Vegetable Garden

The vegetable garden is of great interest - it's the first that I've ever truly had.  

There was a small patch already in situ.  It was heavily overgrown with a variety of plants, largely grasses.  When I tore them out and placed them in a pile to compost, it didn't really do anything for all of the seeds that were left behind.  We did try putting the chooks in there for a wee while but they didn't like being caught twice a day for that purpose.  So, for now, I just weed and eventually the seedbank should decline.

The soil is not so dark.....much yet to be done.  

First planted out.  A trial run, really, dealing, too, with frost (I like, as you can see, using commas).  

Those beds are too small and it's difficult to get around them....

They grow quickly, n'est pas?  Bottom left: carrots, beetroot, onions, leeks.  Top left: broccoli, kohl rabi.  Top right: peas, swiss chard, broccoli.  Bottom right: leftovers (this bed becomes the tomato bed).

Another view.  Notice the bed along the fence in the background....this becomes the sunflower patch (post tomorrow, I hope).

Look at that!  Two months from first planting....

There's still much to learn.  For example - did the broccoli not taste so good because it went in at the wrong time?  And, there's so much more improvement of the soil required PLUS the addition of perhaps 4 times as much space as this.  

Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan)

My latest interest: rhizobial nitrogen fixation in plants.   

The soil analysis came back with the result that, amongst other things, more nitrogen is needed.  With plenty of nitrogen available in the atmosphere - it's there for the taking.  Lightning can fix it into a form useful for plant life but even more extraordinary are bacteria in symbiosis with plants.  

Rhizobia species can infect a plant at germination and persist in the roots.  Specific strains are used for specific species of plant.  When they properly infect a host, they are housed in root nodules.  Within well infected crops they can fix (and it varies with the particular plant species) many kilograms of nitrogen/hectare.   In the case of Pigeon Pea, up to 80 kg/ha.  That would be the equivalent of delivering approximately 1600 kg of Dynamic Lifter to each hectare.  

Pigeon Pea is my first sowing of such a crop.  Pigeon Pea peas are used to make dahl; for us,  they'll feed our chooks (that was the original intention) and the sheep will be allowed to partially graze the foliage.  In the particular patch given to this planting, after the soil has improved with mulching, feeding and biological activity, it'll become the berry patch. 

Planting bed - north facing (that is, the fence runs east-west).

Closer...(one male kiwifruit vine is beginning to flourish).

Long view: the female kiwifruit is much stronger.....  The chickens are in their foraging yard (it was once used as a holding yard for stock work) behind this fence.  

The interesting, scientific part.  Cajanus cajan: the seed on left and inoculant (I thought that the strain was meant to be 'I')  from Green Harvest (mail order company) while the seed on the right is from a kind donor I had contact with on a discussion website.   They should yield different varieties, obviously.  The seed was soaked overnight.

Now with just a small touch of water added...(only a few drops at a time), stirred, the inoculant turns into a very sticky (there's some type of vegetable glue added) slurry that coats the seeds effectively.



For ease of handling and to provide the rhizobium with a slightly more alkaline environment, agricultural lime is stirred in and the clump of inoculated seeds gently pulled apart.  I found that adding plenty of lime and quickly coating any exposed slurry worked best.  Most seeds kept a very thorough cover.  

Orchard beginnings....

For delectable fruits, we managed the task of planting 12 fruit trees in one paddock alone.  They include plums, apricots, apples, nashi pear, pluots (plum x apricot), peaches, cherries and, nectarines. 

Orchard 'before' shot, looking west.  The next yard is part of the chicken run.

Digging into a soil that has many pieces of gravel, some large rocks (crow bar required for excavation) and a very shallow (10-12 cm) layer of topsoil, means extra physical preparation.

The girls inspecting the finished works.  Photo out to 'Telstra Point' (SE).

Photo through the orchard (S).

This dwarf peach finally finds a decent home.  It's survived being uprooted about 5 times and living in less than ideal (very shaded) conditions.  Now it gets all the sun it could possibly need.  It is even carrying 3 fruits.  When once, in Sydney, it carried 2 fruits they were snatched by a rat just as they turned colour ready for picking.

With help....planting of Persimmon 'Nightingale'.

Chickens

It started with the idea of using a half water tank.  There were two, lying in state in the paddock behind the house.

Two halves of a galvanised water tank asking to be used......

We took one half into the old holding yard, next to the crush and construction began - digging a trench, about 30 cm deep, placing the tank into the trench, 

and then securing it even further with a makeshift gabion.....

...door and planting to provide some insulation as the ivy grows.....

voilà...chicken coop made-in-a-day.  We received our first chickens the very next day after we'd prepared.

The seven 'new' chickens.  

They were a year old already when we purchased them as our 'trial' flock.  We bought them for only $3 each as they weren't meant to be very productive any longer.  We found our Isa Browns at a free-range poultry operation (chickens everywhere).  The Isa Brown is a cross between a Rhode Island Red and Rhode Island White and renowned for its prolific laying.

