Well – we were right at the end of the penny-section in the firewood department!
In the nick of time, Cousin Jeff arranged a couple of loads of wood to be dropped off.
Jeff and I got in and stacked it all up this afternoon as it stopped raining for a while. Warmed us up properly before we even put any of it in the fire!
I have also come up with a new plan to store/stack our firewood – which involves some pallets, star pickets & some canvas from an old tent we can’t use… It looks perfectly reasonable in my head, but from the look on Jeff’s face I am not sure he is totally convinced.
Anyway – that will be a summer project!
One more egg!! We got 4 the other day, so things are looking up.
Then I couldn’t help take some random-aim – chook-face photos
My last lettuce that was ravaged by one of the chickens is putting out some new leaves. This makes me happy.
The few frosts we have had haven’t killed my parsley or beetroot.
The last outside tomato is slowly dying off… but not before we get a few more handfuls of tomatoes!
In winter its still nice to be able to put your own tomatoes, corn (from the freezer), potato (Stored), beetroot (Pickled) etc on the plate for dinner!
I was quite happy slothing about at home today working on photos in front of the fire when my cousin Fiona rang up and said that she and one of her sons, Ruben were going out for a walk… interested?
Sure!
Anyway – it was great to get out in the fresh air and it didn’t even rain on us!
Following are just some photos from today and yesterday.
Hope Wednesday is great! All downhill to the weekend!
Cheers!
Fiona and RubenAlmost high tide
So – what do you reckon?My lovely protea has a good number of blooms happeningNeglected herb gardenA small amount of tidying up helpsThe snippet of pig-face that I liberated from down at the Bluff has gone mad! Hoping I will see it bloom when the season is right!Pretties for the gardenI keep seeing on social media the wonders of feeding yoghurt to chooks for increased egg production. At the point where it can’t hurt but to try.Chooks scruffing up my garden. They love the yoghurt. Egg production today went from one egg to none. Sigh.Surprise flowers popping out
It was a photo processing day today – lots of rain and cold weather!
Thought I would share the photos I took yesterday of the chickens having a bath! We let them out into the main yard because the weather was so nice.
They made a bee-line for the macrocarpas where there is no grass and proceeded to dig themselves into their holes and cover themselves with dust. They are so funny to watch and they were clearly thoroughly enjoying themselves
The reason Jeff is not so keen to have them out in the yard so much is because they dig these potholes that he runs into while mowing the lawns
They practically turn themselves inside out in the process
They can play dead too…
The earth moving can get quite vigorous at times –
Chooks! Free entertainment and a side order of eggs!
Hello!
Bit of a dreary day today – lots of rain on and off – which was a good thing so my fertiliser and lime has had some time to soak into the proposed garlic patch!
But it was essentially an indoor day.
Apart from some mandatory housework, I post processed a bunch more wedding photos – still not making a dint in the overall volume, but at least its something!! (I have over 1200 wedding-related images!!)
When the rain let up I went outside to give the girls some scraps and let them out into the main yard to play.
Also took the break in weather to stock up on more firewood on the back veranda.
I then collected todays egg (haha) and picked dinner from the garden.
I had thawed some steaks, and along with some potatoes, it was a dinner fit for royalty…
Love my fresh salads (and yes I had beetroot too!)
We also used our new jar-glasses that I was given from the wedding in Texas… I think they are pretty cool!
Pip spent the day stealing Jeff’s seat whenever he got up to do something! He then adopts this ‘I am sound asleep’ pose which makes you feel mean about moving him. I saw Jeff and Pip swap seats several times today!
Hope everyone has had a great Friday and is in for a super weekend!
Hello!!
Thought I would share the origins of the first chooks!
When we first moved in we were lucky enough to have a lovely coop and yard already built ready for us to use.
OK. Maybe not so ready!
Hard to believe this was full of corn, tomatoes and zucchini this season!!! You could lose a horse in this!
My parents got us the best housewarming present ever! Six chickens!!
First my Dad got right into cleaning out the chook coop and getting it ready for our newcomers.
All cosy and ready to go!
Dad was up early on Chook Day – breakfasted and jingling the car keys way before I had my bleary eyes open.
Got coffee into me and woke up as fast as possible (Which for me isn’t that fast) Then off to get our chickens!
Lesson. You can stuff 6 chickens into one large cat carrier.
It was hard to get them out of the carrier actually – I think we had to tip it up in the end!
Sticking together!!
This is baby Screecher!!!!
We blocked up the nesting boxes for a while – they weren’t due to lay for a bit and we wanted them to get up on the perches and not snuggle in the boxes.
It seemed to work
lol – fluffy chook bums!
The next day they enjoyed exploring – and starting to go to work on those impressive weeds!
Never having ever had chickens before, I didn’t know what to expect. We found so many positives – eating up scraps, clearing weeds, producing poo, eventually producing eggs (and making money off them!) etc. What took me by surprise was how much we love our chickens and how funny and entertaining they are!
If you have room for chickens but have been hesitant about getting into it – honestly, go for it! They are not hard to take care of! I would be sad without them! (and the eggs!! Oh the taste is amazing when you have your own!!)
Hello! The days are moving by quickly! Got my travel money sorted, bills up to date – not long now!
Its hard to get a feel for how the weather was today via photos – it wasn’t that cold and it didn’t rain – but it did its best to be miserable all the same! I figured the chooks would enjoy a tray of hot smash!
They certainly did. Bits of it were being flicked everywhere! I should have worn a raincoat into the yard!
I think this one is moulting! She looks so scruffy!
They are still confined to the duck-yard garden. The main yard is really looking lush right now.
Our oldest bird, Screecher, trundling along fine
I think when I return from Texas we will be tempted to get a few more birds. Hopefully they will pick up on the egg production soon!
