Ember's Veggie Garden

Vegetable gardens are important, especially in our house. We love the convenience of being able to go collect fresh and healthy food straight out the garden. I believe that letting children have their very own vegetable garden is highly valuable. Not only do they get the satisfaction of choosing, planting and eventually eating produce that they grew, but they learn the intimate steps that go into nurturing a vegetable from seed [or seedling] to the plate. They get a sense of achievement of producing something that can be served up to eat for dinner! Nothing prouder than a child who has made a meal from their own produce!

There are some many things a child can learn from having their own veggie garden. How to carefully and gently place the seedlings in the ground and cover the roots with soil whilst making sure the seedling are upright and the soil is firm around the base. Sowing seeds at the right depth and making sure they are watered. Learning how big different plants get, the different seasons that plants grow best in, how to identify pests and what good bugs might visit. Work out if they need climbing structures, benefits of mulching and how to know if something is ripe and ready to pick. Plus so much more.

Today we finished setting up Ember's very own vegetable garden. I bought a cheap second-hand raised planter a few weeks back which was the perfect size for her own garden. 

I let her choose the plants and seeds to put in the bed. Well...almost, I did say no to planting lemon seeds! She was astonished to learn that she would probably be 10 before a lemon seed grew into a tree big enough to get a lemon from!

She chose tomatoes, blue popcorn, snow peas, broccoli, capsicum and cucumber. All her favourite vegetables! We planted all but the cucumber, as the seedlings have only just emerged in the hot house. They will go in to her veggie garden in about 2 weeks time.

We dug up some of our mystery tomato seedlings from the unused chook run to put in her bed, as my tomato seedlings are still too small. Will be interested to find out what sort of tomatoes they produce! [my bets are on cherry tomatoes]

[PS. that is the remains of a face painting of a dragon on her forehead...not blood!]

Keeping Chickens: Incubation

I find one of the most rewarding ways to get a flock of chickens is to incubate your own eggs. It's amazing watching them hatch and grow up from little balls of fluff into awkward teenagers and then into a lovely flock of chickens. Children find it fascinating and it's a great way to teach them about life cycles and nature.

It is however not for the impatient. On average you'd be looking at 6 months at least before the hens start laying, if not longer if you hatch later in the season [my Wyandottes took 10-11 months before they started laying]. Not to mention the likelihood of getting a fair few roosters in the hatch.

There are two ways of incubating your own eggs, either with a broody hen or an incubator. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.


Broody Hen
Let's start with a broody hen. For this method to work, you do need to already have a broody hen, so this is more suited towards people who already have their own flock.

What is a broody hen? A broody hen [also known as a clucky hen] is a hen who has decided to incubate a clutch of eggs to hatch. The 'broodiness' of a hen is really dependant on the breed and the individual hen. Some breeds will go broody a lot more than others. 'Fluffy bum' breeds do appear to go broody a lot more than others, so if you are looking for a good broody breed, I would suggest Wyandottes, Silkies and Pekins.

A typical stance of a broody hen, fluffed right up and looking grumpy!

A broody hen is characterised by not wanting to leave her nest without some force, being rather nasty if you get close to her and her nest-she won't hesitate to try to take a chunk from your hand! When she is off her nest, she will often cluck and be fluffed up considerably.

The hen will lay eggs  in her nest until she has enough for a clutch-the number is really dependant on the hen. Often hens will lay their eggs together, so 'clutches' form quicker and some hens will go broody more often.

The hen will do all the hard work for you. She will sit on the eggs, hatch them and raise the chicks. The eggs will begin to hatch in about 21 days and may take a day or so before they all hatch. They will all hatch around the same time-even if the eggs were laid days apart, because the embryo in the egg will not start to grow until the inside of the egg has hit a certain temperature [normally after 24-36 hours of the hen sitting on them solidly].

A mother hen with her chicks.

You will need to provide her somewhere away from the rest of the flock to hatch and raise the chicks. Other hens may disturb her from her nest if she is brooding in a communal nesting box and often other hens and in particular roosters, will try to kill chicks that aren't their own.

Chicks hatched and raised by a hen will not be friendly towards people. They will more often be flightier and less trusting, unless handled a lot-if the mother hen will let you!


