Five years

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband. We are a bit late with the celebrations but what can I say, we've been busy.
We booked a four day trip to Queenstown, which is on the Southern end of the South Island. We literally went there to RELAX. We had 10 hours of sleep every night in addition to a daily nap.

Queenstown was incredibly scenic and picturesque. I've uploaded some of our photos here with captions included.

Enjoy.

February Egg Count

One hundred and three eggs for the month of February. Wilma, the 'rock star' from last month finally took a much needed break. What does one household do with 103 eggs (that's 8 1/2 dozen)? We share. I gave 2 dozen eggs away last month. I love nothing more than to share homegrown food with friends and family whether it's from my garden or my backyard egg shop.

(you can click on the spreadsheet to see a bigger view)

It will be sad when the garden and chooks stop producing due to shorter days and cooler temperatures.

First weekend in Autumn

When I heard that we were getting hit with a heavy storm on Saturday, I couldn’t wait to have a lazy day indoors. The storm hit hard, it rained sideways but I didn’t care because all I wanted to do was start on the quilt I had planned to start 6 months ago.

Fortunately, I had already cut the material- 72 squares measuring 8 ½ x 8 ½ and 288 strips that are 8 ½ x 1 ½ . Now I just need to sew it all together. These things take time because, once a square is sewn to a strip, it needs to be pressed before the other strips can be sewn on.
Fortunately, I had music- hit here for video.

And, I had an ironing assistant- click here

I did have another kind of helper.

SUNNY!!!!!!

Goodbye Summer

This is what Summer sounds like around here. I took this video last week, early in the morning while going down to let the chooks out. It’s the mating sound of a Cicada, which are common throughout the warmer parts of the world, particularly the tropics. So by the end of Summer my ears hurt because they are so loud. While reading up on the net about Cicadas I read that this sound can actually cause hearing loss in humans. Now I know why I feel so deaf by the end of Summer.

Good bye Cicadas, I’ll hear you next Summer…

Flash Flood

Thunderstorms were predicted for Northern parts of Auckland on Friday night. So at about 6:30pm, it all started. Except that, it literally downpoured for almost an hour with thousands of lightning strikes. I've NEVER seen such heavy rain in my life. It was very scary. Here's a short video of the torrential rain in my backyard. Notice the waves of water running down the nice footpaths that lead down to the chicken run. YIKES!

During this flash flood, the kitchen windows were leaking, water was coming in from under the dishwasher AND we also had a leak in the storage room downstairs!!! I had every towel that we own soaking up all the water from around the house.

My husband was out swimming at Piha beach with his mate (as one does at the end of Summer) while all this chaos was happening. When I text him the video clip from above, he sent me this photo of the beach he was at.



When he returned, he was shocked the to see that a) the power was out and I was sitting in a candle lit house (thanks to my mom for bring me a bag of 100 tealights) and b) all the towels on the floor and widows around the house. He's always away when things like this happen. Grrrr.....

Bolognese Sauce

I’ve had a special request to share my Bolognese recipe. I hope this will be made by you all.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

5 strips streaky bacon, finely chopped

1 ½ pound (700 grams) ground beef

2/3 cup red wine

2 14oz (2- 400mL) cans crushed tomatoes

1 cup chicken or beef stock

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp basil, chopped

1 tbsp thyme, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese, grated (for serving)

Preparation

Heat olive oil in a large pot. Add onions and garlic. Saute for 3-4 minutes. Add bacon. Once bacon is just cooked, add the ground beef; sauté, breaking up with back of spoon, until browned, about 10 to 15 minutes. (The beef doesn’t have to be completely cooked.) Add wine; boil 1 minute. Add crushed tomatoes, stock, tomato paste, and herbs; stir to blend. Reduce heat to a low simmer until thickened, 1- ½ hours. Season with salt and pepper.

Maybe a nice Valentine's Day dinner?

Egg Count

As you know, I have kept a small flock of chickens (up to 7 now!) in my backyard for the last year and a half. Since I’m no longer a beginner at chicken keeping, I thought this year I would get more organised at keeping track of my egg count (my chickens’, that is). I created a spreadsheet that I can fill in whenever one of my girls lays an egg. This way I can tell who is laying and who isn’t.

As you can see by my spreadsheet I have some good and bad laying going on with my flock. I didn’t need a spreadsheet to tell me that Chica, my 9 month old Araucana ISN’T LAYING ANY EGGS! She’s the one that is supposed to lay the blue or green shelled eggs. Sadly, we are keeping her because she’s just become part of the family.

On the positive side, you can see that Wilma is a “rock star”. She was unstoppable last month. This breed usually lays 3 eggs a week. I guess she’s special.

What I didn’t put on the spreadsheet is that on the 31^st, she laid a shell-less egg. This happens when they are running low on calcium. And as you can see after laying 30 eggs in a row, she was flat out of calcium.

Lastly, I can’t believe I had 95 eggs last month! I mean, what does one household do with 95 eggs!?!?? Fortunately, my mom was here to help consume some of those eggs and, I also gave about 2 dozen away.

I also think I’m becoming a bit of an egg hoarder…. But that’s another blog post, perhaps another time or never!