Treehouses

Spring is such a fresh, rebuilding time of year and with today's gentle rain the garden looks shiny green and new. New shoots on top of the bare stalks of the red cedars, the lime spears of the new kentia fronds, and the curled bronze furry fingers of the tree ferns. The plants are emerging from the doldrums of August (and my writing hiatus is over) and you can almost hear the crackling, slurping noise of the leaves growing.

The back track is taking shape with the gravel path, and the final part of the backyard stairs has been laid out with some great recycled sandstone pieces. I have cut out the treads and placed the stones in the spaces to work the best arrangement. It is still wonky to walk on but when I get hold of a cement mixer I will be able to bed them down more permanently.

Treehouse is the next stage of planning, as we are putting the girls Christmas money towards building a tree house instead of more and more plastic toys. Have been scoping for sites to build the house and have settled on a eucalypt in the backyard. Just have to get access to it at a safe height, it is about six metres off the ground.

The Taming of the Chickens

Feeding time in the morning is always a pleasure with the Egg Team busy and keen for breakfast.  There's usually a couple of kilos of kitchen waste and a kilo or so of pellets for the girls to share.  (Although I am pretty sure that there are a couple of roosters just about to bloom - don't forget the black Australorps were bought as unsexed day old chicks). 

The girls all crowd around to share the food and we sprinkle it around so the pecking order is upset or simply doesn't apply.  The black chickens, which all share the names blackie or spotty, are quite tame and appear to enjoy being handled - or at least they just sit there with a look of compliant defeat on their faces.  The red chickens (which are all called ruby), are a bit more flighty having been bought later on at 16 weeks.

The birds are very resilient when it comes to being caught by the wing, the leg, the tail or the neck and quickly shuffle around in the embrace of the my daughters to get comfortable.  The youngest daughter likes to look inside the chickens beak and see the tongue at least once each morning.

This is ruby, a rhode island red who is just getting used to being handled...

The birds have accepted that feeding time is also handling time and are patient when picked up for a pet ad taken away from the morning food.  It is remarkable how well turned over the turf gets from sprinkling the feed at different locations around the property. 
I have deliberately tried not to have a designated feed area as it becomes bare, hard and muddy and is not good for growing anything.  By moving the feed site around I can target weed spots and put the feed there and after a few days of scratch and peck the weeds are cleared and we are ready to move onto the next feed site.

Isla takes some time out with ruby o the new steps - I carted down a metre and a half of gravel in little 8 litre buckets last Tuesday - it was a good workout foe my calves and hands.  But the gravel works well to give a great dry section some grip where was once a damp watercourse.  I have gone for a dry creek bed look with big sandstone rocks along the edges, buried with concrete to stop the gravel spreading when walked on over time.  Love the sound of gravel, it is another layer of experience to hear your footfall scrunch scrunch scrunch as you walk along the path.

Some images of the chicken catching team.  Have realised that it is far easier to time the return of the birds to the coop than to try and get them in whilst it is still broad daylight.  On dusk the birds are orderly and calm and trot in a line to their perches, all I have to do is close the door and screw the latches.

This beautiful winter weather has been a great chance to steal some time building sandcastles at the beach, and feel the sand between our toes.

Chickens, Chickens, Chickens

Here's a great resource for chickens.

Have a read, is comprehensive.

Our 10 girls are going great guns, they are all nearing full size and very comfortable free ranging across our backyard and four neighbouring properties. Luckily fencing is a four letter word around these parts so the birds have access all areas and can forage into the bush reserve at the back of the property.

Have been busy building some more stairs - this time gravel steps underneath the tree ferns - they make a lovely scrunch sound when you walk on them. Plus the texture is shiny/glossy when wet and makes for a great contrast with the dark brows of the humus and mulch. The gravel acts as a rock mulch so will aid water flow away from the walking areas towards the growing areas.

Also working clearing some overgrown undergrowth - if that makes sense(?) and stumbled upon a small SCORPION - I could not believe it, it is definitely a scorpion and I have caught it and it is scuttling around in a plastic cube as I write this. Will take some shots and post soon.

Plenty of frogs also found amongst the leaf litter - was a real treat for the chickens who came in after and cleaned up all the thrips and little critters amongst the leaves. I am planting some raspberries in this space tomorrow I hope.

OK, more soon...

Eating Local

Silverbeet seedling

Can you hear that?  The almost imperceptible hum in the background?  That's the garden farm rousing from winter slumber and tingling it's roots and wriggling it's leaves.  Coming back to fecund production.  Which is all quite delightful, but we are going further into the sustainable jigsaw and taking steps towards eating locally.  This means we will wean ourselves off ultra processed franchise foods, lessen our dependence on corporate food staples, and importantly, sustain this buying ethic from here on.

Here's some revolutionary inspiration from Tom Hodgkinson.

"It seems obvious that if we could just extinguish consumer desires and stop shopping, we would get a lot closer to everyday liberty, simply because we wouldn't have to do so much work.  This is not to say that one can't enjoy luxuries, it's just that we shouldn't take them seriously as a kind of goal in life.  Don't make luxury into a meaning."

The interconnectedness of rejecting corporate food, being able to support yourself, and having more time to just be is really so obvious to me.  It is as simple as if you don't update the SUV, you won't have to work weekends, and then you can spend that time with your daughter, so she will grow up feeling valued and loved.  By disentangling ourselves from debt and financial instruments, I will be self determining and that is so empowering.  So, back to the garden and food.

The first step was establishing our garden farm as much as we could to be productive for table food.  Growing your own food can only go so far realistically on a suburban block.  Sure, I have fruit trees, chickens and herbs and vegetables, but eating local is a major step.

 So how do we actually go about this?

The first step is a mind set.  Cut Franchise Food to Zero.  The whole rationale behind the franchise is to replicate systems so that the end product is identical across the entire territory, which is great for corporate measurement, graphs, percentages and reducing the complexity of a small business to a single figure.  This sameness and homogeneity across the brand brings to mind images of chickens pecking at little beige pellets on conveyor belts.  It presents us with no choice so we come to fear the unknown or things that are simply different.  Not good.

So everything from the stationery to the flour to the staff recruitment is managed off site, deals are on a grand national scale and handshakes made by people thousands of miles away from the kitchen, most likely in suits with percentages and margins uppermost in their minds.  The actual couple who run the franchise at the frontline are managers with debt equity in the business, harried by "regional impressive title" reps to maintain standards.

Not much talk of food or flavour going on, let alone where it is farmed, or how it is farmed, or the farm methods.  So we are saying no the McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut etc.  Any franchise that presents reheated ultra processed food has got to go.  Just like going sober and giving up alcohol, I'm quite sure this will be a slow burn, but have major lifestyle impacts on my life.  Let alone the health benefits of not putting that crap into my body.

But I don't want to specifically head off in the direction of health food exactly, not just yet.  What I am saying is when you are out and about and you have the children with you, don't go to a franchise outlet, but instead go to the local burger joint, local charcoal chicken joint or sandwich bar.

This way, you are not supporting the multi-layered faceless corporate edifice, but instead supporting the local most likely husband and wife business, who make their own decisions on buying the food, choosing their suppliers based on local relationships, and are living independently of a franchise system monitoring their business behaviour.  See where I'm heading?

This way, you are supporting a travelling sales rep who visits the stores in his territory, supporting a local property investor who leases the building, supporting local employment that is not part of some huge human resources department, but is based on real face to face negotiation.  The local business negotiates with a local supplier and creates local connections and jobs - all miles away from the wheeling and dealing of the city.

Eating local is the next step.  I'm coming up to that soon, just have to let these thoughts percolate for now.