New life

Over the last few weeks there has been a flush of new life here on the farm.  Five chickens have hatched and doing really well.  I had planned to write about the amazing animal instincts, that a hen knows how long to sit on her eggs, to turn them (up to 100 times per day), and then how to care for her young.  Not bad for an animal regarded as stupid.  The ability of the mother hen never ceases to amaze me, its mother nature at her best.

Our daughter just loves the chicks

Mother hen teaching the chicks how to forage

Sadly, not all animals on the farm are quite so amazing!  Our goat Rosie had twin boys on friday evening.  All went well with the birth, however it became apparent that the following day she didn't particularly want them.  Or I think more correctly she doesn't know what to do with them. She likes them when we are there with her, but she abandons them to follow us, rather than stay with them.  She screams at our window for us, leaving her own kids in the paddock.  Luckily our other goat Dorka was more than happy to adopt the two.  A true 'nanny' goat!

The kids at about 2-3 days old

 We are now getting 3-4L of milk per day, which means we can make more cheese.  We haven't yet decided what to do with our two little boys, one has horn buds, while the other appears to be polled (we will have to have a better look though).  We had hoped for at least one girl, to keep as a milker... 

The kids!

 

Dairy dreaming!

We have been milking our goat Dorka for about 2 years now (on the single lactation).  She still produces on average 1L per day, which is not much for a dairy goat, but we don't feed her concentrates or anything to increase her milk supply.  We have made a bit of cheese but due to the quantity of milk, we haven't really had enough to make lots of cheese.  So far we have made feta, haloumi and cream cheese.  We haven't dabbled in any of the mould type cheeses yet, or hard cheeses for keeping. 

In a few weeks our other goat Rosie is due to have her first kid/s.  She is enormous, but she always has a bit of a belly, so its hard to say if its multiples or just her!  She certainly has slowed down in the last week or so, but still defiant in her escape from the paddock.  We have been trying very hard to keep the goats in their paddock (they free range on all our land - mostly just around us- so all the gardens have to be fenced off from them, rather than them being like normal livestock...  We added an electric wire about 30cm above ground level and the same out from the main fence to try and keep them in, plus poly droppers (2 between each set of posts) to hold the wires tight together so they can't just walk through the fence.  Its just a 6 strand plain wire fence, which is just not enough to keep goats in.  With the imminent arrival of at least one new goat (Rosie's baby/s) we really want them to stay in the paddock as while 2 goats hanging around isn't too bad, 3-4 is going to be a bit much, particularly as they tend to follow me when I go walking the dogs...


For the last few months we have been discussing getting a Jersey cow for milk, mostly for the cream content, so we can make butter.  We have come close to buying one, but we are going to wait a bit longer (for starters we HAVE to solve the goat fence troubles!), to set up a dairy shed and do more fencing.  My parents brought us some raw Jersey milk from a farm, so I just had to have a try at making butter.  We just poured off some of the cream (approximately 700mL) into a pyrex jug and then beat it with a handheld beater.  It took a while to turn (probably because the cream was fresh) but it did turn eventually, and I made about 150g of butter.  It was nice to have a go before we invest in a cow, just to be sure I can do it.  Before we buy a cow we will have to buy or make a churn, butter paddles and I'm hoping to get a butter mould so I can make 'pretty' butter. 

My first go at making butter, delicious!

My father just returned from a trip to Switzerland, and I asked him to pick up a few goat bells and cow bells.  So he brought home 2 new goat bells for our 2 goats and 2 second hand bells (one small and one big) for our cows when we eventually get them.  I can't wait to put the bells on the goats, but it'll have to wait till we get new collars, as they wont fit on the ones they wear now. 

One of the new goat bells

The bells were traditionally put on cows and goats when they were taken up to the high meadows of the Swiss alps, so that the cow/goatherd would know where the animals were, so none could run away.  The best milker wore the biggest bell, and there were often celebrations when the cows/goats went up to the alps in spring and then again on their return in autumn. 

selection of cow and goat bells from Switzerland

Spring eggs

The spring equinox just passed by a few days ago.  In the northern hemisphere this coincides with easter which takes much of its symbolism from spring - eggs, baby birds and bunnies.  For us in the south, now would be the time to celebrate the joy of eggs, as at easter time they are rare! 

Our girls are laying well, and from 12 standard sized hens, 2 bantam and 4 ducks we get about 15 eggs a day.  Its nice to have some to give away and sell, as well as plenty for baking yummy cakes and custardy desserts.  We also get to partake in the daily egg hunt, as our girls like to hide their eggs from us (I wonder where the chocolate egg hunt idea came from????).

