Broody Rosie

Rosie, one of our lovely Rhode Island Reds has been acting a little strange for a few days now- spending lots of time on the nest, making the weirdest noise when I go near her and fluffing herself up like a puffball .... but she was still laying so initially I discounted broodiness.

Today however, she didn't lay, and has made it very clear that she is sitting ready for her chicks, thank you very much! Small problem though, in that we don't have rooster, and we don't want to raise chicks yet, so this is where Rosie and I are having a little disagreement!

I didn't think we would have this issue yet, she is a cross-breed (usually less broody) and only been laying for 2 months. I hope the other 3 don't get ideas ....

She has hardly been off the nest all day, in fact only when I remove her and I 'shoo' her to make her walk around the garden, (thats a sight to see!) Although even then she stands, feathers all puffed up and squawks at me in disgust! I don't mind losing an egg a day, we have plenty (27-28 a week) and are giving some away to friends. Problem is, it is not good for hens to allow them to be broody indefinitely (if you don't have fertile eggs to give her) as they do become entirely focused on sitting in the nest, and nothing else, often not eating or drinking, and not wanting to move around, scratch outside etc. like normal behaviour. She already looks thinner and its so hot I have to keep making her drink.

The other problem is my other 3 chooks can't get on the nest as she's hogging it! They are laying somewhere near it, although I did see a disturbing sight this morning- one of our Australorps, Lady, had managed to squeeze in, but then Rosie just sat on top of her like Mother Hen! So there was an elevated Rosie with Lady's head stuck out from under her wing!

I've read up today on ALS and BYP (Backyard Poultry) for info, and it looks like its either raising chicks or breaking her out of broodiness. The most successful method usually involves isolating her for a few days in a separate airy cage, with plenty food/water but no nesting materials. Apparently if she has access to a warm, cosy nest -she could stay broody for months :-(
An airy cage with no nest will cool her body temp down enough to break the broodiness. Sounds cruel, but worse would be to let her carry on and risk her health.

What a steep learning curve this is!

Anyway, here is our fluffball Rosie- with a mean look in her eye as I approached with the camera!

Australia Day 2009

As some of you know, I wasn't born in Australia, but in England. However, having spent a total of 16 years here now (5 years when I was a teenager, and 11 years so far this time) I really do call Australia home. And I do feel more than a little patriotic on Australia Day - I love it! It's a time to reflect on what it means to live here, to feel like you belong here. I truly appreciate the chance I was given to return to this beautiful country. Its the place I want to be for the rest of my life with my family.

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Top 10 things I love about Australia .....

1. The Blue Mountains - I never tire of seeing them
2. The smell of gum trees on a hot day
3. The summer storms and the smell of rain on the hot earth
4. The weird and wonderful animals
5. Manly Beach
6. Sydney harbour
7. Catching the ferry between them!
8. Uluru - once visited, never, ever forgotten
9. The persistently optimistic national attitude of "She'll be right mate"
10. Our beautiful children were born here

To everyone out there, wherever you are .....

have a wonderful Australia Day :-)

HUGE knitting! (no, not mine!)

I thought this website might be of interest to some of you out there......

My MIL sent me the link (I think in jest - I have a barely-started scarf from 2 years ago) !

http://www.ingridwagner.com/Art/Knitting/

The woman is based in the UK, but her ideas could be used anywhere by anyone who has knitting skills. She makes wonderful rugs, wall art and HUGE knitting projects using needles the size of BROOM HANDLES! Inspired by her wonderful global travels.

Its truly amazing. I LOVE the rugs! So warm and inviting, perfect for those cold afternoons (she says, currently in 32 degrees!)

Seed saving

A few of my plants have gone to seed recently in the heat- I half neglected them and half meant for this to happen so I can try a bit of seed saving.


