Banana-dramas

It took 18 long months for our bananas to arrive.  They are certified disease free from a specialist banana nursery up in Tully that tissue cultures bananas for commercial and home growers.  Due to the significance of the banana industry in QLD, only bananas other than Cavendish can be grown at home and a permit must be sought from Biosecurity.  The recent case of Panama disease in a QLD plantation highlights the importance of obtaining healthy disease-free bananas.

Banana tubestock ready to hit the chook pen. 
To the left is Goldfinger and on the right is the Dwarf Ducasse

Having successfully tested them out at our previous place, we kept with Goldfinger (yes I sing it in my head each time) and Dwarf Ducasse.  The creaminess of home grown bananas beats anything you can buy from the shops.

The plants take 12 months or more to fruit for the first time so we're in for a bit more of a wait at our new property to see things through. Still, we'll have fruit off the bananas before the citrus so we can't complain too much.

Besides the fruit, bananas are an excellent plant to have in the garden.  They love a lot of water and nutrients so they're great in the chook pen where I dump our scraps and lawn clippings for the girls to have fun digging in and turning into compost.  The compost and the chook poop in turn feed the bananas which then grow to provide plenty of shade for the girls.  A win-win situation for the bananas and chooks.

The only drawback of having the bananas in the pen with the chooks has been protecting them while they're getting established.  For some reason the current batch of chooks seem to enjoy feasting on banana leaves.  I anticipated their desperate desire to dig up the bananas by planting them in boxes; however, the cheeky girls just hopped right in and scratched away before figuring out the leaves were rather tasty too.  The next counter-measure was to put old barbeque grills over the boxes which was successful in stopping the scratching but as soon as the plants recovered enough to produce leaves that poked though the grates, the chickens discovered their new buffet.  After a fair amount of procrastination and utterance of many a proverbial, we constructed these somewhat flimsy but effective covers that allow enough light and rain through to keep the bananas happy and shielded from belligerent beaks.  An added bonus is that we can leave them in place over winter to protect from any chance of frost damage too.

One of the cheeky culprits

Banana slowly starting to recover its leaves

Aside from the obvious benefit of a nice big bunch once a year and excited chickens, bananas have a few other useful attributes.  As the stem grows, some of the outer leaves die off to make room for the new ones.  These can be chopped up and used as mulch around the chook pen or in garden beds.  They can be a little waxy though so mix it up with something else for mulch.  Once fully grown the plant will produce the long-awaited fruit.  Before the bunch matures the flowers provide a great source of food for birds and native bees.  The petals from the bell can be dried, re-soaked and stitched together to make bags and water carriers.

The fruit then slowly form, gradually curling their fingers up, and if you forget to bag the bunch on time it provides a great source of food for local possums, bats and other night munchers.  If you remember to bag them and abundance of yummy fruit ensues and you can even play a certain secret agent with the fruit of the Goldfinger for extra fun before eating.

Once you or some other hairy mammal has consumed the fruit, the main stem can be cut down.  The outer parts of each section of stem can be cut in long strips, dried, soaked again, then made into string (a process which is also useful as depilation if you haven't used that old contraption known as a razor on your thighs in a while).  Meanwhile the rest can be chopped up and used as mulch in the garden or as more compost for happy chickens.

Lifecycle complete!  If you have any other interesting uses for various parts of the banana feel free to leave them in the comments.

The Laurels

About a  month ago we decided to go for a country drive out to Warwick which is a few hours west of home.  We stopped in at Boonah on the way and discovered a Flying Fox colony right behind the tourist information centre where we had lunch.  As usual the noise was incredible but it was lovely to see a healthy colony in a position that for once doesn't seem to cause trouble with residents.

It was a perfect sunny day and not too hot for a gentle stroll around a garden.  This was one of the first Open Gardens I'd been to that was made by a professional gardener; who incidentally had featured in a book on Australian gardens that I'd read only a few weeks prior.  As to be expected, the garden was gorgeous and had a little of something for everyone and some thoughtful elements in terms of design, sustainability and practicality.

