Latitude 14 Eastern Australia

[sun burn]

"many chickens" not "much chickens"!

[Stingray]

yoikes.... sorry to hear about ya chickens :{
we havent lost any yet to snakes.. we had a yellow-faced whip snake around the other week .. but thank fully their fav food is small skinks n small lizards

[eco4560]

Natural Building Fun

Saw this out on the main page and thought of you. But you might have concerns about the fact that they have concerns about it falling down!

[sun burn]

ha, concerns about it falling down!

I am always going to have concerns about trees falling on my house during a cyclone. And i am not going to have insurance. Where i want to build myself at the moment is a complete swamp. I will have to dig some ditches if i don't want to have this below me once i move in.

[aroideana]

Its a different brand of pruning saw , but very similar looking . Mine is Bahco from Sweden.
Have heard great things about Silky , but a great price .

[sun burn]

oh!!. I looked for "barco" on forestry tools as you suggested but there was no brand like that. So i figured i must have heard you wrong or something.

Anyway the thing works. I think its just a bit bigger than yours. Nevermind.

My plants are going fine but at first i put them in my forest but its turned into a swamp so i had to get them out.

Is your garden coming along?

Did you see the pics i put up. I haven't put them all up. I am not much in photoblog mood these days. Its been great gardening weather though we are having a few hot days now. Still i am motivated afresh after my "holiday" at your place. I put in my snow queen hibiscus yesterday - six of them and i am really pleased I spend the dough. I hope I don't have to do it again though.

[sun burn]

Yesterday on the spur of the moment, i decided i would wait no longer for lessons in using a chainsaw from some outside expert and went to Dad and asked his help. Luckily he agreed and although i thought it was going to go badly for a minute there, I chopped down my first tree without mishap, and my second.

The first was a mandarine that looks like, has quite a few little fruit but all are inedible. I judged that the thing was taking up valuable space so it would be best to chop it down and put something else in. I'd like to put in the orange as dad doesn't like its current spot but there's not a lot of root space as its very close to a large fig. So maybe i won't transplant it. I'll put in some small fruit tree seeding, a jakfruit or a custard apple or something like that.

The second one was a milky pine (rainforest tree) that was never going to reach its full height due to insect damage. As it was, it was shading my newly planted hibiscus and so it was time to go for this one too. Milky pines have nice flowers so it is a pity.

I've put in all my new snow queen hibiscus now and I am really excited about them. Though i hope they don't drown with all this rain. They are currently waterlogged but fingers crossed they can survive. If they look like they are suffering, i will dig them out. Maybe i could build up little mounds like you are supposed to do with pineapples. I'll see. Today in Mossman I saw some wonderful examples of this shrub which made me happy to see. They were big and bushy and white. I can't wait till these are full size and doing their screening job along the highway.

I also got a stack of other cuttings in town this morning. I would have got more even but it started raining so hard. Three hours later, it hasn't stopped so I am not doing anything else today though I had hoped to start potting up these cuttings.

A few days ago i had to break my new year's resolution about only eating vegetables from my garden and not buying any from the shops. I didn't want to eat kang kong (although i like growing it) and I've had enough pumpkin. The ones i've got aren't particularly good. I am not going to grow this type anymore. I was putting on weight and eating too much icecream and mints so i've gone on a diet now and this means i have to buy some vegetables from the supermarket again.

With all this wet weather it looks like it might be a while before i can consider starting my paving project. Of course the window of opportunity was back during February which was quite a dry month for this part of the world. Drier than usual apparently. Oh well. I will do it later.

My second mangosteen has finally shown some new growth. Boy i can tell this is going to be a slow painful project. The rollinia is looking pretty pathetic still as well. The orange is probably doing the best of all the fruit trees i bought (oh and the avocardo is holding up well too), funnily enough since that's the one that's not supposed to like this climate at all. Perhaps i shall never get fruit but just a big bushy tree. The mandarine is sluggish. It probably wants a bit more sun. I can't remember what else i bought now. Oh a vanilla orchid. All are doing fine.

I dug out the granadilla that a friend gave me for christmas since it was getting waterlogged where it was. I'll have to find somewhere else to put it.

[sun burn]

For some unexplained reason, there's been a large pile of woodchip sitting by the side of the road not far away from our place. I presume its a byproduct of the cyclone. I'd say the main roads left it there. Anyway we've decided to help ourselves since i can't imagine what they are going to do with it and its been there long enough if they wanted to remove it. We got a trailerload the other day but i must say it doesn't go far so i'll have to go back for more.

I've got to go and get some sawdust from a local cabinet makers shop for the chicken's floor. I'm doing the deep litter method now which ive mentioned before but read about it in my duck raising book. What you do is just keep adding the new clean material on top of the old. And change it about once a year. Its supposed to compost while it sits. Even if it doesn't i've decided i like this method as its less work. At least the stuff will age and will be great on my vegie garden.

