About Peasants

We are 'professional peasants' living on a small farm just outside Perth, Western Australia, growing veggies, ducks, chooks, rabbits, guinea pigs, quail, bees and even fish! We combine our day jobs with making the place work in as sustainable a fashion as possible.

April Update

It has been a busy month with the weather cooling down! One thing we had to do, which we never have before, is buy water! The tanks were very, very low, so over a period of a month we bought 45,000 litres to top up before the rains came.

The pumpkin palace has been thriving, with loads of pumpkin to harvest soon once they have dried out more, plus luffa and a few delicious honeydew melons!

Delicious!

One of the biggest jobs for this cooler period was planting out about 200 plants down the driveway. We noticed over summer that the ‘grass’ didn’t last well at all, despite being watered a few times, so we decided to plant some native bushy plants to eventually cover this area. Then it will look better all year round!

Thank goodness for the post hole digger which really helped with preparing the holes!

And finally, there has been more and more preserving! With plenty of beans, carrots, passionfruit, pumpkin, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumber, the water bath or pressure canner have been busy most weekends!

Quail!

We recently bought some quail, and they are so cute, and today they started laying their beautiful, tiny eggs!

The quail house

They are gorgeous, and quite friendly, though we need to keep them in their cage as they get very easily startled and fly straight up!

Their cage has a wooden floor covered with some dirt and shredded hemp. There is a shelter (including some strategically placed branches), their feed container, water container and a diatomaceous earth/sand dust bath, which they LOVE!

They love having a bath in the diatomaceous earth!

We are still learning about what garden treats they like, but have discovered they love flowers (rose, chives, society garlic) and chopped up lettuce. We have had them for a month or so, and today they gave us four eggs, the first of many!

So cute!

We bought the quail egg scissors off eBay to make it easier to open them, as their shells are quite tough.

Next to the quail cage, we also have another cage for chicks to grow out before they roam with the laying hens. This has a divider down the centre so we can grow out two lots at once, either ducks or chicks (currently we have two lots of chicks each with their mama hens).

Chick house

We have a wooden floor under this cage also, after trialling with just dirt and not succeeding! The mother hens are so energetic with their scratching around that they made holes for chicks to escape, and the food and water were constantly getting dirty. With a wooden floor and a layer of straw as the bedding, it all stays cleaner and is easy to clean out and refresh.

Preserving continues…..

It continues to be a great year for produce so we have continued to preserve what we can. We have added ratatouille with home grown tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant to the shelves, as well as pumpkin (perfect to make quick pumpkin soup in winter), carrot and bean mix, pickled cucumbers, and some ready made meals using home produce.

We have had an abundant supply of passionfruit, so this weekend we preserved 2 litres of passionfruit pulp to use in winter and 2 litres of passionfruit skin jam!

After scooping out all the passionfruit pulp….

We placed it into the water bath canner and processed for 10 minutes….
and now we have jars of passionfruit pulp for winter, with no doubt much more to come!
A quick google search for what to do with passionfruit skins (as there are so many), found a recipe for passionfruit skin jam….
about half that load of passionfruit shells was boiled in water until the rind (not the skin) was soft, then into the fridge to soak up more water overnight….

The softened rind was scooped out with a teaspoon (taking care not to get any skin as it is very brittle), and added to a pot with lemon juice and the pulp of 12 fresh passionfruit. This gave us 7 cups of mixture, to which we added 6 cups of sugar. After boiling for about an hour and a half (and checking for consistency on a plate), it was poured into jars.

it is delicious!!! We are looking forward to trying it on some toast or scones, but think it could be good as a chutney with some cold meat or with a cheese board!

The produce room is certainly getting full, even though we have been eating some of what we have preserved!

Some things had to be rearranged to make room for the preserved passionfruit!!

Home Preserving

We often have quite an excess of produce during its season, and while we are happy to share around with others we also like to preserve for later in the year. In the last two months we have made nectarine chutney, lemon and mustard seed chutney, ginger picked carrots, and pickled tomatoes- all with home grown fruit and vegetables.

