Pest or not???

Around here, the blackberry is regarded as a terrible pest, to be sprayed and destroyed at all cost (the cost being the health of the sprayer and their family and the environment....). We try and do our bit to keep pests down etc, and we try and get the blackberries out of the native vegetation, as they can be a little dominating over revegetation. But to us blackberries are also a really valuable resource.

Blackberries at this time of year (mid-late summer) are in full fruit. As an example, this morning we spent maybe 30mins or so, and picked nearly 2kg of berries, and got to enjoy a nice walk while we were at it. In the supermarket blackberries sell for at least $5 per 250g punnet.... (hmm, the 2kg of blackberries simmering on the stove would make a pretty expensive jam.... we live a pretty luxurious life!)


Blackberries are fodder for stock - we keep goats and goats LOVE blackberries (horses like the fruit, alpacas the young shoots). I think that they would be happy to only eat blackberries for their entire lives! Bees love the blackberry flowers - so for bee keepers they are also important (fingers crossed the bees will happen this year).

Blackberries are medicinal. The leaves can be used to make an ezcema remedy, and the berries (eaten) are a pregnancy tonic among other things (Raspberry leaf tea is normally drunk during pregnancy - and raspberries and blackberries belong to the family Rubus). There are specific remedies that use blackberry, read up on it in one of the many herbal books around - I recommend Juliette de Bairacli Levy, who has written on herbs for both humans and animals.

Hmmm, now I present you a pest, probably far more damaging to the garden than the humble blackberry....


This young man has discovered the art of pulling up carrots! Yes, the carrot patch that I am so proud of, my very first successful carrot patch..... I think there might have to be a child proof fence put up around the bed, or else we will only be eating very very tiny carrots!!!

Click go the shears

We have been waiting on the shearer to come and shear our 4 alpacas for a while now, and he hasn't turned up. Not anything new there, shearers can make life difficult, and can turn up with little notice. Its been hot (on and off thank goodness) and 2 of our alpacas have alot of fleece around the eyes, so they were essentially blind (wool blind).


So, after a friend dropped off some fleece that he had shorn himself with the old fashioned handshears, we got to thinking.... So for the cost of shearing the alpacas once, we got a reasonable set of handshears. But the real advantage is in the satisfaction of doing it ourselves! From 'back to back' the process is all done by us by hand, and that is a good feeling. Although I think Brad gets the easier end of the deal!!! He does the shearing, and my job then is to spin and knit the fibre into clothes.

So far only 1 and a half are done. It takes much longer to shear by hand and with 2 young children sitting patiently while we shear, we just can't do them all in one sitting. I would estimate between 1 and 2 hours per animal, most of that time being spent on the 'rubbish' parts of the fleece - the legs, belly, neck, tail, and around the head. All fiddly and the fleece is shorter and often very guard hairy and coarse. The 'saddle' or 'blanket' is the prime fleece, and its fairly easy and quick to shear.

If you haven't seen alpacas shorn before, you lie them down on their side and tie the front and back legs to posts so the animal is stretched out and can't move much (no action photos - we are too busy holding the animal and getting on with the work!). They are much stronger than sheep, and I don't think it would be a safe thing to try and shear them the way sheep are shorn!!! This time I administered a little 'rescue remedy', and the animal was so calm we both stopped to check if he was still alive!!!! I can't say for sure if it was the rescue remedy or whether it was just how he was going to behave, but he sure did fight before we got him on the ground, and actually dragged Brad about 10m along the ground!!!

So, another step forward, a new skill obtained, and its only January!!! I think there will be many things to learn this year, probably not all will be as easy or fun, but knowledge and skills are invaluable.

Meet the chicks

Here are some photos of each of the three chicks that we hatched last year. They are now about 5 weeks old, and doing great.

Featherlegs - the only rooster of the three, and by far the most charismatic of the chicks. Quite a character, although he is not afraid to peck the hand that feeds him!!! He has taken on his father's characteristic leg feathering. Most likely his mum is our other welsummer hen 'Henny'.



Fivetoes (now named Daffy - by our daughter). She has taken on her father's 5 toes. Also likely to be half welsummer. She has the most feathering of the chicks.



No distinguishable characteristics (yet to be named) - I initially though she was a he. Much slower at feathering up. She has no particularly distinguishable characteristics. Most likely, her mum is our Light Sussex x Leghorn hen, a very good layer.


Life has been good, if a little busy here. Trying to keep the ragwort from setting seed is probably one of the big jobs at this time of year, and unlike everyone else in the area, we are tackling it organically - so pulling or cutting the plants off. We hope that one day we can show people the place and say that you don't need to spray chemicals all over the place to deal with weeds. At this stage no one believes that it is possible!!

Apart from weeding, another job that we have to tackle is tensioning the fence and adding droppers between the posts to make it harder for the goats to get out! Hmm, I read in a book that the goat owner spends many hours upgrading fences and trying to outsmart the goats, but the goats have all day to think of how to get out!!! How true! Ah, fun times.

Goodbye 2009

Today is the last day of 2009. I find it a good opportunity to look back on the year that was and the achievements/milestones.

2009 was a pretty big year for us. This time last year we were still working on the old house, we still had a lot of work to do. We not only finished the renovation work, but also built us a tempoary home while we build our strawbale house. Halfway through 2009 we made the move to our land, to begin the 'dream'. It was an interesting time, we had very little in the way of the 'mod cons' we were used to. Makes you realise how little we need, but also how much we take for granted as 'westerners', compared to what so many in the world have.

