This Week's Random Photos

This week I thought I would post some random photos as the chickens are all fine.  Although I did replace the straw in their nesting boxes a few days ago and made a lovely deep bed for them only to find Ruby liked it so much she would not leave the cosy compartment and she has gone broody again!  It's only been a month or so since she last spent about 32 days sitting on nothing.  Oh well, here we go again.!

                                                      This is the view down to our pool 

                                                                         

A lovely shrub that has flowers that start out blue and fade to white so it always has different coloured flowers on it at the same time.  It really is gorgeous, will find the name of it and post it here in a few days time.

                                         We have a lot of gardenias flowering at the moment.

                                                                                

                                                              Our resident kookaburra

                                                                                
                                                                 Dancing Lady Orchid

                                                                                

Ruby and Abbey are both Light Sussex Chickens and Ruby is bigger than Abbey.  They are supposed to lay large white eggs, which Abbey does but Ruby lays small brown eggs??  I did a bit of research on this and apparently the Light Sussex chickens were originally brown (well over a hundred years ago) so we think Ruby might be carrying an ancient gene.  : )

                                                                               

A few days ago a large section of our passionfruit vine blew off it's trellis in a storm and Abbey thinks it's a lovely, cool place to sit.

                                                                                
                                                         An Echidna at our letterbox

                                                                                  

Those chickens!  I let them out for a few minutes to peck on some greens and this is the thanks I get!

                                                                                 

                                                                            
 I collect our fallen hibiscus flowers so I can see them and enjoy that amazing colour.  Our lawn is recovering from months of well below average rainfall.  It's incredible how it has greened up after two storms.

                                                                         
I took this photo a few days ago of Esmeralda and Jett luxuriating in the sunshine and dust.  The chickens send up plumes of dust and roll and flap their wings in it.  This is natural behaviour that caged birds do not get to enjoy and is just one of the reasons why I encourage the buying of free range eggs.  They absolutely adore it!

                                                                             
Christmas is coming and I must make my Christmas Cake and start on all those old fashioned sweets that everyone loves so much.  Here is a photo I posted last year but now I am going down to Spotlight to buy some fabric to make a quilt and I must finish knitting a gorgeous pair of socks I started about a month ago - more on these later.  : )

 

 

 

                                                                              
                                                                                
                                                                 

Homemade Chutney

There are few things that evoke that warm and homely feel that we all love more than the aromas of fresh baking or something bubbling away on the cook top and a large pot of simmering chutney is one of the best.  It's as if the whole house takes a deep breath and exhales when the rich scents of  spice, garlic, ginger and fruit gently fill the home - a deeply rewarding experience we miss out on when everything we eat comes prepackaged from the supermarket.

So last week I made my favourite chutney recipe (see below), it's simple and delicious and if you double the recipe, you will have enough to give away to family and friends and before long you will become renowned for your wonderful condiments and only you will know how simple they are to make!

                                                                     Lovely ingredients

                                                                        

Place your clean glass jars and lids in a large pot of water straight from the tap (if you put them into boiling water they will crack) and heat them up until boiling - cover and boil gently for 10 minutes.

After sterilizing, remove jars and lids with tongs and place upside down on a clean tea towel or place upside down on a baking tray in a warm oven - cool chutney into cool jars, hot chutney into hot jars.

                                                                              
                                                     Simple, gorgeous and delicious!

                                                                               
                                                                               

                                                                         

Mixed Fruit Chutney

Ingredients

230g (8oz) cooking Apples
230g (8oz) Pears
170g (6oz) Dried, Diced apricots
2 tablespoons Sultanas
340g (12 oz) soft Brown Sugar (I do not double this amount, I use about 450g but this is a personal choice)
285ml (half a pint) Cider Vinegar
12 cloves Garlic sliced
1 tablespoon finely chopped Ginger
1 dessertspoon Salt (I use less)
1 teaspoon Caraway Seeds or Cumin Seeds

Method

Peel and core apples and pears.  Cut fruit (not sultanas) ginger and garlic into small pieces and mix the rest of the ingredients in a pan.  Boil gently for 40 minutes.  Cool and Bottle.

