July 2011 - The solar cooker

Our solar cooker

Now I ask you - what homestead is complete without a solar cooker?

We acquired one in June, but actually only had an opportunity to try is in July due to rain, rain and more rain... but we should not complain though seeing at it benefits all of our gardens, and the wild flora as well.

But the day finally came where we had glorious sunshine, and promptly decided to try our new solar cooker. So .. Jan found some chicken pieces, some random veg, and placed everything in a glass casserole. This went into the cooker with lid on, and then we just had to let father sun do his job. :-)

Our casserole in the cooker

The notion of not having to do anything at all to cook a meal was quick strange, and initially we would check the cooker very 5 or 10 minutes just to see if it was actually working. We soon discovered though that cooking food this way takes longer than an oven, and we then left it.

Jan checking our lunch

 It was still all rather exciting though, and we discussed it at length wondering what a solar cooked meal would taste like even..

About 2-3 hours later after having checked the cooker probably a hundred times in between, and having watched it slowly start to simmer, and emit the most amazing smells, we took it out of the cooker. But I have to add, that this thing is super efficient, and even though your food takes longer to cook, the steam and heat created inside is very very hot!!

Our chicken casserole

So we had our chicken casserole for lunch, and boy did it taste good. The flavours were so pure, and untarnished if one can say say that about food. It was a nice simple dish,with a lovely flavour... definitely worth the investment, and definitely something we will do again once we have more sunshine days. :-)

July 2011 - Chicken progress..

Many happy chooks

Mid winter came along, and the chooks were thriving, getting fatter and growing to be lovely birds. But there was one problem... we had waaayyyy too many. This led us to think that we would have to make a plan to either separate the flock, or start slaughtering, or sell some of them..

They all still looked very much alike though, and being new to the whole chicken farming thing we could just not tell them apart, except for two very definite roosters.. :-| I have to add though that even though we knew that there was too many, we really have taken a liking to the chickens being on our smallholding, and enjoyed the interaction with them just so.

One of our Buff Reds

Always happy to get fed

The chook house complete

We soon decided that what we needed for our chickens, or at least four of them, and also for our veg garden was a chicken tractor. And after much research in Permaculture books and on the net we soon found a host of different tractors to choose from. We actually ended up choosing one from what we consider to be the bible of sustainable living: John Seymour's Complete book of Self-Sufficiency. But since there were no dimensions mentioned in the book, we had to find some on the net. But more on that later... :-)

Jan fitting and adjusting for the handles.

July 2011 - First dig for the digester

Marking out the pit for the Bio-Digester

Trying to live a sustainable life comes with ups and downs, trials and tribulations. It comes with a host of decisions to be made about which practice would be a "green" one, and which solutions one should implement in order to have as little impact on the environment as possible. Since we have always had an interest in doing the "green" thing, it seemed logical to get a bio-digester for our own black water, and animal waste and other waste which would be good for this purpose.

Just checking the measurements..

Finding a location for the digester was quite a contentious issue, with many discussions, and pro's and con's etc, but we eventually settled on a central spot just beyond our Apricot trees. Jan diligently started marking out the size, and location of where the pit should go, and Rene, who is always short of pocket money, decided that he would do the ground break. So both set to work early in the morning, and the situation soon turned into a worker/foreman relationship...hahaha

Rene happy to work..

But nevertheless, the digging started, and Rene was very gung-ho to actually do a good bit of work. And he actually did a good initial trench which was about half a meter wide by half a meter deep... Good job!! He could not finish though, as Sunday rolled on, and it was back to hostel, and work of a different nature. :-) But he dig the initial dig, and created a good  start to the worker who came during the week to finish the hole.

Rene digging for China.. hehehe

June 2011 - Stoep revamp pt2

New roof  :-)

New roof from a different angle..

We eventually got the new zinc for the new stoep roof. We decided that a part of it should be covered, like over the soon to come Dining-room double doors, which will open onto the stoep. Ja.. I know more building, and more changes...more mess and more dust...

But once its done it will be lovely. :-) We also on this side of the stoep want to create a small sitting space, a kind of comfy-nook where we will have two chairs, and a small table.

Just right for enjoying the sunrise, and having a cuppa, or reading a book, or even all three! So that's the plan anyways. And we will have some hanging baskets with geraniums/pelargoniums in them for a splash of colour, as well as actually getting around to re-painting the whole house one day.

