Outdoor Hour Challenge #2

This week's Nature Study was to "Challenge yourself to take another 10-15 minute "excursion" outdoors in your own yard again this week. Before setting out on your walk, sit with your children and explain to them that when you remain quiet during your nature time, you are more likely to hear interesting things..."

We spent about 15 minutes sitting in the backyard near the tree house, just listening to what we could hear. Well okay, I spent it sitting. The kids explored the 'jungle' section of the garden, but they were fairly quiet and we did keep stopping to see if we could hear anything.

Miss5's comment was "but I want to go for a walk - there is not as much nature in our garden as there is outside the gate!" But her mean ol' Mum had had a terrible night's sleep and was really only capable of wandering out to the garden and sitting on the chopping block. We'll go for a walk next week maybe!

Once back inside (and after lunch) we sat and had a think about what we had seen, heard and felt while outside (as suggested in the study).

One word for things you heard
bells, birds, chickens

Two words for things you saw
blue sky, grey sky, brown leaves

Three words for things you felt
rough brown bark, splintery smooth wood (the saw horse), soft green grass.

Nature journal
We are keeping a family nature journal this year, with Miss5 perhaps keeping her own volume next year. I did the writing and drew some outlines and Miss5 happily coloured in things that we'd seen and heard, adding in her own little pictures as needed.

I'm enjoying this series!

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Chickens update

Miss5 takes most of our chicken photos. An endless fascination.

I recently had someone ask me for a chicken update - especially with how well they are coping as the weather turns cooler. So here it is!


The girls are doing well. Belle went into her molt almost as soon as she arrived, but after a few weeks started laying again. Abigail looks like she's just starting her molt now - we've had only one egg to 'harvest' for a few days now (although back to two again today), and there are feathers starting to fly around the coop again. I hope she gets it over with before the winter arrives properly or she'll be a little chilly for a week or two!

While we were in Wellington for our holiday a couple of weeks ago the weather down South here took a turn for the worse. (Remember, in this part of the world, 'South' means closer to the Pole and further from the equator - i.e. colder). I got a worried text message from our friends who were chicken-sitting - would our chickens cope if it snowed and what should they do?

Well, actually I had no idea :) But there wasn't much they could do anyway. Before we'd left we had moved the dome to the most sheltered part of our section - right under some trees that would provide protection from the wind and rain. The chickens still like to sleep in their beer-crate nesting box, so would be out of the wind and close to each other for warmth. I also know that plenty of people keep chickens in this city, and I've not heard of a chicken freezing to death. (Trust me. It would make the newspaper. "Unseasonal Cold Snap. Feathered Family Pet Falls Fowl of Freezing Temps").

So my advice was not to worry. To give them extra food the next day (they eat more when they're cold), and to make sure they had plenty of straw in their coop and nesting box.

In the event the snow never arrived (or if it did, it was not in this part of town), and they coped just fine.

Chickens are pretty hardy animals. They will go off their lay if they get too cold and miserable, but they don't lay in winter here anyway, as there are not enough hours of daylight for them.

Advice I have heard includes feeding them warm porridge in the morning and making sure their sleeping quarters are dry and draught free. Also to make sure their water is neither too cold nor too hot - I guess warm water in the morning on those really frosty days.

The key thing to remember about chickens in this climate is that our climate isn't really that cold! People keep chickens in places like Russia and Canada (with fancier and warmer accommodation than I'm providing, to be sure).

My plan for winter at this stage is to continue converting the rabbit hutch into a nesting box/roosting house that we'll set up next to the dome over winter, and use the dome more like a deep-litter run. This is a 'work in progress' (which means that it has been started and not finished...).

Changes made since the 5th dome post:
- water container. When we were given the chickens, we were given one of these

Self-filling water dish

Or at least, something that looks very similar (you wouldn't believe how long it took me to find a photo of this on the 'net. There are too many products in this world for cats to drink out of). This works very well, so long as you peek in whenever you wander past the dome and scoop out the dust and straw and muck that they've kicked into their water in their scratchings. Once a day to clean it out and refresh the water is fine. The chickens drank more in the warmer months, but I really like the security of knowing that they will have water if we forget for some reason - especially now that Miss5 has the responsibility of feeding the chooks in the morning. So long as I have fed them and topped up the water the night before, this is not something she needs to worry about.

