Moulting chooks

The saga with my chooks continues. They are not broody anymore so that is cause for celebration. Instead they (or at least three of them) are moulting - and not laying. Goodness, I never realised it would be so difficult to have a good egg supply. It seemed simple enough - get coop, get chooks, feed and water them, get eggs. But apparently not. They appear pretty happy with life and burble away quite happily when I see them. According to a wonderful forum I found (and the wonderful world of Google) I need to be sure to give them protein so they will grow lots of nice new feathers. Twice a day I am now giving them mash mixed with milk as well as their usual dose of fresh green vegetables. I am hoping this moult thing doesn't take too long as the three or four eggs a week I am getting is pretty pitiful.

My garden continues to provide me with the bulk of my vegetables - lots of zucchinis and sweetcorn. I am usually competing with the chooks to get any silverbeet but put some aside for me every now and then. My chilli and capsicum plants are all growing furiously and have loads of flowers so I am hoping for a good crop off them at some stage. They are in the greenhouse so any change in weather won't affect them too badly. There are plenty of potatoes in the garden - I just dig them up as I need them but pretty soon will probably harvest them all and find a nice dark place to store them.

Pecking order, vege garden and 101 things list

I am concerned about my chooks. Their coop has heaps of feathers in it currently and I am worried that one of my lovely ladies has decided she is queen of the coop and is pecking the others.

After feeding them the other day I hung around and watched for a while. Miss Broody (the supposed Queen of the coop) had been turfed out of her nesting box by me (as happens twice a day!). She stalked over to where the other three were munching away and started attacking them. I have three different breeds (not sure what breeds though) so maybe that is something to do with it? Hmmmmm! I have no idea what do you do about hen-pecking? Off to Google that one now but any suggestions are welcome.

My garden is reaching its peak currently which is sort of great but always a bit sad to know that my fresh produce supply will start to wind down over the next month or so. I would love to be able to keep my garden going year round but we suffer from hard frosts over winter which kill most things off. I will manage to keep silverbeet going (much to the delight of the chooks) and am going to research what else might survive in our winter.

I am loving having my 101 things list to motivate me. I review it every few days and it's a great reminder to me to get off my butt and achieve something. I love doing my sudoku although I don't always do one daily. I am almost on target with blogging once a week and I would really like to increase this to at least twice a week. I've had a massage, a bubble bath and am eating a lot more fish than I have in the past (salmon on Sunday night was divine!) I have a few things booked which will allow me to tick a few things off over the next couple of months. Next month I will blog about progress against each of the 101 things and needing to do that will certainly motivate me to get a few things completed before then.

Harvest time!

I had a craving tonight for fresh vegetables so went out hunting in the garden to see what I could find. This is what I found.

Two eggs from my chooks today so I have at least two laying at the moment. It's quite strange - when I go check on them there is only one who is obviously broody so maybe there are three laying for they are taking turns?

Dinner tonight was grilled chicken with steamed zucchini and silverbeet and with fresh sweetcorn. I have to tell you, the corn was simply amazing - so sweet and tender. The monster zucchini at the rear of the photo is sitting in the fridge while I figure out what to do with it. It may well end up in a pie or cake.

I went and had my massage on Friday. I tried a new place out and opted for a fairly deep massage to sort out my aches and pains. The massage itself was wonderful - a lovely Thai woman used her magic hands and ironed out a lot of the kinks I had in my back. Sadly I won't be returning to this place - the front-desk service was pretty shoddy (to the point of being rude) and the cleanliness etc of the towels was very questionable - plus the towels themselves looked almost threadbare and ancient.

First week home alone in my empty nest

Well, that's the end of the first week on my own at home. My son and his girlfriend have settled in to their new home - everything is unpacked and in its place. The bonus is probably that they are only five minutes up the road maybe things would be different if they were further away? It's real nice that both my boys (and their girlfriends) are within a very easy drive (and it's even walkable).

So how did my first week go? Really well. I am loving the freedom to cook all the foods I love without needing to consider others (does that make me selfish?). I thought I might have felt lonely without them here but it's actually been ok. It's quite nice that I don't have to "check in" with anybody and I am finding I can be more spontaneous. The downside is there is no-one to boss around and no-one to share the chores. hahaha What a bind having to always be the one to empty the dishwasher! Mind you it took about 4 days to have enough dishes to be bothered putting the dishwasher through.

I am on track with my List - I bought a pattern and fabric today - not for the dress I want to sew but a top. I am waiting for winter fabrics to come into the store before sewing the dress but thought I would get creative and start with a top for now. That will be a task for me to do one evening this week. I have found my next new recipe to try - Chicken and Pesto fettuccine which is on the menu plan for this week. And talking of the menu plan - this is the plan for the week :
Monday - kedgeree
Tuesday - steak
Wednesday - chicken and pesto fettuccine
Thursday - fish curry
Friday - grilled chicken
Saturday - crumbed fish
Sunday - birthday dinner for my son so will let him choose

All meals will use vegetables from the garden wherever possible. I have zuchinni starting to flourish, sweetcorn, potatoes and beans to supplement vegetables bought yesterday.

