I’m very sad to report that while I was away in Scotland, the lovely Pepper was nabbed by a fox and she is no more.

It was upsetting but we always knew it was a possibility because our chickens room around the garden most afternoons. Even though we keep an eye on them when they’re out of their run, the urban foxes around here are quite bold & unfortunately they only need to get lucky once.

When I got back, Ginger was clearly very unsettled and lonely. It’s a bad idea to keep chickens singly because they are flock birds and need at least one other hen around. So on Saturday we headed over to our local supplier and scored a new chicken.

Meet Colette.

Kirsty Hall: Colette, February 2010

She’s a beautiful Cou Cou or Cuckoo Maran – the ‘cuckoo/cou cou’ part refers to the speckled silver and black colouring. Marans are originally a French breed, so naturally we had to go with an appropriately French name. She’s a ‘point of lay’, which means that she’s not laying yet but should start in a week or two once her comb grows in.

Kirsty Hall: Colette, February 2010

Because Ginger & Pepper had always been such good friends, I didn’t anticipate any problems introducing Colette. Boy, was that a rookie mistake! Ginger took huge exception to this interloper in her run & was absolutely rotten to poor Colette. She wouldn’t let Colette anywhere near the food & water and defended her territory with quite shocking levels of violence.

After a day of a traumatised Colette refusing to come out of the coop, I admitted defeat & asked on Freecycle for a spare run. Fortunately someone had a small rabbit run that they were planning to take to the dump, so I collected that on Monday evening and ever since Ginger has been spending her days in solitary confinement with a dish of food and water. She is less than happy!

Fortunately this is just a temporary measure – I’ve ordered another set of feeders from ebay & when those arrive, I shall divide the run with bamboo canes during the day. They’ll be near each other but they’ll both be safe and Ginger will have more room. I’m going to carry on separating them during the day until they can get along, which apparently can sometimes take months. I am making progress though, they managed to room around the garden together today without fighting and they’re sleeping together quite happily: the problems just seem to be over food.

Thankfully Colette has been slowly regaining her confidence over the last few days. She’s still jittery though – I let her out of the run today so I could clean out the coop and then she wouldn’t let me anywhere near her and wouldn’t be persuaded back in again. I couldn’t even tempt her back in with food. Fortunately she went back in on her own accord eventually & I was able to shut her in. Ginger is easy to get into the run – she’ll go anywhere for a handful of grain, the wee strumpet!

I'm very sad to report that while I was away in Scotland, the lovely Pepper was nabbed by a fox and she is no more. It was upsetting but we always knew it was a possibility because our chickens room around the garden most afternoons. Even though we keep an eye on them when ...

This is a very quick update because I’m meant to be packing. My son and I are heading up to Scotland this evening to visit my folks.

Firstly, the talk went well on Thursday. I was quite pleased with the Powerpoint that I put together – only having a week to master the software made for a bit of a steep learning curve and a lot of late nights but I managed to put a simple presentation together. The talk itself was very well attended & the organiser said there was a good response to it. I think that I did OK, although my mouth was so dry from nerves that I got through two bottles of water in quick succession! But apparently I didn’t look or sound too nervous, which was good. I had practised at home a lot, which definitely helped. I also watched this long but fantastic video by Garr Reynolds on how to structure Powerpoint & do presentations, which helped immensely. If you’ve got a talk coming up, I thoroughly recommend watching it – it’ll be time well spent.

There was so much that I wanted to put in but had to leave out – 20-30 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to give a good overview of blogging – so I may do some basic intro posts about the subject in the next week or two.

Secondly, I’m taking my laptop up to Scotland with the aim of writing 5 blog posts. I want to take my blogging up to the next level this year and my first priority is increasing the frequency of my blogging. I’ve been blogging ‘hand to mouth’ for far too long. I need to get a good backlog of posts written so that my blogging is not dependant on my dodgy health. So, if you’ve got any burning issues that you’d like to see me address, please let me know and I’ll try to write about it. On a related note, if there’s anything that drives you nuts about my site, please do let me know and I’ll see if it can be fixed.

Lastly, congratulations to Gwen from Murphy Grace Home who won the Gary Vaynerchuk Crush It! giveaway. Thanks to everyone who commented. I wish you could all have won.

Right, I must go and pack, I’m just procrastinating now!

Edited to add:
Oops, I forgot this bit of news. I’ve changed a whole bunch of my photos over to the Creative Commons license. I’m retaining full copyright on my art photos but the more documentary ones are now available to use. The only restriction is that you can’t take them and sell them. I would appreciate a Flickr comment if you do use them but it’s not obligatory.

This is a very quick update because I'm meant to be packing. My son and I are heading up to Scotland this evening to visit my folks. Firstly, the talk went well on Thursday. I was quite pleased with the Powerpoint that I put together - only having a week to master the software ...

Awesome sauce – I got a paid speaking gig. Apparently the University Of The Arts in London think I’m some kind of blogging expert. I tried to tell the nice lady on the phone that I wasn’t really but she said lots of lovely things about my articles page and how they were looking for an artist who blogs and I guess I qualify on the later.

Did I mention that the speaking gig is next week and I have to learn Powerpoint between now and next Thursday? And right after I said I was going to be taking things easy too – ha, the Universe does like its little jokes. But I’m certainly not complaining; it’ll be cool and this could be the start of an actual income stream for me. Fortunately I’m feeling significantly better I was than last week. I’ve been doing lots of pacing and listening to my body, so I should be fine.

The event is all booked up but they’re going to be taping it and putting it out as a podcast, I’ll let you know when that comes out.

Kirsty Hall: Waiting For Seeds, April 2009

Other cool things have been happening – without very much effort on my part, I might add. It’s slightly odd that I decided to stop pushing and just let things come to me and they promptly started doing exactly that.

I’ve started guest blogging over at the wonderful Make & Meaning blog. I was hugely flattered to be asked to be part of a venture that includes such incredible bloggers as Dudecraft; Craftypod; Kim Werker; Craftivism; Meet Me At Mike’s and Futuregirl. To begin with we’re going to be reposting some relevant posts from this blog but I’m planning to write some original content for them soon. Just as soon as I’ve got this speaking engagement out of the way!

I’ve also joined the brand new Third Tribe initiative, which I’m enjoying a lot. It’s the first time I’ve joined a subscription site like this but so far it’s definitely value for money as the calibre of bloggers involved is just awe-inspiring, plus you get monthly seminars and other exclusive content. It’s half price at the moment but the price goes up at 6 pm Central US Time today (that’s Friday 5th Feb) from $27 to $47 USD a month. If you join today, your subscription price will remain at the lower rate for as long as you’re a member, which is great because otherwise I couldn’t afford to do it.

Finally, for no particular reason that I could see, the lovely people at Vaynermedia sent me a second copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s fantastic book, Crush It. I hope they meant to because I’m about to give it away! You can read my review of Crush It here.

If you’d like a chance to win this great little book, leave a comment on this post telling me what your passion is. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday 10th February.

Awesome sauce - I got a paid speaking gig. Apparently the University Of The Arts in London think I'm some kind of blogging expert. I tried to tell the nice lady on the phone that I wasn't really but she said lots of lovely things about my articles page and how they were looking ...