Hugging other people's chickens

A glorious sunny day, and we wanted to make the most of it.

Claire didn't.

She wanted to play on the computer and the wii.

However, with a little forceful gentle persuasion, we managed to convince her it was better to make something of the day.

What would she like to do?

"I want to see lots of chickens."

We were thinking of the beach...

So Mr G remembered the name of a farm that had been featured on Country File, and we set off on our 45 mile trip to Fenton's poultry farm.

Not easy to find in rural Somerset, but we did eventually. Farmer Gabriel was very kind and showed us his 3 week old chicks all 300 of them. They were so cute and kept 'peeping' at us. We then had a tour of the fields where about 1000 chickens were free-ranging.

Claire was in her element, stunned into silence.

One of the Farmer's little boys caught a Fenton Leghorn chicken, one of his own hybrid breeds that lays blue eggs and gave it to Claire.

She hugged that chicken tight.

She misses her chickens so much, but at the moment, all we can do is let her hug other people's chooks.

I bought a dozen eggs which are lovely; different colours and sizes, and I made some whoopee pies with some of them.

Our thoughts are with Linley today, who sadly had to have one of her ex-bats Vera, put to sleep today. She was a beautiful chook.