Our chickens have matured, but with maturity came the realisation that one wasn't so much a chicken, but rather a rooster! Given the issues with our city about keeping chickens in the first place, having a rooster was a no-go. Thankfully we found another couple who's existing rooster was getting on a bit, so they've taken him to a big farming property they run. Here's a shot of the two Rhode Island Red girls that we reared:
My wife also had a friend who's in the middle of rearranging their garden and henhouse, so needed to get rid of two chickens. We've adopted these, and while I'm not 100% sure, I'm thinking that they're Australorps. The new chooks are a fair bit older so I don't know if we'll end up with huge numbers of eggs, but at the moment we're getting our fair share of manure!
I'm also using the slower growth now we are in winter to be able to establish some garden beds to have ready for summer. This new bed I'm using no dig principles with, starting with mulch on the bottom, green plants (old pumpkin vines and green grass clippings) then autumn leaves off our deciduous trees. Between each layer is a layer of manure. The bed's almost complete (another layer of manure and old grass clippings) and then it will sit for a few months waiting for summer.
I'm not growing too much at the moment, but have got a few broccoli and pea plants. These peas are growing on an old no dig bed that I used to grow potatoes in last summer, and seem to be doing very well despite the cold setting in early this year. The peas will also provide nitrogen to the soil, which is essentially now a compost having decomposed while the potatoes grew.
So, while the plant growth drops off in winter, the work continues! The next big projects until the spring planting season starts is really around preparing the soft fruits - clearing some space for our strawberries and dividing our raspberries to make sure that we've got way too many this summer!
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