I picked these seeds today - from an Italian flat-leaf parsley. There are a load of heads like this one but the others are still green so 'll leave them a while. I usually just buy seedlings but will give these a go and plant them later this week (nothing ventured nothing gained!) Apparently they can take up to 6 weeks to germinate, so I'll keep updating .... but it may be a while!




Also have some coriander (cilantro) going to seed - bit green though so I'm hoping they will dry on the plant too?



I also saved some seeds from our hot chilli and planted them out yesterday- I can't even imagine eating more than one plant produces as they are SO FIERY, but they just look so pretty!

Invade and destroy mission...

OK - not happy about 'the patch'. Actually, what I'm not happy about is our chooks destroying the patch.

On Monday they managed to find a way in through the netting we have around the outside (by ripping a great hole in it). They have not been interested EVER until now so I was shocked to see them in there. By the time I saw them they had obviously been in there a while, and as anyone who has kept hens will know, they just LOVE to scratch and dig.

They managed to uproot ALL the beetroots and capsicum plants, squashed and trampled the carrot tops flat and dug around a couple of tomato plants down to expose the roots. So after a firm chook removal from the patch, I tried to recover what I could and replant them.

This may have worked ......... had they not returned to do the same thing an hour later. AARRRGGGHHH !!!! Of course I thought I'd make it chook proof, but apparently not.

So in all, after managing to save only a couple, we have lost 12 beetroots, 3 capsicum plants, 1 tomato plant and not sure about the carrots. They ate a fair amount of silverbeet and some lettuce, but just the leaves, so they will grow back.

This comes after our purple king beans have been pretty much destroyed by ?? something last week. I had 5 healthy plants growing up a bamboo tepee, about 2 metres tall and just flowering, until something decided the leaves looked nice and juicy and munched them all away. I made a spray from molasses and pure soap, (supposed to stop caterpillars in their tracks) and set up a few vegemite/sugar slug traps. This seems to have stopped the destruction, but there's hardly anything left on the plants now so I'm not sure they will make it.

The toughest part is that I have grown all of these from seed this year, so it has taken a lot of time, effort and care to get them this far. I suppose this is another part of the lesson? I thought planting more than you need was so you could give some away to friends!

So, all in all, not good news on the gardening front. Oh, and for those non-locals, the last 3 days here have reached almost 40 degrees, so everything (including me!) is suffering from the heat too.

As for the chookies, I am back on speaking terms with them (!) the 4 of them are laying every day to ensure their place here remains! The patch now looks like Fort Knox, although I don't think Fort Knox was secured with holey bird net, old boxes and wheelbarrows .....

Weekend task - putting a proper post & chicken wire fence around the patch.

Whooper Egg!

This is the biggest egg yet from our lovely ladies - usually they lay small - medium (around 50-60 grams) but this was a whopping 80 grams - we coudn't even close the egg box!

(Show here in my daughters hands next to a littley!)

Turned out to be a double-yolker of course. Went down well for kids scrambled eggs tonight!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Thought I'd share this - I found this recipe for homemade laundry detergent quite a while ago on ALS, and finally decided to give it a go.

My motivaton is that I don't like the chemical cocktail that goes into commercial powders, for any of us, but our son especially gets skin irritations from some of them, and the couple that are OK for sensitive skin cost a fortune.

So here is the recipe for my 'gloop' - makes 10 litres ----

1 cup Lux pure soap flakes

1/2 cup washing soda

Water

Melt the soap flakes in 1 1/2 litres water, in a big pot over medium heat.

When dissolved add the soda, mix until thickens.

Remove from heat and pour into a bucket (normal 9-10 litre size) and top up with hot tap water.

Can add essential oils at this stage if you wish.

Leave overnight to thicken and it should come out as a thick gel consistency (called 'gloop' in our house!)

I have been using it for a couple of weeks now and it is great! I use 1-2 scoops in our top-loader for a full load, and considering we have 2 active 3 year-olds I am very impressed with the results.

