Autumn Colours

Sydney is not known for its autumn colours – and for very good reason – there aren’t any native deciduous trees here so we don’t get leaves turning red and gold before dropping. Of course Aussies have introduced any number of deciduous trees and so we can get glimpses of leaf-changing-beauty. But this year even that has failed to impress. The autumn has been too mild and, no cold snap, no colours.

On the left is my Japanese Maple - it should be a gorgeous red by now. The leaf litter is from my flowering fruit (apricot?) tree. The leaves didn’t even turn yellow, they just fell off and withered on the ground.

However, I don’t want to imply that my garden is totally lacking in colour. Here are a few snaps I took this morning of some of the bright spots surrounding my house.

Shrimp Plant

Not the burnt red of a maple leaf, but some of the flowers in my garden are sporting their own fiery colours.

Cosmos

Nasturtium

Reds and Pinks abound as well.

Poinsettia

Rose

Trees and smaller flowers.

Camellia

Geranium

Edibles and bulbs.

Chilli

Daffodils

And a magnificent “weed”. At least it just appeared on its own and my half-hearted attempts at eradicating it from my agave plants have proven a waste of time.

It’s pretty hard to complain about the lack of colour in my suburban Sydney garden when this isn’t the full complement of blooms and showy-leaved plants I can see out of every window. Who needs the fresh green of spring and the dramatic displays of maples in autumn when you have this kind of show all year round?

Clever (or perhaps dumb) Trick

We have two types of watering systems for our chickens.

The first one is the store-bought waterer that keeps the water clean but doesn’t have much depth for them to drink from.

The second option is one Frank made out of an empty milk jug.

This milk jug waterer has an identical twin. We hang one in the standard chicken run and the second in the holiday-run.

Without a doubt, the chooks much prefer the cheap, but deeper, milk-jug-come-wide-open-drinking-trough. When we open the coop in the morning, they often run to the milk-jug for a good drink even though the store-bought waterer has been in the coop with them all night.

Unfortunately, Isabel is showing signs of being dissatisfied with both types of watering systems. I think she wants one of those nipple drip systems where the chickens can peck at a bottle and a drip of water comes out. Maybe that’s what she had before we adopted her? However she heard of them, she’s taken it on herself to convert the milk-jug into a drip system. When the jug is full (something I strive to maintain – especially since Isabel learned her new trick) she pecks at it and then turns her head upside down underneath it to catch the drips that run down after the water sloshes out. She’ll also stand under it when one of the other hens drinks and really likes it when I fill the jug to overflowing.

Clever chook or as thick as 2 planks?

Treasure Hunt

In preparation for a couple of new veggie beds, Frank has to move our olive tree (that’s the tiny tree behind him, over his right shoulder in this photo). It’s going into a pretty open space near the top end of our garden (we’re creeping our way up and I predict that in a few years there won’t be a blank space left).

When digging the new hole this morning, he found a treasure. That’s if you call one coin a treasure (and I do). He shouted that he found a 5 cent coin, but knowing the age of our house (1928) and the minting history of Australian coins (the pound was replaced by the dollar in the 60s) I guessed it was some sort of pence. He handed it over to me and I washed it in the watering can and, sure enough, a 1935 threepence coin emerged.

Our Monarch (then it was King George V) is on the front (obverse) and the Australian Coat of Arms is on the back (reverse).

I’ve since looked it up online to find it has $1.21 US worth of silver in it and it is worth about $2.00 on the open market. I still think it’s a treasure.

The chickens got into the spirit of the day by searching for more hidden treasure. Alas, they have yet to find any – or, if they have, they’ve eaten it.

Double Yolks

Yesterday I fried an egg for lunch. It was a large egg – sort of elongated and, lo and behold, there were 2 yolks. This is the 2nd time I’ve gotten a double-yolk egg from my chickens. Since I’ve collected 59 eggs so far and only about 1 in 1000 are supposed to be double, I’m doing well (assuming you like yolks).

Eggs apparently are more apt to contain double yolks when the hen has recently begun laying. There is also a chance that it’s a genetic thing so we might have a chook that lays doubles her whole life. I wouldn’t mind but I wonder if she would.

I’ve been tracking the weight and quantity of the eggs my chooks produce; the first double-yolker was 56 grams and I’m pretty sure it was Bronwyn’s 3rd egg (or Rosie’s or Isabel’s 2nd). This one was 66 grams (ouch – the average size is 48 grams so far) and probably about the 15th egg laid by whoever laid it.

