More on Chooks

Our girls which Andrew has named Blanche, Dorothy and Rose after 3 of the Golden Girls are settling in.

Its is really interesting watching them, and to be honest I hadn't given too much thought about where commercially sold pullets come from. Watching these girls has given me a few clues.  They have a few behaviours that are a bit strange even for chooks who are settling in.

• They took a whole day and night and day to learn how to sit on the perch. The first night they just slept in the straw. The second day 2 of them figured out the perch, while Blanche who was a bit slower sat under them and got pooped on.
• They stay in the box part of their cage all day. They won't come out for food unless Andrew and I are there and they don't do normal chook things like scratch around and make a big mess with their straw. They don't walk around, they just sit almost on top of each other and squawk.
• They don't recognise milk thistle as being food, or vegie scraps as edible.
• They make a mad dash back to the box when they hear the sound of other birds [little birds] singing or a plane fly overhead.

Methinks they have been raised in a chook institution with little room possibly no daylight and certainly no perches. Poor chooks!! I hope that their rehabilitation doesn't take long and that they find happiness in relative freedom.  Tomorrow Andrew and a friend or two are transporting the chook shed to our place so they will have a fair bit of room to run scratch, perch, flap their wings and be happy. As they grow we'll add a wire run too for them to have a real chance to stretch their legs.

The Golden Girls in their temporary house.

This all reminds me of an innocent and ignorant childhood. As a kid, one of our fun family treats was to go to Happy Hens. It was like the best thing ever! They had giant slides, giant seesaws, some animals in pens, a cafe, gift shop and educational area. It was free [except the cafe and gift shop] and we loved it. I was too scared to go on any of the play equipment, but it was still really fun. They even had this big "Happy Hen" on the roof of their building. They eventually closed to the public because of vandalism. Happy Hens was actually a battery farm [in disguise?] and activists were taking advantage of the easy access to the property. It was the first time that I thought about chooks living squashed in cages purely for egg production, and how that may or may not be ok. My dad is a farmer and he still thinks it is ok, though he always treated out chooks much better than that. In fact he refuses to buy free-range on principle to this day!

I hope very much that Addie will grow up learning utter respect for animals - even if we are farming them for their flesh or other produce. I think that over all, my parents did a good job of that. I never saw them hurt, neglect or abuse an animal, and they tried to teach me to care for my animals well [even if it meant going out in the freezing cold to cut grass for my rabbits]. 

My desire is that Addie [and our subsequent children] will make good food choices about farmed animals, and choose the free range bacon, free ranged chicken and free ranged eggs - even if it costs her more and she has to eat less of them.  As a child I was taught many proverbs and this one resounds loudly every time I think of animal issues and has greatly shaped how I think and act. 

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. 

 -Proverbs 12:10 {The Christian Scriptures}

Empty

Just so you know, that book shelf is supposed to be full. 

A tale of 2 bellies.

Andrew took this picture for me about a week ago [14 weeks]. As you can see my belly is sticking out but fairly low as the baby grows. Not enough to wear maternity clothes yet, but too tight for my normal pants, so the trackies are getting a workout!

Addie decided to run around the house in a nappy before I could find her pjs. It was freezing, particularly on the tiles in her room, but that didn't seem to deter her. He little belly was sticking out in a very cute manner. The rest of her is getting skinnier the more she moves around, but that belly is still round and very very cute!

She's beautiful :) I've noticed that its really hard to tell what colour her eyes are in real life, but they come up a grey blue in photos. 

Chooks and plants

I've been spending some of the time that I could be blogging doing other things. Maybe even better things, like reading books about sustainable living, permaculture and simple living. Simple living is pretty mainstream these days - well at least talking about it is. Ironically, there is quite a market for it and about a billion books, websites and products that you can pay for to help you live simply.

All cynicism aside, Andrew and I have agreed for some time now, that when he finished uni and gets a 'real job' we'd like to buy some land, live on it and try to live as much from what it produces. More lately I've realised that we should probably start a bit before then and do what we can right now, where we are. Until now I've been using the excuse "oh Broken Hill soil can't grow vegies" which is maybe true but also very rubbish.

