Country Snoskred

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True Speed

1 Comment Posted on December 5, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Back in October, Andrew from High Riser wrote about the Australian Design Rules. I replied with the following comment.

I will like to mention the most hilarious of the Australian Design Rules – that vehicles may not under-read the speed, but may over-read the speed by anything up to 10% + 4 km/h

This means that if your vehicle’s *actual* speed is 100kmh, the displayed speed is permitted to be anywhere between 100kmh and 114kmh!

I have tested my Volkswagen Polo via several different means, and it is out by 10%. EG at 110km/hr on the speedo, my actual true speed is 100km/hr. Now that I know this, I can drive accordingly. To do 60, I need to do 66. To do 80, I need to do 88. It could be worse, it could be the full 10% *plus* 4km/hr, and I’d forever be doing maths in my car. And I failed maths, quite badly. :)

However, there are a whole bunch of people out there who do not know this, and many of them believe their speedo is supposed to be accurate! These people are likely wondering why people keep overtaking them when they *think* they are doing the speed limit, but they are actually doing less than the speed limit and in the case of 100km/hr, they may be doing less than 90 as a surprise to themselves.

Since making that comment, recently a discussion was held on this topic community Facebook group that I belonged to after someone posted that they were driving at the speed limit and continually being overtaken. Another group member raised the Australian Design Rules and advised the someone to do some tests on their speedo. Theirs was out the full 10% plus 4km/hr.

So, this is my heads up to you. Test your speedometer. There are many smart phone apps you can get to do this. Plus, if you are using a satnav, this will often give you an accurate true speed.

cars, driving

Shoe Cleaning Station

13 Comments Posted on November 2, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my very first Shoe Sunday post – I showed you where my shoes live.

I do own a lot of shoes, and every single pair gets a regular clean. What I usually do is wait until a rainy afternoon, when I can’t be doing anything useful outside, and all my other chores are done for a bit, so I do not feel even a tiny bit guilty about spending a good couple of hours with my much loved shoes..

First up, I cover the work space with a floor mat – the kind you might use in a bathroom. It is good to use something with a bit of thickness to protect the work space, as there will be times when I am removing stones from the shoes with a metal nail file. I always make sure to have a pair of nail scissors and a metal nail file handy at my shoe cleaning station, because your shoes may have some surprises for you.. like this –

I recently sat down with a couple of freshly arrived TV episodes – Homeland and Downton Abbey, my anti-bacterial wipes because there is a lot of flotsam and poopsam on the soles of shoes. The outside of the shoe get a decent wipe down, the place where my foot sits also gets a decent clean, plus the soles get a really thorough scrub. Here is a pair mid scrub, you can see the suds. I’m using the Kirkland Antibacterial Wipes from Costco.

Below you can see one clean sole, and one ready to be cleaned sole.

I cleaned 13 pairs in the space of a pleasant couple of hours, while watching teevee. Once the shoes are clean, they are placed on a clean towel so they can dry off. These shoes all went off for a photo shoot right after being cleaned, for future Shoe Sundays here on the blog.

Tell a story about your shoes on your blog, and link up below!

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germophobe, health, Home, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2014, Shoe Linkup

The Escape Chicken.

1 Comment Posted on October 9, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

After the big rains we had here a little while ago, the drainage tunnel stole a lot of dirt along with the water, making some almost gaps in the ground near the fence. So, we made plans to build a retaining wall and next to it lay some gravel and leave a drainage channel for those wet times. This is a job we needed to be do at some point.

Rosie looking oh so innocent.

For over a week, every day I would discover Rosie on the outside of the pen, trying desperately to get back inside with the flock. She is the tiniest chicken ever. I thought she was sneaking out as a surprise to herself by accident under the fence by digging out the dirt and making holes, right where we had been planning to build our retaining wall. So this job got moved to the top of the to do list.

At least, that is how we thought she was getting out. It turns out, from observing the goings on as we built the wall, that she was deliberately sneaking out. She had found a patch of chicken wire that was not staple-gunned down. She was able to jump up onto the fence and then sneak out via pushing the wire away from the fence. All we had to do to prevent that was staple-gun the wire down, which we did.

What is the most crazy about this escape chicken – the moment she got out, she was desperately trying to get back in with the other girls. She did not enjoy being outside with all that grass to scratch and eat if the other girls could not be with her. This job could likely have remained on the to-do list for another month or so without any issue, if we’d just discovered her escape route earlier. It is done now, and I have to say it is pretty awesome. :) There are 2/3 more sleeper dug into the ground and covered by gravel that you can’t see in these pics.

