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.

Sounds of the season

I've only just adjusted to Autumn, and just now they're telling me that winter starts next week.  I'm not ready.  I'm still admiring the golden leaves on the oak tree in the front of our property that's over 100 years old and the dampness of the grass on the ground.  The chooks are finally laying eggs again which means we don't have to go shame faced to the egg sellers at the farmer's market every week.  Our friendly beaked community are more prepared for the weather than I am.  They've allocated laying boxes and found perches around the garden when there is no room at the inn.  The lavender bushes are slightly flattened where they've rested weary feathered bottoms at night and the top of the veggie patch polly tunnels have provided a rooftop view for our guinea fowl.  It's a funny sight of an early evening when I step outside the back door with chook feeding container in hand to see about thirty birds rushing towards me like long lost friends.  And whilst I used to think it was just about food, now I'm not so sure. Last Sunday we had a mild, sunny day and spent most of it doing jobs around the garden.  I ventured out to the back paddock in the early afternoon and perched myself on the old wooden picnic table.  It's a lovely look out towards the green hills up the back and you could almost imagine you are all alone.  Very peaceful.  And after a few moments I was joined by head rooster Cyril (pictured above).  He jumped up onto the table and sat beside me on my left.  And then one of our Wyandotte hens also jumped up on the table on my right side and stood there, with us all looking out at the view.  It was quite a moment shared.  There's so much more to the interaction between us and animals but I guess sometimes we rush around so much it goes unnoticed.  I'm only beginning to understand the different noises our birds make.  The guinea fowl have a few sounds, one resembling a rusty spring, and the other is someone trying to start a car, unsuccessfully.  The amount of rooster crows we hear is extraordinary, all different and one that actually even says 'cock a doodle do' like a human would.  Some of the younger ones don't quite reach pitch and some just sound rather painful.  So bring on winter.  I guess if the chooks are up for it then I am too.

That's not all wool...

Can sheep get too fat?  I understand the hungry argument for fat lambs but when they are pets stacking on the kilos, and visitors pass sheepish comments like 'they're certainly in good condition' we may just have a problem on our hands.  Our girls are expected to be heading for the maternity ward some time around Spring, and the plan is...or was, to shear them before they get too, ahem, big.  We may be too late.  They're barrels already.  When it comes to rounding them up it's quite possible we will need to replace the sheepdog with a forklift.  They've been very successful in extracting grain on a regular basis from husband and head farmer, and our generous neighbour recently flung them a hay bale which is now not much more than a few straws.  Rambo our visiting Ram (left) is two weeks away from the end of his vacation on our farm and I suspect it's going to take some doing to get him to go home.  He'll not want to get into that Ute because he knows that life on this farm is pretty damn fine.  He's been hand fed apples and has enjoyed the warmth of a purpose built sheep shack with water views and soft furnishings (old wool).  And Lambie (fourth from the left) belongs next door and is now too big to be hoisted back over the fence.  It is quite a sound when they come thundering up to you thinking you have food to offer.  A bit like a herd of wildebeest thumping through the paddock.  Can't be good for the foundations though.