First Chicken killed for meat

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Killing your own food to eat
Well, we finally killed our first chook for meat, it was one of the first lot of  chickens we had, way back here

He was a male, and had just started crowing, so off with his head.  While it's difficult, it's also probably the most wholistic way of sourcing your own meat.  Buying them from the Supermarket having been raised in who knows what conditions, with you several steps removed from the process seems somewhat surreal in retrospect.  We keep the hens for laying eggs.  I guess I am now one of those people that thinks if you can't kill and prepare your own meat you really should not be eating it.

Slaughtered, plucked and gutted...

Anyway, we need to let him sit in the fridge for two days or so to let the rigor mortis out of his muscles, so he's not so tough.  Being so young he should make a lovely roast.  He weighs 1.5 kg, so the same as a size 15 chook from the supermarket but raised ah la natural.

Doing your own repairs
While we like that we're self sufficient in power and water etc sometimes things break down and need repairing, like this join in our main water line.

We noticed the tank had emptied much more quickly then it should have, with all the rain about it is tricky to try and find a water leak in the rain but we finally tracked it down to a really soggy patch right near the main pump itself, after a bit of excavation this is what we found, sure enough !!.

We had to go into town and grab some fittings and do a few repairs.

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More fruit trees and other things

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Fruit Trees

We plant a few new fruit trees each year, just planted a Eureka Lemon, 2 Passionfruit and 2 Paw Paws today.  After digging the holes, I filled them with water, waited until they drained then used our compost to fill them, watered the plants and then mulched them with Comfrey leaves.

New Paw Paw

New Eureka Lemon

The Dwarf Mulberry we planted a few months ago (Nov 2010) (below) seems to be doing okay, at the same time we did 2 x Pecan, 2 x Japoticaba, 2x Pecan and 1 x Passionfruit and 1 x Black Sapote.

Dwarf Black Mulberry

The Raspberries are coming along, here's where they were first planted back in June and we've collected a 1/2 dozen off them.  We don't really expect many until next year.

Raspeberry Canes

They all seem to be doing fine so far but the Avocado we planted earlier last year looks like it might have succumbed to the constant months of rain we had.  I assume that's what's done it in ?

Sorry looking Avocado

It has been quite hot here lately, the only warm weather we have had so far this Summer.  We often duck down to a nearby creek for a cooling swim, it's a beautiful spot.  The pic below was taken with me in the water up to about my hips.

Swimming hole in a creek  near us, lovely in the Summer heat

Native Animals

Being in the bush of course we get a plethora of native animals, unfortunately the Goannas are in abundance now and it can be difficult keeping them out of the chook-pen, inevitably we loose some of the eggs to the buggers.  

Goanna enjoying a nap in the tree !

but we also get  snakes of all sorts, like this Python on the driveway

Carpet Python

and a family of kangaroos getting some shade relief under the Olive tree.

Mum, Dad and baby enjoying the shade

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Gardening and catching up

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After the floods and constant months of rain, we seem to have had a reprieve for the last two weeks, which has been good, allowing everything to dry out a little.  It has also allowed us to complete a few chores and get stuck back into the garden.  I have to hold my hands up here, Toni does 80% of the work in the garden, I just help out from time to time with the heavy lifting.

Rock Steps and Wall
I finally managed to get the rock wall and steps finished, it had been sitting at about 90% complete for 2 months or so.  I needed more stone and had not been able to get out because of the wet weather to source any, but with the rain abating, I did.   Hopefully the steps and wall will outlast me.

Rock Steps and small retaining wall  replacing rickety wooden originals

Back into the Garden

Starwberries about to be planted out

Toni had been getting a fair bit done in the garden, this mornings chore involved transplanting about 20 Strawberry runners.  

Collecting the "trained" runner from the old bed

We had dug the garden bed away, replaced lots of the soil with decomposed cow manure, compost and decomposed chook manure and straw, then covered it with newspaper, planted the 20 or so runners Toni had trained into seedling pots, into the new "soil" through the newspaper, then mulched well on top to keep the weeds down and moisture in.

