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.