It's all in the soil

Tonight after my children were in bed I dug up my garlic. Well actually one child in bed, but that's enough mention of my rather average parenting. I gave up at 9.50pm as it was getting too dark to see the last few garlic plants.

A very encouraging harvest. In the punga raised bed, the bulbs were huge. The soil surrounding them was soft and quite dry and it was easy to lift the bulbs with a fork without damaging them. I know the red one is Takahue and at least some of the white one is Kakanui. Some of my bulbs were from my own harvest last year (the source of those in turn was an organic grower in Raglan), others were from the garlic I brought from Bill and Leitu Jackson at Wangapeka, a few hours north of me and the rest I bought from Koanga Gardens. I will keep some of my recent harvest for next year's seed, one head of Gilly's for seed and order some more in. Given some of the problems New Zealand commercial growers have had with inbred seed (although I'll confess I'm not completely sure how that problem occurs), it seems a good idea to keep bringing bulbs in from elsewhere in the country. I haven't counted my garlic yet, but at a glance I have perhaps 50 heads of garlic. One head per week isn't really enough for winter cooking in my kitchen. I've already given Bill and Leitu a call to put my name down to buy some more of theirs.

Anyway back to my garden. In the other garlic bed, the soil is only slightly raised from the lawn level. It is also at the bottom of the slope of our section. Two garlic necks had completely rotted through leaving the bulb in the ground while the leaves pulled free when I attempted to dig it up. Some bulbs from this garden were a good size but many were not. The soil was wet (despite it being mostly dry for this last week - only two overnight rains being practically a drought here) and stuck together in clods. It wasn't as easy to dig the garlic out and I damaged several bulbs with the fork.

I went shopping at the garden centre this morning. Boron and dolomite lime. A globe artichoke plant, beetroot seedlings and a mixed punnet of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings. I've not raised many plants from seed this spring or summer. I doubt I will be raising many from seed either until Brighid gets past her garden murdering stage.

Our chooks have been wondering free, unbidden. It took several escapes before I established exactly where they were getting out. Most remarkably, when I was out yesterday evening, two of the three chooks got out, so Fionn and his friend put them in the temporary shelter. Fionn was in bed when I got home, so I never learnt of this until much later. This morning I noticed the top edge of the temporary shelter wiggling from the study window. It was from a chook trying to get out. Yes, one chook. The other chook, it appears, got out from the temporary shelter (not especially difficult) and put herself back in the poultry palace. I think they were both anxious for their usual laying spot.

They were escaping from the door. Don't roll your eyes. They had wiggled a gap between the door and the wall beside it. So now I have wiggled some wires myself and added a bungy cord through the overlapping wire mesh section to hold the door closed. So far, no more escaping.

They were fairly gentle and unadventurous souls while we were fixing the door security. They poked around in the potatoes and the broccoli but didn't go anywhere near the old chook run, which is where they would have done the most damage. I do see though that they have scratched up some rather small potatoes, for the most part tearing them from their parent plant. So I need to collect the rest of those in the morning and cook them up. I also need to spread some more pea straw around the plants. I never mulched them as high as I'd planned. It just rained too often to get outside until it fell off my to do list. I think I will go and buy some fresh peastraw though. I'm sick of my current bale throwing up masses of pea seedlings. That can go via the chooks and hopefully the germination rate will be significantly less.

We have sunflowers in bloom now. I don't remember why I planted them so far from where we can see them though. It's akin to walking through a tiny forest to get close enough to see the blooms. The wild blackberry has no flowers on it. Wild blackberry not far from us is awash with flowers. Not sure what the story is there. Neither is there any fruit on my blackcurrants. Is that typical for the first year from a cutting? I'm sure glad we are not dependent on our garden for fruit. Eight strawberries does not a happy summer make.

Geodesic domes

I saw a geodesic dome glasshouse (or maybe it was plastic) in North Canterbury once. Good choice of shape for such windy country. You know, I think bamboo could be used to make a similar shape, not as sophisticated but good enough. Then I could cover with shade cloth to mitigate the wind or to contain chooks, or plastic for a semi-glasshouse effect. I would end up with mandalas a la Linda Woodrow. Our poultry palace is making such a good home for our chooks and our two feijoa trees. The feijoas were looking rather poorly before the chooks and their palace moved in around them. Could I extend the concept for very little financial outlay?

I put the smashed mussel shells in the chook run this afternoon - hopefully that is a good source of calcium for them. We've had a few very pale, thin egg shells lately.

I had a lovely parcel today of a plait of garlic. Thank you Gillybean. I'm so pleased I actually made it to the post office to send your kefir last week. Sometimes the post office runs away and hides when I write it on my errands list. Shocking is the list number of gifts and cards and other things which hang around my study with the name of a friend on them, waiting forlornly for me to take them to the post office.

