New residents in Chicken Palace

We have been ready for our chickens for ages, but had to have the accommodation and water set up  for them first.
Hubby and our wonderful friend from the coast had built Chicken Palace late last year and then about a month ago Hubby added the extra roof over the coop as  more  protection from the heat and  weather both for the chooks and the coop itself.

Hubby  also added one of those 1000 litre  water cubes and  added a gutter to the roof of the  cover to harvest any rainwater that we may eventually be lucky enough to  have.
We also ordered online  a handy little set of drinkers for the chooks inside the coop and   we recycled an old pig trough to add  another water source outside the coop but still within the  fenced larger 17 mtr x 12 mtr yard.

We started looking for our chooks, but as hubby had his heart set on the  light Sussex breed, we just couldn't find any for a while, but we then stumbled across an add on Gumtree and we traveled to Tamworth to a lovely couple   called Wendy and Brian who sold us 6 nice young hens and a young rooster.
They are beautiful  chooks and they settled into Chicken Palace very quickly.

We kept them in the larger yard for a few days before opening the gate to let them free range, they  now run all over the place, one day when I left my back screen door open I even found four of them comfortably sitting on the floor  in my  preserving pantry.

We are so in love with our chooks,  so we decided we needed  turkeys as well, hubby's family had raised turkeys as he was growing up but I had never had them before.
We went to a poultry  auction at Balimore about an hour or so from our place, and were lucky enough to purchase 8 turkeys ,1  young gobbler, two  young hens, and then 5 smaller hens.

We kept them all in for a day or so and then let them all run free, just locking them up at night.

We were then  unfortunately, invaded by a plague of grasshoppers, they came through like a moving carpet of grass munches, leaving  total lawn and paddock destruction in their wake. Our car  was constantly covered in grasshopper guts....we never seemed  to stop scrubbing it off the front for a few weeks .

The turkeys  thought all their  christmas's had come at once ...... Thank goodness the grasshoppers have now finally moved on.

Even the Old Blue Girl thinks they are really special, she wanders around behind them  and they don't seem to worry each other at all.
Every morning we let them all out early and they walk the perimeter of our house yard  searching out anything that moves,   I  reckon that no  creepy crawly will be safe  anywhere near our place anymore' which suits me just fine !!!

We have been really badly in need of rain, and the other day the clouds built up  with the promise of a storm and shortly afterwards down it came. We had 8.5 mm, not much but welcome all the same.

The turkeys were down near the shed  and got caught in the storm, I thought they were so funny when I looked out and saw them standing  as tall as they could, all of them up against the  walls trying to keep dry.

Hubby has been trying hard to keep  the sprinkler moving around the lawn, trying to revive  some grass  where the grasshoppers  ate everything, and every time the turkeys see it   they rush in to play in the water.

we are so happy with our chicken and turkey flocks, they seem to interact really well and hopefully down the track they will provide us with many, eggs and  meals of chicken and turkey.
We do love them dearly, but we are realists, they are here for a purpose but we will endeavour to give them the best life they can  possibly have , both for their health and ours.
Take care until we meet again,
all the best,
Cheers,
Jane.

Sunshine,Solar pumps and Water- a fantastic partnership

Our water supply up at the farm comes from two sources, the first is rainwater harvest off the roof of the house and various sheds,which is collected in tanks then pumped up to a larger holding tank high up behind our house and gravity fed back to the house for our personal household use.
The second source is that it is pumped up from 300 ft underground using a big Grundfos submersible  electric pump operated by a big diesel generator.It also is  pumped up to another storage tank up the back and gravity fed to the garden and our laundry.
The pumping from the bore involved hubby trudging back and forward up to the generator about every hour as we have a low output bore and it was pumping dry in about 10 minutes.
We made the decision way back to replace the  grundfos pump with a Lorenze solar pump as soon as we could afford to do so( Hubby's brother next door had successfully installed one) and  we had been saving for ages, but hubby retiring  recently gave us a little extra  financial boost to complete  a few projects including the solar pump on the bore.
The first step was to lift the old pump up and out of the bore and hubby's brother next door came over with his tractor that has a bucket which makes the task a little easier.

The men had to pull out  a huge amount of  poly  piping, electric cable and safety cable, and then finally the pump itself.
They then installed the new post that the solar array  will be positioned on.

The  young assistant to the installer got busy building the frame.

They connected the new smaller,lighter solar pump up to the poly pipe( we were able to use the existing pipe and cable.)

