Jump to the end if you just want a summary, or read the whole story about why we've bought more laying hens (read more here about things to consider when buying hens). Pete and I have been keeping chickens for eggs (and occasionally meat) for over 10 years. We've usually had at least 10 hens and sometimes up to 30, and we've always had enough eggs to feed ourselves and usually extra to sell or give away. Lately our chicken numbers have dwindled to six hens and rooster, mainly due to natural attrition and then a fox got into our chicken mesh. (Which is another story - the mesh had got ..read more

Most conventional vegetable garden planning advice says to "grow what you eat", to look in your fridge for ideas of what to grow in your garden, otherwise your veggies will sit out there in the garden untouched and your efforts will be wasted. I tried this the first year in my new veggie garden, I planted tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, corn, broccoli and celery, which were all things we liked to eat and would regularly buy from the supermarket. The tomatoes were attacked by fruit fly, the carrots were short and fat with many "legs", the potatoes didn't grow in our heavy clay soil, the brocc ..read more

Chickens naturally stop laying eggs in winter.  Actually when you think about it, the fact that they lay an egg a day for so much of the year is completely unnatural.  Birds in the wild will only lay a few eggs until they have a clutch to hatch, but we have bred chickens to just keep laying every day, no wonder they need a break! Part of the reason we keep so many chickens (usually around twenty hens), is that we get just enough eggs through winter to have one or two each a day. In spring we will get up to twenty eggs a day and in winter it will be two or three eggs. You can use ..read more

While mindlessly scrolling Facebook I saw a post which was an article from 2017 that had been reshared. The title of the article was "No, poor New Zealand families can’t just ‘grow their own vegetables'". I read the article, and it got me thinking. I know that people grow vegetables for lots of reasons, saving money may be a minor reason for some people. Growing your own vegetables can give you a greater variety of vegetables that you can't get in the supermarket, you know they are chemical-free, they taste better, and you get the enjoyment of some physical activity outside in nature. But that ..read more

We bought our 258 acres property with no house, knowing that we would eventually build a house so that we could live on the property. While we were agonising over the exact type and layout of house we wanted to build, a small Queenslander house was advertised for sale on a nearby property.   We moved the house... We had lived in a Queenslander house before, and we knew that they were a lot of work to maintain. We had actually sworn that we would NEVER live in another Queenslander house! But when we saw this little house advertised, and that it was in pretty good condition, we decided tha ..read more

I started my first vegetable garden in 2008 after I was inspired by a DVD in which Peter Cundall (from Gardening Australia) dug up a lawn with a rotary hoe. We were able to borrow a rotary hoe from a friend and built a giant shade structure using secondhand shade cloth. I watered the garden using dam water and a fire-fighting pump. I grew vegetables from seedlings and seed. We had gluts of zucchini and tomatoes, and at other times virtually nothing grew. The relative success was luck more than anything else, as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Since then, I have read just about ever ..read more

Water security is a massive priority for us, particular in dry seasons. We have a few bores on our property, and at times we find that the water is too salty to use on the vegetable garden, for the chickens or even for cattle water. I have been wondering for a while if there is a cost-effective option to remove the salt, so I was happy to be approached by SWS Pacific with the offer of an article on this subject.   The desalination units are still relatively expensive at around $6000, however, sometimes water security is worth the investment depending on your other water sources and y ..read more

I'm always looking for ways to use the natural materials that we produce on our property, and one of those is beeswax. I've been using beeswax to make beeswax wraps, various balms and salves, beeswax wraps and leather dressing. And I've been selling beeswax to other people to make their own DIY products, including candles. Beeswax candles One thing I hadn't tried yet it was beeswax candles myself, so I did some research on the options for making beeswax candles. You can either pour the beeswax into a jar with a wick or you can use a mould (usually silicone, but also sometimes metal o ..read more

Backyard chickens are said to be the “gateway” animal to more serious homesteading. They are small and easy to care for, you can keep them on a suburban block or any larger property.  You can have anywhere from 2-3 to 200 or more chickens. Pete and I have been keeping chickens for over 10 years.  At different times we’ve had pure bred Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, Isa Browns and everything in between, including hatching our own chicks. We’ve also tried turkeys, guinea fowl and bantam chickens.    Over the years we’ve learnt a lot about these funny little birds an ..read more

Over the years I've hatched hundreds of chicks using an electric incubator, but I never used a clucky hen to hatch chicks. I had thought about doing it because I don't like relying on an electric incubator, but I just wasn't sure where to start. Then one afternoon late last year I spotted a chicken (or rather Max the kelpie dog spotted a chicken) in the long grass with seven little baby chicks that she had hatched. This escaped mama hen had sat on her eggs for the past 3 weeks and when they hatched, she brought them all back over to the chicken area and was trying to get back in. Side note: O ..read more