We have a real problem here with wild birds eating our seedlings. They love broccoli, lettuce, beans, beetroot, silverbeet, corn – they even pulled out some of our onions and garlic!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the birds – satin bowerbirds and purple swamphens are the main offenders – I just wish they’d leave our gardens [...]

Some sad news, I’m afraid – two of the three chicks that Girlie hatched have disappeared.

We’d left Girlie and the chicks in the main chicken run, since they had a safe indoor area that the rooster can’t get into (the entrance is just small enough that he can’t/won’t go in). Things had been going well, [...]

We had a fantastic presentation today at the Jamberoo Community Growers meeting, by the people from Organic Crop Protectants. A big part of the talk was on organic fruit fly control, using their “eco-naturalure” male fruit fly trap and attractant/insecticide products. It looks like a great system to keep these frustrating pests down.

You simply bait [...]

Would you eat escargot (i.e. snails) in a fancy French restaurant?

Would you buy prepared snails from a deli and cook them at home?

What about eating snails from your garden?

I was doing some research, trying to figure out how to get rid of snails in gardens, and discovered that the garden snails we get around here [...]

We did an interview and some photos with Paul from Wollongong Council for Sustainable Illawarra today.

Paul is going around and gathering stories from about 25 different households, putting together some case studies and other materials for the Sustainable Illawarra project. Maybe we’ll end up on their web site, or possibly in a booklet or something [...]

I previously posted a list of online resources I found useful (for both plans and inspiration) when designing our chicken tractor.

I’ve had a few emails from people who lack either the time or the inclination to build their own, and would like to purchase a ready-made chicken tractor. So here are some of the Australian [...]

I’ve long watched other chicken-bloggers report their first eggs, and now it’s finally my turn!

When I came home from work today, I went out into the backyard to have a look at the garden and the chickens, as I normally do. On a whim, I opened up the door to the roost to check it [...]

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to writing up these entries – last weekend I attended my first Illawarra Seedsavers meeting, and it was great.

There were about 10 people at the meeting. Being my first, I didn’t know what to expect, but the other people were all very friendly and welcoming. They’d [...]

It can be hard to find chickens for sale locally, especially if you’re after a particular breed. Here is a big list of all the places I found when I was looking:

Illawarra Mercury Classifieds (look under pets, horses and livestock, and for sale categories) Other local newspaper classifieds (Kiama Independent, Lake Times, etc) The Trading Post The Land Check [...]

The Sydney Morning Herald’s “Good Living” supplement today has an article about HerdShare and Rentachook, titled City folk find a milky way.

HerdShare runs out of Byron Bay, and facilitates a scheme designed to get around Australian regulations that prohibit the sale of raw (unpasteurised) milk. Instead of buying your milk at retail, you instead buy [...]