LOOK how we have grown!!

I know I've been REALLY slack and no blogged in ages!! Thanks to the constant pestering from a few people, I'm going to make an effort to get one blog a week done :)

So an update on the chickens first .....

 

 These two little guys have grown into .....

  These boys will have to be rehomed :(

  These little guys of which there was six, 

four survived have grown into ....

 how cute is the MOPPY hairdo on this one haha

Four really cute hens!! We love hens!!

 

Who remembers this little one?

This was our first hatch for the spring only one egg hatched.

 We named it ginger chick due to it colouring.

 What a lovely buff orpington hen she's grown into!!

Last month we bought an incubator and couldn't wait to give it a go, our first hatching had lots of issues most minor but a blackout for 3 1/2hrs on a cold day didn't help us at all. We'd decided we'd be lucky if anything hatched but would keep going just in case. To our surprise we had two eggs hatch!!

 How cute??

We hope in spring to have another go at incubating, once better with it we'd like to try some other breeds as well. The kids are keen on getting some silkies, I'd love some frizzles :)

aus.keeys

Preserves

Like most things its either a feast of famine in the garden. With it being holidays and some of our kids away at the moment we have to much for our needs at the moment coming from the garden. 

This got me thinking what I would do with the excess?

I spent some time reading up on how to preserve foods. Alot said you need fancy jar kits worth $100's!! I then kept reading and spoke to a few of the older folk who said to just reuse old jars just be sure they are well cleaned and sterile. 

I had a few jars of my own I'd kept but needed more, thanks to a nice local on facebook who answered my call on the local free,swap,sell I soon had 30 jars!

So I looked at recipe's suitable for what I was after....I have LOTS of zucchini and although we love quiche we can only eat and freeze so much with only 2 adults and 1 child at home at the moment. 

I came up with this recipe.....

http://www.abc.net.au/tasmania/stories/s1313383.htm

all chopped and ready to go

You need:
Zucchinis, onions, capsicum, salt, sugar, vinegar, water and a handful of spices.

• 1 kg zucchini
• 2 large onions
• 1 small capsicum (red looks attractive)
• ¼ cup salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons mustard powder
• 2 teaspoons turmeric

Method:
Chop the zucchini, onion and capsicum finely. Add the salt and leave to stand for two hours or more. Drain.

Combine the sugar, vinegar, mustard powder and turmeric. Place the vegetable mixture into this, bring to the boil, then cook for 20 minutes.

If you think it necessary at this stage, the pickle can be thickened with one dessertspoon of cornflour mixed to a paste with a little white vinegar.

The finished product.

 I don't eat it but am told its REALLY nice!

This is a chunky version as thats how its liked but others might like to grate the ingredients rather than chopping if they rather that consistency. 

I also had 3 cucumbers sitting around we weren't going to get eaten in a hurry and more in the garden ready in the next few days so I decided to make something with them too. 

I came up with this recipe .....

http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Bread-and-Butter-Cucumbers-L763.html

 Ingredients

4 Large cucumbers

1/4 cup of cooking salt

1 1/2 cups of white vinegar

1 cup of water

3/4 cup of sugar

2 tea spoons of mustard seeds

1/2 small red capsicum

Method

1/ Wash cucumbers and thinly slice

2/Place cucumbers in a dish in layers, sprinkle salt between each layer. Leave overnight.

3/Rinse under cold water and drain.

4/Combine vinegar, water, sugar, mustard seeds and 1 teaspoon of salt to a pan.

5/Stir until sugar is dissolved and bring to the boil.

6/Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 5mins

7/Add cucumber, bring to boil and remove from heat. 

8/Pack into sterilised jars, adding a few thin strips of red capsicum.

9/Fill with vinegar to within 1cm of top and seal.

The finished product.

I took the skins off these because the skins weren't the best, am sure they will be eaten just the same. Its just not as pretty without the green colour.

