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Baby apples - applets, budlets, promisory notes, mini-crunches, post blossomets, pre-apples....whatever...they are here.
Some of the branches are quite laden with small apples. What is nature thinking?
Previous posts
Backyard apples trees in Spring (October, 2011)
Heritage apple trees - when to prune (September 2011)
They have been sitting very diligently. Waiting, waiting. I managed to take this without disturbing them. They come off the nest about once a day for water and food and a bit of stretch of the legs. Funnily enough, I never see both off at the same time. When they do get up, they will cover the nest with leaves. Not sure if that is about warmth or predators or both. Anyway, flock due soonish (we think).
Previous posts
Drakes - a short history since 2006 (October 2011)
Nesting ducks (October 2011)
I was wrong - not once, but twice (December 2007)
Duckling arrived (November 2007)
Sitting ducks (November 2007)
We've been keeping ducks for a number of years. In our time here in this house and garden we've had three different drakes. This is our Indian Runner drake from February 2007. He was given to us in 2006 by a fellow Charnwood community gardener. This would have been his first progeny in the bathtub. He was brought in to join our flock of ducks, which had come from a woman selling all four of her ducks. She currently runs a hatching chicks program for schools and child care - both our schools and our preschool did this activity. We were tempted to get chicks from the hatching all three times we participated in it. It was so much fun. Here's a link to her site - Hatching chicks. At one stage in her poultry keeping, she decided to only keep chickens and so offered to sell us her ducks.
We kept the Indian Runner drake for quite a few years but when he died in 2009 we replaced him with a new drake from a fellow who sells poultry at Jamison Trash and Treasure.
Drake on 15 January 2010. We had ducklings hatch in early January 2010 and he was locked out because he was harrassing the mother and babies.
Here's the drake on 30 January 2010. By this stage, the babies are fairly big and we had let him back in with the flock. He proved to be quite an aggressive drake though, and I was always on edge with him. He was often separated from mothers and babies.
Mid-2010, when these little fellows grew up, we managed to find homes for them on a friend's farm on the Murrumbidgee river, just outside Hall. They took all the ducks from this hatching and one of the drakes, leaving us with one baby drake. Then suddenly the Father drake died and we had just the adolescent drake left. This ended up working out quite well.
So, in the photo below, this is our current drake, as of 2011. He fathered one flock last year. We kept his daughters but his son was given away to someone from my work who lives in the same suburb as us. We gave them a drake and one of the older ducks, so that they could start their flock. We like to keep a flock of 4-6 ducks, which would only include one adult drake. Baby drakes are OK until they grow up and then fighting starts between the males so new homes must be found fairly promptly. At least, that's what we've learnt over years of keeping ducks and drakes in the back garden.
What kind of drake do I have?
I wonder what kind of mixes of duck breed he is? Suggestions are: Abacot ranger duck, silver appleyard, buff orpington, overberg. See this link Silver Appleyard or Backyard Poultry's link to Silver appleyard.
Here's a link with lots of duck breeds Domestic Waterfowl of Great Britain and finally another good one is the Poultry Keeper link. I've never really been interested in being terribly rigorous or scientific about keeping ducks. I just love them for their quirky habits, their eggs, the little barnyard dramas that develop, their sounds and the job they do ridding our garden of snails and slugs. I can't imagine a garden without feathered friends. However, if you are interested in being true to a breed, and live in the local area, you may be interested in the Canberra and Queanbeyan Poultry club.
Previous posts
Nesting ducks (October 2011)
I was wrong - not once, but twice (December 2007)
Duckling arrived (November 2007)
Sitting ducks (November 2007)
You know what this is, right? Botheration. Well, not exactly. Who doesn't love ducklings. But, honestly, I don't think we need this many ducklings. There are 22 eggs in this nest. Damn. There are two ducks sitting on these eggs, which puts both the young layers out of action for this season. My daughter gets paid to collect the eggs and she must have been cashed up enough recently and so didn't require any extra pocket money. We took our eye off the backyard and now this...