No-dig gardens are fantastic. In a nutshell, they are layers of different matter that make a great garden bed, nutritious, fairly cheap and do-able where you are right now. The ABC have a very easy to understand 'fact-sheet' on it here. Thats something I can do here and now [with landlord permission]. I've also planted a small garden just outside the backdoor in a patch of mediocre dirt along the fence. It is growing peas, onion, beetroot and broccoli. I'm about to plant carrots too.

We have bought 3 chooks this week, which should start laying around spring. I've been looking at plans, ideas and inspiration for a decent sized chook run. Chooks should have minimum 1sq meter each to run around in, but I'd like them to have more. I need a system that is portable too to satisfy the landlord. Its a good idea anyway to have something portable, because it means you can change it's direction in summer or winter to look after the chooks the best, or to give them a new patch of land to plow.

I thought I'd share some links to ideas I've been looking at.

An airport hanger style, looks both affordable, doable and I like the being able to walk into it bit.

A reused swing set, we're not sacrificing Addie's swings for this but they have plenty at Lifeline and we might even get one cheaper @ the dump. I've also seen them done more simply with just netting over the whole thing, a door and a wooden shelter area attached. There are squillions of other designs, but these are the ones that are simple, effective and I like them.

Just for fun, here is an AMAZING coup that is way OTT but nice to look at and very functional.

Andrew also wants to get goats and has lovely romantic images of what that would involve. Thank God the landlord would never agree to that!

Chooks in the Yard.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, chooks are all the rage in the city now, for people who want to feel like they're doing their 'bit'.

I grew up with chooks as being a fairly normal part of life [along with foxes eating them :( ]. I remember being scared of reaching under a broody chook to steal her eggs. I'm still a bit wary of that! My brother loved his bantam silky chooks so much [he'd sit in their shed and cuddle them for hours] that we endured months of chook lice - before someone realised where the bugs were coming from. That time in my life is marked by a feeling of constant cold from wet hair, and is tinged with the strong smell of heavy duty chemicals used to delouse hair. 

At some time the chooks left [possibly after the lice incident] and for my teenage years to chook shed was my cubby house/hideaway, where I would listen to my copied mix tapes and pretend I was anywhere but there.

In my early twenties, my housemates bought some chooks, but to be honest they were more mine than anyone elses. I loved them, named them, encouraged them to lay when there was discussion about them becoming dinner and was very upset when one of the girl's dog's ate them. The worst bit was that she didn't even seem sorry.

I finally got chooks again last year when we inherited them from the people who lived in the house before us. They were scraggly and a bit poorly but I let them out of the cage, let them have the run of the yard, and they came good. Unfortunately the next tenants of the house were not chook lovers and the poor girls died this past summer.

This week we got new chooks!! The landlord has agreed, and so our chook story can continue.

Addie meeting the new girls.

My place & Yours - What is on your fridge?

Does this mean, on top of my fridge, or on the front of my fridge?

I'm not one to leave any surface uncluttered. Lets start with the top of my fridge.
What you can see there is a lantern my dad converted to an electric lamp, with some self confessed dodgy wiring. I love it and have had it for many years - I think I nicked it from them when I was 18. There are various syrups and cordials, some Saki for when I one day make mushroom risotto, pens, toothpicks and egg cartons.

On the front you'll see lots of magnet holding much paper. We've got shopping lists, phone numbers, a family picture of Addie's God-Family [the adults are her godparents, and they boys reckon that makes them her godbrothers]. Flyers for promotions now past their date, old shopping dockets, a note from one of my besties, an immunisation schedule, at the bottom of the picture is the 7 week ultrasound for baby Schultz #2.

The usual gang played along earlier this week to see their fridge-faces see the list at Hello Owl.

Daddy's Wallet

Tonight Addie discovered Daddy's wallet.  She found out that there was money in it all by herself. Hopefully it is a while longer before she realises that money will get her things, and that Daddies are soft.

I did it again.

See? No dreads. Again! 

Here's the low down. I like dreadlocks. I like how they look, especially on me. I think they're a great hairstyle and that they are much maligned only because of a) people who just don't understand them and b) people who have disgusting dreads. 

