going to sit and watch it.

The country for me any day.

It was raining a blowing hard when we went away last week unfortunately. The kids had their school holidays so they said they didn’t want to spend the whole time at home, so we went away. And though it was raining hard at first it soon stopped and got sunny so it was really nice. Rain when you’re away is a drag.

The resort was really nice. I chose it because it had lots of things for kids to do. Kids always need to be busy, so if you go somewhere where there aren’t any kids facilities then you’ve got a bit of a problem. Bored kids.

Bored kids can be the worst thing you can do for your holiday. They are unhappy and keep hassling you all the time to play with them, when all you want to do is to sit and relax and read a book. Kids hassling you doesn’t mesh well with a happy holiday.

But the kids were happy over the weekend, which was nice. There were so many things that they could do, including jumping up and down on this big plastic blow up thing, and they just loved that. That alone kept them happy for hours.

And there was a games room and they played in there for hours too. There was this huge tv and every night there was a kids movie for them to watch.

And of course there was a swimming pool. I can’t believe something as simple as a swimming pool keeps kids entertained for so long.

But back to the boat that I’ve got. I took it for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I wanted the boat along with us, but also because I wanted to take the kids bikes with us too, and I cant get 2 bikes into the car. But there’s no problems getting 2 kids bikes into the boat. There’s stacks of room there.

So we ended up doing 2 days out in the boat. One along a local river which was lovely, just puttering around looking at the scenery, a nice picnic on the bank of the river, some swimming for the kids, and a nice shady spot for us to sit after lunch and read our books, which we love and don’t do enough.

And the small lake was great too. Last summer I bought a tube and rope and towed the kids around with it so I brought it along this time too and they loved it just as much. In fact it was difficult to get them off it, htey loved it so much. They just wanted to spend the day there.

So a boat is a huge bonus on our holidays. We use it to take the bikes and have the kids entertained along the way. I’m really glad I took the boat.

Life always looks better from a boat in my view.

You won’t get to pat them a lot unless you’re feeding them their hay. They like their hay and when the grass is short and there isn’t too much because winter is coming and the grass isn’t growing. But I have a good supply of hay so that’s no problem.

Now that means of course  that you’re stick with feeding your cows every single day. Once there’s no feed in the field then they need hay each day. So you cant just go away for a few days and leave them or they starve. So you’re committed to being at home and feeding the cows.

I feed them all by myself. I like my holidays though so when you go away you have to have something to do so that the cows are fed.

I  have a number of different fields all fenced off. I have a total of 7 fenced off. And if I have lots of grass in some then I shut the gate to that one so the grass doesn’t get eaten and keep it there, then when I go away I’ve got a great field with lots of grass. I can open the gate and let the cows in there for a week or so and I’ve got my cows properly fed while I’m away.

And the cows aren’t silly at all, they know that there’s grass in there somewhere when they look through the gate so once I open the gate they’re right in there as fast as they can.

Then when I come back I put them out of that paddock and back into the one with no grass and I start feeding them the hay again.

I feed them immediately after my own breakfast. They know exactly when I feed them and when I come out to feed they’re sitting right in front of the shed with the hay in it waiting for their breakfast. I usually give them about 2 bales of hay. Sometimes when I feel generous I give them 3 bales.

I gave them 3 bales of hay this morning as it was cold and it helps. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is getting longer, it’s growing. And that’s good because my hay is getting short, I have a shed for hay and it’s pretty empty.

And my cows are always happy when the grass is getting longer. And the grass is getting longer now, so my cows are really happy.

And I’m happy if my cows are happy. So I’m happy.

I came to cycling a while ago. Well no not that long ago actually, considering that Im not young. I knew I had to do something to keep fit. I was getting fat.

Swimming never did it for me. I mean swimming is boring, incredibly boring. You just swim up and down, up and down. For hours and hours, or at least for a while. Actually it only feels like hours and hours, I rarely swim for more than about 20 minutes, that’s about as long as I can stand the boredom.

