Baby Chicks

Have had a very busy week with hatching baby chickens, visiting in-laws and Tai Chi. Had lots of cuppas out with the in-laws which has been nice. I also did a Tai Chi demonstration with my group for Seniors week, we do it every year and it all went very well, everyone looked great.

We have had four baby chicks hatch out, unfortunately, one has died. The other three however are very strong and being looked after by two mothers.

The chickens have obviously not read the book on what they should and shouldn’t be doing as they are doing things that we haven’t read about. Like sharing mothering duties, sharing nesting boxes, we have seen three in the one box, plus the babies.

The babies are very cute with black markings, one has a complete racing strip down its back. Don’t they grow fast? Feathers start growing straight away and they get bigger while we watch them. I really hope they are all girls as we can’t keep boys.

There is a reality about having animals and that is the life and death cycle that comes with it all. The weak ones are rejected, some die, some are picked on by others if they are different. Watching the social structure and interaction, the hierarchy and togetherness. It is all fascinating, but sometimes harsh, and while I understand the whole thing that it is nature, it doesn’t mean I can’t be sad about it.

However, I also can rejoice in it too, the new life that we are watching and the way they look after each other is wonderful.

OK, back to being very busy. We are off to the markets tomorrow and I hope to get some seed potatoes to plant, and maybe some other stuff too. The in-laws go home next week and then back to routine, for a while at least.

Where Has Our Son Gone?

It is interesting as time goes on to see how our number one and only son grows. As he is our only child everything is a new and once only experience.

However, at the moment it seems that aliens have abducted him and replaced him with a clone who helps without complaints and even makes biscuits. He ironed his school uniform without so much as a murmur and is holding intelligent conversations with not much grunting, groaning, yeah, nah, dunno or can't remember. What is going on? He is only 14 years old and needs to be difficult and uncommunicative for at least another four to six years years yet :P

As for me this week, seems that I am unable to cook without burning food to the bottom of saucepans. Don't normally do, but I will have the visible evidence of burnt on rice in one saucepan and also stewed apples in yet another saucepan(which I am hoping to salvage by turning into apple crumple and smothering with custard to disguise any burned taste, if not, then the dog never seems to mind).

My partner in crime and life parents arrive today for a two week visit, they will be staying in town as we can't cater for overnight visitors in our shed house. We have plans for a picnic, local markets and a few trips out to various places.

Still waiting to see if any baby chicks hatch out but we are ready with water and chick food if that happens. Now another hen has gone broody, Orange, the one with more personality than you would believe, though she is trying to take over Pink's nest and this morning they were in together. If any chicks hatch out it will interesting to see who they bond to.

ON OTHER MATTERS

I have lost my favourites button along with my million or so favourite sites, I am sure I will find them somewhere, just not in the next five minutes :(

African Aussie has a good post about free stuff in the garden. I love posts like this as I am inspired to grow more of my own like beans now as we use lots of beans here. New recipes I have tried, and liked, this year include: baked beans, vegetarian sausages, a new curry recipe and of course beans and rice. May as well grow my own.

As I always love recipes (and I have certainly tried a lot of new ones this year)here is another one from over at Organised Castle I am going to try. We always like to have lots of stuff for lunch boxes in the freezer, so we will cook up Anzac Cake,might do it this morning.

I want to send my wishes to Marie (who writes Eclectic Homeschooling) who is going in for a hip replacement. Thinking of you from the other side of the world.

I really liked this post at New life on a Homestead. We all wish we had more time and more energy to do stuff, however I think the best idea on this post is to ditch the TV. Really, you are just killing your brain when it comes to TV, and I really hate reality TV,footy talk shows, modelling shows and various other shallow, mean shows, and there seems to be a new one out every five minutes (I see them advertised while killing my own brain in front of the idiot box). I do watch TV, but generally pick what I watch and it is only at night and not during the day, still, think how much time (and life) we could regain by getting rid of the TV, maybe just have it so we can watch a good movie or doco.

