Goodbye Gypsy

We are in complete shock this morning, to find that our Gypsy - our milking goat's (almost all grown up) baby is dead. For no apparent reason.



We have had her since she was only 2 weeks old, and so small I could hold her in my arms. We watched her grow up, jump on our backs when we bent down in the paddock, chase the dog, and mature into a very beautiful healthy goat. We tried to give her the best 'childhood' so that she would be a great milker.....

It gets you every time, no matter how many you lose, it just never gets easier does it?

Goodbye Gypsy.

Chestnuts

Its been getting colder and wetter now, and the autumn winds are sure blowing up here. We have been enjoying eating the wild mushrooms popping up on our land, they are beautiful flavoured. We are also fortunate that there are several chestnut trees growing wild along the roadsides in our area. Chestnuts are definately a food of the autumn and are something to be enjoyed on a cold evening.

The kids and I ventured out to collect a box of chestnuts on the weekends. For me chestnuts have alot of memories associated with my childhood in Switzerland, and of times spent at my great-aunts place in Chestnut growing country. I have always enjoyed getting the nuts out of their very prickly cases, and the process of peeling them.

We roasted a small amount of nuts a few nights ago, ate some and turned the rest into soup. They are great for thickening up soups or stews and add a nutty flavour. You can also add the cooked nut into stir-fries and make deserts as well.


I doubt any one else in our area collects these nuts, so I am sure we will go back and collect some more before they all rot. I think the chestnuts will be the last of our harvests before winter sets in. I've been propagating lots of winter greens and brassicas for the garden, which are going in as we speak. I suspect that unless the weather changes pretty dramatically I will be making a big batch of green tomatoe chutney, as only half a dozen tomatoes have ripened so far!!! Maybe for next spring we will have to set up a small greenhouse!

Simple joys

I love this time of year, a gentle time, not too hot and not yet bitterly cold. The apple harvest is over (for us), but now comes the next harvest! We have been enjoying these goodies every few days, and I think it will improve as autumn progresses.


There has been a bit of this:


and this:

Lots of watching these little guys:

(sadly we lost one, so now there are only 4 - 1 rooster and 3 hens)

And lots of walks around the property, enjoying the clear autumn sky.

The equinox and beyond

We celebrated the Autumn equinox on the weekend, with a bit of a harvest party, and our woodfired pizzas of course! We had a lovely day with a great group of friends and family. The food was amazing, with most people bringing home grown and home made food (or both!). It was a lovely way to celebrate a time of year that was typically the time to bring in the harvest in preparation for the dark times. Here in Australia this time of year is still quite mild and the harvests will extend beyond the equinox.

Our tomatoes are ALMOST ripe now!!!! Its been a funny growing season this one, with very early hot periods (that sent most people into a frenzy of 'what is summer going to be like' (me included), then it turned bitterly cold for a while, and then back to a typically mild summer (like the ones we used to have)). Despite this we have had a pretty good crop of beans (the purple king climbing beans have been great - definately will plant more of these in spring), reasonable crops of zuchinni (good for me anyway!), potatoes and lots of very little carrots. We had a great crop of blackberries (all gone now though - the plants are dying back) and still inundated in big juicy apples. I think the last crop will be the chestnuts (there are about 10 wild chestnut trees nearby, so we will do a collection of these once they are ready), and then I think it will be pretty quiet till spring.

So what do we do with the abundant crops (especially the wild ones in our area) - well, I have gone somewhat overboard on the preserves I think!!! Brad suggested a table at our equinox celebration with 'please take one'!!!!


Personally I think there is something comforting about a pantry full of jams, chutneys etc. It feels as though no matter what happens to this world and civilisation at least we wont starve. Perhaps its from the 'old days' when we had to preserve the crops so that we would survive winter before the spring crops begin bearing. I guess its not really relevant in todays world, as everything is available year round in the supermarkets, if its out of season its just imported from overseas or grown in a hot house. I find that growing your own and gleaning from the wild plants forces you to eat more in tune with the seasons. And I am happy to go straight past the jam, chutney, milk and eggs in the supermarket!!!

So now we head into the dark, the days are noticably shorter, the shadows definately longer, and the nights colder. We are heading into unknown territory with regard to our power system (we installed it around the time of the spring equinox last year). So far it has performed perfectly, with an excess of power (typical for solar power) over summer, but once the sun drops lower in the sky we may not make enough power to keep the batteries charged enough. The sun sits pretty low in the sky up here, quite surprising to us, considering we lived only 30mins away and it was never so low at our old place.

So for now we are planning on enjoying the light while it lasts, spening time in the garden, and getting fencing done (as well as the final jobs to keep us a bit warmer this winter). Soon it will be bitterly cold, and I have a backlog of fleeces to spin, so thats what I will be doing this winter!

New chicks

About a week ago our newest chicks hatched. Out of 6 eggs, 5 hatched. Of these 4 are black and one is fawn coloured with stripes - 'wild colouring' (this chick is most definately a Barnevelder x Welsummer - and the type of fowl I am most interested in breeding).