I might harvest my own garlic tomorrow and lay it out to dry. I have two beds of garlic, one happy, one spindly. The happy garlic is in our punga raised bed and enjoys lovely lovely soil. The spindly garlic is in a less well nourished bed which it shares with strawberries and peas, neither of which are good companions for it. There are some tomatoes in there as well and they are doing rather averagely-to-poorly. At least I will remember for next year. I shall take the peas (rogues from some badly behaved peastraw mulch) out at the same time as the garlic. The strawberries can have a bit longer to earn their keep. Then it will be time for the chooks to have fun in there I think. Two years ago I turned the lawn over and slowly weeded it myself, with only bokashi as fertiliser. Since then, it has had the odd bit of seaweed brew and some menstrual blood. Not really enough input for the kind of productivity I like to see.

When I went to feed the ginger beer plant tonight, it fizzed when I opened the lid! Hurray, we are definitely making progress.

tucked up safely

Thank you for your recent comments of support for the chooks. They are safe in their coop now, which has a brick on top of it tonight so it cannot blow open. We've placed the temporary shelter round the coop so that they can still wander round outside as they wish in the early morning. It's still blowing hard outside.

I am having fun thinking of what I will plant in the vacated chook run. I didn't think we'd be moving it until Autumn, but I'm sure that now the chook run shelter has moved itself, we may as well home the chooks somewhere else and start growing. They've been on that 5 x 2 metres spot for over two months. I can see a zucchini down one end, herbs and flowers around the perimeter (close together to act as a deterrent to the grass moving back in), lots of silverbeet, kale, lettuces, maybe some bush tomatoes, beetroot. I could make a teepee in the middle for beans to grow up... I've never had a garden plot of 10sqm to play with from scratch like this before. Better find out when the next good seed sowing day is lunarly.

I am glad I didn't make great progress on lunar transplanting days earlier this week. I only got one zucchini transplanted and it is looking very poorly now. I think the wind has snapped it's stems.

Fish Pie

There should be no stinting on calories in fish pie. At least, I have no plans to stint on calories in fish pie. The one I made tonight had cream cheese in the mashed potato topping (we had cream cheese but no cream. Milk not rich and exciting enough) and sauteed button and shitake mushrooms in the filling. The fish pie was a celebration of actually having some fresh fish. It is now impossible to buy locally caught fresh fish in our town, despite the fact that fishing boats do dock at our port. So a friend who was down south further today got me some "deep sea cod" in exchange for the avocadoes I gave her from my latest co-op box. It was completely divine. I don't know if it is a naughty fish to eat - most likely given it's name (and the fact it is fish!). I used a Nigella Lawson recipe as my guide. That woman knows how to use a lot of pots. And butter.

Yesterday one chook escaped. One minute in the temporary enclosure, the next in the potato patch. So they went back in the Poultry Palace, a more secure enclosure, for the day and indeed ever since. I'd better buy some tent stakes to up security for next time I let them out into their portable run. I am leaning heavily towards getting rid of all the grass around the feijoas and having thick mulch closest to the trees and herbs around the outer circle. Using the chooks as indentured labour for the job of course.

Another thing yesterday. I stopped in to a see a friend whose husband is renovating their home. Steve had replaced the wooden corner window with a modern aluminium one. Would I like the old window for glass house building? Well yes of course I would. We have a house lot of windows already, waiting to be turned into a glasshouse. But this corner window could make a cold frame on it's own without much adaptation. I'll be sending Favourite Handyman out in the weekend to have a look. Then we can start planning how to best use it.

Things I wonder

Madeleine Bunting wrote an excellent piece on the adoption of breast cancer as a kind of commercial commodity in a recent Guardian Weekly. I read it in the paper version but can't find it online. She noteed the hoopla surrounding breast cancer week in the UK, with pink ribbons, pink t-shirts and other high profile pink paraphernalia. She also noted the total silence on the possible causes of breast cancer. Those hormone disrupting plastics, food additives and other commodity based suspects can't be packaged up and sold as a PR feel-good advertising package.

So it was with some loathing today that I noticed that in our local supermarket we currently have a double layered advertising caboodle in the bulk foods section. Alison Holst, who has guided thousands of New Zealanders through their early and later days in the kitchen, currently has her name to most of the bulk foods section in 'New World'. No doubt she gets paid handsomely for having her motherly face plastered over the top of containers of scroggin and pine nuts up and down New Zealand. Today it was all through the lens of pink. All the labelling and display posters had been changed to pink and even the bulk foods bags are currently pink. I bought pink Tim Tams earlier this month and thus gave the breast cancer charity ten cents to their worthy cause. Some might suggest that Tim Tams are the kind of processed food that people anxious to reduce their cancer vulnerability would do well to avoid.