Old shed converted to a chook house

Herb forage for the chooks

A sheep that won't eat all your prized ornamentals

Fluffy bottomed trio of lawn manicurists

The woodland walk

Homemade garden ornaments

Stunning fountain at the formal front entrance

Ahhhh symmetry and stachys - what more could you want?

This hedge formation elongates a narrows space and directs the eye while also dividing the space into rooms in their own right

Giving sedum the boot

Walkway to the garage and backyard

Wall garden made from a pallet

Outdoor area - there are wisteria planted to grow over the pergola which is made from recycled timber as are most of the structures in the garden

Guarding the entrance to the backyard

Even the fountain is homemade

Treehouse and mini deck chairs in the front garden

The Girls are Back in Town

It had been almost two months since the catastrophic chicken carnage.  The egg supply had finally been depleted and we were still weighing up the choice between rehoming some battery hens or supporting heritage breeders.  The decision was made last weekend when I was lucky enough to have an abundant supply of burly lads around to move the chook cage to a better location closer to the house.  As it happened, that same weekend there was a notice up on the KFC Project's page for some ex-battery hens.  We set up a pen on Sunday morning then made the long car trip out to Ipswich to pick up the four easiest to catch hens from the latest rescue batch.

Well I say it was a long car trip out there but in all honesty we had a lunch break and then a lovely tea break at a friend's place on the way.  Actually it was the car trip home that could have gone a little faster. The air was frequently punctuated by pungent odours wafting from the back seat as one of the four chickens would remind us that she most certainly did not enjoy being shunted around the countryside for the second time that day.  Nevertheless we did not sink into stupor with the overpowering smells and made it home without careering off the road in a flurry of chicken feathers and cardboard boxes.

 Finally reaching their final destination we opened the cat cage that I had thankfully had the foresight to line with cardboard and took the lid off the cardboard box releasing all four girls into their new life in Elysian Fields of lush green grass complete with seed-heads ready for nibbling and thin patches begging to be racked into luxurious dust baths.  Admittedly it didn't quite happen like that.  The girls remained in their boxes and had to be lifted out, flapping their wings in protest.  They didn't quite seem to know what to do with their new surroundings.  The juicy blades of grass meant nothing to them. The watermelon skins were left lying lonely in the open like tumble weeds in a Western film; only the sound that rang through the air was not the quick-draw shot of a gun-slinging cowboy but the clink, clink, clink of the nearby chain-gang working in the mine.  

The chain gang working hard

The poor girls obviously didn't know any better than to be obsessed with pecking at the bolts on the cage or the holes in the star pickets.  Either that, or they were determined not to be caged ever again and were working fast at dismantling any potential new prison.  The only other feature of their new home that sparked interest was this new-fangled water dispenser thingy in the corner of the cage.  It took one girl at least five minutes of pecking at the overflow spout on the water dish (a repurposed and of course cleaned oil drip tray) before she figured out she could drink straight from the surface.

Did you honestly think you'd catch me looking at that watermelon?

Despite the culture shock of the new place, the four girls are adjusting to their new surrounds.  They've laid 6 eggs in a week and one has even figured out what that straw-lined four-sided, odd-looking contraption is meant to be for.  They did eventually, at least I presume it was them, realise the joy of watermelon after I left the remaining rind in with them overnight so they could try it out while I wasn't looking and not have it snavelled by a crow with a hungry mouth to feed besides its own.  

Next on the list for expanding their culinary repertoire is capsicum.  They ran off today after I dropped the seeded part of the fruit in their midst today as if I had dropped a grenade.  While they were a little less terrified when I put it in their cage tonight their looks were still dubious.  No doubt the rolling thunder and lightning  tonight didn't alay their fears of having entered a war zone.  I wonder what they'll think of tomatoes.

First egg

Shell shocked

Since losing two of our newest chooks to what we presume was a fox, we've been religiously shutting them in the cage each night.  Sadly one of the chooks that was taken was Hopscotch (my favourite our of the new girls).  I miss her cuddles in the morning and have fond memories of her meeting me at the front door, then dorkily running after me back to the pen for breakfast when she was managing to escape from the pen.  She even went clucky at one point on the neighbour's side of the fence nestled in next to a gumtree.  I spent a week or so wondering why the girls had suddenly stopped laying.

