Day 207

Winter is so hard.  I can barely seem to fit in the time to get out to the patch before dark.  Tonight it was picking in the dark and I keep thinking I should get a head torch.  

Tonight I picked a handful of leeks.  The crunch as I chopped them for a lamb and leek casserole was amazing.  You just cant buy that sort of thing.

This is a fairly basic slow cooked lamb dish.  It has lamb, leeks and potatoes and is baked for 3 hours so it is for tomorrows dinner.  This is the layer of leeks over and under the lamb.

Topped with sliced waxy potatoes and fresh thyme from the patch and it smells amazing.

Day 206

The patch yielded up some treats this afternoon which consisted of Silver beet, Snow peas and Cauliflower.  I think this variety of Cauli is meant to be a purple variety but we never leave it long enough. We did have one awhile ago that was very open like this one that had a bit of a purple tinge but it too was consumed too early.  Its too tempting to leave them in the garden.  

Day 205

We're still here.  Its just slow progress.  I did a bit of garden maintenance this morning.  Cleaning out dead leaves etc.  

You can see in this picture we have  leeks that are almost ready to harvest.  They were grown from heirloom seed.  

In this picture is broad beans.  They seem to be taking ages but ones again from seed.  I read this morning that they are very slow growing so it's reassuring.  

And this fellow.  Our first cabbage has very limited days.  Cant wait to have a crisp coleslaw.  Those outer leaves will go straight to our chooks who have been having a great smorgasbord of all sorts of green leafy waste from the patch.  We've had 3 eggs so far as well which is great.  They really seem to be settling in well.

Day 192

Today we picked up our chooks.  Three Belgian d'Uccle's (pronounced dew-clay). Until we spoke to the breeder we had no idea these beautiful hens even existed.  

They are so placid and have great colouring and have become a great addition to the patch.  We want to give these guys all our green waste from the aquaponics garden so they can turn it into compost for us and we'll also get some delicious eggs as a bonus. 

We have called them Polly, Molly and Daisy.  They are so much fun to watch.

Today we let them out for the first time for a little walk.  It will be good when the weekend comes so we can let them out a bit longer.  

Day 188

We've been contemplating for quite a while now about getting some chickens.  We think it would be great for a number of reasons including

1. Great for the kids.
2. Our current compost efforts aren't keeping up with our green waste from the patch
3. We could use the eggs they produce and the chook poo as a compost.

So we bought ourselves a Chook pen.  I pick it up in two days and our weekend project will be building the pen and getting it ready for some chooks.   We are going to get Isa Browns as they are great layers and fairly good with kids.  We really think it will be a great addition.  They can eat our lovely green waste from the patch of which we have heaps and it means we'll get fresh organic eggs.  I'll post some pics in a few days of our progress.

Day 184

6 months.  Can you believe that its gone so quick.  It seems that it wasn't that long at all since I first started this blog.  Certainly things are slowing in the patch and I do need to get out there and do a little clean.  Its becoming a little over grown and needs a good tidy so I will do that tomorrow.  But to celebrate half a year we decided to pick some more and tonight we enjoyed silver beet, cauliflower and the most successful carrots yet.  We've never had much luck with carrots but these weren't too bad at all.

Well here's to the next 6 months.  As spring will soon be here I can only imagine how much busier this blog will get.  Thanks for sticking it out with us and we look forward to the second half of the year in the patch.