Meet Lottie

So this is Lottie.  I hadn't quite twigged that she'd be so tiny (bantam?), but she is about one third the size of our others - they look huge next to her.  Apparently, a couple of weeks ago she started moulting - maybe she knew something was afoot to disrupt her happy life!  So she's looking a little threadbare but her feathers are starting to grow back which means she has a 5 o'clock shadow in places.  She has lovely big brown eyes and I think she'll be a very pretty chuck in a few weeks.  It seems her eyes and feet are the same size as a normal chicken it's just everything else that's smaller.  Although she's small and not at her best, she's quite fiesty and the other three are scared of her - it wouldn't surprise me if she ends up top of the pecking order.  There have been a few feathers flying.  For the last two days the others have been shut out of the run and she's been shut in.  They all get shut in together at night of course.  We did entice her out this morning for a few minutes, but she went back in of her own accord after a few minutes.  Maybe she's a bit shy of her appearance in front of new people!  I don't like this part of getting new chickens - it's easy when they all get on with each other, know the routine and come when they're called.  I guess she'll pick it all up before too long.

We survived the massive storm yesterday without any problems . . . . in fact, without much wind at all. Lots of rain, but that's about all. I did toy with the idea of ringing work yesterday and saying that it said on the news not to travel unless absolutely necessary, but I didn't think they'd be too impressed as it was actually a reasonably nice day. Hope you all got away without any problems.

Do you know, we've now lived here for five years - it seems like a lifetime ago but at the same time no time at all (does that make any sense).  We don't usually bother much with anniversarys of things, but decided to celebrate our five years with steak and a beer . . . . on a Monday!  How lavish!  We were sitting down sipping our beer reminiscing about what we were doing exactly five years ago and decided to check my notes on this blog to see when we actually did things and, much to our dismay, found out that Sunday was the actual anniversary and we'd missed it!  We were both sure it was 28th, but checking back on the calendar confirms that the Monday in 2008 was 27th.  Ooops, were not very good at this . . . . . . we still managed to enjoy our fraudulent steak supper on a Monday though!

Our first night in the caravan.  Funny, in all the chaos and with
no fridge, we still managed to make sure we had cold beer and
a couple of bottles of red wine to hand!  Have to get your
priorities right.