Gonzo has recently started laying again after a very long period without a single egg.  Perhaps she was in mourning over winter after losing her friend Wheelie.  Her pure white shells stand out among the stock standard beige of all the others.

Today two of the girls had laid but one of the eggs was not quite right; it's all wrinkled with diverts around the side.  Either it was hard to get out or the shell is very thin.  We often get eggs with wrinkles in them but this one looks almost like a dinosaur or lizard egg!

Give me a home among the gumtrees

June was an incredibly busy month.  Long hours at work coupled with moving one weekend then  helping my sister move the next as well as no internet connection for well over a week has meant no access to the Blog and last ditch efforts at an internet connection at the local library and visiting our old place.  At the end of all the kerfuffle, we are happy to announce Colliwat Farm is now semi-rural on a 2.5 acre block about 30 mins south of Brisbane.  The chooks and cat survived the move intact and were surprisingly not too stressed.  The new chook pen is not all that secure; however, and I'm greeted each day at the front door by a cheeky Hopscotch looking at me endearingly.  It seems she's now taught the others her escape route too as I found three of them out and about scratching around in the garden on several occasions. Luckily there's nothing too precious in the gardens at this stage that I'm worried about losing to beak or claw.

It's been continuously raining for the last 4 or 5 days (the washing is still on the line!) which has meant not much can be done outside.  We've been disappointed to find the downpipes are not delivering the rainwater to the water tanks with only a very marginal increase in the level despite half an inch of rain in the last 24 hours.  We've devised a new route which will involve some replumbing of downpipes but will hopefully mean more rain in the tank so we don't have to rely on trickle feed.

Another water issue has been the pump in one of the grey water tanks.  It trips the power for the entire house when we attempt to switch it on.  Hubby persevered and managed to get it working intermittently and long enough to eventually drain most of the tank.  The pump it still not working properly and looks like we'll need a new one.

On the bright side the dam is full and we were able to check out the overflow pipe in action one afternoon.  It was nice to listen to the chuckle of running water under and over rocks not far from our front door.  We were excited before moving in at the prospect of swamp hens living in the dam.  After the move we've found we got much more than we were expecting: not only are there swamp hens but ducks that ski across the surface daily and a resident turtle!

I've been itching to get out in the garden and have been thinking and making plans with all the wet weather forcing restraint and a patient approach.  The garden is currently a sparse higgeldy-piggeldy mess of vaguely matching plants.  Fortunately the garden beds themselves are laid out well without much need for redesigning.  I've been mulling over which plants to keep, which to dig up and feed to the compost and pondering over the overall theme for the garden.  In the meantime we have to be content with our left produce from our old place - carrots, pumpkins and soon some peas.

The neighbours have dedicated the rear of their block (next to our house) to land for wildlife so a more native approach to the garden seems appropriate.  It's also something I've been wanting to experiment with for a while in terms of aesthetics and edibles.  Some edging for the dam is certainly in order to keep the toads out and the frogs in.

Next on the list is to choose a site for the orchard and vegie patch.  It's likely the current chicken pen will become the vegie patch once it's been turned over by their little feet; that's if we can get them to stay put!  It's a gently sloping, cleared section of soil near the dam that gets a decent amount of sunlight during the day.  The soil here is a sticky clay and is fairly water repellent.  Before I groaned, I reassured myself that at least it's something I'm familiar with and it can be worked into a beautiful loam with patience and the right materials.  Time to get out there and start the compost heap!  

I'll try to post some photos as soon as we have an internet connection again.

Winter is here

Winter has come.  Depending on the weather it can be a balmy 20 degrees outside if the sun is shining, then down to low double digits or less if there's been overnight rain and the cloud is hanging about.  I've been working every second weekend and this weekend was my weekend off.  A chance to catch up on general house stuff, get back to the blog and into the kitchen.  As luck would have it, the weather was both sunny and warm and overcast and cool which meant perfect opportunities to get the outside and inside work done; even if it did rain just after we hung out the washing.

