"Balmoral Park" farm garden

The other day I purchased three new bantams. They are called D'uccles, they are very cute. Smaller than the silkies with interesting feet! I haven't managed to get a great photo yet but these are  not too bad. The little rooster is called Mr. Darcy, the mottled hen is Lizzie and the black one Jane. They have settled in well but in truth we are lucky to have them because the very first night they were here a fox got in and took two of the Silkies. As they live in a cage under the fruit trees and in our yard we have never locked them in their little coop at night. What a cheeky fox to come so close to the house. We are going to set a fox trap tonight. Despite a general air of disorder in the garden there are many wonderful things to see. I spied these Hakea flowers yesterday, Aren't they lovely. And the ornamental grape is putting on a magnificent autumn display.  

I have to admit I am not a very scientific gardener. I tend to absorb huge amounts of information, then apply things a bit randomly while building on what works. I like the idea of companion planting and I have some charts somewhere but what I really like is when I can actually see the companion relationship working. I read once that the Native American people used to plant beans, pumpkins and corn together. The corn provided some support for the pumpkin and beans and they all shaded and sheltered each other. In our  very hot and usually dry summers I thought this was an idea that might actually work. In the heat of the summer our vegetables quite often "cook" on the vines. I planted climbing  beans on the trellis on two sides, rows of corn in between and pumpkins in the corner. It has become a veritable jungle. A happy and productive jungle. The corn is over two metres tall and loaded with yummy cobs, the beans have grown up the sides and over the top of the trellis, shading...

We have had quite a lot of interest in our poultry lately and have a waiting list for chickens. Instead of selling them I have been trading them. One of my work clients from Orange wanted three chickens for her children so we swapped them for a bag of  chicken starter  food. the deal is that if they turn our to be roosters they can bring them back and swap them for a pullet. Have not heard from them so hopefully they are all pullets. We have actually had a greater proportion of pullets than roosters in the last few batches. There is one little rooster, only about eight weeks old and crowing already, looks and sounds very funny. Our neighbours wanted six chickens as well and they took them last week. They are farmers so I said they could swap me some mulch hay or some wheat. Patrick turned up on Saturday with his ute loaded with three big round bales of hay and two bags of feed wheat. A pretty fair trade I think. We usually buy mulch hay for the garden and this will go a long w...

You might recall that we hatched several lots of turkeys over the past few months. the first lot hatched in the incubator and emerged on 25th September. They are now getting quite big, there are eleven of them. Next a brood of six hatched by one of the black hens that we set, they are about a month behind the other lot.Then two separate lot,s one of five and one of two that hatched from the turkeys I set under the broody black hens  when Peter was in hospital, they are about ten days apart. What has happened is that the incubator ones lived on their own in one of the small sheds for two months, while the others ended up all together in the big shed. They formed one big flock with three mothers and thirteen chicks of various ages and stages. Not the way to go but it has sort of worked. Our plan is for the little shed to get divided into three broody cages and the big shed also get divided into three so broody hens can sit and raise their chicks in isolation and then we can put the h...

When I got home from work yesterday I discovered that the surrogate chickens, who are being raised by the silkies and living under the peach tree, have discovered they can fly. They had flown up into a low branch of the tree and were picking and eating the peaches. I am glad that I checked that tree yesterday as it is only quite small and they could have made a real mess of it just as the peaches are ripe. We moved the silkie cage to another spot and netted the tree in case the birds also discover it. Also decided that the chickens could go up with the other chickens who were hatched in the incubator. All together we had twelve chickens, three have gone to one of my friends as pets for her children, another six are going to one of our neighbours. We will keep the remaining three but I think two of them are roosters so they are destined to be dinner at some stage. I already have someone wanting more chickens so will set another batch after Christmas. I am literally swapping my...

Springtime and our turkeys have been laying prolifically and going broody. We reduced our flock considerably in the autumn and have just three white hens, three bronze and one bronze gobbler. So we wanted to breed quite a few turkeys this spring. The first two that Peter set in august came to nothing, perhaps it was too cold, so we put a lot in the incubator in September and hatched 11 from that setting. They are now two months old and going well. they free range through the day now and share their accommodation with two chickens who hatched at the same time. They are starting to need a lot of food so it is just as well that there is a lot of grass around. We set another hen on eight eggs and she hatched out seven of them about two weeks ago and is doing a great job of raising them. We needed to move her and her chicks to the big turkey shed when they were a few days old and she really was not impressed. she doesn't like us to come anywhere near them. When Peter was in hospi...

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 i...

This spring almost all of our poultry has gone broody. I suppose because  it is such a lush season. We are new to the business of breeding poultry so our efforts to date have been a bit hit and miss. Recently we hatched turkeys in an incubator and of the thirteen that hatched, eleven survived and are doing well. One of the black turkey hens has just hatched seven chicks and they seem to be healthy and strong and I have another two turkeys sitting on eggs. We have five little silkie bantams who live in a moveable cage in our garden, they are generally under the fruit trees and their job is to clean up fallen fruit and generally scratrch around and fertilize the area. We  used to have a rooster called Russel, but Peter dispatched him due to his loud and incessant crowing! Despite the lack of fertilised eggs the silkie hens regularly go broody and they are great mothers. After the dissapointment of one of the larger hens abanding her eggs after the first two hatched I decided to...

The last two lots of Turkey eggs we sat under broody hens came to nothing. We had pretty much decided that our very handsome gobbler was a dud. however Peter decided to borrow an incubator and put 18 eggs in it. Just a few hours ahead of schedule the first little turkey appeared. So far 13 have hatched out and are doing really well. They are very cute. We hadnt used an incubator before and were a bit worried as we had a few power outages. Luckily I woke up the other night when the power went off and we wrapped the incubator in a doona with a hot water bottle. It must have worked. I quite like the idea of being able to plan our poultry hatchings a bit with an incubator as some of our broodies are unreliable. just had a duck sit on five eggs for two and a bit weeks and then just up and leave them! I finally have some broody chickens though and one of them is sitting on a dozen eggs that should hatch tomorrow. Here is the first little turkey, isnt it cute!

Raising turkeys is part of what we want to do here so I am always excited when we get a broody turkey hen and can set her on some eggs. One of the black hens went broody and we set her on twelv eggs. Last time she was broody she started kicking out the chickens so we hand raised them and they all survived. This time we thought we would let her raise them. Not sure why, maybe a misplaced belief that nature knows best!She hatched out nine and now two weeks later there are only five! We dont know what happens, she squashed a few and some jsut dissapeared. Contrast this with the silkies who we set on four hen eggs each, they both still have four chicks a month down the track. they look after them and out for them, even though the chicks are now nearly as big as them they still find a way to snuggle them all in. Next time we get a broody silkie I will give her three turkey eggs to hatch!

Peter grew up on a Turkey farm so we always intended to breed turkeys when we had the space. what we didn't know was how rare they had become and how hard it is to get any turkeys other than white ones. We started off with what was supposed to be a breeding trio but poor old Bruce was well past his use by date. We later found some turkey chicks, white and slate grey, they have formed out breeding stock so far.We hope to find some blue and bourbon reds as well when we have a bit more time to put to this task. Our first lot of turkey chicks were a bit tragic as we had not realized that they can be very careless mothers and actually just knock the chickens over. Turkey chicks are not as robust as our backyard , crossbreed chickens. Our last lot of turkeys hatched out just after Christmas and the mother threw the first one out of the nest. Zoe and I rescued it and brought it into the house. As each egg hatched we also rescued them and ended up raising them in a box, with a light fo...