Roosters

The Truth About Roosters

The unsung Hero of your flock or the devil with spurs.

Building the Chook House

AKA - The Big House

The first week in October 2016 we started building the chook shed. 

Anyone who has milled their own timber knows it takes a lot longer than just going to the timber yard and coming home will all you need for your job.

Chickens the Gateway Drug

This is Eagle Girl, she is a flight risk, must be closely watched.

So it is said that chickens are the gateway drug to a more sustainable life.
Is it true.... yes i think so, the temptation of all those lovely fresh eggs and how easy chickens are to come by and care for they are usually the first thing people get into even before doing a veggie garden.
I first got chickens in about 2001, 2 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Austrolops. I have come a long way from those first chickens and have learned so much.

These are the Lawson Ladies- Miss Gray, Miss White, Miss Black and 

the Brown Twins.

Washing Part #2

When i was a little girl we lived on our grandparents farm and ever since then, i have wanted a post and rail clothes line.

Its funny the things you remember from your childhood 

5 years old and helping mum and nanna hang out the clothes, handing them the pegs and watching as the pole went up and lifted the line.  

Dresses, jeans, shirts and sheets flapping merrily in the wind.

All my adult life i have enjoyed doing the washing, seeing a line full of clothes drying in the fresh air and flapping in the breeze brings a sense of accomplishment, pride in a job well done.

So at the age of 45 i can finally look out at the washing flapping in the breeze on my own post and rail clothes line. This makes me very happy.

Washing

Washing at Early Bird Farm

Part 1

When we first started our adventure camping out at our friends Phillip and Scotts bush property we used our trusty wonder wash washing machine.

Its great when your camping as its usually just for a couple of weeks and your only washing small stuff.

We spent 42 nights camping there but as the weather got colder the washing wasn't drying well, so a few times we went into town and did washing at the laundry mat mostly so it was spun out. Wring out washing by hand you don't get a lot of the water out so dry time is a couple of days when the weather is getting cold. Speaking of the laundry mat, the washers are so old and not cleaned so your clothes come out dirtier than when they went in. 

Prepping Part #3 Dehydrating

Dehydrating 


Why dry food?

Things dried this year mangos, raspberries, apples, zucchini, almonds, mushrooms and bread.
If you make your own bread any leftovers can be turned into bread crumbs dried in the dehydrator something you will never have to buy again.

Something i have done quite a bit of over the last 6 or 7 years is dehydrating fruits, vegetables and herbs.

Prepping Part #2 Foraging

Foraging for food

Over the last few weeks we have been foraging for food with friends and neighbours on road sides and down tracks and lanes.
Picking sweet plums and apples.
Most of what we picked was made into pies, cakes and slices and shared over a cuppa with friends, good conversations and lots of laughs.
The rest were made into oh so sweet jams.

This recipe is approved by Ball as a safe canning recipe.

Yellow Plum and Vanilla Jam

1.8 kg Plums pitted
1 1/2 cups Water
1/4 Lemon Juice
6 cups Sugar
1 Vanilla Bean Pod

Star Pickets

How to remove a star picket

I think of star pickets as temporary fencing, the reason being is they are so useful for soo many things its crazy to use them for anything permanent and at between $4 and $6 each they are way to expensive not to be a reusable item.

Out Door Loo

Dunny, Thunder Box, Shitter, Crapper, Bog, Out House, Shit house what ever you like to call it, it all means the same.
From using a bucket in the paddock to something with 3 and a bit walls, its the ultimate luxury in the Aussie Bush.

Prepping Why? Part #1

The Pantry and Freezer.

Being prepared is more than just surviving a disaster- like a tornado, a financial crisis, TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) or a zombie apocalypse.

People who aren't preppers seem to think that people who are, are either a little bit nuts or a lot. Yes there are those who are quite extreme but who knows they may be the most enlightened people at the end of the day/world.

Prepping for me is about taking control of our life, if the something big happens or if it doesn't then either way i am looking after my family, friends and neighbours. I think that's worth being called nuts.

While you live week to week you are controlled by the whims of the supermarkets, as long as they control your food, you don't have control of your food security.

Solar set up part #2

So the time had come it was the new year and time to get the free sun power hooked up.
Oh not to have to make the decision, food or drinks.... you know, one or the other when you only have a small camp fridge and the weather is in the high 30's. Eat something out of the fridge so we can put in some water. Oh how we miss cold drinks.......