I've enjoyed making these preserves and am sure they are the first of many. I look forward to learning how to preserve the tomatoes once they ripen, making pasta sauce, salsa and semi sun dried tomatoes. All going well we will have beetroot, corn and much more.... I've already started looking at other ideas on what I can make next. I can see how this becomes an obsession, given I don't eat any of what I've already made yet I'm keen to keep going! Its nice to know months from now we will still be enjoying the rewards of our summer garden.

aus.keeys

Fluffies

Today is 21 days since we set our clucky hen, since then we have been waiting and waiting. In the mean time we did have a few surprise arrivals. 

                        This and his/her, brother/sister found behind the chook shed in early December.

                                This Mum and chick were found just last week wandering the yard.

This morning I checked on the expectant Mum and nothing, not a thing was happening. I went out for the day and returned home to this .......

Which the became this.....

and then.....

soon followed by.....

and lastly with a bit of chick starter encouragement.....

 

HOW CUTE!!

She is still sitting on a couple of eggs, so still could get more but we are REALLY happy with 5 chicks given our best so far has been 2 chicks. These eggs were from a friend so not sure what they are, some were bantam others full size.I'll have to find out what breeds and then people can have fun guessing breed and gender of the chicks. I know some were silkie eggs.

aus.keeys

Time for bed...

So its dusk and everyone is settling in for the night. To be honest I've not really sat and watched them all go to bed but today decided to sit and watch. Just like people, some went to bed early and others waiting till it was almost dark. 

 Getting ready for bed.

 Bed buddies.

These guys, the babies of the bunch were along with the bantams, were the last to head to bed.

I leave you with this photo, although a little blurry I thought it was worth sharing. 

You can see that even though ginger chick is now just over 4 weeks old and is big enough to fly up onto the perch with its Mum, that Mum still puts her wing around it...very cute :)

aus.keeys

Pallets.....and other recycled materials

We wanted to have a backyard vegie garden for a few reasons -

• save money - I was sick of paying stupid prices for some of the easiest things to grow eg lettuce
• to encourage our youngest non vegie eating child to be interested and try things he helped to grow
• spend time together as a family doing something that benefits all of us - health and money wise
• learning how to preserve or freeze our produce so we have for the months its not in season
• to share with family and friends

 What I didn't want was to spend a fortune on setting it all up, it seemed to defeat the saving money part or the idea. Of course some things you have to spend money on there is no choice but where there is a choice, another option we have tried to do that. 

first pallet garden

The original garden bed was built with wood from a couple of pallets and filled with the manure, straw etc from a big clean out of the chicken coop. We left it for months and months to see how it would go in the weather.

This is the latest photo of this garden from a few weeks back.

The next garden game pretty much ready made, a HUGE pallet that had garden written all over it as soon as I saw it!

We filled it with manure from a friends cattle property that had been sitting around for about 6mths along with straw.

This garden now houses the zucchini and cucumbers which are growing like MAD! 

It was about this time we started thinking about needing compost and how we could build a compost bin so we by next spring would have some of our own. This would save money in not having to take green waste to the tip and not having to buy additives to boost the soil quality. I started researching and found all sorts of bins some cost alot of money and some we just slapped together but the end product was the same. I found a website that talked about a pallet compost bin which given I had pallets on hand grabbed my attention. After a few hours work this is what we ended up with .......

 

Its just pallets, chicken wire and a few brackets. The brackets were the only thing we had to buy to build it and cost us $12! We are slowly adding material to it and learning what we can and can't put on the heap. 

We look forward to next spring having our own compost to add to our gardens when preparing them for the spring/summer crops.

The next two gardens made were from another idea I'd seen and knew we had the materials for in the yard. Both these gardens used old roof tin and timber a neighbour had given us a few weeks earlier when moving house.We had run out of soil so went and bought some garden soil for this lot from the local tip at the cost of $100, yep thats $100 worth of dirt your looking at!

Our newest garden beds were built just yesterday.....yep we had gardening day, instead of boxing day. The garden beds are similar to the first bed we built of pallets.

We decided to build one not as deep as the other we will just be careful what we plant in it. 

This is the shorter bed with a layer of straw in the bottom, we just need to get some more soil. I already have some seedlings ready to go in. 

