Happenings lately in our sunny strawbales:

Completely home-grown roast dinner:

Ours – potato, sweet potato, beetroot, pumpkin, spinach, chook.  Others (shared with us) – zucchini.

YUM! 

Chook wasn’t tough at all. 

Which is good, because another 2 will be processed to the freezer soon.

Harvest happenings:

That big-un is over 30cm across and weighed a good amount too.

Sweet potato soup was on the menu J!

Last week, we had a delivery of the good stuff:

4 m³ of Mumby Magic – and it will work its magic in our orchard as soon as we spread it out. 

Poor orchard got all put in without us mulching properly so it is well time for us to give the fruit trees some love before winter sets in.  Plus we will be establishing a food forest as the understory in there so we grow more greens and grains so we can free-range the chickens a bit more.  I can’t wait!

Now, lookie what my Honey has been doing!  J

Now if you know your paving, you will see that he has been cementing in the edges – and that can only mean one thing!!  The paving around the house is finished!!!  Yay!!!  Cue the party whistles, balloons and confetti canons J. 

The photo is actually Michael digging up the edges of the lawn so he can extend the retic right to the paving now (and further) because we can safely let it grow to the edges now. 

Pepper, of course, immortalised herself with wee footprints in the wet concrete edge:

And yesterday, I got serious with getting some winter crops started J.

Planted seedlings of broccolini, spinach, bok choy and cauliflower, plus seeds of similar greens:

We fenced up the garden beds to keep the voracious chooks out!  And did similar inside their run as I put down seeds to start their food forest in there:

Seems voracious birds are a feature at the moment.  Lookie at our sunflowers:

The parrots didn’t even wait until they were finished growing, these were all still green!  We will get no seeds from these few plants – lucky we have plenty others saved!

Chickens are coming and going around here:

Meet our new Silver Laced Wyandottes – 13 week old pullets (= girls!).

To replace chicken dinners...

Remember the one time when I said I had suspicions our first chookens were 6 out of 6 roosters?  Sadly, it is looking like I got it right…Fred, Twilight and Sunset all crowed.  At this stage only Midnight is getting the benefit of the doubt – she is the only one without saddle feathers, though she does have the longer neck feathers, sigh….!!!

Rosey Roger has a reprieve (because he is still gorgeous and still gentle – and I am on the hunt for some Brahma girls so some babies might happen).

(hmm, not his best side by the looks of this photo :-/)

Big Al has a reprieve so some baby Bantam Faverolles might happen, but then he will be re-homed because he is our earliest crow-er!!

And Peggy has a reprieve because (s)he is a Brahma and the breed is not common so I feel happier preserving it.  Peggy is yet to crow but those feathers are giving him away!

It has been a busy week of preserving here J. 

I took the hard way to preserve the tomatoes and made paste instead of my usual pasta sauce.

 

      

 

It was all going great until I popped into the shops and the edges burnt…still there was plenty to save and I do hope it has the intense tomato flavour I am looking for – will let you know.

Then there was the cucumber overload – turned into pickles.  First time I have ever made them, so I used this recipe:

I do like the thought of eating these in a week or so when they are ready.  And I liked going down to our local health store and buying all organic spices – I figured if I was going to preserve our organically grown cucumbers, I might as well do the right thing.

I also crushed this weeks’ dried egg shells for our girls.

And we had fun opening the gate so the chooks can explore their new run – first across the line are Midnight and Sunset J but it didn’t take the others long to follow.  They especially seem to love sitting under that wattle on the left.

Our beautiful rooster starting crowing this week too - quietly is how he does it – which could well be all he does as the Brahmas are known for being quiet chookens.  Let’s hope so or decisions will have to be made…and we all love Rosey Roger!

And yesterday, I made ricotta – my very first cheese J.

It was very easy and tastes yum!  Will be trying mascarpone next, then feta (the one I really want to make!).  And like all good cheese makers, I need to find a use for all that whey…

A few random photos of our recent days:

Our Italian helper cooked us pizza!  YUM.  We have never made or had ‘pizza blanca’ but that zucchini and yellow cherry tomatoes was absolutely delish.

I wasn’t entirely impressed at our youngest leaving her teddies outside – but she stacked them cutely in the wash basket – so that kinda made up for it ;-)

Trick question now – what don’t you see in this photo?

Answer – this huge pile of leaves!  And since it is raining today (yes summer rain, water our plants and fill our tank some, summer rain J), this will be on its way to composting down J.  But major bonus of course is that it is a major step in bushfire fuel reduction under our Marris.

The other major progress, with helpers, has been the chook run extension with cemented poles and buried scrap tiles and tin for foxy prevention.  The girls will be loving this when it is finished very soon J.  Michael is hoping to get the strainer wires on today, then it will be time to get the meshing on.

And our best fun was yesterday’s Sausage Dogs South West Bushfire Fundraiser.  There is no doubting the hilarity of 16 snaggy dogs running loose (in a fenced park of course).   Pepper was in doggy play heaven with friends to run with, and run with and run with!  She was a bit of a natural leader in the cheekiness stakes - and she won the ‘Running of the Weiners’ race too J.

 

A ‘catch-up’ post.

Our December was busy and we tried to fit in plenty of fun too – picking out our Christmas tree was a highlight.  We love buying it from the Lion’s Club, a great group to support – and didn’t it look wonderful?

 

And it sported a special, new decoration – Pepper’s First Christmas – bought for us by the biggest girl J:

We spent a few days away at a little old shack on the Murray River.  We *loved* relaxing on the jetty and watching the world go by by catching up on some reading – definitely one of my favourite things!

We made a trip back to the boys’ scout group for our younger one to receive his Silver Boomerang J.  And we made a trip back to a ‘pick-your-own’ raspberry farm on our last day – seriously yum!!!

Then the day after we got back home, we picked up our new chookens J.  Our friend in town had hatched 7 Bantam Faverelles and we chose 3 – two hens and a wee rooster.  Then as we were leaving, our friend mentioned that they were maybe looking for a new home for “Miss Clucky” as she didn’t really fit in with their flock – so we brought her home too.  She is a Bantam Plymoth Rock and has gone from being bottom of the pecking order there, to top chook here!  As she is fully mature and already laying, we thought this would be the case, even though our chooks, being standard size, are already bigger than her.  

We did what we could to get them used to each other to ease the transition and after a week, we let them roam together for an hour before bedtime, then the next day did the same thing but let them roost the night together and they are not too bad now.  She is still picking on the rest a bit and they are very wary of her, so we hope she will settle more when our girls are mature in a month or so.  The babies (the Bantam Faverelles) we also introduced the same way, but we keep them in their own sleeping cage.   Yesterday, the littlest one, Sunflower, had some pecks on her head, so we also kept them separate yesterday and today – poor little mites do get picked by 5 of the others, “Miss Clucky” and “Fred” seem to tolerate them well.