The strawberries had been taken from another bed, the runners encouraged to grow into small seedling pots, left to grow in the pots, then planted out in the new bed.  Hopefully they will proliferate under the Mandarin tree.  This is something new we are trialing, knowing the Strawberries are understory plants, hopefully they will thrive in the new position and produce good berries for a few years to come!

The tomatoes seem to be coming along nicely, the cherry tomatoes are supplying us with heaps of fruit at the moment, with the other patch,

Tomato Patch

 a mixture of Tigerilla, Black Russian and Roma tomatoes.

Baby Chickens
We have had several lots of baby chickens hatch in the last few months, and here is the latest batch.

Mother and three babies !

Hopefully a few of them will be females, to supply us with yummy eggs !

We are supposed to be killing our first chook for meat next week, a young male from the very first batch of chickens we hatched, he has just started crowing, so we will see how that goes !

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dams full, grounds wet and more

12:53 PM No Comments

the interminable rain let up for the morning, so we managed to get outside and catch up with a few chores.

Steps
I had started the new stone retaining wall and steps,

First rock in place

to replace the rotted old wooden ones and managed to get a lot more work done but then I ran out of rocks.  Need more rocks for the walls but also some smaller, odd shaped ones to chink up stones to get them to lay flat and to use in gaps, more rock hunting when it dries out a little so I don't get bogged!.  I would say 60% complete and i have started tamping sand into the cracks around the joins for the rocks used for the steps.

Steps part way through construction

Dam
If I turn around from the steps and look East, I can see how full the Dam is, the jetty (LHS) goes under if the inflow is faster then the outlflow, the outflow (far RHS) is still running in this pic

A full Dam

Mini Hydro Electric
The creek has been running for the best part of a month and has made me think about using a mini hydro that I can install in the creek itself, if we wanted more power, instead of Wind.  The wind here is very intermittent but the creek runs after heavy rain (no sun on the solar panels)

Garden
Toni has been busy in the garden trying to mitigate some of the damage from the rain Finding some aphids in the corn, she brewed some Lantana Spray to use against them. It works really well apparently! but most of the time is spent weeding !

Kitchen Window
The banksia outside the kitchen window is in flower, a few of the local honey eaters taking advantage

White Cheeked Honeyeater

Lewins Honeyeater

Kookaburras
We have a couple mousetraps around the place and every now and again a mouse gets caught, we promptly feed the mice to the local Kookaburra's

Kookaburra feeding on a mouse !

who really seem to enjoy them !  The willy wagtails however are nesting close by and take offence to any bird entering their territory, much to the other birds chagrin

Willy wagtail attacking the feeding Kookaburra

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Growing, harvesting and digging... and more !

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Garden
Toni has been active in the garden. The rain has been insistent, with more to come apparently, it has destroyed some of her hard work but the other day she managed to harvest some of her garlic, hang it in the shed to dry then bring it in to hang in the pantry.

Garlic, drying, ready for use

Planting more potatoes, carrots, attending to her corn, beetroot, lettuce, picking strawberries etc keeps her very busy in there.

Rock steps and wall
I have been scouring old borrow pit sites for some time, gathering rocks in preparation for redoing the steps of the outdoor area. They were built  with wood laid on the ground and of course have become rickety with rot over time.  This is what it looked just as I started the digging.

Starting the dry stone wall and steps

I have to dig out the remainder of the soil, on either side, and then lay about two courses, matching it to the new stairs I will have in place.  Hopefully, even though it will be a first attempt, it will look good and outlast the house itself !

Grass

With summer under way and plenty of rain, the grass is growing crazily but the kangaroos do a good job in the main yard, with it only needing mowing infrequently The guinea pigs a good job in the orchard, albeit at this time of the year even they struggle to keep it down.  Combined with the chook manure, sun and rain, the chook run grows as I watch it, so it needs to done weekly but having just widened the door, I can get the ride on mower in there now, oh happy day, it can do 80% of the yard and Toni's love of using the whippersnipper sees the rest being attended to.  We use the cut grass by drying it in an old shed near the chook yard and using it to line the laying boxes in the chookhouse, the old stuff going onto the compost pile as well as for mulch around fruit trees.