When I discovered it about a week ago, it looked quite advanced and I didn't have the heart to turf the ladies off their nests. My husband kindly relocated the compost heap because they had built their nest right next to it and so everytime I wanted to return green matter to soil, they were being disturbed. Oh sigh.
Anyway....remember these....previous flocks....I guess it will be cute to have ducklings again.
Previous posts
I was wrong - not once, but twice (December 2007)
Duckling arrived (November 2007)
Sitting ducks (November 2007)
A few weeks ago, I wrote a detailed post on our backyard apple trees. They were planted in 2006 and so are now five years old. We have been training them into an espaliered planting and recently I got the jute out and tied the new shoots onto the support wires. The trees are currently loaded with blossoms and sometime later in summer I'll prune them, probably around February.
Previous posts
Heritage apple trees - when to prune (September 2011)
We are back from the NSW South Coast Light to Light Walk, which we did over four days, three nights from October 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Then, to flesh out the school holidays we put our feet up at a local south coast oyster farm for a few days.
This bushwalk through Ben Boyd National Park is designed to be a point-to-point walk, where you walk from Boyd's tower to the Green Cape Lighthouse, a 30 kilometre trip. Here's a blurb from a website describing south coast walks .
LIGHT TO LIGHT (Ben Boyd National Park) 
30kms ONE WAY Time: 2-4 DAYS Grade: MEDIUM
Boyd's Tower & Green Cape Lightstation off Edrom Road
A walk for the more adventurous, the Light to Light Walking Track runs from Boyd's Tower to Green Cape Lightstation passing through spectacular coastal scenery. It is dotted with vestiges of European efforts to tame this isolated coast and harvest the wild seas. The entire walk takes 3-4 days, or you may choose sections from numerous points along the way. Whales tend to come in close here to stop & feed their young while they gather energy before they do the dash south during their annual migration in spring and Green Cape is one of the best vantage points.
A park-use fee is applicable.
We had toyed with the idea of arranging someone to do a car shuffle with us but didn't manage to get that organised. So, instead we did a loop walk. We had intended to do a four night, five day walk and as part of that we wanted to make it to Bittangabee Bay on day 2. From there we would have a rest day and then walk to Green Cape and back to Bittangabee with just day packs. We didn't quite make that. Instead we cut a night and day's walking out. We experienced a fair bit of rain, the wind was reasonably chilly, we were cold overnight and we had a few insect skirmishes (ticks) so, given all that, we cut back on a day and instead had a walk very similar in length and achievement to last year's Wilson's Promontory 2010 walk.
Our overall impressions of the walk were very positive. It is quite a varied walk, with beaches, cliffs, rock platforms, lagoons, open heath, and tea tree, and meadows of wildflowers courtesy of a few wet seasons. We also sighted lots of whales, some kangaroos, wallabies, a sea eagle, a few black cockatoos, a nesting rufous flycatcher, a few lace monitors, an echicna, a bandicoot and a possum. As well as lots of bugs and ticks, which were painful and creepy. Ok that last bit wasn't positive at all. If you just discount that last little bit, I can say with conviction that we loved this walk and we would actually like to do it again to finish it off.
Here's the structure of the walk:
Day 1 : Boyd's tower to Saltwater Creek - Start 1:20pm arrived at campsite at 6:20pm (elapsed 5 hrs) - 13k
Day 2 : Saltwater Creek to Hegarty's Bay - start 10:50am arrived at campsite at 1:30pm (elapsed 2hrs 40mins) - 4k
Day 3 : Hegarty's Bay to Mowarry Point - start 11:50am arrived at campsite at 5:15pm (elapsed 5hrs 25mins) - 9.5k
Day 4 : Mowarry Point to Boyd's tower - start 11:10 am arrived at car at 2:45pm (elapsed 3hrs 35mins) - 6.5k
This morning's harvest of spring vegies to take away with us. We're off down the coast to go camping and bushwalking. See you when we get back.
