Category Archives: Food

Backyard chicken keeping course kicks off in the City of Swan

Posted on May 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Did you know that one backyard hen can recycle 150 kg of kitchen waste per year AND give you up to 200+ wholesome yummy eggs per year in exchange? Wow!

This is just a taste of what folks in the city of Swan are learning about reviving the art of backyard hen keeping.

Sunny Side Up tours Erica's in Lockridge

Sunny Side Up tours Erica’s in Lockridge

Last week, Transition Town Guildford was very excited to start our pilot training project, ‘Sunny Side Up: Reducing household waste with backyard chooks’ with the support of the WA Waste Authority and Men of the Trees.

25 novice households from the City of Swan are in the process of learning about What Hens Really Want. Our first workshop focused on the welfare aspects of pen space and design, and how to use recycled materials for construction. Participants learned the difference between commercial ‘cage laid’, ‘barn laid’ and ‘free range’ space allowances, and how this translated into options for welfare-friendly backyard enclosures. Last weekend, we toured the backyards of 4 generous locals with a range of housing types all constructed simply and inexpensively from recycled parts. Everyone is now busy building their own hen houses and pens ready to receive their clutch of 3 project hens next month.

Our next workshop in June will focus on feeding, health and husbandry. In the meanwhile, we have a growing brood of hens and pullets agisting and adjusting at Peter’s place awaiting rehoming with our course participants. Each household will receive a retired ex-battery hen (plenty of life and future egg-laying yet to be enjoyed), a young commercial pullet about to begin laying eggs for the first time, and a heritage breed hen. Course participants are sure to enjoy getting to know the personalities and foibles of their new pets in due course. Stay tuned for more updates from Sunny Side Up in the City of Swan

Retired commercial cage laying hens getting used to the outdoor life at Peter's

Retired commercial cage laying hens getting used to the outdoor life at Peter’s

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Posted in Food, Take Action, Waste & Recycling

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Dill Pickles

Posted on April 29, 2013 by | Leave a comment

For the long weekend we had a nice relaxing time down in Pemberton, about four hours south-east of Perth. Upon our return I found quite a few cucumbers a good size for making my first attempt of dill pickles! Thankfully today my order from OzFarmer.com arrived that contained lots of wonderful things I needed to make my pickles, so I got cracking!

I didn’t have a huge amount of cucumbers, probably about 15 small to medium, but I didn’t want to leave them on the vine any longer as the plants themselves seemed to have died off with what looked like a while dusting of mold on the leaves while we were away, and I wanted to get some pickles out of them before they died completely. I’ll have to do some more research on what this might be, there did seem to get a lot of aphids and ants on the cucumber plants while they were growing, which I did try to deal with some organic pest control, but it didn’t seem to do a huge amount of good.

This was the harvest mid clean. Not a huge harvest, but still better than none! I had intended on putting the cucumbers in two 1 litre jars, but upon packing found I had too many for just one, and too little for two, so I decided to use the beautiful smaller blue vintage ball jars I ordered and that has just arrived that day. I also used a Kosher Dill Pickle pre-made spice that also had something to make them extra crunchy, along with some vinegar and water and brought that to the boil. Then in it went and back into the boiling water canner for 15 minutes. All three of my jars got a nice loud pop when sealed, so I was happy.
  
 These were the large 1 litre jars packed but not full enough. How annoying. But these things happen, so we persevere! I did have the chance to use all my new fancy canning equipment seen above, which made canning so much easier!
 These are the three smaller jars packed with pickles shortly before adding the brine. I think I could have packed them a bit tighter as once the brine was in them they all floated to the top of the jars, so you could see how much space was left in the jars, but a lesson well learned I guess, I didn’t want to over pack them.

Finished product! Three little beautiful jars of homemade pickles! I am so going to get some more of these blue vintage inspired ball jars in different sizes as they are so pretty! Will make storing my canning jars more of a work of art rather than just trying to shove my jars somewhere out of the way! Maybe I’ll put in a high rail all along the kitchen and sit them up there until I use them…. We’ll see what Dave thinks of this idea. 😉

The haul from OzFarmer.com, my beautiful blue jars, enough canning salt to last until the apocalypse, pickling spice and the very helpful book of Putting Food By. New bedtime reading methinks!!

By Steering Member Kim Farnell, first posted on her own blog Barbaloot Suits and Garden Boots. We look forward to hearing what they taste like! 🙂

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