Incubator
Incubating eggs is so fun and rewarding. If all goes well, you get to follow the eggs through the 21 days in the incubator, watch in awe as the little chicks break out of the shells and fluff up into cute fluffy chicks! The hardest bit can be not opening the incubator!

Chicks hatched in an incubator and hand reared will be friendly towards people, the amount of friendliness depends on the breed and how much handling you do of them as babies as well as once they are grown.

Incubators vary dramatically, from small plastic foam boxes that will incubate a dozen or so eggs to large commercial incubators that do hundreds. Second hand incubators come up quite often for sale and are probably the best thing to start with. You can build your own, but unless you have some prior knowledge with incubators I would stick with a commercially made small incubator which has instructions!

A Hovabator brand foam incubator which can fit 4 dozen eggs

As every incubator is different, I can't really provide much instruction on how to set it up. Set up the incubator according to the instruction manual and if you have trouble, have a search online for trouble shooting guides for your incubator.

Most require some water in the bottom to provide the humidity needed for the eggs to hatch, depending on the model you may or may not need a separate hygrometer to measure the humidity. Make sure it is placed in an area which is free from draughts and temperature fluctuations [and pesky cats!].

An auto turn Janoel 24 egg incubator with a pesky cat!

The incubator should be set at 37.5-37.7 degrees C [99.5-99.8F] throughout the incubation period for chickens. Other poultry may be slightly different. It is a good idea to run it for 24 to 48 hours prior to putting eggs in, to make sure it is holding temperature properly and there are no other issues presented. Those first few days are when the eggs are most vulnerable to temperature changes and could cause the eggs to die in early stages of incubation.

Humidity varies depending on the sources you read. I like to keep about 50-60% humidity until day 18 and then increase it to 70% during hatching. But this does vary depending on the incubator, so check the instruction manual for recommendations.

Chicken eggs take approximately 21 days to hatch, although I have had them start at day 19 before. For more on the hatching process, please see Keeping Chickens: Hatching [not yet published]

Raising Baby Rosellas Part 1

About 2 weeks ago I answered a plea on a Facebook group for someone to take some Rosella eggs that had been removed from their roof during repairs after storm damage. I have an incubator so there was no issue with me setting it up for them.

Rosellas are a native species of parrot which lives quite widespread across Australia. There are a number of species and subspecies We get two different species in Adelaide. The Eastern Rosella and the Crimson/Adelaide Rosella.

I collected 7 little white eggs which had been out of ideal incubation temperatures for about 10 hours and popped them in the incubator. I didn't hold much hope for them. But I had been surprised before with how resilient eggs are.

About week later I received a phone call from another person who'd had some rosella eggs removed from their roof and wanted to know if I could incubate them. Being the sucker, I mean caring person I am, I took them and added them to the incubator. A small child then dobbed me into my ever patient husband! Darn kid can't keep a secret haha!

So then I had 14 eggs! The second clutch were vastly different in shade to the first clutch, much creamier in colour, so I had no issues keeping the separate. I will be curious to see if they are the same species of Rosella.

I candled them every few days, using a bright LED torch to see inside the eggs and check development of the chicks. Because the shells are so thin, it was easy to see all the veins and the shadow of the embryo gently moving around inside. 

As they developed more, the eggs got darker as the chick grew bigger. Regular candling allowed me to remove eggs that had died midway through the development before we ended up with any nasty exploding rotten eggs. Two of the first batch got removed because of this.

On Monday I went to do my morning check of the eggs, turn them and check the humidity and temperature, as I usually do. It was going to be the last day I turn them because I was predicting them to hatch mid week. Turns out they were ready a little sooner...

One had started to pip. Pipping is when the chick inside breaks a small hole in the egg from the inside. From there the chick turns in the shell and break more holes right around the shell. This process can take up to 24 hours from pipping to complete hatching.

I went out for a few hours and when I came home, 3 more had signs of pipping. But it wasn't until about 9pm Monday night that the first one hatched. It wasn't even the first one to pip, you can the first pipped one just to the left of the hatchling.

