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.

12 months of Greening - Organic October + No Heating!

I didn't do a 12 months of Greening post last month, oops!  But I posted a bit about it on my Slow Living post.

This month we've dubbed Organic October.  We're trying to buy (or at least consider buying) organic products where possible, and also trying to use more organic practises in the garden.  The word trying is important here and I'll explain why down lower.

We've spent quite a bit of time removing chemicals from our bathroom and our laundry this year, and have been cooking from scratch a lot more so that we are removing much of the chemicals from what we eat.  This month, we're delving a little deeper and removing those unseen chemicals from the fruits, vegetables and grains we eat by choosing (where feasible) organic options.  I'm no expert on organics, but my take on it is that the chemicals that are added during the growing of non-organic products are used to make them grow faster, remove pests and weeds etc.  These chemicals come through to us, the consumer in small amounts, but they also damage the ecosystem around the land in which the product was grown, and this environment impact is the most important factor for us.

I don't have easy access to an organic green grocer, so I am choosing organic labelled products where I can, and otherwise, using mostly our own food crops, or choosing in season foods.  I figure that many of the chemicals that are used on our foods are to either grow them out of season or to store them for selling out of season.  Buying in season foods is also cheaper and they taste better, a win-win.  The only challenge in buying only foods in season is that they are not always the foods my kids like to eat.  For example, I try to get the kids to eat fruit each day, but they have never been big citrus fans, so winter through to now is a tough time to find in season fruits.  But as they get older and their understanding of this grows, they're more willing to try, and this week we have finally won the "you will try and you will like mandarins" battle - woohoo!

We're also trying some other things such as organic baking products and cereals.  Unfortunately, some of these are more than 4 times the price of the non-organic variety.  I understand why, and truly want to support organic producers so that these prices can come down, but this isn't always easy on the budget, so I do what I can, and sometimes the weekly shop just won't allow the added expense.  Some items however we now only buy organic - like tea and coffee.  This feels like a good change.

In the garden, I'm also trying to go organic.  I have always used chemicals sparingly, but this year they are only used as a last resort.  Sadly, I've had to cave on this already with the use of some snail bait.  As I've mentioned, I am trying to grow as many of my veg from seed as possible.  I have started transplanting out into the garden, and despite all of my organic efforts (beer traps + egg shells + coffee spray + coffee grinds + morning snail and slug massacres), I have still heartbreakingly found whole seedlings chomped through overnight.  I decided that it was expecting too much to tackle both fronts (seeds and completely organics), so have used a small amount of snail and slug pellets (the kind that say they won't hurt other animals) just to protect the seedlings.  All other chemicals have been banned from the garden though.

BONUS CHALLENGE

In addition to our regular monthly challenges, we decided earlier in the year to make our mid-autumn and mid-spring months no heating and cooling months.  October is therefore one of them.  So in addition to our organic challenges, this month we have turned off our heater at the meter box and banned all other heaters and fans.  This would be fine if the weather was always Spring like, but the last few days have given us f-f-f-freeeeezing evenings!  We've toughed it out though, snuggling up in blankets, slippers and enjoying our hot water bottles and warm drinks.  Why would we do this?  partly because we like the challenge, partly to save power and therefore greenhouse emissions (and a few dollars) and partly to remind us that heating and cooling are a luxury that we can (at times) live without.  Living in southern Victoria means we get quite cold Winters, and I think it would be unhealthy to live without heating all the time, and there are a couple of days a year when the air-conditioner being used for just a little while means we can continue to function.  But a lot of the time, it is possible to be heater and cooler free.

Perhaps you'd like to join us on one or more of our challenges this month?  Let me know if you do and how you go.

The Ole Snail Inn

 

Ah snails.... I once collected them (to use in a university experiment) on top of my akubra hat while walking in the rain.  Did you know that you don't need ethics approval to use snails in experiments? Not that I hurt them, just wanted to know whether they would eat my native tree leaves. They didn't, but they do eat my vegie seedlings these days.

 

I've tried being organic in my garden, but snails have always beaten me. The last couple of years I've used snail bait just so I could get some veg. This year however, I don't want to. I'd like to go out and have a chat with the snails and explain what they can and can't eat, but I don't speak gastropodian. So I have to deter or kill them some other way.

 

I've decided to take a threefold plan of attack. Method one is gumboot stomping. I rather like this one. I go out in the garden on damp mornings in my gumboots (preferably with a cuppa and still in my Pjs, it works better) and I stomp on any snails I find. They're easy to find too - on the driveway and lawns making their way back to shelter after munching plants all night. I used to collect them for my chooks instead, but my chooks are real Aussie girls and don't go for French food.

 

Method two is untried, but i'll give it a go. I found this method in Jackie French's 'Earth Gardener's Companion'. You collect a few snails in a bucket, pour over boiling water to kill then and then leave them in the wate for a few days to ferment. Then you spray the fermented snail soup on and around the vegie garden to detract the soup-ees friends. Ewwww.... But i'll give it a go. (you need to respray every time it rains or there is a heavy dew though).

 

My third method is the good old beer method. If you don't know about this, basically, snails are like most men - they are crazy for beer. The very smell of the stuff makes them come running (well, sort of). But, being gastropods, they're not overly bright (like some men) and given a puddle of beer, they will dive right in, get drunk/drown and die. This is supposed to be a good and effective way to rid your garden of the buggers, but if you just put beer out in a saucer, it'll evaporate on hot days or get washed away on rainy days. So some clever person invented these:

image from here, where the price tag isn't too high :)

Nice huh? But they come with a price tag, so I'm not keen. Some other smart cookie came up with this:

Image from here, with a tutorial if you like them.

But we don't drink much soft drink and I have other uses for the soft drink bottles we do use. So I came up with this:

 

We have heaps of milk bottles, so I can make heaps of these and they only take 2 minutes to make. Here's how.
 

• Cut the bottom 5cm or so off the bottle with scissors or a sharp knife.
• On the top part of the bottle, cut doors for the snails that are about 8cm high on each side.
• Add a jaunty sign to welcome snails in (or not....).

• You're done!
• To use it, bury the base into the soil near your seedlings so the top is near the soil top.

• Pour in some beer (perhaps some of your husbands home brew?).

• Push the top of the bottle in.
• And wait.

 

Hopefully the next day you'll find smiling dead snails in there.

 

Have fun!

 

PS. If you don't have beer, you can use a mix of yeast, sugar and water. Snails are dumb, they won't know the difference.