Twas a long weekend, so on Friday afternoon I said to the other half, let us go to the hardware store now and avoid the rush. Which we did. And we got sleepers to build another planter box as well as the retaining wall, the gravel to go alongside, some potting mix, and some new plants for the garden which I intended to weed a very large patch of.

So I did weed, and then it looked like this –

I planted some silverbeet seedlings which the chicken love and I am not adverse to myself.

In the new planter box, we will be having a Kale moment. Tuscan Kale, which is a somewhat new format of kale to me, as well as some regular kale. The chickens *love* Kale. :)

Before I let you go, you ought to go and read this post. Everything I Know, I Learned from Cows.

Chickens, garden

Weekend Jobs, Bits and Bobs..

2 Comments Posted on September 20, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Our new over the door coat racks – $9 from Kmart.

It is the weekend again here at Chez Snoskred. Yesterday I went and had a CT pulmonary angiogram, which I had been putting off for 4 months! and a shedload of blood tests that involved 15 or so vials of blood. The girl forgot a vial, so I had to go back for an extra needle stick, which I did with extremely good grace considering I hate needles more than anything. So 3 needles total, yesterday. NOES.

Candle Lanterns $7 at Kmart

When she called me, I was at Kmart, where I picked up these cute candle lanterns. Little Kitty has learned to jump, and this means a sad goodbye to my present candle burners. I can’t be certain that she won’t stick her face too near or even in the flame and burn all her whiskers off in the process. I got a perfect ceramic pineapple without any chips for my mother for her birthday as well- I wanted one for me too, but I couldn’t find a perfect one without chips for me. Sorry no pineapple pic, it has been wrapped already.

Yesterday I wrote a list of things I wanted us to do this weekend. Several of them involved a trip to Kmart. The other half checked the calender and realised it is the first weekend of the school holidays, so we ended up going to Kmart last night around 9:30pm because ours is 24/7. It was wonderfully peaceful.

I was actually mid-another-job – laminating Hawaii calender pages to hang on the back of the toilet door – when I ran out of A4 laminator sleeves. I figured we might as well pick some up while at Kmart, also too. Then I came home and completed the laminator job, while listening to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast on my iPhone.

The other things on the list involved a phone call to the local Chinese to make a dinner appointment for tonight, which has been completed this morning. And a trip to Bunnings – a hardware and garden store for those not in Australia – to buy sand for the chook pen.

Of course a trip to Bunnings never means just getting the thing you went for. The other half has been planning a special planter box for a while, and this weekend he is building it.

I found a gorgeous climbing jasmine, a sieve for the chook pen because the kitty litter scoop is not very efficient for chook poop, and a new bucket to store the chook poop in because all the old lids had broken.

I was quite tempted by these colourful Mr Men items – Mr Men Garden Gnomes, and Mr Men on a stick.

When I mentioned the Mr Men on a stick to The Other Half, who was busy wrangling the trolley and he did not spot them, he was very concerned at that concept, because his mind put the stick, well, guess where. But I showed him the picture and he was quite relieved to see the stick was not near to the Mr Man at all.

So now, off to do chores and jobs of work. Tomorrow, my first official shoes post. It is a good one, I think. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and consider making a shoes post of your own to link up. :)

Happy weekend all!

Chickens, garden, shopping, yay

Chicken Update 580235

4 Comments Posted on August 10, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

So excited I am about blogging again, I am scheduled out a couple of weeks in advance. You are reading this in August but it was written on the 28th of July. :) YAY me.

We have just had a huge weekend of chores and jobs, and the first one on the list was clean out the chook pen and enclosure.

The raked up leaves, branches, and assorted biodegradable chook leftovers.

So the people who have the block behind us have a lot of trees and while it is lovely to look at it means a lot of leaves, branches, gumnuts, and associated tree junk end up in the chooks yard. The chooks do not mind this because these leaves will often hide little yummy insect friends, so the leaves are really a constant entertainment to them. They spend their days turning the leaves over hoping for a treat. I mind, because it looks messy. But in keeping chooks you soon learn you have to give up on what you want, it is all about what the chickens need and want.

Over winter there is not much point trying to do anything about it. If I rake it all up guaranteed the next week there will be strong winds and it ends up just as messy as it was before. So yesterday I did rake and made a lovely pile in the back corner which will be left to biodegrade – that is if the chooks can leave it alone long enough – and there is now a strong wind warning for our area. Of course.

