Reusable nappies-Modern Cloth Nappies

Something I could have never imagined entertaining the idea of 6 months ago is Modern Cloth Nappies (MCN'S). For my baby shower my clever brother gave me 2 brand new reusable nappies of the Pea Pod brand. I am a little bit sick of throwing out nappies and buying new ones every single week. One of the lovely ladies in my mothers group has been using MCN'S since her baby was born so I got onto our app (Group Me is a free app you can use on your phone and group chat for free) and picked her brain about them. Her favourite brand is Itti Bitti. Since I had already used the Pea Pods a few times and was happy with them I thought I would mix it up a little. I bought a couple of Itti Bitti 'Tutto's' from their website while they were on sale and I jumped on eBay and started hunting for some new Pea pods.

Basically they work by having an outer 'shell' and an absorbent fold up cloth that either slips in a pocket or clips on, depending on the type of MCN you have. After baby has gone to the bathroom in them you are instructed to 'dry pail' them. I prefer to rinse and soak in plain water. You then wash normally, with half strength detergent, no hotter than 30degrees (I use cold water mostly to save electricity costs). You can also buy Eco friendly laundry detergent and use that at half strength. I have some that I alternate with. Btw-the sun bleaches EVERYTHING!

 It turns out there is actually a massive following for these nappies with lots of pages on Facebook!

Shopping online from your iPhone at 2am requires much discipline, but the aim of the game is to save time in the long run so I started with just two Itii Bitti's

I also purchased a number of nappies of different brands coming from different parts of the globe (I have to admit, some of them did come from China).

Some of my other new nappies, aren't they cute?

The above pink MCN is handmade by an Australian women, it was only $14.97 and is SO SO cute. Have a look at her eBay site here:

Bountiful Bubs

 

After a bit of trial and error with leaking and whatnot I think Husband (him begrudgingly) and I have finally got it down pat. I am finding however, that the inserts dry very slowly so I may have to get a few more just to speed things up.

 

All good MCN users also need a wet bag! They are made from the same waterproof material.

Time eases up-mothers group and seeds planted

In what is hopefully my new fulltime life as a mum, and business manager (Husband and I both have our own business') I have been flatout!
 I started going to a mothers group when baby was first born and we have kept meeting up for the last 5 months.
We meet up about once a week. I LOVE my mothers group. Some people have bad stories about bitchy experiences but our group is fantastic. I know I wouldn't have been able to thrive as well as I have if it wasn't for that group of women that I could call on for advice or just to ease my worries at times throughout the last 5 months.
 Between that, catch ups with my other friends, looking after the business' and our little property I haven't had much time left over for blogging!

 Everything on the manor is coming along nicely. I now have a little bit more time since baby sleeps regularly during the day and when she is awake she's happier to sit and play for a little while.
So my garden beds that have been laying dormant have been churned up and I have planted some seeds. The seedlings need to sprout before it starts getting too cold. We get frost here and no seedlings like frost!

Today I planted:

Zucchini
Mint
Pak Choy
Rocket (I am a bit concerned about the expired use by date on these seeds)

Rain rain go away...Just for a little while

We wish it would stop raining so that we could do something productive!

 

(Even though I can almost hear my water tanks filling up)

 

Doza, the oldest Fur man, ready to go for a run in the rain.

Lavender Araucana comes home and the girls get a new home

Last weekend, after 2 nights of no Araucana we had already said our goodbyes-after all, no one feathered walks through the valley of the shadow of death and lives to tell the tale. Even the fur men (Doza & Diesel) shy away from it. Husband was minding his own business on the perimeter of our yard weeding or something, and lo and behold he spots a certain Lavender Araucana that used to belong to the Manor on our henny girl fat farm. He jumps the fence and recruits a passer by to scoop up the dastardly beast and plopped her back into the pen. The other ladies huddled around eager to hear stories about what went on 'on the other side of the fence'. N.B. In truth, they had actually forgotten who this henny was and thought she was a new intruder to be hen pecked to the bottom of the order.

While Miss Araucana was gone we thought it high time to improve their surroundings. Thanks to Bunnings and the clever Husband we purchased an aviary and adjusted it to suit our hennies.

Doza-foreground- and Diesel-the white dog- checking out the new digs.

Dark Browny inspecting her quarters.

 

 

 

They get a flash new house but they don't get it levelled.

