RIP Buttercup

Much loved 7 year old - plus Buttercup passed away not long ago.
She had a lot of kid cuddles in her time, and probably ran many kilometers in her life trying to escape the attentions of children.

She travelled many miles to move with us, and was one of the constants for the children during their big move.

She now rests beneath a lemon tree, where the yellow lemons will remind us of her.

Green manure and garlic replaces tiger snakes and blackberry

There are things living everywhere. For every modification something benefits and something loses out.

Even a clear looking patch of pasture can be home to quite a few critters as I discovered while digging up a new vegie patch in the orchard. When the Wwofers and I had finished the patch, four baby tiger snakes had been dug out and relocated to another part of the farm. Luckily the day was cold and they were not at all active.

Garlic and green manure crops

The garlic went in the ground in mid march and came out of the ground very quickly. I obtained a variety called “Italian hardneck” from a local grower who has been growing it very well for many years. I have already done several rounds of hoeing  to kill off germinating weed seeds. Experienced growers around here recommend growing 1 or even 2 green manure groups before you plant your garlic. Part of the reason for doing this may be to reduce the weed problems in your crop. However I know other people who have grown very admirable garlic using compost.  These garlic will be due for harvest in Nov – Dec and will hopefully supply our family and animals with a year’s supply of yummy garlic.

My green manure crops are also thriving. I sowed an autumn mixture from Eden Seeds because that’s what I had on hand. I am still tossing up what to plant in the beds after I dig the crop in late winter. The first crop was dug in about 3 weeks ago and today i put in the first lot of potatoes.

Mixed green manure crop

I have also planted some Oats a month or 2 ago and i also hear that Rye established well in cold weather - much better than other grain crops.

Picking from the garden - Cauliflowers, Fennel, Carrots and parsnip, Broccoli and the occasional cabbage as well as green like Kale.

Cauliflowers have been supplying us with veg for many weeks.

The Caulis were an unexpected mid winter treat as i thought i had planted Paleface  - instead i had planted snoball or something similar. Although in the past i have regarded them as a waste of space - these ones are a welcome addition to our winter diet and the kids love them.

Florence Fennel

I always grow Fennel. It seems to love winter and bulb up beautifully. This crop is no exception. I have noticed that up here at 400m, some of the leaves get burned off by cold weather. Generally they are frost resistant so it would not have been frost alone that caused the leaves to yellow. The bulbs are still brilliant despite this minor damage.

Winter swap-meet: A colourful collection

We met on a cold rainy day last weekend to swap some vegies, cuttings, canes and bulbs. Some things turned up that i had wanted to get my hands on for a while. David from Olinda supplied some Oca, a wild variety of Quince, R2D2 potatoes, Tamarillo fruit (grow new plants from seed) and some Yakon, while Graeme George generously supplied a box full of Jerusalem Artichokes (2 varieties). Graeme mentioned that there were also a purple and a light yellow variety of Oca, with the purple one being most similar to potatoes.

Seedsavers swap meet

Seedsavers Yarra Valley is having a get together this Sunday to swap bit and pieces of edible food plants such as bulbs corms, canes and tubers - all those things that are dormant over winter.  Joining Seedsavers Yarra Valley is free. See seedsavers.net for details.

Mixed poultry flock - how is it going?

I do like novelty. As i child i kept aviary birds and sat and watched them for hours. I'm sure i learned a lot about bird behaviour in those many hours  perched on a chair. New birds were always extremely interesting. You could see how they interacted with the current birds and what their habits were. What they liked to eat?

Feeding time

So when i started up my poultry flock i was determined to have a few things. I kept Turkeys in Alice Springs and noticed how much greens they consumed compared to chickens. I thought they would be a great free range bird to have if you had a lot of grass. The more grass they eat the better their meat would be. We have plenty of grass, and when they hatch out new babes in the spring we'll have a meat supply that will be delicious and healthy.

Turkey hen in her youth

Turkey male in his almost constant display mode

back to the collection:
Chickens of 4 varieties, Indian runner ducks and Guinea fowl.
Amongst the chickens i have a pair of White Orpingtons'. The plan is to breed a few more Orpingtons' as well as cross them with the Rhode Island Reds. The offspring will be fast growing and probably very suitable for meat birds. The Hamburgs' were a very welcome gift and were our first layers.

This mixed flock are all Hamburg's

The ducks were a bit impulsive but i knew we had a major snail problem - one which the ducks have largely solved especially around the house garden. Now they are laying an egg each a day in the middle of winter which is great.
The Guinea fowl were sought out to be hunters of grasshoppers. We have a lot of little grasshoppers in the paddocks and they get in very high numbers. I figure that i can get rid of a lot of them around the garden as well as turn grasshoppers into eggs and meat. The plan was for these birds to free range and roam in the paddocks but they tend to hand around the house and out buildings. They keep to themselves and have a loud cackle to warm of intruders. It is extremely loud and surprising if you have not heard it before.
The guinea fowl perch in the orchard, but fly out every morning with no trouble.

