Whats the cook doing?

There was a major offensive on the Garlic front yesterday. A lot of weeding and replanting of accidentally weeded plants happened. The boys have friends over for sleepovers – usually they have more during school holidays but this time it’s been a little slow.

You wouldn’t believe it either. After yesterday mornings fox attack the stinking thing came back again about 10:30pm. The cook heard the chickens squawking as she went in for a shower, I raced up to see what was going on. It was a bright moonlit night, but I didn’t want to open the chicken house up before I had a torch. The cook brought one up and we went in, thankfully there were no dead bodies. But, one of the silky roosters was making noises from the bottom end. The Cook shone her torch in the general direction and spotted the fox trying to hide in a bush. I picked up a piece of wood and in a mess of flailing arms went after the fox. I connected a couple of times but I don’t think I did any damage. I threw a huge chunk of timber at him and missed – it was pretty intense for a time. The fox ended up escaping through a hole he pushed in the wire – the dogs saw him off this time and he didn’t come back all night.

After we’d calmed down I thought I’d take a look and make sure that he hadn’t killed anything. I bent down under one of the roosts, but failed to notice that Gob the turkey gobbler was sitting on it. Well he must have worked up a good one in all the excitement and dropped it right on the back of my head – lovely I thought, must wash my hair before I go to bed. I didn’t find any casualties so I hope the fox lucked out.

The Cook is reinforcing the chock pen at the moment. Due to her German heritage I can see this will be better then the Atlantic Wall. As long as it keeps the poor old chickens safe.

So the animal count for inside of the house is one guinea pig, two piglets, two injured roosters, a dozen incubating turkey eggs and twenty chicks - in others words, I now offically live in the barn.

Foxes

There’s always something. This morning I heard a commotion in the chook pen and doddled off in my slippers to investigate. We had lost eight of our new hatchlings over the past couple of weeks so I’ve been a little worried about foxes. Anyway I couldn’t see anything, the chickens were making a bit of a racket still, but I figured what ever it was it was gone.

Anyway, I was coming out of the house later, the turkeys were gobbling away and I thought every thing was fine. Then I saw a fox jump onto the roof of the chook pen! I thought at first I might be able to get a photo of it for the Blog, but the camera was in the car. So I tried to sneak up to the chooks and give it a good wack with a bit of wood. I thought I saw it jump down onto the ground, but then I saw it on the roof and it saw me and took off. Maybe there were two, I don’t know.

So I took a look in the chook pen and I was gob-smacked. I thought I’d seen the fox/foxes on the way in but obviously it was the way out. The pen was littered with dead chickens, all our Silky hens and a couple of roosters, our layers, Ricki the Rooster – Bens favourite, the last of the young chickens, one of our Pekin/Hamburg cross rosters and our last red Bantam hen. We only have a couple of Hamburg Hens and a handful of Roosters left. They didn’t touch the ducks or turkeys.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get organised enough to get a firearms license, which is obviously becoming more and more necessary. We were only talking about it last night at dinner. The sheep that are agissted on the hill have lost a number of lambs to foxes this year as well.

So – adding to the ‘to do’ list - back to the drawing board with fox proofing, get a gun license, hunt foxes and hatch more chickens.

Funny thing is, yesterday when the Cook went to kill the black rooster poor old Ben wouldn’t let her. So the rooster came back, the foxes didn’t kill him either. So I think we are stuck with that one. Ben did say it was a lot nicer to him yesterday afternoon.

Photo of the Week

Do I nose you?

The sheep are settling in well. The Cook has them on the Apple Vinegar Cider to clean them out before we release them to the paddock. The Apple Cider Vinegar is a Biodynamic remedy for worms and other internal parasites. We also need to give them a good spray of Neem oil incase they have any lice or external parasites.

The Cook and the kids tried to separate the young gilts out of the boars paddock yesterday with out much success, pigs 27 farmers 3, however, the Cook will get her own back. She's off to help the folks down at Ingelara to castrate their pigs today - and there's no way I'm having anything that looks like meat balls for dinner! She did mention taking the Black Rooster down with her to get the chop. He's been harassing her and the kids lately so I think they are pretty keen to get him on the plate and eaten.

BREAKING NEWS: Another six piglets born this morning - I'm not home and of course everything is a little confused - The Cook has to take the Jeep in to get the door re-attached this morning as well as going to Ingelara. The Black Rooster attacked Ben again and is currently under bag arrest awaiting the chop.