We have added to the 'family' with the addition of our milking goat and more hens and roosters (which lead to our chicks! Self sufficiency in hen replacement!!). We have learnt how to cook and bake on the wood fired combustion stove, how to set up an off grid power system, and milk a goat. We have managed to somewhat tame our clydesdale horse, and can now put her halter on, and pick up her feet a bit. So much more to learn in 2010.

All that time I spent travelling up to our land every couple of days to check on animals has been spent creating and tending the garden, which is growing nicely. 2010 should see more beds dug and more manure and compost added to the established gardens.

Its been a hard year, I certanly feel tired. But its probably been one of the most rewarding years as far as our own personal achievements go. But 2009 was also an incredibly scary year. We suffered a seriously hot heat wave, temperatures beyond what we have had before, which lead to the worst fires we have had before (with unprecedented deaths). I hope that 2010 is kind to us, but as I write this its hot outside, and the grass is drying off.... Hmm, 2 months to stress and worry, till autumn comes.

So what is the plan for 2010? Hmm, hopefully some rest and relaxation. Hopefully more time spent with the animals, taking care of their needs. Fencing, gardening and weed management. We hope to have the house plans drawn up and maybe to make a start on the house, towards the end of the year.

So goodbye 2009, the new decade begins, hopefully with the 'flavour' of hope, change and compassion on a global scale.

Summer solstice

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It was warm and sunny, but not too hot. We spent the afternoon with some good friends and soaked up the sun and actually sat down and relaxed (doesn't happen too often around here!!) We used the opportunity to move our 'movable' chook pen while they were here!!!

The chooks are all great. The chicks are growing pretty quickly. I am fairly certain that one is a hen and one is a rooster - the third one I haven't made up my mind yet!


We de-loused one of our hens (not the mum and chicks thank goodness), she is called 'runty' because she is somewhat stunted in growth. We now know why - she was covered in some sort of lice (not the small mites I have seen before, but flea sized 'bugs' and many of her feathers had large clumps of eggs stuck to them). She has really improved since though, and although she is still small she seems to have a spark in her step now. She will need another treatment soon though, as some eggs remain. We will treat her and the whole flock probably in a weeks time. Should be fun!


The garden is growing well, zuchinnis are nearly ready to harvest, and some of the tomatoes and beans are flowering. We have harvested some potatoes, which were delicious. Nothing beats homegrown potatoes! I have many mustards and lettuces and other greens going to seed, which means that by autumn the garden should be nice and full of plants! I am also considering starting a very small and local seed/glut/jam/chutney etc swapping group. It seems like a good way to get diversity in your food and garden without extra money or time. I recently made a large batch of cherry plum jam and chutney (collected from the roadside), and its nice to swap it for something made by someone else (even if its their cherry plum jam - we all do things slightly differently, and subtle differences are nice too!)

Another use for all the plums!!!

All the best for christmas and the last bits of 2009.

The poultry bug!

Well, it seems I (or we) have caught the poultry bug. Since the move we haven't been restricted by the council rules for keeping poultry in towns. So we have bought more hens, aquired roosters, and hatched chicks.

The chicks are well, they are outside enjoying some sunshine and scratching with mum. They are so cute, and I enjoy watching them grow up.


We have also added some Silkies for the kids. I have never been partial to silkies, they seem sort of useless since they don't lay many eggs, but I am learning that they have uses beyond eggs. Such as scratching the soil, pest control and fertilizing the soil. All things that can save us time if we put the birds on the garden beds.

They are also quite cute, friendly and fairly placid. Our daughter loves them, here she is with her silkie 'erratic' (she named it!).

They may be roosters or hens, not sure they are still young and were simply sold as chicks at the sale we went to. But it doesn't really matter, they are simply pets, and garden hands!

Chicks!!

I think I mentioned in previous posts, that we had a hen sitting on some eggs. Well this week they hatched!!! Well, only 3 have hatched and surived (out of 8 eggs), one hatched but died, and one egg disappeared! They are all black with just a bit of lighter colour on their belly. They are Faverolles X welsummer and Faverolles X Light Sussex X Leghorn. Will be interesting to see how they turn out. One of the chicks has 5 toes (a Faverolles trait), the others have the normal 4 toes. I suspect the 5 toed chick will be a rooster and the other 2 hens. Brad reckons they will be all roosters. Will be fun to guess and see who is who!!!

Sadly the cross that I had been most interested in was the Faverolles X Auracana (both these breeds have the 'beards'), but none of these eggs hatched... Oh well, there is always next year! I feel quite addicted to this now, and really look forward to more hatchings in the future!!!

The kids are wrapped, and spend a bit of time sitting watching the chicks. It's really great for them, to see the process, see the eggs, and the chicks cracking the eggs open, and now the little fluff balls running around, and then how they change as they mature from chick to chook! You can expect lots of photos in the future to show the progress of these little guys. Its my first time at breeding poultry, so I have a lot to learn, along with mumma chook (it's her first time too), who is doing a great job!

Apart from the new life on the farm, pretty much nothing has changed, we have had some rain (what a weird old spring its been here...), and things are growing. The grass is growing too, which is our biggest 'isssue' at the moment. We are putting the neighbour's cattle into one of our paddocks, to eat it down, but we still have ALOT of grass, above knee height, and its a bit of a concern once it dries up.... The garden is growing well, the kids have been harvesting raspberries every day!! It looks like we will have a pretty big blackberry crop too!

The alpacas will be shorn in the next few weeks, depending on the weather, so that shall be fun!!