Around the Garden right now

We're about to enter the third calendar month of autumn. You wouldn't guess it by looking at my tank levels or popping a spade into the ground - it's still way too dry, but the crisp mornings and the need to wear a jumper and socks tells me it really is.

It's dry, but we've had some rain. Weed seedlings are starting to show their heads in the 'lawn' areas and while my plants still look forward to a drink of carted grey water, they would survive without it.

This autumn I feel like I am living in and for the garden. I've spent countless hours preserving the fruit crops we grew or were gifted and have been enjoying celery, carrots, lettuce, herbs, tomatoes (yes still), silverbeet and herbs in our meals. I can see that there will be a small gap in harvest soon though, and will look into fixing that gap next year.

I'm growing seedlings of artichokes, pak choi, kale and purple sprouting broccoli, some more successfully than others, but I'm learning more each day, and getting better gradually at this growing from seed business.



Seedlings on the verandah.

Planted in the garden over the last month or so, I have broad beans, peas, sugar snap peas, snow peas, brocoletti, carrots, lettuce, wong bok cabbages, beetroot, garlic (two varieties), red onions, spring onions and carrots.



Seedlings doing well in the garden under a canopy of chicken wire to keep off cats and ducks

Around other parts of the garden, I've planted another olive tree, an almond tree, a mandarin and another feijoa. I've also added more herbs to my potted herb garden, helped 'self sow' silverbeet and calendula and sprinkled seeds of chamomile.



Garlic doing very well.

Our Muscovy ducks, Daisy (who may be Donald) and Peach, follow me everywhere in the front yard, chatting away and hoping I'll throw a snail or two their way. I've learnt that they love lettuce and beetroot leaves, and therefore, if I want to grow them for us to eat, they'll need to be planted beyond their reach.



I was sitting on the verandah writing this, so they joined me!

Also in the front, I'm working on a spot of pruning and taming the grass runners that are doing extremely well and reeking havoc around trees.

Out the back, Buddy is my constant companion as I peruse the works in progress. It looks messy now, but soon, our backyard area will be split by a fence. Inside that fence will be a water tank on a stand, the stand will become a shelter for our miniature goat, Jorgie, and her kid (which she should be getting pregnant with about now) when they come to live with us in September.


Behind Buddy, you can make out the holes for the tank stand and the pile of dirt we've dug out so far.

Next to the goat yard will be a new shed. The shed will be for feed storage with a section set up as my dairy. And all the way around the fence, I'll be planting goat friendly plants such as roses, lavender, silverbeet, wormwood, nasturtiums, chamomile and rosemary. These fragrant and pretty plants will look and smell lovely in the garden that will be below our washing line, and as they grow tendrils through the mesh wire of the goats fence, they'll be able to nibble away.

Introducing Jorgie, our miniature goat who will continue to live on the stud farm in Portland until she's had her kid.

The chooks are doing well too, they're laying a bit less now, but I still bring in eggs each day. They are enjoying scratching through weeds, devouring the sprouted wheat feed and picking at their garden which I planted back in march in an old guinea pig hutch so they can pick, but not destroy, the silverbeet, nasturtiums and calendula growing in there.



Standing on their very own garden.

So that's what's happening around here. On Friday, we'll take delivery of the tank and fencing materials so the next part of construction can happen. I'll keep you updated!

Not a butcher

Remember these guys?

Well they grew up. They grew up into beautiful big roosters of various colours. They were quite friendly and lived peacefully in a bachelor coop with younger roosters that have gradually come to join them. I enjoyed raising them, but as was always the intention, the time came for them to be processed into healthy, lean, almost free range and extremely low food miles meat for our freezer.

We've processed a few batches now, and we're getting better at it.  Each time, we learn something new and do the job cleaner, quicker and with less waste.

The adjustments we made to the process this time were to put each of the roosters (three this time - two of ours and a donated Rhode Island Red), into an empty feed bag each when we caught them. Previously we've just put them all into a box and once we had one escape and had to chase him round the backyard - not conducive to stress free meat! By placing them in the dark bags, they stayed still and calm until their turn came. We only ever catch then when we are completely ready, so they are in the bags a maximum of 10 minutes.