Well it all seems to good to be true, unpacked all the solar gear, go through the stuff, look on line and go through all the stuff again and well you guessed it half the order was missing, who are these people who pack orders for shipping, it's ridiculous. Now Andrew's calling the company and trying to work out what's missing as there is no sheet listing what items were sent there isn't even a guide as to how it all goes together. Well there is quite a lot missing and you guessed it too big of a package to go to the PO Box so another trip to Sydney when the missing items are sent.
Back home again and we think we are all set but no, still missing some of the battery connectors and still no instructions.
We feel like this is a bad joke.....

Solar Set up Part #1

We ordered our solar set up on line and it was a toss up between two companies, one was a bit cheaper and you had to wire the board yourself and the other came with a pre-wired board and was more expensive. 

We decided to go with the pre-wired and had 2 double power points added to the board.

4 x solar panels and 8 x Giant premium heavy duty sealed deep cycle batteries. 

Country Living

a more thoughtful kind of life

Last week of October

Birthday Girl

This week Sally Girl turned 7, she has had big beef bones every day and doesn't like it when you go near them.

Furniture Finally

We had kept all of our furniture in storage for so long because it was so wet here and we didn't want the removal truck to get bogged. Cars were bad enough but a truck is a whole other story.

Andrew found out that we have two underground streams coming from the front entrance and cutting across toward the cabin. With that plus all the frost sucking the water to the surface our place was like a quagmire.

On the 22nd of September we booked in to have our furniture delivered, the ground was dry and no rain or frost for 3 weeks, i couldn't wait. Every thing had been in storage since march and there were lots of things we could use.

There was no sign of them by lunch so Andrew rang up the company to see what was going on.

Well wouldn't you know it, they crashed the truck just outside Pambula.

For the next 3 weeks the only things we were told was the truck was recovered and towed to a storage facility in Bega, then all our stuff was transferred from there to Pambula for storage. The truck was wrote off and all they would say was most of our boxes were in tact.

Finally they delivered on the 19 October over two days as they used a smaller truck.

As we watched them unloading we saw just how much damage they had done, pretty much all our furniture was in pieces.

The two guys who delivered told us they also unloaded from the crashed truck and told the company that everything was totalled.

I was ok to start with but then all of our good furniture was unloaded......... needless to say i had a bit of a cry. People say its only stuff, most of the time i would agree as it can be replaced. However there were other things that can't be replaced.

This was my dressing table, the mirror didn't arrive and neither did the missing timber.

I had 19 of these crates and all were either broken or missing.

This was a coffee table that Shanna made me, some of the pieces are missing, oh and its broken.

Apparently there were lots of stuff not in boxes any more so they just dumped stuff into new boxes.
These are photos they are not just bent but the box is full of dirt and gravel, needless to say there are quite a few damaged.

This is our Butchers Block that Andrew's brother made us as a wedding gift, lucky it can be repaired.

These next two photos are my Dinning Table that Shanna made for his year 12 wood class.
The frame and legs are broken and the top is in pieces and there are bits missing. :o(

This use to be a hall table that Andrew's Brother made us, not only is the sides and top broken but two of the legs are missing.

Shanna made this solid jarrah coffee table, we could have fixed it but one of the legs is missing.

 Bedside table with a missing leg and shelf.

I think Andrew was most upset about his BBQ, he was looking forward to using it. Not only was the stand broken and that was in a box but the lid and base were broken also.

I guess these next two photos tell you how hard the truck hit when it rolled cause both of our ladders were cracked and bent.

So for the last 7 days we have spent all day every day pulling everything out of each container and checking every box and furniture item. Listing and photographing every thing for the insurance company and finding replacement prices. 

Now we are just waiting to see when an assessor will be out to go over it all. Not looking forward to that as i am over moving boxes for quite a while.

You might have noticed that i said things were missing, well quite a lot of stuff was missing and not just broken items, like mirrors and pieces of furniture. All the long frame pieces from our green house didn't arrive along with our trolley wheels, tools, toys, and even a tea-chest box full of new fabric for my Early Bird Kids business.

What i have shown you is just a small sample of what was broken we estimated it to be about $49,000.00 and i'm still finding things broken. 

There is going to be quite a few trips to the tip when all is said and done.

The only other time we had broken things was when we moved to Tassie and then it was just two mixing bowls and two terracotta pots.

We have moved a lot and i am very good at packing but when a truck rolls it does not matter how good you are, you still end up with a load of broken stuff.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Water Tanks

Rollin Rollin Rollin 

We had 2 x 5000 litre water tanks delivered from tank world, they were $750 each.

