What I saw this morning...

My ducks eating their breakfast.  Ducks are rude and loud and obnoxious, then they shut up as soon as their beaks are full....hmmm, sounds like a few people I know.

Wildpuss, pretending to be a tiger.  He's not a fastidious cat and doesn't mind the dew.

Emma saying good morning to Wildpuss and Wildpuss not looking so amused.  Don't worry, WP, I don't like the wet nose either!

Them's thar turkeys on thar hills!

I love this one.  She looks like she's saying, "We are not amused," in her best posh voice.  As in, we are not amused that you are taking pictures BEFORE you feed us.

Such an enthusiastic, dopey dawg.  Being a labrador, trained as a gun dog, Emma feels she has to carry something in her mouth at all times.  Today she's found a bit of wood.  Usually it's a rock, which is bad.  Check out her blunted tooth.  She will drop them when we tell her too, but as soon as our back is turned...

And another pretty sunrise.  Can't help myself, I've a million shots of pretty sunrises.

Sunday Mumblings

It was frosty this morning.  Only our second frost this winter (and the first was yesterday).

But frosty mornings usually mean sunny days and, sure enough, today was lovely.

Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine.  The boss of the world thought he might herd the ducks.  They were having none of it, and fair enough, they're about twice his size.

The chooks have started laying.  They were hatched on New Year's Day, so bang on six months old.

Floppy (for obvious reasons) is a North Holland Blue, which looks very similar to Barred Rocks.

This girl is unnamed as yet and she's a mix of Light Sussex and Golden Laced Wyandotte.

We put the cows on the lawn to mow the grass.  Grass converting itself to beef, yum, yum.

I tried to work on my swallow quilt but the kids kept annoying me and each other so I got them outside for some sketching.  It worked a treat to get them settled down.

Mine's in the middle, but I think I like my daughter's on the left best.  Although my son's, on the right, might make an interesting quilting pattern!

Hope you had a lovely Sunday too.

Wassup?

Now we are back into the swing of things, I've been pondering a blog post for a few days.  But what to focus on?  I've been doing a bit of this and a bit of that with nothing particularly driving me to write it down.  So I thought I'd just do a conglomeration post, showing my thisis and thats and maybe that will encourage me!

I've made a bag - and loved it so much and had so many positive comments that I'm making another one (sitting flat on the chair) and writing a pattern.  (And by crikey, I admire people who churn out pattern after pattern.  Those things are a drag to write!)

A close up of the quilting on the other side of the bag.

I've recovered from two weeks camping and I've started exercising to combat the Christmas/New Year's/Summer/Just Because bulges.

 (Truth:  the sum total of my exercising was a half-hour walk this morning.)

I've climbed and conquered Mt Washmore (the nickname I have fondly given my washing pile).

I've laughed at the cat.

I've started a new night-shift project with some of my favourite prints.  These squares are cut to finish at eight inches to show off the fabrics.

I've oogled the ducklings (anyone want a pekin duck for their pond - I've got a few spare!)

I've played with organza and tui and low-volume strips (no you are not seeing double, I've just offset the organza overlay).

And I've firmly tried to ignore the urge to write a list of resolutions as long as my arm.  In fact, the best New Year's list I've seen is here, on Terri Grant's blog, And sew it goes...

School Holidays have hit

So I found my camera.  I did what I should have done first.  I asked the kids.

"Oh, we found it on the ground, so we took a few pictures."

"Then what did you do with it?"

"We put it in here to keep it safe."  

Of course.  And here was their toy garage.

I thought I'd show you a couple of their artistic shots.  They illustrate quite well that it is school holidays for two weeks and they are already driving me a little crazy at lunch time on the first day!

So once I had my camera back, did I take any astounding photographs?  Not really, sorry!  Just a few of the ducklings who are enjoying living outside.  Big Red, the rooster, is a huge bird, so you can see how much they've grown after only a few weeks - much faster than chickens - and if you want to eat these, they are ready at eight weeks.

And I'm still stitching away at my Tree of Life quilt.  I don't want to rush it just to have it done.  I'd rather spend the time on it to get it right.  

So happy school hols everyone!  Let's hope I'm still sane by the end of them!

Procrastination

It's a beautiful spring morning here and I'm procrastinating.  I'm sitting in front of my computer reading all your lovely blogs instead of hauling my butt outside and changing my flat tyre.  But if I want to go to my Friday morning quilting group (and I do!  I really love spending some stitching time with those ladies) then I have to quit this and go get grubby.  So I'll leave you with a picture of these cute little peepers who hatched a couple days ago.

Rabbit on a Rampage

Well, not a rampage really, just a jaunt.  But I've had rabbits out on jaunts before, and it only ends one way! More rabbits!  A couple days ago we had howling wind and it was so strong it blew off the roof of the rabbit cage.  Mama bunny saw her chance and there she was the next morning, bouncing round on the lawn.

The ducks weren't quite sure what to make of her.  "She's white but she doesn't quack.  And whoa!  No waddle!  Definitely not one of us."

And looking at the background of that photo makes me realise I haven't pruned my fruit trees yet.....add it to the to do list.

Very shortly we will be getting some more of these wee sweeties.  It's serious calving time around here on all the dairy farms so it's the best time to get some calves that I'll then raise by hand.  A year or two later and they fill our freezer nicely.

I just witnessed the home kill of our last two big cows - which I kinda think is the right thing to do.  I've raised them, cared for them, shifted their paddocks every fortnight, chased them around when they've got out, and I like to see that they have as good an end as they did in life.  And they sure did.  Our home kill guy is great.  One shot and they drop like a stone.  No terror of trucks and abattoir, just contented grazing right to the end.

