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The chooks let loose

03 Saturday May 2014

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3 May 2014

The chickens have grown noticeably in the last week, their combs starting to appear out of a red ridge in the top of their heads, their bodies plumping up, their bewilderment gone. They muscle their way out the coop door whenever it’s opened, and it’s time to give them more room to run. After a frenzy of internet searches to try to match the electric mesh fence and the solar power energizer, not bought as a kit but separately, we decide that the recommendation for our fence is an energizer of .8 joules, and the power produced by our actual energizer is about a quarter of that. It seems safe to put them together, with no danger of fried chook.

We put the fence up easily, enclosing a surprisingly large area of grass, and the coop door is ceremoniously opened. The chooks run out, run around their house, and run back in. Then they run out again, peck at the grass, venture a metre from their house, and run back in. They keep this up for some time, moving a little further away from the safety of their house with each foray. They’re a few metres away when something spooks them and they take to the air, flying and flapping back to the coop. But finally they make the break, and they’re strolling around their majestic yard, heads held high, clustered like children in a three-legged race, falling over each other to peck at the same moth.

A fierce wind sprang up during the night, buffeting us with icy gusts all day. It died down while we were constructing the fence, but by late afternoon with the sun setting, the temperature drops again. I go up to the coop to put the chooks away, but they’re already making for shelter, running up the ramp to the sleeping area. I checked on them last night, listening to their sleepy chirps, and lifted the lid to find them huddled together in a corner of the nesting box. Maybe they’ll learn to sleep on the perches when they’re grown-ups.    

The arrival of the chooks

28 Monday Apr 2014

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28 April 2014

We bought our first chickens on Saturday, three 12-week-old Isa Brown pullets. They chirped dejectedly all the way back to the farm, sitting in their cardboard box in the back of the car, then squawked in a half-hearted, helpless way when we picked them one at a time out of the box and placed them carefully in their newly-built house. They didn’t sit in their cosy perch-area mezzanine for long, but ran down the ramp and started nibbling at the grass, looking happier already.

Their house is a bit of an anomaly in our garden full of largely makeshift tree guards and plant protectors. We have a fine collection now of discarded wire baskets that we use to cover any plants that are more vulnerable to wallaby attack, like broccoli and kale. The chickens have a kit home, bought from an inner-Sydney person who longed to have chooks, but, after having the unconstructed coop sit in his bedroom for a year, decided to sell it. We put it together last week, fitting slot A to tab B, making a two-storey cage that strikes me as being high on dinkiness and low on sturdiness, but a good start. Once the chickens are settled we’ll put up a fence of 50 metres of electric mesh, keeping them in and the predators out, and they’ll have a movable run around their home.

I was telling someone today at work about the chickens. ‘Why is it that people buy three chickens?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard of other people buying three. Is that the best number of chickens to have?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘We bought three because that’s all that the shop had for sale.’

The easter egg hunt

21 Monday Apr 2014

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21 April 2014

When I look at the garden bed that I’ve decided to weed, I have a moment of overwhelm. It’s too much. It’s too chaotic. I’ll never sort out the weeds from the plants I want in there. The crofton weed will be too hard to pull out. The chickweed will be too enmeshed with the bok choy and the ornamental sage. The cape gooseberry keeps getting eaten by beetles anyway so why bother? I sit on the edge of the garden, my weeding tool in my hand. The sun is warm, but not too warm. There is movement in the air, but it’s not windy. The light is clear, the sky a distant, dreamy blue. The day is filled with the jubilant crack of the whipbird and the burble of the magpie and why would I want to be inside? I’d rather be tugging at crofton weed.

Of course once I start I can’t stop. Kept going by the satisfaction of pulling out a long strand of a weedy groundcover (nameless, as I can’t identify it on any of the weed websites) complete with a number of its endless root systems, or of a particularly complex root of kikuyu, thick and white, that has infiltrated the very depths of the bed. Buoyed by looking back at clumps of black soil, dusted with mulch, around startled plants. They seem to shake themselves down and expand as they realise their freedom, released from the threat of suffocation and the enclosing gloom of overshadowing, from consumption by the caterpillars and snails that I’ve removed and squashed.