 

 

The bread maker

Mmmmmmmmmm

Nothing smells better than freshly made bread! Wholemeal and enticing (and maybe a little taller than I had expected), this stuff is good! For now I'm using the bread premixes you can get from local supermarkets, just until I can get the hang of it.






Talk soon, I hear bread calling my name...

New bread maker & a missing araucana

Ok so I don't have any sort of willpower or patience for waiting for these things so rather than going through the bidding war on eBay I just went out to our local Target and purchased a brand new Breville Bread Maker. Who has time to wait for these things? Besides, it was only $50. How could I NOT buy it?



Meanwhile 'back on the ranch' we have an escapee. Someone clearly wasn't enjoying the fat farm as much as the other girls and has jumped the literal fence.

Our property backs onto a nature reserve and Miss Araucana was last spotted on the other side of the fence.

Husband spotted her over there, gave chase and then off she went burying herself into the brushes that house all sorts of feral cats, foxes and whatever else finds itself walking in the valley of the shadow of death. Hopefully she survives the night and comes home!

Taking stock

Soooo, I thought I would take stock of what this manor already has and what we need to add to it to help us cut costs. Hmmm spend money to save money?

We have the hennies-all 3 of the ladies lay an egg each day
A mango tree-lorikeets are loving THAT
A mulberry tree-a reliable but only seasonable fruiter
Veggie gardens-empty but ready

Inside we have a yoghurt maker and a mummy who knows how to make yoghurt with milk and a few tablespoons of yoghurt (culture)
Cheese that can be made from yoghurt

And that's about it. I might have to work on that list. I'm watching a bread maker on eBay right now. Would prefer to get a brand new one but think I should save my $. I'm going to the shops today so will try to resist purchasing a new one. Good luck to me!

2 months after baby

So here I am, 3.5 months in from leaving conventional work, a 2 month old baby and a husband working for himself. We are still living at our little Manor and needless to say my veggie garden has long disappeared.
As my little cherub turns 2 months today and life is getting easier and more fun every single day I think to myself that I MIGHT start planting some seeds! The seed has been planted you might say hah hah. Husband has decided that we will be moving as soon as we can sell our house. Must put it on the market first me thinks. If we do move I have decided it will be to a slightly larger plot than what we have here. I want a dwarf goat yo! That will be our pay off.

Being a mum has been exactly as I expected it to be honest, excepting one thing. I didn't expect to fall as fiercely in love with my little babydoll as much as I have. I knew I would love her of course! But I didn't expect to feel a burning sadness in the pit of my stomach every time I had to leave her. I didn't expect to want other people holding her to hurry up and give her back as I missed her.

She is amazing and I am determined not to have to put her in full time daycare until she is a couple of years old. I understand that some people have no choice and that some mothers can't wait to to return to work-that is fair enough! But it's not for me hopefully. So to make this dream come true I am going to have to get a little crafty and start saving $. So I have returned to my blog once again to document my adventures. Here we go.

Winter project update

As I re-quaint myself with my blog I realise that I left my 'Winter chicken egg-laying project un-updated.

My winter project was to see if I could keep my egg production up throughout the winter days. Now we don't get winters here like America sees ->check out Ohio Farm Girl for what REAL winters are all about. However, our hennies have been born and bred in our climate so our cold is their cold.

My idea was not to falsify light for them, tricking them into thinking that the days were still long, my idea was supplement their diet to see if this made a difference. I have read a few theories on Hennies and their winter egg lay-off (pun intended). One theory talks about during winter and moulting periods, hens need all of the nutrients they are getting from their food therefore not leaving anything left over to create eggs with.

I'm not a huge fan of falsifying light hours as I think if the hens need a break then they need a break. We are just a small household so if we don't get eggs then so be it.
On top of their current egg-layer pellets I started giving them warm, milky porridge twice a week. They LOVED that! I also gave them sunflowers seeds. I have read that 1TSP per bird per fortnight is plenty. I probably gave it to them once a week.

Well it worked. It worked wonders. My hennies stayed nice and fat and the 3 of them (Mrs. Purebred Lavender Araucana doesn't lay at the best of times) kept laying throughout winter. We had a few days here and there where we would get less eggs or  noone would lay at all but we had a steady supply.

In fact, we havent seen a halt in the egg laying at all until this Summer, dark browney and light browney decided they wanted to hatch out some eggs. We don't have a rooster.

This, is another story for another day.