So I do hope that all this fundraising and awareness raising saves some lives. But I'm also with Madeline Bunting - the packaging is rather suspect.

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I wonder what the point of my carefully made meal plan and prudent food shopping this morning was. Given that I worked late and ended up buying fish and chips for tonight's dinner. $54 at the supermarket for food which should last us until next Tuesday/Wednesday, apart from another milk trip. $19 at the chippie for food which filled us without laudable nutrition for one meal only. Tomorrow is black pudding, baked beans, veges, rice. I'm thinking I should cook it in the morning. If we have another late arrival home, we can eat the pre-made dinner cold.

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The chooks are trying to roost in their new day home. They do look funny falling off the pungas. Favourite Handyman is going to adapt a saw horse for their portable roost. The odd chook is still odd. Today's egg was shell-less and barely recognisable as an egg. FH suggested killing her now as the books and our learned chook-owning friends suggest she is egg-bound and will most likely die anyway. I guess that is forward planning. Of a kind. She seems quite happy, just underperforming egg-wise.

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Some of the remaining leeks are going to seed. Leek seed heads are so very beautiful - I'm definitely letting at least one grow to it's full glory. My parents arrived here this evening and I proudly showed them round our section. They are quite bemused by our training of wild blackberry. I have quite a few germinated sunflowers now. And two beans. Progress on transplanting kale and lettuces yesterday has been undermined by Brighid who thinks seedling pots are to be emptied, filled and moved around with like sandpit toys. We're not getting on well in gardening terms at the moment, my daughter and I.

Gardening Monday

'Labour Weekend' in New Zealand is in the latter part of October each year and is the traditional time to plant tomatoes, pumpkins, beans and other frost tender plants. People where I live often wait a bit longer as Spring is slow to kick off here. I've planted a couple of tomato plants outside but am in no hurry to finish planting. I planted two pumpkins this afternoon and about 65 onions. Then the children and I transplanted lettuce and kale seedlings into pots. They need to get bigger before they can go into the garden.

I've also permanantly lifted the roofing iron from the compost experiment out the front. I'd layered horse poo and pea straw and fabric scraps and shredded paper and then put roofing iron over it all and weighted it down with bricks. There are worms in there so some activity but actually it was too dry in there and so not huge break down. I watered the newly exposed pile with seaweed brew this morning and no doubt it will rain several times this week. The zucchini seedling I have earmarked for this spot is not big enough to transplant yet but most likely will be in a week's time.

I've used last year's strawberry protection frame (made of wire mesh) to go over the top of my rocket seedlings and the big pot which houses my calla lilly. Brighid caused merry havoc with these pots earlier and was furious when I put them out of her grasp.

Favourite Handyman made a splendid contraption for the chooks today. A large (perhaps two metres in diameter) circle of wire mesh with two bamboo poles crossed and attached over the top to lift it by. Then we pegged shade cloth over the top. We moved it (and very light it is too) to Brighid's Forest (small patch of pungas and a cabbage tree) and then put the chooks in there to feast on the long grass and weeds surrounding the trees. Great scheme though I'm about to discover how to get them out soon... I put some water in a bucket inside the circle for them and in summer could easily make a laying box to pop in there and then they could live there for a few weeks. But at the moment the idea is that they live there in the daytime only. I do appreciate not having foxes in New Zealand - it does make housing chooks much easier.

Of course the term "Labour weekend" is a stupid fallacy. It is supposedly a celebration of good working conditions in New Zealand or something like that. But it was deliberately divorced timewise from the traditional May Day labour movement celebrations which are found all over the world. Robbing it of it's political and historical context. The West Coast is the birth place of the union movement and we have celebrations relating to this at Blackball on or around 1 May.

On the subject of politics, I heard Kim Hill running the election debate last night. You'll be able to find it if you look on the National Radio menu. I am a huge and longstanding Kim Hill fan. It's a great incentive to cook on a Sunday night if I get to hear Kim Hill handle our politicians with skill and verve like last night. My favourite line was after Jim Anderton spoke and went something very similar to: "That's the great thing about having Jim Anderton on this debate. It's like going on an archaeological dig."

Poultry Friday

Collected a large bag of watercress for the chooks plus lots of slugs. Turned the latest compost heap over a bit. Just shovelled the sides up on top. Not game to attempt turning the whole thing. Although it is very wet, it is teeming with worms. I found a large sheet of old iron and laid it against the heap to reduce the amount of rain deluge.

Collected lovely aged compost from the oldest heap and heaped it up around my rhubarb.

Although Spring is slow here on the coast and I should wait 2-3 more weeks, impatience got the upper hand this afternoon. I planted out a zucchini and two pumpkins.