We also really enjoy ferments and picked, and make our own sauerkraut and kimchi with as much of our home produce as possible.

In the photo behind the fermenting sauerkraut, there are (top left to right) baked beans (not with homegrown produce but a favourite recipe!), spiced tomatoes, preserved lemons, herb infused oils, chutneys, peach jam, kefir lime marmalade, sweet chilli sauce, ginger pickled carrots, and pickled galangal. The other shelf on the left is home ‘farmacy’ using home grown herbs and honey/beeswax from our hives. Favourites are calendula salve, bumps and bruises balm, lip balm, wood polish, shoe polish, and calendula lotion bars. Home remedies include mint tincture (for upset stomachs), rosemary or oregano tincture (for upper respiratory symptoms) and ginger tincture and rose tincture combined with honey for sore throats!

Making our own products for food or health are a great use of home produce, and also help us to be more sustainable. We also make our own reusable gift bags to save using wrapping paper, and beeswax wraps to avoid using plastic wrap.

Berries!

Since moving to McCarthy Park 2, we have trying to find the best place for growing berries, as we had in McCarthy Park 1……. the chickens eat them, the ducks eat them, they frazzle in Perth’s hot summers……..

In our continuing attempts to reduce the amount of lawn, bit by bit, we came up with the idea of raised grow beds near the aquaponics. This area has a few benefits- the animals can’t eat them, they get morning sun but afternoon shade, they are contained (so they don’t get out of control), and they are close to the house (and the blueberries) for easy picking!

Unfortunately it is quite late in the season so we may have to wait until next year to get any berries!

We have several potted blueberries, which fruit at different times so providing us with plenty to eat and plenty to freeze for later in the year!

Everything is blooming!

The weather has been very odd here in Perth, with some warm sunny days in between cold, wintery days. While some plants have suffered from the unseasonal cold, the majority are going well with the additional rain.

The orchard now has 11 trees covered to protect them from fruit fly and/or parrots….although today we did notice an Australian Raven having a good attack at one of the nets! There is flat peach, nectarines, loquats, pear, avocado, and several plumbs all safely under cover- fingers crossed!

The roses too are really blooming and add such a lovely colour to the garden! Thankfully this year’s quite severe winter prune was successful!

And ‘pumpkin palace’ has really taken off, despite a couple of set backs with a chook getting in for a short while! We have grown pumpkin, luffa, cucumber etc vertically for some years now, and it saves a lot of space as well as being safer due to snakes. We rotate the garden beds around the chook run- currently last year’s pumpkin palace is fallow and we add all the chook scraps in there for them to eat and scratch around. Another is sown with wheat and lupins as a ‘clucker tucker’ area. The third is this year’s pumpkin palace!

October update!

Our fruit tree netting system is proving to be very successful so far, with a total of 7 (and soon to be more) of the fruit trees in the orchard now being netted- 3 plums, 1 loquat, 1 flat peach, 2 nectarines. The avocados are flowering and soon will be netted too!

The ducks are now safely returned to the duckagon in the orchard, after having to secure them in the chook run as they kept getting out! We had to upgrade the fencing (see the orchard fence above). We also installed a lovely swimming pool for them, which they love.

They have been laying really well, but have had no inclination to sit on the eggs, so we gave some to a clucky hen and now have ducklings!

Spring 2022

Spring has arrived in Perth, and is evident with the fabulous colours in the garden at McCarthy Park!

The clivias are a fabulous splash of orange in the garden, and look amazing in a vase!

The bees are very active and bringing in lots of pollen. We have taken advantage of the weather and had a good look inside, even showing friends who are interested in getting into bee keeping. There was plenty of brood and some good honey reserves they can now add to.

