What a week...

...or two it has been!!

Our President stated that his political party - the ANC - comes before
 the country.   Nope -SOUTH AFRICA COMES FIRST JACOB!!!

Our government - or more specifically our President - threw his toys out of the cot, and removed two of the most hard-working, excellent and ethical ministers from their top positions in Cabinet (namely the Minister and Deputy Minister of Finance) for what is generally seen as: 

1) a way of installing unaffordable nuclear power for the benefit of his cronies who own uranium mines;

2) earning the "cut" the Russians have apparently promised;

3) plunging this country into a debt so large that it will take until 2100 to start recovering from;

- basically, the firing of Mr Gordan and Mr Jonas is a blatant act of capturing the next helping of illicit income he can take from the people of this country.

This willful, illogical action has resulted in South Africa being downgraded by two ratings agencies (Standard & Poor and Fitch - with Moody's reserving judgment - for now) - to JUNK status.  Good job, Jacob!!!

So, RMan and I responded to the call to action and took part in a nationwide (peaceful) protest yesterday.

The government states only 60 000 people took part, but those who called the protest place the number who took part above 220 000.  The fear of violence kept many people away, I reckon.  Thankfully there were only 4 - 5 incidents of intimidation in the entire country - and those incidents were nothing major.  it could've been much, much worse!

From the sounds of it, there'll be more action next week - and I'm THERE!!!  And, hopefully, now that the "fear" of intimidation/ counter reaction has been removed, more people will respond to the call to action.

But, back to more mundane matters...

The mulch we put down certainly helped in the veggie patches.

Harvesting and preserving has been going on at a steady pace.

 Piquanté Peppers are bountiful this year and have been both pickled and dried in the Foothills DryAway.

The dried ones have been turned into Piquanté Pepper powder - for sprinkling on top of scrambled eggs, omelettes, roast chickens, pizza's, etc.

Jars of pickled peppers for RSon, Natasha and us.  The next
 batch will be for gifts...

Tomatoes, also, were brilliant.  They were coming out of my ears at one stage ;)

I love heirloom tomatoes :D

Again, some tomatoes were dehydrated and I now have sun-dried tomatoes residing in my fridge for those grey winter's days when one needs sight and reminder of brighter days.

Homegrown heirloom tomatoes - drying in the
 Foothills DryAway

Although tomatoes take more time to dry than other vegetables, the end product is well worth the effort.

Perfectly dried sundried tomatoes

  The majority, though, were boiled / simmered in their own juice until they...

Sweat the entire (skins, seeds and flesh) tomatoes slowly
 until they produce enough  liquid to simmer in order to reduce
 the mixture down before  blitzing

 ... reduced down to become...

Blitz the reduced tomato mixture (skins, seeds and all) until
 you have a smooth tomato mush which is slowly reduced
 until thick enough.

...containers and ice trays full of tomato concentrate.  Plain tomato concentrate with not a single chemical additive.  These are also waiting in my freezer.

Finally, to help counter the cost of keeping them, I also managed to successfully grow sunflowers this year.

The easiest way to remove the sunflowers seeds is with the
 assistance of a fork.  Much kinder on the hands ;)

Getting the seeds out of the flowerhead isn't the easiest, but when you see the amount you've harvested it's well worth the effort.

Gorgeous sunflower seeds - for the chickens and for us :D

The chickens will love them over the winter months.

It's a messy business removing the sunflower
 seeds from the dried flowerhead

Be warned though, getting the sunflower seeds from the flower heads is a messy job, and best done outside :)

For info on how you can obtain your own Foothills DryAway solar / wind food dehydrator please click the link.

Putting chickens to work

...is, I believe half the point of having chickens.  The other point is their eggs - and their flesh - not that RMan or I would ever be able to kill one...

But getting them to work effectively needs guidance :D

Since we have restricted them to the back area they have had a merry time destroying whatever they can.  That is a chicken's wont though, isn't it ;)

The previous poo pile worked - after a fashion

And once we had removed the black plastic cover from on top of our alpaca poo pile, creating havoc out in our alpaca poo area was one of their greatest delights.

But, as a chicken claw or two and soon the
alpaca poo was widely distributed where it
wasn't wanted

So, we had to step in and create some order out of their chaos.

Once again, the 3 mtr long alien Black Wattle "droppers" we have in the tractor shed came to our rescue.  ("Droppers" are so named because they are normally "dropped" in along a barbed wire fence to add some strength / stability to the long expanses of wire.)

