Remember these guys? These adorable little balls of fluff?
Look at them now! All grown up.
We have still have all 12 that hatched - even the little runty one made it through! 11 Australorps and 1 Barred Plymouth Rock. We're still trying to figure out which are hens and which are roosters...we know for sure that the Plymouth Rock is a rooster - he may be the smallest but is he is definitely the boss and stands proud on the roost in the morning and crows his little heart out...well, sort of!...
What do you do when you have a few days off work, the sun is shining, the garden needs to be weeded and the house needs to be cleaned?
Build an extremely adorable, rustic shelf out of old fencing battens of course!
I had been feeling creative and collected a few old battens from up the farm a few weeks earlier but couldn't decide what to do with them. I then saw a couple of beautiful coloured ladder type shelves in a shop next to my work...but with a price tag of $145 on them! So I thought, surely I can build one of those...and by "I" I mean Josh. 😀
And I was totally surprised by how easy it was! Ok, so it probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as easy if I was attempting to do this on my own but lucky for me I have a clever DIY man around the house. And I was not going to turn down his offer of help.
Within about an hour and a half we went from this...
to this...
to this!
We gave it a bit of a waterblast to wash off the wear and tear...I thought it added character but when we decided to put guest towels on it we thought we should clean it up...guests, you're welcome. And just like that...instant super cute and actually quite useful shelf. All it took was about 12 battens and 30 screws at a grand total cost of around $5. Not bad for a bit of afternoon DIY!
It's the middle of summer here, and for us that means trips to the beach, spending time with family and friends, and eating. A lot. And mostly snack food. We are BIG fans of cheese platters in particular...crackers, pate, relishes and lots of delicious cheese. I recently had my mind absolutely blown by a combination that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Blue cheese and fruit paste. It was amazing! The saltiness of the blue cheese combined with the sweetness of the fruit paste...a match made in heaven!
But when you're paying $8+ for a nice blue cheese and $7 for a 100g pack of fruit paste...it's turning into a pricey little platter! So in the spirit of the homemade challenge I thought I would attempt a fruit paste...I'll leave the blue cheese to the professionals! We had tried a few different fruit pastes...fig, quince, pear...so I opted for the most readily available, and familiar - pear. ...
*Please note this post does contain some slightly graphic images of the process so if you are squeamish, maybe just scroll through the pictures really fast!
Well it's only taken me another 8 weeks to write this post so here goes. The business end of raising chicks for meat. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about having to kill the chicks that we had raised from 1 day old but I was absolutely fine. I think knowing right from the start that the purpose of these birds was for meat made it much easier. And I was looking forward to my roast chicken!
We 'graduated' the chicks in 2 batches as it is quite a lengthy process by the time you cull, pluck, gut and clean - first time we only did 3, and then the other 8. They all weighed in at just over 3kg which we were very happy with.
Firstly, we had made sure not to feed the chickens for about 12 hours before we were going to process them - this just makes it less messy from the gutting point of view. We picked the first chicken out of the paddock and took it to the cone that we have attached to a tree. Josh used a knife to cut the throat and we let the chook bleed out which only took a few minutes. This is an important step in the process as if not bled out, the birds have a tendency to bruise in the plucker....
Update September 2020: I now exclusively use the water bath method for canning/bottling everything as an extra layer of food safety. I will be updating instructions over the next few months to share how I do that. I have never had any problems bottling them this way but now prefer the water bath method in terms of ease and having a higher success rate with jars sealing. Laura
I love beetroot...a lot. I like it roasted, in chutney, just plain old boiled with a dollop of sour cream on top. And out of a can. A bit of beetroot takes a plain old summer salad to a whole new level. So when I pulled the last of my baby beets out of the garden, the natural step was to put them in a jar.
And turns out it is easy peasy! A lady from work gave me a recipe and I couldn't believe how simple it was. Peel and cut beetroot. Boil for 10 minutes. Add vinegar, sugar, salt & cloves. Put in jar. Done.
Amazing!
And let me tell you. There is NO comparison to the limp, bland beetroot that comes in a tin from the supermarket. Don't get me wrong, I won't turn up my nose at it, but this homemade version is just so much better! Big thick chunks of beautiful deep red beets in liquid that is the perfect combination of tangy and sweet with just a little hint of spice....
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. We certainly did, we were missing my little sister who is in France but we still had a great day. I got new gumboots...SO EXCITING!! And I'm being serious! I also got Disney PJ's which got a response that could rival winning Lotto. I'm still not sure if I'm 26 years old or 6...apparently I'm quite confused!
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Merry Christmas Eve!
