farm hunting

This morning Pa Kettle and I went farm hunting. (....again)

We got there so early, and we were up so high in the mountains that it was still foggy.

Is this the Duck Herder's new farm?

In other news - BEHOLD - the 2007/2008 Kiwi Fruit Harvest!

Hunble, but delicious. Next year folks, next year........

And to end things on an even happier note - those lovely ducks!

new farm

Well, summer has arrived here in ONC*. Two days in a row around 33 degrees - following on from a fairly warm Saturday. The shade cloth got put up on the pergola this afternoon to keep the sun off the lower parts of our wonderful full length northern windows. This creates an instantly cool, dark outside room, and makes a huge difference to how hot the house gets during the day.

At the new farm, I have been experimenting with my big pile of worm castings. I have dug a trench into the old sawdust (stable waste) and filled it with castings. This I planted with runner beans, which have all sprouted, are lovely dark green and nothing is eating them too much (unlike the previous pea seedlings). Watermelons are up, Rock melon is up, Pumpkin is up as are the Cucumbers. I wondered how things would go growing in neat worm castings, but so far so good. For those of you who don't know, the new farm is my new extended veggie garden in the making up the road at an agistment farm. There is lots and lots of work to do, bringing this huge patch of depleted sawdust spread out over a paddock to life, but having a commercial worm farmer next door certainly helps!

I have been reading Charles Walter's book "Eco-Farm, and just loving it. It is on loan from the biggest hippy, but I think it might be one I need to have beside the bed for a long long time.

If you are ready for the mysteries of plants, eco farming, soil biology, production of chemical free, nutrient dense food and the like, this might be just right for you too!

* Our Nation's Capital

Lacuna Sabbath

Well, here we are again at the Lacuna Sabbath end of the week. Hooray!

Despite the high levels of neglect over the past week, I popped up to the new farm yesterday to find lots of little pea seedlings sticking up their little heads. Looks like the peas, snow peas AND sugar snaps have all germinated. The tiny onion seedlings have taken well, and are even growing new leaves - if you can call onion leaves "leaves" that is. The comfrey has sprouted and the leeks are doing well too. Even the broad beans have popped up, although they are going to have to get a wriggle on to compete with the pattersons curse that has re sprouted.

I need to organise an automatic watering system in the next couple of months, but while it is still cool, things should be OK. So far, the sawdust based soil seems to be holding up OK. It is a new and weird experience working in this loose, dry soil - so different from the rich black wormy stuff that I have created at the community garden. I am sure that in a few years time new farm will be just as rich, productive and familiar.

As for closing down the old farm (community garden plot) - I might have a buyer for the chook run I made down there. I am looking forward to transplanting Bianca, Charlotte and Gretel home to the backyard. Another of the big things to do here is to cut out a wattle tree along the fence so that there is enough room for their deluxe chook run.

Lucky Maurice - three new lady friends! Even if they are the wrong breed.

Speaking of Maurice - I am SURE I caught him giving it a very good go in the bushes with Jenni earlier in the week. You would all be so impressed - he was quick, gentle and proficient - didn't make a big fuss - no violence and no crowing about it after. I love watching Maurice grow into his role of patriarch and protector of the ladies and their little ones.

Jenni now has 9 eggs in the nest. I suspect she will only lay a few more before she decides to sit. Its all happening here in fluffy chicken land folks!

And now for a Nashi update - after a bit of research on the internets I suspect that rather than frost damage, Hosui and Kosui have budjump. Most of the flowers seem to loose their petals before they even open, and inside each flower is sort of sparse and crumpled. Hosui has a couple of flowers that look half decent, and Kosui has quite a few, so this morning I might take a little makeup brush out there and try and cross pollinate a few. I haven't noticed any bees in the back yard yet, so reckon that if I want any nashis then I have better take matters into my own hands! That's the other thing I have noticed about new farm - there are ZILLIONS of bees buzzing around all the flowering rocket, kale, cabbages and broccoli. But I have not seed any here in the backyard - so makeup brush it is!

Anyhooo, Happy Lacuna Sabbath to you all.

I love my job

I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job!!!!!

Well, I love my new job folks.

It has been a big week with lots of travel but I feel tired and energised and excited rather than tired and bleak.

I love this free range chook living in tutti fruiti time thing.

Yay!


In other news, Jenni the lovely silver silkie has laid 5 eggs. I think I may have caught Maurice the stupid fluffy rooster doing the other thing I really need him to do beside being chivalrous and beautiful- there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the bushes the other morning, but he may have just caught his silly feathers in the lomandras. Baby Maurices? (Maurici?)

time will tell and other homilies...