This time I wasn't using any dread products [a good decision too] and I'd had them for about 4 months, but the maintenance wasn't happening. For the first year of dreads you really have to work on them, train them how to go. The first time I had them I was single and had heaps of time to play with my hair, these days not so much, and with 2 children I'm going to be even more time poor. The last thing that I wanted to do was have yucky embarrassing dreads. So after much deliberation I cut them off. Andrew helped [hence the really short sticking up piece of hair right at the top of my head!! gah!] and now I have thin wispy hair. It won't stay thin and wispy because I actually have abundant thin wiry hair, but I'm thinking now that cutting it short and keeping it thinned out is a good idea for a while. 

So, thats that.

Gifts featuring Chez Beeper Bebe

I needed some more birthday gifts, this time for twin girls and a newborn. The twins were turning 1, and I had the brilliant idea of making them twin Black Apple Dolls. How cute would that be right? Luckily I saw photos of their actual birthday a few days before the party, and apparently I'm not all that original and they got stacks of twin dolls. None of them were handmade, but still... I wanted them to have something cute and special! Thankfully I remembered some little Counting Bean Bags made by Chez Beeper Bebe who is one of those bloggers that I admire somewhat jealously because they can come up with ideas that are just that good! Go check out her stuff and you'll see what I mean.

I have so little imagination that I even copied her photo composition for these, only very badly because I was in a rush and I am a bad photographer at the best of times. What I can do well is copy people's ideas and I'm very happy with these little bags.

I filled mine with cleaned wheat [sold as chook food in the supermarket] because it is what I had on hand. Instead of using muslin for the white fronts, I made the whole bag out of rubber backed [single pass] curtain fabric to give it more durability. The coloured prints are sewn over the curtain fabric on the back so you still get the pretty bean bag. 

The appliqué sewing got pretty boring, in my opinion. This is why I don't do quilting, it takes way too much of doing the one thing over and over. At least in most garment and toy construction, you do one thing, then you're onto the next step and it makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere. 

These tiny sacks of wheat took a good few hours by the time I did it all so Addie may or may not get a set - we'll see! I'd like to make her some though. I thought it'd be a cute gift to use letters instead of numbers and make them spell out the child's name, or if you REALLY liked them, you could do the whole alphabet. You'd probably go a bit insane, but its an option for those who like to take things too far.

The other thing that I made that day was this Rainbow Sunshine Plushie for a little teeny baby who was only born last week. 

This also comes directly from Chez Beeper Bebe - when you're on a good thing why stop? I like the whole ribbons and babies thing. Babies like them and they look cute. I made a ribbon edged blanket toy for another little baby who is now 6 months and seems to like it. Unfortunately there is apparently a bit of a sad story about big nasty companies, patents and people who make things with ribbons on them. To read it, go to Chez Beeper Bebe's tutorial.  

Unlike the original designer of this one, I didn't put any filling in it so it is very floppy and soft. It is made out of terry towelling, and I though that leaving it unfilled would make it easier for a baby to hold and probably useful to wipe up little posets and dribbles. Don't you think?

Lastly, Addie is growing up so fast, she's 10 months old now and during the day has next to no fear about anything! At the park [where we were for the twin's party] there were a hundred baby toys for her to play with, but she decided that she'd rather explore all on her own [far away from the party!]. She was playing with this little station she found for ages until I crept up with the camera. Unfortunately she spotted me and decided to come over for a 'hello' once again destroying a perfect photo op. Never mind.

Click Clickety

One of our favourite places to go when we feel like "shopping" is the local rubbish dump. They have a shed where they sell things that have been scavenged from the general dumping area. I've bought several sewing machines, chairs, fabric, books, wooden boxes, scissors and other thins someone didn't want but I do. Andrew actually bought a decent desk from there and a working fridge [for his beer-making] as well.

Last time I went, I found this typewriter. I have been wishing that I had one for quite some time so I was very excited. The money lady was less thrilled and charged $1.50 - not bad I say? 

It is an Olympius machine, made in Germany circa 1951. It is quite heavy [I think] but it is a 'portable' model, so it is really compact. The round keys feel lovely to use and it works quite well. I've been writing letters on it, and I'd love to use it for some crafting applications as well.

