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!

Honey harvest!

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Peasants

Well in the space of a month there is honey to harvest! The weather has been unpredictable so we only took two frames from each hive, but the bees look busy and healthy. It was fascinating to see the different honey from each hive- the ‘kitchen hive’ produced a slightly paler honey than the ‘billabong hive’, though each hive gave us a good 3 litres just from the two frames.

Because the bees were so healthy and obviously all was well, a week later we also added a super to each hive. This time we are going for WSP supers and frames as they are a bit lighter (because they aren’t as deep). A full super of honey gets quite heavy to lift off, so this should make it a little more manageable!

Spring is on its way….

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Peasants

It has been very mild here in Perth lately, and with the warmer weather the bees have become much more active. They are bringing in lots of pollen, indicating they are feeding lots of brood! There isn’t enough for us to harvest just yet, but won’t be long now!

Pollen laden bees (photo courtesy of Lucky Mac Photography)

Latest McCarthy Park update….

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Peasants

Everything is really growing at the moment- we have had a fair bit of rain but lately the days have been quite mild- perfect growing conditions! The orchard has really taken off in the last couple of years, we have had ample mandarins and it looks like a good crop of nectarines and plums again this year.

Bees pollinating the nectarine

After the bushfire a couple of years ago, the bush is growing back. Though many species have completely gone as they were burnt too severely, other plants really regenerate after a bushfire. Most of the balga (grass trees) have grown back and quite a few are now flowering, lots of gum trees have self sown, and the prickly moses (a type of acacia), has come back with a vengeance (they really are prickly).

Prickly Moses

Running postman (Kennedia prostrata)

Regeneration

The almost spring weather is also shown in the animals activity around! There are lots of birds around making nests, particularly the wild ducks.

You looking’ at me?

The turkeys are nesting in their nice ‘bush’ nest (though safely in their pen!) too, though two on the same nest!

Sharing a nest

Fermenting…..

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Peasants

Our latest preserving venture is lacto-fermentation, a process which has been around for a long time and has many health benefits. After a few experiments and a couple of hands on workshops (in particular with Yoke Mardewi from Wild Sourdough, we are now well on the way and have a few delicious items fermenting away!

Just a few….

There is a batch of sauerkraut and a batch of kimchi in the fridge being eaten, and in this photo is two types of sauerkraut, more kimchi, rhubarb and beetroot (left), saltless carrots, garlic in brine and garlic in honey. Next on the list is a mushroom ferment…..when we can find the shimeji mushrooms needed! Recipes will be added soon to the recipe section.