Change in the weather

OK so this entry is just a blatant excuse to post this cute picture of Boss ( and yes she is moulting!) attempting to shield her over-sized brood from the breeze on a chilly summer's night last weekend. The babies, despite losing their fluff seem to have been in no hurry to feather up, meaning it was all a bit of a shock to the system.

Where in the world would you have a week that started with a 39 degree day followed by a 20 degree day, then some other random in between days in the 20's finally ending with a 40 degree day...Welcome to Melbourne...

While the animals and plants must be confused, I am just thankful we have managed to escape the worst of the heat wave that has recently enveloped the rest of the country. Stay cool everyone.

The chook saga

Its been a bit of  roller coaster on the chook front over the past few months.... first came sadness, then anticipation, then relief and joy and happiness.

Sadness because  a few months ago our girl Spazz passed away. Something not quite right had been going on for quite a while, sadly something that not even a drive across town to the bird vet and a bill to match could solve. We watched her slowly losing her rough and tumble snatch and grab approach to life. I knew thing were drawing to an end when our other chook Boss also figured out something was wrong and pecked and kicked her away. She died peacefully on a beautiful spring day and  I buried her in the spot where she had dug and scratched the native violets out of existence.

The question came next as to what to do with Boss. Chooks are flock birds and don't live happily alone. At that time of year its practically impossible to find large 'point of lay pullets' as the year's crop has just finished hatching. But Boss had one thing on her mind apart from laying eggs and that was sitting on them.

It 6 of her own eggs to get her to bed down overnight on her clutch and we were ready and waiting. A quick trip out to her home farm at  Bannockburn to collect a precious cargo of 8 fertilised eggs.

Boss sat tight for days on end and we changed her name to 'Miss Clucky Mama'. She only ventured off for 10 minutes to eat, drink, drop a big steaming pile of chicken manure, engage in  power dust bath before bolting back to the nest.

21 days later and the wait was over..... five perfect little hatchlings poked out one at time from a protective 'mum' (we found earlier that 3 of the eggs  were most likely unfertilised and were not developing).

"Hello baby"- still a bit dazed and confused following the arrival of chick number 1

Locked up with the brood.

At first everyone was confined to an enclosed nest box area but within a week poor boss suffered 'cabin fever' with five little ones under her feet and took them all downstairs. They haven't looked back since!

First venture into the veggie patch

As I am sitting here typing 5 little scruffy little things (they look like feathered baby dinosaurs) are rampaging round the yard  scratching and digging running poor Boss ragged in their constant hunt for bugs and seeds.

At home in the garden

With one confirmed baby rooster (hes got attitude already) and another one or two possibles, I am doing my best to visualise tasty roast chicken and how when to dispatch..... (will keep two pullets as friends for boss)

Junior rooster (centre) One month old today! he's already lived longer and happier than an average KFC bucket!

Holidays

I am currently enjoying the last day of a very nice trip up to the far north coast of NSW. We have spent the last week holidaying (about and hour and half south of Byron Bay) in the sleepy village of Iluka on the mouth of the mighty Clarence River. It's a southerners vision of the ideal holiday - days on the beach spent in  (almost) tropical climes - so its kind of ironic that yesterday while poor Melbourne and the rest of the country sweltered we were practically the coolest place in the country!

I do feel extremely blessed! Free access to holiday home (once a home for a time for my late Grandmother) and hoping that the poor garden and the pets are being nursed through the heatwave by poor Naoko (a Japanese student who's kindly house sitting and has probably done more plant watering in two days than she ever thought possible).

Whenever I travel to regional Australia or even to my parents home in Canberra (where everything endures the trip down from Sydney and suffers for it!) I am always reminded how lucky I am to live in a capital city and have access to cheap and fresh vegetables and produce. Thanks to the domination of the big two supermarket giants and their insistence on centralised purchasing through the capital centres, travel outside Sydney and Melbourne away from the wholesale markets and suddenly the price of supermarket  fresh food goes up and the freshness goes down. On the way up here I was greatly excited to stumble upon a farmers market when we made a quick pit stop in the town of Glen Innes. Talk about amazing fresh bargains! $3  for a dozen free range eggs, $1 for a bag of the tastiest kipfler potatoes, $2 for a bag of fresh beans and $1.50 for fresh zucchini! Almost as good as home grown!

