Mysterious death

Well, alack! This morning I had a dead chook in the chookabago. We were rushing to Church fair so I didn't have time for a full post-mortem. I called Ducky but he said his name wasn't Chicky, and I would have to deal with myself. By the time we got back burial was in order, and dissection wasn't. One of them was a bit off color and not taking tit-bits from the chook-bucket yesterday morning. And I did hear a hullaballoo yesterday afternoon, so either someone laid an egg or a passing snake came egg-hunting. I don't know which, or if she was sick. Anyway, we will just stick with 2 chooks for a while.

The highlight of the fair was Pippa's (my neighbor's daughter) pony, as Rosie was a major hit with the stream of kiddies. She apparently did fifty 'rides' - and this must average about 3 per child in our vast population, and was much loved and petted, and will doubtless be causing horse-shaped holes in many parents pockets soon. My sandwiches (yes, my role) will probably not kill too many people. And we got more milk. The bargains you get here! The cartons say 'permeate free', which I imagine is like free green stamps. We've drunk one carton and not found the permeate, so I shall write and complain. Actually the fair is another example of the island community. Perhaps a 1/4 of the people involved have anything to do with the church, but on the other hand the church does do one of the most important (sadly) island tasks, the funerals. So everyone chips in.

The rose garden at the Whitemark Multipurpose center (where the fair was) makes me feel piteously inadequate as a gardener. Not that I am very much of a flower grower (does cauliflower count?), but the volunteer tomato plants make mine look so feeble.

I found two pea-pods this evening. We feast!

Today was pet-food day. Oh and recapture the AWOL chicken day. One had wondered out of the 'bago, as they'd finished their food, and the front edge wasn't down hard. Fortunately the chooks are very tame, so I just walked slowly up to her and she let me pick her up and take her back. I brought them all some little bits of fish as a reward and apology. They take them from my fingers, bit pecky but it does make them very tame. I'd better feed them early tomorrow.

We minced 27 days ration of cat fish, and 21 days of dog-roo cubes cut, bagged and frozen. We like to do these in big batches so it's not an every day chore. Thank heavens for freezers. I like to live in the past but with modern conveniences.

We're having our last peaceful night for about 5...
I thought life in the country was supposed to be slow and quiet, and good for my work!

Bees, chickens and Artichokes (artichooks?)

Met the island beekeeper today, and it turns out he's an ex-zoologist. We chatted about the important secret things zoologists talk about - the sex life of invertebrates, just in case you want to know (the details of which are only for those initates into the inner circle who survived second year Zoology. Don't ask. I might tell you, and brain-floss is hard to get through your ears). Anyway, he grows berries (and honey) - might get a boysenberry cane or two from him. I said my dad had kept bees and I'd always thought I'd like to try it. He was really encouraging, said the Island needed more beekeepers, and he'd help me with a hive if I liked. We looked at Sue's chooks together, and I soon realised the core secret of chook-keepers. Every single one of them SWEARS by his or her breed. All others are inferior ;-). Honestly it's like AFL team rivalry. I want a bird which is OK for eggs and meat occassionally. Not for for being the best... well, not yet.

Artichokes are possibly my favourite veggie. So my delight today at getting some - all at the stage of take them now or they'll flower, was very great. I did manage to grow them with difficulty back in South Africa, but I've never had anything LIKE enough (enough in Dave's book too many to eat, and enough to pickle) I got some seeds too (from some that had already gone past the eating point), so hopefully will get some plants going. I wonder if they can be grown as a field crop :-)

First bell peppers (capsicums, sweet peppers) went out today and first cucumbers (the gerkin source) too.

Anyway, we got home from the chook-yard tour to discover the back door hadn't latched properly and our dear dogs (brought at great expense and heartache from South Africa) had emptied the garbage pail onto the kitchen floor, and transported the salt outside and eaten a carton of 2 minute noodles.

They were NOT popular.

Glasses, cows and chooks

When we were leaving South Africa for this remote island of ours, my wife finally put her foot down and I ended up going to an optometrist - Moffat optical in Pietermaritzburg. Now I'm not good with fragile things (dunno why, you'd have thought coping with my brain would have trained me. So we decided to spend quite a bit extra and get Titanium frames, because as I explained to them, it's a expensive flight to get new glasses, aside from the hassle of not having them, and the cost of them in Australia. They must be the rolls royce of eye-ware 'cause I can't have them go wrong.

