Chicks

The school have arranged for chicken eggs in an incubator to be kept at the back of the church for ten days. They started hatching last night and by the time we arrived for Oasis there were seven little bundles of fluff in there. Although the main church is usually restricted to school use in the day we were able to bring our toddlers through to take a look. Mine was very excited about 'chicks hatchin in their eggs'.

Several of the adults present said sights like that made them think about turning vegetarian! I suppose that was the sort of thing that turned me vegetarian well over twenty years ago but these days I feel eating other animals is natural, it's just the way most of them are treated that makes me not buy them. More recently concern about the climate has been an extra consideration (a recent Swedish study compared the greenhouse gas emissions caused in the making of four meals and found that a vegetarian meal with local ingredients caused 190g CO2 whereas a meat based meal with mostly imported ingredients caused 1800g. Moreover the World Bank says recent destruction of the Amazon rainforest has been 'basically caused' by beef production - much of that eaten in the UK). These particular chicks are destined to return to their parents' organic farm unless the school is persuaded to keep them.

On the subject of chicks, in the photo you can just about see one of the two bird boxes I put up outside the church on Sunday (well, put up with some help from Richard and Mark as I am very incompetent with hammers). The most visible is a robin box and the one further back is supposed to attract bluetits etc. I know there is a risk of them being vandalised but decided to be optimistic and bought FSC certified boxes from the RSPB which seemed the greenest option in this context.