Compost

I have been a little slow with this video, with Christmas and all. Now I'm back on track to completing the video for the compost module.

Composting at our house is done in rolling compost bins, I would love to have a normal composting area but my yard just doesn't lend itself to this. We compost anything that my 9 chickens won't eat, which doesn't leave much. I have a compost bucket set up on my kitchen bench next to the chicken scrap bucket. We have reduced our food waste into our garbage substantially. We have also improved the soil in our raised garden beds

Chicken Assessment

I've been keeping chickens for approx 10 years.

In this time we've had various incarnations of runs. Recycled pallets, garden sheds etc.

We started with 2 chicks, that we bought at the local Market. It was the middle of July and we didn't even have a heat lamp. We put these two little chicks on the back patio in a cardboard box with water and food and warm bedding. We weren't even sure if they would survive the night. The did and they became 2 gorgeous hens (lucky as they were unsexed), that gave us lovely eggs for about 2 years, this was enough time for us to become diehard chook lovers.

We live in a local council area that only allows 10 hens per household. At the moment we have 2 light sussex, 3 Barnvelders, 1 Whyndotte (not my favourite breed), 2 Isa Browns and one chick that is a lavender sussex.

One of our Light Sussex over the last 5 years has continually gone broodie, so this year we put 2 fertilised eggs under her and she managed to hatch one of them, so now we have one little Lavender Sussex that Floppsey is being a fantastic Mum too. It is so beautiful to watch.

The Current living arrangement we have for our girls is an Egglu. In 2016 we did a knock down rebuild and knew that where we were going to be living for 12 months would have foxes so we wanted to keep our little family of hens safe, and Egglu's are brilliant for this, yes it was tested numerous times in that 12 month period.

The Foxes came mainly in the morning and we caught them terrifing our chickens on quite a few occassions. In the end I was getting my hubby to pee on the boundary to try and keep them away.

2 years later we are living back on our block of land in our new house and the girls are very happy living in our newly planted Orchard and they have the run of this Orchard, they aren't allowed in the vege garden though unless very well supervised.

The last 2 years

Well, quite a lot has happened since I last visited this space. I have had Major Heart surgery (that is a very long story maybe for another day).

We have knocked down our house and built a brand spanking new one and moved into that brand spanking new house and have been working on making it our home. This week we would have been 1 year.

We now share our home with Steve's parents who are very elderly and even though they were coping very much on their own, there is going to come a day when they won't, so we thought the best option for that was to all move in together. Aged care in this country isn't very good but they have us.

We have been working very hard on building our garden back to all it's glory.

Orchard and chookies.

other side of Orchard

Roy the rooster and birdbath

for the bees and the birds to

have a drink.

The Gate to the orchard and vegie

patch.

Vege patch

We have fenced the Vegie Patch with a pallet fence to keep the chooks out. They get to free range in the Orchard hopefully keeping any bugs out of the soil so we can have healthy fruit with no fruit fly sting.

Now that spring is on it's way we will be working harder and harder to get lovely fresh produce right from the back yard. I've been harvesting lovely greens for salads every day so hopefully soon there will be tomatoes and cucumbers too.

Till Next time

Tracie

Current Projects

I made this blanket for a friend having a baby. 

This is some Marvel PJs for my husband.

I  bought the fabric from Spotlight.

Gluten and Dairy Free Cakes

It has been quite a while since I wrote anything here. I think it comes with working fulltime and having an hour plus commute.

Steve and I are starting on a whole food journey, so we are eating healthier than we have in the last 18 months. We've had a bad eating year, now it's time to get back on track.

I have a beautiful colleague at work that is turning 18 tomorrow she is gluten an dairy free so I volunteered to make her a cake.

The recipe came from the Healthy Chef web site and was really to make. In the morning I'll ice it with a avocado ganache.

Nutribullet beginning of week 3

Well we have owned the Nutribullet for 2 weeks now. We are finding it really great. I'm starting to get it all under control. The first week I ate too much fruit, now I'm only hsving the fruit in my breakfast smoothie, for lunch I've been making a vegetable smoothie and taking protien with me in a separate container. We've been having a normal dinner, with the addition of fruit icecream for dessert. Yummo. This fruit icecream is frozen fruit and either almond milk or cows milk, I have found that the cows milk leaves a fatty texture.  Last night we  added some yoghurt.

Tracie

16/01/2014 . Nutribullet Day 2 Well this morning we went for a 40 min walk. Trying to ease back into the exercise. For brekky we had another blast... Me being concerned with the calories and the amount of fruit I was consuming made my own concoction. Spinach Banana Apple Blackberries Broccoli Celery Almonds, flaxseeds, Maca. For lunch it was a salad in a cup... spinach tomato cucumber celery,walnuts Dinner was chicken leg and salad with yoghurt. So far the nutribullet is working great.