First Frost, and Other Blighted Hopes

Frosts in Sydney are infrequent and light, like the one that left its touches on my heaped lawn clippings this morning. Our humidity is often too low for frost to form in winter, or it's cloudy, which keeps the temperature too high, or else it's windy. I'd be surprised to see more than half-a-dozen frosts a year, and the ground never freezes.

The results are in from my Great Pea Experiment. Not a single pea came up and there was no sign of any peas in the ground. Perhaps a bird is eating them?

So I did what any gardener would do. I took a deep breath and... sowed another batch.

In Which We Meet Lizzie, and Learn More About Chooks

Lizzie has been named after a bluff elderly steam lorry in Thomas the Tank Engine. Unfortunately, while she looked reasonably sure of herself at the hatchery (she pecked the Sprig!), she is being thoroughly bullied by Annie. It's called the 'pecking order' for a reason, and 10,000 years of domestication has not civilised it yet.

If you are thinking that Lizzie looks more like an oversize quail than a respectable bird at point-of-lay, that's because there was an outbreak of feather-picking in this group of pullets. It's a more aggressive manifestation of the pecking order, and is caused by boredom. I'm satisfied that the hatchery is as good as they get, but a hatchery isn't a place for grown-up hens to live. The feathers will grow back.

I had better explain that any bird past about 18 weeks is considered at point of lay, though most won't lay until at least 21 weeks, often later, depending on breed and conditions. People have told me that if a layer is already present, younger birds will reach point of lay earlier. I hope it's true of our new girl! Annie lays 4-5 eggs a week, which isn't quite enough for us, especially as the Sprig's favourite food is "dippy egg with soldiers". I'm pretty partial to boiled eggs myself!

There's a mystery there, though: Annie's eggs weigh under 50g, but take longer than three minutes to become a "three-minute egg" (ie, firm white, soft yolk). I wonder if this is something to do with the very low proportion of thin albumen in fresh eggs.

If you look at Lizzie's picture, you will see a small pale-pink comb and undeveloped wattles, not much larger or darker than Annie's looked at 10 weeks. A sexually mature bird develops a red comb and wattles, which then grow larger remarkably quickly. Annie has been laying for about 8 weeks now:


I rather like her red bonnet!

Wholemeal Apple and Native Raspberry Streusel Cake

By request of the Sensible Vermonter.

125g butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1 Granny Smith apple
a few native raspberries
left-over crumble mixture from the back of the fridge

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F).
Grease and flour a deep cake pan (20cm/8 in across).
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla.
Beat in eggs one at a time.
Beat in flour alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour.
Beat mixture for one minute (or 30 strokes with a wooden spoon).
Peel, quarter, then core apple. Cut each quarter into 4 thin slices.
Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.
Push slices of apple into cake to create an attractive pattern. Do the same with the raspberries, but lightly and gently.
Sprinkle cake with crumble mixture.
Allow children to lick beaters, spoon and bowl.
Or maybe not.
Bake cake 50 mins, but test for doneness with a skewer.
Stand for 5 minutes before turning out.
Turn it out onto a rack somewhere where you can easily collect the bits of crumble that fall off, either to replace or eat yourself.

While this cake is my own invention, it is derived from the "Basic Plain Cake" recipe in The Commonsense Cookery Book, which has a number of variations, including one topped with apple slices and cinnamon sugar. You could top the cake with any other quick-cooking fruit, such as blueberries.

Native Raspberry

Here are some pictures from my Native Raspberry, probably Rubus probus.


There are a number of native species. They are surprisingly varied in leaf shape, flower colour, fruit colour and thorniness. Mine has few thorns, but some species are quite spiny.


The berries are not as strongly-flavoured as domesticated raspberries, and have a great many minuscule seeds. I have collected a handful of ripe fruit today and made a wholemeal apple and raspberry streusel cake. Any excuse for cake!


The boys liked the raspberries especially and I don't expect to get any more ripe ones intact to the kitchen.

A Drive in the Country

We went on a trip yesterday to Luddenham to pick up a friend for Annie, after Penny's death two weeks ago. Penny was six years old, which I understand is a reasonable age for an Isa Brown, and once the weather turned cold she grew old very quickly.

From our place, it's less than an hour to Barter's Hatchery (not to be confused with Bartter's, now part of Steggles -- their chooks come cooked!). Annie's new friend is a lovely Rhode Island Red at point of lay, about 19 weeks old. We have not named her yet.

The Barters man told me that the fashion for chooks means they have had trouble keeping up with demand -- isn't it lovely that people are rediscovering the joy of chook-keeping! Of course, this isn't without its problems. I was told of a disgruntled customer who turned up the day after he'd purchased a dozen day-olds. They'd all died overnight and he wanted his money back. Being the type who won't be told anything (they'd tried!), he'd put the chicks in an area with a concrete floor and no heating.

We bought some strawberries in Wallacia (oh, the fragrance!) and had lunch at a takeaway there. Of course you can't leave a chook in a car for too long, so we had the box on the ground next to us. The chook, distressed by the change in her situation, sounded the alarm frequently -- you can imagine the looks and comments from passers-by, and our responses!

"Yep, we like our lunch really fresh!"

"Doesn't everyone take their chicken out to lunch?"

As we were only 7km away, we decided to take the Silverdale Road to Warragamba Dam. The new visitor's centre is yet to be opened (it was burnt down in 2001) and the dam is still closed while works continue on the original spillways. I'm sorry to say that the new spillway, while certainly necessary, has spoilt the look of the dam, which was previously elegantly symmetrical. The new spillway is to one side and almost as broad as the original dam wall.

We drove back to the motorway on Mulgoa Road, stopping at the Glenmore Nursery for low-grade hay at $8/bale. We don't need high-quality hay for animal bedding. Generally, we use our own dry lawn clippings, but the combination of rain and cold weather makes this an impossibility. I would have loved to have a better look at the nursery, but it really was time to take our new friend home.

Our drive took us across a picturesque part of Sydney, part of our remaining rural belt. You can see market gardens, battery farms, cows, sheep, goats, and horses. This is the world of five-acre blocks. Unfortunately, some of them consist of an ostentatious house and a five-acre lawn -- what a dreadful waste of good garden or farm space! I do wonder what prompts people to buy a large block of land and not do anything with it. I think our well-used fifth of an acre gives us plenty of work, relaxation, beauty and produce.

If you are travelling in the area yourself, these websites may be useful:

• Penrith Valley Tourism
• Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail

Bird-Watching at Homebush Bay

I love the big skies here -- one of the advantages of living on the edge of the Cumberland Plain. Would you guess you're in the geographic centre of a city of four million people?

Serious, stay-in-a-hide-for-days bird-watching is not on the agenda for us, with two young boys. But nonetheless, we can wander to a bike track a few kilometres away and pop into the bird-hide at the Sydney Olympic Park Bird Refuge. The Geek took both these photos from the hide.


Black-Winged Stilts and Pacific Black Ducks (I think -- a common species, anyway) feeding on the mudflats. In the summer, this area is host to migratory species from Siberia and Central Asia. More details here.

The Great Pea Experiment

After several years of failure with peas, as mentioned in my last post, I've decided to try a proper experiment.

I have planted a 2m strip with peas -- and with slightly more thought than usual. Peas don't like well-manured soil, so I've made sure to plant them in an area which has not been used recently by the chooks -- it's probably had about 6-8 weeks lying fallow, and two weeks of rain. Half the drill was sprinkled with lime immediately before planting, and half was not. Normally, I would lime the beds on the surface.

I am wondering if the lime will prevent the peas being eaten by the little creatures I usually find eating them, or if something else is going wrong.