With our loving care and extra rations of high-powered, nutritious food.....there was a day when even EACH hen produced an egg....

They're cheeky things.  They're now so used to us that they flock to you in the morning when they first are let out from their coop.  Of course, it's all about the food.

Not content with the 7, M. came home with 2 more hens.  These are beautiful Australorps.  They are larger than the Isa Browns and rather pushy.  A dual purpose bird, they're good for egg and meat production.  

We got them only a wee while ago and they were sold to us at 'point of lay'.  We now have the evidence that they're past that point. ..... mind you, it's so hard trying to work out which egg is which.

Zwickal isn't so bad with the birds.  She leaves them alone unless they create a bit of a squawk or a flutter and then that gets her all excited.   

We attended an auction a few weeks ago.  We weren't successful and luckily so.  At $27 / bird, we were lucky to be the underbidders since a week later a poultry auction much closer to home (Lithgow) was held with a much better offering and economy of price...and now there are some smaller birds on the scene.   Zwickal's absolutely intent on getting closer to one.....especially with a whole lot of 'peep peeping' going on.

2 x (hens?) Japanese Bantams.

M. was very excited to come home with 5 new birds.  All bantams, they are not easy to understand at the auctions.  They're all lined up in individual pens with no instructions/explanations attached.  We suppose that it relies upon expert understanding.  One is meant to know one's birds.  But when you don't...you go by the look, don't you?

Isn't this one gorgeous....!

He's our rooster.  We finally have one.  He's only young and is learning to crow (it's a half-hearted, barely audible effort).  We have called him 'Lagerfeld' (ze looks, ze looks - thank you, Stefan).  He, and the hen furthest to the right, are 'Japanese Bantam' crosses.  Who knows what they're crossed with..

Luckily looks count for something in our chook yard, apparently Japanese Bantams are rather ornamental beings.  The eggs that they produce are tiny and few and far between.  However, they do like to sit on them and so we hope that they'll serve as exemplary mothers.   Lagerfeld has just got to catch them.......

Yabbies - starting them off

Well, another endeavour is yabbies.  

We ordered 60 by mail from a supplier on the coast.  The poor things came packed in a foam box with wood shavings and ice to keep them 'fresh'.  

Cherax destructor.  The 'yabby'.  These were about 40 grams in weight each and approximately 10 cm long.

Unfortunately, the package went to Orange and despite paying for delivery, we had to pick it up from Lithgow.  So, it was a full 48 hours before they made it into their lovely new home....the dam......

The dam is about 200 square metres in size. We think it might be about 1 metre or more in depth at the deepest. It's only half full.

Well, I surveyed the dam for many hours before the release date.  I was hoping that there would be yabbies already.  I saw no sign of them, nor that of any other creature.  The odd bubble here and there was of no great concern to me -  I was sure that it was the normal action of bacteria, gases, breakdown etc.  Hmm.

The day I ordered the yabbies, we went to the dam to throw a few more logs in for habitat.  Imagine our surprise when we noticed the many (20?) white 'things' floating on the surface.......

This is a zoomed photo, cut and magnified, and not presenting very clearly. 

Yes, well, that's a turtle.  A long-necked turtle.  I suppose we'll have to add that to our 'fauna' list.  They're plentiful in Australia (due to there being so many farm dams).  But how on earth did they appear out of nowhere?  They were either already there and I hadn't noticed them (unlikely) or they made their way to the dam after 4 days of off and on again rainfall (more likely).  

They eat yabbies so we must (eat?) catch them.

I constructed a trap out of chicken wire and it works!

Tacobelle getting up close and personal.  She's so brave.

I've managed to catch about two per day (four is the maximum) and hope that we might be able to empty the dam of them.  We release them into a creek that's about 15 kilometres away from here.  Bless.

Hopefully we'll have yabbies proliferating over the next few years.  We'll see.....

Views, glorious views

A fiew views

Back to the house from 'Telstra Point'

'The Nipple' from the house.


Otherwise known as 'Pantoney's Crown'.


From 'Pearson's Lookout'.  Our house is in there......

Sheep - first day

Sheep - first day

Originally uploaded by LemonFarm

We can't really believe it - but it's true. We took ownership of 9 sheep.  Black-faced Suffolks.



Imagine....

 

1 ram and 4 ewes (with littl'ns at their feet (hooves?) - 2 x ewe lambs, 2 x ram lambs).

We're getting more comfortable with the sheep.  They come to us for extra feeds and we seem to be able to identify the individual characters more easily.  

This is the largest ewe lamb, 'Amazon' (she's required to donate one breast - right into a stainless steel bucket when we start milking them).

Two lambs.

And another two.  Here we've let them into the garden paddock right in front of the house.  We felt like shepherds - waving them off the plants they're not allowed access to.

Shepherd, no?