Black wattle "droppers" to the rescue once again

Once again RMan used the garage entrance / door to square off the "frame" before screwing the pieces together.

One of the side frames before it was knocked
 into the ground

Then it was a case of knocking the longer end and middle supports into the ground, and filling the slots with pre-cut pieces of Black Wattle.  Thank goodness we have had a little rain recently - trying to knock anything into this ground in summer, when the soil is baked harder almost than concrete, is not possible.

You can see the far side "wall" is still short of some
"dropper" pieces - but 3 minutes later it was all sorted!
 Ha!  Take that chicks!

The one side was purposely left shorter than the other three.

Te shorter side is just the perfect height
 to use it for wheelbarrow emptying 

That was done so that we could collect the alpaca poo in the wheelbarrow, and then, using the shorter edge as a fulcrum, tip the contents of the wheelbarrow into the newly designated alpaca poo compost pile :)

This year there won't be a shortage of alpaca poo for the veggie beds and fruit trees.

It works a treat - and, because the poo is contained and the chickens aren't scattering the contents far and wide, the contents are keeping them much busier for longer :D   Not only that, but we have caught them sitting on top of the poo "fence" - no doubt providing them with a better view for surveying their kingdom.

A bored chicken gets up to all sorts of mischief!

Sorry it took so long to share, Mum - but there - now you have our solution ;)

Restricted, but still working

This was a strange winter.  I didn't put on my warm jacket once.

But, surprisingly, we had snow on the mountains which are visible from our smallholding - not once, not twice, but three times!!

It's a pity the snow doesn;t come lower,
but I guess it is better than nothing :)

Normally if that happens only once a winter we are lucky, but three times???

Given our topsy-turvy weather, I have this niggly feeling that this summer is going to be an extra-ordinarily hot one.

So I have to make plans now.

The chickens have had free access to the entire property ever since they arrived here.  Not that you'd know it - they tend to hang as close to the house as they possibly can - trying to wheedle food out of us every time they see us.

And, the new rooster, Tweedle dee's now grown up chick, has decided that RMan will be the target of his displeasure when he feels that the (easy) food distribution is taking too long.

Existing chicken range

The problem with allowing the chickens total free reign is two-fold.

1  They are casting aside whatever mulch we place round fruit trees, grape vines, veggie patches and berry bushes.

2  We run our Cape Town based business from home, and, the rooster has no remorse crowing right by the back and front doors whenever he feels like it.  What our potential, or existing customers think about that noise as background to their telephone conversations I have no idea, and there is no additional charge for the sounds effects, but it is not an ideal situation.

3 Stepping out either the front or back door became an obstacle course - trying to avoid their "parcels".

Plus, I have one chicken who refuses to lay with the others - look what I found under the  bay tree...

As you can tell, I have been searching for her
 eggs for 13 days...

So, we have made a plan.

We decided to restrict their free ranging to the back area - in our lemon orchard.

New chicken range

Being, on average, 38mtrs X 30 mtrs in extent (or 1140mtr2), and considering that they are given a generous amount of chicken feed / laying pellets twice every day (good morning and goodnight) I am not concerned that they are going to suffer.  (Note: Althought the 24/7 feed bucket worked very well, and was hung high enough in the coop to prevent the mice from accessing it, I had to remove it from the coop as the wild birds found it.  Perhaps I will introduce it again next winter...)

The chickens noses are a tad put out of joint, but they'll get used to it ;)  The occasional one has found her way over the new fence, but that generally happens round about the evening feed time, so getting her back into the orchard area is quick and easy - she follows me because I'm holding the chicken feed bucket.

The separation involved running a chicken wire fence down next to the berry area.

New gate to access the lemon trees and the
 chicken coop.

We have placed a gate right next to the coop...

New tractor access gate

... and RMan has made a stonking gate next to the boys paddock so that he can still get his tractor out of the area.

The only problem is we keep our alpaca pool pile in that new chicken area.

We covered it up with heavy black plastic for the winter - to prevent any potential heavy downfalls of rain from "washing the goodness away" and to encourage the pile to heat up and kill any weed seeds.   That also meant that the chickens didn't have access to it - they were tending to scatter it's contents to the wind...

Seems like a small pile of alpaca poo, but we have
already started feeding the plants with a dose of it's
 goodness in anticipation of their bearing fruit / veggies

However, as they will now be restricted to the area where the poo pile is located so that doesn't seem all that clever.