I used to be a vegetarian - kinda weird now when you think of what we do here: raise rabbits, chickens, sheep and cows for our freezer.  But my main complaint was the way they were raised and then slaughtered. I feel good about how our animals live and then die so I don't have any qualms about eating them.

But I have to be able to keep them in their paddocks/pens/cages first!!  So now I have to dig out the live capture possum trap and try and get that mischievous Mama Bunny back where she belongs.

Farm TV

These are for my sister, who requested pictures of the animals.  I've called it Farm TV, because that is what my hubby and I say to each other when we are going to sit out on the deck and have a cuppa.  "Come and watch Farm TV with me."  The animals never cease to amuse. 

Plus, this post fits in rather nicely with Kit Lang's - What do you see on your way to work?  This is what I see, they are my work (besides the kids of course).

 First up are the ducks.  They are the loudest and so get fed first.  A handful of grain on the grass and for the rest of the day they free roam and keep the slugs down in the orchard.

 Mama bunny is right next to the feed shed so she gets fed quickly too.  Plus she has eight babies with her and they go through a bit of food.  Here she is having a drink.

 And here are her babies munching their breakfast.  Cute huh?

 These two are out in a run on the grass - which is rather lush at the moment being spring and all.  They are part of a group of five boys destined for the pot.  They had five sisters who went to the pet shop. 

 Rooster chicks.  Destined for the pot too.  Their seven sisters went to a new home the other day.  There are big bonuses to being a girl if you're a chook.

 Big Red, the rooster.  He originally came from Laura at Our Wee Farm.  He was destined for the pot too, but he got a reprieve and because he is never aggressive, he might stay out of the pot for a good long while.

 Big White, on the other hand, is permanently locked up or he'll attack the children.  He's on the shortlist for the pot.

And here's what the girls give me.  Omelette's anyone?

Yellow is a happy colour

Now, isn't that the sweetest little bundle of fluff you ever did see?  I don't think you can see them all, because they tend to like sitting on each other's heads when they are startled, but there are ten which hatched from twelve that I had set in the incubator.  They are Pekin ducks from my own ducks who lay very well, but don't sit and hatch ducklings.  They also grow very fast and are ready for eating at eight weeks old. 

The best part of it, is that they are in their brooder in the new shed, NOT in my bathroom.  Because although they are cute, they also poop, and poop smells. 

There is another reason they can't be in the bathroom:

There is a window being installed!  This windowless dungeon has been very dark and dingy for the last few weeks as the builders took out the Clearlite roofing panel and put corrugated iron on instead in preparation for it one day having a ceiling.  But now it has a new lease of life (and a whole lotta sawdust) with this window.  The window is an old wooden one that has been sitting behind our shed, hence the grime and the broken pane.

There is also a floor going in in the last bay of the shed between the bathroom and the back door - no more stepping down dodgy steps onto dirt in the middle of the night.  What is more, is that that floor will one day be the floor of my sewing room!!

This is a fish bin standing in as a wheeless wheelbarrow.  Fish bins are quite big (in case you were wondering about scale).  I could fill this six times over and not make a dent in the wilderness that is my vege garden.  In reality, I filled it once and then tipped that to the chickens and they didn't ask for more.

This is the wilderness that is my vege garden.  Buckwheat and cauliflower in the front, doing a sterling job of hiding the gone-to-seed kale, lettuce, swede.....well, gone-to-seed everything.

At least my slug patrol enjoys the wilderness - better habitat for all things slimy and crawly.

Ahhh!  A much more demure, restrained, orderly garden.  This one was my rooster pen.  They did a fine job of weed killing, fertilising and digging over.  I think I'll re-hire them next season.  They have a much better work ethic then I do.

Vegetarians, look away now.

Duck for dinner.

My husband has been looking at our ducks for a few weeks now and hinting, hinting.... But I've been loath to 'do one in' because I haven't been able to tell drakes from ducks. Drakes develop little curled feathers on their tails, but not for another few months.

But last weekend we were doing a few other birds (roosters and the turkeys - RIP) and we decided to do a duck anyway. I've also been told that ducks quack and drakes wheeze/hiss. So I picked the biggest wheeziest one and that's him, above.

If you look close, you can see our first problem we encountered. Major plucking. We had been told to cull them at 9 weeks to avoid their new pin feathers coming through. And they were right. Also, he was really, really fat. So I think we'll let the rest mature a little more to let their feathers come through for easy plucking and then when we get breeding properly, we will kill our eating ones at 8 weeks.

This is a roast we had from one of our roosters. Nothing tastes like chicken again once you've had a homegrown one that you know had a good life and a quick death. Yum!

If you are planning to kill and pluck your own birds, the best ever way we have found of plucking is the hot water trick. Heat up a big pot of water till it's about 68 degrees Celsius - or for me, too hot to put my hand in but not boiling. A squeeze of detergent then dunk for freshly killed bird in for a minute and get plucking. The feathers practically fall out (except from a 10 week old duck!).

I'll tell you how the duck tasted tomorrow.

Quackers!!

is what I call the ducks with. To distinguish from, "Chook, chook, here chooky-chook." Which is obviously for the chickens.

Although Mama Black Hen now responds to both. I think she's a little concerned. Her babies are only a month old, yet they are almost bigger than her.

And they don't fly. And their feet make flappy sounds when they walk, sorry, waddle.

Her babies also have a strange fascination with water. They drink alot. And they squirt it through their nostrils.

In fact they'll put their whole heads under water.

Ducklings are funny. But I don't think Mama Black Hen is amused.