Giant Egg

We got rather a surprise when we looked in the nesting box this week and found this enormous egg sitting there:

You can see it is rather a large specimen. Have no idea which chicken laid it. I spent some time observing them to see which one was walking round with the crossed legs. Have been too scared to crack it open to see what might be in it, so have traded it for figs with my brother-in-law... (more on our first official trade later).

Home grown tomato sauce

With the wet summer we've had, it's at least been good for growing tomatoes:

So, what to do with tomatoes that will last 'till Christmas?

Dan thought he would have a go at tomato sauce (ketchup). We used the "Homemade tomato ketchup" recipe from Jamie at Home:






Ingredients:

2kg of tomatoes
2 x celery
2 x red onion
ginger
garlic
1 x fennel
basil
salt and pepper
coriander seeds
400ml red wine vinegar
70g sugar

Seemed simple enough. Took about 8 hours to reduce down to a tomato sauce. And for all that effort? One-and-a-half bottles of sauce:

...we realised we may have to scale up this whole thing if we want to have enough to barter with... still, the sauce tastes good and the kids like it.

Caring for Chickens

Here's we've learnt so far about caring for chickens:

Initially, our chickens were not laying any eggs. Advice given to us included:

• Putting a fake egg in the nesting box
  (we tried a potato - didn't seem to work)
• Making sure they don't sleep in the nesting box
  (we have kicked them out every night and they still sleep in there - I have also noticed that chickens snore!)
• Keep them inside their coop for the morning
  (couldn't stand the whingeing after a few days of this)
• Singing songs to them
  We composed the following:
  

  Come on chickens,
  Lay your eggs,
  If you don't,
  We'll chop off your heads. :-)
  

However, after a couple of weeks (we bought our chickens from the hatchery at the point-of-lay, around 22 weeks old) we have found our four hens have settled into a routine and are now laying 2-4 eggs a day between them:

So we are very happy, plus it means we have a supply of eggs to trade!

To market, to market to buy a fat hen...

  After many recommendations we decided to get our chickens from Wagner's Poultry in Lilydale.  So off I went with the children to get our girls. We were recommended to get "Isa Brown" hens, as these are supposedly the best egg-layers.

  We picked our 4 girls, each child picking one (however I must say that they all looked the same), put them in the box and brought them home.

 They have just staying in their coop for the day as they are a bit nervous, with three coming out into the run for a peck around and one still not brave enough to come out.

 They seem to be very friendly loving a pat and scratch around in the garden.

May I introduce to you our girls

Coco Chanel

Chocolate Brownie

Lettuce

Whitey

I must say I have already become quite attached to them, these are very definitely not for eating, but it is making me realise that the meat option will be quite hard if I keep getting so attached.

Building (assembling) the chook house

The plan was to get my husband to build a chicken house. But the marvels of the internet age - namely the wonders of ebay - meant that we found a 5 star flat-pack chicken house for our girls (the chickens, that is) cheaper than it would cost to make one. Dan duly trekked off to an abandoned warehouse in Dandenong South run by a skeleton staff of two to collect said item.

So building the chicken house became "assembling the chicken house", duly recorded for your viewing pleasure:

 
After assembling the chook house and buying the hay, feed, feeders, grit, chicken wire and stakes to make the run...

Hay!

...we've since discovered that producing your own eggs is an expensive hobby! Looking forward to seeing the product though. So far we could buy 60-70 dozen free range eggs for the combined outlay (and we haven't bought the chooks themselves yet).

Meanwhile, the debate over meat continues... reader suggestions include pigs, goats, ducks, snails, roasted guinea pigs, turkeys, chickens, fish. As our back yard is under 1 hectare we are not allowed pigs or goats. We're not so keen on roasting the family pets, which leaves turkeys, ducks, snails, chickens or fish. Unfortunately Daniel's fishing prowess (or lack of it) means we will almost certainly go hungry with the latter option. We're going to see if catching squid (calamari) is any more successful.

To market, to market tomorrow we go...

Grow your own Christmas: Rules of the game.

My challenge for this year (set by my husband) is to grow everything in our Christmas dinner this year using produce from our garden.

The Rules:

* All vegetables, fruit and herbs have to come from our Garden, or bartered for with produce from our garden (see below).
* The meat for the meal has to come from our garden (maybe a vegetarian meal!)
* I can barter for goods using produce and products made from my home grown produce.
* Basic ingredients such as Olive oil, vinegar, flour and sugar can be bought.
* I have yet to decide what to do about dairy.

So far in our garden we have one vege plot, a strawberry bed, some blueberry and raspberry plants and very juvenile fruit trees.

The Front Garden:

Strawberry Bed:

We have a lot of work to do, we have to build a chicken shed and get some chickens so we can have some eggs (maybe some meat as well for our meal!). The plan with the front garden is to dig up the grass to build another vege plot and remove the front bushes to plant more raspberries.

I have to start pickling some of the produce I have now so that I will have bartering tools.

The Vege Patch in the back garden:

The other challenge at the moment is to decide what we are going to do about the meat for a meal. Maybe snails!! Suggestions welcome.

I would like to resource some milk from a farm so I can make my own butter and cheese. We will see how this develops...