As I move down the bed my eye is caught by alien glints of gold and red foil. The children missed one of their targets in the easter egg hunt yesterday, and it hasn’t yet been found by the ants. Its garish, shiny wrapping conjures the sound of four happy children – with an average age of six – running through the garden, pouncing on eggs and rabbits. The sun was so hot in the middle of the day that we had to scatter the bounty then let the children loose immediately to avoid easter baskets full of melted chocolate. The hunt was followed by an unprompted reckoning up, where the four of them compared what they’d found and shared out the proceeds more fairly. What beautiful, shining children!

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slime mould

04 Friday Apr 2014

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slime mould

3 April 2014
After a brief shower yesterday evening (a sudden fall of heavy wet drops – if only they could have fallen 10 minutes later and let me finish my mowing) we heard the welcome sound of the blue wrens. They’ve been absent from the garden for weeks, but here they are, quick flitting through the heavy leaves of zucchini and pumpkin. One firetail joins them, assiduously crunching through seeds of grass, parsley, basil. The wrens are tiny, the same body-shape and colour as mice, the same swift anxious movements, even the same squeaks. They patrol the garden in their haphazard manner, flying into deeper cover at an insistent triple call that comes from somewhere in the fennel, hovering for swift forays to the front where the soil is more exposed and they peck and jump. They don’t lord it over the garden like the blue wrens in summer, who had strutted and postured, parading on the bean poles with loud commanding songs. They’re meek and mild, new baby hatchlings.
This morning the garden’s wonder is slime mould. One is puffball shaped, climbing a stake, while the other sprawls over a dandelion. Little tendrils appear to connect them, or show that they are the one … the one what? Creature? Plant? Are they one organism, or a collection?
They start the day a vibrant fluorescent yellow, but have now darkened to a peachy colour. Their powdery surface makes them look toxic, but various helpful websites tell us that they’re harmless, assisting in decomposition. They’re not fungi, but they use spores to reproduce. They can take many different forms – last time we had some it was like spilled paint tipped vibrantly over the soil. It appears that today’s are in their fruiting form. One type is attractively named the ‘dog vomit’ slime mould. Don’t blame the dog.

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The railway station

28 Friday Mar 2014

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28 March 2014

There’s no-one else on the railway station. The fluorescent lights cast their bright light over an empty platform. Just me on the bench, and a few small flies around the lights. A bell rings intermittently down the line, like the bell at a railway crossing, except there is no railway crossing here. The road goes over the line, and makes a sharp, almost invisible turn left after the bridge. A dog barks. There are cones of light under the streetlights on the town side of the tracks. It’s like a painting of a small country town with all the elements in place. I have a burst of nostalgia for summer in the humid night, warm with the rain. I don’t even like summer, but the thought of summer nights carries with it a feeling of freedom and energy, of joy at the end of a hot day. I recall the joy of a cooling evening rather than the beating heat of an endless day.

A hard-shelled black beetle thuds into me. Another one falls loudly on the platform, landing on its back. It waves its legs ferociously, propelling itself along the ground. I miss the moment where it pushes itself over, but suddenly it’s walking quickly away, like someone who’s made a gaffe at a party. There are more beetles now, and many more insects around the lights. It was dusk when I arrived, but quite dark now. The dark has brought the insects in, concentrated them around the last source of light for the day. 

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22 Saturday Mar 2014

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22 March 2014

The land is bursting with ridiculous fecundity, as if we’re entering a season of growth. The forest in front of us is filled again with sounds of birds, competing songs patterning the air. A low underlying mumble of satin bower bird, a deep incessant throb of wonga pigeon, the steady beat of the bellbirds, the punctuation of the whip bird. Higher in the forest a chorus of excited parrots quarrels from tree to tree. Magpies sing arias from the back of the valley.