The other change was to add a few drops of dish detergent to the scalding water we use before plucking. I don't know if it helped - the first two were relatively easy to pluck, but the third one wasn't. I think the water was too cold, but basically, he ended up skinned instead of plucked. This seemed like a bad thing, but ended up good.

Now I'm not a butcher, and I actually don't like handling meat, but I believe humans should be omnivores, I believe we should eat humanely raised and killed meat and I am the only one in our house likely to do any butchering.  So I set to preparing our roosters for the freezer. Previously, I've just cleaned them all up and frozen them whole. And previously, we've fed the necks to the dog, but all the feathers, guts etc have been thrown out. Not this time. This time, we reserved the necks for Buddy, I have frozen the livers in a container to become pâté when we have enough (I'll add more each time we do this) and the guts and feathers were buried near one of our fruit trees to act as a blood and bone fertiliser.

The rest of the chicken, I brought inside. The Rhode Island Red was plump and lovely looking, so after a clean, he was left in tact to become a roast. The other two were not so 'roast chicken' looking, so I had a go at jointing them. I can't say I ended up with the neatest cuts of meat, but I did put a bag of skinless/boneless breast fillets, a bag of skinless/boneless thigh fillets and a bag of legs and wings into the freezer. Then, not wanting to waste anything, the carcasses went into the crock cooker with a couple of litres of water for two days. Yesterday, I strained it, picked the remaining meat from the bones and gave the bones to the chooks to pick at (that made me feel weird, but I didn't want to just throw them out! Besides, they do eat meat scraps from the chook bucket usually....).

The scraps of meat were added to a pasta dish last night, and the stock filled three large mason jars, which I bravely pressure cooked using my pressure canner for the first time. I was petrified of using it, but in the end, it wasn't too hard, and I now have three meals worth of stock added to my overflowing pantry.

So, despite the fact that I'm not a butcher, I managed to grow healthy, happy roosters and turn those three roosters into at least 10 meals for our family, plus bones for the dog and pâté. And not one bit of those roosters went to waste, or left the property.

Happy mini farmers.

DIY chook food

Up until recently, we fed our chooks on pellets. Layer pellets for the main flock, and pullet starter/grower for the young. But with so many chooks now hanging around, and my ever present 'could we DIY this?' attitude, I began looking for an alternative.

I discovered fodder systems and was pretty impressed. A fodder system is basically growing sprouts for your livestock. You can grow all sorts of things, but wheat is readily available and sprouts well, so that's what I use. By sprouting the grains, you change the chemical makeup of the material, thereby, increasing the available nutrients for your animals. You also increase the quantity of food, and in doing so, feed your animals less and save money!! As added bonuses, you know exactly what you're feeding your animals (and therefore what you're eating in your eggs/meat) and by buying less bags of pellets, you save on packaging. Hooray!

Wheat grains contain Vitamin B,C and E, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Pantothenic Acid, Phosphorus, Amino Acids.  By sprouting the grains, your animals get all of that PLUS vitamins A and K, Chlorophyll, Lecithin, Potassium and trace elements.  And the protein value of the feed goes from 10% to 30% (reference).

 

Lots of people grow fodder, if you want to do it, hunt around the Internet and read some other blog posts. But here is how we I do it.

For one smallish flock of birds (ie. for either my 7 roosters and 2 ducks of my 10 layers), a tray of food a day (plus some other things -see below) is a good start. So for each flock you need to set up a system. Each system needs a container with a lid (ice cream containers work well), 7-9 kitty litter trays (or similar), some old net curtains and somewhere to keep your system.

My fodder system is made of lots of bits of recycled timber and sits on the verandah.
Total cost for set up was about $30

Storing your system on open shelves is a good idea as the water used to water the top trays trickles down and waters the trays below.  You could use wire shelves from the shop, or if, like me, you believe things should be as cheap and recycled as possible, grab some pallets and scrap timber and custom make one!

I had helpers while making my pallet shelving system :)

Take your kitty litter trays and drill drainage holes in the bottom of them. Make sure you put in quite a few, but keep the holes smaller than a grain of wheat! I experimented with how many trays and found 8 is good. Apparently the fodder has the most nutrients between day 6 and 8 and after that it gains nothing and may start losing nutrients as the grass grows.

Now to grow the fodder. On day 1, put two cups of wheat into your lidded container. Cover it with water. After 8 hours (or overnight), tip the contents into your first litter tray and spread out the soaked grains. Repeat this step every day.  Use your net curtain to drape over your trays or the sparrows will find them and get very fat on your efforts (yep, speaking from experience!).