The chooks were well and truly due for a good clean out.  The Isas are so greedy they were even interested in the bucket of their own excrement!  Silly chooks.  They have been finding various hidey-holes in the grass for their eggs.  We were wondering if they'd stopped for winter - rather suspiciously all at once - until hubby found their secret stash of 13 eggs mid this week.  I try to leave an egg in one of the nest boxes but only one or two of them seem to understand.

While on the topic of chooks I have some sad news - It's been 8 days since my little cluck monster passed away.  I went out to feed the girls last Friday morning to find her lying on the grass.  She had no marks on her and not a single feather out of place which means I'm still at a loss to say exactly how she died - it may have been old age or perhaps lack of food coming into winter due to the bullying of the new chooks.  My main regret is that she never got to be a mummy chook.  RIP little Goldilocks, AKA cluck monster, fluffy pyjama feet, Little One, or as the neighbour's called her Mo.

Winter heralds the onslaught of the Colliwats; the first of which was picked today.  We were lining up for at least 20 of them until the Isas virtually demolished any of the vine that was remaining on their side of the fence.  Weighing in neatly at 4.5kg, this pumpkin is the biggest and first of the glut salvaged from destructive beaks.

Shortly after the pumpkin rescue the skies clouded over and rain was threatening to drench the newly hung out washing; which in due course it did.  Time to head inside and make even more of a mess of the kitchen.  I started with home made muesli bars.  You'll realise how much of rip off the shop bought ones are when you make your own, and also that they're probably not really all that healthy for you despite what the ads say.  In any case they are quick to make and a good pick me up if you need that sugar hit at work.  You can change the ingredients easily to accommodate your tastes or to suit what you have available in the cupboard.  These are raisin, mixed nuts, sesame and sunflower seed.  Dried apricot and coconut is also nice and I usually add pepitas but had run out this time.  I also use a little less butter than the recipe asks for (100 instead of 125g).  You can find the recipe here: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/1457/homemade+muesli+bars  Do you make your own muesli bars?  I'd love to know what variations you use.  I'm keen to try cranberry and white chocolate some time.

Homemade muesli bars

Continuing my kitchen day I started a sourdough loaf of cinnamon and raisin toast.  For some reason I've been craving it all weekend.  It's possibly due to going a whole week without bread because I didn't have the time to make any last weekend.  It's funny that I've had raisins sitting in the cupboard for months and yet I've nearly used them all up in one weekend.

Sourdough raisin bread

The dough doesn't rise all that well on the bench in winter so keeping it next to the laptop air vent or in our lap does the trick!  You can probably tell hubby is helping out with this one today.  No doubt he'll ask for his dues once the loaf is done cooking.

While the dough was proofing it was time to try out one of Mel Kettle's recipes.  I'd been waiting months to find some tiny unopened button mushrooms and the time to put my mind to making this one.  I finally found some perfect sized mushrooms at the Rocklea markets yesterday and at $4.99 a kilo I was in there like a shot stuffing my reused paper bag to the brim.

This recipe combines so many my favourite things: mushrooms, lemon, vinegar, garlic, good quality olive oil and herbs fresh from the garden.  I can't wait until they're ready.

Lemon, thyme and garlic marinated mushrooms

When it's wet outside you have to bring the garden inside so I spent a bit of time preparing these asparagus seeds - some for the new place and some to give away at the next crop swap.  I know most people grow from crowns but the seeds germinate readily and mature fairly quickly.  I have a few tiny plants at the bottom of the ramp when I spilled some berries last season - read left them out so long they got knocked over into the gravel and rained on .  Please note the red berries are poisonous so if you have little ones make sure they don't pop them in their mouths.

Seeds - Aspargus "Mary Washington"

Now to tackle the mountain of dishes...