There is so much pleasure in eating real food, it's time to reclaim the kitchen and experience some of the wonderful satisfaction and joy that comes from  getting back to basics and making some of these beautiful old recipes - your life will be richer for it.                  








                                                                           

Fairy Egg

Last week one of the chickens popped a fairy egg into the nest.  At first I thought a wild bird must have taken a liking to their nesting boxes but I quickly realised that this indeed was laid by one of our chickens!

It is about the size of a pigeon egg and weighs 9 grams.  Apparently it is not uncommon and all the girls have been laying normal eggs ever since.  I wish I still had that big double yoker so I could put the two eggs together.  I have not cracked it open yet so I don't know if it has a tiny yoke and is just a teeny egg - cute but weird!  Oh, and it was laid on Halloween, maybe just one of the chickens having a joke. : )

Good news, Esmeralda has not coughed for about two weeks and is back to her normal self - noisy, demanding and eats too much - it's good to have her back. : )

Some random photos -

                                    Orchids growing in my mother and father in-laws garden

                                                                                 

                                                                                
                                                                             

                                                                                  
An iris growing in our garden pond.

                                                                            
    How to protect our cycad revoluta from being decimated by those blue moths that lay eggs on the tender new fronds.  Firstly spray new leaf buds with pyrethrum then cover with net, repeat spraying every few days as the moths lay their eggs before the new leaves appear.

                                                                                                                                                     
After two years of unprecedented rainfall we have barely had a drop since July this year so yesterday the water tanker paid us a visit to top up our swimming pool.  We can no longer risk using our bore water (well water) because we would rather save this for our garden and as we are not connected to the mains water supply, we must prepare for this dry spell to continue.  

                                                                                 
Ok, this is all well and good but what has been baking this week?  As my father in law has an orange tree that just seems to keep on fruiting, I thought I would make something using his fresh oranges so I baked a Sticky Orange and Vanilla Upside-down Cake - yum!

                                                                             
                                                 Now, turn it out and there's the surprise!

                                                                               

                     

           
This recipe came from this website - http://foodforfour.com/2010/04/the-cookbook-challenge-week-20-sticky-orange-and-vanilla-upside-down-cake/comment-page-1/

Until next time,

Enjoy yourselves!  : )






                                                                                                                           

Sick Chicken?

Esmeralda has a cough.  Not the deep, chesty cough I have been watching on YouTube videos in an effort to understand what might be causing her distress but a dry cough that comes from her upper chest area.  It sounds like she has some grain or something similar stuck in her throat.

I have been reading all about sour crop and crop bound chickens and I was sure she was most likely crop bound as she will eat anything as GG noticed!  So this morning when Greg let them out of their pen he did not put their food down for them as usual so I could check a little later if Esmeralda's crop was soft and empty or if there was a hard mass in there.

Luckily for me when I went out to their pen she was sitting pretty in the nesting box so I could easily check on her and I am very pleased to say her crop was soft and empty and there was no discharge from her eyes, nose or mouth so I am back to thinking she may have something small stuck in her throat. 

I decided to give the chickens their yogurt with some oats and grated apple in it just to see if Esmeralda was interested - what was I thinking!  After the other chickens had finished and were walking off with a spring in their step, she was still there tucking into it.  I brought the yogurt inside when she had finished and put it in the fridge for later and she was soon squarking at the gate bullying me into bringing it back!  She's a naughty girl. 

I think her cough is a bit better today and apart from that she is acting quite normally (for her)! 

This morning I collected five eggs and now they are all sitting together  (but wait where is Esmeralda!) under a bush exchanging the occasional cluck and generally leading the life of very contented chickens. 

                                                                Oh dear, there she is.

