Foxglove

THE hens have been banned from the vegetable garden for the summer, about which they are indignant. Each autumn we take the fence down and allow them unfettered access until the small plot is planted again.

If you want the soil to be raked over with diligence, and the eggs of slugs and snails to be devoured, along with wireworms and multiple-legged small things that have designs on greenery, this is as organic a way as you will find.

By the time they are excluded again, the fowl will have manured the plot lightly and removed hordes of damaging invertebrates. Of course, the hens would eat our vegetables to the soil, and rake out the remains, if allowed in all summer, and I tell them this as they crowd around my feet.

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They reply in soft querulous voices, confirming or denying, until I find some grain with which to distract them. Above me, the apple blossom is crisp on the bough, and we might have a good crop this year, if the seed sets before the wind strips the petals.

My thoughts are interrupted by a small furry body that falls out of the elder tree by the hedge, and lands pancaked on the ground, stunned. That was a considerable fall for a vole, and he does not look as if he will survive it.

For full feature West Sussex Gazette May 14