Threw some more barley straw into the chook run. It was sending up new green shoots from the bale - would have been hopeless straight on the garden. But the chooks do a fine job of eating the green shoots and turning it into garden or compost ready material. I tried to buy some peastraw which is best gardenwise this morning but ended up on the waitlist for the next truck delivery. Again. That stuff is like gold here. Instead I grabbed some whole maize because I thought the chooks would like it. They weren't greatly keen. Maybe too big.

Thank goodness for wine

I did more tidying today. That is three, maybve even four days in a row. We certainly didn't have 'proper' food for dinner. I can't be folding so much washing, interspersed with washing and drying and carting up even more new washing to be folded, AND cooking like Nigella. Cos' of course I cook like Nigella the rest of the time y'know...

So you can now see some of the couch and has the world changed? No. Not a bit. But anyway, maybe the visitors will want to sit on the couch and maybe they will be able to. We are having our third lot of visitors in a month tomorrow. The first visitors lucked out a bit - we had three hours warning of when they were coming and Favourite Handyman was working long hours at the time. The second visitor arrived at the same time as we returned from our short holiday in Marlborough. Given that Favourite Handyman was home and it was school holidays, she lucked in very slightly and didn't have to make her own bed up. But tomorrow's visitors, well they will have the opportunity to walk from the bathroom to the study without completing an obstacle course. They will be able to eat in the dining room without any detritus on the table or even any boxes around the edges of the room spilling over and out at unpredictable moments. They will even have a new continental blanket on their bed. Does five star entertainment get better than this? Well obviously it does, but no flash hotel also provides access to the beloved niece and nephew like our place does. I've mentioned the possible couch sitting opportunities several times already...

I had to buy wine this evening to keep myself going.

The school spud project is coming together nicely. We'll be dishing them out this coming Wednesday morning. At the weigh in competition at the end of term, children will be able to take their potatoes home to eat with their families or to donate them through the school to the Christmas charity food bank. I'm delighted. So far anyway. I've also managed to procure a Bokashi bucket for the school.

Being Friday, it was poultry palace day. I tipped half a wheelbarrow's worth of river sand into one end of the chook run so they could all enjoy a decent dust bath. I changed water (which I do most days) and I changed the straw down the pooey end of the night coop. I notice that the chooks left the chickpeas out of the last lot of leftovers I fed them. Probably too big to get in their mouths. They've had hummous leftovers before and eaten that.

I am loving all the comments lately. Now I need to get my head back in nappy country and teach the world to contain poo and wee on a tiny budget. Without going down the let it all out wherever whenever route. I do have boundaries you know.

Armfuls of watercress

One armful for the chooks. One armful for the compost. The chooks loved the watercress. While at the compost heap, I plunged my hand into it to see if it was warm. I wouldn't say hot, but definitely warm. Goood things are going on inside my pile of grass, chookpoo, straw. Hmm I've just remembered that I put some sawdust on it. So that will need loads of nitrogen. Watercress should do the trick though. There is plenty of watercress down by the league field and removing it from the waterways is good as eventually water weeds take all the oxygen from the stream. I must remember what Woodrow says about using it for garden paths rather than gardens.

I'm going to add many more nitrogen rich things to the strip across the back of the back garden. That was just falling away into weeds last year and we started to build it up by laying newspaper down and then wood chip on top. I added grass clippings and then planted 30 broad beans in little pockets of potting mix along the fence. The broad bean yield hasn't been amazing so far but the main result is I get to dig the broad bean plants back in for a nitrogen boost. I need to edge this piece with logs so that the grass doesn't recolonise this garden plot. I think some of my Lions fertiliser fundraiser sheep manure would be well used along here. I'll plant some more legumes - peas and astragalus milk vetch through summer and hopefully the nitrogen levels will be sufficient by autumn to plant winter silverbeet along this shady strip.

I sowed many seeds this morning. Borage, basil, coriander, lettuce, kale, astragalus milk vetch, marjoram, garlic chives, sorrel, anise hyssop, chervil and calendula. This afternoon I planted a pot of beneficial insect blend seeds, two more zucchini and a bean. I gave away four tomato plants and four pots of basil this afternoon but I still need to give away some more tomatoes before I have room to plant more than one bean.

This morning I had a quick squizz on the beach and found some seaweed. I've draped it around my broccoli plants, tucked under the mulch. Fingers crossed. Linda Woodrow says it is easy to grow broccoli, but that has not been my experience so far.

One chook looked off peak yesterday and I found the remains of a shell-less egg this afternoon. Off to research what being 'egg bound' means. My aunt mentioned it last week but I was too busy thinking I knew it all about the same chook's last illness to listen properly. I had some things to learn when I was eight, and I still have them to learn now. Listen Sandra!!

