This was a new mission with the Equal Art HenPower Project at Wood Green in Gateshead. HenPower engages older people in arts activities and hen-keeping to promote health and wellbeing as reducing loneliness. Wood Green is a retirement community where the project started before being adopted in other areas of the country! They now have 25 hens! The first task they wanted us to help with was moving a shed, so it could be easily accessible from the path. The second task was laying a path inside one of the chicken coops to improve accessibly.

Carol Anne and I arrived first and cracked on starting to move the shed and levelling the ground at its new location. We pegged down the tarpaulin and clipping together the interlocking plastic floor tiles which led to the shed. We were quickly joined by Kate, Emma (who got slightly lost and ended up at a farm!) and Andrew (who ran all the way from Gateshead parkrun as the metro was off!). All five of us turned and moved the shed into its new position. Carol Anne was even lifted off the floor as we pushed the shed over!

I was super excited to meet the hens and got to hold a lovely hen called Rebecca. Carol Anne was not so keen! The hen’s approved of our handy work and a few of them started wandering over to where we had churned up the soil levelling the ground and we soon eating up all the worms we had exposed.

Next, we moved on to laying the path. We started digging up the paving stones in the coop to improve the path. Once these were removed we decide it was time for a break. The lovely task owner had left us bacon sandwiches and chocolate cake! They were shocked to learn that four out of five of us were vegetarian! Carol Anne tucked into a bacon sandwich and the rest of us had a cake (or two) with our tea. We also got to see some of the eggs the hens had laid.

We decide we better crack on with laying the path. The others dug the ground ready whilst I carried over the slabs. We were busy laying the slabs and using sand to fixes any wobbles, when we were interrupted by a lady with a medical emergency! Carol Anne did an awesome job looking after her and Kate and Emma helped support her child who were very distressed by the situation. We even fitted in another cup of tea before finishing off the path.

I hope we get invited back to paint the hen coops which we didn’t have time to do today so we can see our feathered friends again!