Because  the new pump was much lighter, they didn't need to lower it with the tractor, the men were able to "walk" it down  to the  bore.

The  connections were all made, the pressure gauge was installed on top of the bore and  the electrical  control box installed.

The panels ( three  x 250 watt ) were  installed and the orientation  set correctly.

The  installer then did a test run to check the  amount of water that the bore  was producing.
It now flows at 8 litres per minute( just under 2 gallons), this is a very  slow bore, but  taking into account that this pumps while ever the sun shines, it  producers quite a bit of water   over the period of a  day , certainly more than we were getting before.
With the old pump  ,if we were away for a few days, we got no water pumped at all, now the pump keeps pumping away, controlled by a float up on the tank and the garden can continue to be watered  on timers.
 Hopefully we will now finally start to see a big difference in  how the gardens and the lawns   appear and what we can produce.
On my next posting I hope that I can show  a few pictures of the difference it will make.
So until we meet again, we will be keeping busy  moving sprinklers, and setting up spray systems all  around the yard,
Take care everyone,
Keep your fingers crossed for rain for us, it's all very dry out there,
catch you later,
Cheers,
Jane.

Quick lazy grape juice and cordial

One of our  neighbours at the farm come and go like we used to do, and for the last two years they have told us to pick their grapes as they would not be around when they would be ripe.

They are not a very  nice eating  grape, so when I saw a few fellow canners had made simple grape juice,  I decided That I would give it a go too ( I  had nothing to lose)
We wandered over and picked two buckets full and brought them home.
I tipped them into the sink, washed them and  started pulling the grapes off the stems and gave them another rinse in clean fresh water.

After this I put about 3/4 - 1 cup of grapes into each clean bottle, then added a bit less than a 1/4 cup  white sugar to each bottle, I then finished  filling  up to the   top with boiling water , leaving 1/2 inch headspace  to each bottle.

I  capped each  bottle and  give it a few flips to make sure the sugar is fully dissolved and placed the bottles into my electric water bath canner, bring to the boil and hold at boiling point for ten  minutes.
After  processing time has elapsed, I removed the canner lid,and let bottles sit in the water a further  5 minutes before removing  and placing on a towel covered bench out of draughts to cool and seal.
I use a brand new  cap  on these bottles each time I use  them.

These now are supposed to sit on the shelf for 3-4 weeks for the flavour  and colour to develop.
I have already tried a few after only 2 weeks and I really love the taste already.
We ventured back down to the neighbours  again and picked another 2 buckets of grapes(this time they were a fair bit sweeter, but still not great eating) and as I was really happy with the first lot I decided to make even more quick juice out of the larger bucket full and ended up with another  great batch of juice.

This time I used larger bottles and some quart jars.
With the remainder I decided to make some  grape juice cordial concentrate.
I again picked off all the grapes, placed them in a big stock pot,crushed them  with a potato masher and just covered them with water.
I brought this to the boil and boiled  the grapes and water  for  about  10 minutes.
After this I then strained it all through a strainer and then secondly through muslin.
The skins,seeds and residue I fed to the worm farm, and the strained juice I placed back into a  pot and added  an equal amount of sugar ,stirring regularly until sugar dissolved and it reached boiling point. I then  let this boil for approx. 10 minutes.

I then  filled my pint jars, allowing 1/2 inch headspace,wiped rims clean, sealed with flats and rings finger tight and  placed into the boiling waterbath for 10 minutes to seal.
After the allotted  time elapsed once again allowed 5 minutes with lid off and removed to cool on the bench overnight.

I was really pleased with the  amount of juice and cordial we produced  from the four buckets of grapes. The photo below  is just from the second lot of grapes.

The cordial especially has been a  great success, with myself and numerous visitors having had  a try and everyone giving it a definite thumbs up. It is a lovely refreshing drink to have with  soda water or sparkling mineral water and ice, and I am sure would mix   into  alcoholic  drinks like vodka  equally as well.

I often sit out on the  front verandah with hubby late of an afternoon and  enjoy a glass or two,while he has a beer.
I definately will be making more of both the juice and cordial  anytime I am lucky enough to  have a bulk amount of grapes, it is  well worth the effort.
The prickly pear season will be  upon us soon,( I spotted a huge cactus near our place and the owners said I can have the fruit) and this year I intend to make cordial again from them(last year I made jelly and cordial from other  cactus plants I found along the roads, but we just don't eat much jelly).
So until we meet again,
take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane. :-)  :-)