More on permaculture

Following here from questions/comments from a recent post on Linda Woodrow's Permaculture Home Garden book. Nova, there is a lot in Woodrow's book for every gardener. The things she writes about making compost and collecting compost are really helpful. I had forgotten all about her advice to collect weeds from waterways but after reading that bit again yesterday morning, I found more. We were out doing a bike and baby walk (I don't usually write about the children here, but it felt like a big deal that Fionn now has his own two wheeled bike and he rode ahead and had me pushing the pushchair quickly to keep him in sight - good exercise for us both!!). We walked past the stream that I had checked the first time I read the book and it still didn't look great - mostly gorse and blackberry down the sides and just long grass on the edges of the actual water. I saw some nasturtium beginning to spread again and remembered that nasturtium leaves are good on the compost.

I did notice that the Marist rugby field has been mown recently. I must take the car down and collect the grass clippings.

Then, via the playground we got to the other stream, the one near the rugby league field. Aha. this one has something which is either watercress or similar and there is lots of it. On the way back home I grabbed two plants and tried them out on the chooks. They love it. Woodrow says it is good to pull it out of streams because the plants ultimately rop the stream of oxygen if left to grow too much. Perfect synergy. It is raining this morning but that won't stop me putting on my gumboots after breakfast and collecting lots of grass by the rugby union field and watercress by the rugby league field.

Leanne, Woodrow talks at length about the benefits of seaweed. It has lots of minerals in it and is fantastic for your garden. You can make seaweed brew with it (put in a bucket with water and a lid and leave there for 2+ weeks. Drain off and dilute and water on to plants. Refill and repeat. Once you've done this 2-3 times, throw the original seaweed on your compost heap. Given our high rainfall here, I only do the seaweed brew method in summer. The rest of the time, the last thing my plants need is more water. So I throw some directly on the compost. I chop some and spread it on my garden. When I planted my first raspberry earlier this year, I lay a wreath of seaweed around it. The high rainfall washes it in pretty easily.

Woodrow notes that seaweed is a good source of boron and is great for broccoli. She also says that broccoli is easy to grow. Easy? Not quite my experience. So I'm planning on a seaweed gathering trip this week and will be putting some of it round my broccoli.

Last time I read Woodrow, we didn't have chooks. Then while we were planning our poultry palace, someone else is smallwettown was very attached to the library copy of Woodrow. So now we are looking again at her chook ideas and designs. The idea of circles is very appealing. I also want garden curves softening the perimeter of the section. But given the high rainfall, raising every bed at least a little bit is necessary and to do that for free or very cheaply, we need to use found logs (seriously, every storm brings up more logs on our local beach). Those logs are straight rather than circular. The nikau ones are the most beautiful. Perfectly straight, with etchings which must have been the original inspiration for carved Maori totem poles. If anyone can tell me the Maori word for totem poles, I would love to learn it.

Even without the large mandala idea, Woodrow's knowledge is infinitely applicable. She is in favour of 12 chooks in an eleven metre square patch, moved on every two weeks. You need this concentration to get the optimal poo volume apparently. We have three chooks in a ten metre square run, not moved on at all yet. They do get to free range outside a few days per week.

We have many ideas about different homes and setups for our chooks. We come up with a new one each week. The thing is that much time is needed and that is not available. That old chestnut about needing to earn a living. The latest one which is in favour is to move the current poultry palace to the west side of the house. Most of our garden is to the north, with some to the east and the front of the hous facing south. The eastern part of the section is largely unused as it is open to the traffic and thuis unsafe for Brighid. It has a small compost heap in it, the house lot of windows which await turning into a glasshouse and the remainder of the enormous pile of sand we bought for the sandpit last Christmas. Yesterday we were talking about fencing this area off and having the Poultry Palace in the middle. During the day they could be let out to fossick in the enlarged area. As it has no tender vegetable plants in it, they would pose no garden danger.

And the genie landed on us. Our neighbours and friends often think of us when they are about to throw old chicken wire out and Barry and Brenda had been doing a big clear-up on their place. Would we like some more chicken wire? Would we ever?!!!!!! They passed over two big posts and 5+ metres of really strong, high grade chicken wire. How perfect would that be for making the fence between the front of the house and the eastern boundary fence? Very perfect. Not sure when it will happen, but it is looking like a very good plan. We sent some eggs over. Later that day they asked if we would like some shade cloth which they no longer wanted. Yes please. It is the perfect size for making a sail cloth above the sandpit. In winter it is great to have full sun on the sandpit. Fionn and Brighid play in it a lot. But in summer some shade on it would be better.