We recently bought a couple of female rabbits– a Giant mix, to restart our rabbit breeding (for food) program, after selling them all prior to moving to McCarthy Park 2. With the lovely warm weather we have been able to bring them onto the grass to enjoy the fresh air and get lots of handling, as well letting the dogs get used to them.

Bruce getting acquainted with Kep and Kaanya.

Spring has also been a great time to establish more wormwood plants around the chook run. This has been a goal since the chook run was completed at McCarthy Park 2, as wormwood is a natural insect repellant and anthelmintic, meaning it can reduce or eliminate parasitic worms if ingested. Last spring and summer we grew plants around the chook run in the ‘pumpkin palace’ (the area around the chook run is divided into three, providing fallow ground and growing space which are rotated each year).

This was to get the plants really established before the chooks were let in once harvesting was completed, and to let the leaves poke into the chook run so they could peck at them as needed- apparently they will leave wormwood alone most of the time and only ingest when they need to self medicate. We also put a sprig in the nesting boxes at regular intervals to repel insects.

It was a great success, with the wormwood growing sturdy enough to cope with the chooks once they had free access to them in the old pumpkin palace. We have now planted around the other sides in this year’s ‘pumpkin palace’ and will let them get big and strong before letting the chooks in to this section, again once harvesting is complete. This now gives us a complete wormwood barrier around the entire chook run!

The plants in the foreground are recently planted, while those in the back ground were last seasons plantings. These have been eaten by the chooks but have remained strong and vigorous despite that.

Netting fruit trees….latest method!

In McCarthy Park 1 we needed to net some of our fruit trees to prevent fruit fly damage, here are McCarthy Park 2 we also need to net them to prevent bird damage! We have lost so much fruit due to the huge number of parrots and cockatoos we are blessed with, so our tree netting method has been refined to make it easier and quicker.

First, the fruit tree has a star picket securely placed as close to the trunk as possible.

A length of PVC pipe (big enough diameter to fit over the star picket) has a dowel inserted on one end, with a hole in the centre. This piece of PVC also has holes drilled all the way through so a 6 inch nail can be inserted through one side, through a hole in the star picket, and back out the other side. Several holes spaced apart allows for the height of the netting to be adjusted.

The top support for the net is made from 20mm PVC piping, a four way joiner and four right angle joiners to soften the ends of the cut PVC piping. In the centre of the four way joiner, a hole is drilled so a 6 inch nail (with a large washer) can be inserted. These can be made to suit the size of the tree canopy.

Now all the parts are made, assembly starts with the vertical PVC pipe with the holes drilled inserted over the star picket but not with the nail going through any holes yet- we leave it low enough to put the netting on and then raise it. Then the top cross is added, with the 6 inch nail inserted into the hole in the dowel………..

Then the netting is placed over the entire structure………….

……….. and then from inside we raise the vertical PVC so it is well above the canopy, using the nail to go all the way through the pipe and a hole in the star picket at the required height……..

….. then we tie off the net around the trunk and star picket to keep it all secure!

We now have a tree well protected from fruit fly and birds. Of course the netting can only be placed on after the fruit has set to ensure all the lovely pollinators are able to get to the flowers and do their job!

We are watching these ones closely to make sure the nets go on after pollination. You can still see the insulation tape we used as ‘bandages’ when we relocated these trees from our old property. The tape is now brittle and peeling off itself as the trees grow and flourish. The intention is to gradually remove it during spring.

Revegetating update!

One year ago we revegetated ‘the oval’, a very large area of lawn that was completely unnecessary ………. what a change in just 12 months!

Although we lost a few plants in the final heat wave that hit Perth in summer, the majority of plants did very well. We have just replanted those that had died, and filled a few empty areas, and it looks absolutely fabulous! It is such a nice entry to the property now, and a lovely place to sit and watch the birds.

The rescued grass trees are growing well, with only two that didn’t survive. The rescued zamia have also done well, with only one loss.

It is such a pleasure walking to the main gate this way…………. so much nicer than before!