I woke up at about 5:50am thanks to my husband stepping in puppy poo in the hallway, and checked on them again, another had hatched! The first to pip was still taking its sweet time! I transferred the hatched chicks and eggs into a small container so they didn't wander around the incubator or fall in the humidity trays full of water.

By the time my 'real' wake up time of 8am came around, the third one was almost out. It however did need a little intervention as the shell membrane had stuck itself firmly to the fluff on its back, and it was having great difficulty detaching from the egg shell.

The eldest also got its first feed of warmed natural yogurt. They get fed yogurt for their first meal for 3 days and this helps kick start the good bacteria in their crop before introducing the hand rearing mix. 

The other two were still too new to try to feed, they don't need feeding for the first 6 or so hours as they are still absorbing the yolk sac. I went on to feed them around midday and will continue 1-2 hourly feeds during the day.

Mother Nature's Power

There is nothing like a good storm to awaken the soul.

I love the power of Mother nature. 

To experience the wrath of her is a wondrous awakening. 

Wild and raw

Ferocious and unyielding

Refreshing and invigorating

Recently Adelaide was hit with a once-in-50-year storm which resulted in the whole state losing power! Tornadoes went through a few regions further north [tornadoes are extremely rare in Australia!] and took out most of the transmission lines [23 towers were toppled] connecting us. 

Adelaide is where the yellow arrow is pointed

Toppled transmission towers [not my photo]

There is widespread damage and flooding across the state. We were fairly lucky and only lost power for 6-7 hours all up and had minimal flooding in our yard. 

Ember and I decided to observe the result of the storm at the beach between storm fronts. We followed the ocean along the coast, stopping multiple times to get out and experience the wonder and ferocity of our normally calm ocean. 

We live in a sheltered gulf so waves of this size are rare occurrences. It was pretty amazing standing there with the wind and sea spray whipping our hair around our faces and watching the large waves crashing against the cliff faces which are usually high and dry!

The mouth of the Onkaparinga River; there is normally a beach and large sand bars either side of it. So much water was coming down and with the storm surge, all but the largest sand dunes were under water.

It's still continuing days after the main storm has passed, with more heavy winds and rains, making things fun! Creeks and rivers are still full to the brim, causing them to break their banks and flood areas and roads.

There is a ford local to us, we went for a wander there in the morning, just before more rain hit to have a look. It was again starting to flood across the road but the road was yet to be closed. We threw leaves off the footbridge and watched them disappear into the turmoil of the water.

Mother Nature is amazing.

Hand Dipped Beeswax Candles

I am very fortunate to live in an area of South Australia where there is an abundance of small local businesses who sell amazing quality foods and items. We try to support local where ever we can! Our honey comes from the lovely Do Bee Honey down in Aldinga, and not only do they have fantastic honey, but they sell beautiful blocks of unfiltered beeswax. I may have a slight obsession with it! 

Recently I decided to try my hand at making some beeswax taper candles using the traditional method of candle making, hand dipping!

I used an old 4L olive oil tin with the top removed with a can opener to melt the beeswax in. The tin is placed in a saucepan of water which is acting like a double boiler. All up I melted about 4 1/2 500g blocks of wax into it. Melting from blocks takes a fair bit of time, took about 40mins for the wax to be fully melted.

I had some spare wick specifically for beeswax candles lying around in my boxes of 'stuff' from a previous candle making project. Using wicks made for beeswax is really important, as otherwise the candle won't burn as it should.

A length of wick, long enough for two candles is cut and then a weight is tied to the end of each wick to hold it straight as the dipping process is started. Normally hex-nuts or washers are used but I couldn't find any in the house, so I settled for old screws. The wick is held in the centre to form two even wicks and is dipped in the hot wax and allowed to cool between dippings.  Once there is enough wax is formed on the wick to keep it straight, the weights are cut off.

Keep dipping and cooling... I had 3 sets of double wicks going at the same time, so I would swap as they cooled down to dip another one. Slowly they grew in size. They weren't very straight but that wasn't an issue.

Once I reached my desired thickness [standard taper thickness] I stopped dipping and hung them to dry in my sewing room. I need to leave them to cure for a few weeks before use as the beeswax I used is very fresh wax.

Once they are cured, we'll be able to add them to our lovely thrift shop found candelabra which has been screaming out for some candles!