Finally planted the peas.
I usually like to plant my seed potatoes by the end of September. I'm not sure that I think that the first weekend in October is actually running late. What's a week here and there. On the weekend, we managed to find a few hours when the rain wasn't falling. We dashed out with potatoes, newspaper, blood and bone, a bag of lucerne and a few tools. Down to the garden. The children were keen to help as it is school holidays and they both have need of a few dollars. We paid them for their help and on the two occasions when they felt inclined to club each other with garden tools I reminded them that their pay would be docked and they returned to glaring and hissing instead of shrieking and clubbing. I was satisfied. They are actually of an age where their help is much appreciated. They can focus and listen and take instruction! Parents of toddlers, hang in there!
First, we cleared the bed that was to host the potatoes for this season. Then we began the planting. I like to follow the Peter Cundall method of planting potatoes. I have an old copy of Patch from Scratch (ie it is in a previous generation's technology - VHS) where he demonstrates this method. He uses it to cover an old patch of lawn and this method then kills the lawn so that the space can be used, in the future, as a garden bed. I used it once, years ago, on our front lawn in Higgins and it worked perfectly. For some reason, here in the community garden, I still use the complete method (newspaper and all). I could probably do away with the newspaper but I tell myself that it helps keep the potatoes from leaving tiny little seed buds behind. It will take most of the summer for the newspaper to rot down, be eaten, and absorbed into the soil. By that stage, the harvest is just sitting on top of the dirt and is really easy to collect. It could also just be that I'm a creature of habit and once a master gardener has taught me something, I'm a bit of a loyal follower.
As we know, I've bought this year's seed potatoes from New Gippsland Seeds. And like last time, we are writing down the order we plant them so I can keep track when they are harvested. Lots of Desiree this year. You can see some of the potatoes have got little baby sprouts on them. eeee. grow potato grow.
We then covered the bed with a bale of straw. Well actually, we used three bales of straw. Two go on now, then you throw on two bags of Gundaroo Gold, (aka sheep manure), blood and bone, lucerne and then a final bale of straw and water soundly to keep all the straw in place.
Sheep manure on the straw in the photo below.
Lucerne is then added to the top layer. We don't necessarily do this every year. Some years we have lucerne available, some years not.
Later in the season, this straw sandwich will start to rot down and I'll top it up with more straw so that the light doesn't get through to the potatoes. This method has the additional benefit of leaving behind lots of organic matter in the soil. Basically, you are building a rudimentary compost heap on top of your potatoes. It takes about six months to grow and harvest the potatoes and by then all that carbon in the straw and all that nitrogen in the blood and bone, manure and lucerne has rotted down, fed the potatoes and left behind some organic matter. Easy, peasy. Particularly if you have children in need of a few dollars. We whipped through it, got home, and the rain started up again.
Previous posts
Buying seed potatoes (September 2011)
Leek and potato soup (May 2011)
More on the potato harvest (March 2011)
Potatoes and leeks (March 2011)
Potato bed - update late summer (February 2008)
Potato bed - early summer (December 2007)
I gather from the promotional material sent to me, that this specialist day at the Old Bus Depot Markets is in its second year. I didn't get along to it last year and probably wont make it this year, though if I wasn't already busy I'd certainly consider getting along. If all goes to plan, we'll be doing overnight bushwalk number 4, with the children. If you've been following along here for a long, long time, you'd know we did the Bingi Dreaming track 2007, then Namadji 2009, then Wilson's Prom 2010 and now we're heading down to Eden to do the light-to-light walk. On this year's walk, we're aiming for five days, four nights. As I write this, its raining and grey and cold. Hmm. Let's hope it improves. We were very fortunate with weather in the past, but I know it doesn't always work out that way - nature having its own ideas about such things.