They sat in the paddock for a couple of months until we dug one of the pads, we are on a slight slope so needed a relative level spot for the tank.

It was a night mare the ground was so wet and muddy. 

We opted for putting them straight on the ground, we were going to add sand to the bottom but just didn't get around to it.

We did add an old carpet to the bottom, then just rolled the tank over to it, too easy.

All the plumbing was either already here or we had brought back from Sydney.

Now all the wonderful rain we have been getting is slowly fill up our tank.

When its full we will pump it up to the other tank further up the hill and that will in turn go to feed the Cook House.

At the moment we have been pumping the water up to the shower cube as we have not added the gutter to the shower house yet.

When i get some time i will be adding a stone wall at the top of the slop with some drainage pipe, i would hate to have our tank slide down the hill over winter when its so wet.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Linked here
Sundays Down Under # 21

Random

A few random shots of the last couple of weeks.

This is Andrew's winter beard, it even had its own special brush.

A couple of weeks ago he went back to his summer face, now that the weather has turned warm. I do like the big beard but i think i prefer the trimmed one better.

Our Sally Girl she does take a great photo.

These little guys spent the first weeks of spring building mud nests on our cabin. There are 4 in total and boy are they noisy first thing in the morning. The fly around the out side of the house like bats in a bell-free.

Speaking of bats, this is one of the micro bats that lives here. We haven't seen them for a few weeks and you notice it because we are now getting spiders in the cabin.

This little guy was out looking for some lunch.

You have to be quick when photographing birds cause they don't stay still for long

This weeks sign- 

down here we dont have wires we have NANA for all our injured wildlife, how cool is that.

Just another day in paradise......

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

New Shower

Good Bye Old Shower, Hello New Shower House........

This is what our Shower set up looked like a week ago.

We came home from trip to the beach and it was pouring rain and it had been hailing. The top of our shower was shredded, it wasn't just the hail these type of tents are not meant to be permanent structures. All the sun had made it very brittle and it had lots of vent holes in it. 

It had done its job for over nearly 8 months so we cant complain.

Wow 8 months the time has flown by....

Pulled it down and now it was time for something a little more weather proof.

These 4 posts Andrew put up a few weeks ago to use as loo walls and now they will be turned into the shower corner posts. First up the pallet was set level for the shower base to sit on.

We had purchased a few fittings for the shower the last time we were in Sydney.

There was a small stack of roofing iron up the back and they were dragged down to cover the roof and walls.

As always Sally Girl supervising all the work. 

At the end of day one and time to try it out.

This back opening will have a lift up shutter so you can close it when the weather gets cold again.

Someone has to test it out, as the back wall is a little low for shower photos of me, Andrew was the one to have first go.

The shower curtain is a tarp, its a bit of a pain in the ass.

Day 2 we went into town to pick up our new shower from the post office. 

The last shower had an accident with some frost and has now been retired. Above is the new gas hot water shower attached to the water cube Joshua got us.

Day 3 we decided to build a more stable floor for the shower base, thank goodness we have some timber already cut so it was just a matter of going down to get it.

This whole thing was built using the chain saw, socket set, bit and brace and hammer. 

Don't ya just love hand tools, it might take longer but i think it is more satisfying.

The foreman is always sunning her self.

The base was put on the joists and the timber flooring was cut and laid around it.

It turned out awesome i am so proud of Andrew he did an excellent job.

I always say we but Andrew does most of the work, im just the gopher and ideas man.

All water goes into this bucket and eventually it will be filtered through a sand and charcoal system but that's for another day.

This is a small trug bucket, it holds about 15 litres, it is filled after we both have a shower.

I think 15 litres is pretty good for 2 showers.

The gas bottle is sat on pieces of slate. The pump and battery will be put on a shelf around the front side out of the weather.

We moved the water cube to the back of the shower and next week we will add a piece of gutter to the roof and catch all the water to fill the cube.

The water drains well and the floor looks great.

Added a shower curtain and a basket to hold all the shampoos and soap.

This is not our permanent shower, we will be building a Wash House with windows and doors. This is just to tide us over till then.

I think when you live on a farm you end up with lots of buildings that are used for temporary solutions till you get to the ones you really want.

I am finding that i really like it here, but i can tell ya i really miss my kitchen and oven. I can't wait till i have a cook house.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Linked here

Sundays Down Under #18

From the Farm Hop

Simply Natural Saturdays

Simple Homestead Hop # 21

Front Porch Friday