Lockdown Day 18

Such is my commitment to blogging every day that I just got out of bed to write. I realised that I'd been distracted by watching a movie with the kids (The Avengers - lots of special effects, a few funny bits, not bad for a teenage family flick) and forgotten to blog. But once I'd remembered, I knew I wouldn't drop off to sleep easily, so here I am.

I'm just going to share a picture of something that is brought me joy today.

My planter box, cheerily greeting me in the morning sunlight. I planted this with seedlings a few days before lockdown and I'm so glad I have something bright to look at. I'm also glad that the weather forcaster promises us rain tonight - our garden desperately needs some.

I'm knackered.

But not too knackered to show off!  All the bare-rooted fruit trees are planted, mulched and staked - but not tied yet - no hurricanes tonight please.

All the poplar and willow poles are in.  Little soldier lines of stakes.  They are close, but we figure we will get a better shelter sooner - and hubby is itching to use the chainsaw in a few years time.

My tree-planting hero.  We are in sight of the finish line, with only about 100 trees to go.

We've already lost a couple to wild rabbits so I sprayed the remaining ones with our super duper rabbit repellent. 

5 eggs

150 mls acrylic white paint

(I actually don't think the rabbits will mind what colour you use)

600 mls of water

Mix well and spray over your seedlings with a fine setting.

Heavens! What was I thinking?!

Back when it was sunny and hot and I needed shade.

Back when planting season was a long way off.

Back when I was enthusiastic, keen, fired up.

Back then I ordered trees.  Lots and lots of trees.

100 Manuka

100 Kanuka

32 Wineberry

30 Totara

32 Blackwood

20 Wharangi

32 Norfolk Island Hibiscus

30 Weeping Bottlebrush

30 Cabbage Tree

32 Five finger

20 Whau

20 Copper Sheen Teatree

5 Pinoak

5 Liquid Amber

5 Silk Tree

(And we've already planted all the poplar and willow stakes)

Time to pay the piper. 

We won't be answering the phone today, we'll be too busy planting trees.

(Actually, we're taking it in turns.  One plants till they get tired, then they come in for a rest (which means supervising the kids), and the other one goes and plants.)

PS - someone asked me if the poplar and willow stakes had roots.  Nope, they are just sticks.  You keep them in water until it's time to plant and you just have to make sure you bang them into the ground the right way up ;)

Secret Garden

When we went to Hamilton recently, we stayed with my Sister in Law.

She is a wonderful person, slightly eccentric, has a house jammed full of treasures and people and has three little daughters who are best friends with their cousins.

I love her garden. It always inspires me when I go there. It’s nothing fancy, just a small backyard. But it is full of what I want for my place. Little spaces, tucked away corners, a mix of vege gardens, lawn and rambling wilderness. It’s PERFECT for children to play in.

Hidden nooks and crannies. A safe, sheltered haven.

Although I did try and convince her that she could fit in a few chooks ;)

Orchard Design.

I went to a workshop at Koanga Gardens on Saturday. It was an Orchard Design Workshop. It was exciting, motivating and I've come back so enthusiastic that I was planning to rip up of some of our driveway just to plant more fruit trees!

It also made me realise that my research is paying off - I knew quite a lot of what our tutor was saying. I'd already read it/heard it/learnt it elsewhere and that really galvanised my feelings that I'm ready to actually do this, and to do it well.

Yikes, reading that you'd think I was embarking on an exploration of Mars or something. But this place is so big and is such a blank canvas, that it's very daunting for a fairly novice gardener like me.

Our land when we first bought it - a truly blank canvas.

I felt overwhelmed when I was first presented with my ready-to-dig vege garden site. But in the four months that I've had that, I've learnt that if I stuff up, it's ok. There are a few beds that I need to renovate (the edges are falling down, they are on too much of a slope for watering) but the veges don't care about things like that. Some of the plants haven't grown well, but I can move them, or plant them somewhere else next time.

The main thing I've learnt: If I don't START, I will never LEARN.

So I'm diving in, making a site plan, defining my permaculture zones, noting the features of each area and the best bit, perusing the tree catalogues!

The other thing I did on Saturday was pick up these two girlie's. They are only seven weeks so they haven't met their beau, Riley, as he might not observe proper protocol as to underage 'dating'. Unfortunately the little grey one (named Little One, by my daughter) seems to have a slight runny nose, which I didn't notice when I was picking her out. Lesson learnt. Lets hope she comes right. Her appetite is fine and she is lively so all good at the moment. The wee black one was named by my son as Fluffy.

Oh yes, and it's Monday, time for Independence Day Challenge but to be honest, I'm a little pooped. You'll just have to accept the Orchard Design Workshop synopsis as my contribution towards my food independence goals.

And this one photo of our first potatoes. It's amazing how keen he was to help wash and eat these after digging them up himself!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.

xx

Just Chicken Feed.

I've started sprouting the wheat that I feed to my chooks. In my quest to be a little more 'food independent', I've been researching how to grow my own chicken feed. There is lots of information out there, The Modern Homestead has to be one of the best sites I've found with some fascinating articles. Sprouting wheat seems to increase the vitamin and enzyme count of the wheat, and converts it from inert to something living which is what chickens prefer to eat naturally.




At the moment I feed pellets bought from the local farm store, wheat, sometimes maize, scraps and then let them out for fresh grazing and bug patrol in the afternoon.

