City Chicks & City Bees

This site details our journey of discovery as we try to live a more sustainable life in an urban setting.

In 2005 we decided to grow as much of our own food as possible while living in a city. We have learnt the skills and experienced the rewards of growing, making catching and collecting as much of our own food as possible.

We have changed the way we heat our home installing a wood burner and sourcing wood locally ourselves.
In February 2011 we began generating electricity with solar PV panels and rainwater harvesting to supply thewashing machine and flush the toilets.
Solar hot water is coming in early 2012.

We now mill our own flour for homemade bread, make cheese, ham, bacon & sausages.
Mead , beer and wine making have been very rewarding along with bottling and preserving fruit and veg we grow.

We have reared our own chickens and turkys for the table and in 2012 we kept pigs for the first time.

Beekeeping has become a wonderful and challenging occupation which is always teaching me something new.

Support local bees
adopt a hive

Champagne and Sausage making day
 for more information email or call 01752 516619

Our journey during the last seven years has been a real adventure, starting with keeping chickens and turkeys, to catching fish and game and making sausages of all kinds. Cheese making and learning to pickle and preserve a variety of foods has been great, smoking salmon cheese and other meats has been really rewarding. We reared 17 Ross Cob chickens back in Feb 10 finished weights range between 6-9 lbs.

The bees survived the snow in 2011 this year city bees.org.uk has seen me called out to rescue and rehome 25 swarms. The adopt a hive scheme is starting to gain interest which has helped with the cost of supplying new hives and transport, we have also kindly been given permission to keep bees at another 4 sites including Dartmoor Zoo and with the National Trust at Antony House. In 2011 we started running beekeeper experience days which is proving to be a popular gift to buy for Christmas and Birthdays, even holidays makers have turned up

Cheese making will resume this autumn if its not too cold, it needs to be above freezing and below 8 degrees C to mature the cheese in our workshop.

We made 40lbs of pork sausages this year from our pigs which weighed in at 87 kg each we will make turkey sausages again this Christmans from one of our 4 turkeys, with port and cranberry and chestnut and another batch with garlic and chilli . We invested in a vac-pack machine last year which increases the storage time for frozen and fresh foods by around 3 times.

This spring 2012 we start running champagne and sausage making days, giving people the opportunity to learn how to make two of the most delicious things we make elderflower champagne is fantastic, really worth making but very difficult to keep in the bottle, lively on opening too if not chilled properly!
The boat is proving more proved useful this year catching more mackerel which we hot smoked and froze the rest, which later we will turn into fish cakes, pasties and curry, which if somewhat unusual, is great.

All our hens and eggs for hatching have been supplied by Senara at Hendra Farm in Cornwall click on the link below to view her website

If you would like to support the campagin to stop intensive rearing of chickens then click here