Eight Acres

Farmer Liz: Continuing my series of interviews with bloggers who keep chickens, I have a new blogger, actually a couple of bloggers, Adam and Amy, who I haven't featured previously.  They are a family of three living on a 700 square metre suburban block near Fremantle, Western Australia. They are passionate about sustainability and write about our sustainable journey in their blog Sustainaburbia . Among topics of interest are gardening, preserving, ‘green’ technologies and cargo bikes.  They write a bit about the chooks and record the number of eggs laid daily, so I thought they were perfect candidates to interview about getting started with chickens.   How many chickens (and other fowl) do you keep, what breed and what do you use them for (meat, eggs, slug control etc)? Adam and Amy: We currently have seven chooks, three oldish (5?) Australorps and four 18 month old Hi-line browns. The old girls are less productive these days so the new girls produce most of...

I'm up to the 7th principle in David Holmgren's book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability , "design from patterns to details", and I think its a good time to reflect on the principles as a collective.  The first principle was " Observe and Interact ".  The first five principles after that were, more about what we want to get out of our permaculture system.  We want a system that can " Catch and Store Energy ", " Obtain a Yield ", " Apply self-regulation and accept feedback ", " Use and value renewable resources ", and " Produce no Waste ".  The next six principles are more about how to achieve these aims and come to sensible design.  This month I'll discuss "design from patterns to details", and the remaining principles are "integrate rather than segregate", "use small and slow solutions", "use and value diversity", "use edges and value ...

Until recently, we used  balsamic vinegar all the time in cooking and salad dressings, but when I wanted to buy more, I read the labels, and couldn't find a brand that didn't contain added colours and preservatives, so we've been using organic raw apple cider vinegar instead. I missed the taste of balsamic vinegar, so I started to look into how to make vinegar.   Vinegar is just another fermented product.  The acidity of vinegar is acetic acid, which is produced from the fermentation of ethanol, which is the alcohol that we like to drink.  That means that any alcoholic drink can be fermented into vinegar (including beer).  Unfortunately balsamic vinegar is made from concentrated grape juice, which just seemed a bit beyond my capabilities at the moment, but I thought that red wine vinegar was at least close, and easier to make.   the finished vinegar I vaguely followed the instructions on this blog , except that we don't usually drink much wine, so ...

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Farmer Liz: You will remember  Tanya from Lovely Greens from the first series , she lives on the Isle of Mann and added chickens to her garden about a year ago.  You can leave comments for this post on Tanya's blog . How many chickens (and other fowl) do you keep, what breed and what do you use them for (meat, eggs, slug control etc)? Tanya: Around the same time that we were initially thinking about having hens another friend beat us to the punch. She went to the local pet store and bought a flat-pack hen house and chicken run combo and found a local farmer who had dozens of semi-feral chickens running around his property. One night he pulled three down from the trees and my friend took them home in a pet carrier. She named them Miracel, Carmen, and Geraldine and though they’re pro...

We have had some cold weather, with a few frosty mornings (finally the bufallo flies are gone!) and a few mm of rain as well.  Its been a good start to winter.  We've been running the woodstove and cooking everything in and on it. We have separated Bella from Romeo so she can have a break before her next calf (due in August).  We managed to catch Monty and put a band on his balls.  We had to catch him in the calf yard, which is a horse round yard, so we all did a few laps until we managed to get him on the ground!  I've been working on my house cow ebook and I just need to discuss the tax implications with my accountant (not that I expect to make millions from it!), and have it proof-read, before I can organise to publish it.  The butcher is coming for Frank(furter) on the 12 of July, so we've been organising the freezer and buying more freezer bags and digging a hole for the bits we don't eat.  And poor old Donald is still in another paddock, becau...

This month I'm joining the Garden Share Collective , which was started last month by Lizzie from Strayed from the Table , to allow vege gardeners to share their successes and failures and generally encourage everyone to grow more of their own food organically.  This first month, I'll give a detailed update on everything that's growing in my garden, for anyone who hasn't been following for long.  I'll do my normal farm update on Tuesday as well. If you've just joined me, welcome to my vege garden.  I recently wrote about gardening in our sub-tropical climate , so if you're wondering about the huge shade structure, that's for protecting the garden during our hot, humid summers.  At the moment though, the garden is full of brassicas, which grow best here in winter, and are suitably frost-proof.  The garden is about 12 m long by 5 m wide, and surrounded in chicken mesh to keep out the chickens and the bandicoots.  The garden has spilled out around the edg...