Spring = New Life

Spring is the time of year when everything comes to life, your garden greens up, trees wake up from their winter sleep with lush green growth and animals decide to start families.

In our backyard spring has well and truly sprung!

Everywhere we look in our yard there are reminders.....

First there was this little OEG hen who decided she would like to be a Mum and is sitting on some eggs. She is due the day we leave for holidays so if we are VERY lucky we might see some babies before we leave.

Next we found this OEG hen sitting in a hay bale in the vegie garden.

We made her this little box up out of ....you guessed it pallets!

She is nice and warm in her new box and when we moved her we found her sitting on 20 yes 20 EGGS!!

This little girl has high hopes of being a Mum but 20 babies is too many for anyone :)

A few weeks ago, 5 weeks ago infact we found our rabbits out in the yard, mixing it with the dog, cats and chickens, it seems they had been having a bit of a dig and dug their way out.

Hubby was going to rebuild the bottom of the cadge when he found a huge burrow full of fur. 

I said I thought they only did that when they were having babies?

Now we have had 3 girl rabbits in the cadge together for 12mths now so not much chance of babies if one was a boy we'd have had babies by now.

Fast forward to this week......

I get a message from hubby we have baby rabbits!

I get home to find these fully formed bundles of fluff jumping around not this furless things I was expecting.

Seems that fur lined burrow a few weeks back was for babies after all!!

It also seems our bunnies were a bit slow if it took 12mths for them to work out how to have babies!

It also seems I'm not good at sexing rabbits given I said we had 3 girls!

OK I know you just want to see the photos.....so here they are

 Mum with her babies

 Dad is black and Mum is black and white so this little one is a surprise!

 Just like Dad.

 there are three who look just like Mum.

This is our new cat "Frank" we got him a few months back to keep our other cat company. 

Here you can see Frank isn't sure about the new family member.

All bunnies have new loving homes to go to in the next few weeks, till then we get lots of cuddles :)

Today while in the garden I went to turn the tap on and got a telling off from a not very happy OEG hen from under the house. Upon looking closer she is sitting on a nest of 6 eggs, I'm guessing she is the same one who nested under the house last year. 

We have a baby boom going on in our backyard!!

The poor people looking after the animals while we are on 2 weeks holiday, 

like it wasn't enough asking them to look after 20 chickens, a dog, 2 cats and 3 rabbits,

 they now have to deal with any number of baby chicks as well!!

We will have to be sure to buy them something nice as a "THANK YOU" gift

....maybe they would like some chickens?? I think we will have a few spare haha

aus.keeys

Door shed - Part 3

Well another week has past in spring and we now have only 99 days till Christmas!! 

It was another beautiful spring weekend and a great chance to get into the yard.

So last time I wrote the shed looked like this 

So through the week its had a couple of coats of paint and then looked like this

What a difference a bit of paint makes!

So we still need a roof .....

Ok so it looks a bit strange but there is method in hubbies madness of such a large roof....rainwater! We plan on putting a little gutter at the back and running it into a small tank so I have water at hand for my watering can. It won't collect alot of water but every bit helps and a larger roof area adds just that little bit more. 

The gutter and tank will be added at a later date, we are a little short on time with going on holidays in two weeks, I'll be sure to do an update when we add it. For now it was more important to get the shed all set up for that much needed storage space. 

I really wanted the inside painted as well but again due to a shortage of time right now

 the inside will painted at a later date.

 We put in some shelves that were given to us months ago we had put aside for when I got a shed.

Then the fund began moving things from the main shed into MY shed! 

I decided I needed and extra shelf, so hubby put one up for me

 and put some containers on the side walls to store things in.

Its pretty empty still but I'm sure it will fill up over time now I have the room for things. 

The whole project cost us nothing with everything being from upcycles materials.

All in all I'm pretty happy with it and once the water tank is in and the inside is painted I'll be even happier.

Ok so it doesn't look like the original one I saw 

but I think you will agree with no cost and just a couple of days work the outcome was pretty good!!

aus.keeys

Door Shed - Part 2

So now we have all our materials collected and cut to size, we can now start the fun bit building!

