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)

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...

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.