I can think of 3 downsides to double-yolks:

1. It’s got to be harder on the hen to lay (and she must need to eat even more than normal – which is a whole lot).
2. Surely it messes up any recipe. (Does it have the same amount of white? This morning I made friands which called for 3 eggs, if one of them had a double yolk, would I only use 2 eggs?)
3. Each chicken has a fixed number of eggs to lay in their life. If they start doubling up, you get fewer eggs over the life of the hen. (Bummer.)

The upsides are:

1. Cool factor.
2. I like to dip my toast in runny yolks – double yolks, double dipping, double good.
3. Double yolks are supposed to bring good luck.

That’s 3 pros and 3 cons in the double-yolk debate so I get to cast the tie-break… I like them!

Winter Vegetable Garden

The 4 rows of vegetable beds are pretty full right now. They contain (top to bottom):

• Cauliflower, rocket, lettuce, radishes, peas
• Kohlrabi, kale
• Potatoes, silverbeet, basil (old and bountiful), cauliflower
• Eggplant, peppers, spinach, onions (all ancient and poor producers) and lettuce and rocket (I’m harvesting from these already)

Everything I’ve sown to date is in its final position which means my winter crop is well and truly on its way. I could probably squeeze in some spring onions with a little more chicken wire to protect  the eggplant bed, but that’s it. As much as it hurts, I need to stop sowing seeds.

Today I planted out the last crop – silverbeet – in the bed with the kitchen-reject potatoes (photo below), mulched it, protected it with chicken wire and filled the seed tray with more radishes. I figure there’s no point in leaving seed trays dormant if they can produce crops of radishes.

Frank has plans (which I strongly encourage) to make 2 more veggie beds for me above the others. When these appear I can think about adding a few more items to my winter veggie garden – or maybe that will be for the first spring plantings. I’ve got lots of seeds that aren’t being used and it makes me hungry just to think about them being dormant!

Kitchen Herbs

Back on March 7th, I returned to the garden after being overseas for a few months. I sowed like a maniac. One of the seeds I sowed was basil. They’ve sprouted really well, but with winter coming on, I thought it would be a good idea to bring them inside to add to my kitchen herb collection. The basil has joined the herbs I sowed on the 6th of April (coriander, thyme and dill) and the parsley I sowed in a pot over a year ago (17 Feb, 2011).

This pass-through window between the kitchen and lounge room gets filtered light from a skylight which has proven to be enough light for herbs in the past. The location is obviously protected from the elements but, since we don’t regularly heat the house, sometimes it gets almost as cold inside as out (which is pretty mild – rarely below 10 C or 50 F). On average though, it is definitely warmer inside.

Last winter the parsley thrived inside and out even with us eating from it several days a week (I love my parsley). I’m not sure if it’s the temp or the reduced sunshine that impacts the herbs but last winter the one basil plant I left in the garden sort of survived. It suffered a bit of leaf drop and didn’t put on new growth but we could harvest from it and it didn’t die (it even revived a little in spring). The dill, thyme and coriander outside died (winter, summer, spring, you name it, I can kill those plants). I’m hoping this batch of herbs will survive better inside this winter. Actually, I’m looking for more than simple survival, I want to harvest from all of the herbs through the winter. Well, why not?

I also sowed a few celery seeds in the plastic pot that I took the basil seedlings out of. The packet says you can plant it in autumn but Gardenate suggests September might work better. I have about 10 million seeds (they’re tiny) so I’m not really wasting anything by trying now.

Chicken Crop

Yesterday morning I had no idea what a chicken crop was. Okay, I’d heard of a craw (“it stuck in my craw”) in the vaguest of terms but I didn’t know a) what that really was, b) that it was the same thing as a crop, c) that my chickens all had one, and d) that it can get really big and look a lot like a massive tumour.

Then, yesterday I went down to give the girls an afternoon treat and noticed that Rosie had a huge lump on her right breast. I kind of poked at it (she backed away from the treat but didn’t protest) and it felt like chicken (I know, what did I expect?). I came inside and got Frank and he agreed Rosie had a big lump (a very observant bloke). And that the other 2 chooks had smaller varieties of the same.

We panicked. Did we feed them something bad? Do we have a noxious weeds in our garden? Were our girls on their last leg?

Here is a so-so photo (these shots are hard to get of a chicken) of Rosie with moderate crop swelling taken today – a LOT smaller than yesterday’s swelling.

Since it’s the 21st Century, I ran in and did an internet search. It turns out that chickens have a crop (aka craw) which is where all their food goes to be digested by the grit they eat (I basically knew that). It is possible for chickens to gorge themselves and for the crop to bulge (that I didn’t know). If the swelling is reduced in the morning, it’s nothing to worry about. If not, it’s pretty much bye-bye-birdie. Okay there are some creepy options like massaging the craw while holding the chicken’s head down, pushing out any excess food and removing the blockage, but generally the end result is suffocation when her crop cuts off her windpipe. This is apparently VERY rare (whew).