Each day, water your trays to keep them moist, but not soggy. In cool wet weather, I find once a day is enough, but on hot dry days, you need to water more often.

Day 1: Soaked grains

Day 3: Starting to grow roots

Day 5: A nice green flush

Day 8: Ready to feed!

Try not to disturb your growing wheat - it slows down the growth and you end up with messy crops. By day three you will see the wheat layer is starting to bulge and "puff" us as the roots grow. By day six, things are turning green. And by day 8 you'll have a lovely grassy crop. Keep away any wheat grass smoothie drinking folk and prepare to feed out your first crop!

The wheat will have grown into a slab of roots, shoots and grainy bits. Break it up and feed it out. Different animals treat it differently, but they all seem to like it.

I started with one system and have just started a second. Once we get our goats, I'll probably do three. And remember if you have other herbivores (guinea pigs, horses, rabbits etc), this makes a good feed for them too.

I do supplement the feed. The ducks free range and pig out on snails and slugs and the occasional scrap. All of the chooks get kitchen scraps. The meat chickens also get a whey and oat porridge (or porridge and yoghurt) to fatten them and the layers get a handful of layers pellets and shell grit. I hope to get rid of the layers pellets eventually though and replace the necessary nutrients in them with more home grown and natural foods.

Do you grow or cook for your animals?  Would love to hear about it!  And if you have any questions about this, ask away!

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.

Our life less ordinary

If someone had asked me ten years ago, what I would do with a weekend in 2013, I don't know what I would have told them. I probably would have predicted spending it with Stu - right. I might have hoped I would have a couple of kids in tow - right again (though I would not have predicted the identical twin boys I ended up with!). But as for the rest....? What I do know is that there is NO WAY I would have predicted the list of things I've been up to with my little family this weekend!

Friday saw me planting out some more seeds in my vegie garden, hanging out with the kids at home and studying the new fitness program I'll be teaching next term. That night, we met Stu in Warrnambool to work on our tiny school's fabulous, parent run, pancake stall at the night markets. We worked really hard, but it was so much fun!

Saturday morning found us in the garden fixing a gate to stop our over friendly chooks camping on the back door step (and possibly being hurt by the dogs). Mum stopped in to say hi, then later, in the spirit of tiny towns, one of our friends and neighbours dropped in for a cuppa. We emptied our waterless toilet and made some adjustments, and spent some family time discussing the possibility of getting a milking goat, and debating the best solar power option.

That night, after a homemade curry packed with homegrown veg, I dressed up in a belly baring costume, did my hair, put on too much makeup and went to a local restaurant. It was completely booked out, and I was there to belly dance.... people really enjoyed watching me (and my dance buddy) performing the dances I had choreographed.... AND I got paid for doing it!  Can you believe that?!

A job as a belly dancer? !  I never would have guessed that one!

After dancing, I came home to a peaceful home (it was screen free Saturday of course) and cooled down with a homemade apple cider, hanging out with Stu and our books for a quiet night.

Early this morning, I was out and about with Stu for a run - yep, a run! Stu is helping build up my running stamina. Once I was spent, I was home for some yoga before breakfast.

The rest of the morning was spent processing three of our home raised chickens for the freezer - a job that, while not exactly pleasant, was surprisingly satisfying and not as horrible as either of us expected it to be.

This afternoon, I have watched brand new chickens hatch, completed paperwork for this terms belly dance classes, crocheted a small gift and baked bread for the next couple of days. And while I was doing that, Stu was working on the belly dance website and the kids were enjoying their favourite thing - time together at home to just play.



Hatchlings!  Six hatched and at least two more on the way!

I'm exhausted! But would I change a thing? No way! And I would love to know what I'll be up to 10 years from now.



Around our place today

More presents are appearing daily beneath the Christmas tree.  We're all getting very excited!

Christmas baking and lots of it.

My hip scarves have been hung up after completing my fifth year working as a belly dancer/teacher.  I'll take a bit of a break, and then back to it for next year which will be even better and brighter.

My young chickens are getting BIG!  These in the front are about 9 weeks old, and the smaller ones with their mum in the background are about 5 weeks old.