                                                                                
                                                                             
Will keep an eye on her but I am quite sure she will be ok.  : )
                                                                            

Chicken Pen Hygiene

I thought it was time I got back to some serious chicken stuff seeing as chickens make up the subject of this blog so in view of recent snake discussions, we have come up with a very simple method to ensure there is no food for rats and mice in the chicken pen. 

Rats and mice come out at night and feast on the grain that is there for the chickens and this of course, attracts snakes.  We had carpet snakes and green tree snakes here long before we had the chickens but this is the first year (been here for 20 years) that we have seen Eastern Brown snakes.  I am sorry to say that we have not seen our green tree snake so far this spring and our baby water dragons have not been seen for a few weeks.  We think the Eastern Brown snakes have either eaten the good guys or chased (scared) them out of the territory the Eastern Browns have now claimed as their own.

Now, back to chicken pen hygiene.  This first photo shows the automatic feeder we had previously and the chickens (and bush turkeys) scattered the grain around so it was permanently on the ground.  Definitely not the way to go as mice would think all their Christmases had come at once, once the chickens were roosting on their perches at night. 

                                                                             

This next photo shows our new arrangement.  Using "Liquid Nail" we glued the plastic container to the cement paver so the chickens would not knock it over and spill all the grain and each night we simply put it away in the plastic crate you can see in the following photo.  If the chickens have scratched out any grain we sweep it back into the container using a small brush - perfectly clean.

                
                                        Put away securely each night - no feeding mice!

                                                 
                     The chickens jump up their ladder and roost on the high perches at night.

                                                                                 

                      Their "indoor" water is up on blocks so they do not scratch saw dust into it the minute I clean it out in the mornings.          

                                                                                

                                       The outdoor water is up on a block for the same reason.                                                                   

                                                                                  

The chickens have a large, fox proof pen with deep litter (saw dust) on the floor.  The litter is raked over regularly and replaced when needed, makes great compost and is always clean and fresh.  They love scratching in it.  This is where they are locked in at night.  The meter high heavier wire around the outside is to stop foxes breaking in through the small bird wire - the wire is also buried into the ground.  The roofed area in the foreground with the perches underneath is where the chickens go to sit when it is raining.  Mulberry tree hanging down in front of photo. 

                                                                                     
Looking through the door to the vegetable garden behind the pen - ex vegetable garden, they scratched all the plants out.  The raised garden bed is in their pen and used to have sweet potato in it until they ate all the leaves and scratched out the vine!

 

A major part of chicken hygiene is to make sure you have somewhere for the chickens to enjoy a dust bath.  They love it, it's a very important part of their natural behaviour and it keeps them clean and free of nasty mites.  They also like to lie in the sun with one wing stretched right out to expose their feathers to the maximum amount of sunlight, looks pretty funny but they know what they are doing.  One day I will get a photo of that.

 

                                                            Abbey loves a dust bath!

 

                                                                                                                                                  

Good chicken hygiene keeps the birds healthy, happy and laying plenty of lovely, fresh eggs  and collecting those lovely fresh eggs from the straw nests the birds have shaped so carefully is indeed one of life's simple pleasures.  : )
                                                                               
                                                                                

                      

Mt. Coolum

Yesterday we decided to climb (more a steep walk) Mt Coolum as it was such a gorgeous day - sunny and 25 degrees (77 fahrenheit) which is prefect weather.  We have climbed Mt Coolum a few times before but not for many years.  It was a wonderful day, ended up in Mooloolaba for lunch and coffee. : )

                                                View from about a quarter of the way up 

                                                                Looking north east

                                                             
                      Mooloolaba harbour in the distance and Sunshinbe Coast airport in the middle of photo

                                                                         
                                            Buderim is the ridge in the distance on the right
                                   

                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                  On the way down
  

 