I am so excited I can barely contain it...and even more excited about the fact that I still love Christmas as much as I did when I was a kid!
I was feeling a little funny about Christmas up until a few days ago. I feel like I'm in that weird transitional period where I'm not a kid anymore and neither is anyone in mine or Josh's immediate family, but we don't have kids of our own yet. Enter, the weird "grown-up Christmas".
And then I realised that I should be excited. This is the time that Josh and I get to start making our own traditions, things that we will do with our kids and families for the next LOTS of years! Cue excitement. And Christmas cookies!
These came from Annabel Langbein who is somewhat of a domestic goddess in NZ. And they are DELICIOUS! And make the house smell oh-so-Christmassy! (Recipe below)
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We have babies! Little feathery babies that look like they could be closely related to penguins, but babies nonetheless! And it happened FAST!
I got home from work and went to have a little peek, spotted half an eggshell in the corner and heard a little "cheep cheep cheep" and there was our first hatched chick! Within an hour there were 3 more and in a couple of days we were the proud parents of 12 little chickys! I can't explain how exciting it was after waiting for almost 3 weeks and being able to see them breaking through the shells! We left them in the incubator for about 24 hours to give them time to dry out and rest up in the warmth before moving them into their new home under the brooder.
Unfortunately 2 chicks didn't hatch but I think 12/14 is a pretty good strike rate with incubated eggs. They are all black or dark grey except for this little grey one - I think he is the other breed!
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We are hatching chicks! Bringing home day old chicks wasn't enough for us so we decided to take it a step further and bought an incubator! We have 14 eggs and for 18 days now we have been patiently waiting for the little guys to break free.
Our incubator is fully automated so you put the eggs in the little trays, set the temperature and leave them to it - the incubator turns the eggs for you.
At 10 days you candle the eggs in order to see how many are actually in the process so that you can remove the undeveloped eggs. As you can imagine leaving a regular egg in an environment that is around 38°C with about 55% humidity is not going to end well! I had no idea how we would be certain if there were chicks growing inside until this happened...
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We had a bit of an up and down week here this week.
Last weekend we "graduated" 3 of our biggest white chickens. More on this later but let me just say that Josh's plucking machine is probably the greatest thing he's built. What a time saver! We have 8 chickens left that weren't quite big enough for our liking so they will wait for another week or 2. We have one rooster though who has suddenly decided that he would quite like to be a rooster...it is HILARIOUS! You know that scene in the Lion King where Simba is trying to roar and all the hyenas are laughing at him because it is so pathetic? That is pretty much what is going on with our rooster!
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Given that the chicks (not that they are really chicks anymore) are pretty much fully grown I thought I'd share something different this week.
This is how we weigh them. In a bucket, sitting on my kitchen scales that are wrapped in a plastic bag. Genius!
It worked a treat when they were small...now they don't really fit in the bucket and we have to hold them in while at the same time trying to not put extra weight on my little scale. Tricky! This guy weighs 2.8kgs.Looks like roast chicken to me!...
I can't tell you too much about what was happening on the homestead this weekend as we had a rare weekend away. Josh had been looking for a 4WD ute for quite some time and he finally found one...only hitch was, it was in Christchurch. For those of you not familiar with New Zealand geography let me give you a quick lesson...we are in the top half of the North Island, Christchurch is almost halfway down the South Island!
And so we went on an adventure. Saturday morning bright and early we flew from Auckland (thanks to Josh's amazing parents who took us to the airport at an ungodly hour) to Christchurch. We made the deal, dropped the old owner at his house and started our journey home. I always knew we lived in a pretty amazing place but I have a whole new appreciation for how beautiful our country is after spending the weekend driving about half the length of it.
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Week 9 and we're getting close to D-Day now! We weighed a few of the chicks and they are ranging from 1.8kg to a whopping 2.4kg! We're not sure yet if we will go with an age or a weight when we "graduate" the chicks...watch this space!
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I am pleased to say I was MUCH better at keeping track of the chickies this week! They are now 8 weeks old, weighing around 2kg and are HUGE!!
After deciding last week to plateau their feed we have upped it to 130 grams per bird, per day. While we don't want to be funnelling food into them, this particular breed is designed to gain weight rapidly so we figured we should make the most of this. We don't want to run the risk of leaving them too long and the meat becoming too tough.
We have 2 separate feeders in the paddock now as they are too big to fit around the 1 and go CRAZY when the crumbs are poured in. I'm talking extreme squawking, and full on attacking of each other...nicely though!
They're not too bothered by the laying hens next door - they just occasionally check them out and keep them in line!