Guinea fowl at the feeding station

So how do they go together? The ducks, Turkeys and chickens roost together. That works OK but the Turkeys are a bit harder to train to roost in the chook house. They still need to be chased in at the end of the day on most days.
The Ducks were raised with the Turkeys and they often stick with them but lately they go with whoever seems to be foraging more widely. The ducks muck up the water for the chickens but we have got around this a bit by placing the water containers on bricks which makes it a bit harder for the ducks to put dirt in the bowls. Any more than 2 or 3 ducks might be a bit too mucky. However the ducks get along well with the other poultry and certainly forage on stuff that the other birds don't. I think they are a useful addition and they lay great eggs.

As for free ranging; I thought the Turkeys would be big free rangers, then i thought the Guinea fowl would be. I wanted them to venture out into the paddocks and use the pasture. Instead they tend to hang around the house where they might see some people who give them food. They don't hang around all the time but enough to be annoying sometimes.  Surprisingly it is the ISA browns that seems to be taking the flock into new areas they have never been. Maybe because they are so hungry (egg laying machines that they area).

We lock up the birds in a secure pen at night and let them out daily to free range. In winter this amounts to most of the day while in summer we tend to let them out for half of the day. The free ranging , as well as providing the birds with freedom to move and think, provides them with green grass as well as bugs, slugs and snails. It also think that the birds are able to self-medicate when they are sick by eating different plants which provide them with different nutrients. So far we have had no adult birds die due to sickness, but we have a few more months of winter to go!
On the health front, we do provide them with chopped up beach kelp in their mash for general health and garlic mash once a month to control worms.

At the current size, this strange mix of poultry works well together. I didn't buy all the poultry at once. That happened slowly so i could learn about their habits and where and how they might fit into the farm. After i though we had worked out one species, we added something else to the flock.
I have learnt a lot about poultry in the last 9 months and still continue to learn. However we are near capacity with our current housing so any new additions may have to wait a while.

Pragmatic composting

In my old place of residence cow poo was readily available, convenient and gave excellent results. Because of the lack of rain, when cows dropped a turd, that turd dried out and preserved all the goodies until it was scraped up and wetted down for making compost.

Around here in the Yarra Valley, cows poo in paddocks and the manure rapidly disintegrates through rain, insects and fungi. Good for the paddocks but not so good for the keen gardener. Some small dairy’s use straw which is mucked out , while most (it is my understanding) hose out the poo into large poo pools. Not so easy to take home in a trailer. I have tried horse poo, which is readily available here, but by the time I got hold of it, it was somewhat aged and had lost some of the goodies that are needed for composting. Without composting weed seeds are not killed and I am not all that keen to introduce new weeds to the property.

I could perhaps persevere with horse poo and try to source it from a place where I can obtain it quite fresh, but I only have so much time in a day to find this source.

So what have I done to make my compost here?

Well – chook poo. From a large and intensive chicken growing farm. I am told this is not so good because of possible hormones, antibiotics and food additives, but I also know that composting destroys a lot of these things. So although it is not altogether the most desirable source of composting material- I am being pragmatic. I do need to grow vegies to feed the family now, and as there is neither ready made compost on offer (which is not also made from the same chook poo) or readily available composting material from other sources, this is the decision I have arrived at.

Over time I should be able to source more and more of my composting materials from the farm but at this stage I just need to get things moving and I need large amounts of compost to do this.

I always like to have a lot of finished compost ready and waiting for the vege garden. This lessens the likelihood that I will be tempted to skimp on how much I add to garden beds. I have discovered here that although the soil is pretty good, it definitely needs a good feed of compost to grow a productive crop of vegies.

If you have the room, a trailer load of manure is desirable, and this can be combined with other plant materials from the garden in the right ratios. I have recently purchased a garden mulcher which I have wanted to do for years. This machine reduces woody prunings (source or carbon) and branches into fine chips of a size that are perfect for composting. For chicken manure which has a high nitrogen content, this is the main material I use to mix with it – so far with good results. When you use these fine wood chips, the pile is easy to turn (because there are no big stringy bits inside) and more air is held in the heap which is desirable for aerobic composting. For instance, if you use straw it can rot quite quickly and the heap can collapse into a more compact, and more anaerobic heap which is not so good.

Thanks to help from the wwoofers I have two big heaps cooking at the moment which will make for some great growing come spring. I find that when the heaps are Winter is the perfect time to do all this compost preparation

Quick! Pine Mushrooms

A short walk along the hills surrounding the Yarra River has provided another seasonal gift.
Pine mushrooms or Lactaria deliciosa  are found beneath - well pine trees. Thankfully they are found commonly under the most common pine tree - Pinus radiata. This is the pine most commonly used in plantations in Southern Australia.  They can be seen in the photo above center left and dark green.

Pine Mushroom.

A small reminder that it was pine mushroom season was a couple of old fellas fossicking around some pines on the Warby hwy about 2 weeks ago.
Pine mushrooms are upwardly concave when mature, pale orange to pink on top and bright orange when cut open. The gills may be stained with bluish bruises, especially if they are older specimens.

I think the old fellas were right on time because many of the fruit i saw were past it but i still gathered quite a few kilos of reasonable mushrooms in a very short time.

notice bluish staining on gills

Note that i am not writing a guide to the identification of these mushrooms. Go for a walk with someone who knows these critters or take a specimen to someone who knows what they are.

They cook up well and keep their shape better than a field mushroom. Stephanie Alexander even has some resipes in the "Cooks companion". The flavour is not as intense as a ripe field mushroom and they are very good done with garlic and butter!

I couldn't resist preserving some under oil