Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Great weather for some gardening Extended the garden today with the Howard Terrier, incorporating two trailer loads of horse manure and a big trailer load of vege and flower mix to help it along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxO_ej_HPKw

Planted out cucumbers, capsicums, egg plants, lettuce and broccolini.

Trellis work next.

Chooks are doing weird things, these two eggs today from our biggest two chooks, the super egg from the white sussex and the mini white from the gold laced wyandotte.

That's gotta hurt

Holy crap! That must of hurt...


The vegie patch looks good mate, bet the terrier makes it light work.

Garden is enjoying the cool change. Tomatoes need some love, all flowering and ready for trellising. Going Florida weave this year, started on one line, will get to the rest this weekend. Beans and cucumbers are ready for some trellis as well, planning on using some reo mesh for them.



Gotta love gumtree. Picked up this Washington Navel for free this arvo. It was transplanted previously but wih some love and pruning I hope to make a worthwhile tree out of it, it was butchered during the last transplant so I need to sit and look at it for a while before I decide how to prune it for the long term.

Looking great!

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Peasants

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.
Cicero

our Aquaponics thread
https://www.facebook.com/mccarthy.park
http://www.mccarthypark.com.au

As the borrowed land I have been gardening on it currently subject to a building licence and the soil is still not great (very high pH) leading to poor growth I have started a major revamp of my other garden area. All the raised beds will go and the poor Valencia I transplaned above will have to be transplanted yet again . The paperbark has gone, the topbar hive transferred into a Langstroth for moving and plans are afoot

Meanwhile the 6 week old Damara we have been bottle feeding from work is enjoying the old garden. I need to pull my finger out and transplant the brassicas and chard before she totally devours them.

I have also been busy following the fresh food dream and built a KKTO coffee roaster so we can enjoy consistently tasty latte from our newly aquired Carimali single group and comercial conical burr grinder at a great price

I finally got some eggs for my gold laced that is continually clucky. Friday (day 19) and I come home from work to find 3 eggs missing, the nest tipped over and her standing at the door waiting to get out. Remaining two eggs were cold but I have placed them into a makeshift incubator just in case as I read of a few cases where cold eggs had been recovered or hatched. There was no sign of the other three eggs, shell or innards so I don't know if a rat got in and ran riot or she canabalised them.

I did not have a lot of faith in this chook raising chicks and my daughers both want to hand raise any chickens so I have been building a brooder to put any chicks she hatched into. It has been designed to have a removable litter tray and has perspex front for viewing, it is also on castors. The idea is that it may spend some time at my daughters daycare centre as they loved the lamb visiting and now want chicks. I may get a thermostat for it, but at the moment it just has a ceramic heat lamp and a digital thermometer. The top section is heavy duty woven security flyscreen mesh, this is framed so pieces of 6mm ply can be added on top of it to keep in extra heat if needed.

Can't have it sitting around empty so I have half a dozen gold laced day olds on order. If that fails I will just get some Hylines, at least they are sexed.

That looks great, I wish my builds had that level of craftsmanship. I also like the lamb, we went to a rural show today to have a look at some goats, that will be the next addition to our small farm.

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

Have read up on Damara sheep, could be another option for you. No wool and a fat tail, they look more goat than sheep and have a pretty good temperament, this one is hilarious. Quite a lean meat from what I am told as they store their fat on the tail.

One of my coworkers told me his neighbour has some hybrid of sheep and goat but I didn't know the breed name. Maybe they are the same. Got told they are pretty easy as you don't have to sheer and with easier regulation as I can't have normal sheep's because of blue tong disease and the importance of sheep export in the territory. I will have a look at them. I looked at Boer goats today but the highschool which breeds them only sells wether's, but I would like to get a breeding pair.

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

Wow you have been busy Burnsy!!!

We have Wilthshire sheep (ours are polled) which are also fabulously easy to care for- no shearing, crutching etc and they have a very good meat. Check those out too Gwydion!

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Peasants

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.
Cicero

our Aquaponics thread
https://www.facebook.com/mccarthy.park
http://www.mccarthypark.com.au

Will do, thanks peasants

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

Hey burnsy do you grow your own coffee? I found a tree on our block and could use some tips or links to some info

No I just buy green beans. There is bit of info on growing and procesing on coffeesnobs forum.

Gold laced eggs were a loss so I bought six day olds today. All gold laced wyandottes All happy in the brooder, eating drinking and basking in the warmth of the ceramic lamp. It is funny how they do everything together, one goes to eat or drink and they all do.

Delivery


Staying warm


Inside out of the weather

Nice work Burnsy wish i had the space like you have

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