Our new chooks

We are still relatively new to chook keeping (we got our first little flock not long after Miss 2 was born), but it is one of those "frugal" things I cannot recommend enough. We had a sad time about a month ago, where our dogs suddenly attacked and killed our 2 girls, Nugget and Icecream. We've since done some re-planning on our chicken set-up, and have decided our new girls won't have as much free-ranging time as the other two did, but they still have plenty of room in the safety of their coop and pen to safely forage about, peck at grass and make us some delicious eggs and compost for our garden! 

Introducing Elsa (white), Anna (black) and Ariel (brown). I will get some better photos, but this one was snapped the afternoon we bought them home.

I missed having chooks about when our old girls were suddenly gone. They really bring something extra to our garden. The kids adore them, and they are a source of endless entertainment. I find myself sitting watching them and talking to them.

Aside from thier physical presence in our lives, I really missed their eggs, especially when I realised to buy a dozen "free-range" eggs in a major supermarket chain in Australia is now about $6. I never really rationed eggs before, but since the price had jumped up so much in the past 2 years, I found myself almost second-guessing using them. Also, I now know I've become one of those people who cry, "They taste so much better fresh!".

Our first two new-chooks' eggs. We used to have just Isa Browns, and they both laid quite large eggs. Our new girls are 1 Isa and 2 leghorn bantams, whose eggs seem teeny by comparison! I'm not sure if I'll subsequently need to use more in baking, I guess we will see :) 

I wasn't sure how we would go keeping chickens. I worried they would take too much time. I would guess they need perhaps 5 minutes of time a day if we are just doing bare-minimum caring, but as we consider them sort-of pets and we like them, I take my time with them.

I was shocked in the month of being chickenless how much extra food wastage we had. Chooks eat so many more kinds of food scraps than I ever imagined before owning them.

I am so glad we have our new girls. I think I can officially say I'm a chicken-keeper-convert!

My weekend garden to-do list

Just a quick list today. It's a school day and Miss 2 is at day care, so I have about 5 hours to myself. It's literally been months since I spent any time gardening, but today and tomorrow are when I am diving back in. I sort of went into hibernation over winter, but now spring is here in full force I am ready to get back out there. We don't have any vegetables growing at the moment, just a little potted herb garden, but we still have our fruit trees and ornamental garden beds to look after, and boy do they look neglected :( Onward and upward though.

We are having friends over for a barbecue tomorrow night, so Anthony will spend a few hours mowing tomorrow while I potter around with the kids ticking the remaining things off my list. I love showing them how to do things in the garden, and teaching them what my parents have taught me. I hope they continue to love nurturing and reaping the benefits of gardening as they grow up.

My to-do list: 
Weed all garden beds and pots

Feed fruit trees

Plant new herbs (a lovely friend sent me and Anthony a gorgeous planter of fresh herb seedlings for our birthdays, but I am transferring them into our bigger herb pot so they can grow a bit, and we will keep the planter as a little feature, it's really pretty)

Water all pots on the patio

Compost flowering cherry tree

Trim the front hedges

Transfer the compost in the blue bin to the black one and move the blue bin to new location

Re-fence the side of the chook pen (We did have a couple of chooks, but a few weeks ago they got attacked by our older dog. He had never so much as licked them before then, but we adopted a new smaller dog about 2 months ago and we think his 'pack mentality' may have kicked in to overdrive, and unfortunately the chooks kept escaping their pen and copped it. The kids especially miss them around the garden, and so do I! Plus having to buy eggs sucks after having them fresh from our own chooks for 2 years. I am hoping to introduce some new ladies soon though. Watch this space!)

Fix the gate on the chook pen

Clean the BBQ

All this plus my normal house work makes for a busy day! I'd better get to it. Happy weekend! xx

Getting the washing done

When we first moved to this house (4 years ago) the backyard had a standard rotary clothes line. It was in an annoying spot though, taking up valuable play-space for the kids, and was in the way of some fruit trees we were wanting to plant. We replaced the rotary line with a wall-mounted line around the side narrower side of the house, and it is great on warmer or windy days. It does get rained on though, so isn't great on wet days. With just myself, Anthony and our eldest daughter, we didn't have a lot of washing though. It was manageable, and being a stay at home mother gave me the wonderful power of being able to choose when the washing got done based on how busy we were, and of course the weather.

By the time Miss 2 came along, our washing baskets seemed to overflow more often, and I needed the ability to get washing done no matter what the weather was doing. Our house is only quite small (by today's standards - more on that in another post), and filling it up with clothes horses with 2 kids running about it was just annoying, though we put up with it during winter.

We toyed with getting a clothes dryer, but first decided to try using our under-covered pergola. I had, in the past, tried hanging our washing under the pergola on clothes horses, but the wind kept blowing them over and they would get dirty again - extremely annoying!

A trip to Bunnings later and we'd invested in a cheap-but-thoroughly-effective retractable clothesline, which Anthony installed. It isn't very big, but it cost under $30 and because it is completely sheltered I can hang our things up in the fresh air no matter what the weather is doing.

Our under-cover line, which is approximately 6 metres across, with 2 lines. It fits a big load of kids clothes, or a few loads of towels or linen. 

I would love to get another one, it's on my to-do list, but now spring is here and I can use the outside line more it doesn't seem as urgent.

We did end up buying a clothes dryer this past winter, purely because even though we have a sheltered line, in the icy cold winter it can still be a struggle to thoroughly dry things, and now needing to have school uniforms ready 5 days a week, I wanted to be sure I'd always be on top of them.

I gave myself some rules (which were just logic for our circumstances really) with the dryer though, to minimise the cost of running it and the environmental side of it. I only use it to finish off drying things, they first must be hung up for at least a few hours, and I am only using the "warm" setting, not the hot. I also only put it on for the bare minimum time, depending on what needs finishing, and I check the clothes regularly to see if they are dry, so as not to have them in there for ages if they only need a quick spin round.