We have kept poultry for many years, well before we bought the land. Our son Jack built the original fourteen hen pens, each with an inner pen for security, with a larger grass area for them to roam when it’s safe. Foxes are rare visitors but they will do what they do, which means we have to be sensible. Buzzards, which were here before we were, are an occasional nuisance in the case of young birds or bantams. Before Avian ‘Flu hit in four years out of five, we had more than 100 hens and cockerels, but the restrictions forced us to cut to a minimum. Now, however, we are beginning to rebuild. Originally, we did our best to encourage rare breeds – Zingem from Belgium and Hergnies from France – and sold birds and hatching eggs. We will see where it takes us this time.
Today got off to a horrible start with a message filling Bob’s laptop screen and a voice blaring out on loop telling us it had been blocked and that we needed to call a number it was giving us for help. Well, we weren’t falling for that, but we couldn’t...