I continue to struggle with broodiness of my chooks - three out of four are currently broody so I am down to 1 egg a day again. How annoying! I am on the lookout for a cage I can segregate the broody ones into. I get the feeling this will continue to happen - maybe I chose dud chooks? hahaha I figure they are following their natural instincts - but it's a bit annoying when I am looking for them to supply me with eggs not produce more offspring.

Gulp! What a bad blogger I am!

It has been a long time since I last posted on this blog - and I have no good reason for that, apart from my normal routines being disrupted by Christmas. But I am now back - better than ever after having spent a relaxing time at home over Christmas and New Year.

With such a long break from writing I am a bit lost as to what to blog about first. I know I still haven't blogged with the result of my No spend month (and that was in November). I don't have all the figures with me right now so that will need to wait for another time.

A few people have asked after my chooks - my de-brooding exercise was relatively successful. After two days of being blocked out of their nesting boxes three out of four chooks started laying again - yay! Sadly last week one chook decided that being broody was a good thing so now I have two chooks laying and two chooks being broody. I will let it slide for now as I am still getting two eggs a day but as soon as that changes I will be back to de-brooding mode again. The positive thing is that the eggs we are getting are bigger than they used to be.

The countdown is seriously on for my son and his girlfriend moving out of my home and into their house. We are all very excited about that. Once they have moved out I will be continuing with my decluttering exercise. I thought I would be able to do this over the Christmas break but decided it would be easier once I have the house to myself and less furniture, etc to work around.

I did spend some time over Christmas getting some chores done that I wouldn't normally have time for. I have a large garden window in my kitchen (with a very deep sill) which needed to be sanded back and repainted. I have put that off for ages as I couldn't be bothered dealing with the mess that would create. But I bit the bullet and got stuck into that on a rainy Wellington day (ah, Wellington in the summer!). I think it stills needs one more coat of paint to be honest so plan to do that this weekend. Even as it is, it looks much better than before. The old paint had started to degrade and was flaking off in places - plus it was more yellow than white!

I also spent some time working in my garden. My pea crop this year has been a bit of a disaster. I'm not entirely sure why but some of it can be put down to the cats digging up the peas!!! Sometimes I think I need to devote one of my raised beds to be the cat toilet but knowing my little monsters they would ignore it and continue to dig up my seeds and seedlings! Other things have been more successful. My corn is coming along really well and my zucchinis and scallopinis are flowering madly so they will be producing pretty soon. I have chillis and capsicums growing in my greenhouse - they are growing well but something is munching on their leaves. I'm not too sure what is doing that right now but have sprayed them with a garlic / soapy mixture so hopefully that will get rid of whatever is eating them. I also have lettuce in the greenhouse so that is coming in handy for dinners. My "orchard" is still in its infancy - I got one cherry off my cherry tree and one raspberry off the raspberry bush. To be fair the cherry tree was planted a year ago so is still very young and the raspberry bush is probably about six months old.

I'll be posting some ideas for frugal, yummy meals for one soon so keep an eye out for that. Hope you are all having a great start to 2010 - I know I am.

Broody chooks

We have four lovely chooks who, until recently, provided us with all the eggs we needed plus some surplus. But one by one they all went broody. My knowledge of chooks is not great - I rely heavily on the internet for information. I also asked around my friends and family for advice. My understanding of this whole broody thing is that the chooks go through a hormonal thing and decide it's time to have some chicks. In our situation that is really not going to happen especially given that we have no rooster. But our four lovely chooks obviously didn't know that and spent nearly all of their time snuggled down in the nesting boxes - and not producing any eggs. After asking around we finally found a solution that has worked. We blocked off the nesting boxes from the rest of the coop for two days.

The picture below shows my four girls looking distinctly grumpy sitting on their perch.



They seemed to feel this was cruel and unusual punishment but once we unblocked the nesting boxes their whole mood was different - they were back to scratching around in the grass, eating well and happily clucking. And the best result is that today we had an egg! Yay! At least we now know what to do.

Wooohooooo!

We have exciting news! Today our chooks have produced our first egg! Here it is!


As you can see from the picture it's a little on the small size but that's ok. It's also a lovely shade of blue - real cute.

Felix gave us a hand finding the egg. He's real helpful like that.


Right now this little egg is the most expensive egg I have ever had so we are looking forward to plenty more.

New Arrivals

We've taken delivery of our four new "girls" - four young chickens (hopefully all girls but apparently you can't tell until they are older). At least three of them are too young to lay eggs yet but I am hoping the biggest, older one will start producing once she settles into her new home.

So here is the coop I bought off Trade Me



And here a couple of photos of the girls - we have three different breeds (don't ask me what they are though).

Exciting news!

Well I think this is exciting news - my youngest son doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm though.

We are getting some hens! I've ordered a purpose-built coop from our local (New Zealand) internet auction site so I am hoping it will get delivered real soon. A friend of mine has a lifestyle block and has different breeds of hens as well as ducks. She has said I can buy some hens from her so I will be getting that organised as soon as we have the coop all setup. The coop is large enough for up to 5 hens.

Once we are up and running I'll post a photo and let you know their names. :)