We have one clucky hen sitting on 9 eggs, so fingers crossed it all goes well and we get a nice clutch of chicks.  Its important to keep new hens coming in each year, and at about $30 per hen it becomes costly to buy and replace your stock all the time.  We have a new rooster, a Speckled Sussex who is quite nice and should bring in some new qualities to our mixed breed flock.

The garden is really growing now (and the grass) the loganberries and raspberries are just starting to flower, as are the strawberries.  Lots of little seedlings are popping up (such as silverbeet, lettuce, mustards, kale), and my precious tomatoe seedlings and cucurbits (pumpkin, zuchinni, cucumber, melons etc) are just germinating.

I'm planning to grow a ' 3 sisters' style plot for our sweet corn and popcorn.  The 3 sisters are corn, beans and squash.  The native american indians grew gardens like this before white settlement, so its a very early example of companion planting.  The corn provides poles for the climbing beans, the beans provide nitrogen to the soil and the squash provides a living mulch to keep the soil moist (which is really important for the corn).  They planted them in mounds with the plants fairly closely planted.  It will be a bit of an experiment anyhow. 

One of our goats Rosie is 'in kid' and due in November.  This means that after having her for over a year we will finally be able to start milking her!  She is looking enormous, so I'm anticipating twins (hopefully NOT triplets) so there wont be much milk to start with.  We are also investigating buying a house cow, most likely a Jersey, so that we can make bigger quantities of cheese and importantly BUTTER!  We use a bit of butter in cooking and baking so it makes sense to produce our own, and we are all pretty keen on making all our own dairy products.  Excess milk and whey will be fed to the chooks and eventually to some pigs which I'd like to get for garden tillage. 

Busy busy

The blog has been quiet this year, but that is because we have been so busy with everything!  It feels like we are getting somewhere occasionally.  Lots of work to reach our goals of self sufficiency.

This week the kids and I planted out our potatoe patch - approximately 80sqm.  I have been spending a bit of time each day turning over the soil, then chopping up the sod with a hoe and hilling up the soil into rows.  Then the fun but back-breaking job of planting out the seed potatoes and backfilling.

planting potatoes with a little help from the kids

Now I just have to mulch with the old bedding from the goat shed and I can take a quick breath before the spring vegies have to be propagated!!!

the hand dug potatoe patch - ready for mulching

Spring is most definately here now.  Hardly a drop of rain this month, which coincides with the arrival of a new water tank!!!  We thought we would add more storage to our fairly modest 22,500L tank that is our domestic, garden and stock water supply!

new tank arrives!

The chooks all think its spring too, as they have been very busy laying eggs for us, so its nice to have plenty to enjoy and use in baking.  This year I'm planning on baking a few rich fruit cakes to put away to enjoy in the winter when eggs are scarce and not available for baking cakes.  Fruit cakes keep for ages if wrapped up and kept in a dark pantry.

our 5 year old with one of the hens we raised this year

I'm about to start all our summer vegies this week, all the tomatoes, pumpkins, zuchinni, cucumbers etc.  And then the REALLY busy time begins!

An early spring

I had heard at our local plant nursery that we were in for an early spring, and after the last week of record August warmth for our region, I have to say I agree!  Although it was lovely, its a bit disconcerting to be out and about in a t-shirt in August!!! 

Again, I have to apologise for the lack of updates on the blog.  Due to the lovely weather, I have been spending very little time inside, and even less time on the computer! 

I've been slowly working away at all the jobs that need doing around the farm.  I've planted about 12 fruit trees, plus about 30-40 raspberry plants, and a dozen rhubarb crowns.  I've fenced off what will be developed into a food forest, with 4 strands of electric fencing to keep out our 2 free range goats (my next fencing project will be upgrading the paddock fencing, so that our 2 free range goats will be restricted to being 'paddock goats' instead!!).  I've spent a bit of time fencing off another garden plot to plant our potatoes in this year (its about 8m x 8m).  Now I just have to dig all that area over to plant the potatoes!!!

happy free range ducks with my simple goat proof fence in the background

 We did some burning off of cypress prunings. I'm not a big fan of burning off, I don't like wasting even sticks for an 'unproductive' fire, but we have alot prunings around the place and dry cypress burns a little too good to have it lying around all summer (especially since its predicted to be a much drier summer than the last....).