Today’s mega garden haul!!
Outside right now its blowing a gale and the rain is being blown right up to the back door despite the covered veranda!
Its lovely and cosy inside – fire is crackling away!
Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend planned!
Hello! Midweek and the first day of autumn!! And it was the nicest day of summer ever! Go figure!
Margie dropped in today to say hello. She brought her little dog Macca, but left him in the car with the windows a little open as she wasn’t staying long.
Well… as we walked back to her car we could hear a dog barking – but not from the car! From down in the back yard. Yipes! The little snot had wriggled his way out of the car window and somehow through the fence to the back and found 11 new feathery playmates!
By the time I got into the yard, there was no sign of 10 of the birds. Just one black girl that had hunkered down, kinda comatose. I think she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t there as Macca bounced around her in delight barking at his new playmate!
It took a while, but I coaxed Macca to me and deposited him back over the fence to Margie who was looking all kinds of mortified!! (To be honest I am just glad he went looking for the chickens and not straight out our gate to the highway!!)
I went back to the chook who seemed paralysed picked her up, tipped her over and checked her out – no damage. I popped her in the coop area and ruffled her up a bit to snap her out of her frozen state!! She came to and wandered off! (chook brains!!!)
Still not another chicken in sight. It was like the aliens had been and beamed them up!!
Finally they started appearing from out of bushes and behind the big macrocarpa trees.
So hard to count them… I could only come up with 9.
It took ages – there are a lot of black chickens and they move about a lot so it was a bit of a challenge. I finally found Squeezy Chook buried in the raspberry patch. That was 10.
I didn’t think there was that many hiding places! It took me about 20 minutes to find the missing girl!
She was squashed down between the compost and vegetable garden fence and kinda nested in some of my plastic sheeting. Wasn’t moving a muscle – or feather! I had to pick her up and reanimate her as well! Then gave her a bit of bread which made things all better.
This set of photos made me laugh – I took them some bread this afternoon as a treat to make up for their fright. I had the camera sitting above the bread down at ‘chook level’ and was taking random photos without looking what I was doing! Chicken Faces are the best!
G’day… There goes another weekend! They just zip by don’t they?
It rained a reasonable amount today – but not with the enthusiasm of yesterday, so we could at least go out for a bit without getting completely saturated!
First Marigold!!! Made me laugh because its such a scrappy little thing!
This completely unimpressive photo is my ‘before’ photo. In about a month I am really hoping there will be so much green with tall corn and massive zucchinis etc. It just looks a bit underwhelming right now!!
Just a little bit of weeding left to do in the duck yard!! haha
And look who I caught in action!! Screecher, our oldest chook has discovered she can fly to the top of the pallet fence and take a stroll on the wild side!! (Wing clipping night has to be soon!!)
The chicken plummet…Capture of non-remorseful chook!! Couldn’t hold camera, chicken and focus!! Oh well!
Anyway, this post was meant to be about pizza.
We enjoy pizza… we used to buy it when we lived in the city. But when we moved to Tasmania and I didn’t go back to ‘normal formal paid 9-5’ work, I learned to do lots of things that meant avoiding spending excess $$
Making pizza’s was one of those things.
Its actually pretty hard to go back to the bought pizzas once you make your own unless you are going out to the fancy-pants gourmet pizza places.
If you don’t make your own bases… here is the recipe for mine. Its pretty easy & straight forward.
In a small bowl, put one tablespoon of dry yeast, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a cup of lukewarm water.
Mix and leave until it froths up nicely.
In a large bowl sift 2 & 1/2 cups of plain flour, and add one teaspoon of sea salt flakes (I often use normal salt) and a tablespoon of olive oil (again, vegetable oil quite acceptable)
Add yeast mix to the flour and mix in – using well floured hands and bench, start to knead into dough. Takes a few minutes to get it to the nice smooth elastic consistency.
Place in clean bowl and cover with damp cloth
This whole mixture now has to be left to rise, so perfect opportunity to go down to the supermarket to go shopping and forget the icing sugar for the cake you baked the day before (yeah I know… sigh)
Aaaanyway… skipping forward
I like to break this into 3 lumps, although the original recipe says 4
Roll out to vaguely pizza shape
Add toppings as you desire… we usually have same one every time because we are boring and we like it.
Home made tomato relish as sauce baselittle cheese, onion and capsicumIn my world, a pizza is not complete without pineapple
Topped with chicken pieces and sprinkled with cheese, we have our favourite pizza!!
Do you make pizza? Is pineapple important? What toppings are essential??
Who knows… maybe we will branch out one day.
Enjoy whats left of your weekend and hope Monday is kind to you!
Finally got around to juicing a good number of Ruby’s lemons. Will freeze for later use. Those, plus some oranges and other general scraps got put through the gee-whizzer to give to the worms. (Its not just the cat and chickens around here that get spoiled)
Three of these containers went into the compost – happy worms
Breaking down the compost scraps has really moved the whole composting task along so well. I gave them a bit of a stir with the pitchfork and it looks so beautiful! (If rotting food, mud and worms could look beautiful, then I’ve nailed it!!)
I tried to take a photo of the wind for you today.
Probably not very successful.
But blah!! It was so uncomfortable outside – the wind was literally pushing me off balance out there. Funnily enough all those cups didn’t get blown into the next paddock – just a few other seedling covers had to be re positioned
I suppose its hard to see all the lettuce being blown back!!A line up at the nesting box – I didn’t fill the other two spots with hay because they all insist on laying in the same one! (and I am short of hay)
I gave up later in the afternoon, came inside and indulged in playing my old X-Box!! Pitfall Harry – Intrepid Jungle Explorer! (We all have to have our little vices don’t we??)
Hope your weekend weather is much nicer than ours wherever you are!
