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.

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!!

Independence Day Challenge

I've read about the Independence Day Challenge a few times on Towards Sustainability. I brushed it off, but somewhere it stuck.

So I went looking for the original owner of it (who credits it to someone else, of course) and read this post.

Interesting. The little by little really strikes a cord with me.

And so I've begun. I guess I'm hoping it will keep me heading where I want to go, which I'm realising more and more is to be independent, as much as I can, with my own and my animal's food.

So last week:

1. Plant Something: This I did in plenty. Seeds of pak choi, loquat, bronze fennel, spinach, buckwheat, borage, chives, sweet red onions, berlicum carrots, sunflowers and lettuce seedlings from my M.I.L. I'm getting into growing from seeds - cheaper, more variety, fairly easy (so far), and you know how they've been treated.




2. Harvest Something: Courgettes a-plenty, basil, pak choi, and grass (I'm sure that counts!).




3. Preserve Something: I turned the basil into pesto (emits a groan of taste ecstasy) and the grass into hay. Does starting a sourdough culture count?




4. Reduce Waste/Waste Not: We used an older fridge/freezer in our kitchen that continually iced up, which would have been costing us lots in power. So we swapped it for our smaller beer fridge that was not in use. We will use the chest freezers that are just outside the back door for the small items I had in the freezer compartment. And I made a yummy apple and apricot jam pudding out of apples going off and jam starting to ferment.




5. Preparation and Storage/Want Not: Can't really think of anything under this one.




6. Build Community Food Systems: I visited with a friend I hadn't seen for a while. She is going to give me some kefir grains and lend me her Nourishing Traditions book. We discussed growing your own chook food and keeping pigs - lots of stuff really. She also casually runs a kind of co-op for buying bulk organic dry goods from a wholesaler - I signed up!




7. Eat the food: All of the above! Yum Yum.

Now that wasn't so hard. And this morning I've already planted some more seeds and I'm cooking tomatoes to bottle right now - next week's post is half-way written.

Work in Progress Wednesday

My little batik charm squares are slowing morphing into something else. Little by little I hope they will transform into a quilt worthy of my Mother-in-Law. She is a wonderful, wonderful person, she deserves a decent gift!

I particularly like the feather design.

Wednesday night is my night I go quilting at a friend's house, so I'll be working some more on these. They are great little portable projects because there is lots of tracing and cutting to do before you get to the stitching bit.

A roll in the hay.

Yesterday I made my own hay. "Why not?" I thought. Surely you don't need a ginormous tractor, baler and scores of hefty young men?

Recipe for haymaking:
Cut the overgrown kikuyu with the ride-on lawnmower.
For a few days, kick it around every time you visit the chickens.
Once it's dry, rake it into sweet little piles.
Stuff it into old feed sacks, smash it down as hard as you can, that stuff takes up a lot of room.
Itch like CRAZY.
Run to have a shower before you scratch yourself to ribbons!

I'm going to use it for bedding for the rabbits I'll get soon and nesting material for the chickens. And because of the drought, hay bales are about $18 when they are usually about $5-$7. Mind you, I probably only picked up about two haybales worth...but hey, every bit counts, huh?

And then today, it rained.

So I was very glad - it was RAINING, which it hasn't done for about four months, and I'd already brought in the hay harvest (tongue firmly in cheek!).

The dam we had dug needs sealing before it will hold water. Apparently you do this by running a mob of cattle through it for a day when it's wet or driving round and round in it in your tractor. We don't have a mob of cattle and Dear Hubby didn't want to drive his tractor in in case he got stuck. So we used the children!

They didn't complain. Lets hope it works or we might have to coerce our calves into dam duty.

Just a little footnote. If you click on the top photo to make it big, you can see the block of land that's for sale. It's the big paddock behind the wheelbarrow and includes the half round barn and the big woolshed, plus lots more that you can't see. In fact, 180 acres or 72 hectares. We want it. In fact I want it so bad, I'm pretending not to so I don't get disappointed. It's too expensive for us so we are putting it out there to the universe to help us find a way. I'll keep you posted.