The equivalent amount of laundry liquid (10 litres) would cost us around $50. These ingredients cost around $2 to make the same amount, and cleans at least as well without the nasties.

The only thing I would change next time is I will look for non-perfumed soap, as lux smells very 'soapy', (though less when its made up) and I will add eucalyptus oil which also acts a softener. Oh, and a bucket with a lid would be better!

Weekend gardening update

Well I hope all you blog-readers had a lovely Christmas, I have been out of the blog-osphere the past week but we all had a great Christmas, lots of excitement with our children on the big day and enjoying some family time off together.

The summer garden however, stops for no-one! So after a few days neglect it was back into the gardening ... actually never feels like a chore as its always enjoyable.

Firstly, we collected a wheelbarrow full of compost from our first compost bin - it was the really slow type, cold as we filled that bin before the delights of chook poo! Since then we have a second bin full of hot compost (the holy grail of gardeners!) almost ready, and have re-filled the first bin which is also now hot too.



For those non-gardeners amongst you, our compost is made up of garden waste (grass and tree clippings, dead leaves and bark etc) some kitchen scraps (veg peelings, tea bags, eggshells etc) and lately whatever gets cleaned out of the hen house (newspaper, woodshavings and manure).

The kitchen scraps are becoming less as scraps go to chooks and the worm farm, but at least we hardly have any rubbish going out each week.

The resulting compost comes out as a fabulous nutrient rich soil, great as potting mix, topsoil for the veggie patch, seed raising ....

If the carbon : nitrogen mix is right, it will heat up and be ready in a couple of weeks (and no it doesn't smell!) If its cold compost, it takes forever but gets there eventually when the worms move in.

Other garden news - planted out into the patch a row of capsicums and row of beetroots I have been neglecting in small pots for a while. Also a couple of tomato plants to replace the ones that gave themselves up. Zucchini plants are HUGE- now with fabulous flowers which look glorious in the mornings. Purple King beans now are growing up a teepee frame made of bamboo stakes, and Blue Lake beans doing well in their box.

Over Christmas we used our own salad greens for salad with lunch and dinner (can't get fresher than that), and used some of our hot chillis for garlic and chilli tiger prawns on Boxing Day..... OOOOH, YUM !!!

Aussie 12 Days of Christmas

There are a few different versions of this round, but we have this one out from the local library at the moment, and our kids love it (and so do we!)

So COME ON .... you know you want to sing along!

And don't forget when you get to five, its "five---kang----a---rooooooos" !!!

On the FIRST day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
A kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the SECOND day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the THIRD day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the FOURTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the FIFTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the SIXTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the SEVENTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the EIGHTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Eight dingos dancing,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the NINTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Nine crocs a-snoozing?
Eight dingos dancing,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the TENTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Ten wombats washing,
Nine crocs a-snoozing?
Eight dingos dancing,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the ELEVENTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Eleven lizards leaping,
Ten wombats washing,
Nine crocs a-snoozing?
Eight dingos dancing,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

On the TWELFTH day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Twelve possums playing,
Eleven lizards leaping,
Ten wombats washing,
Nine crocs a-snoozing?
Eight dingos dancing,
Seven emus laying,
Six sharks a-surfing,
Five kangaroos,
Four lyrebirds,
Three wet galahs,
Two snakes on skis,
And a kookaburra in a gum tree.

Great singing! xxx

Free trees for carbon offset

Blue Mts council are currently giving away 2 tree seedlings per household to encourage local planting as a 'carbon offset' initiative. Organisations can get up to 20 - which our native gardening course have already claimed and planted, but I did want to get our 2 for us- so we collected them this week.

There was a huge range of natives to choose from in either tube-stock or small pots. We chose Eucalyptus Sieberi and Eucalyptus Oreades, both beautiful but will become huge trees, so we will plant them up on our land at Blackheath where they will have plenty of room. Both trees are found naturally in that area too.

Anyone local interested in getting your trees- more info here