The other side we are going to build shut, in order to have a mud-room. A what? A mud-room... its kind of like an extension of the kitchen, but also kind of like a scullery.. its actually just a place for the freezer and washing machine, and a place where we can let the dogs sleep, and walk in with muddy shoes. That way my theory is that we will have mush less dust and dirt in the kitchen proper, as well as the rest of the house! We will also, by doing this, minimize the number of entrances to our house.. But more on that later.. haha!

May 2011 - More Mushrooms!!

False Parasol...

On a recent walk around our plot with the dogs, I decided to take my camera with me.. just in case. :-) This is something I like to do now and then when the seasons are changing... and since we were heading towards winter it would be a good time to look for mushrooms.

We did find a few late ones, but more than that we harvested the seasons first, and rather late, and what also turned our to be the last crop of White Parasols..

Dunno what these are... :-|

A whole bowl of gorgeous edible mushrooms.. :-)

A young White Parasol

The underside of a White Parasol

May 2011 - Stoep revamp

Since we thought it would be a good time to revamp our stoep as well, and it would be a good source of zinc for the purpose of cladding the new chicken coop.. we started that as well concurrently with the building of the actual coop... Completion of the latter sort of depended on the beginning of the first.. :-)

Construction site?

So we removed most of the zinc, and just cleaned up the outside of the walls to prepare for the new beams. We had to remove the round pillars as they started to crumble with the removal of the zinc. This in turn meant we also had to rebuild the pillars. For them we decided to just go square using brick. and for the new beams, we decided that round ones might be good, and had to therefore create holes/recesses for these in the house wall. Not major structural changes, though because the house was built using clay bricks, we are ever worried that the walls might crumble.. so any structural things that we do, we reinforce the immediate area as we work.

New beams up

With the new beams in place, we could continue with the cladding of the chicken coop..

May 2011 - Chicks come home

Our box of chicks

So the time had arrived for us to fetch the chicks at Guinea Glen by the Crags. We had ordered 20 un-sexed Koek-Koek chicks, and when we got there the woman asked us if we would be interested in some Buff Reds too.. so we bought 5 of them as well, and got 2 extra on top of that in case some perished on-route home.

We drove slowly over the Prince Alfred pass again, and the chicks did not make a sound all the way. Not even one!

Jan hard at work on the coop

Having arrived home, and knowing we had not yet completed their new home, we had temporarily borrowed a chick-box from our neighbor Gary. :-) This would keep the chicks warm and dry till they got a little bigger. And we set about finishing the coop. Most of the structure was done, though we needed to clad it still, and just add some finishing touches like the chicken wire, some hatches for them to go in and out of, and some other sundry things.. We ended up borrowing Gary's chick-box for the best part of the following month.

The basic structure completed - more or less...

The Chookie - complete...almost

We managed to get the coop almost completely covered by recycling the old worn zinc from our stoep. But we didn't have enough for the whole coop, so we had to use some builders plastic for the back. This would keep out the worst rain and wind at least for the time being.
We were still using Gary's chick-box at that stage, and the chicks were thriving. After about 6 weeks they were too big for the chick-box, so we organised a lamp for them to stay warm, and a feeder, and water trough for them in their new home. At this point we still had not lost one single one, and they were all happy. :-)

The little chicks in Gary's Chick-box

We made sure we had plenty of saw dust for them, and they just did their little chick business, and grew.


We were having a little difficulty telling them apart though, and only recently have we been able to actually tell who is roosters, and who is hens...

One Koek-koek chick..

I have found them most entertaining, and even though they might not be the brightest animals around, they do still have personalities. Or at least I like to think so.. we have named a couple now.. Our main rooster, Mr. Rooster is a proud Koek-koek rooster, with gorgeous plumage, and a good vocal! He is king of the flock, and the roosters that are left have all accepted him as leader. In the same flock we also have Kleintjie, and Squeak.. Kleintjie is a small koek-koek hen, she has remained small than the others, and is only now catching up.. after 4 months. She is our only black koek-koek hen. Squeak got her name cause she like Kleintjie remained small for long. She is a thin little hen, and her vocals have not developed well.. so she can't cluck, but will rather squeak... kind of like a chicken with laryngitis...hehehe.. The rest of the chicken story I will tell later... :-)