Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We may have seen the last of the torrential rain... the chickens celebrated yesterday evening by having an 'on-the-gate' conversation where they agreed it had all been rather terrible but at least the cockerel's ardour (desire to mate with them all!!) had been somewhat dampened!
Our quail have been missing it all as they are still too young to go outside and so at the moment spend their days under a heat lamp. If they were being brought up by an adult quail (or even a small chicken) they would use their 'mum' to keep warm by crawling under her body but these babies were hatched out in an incubator and so are spending their first few weeks in a small aviary with a large red bulb that gives off heat. We are seeing some rather lovely colours coming through in these three week old Japanese Coturnix quail as the middle photo shows. Coturnix quail come in a variety of colours and specialist breeders work hard to produce the best colours they can by selecting the birds that only have the particular colour they are looking for. These eggs came from a breeder who breeds to get as many different colours as she can which is what appealed to us.
And so to the polytunnel where the courgettes are growing almost faster than we can eat them but we have to admit: we NEVER get tired of courgettes. How do you cook yours? A really lovely treat is frying them in butter but we are slightly healthier and use olive oil!!