The chickens have proved to be a great addition to our self-sufficiency drive. They provide us with eggs, most obviously, but also help at both ends of the chain when it comes to growing veg.

For one thing, they eat all of our off-cuts. The peelings from our carrots, which they particularly enjoy, the skin of our beetroot, the ends of our beans, the feathery tops of our carrots and so on all go into the run and are gobbled up right away. The only thing we don’t give them is potato skin, as it’s poisonous.

This week, though, we’ve started digging in their manure to help with growing the veg they so love. It’s their little contribution to the food cycle, although they don’t know it.

It felt good to be digging it in. It’s been building up on the top of the plot for the last few weeks, but with the ground so hard it’s been impossible to turn over. So it’s been sitting there, looking ugly but at least scaring off the neighbourhood cats, which have always had a thing for scratching around in the plot and fertilising it themselves.

If it does what it should, we could have a bumper crop this summer.

Related posts:

1. Mucking out the chickens
2. Pulling the first carrots
3. The plot in 2008