Trout season begins!

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Peasants

As the water temperatures have gone down below 20C now, we took out the perch from the aquaponics fish tank and added them to the swimming pool with the other perch. It is great to be able to have a variety of sizes of fish living together and not eating each other! We added trout fingerlings to the fish tank for winter, and already they are leaping out of the water to feed! They are so much more exciting than perch, but the perch are certainly tasty and easy to manage. Part of the change over involved a good tidy up of the grow beds, which were looking very sad. Pulling out plants that had finished providing (or were too massacred by caterpillars to keep!), adding some fresh expanded clay and seedlings, and they look so much better.

tidied up and ready to grow!

It was also time to harvest some yabbies, and it reminded us of how much it hurt our backs to bend over the ibc tanks to clean them out…so, we purchased a grow bed to match the aquaponics system and replaced the ibc tanks with that. Now we have a great yabbie tank that doesn’t involve bending over to clean, and it looks good too as it matches the AP system! Of course, we had to harvest a dozen or so yabbies at the same time!

new yabbie tank

Autumn and getting green once more!

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Peasants

Well, it certainly has been a hot Perth summer, but autumn has finally arrived and with the cooler weather the plants are recovering. We have loads of pears, guava, citrus and apples growing at the moment. This is the first year we have been able to pick guava, and they are delicious!

Strawberry guava- delicious!

We also have had a huge amount of honey from our busy bees- the shelves were full of jars of honey and we did another harvest a couple of weeks ago. This is a 20 litre bucket!

20 litre bucket of honey- second harvest this year!

Our olive trees have also fruited this year, much better than the dozen or so olives we harvested last year!! Enough to fill a couple of 2 litre jars. These are soaking in water, changed daily for 2 weeks. Next comes the brine solution which they will sit in for a year- such a long wait!

Olives in water

The hottest Perth day for 24 years!!

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Peasants

Well, most of Perth stayed indoors as much as possible today, with the temperature reaching 44.4C…….that is 112F for those overseas! We knew some heat was coming (plus it is summer after all and we do what we can to prepare for the heat…and bushfire season. We had put up shade cloth over the aquaponics grow beds, and the duck pen, and thank goodness we did that before today.

Shade cloth covering the veggies in the aquaponics

Late yesterday we gave everything a good deep watering in anticipation of the 41C forecast for today. As the temperature soared we turned on some sprinklers to give the birds some relief, and freshened up the water baths (check out the handy hints page) we have around the place.

Splish splash I was takin’ a bath…..on a 44 degree day!

We also put on the ‘overhead’ sprinklers. We have these on the house in case of a bushfire, but it also helps to cool down the house (we have a tin roof); and we also have them on the rabbit house, again for both reasons. The rabbits had their two litre bottles of ice (also mentioned in handy hints) this morning, and then a new one at 3.00 to help them out some more.

The poor turkeys are hot, as they recently had young and they are too small to let out along with the ducks, geese and poultry. We turned on the sprinkler for them too, and this helped cool them down.

Welcome visitors….

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Peasants

We have had such an abundance of birds lately- particularly the Splendid wrens. They are so comfortable with us being quite close- the only trouble with photographing them is they flit so quickly!!

They have become very regular visitors to the vegetable garden and aquaponics garden, and are very welcome indeed as they are eating the caterpillars!

Checking out the caterpillars in the veggie garden!

Birds in our backyard!

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Peasants

There have been more birds visit our place lately, so we must be doing something right for the environment! It was fabulous to be able to photograph the elusive Red-capped Parrot (below)!

Wagtail nest

Geese again!

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Peasants

Well, after having no geese for a couple of years, we decided we really needed them…..even with the ducks! Ducks go where they like and tend to rummage for bugs and weeds rather than graze. The geese are grazers, and so eat the pasture in the paddocks, and since we haven’t had them any more we have had to mow in the orchard….there is NO WAY we are putting our Wiltshire sheep in the orchard to eat the grass, there would be no leaves left on the trees!

So, we decided we would get a small number of geese only for the orchard….we bought an incubator (something we had been considering for a while) and 8 fertile eggs. Of course after ordering and paying for the eggs she also offered us a goose and a gander (we had been unable to buy them previously, hence the eggs!!). So we now have an adult goose sitting on a few eggs she laid since being here, plus we have had four of the eight eggs hatch into cute little goslings!

We were so lucky to be photographing the first two hatchlings when the third egg hatched right before our eyes!

Starting to open

Getting there!

squeezing out

There are now four, and all doing well in a homemade brooder box!

Welcome rain…

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Peasants

We had great rain in May, though so far in June it has been warm and sunny…not really what is needed in winter!

The ‘complex’ complex has had a bit of a revamp which includes a fence around it. Traditionally what we have done is bury the left overs once we have prepared rabbits, chickens etc for the freezer, plus use animal manures freely. We haven’t been able to do this in this new raised bed garden as the dogs are big and agile enough to jump in and dig it all up again! The gardens were suffering from a lack of nutrients, so fencing was the easy answer. Once the fence was in, we were able to really nourish the soil in the raised beds and replant area, and it is really starting to take off now, especially with the rain we experienced in May.

Secure from the dogs!

Autumn?????

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Peasants

Well, most of us here in Perth are still waiting for the Autumn rains, and we are 2/3 of the way through already! Since the end of November, we have had only 18mm of rain!

The aquaponics system has grown well regardless of course, but the dirt gardens have struggled. Now there is a really good reason to get into aquaponics!

View across two of the growbeds

We harvested the perch from the AP fish tank, keeping 28 for the freezer and putting 10-12 into the swimming pool to continue to grow. The perch had a slowish start when we moved some from the pool to fish tank for the summer, but they made up for that with the largest being 912 grams and 39 cm long!

Silver perch ready to fillet and freeze

The trout fingerlings are now in the fish tank for the winter months, and the grow beds tidied, harvested and replanted. The dirt gardens have also had a tidy up and replant for the cooler and wetter (hopefully!) months.

Fire fighting strategies at McCarthy Park

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Peasants

Bushfires are always a possible threat here with so many trees around, so it pays to be prepared. We have always had sprinklers on the roof of the house, which wet the entire roof and surrounding area. Of course we rely on the electricity still working though! This year, we have had a couple of close calls again so have redone the roof sprinklers with a larger diameter pipe to enable a higher water flow. We also added roof sprinklers to the Flopsies House (rabbit house) and the adjoining workshop which houses the tractor.

In addition, we bought a second hand, unlicensed trailer from the local rubbish dump shop and fitted it out with a water tank, pump, and hose. Now, with the tractor, we can tow it anywhere on the property where spot fires may come in as a result of fires and strong winds in the area, rather than just relying on the electricity to power the sprinkler systems.

Mobile firefighting unit

Filling the tank from one of the sprinklers

The complex complex….

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Peasants

The new vegetable garden complex….we call it the ‘complex’ complex because it is full of raised beds, pallet gardens, water gardens and the pumpkin palace!