And clearly, there is little chance of the chickens leaving it alone for very long. If you move something to a new place, it suddenly becomes fascinating and exciting and must be explored, pecked, scratched, and not left alone until every possible treat has been exposed and eaten.

Little Kitty looking in – why can’t I be in there?

Well, little kitty is not used to chickens yet. She thinks they are great fun to chase. The chooks respectfully decline this, and gave her several decent peckings to convince her they are a formidable force. She does not seem to mind and continues to chase. I will slowly teach her this is a bad thing, over time. At this point she’d got annoying and the chooks were clucking and tut-tutting her, and there was even a few wing flaps and bagerking in her direction, so she was sent back to the regular yard for my sanity and for her own safety.

Usually we will clean out the coop in the last week or two of autumn, and then leave them be other than occasionally scooping the poop out of their coop, throwing them their many treats and collecting any eggs. You can’t be so lax in summer because in the heat the poop gets quite smelly but in winter you can leave it a few days – some people actually leave it the whole winter which is perfectly ok – they use a system called deep litter. Long story so google it if you want to know more.

The chooks laying area cleaned out.

The chooks laying area with fresh new wood shavings. They will make some very fascinating circle shaped nests in here. I will have to remember to take a photo.

One thing I do not clean out is the spider webs. There is only one place (in my mind) where a spider is welcome and it is within the chicken coop. If they can survive the pecking beaks of the chooks, they can eat a multitude of flies. If I spot a poisonous one I do usually squish that because I’m none too sure on whether they are poisonous to chooks or not.

The girls hanging out, here are a couple more shots. :) Happy moments for my girls.

Chickens, country life

Officially Un-favourited.

7 Comments Posted on August 1, 2013May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

I wrote this comment on Dancing with Frogs just over a month ago now. I have an update, and some photos. :)

My favourite (Red Comb) was attacked by a hawk this morning. She is sort of ok. We have not been able to find any injuries. She did have some blood on her beak but my thought now is that blood belongs to the hawk and that is why she is still with us now. She is no shrinking violet and I am sure she gave that hawk one heck of a pecking.. and was thus unceremoniously dumped as too much trouble.

I don’t think this can have happened too far from the ground because she was still in the chook pen..

She was unsteady on her feet, but I think maybe that is shock, and also that she was probably dropped though none of us saw the attack, we did see the hawk sitting in a tree nearby right after. Nothing is broken, though I suspect she might have bruising we can’t see. She is still alert and still her regular loopy self personality wise.

She stayed in the nesting boxes all day with all the other girls comforting her, except for one girl on the lookout in the run, anytime a bird flew by there was much bagerk-ing and posturing from the lookout. They took it in turns – one keeps the watch, the others comfort – until it was roost time. As soon as it got dark and the other girls put themselves to bed, we took her inside because it was going to be a cold one tonight.

Right now she is safe in a box, all toasty warm (but not too warm) by the gas heater. I am resisting with all my might the constant urge to check on her. She needs her sleep. I must not touch that box until 5:30am at the earliest.

If she survives the night, before the other chooks wake up in the morning, I will install her back in the nesting boxes in a warm box she can get in and out of with food and water nearby so that she will not lose her place in the flock. My hope is that she’ll have had enough time and rest to be back to normal – if not, we will keep up the night time warm inside sleepovers until she is.

It does not matter what it is, if anything happens to the chooks it is always her it happens to and I think this is because she is my favourite. I have now officially un-favourited her, and I am going to have no favourites now. I must like them all equally. It isn’t fair to the favourite!

We will now be installing bird netting over their area, to keep them safer from flying predators. Though it is entirely possible that hawk will not return – too much trouble for no reward. If the hawk had picked one of the other girls the hawk might have had better success.

It might be time to re-visit the design of the chook pen, too.. I really want to just suck it up and bite the bullet and make them a huge totally enclosed area like the one on henblog..

So.. what happened next?

Red comb did survive the night. At 6:05am I opened the box, which had been in front of the new gas heater overnight. I tell you, this was the warmest chicken I have ever held. And she was so happy to see me, and I was so happy to see her. It was raining outside so I wrapped her up in a towel so she wouldn’t get wet, and took her back out, putting her in a safe box in the nesting area.

I knew she was not out of the woods yet, that there might be internal injuries we could not see. The other half – who grew up in the country – had checked her over very carefully and could not see anything wrong. I crossed my fingers and went to bed about 6:30am (night shift) and when I got up that night she was still fine. Each day that went by and she was still here, I got more hopeful.

