EXCHANGE INTERFACE

No, we don't have a 'blue' chook. Alas. Love the 'blue' shades on chooks - so pretty and unusual!

We do, however, have a couple of new ISA browns. That is, they're 'new' to the flock. From a local private school which had them but got a new Agriculture teacher, and they bought pullets and were looking to rehome the old ladies.

So we took two, because we couldn't take just one. They came yesterday afternoon, they are fearless and grumpy, and very very noisy.

Also, we only just settled the two newbies from the postman in. "The Posties" are, if not fully integrated, comfortably co-existing with the three we've had. And now our number is 7. Which might be more than council technically allows us, but unless someone complains...

I do need a new garden icon with the chooks.

Tell me what drew you to keeping chooks? from senmut

I really blame Australian permaculturist Linda Woodrow and her book The Permaculture Kitchen Garden which I borrowed from a friend, read over and over and over, then handed back and bought my own copy to pore over. She described how chooks are multi-functional in the garden - not just laying eggs, but also scratching up the soil, making mulch, depositing manure, eating weeds and seeds and bugs, and providing entertainment - and I was sold!

These days, in most cases, chickens are easier to till the soil than breaking my back trying to do the job. They deal with the snails and slugs and bugs, with the fruit-fly-infested fruit, and any grasshoppers or earwigs or grubs they turn up in the garden. They don't really lay all that much, and they tend to dustbathe in the most inconvenient places. But they are heaps of fun, and such quirky personalities, and I love mine.

The two in the icon are our first flock - the Original Recipe: Honey Soy (Isa Brown) and Hainan (Leghorn). They died a few years back, but were very much Personalities.

Since then we have had:
- Sussy (a beautiful Milleflora Sussex) and Tja-Tse (Hyline): killed by a fox
- "the Banquet" - Shantung (might have been a Hyline, might have been an Isa Brown) and Cold Dish (a leghorn): died of old age
- "the babies" - Siyao (Barnavelder) and Goongbao (Wyandotte)
- "the little girls" - Carambah and Chouquette (both Quambys)

We're down to three chooks right now after Chouquette was put down earlier this year, and looking at getting a couple more, but first some work needs to be done on the chook yard. Which will hopefully happen today while I have some 'hired help' for the yard.

The person who came around to assist in working out the sound system got it working!

It still cuts out if you turn it too loud, but we're not loud watchers (okay, B1 isn't a loud watcher and neither is B2).

I watched the opening sequence of Pacific Rim to ensure that it worked and, as ever, found my throat thickening up at the world coming together. I didn't really enjoy Pacific Rim: Uprising. The managed to take the heart of the first movie out of it, and it never really recovered from that point onward.

Even in the opening scenes of PR, you get a good sense of the world and the people in it. You like Raleigh and Yancy and Tendo, Pentecost is the anchor from then to now, and when they start up in the "future" (Yancy died in 2020 - man, I had a moment watching the dates come up), Mako being caught out for trash-talking Raleigh in front of him is so relatable, with Gottlieb and Geizler the comic relief.

Anyway, now I just need to get longer cords for the sound system to go around the room, and in the meantime we need to not trip over the cords so much...

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I did get the front curtains up, so now we're not on display to every person walking by. There's been a string of robberies and break-ins to cars in the area, so it's good not to have our complete entertainment system on public display any longer!

Unfortunately, the curtains I was going to hang on the front window turned out to need a wash, so I ran them through the washing machine...and then it began to rain. I hung them out anyway, and have a few buckets up to catch the drips that are happening through the porch roof...

Oh damn, I think it's going to rain all this week...

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The chooky-babes are laying again! Well, Q1 (Carambah) is laying and has been for the last couple of weeks, while Sissy has just started up again - just as we sail into winter! Be interesting to see if she lays through winter.

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I got some of the study floor polished; but I think I need decent light to do it by, so I've put it off until tomorrow.

B2 helped me move my bed back into place,

Might be an early night for me; B1 got up for about an hour earlier tonight, but that's been about it so far.

Hockey tomorrow, feeling a bit run-down and exhausted, frankly. And it'll likely be raining. Not gonna be fun.

We got HoneySoy and Hainan chicken as 6 month old pullets back in 2017. They came already acclimatised to each other, and living in a solid wooden triangle coop with two wheels that was supposed to be moved through the garden.

( death of a kind-of pet )



RIP Hainan chicken, you were the bravest chicken to ever bravely run away.

my post over at gardening.