Sadly, it looks like most of the blossoms on one of the nashi trees may have been burnt in the slight frost we had last night. nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! They are not even out yet. This is the same tree that didn't even flower last year. The other one (Kosui) is budding up nicely, but it needs the first for pollination. sheesh.

Wel, I am off to check on the new farm. seeya

peas please!

Hello again folks. Yup, it has been a little while - a whirlwind week so to speak, but here I am, safely ensconced at Lake Lacuna on the Lacuna Sabbath. I LOVE not working on Fridays!

Carve up from safety of Lacuna Sabbath - I love my new job!

So, there has been no time for blogging - I am sure I have HEAPS to catch up on what everyone else has been up to, and I am BEHIND!

Last weekend I got to work on the new farm, planting 14.4 meters of peas - this translates to 2 rows of telephone peas, one row of snow peas and one row of sugar snaps. Here is a little picki.

After a sleep in this morning, I rode up to see if anyone had popped out their little heads yet, but no luck. There is still no sign of the broad beans either. I think it has just been too cold.

I also planted onion seedlings and they are settling in too. So much SPACE!!!!!

It is raining now (hooray!) which should help to speed up my little peas a bit.

duck proof fence

So what's been happening this week? Well, those little baby chickens are getting bigger and cuter by the second. Maurice is doing an excellent job chaperoning his lady friends and co on little excursions beyond the safe confines of the fluffy house. He is gentle and considerate, keeping an eye out for crows and calling out warnings whenever anything large flies over.

Yesterday I watched him call Jenni over to the rosemary bush, showing her how to pick off the little flowers and gobble them up. The little babies are just as happy to run under him as they are Nefley whenever someone calls out a warning. Maurice is, by all accounts, the quintessential gentleman, and a model for all menfolk everywhere, and of any species.

While neither Jenni or Nefley will tolerate being picked up or held, Maurice is quite happy to sit on anyone's lap, and to soak up the pats and oohing and aaahing about how soft and white and silly he is. Little 3 1/2 year old Stampy was most impressed with his friendliness and softness!

And what else? Well, drastic actions are being taken to de-duck and de-chook the veggies plots. Those wicked ducks have been constantly stomping on the rhubarb, and combined with a strong desire to get harvestable quantities of asparagus this year, here is the new duck proof fence around the asparagus patch. They were most unimpressed, and staged an immediate sit down outside the new fence. Here is a cranky Tabitha Jemima telling me just how she feels.

Also, work has started up at my new farm, with a bout of serious weeding and blood and boning. I need to move a heap of worm castings, but somehow, all the wheelbarrows in my life have flat tires at the moment, so obviously there is a little bit of maintenance to do first. I have transplanted some Jerusalem artichokes up there, and am keen to get some broad beans, peas and comfrey in as soon as I can, but can't do this until the worm castings have happened. sigh. I hate going to the hardware store. But I am very excited about those windrows of lovely worm castings!

And finally, today was the last classroom day of our bush tucker course which culminated in a delicious feast of wallaby sausages, kangaroo, emu salami, and lots of salads, bush tucker flavoured salad dressings and so on. Next Saturday we are going to converge on the Yaralumla Nursery Native Plant sale armed with our lists of botanical and common names, and the Saturday after, we are going to go up to Tidbinbilla to see the moth cooking stones and have a picnic.

There are a few species I would love to introduce into our garden, but more about that next week, subject to a successful bounty of little tubestock of selected varieties!

And finally, I have been thinking a lot about kiwi fruit this week. My beautiful vines are starting to swell, and hopefully this year will be the year that we get our first significant harvest. For folks who are interested, Kiwi vines are either male or female, and you need about 1 male vine for every 9 or so females, and if you grow them from seed or don't know what you have, here is how you tell:

The flower on the left is from a male vine, and the flower one the right is from a female. The main difference is that the female flowers have the white thingies in the middle, and the males don't. I have included this picture as a bit of a spell, because in a couple of months I want to be able to reproduce it with photos of my OWN flowering kiwi vines! fingers crossed OK?

Lacuna Sabbath

Refusing to subscribe to a linear concept of time, here is quick Lacuna Sabbath update. On Friday (you know, the Lacuna Sabbath) I popped up the road to my potential new veggie garden and got shown the ropes about how to turn on the irrigation and all that. It is such a breathtaking spot - only 4.5km away, but feels like you are way out in the country. The views of the Brindabellas are just amazing - the photos do not do them justice at all. It was about 2.15 when we arrived, and the orange foxy loxy slinking quietly away put rest to any remaining fanciful ideas that the girls could survive up there, even in their fox proof chicken tractor fortress.