The garden is overflowing with energy. Seeds that have sat dormant through the drought are now emerging, to an uncertain future. A group of some sort of cucumber or zucchini (what did we plant there six months ago?) is sprouting in the top bed, where a late crop of tomatoes is flowering and fruiting. There is one fully-grown watermelon and more on the way. The watermelon vine is spreading down the bed, sending burgeoning green tennis balls poking through the tomato leaves. The rosemary, covered in purple blue flowers, buzzes with bees, both big (black and yellow) and small (blue and black). The kale has revived from its infestation of invisible bugs and has a new crown of crinkly grey leaves. Perversely, the silverbeet that fed us through the months without rain is now wilting, covered in rust. Rampant mizuna, mustard and parsley spring up in every spare spot around it. Heads of parsley droop with the weight of their seeds.

The cows are knee-deep in grass. Three Fernandos (white belt on small stocky black bodies) poke their curly-fringed faces over the fence and contemplate us. Tamed by full bellies, they no longer turn their heads eagerly when we open the gate. They don’t care about us and our green growth on this side of the fence any more. As they munch their way down the hill I wonder, should that be black heads and tails on white bodies?

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08 Saturday Mar 2014

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8 March 2014

There’s a moth banging against the big windows, bashing itself against the glass. We hear it before we see it, bang bang bang. I turn to look and something flies in from the dark side of the door. It’s a brown frog, looking small and silly on the paving, having missed the moth and stunned itself in the process. The moth, bigger than the frog, has also taken a blow, and bashes itself with more ferocity against the doors, flying more crazily and haphazardly when I put the outside light on. It bumps blindly around, clutching me for a mistaken moment as it searches for whatever it seeks.

It’s getting too cool to eat outside, and the moths add another reason to eat in. The days are still too hot to work all day, so we cram our gardening into the late afternoon and eat late when it’s dark. At last the grass is growing enough to need mowing, the weeds are sprouting in their opportunistic way, and the vegetables that have sat stunted in the ground for all these months are buoyant and producing – zucchinis, bok choy, all manner of greens. A particularly robust Thai basil with a strong anise flavour has spread seeds all around and little basils are coming up through the garden. Our own mutant capsicum / chilli has doubled in size over the past two weeks and is covered in its crinkled red fruit – not too hot, just right for me, a chilli-heat wimp.

The small birds have vanished, as if the rain has washed them away. There is less evidence of the wallabies in the garden, the kale and the parsley safe again, small chosen patches of juicy grass nibbled down instead. We do see an immature male forest kingfisher on the bottom fence, its blue plumage not as bright or distinct, its actions not as swift or precise as its older relative who graced the fences near the road for a few weeks. An eagle perches on the dying tree above our house, chased away by two game galahs. The eagle stretches its shaggy-edged wings and flaps lazily away.

The bare hill has a sheen of green, and its curves take on the beauty of simplicity, its bones of eroded rock covered again. White clouds in a blue sky cluster and clump, the clean line of the hill’s swell standing out against their puffery.

21 Friday Feb 2014

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February 21, 2014

The rain – not heavy, but constant light showers – has brought a cover of green to the paddocks, and life back into the struggling trees. The creek is not gushing but trickling a fresh line of life.

The rain has also brought bugs. Moths and butterflies are careering around in a last chance bid to lay their eggs. We inspect the trees and find that the olive’s top branches have been stripped by a massive finger-like green caterpillar that is now motionless, starting to pupate. Neither of us is able to interrupt this cycle of life, and Martin flicks it onto the grass instead.