World Events

I have been so distracted by the events of the world this week that I have forgotten to post. There has been the economic events in the US and Europe and the riots in the UK and the ripple effects of all this. There have been other events that haven’t been quite mainstream (at least not in my world) like the aircraft carrier that the Chinese have refurbished/finished putting together, and is now out and about in the world, and another earthquake in Japan in the same region of that devastating one in March.

I think I may have an un-natural obsession with the news, however I do like to know what is going on in the world as the ripple effect of events can be far reaching. It is not only the events of something just up the road that affects us, like the horse that died of Hendra virus a bit ago and we had Bio-Security come and visit us on our little piece of land, but events on the other side of the world like the economic turmoil going on right now, don’t want to look at what that has done to our superannuation.

However, in between all this world distraction, life goes on.

Pink, one of our hens, should have some babies any day now, she has six eggs under her so we will see how many hatch out.

I had a lovely lunch with friends on Tuesday, life sure is good when you can eat great food (lovingly made by one of the wonderful friends) and enjoy the company of intelligent, funny women.

I went a loaded up the car the other day with more fencing stuff, so hopefully we can finish of the boundary fence and then in a couple of weeks put on the front gate. I also got more chicken wire to fence off more of the garden so I can plant more stuff (I am a bit behind with this as I need to fence first), we will also be putting wire around some of our tree as the chooks just love scratching around them and the trees are too little to cope yet. The ones we will put wire around are some of the natives, the tamarinds and probably the passionfruit, luffa and chokos.

My partner in crime and life made pickled eggs yesterday and they should be ready in a week. Even though we get eggs every day, we had to stop eating them so we have enough to pickle, he used twelve. The next thing will be pickling onions, which we also haven’t done before.

ON OTHER MATTERS

Where does the radioactive waste from Fukushima go? Are they doing enough? On reading this article, it doesn’t seem like they are.

Here is a post at Penniless Parenting that I completely agree with about wooden toys. Plastic is toxic and doesn’t last for as long and when you play with wooden toys you can feel the difference in quality. I don’t really play with toys, much, however I do know what will last and what is not poisonous and I believe it is worth it to pay a bit more and in the long run it does work out cheaper.

Here are a couple of articles relating to China’s new aircraft carrier,for those who missed it, “China's refitted aircraft carrier platform sets sail for first sea trial” and another here from The Courier Mail.

The Fence

We have finally started fencing our property. The job is not as large or hard as we thought but not easy either, depending on whether the ground it hard or soft, and it is harder on my partner in crime and life than it is on me (he has stronger muscles than me so has done more).

The fence became a more urgent thing with the chooks starting to roam far and wide, so the fence came to the top of the list. And that is how most things get to the top of the list, they become urgent.

So the chooks are sort of contained, with the smaller ones popping through with no trouble and the larger ones squeezing through too though less often than the others. So we will run some chicken wire along the bottom of the fence and while we know they can fly, hopefully they won’t.

We actually haven’t finished the fence yet, we are halfway across the front of the property, and so have a little to go, also the gates. We won’t be fencing across the back along the creek as we want the wallabies to still be able to come onto the property and get back out through the bush, but at least dogs won’t be able to get on from the front. It will also discourage strangers from just wandering in, we hope.

ON OTHER MATTERS

This post from Survival Mom reminds me that we need to go through our boxes stored up above our room. We are still missing things from our move that we do go in search for and can’t find, so a declutter of the boxes is overdue, and also label the boxes with the things we keep. This job is starting to move closer to the top of the list.

Check out the photos on this blog of all the fresh fruit, I am drooling, wish our fruit trees would hurry up and mature and fruit. The blog is called The Prudent Homemaker and I just came across it the other day and am still looking through it, looks good.

I really enjoyed reading this article about an energy efficient village, what they did and the details of it. Although we are seeing this more and more, I still think we don’t build our homes good enough, so this is encouraging.