Around our mini farm.....




I haven't done much in the way of a garden round up for ages.

There's been lots going on.

We've been cutting out the shrubs that haven't survived the long dry summer.  Many of them are being cut up into workable sized sticks for a project we have in mind.

We've been out and measured our whole block.  We drew a plan of all the permanent structures and are using it to plan the upcoming changes.  A fence here, goat pen there, a new tank and a milking shelter.  How many more fruit trees can we put in?  And where will we plant next years tomatoes?  We're continuing to work on changing what was a fairly blank 1/4 acre block when we moved here into a real food forest that will be both fun and productive. 

 

Our young hens have started to lay eggs of various shapes, sizes and colour.  One of the new layers we had thought was a rooster and was destined for other things - she started laying just in time :)  Oh, and that teeny tiny brown egg down there, believe it or not had two yolks in it!

 

 

 

A friend gifted us four young pure bred barneveldor roosters.  She had hatched them and only wanted hens.  The roosters were destined for the rubbish, so we'll put them to better use.  Three are still in our rooster pen to be fattened.  One lucky rooster became our keeper.

 

Anna, Rose, Lacey and Leah  (chicks hatched by us this year) have now joined our laying flock to make up ten hens.  They were then joined by Barney, the friendliest barneveldor rooster ever!  Plenty of eggs for us next year and more chicks too.

 

 

I've begun growing my own animal feed, working on a wheat sprouting fodder system.  It took a while to get it going, but now, for the cost of 9 kitty litter trays, I am able to sprout my wheat for some of our poultry, doubling the food quantity and halving my feed costs.  (I'll write more on this soon).

 

Summer crops have been removed from half of our vegie gardens and seeds have been sown for winter veg - some direct, others in punnets.  They're now beginning to show their heads above the soil.  The other beds will be done in the weeks following Easter.

 

We have finally had rain.  Not really enough to make the soil moist or to fill the tanks, but to relieve some of that pressure.  We can now shower for normal lengths of time (ie. 2-3minutes instead of 30 seconds!) and the vegies look much happier.

 

We decided that we couldn't eat the hens that grew from our chicken project and we had too many to keep them all, so we struck a deal with my mum.  She wanted more hens and will give us some of her unwanted roosters.  We took four hens over last week and came home, not with roosters, but with these two lovely baby muscovy ducks.  Daisy (the white and grey) and Peach (the dark one) will be the snail patrol this year - just as soon as we've fenced their area better.  In the meantime, I am hunting snails and delivering them - they love them!  Hooray!

We've also started work on Hurley's garden and have planted out a new mandarin tree, a second fejoia and a second olive tree.  All of our apples were blown off the tree last week and we've been loving munching our delicious pink ladies and I've also been using them for baking and have dried a few jars for our muesli.

We're all loving the journey that we're on in our garden.  We toy with the word permaculture, but I'm not knowledgable enough in it yet to feel confident using the word.  In the meantime, we call it our mini farm, and that makes me smile.