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.

Nurtribullet

15/01/2014 Nutri Bullet.

It's been quite a while since I posted here. We purchased a Nurtribullet after a lot of research. I would have liked a Optimum pro 9200. If the Nurtribullet doesn't work out the that is what I'll be buying.

On Monday the 13th January 2014 the new Nurtribullet arrived. We only used it once on Monday on Tuesday we used it twice, but today we have started our green smooth way of eating. This morning I made us for brekky a Protein Protein Powerhouse smoothie. Lunch I made immunity boost. What is worrying me so far is the amount of fruit in them. I will look for recipes with not so much fruit and more vegetables.

We should only have 2 serves of fruit per day and five serves vegetables. Today we have had raspberries, avocado mango pear pineapple apple banana there isn't enough protein either.

The Nurtribullet is great though. I'll just have to find my own recipes following nutrition I know is more correct for a healthy body. Steve will be loving this because it's so sweet.

Well we have made it to December already, where has the year gone. I have been busy for the last 12 weeks trying to get fit and healthy, I'm achieving that at a nice slow pace, that story is on my other blog.

Today was the first time in ages that I've had the chance to spend any time in the garden. We pulled out the snow peas and planted carrots, and purple beans, we also have a fantastic crop of tomatoes at the moment, they are so yum. They are also going wild the blue tongue lizards are helping themselves to the lower ones, I don't really mind as there are plenty for them as well.

We are growing apple cucumbers and they are very nice to eat. I cut one up to have for a nice healthy morning tea, and everyone helped me eat it so I had to cut up more this is what happens when you cut something up that others don't usually have for morning tea.

Our corn is almost ready to harvest, so we will be enjoying some nice cobs soon.

Tracie

I have just joined Michelle Bridges "12 week Body Transformation" I'm really looking forward to getting started,  if you want to keep up to date on how I'm going you can read it on my new blog
my-12wbt-journey.blogspot.com

Tracie

Today the paving was started.

Have a few jobs to do tomorrow so we will do more paving on Friday if the weather stays fine. The forecast for the next couple of days is rain.

Cooked some nice Silver Dory with chips and steamed vegetables for dinner. Very nice. We don't eat enough fish meals at this house because Steve isn't that fussed. I sneak one in every now and then and he doesn't mind.

Tracie

Holidays

I'm on Holidays, 16 days of not going to work. This will be the first holiday I've had in 5 or more years. I'm so looking forward to it.

I'm going to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that but most of all I'm going to relax.

Tracie

Today we did the mulching around the garden beds but we ran out of mulch. We will need one more scoop to finish, will get that next week while I'm on holidays. I'm having two weeks holidays starting next Tuesday, have lots of things I want to do at home and in the garden. We are having a stay-cation. I'm looking forward to it very much.

Today I cleaned out two of the gardens one ready for corn and the other one ready for tomatoes. I planted a ROMA, MORTGAGE LIFTER, and a rich red tomato. Steve will plant some seed and get some seedlings started but these three little plants well get us started in the tomato stakes.

We still have quite a few Brassicas that are developing, Broccoli, Cauliflowers and cabbage.

Back to work tomorrow.

Tracie

I can't believe it's been 6 months since I wrote a post here. Well here I go again I will try to keep it a bit more up to date.

We have really neglected to garden in the last 9 months since I started to work full time, I just don't seem to have the time I used to have when I was nannying, I at least had Sundays to garden, now that my weekend consists of Tuesday and Wednesday, it has been a little hard to get used to. Steve also works a normal week so he doesn't have as much time on the days I'm off.

Today we started off by having a sleep in, I worked till 9.00pm last night, working in retail is a little crazy sometimes, then we did our junk mail, then it was off for a trip to Flower Power for some Mulch so we can finish mulching around the garden beds, ( we only started this little project last spring) and some soil to top up the garden beds. Then we went to Bunnings for some Seed Raising mix, it's cheaper here than at Flower Power. We also picked up some nice looking Tomato plants this will help us get a head start with the tomatoes for summer.

While we were digging around in the garden this afternoon we found this giant purple Sweet

Potato it was 2.482 kilos this is the biggest sweet potato I have ever seen and the biggest one we have ever grown, this was the only one we found today I hope this isn't the only one that has grown this season.

Today we also picked some nice broccoli it has been really yummy this year, I think it is all the rain we have had this season. Cabbage moth hasn't been around as much either.

I will try and write a bit more often.

Tracie

Our Pond

Last Easter (2010) we turned the filter off on our swimming pool. The cost of electricity and chemicals to run it was extremely expensive.

We did do quite a bit of research before doing this, and decided if we were going to still have a body of water in the backyard we may as well make it pretty.

