Happiness Is...

Heading into the garden with my cup of tea yesterday morning I couldn't help but feel like the luckiest girl in the world! How can you feel anything else when you share your morning cuppa with the chickens, bunnies and such pretty flowers and exciting new seedlings? 

After the upheaval of moving the garden from one suburb to another, the veggie boxes are finally installed in their 'forever homes' and filled with straw and chicken litter and potting soil (the idea is that the chicken litter breaks down and the veggies on top grow like they're on steroids!)

The beans are 4 days old and looking strong

The bath full of carrots is looking so promising!

Lettuces just showing their faces in the first veggie box

Lettuces and Beans in the first veggie box

So it's been a while, a very long while since I've managed to post anything, let alone something valuable or interesting... It's not that there's nothing happening in the kitchen or urban farming project, it's actually that there's been too much on the go!

I dealt with an infestation of lice in the chicken cage - I was away for the weekend and got a pannicked phonecall  from my little boet saying I had to come home immediately... I told him to relax and I'd deal with it after my mini break :-) The solution to lice isn't a fun one and neither is it particularly environmentally friendly... I cleaned out the cage completely and then dusted the ENTIRE thing with some chemical concoction called Karbadust (which nurseries no longer stock as it's a nasty insectacide - I found it at the farming co-op agrimark in phillipi). My internet research said that I'd need to dust the chickens too - the instructions suggested putting the chickens in a plastic packet with their heads sticking out and shaking a little to get them covered in the dust... I laughed out LOUD when I read it. I then called my mom and read it to her and we laughed hystirically together... you see, there is absolutely no way to get a chicken into a bag without injuring it and yourself, not to mention that it'd have to be one flipping sturdy bag not to get shredded by the chicken's kicking claws!!! I worked out a much more efficient method: I simply sprinkled powder onto the chicken's back which resulted in a flustered chicken who kindly ruffled their feathers, thus distributing the dust all over their bodies... I also got covered in the process (and I seem to have read that it's toxic to humans on the instructions) but I had a ball and was absolutely certain there could be no lice on me by the time I was done :-)

We're busy building a compost heap system - three divisions as there's quite a lot of composting material coming out of the garden and chicken cage... I'll post photos and designs once I'm done :-)

There's so much more to share but I haven't put the photos onto my computer yet and somehow photos tell a much better story than my less than colourful words :-)