I’m not so sentimental with the little bugs. The eggplants have managed to survive last week’s wallaby attack only to become infested with metallic flea beetles. They’ve turned the leaves into lace and are now clustering on the purple flowers. We had them last year on the eggplants as well, but not on anything else. Bugs are so specific. The brown spot on the silverbeet doesn’t affect the kale, and the caterpillars that are on the kale don’t touch the rocket or the silverbeet. There is scale on every citrus but not on any other trees. The red mustard has been decimated by something that ignores the zucchini plants in between.

Back to the books. Ignoring the carbaryl again, Jackie French recommends glue spray – her favourite spray – for beetles. It’s easy to make – mix flour with hot water then dilute with cold water and spray. You’d think after years of making custards, white sauces and playdough I could mix water into flour, but I end up with lumps in my glue spray. I strain it and spray it, all over the metallic flea beetles, and all over the pumpkin beetles (not so picky – they’re in the tomatoes now) for good measure. Now sit back and wait for them to die!

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14 Friday Feb 2014

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February 14, 2014

A little rain in the night. When we wake there is mist rising from the forest while light rain continues to fall. The mood is not yet of exhilaration, but of quiet optimism. A little cloud of red-browed finches hovers into the garden, descends on grasses and parsley, then one darts off and the others follow in a ragged bunch. From the creek we hear low trills and a gentle coo – probably the brown pigeons (brown cuckoo dove) we see on the tobacco bush. A whip bird breaks through with a triumphant note, and the call fades away in the gentle morning. The steady background hum and rise of the bellbirds is muted.

A large waterbird flies along the valley and loops over the creek, its languid stroke brushing through the soft air. I’ve always called these birds blue herons, but I check Cayley this time and find it’s a white-faced heron. They’ve been more visible during the drought and we’ve seen them in twos and threes, searching for the merest speck of water and food. This one perches on a dead tree, its grey back merging into the grey of the lichen-covered trunk.

The rain continues to fall, sometimes in stronger showers where you can hear the drops falling on the forest trees with a steady rush. A neighbour visits and says we had 9 mm to 9am.

The dead leaves on the vegetables near the house stand more starkly yellow and brown against those that have survived, revived and green and newly washed. I want to see new leaves grow, I want to give the heron on the tree a running creek and a good meal, but we’re all going to have to wait a bit longer.

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07 Friday Feb 2014

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February 7, 2014

Coming in to the farm yesterday afternoon, the dusty paddocks, sparse trees and dried out creeks, the river still trickling but only just, were almost more than I could bear. I had hoped, beyond reason, and with no assistance from the weather bureau, that we would have had some significant rain. That we would drive in to a lush landscape. Lush is a description that confounds reality. Even the slime on the creekbed is dry, blackened and cracking. The bare hill reveals red bones of soil below dried-out roots of grass.

Driving in the second time, after yoga in town, it’s mercifully dark. But the afternoon’s images stay with me. I lie in bed doing the crossword, trying to distract myself with word games. It’s working, when I hear a noise outside. A noisy lapping, just outside the window. Is it rain, falling softly? Moving quietly to the dark bathroom, I look out. A small head with sharp triangular ears pops up from behind the water chestnut trough, and appears to look straight at me. I think calm thoughts towards it. The head disappears and the lapping starts again. This is where the water has been going – not in evaporation. We’re watering the local wallabies. The noise becomes slurping, loud and unbroken. It continues for longer than I can stand there, and I go back to bed, my spirits revived by the glimpse of those quivering ears, the sound of one wallaby lapping.

In the morning it’s still dry, but the view has become less desolate for me. A family of bluewrens hops through the remnants of the garden, calling, jumping, flitting, preening. They find the birdbath has been filled so they splash and fluff. The cows, high up the hill, take fright at something and gallop down to us. They stop outside the fence to butt and tangle their heads together, then run on. Their bellies wobble as they run, their feet kick up and their tails lag behind.

But in the late afternoon I hear, again, the crash of a tree in the forest. It’s the third time in as many weeks that I’ve heard that mighty splinter and fall. The trees are stressed; nature is shedding what it can.