Of course there is no spellcheck, no erase, and no grace when I make a mistake. I'm hoping that perhaps it will help me to be more accurate in my typing which might translate to more thoughtfulness when using a computer? Anything is possible!! It also lacks an exclamation key, so I'm having to write without them a lot more. It really could be good for me.

Herman

Feeling sad that I always seem to miss out on swaps, I started on which was joined by about 7 people [a good size to manage]

My softie came from Talia @ Life's Visual Journal. In case you can't see the picture, you will see that it is an Owl. Naturally, being an owl, it is a boy. Whoever heard of a girl owl? I had to think about a name for a few days, but today I looked at him and realised that his name is Herman.

Herman, being an owl is quite wise, but is also a bit of a hippy, psychedelic, baltic-tye dyed fellow. I like that. Stodgy wisdom is no good anyway :)

Thanks Talia. It was heaps of fun!!

My Place & Yours - When you wake up in the morning and it's a quarter to six

I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon over the past few weeks - I've been too tired to blog. Lame but true.   With the first trimester done and dusted, hopefully I'll be a little more energetic again soon and will be able to convince my fingers and brain to work together. So here is that little game we play, called My Place & Yours.

This week Danielle asked "What do you look like when you get out of bed in the morning?" Rude question, but it must be answered. 

This is me first thing. Dressing gown on, hair looking like a mad scientist's and wondering why I'm up at 6am?! 

Here's what happens after a shower, a hair tie and some clean clothes. I look much less scary and I might be decent enough to wander in public!

Just in time!

It was about two weeks ago now, that I received a lovely present in the post. Its one of the great things a bout living in a remote area, I'm always getting things in the mail :)

This beautiful box came from the very nice people at Kidspot and Johnson & Johnson, as a part of a cash [in this case 'product'] for comment deal.  I think that social networks such as Kidspot are fantastic for mums. Your family and friends aren't always available [and sometimes they're the problem] but internet-land seems to always have someone who can listen/sympathise/advise when you need it. But I digress.

Addie quickly decided that she too likes things that come in boxes and 'helped' me unpack, doing some 'product testing' along the way.

This box could not have come at a better time. Babies are pretty clean I think, until they can move. They poo, wee and spew but really until they are mobile that is the extent of it.  No matter how hard I try, and lets face it I'm a bit laissez-faire when it comes to some of this stuff, Addie manages to cover herself in known and unknown substances all through the day. Everywhere she goes she wreaks a trail of destruction. I must apologise to the staff at Woolworths while I'm speaking of this... if you are wondering why many of your "specials" tags go missing, I'd get security to keep an eye on my daughter. That would actually make shopping a lot easier for me if they watched her, as I don't seem to be very good at it anyway.

What I'm trying to say is that my daughter is a grot. This day was no exception, so it gave me plenty of opportunity to test out some of these goodies.

Lunchtime came, and she managed to look like this.  Never fear, I have wipes! Mwah ha ha! These wipes are very very good for little fingers and faces, and my box had 2 huge packets as well as 2 purse packs. Woo!

We had to do the grocery shopping later [again, sorry Woolies but its illegal to leave her in the car], and somehow she'd gotten biscuit everywhere. I noticed as I was getting her out of the car, and that purse pack came in handy! Having a relatively clean baby makes me look more like a caring mum when I'm in public. I've since found out that its helpful for cleaning up my own clothes too so I look less like I'm sleeping rough after some hugs and kisses from a certain little girl.

Later that night she had a bath [ohh she needed one!] with our fancy new potions. I really like the smell of the bedtime bath stuff - not sure if it calmed her down at all, but it made me feel happy so thats worth it. I also used the No More Tears shampoo & conditioner on her hair. Theres not much of it so until now its just gotten a rub with some bath soap, but today for the first time she had a real 'hair wash'. I was really surprised when I opened the shampoo. The smell hit me and took me back to being a little kid in the bath with mum washing our hair. It still smells exactly the same!! Its amazing the effect that smell has on memory!

There are a bunch of other products in there too that I'll try over the next while. If my friends are nice to me they may even get a present from me - you know, sharing the love.

So, if you've got little kids or you're expecting one soon, make your way over to KidSpot, join their Baby Club and they actually have heaps of chances to win and test stuff, as well as the support etc that I mentioned before. Its free so you've got no excuse. Go.