WOW

Wow. It has been 7 months since I last posted. Have I been lazy? Not quite. Been badly behaved with my blog? Most definitely. My poor garden has become overgrown and my blog empty and barren. I have been settling in and loving my new job. I still love it more than ever but I now have a great routine. A routine which involves 4:45am starts that allows 15 mins of coffee-in-bed-time, breakfast, husband-off-to-work time and then extra for either garden or exercise time. All before 7:00am when I leave the house for work. This week we did garden time and my garden is now ready for replanting.

The wondrous thing about my fabo job is that I have EVERY SINGLE weekend off! Tonight is Friday and after work drinks and Husband coming into the city to pick me up I am ready for a weekend of Farm work. I am after all, a suburban farm girl.

My new henny- Lavender Araucana

I got a new little henny! A light lavender and light brown araucana pullet. She will (eventually) lay light blue eggs which I am very excited about! I probably wont get eggs for another 1-2months but nevertheless they will be blue!

She is very pretty with purple/grey legs and a puff of feathers on her head. Almost looks like a little hawk rather than a chicken.

And hard to take a photo of. Araucana's are South American->Very skitterish.

My little happy hen house

My chicken egg laying project

No, I am not going to try to lay eggs as my title would suggest.

I am combining a few ideas to see if I can encourage my hennies to keep laying through winter. As our aim is always to suburban farm as organically and environmentally stress free as possible I am not going to push my hens to do anything that they aren't physically up to. So using heat and lights to falsely extend their days is not whats in mind. I am supplementing their normal layers mash/pellets with fortnightly (mmm sometimes weekly) feeds of porridge. Cooked with water and cooled with cows milk.
As well as fortnightly sunflower seeds. 1 tsp per bird, per fortnight.
These supplements I have read will give the bird the extra nutrients they need to continue laying through winter as well as through moulting. Moulting and winter use more of the birds energy.

I have also filled their little house with plenty of hay to help insulate the place. Photos to come tomorrow

I know I am not the first person to spoil her hennies but very curious to see how they go with these added diet supplements. A few things working in my favour for those of you playing at home; I live in QLD, Australia=>no snow. Also 2 of my hennies are in their second laying season, 1 is in her first and the 4th one is yet to start. The older 2 are ISA brown egg laying mix breed. SO they are all pretty keen to lay anyway.

If you have any opinions on this please feel free to comment!!

ooopsy

Well its been awhile since I last posted! Just under 2 months actually. Been too busy changing that place called work and trying to build up our little paradise!

I no longer work in the awful hell-hole I was in. I now have a much better paying job in the city that constantly challenges my brain. LOVE THAT.

On the only downside I have to leave for work an hour earlier (now at 7am). I get home sometimes earlier and sometimes at the same time as my previous position.

I drive 10 kms to the bus stop and 10kms home (that kinda maketh sense now doesn't it) and my bus ride costs $8 per day. Im saving money, saving car expenses and also taking one more car off the road. Actually I read on a sign in the bus this morning that for every full bus (I do ride an overly packed up bus) is 40 cars off the road.

Cannot WAIT for winter to be over even though it doesn't officially start for 2 more days! I always look forward to that wondrous day in June. THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR. Why do I look forward to it? because from that day on the days start getting longer again.

Only one more day!

After I get ready for that place called work (and I finish writing this) will be going down to check on whitey and her little clutch of eggs. When we candled the eggs last week we only candled two *facepalm*. It turns out the definitely one-maybe two are not fertile and off. lol DEFINITELY off. One exploded all over me and poor old whitey. She was possibly less horrified than I as she immediately set to work eating the newly exploded egg.
So then there was three. One of the three is off as well, feeling a whole lot lighter than it should. I have chosen to ignore this until tomorrow and the other two hopefully hatch out.

On the garden front everything is growing nicely. My tomatoes are getting tall and one of the original tomatoes has a few reddening right now.

Still having issues with caterpillars and I have a fantastic caterpillar-rid but it can only be put on the plants early in the morning or late afternoon. I get home in the dark and always get distracted until too late in the morning- ala today!
Hopefully tonight will be the night. On another note the 6 lettuces that I bought as seedlings are growing UP. Not out but up. Much like lettuces that have been growing for too long, long stem and all that. Hmmmm. will see how they go.
Must be off to check on Whitey
...

We're gonna have us some chicky babies!!

Unless something bad happens over the next week (yes, yes I am very aware of the old saying about not counting chickens etc etc) we should have 4 little baby cheapies next Sunday!! Not sure if Im ready, actually I KNOW Im not ready yet. I guess I just wasn't expecting the eggs to work out for some reason. Tisk tisk here I was COMPLETELY underestimating Whitey!