If anything I've learnt there is no point direct sowing as the rate isn't nearly as good as having them in the mini green houses and then moving when big enough. 

These mini green houses are my favourite, I have 3 of them and have a much better rate with them than anything else I've tried so far.

                                                       I planted out this corn today.

The most expensive thing in our garden so far apart from the $100 soil has been the tomato stakes but we figure we will get our money out of them over the next few years. 

I still think we will recoup our outlay in 6mths or so, its amazing how quickly the savings add up, we haven't had to buy lettuce in 2mths, we get enough beans for dinner a few nights a week, we have had our first few cucumbers, bok choi for stir fries for the past 2mths, spinach a few nights a week for 2mths, aprox 8kg of zucchinis and a capcicum. All this in just 2.5mths not bad at all!

aus.keeys

The SURPRISES just keep coming...

So while out in the garden today I heard alot of fussing going on from the chickens....I looked but couldn't see anything of interest so kept doing my thing. 

When heading back into the house, what do I spot wondering around the yard??? 

THIS......

Ummm why is there a Mum and chick walking around my yard?? 

 Seems another bantam had been sitting and is the proud mum of 1 little chick. As much as I loved watching them wonder around the yard, I'm a little worried about other animals taking them so they are now safe in a cadge till older.

Other chicken news of the day....

The four, ten week old black hens have been moved in with the other fully grown hens, we have been mixing them in the past few weeks and keeping an eye on them and decided today was the day. The move went well, they have a few less feathers than they started with but all in all was an easy transition it seems.

The Mum and four week old ginger chick moved into the cadge the black hens had been in, this will give mum a chance to teach it how to get up on the perch and whatever else a Mum teaches a chick to do. In another 6 weeks or so just like the black hens it will be time for it to move into the main flock.

Mum and the two bantam chicks now 2 weeks old moved into the old rabbit cadge Mum and ginger chick just moved out of. Mum was keen on the move to begin with but has settled in well now.

The other bantam is still sitting she is due on the 28th, we can't wait to see what hatches and how many :)

Its been a pretty busy afternoon with chicken house moving, we now have 23chickens with 1 rooster, 4 chicks and 18 hens and fingers crossed a few more by the end of next week!

aus.keeys

Busy few days... and Boys V's Girls

 

 This time or year is so busy, time just gets away, this last week has just flown by and I'm left wondering what I did? On face value it seems like I've done nothing but if I think about it ALOT has been done this past week!

I've picked LOTS of zucchini's and I mean LOTS I now have several lots of quiche in the freezer and gave some quiche away. I still have the large one I picked a few days ago waiting to be stuffed. I have 7 others still waiting to be used I picked today, I'm wondering what other people do with all their zucchini's?
Who cares to share their recipe?

We picked our first cucumber yesterday and it quickly found itself on sandwiches for lunch. Today we picked our first capsicum and although small was very tasty in tonights stirfry, can't wait for more.
The Bok Choi was also great in the stir fry tonight, although I found a white moth enjoying some earlier too! We get a handful of beans every few days, I didn't plant nearly enough it seems, (live and learn). Think I might plant some more tomorrow.LOTS of green tomato's I'm wondering if its ever going to be warm enough for them to turn red?
We seem to be spending more days like this....

Although the rain is nice we need some warm weather to move things along and ripen up those tomato's.

So who knows the difference between "boys" and "girls" ? Silly question really, well not really alot of people don't know their veggie flowers come in boy and girl varieties! So I thought I'd show you with these photos I took in the garden, as Mason who is 5 says "you can tell the girl one shes the one with the Baby and the boys do nothing" I had no choice but to agree hehe

Cucumber girl flower

Cucumber boy flower

Zucchini boy flower

 

Zucchini girl flower

Pumpkin girl flower

Pumpkin boy flower

  Once its pointed out its very obvious which are boys and girls. If they boys don't pollinate the girls with the bees help (or some human help) then the girl flowers just drop off without growing. The bees here seem to be doing a great job if the amount of  zucchini's are anything to go by!

aus.keeys