The vegie garden is thriving and we're eating zucchinis.

And I have no pictures, but Stu is starting his new job today which is very exciting, and the kids are finishing up at school this week.

What's happening at your house today?

Tuesday garden journal

First of all, I want to say thank you for the replies on the blog and by email to my post yesterday.  It is lovely to hear peoples words of support and stories of others in the same situation.  I think it is wonderful to be able to choose live our lives this way, and hope that others understand that their choices are theirs and ours are ours.

~~

Onto today's post.  Linking up again with Squiggly Rainbow for a garden journal!

I've decided not to tell you about all of the work happening in the vegie gardens or on the pizza oven this week, and instead to share with you some little things that make me smile out in the garden at the moment.

I love the borage that is growing wild in my herb garden area. Stu hates its wildness. I love its wildness, its pretty blue flowers and the bees that it attracts. When its wildness gets too much, I rip it out and add it to the compost where it helps to speed up composting.

We have two Virgilia trees in our front garden that we planted there about 6 years ago.  They grew rapidly and now give our home its beautiful leafy look and our front garden lots of privacy from the road.  Each Spring they change from leafy green to delicate pink as they flower profusely, though strangely, one at a time.  The first is pretty pink now.

Our beautiful hen Specks hatched her adopted eggs this week!  We have 6 adorable fluffy black and speckled chickens.  They are safely enclosed in a pen near the vegie gardens and we are all loving watching their antics.

Hoping your Spring garden is making you smile too.
xo

Tuesday garden journal

Linking up again this morning for the Tuesday garden journal with squiggly rainbow.....

This week has been typically spring like - perfect sunshiney warmth one day, wintery wind, rain and cold the next.  This would be fine if the weather would work with our plans, but it isn't.  We get a beautiful day for a family visit (which we spent much of inside drinking tea and chatting while the baby was sleeping), and then rain and wind when we want to build the pizza oven!  Needless to say, we haven't got as much done outside as we wanted to.

We have started the pizza oven plinth though.  We built two of the levels of besser blocks before the rain set in and it all had to be left covered with a tarp.  We're getting better at it as we go, but I will just say that I am not making a career change to brick laying and I wouldn't hire me to build your next home. :)

In the vegie garden, I've continued to plant out a few seedlings as they have reached a good size.  I have been giving them a dose of seasol and popping a cloche over them and the growth following transplant has been huge, from 2 true leaves to 4 or more in a few days!

Yesterday I pulled out a couple of shrubs along the front fence that were weedy or struggling.  They were also right next to the veg beds in the part of our garden that I one day hope will be all edible.  I am going to plant sunflowers and other beneficial flowers and things along there, I am just holding off as I want to buy the seeds when we visit the Garden of St Erth in a couple of weeks.

In chook news, our last remaining "old girl" (a rescued ISA who was about 6 years old) got sick.  We decided that given her age and the fact that our treatments weren't working to help her, that it was kinder to put her down.  Stu helped me as I found it tougher to put down a sick old girl than a rooster for the pot.  We feel we did the right thing and she went peacefully.  In happier news, we have gone from getting two eggs a day to getting four as the weather is warmer.  We now get a brown, a white, a cream and a mini bantam egg each day.  Love my chooks.

 

That's about the wrap up.  I apologise for barely getting here to post, but as you can see, we're rather busy at the moment, so I post when I can.  I hope you're having a good week too.

 

Tuesday Garden Journal

Rach from Squiggly Rainbow stopped by here on the weekend and invited me to share in the Tuesday Garden Journal linkup she has started.  I'm a big fan of linkups :)  and I have started to browse through her blog and it looks like another good one - stop writing such lovely blogs people!  I'm running out of time to work LOL

So I'm going to try and join in with this Garden Journal on a weekly basis......  so here goes.

We've been very busy in the garden this week.  Its Spring, of course we have!

I have just finished making this arch in my vegie patch which I will use for growing cucumbers over.

I found these cheeky little tomato seedlings sprouting in the veg beds, and have plucked them out and potted them up.  Based on their location and what was growing there last year, these will be a delicious cherry tomato.  A few plants for me, a few for mum.  By the way, can you see the chicken wire loosely covering them?  That has to be all over my garden beds as we have cats and they love nothing better than well tilled soil for digging in.