As I know our girls are gluttons, I slept well suspecting all would be right in the morning. And it was.

I’m guessing the crop grows through the day, every day, and shrinks at night. The poor chooks are stuffing themselves to make me those tasty daily eggs.

We’re thinking that what made yesterday different was that we didn’t let the girls out for a garden run like we do most days. They’d been in their smaller run (still bigger than most backyard chickens get) all day and I think that meant they just sat around eating their feed rather than scratching and eating less food more slowly. That’s probably why Rosie’s crop was so enlarged. Our chickens revert to couch potato status when the glories of the full yard are not at their disposal.

The other thing Frank and I did notice about this whole distended crop thing was that this morning, the chook poo donations left by the girls overnight was of impressive proportions. I suppose all the food from their crop that didn’t become and egg became garden fertiliser.

Bauern Frühstuck

As part of our ongoing effort to find ways to eat our backyard eggs, last night’s dinner was Bauern Frühstuck (German for Farmer’s Breakfast). It’s typically served for lunch or dinner in Germany. It is a very filling meal and would, no doubt, keep a farmer working in the fields until the sun sets.

The recipe for 2 servings is:

• Fry 1/2 sliced medium onion and 2 cloves garlic in butter, oil or (even better) bacon fat.
• Slice 2 medium leftover baked potatoes (you need to parboil or microwave or somehow cook the potatoes first). Add to fry pan.
• Add chopped cooked ham (or bacon) and fry with onions and potatoes, turning until all are lightly brown.
• Season to taste (it probably won’t need salt if you add bacon or ham).
• Gently scramble 3 eggs, add to pan and cover. Leave on heat until eggs are firm.
• Top with fresh parsley, chopped.
• Serve with pickled anything (it helps offset the heaviness of the meal).

We normally eat Bauern Frühstuck with pickled cucumbers but happen to have some pickled veggies (radishes, carrots, chinese cabbage, onions, chilli) that we made in a workshop this week put on by our council (trying to encourage residents to reduce food waste). They were (a bit too hot – that chilli was potent but) really crunchy and fresh. A perfect accompaniment to our plateful of cholesterol.

Planting Out Kale and Kohlrabi

On April 6th I sowed kohlrabi and on April 9th I sowed some kale in pots.

Kohlrabi and Silverbeet seedlings

Kale seedlings

All the kohlrabi seedlings made it into the ground yesterday but I had way too many kale seedlings to plant them all out. Since they were from seeds harvested in my organic gardening class I’d expected a lower success rate – that’ll teach me!

I haven’t planted out the silverbeet seedlings yet because I don’t have a chicken-wire barricade around the bed they’ll go into and I’ve learned my lesson in planting out anything that isn’t protected from my local pests (neighbour’s cat, my chickens, a bandicoot and possums that live in or near my garden).

I’m still in the first quarter of the moon which is great for seeding plants (like peas) but I think it will be fine for my brassicas as well. I certainly hope so anyway because I don’t want to wait 3 weeks for the phase to come around again!

Homemade Pasta and Salad

Yesterday I harvested the first of the lettuce from the batch I sowed on March 7th and planted out on April 6th. According to my notes, they should be harvestable in 10 weeks so eating off of them in 8 is pretty darned good.

Frank turned the lettuce into a salad by adding some mandarins, a bit of lime juice and some brown sugar. Very tasty.

To go with the salad, we made a pasta dish. I made some egg pasta (makes 2 smallish portions but 1 egg per person makes way too much in my opinion) as follows:

• Crack one egg into a bowl.
• Add a pinch of salt (to taste).
• Add, in even proportions, plain flour and semolina flour (I’ve used all plain flour and it works fine – the pasta is a bit softer at the end if you don’t use semolina) until you have a stiff dough (you might need to knead in the last couple of spoonfuls).
• Knead until the dough is smooth and set aside to rest for a few minutes.
• Roll out and slice into strips, or use a pasta making machine to create the pasta (sooo much easier).
• Let stand for a couple of minutes to a couple of hours (this isn’t very time critical).
• Place in boiling water until done (about 5 minutes – semolina requires longer boiling).

Frank made a topping for the pasta which included roasted pumpkin, roasted pumpkin seeds and sausage. Parmesan cheese was served as a topping.

This dish was another really good (that is, yummy) use of an egg. It would have also been a good use of a mandarin and a pumpkin which we sometimes harvest from our garden as well.