Misters October.

When you buy a copy of this week's The Weekly Times you get a dog calendar as a free gift. The calendar is full of gorgeous photos of man's best friend.

When October 2011 comes around, you get to look at our Farmer Bren and Bingo for the whole month. Now that's something to look forward to.

Our calendar is already hanging in the kitchen open on October which is making our two little October babies just a bit excited thinking they might have birthdays all year through.

In other exciting news, we've started harvesting our garlic.

We've spent the past few days while the sun has been shining pulling up the glorious, juicy bulbs.

We've got many rows left to harvest, but I have to tell you that it feels great to stop worrying about the wet and the locusts and to focus on something positive for a while. Great!

After we pull up a row, we rack it all up to cure for a few weeks.

You can get your hands on the best, most delicious garlic in town, at the Slow Food Farmers' Market next Thursday the 23rd of December at The Abbotsford Convent from 3pm-8pm.

Garlic toast for dinner tonight I think.

See ya!

Chooks at work.

Last year this was part of our garlic patch. This year we grew carrots, beetroot, cabbages, kale, spinach, turnips, broccoli and cauliflower here. Until about a month ago we were still harvesting from this plot.

Last week it was finally dry enough for the chooks to be brought down from the bush.

We love watching the chooks when they fly out of their houses onto a new patch of garden.

It doesn't take them long to start exploring their new surroundings.

The chooks will enjoy this area for the next couple of weeks but during this time they will also be hard at work for us. Their job is to eat the insects and the left over vegies, cultivate the soil and fertilise the ground with their poo.

There's Bingo making sure Dave Griffiths from geomtree is one of the good guys.

Every day their houses are pushed further along the rows to ensure their poo is evenly spread.

In a couple of weeks the chooks will be moved on and the ground will be prepared for planting this growing season's crop.

I hope you have a great week wherever you are whatever the season.

Chooks Out, Chooks In.

Follow that path just a little bit further into the green clearing and there you'll find our flock of chickens that are now ten weeks old.

They are living with a flock that are about 25 weeks old and are doing really well.

Bingo the Maremma is happy guarding the chooks, although sometimes they make it difficult for him to enjoy his dinner.

Most of the time it is difficult to tell the 2 flocks apart. But look closer and you'll see the ten weeks old are smaller and their comb hasn't developed or filled with blood to make it red yet.

A ten week old above and a twenty five week old below.

Now the brooder is empty what are we meant to do?

Clean it out, restock it and send Bren off to the other side of Melbourne to pick up a new flock. This time we are getting three hundred one day old chicks and 25 ducklings.

Ooohhh, I can hardly wait.

Make sure you pop by later on to check out them out.

Meet Bingo and Banjo

This is Bingo.

Bingo is named after that song

There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name o.

Bingo is a Maremma breed of farm dog.

Maremmas originated in Italy and were bred to guard sheep from wolves

These days they are used all around the world to protect all types of animals.

We love our Maremmas for the wonderful work they do to protect our chooks.

Bingo lives with our baby chickens and protects them from foxes.

This is Banjo.

Banjo was the name I always wanted to call the son I never had.

(And with two male dogs Bren feels a bit less outnumbered.)

Banjo lives with some of our older chooks.

I think Bingo and Banjo have a wonderful life, sleeping all day and barking all night.

And we have never lost a chook to a fox on their guard.