Chooks (Bantams) available to a good home

I offered to look after these three girls when a member of my local permaculture group moved to a flat a couple of months ago. They don't lay many eggs and I'd like to give them to a good home. Not sure how old they are, but they're very cute, healthy and people friendly. Being bantams, they're a bit smaller, and they take very little effort to look after. They eat less and poo less. Just lock them up at night. Available to collect in Ormond, as of 20/1/11. Call me on 0401 991 866.




The garden's going great guns after the rain and sun.

The Oat Growing Experiment

Back in chilly August, I dug over half the back lawn and planted oats and peas.
(See here) The peas didn't do to well, but the oats have done okay, among many weeds and subsequently planted potatoes.

Today, 3/1/2011, we had a go at harvesting the oats.

We started by cutting the heads of the oats. I spread them out on a sheet, stomped on them and scrunched them around. The next step should have been to sprinkle them into a bowl, allowing the wind to blow off the chaff. Trouble is, these oats have husks. I should have bought a husk-less variety if I wanted to do this by hand.
This photo shows what has to be removed to get to the rolled oat at the far right. The final husk (steps three and four before the end) is too hard to remove on-mass by hand.
In the very last step, I've rolled the oat with a roller, to make it look like what you get in muesli.

So I can easily grow my own cereal, but processing it ready for breakfast is a bit harder. Too hard by hand. But not all is lost. Oats are a great source of protein, fats and other nutrients. They'll make great fodder for the chooks, off-setting feed costs. I can just put the chooks in the chook tractor on top of the oats. The are very efficient at de-husking. More importantly, we've learnt what it takes to get our porridge.