Last thing yesterday I decided the blueberries needed more nutrition. I added some compost to the blueberry patch when I set it up but there is not much evidence of it now. The blackbirds have been having a field day in the blueberry patch and that is before there is any fruit. So I opened the kinpack soil conditioner which I bought from the local Lions club fertiliser fundraiser drive. This is made from sheep dags. I need to get friendly with a local sheep owner so that I can collect this kind of thing for free. I spread a layer around the blueberries but didn't bother to water. I thought rain was coming and I was right. I probably won't need to hoe it on afterwards either. The rain will damp it down a lot and the blackbirds will turn it over for me.

Bog chooks and slug deterrents

One day into my new self imposed rule about only using the internet after I've 'done' my reading in the evenings and I'm on the net at 8am. Spontaneous need to record my latest chook challenges.

Our entire back lawn and garden is a bog. The rain has been relentless and will last for a while yet. It could even be mostly wet all the way until January. So even though we've got a covered chook run, the saturation of the soil is such that rain seems to be seeping downhill and there are puddles even under cover. euggh.

We will move the chook run to a higher spot on the section at some point but even that will only help a bit compared to the enormous rainfall. At least the coop part is raised off the ground and has a wooden floor.

Hard to tell whether the eggshells are helping with the slugs. The blackbirds keep fossicking in the soil and making a huge mess as they go. So they've made craters beside the lettuces and moved the eggshells aside in the process. One lettuce has been partially eaten but at least not razed to the ground. So now I've tried another idea I read of recently and put orange peel around the lettuces. Apparently slugs don't like orange peel. We'll see.

Fabulous holiday

We went to the top of the South Island. It rained. Well it would have done so at home, so still worth going.

Had a great time with my grandparents. Brought some lemons home from their trees. Visited my aunt and uncle and finally, after 2.5 years of looking, stumbled accidentally on a source of chestnuts. They have six mature trees, planted by early European settlers on their land. So I have a box of chestnuts to learn how to shell (I bought cans in the UK) and then I can make Nigella's chestnut and lentil soup once more. Brought home pumpkins and a leek as well and some more ideas in my head from my aunt about good food for the chooks. I am keen to learn more about how to provide food for the chooks without using the commercial layer pellets. I do wonder about the proportion of soya beans in the pellets and whether they are genetically modified. We are eating those pellets in a processed form when we eat their delicious eggs.

We drove through Nelson on the way home and stopped in Wakefield at Faulkner's Park to eat pizza and play on the coolest flying fox in our world. Brighid (20 months) got her first go. Marvellous.

Things which we left at home: homeopathic teething powder. the camera. muslins. We missed the teething powder badly on both nights. We did notice the absence of the muslins when Brighid threw up bright green sick again and again and again on the way north. The bright green bottle of souped up raro masquerading as a fruit drink which the children drank at the lunch place won't be repurchased. The camera - well we'll just have to visit again soon and do it all again.

chookity chook

The lid is up on the coop in the photo above and I've mucked out the front half of the run. The terracotta pot works well as a water trough as they don't kick it over like the plastic versions and it is high enough that they don't kick straw into it.

Getting the old tobacco patch ready for potatoes to go in it.

trouble in poultry paradise

One of our chooks is sick. She was very quiet all of yesterday and finally laid a shell-less egg in the late afternoon, just plop out in the open. She has a red anus and is clearly unhappy and only eating and drinking a fraction of her usual enthusiasm. My initial research online suggests an infection which should be treated with antibiotics.

My chook guru friend Raelene rang back with ideas once I was in bed asleeep with the children (I'm up in the middle of the night because I don't have sensible sleep patterns at the moment. Nothing wrong, just not sensible), so I'll have to wait until the morning to learn about them. Pending Raelene's views, I'll probably have to ring the vet in the morning (I have never had anything to do with a vet before. This appears to be more responsibility on top of having two children. Cue: goggly eyes).

I'll also be down at the feed shop buying straw to replace the existing straw in the laying box. It wouldn't cost a great deal more to replace the straw in the run and perhaps that is even more important given that is the wet area. Presumably the existing stuff will go on the compost and diseases heat up and die. Not sure about bacteria dying at temperatures which won't rise above 70 degrees celsius and may be quite a bit less. But then the chooks aren't going to be living on the 'made' compost.

I'm also thinkg garlic. Planning on cooking up some wheat with garlic and cider vinegar in the morning and feeding that to the chooks. Everything benefits from garlic in my world view.

It is par for the course possibly that the run is so wet and that is a breeding ground for disease. I am liking the idea that we could build our glasshouse this summer and use it as a chook home out of tomato season and a tomato growing house the rest of the time. Living in a bog was never good for Irish potatoes and neither is it good for chooks, or so I'm learning.

I do continue to get huge satisfaction from collecting slugs every afternoon and feeding them to the chooks.

Last night's dinner was quiche which included eggs, leeks, thyme and parsley from our garden. I liked it. Favourite Handyman liked it. The short ones demonstrated their lack of sophistication and class on the taste preferences stakes and were rewarded with empty tummies.

