Speckles!

Our first attempt at free ranging the chickens this morning didn't go too well. Mother Clucker, Dorothy and Denise stayed near the gate but Naughty Speckles went all the way around the house on her own and was in the neighbour's yard when we went looking for her! When I walked over to her she just stood there waiting for me to pick her up. Silly chicken.

The plants survived the night except for some wilting tomatoes (the gold nuggets - they're only a few inches tall). Hopefully they'll make a full recovery today.

Hot Days, Frosty Nights

We have another frosty night ahead, apparently. We spent a good half hour covering the fish tank, the grow bed and the greenhouse plants with various tarps and cloths. We closed the greenhouse up early so hopefully it will retain enough heat to stay above 0. 

Nathan has gone to check the fish water temperature in the middle of the night the last two nights (*note that I never volunteer for this task) and it has stayed consistently between 18-20 degrees. There's a small aquarium heater in the tank, it gets covered at night, plus we attached insulation around the outside of the tank. Those things all seem to be working to keep the temperature up. 

First net full of Tilapia going into their new home. We transported them in that black tupperware in the back of my car - going around corners was a little sloshy but all fish were fine upon arrival.

They like to hide in dark corners and in some plant pots that Nathan put in the tank (or "pot plants" as Nathan says they call them in Australia. I'm not so sure about that...) 

Salad greens looking good in the grow bed. 

Tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini.

I took Magpie away from the other chicks to have her photo taken and she wasn't too happy about it. She is *loud*!

It was so hot in the greenhouse today...and yet Abby and Ryan insist on lying in there, panting away.

Eggciting Gardening

Ok that was a pretty bad pun...but we did have some chicken help the other day in the front garden, no yolk. We were digging out all of the weeds and realized that the chickens could help us move the soil around a bit (and it was full of worms and other juicy bugs). 

We brought Speckles, Mother Clucker, Denise and Dorothy out one at a time on a rotating garden helper schedule. They were pretty content scratching around for bugs.

 We found this guy (I think it's a Western Redback Salamander) before the chickens got him.

Yesterday we went and checked out a livestock auction (no, we didn't come back with any more animals). We never even made it to the livestock part of the day! It took them 3+ hours to get through the farm equipment so we ended up leaving before they started with the animals. We did get to see all the animals in the barn - the lambs were tiny and adorable. Maybe it's a good thing we left when we did...

We woke up this morning to a strange scene - the farm gate was open, the landlord's truck was gone and there was a burn mark in the grass outside the greenhouse with an empty, blackened garbage can next to it. It turns out that our landlord woke up in the middle of the night and realized it was frosty out so he drove over to the farm to try and heat the greenhouse up. He attached a pipe to the heat vent of his truck and ran it into the greenhouse, and he lit a fire in the can outside the door and used a fan to blow the heat in. The seedlings all seem fine today (his and ours) - the thermometers apparently read -1 degree outside and 3 degrees inside at around 4am. The fantastic guard dogs never even woke up in the night...