I think that this is going to be a much more productive year, so far as the annual beds are concerned. Previous years have been hampered by the lack of soil fertility, in part because I'd grow my vegies and then wouldn't really have replaced the nutrients that got taken from the soil by the next year.

( mostly about the chooks )

So good.

I've only listened from end to end once, and seen the movie release end to end once. Otherwise, it's mostly been hearing this song or that song here and there and all over the place.

The show was GOOD. I just sat and enjoyed it from start to finish. I have another two sets of tickets (yes, I went and bought multiples as soon as they were on sale) and I will be using at least one set again, so...it'll be good to see the second time.

( more stuff )

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A small home drama when the show finished: my sister had messaged me to say that one of our chooks was missing! She couldn't find her when it came time to put them away, and thought maybe she'd been stolen.

I got home at 11pm, did the rounds, and found her perched up on a 1.8m fence! I have no idea how she got up there, but apparently she did. Got her down, put her into her chook house, closed everything up. I tried to carry her down but she was having none of that and at one point I dropped her. I hope I didn't injure her, because there was a lot of 'trying to get comfortable' happening when I finally walked away from the chook house.

So, show watched, drama done. Long weekend imminent.

So tired.

Well, Team 1 are down a few players this weekend, so I'm up for playing.

Now I have to go for a quick run morning and evening to get my fitness back up. I should really be doing this every day but I am LAZY.

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I have apples growing on my tree! APPLES!

Also, one side of the dual plum is blossoming. But the other...is not. Not sure what to make of that.

There might be apricots on the multi-stone (the only graft that does well on that tree is the plum graft: LOTS of plums). Now I just have to keep them alive and unfallen and uninfected by fruit flies until they're ripe!

Have separated out most of the tomato seedlings, need to separate out the eggplant seedlings.

None of the pigeon peas (legumes) or edamame are sprouting though. But the melons and pumpkins are going great guns right now!

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We have two new chooken! Refugees from up the road, tormented by a new and enthusiastic puppy who hasn't yet been taught not to 'play' with the chookens like they're rubber toys. And they've already laid: one beautiful, perfectly formed brown egg, one rather odd, almost porcelain-like shelled white egg.

Somewhat hilariously, the new brown one (Shantung) has decided that she is going to be top chook in the yard. Hainan tried to bully the new white one (Cold Cut) and Shantung wasn't having none of it. There was lots of chest-boofing and flapping at each other, and over the next 60 seconds, Shantung basically bossed Hainan into submission.

Poor Hainan stood around looking a bit shocked after that.

We'll let them in around each other a bit during each day to get them used to each other. But the two new girls certainly aren't showing any fear like the two we had previously. RIP Sussy and Tjatse.

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Work is chugging along. Although I do wish the guys would listen. I feel like I am explaning everything twice - in emails, no less!

Last night I went to the regional permaculture group, because they had an avian doctor there to talk about chickens and the health issues they face.

She had pictures. They were rather graphic.

( no pics, just some thoughts )

Anyway then I came home to a FB post on a backyard poultry group where a guy wanted to know what was the best way to kill off his chooks which hadn't been laying for 3 months. ( it's kind of funny, but also kind of not )

I think the main things I took away from the vet's talk, though, was too look after my girls (egg-layers) with love and care and all the necessary nutrients for as long as they're alive, which probably won't be very long - egg-layers last maybe 5 years?

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To do before going away for the weekend:
1. divide chook feed into servings for easy feeding, also divide 'snacks' up into containers.
2. replenish their water
3. add more mulch to their pen

High humidity, awful heat (parts of Sydney hit 47C yesterday), fic deadlines, and irregular bedtimes thanks to holidays have worn me to a fray. And now I have to work eight hours, supposedly rested and relaxed after holidays and ugh, I'm just not feeling it...

On the up side, the chickens survived yesterday, and it rained in the night, so hopefully things are a little less hot (although they're going to be no less sticky I think).

At some point in the next couple of weeks, an automatic door for the chicken coop will turn up, and after installation (and the creation of a suitable 'entry room' for the coop), I will no longer have to get up before 6am to let the chooks out.

Somewhat amusingly, my FB timeline threw up a pic of the garden when we first moved in, when I was still planting things out. I need to take another photo of it from the same angle - and hunt up the original photos for comparison...

Writing did not happen the way I wanted it to during the holidays. I snoozed and napped a lot more than expected, and spent a lot of my time out in the garden. I'm thinking that maybe my summers will be spent out in the garden, and my winters spent inside writing? Also, we really need to install some water tanks on the property, because I hate using the city water supply for things that don't need potable water.