My partner 'G' (bless him) has been busy getting in touch with his inner hunter, wading out in the shallows  of the river each night armed with nothing but a torch and a hand spear.... when the wind has been behaving he's been bring home fresh flatheads to add with my vegies.  I am approving of this more 'sustainable' approach to fishing as it not only is it putting food on the table but its also putting a end to my usual concerns about his amateur fishing... spend $10 on bait... (that had to be fished from somewhere not necessarily sustainable).... and come home with nothing.

I wanted to upload a picture representing the simplicity of holiday life....... freshly caught flathead fillets with steamed vegies (complete with daggy melamine crockery that finds its way into every holiday home). Unfortunately the telstra 4G thingo is not cooperating with blogger so for now you will need to imagine!

Found objects

The other week I was excited to read an article in the garden column titled 'Find and ye shall reap' featuring the garden of Millie Ross, a researcher for ABC's Gardening Australia and author of a new book called the 'Thrify Garden'.

Since becoming a chook owner (well actually if I am being honest with myself even BEFORE becoming a chook owner) I have pretty much given up on the idea of having a Jamie Juriesque designer style garden. While I never felt the need to try and create a corner of Tuscany, a balinese temple or a Japanese zen gardn in my backyard I have still sadly lamented my seeming lack of any gardening design skills.  The addition of the chooks  really just sealed the fate of my garden remaining a kind of hodge podge of whatever plants can survive being dug up, trampled and pecked combined with a range of random treasured objects I inherited from the house's previous owners, pulled out of skips, have taken off nature strips or have been gifted by others who had in turn done the same thing. I refer to it as my shabby chic garden style that now has now officially been validated by Millie Ross's article and book launch as what I hope will become hip new urban trend.

Here's a couple of my favourite pieces:



Recycled Tasmanian apple crates off a nature strip  (came complete with their original consignment labels). I bought plastic storage tubs that would fit inside. As these weren't intended for outdoor use and unlikely to be made from UV stablised plastic we gave them a quick lick of left over exterior paint from another reno job.



I got these bamboo cupboard doors off a nature strip when I was renting around ten years ago. They came with me to the new house and although they are pretty much reaching the end of their lives now, they have spent many years as an interesting 'design feature' on the fence and serving a useful purpose holding up seasons worth of snow peas and climbing beans.

Digressing slightly to one of my favourite soap boxes (or antique apple boxes) I also hope that the certain certain council officers presiding over both Millie's  and my neck of the woods had a chance to see the article and consider reversing their stupid draconian hard waste laws- that essentially make creating a shabby urban recycled oasis pretty much illegal. Both for anyone putting out items onto a nature strip for re-use and upcycling (that's illegal dumping) and for collecting items (that's illegal scavenging). In council eyes - all the items in my backyard (and no doubt many appearing in Millies book) should have been booked into a pre-arranged hard waste collection, arranged inside the property boundary no earlier than 24 hours prior to the set day, collected, munched up in a garbage compactor truck and dumped into landfill at a $100 a tonne -charged to me the rate-payer - Seriously- where is the fun (or sustainability) in that!



The illegal corner of scavenging sin! 2x antique ladders from a skip and nature strip (note the one on the right is serving as kind of  anti chook protective arrangement around my Japanese burdock plant at the moment). My potting table was created from a work bench left behind by the previous owners and timber platform type arrangement that was dumped with the apple crates. The fish tank was also on a nature strip- I use it as a kind of mini glass house arrangement for my seedlings- even with the the top off it helps to keep the wind out and the warmth in. Incicdentally the slighty wonky ceramic pot in the foreground  (with the lemongrass I got for free from the Maidstone produce swap) only cost me $2 at the Bunnings 'Quick panic! Masters Home Improvement is opening up next door' sale.

