As you may know I’ve been doing a little filming. It’s not quite as glamorous as I’d hoped. No massive trailer with a star on the door or even a make up girl! Nope, you get me, warts and all.

Even so it’s quite a fascinating process. For a start you talk to a camera rather than the chap holding it, which is very strange and difficult to get used to. Next is you say your piece and then they say “Stop!” because a plane is flying over or a dog is barking. You don’t realise when you’re talking to someone how many noises there are around and how you automatically raise your voice to compensate.

Backyard Chicken Tips

The one exception to this, so far, has been the video we made in my daughter’s back garden where our cute little Polish cockerel Blackie kept crowing. I just stopped talking until he shut up and we decided to leave it in as it was. A perfect illustration of why keeping a cockerel in a suburban garden is not the best of ideas. At 4.00am the neighbours start to think about turning him into chicken soup.

He’s actually off to Darlington soon to a farm where he can crow his little heart out without upsetting anyone.

You might notice my grimace as by take 3 the hens had had enough of being shown to camera and were doing what birds do, over my hands and shirt! The first part is online now and they’re editing the rest of the day’s shoot to make another few short films.

Backyard Chicken Tips

Allotment Gardening Tips

I’d made a series of tips films on the allotment and they’re on the site now in bite sized chunks. What I’ve done is to put some text with each video expanding a little on the topic and links to other relevant pages on the site. Hopefully, you’ll find these worth your time looking at too.

Allotment Growing Tips