We candled the eggs tonight and we have blackness! and veinyness!!

So fabulously amazing! When the light is put underneath the baby chicky inside goes to the other side of the egg AWAY from the light.

Might have to spend tomorrow (day off that place of work)preparing for the hopefully imminent arrival!

whitey update

Whitey is still sitting nicely like all good broody's do. I really am very impressed!
Im not sure if I should be pushing her off the nest once a day or just leave her. I have been letting nature take its course and just giving her a handfull of pellets in the nesting box. She does seem to love that!


 <- Whitey all puffed up and annoyed at me looking at her




The babies are due on April 10 so she has been sitting for 8 days so far. Not sure when I should candle them and see if anything is going on? Since dark browny and light browny have been still laying in whitey's nesting box I have been checking the eggs daily to take out the new ones. None of the marked eggs are feeling particularly light and I would imagine after a week of warmth that if they werent fertile perhaps they would be lighter with off-egg gases by now?




Husband updated the chicken pen on the weekend and it really is looking all suburban farm like!

Eggs incubating

I think Whitey was happy this morning when I put eggs UNDER her rather than taking them away! 4 eggs are now incubating. Lets hope something appears on April 11th!

And then there was three-Murder in Suburbia

It is a sad day today at the manor. There was a murder in the chookly way. Poor Black, may she forever lay eggs in heaven.

We foster dogs here at the manor, or the 'property'. Working with dog rescue groups we temporarily take on dogs to save them from death row in the pound. We hold until homed, to sum it up in 4 words.

Our current (previously current) foster dog was definitely too too interested in the girls. Our two dont care about them. Having either grown up around them or just being of the calm nature they dont care.

I arrived home to find a very annoyed Husband. It would appear that Blacky had escaped from her camp despite the super shortened left side wing. Foster dog has caught her and proceeded to end her life in front of her other fat camp holiday makers (read: chook pen with no consistent egg laying->holiday).

Husband reported that the Fat camp holiday makers were all very shocked and informed him that it was indeed the Foster dog and that husband should be moving said Foster dog along to a new home soon.
We dropped him off to another carer who had been wanting him for awhile.

Went to visit our family this weekend who live a bit further north and dropped into my mothers place to grab some eggs. Once of our new hennys-Whitey is clucky. My mother has a while flock of chickens and a giant light sussex rooster.
Instead of buying a new henny or two (for introducing purposes) I thought we might give Whitey a go, see if she can hatch anything out. Eggs will be under her at 4:30am tomorrow! As it is now 10pm and I clearly have an early start to get some things done before that place called work I should be off now.
Good night all!

Surprise Pumpkin!

I forgot to post this last week! The one plant that did survive the floods was a zuchinni/pumpkin/squash looking vine. I bought a whole heap of seeds from Ebay last year and planted what was supposed to be an eggplant.

It was overgrown and not producing anything-so I thought- Halfway through ripping it out and surprise! Its a pumpkin! And it has been quite productive actually!

So it stayed.

Hmm cant quite to seem to right the picture. Must be off to that place called work now so will look it again this afternoon.

Happy farming!

New chickens, new garden

Ive been slack on the posting! Been busy digging garden trenches, going to that place called work and then collapsing after that place called work.

We decided to purchase 2 new chickens; whitey and blacky (for continuity's sake).
Bigger pen has been built and a lovely clutch of 4 eggs was being laid everyday as our pullets were more than ready to go it would seem. For a few days anyway.

It would appear that I had not cut light brownys wing short enough as she decided to go flying ala guinea fowl style. Unfortunately unlike the guinea fowl she is too fat (and does have one wing slightly shorter than the other) and cannot fly all that well.
Mr. White Man (my bull arab x) decided it would be a great game to play chasey with light browny. He did catch her but not without stustaining face wounds of his own during battle!
Light browny did survive and is now recooperating with her other inmates. Hence we are now missing 1 egg per day and everyone has one ridiculously short wing. Not sure if she'll lay again for awhile but at least she is alive and eating!

Seedlings have been purchased in the way of Tomatoes, Basil, Lettuce, Capsicum and strawberries.
Seeds have been planted: Corn, snowpeas, carrots, more tomatoes, silverbeet, more Basil, marigolds and nasturtiums. I am right into the idea of companion planting so we'll see how that goes!