The seedlings are going really well in the cold frame.  I love seeing the first hints of green each time a new variety pops through and cheer them on while they grow first leaves and then true leaves.  The zucchinis and pumpkins are nearly ready to go out and then will be protected from frosts by cloches in the garden.

Out in the chook area, Specks is all settled in the old dog kennel with 11 eggs from my mum's farm under her.  With a bit of luck we'll have little chicks in a couple of weeks.

Materials are piling up for the building of the pizza oven.  These concrete blocks came home yesterday and Stu will be getting more supplies after work today.  The concrete we laid on the weekend is dry now, so we will hopefully start the building tomorrow evening.

The sun is out and everywhere I walk I find animals enjoying the sunshine - chooks, bees, dogs, insects, snails (they don't get to stay though) and cats.  They all love our springtime garden as much as I do.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else is up to in their gardens this week.

A busy weekend and a stingy experiment!

We have just had a whirlwind of a weekend!

From belly dance haflas and family get togethers to building in the garden.  Today we're all tired, but looking forward to another week of busy-ness.

On Saturday, my teenage brother played in his football grand final.  The boys and I didn't go as we would have had to leave too early in the morning following a late night, but Stu went to support him on our behalf.  Sadly, the team didn't win, but it sounds like everyone had a good morning.

In the afternoon, we all met up at my mum's farm.  They have 50 acres which is mostly taken up with rather a lot of horses (my mum and sister are very into showing, breeding and all things horsey).  But 50 acres is a lot of space for a hobby type of farm, and they also have plenty of other farm animals.  It was a great visit - lots of catching up with everyone as my other brother and sister in law had also come over for the afternoon.   Mum made one of her delicious (if eclectic) feasts and we even managed to chat to my Grandad in the UK via skype.  It was one of those family events that felt comfortable and warm.

I managed to come home with a good range of "souvenirs" too - some poly pipe to support my cucumber arch, some fertile eggs to put under my clucky hen, some straw for topping up the nesting boxes, a dozen duck eggs, a pile of books for me and the bookworm kids and a bag of stinging nettles.  Mum thought I was crazy to turn down her offer of silverbeet and take some of her "weeds" instead, but I've been reading so many things about nettles and watching TV shows featuring them - I just had to give them a go!

A somewhat blurry (sorry!) photo of my nettles.

I didn't get a chance to cook with the nettles yesterday as we were out in the garden getting the pizza oven project started.  This involved fixing the wheelbarrow and then mixing up some concrete and screeding off the top of the old garage slab that we'll be building it on.  We have no concrete experience (other than the odd rapid set in the post hole use), and it took a lot of research to even get to this point, and I'm not sure we've done a great job - but it is done!  And tomorrow evening we will hopefully lay the first course or two of concrete besser blocks that will form the plinth for the oven.  We've found this project interesting so far as there are just sooooo many ways people have built woodfired ovens that we have had to sift through all the books and blog posts and come up with a unique plan that is a combination of all the methods we've read about.  This is going to be a steep learning curve, but the aim is to have it ready for a party we're having in November - fingers crossed and I will keep you posted with updates as we build. 

We were also brewing yesterday - bottling the first batch of alcoholic ginger beer (which smells and tastes divine! Can't wait for it to be finished!), and loading up the fermenter with another batch of beer.

16 bottles of ginger beer..... mmmmmmm.....

Back to the nettles though.  I braved them today and used them to cook tea.  They were actually very easy to use and quite tasty.  I simply put on gloves and pulled the leaves off the stems.  I threw the stems out and blanched the leaves.  The sting is all gone when they are cooked.  The cooking water I tried some of as a tea - it has a real earthy flavour with a hint of fishyness.  I can't say I loved it, but it was drinkable and apparently extremely healthy.  The nettles, I mixed with some finely chopped mushrooms, sour cream and grated cheese and used as a ravioli stuffing for pasta made with mum's duck eggs.  The verdict?  Yum!  They were really good!  And the greeness of the nettles is better than anything else I've ever seen.  We'll be revisiting this weed again for sure.

Nettle and mushroom ravioli ready for folding

How was your weekend? 
Have you ever eaten nettles?  How?

The things we're doing.....

I felt that I had nothing to blog yesterday or today.  It felt a lot like this:

"What have you been up to lately?" asks friend/family member/random acquaintance bumped into

"ummmm..... not a lot really" answered, while thinking "But I have been busy just living!  I've been doing so much, but feel like I have nothing to report - how is that possible?!"