So if anyone happens to pop in to Moffat Optical in Hayfields... tell them I am waiting for them to fly over fix the darn things. They keep (3rd time now) losing a screw (different sides) and dropping the lens. No damage done, except I have to find and replace the screw. And about all I really need glasses for is that darn screw (I still have - just, long enough arms to read with. Actually my glasses have VERY light duty, and live on the shelf above the computer and never travel further than 1 foot from my desk. Barbs glasses are always on her neck on their cord and go everywhere. She needs superstrong frames, I don't. And actually cheapest low magnification supermarket reading glasses are easier to read with than these too.

Anyway - cows and chooks... someone planning on leaving the island is trying to re-home his 2 cows and his chickens. We planned eventually on both, but have been kind of holding off because the initial capital input is quite steep - and by the sounds of it you can spend more on the creatures' dinners than they save on yours. We definitely want MILKING cows - and these I don't think have been, although they are quite people familiar. The chooks... well I've a feeling there is a big learning curve waiting for us... Matters under consideration.

cannibal chickens and a spinning head

My attempting to be self-sufficient friends (the warders at rabbit-stalag-luft) and I had an important discussion about cannibal chickens. I shall never attempt to convert the savage chickens and keep a weather-eye for roosters with large cooking pots... actually as far as I could figure the chickens confined their cannabilistic behaviour to other chickens, and if they ate you anyway, it was just fine because as you weren't a chicken or an egg, it wasn't cannibalism. According to them chickens are good evidence that yes, birds are the lineal decendents of T.rex and haven't really changed that much. Their birds had gone egg-cannibal which they cured with extra calcium in the diet. I'm listening very carefully to all this stuff as we expect to have to keep chooks. I hope my next effort is better than my success at it as a young shark biologist. We stayed in a rented cottage on a run-down farm and had semi-inerited a flock of feral bantams that came to be fed every day. We'd had a spell of bad weather (ergo the fish and shellfish we normally principally lived on were low) and the exchequer was at its usual biologist's income flush point. And the chickens had increased vastly in number. So I went out with mayhem or at least chicken dinner in mind. I baited the feeding area well, and put more food under the steel bucket with one edge propped up with a stick with a piece of thin fishing line attached... leading to my lurking place 50 yards away.

Of course one of the roosters led the charge.

Did I mention that thin fishing line has quite a stretch factor and that the bucket was heavy and not easy to balance on the stick. The stick had to be pushed into the ground a little...

Wait.
peck
peck peck
peck peck peck
wander off and bully a hen.
return. Peck. peck peck. advance.
NOW!

er.

Pull harder.
Heave!
HEAVE HARDER.
Line snaps

The next day I used 200kg tuna line.
Now I''m not very squeamish, but I really hadn't thought through the 'how to kill a chicken' bit. I'm a firm believer in quick and clean (I do not approve of people who leave fish to flop on the deck or beach.) I'm an omnivore, prepared to eat meat, so in need, I'll kill it. Quick, neat and painlessly as possible. I've been dealing with fish-killing all my life. So I ran out there, and beside the fact that I was not going to have the scene with the headless chicken running around spewing blood, I really didn't know what to do.
Grab chicken.
Not happy rooster. Bullying is left to him, not happens to him. Decide to wring neck.
So I did. Several times as I had no idea what it took.
And the dastardly deed done I turned to pick up the bucket to put the rooster into.
And the chicken dinner -- just like in the cartoons -- stops being dead.
Starts running, its wrung neck unwinding, head spinning (you heard of someone's head spinning? Bet you didn't know it was on a rotating neck.)
The next few hours until dark were spent by a horrified Dave (you've injured it, you must kill it mercifully) chasing chickens through about 100 acres of scrub.
I never caught it, and it continued to rule the flock until we left the farm.

it's the sheep-caviar

Important discussion today with Chantelle ( an artist friend who, along with husband and many dogs and cats (yes they do read!) also let themselves read John Seymour's Self-Sufficiency. They farm rabbits... and despite the ease and fecundity have persauded me I never want rabbits as I have no desire to man stalag-luft's escapist detetection units. And their chooks - and I am interested in chickens - I have kept them before - have gone egg-cannibal) on how old sheep-shit has to be before it is no longer sticky.

These are very important questions for someone who has looked at a big sheep paddock as a possible home.