I have to admit, we've failed a bit at our chicken farming this week...well, not actually at chicken farming - just at documenting it! We were away over the weekend and as a result completely forgot to weigh the chicks or take any new photos of them...whoops! You're really not missing out though...they look exactly the same...just bigger! At my guess they are probably weighing in at about 1.5kg each.
We have leveled out their feed supply this week. They will now continue to be fed 100 grams each per day. This seems to be a good amount as it is not so much that they are gorging themselves, but enough that they are continuing to gain weight at a reasonable rate.
I can tell you though that our guess of only one rooster in the bunch seems to have been wrong. There is at least one other...he has just been a little slower to develop!
They are still happily living in their little run and are absolutely loving their big fancy coop. I'll leave you with this picture...hard to believe only 7 weeks ago they looked like this!
I am a big breakfast eater. Some people can't eat in the morning - I can't function if I don't eat breakfast within about 30 minutes of my feet hitting the floor. If I had it my way I would eat waffles, pancakes or eggs benedict everyday but really, I don't have enough time during the week for that sort of carry on. And did I mention that chocolate chip pancakes are my favourite? Not the healthiest option for everyday!
I want something tasty for breakfast that is going to keep me going, be quick to prepare and not equal my body weight in sugar. My answer - homemade muesli!
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So much for a 50/50 chance of hens or roosters. It would seem that we have 11 hens and 1 rooster - how ideal would that be if we were raising layers! We're actually pretty happy about this though, as last time we had 2 hens and 2 roosters and found that the hens meat, particularly the breasts were bigger and more tender than the roosters. Makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it!
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One of my favourite things is the smell of freshly baked bread - there is something about it that is so inviting. And I think that farmhouse kitchens and freshly baked bread go together so well! Like peanut butter & chocolate, Ross & Rachel, BBQ's & beer...you get the idea.
One of my absolute favourite kinds of bread to make and eat is focaccia bread. It is not difficult to make and is so versatile - you can eat it for any meal of the day and add whatever toppings you have on hand. It's the perfect accompaniment to a summer BBQ, a winter soup or just as a snack.
You do have to plan ahead to make this bread as the total time from start to finish is about 3 hours, however the majority of the time is spent waiting for the bread to rise. Perfect if you are throwing a dinner party.
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I can't believe the chicks are 5 weeks old already! And they are really starting to look like chickens now. They have had a major growth spurt this week. From weighing 600 grams each last week they are now weighing in at around 800-900 grams.
Over the week we increased their feed from 70g to 80g each per day. They are now eating NRM Meat Bird Crumble. The Chick Starter Crumbles were great when they were little as it is formulated to promote muscle, bone and feather development but the Meat Bird Crumble is full of protein and is specifically to aid rapid weight gain. Not that we are in the "fatten them up as fast as we can" camp but we don't want to leave them too long either. We put a lot of thought and research into when we changed their feed over...just kidding...we ran out of chick crumbs! ...
Aside from doing a fabulous job farming our little block, Josh also works on his parents farm. Lambing is all done and dusted but this weekend marked the beginning of the calving season.
I love helping out on the farm in the weekends...especially when I get to check out these cuties! This little girl was only a few hours old when we saw her.
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The chicks have a new home! By this point last time we only had 4 chickens so there was plenty room in the coop but with 12 bodies in there, space was a little tight! Lucky for our chooks Josh had been hard at work building the cutest darn coop around!
The chicks are now between 530 and 600 grams each and are eating 70 grams of the Chick Starter crumble each per day. They have lots of feathers and we have turned the brooder off as they are capable of keeping themselves warm now. ...
I LOVE this time of year! The cold dark days of winter have gone and suddenly everything is coming to life again.
Our animals are looking great, we've had a few beautiful sunny (and even warmish) days, and things in the garden are beginning to look alive. The polytunnel is definitely proving itself - we even have our first red strawberry (my FAVOURITE!) which is amazing given that it's only September!
Our oak tree has turned from a big gnarly brown stick monster into hundreds of green shoots within a week. ...
Our baby chicks are not really babies anymore! They are mostly covered in feathers and some are starting to grow the combs on their heads. And if I'm being totally honest - they're not particularly cute anymore either. Actually, they're borderline ugly! They kind of look like mini chickens now as opposed to little yellow fluff balls.
They are growing fast, but all at quite different rates now. Their weights are really varied - from 280g - 400g. I'm not sure if some of them are faster eaters so are getting more food or if that's just how they grow! ...
13 chicks in the spare room right through the wall from our room got old fast! At the tender young age of 2 weeks old, our little chicks were moved outside into their new home.
They now have more room to run around and they have learnt how to fly up onto the perch and balance. We've had a few nice days and they love snuggling up together in the sun....
