more mushroom compost

The tiny hens were ravenous when I let the others out, and went rushing to the food hopper as soon as the rooster and the big hen went out of the hen house.  It occurred to me belatedly that yesterday, with the adult fowl sheltering from the rain in the house, which the SA reports they did, the new hens may have spent the day hiding in the egg box and not have got much to eat.  Two of them came out into the run briefly later on, so that's progress.  They are very tame, and don't flinch away from my hand when I top up their food or renew their water, though they still keep kicking sawdust in their pan of water, and the sooner they start using the run normally with the others the better.  They keep together in a little flock, and make small peeping noises, which again is encouraging, as hens generally seem to chatter when they're content.

We went and got more mushroom compost this morning.  Originally we were going to go last Friday, then the Systems Administrator began to think that a morning spent shovelling straw and manure might not be the best preparation for an evening sitting on the chairs in the village hall, which was a perfectly sensible thought.  It was just a pity that we had over 20mm rain in the intervening period.  The yard at the mushroom farm was particularly slurry covered, and staff were dumping fresh loads of spent compost when we arrived, so that the only accessible pile for us to dig from lay the other side of a large puddle and a layer of semi-liquid straw and manure about 15cm thick.

I went to pay at the office, and the woman there asked me how many bags we'd had.  I said that we hadn't loaded it yet, but would like 25.  She looked at me and asked 'How large is your car?'  We agreed that mushroom compost was splendid stuff for the garden and she wished me happy shovelling.

By the time we got to the twentieth bag I was beginning to feel tired, but I really wanted that compost, and when we'd bothered to drive all the way up there it seemed a pity not to make the most of it.  I nearly got my boot stuck a couple of times, but didn't, and we both managed not to fall over.  We had a bit of a scare with the truck when the SA reversed it down a slope to bring it nearer to the bags, to save carrying them across the yard, and it wouldn't go up the hill again because the wheels kept slipping on the slurry.  Eventually the truck made it back to the top, after taking a run at the hill, and we heaved the bags on board.  I could lift the small ones that originally held B&Q composted farmyard manure, but the big ones that originally held Strulch were a two person job

On the way home we agreed that it was just as well I hadn't gone for 30 bags, and the SA confessed to hating loading manure, while seeing that it had to be done.  The bags certainly weigh more than 25kg, which is the weight of a sack of chicken feed or bag of cement.  If they weighed as much as 40kg each then we lifted 1000kg of manure, which is a tonne.  Literally.  It might have been a bit less than that, but it was a lot.  As the SA says, a whole heap of shit.