Okay, that's probably the main change :) Everything else is pretty much the way it was the last time we took a tour of the dome.

The biggest thing, really, has been that we've started using the dome over the veggie patches. Having done this for two patches, now, I can say something with feeling. Do NOT feed your chickens wheat seeds while they are on a veggie patch. Linda Woodrow feeds hers sprouted wheat, which would be okay since it is unlikely to survive the chickens and the elements to turn into wheat. But I now have a lovely veggie bed with seedlings of cabbage, cauliflower, red cabbage, kale, kohl-rabi, and turnip... and wheat everywhere! Am not impressed.

I am not feeding them wheat any more, since they clearly aren't eating much of it, and am giving them pellets morning and night. I found that with the size of this dome, the chooks devastate everything growing inside within 24 hours and are back to depending on outside food sources after that.

However, the veggies are loving being in the freshly chickened veggie beds, so that part of the permaculture equation is working well!


For our instructions on building the dome, start here

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

I've found a lovely resource for Charlotte Mason-style nature studies.

The Handbook of Nature Study blogsite has got over 50 once-a-week Nature Studies, each lasting about 20minutes, based on Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature. (available free online here).

Each of these studies is called an Outdoor Hour Challenge, despite them not lasting for an hour. So this is our new regular posting - our participation in the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

The site creators recommend doing the first 5 studies, then joining in with the current challenges, so at this stage that is the plan.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

First, I ascertained that the reference book for these studies is not available at our local library. Then I checked its availability for purchase. My oh my the current exchange rates have put a damper on my 'just buy it from Amazon' plans. 6 months ago the NZ dollar was buying 80cUS, it's now buying about 48cUS. Not pretty. So despite my distinct preference for paper books over electronic books, I pursued the electronic option. If, after a few weeks, I decide that we'll continue with these studies, I may seriously consider buying it then.

I dutifully did my reading from the book, and was so taken with her viewpoint and opinions that I bored Merl silly by continuing to read bits out to him while he was trying to read a book :)

On Tuesday the kids and I went for a walk to the local park/playground. This is a fairly utilitarian green space with some swings and a see-saw and three young trees. All the way there I was gently calling attention to things in the gardens we walked past, to the complete lack of interest of my children.

When at the park, I decided to pick up a few of the autumn leaves that had fallen from the young trees, thinking that if Miss5 didn't get interested in anything then at least I would have something to investigate.

Happily, on the way home, she collected a rock off the road, so that was brilliant.

At home, we sat around the table and looked at the things we'd collected, and generally just chatted about our walk.

That night I found a couple of online field-guides to identify rocks and trees, and the next day we investigated the rock. Miss5 had recently read the Magic School Bus Rocky Road Trip, so we had a look at their discussion of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, then used the Rock Key to id the rock - Basalt!

Cleaning the rock from surface dust etc

Some of our tools

The next evening I identified the leaf as coming from a maple tree, using this guide, and passed the information on to Miss5 (which failed to rock her world, given that she had never been interested in the leaves to start with).

In all, a successful wee study. Miss5 was quite interested in investigating the rock (her favourite bit was using the magnifier that Grandma had given her for Christmas), and we've begun a 'rock collection' in an egg tray, as recommended in the Magic School Bus book. She has always come home with pockets full of rocks and gravel whenever we go anywhere, and now we can at least see something to do with those stones (other than sneak them out to the garden, or getting annoyed when a pocket full of gravel ends up in the bottom of the washing machine!). Perhaps it will encourage a level of discernment about what stones actually get brought home... but that might be too much to hope for.

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An irish omelet in our garden

We did some harvesting yesterday! It's so cool when you can head into the garden and get food out of it.


No photos, sorry, cos we left our camera cable at Merl's parents' house, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

It all started because the chickens were in dire need of a change of location. They had been in the same place for the 2 weeks we were away, and then a further week while they waited for us to get around to shifting them. The dome was starting to smell and needed some fresh ground.

