Tiger in the orchard!

You know you’re getting your eco-habitat right when you have top-of-the-rung predators lurking amongst the foliage: this tiger turned up the other morning, to the consternation of the faint-hearted chickens! 

And then an ibis! Who seemed very puzzled at finding itself in such a lovely jungle of fruit and no garbage in sight…

I felt quite like David Attenborough, stalking the wildlife through the orchard with my camera. 

Trendy brooding chooks

The chookies now have that staple of trendy 70s architecture: the split level. With Cam digging around in there and shoring up edges with salvaged sleepers we thought perhaps we’d ruffled a few feathers when we couldn’t find any eggs for a couple of days. Perhaps they were in the orchard instead…

Note the beautiful, dark humus
the chooks have already made.
Since dug out and put on the lower salad bed.

Now the chooks can scratch around to heart’s content – they like to scratch uphill so everything always ended up piled up against the bottom gate before, and the concrete footing of the top post was exposed. Now that it’s level, we’ve put in a good thick layer of straw (carbon) and chuck in our kitchen scraps each morning (nitrogen) and they can scratch around (aeration) and poo (more nitrogen) and as a reward eat the worms coming up for a bite a

t the scraps too. And over time they have turned and tossed and aerated and wet a lovely rich compost for us to shovel out and use on the garden. Thank you ladies!

And then we found the white hen was broody (again!) and on lifting her out of her box found all the eggs of all the girls from the last few days, neatly nudged from all the nesting boxes to keep warm under herself. She tucked straight into some grain and had a good drink – broody hens go for 21 days without eating or drinking, keeping their eggs a constant warmth – but of course sitting on unfertilised eggs there are no chickies tumbling out at the end and perhaps they will keep on sitting and sitting and sitting until…! And so out she must go, although I feel very rude to do it.

Hot air

I shall be glad to see the back of this north wind! As shall some wilting but nevertheless enduring vegetables.

 

The sunflowers are turning up their toes but luckily have already set their seeds to feed to the chookies. Meanwhile they have been a bright beautifulness out the window!

But the afternoon sun and the hot north wind set Cam wandering the beds with his laser level and pencil….

This evening he has a new plan:

to re-jig the vegie-growing area into three main terraced beds, two sleepers high at the front edge and with key hole paths leading in from the back edge.

We can grow a lot more food in the same area this way – less path and more actual growing space. And to shade the paths and grow even more food – vertically! – he will build a trellis over the two main paths and let the kiwis at it. They’ll give the garden a little shade in summer, but lose their leaves in winter and let the sun in.

It would be good to plant a big, loose-limbed tree in that bottom corner too, to disperse the wind a bit. Not a tight windbreak tree – that would lift the wind up and over and dump in straight onto the vegies – but just a nice big blowy tree the wind can move through and slow down in, and tickle the vegies thereafter.

Backyard nomad

I have been a mama five months, and thus far a nomad mama:

Our home in Samoa,

where Yarrow was born in the middle of the wide blue Pacific,

with two local midwives.

Home of me madre, brother, belle seour and deux nephews in Canberra.

Home of the outlaws in Melbourne.

Our roving home.

Christmas home, hired with Price clan on NSW south coast.

Floating home.

New Year's on the Murray, building the houseboat.

But now this nomad mama will be putting down roots, potting up seedlings & tilling the soil:

Kim and Clive’s home. 

They are off to Uganda to do good permaculture things and grow an abundance of food at the Sabine Home orphanage.

So I shall hunt and gather at the back steps! A nomad mama learning to be a farmer mama…