However, if you are in Canberra on the 9th of October 2011, this Green Savvy Sunday sounds like a pretty interesting event. There will be lots of shopping opportunities (obviously) and it sounds like lots of opportunities to gather facts about solar technology, rain water tanks, carbon tax, organic products, organic gardening. Staff from Government departments will be available to talk about green programs. And it sounds like there are some pretty interesting speakers. I've heard Richard Denniss speak a few times and he's always good value. He's going to speak on "why we need a carbon tax, why it wont destroy the economy and why the polluters are so afraid".
DIARY DATE:
What: Green Savvy Sunday
Where: Old Bus Depot Markets
When: Sunday 9 October 2011
Time: 10am – 4pm
Cost: FREE entry
Web: www.obdm.com.au
From the promotional material sent to me...
For those keen on learning more about greening your life, the markets will feature an all day speakers program called Green Savvy Speakers. Keynote speaker, Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director of the Australia Institute, will present his views on why we need a carbon tax, why it won’t destroy the economy and why the polluters are so afraid. Justin Ryan, Director of Armada Solar will discuss the future of solar in Canberra after the Feed In Law, and present a new environmental product that makes houses more energy neutral. David Hocking from One- Eco will present on sustainability in the garden, and Nick Mayo will also be sharing information about Canberra’s Sustainable House.
I can't recall how I found this book but I think my fingers hit "add to cart" before my brain could even form up the idea that maybe this was something I wanted. I've referred once before to the Italians in my genetic line.
From that post on the Epiphany....
My grandfather was born in Sicily and immigrated to America, via Ellis Island, on what the family affectionately called a "banana boat". I'm not sure of the origin of that expression, nor why we felt affectionate about it, but certainly my grandfather was very proud of becoming an American and never taught his children to speak Italian. It was from my grandfather, Epiphani Siciliano that I first identified my love of growing vegetables. He had a huge vegetable patch and orchard at his home in rural Massachusettes and I remember as a young girl (primary school, we immigrated to Australia when I was in Grade 5 so it was sometime around 8, 9 years old) thinking his garden was fantastic. I probably wasn't old enough to think "I want to have a garden like that" but somehow it doesn't surprise me that I now do (though his was way bigger than mine and he owned the land...but still...no point spoiling a good reminisce).
In the basement of my grandparent's house in Leominster, Massachusettes was a cupboard with jars and jars of preserved fruits and vegetables. When we visited we were allowed to go downstairs and choose a jar of fruit for breakfast or to eat with ice cream. My grandfather loved ice cream. Perhaps we even had it for breakfast!
This decorative lady from the past in no way resembles anyone living or dead in my family. She is purely a work of fiction and imagination. The preserves though were real. My grandmother's cupboards looked exactly like this in my memory. All these years later, I have a new (and by my standards) big pantry but it is nothing on the scale of my grandmother's wonderful basement.
Still, I have laid down some preserves from last summer. And maybe this coming season I can use this book to add to my repetoire. The author is a chap from Melbourne who has a website and it's worth having a bit of a peak, if you're interested. The book is fantastic. It covers a wide range of topics from the standard preserving-the-tomato-harvest, to some rarer items - like olives and fish and cheese and salami. Its a treasure trove of Italian eating.
There's even instructions on how to build a pizza oven! Go on. You know you want one.
But seriously, you have to read the bit about how to deal with the 'evil eye'. Who knew that so much ill fortune could be explained and solved by olive oil, garlic, prayers, salt and other bits of Southern Italian advice. So from the book..."When you hear that someone has said something envious of you, you can make 'Le Corna' ('the Devil's horns'), with your index and little fingers. Note: this is not an excuse for anyone to make the other sort of Corna, unfaithfulness to your partner". There you are. Food for the body and the soul - Italian traditions, as recorded by a contemporary Melbourne doctor. The story of the great waves of immigration continue and echo around the globe.
