The previous owner left us eight chickens, housed in an old coop. They’ve been nice company round the yard, and have bonded quickly after a bit of feeding, so now they follow me to the coop in the evenings, which is handy. They had been used to free ranging and some used to roost on the roof of the coop at night, so it’s good to have them locked into the hen house away from danger. They weren’t laying at first, I think they are old and out of training,…
Read MoreCategory: Country life
First weeks
Beginnings – first new-cut beds and the edge of the established veggie garden. It’s been a busy first ten days, unpacking boxes and getting to know the house and the neighbourhood. In among all the essential first things like seeing to the floors, deck and railings, which were a bit weathered, I’ve dug a few new beds. As you can see from the photo, the land around the house is mainly pasture, with an established veggie garden right in front of the house. The established patch, with…
Read MoreMoved in to Uki
We have finally settled and moved into our new place in Uki. It’s been a busy week but we are both very happy with the new place. There are still a lot of things to get organised, like a good internet connection, after which I will be able to start posting with pictures. We were lucky to be left a small fenced vegetable garden, a little overgrown but with some useful starters like tuscan kale, basil, mint, tomatoes, parsley, and strawberries. The last couple of days I’ve been digging over…
Read MoreMoved!
It’s been more than four years in the planning, but we have finally left Sydney and moved to the Northern Rivers region of NSW, so no more balcony blogs. And after a slightly impatient few months of finding and buying the right place we are now set to move to the town of Uki in a month. Exciting! The property is largely undeveloped, a mix of mainly subtropical rainforest and some cleared land, and pretty much an empty canvas for us, although the house is great just as it is. …
Read MoreNative bees
There are usually bees around whatever is flowering on the balconies, and I had never had a close look until the other day, when a conspicuous large brown and hairy bee was hanging around the rosemary. A quick search got me to the excellent Aussie Bee website and I found it was probably a brown carpenter bee. Then I realized that the rest of the bees that feed from the rosemary weren’t plain old honey bees, but blue barred bees. Right here in the middle of Sydney! It’s good to…
Read MoreWho are we?
I was deeply impressed recently by a film clip from the late 19th century. It was part of a program on the development of the new technology of electricity generation in New York city. A ‘war of currents’ had developed between Edison, who was heavily invested in direct current, and Tesla, who wanted to introduce the radical new alternating current. Edison wanted to make AC unpopular by portraying it as dangerous, and so he staged public electrocution of various animals. The clip shown was of an elephant, shackled, being electrocuted…
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