Stories from the farm garden
I have been home for a whole month now, no trips away for work and despite lots of days spent travelling to and from the hospital while Peter was sick, i have spent most of my time in the garden and looking after the poultry. When I wake up every day it feels like i am following multiple stories and need to quickly find out what is happening today.
There is the Poultry Story, to check out, how are all the chickens going, what has gone broody today, are the hens still sitting on the eggs, are any eggs hatched, how is the incubator going, and later in the day, how many eggs of what variety, and finally are all the chooks, turkeys and ducks away for today? The interesting things today are that the shared parenting arrangment with the silkies is going fantastically well, one still sitting on the unhatched eggs and one looking after the chicks. there are three chicks, very cute, one looks like it is sort of reddish grey, the other two look like pure Plymouth Rocks, Rocky the rooster is Plymouth Rock.
The Ducks have started to lay again, i am going to keep their eggs and put them into the incubator once the chicken eggs have hatched. I am not going to bother sitting these ducks on eggs again as they sit for two weeks and then just abandon the eggs. The two turkeys sitting on eggs in the big shed are going OK, one of them should hatch some eggs soon although I have never been sure exactly when she started to sit. We are getting loads of eggs and I have discovered that if i keep everything locked up until about 2 PM, we get all the eggs, if i let them out earlier some run off and lay in the grass somewhere and I never find them.
The Garden Story, what seeds are up, what needs planting out, are there any slugs around, what about those pesky caterpillars, what needs picking in the veggies garden, what fruit is ripe, will I ever finish the mowing and removing the pattersons curse?
More about the seeds and mowing another time but what is flowering are these stunning poppies, I have never seen anything like these. They took about five days to open out and I could tell they were going to be special.
And the food story, what can I pick from the garden, what can i make to eat from what I pick and what needs preserving? There is so much to eat from the garden that we are eating little else at the moment. Yesterday I needed to pull out some self sown potatoes that were taking over the asparagus bed, they came attached to these lovely new potatoes
. So for dinner a lovely warm new potato and broad bean salad with fresh herbs, galic, wilted silverbeet, olive oil and lemon juce, with fresh poached eggs, the eggs were fresh today and a slice of bread straight from the oven, Delicous.
There is the Poultry Story, to check out, how are all the chickens going, what has gone broody today, are the hens still sitting on the eggs, are any eggs hatched, how is the incubator going, and later in the day, how many eggs of what variety, and finally are all the chooks, turkeys and ducks away for today? The interesting things today are that the shared parenting arrangment with the silkies is going fantastically well, one still sitting on the unhatched eggs and one looking after the chicks. there are three chicks, very cute, one looks like it is sort of reddish grey, the other two look like pure Plymouth Rocks, Rocky the rooster is Plymouth Rock.
The Ducks have started to lay again, i am going to keep their eggs and put them into the incubator once the chicken eggs have hatched. I am not going to bother sitting these ducks on eggs again as they sit for two weeks and then just abandon the eggs. The two turkeys sitting on eggs in the big shed are going OK, one of them should hatch some eggs soon although I have never been sure exactly when she started to sit. We are getting loads of eggs and I have discovered that if i keep everything locked up until about 2 PM, we get all the eggs, if i let them out earlier some run off and lay in the grass somewhere and I never find them.The Garden Story, what seeds are up, what needs planting out, are there any slugs around, what about those pesky caterpillars, what needs picking in the veggies garden, what fruit is ripe, will I ever finish the mowing and removing the pattersons curse?
More about the seeds and mowing another time but what is flowering are these stunning poppies, I have never seen anything like these. They took about five days to open out and I could tell they were going to be special.
And the food story, what can I pick from the garden, what can i make to eat from what I pick and what needs preserving? There is so much to eat from the garden that we are eating little else at the moment. Yesterday I needed to pull out some self sown potatoes that were taking over the asparagus bed, they came attached to these lovely new potatoes
. So for dinner a lovely warm new potato and broad bean salad with fresh herbs, galic, wilted silverbeet, olive oil and lemon juce, with fresh poached eggs, the eggs were fresh today and a slice of bread straight from the oven, Delicous. 
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