1st - 7th November 2010

The chooks were now well settled in to their new lifestyle although not without a few teething problems. The formerly bold bald one became very lethargic and stopped eating and we were advised by the vet that this was likely to be due to stress and was quite common in ex-battery hens. She recommended we kill it as they rarely survived but fortunately someone else recommended some 'Rescue Remedy' and this worked a treat. As we thought it would stress her even more to catch her and isolate her, we popped some in the hen's normal water pots and soon we had some very happy hens! In fact the effect on Bold Wally was amazing and soon she was back to full fighting fitness and somehow managed to gain a food pot to herself each time they were fed. They were doing quite a good job of digging the patch for us and seemed to enjoy dustbaths and sunbathing - all new experiences for them

Joanna had a brief stay before disappearing overseas and helped Dave water the natives ...

... and paid particular attention to Michael Jackson tree that she had planted in July last year (when it reached up to her knee).

She was also useful in sorting out the irrigation pipes.


Dave then got distracted and decided to move the gorse roots about - a real example of project creep as he ended up clearing a whole new area of gorse so that he had space to pile up all the roots of the plants he had dug up over the year.

And, yay, he emptied the swamp which had been a bit of a disaster as they were intended to kill the kikuyu grass but had attracted the pukekos. Still they produced a lot of good material for the compost heap.

These two activities were really to free up a site for a glasshouse / grow tunnel that we hope will be levelled off by the drive man when he comes to put the top surface on the drive. The final stage was to cut down all the weeds but unfortunately we were let down by technology and that will have to wait.

The chooks had had their two weeks on their first veggie patch and had done a pretty good job of clearing, digging and fertilising it for us ...

... so we prepared their next site which looked rather exciting. Just a few broad beans to pick first and some supports to remove ...

... and then across they moved. Wow, how much more exciting is this that a battery cage!


And the previous site needed some water ...

... and then a lot of mixed veggie seedlings.