As always, chicks are just so cute, and its easy to just sit and watch them and the interactions between the mother and chicks. The instincts of the mother hen are incredible, and the 'obedience' of the chicks is quite amazing (as parents of 2 young children we can only dream of having that sort of 'control' over our kids!!!!). The kids love them (its hard not to though!), and so far it looks as though we might have 2 roosters and 3 hens (crossing fingers!).

The sight of the chicks has now set off another hen to go clucky, but I don't think I will let her sit on eggs this time (this hen was the one that raised our first 3 chicks), as by the time they hatch we will be half way through autumn, and it can be pretty wet and miserable and probably not so good for little chicks. She is pretty determined to stay on the nest though, so it will be interesting.

free-ranging in my garden (I will post on the 'evolution' of my garden defenses soon)

The first 3 chicks we hatched are doing great I think they must be about 15 weeks old now, and are quite large, solid birds, and very active and healthy. Much better than some that I have bought from breeders (with very skinny legs and fairly sickly looking). I think naturally raised chicks (under a hen) fed good wholesome food grow up into healthy and vigorous hens/roosters. I feed my chicks boiled egg with garlic as their first foods (its a traditional first food) as well as organic ground wheat or rolled oats. I try to add seaweed meal to their food as often as I can, and try and get them out to free range when ever possible. I don't vacinnate them or medicate them in anyway.


Not much else happening around here, autumn is upon us, and it has really cooled down at night which is lovely. Making us think about preparing for winter, jobs like finishing putting up the insulation and a few missing doors. Also firewood collection. We will have to run our combustion stove ALOT over winter, so its a nice feeling to have a good stash of firewood, cut, split and undercover. We already have enough to get us through, but it nice to have a little bit spare incase it will be a cold winter this year (I suspect it will be). I hope that this winter we will be a bit more comfortable than last year!!

stormy skies!

Apples

Autumn is fast approaching, and around here autumn means apples! Its the start of the apple harvest, and this year seems to be a good year! Our tree (a very old tree - probably at least 50 years old) has born a great crop of HUGE apples. The birds have been eating them, and the wind has knocked many down (food for the chickens and I've been making chutney), but there are many there, still ripening.


Apples are one of the great harvests in the cool temperate zones. You can store them as they are (usually wrapped in newspaper in a box in a cool place) if they are un damaged (not windfalls), make chutney, apple sauce, apple butter, bottle them, dry them, juice them and make cider. I am planning on doing a bit of all of these!!!



The other great thing about apples is that there are so many wild trees on the side of the road (in country areas, especially along roads that were once busy, but are no longer used much), probably grown from discarded cores or spread by birds. I have taken note of the different fruit trees growing wild in our area and so far I have found - apples, pears, chestnuts, cherry plums (various varieties), peaches and loquat. I always keep my eyes open for edibles when we are out.

Nearby there is a heritage apple nursery, and this year I want to head there and buy some more apple trees. Not the run of the mill varieties, but some of the old and no longer common varieties, and I want a Cox's Orange Pippin (I did plant one a couple of years ago, but alas, my 'patented method for hardening off trees' did not suit this tree and it kindly died on me...)!


Aside from being (almost literally) showered in apples right now, things have been relatively quiet around here. We have been working at getting our winter firewood in (pretty much done), and have started on a bit more fencing. The nights are getting cooler, and the sun is dropping in the sky. The equinox is in less than 4 weeks, and then it will start to get both cold and dark. We noticed that up here in the hills the sun sits lower in the sky in winter. It will be the real test of our solar power system - how it will cope with the low sun angle and the gloomy misty winter days of the hills. Wont be long and we will find out!!!

I will leave you with a photo of the kids. Happy, healthy and active little rascals.

Bountiful!

Despite the heat and dry conditions over summer, the garden has been providing us with some good harvests.



The garden still needs LOTS of work, alot more organic matter incorporated into the soil, ALOT. There are only so many trips with the wheelbarrow that I can manage per day, and the heat lately has got me out of the habit. I don't mind hard work, but pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up our hill on a hot day isn't much motivation!!! We are in the planning stages of a very big and thoughout chicken pen/vegy garden set up. Its basically the 'chicken tractor' that is often mentioned in permaculture books. There will be one largish under cover shed, where the hens will roost and get out of the rain, with a reasonable sized yard attached to it. Then comming off this will by long beds, which will be the vegetable garden beds, so when the harvesting is done, the chickens can be let into one of these beds and clean up, turn over and fertilize etc. If everythign is off limits, then they will be restricted to just the yard and shed. Hopefully it will solve a few problems that I have - increase the fertility of the soil, more area (and therefore food for the chickens) and stop the chickens from destroying my current garden when I let them out (very important to me!!!). Its going to be a fair bit of work, but hopefully will give us a very productive garden.

Speaking of chickens, we have another 2 hens gone broody. Hopefully tonight we will move them to our chick hatching pen (the old rabbit cage). Our daughter is pretty excited about this, and is talking constantly about chicks hatching etc. Not sure though about the timing, it seems a bit late now, as the chicks will hatch in autumn, but perhaps it will work out well, they will probably be ready to lay in spring.

As I am writing this we are being blessed with some lovely rain, and lots of it. It rained all night, and the day before we got a heavy downpour (which included very large hail - like golf balls!). Its just lovely, and at least I get out of watering the garden!!! I guess I should get the trusty wheelbarrow out and do some manure collecting instead!