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 go bush

During the warmer months our flock of chooks follow behind the vegetable harvest. After the vegetables are pulled up, the chooks go in and enjoy the leftovers, scratch up and fertilise the ground.

Now it's Winter and it's time for them to come up onto higher ground which for us means into the bush.

But first we have to make a few modifications to fit their houses in.

Cutting a few trees down to make way for their houses means firewood for next year,

some bush poles for building our tractor shed,

and some sawdust.

Every year we are surprised by how much the chooks look at home in the bush and then we remember that they were originally jungle fowl.

I love this one of Mr Rooster mid crow.

Collecting the eggs.

This Mrs chicken stayed home....

Doesn't this look like the definition of free range?

Hello Banjo, we are friends.

Enjoying a dust bath.

We try to offer them pasture as well as bush but given the choice they much prefer the shelter of the trees and scratching amongst the leaf litter.

Crunchy cold

On some days we wake up and the world is white.
The ground crunches with each step.
On these days the world seems very still and quiet.


It is hard to believe the baby garlic shoots are hardy enough to survive.

But out on the edges the compost piles are steaming.

The air and the surrounding ground are close to zero yet the compost pile is cooking on the inside. Growing bacteria that will break down the raw materials and turn them into black gold, humus, fertiliser, soil nutrients, plant food, innoculant....compost.