This little feller is a resident of the Sorell Farm School.  We recently were happy to find that the Farm School were willing to take our unwanted chickens regardless of sex or breed.  We had an oversupply of chicks born on our property over the summer and not being the sort of people to knock them on the head which was sadly suggested by some, we were happy to find them a farm that not only takes them and gives them to new homes, but also shows them as well.  This little guy was being trained to interact with new comers and sat perfectly still while I shoved my iPhone in his face.  I wanted a selfie but didn't want to push my luck, I could see he was getting a little tired of the attention. This farm school is a fantastic facility housing prized giant rabbits, rare breed chickens, and various livestock all to develop agricultural skills in kids.  It's so great to see that skills are learnt in all different forms nowadays.  Having grown up in the inner city suburbs of Melbourne, this was unheard of, and the only interaction you had with farm animals were the plastic ones you played with as a kid.  What ever did happen to Dobbin?  Moving on...so now when I drive past the school I feel like waving in their direction, knowing that our little feathered friends are doing well in their new home where they are checked and groomed by some really enthusiastic kids.  If they win any show prizes I'll take full credit, of course.

No doubting the Magnificant Max

Very proud of himself he was.  He's been watching the dishwasher for weeks.  He swears that something moved there.  He sat for hours at a time, waiting. And no one believed him.  Bennie would come in, sniff and walk away muttering that Max is delusional and the only thing that lives beside the stove is grease.  Thanks Bennie, cheers!!  So not wanting to dampen Max's enthusiasm, I placed a little piece of leftover cake on the floor to entice his alleged mouse out of hiding.  Bennie, in full support of the strategy, came over, ate the cake and walked off.  Tail wagging.  Max was annoyed.  Bennie just didn't understand the game plan.  So days, and then weeks passed.  Max dedicated lengthy afternoons to the watch.  He held his post amongst dinner preparations with the chopping of vegetables and the banging of pots, he still held his ground.  Somehow I knew that if anything was there, it surely wasn't going to poke its head out with someone in the kitchen wielding a cooks' knife, a dog diligently waiting for something yummy to fall from the bench and a cat, poised to pounce on anything that doesn't resemble diced onion.  We don't give Max much credit.  His experience of cat and mouse usually involves a toy stuffed mouse on the end of the string being dragged along the floor (like I've got time for this!!).  The sad part is he gets more excited by the string than the mouse.  So revenge was his at around 5am this morning when he ran across us in our bed with a somewhat live mouse in his mouth just to show us, to prove us wrong.  I heard thump, thump, and again, he bolts across the bed.  I knew what it was, just wasn't prepared to open my eyes to witness it.  Fortunately the Mr. of the house was responsible for ending the torturous activity and removing the evidence.  He's now asleep.  We'll not doubt him again.

Over here love, give us a smile darl...

Yes, I will admit it.  I went and saw the movie Chicken People on Saturday night.  Very funny.  It does help if you have a few of your own. It's a documentary style film about people who own or breed chickens and show them.  As with most 'show' people, they are highly competitive.  Who would have thought such power could be had as a poultry judge in determining the grand champion of all breeds.  I don't think my, less than perfect specimens could handle the stress somehow.  They certainly wouldn't be keen on being washed under the kitchen tap and then fluffed to perfection with a hair drier.  It's not that they are fussy, or wouldn't get out of bed for anything less than ten thousand bucks...I'm just not sure they'd give up the good life for the limelight.  Doris (pictured below) has a small following of course but not quite the standard for poultry papparazzi.  Most of ours prefer the country comforts to the more luxurious items like a wheelbarrow full of dead plants as the laying spot of choice in preference to the Bordeaux Grand Cru wine boxes in the hen house.  What, French Oak's not good enough?  The wheelbarrows of dried plants are plentiful at the moment with the severe lack of rain for this time of year.  I spent Sunday afternoon pruning some pretty dried looking lavenders that I'm hoping will hang in there through this odd winter.  The weeds barely put up a fight as they're on their last legs anyway and it's hard to tell what's just dormant for the winter or plain dead.  The rain clouds seem to bypasses our town on their way through to the south of the island or out to sea where the more dramatic of weather evens occur.  Though it's only Monday and the weather forecast is always positive - the radar only shows a few minor blemishes of cloud so I'm not very hopeful.  Although it's good news for Doris.  She hates getting her hair wet.

Crossbeak

This is Crossbeak.  He's my new little friend.  He was born this way and I'm not sure what happened to send his top beak in the wrong direction but he's a friendly little feller.  He struggles to eat off the ground so I hand feed him or let him eat out of a plastic container I use to throw seed around.  The other chooks don't seem to have much time for him (so judgemental) as he seems to be on his own for most of the time.  He follows me around a bit when I'm in the garden and he'll just pop up every now and again.  I was unpacking the groceries from the boot of the car the other day and I looked down and he was at my feet.  It's nice to be able to help out this little guy and we won't include him in any redeployments.  Minnie doesn't bother much with the chickens, or anything at all really, and will come out for a casual look for any mice under the hen house.  She'll tip toe around the chickens as she's a bit wary of some of some of the bigger ones.  Although she's got her work cut out for her right now with the current mouse plague.  The cold weather has brought them all out of their frozen apartments.  Don't they have heating?  Bennie and Minnie are doing their best to keep the numbers down but I'll consider a bird of prey if it gets much worse.  We've got a local neighbourhood hawk who conducts a low fly over every now and again but he's only a one bird operation and can only eat so much.  We might just have to cut back on the cat food for a little while, just to get Minnie a little more motivated.  Could take some doing!