On re-potting a pot plant on our patio last weekend, I also noticed that the soil inside the pot was full of cutworm - which must've come from the alpaca poo pile.

So, exposing the poo pile to the chickens is win-win - they get additional insect protein whilst they're turning over our poo "compost" :D

Oh yes - look what we've got access to...!

Actually, they get (got) more than insects.  As we lifted the black plastic, we spotted a fair sized frog (which they totally ignored) and a mouse - which crouched transfixed at the sudden sunlight / sight of us and the chickens.

One mouse - it had just seconds to
realise what was happening...

It didn't last long though.  One of the chickens spotted it, grabbed it, ran away from the other chickens and, in one gulp, swallowed it.

She is doing that chickens are meant to do -
find the insects in the poo pile - but, in so doing,
 she is scattering the alpaca poo far and wide...

But, what to do about their scattering the gorgeous compost material everywhere?

For that solution, you'll have to wait until it is complete and I can share it with you all... :D

Finally - culinary success

Kymber is forever posting about fermented veggies and kimchi.

And, although I have tried making sauerkraut a number of times, it has alway managed to "achieve an aroma" which put me off, and has caused RMan to throw it away.

I have finally succeeded this winter though.  And I now know why my previous attempts have been a failure.

Fermented cabbage - success at last!

In tryng to make sauerkraut in summer, the ambient room temperature has been too hot.

Home made salad dressing to splash on the
(95% home grown) salad
(our avo trees are still to young to produce),
and homemade fermented cabbage -
easy summer veggies to serve at the drop
 of a hat :)

It was the winter 2016 issue of the go! Platteland magazine that spurred me on to try again this year - with these two recipes.

Fermented cabbage & kimchi recipe
(Recipe courtesy of go! Platteland Winter 2016 issue)

So, with the success of my first trial batch, I got clever.  Not only have I got fermented white cabbage, but I have got fermented red cabbage too ;)  Success, of course, made me giddy - and I know have 6 jars of white and red sauerkraut in the fridge.  Loving ginger as I do, I added about 2.5 cms of peeled, chopped ginger to two of the sauerkraut jars.  I haven't tasted those yet though...

BUT, even if you're an avid fermented cabbage fan, please, make yourself a batch of their sweet and sour pickled cabbage.  It is just too devine :D

Sweet & Sour pickled cabbage recipe
(Recipe courtesy of go! Platteland Winter 2016 issue)
I added some of my preserved piquante peppers to
 this as well as the chillies - yummy...

I am completely hooked on it - and would even eat it with boiled eggs if I could ;)

Very cool!!

I will try and see if I can grow cabbage in my shadelcoth veggie patch this summer and, if I am successful, from now on before I make any cabbage for RMan and I, and before the chickens demolish the outer leaves and the alpaca's wolf down their share of thinly sliced cabbage, I am definitely making more pickled cabbage this summer.  Saukerkraut and kimchi - when my fridge stock is finished I will just have to wait until next winter when the temperature is once again suitable for fermenting vegetables... 

P.S.  Don't fret if you can't find the Winter 2016 issue in the store anymore - go! Platteland have additional copies which can be back ordered

Mulch rescue

The one thing about having totally free range chickens is that they can play havoc to your best laid plans.

Mulch mess - thanks chickens!!

Take the mulching that we're doing to try and preserve water / assist the plants / veggies / fruit trees to thrive in adverse heat (global warming) conditions and be productive.  The chickens delight in scattering that mulch as far and as wide as they can.

Nope - that doesn't suit me at all!

So, I asked RMan if he could build me a mulch protector.

First things first though, in tidying up the mulch mess, and removing some weeds / grass, around the beds we came across this little fellow.

About 1.5 - 2 feet long - with quite a scary "V"
marking on it's head.  A brown house snake.

Initially, we were a tad concerned, because the single row of scales underneath of the snake seemed to imply that it was poisonous, but it was confirmed as a non-poisonous brown house snake - that delights in eating frogs and mice!

We were told that a single row of scales
below a snake indicates that it is poisonous.
Thank goodness that proved to be an
incorrect theory ;)

It's a pity it was dispatched before we could find out that it wasn't a threat to us, but was, in fact, a very helpful fellow.  But, too late to cry over spilt milk / a deceased snake lol

Thank goodness for the table saw
 that RMan scored from the auction back in 2011

But, I digress - to get back to the mulch protector.