I am making progress on Fionn's knitted sleeveless hoodie. I'm up to the armhole shaping on the back.

I have started a great book called "Mr Pip" by Lloyd Jones. I should be reading it now instead of blogging and knitting. Or perhaps I should be sleeping. Being sensible.

We don't have a television so I was unable to form my own opinion about a programme which apparently aired here in New Zealand showing that plastics recycled in New Zealand are shipped all the way to China where the create a huge plastic city of filth and are recycled into more plastic in unpleasant circumstances. Maybe it is not so bad that our Smallwettown's council provides no recycling facilities.

Our one solitary feijoa tree needs some food and a friend. I didn't realise feijoas were hungry until recently. So some blood and bone and mulch will be coming its way shortly. I've weeded around it. It was sold as a self-pollinating variety but apparently even self pollinating feijoas do better with other feijoas for company.

My seedlings are coming along nicely. If tomorrow is fine, then I'll be able to plant out some borage, calendula and silverbeet.

Have I mentioned that the yams are showing above the ground now?

The comfrey has risen from its winter slumber. I want more of it though. I wonder how it manages in bog soil. It would be more useful than Wandering Dew.

Out the front I pulled more onionweed yesterday. I'm weeding around the wild blackberry, which I've decided to cultivate this year. In the background to the onionweed, blackberry and the plots which await pumpkins and zucchini are tulips and irises. I like the idea that there are somewhat hidden treasures of beautiful flowers here. I have silverbeet growing around the perimeter of the zucchini patch at the moment. No place too wet, cold, hot, dry, sunny or shady for silverbeet round here.

celebrations

Small, significant.

After years of bad eczema, my son's immune system seems to have made a big leap to overcome some of it's challenges. We are no longer gluten free or egg free and his legs are the best I've seen them for nearly three years, possibly longer. Naturally I'm very pleased for him even if I don't know what's around the next corner dermatologically. It's changed my cooking, freed me up to play round with some old old favourites and experiment without recourse to some unattractive and/or expensive substitutes. I made quiche yesterday - two days' worth of lunches and the leftovers for dinner tonight. I've pulled out the Edmonds recipe book and as I type, Oaty Apple Loaf is cooling on the wire rack. It's made me appreciate some hitherto taken for granted ingredients, the 2-3 years we've spent gluten and egg free.

I let the chooks out to free range for the first time late this afternoon. They just followed me around! They also gobbled the grass enthusiastically. As I didn't get a chance to reinforce the plastice cover on the chook run by sewing some shade cloth on top in the weekend, vigorous winds on Monday and Tuesday have created gaping holes in the raincover. The rains which followed have really made the run very wet and I want access to fresh grass for them. I'll let them out for longer tomorrow.

I still haven't planted the latest silverbeet seedlings, but I did go slug harvesting in the early afternoon for the chooks. It really is a satisfying pastime, preparing the soil environment for safer planting and feeding much loved delicacies to my chooks at the same time.

Onion weed

I gathered an armful of onion weed this morning and cleaned and prepared it (like spring onions, chop off roots and about half of the green part, rest to be used) and put it in the roasting tray with some huge winter carrots from my Dad's garden and some celery from my garden. I drizzled them with oil and let it cook at 150 celsius for about 60 minutes. The roasting tray was quite full and the veges wet from being cleaned so they half steamed and half roasted. Then I whizzed the mix up in the food processor and wondered what I might do with it next.

Next I played round with broccoli pesto after seeing a recipe online which I didn't actually follow because I have banned myself from the computer for all but 20 minutes in the evening. But mine was similar except I used parsley for the non-broccoli green.

Tonight I cooked pasta and then sauteed some anchovies in a pan and added the onion weed/celery/carrots mixture and a bit of tomato sauce. I mixed that with the cooked pasta and then topped each plate with the broccoli pesto. It tasted nice. Not likely to win any awards and certainly not restaurant fare on aesthetics, but "Thank you Mummy, I like this" from the boy who was very doubtful throughout the cooking part did very nicely for applause.

We got our first egg on Saturday and then two yesterday and two today. The run is too wet for them though - increased vulnerability to disease. So we will stake the run into the ground and add plastic to keep it dry. We are now talking about building the glasshouse this summer and making that their winter home while I plant winter veges into the current run spot. Then swap over in summer so the glasshouse can grow tomatoes.

I gave my Dad two sub arctic oregon tomato seedlings which I had grown on Saturday. Mum and Dad were over to watch Fionn's final in the rugby league. Hoki dared to beat us once this season and they paid for that on Saturday. Those little 5 and 6 year old boys and girls in Fionn's team thrashed Hoki soundly. I never thought I'd be a sporting girl, but Saturday was full on excitement. Well well well.