Shanks, sheets, snow and fur

The front lawn is a crisp white with winter well and truly here.  You feel sorry for the plants as the harsh frost must slap them in the face pretty hard.
Last weekend we came back from an overnight trip to Strahan and came via Lapland (pictured).  Or so it seemed. It was thick white snow on pine trees that just says Christmas, or not!  No carols to be had we took our photos in the sludge and took off, slowly.  The days are bright but the sun just can't muster enough warmth to go around.  It's a short day and the warmth only stays around for a short time as our family of chickens make the most of it.  The wood fire goes on, and on and it's a bit like the eternal flame as each cold night rolls into a freezing morning.  The slow cooker kicks into slow gear for a good eight hours with some browned off shanks that look more like they came from something prehistoric rather than something lamb like.  But come dinner time we'll be grateful for the dark red, Chianti soaked meat that could be 'cut with sigh' to quote Matthew Evans. Now we're past the winter solstice we can look to the warmer weather.  Just not any time today.  Our outdoor cat Minnie launches out of her bed in the shed for meals only and indoor Max has his behind permanently embedded, in ours.  We're at the point now where all of our sheets now appear to be flannelet, with a fur coating on them that doesn't come off in the wash.  The hardest part is going out to feed the chickens.  Their water bowl has a layer of ice on it and if you get it on your hands it stings, particular for someone like me with hands like raw filo pastry.  And it's really just the beginning.

Midsommer Murders have nothing on this place

While Max considers the dinner arrangements, I'm out there committing random acts of violence on his behalf.  Keeping chickens also means keeping rats,  I've discovered.  They'd taken up residence under the chook pen and were only discovered by our yard patrolling Cocker Spaniel inspector Bennie.  Chief farmer and husband decides to put rat bait under the hen house far out of reach from anyone other than a rat.  The plan appeared to work, until today.  One delirious and not at all well looking rodent ventured out to escape the scene of its not such a good idea last meal.  And of course Bennie found it.  Bennie doesn't quite know what to do with it and as chief mouser was still tucked up in her flannelet high vis jacket laden bed, she offered no instructions.  Ordinarily Minnie would hunt out the mice and direct them into the courtyard where she can share the game with Bennie.  They go halves.  Not as in, here I'll play with it and then you can play next, it's more, here's your half.  That game usually ends pretty abruptly.  So no Minnie to instruct, Bennie keeps barking at the toxic rodent and I'm worried he's going to pick it up and bite into it.  So I quickly pick up a nearby shovel.  And I'm not a shovel wielding kind of person either.  I hate violence.  I can't watch anything more violent on TV than really old James Bond films where baddies just fall to the wayside.  So with a heavy blow I land the rat enough spade to cease its pain.  And then sincerely apologise to it.  But it just looked at me with tail and legs still twitching.  I apologise again, and repeat the blow.  This time a few less twitches but not the intended outcome.  Jeez, this is hard for me you know!!  I'm not sure if I'm more horrified at my pummelling an unfortunate creature to death or the fact that I'm incapable of even doing that.  Struggling to keep Bennie as a spectator, when he's back is turned I swiftly shovel up the almost dead rat and fling it over the fence into the bushes to die a less eventful death.  And I stop apologising. I can't be sorry for something that I didn't completely. do.  Two cats you say!!!

Apples keep coming

Apple season rolls on.  Ruth at the monthly Bream Creek Farmers Market has some of the best pink lady apples around.  At the Farm Gate market the couple from down south might still have some Geeveston Fanny's but you can only have what they've picked the night before.  We've been loading our crisper with freshly picked apples now from about March.  Including our own, home grown provided we got there before the grubs.  Given our large chicken population in the garden, I was surprised that the local moths even had the nerve quite frankly.  Knowing that apples lose their love in the fridge, we're doing apples every way and every day including sliced matchsticks on yoghurt for breakfast topped with home made toasted honey and oats, coconut and hazelnuts, we're eating apple teacake courtesy of the Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook, even without the 1970's burnt orange and lime tiled kitchen to match.  An apple and blueberry crumble will make a showing again for dessert tomorrow with Ruth's tombolla sized blueberries she's still picking off the bush from down Huon way.  Being a colder climate down in the Huon Valley I suspect there's no need to cold store fruit there, you just leave it on the trees and eventually it will freeze.  It was a tiny two degrees as I headed off to an appointment yesterday morning.  I put on my hand knitted scarf that is half scarf half blanket and headed into town.  Hobartians have heaters of every sort for every occasion.  The only weird thing is that they don't call it air conditioning, they call it a heat pump.  Known to me as a split system heating cooling air conditioning unit, they say they only ever use it for heat, so that's why.  A tradesman once entered my Hobart office and said he'd come to fix the heat pump.  I said good luck finding it, looking around for some kind of plumbing apparatus.  He must have thought I was completely clueless given I was sitting under the wall mounted heater.  Lost in translation, not to worry.  Now back to those apple recipes.