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November 2008 |
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| The chicken are growing fast | |||||||||||||||
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The Barnevelders are eight weeks old and have moved from the shed into the chook tractor. They still can't free-range as yet because of the hawks in our area. In another two months they should be old enough to look after themselves out in the paddocks. These two hens now look very much alike, but when they hatched one was black and one very light coloured! |
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Left: the Welsumers are now three weeks old. We have two hens and
three roosters.
Right: the Salmon Faverolles are one month old. The black ones are the males. We end up with five females and three males. They now live in the shed. This shed will be their permanent home, but in a couple of weeks they will have access to the orchard to free-range. The orchard is fully netted and they are safe there. |
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The second batch of Welsumers and the Plymouth Rocks: Out of 24 eggs we hatched six Welsumers and five Plymouth Rocks. The chicks are now three days old |
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And now there's pigs as well! |
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| Every permaculture farm should have pigs... Now we do! But our pigs are "mini pigs" that (hopefully) won't grow to the size of standard pigs. We just don't have enough room for normal pigs. These three little one are six weeks old (the brown boar and the white sow) and twelve weeks (the black sow). Right now they live in our new chook shed, but in a few weeks they will move out into a pig tractor with movable fencing and a shelter, which can be shifted after the pigs have dug up and fertilized a patch of ground. We hope our pigs will get rid of the bracken and other undesirable plants for us and aerate the ground in the paddocks. |
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| November 27th, 2008: the pigs have a run built from farm gates. The pigs love it outside and they really like the celery that had gone to seed. | |||||||||||||||
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Potatoes all year round! |
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Left: broad beans on the left, a row of Pink Eye potatoes behind.
Right: the Pink Eyes were planted in July and August, two weeks each between three plantings. Today we dug up the first fresh Pink Eyes, three weeks earlier than last year. It was worthwhile to plant early and risk frost. Now we have had our own potatoes all year round! The last old ones are on the small plate, the new Pink Eyes on the large one. |
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Onions galore! And garlic, too! |
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November 27th, 2008:
Left and below: all the weeding has paid off! We had planted different types of onions in staggered plantings starting six months ago. Today we harvest this season's first onions. They are white onions. Below right: our first garlic harvested in Tasmania, Tassie Purple. This purple garlic is supposed to be much stronger in flavour. |
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Liquid fertilizer |
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| The complete organic fertilizer which we mix ourselves based on a recipe by Steve Solomon has worked very, very well. As long as we use it before planting out and dig it into the beds. We tried to use it for side dressings of half grown plants, but that created problems. If it's just sprinkled onto the ground in a circle around the plants, then it will turn into a hard crust after the next rain or watering. We tried to dig it in by hand, but that takes too long. We also tried to mix it with sand and then sprinkle it on, but that is cumbersome, too, and it still forms a crust after getting wet and drying out again. We really needed liquid fertilizer, something that can just be poured over the beds, something that is also cheap as we need lots of it! We are now making our own liquid fertilizer from ingredients we have on the farm. We bought a few 44 gallon drums from the recycler. They were used for concentrated orange juice and don't contain any nasty chemical residues. We filled them with water and horse manure, straw with droppings from the chicken coop and greens from weeding. The recipe is simple: just let the whole thing stew for a few weeks, then use the brew on the garden beds. Let's see how well it will work! | |||||||||||||||
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Beans and snails |
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Every year seems to bring its own special share of (new to us) problems. Now it's snails. At least we think they are snails. A few weeks ago we planted much of our beans for this season. But something is eating the little seedlings. The photo above in the section about onions shows how the seedlings have been decimated. Below left: damage to young bean plants Below: these beans have not been affected quite as much. Borlotti bush beans along the fence. Sex without Strings butter bush beans in the front. Quite a few of these did not germinate. Many seeds from this supplier gave us bad results. Behind them Purple Queen bush beans. Below right: four rows of beans in the kitchen garden. Borlotti bush beans left, Cherokee Wax and Royal Burgundy bush beans from our local seed supplier. Much better germination results here, and not much snail damage. |
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Chicken in the large orchard |
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Left and centre: The salmon faverolles are now six weeks old. Because of predators we won't let them free-range out in the open, but our large orchard is fully covered in bird netting and is a safe place for the chicken to explore. The chook house is connected to the orchard with a netted access. At dusk the birds return to the chook house and we lock the door. Right: this group of Welsumers and Plymouth Rocks is now two weeks old. |
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