I've cut down more trees and branches with my chainsaw but one of the trees has an awful lot of sticky sap and so i've got my blade covered in it. I've had to take it all apart to clean it. I haven't put it back because i wasn't sure how to add more oil to hte chain. I should fix that up today now that i've decided a basting brush would probably do the trick with the least mess.

I've lost the nut off my new handsaw already which is a bugger. I've got so much to do with these two tools.

Meanwhile with all the rain we've been having everything, including the grass, is growing nicely. Not that there's any foody things growing, apart from sweet potato which i've allowed to take over my vegetable patch. Its a good source of cuttings though. The rosellas are looking healthy now and I should get a good batch of jam out of them. They really like the rain. The sugarcane and sorghum are doing well too. I only wish i had more sorghum.

I need to get down in the vegie garden and do some clearing out and preparing the beds for my winter vegies i think. And also i should dig out the bog for the taro.

Now that i can see the extent of all the swampy ground, i can see what i have to do down in that part of the block to make it more suitable for production.

I've finally found a good spot for the tamarind tree. I will put it near the shed to provide some cool and this will also provide some shade in that old duck yard area. Its taken months for me to figure that out. Tamarind trees make lovely shade trees. I've been looking at a couple in mossman. Apart from using tamarind in thai soups and the like, probably the easiest way to use them up would be making a sweet refreshing drink. I've had this before and its delicious. But for me, as i've sworn off sugar at the moment, i don't know if i will be drinking it. Perhaps I could sell it at the markets or do something like that iwth the fruit.

[sun burn]

I'm excited because i've found another duck murderer in the same situation as me. I hope nothing will get in the way of this but it looks like we may be able to help each other. She replied to my request through the local permaculture group and lives about an hours drive away. I think its a she anyway. She seems to be thai or chinese.

Other than that its so hot here these days since the rain has stopped that I can't make myself do anything. I could work in the early hours of the morning but i prefer to sit around drinking coffee and mucking about on my computer. So i just have to hope it doesn't rain in the afternoon (like it did the other day) and then i can get a little bit done. Mowing is getting a bit urgent.

Dad picked up a nut for my new handsaw the other day so i can probably get onto to chopping up the trees i chainsawed down the other day.

Oh yes, lol. Yesterday i had run out of chicken pellets and went to town. I had it on my list to get some more. I told dad that he might have to give the ducks and chickens some canned cat food for dinner. I visted a friend before leaving cairns and didn't leave till about 8pm so i missed out on getting the pellets. So i thought the poor things might be a bit hungry. Dad said the chickens went for the cat food but he didn't know about the ducks. This morning i fed them cat food again and i noticed that the ducks were not interested in the cat food even though it was a fishy one. The chickens loved it of course. But i also noticed that the ducks did not seem particularly distressed. I think they must be gorging on the fat witchety grubs that are all around the garden. Lately they have not been eating all the pellets i've been giving them so this is a good sign. Anyhow, today i will have to make a special trip to Mossman to get more pellets which is annoying since i have to go again tomorrow as well.

[sun burn]

Yesterday the other duck person phoned me. She's going to watch a friend on Sunday as he kills some turkeys. I asked if she could ask if i could come along. I am waiting to hear back now.

Also we are agreed to help each other. She says the thing that's putting her off is how hard the ducks are to pluck. As i haven't experienced that its not the main problem for me.

Also Joe phoned yesterday but i forgot to phone back. So it looks like he's going to be doing his ducks soon.

I figure I will use all the support i can get and if that means attending more kills then that's what i will do.

But also i will maybe get to meet some other local permies so that could be good too.

When i went to town the other day to get some sawdust, i found out that the sawdust is poisoned with arsenic, cyanide and something else as all the wood up here is treated. I still got a bit of it because it was only after loading it on teh trailer that i realised what a bad idea this would be. Of course i wasn't going to put it on the chickens floor and later vegie patch when i realised this but i thought it might be ok for the other plants but since then i've thought better of that too.

But what's rather worrying is that the guys at the sawmill told me they give their sawdust to the local stables. Now i am concerned that the people i get my horse poo off have the poisoned sawdust. Of course i have put my horse poo on vegie patch. WEll so far i haven't experienced anything bad from this horsepoo but i think i might have to hvae a chat with teh people who sell the horsepoo. You see in a bag of horsepoo it is half sawdust.

So bearing all that in mind, you've got to wonder about the hazards of using any timber in your house. Given that when its cut to shape, they are producing a poisoned waste and that waste has to go somewhere and most likely back into the ground.