The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella
But chiefly on the just because
The unjust chickens pooped all over the deck and Julia was out half the afternoon scrubbing the deck

That rain was extremely welcome by all except the chickens, who couldn’t be bothered coming inside and decided to run around getting progressively more bedraggled. I’ve just let them out for the morning, and they’re back to their normal floofy selves, but the rain proves that most of their appearance is down to their lovely feathers. (Is floofy a word? It should be – it’s great for describing floofy birds such as Australorps.)

Australorps have gorgeous feathers – as a visiting friend pointed out, they are full of paua (abalone) colours. Black rainbows shading into the green spectrum. The young roos (still not crowing, thank goodness, so I can keep them a bit longer) are becoming more apparent in their personal majesty, with curving tail feathers growing longer and longer. Those feathers balance out their strut, except when the wind blows up their backsides, turning their proud bottoms into pom-poms, and the baby roos try not to beakplant. The pullets aren’t quite as gaudy, with more fluff than flow to their tails, but the green-black shimmers are still there and the feathers are just as floofy when they are galloping around in full flap and jousting with each other.

This is what beetroot seedlings look like when they are praying for rain.

After all the lovely lovely rain filling up the tanks last week, I went a bit mad and planted three punnets of beetroot (and some silver beet, but enough about that).

I am of the mindset “waste not, want not”, which meant I took about two hours to do a ten minute job: instead of simply thinning out the extra plants like a normal person would do, there was much tender extraction of each little baby plant that had sprouted from the rest of its brethren then planting them out in a bit of vegetable mix. So instead of planting eighteen seedlings, I now have umpteen. Heapsty-four. I’ve lost count.

Because the seedlings were going to be too delicate to stand up to the blast of the midsummer sun, each morning I have been covering them with layers of mosquito netting, and in the evening uncovering them again. Sort of like my relationship with mosquitoes, but in reverse. If there were vampire mozzies that went vegan and lurked in the daylight because they were allergic to starlight, then yes, this would be what I am protecting my beetroot against.

Dad hiding from the chickies behind a sheet of plywood.

The care has paid off in that most of them are greening instead of withering (or whithering), but this is why I am not a farmer. I have no sense of time investment or proportion of effort for reward, and normal farmers would not be putting out layers of netting to stop vegan mozzies attacking their beetroot.

Another reason for netting is that one of the chickies now flies (badly) over the electric fence when he sees me out gardening. He seems inordinately proud of his efforts at being a semi-guided fluffy missile, and rewards himself with stolen spinach. The little bugger.

Just trying out a new theme – apparently very popular, but I’m still trying to work out how to get it up and running with previous posts. So far it looks like I haven’t wiped my previous content, which is nice… kudos to WordPress. 🙂

So how am I managing these giant feats of internetting? I started out with WordPress All-in-one for Dummies, but I am sub-par even for a dummy, it would seem. A much more helpful website is How to Make a Website by Robert Mening. He’s pushing Bluehost.com, but he certainly deserves to get some money out of his excellent advice. I certainly feel less of a dummy for having found his website. He also pointed me towards the new theme – Responsive, from CyberChimp.

It’s been raining, and although the tanks are full. the chickies are getting fed up living in the basement. Typical teenagers. They’ll be wanting a new Play Station next. I’ll try and rearrange the electric fence so that they can get outside for a wander but still come back in to the basement if the rain gets a bit much for them.

Off to buy some more beetroot seedlings this morning. Fingers crossed Placemakers has some, because I can’t be bothered starting from seed after the last couple of fails.

Picnic today at Oneroa Beach with a couple of old friends from school, where I test drove some spicy beetroot relish on bread with feta and pastrami. The bread was “chickie bread” – an elderly bag of flour combined with an equally elderly batch of baker’s yeast to use up ingredients and have a treat for the chickens. I don’t think I sold it well, as only one friend tried it (she did say she liked the relish). The batter bread recipe gave a sloppy mix that tried to go everywhere when it turned out the yeast had some life left to it, and there was no way I was going to knead it.

Bread was surprisingly yum. I ended up eating most of it. The chickens will help with what’s left.

Spicy beetroot relish on fresh bread. Feta and pastrami added for extra yum.

What’s currently not on the menu is chicken for the neighborhood cat. As I don’t have a cat, I have to settle for petting rights with a local tabby who likes helping with the gardening (i.e. he gets under my feet while I’m watering and lies on any seedlings I might have planted out). The cat hasn’t quite figured out the electric fence yet (I didn’t have it on while I was feeding the chickens), but if he gets any more interested in the chickies he’ll get a quick lesson. Needless to say, the chickies were massively unimpressed with the leopardy creature following me around. Their alarm buk-buk-buk-ERK!s are coming along well.

Peekaboo!

Is that a CAT??? Buk-buk-buk-ERK!!!

I iz not cat. I iz internet meme.

There’s a cat behind you!  Do you really think we’re stupid enough to eat with a cat around?

Fair call.

What does this wire do, anyway?

Happy New Year, and here I go with a new website. Very gentle rain is falling outside – we need loads more if we are going to fill the tanks, but in the meantime the little chickies are enjoying the change of pace and going hard with scratching up the damp mulch in search of whatever their instincts tell them will be good.

The beetroot I planted nearly two weeks ago is starting to look feisty after sulking from being put outside into the hot dry soil. The trick will be to keep the beets away from the beaks.

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