Stink Bugs
One of the scourges of having the orchard netted is that birds can't get in to demolish the stink bugs on the citrus trees.

Juvenile stick bug in action on our citrus trees

 These dastardly pests have been busily sucking the sap from new growth, so it was time to do something about them.  Wearing rubber kitchen gloves and carrying a bucket of soapy water I removed thousands off the citrus trees a few weeks ago but I decided I needed to follow up and removed a few hundred that I had missed last time, probably one more attempt in a few weeks to remove the last few will do me.

Other Stuff

The chickens have been busy making more babies, we now have three pullets, four that are about a month and a half old and another four that are a week old.

The constant rain has seen the Dam full to overflowing, and the lillies and ducks are lovin' it

Male Blue beaked duck getting ready to take off

One of the many water lillies on the Dam

Nesting Kookaburras

and the Kookuburras have built a nest in a large tree in the front yard, they merrily made a hole in the side of the large ants nest that was in the tree. I thought they were just going after the ants but it appears they had baby making in mind from all the frenetic work they had done. The ant nest provides food for the babies and insulation as well.

Just about to leave the nest

They busily come and go all the time, with food for the babies

More flowers

of course the plants are enjoying the rain, still bursting forth with flowers, most of them I have no idea about, though the Agapanthus (native to southern Africa) I do.

Agapanthus blossom about to open

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more lantana, Geckos and fruit trees

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We took the opportunity with the rain having stopped for the day, to go out and clear some more lantana, with the soft ground it was the best time to pull it.  We were adverse to using poisons so the regime we used was to clear an area by pulling it all out by hand and then come back about a month later to get the bits we had missed or the bits that might have struck again and then return about 6 months later to get any small vines that may have started to grow from seed etc.  We are aware of the damage this method can do in terms of erosion, especially near creek banks but thought it a fair trade off to the persistence and dangerous nature of the poisons. See this article on Round Up for more information

Anyway, enough pontificating, this was the area we had cleared about a month ago see this old blog post for a before photo and now and after photo

A month after being cleared of lantana

One of the many advantaged of having the area cleared of lantan is some of the native wildflowers can peek through,

Wildflower in bloom

this one was about the size of a match head and was taking advantge of the warm spirng weather and copius rain we have been having.

Gecko suprise
The other night I was surprised to see this fine fellow clambering up the inside of the wall of the house,

Robust Velvet Gecko

what a wonderful Gecko !! and HUGE compared to the Asian Gecko so common in my recent home in North Qld.

More Fruit Trees
Our fruit trees from Daleys Nursery arrived today. Two Pecans, a Passionfruit, a Black Sapote, two Japoticabas and a Dwarf Mulberry, all designed to give us lovely fruits and nuts (hopefully) in the future.  We will get around to planting them on Friday hopefully.

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rain... rain... rain.... and snakes

10:28 PM No Comments

The rain has been fairly incessant, Toni managed to get into the garden for 1/2 a day to do some weeding but a lot of the veggies (eg Potatoes etc) have been destroyed, oh well, such is life on the land.  I had to dig a few water bars on the road to stop the driveway being eroded and have been pulling more lanata, which comes out so easily in the wet soil.  The Dam we use to water the veggies etc is full, bt the irony is the the veggies don't need watering !

The perennial creek running through the property has been flowing strongly

Small creek  on the property, in full flow

and the fern forest in the rain forest, beside the creek

Fern forest

Speaking of life on the land, dealing with snakes is one thing that can be a little disconcerting, so far we have had a large red bellied black snake in the mulch pile, no doubt looking for a warm place to relax but scaring the crap out of Toni when she went to get some mulch of compost for the garden.  A couple days after that  a smaller red bellied black snake going for the baby chickens, I managed to catch him JUST in time and yesterday there was a small carpet python going after the baby chickens again !  We managed to catch it before it had any success, and we relocated it many miles away

Releasing a relocated python

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