Pig love

Monday saw us return to the scene of yesterday’s fun and with aching bodies to capture the remaining sheep and transport them back to Bredbo. Whilst we were gone and again soon after we arrived home we got a good shower of rain, which ended up being about 5mm. The sheep have all been put into a small receiving yard, at the front of the property, for a few days until we can get them up to the yards.

When we arrived home we found the pigs had turned off the electric fence, and we had pigs everywhere. One of the sows, who was obviously in season had moved in with the Boar, and they were both very happy. Some of the growers had moved in with the mums and a number of piglets had swapped mums as well. This is what happens when nobody is home!!!

Once we sorted all this out it was time for a cup of tea and a sit down. It rained again for about five minutes, the temperature dropped suddenly and it was like winter again. Finally after feeding the animals it was time to get inside and warm up. Unfortunately on our way inside we noticed one of the ducks lying on the grass in front of the chook house, poor old Pong our first Peking had died. It looks like he just laid down and gone to sleep, he was one of the animals we had brought with us from Murrumbateman when we first arrived here.

This morning we had a fairly heavy frost which hopefully hasn’t done any damage to eth potatoes. We also had snow on the hills along the Western ranges – no wonder it got so cold last night.

Market day

Sunday was very busy – it was up early and off to the Markets. We had never been to the Farmers Market at Woden before and thought we’d take a look and see what the process was like, the types of produce and the atmosphere. The Market is smallish, but has a good atmosphere and there was a constant flow of people through for a good part of the morning. We ran into a couple of people we know, Michael Croft from Mountain Creek Farms who runs Saddle Back pigs and Belted Galloways. He’s a wealth of information and has been very helpful to us over the pas few months. We also ran into one of the Cooks work mates John, he’s a Biodynamic tragic like us, and it was good to finally put a face to the name. John also mentioned he reads the Blog – so hi John!

Produce at the Markets was a good mix of in season fruits and vegetables, lots of wood oven baked breads, meat, fish, eggs, honey and cheese. I would have liked to stay a little longer but we had other jobs to do.

From the Markets we went off to pick up some sheep from out the back of Gundaroo. The sheep were Merinos, a mixture of rams, lambs and ewes. When we arrived at the front gate of the property we could see that they had had a little rain, the track up to the yards was a little rough in places but the Jeep managed to drag the trailer up without too much problem. Once we arrived at the sheep yards the fun started – firstly the front drivers side door of the Jeep came off (I’ll come back to this). The sheep yards had no loading ramp so it was a manual job to get the sheep onto the trailer. The Boys thought this was pretty good, and both of them leapt into grabbing the sheep. My problem was, being the only man on hand; I was responsible for getting the sheep on the trailer.

Normally this would have been a challenge I would enjoy, but after having all that rain, and the sheep not being shawn for a year, they were heavy and awkward to lift. It took us about an hour to get the 24 sheep and lambs onto the trailer, leaving a dozen or so for another trip. We turned our attention to the Jeeps door and after a little swearing and a lot of jiggling we finally got it fixed enough so we could get home. We were all a little exhausted by now and a lot of snoring was heard coming from the back and passenger seat all the way home.

Sowing circles

Next on the list of activities was Corn planting. We are doing a little experiment with the corn to see how well it grows here, hopefully we can grow enough to use for pig feed. All the corn we get at the moment comes in bags as you would expect, so it’s off the cob and dried. We noticed last year that the pigs loved to eat the corn stalks and cobs just as much as the grain. Being easy to store – in the field – it may be just as easy, but less resource intensive to feed the corn to them stalks and all.

Anyway, we’ve planted a fair amount of the stuff now so we’ll wait and see. Of course the kids are just a great help when it comes to these types of activities and a very willing to come out and give as hand. Both Ben and Harry played pivotal roles in ensuring every seed was planted at just the right depth.

Spring oats

What a weekend, we are all knackered – I can hardly summons up the strength to type. One of the first things we did Saturday was check the Oats crop and see if there was any sign of life. I wasn’t expecting much, maybe a few indications that we were getting some germination. I was a little surprised to see it had not only germinated but was standing about 2 inches high all across the paddock.

Next I suppose we need to look at how much the kangaroos are going to affect the crop and what I can do about it. The crop across the river dosen't get any kangaroos so maybe the railway line will act as a barrier.