That's not busy...this is busy

We've been so busy on the farm the last few weeks it's been hard to find time to sit down and write.  I'm already hearing the BS detector go kapoing as I write this.  I can't really call myself busy when our little farm yard family are always at work.  Our chooks never take a day off.  They're up as soon as head rooster blasts them out of the pen and they don't stop until the sun sets and he says it's ok to go to bed.  They even forgive me when I'm late with the chook feed and come racing up to me with the oldest of the Wyandottes standing on my foot looking up as if to say 'where the bloody hell have you been?' I apologize and get last night's pasta out on the ground as quick as I can.  Whilst I was off being busy the apples trees have fruited their best to date with the green granny smith variety in bunches of two and three, and mostly free of moth and grub confinement.  A big thank you goes out again, to our chicken community.  I haven't had time to pick the capsicum and the plant now resembles a little christmas tree trimmed with dangling red ornaments like lanterns.  I know I need to get to the basil plant as it threatens the end of abundance with the seed flowers appearing with their mini wedding bouquet flowers.  I'll get to them and a pesto sauce will result with some recently salvaged almonds that the green parrots so kindly left for me.  Garden produce waits for no man, woman or chicken.  It's ready when it's ready and if you're not ready it's gone.

The Apple doesn't fall far from the crumble

I hand wrote out the Sally Wise Apple Crumble Recipe off the website.  If it's one thing I can't seem to master it's cooking from a computer.  I've got enough flour and nut particles lodged in my ipad device to cause considerable concern to a whole raft of food allergy suffers.  So resorting to the old methods I took great pleasure in spending a sunny afternoon picking apples from our variety unknown trees.  One of the trees only produces in green and is intending to stay that way so we'll call them Granny Smiths for the sake of a name.  This year we  pruned and watered, and the chooks put in a tireless effort in scratching for bugs and insects at the base of the tree.  And with much combined success this year we've been fruitful.  The odd grub has managed to somehow distract a scrounging chook and scurry up the tree but we can live with that by surgical removal.  Our local possum life have set off my car alarm in the middle of the night in the hope of bounding off the roof into the tree only to most likely be flung across the driveway with fright.  So the finished apple crumble was warmly welcomed with a large spoonful of vanilla ice cream melting across the top.  And using your own produce just makes it  feel all the more special.  Now I just need to conquer the almond tree before the green parrots do.

When you're a Jet

This is Harold.  He's one of the previous batch of chicks born and bred on our property.  We know he's a he because he acts like one, and the crowing was a bit of a give away.  Harold is a loner.  He won't assimilate with the rest of the chicken family.  He's broken away into his own gang and recruited a couple of the younger hens into his posse.  He's always in trouble and is constantly chased by Cyril our team leader rooster who pulls him by his feathers but cannot get him to join the group.  Cyril storms off spitting white down all the way back to the hen house.  We attempted to move Harold on before we even knew he was a Harold.  He was destined to move with three other chicks to a family nearby whose kids were excited about their new pets.  Harold busted out and took off before we could get him on the bus.  He trusts no one since that day.  He's cuts a lonely figure in the yard, living by his own rules.  If I found cigarette buts behind the fishing shed I'd suspect Harold.  His gang hang around as opposed to the energetic foraging done by the others.  They hang out in trees and look down on the others.  Their request for a pool table has been denied.  I'm not sure about Harold's future if the rumbles continue.  I've seen the likes of Harold's along the edge of highways.  They ignore the rattle and thunder of the early morning traffic as if they've turned their backs on civilisation.  They're chicken outlaws.  Prone to holding up wagon trains I suspect.  We can only hope that one day he'll grow up and turn out to be fine upstanding rooster as the others are.  Failing that we'll have a chicken stomping around our property in a leather jacket.