I'm getting excited about our spring/summer garden.  We are planning on planting some new crops - popcorn and luffa (to use as a more eco friendly alternative to dishwashing sponges -yes we are the only people on the planet who still wash up by hand, haha).  Plus a few different varieties of tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, beans and zuchinni.  I'm really going to push myself a bit with the garden this year and aim to produce some good crops that will cover us for the whole years consumption. 

the vegie garden, getting ready for spring

Next year we plan on starting to grow our own grains.  Probably just wheat, oats and maize (a better alternative to growing ordinary sweet corn as you can pick it 'green' for sweet corn and leave some to mature as maize for cornmeal and animal feed).  We will look at buying some pigs to employ as ploughs to help with preparing bigger plots for planting. 

The bees survived the winter and were out and about enjoying the sunshine!  That was a relief as I was unsure how much honey they had and how much they need to keep them going.  We will harvest some in late spring, just enough for our own needs and see how that goes. 

We are still reading the 'little house on the praire' series of books as a family and loving them.  We are now up to the 5th book and now have a popcorn and reading ritual going (inspired by Almanzo's family popcorn and reading nights in Farmer Boy).  We can't recommend these books highly enough - not just for kids.

Our little girl turns 5 this week!  She got an early birthday present of a trio of Rhode Island Red bantams, which she adores, and goes out to visit MANY times a day.  Hopefully the hens will be good broodies and hatch some chickens for us this year.  Speaking of chickens, summers little chicks are now all grown up and some are laying!  We are getting a few more eggs each day.  Another sign that spring is around the corner.

happy free-range kids!

Farming

"A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you are a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with the wood out of your own timber.  You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come.  You'll be free and independent, son, on a farm."  Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

We are currently reading the 'little house on the praire' series of books to our kids.  We have just finished Farmer Boy, which was fantastic.  I highly recommend them to children or adults alike.  The detail in the daily processes, from churning butter, weaving cloth, shearing sheep and hauling wood are fantasic, and give you such a sense of the tasks that had to be done.

I suppose for our family this story was pretty special, as it outlined alot of the stuff that we are doing or trying to achieve with our own patch of land.  It also is a great reminder that we can survive after peak oil and the changes that will bring with it. 

Sorry for my absence from the blog for the last few months.  I've been flat out with keeping up with the work on our little farm.  I've started planting out our fruit trees in our food forest (which is basically a less tidy version of an orchard with multiple layers and eventually edible ground covers as well), I've planted out a bed of asparagus (thanks to my friend Jo who supplied me with some of her own home grown asparagus crowns), one of rhubarb and 3 of strawberries.  I'm also preparing the garden for the spring crops and enjoying going through seed catalouges to decide what we will plant this spring.  I'm determined to improve on my vegetable garden this year and really focus on growing all that we need. 

The weather has been a bit of a mix lately, with unseasonally warm (and very spring like) weather, and now the more typical cold, wet and very windy weather.  There is talk that this summer will be drier again, and I've noticed that the wattles have started flowering, but the flowers are sparse and nothing like that of last year.  Wonder if it means anything....

Autumn

We have been blessed with some lovely autumn days (as well as lots of rain), but despite nice weather winter is just around the corner.  In our part of the world the sun sits very low in the sky and the shadows get longer.  We are now in 'power saving' mode here, with a very modest off-grid solar power system (with trees to our north!!! Probably THE worst situation - but its only temporary).  We have to be more and more careful about how much power we use, particularly the stuff that is left on over night (as in appliances on standby mode etc). 

halloween in the southern hemisphere! At the RIGHT time of year!

Autumn here has been a busy season with garden harvests, roadside harvests and lots of preserving.  I've tried to expand my collection of preserves this year, with green tomatoe relish and pickles, pickled zuchinni, tomatoe sauce and bottled apples (cooking apple variety Belle de Boskoop from a nearby organic apple orchard).  I also made the usual chutneys and jams.  I still have Apple butter and chestnut jam on my list to do before I can rest in the kitchen!

bottled apples

We have made 2 batches of wine this year - cherry plum (from the roadside trees) and apple and blackberry.  We finally got to taste our blackberry wine that we made last year and it was a sucess!

I have been doing lots of work in the garden pulling out the summer crops and preparing the soil for the winter crops and new perrenials like asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries.  I'm also planning on planting a good number of fruit trees this winter so there is plenty of preparation to do before the fruit trees become available in July (mostly fencing to keep out our free range goats!).

some action on the house too!

On a wanna be self-sufficient farm there is no 'quiet' time it seems, as there is always plenty to do (hence there has been very little activity on the blog!)