So, I thought I would share a little list of the 'not a lot really' things that we've been up to.

• Stu and I re-taught ourselves how to play Gin Rummy and played late Saturday night while drinking Baileys.
• I danced at an 80th birthday party, where the guest of honour was thrilled to have us there and danced with us for 10 minutes.  It was the best gig ever!
• I started to hack into the pittosporum hedge that runs the side of our block.   We're going to gradually replace it with citrus and avocado trees which will also give privacy but with the added bonus of food.
• I hosted the AGM for our belly dance group at our house.  It was a pretty straightforward meeting, but the afternoon tea and company was exceptionally good.
• I found some kids yoga sessions on You tube and can't wait to share them with the boys.
• I've had each of the boys home sick from school for a day.  Neither of them were terribly sick, but a day on their own/with me seems to have been good for them.
• I received my Digger's club order.  I was so excited!  I have now planted my tammarillo tree and my kiwiberry and am looking forward to starting to plant my huge pile of seeds.
• I've discovered (a bit late) River Cottage and am enjoying watching the first season on DVD with the whole family.
• I enjoyed having my teenage brother stay with us for last week while he did work experience.
• I have been talking to my sister-in-law regularly for baby updates.  I am getting very excited about its upcoming arrival.
• My chooks are slowly starting to lay again as the days are getting slowly longer - an egg a day this past week.
• I started washing my face with honey as I had run out of cleanser and needed an alternative.  I love it!
• Stu has been planning and thinking a lot about his brew shed and we've been plotting to use homemade alternatives for expensive items he'll need.

See.... not much, but a lot at the same time.  Thanks for listening :)

Chook happenings

I've been busy with the chooks the last few days. 

The first big chicken event came about because one of the school's roosters had started to attack people (there were too many roosters in the pen) and needed to be "dealt with".  My friend who cares for the school's chooks had accidently let him out of the pen when she was trying to catch him, and he spent a happy couple of days living behind our back fence, perving on our hens and waking Stu and I up early with his crowing.  When he moved himself into our front garden, I rang my friend to ask if I could "deal with him" for her.  You see, I have plans to start raising and preparing our own chicken for eating and have been reading a lot about the process, but not having ever done it,  I saw him as a good opportunity to see if I had the stomach for it.  My friend was more than happy for me to take on the task and so I did.  I'm not going in to details, but I will just say that it is a physically hard thing to do!  I had steeled my mind to the process, so in that sense I was OK (this was a better option that him dying for nothing), but it was just plain hard work, and the rain didn't help much.  But I got the job done, and while I don't expect he will make a great roast, I will be making chicken soup this week.

It seems I have to stomach for preparing my own chicken for the table.  My reasons are clear in my head (we have decided we are omnivores and need some meat in our diets, but would like to know our meat has had a happy, healthy life and minimise food miles), now I just have to work out the logistics of the process.

In lighter, happier, more vegetarian friendly chicken news, we bought ourselves some new egg laying girls yesterday! 

We went on a road trip with my Mum and teenage brother and sister to visit my Grandma.  We had a lovely day, lunching, op-shopping and visiting the Maritime museum and then stopped off at a local free-range egg farm on the way home.

L&J with my Grandma in the whale skeleton at the Maritime Museum

There were some dramas at the farm (we won't be going back there!) but we managed to leave with 4 new Isa Brown hens for us and 4 for my Mum.  By new, I mean 18month old girls who have been busily laying for the shops for a while and are just starting to reduce their productivity.  They are perfect for us though as we should get just the right amount of eggs from them.

We introduced them to our other girls (who have not been laying at all) when we got home and they had a few spats and then settled down to eat together.  I went out after dark and collected them from their various stupid roosting places (none inside!) and put them into the house.

They are very quiet and happy to be handled and stay near me chatting away peacefully.  But they are not particularly attractive (and camera shy too!), but nothing a few months of the good life won't fix.  They seem to be settling in so nicely this morning.....

These two came to chat to me at the back fence

And this one likes this shrub to hide in

One clever hen found the nesting boxes in my (recycled pallet) chook house and made herself comfy.......

And produced this!

Hooray!  Fresh eggs on the Wright household again!