  

Five new feathered friends

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine known as Green Dean was wondering why on earth his chickens were squabbling more than usual.  Not to mention they were gobbling more feed down than ever before.  A head count soon revealed the suspected truth: five extra chickens!  Someone, somehow had taken it upon themselves to surreptitiously swell his flock of 13 to 18.  Now on acreage that may not have been such a bad thing, but on an urban block it posed a problem.  An increased feed bill, potential quarantine issue and introduction of infection or infestation was not a happy prospect so the chooks needed to go to a new home.  

I had been thinking of getting new chooks even before the loss of Wheelie about a month ago.  Declining egg production in my ageing flock meant we were nearly running out of eggs over winter, with the eggless period stretching for longer and longer each year.  The dilemma of ethics was what had delayed me increasing my flock thus far - to buy fertile eggs for the Cluck Monster and risk hatching a rooster; to buy sexed pullets or point of lay in heritage breeds; to rehome unwanted chooks from RSPCA and end up with more chooks without really solving the eggless period.  All this resulted in persistent pondering rather than decisive action.

Hearing of Green Dean's conundrum provided a solution.  He estimated the chooks to be less than a year old and he wanted all five to go together.  I had the space and was prepared to quarantine and feed them while they got used to my existing flock.

The new chooks not too impressed after their car trip

Alas, the sneaky chooks had other ideas.  After collecting them from Dean's I was running short on time so hitched up a fence in a corner of the existing chook pen with water and food and the shelter of a pumpkin vine.  When I got home from work however; I spied 4 out of 5 chickens roosting in the cage!  The only one that hadn't escaped was Hopscotch - the chook with a limp.  She gets around alright and can run on her leg which appears to be slowly improving but the height must hurt her to jump down so she was contentedly sleeping in a corner of the pen dreaming of the day when she too would escape to the greener pastures on the other side.

Quarantine aside, the only problem with the whole flock escaping has meant that the five of them now gang up on my existing 3 chooks when it comes to food time.  They are slowly starting to integrate with my 3 now beginning to challenge Hopscotch for food but the two flocks stay separate during the day. Although one of the five laid an egg while I was collecting them, we have yet to find any more.  Perhaps once they're settled in and finished their moult we will have eggs again.

Here's hopscotch - she's a little darker than the others

Feathers McGraw (after the penguin in The Wrong Trousers) Her comb extends over her head making it look a bit like she's an imposter with a rubber glove stuck on her head

The three below have yet to be named - let me know if you have any suggestions.  They are all Isa Browns and a bit hard to tell apart as you can see.

Third strike

I came home from a concert on Wednesday night to find out that my chickens had been attacked by a pair of escaped Staffies.  The neighbours were home and heard a  noise but weren't able to easily break up the dogs or get them away from the chickens.  Piecing the story together here's how each of the chickens fared in the foray.

Fortunately the cluck monster had re-emerged earlier in the week and thus she managed to remain undetected in her lair, brooding away in a dark corner.  Hetty employed her camouflage brown feathers and hid under a miniature copse at the back of the pen.  Gonzo must have had her whits about her.  She's white so wouldn't have avoided detection by the dogs but must have been fast enough to outrun and out-manoeuvre if not the dogs, then at least her sister Wheelie.  

Wheelie wore the worst of the attack.  This was her third experience in the jaws of a dog and she has survived the previous two relatively unscathed.  Her dodgy eye leaves her vulnerable and unable to judge distance and perceive predators sufficiently.  She has suffered badly with one deep puncture wound on her back and another shallower one on the other side.  Next to the large gouge is an area that has been ripped open down to the muscle and fat.

Wheelie with a comfrey poultice on the first night

I prepared myself for the worst and left her in a basket inside overnight to keep her warm and safe, waiting to see how she was travelling in the morning.  Surprisingly she's now lasted two nights since the attack although her breathing remains fairly laboured.  She seems to be improving and more alert each day and we have been syringe feeding her water with poultry multivitamins.  This afternoon I cleaned out her wound and was surprised to find how deep it was.  There was a fair amount of gunk in there (but no pus) so hopefully she will continue to improve now that it's been cleaned properly.  I've made her up some bran porridge for tomorrow morning and put her in the basket in the cage with the other chickens tonight for some company.

