Naughty chickens....

The chooks have been laying 5-6 eggs a day, so we have had lots of eggs to use up. I have been making up some cheesy spinach quiches, and I made up a Bacon and egg pie. I made up some shortcrust pastry in the thermomix, and lined a dish with the pastry, then lay down strips of bacon all over the base of the pastry, added in about 10 eggs, topped with a little cheese and cream, and then topped with a lid of pastry, and baked @ 180 deg celcius, until golden....

The other day I planted up some sunflowers, tomatoes and corn seeds. A couple of naughty chickens have been scooting under the gates in to the vegie garden and have dug up the corn seeds, and one of my newly planted chilli bushes. Sometimes it seems like all I do is work in the vegie garden, but don't seem to get much to harvest. They also stripped my silverbeet plants to just ruby red stalks, they have eaten half of my cabbages, and probably gobbled up the tomato seeds and sunflower seeds as well. They have also eaten half of my ornamental kale, and stripped one of my chilli bushes.They have also scratched up quite a few garlic bulbs, so I have replanted those, but don't know if they will recover in time to produce nice bulbs in a few months. So...peeved is an understatement. I have only just worked out how they have been getting in to the vegie yard, so tomorrow I will steal some rocks from our garden edging that I have been placing around the gardens and run them along the underside of the gates and see if that stops them from getting in, before I bother planting any more. I thought they were flying in, even though I have clipped their wings, but have now seen them going under the gate, they really have to squash under, but they are determined. At the moment I feel like just heavily mulching the vegie garden to keep the weeds away, and just giving up...
On a brighter note, we went out yesterday and picked up a 2nd hand kitchen we purchased from gumtree to go in to our "shouse" (shed house) It is a nice large kitchen, with plenty of cupboard and bench space, and it is a nice neutral creamy colour. We think we may end up replacing the bench top as we want to change the configuration slightly, but will see how it all comes together in the shed. Hopefully if the weather works in our favour, the shed slab will be started next week... so in the meantime I am haunting the auction centres and ebay and gumtree collecting bits and pieces along the way to fit out the shed without spending a fortune.