I'm not liking the pellets much anymore after reading about them (horrible by-products, rancid and overprocessed) and they have always smelt a little stale to me, so I haven't really liked them anyway. But it's a matter of how to replace those.

Growing grains is possible, but how much would I have to grow? And how much effort would it be? I have ideas of using the chooks to scratch up a patch of dirt, plant it up with buckwheat or rye and then let the chooks back in later to self-harvest.

But the protein they need is harder. The above link has articles on feeding maggots and worms and these people, Farmlet, are actually trialling the maggot thing right now (mmmmm, makes you really appreciate that omelette!).

Chickens do get some protein from the bugs they find when they free range, but the amount of bugs around varies with the time of year. Also I'm wanting to do more planting around our section and if I don't fence or protect every little plant and bit of ground, chickens do dastardly things. So I'm also thinking about how to contain them more but still keep some access to grass.



I use the chicken house to deep bed them , which makes compost or mulch. I chuck in old hay, grass clippings, weeds and let them turn it over, poop all over it, eat the weed seeds and in six months time or so, I can haul the lot out and it's beautiful, rich, dark stuff that gardeners love. I used to be able to tow the house around onto fresh pasture, so I didn't deep bed the chooks and I could contain them more. But the house started to collapse (whoops!) so now it stays where it is).





In an ideal world:

• I would have several (for different ages and breeds), small, towable chook houses with wooden floors.
  
• They would get locked into these at night and the houses would have a deep bed litter.

• During the day I would open the door and they would have access to pasture whilst being contained behind some sort of movable fence - electric netting would be perfect.
  
• I could use the chickens to de-bug and fertilise exactly where I wanted them to, rather than where they like to be.
  
• I would grow sunflowers, amaranth, corn/maize, and lots of other stuff to feed them
  


• I've won Lotto to provide all the funds for the houses and netting. And the grains would magically plant and water themselves.
  

It's a classic case of me having an idea and then wanting to dive right in and do it all.

So I need to stop, slow down and break it down to manageable steps.

First, I'm going to continue to sprout the wheat and maize (although none of that has sprouted so far, might need longer soaking or longer time to sprout?) that I buy.

Second, I'm going to experiment with maggots (GROSS! But if it's too bad, I'll stop).

Third, I'm going to work with hubby on a design for a new chicken house. Towable, easy to use, cheap to build....

Forth, I'm going to investigate more about growing my own grains. Including some research into a plough/hoe attachment for the tractor.

I'm also going to continue to feed pellets until my chook food systems are a little more developed.

Thanks for reading my ramblings - blogging is so great for ordering my thoughts!!

Earthworks.

The big yellow machine finally arrived. This has been a much anticipated step towards getting ourselves sorted out here on 'the land'.




This is the new shed site. Dear Hubby built the retaining wall........





And the digger flattened it all out. They scraped off the topsoil first and put it on top of my garden site. Then they flattened it all off, filling it up with subsoil from the duck pond.




This is a 'before' shot of where I wanted a duck pond. There is a drain or swale that runs across the hillside here and so it will now run off naturally into the 'pond'. I think pond doesn't quite encompass the scale of this thing, really it's a dam.

Here is an after shot taken from about the same spot, which doesn't even really show it properly. The edges are all tidied up now and I can see I'm going to have to do some serious planting around it and, of course, some sort of fencing.

I didn't intend a dam. I wanted a little pond that I could build a duck pen around with a house in the middle and another pen on the other side. Then I could use one pen at a time so that they didn't get completely bogged or bare. But now instead I have a huge dam. And it's ok, because now we have an extra water storage facility for summer. We can use it for the stock water troughs and it will still service the ducks, I'll just have to find a different way to utilise it.





This is actually where he started. Hubby built the framework of logs (old wharf posts) so that the fence can be built off them. The digger dug over the topsoil first, mixing in the truck load of horse manure I had dumped on top. Then I went to bed for a few hours ( I worked a night shift last night) and when I woke up, there was this:

The soil level is now about three feet higher than it was. THREE FEET!!! It's all lovely topsoil and loosened by the big yellw digger. The loosening goes down below for another couple of feet too. What would have taken me about 30 hours of hard double digging and then another 40 hours to shift all the topsoil from the shed site, was accomplished in about 30 minutes. It made me gulp to think about the fossil fuels that that beast consumes, but I can rationalise it when I think of the human hours this would have taken.

And now the digger has moved over to the neighbours to do some work over there. So we saved a bit of fuel by combining the transport costs of trucking the digger out here too.

So now I have lots of things to do. I have to find out how to care for dams, what to plant around them, and how to keep them healthy. I also have to fence the garden and start PLANTING!! I'm kinda overwhelmed with the thought of the garden because things have just taken such a giant leap forward, brain has to catch up.

So that is it for now. I have the night off tonight but will be caring for a vomity little girl instead.

And I will be admiring this:

My darling sister, Just This Side of Chaos, sent me this in a parcel. Isn't it gorgeous?

Satisfaction is......

A bottled brew of gingerbeer.

A perfectly baked loaf of bread (admittedly from the breadmaker, but hey!)

A big pile of chopped down gorse.

Realising that this beautiful flowering flax used to be a small division just a couple of years ago, planted by me (or hubby or one of my dear friends!), and look at it now! We are making progress.

Building a calf shelter for the little bobby calves that I'm going to raise. Hot news: I have resigned so now I'll have the time (I hope) to do this sort of thing.

A beautiful Sunday spent with the family.