Oh, quick recap - looming stage 4 water restrictions kick started the duck herder into looking for alternatives to the community garden - which relies on potable water. The owner of a mountainous horse adjustment complex up the road offered free room and board for the duck herders veggie growing endeavours in exchange for fresh produce for his family. There are many many pluses to the new farm - unlimited stable waste, reticulated dam water, no frost hollow, gorgeous view, peace, serenity, and incredibly, open access to the rows and rows of worm castings produced by a fellow gardener on a commercial scale using the stable waste and trucked in food scraps. Recent rain has pushed back the urgency of stage 4, but it is still on the cards. I would be heartbroken if I planted all the spring and summer crops, only to see them wither and die if we had to stop watering.

Less good things about the new site is that it is 4.5km away compared to the 1 km jogging distance of the community garden. I would mostly have to drive there, although when the days are longer, riding my bike would be just fine. One of the good things about the community garden is that it is on the way to work - whether I am driving or riding. BUT, working from home would mean that this is no longer the case, and I would have to make a special trip regardless of where my garden is. And then again, if the girls came home, even though their chicken tractoring days would be over, they would still get to free range ( as much as the poor garden could cope with their delux earth moving legs).

Mostly, it is the chickens that require a daily visit (or twice daily at the moment). Really, they should be here at the house, from a permaculture perspective at least, but they LOVE the abundance of fresh pasture down at the garden. I am wary of overstocking in our little backyard and unlike the fluffies and ducks, those girls jump fences, dig up seedlings and destroy veggies gardens!

I would be able to set up an automatic watering system at the new farm (and make use of the miles of irrigation hose and sprinklers left over from when the owner had less babies and more time), which I can not do at the community garden. This could mean only having to visit a couple of times a week.

What to do, what to do........

I want to SIMPLIFY my life. This means CONSOLIDATING my gardens. BUT, after three years my community garden plot is rich and abundant and produces all year 'round. It will take time to create this in a new place, and it is a big thing to walk away from all that work.

So, perhaps I will just do things incrementally - scale back what I am growing at the community garden, and just start gently up the road - perhaps with some general soil improvement and lots of green manure and vines that can be put on a watering system. I can THINK about creating space at home for the girl's chicken tractor - there is a spot along the northern boundary that with the removal of a medium size wattle tree, would be an OK space. The chook tractor they are in is big enough to work as a deep litter system, but it would be a shame for its tractoring days to end, although if we ever move to a farm, it could be recommissioned. After a while I would be able to COMPARE the soil and conditions at both sites, and then be able to make decisions about consolidation based on actual experience rather than worry and speculation!

So there we are. A bit of a plan. I can go back to bed now!

A New Farm for the Duck Herder?

Looming stage 4 water restrictions have generated a low level hum of anxiety for the duck herder. Some of you will know that the vegetable growing limitations of the princess castle are augmented by a 135 square meter plot plus roaming chicken tractor at the Holder community garden. This is where the bulk of the duck herders veggies are grown.

If we are unable to source a non potable supply of water for the community gardens, it will be very tricky to continue! We are looking at putting in a community water fund grant for a tank and pump to get water from a nearby creek/soak. Alas, the ACT Health Protection Service refuses to let us use the free recycled water available from the Lower Molonglo Treatment Plant. I drafted up a submission for the Canberra Organic Growers Society to put into the Water Conservation Office to try and get a limited exemption for the community gardens, but I am not sure how successful it will be.

Obviously I need a Plan B!

Up the road there is a horse agistment farm. At the bottom of the farm is a little valley with amazing views and piles of sawdust and manure from the stables. Living at the farm is a nice man who in exchange for some fresh produce has offered me a HUGE space to grow veggies!

There are some definite good things about this new site - reticulated dam water (no fluoride or chlorine!) no COUCH!!!! (the PLAGUE of the community garden) and an unlimited supply of sawdust and manure. Unlike the community garden, it is NOT in a frost hollow, but rather nicely aspected on a gentle slope protected from the west north-west wind by a big mountain.

Less good things are that it is 4.5km away, is no longer on the way to work and I would be leaving my beautifully nurtured soil and starting again with basically a paddock covered in 20cm of nitrogen deprived sawdust/manure. I would have to bring my super you-beaut mega chicken tractor home (and try and find room for Bianca, Gretel and Charlotte somewhere in the backyard) as there are way too many foxes out there to monster and stress the girls.

On the plus side again, if the girls were home with the rest of the flock, then all my Zone 1 things would be near the house, and I could concentrate of setting up the new plot to only being visited every second day or so.

Well, at least there is a plan! In the mean time, all the winter crops are in at the community garden, there has been a bit of rain, we have water for another 2 weeks and the girls are still laying through the cold weather – bless their little red combs.