Spring into summer

Well somehow spring came and went and I found myself in what feels like the middle of summer.
Is it just me - or is time somehow being condensed so that an hour is no longer really an hour? I swear I haven't been watching extra TV, I have not been logging into Facebook,I HAVE  been busy at work - but I am always rushing out the door to make my train, yet more than a month has come and gone since I was away and I feel like I have achieved strangely little.....

Its been a slow transformation but I think I am nearly there.....

Out with the daikon that bolted while I was away before I had time to harvest and enjoy, replaced with tomatoes, eggplants and FINALLY if I get around to it the capsicum patiently waiting to be plated out (thankfully I left two of last year's which have already bounced back nicely with a heavy burst of buds).

The raspberries had a fantastic flush of flowers a month or so back- but sadly a combination of hot dry weather, I suspect rats and birds have somewhat diminished the harvest compared to last year's bounty

I picked the last of the snow peas which succumbed early to mildew and tried my first crop of broad beans (yep I will definitely be adding them again). 

Sadly my attempt at growing cabbage in the front garden was a dismal failure- black aphids and snails. My garlic also let me down (a dry spring?). But the cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) that was stripped back to the stems by my feathered raiders recovered nicely... It's been resistant to bolting so I have been enjoying it sauteed with garlic, roast pumpkin (gleaned from fellow gardeners at the Maidstone produce swap) tossed through pesto spaghetti with a bit of free range bacon and Meredith marinated goats cheese. YUM!

Gardening in the Solomons

I am lucky enough to have just spent nine days on a tropical island.

This is Uepi Island. It's located in the Marovo Lagoon, the world's largest saltwater lagoon, situated towards the north-eastern end of the Solomon Islands. Getting there is a 3 hour flight from Brisbane to the capital of the Solomons, Honiara. From there (if you are lucky and there's a plane in working order) it's a 1 hour flight to the nearest airstrip at Seghe (in the central part of the lagoon) followed by a 30min boat trip through the lagoon and out to the island.

Of course gardening isn't it exactly what took me there........

rather..... the opportunity to indulge in one of my other (some may say, more extreme) hobbies

 

Although divers are generally a hardy lot, its kind of a sad state of affairs that you need to travel to some of the world's most remote locations to experience pristine reef systems as they are meant to be.  At the same time however it is an opportunity to provide an income to local people and provide reason for them to do their best to protect their local reef.

Wherever you go in the world it seems there's  one thing that a diving holiday revolves around (apart from diving) and that's eating........

Lunch is served: freshly baked bread rolls, satay chicken, green papaya salad, melon, paw paw and pineapple.

 In the Marovo lagoon, there are few shops,no supermarkets and no commercial supplies of things we would take for granted (a barge does a supply run through the lagoon every week or so bringing with it things that can be found in the capital) so its quite a logistics exercise for the Island's managers, Jill and Grant to keep 20+ guests and 25 staff (50 in total over 2 weekly rotating shifts) fed and happy.

Fresh fish and seafood (mud crab and lobster are a daily feature of the menu) are purchased from local fishermen. Jill has a policy of buying only the more plentiful pelagic (ocean going) fish species to ensure those living locally on the reef are protected.

Chicken, eggs, fruit (paw paw, pineapple, banana, limes, passion fruit and fiberous pink grapefruits, ) as well as vegetables (some apparently grown to order) including beans, teeny tiny capsicums, eggplant, watercress, various versions of potato and pumpkin are all purchased from the local villagers. One of the more interesting additions to the menu was 'pucha' salad made from a type of fern (I have tried this in PNG as well). The fern fronds were blanched in coconut milk.

The island also has a kitchen garden, which Douglas the gardener kindly showed me around. Unlike the larger volcanic islands, where most of the lagoon's population lives (think rich red volcanic soils), Uepi is a coral atoll - so gardening with no soil is quite a challenge. Soil is made from composting kitchen scraps and breaking down coconut fibres. Rainfall is not a problem as the island gets 3 metres a year (mostly falling in the afternoon or at night).