But, of course, before they could go onto the next veggie bed, the potatoes needed to be dug. Merl did a valiant job of digging up the two rows of potatoes I'd planted at the back of the bed. From an initial 'investment' of about a dozen or so smallish potatoes, we got a bucket and a half of good-sized tatties - most of a paper sack full. So that was awesome.

While we were lifting up the droopy tops of the potato plants I discovered a row or two of onions that I had completely forgotten I'd planted. Most were on the small side and some had started to go slimy cos I'd not harvested them soon enough, but I'm pretty darned excited. I have never grown onions before, and now I've got about half a dozen lovely onions to braid up into one of those old-fashioned onion strings. Of my own onions!

Having seen that I'd left the onions a bit too long, I went and pulled up my elephant garlic. This was a little disappointing. Next year I'll plant them somewhere sunnier and just generally better. Only three of the cloves I planted grew to produce a flowerhead, and each of the three bulbs when I pulled them were underwhelming in terms of clove size and number. But the bed that they were in is in shade for most of the day and alternates between being terribly dry and extremely wet. Not ideal. So I hope for better for next year.

While I was prowling around the garden I noticed that the parsley I had left to seed was indeed seeding, so I harvested an envelope of seed from that too.

So there we have it - potatoes, onions, garlic, parsley (from the other, younger plants) and the continuing supply of eggs from our cooperative chooks.

Sounds like an Irish Omelet to me!

Now all we need is a milk cow so we can make our own cheese... (Well, okay, that might be a step beyond what our suburban section can handle - but what good is an omelet without cheese?)
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Daddy, do you have tentacles?

So said miss5 as I was driving along.

Me: No, I don't have tentacles like an Octapus.

Miss5: I mean like when a dog licks itself, like on grandad's cup. Do you have them?

Oh. Testicles.

Please don't
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Albatrosses

Forgive us our absence! We are currently on holiday in the North Island of our beautiful country, but will be home before we know it. Merl is up here for work, so this time we all decided to tag along and catch up with friends and family living in the capital.

But this post is not about Wellington - that will wait for another time! This is all about our trip to the Albatross Colony that is just out of our home town. This was another of those brilliant home-educating 'school trips', organised by one of the other home edding parents in town - like our trip last year to the Aquarium.

The kids started off in the 'education room' had a wonderful introduction to the birds who live/visit/nest on the headland (from left, the Yellow Eyed Penguin, the Spotted Shag, the Stewart Island Shag, the Little Blue Penguin, the Red-billed Gull and the Northern Royal Albatross). We discussed which were endangered, which were declining but not currently at risk and which were doing just fine at the moment. The Albatross and the Yellow Eyed Penguins are the endangered ones, and are hence the ones which everyone wants to see the most.

After this intro, the kids were split into two groups, as the observation room for the Albatross has a limited capacity. We were in the first group so proceeded to huff and puff our way up a fairly steep hill to the observation room. Miss2 made a valiant effort to walk all by herself, but at one point was making two steps forward and one back, so I carried her most of the way.

It was worth it.


Here is a parent and their chick - the only one of my Albatross photos to turn out okay. Three nesting sites are visible from the observation room, and we were fortunate enough to see two parents feeding chicks while we were there, and super-lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see one of them take off to fly out in search of more food. The parents share the feeding of their chick - often leaving it alone for a day or more while they go looking for food. The chicks are huge, but as a species they are not well adapted to deal with ground-dwelling predators like dogs - explaining why this site is the only mainland nesting site of Albatross in the world. All other nesting sites are on remote islands.

After returning to the education room, and spending some time looking at the information around the place
-about plastic pollution and how Albatross often mistake it for food - feeding it to their young and sometimes poisoning and starving them to death as a consequence,
- playing with a set of scales and a model real-weight chick to see how the rangers weigh them to check on their progress
- looking at a world map to show the different Albatross species and their distribution around the globe
- etc
we were joined by the other half of our group and took a walk down the hill to Pilots Beach. Again, Miss2 needed to be carried quite a lot of the way, which in my increasingly ungainly pregnant state was getting to be quite a mission. Thankfully one of the other Mums, whose kids are older, offered to carry her back up the hill! 2 year olds are a substantial weight (especially our two year olds), but the push chair would not have been suitable for the terrain so we were left with few options...

