...and now July...

Like a bloody calendar this isn't it!

Arse in gear hopefully very shorly to resume service...

It's June!!!

Just saying...it's June not May as previously stated.

Been busy, but more of this drivel to follow soon...

It's May!!

How the hell did that happen?

Seems I've been rained indoors for an eternity which has dampened my mood somewhat. The veg plot is completely devoid of any new planting due to it resembling the Somme at the moment - the clay soil steadfastly refuses to dry out. This is p*ssing me off no end. I do have rhubarb to eat, managed to grow that so far (it grows itself - that's why!) so that's good. My stomach is likely to have other ideas about the wisdom of eating large quantities of rhubarb and custard though. I shall have to eat more grass and nettles to balance out the diet a bit. Please God send some SUN!

Let us pray...

...Dear Lord, please could you let the sun come out to play for all of the coming month. May my stomach recover from all that rhubard tart. Please Lord, could I win the lottery this Friday so I can buy some land in warmer climbs, somewhere the sun always shines, the people are nice, the women are single, desperate and plentiful. Yes Lord, please may I go to Wales!! Failing that, a 3 mile stretch of the African coast and a beach hut would do. I'm not fussy. Oh, and don't forget the money.

Thank you.

Amen.

We will now sing hymn number 208...Abide With me.

"Abide with me, fast falls the even...C'MON SING!...tide,..."

For Gobber...send me your e-mail for FH logo...

And so I walk...

...into the chemists, internet list in hand. I hate trawling up and down the aisles trying to find what I want so immediately seek out the first shop assistant I can find.

She's an attractive middle aged woman, dressed very smartly in her white pharmaceutical smock. She is stacking shelves with various medical products. I sidle up to her. I'll have some fun.
"Hi", I say, "I'm looking for some atheletes foot cream".
"Here, on this shelf", she says, pointing up and down at the shelf immediately in front of us. I pick up a tube of the cream.
"Do you have any vaginal - yeast - infection - cream?" I say, as I read each stunted word from the crumpled list.
She looks at me and pauses for a moment before replying. I can actually see her mind whirring, trying to make a connection here between my need for the foot cream and the thrush cream. She looks around quizically whilst she does so.
"My cock", I say, looking her right in the eye, "his head has become very inflamed and sore. I'll need to rub some of this stuff on it to try and cure it. It's starting to look very angry. Do you think this will do the trick?" Her mouth opens a little.
"Oh, and some iodine if you have it!"

Apply liberally...

Yes Jacques, my prized Copper Blue Maran cock (let's say rooster from now on shall we) has developed a rather nasty wound on his comb. He and the other cocks roosters have suffered a fair bit from frostbite over the past couple of winters but always recover. The frost-biten tissue just dies, dries up and falls off, and is a common occurance with both roosters and hens. This time though it looks a bit worse.

I wondered if it was Fowl Pox at first. Jacques does have white powdery spots on his comb occasionally, and a couple of black ones. Fowl pox is carried by biting insects such as mosquitos and there are two types. The first type is untreatable but the bird usually recovers after a few weeks. The legions heal but the infected scabs fall of and can infect other birds so it's quite contagious. The second type, known sometimes as wet fowl pox, is associated with the mouth area and can be fatal. A vaccine is available, to administer to the young chicks, but I didn't vaccinate these birds. Maybe I should have.

Jacques in fine fettle

Anyway, I don't think it is fowl pox. Jacques does like to occasionally fly the dividing fence and have a scrap with Loius the Ist, and what I think has happened is that he's got himself wounded (again) in one of these fights and the wound hasn't healed. When the chooks roost, I suspect the hens sitting in there with him have a bit of a peck at it. I could use gentian violet spray on his comb, that will stop the pecking if there is any. It's also anti-fungal and antibacterial so it's an option, but this product might not be powerful enough to clear the wound up.

He may also have Favus which is a fungal infection. This sounds more likely as the wound has left a bit of a depression in the tissue of his comb which is known as a favus cup. The thrush cream contains Clotrimazole which is an anti-fungal agent, same stuff as the atheletes foot cream, but in a higher dosage. I'll apply some of that to the wound and let you know how it goes.

So tonight I shall get the fishing net out again and chase Jacques around the orchard and give my 'rooster' a damned good creaming!

Can't Start, Won't Start!

Bastard!!

Yes, it's that time of year again, when the savanna needs cutting...

Mr. Rat decided to make a nest under my mower and was not a happy ratty when I moved it. Bloody little sod (rather big actually) used to make foraging expeditions into the greenhouse to chew up bits of string and stuff to make his house! A trail of debris led right back to the mower.

Anyway, here's a step by step guide on how to resurrect your petrol mower after a long cold winter. Click to zoom in as per...

Note to self: Never push a mower around for hours in long grass after f**king your back up trying to pull start a knackered petrol mower all morning. Unless you're ok with hobbling around in your pants the next day 'cause you can't get your jeans on!

More than I can chew?

I probably shouldn't post about this right now as there's a whole bunch of stuff that can go wrong yet, but...

Let's play pig farmer. Yay! You be the pig and I'll feed you swill...

...I can't wait. See I might be getting a little piglet in the near future and that's about the most exciting thing to happen this year (God, that's so sad, lol). But I don't care, I'm dead excited about it. And it's all your fault (those of you who have had pigs lately).

There's this plot of ground see, about 1/4 acre big opposite my plots which last year had some Jacob sheep roaming around on it. The guy who rents this field was going to get rid of it all this year but I stopped him one night and said, "Hey, don't be too hasty - hows about you and me keep some pigs for a pig keeping experiment this year?" Just said it, just like that, without actually really thinking it through properly and not expecting him to say yes at all. F**k me if he didn't bite my hand off!

So now there's three of us up there, all going to have a pig each. These pigs are for the table, so to speak, so the trend I have to warm to the animals I have will have to be tempered a bit. Quite a bit I would imagine.

Light reading. Sending it off is going to be tricky, I can see it now...

I've spoken to the pig breeder (Glouscestershire Old Spots) who says he has a litter of weaners that will be ready in about six weeks. Plenty of time to do some much needed POW stylie fencing, build a pig ark, sort the paperwork etc,.

What with the bees suddenly on the go and loads to do anyway over the busy Spring (and having to actually earn some money!) I should be ok provided I don't sleep until the end of Autumn.

Does viagra help keep you awake or just up all night?

;-)

Oh!

Logged on this morning to find that GrowFishEat.blogspot.com is now GrowFishEat.blogspot.co.uk!

Which has totally f**ked up some gadgets and stuff.

Another classic 'do it first and worry about the destruction later' issue from the chaps at Blogger...

Anyone else feel like a guinea pig?