This week we put the first of the plants in the water, look at what they have attracted. Beautiful Dragonflies.

This fellow or lady, was quite large and having a great cool off in the water.

and doesn't this guy have the most gorgeous red tail.

Our pool has a few other water bugs as well. Our next step after we have put a few more plants in is to add fish...

Tracie

Well today is my 48th Birthday. I have had a nice relaxing day. Breakfast with my hubby, then a phone call from the boss to say happy birthday, and why don't you stay home today nice surprise.

The photo above is of the beans we planted on the 9th Jan. They are already popping their heads up out of the dirt, will be able to plant them out next week.

These lettuce are growing like weeds, they seem to grow taller every day. I think you can just about watch them grow.

Here is Ethel on top of the Box of weeds I bought them home yesterday. It is keeping them busy. In a few days they will have it all emptied out and all the good bits eaten.

Can you see the ginger rooster in the background behind the girls, Kirby spends hours in the chook pen with the girls, we think there may be a mouse catching his eye.

This is my Rosie girl. She doesn't like the hot weather. She hates it above about 25 degrees c. Here she is under the shade of a gum tree keeping cool.

Well this was just a quick catch up of around my place. Work keeps me really busy so not much time to catch up on blogging.

Tracie

"Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat etc etc......."

The new Job is going great. The best move I have made so far. It is very quite at the moment not many people buy beds pre christmas, but they tell me that after christmas we will be run of our feet.

Have today off. I don't start work tomorrow till 1.00pm - 9.00pm. Thats okay as I get to do a few more christmas things. We were having Christmas down here but with the change in job we are going to have Christmas at Pymble this year. When I have been in the job longer I may be able to organise Christmas eve off next year. I know it's a whole year away but I like to be organised.

Today I have made 2 Festive fruit and nut cakes to give as gifts. I like to give gifts that I have made. Made a huge batch of white christmas to give as gifts as well. YUM.

Well I have 3 fairy skirts still to make so I had better get to it.

Tracie

I can't believe I haven't written anything here for the past 3 months. Spring has passed by in a blur. Last time I wrote here, I wrote about starting a new job. Well this week I finish that job and move on to another more permanent job. Nannying has been great for the last 18 months, and I'm going to miss M J and A greatly. I hope I can still see them. I'm a bit sad that I can't watch them grow anymore, but it was my time to move on.

I'm going to be selling beds and mattresses for a large chain. I have retail experience but have never sold a bed. Suppose it won't be too difficult once I now all my product knowledge. Product knowledge is swimming around in my head right now as I had my first shift yesterday.

Now that I won't be working such long hours I will try and write more often.

I have been doing some baking, and our garden is looking fantastic.

The chookies are all laying, and we get 5 to 7 eggs per day. We are both enjoying our googs, they are sooooo nice.

Have a great day.

Tracie

SPRING

Today is the first day of spring, hurray, I love spring, the new life that is popping out of the ground is great.

Two of my pullets are laying... They lay the cutest little googs (eggs). I put a couple of them in rissoles last night and they were yum.

It has been awhile since my last post but my life is a bit hectic at the moment. I have started Nannying for another family. I had to give up my Funtime job. I finish there this Friday. It is a little sad because I loved it at Funtime. Hopefully I'll be able to work on the odd weekend to keep my hand in.

I'm now nannying 5 days per week. The new family is very nice, but I will need a bit of time to get used to their routine and what is expected of me.

HARVESTING

We harvested 3 kilos of spuds they were yum, and we have been eating broccoli for weeks now and it is yum as well. I especially love the purple broccoli. Last night all the veges we were eating for dinner we had grown, broccoli, kohl rabi, pumpkin, potatoes, snow peas. I steamed them all and had them with rissoles.

Better get ready for work...

Have a great day.

Tracie

Our garden is coming to life. We have tiny little peaches on the peach tree, I just hope they set. We got one Peach last year and it was yum.

Our lemon tree still has quite a bit of fruit on it, I have given it a prune and now there is new life on it too. Lovely new shoots and lots of little lemons.

This is one of my favourite flowers, I love it because it just pops up every year. No need to re plant it. The chooks also love to eat the lovely green leaves.

The broadbeans are flowering but not much else. There doesn't seem to be any little beans yet just lots of flowers.

This is the 3rd year I have had my blueberry bush. this year it is full of lovely little flowers, if all the flowers on my bush turn to berries I will be haveing a blueberry feast. I think it loves the drink of tea I give it every morning.

On the other side of our fruit salad tree we have a branch of apricots. this is the first year it has flowered so hopefully we will get fruit.

Thats all for today. Better get ready for work.

Tracie