Animals

When we bought this house in early 2008, we joked that it came with a ‘dead’ eco-system. The only spiders were redbacks, the only birds common farm varieties, the sparrow and the starling. Both pests and in plague proportions.

We’ve been slowly and steadily building things up, hoping that we could address the imbalance without resorting to chemicals to kill the ‘bad’ spiders. We planted a garden, we reseeded the lawn, we had horses for 6 months and we’ve got poultry – at a steadily increasing number.

All these things have worked to decrease the ‘bad’ bugs and spiders and restore a balance to the system. We haven’t seen a redback spider in a while, the huntsman spiders are increasing in number and we’ve got a few black house spiders hunting in various corners outside.

The bugs appear to be a good mix of everything and the ducks and ducklings spend most of their time darting through the grass catching everything that flies. The chooks scratch out the beetles and grubs and my paddock has never looked so lush, with the grass desperately needing whippersnipping – it’s waist high in places.

It took twelve months for the small garden to look any good – that was 12 months with the soil covered entirely in hay to promote moisture and growth. We’ve had good results with everything I’ve grown in there since.

Obviously some parts of the paddock need work, my big garden in particular. I’m slowly building that up with potting mix, sheep poo and left over horse poo. Next time I see the farm manager I’ll corner him and ask for some more spoiled hay for the garden, if they’ve got any.

One of the best things about having planted flowering shrubs and getting the whole cycle of things sorted out is that the native birds are coming back

I saw a honey eater the other day and the welcome swallows are hanging around.

Welcome swallows have to be one of my favourite birds. They are cheeky and let me get rather close with the camera. Not to mention flying around my head in circles when I’m out in the paddock, making me wonder if I’d accidentally fallen into a cartoon and hit my head.

This current pair is looking for a new place to nest – they had attempted nesting in the old water tank, but all their nests have fallen off and broken. I’m not sure if it’s the mud they’re using, or the metal of the tank. Something isn’t working for them in any case.

In amongst all the partially built and broken nests, I found an entire one. They had made it to the lining stage, before it fell off. No eggs lost though.

It looks like they’re favouring my barbeque area as a nesting site, or that general area. Needless to say they’ve been flying in and around my kitchen windows, darting in and flying around Nathan’s head before flying out and assessing the situation.

It’s been great to watch and I can’t help but be pleased that they are back. Not to mention, this isn’t the only pair. I counted 4 different pairs taking a bath in our puddle last week.

Lovely.

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I didn’t expect to have to cover my frost tender plants in early November, but it seems the seasons conspired against me and the first week of November saw me in the garden with sheets and towels, covering the plants that would have died if frozen.

A week later, I’m hopeful that the frosts have gone for the year entirely, but I’m not holding my breath. In a small fist shake to the weather gods though, I have planted out some of my frost tender plants from their seedling boxes and crossed my fingers that the chooks don’t find their way into the new! shiny! big! garden.

I’ve had a lot of things planted, including things that you don’t normally find available in seeds in Tassie, I’m experimenting with honeydew melon, rockmelon and water melon, as well as luffa and some giant pumpkins – amongst other things.

After buying a load of seeds from here [side note, much recommended, shipping is fast and the seeds are amazing], I decided that my ‘small’ garden wasn’t big enough – at least, it wasn’t big enough after I planted the entire middle section with climbing beans, peas, kohl rabi and potatoes – we moved all the tyres from the tyre arena and created a garden, about 10m square (30ft thereabouts).

One problem? The grass and soil in that area of the paddock is horribly compacted, from years of previous owners driving cars on it. So turning it over isn’t an option, not unless someone in Tassie has a machine to do it for me, for free? No.

So, I got experimenting. I laid some cardboard to kill off the grass a bit and then covered it with horse manure, sheep manure and potting mix. It was a little bit messy and I wasn’t sure it was going to work – but I planted my corn in there anyway.

Over the weekend though, I had an even better idea and just filled some boxes from the fruit and veg market with sheep manure and potting mix – without flattening the boxes first. This way the sides keep the soil in for the beginning, the bottom rots out slowly letting the roots through and the grass hopefully doesn’t get too strong a hold in amongst my vegies.

Of course, I’m still waiting to see if this is going to work how I hope, so cross fingers for me, yes?

My tomatoes and other seedlings aren’t large enough to plant out yet, so the ‘big’ garden only has basil, rockmelon and corn in it at the moment.

And babies!

I mentioned on twitter that I had a chook broody and I thought all her eggs were rotten. No, she proved me wrong when a fortnight ago she appeared with 4 chicks. These were my first babies out of my own eggs (from the rooster who attacked Amy and made delicious dinner) and I found it really interesting to see what colours they are.

My rooster by the way was a Rhode Island Red X and the hens who laid the eggs were Australorp X’s and a Rhode Island Red X hen, so having 3 red/browny babies wasn’t a surprise. No, the surprise came with a black and white baby. I have no idea how a black/red hen and a red rooster produced black and white baby, but hey, it happened and I’ll be interested to see if it stays black and white.

Plus, the ducklings I have left. The mother is marked for ‘no more babies, ever’ because she’s such a terrible mother. From 16 eggs we got 12 ducklings and 2 weeks later I have 5 left. Sigh.

But they’re cute!

And my ‘older’ ducklings are just getting their feathers, so they’re firmly in the middle of an ugly stage. However, they’re growing fast enough that if we’re really lucky, we might get a roast duck for Christmas.

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