                                                                               
                                                         Beautiful day to be outside
                                                                

                                   
                                                                 Sign at start of walk
                                                         

        A little article and photo of Mt. Coolum and no snakes in sight!  Chelsea had a different story when she and some friends walked to the top of Mt Cootha in Brisbane via a bush track yesterday. : )))

http://www.coolum.com.au/display_listing.asp?id=556&catid=229&pageid=20&cattype=

                                                                  

                                             
                                                                               
                                                                                                                    

Eastern Brown Snake Update

Well after nearly walking into a brown snake yesterday and having one slither within meters of where we were having breakfast on our verandah this morning, Greg called the snake catcher.  We knew he would not be able to find it but we needed to know some facts and to get a bit of reassurance.  This morning Leo quickly went sniffing near the snake until I called him back so loudly that he instantly turned around and ran back to were we were standing.

We learnt that the snake is scared of us - only a tiny bit reassuring.

We learnt that we must love our goanna - they eat brown snakes!  Getting better.

We learnt that brown snakes prefer to be on the ground, so they will not take up residence in our ceiling (with the goanna) - good news.

We learnt that moving to a 6th floor apartment in Mooloolaba will only help a little as the brown snakes like the sand dunes - very disappointing.

We were told to keep Leo inside - we knew that.

We were told to never "corner" a brown snake as they WILL defend themselves - we knew that.

We were told to make sure all our screen doors are securely closed - that apartment in Mooloolaba is looking very attractive!

He said he loved our property - I told him he was a snake catcher, of course he loves our property!

Greg took this photo this morning, the snake is on a deck that is beside our pond.  The hose it is on is attached to a pond vacuum cleaner as we have been cleaning some weed from the pond.  We were very hopeful the snake catcher would say it was a harmless snake of some sort but no, he was quick to point out that "sorry, that is indeed a brown snake". 

                                                                             

                                                                             
The photos do not show how big this snake is, he is very robust and exceedingly agile.  Seems all we can do is to stay vigilant - I knew that.   : o 

This Week's VERY Random Photos

I just couldn't think of anything to say this week (catching a cold from a certain toddler didn't help) so I thought I would take the camera outside, do a lap of the garden and see what I could find.

I really wanted a photo of the goanna that lives in our ceiling space leaving his hideout and going out for the day but I can never catch him.  I hear him moving from inside the house and I run outside with the camera and point it to the small space he squeezes into but so far no luck.  Last year we had a handyman up here doing something else and we asked him if he could fix the gap where the possum, the goanna and the carpet snake enter our roof space but blocking up the hole is not an option because we would probably lock something in there and that would not be good!

Anyway he said he put a small trapdoor in place where anything that is in there can get out but will not be able to get back in - great!  Problem solved!  Hmmmm, we can clearly see where the trapdoor has been broken and our ceiling is once again the abode for all and sundry!  Sometimes when Leo and I are reading or watching TV and we hear a noise from "up there" Leo looks up and just gives the most disgusted look, he does not approve.

                     The first thing I found was a five legged grasshopper! I told you these were random!

                                                         Lovely red berries on a cordyline

                                                                                     
                         A Golden Whistler, a beautiful rainforest bird with a most amazing song

                                                                                   
                                                              A gorgeous bromeliad

                                                                                      
                 Our baby Eastern Water Dragon has come out of hibernation, he looks a little thin but is enjoying soaking up the warm sunshine.                                           

                                                                            

                      A self sewn orchid on a palm tree, love how they just come up randomly like that.
                                                                                  
                                 

           
                                                                             Skeeta!

                                                                                 
                                             Esmeralda always likes to present her best side.  Is she a prize winning chicken or what!

  

                             

I just thought this is fun, I need another photo so I went outside and look who is sunning himself on the swimming pool bridge as I type this!  I wonder if he just left our ceiling or if it is another one - probably is our noisy house guest!   : ))))

                                                                                        
Ok Leo gets the last spot, just took this photo and he is clearly not amused!  Needless to say he has gone straight back to sleep. : ))

                                                                   
 So that is what I found in about five minutes walking around the garden, there is always something interesting to see.