So for those who saw my blog last week this was the picture that first inspired me to build this shed

Isn't it nice?!

I did say at the time knowing hubbies building skills it would end up looking more like this....

OK so let the building begin!

Firstly you need to choose where you want your shed, it needs to be build on that spot as it will be to heavy to move once built. 

Then level the ground and put your floor in place.

 We put ours against the back fence, keeping in mind shadows from the sun at various times of the day and the fact we will extend our garden over time.
We also had to dig out some of the ground to make the floor nice and level.

Next take one of the side door and the back door or in our case board and screw together.

 We used the door hinges to hold in place then added extra screws.

We then used cut down pallets to run along the inside walls, we first nailed it to the floor to hold in place and then to the walls themselves. This will stop the walls lifting off the floor.

Now do the same for the other side.

We needed to also run a strip down the back because of it being in two parts.

So this is what it looks like so far.

We then put in the door frame, our front door was very heavy so we needed to be sure it was in something solid to hold it. 

We recently removed a door frame from our house so upcycled that to our frame for the door shed.

Even the oldest teenager and cat came to have a look....WOW it must be something special to catch their attention, usually only food does that!

Thank GOD it fits, I was thinking for sure we would get to this point and the front door wouldn't fit!

You can start to see it really does look like a little shed.

Or somewhere to lock up hubby!

Now before I get to excited hubby still has to get the roof finished. 

I did make it a little harder saying I wanted the roof to have a gutter into a tank

 so I have water at hand to refill my watering can instead of having to walk down the other end of the yard. So lets see how he goes with that!

All in all though I'm pretty happy with it so far and can see once I paint it and get it all set up with shelving etc it will be a great little storage shed for my gardening items. 

aus.keeys

Door Shed - Part 1

So I promised last week to show you how we were going building our door shed. 

For those who missed the last blog.....

I've been wanting a small shed to store all the tools and bits in, 

but wasn't wanting to spend hundreds on a shed! 

So I did some looking around and saw small sheds made out of doors,

 perfect for my needs and costing next to nothing just a few nails and screws are about the only costs I think.

 So we started with 3 doors, it should be 4 but we only had 3.

So what to do for the back since we were 1 door down?

We had this pallet so decided to use the board from it, it won't last as long as the doors and will need to be replaced at come stage but for now it will be fine and the paint will help make it last longer.

 Everyone helped with this project, Mason helping to remove nails.

 Hayden helping to cut the boards.

So we now have 3 doors and the back of our shed from the pallet.

We now need a floor.

 We had these left over from a pallet we pulled apart and added the slats of a couple of nice solid pallets.

 The finished product was a nice solid floor/base for our little shed!

So we now have all the basics for the walls and floor of our shed. 

Next blog will be the making of our shed.

 aus.keeys

SPRING is here!

 

Spring means different things to different people, for some its about spring cleaning, time to get into the garden and for others new beginnings.

For us this year spring brings with it the excitement of going on a family holidays!!

 This make it even more important to get on top of the spring cleaning and gardening jobs!

Our first day of spring was spent doing a general tidy up of the veggie garden, we turned in compost to a few gardens, planted out the pea seedlings we planted 3 weeks ago, built a new garden for the beans and planted the bean seeds. Weeded and then everything got a really good water to finish it all off!

In the rest of the garden we trimmed some tree's and cleaned out the sandpit of grass and spiders ready to be played in now the weather is warming up. 

The second day of spring Father day, we decided after a sleep in and breakfast in bed for hubby of course, to take on a new project. I've been wanting a small shed in the garden for all those nicknacks but sheds are not cheap and the idea of the garden was to save money doing it on the cheap upcycling where we can. 

So I searched for ideas and came up with a beauty!

  This was the first one I found and LOVED!

Its 4 old doors used to make a shed, such a simple upcycle idea!

Mine will end up more like this one though..... 

Its lets say more rustic haha

Hubby isn't one for building things all pretty, measured and square.

So we spend the day building and although not finished, it doesn't have a roof yet and isn't painted, it doesn't look to bad. Keep an eye on the blog this week for a look at the step by step photos and finished product.

We have got ALOT done for just two days into spring,

 it was great to be out in the sun :)

aus.keeys