Still, again it was worth it!


This is a fur seal, sunning itself on the beach. If we were insane we could have gone right up to it and touched it. As with all wild animals, however, seals need a good deal of respect. They may look like awkward lumps while on the land - but they can still move fast, and they are heavy. They're not usually agressive - just playful - but humans generally don't like to play the games that adolescent male seals play with each other! So we gave this one a good 3 to 5 metres space and made sure not to get in the way of its escape route to sea. It responded by serenely ignoring more than 40 curious human intruders to its beach. Very civilised.

Human access is only allowed to about 1/2 the beach so that the seals and sea lions (which have only just started to visit again, after an absence of some years) have some space to lie about unmolested.

No sea lions were there that day - but I remember them from when I was a kid. Sea lions are huge. And not to be trifled with. (like the Dread Pirate Roberts...)

Along this same beach there are heaps of Little Blue Penguin burrows, which the penguins return to at dusk. We didn't see any penguins this trip, but I have seen them in the past, and they are very very cute. Again, though, it's important not to get in their way - not because they'll jump you, but because they'll just stay in the water and wait for you to go away, leaving their chicks going hungry in the burrows, while the parents get colder and tireder in the water.

After slogging it back up the hill to the Albatross Centre (with Miss2, thankfully, being perfectly content to be carried by this other, wonderful Mum), we met for a brief re-cap in the 'education room' and then sat and nattered over lunch. The nattering was good, as I got to meet some new people (or rather, I, being the new person, got to meet some of the old hands), and got to know better some I had only met once or twice.

Just to top off a wonderful day, I saw one of the Albatross flying around over the car-park when I went out to get our lunch from the car. Brilliant. In all the times I've been out to the colony over the years (but, admittedly have always been too cheap to pay the fee to see the nesting sites) I have never seen one flying. And that day I got to see it twice.

Magnificent.
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Photo catchup

It has been ages since we emptied our camera's memory card, with the result that mid-way through Miss5's last day at Kindy, we received the "Memory Full" notice and had to hurriedly scan back and delete some useless ones so we could be sure to catch the all important cake and candles shots.

We consequently have a large back-log of photos that we haven't shared with the world, so do join us on a trip through the last couple of months!


This is the rabbit hutch that I'm midway through converting into a little chicken coop for our two hens to spend their nights in. Yes, it's little, but it's much more spacious than the beer-crate they are currently using, and as you can see - two little human chickadees feel quite at home there.

And here's the view from the top. The kids are having their afternoon tea, having chosen a box instead of all the other, more comfortable and (to my mind) exciting places like the tree house.

Miss2's birthday party - the cake

Yay! She blew the candles out!

Miss2 feeding her baby. She initiated this game all by herself.

Oops! Dropped some of the food!

Miss5's last day at kindy. She made the hat all by herself and had a wonderful dayHere's a close-up of the cake. This was a wonderful gift. I mentioned on Facebook that I'd be buying Miss5's cake this year, and a friend offered, out of the blue, to bake and decorate one for us! Very much appreciated!!

And these final two photos are an eloquent example of Dad-physics. These batteries are the ones I took out of the smoke-detectors, so they've been running down their charge for a year, but even so, this is not a Mum-physics lesson. Merl decided it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls about touching batteries onto your tongue.

Yes indeed.

The second photo is taken in the split-second after Miss5 had done so.

However, the batteries must have been worn out enough for the zing to not be too bad, because Miss2 spent the next 2 or 3 days wandering around touching her tongue to the batteries just to get the kick out of it.

I've since done the responsible Mummy thing and explained to Miss5 that you must only ever do it with worn-out batteries, and I've hidden them away from Miss2. Merl insists the batteries will come in handy for electronics experiments, so I'll have to put them somewhere safe and label them as used batteries. Then we can throw them out in a year or so when we find them again and they've gone all melty and yuck...

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