Back to gardening. I also gave Dad some of my pumpkin and zucchini seeds. The climate in his garden is quite different to here and it will be interesting to compare results. My neighbour was talking about the article on heirloom tomato varieties and health benefits in the weekend but didn't know where she could buy seeds or plants. I lent her my Kings Seeds catalogue. Spreading the word on genuine food diversity one friend at a time.

Yesterday was the local Lions fertiliser fundraiser. I joined the queue for sheep manure, blood and bone and powedered sheep manure. I didn't want superphosphate, but happy to put the other things on my garden.

In pursuit of poo

Today I raked out the floor of Raelene's chook house and bagged up the chook poo/bark mix and took it home. I've put one bag on my small (1 x 1 metre) new raised bed. I just spread it on top of the current layer of mulch. Under the pea straw mulch that was already there I could see plenty of worms, a few slugs that I gifted to my chooks and some utterly sodden soil. Too wet to be forking it over. I grew a zucchini in this spot last Summer and let the zucchini flop over the lawn. This time I'm trying to make a more distinct bed and current (but may change 17 times) plans are for herbs in there. Maybe I'll rescue the strawberries from their sad relationship with the garlic and move them to this garden, maybe not.

The soil everywhere is sodden, including the chook run. So this afternoon I shovelled some river sand onto it (we have a stash left over from filling the sandpit) and then a bale of straw. They had a great time fossicking in the new straw and I'm hoping prevention of a bog will be easier to manage than trying to unbog a chook run bog.

Germination

I have six parsley seedlings. Parsley can take a long time to germinate and I often find the germination rate is not fantastic. Two plants (I have the giant Italina flat leaf variety) are enough to see us through the year. Last year I had too much from my enormous plants and gave heaps away. This year I am putting parsley in hummus every week and finding two plants perfect for a fresh supply of medium aged leaves. It seems to grow even in winter.

I also have tomato and basil and lettuce seedlings, a few of which have reached the two true leaves stage. I'll be keeping them inside quite a while longer. Quite apart from the risk of frosts and the endless rain still keeping the gardens in a bog-like state, the slug population is still too sizeable. There are many more to be found and fed to the chooks yet. Once the weather dries up I can start using the beer traps as well.

My potatoes are sprouting nicely. They'll be staying in the shed for a while yet. No point planting them in a bog.

The onions are doing fine in their new plastic medium sized home. I think I'll leave them there for at least another month. I've changed my plans for where the chooks and the spuds and the onions are going yet again. I think I'll keep the poultry palace where it is for six months and put the potatoes in their initial spot (which they've moved in and out of in my mind about six times now). They're going where the tobacco went last year. This is the spot which will become a glasshouse, probably in Summer 2009-10. The chooks will move up to this spot after potato harvest, probably about February.

Saw Raelene the wonderful yesterday. I'm going out to her place to clean out her chook house later this week. More compost. Mmmmmmmmmm can't ever have enough of the fabulous compost which chook house clearings make.

Ros-from-work got chooks the same time as us. And one of her chooks has laid an egg already. Sooooooooo. Maybe we'll get our first egg soon. Round the smoko table I've been collecting tips on the best foods for encouraging egg production.

Introducing chooks one, two and three

of Poultry Palace, smalltown.

They eat slugs.

I love my chooks.

chook love

I love the chooks. They are nameless but loved. We let them out into the run this afternoon (I was too impatient to wait two days) and they clearly enjoyed that and we all stood mesmerized by chooks pecking grass and straw...

I've convinced Favourite Handyman on my scheme to create a large garden bed by the poultry palace building site by having the chooks there for a few months and then finishing off any digging they haven't done myself. I'll put potatoes there in late October and create a herb border all the way round it. The garden bed will be 5 x 2 metres which is the sort of gutsy sized garden bed I want/need rather than just itsy bits around the edges of the section. We're talking about modifications to the poultry palace now that it is up and running. Not that it means much here without any photos. Couldn't find my wallet this evening either. Obviously cleaning the kitchen today wasn't sufficient effort to organise my chaotic physical surrounds.

I've made no progress on the yeast-free eating front. Today I even started making bread again. I tried a new recipe - sweet rye bread. I didn't have aniseed which I gather is the key taste in the recipe but it was still good. Nice with hummus. It is supposed to be great with strong cheese but we've run out of that until Wednesday. It uses treacle which must be good. I need to start my use up the cupboard project again. Stuff just creeps in there and sits unused if I'm not very vigilant.

Happy fortieth birthday to my friend and childminder Robyn, whose party I've just come home from. Robyn's friends and family have already raised $2500 tonight towards the next Watoto project. She makes a huge positive difference to many lives, including mine, here in our small town as well as on the other side of the world.