Meet the Chickens of Smithycroft House
With thanks to Susan Waldron and you can visit Krissy and her buddies in their beautiful garden at Pettinain in Lanarkshire on 7th June and 23 August 2026 - come and say hello!
Hello, my name is Krissy Hinde - the chicken, not the pop star… although I do think my fringe is better than hers. My Sunday name is Chrysanthemum, and my four buddies are Marigold, Pear, Peach and Apricot. There is something afoot in my garden: my keepers, Susan and Fin seem to be frenetically working outside, every hour that it is not raining, and sometimes in the rain. They tell me they there are a lot of people coming to visit their (my) garden soon, and we chooks must be on our best behaviour.
The garden is a special place to me. It's where I live, sleep, eat, and have fun. In turn I keep the slugs down and produce lots of eggs and help with the grass cutting…I love a freshly cut lawn as small blades of glass as easier to eat, and as the chlorophyll is great for the yolks, my keepers love my eggs.
Susan tells me that some people may visit on June 7th as they may be interested in seeing how to garden with roaming chickens. Well, I tell you – we are proud of the garden and don’t set out to damage it. Honestly, we don't make much of a mess and our poo is great for the compost bin. Admittedly, we are fenced out of the vegetable patch, not allowed in the greenhouses, and Susan does have to spend a bit of time protecting new small plants that go in. This is not generally because we eat them …rather than we might run across the garden and excitement and trample them, but once they're established there's absolutely no problem.
Susan is a bit annoyed this year because some of us (not me), have eaten her sweet peas and they were unprotected as she did not expect this. I can understand her annoyance as Susan’s sweet peas are usually gorgeous, and she likes to grow them to give to friends. Also, she is about to net the gooseberries….damn her. We love a gooseberry even before ripe and last year we worked out how to land on the bushes to get the biggest berries at the top! We don’t eat the gooseberry saw-fly as their stripping of foliage helps us see the berries better. Chicken win-win!
What else can I tell you about the garden? I like the pond. It's actually 1.5 meters deep in the middle. We drink out of it when we can't be bothered to go to many of the other places of clean water that Susan leaves around the garden, and I like to watch the bees land on the surface and rest on the small floating plants while they have a drink. Also there is a stunning beech hedge that Fin and Susan planted at the same time they first got chickens. It creates a microclimate, but it also provides shade for us, and on sunny days we love to try and make a dust bath in front of it …ruining the lawn they say, but that is a matter of opinion.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello. There's me and my 4 friends. None of them are as pretty as me, but we'd all love to see you on the 7th of June at Smithycroft House in Pettinain. If you're coming to visit, please bring us some grapes (but not dogs as they scare us). There will be cream teas, so if visitor numbers are high – plenty of grapes; if visitor numbers of low - plenty of scones for us. Another chicken win-win!