Plants grown in raised planters and containers included:


coriander

a small leafed mint

spring onions

cucumbers

snake beans

Kitchen salad leaves are grown hydroponically with coconut husks providing a growing medium. (I am not sure what they leaves are- when I asked Douglas he told me it was 'salada' (?) and that it was an Asian vegetable).

Out the back there is also a garden patch with pineapples and pumpkins.

When preparing a garden bed with compost, a layer of coconut husks is placed over the top.

Apparently this helps stop the abundant population of local monitors from digging up the compost, because the smooth surface of the coconuts makes it harder for them to scratch. 

 

 

 

How hard can it be?

I believe in the potential for growing food in the suburbs- its one of the reasons I started my blog. With the World's population and demand for food growing, it's something that will become more important over time.

Often when walking around my neighbourhood I see run down weatherboards on big old blocks being knocked down to be replaced with paving and crowded townhouses. In a place where there were grapevines and fruit trees there are now black bricks and white stones. While that's not necessarily a bad thing (if it saves precious farmland further out) it seems a waste. I also look at some of the neglected or barren gardens of remaining homes and think that only people with a 'gardening liceense' (the enthusiasm and the willingness) to make the most of their land should be able to own the land that they do.

Constrained by my own limited patch shaded by trees (wildlife habitat) I have been thinking how to start my own suburban garden revolution. Here is the start of my journey.

This is the council owned block on land at the end of my ROW. The land used to be a road that ran through between two streets (where the silver shed is now). For years it has languished as a dumping ground and car park. The land can't be developed (council has tried that) because there are issues with access the ROW and the main sewer line that runs down it.

Lets turn this........

A little over year ago I decided I couldn't keep sitting around while there was a patch of unused gravel with vegetable growing potential. So I created a flyer outlining my vision for our very own neighbourhood community garden.

into this

After letterboxing 100 or so houses in surrounding streets I had just over ten households get in touch and want to get involved. Armed with this information I contacted council. Lucky for me council had just hired a 'community garden coordinator'. I waited a few months for her to start work and to figure out what she was supposed to be doing. Finally I arranged a meeting. The community garden coordinator suggested that in the first instance I would need to form an incorporated association with the neighbours (meaning we would need officer bearers and an AGM) at the same time we would also need to organise public liability insurance, oh and by the way as it was council land we wouldn't be able to fence it, meaning  by the way despite the hard work and financial contributions from a few neighbours the garden would be a free for all for the whole street. I explained as much as people were keen and had expressed an interest in a bit of fundraising and a few working bees to get the garden together that didn't seem like a fair deal.

The coordinator told me that anyway before any further decisions could be made by the council, the first priority was creating a 'Community Garden Policy' and this would most likely go to council in February. February came and went. The council meeting minutes said policy deferred until April. I can't remember what happened in April, but finally I got an invitation to attend a community gardens meeting. Probably the most tedious two hours of my life (will spare you the details) but the outcome being that council has realised people are interested in growing food on their nature strips so they decided to fund a 'planter box trial' for vegies in two suburban streets.There was no info on how the locations would be decided but thanks to a bit of extra persistence from some of the other interested neighbours, council decided that given the block was technically a 'roadside' they considered that a planter trial might be the best option. (this would also avoid the need for the incorporated association)

One more tedious 'community planter box trial' meeting and a rather interesting site meeting with local residents and it looks like council is funding the installation of eight professionally built planter boxes and a water tank to be topped up by council as required. (Individual residents had to fill out a planter box application forms and liability waiver and agree to abide by the planter box regulations- in order to maintain the planter maximum height restrictions no plants over 50cm high!).

I should be excited..... but somehow I feel a little deflated about my grand visions...if we are serious about transforming suburbs back into the food producing areas they once were......should it really take one person one year....and council a few thousand dollars (??) just to get eight planter boxes placed on a vacant block?!

Only time will tell what happens... will the garden grow and flourish, will the rest of the neighbours get involved or complain to council that they can no longer park there cars on the block... will I have a space to expand my vegie garden challenge without people stealing the spoils.... I don't know but I will keep you updated.