Wheelie's wound.  There's a cotton ball covering the large puncture wound

Amanda's Garden

Feed barrel wicking bed

A garden group I'm part of runs monthly garden visits.  During some fine weather at the start of February we made a visit to a relatively new garden in the south-west of Brisbane.  The garden hosts a variety of spices, fruit, herbs and vegetables and is also home to a small flock of chickens and ducks.  Stepping stones spell the names of all the family members and the kids' trampoline and cubby house form the enclosure and protection for the chickens which reflects how well the family works together and is included in garden.  Most things are imaginatively created from repurposed materials like the feed-barrel wicking beds and concrete sinks on their side for the ducks' nests.

It was a wonderful day to explore the garden, gather new ideas, chat about gardening in general and share seeds and plant cuttings with other members over a little home made morning tea (complete with home made wine and icecream tasting).  I was even fortunate enough to have the time to stay for lunch and sample some freshly baked bread.

Thank you Amanda and Mark for sharing your garden and food with us.

Beautiful lush rosellas

Bishop's cap chillies

An orange loaded with fruit

The ducks live under the citrus and help with keeping the weeds down and fertilising

Awesome biplane made from beer cans. The propeller works!

Herb hanging pots make a nice screen for the deck.  A pineapple steals the show in the middle.

Basil and a chilli bush with pumpkins quickly closing in

Home made stepping stones make a path around the banana and pawpaw (papaya) circle

Chickens in their safe pen, although the new hen managed to escape during the visit somehow

The raised beds will be converted to wicking beds due to water and nutrient leach from a nearby humongous fig tree (Ficus benjamina)

Meet the girls

I thought it was about time I introduced you to my feathered flock.  The "girls" and their cages were given to us as wedding presents three years ago.  Since then they've been providing us with dorky entertainment, fresh eggs far bigger and brighter than any you can buy at the shops and quick vegie scrap recycling services.  Despite becoming what many producers would call too old for productive hens, they are still giving us more than enough eggs despite their age.  

We let them out in their pen every day so they get plenty of room to scratch around, have a dustbath and look for bugs.  They're spoilt for choice when it comes to scraps too - they get our's, the neighbours' and a weekly "Bok Box" from my work.

 Here are the three big chooks aka the big bears who came from a family who could no longer look after them.

Introducing Wheelie. When the chooks first arrived she seemed to be the third wheel of the group.  Now she's the little rascal who gets out on occasion to dig up my seeds.  I'm not sure you can tell in this photo but there is something wrong with one of her eyes.  She seems to be able to see movement and at least shadows out of it but the pupil can't constrict or dilate properly.  It doesn't seem to interfere too much with her eating but it definitely takes her a long time to make it down from the perch - pacing up and down trying to line up the door.  Yet, somehow she can fly through a smaller gap in the top of the fence to get out.  She has been attacked by a dog on two separate occasions and by some miracle come out of both relatively unscathed so perhaps her eye problem is the result of one of these.

This is Hetty Hen, a dumpy Rhode Island Red with impressive drumsticks and an appetite to match as you can tell by the size of her crop in this photo.  Her eggs weigh a good 80g or more and don't fit in the standard sized cartons.   She also has a good eye for any bugs I might throw over the fence.

Gonzo is the larger of the two white chooks (a Leghorn I think) and is the head honcho.  She gets first dibs on food in the morning and dustbaths in the afternoon.  Her comb flops from side to side as she runs toward you.

I've introduced her before but this is Goldilocks (aka the Cluck Monster).  She's a bantam so the three big bears above pick on her a bit, stealing her dustbath and food but never hurting her badly.  I feed her first in the morning before I let the others out to make sure she gets enough to eat and some time to free range unhindered.  She came from an animal shelter so I have no idea how old she is or what breed (perhaps Belgian d'Uccle x something).  She's very sweet and with her fluffy feet she looks like she's wearing pyjamas all the time.  Her eggs are a cute 45g which is tiny compared to the other chooks but scarily nearly the size of "large" eggs from the supermarket.  I'd love her to be a mummy one day as she goes clucky regularly but looks after herself when she is, popping out for food and water at regular intervals before returning to the nest.