My request to RMan involved him pulling out his table saw which he scored from that auction all those years ago.  I have to say it certainly has come in handy round the property :)

RMan chopping up the 3.0mtr long droppers

Then we grabbed a whole bunch of spare "droppers" (3.0 mtr long lengths of alien vegetation a.k.a. Black Wattle branches / young trunks) which we had in storage for just such an occasion.

With a cut here, and a cut there, plus a whole bunch more, we ended up with this...

Literally within 15 minutes of completing these
 mulch protectors, the chickens arrived to
 confirm that it would work :)

... a mulch protector :)

It involved thumping one middle and two end "posts" into the ground in order to use them as supports for the horizontal cross posts - of which there are two at the front and two at the back.

All it took to make was 10 - 12 X 3mtr long
 "droppers", 3 X support posts,  4 X cross posts,
 umpteen  short vertical posts, and exactly 6 screws

Between the horizontal cross posts we inserted a whole bunch of 300mm high vertical posts which will act as the mulch protector "fence". 

It looks quite cute - and goes with all the other
 wood we have requisitioned for whatever use

Not quite a white picket fence (which we didn't want) but it certainly does the trick!

As for the fruit trees - as they are part of our "food" production, they are going to get some extra special treatment.  More on that in September when it happens...

The latest addition to the family...

... arrived last Sunday.

RSon phoned RMan last Sunday morning.  He told him a story about a 3 - 4 year old animal at the apartment block where he lives in town, which had been left behind by his first owner.

How can anyone do that?

The new inhabitant of that apartment adopted the animal.  But, he was recently diagnosed with Leukemia.  They thought that the cancer had spread to his lungs because he was having difficulty breathing.  It turn out he was allergic to it.

Sigh.

So it went to another occupant - who already had a one, and the two didn't get on.  So the new owner made it sleep outside on the balcony / verandah at night.  On a cushion on their patio chair in the freezing cold!!

What???

Anyway, to get back to topic...

RSon wanted to know from RMan if we would take the animal.

Bloody hell, yes!

So RSon immediately hopped into his car and drove for 3 hours to bring her to us.

How can anyone be cruel to an defenseless, harmless animal?

So - introducing Snoopy...

Snoopy on the couch with RMan - RMan
 was still taking it slow whilst Snoops got
 to know us so minimal touches which she
flinched away from, and no sudden movements.

Who calls a cat Snoopy, who comes when she's whistled, and who doesn't meow, but makes tiny little squeaks lol

The poor traumatized thing hid under RSon's bed for 2 days!

We were very worried about her - nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no sandbox use even though I, concerned, put the food, water and box in the room with her...

Finally, on the third day she ventured out from under the bed - and room.

I brought everything downstairs to the kitchen again, and she has finally started eating, and drinking properly.

She is very skittish, and runs and hides at the slightest loud noise or sudden movement.

Yesterday our neighbour popped in for 10 minutes - and Snoopy disappeared.  I thought that perhaps she had taken fright and run out through one of the open doors.

We searched high, we searched low, down on hands and knees, and up on tip toes.  She was nowhere to be found.

I tried thinking like a cat - and checked in all the kitchen cupboard doors which had been open during the day.

Believe it or not, Snoopy squeezes into the space
 behind the records - all you can see from the outside
 is the tips of her two little ears sticking up

I checked in the small space behind the LP records we have in a shelf - where she had hidden before.

The tiny footwell under my writing
desk which I inherited from RMan's mom

I checked in the tiny footwell under the writing desk where my laptop is situated.

Nada!

Damn.  Where could she be.

Walking round outside, calling, psssss-ing and whistling (she comes to whistles?!?) and nothing.

Then I remembered that I had brought in the washing from the line.

Could she?

Is she?

Yup, she climbed in the bottom and RMan's cupboard and hid amongst his shirts.

Sigh.  What a relief.  She is safe.

She is s-l-o-w-l-y getting better, more friendly, and more exploratory.

It will just take time.

Snoopy on the front patio -
basking in the afternoon sun

Tomorrow she has been here for a week.  This afternoon, in celebration,  she ventured out onto our front patio.

She met the chickens.  And the rooster.

And was very intrigued.

From a distance.

As soon as they came up the front steps to investigate her, she scarpered indoors again, and watched them through the window.

Ditto, the alpacas fascinate her - from the window sill  lol

Snoop has decided that my lap,
 covered in my comfy gown, is
 an acceptable place to watch TV
  with us in the evening

There is just so much to explore here at her forever home...