Growth Spurt

Post sheep, the grass is coming back with a vengeance and I have been busy planting out home raised seedlings with others brought in from the local market. I am a fan of Carole Depp and in the spirit of good prepping (for the downturn that is to come) I am trying to source, test and refine local varieties of veggies which are tough enough to cope with changes in climate and feed us.

We are trying 'Granny's beans' this year bought from an old lady at the local market. She assured me that they were good eaten green and for drying so we shall see. Another newbie for this year are sweet lupins which can be eaten green or dried. Tomatoes and potatoes both readily get blight here so although I am still trying to grow tomatoes, I am also putting my faith in oca and may move to tomatillos both of which are blight free even if the yields are a little less than their domesticated relations.

It looks as though it will be a good loganberry year.

Flowers keep blooming and beer traps are working against the slug and snail menace. All that cheap beer going to waste, it makes me want to weep.

Finally the darling meat chickens are having a fabulous time in the orchard. Hesitant at first they now spend all day eating, grazing, snoozing, dust bathing and chasing insects in the long grass. I often sit and watch them doing what chickens should. Their chicken mates are at this moment shut up in sheds, never seeing daylight or experiencing the joy of summer afternoons dozing in dappled shade. I know that eating meat is unfashionable at the moment but the argument for and against doesn't have to be binary, there are always shades of grey.

I firmly believe that there is a place for animals on a small holding, eating good quality natural food, living a good quality of life and providing valuable manure. Money and profit shouldn't be the main driving force behind good animal husbandry and if that makes meat more expensive and out of the reach of consumers on a everyday basis then so be it. We should value meat as the incredible nourishing gift that it is. A life was lost in order to provide it so down with your cheap burgers and nasty feed lots and cages, and a salute to the poor animals forced to endure the living hell of factory farms. We should be getting them out of there and into the sunlight where their joy can enrich humanities soul. Enough of preaching, here is a pic of Sheldon and Cyril et al.