There’s a black line and you just spend your time watching that black line, because of course there’s nothing else to watch other than that black line. Now that’s what I call boring. I hate that long black line.

So trying swimming was for me a flop. It never worked for me. And to get fit you really need to do it at least 4 times a week if not 5 times a week and if you’re bored and every minute feels like an hour I just can’t do it.

And you’ve got to do about a half hour minimum. Less than that and its a bit of a waste of time.

So once I knew that I hated swimming I had to find something else. I also didn’t like running at all, so that was out. But one day I thought about cycling.

But I had a problem. No bike. Well I did have a bike but it was outside the shed in the junk pile and all rusted. It was way too old. So somehow I had to get a bike and it isn’t cheap to buy a good bike.

But I found out that there was a cycling club near me and they were starting up a new cycling group. The ideal time to buy a bike and take up cycling.

And right from the start once I joined the new cycling group I enjoyed the cycling. They varied their rides and did longer and shorter ones. But I did find that the pace of riding was not right for me. A bit too slow.

I’m not exactly young but despite that I really felt that I could ride harder than the recreational group did, that it was a good social situation but I wanted to get fit and do a workout and it was too slow for my liking. So I started riding on my own to get a faster ride in and workout more. I really did need to go faster.

So after a while riding on my own I found that it was nice to ride hard but a little lonely. I was getting a workout but on my own. So I made some enquiries and found out that there was a riding group that rode out of town a few days a week that used road bikes and rode hard. It went on sundays and I decided to go along.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike,   and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really liked riding to I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride pretty fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up. I work hard.

But unlike the recreational group the Sunday ride gives me a hard workout and that’s what I wanted, I’m not complaining. I need to keep fit.

Unlike the swimming I enjoy it and I’m getting fitter. Cycling does it for me.

There’s just so much to living in the country that you just can’t find living in the city. One example for you to think about. I love cycling and do it lots out here in the country. It helps keep me fit and that’s important and I definitely need to keep fit. And it gets me into some beautiful outdoors locations. Really beautiful

I ride past so many wonderful things, so many sights. I love to see cows in the fields and I see sheep and other animals as well. I even have my own cows and they give me calves which is great too.

It’s just one of the best things of living here, I get to keep cows and calves. I love that and all of the nature around me. Nature lives in the country.

Its summer right now and its really hot. We’ve had some very hot days lately. Now of course if I lived in the city it would still be hot. But here I see the cycle of the seasons so well. I feel more at one with the seasons and with nature now.

I see the grass wilt and die when summer comes, I see the grass regrow and get green again for winter. It see snow, I see drought, I see rain. I see nature.

There’s so many wonderful colors that I get to see in the leaves, then they all fall off and make compost around the base of the tree so that new baby trees can grow from the seeds they grow. I get to see the whole cycle of nature out here. Nature grows and I see it.

All of these things cycle. They go round and round and I really see what the seasons are. Seasons are important.

Maybe if I lived in the city I’d have a garden, maybe no garden. And I might not even have a tree. Maybe all I’d have is some concrete in my back yard and no more, except a BBQ perhaps. I do like BBQs.

Apart from the temperature I mightnt even know what season it is. I mightn’t see nature, just concrete.

It’s sterile in the city and I spent a large part of my life there so I’ve been there. Of course it’s just me that thinks it’s sterile, others don’t. What do you think?

Even the rest of my own family live there sadly. My brother loves it and he’s single so I suppose he needs more social life than me, and there’s probably more social life in the city. But I don’t like it.

I grew up in the city and spent most of my life in the city. Then it was fine but it really feels now as if I wasted a lot of time in the city, I wish I’d been born in the country instead.

I feel a little like I wasted a lot of my life in the city, that’s sad isn’t it? I didn’t really waste it of course but it feels that way now. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live here but I doubt he would. He likes the city.

So now it’s the country for me and that’s where I intend to stay. No more cities for me thank you.