Friday, February 25, 2011

Around the Farm today

There's a definite change in the weather, it feels slightly less like summer and slightly more like autumn. It's hard to say exactly what the change is as it's still really warm during the day. 

I've been up since 5.15am, gone for a swim then came home and started on the daily stuff of feeding chickens, ducks, checking veggies, wandering around...

So first off veggies, or more specifically chillis. Lloyd is a chilli fiend. He loves them and would eat them with every meal given the choice. It gives me great pleasure to grow them for him, less so to eat them! His all time favourite is the habanero. Super hot and very pretty. He makes the most amazing chilli sauce, so I'm told. I come out in a sweat just looking at the bottle. 
Oh and he did this brilliant thing at the weekend ~ one of the Thai chillis got trashed in the cyclone and the chillis went red and dried on the plant which promptly died. Lloyd took the dried chillis and blended them really finely with some salt and made chilli salt! Amazing.

Chillis need a long season so they are beginning to turn now. I planted a good selection for him. Habanero, of course, a small Thai chilli, Tabasco, Rainbow, and a sort of purple cherry one that is new this year. I got it at the farmers market from a lady who has the most amazing seedlings,  a couple of Sudra which I had never heard of before but are a long, thin, hot, Indonesian chilli and some special ones I was given by a friend ~ you know who you are! And last but not least some scotch bonnets - another friend gave me some seeds from her plant. So all in all quite a good selection.
 Habanero


 Sudra, which I think will look amazing when they go red.


Scotch bonnet


After the veggies I went back to play with the chickens. The baby ones have merged in beautifully with the big ones. In fact one of the light sussex already goes to sleep with the big ones up the tree! The others go to bed in their house. Far more sensible. 

And I have yet another broody! That makes 4 this year. I put her in the wee house and she settled down beautifully on a little plastic egg and unless a wee plastic chicken miraculously hatches, I thought I really should get her some fertile, non plastic, eggs. Charlotte's roosters are having some time off just now so she had no eggs but I did manage to get some online. I got 6 ( as Elizabeth is a silver campine so very small) 2 light sussex, 2 silver laced wyandotte and 2 gold laced wyandotte, so fingers crossed my ratio of boys to girls is slightly better this time round.


But my favourite thing of the day is this...
You just can't beat lovely fresh washing dried out on the line. Love it!


Come and join in!

20 comments:

  1. Great photos! Having real trouble reading your posts though, the font is tiny :(

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  2. is that better, Sue, I changed it so it should be bigger now??
    There are all these lovely new fonts in blogger and I think I got carried away! I changed it about 12 times yesterday!

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  3. Hi Laura, love this post. So glad I read the comment above--I had no idea blogger had added cool fonts. I’ve seen several folks with great new looks but figured they found a way to add them on their own. This is wonderful. I’m off to look at fonts now :)
    Thanks for linking up with FFF --I will be posting the link in one hour ;)

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  4. yeah *blush* I'm a little early today!! Silly time difference!
    Oh you'll want to try out all the fonts! Some are like handwriting and I love them, but someone said yesterday that it was very difficult to read.

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  5. Great post - I love growing chillis too, but not so much eating them! They are so easy to grow and look great. You've got quite a few varieties! Chooks all looking good, glad the littlies fitted in so well.

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  6. thequietlife11:06 am

    Love your photo of the washing. Apart from, like you, having washing on a line, in the sun and blowing in the breeze it reminded me of the clothes line we had when I was little. A line with a clothes prop is so nostalgic. We'll forget about the winter days when the prop fell and the lovely white sheets dragged in the mud !

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  7. Sigh....I can't wait to garden again. I too just love hanging clothes on my clothesline. Unfortunately right now they would freeze solid to it.
    Staci

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  8. You certainly make me long for spring. I just love all that green!

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  9. oops, I joined your linky and then realised it was a farm linky..Im sorry...I guess with only one chook , three rabbits and a geriatric guinea pig Im not really a farmer........
    oh, but I would so like to be....xxx

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  10. It is getting a bit cooler isn't it. I love the weather in March...can't stand it being hot and humid especially at night.

    Love your old fashioned washing line! Makes our Hills Hoist look very boring indeed ;)

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  11. I had to google Hills Hoist! ( my mum had one and she just called it a whirligig!)

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  12. Have you ever pickled any of your peppers. So delicious with some pickling spices and garlic. The clothes on the line with that amazing blue sky was such a pleasant summer photo.

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  13. I can't wait until the weather will allow line-drying. I miss that wonderful smell of sunshine.

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  14. I miss my clothes on the line. I would freeze my fingers this time of year.
    Great photos.Love this post can't wait till our spring. B

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  15. I love line drying I can't wait till spring. Great informative post. Great pics. B

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  16. I can't wait until I can hang the wash out to dry,we have snow again today..
    I love your picture!

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  17. Nice post... your peppers look so pretty, love the chickens and I love hangin our laundry out to when its nice outside :)

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  18. Nothing like laundry, dried on the line!

    ~Chris

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  19. As I read your post I had a bit of cognitive dissonance. I kept checking the date of the post - yeah, it's current. But peppers turning?!! Can't be! The snow is swirling, the wind is howling...it's winter! Does she have a green house?! No - oh, now I get it. Lucky you, you live on the other side of the world where it is summer! What a great post to warm the hearts of readers living on the winter side of the earth! What fun that we CAN communicate so easily.
    My thoughts dwell on those in Christchurch. I hope all of your friends and family are safe.

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  20. The Scotch Bonnets are beauties. Wish that chilies didn't literally make Terry's skin peel. Ah well.

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x