355. Garden Author | Pauline Pears | Leamington Spa, England

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Garden Organic Book of Compost

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JackieMarie Beyer

Welcome to the Green Organic Garden Podcast. It is Friday, December 4th, 2020. We are doing season three. So it's probably January, 2021. When you hear this, I have an amazing guest on the line. She's over in the UK, right? Smack in the middle. So as far from the ocean, as you can be over there. So welcome to the show. Pauline pears.

4m 32s

Pauline Pears

Hello. Thank you for inviting me.

4m 35s

JackieMarie Beyer

We're so excited to hear your story. So why don't you go ahead and tell listeners a little bit about yourself?

4m 43s

Pauline Pears

Well, I live in, as you said, I leave, I live in Leamington Spa, which is right in the heart of England though. I'm just a bit, I come from Scotland. I'm sort of semi-retired now. But I spent most of my working life working for an organic gardening organization in the UK promoting organic gardening. And now I'm still, I do some writing. I do some editing. We have four allotments, my husband and I, where we grow most of our own vegetables and digress, some fruits. And I love making composts and we have three chickens and that's about us really,

5m 22s

JackieMarie Beyer

You know, Pauline all these years, I've always let my husband take care of the chickens because I had like this mental block that they needed to be free and they needed to be out and I couldn't stand them being in the cage. And then last year I kind of, well, I ended up getting this one little check, that one likes to live on my shoulder and watch me when I'm working. And he's like the cutest little UL, but I have fallen. So in love with caring for those kitchen, those chickens this year, it's just amazing. So I can see why you like three little chickens.

5m 59s

Pauline Pears

You used to let them run around the garden, but we get lots of where we live in the center of the time. But there are a lot of boxes on one Fox, two chickens on Christmas day. And we thought that was enough. So we know they've got a great big run, but sadly, they don't get science into the garden. I put in the greenhouse over the winter to pick up all the slugs and the bugs.

6m 19s

JackieMarie Beyer

That's what my husband always told me. He's like, it's to keep them safe. It's to keep them safe. And we've had more than our share of predators. Like the last time we had a grizzly bear that destroyed the chicken house and actually part of me caring for them now is like they commit at night and sleep in the bathtub cages. And like that's part of what I love is going down and changing those little cages out and putting fresh straw in there for him. And that's just chill the bears hibernate. That's what they're doing this order until we either put electric fence up or figure out my husband's soul. Isn't I mean, he, the bears come three times, but the last time he just ripped the whole back wall off of the chicken coop.

7m 2s

JackieMarie Beyer

And so we have to come up with some money for some supplies and stuff. It's crazy foxes. I had a student last year. I just loved boxes.

7m 11s

Pauline Pears

Oh, people do. But they, they just cause they, they don't just take one chicken. They they'll kill them all. And I have to say, compared to bears, they're quite easy, quite easy to manage.

7m 22s

JackieMarie Beyer

It's crazy. We've lived here 27 years. We were married this year and for the first 25, we never had a problem, but we've had chickens almost the whole time. And in the last two years, it's just boom, boom, over and over and over. And I think it's just, we're getting overpopulated and the bears got a taste for chicken and they're running out...