She did have a limp for a while and it took her a while to get back up on the roost but otherwise seemed fine.

She has made herself a new chicken friend by the name of Rosie and all appearances suggest she has been lowered on the pecking order. She used to be second chook, right after White Sussex. Now, it is White Sussex, the other two game hens, Ancona, Red Comb, and then Rose Comb (Rosie).

Now Red Comb and Rosie are inseparable. Where one goes, the other must follow. Rosie is the black chicken below next to Red Comb, eating a corn treat.

I think the reason for the demotion was that Red Comb had a limp for a while, was not on the roost at night, and was not her usual speedy self.

The chooks were locked in their run/coop for a good couple of weeks. They were not a great fan of this, being it is winter and they like to be out scratching up a storm of bugs and worms in the softer ground. On Sundays they would get let out early when the other half got home at 4 and he would be out there with them for a couple of hours so they could free range a little under his watchful eyes. Many healthy treats were given in the coop/run to keep them from being bored.

Then a couple of weeks ago, we re-did the outdoor pen. It now looks like this –

You can see the height of the pen has now been doubled to walk in height. It used to look like this – this photo was taken just after we put in a fresh sand floor back in the summer –

Chicken wire now covers the top of the enclosure. It took a good couple of days for the other half to sew it all together with binding wire.

We put in a beam at the back to support the wire some.

After this photo below was taken, I got out the pitchfork and made some holes in the dirt, for the girls digging pleasure. They had a blast.

I don’t know. I think if a predator is determined to get my girls, no amount of chicken wire or protective measures is going to be enough to save them. I think this is a reasonable compromise for the time being. In the summer, it might be rethink time. I want to build me a chicken batcave safe enough no fox or quoll or other unfriendly predator can get through. For now, I think this will prevent further hawk attacks during the day while they free range, at least.

The other great thing about this is pigeons can no longer get in and steal the food. I like the pigeons, don’t get me wrong, and I mean to set up a proper bird feeder for them. I just am not a huge fan of the lice and mites they can sometimes carry with them. Our girls have been lice and mite free for a fair while now, though.

I’ve been on the overnight shift for a month or two now, as in starting work at 10pm or midnight – I have been meaning to post this for ages but events conspired against me.

I am not sure yet if Red Comb knows she has been un-favourited. She doesn’t get treated any differently, it is just in my mind I am not allowed to call her my favourite anymore.

As I type this, White Sussex has begun her ba-gerking. There are a tonne of cockatoos and galahs flying about overhead. She will ba-gerk for that or anytime one of the other girls lays an egg.

Speaking of eggs, these crafty girls were hiding theirs somewhere. Now that they are in this enclosure, hiding is no longer an option. I also suspect our resident blue tongue lizard was eating some of the hidden eggs! But maybe one day when spring rolls around and I get back to the garden, I’ll pull out something which has gone rogue over the winter in the garden only to find a huge clump of eggs hidden there.

Chickens, country life, fears

And It Begins

1 Comment Posted on January 9, 2013May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

There are some jobs that I have been wanting to do for over a year. One of them was to sort out the shoes. Why would I do this in preparation for kitchen jobs you ask? Well the kitchen is like one huge open plan area and in one corner of that we had shoe racks – it was right near the entry way and it seemed like a logical place for them to go but it never worked in practice. All shoes have now been moved to this new home.

Plus some shoes have been put aside for donation and some for throwing out. Decluttering is always a happy feeling for me..

The scarf storage has been on the door of the new “shoe room” for a while. I’ve put the jewellery cabinet and storer into the same room as well. Kinda like a mini dressing room. Now I just have to get all the jewellery in the one place – I can think of 7 different locations where you can find jewellery of mine right now – on top of the soda stream being the most bizarre one. :)

The plastic containers have been a nightmare I never seemed to wake up from, and I was over it. OVER IT. But now, it is sorted – using a bookshelf which was no longer needed for storage of the tupperware type containers, and all the plastic storage containers I bought today for use with the new plan of things.

Here is our new pressure & slow cooker! Shiny, no? Well kinda no, it was the floor model so it is a little dusty. Now I just need to learn everything there is to know about slow cooking. As in how it works, etc. I have never done this before.

We bought a meat slicer. Yays! I am sick of spending excessive amounts of money on sliced chicken, turkey and ham. We have a foodsaver already.

I also got this rocket blender. I have wanted one of these things for a while now and I think a strawberry/banana coconut milk smoothie might work for the mornings as a breakfast.

Of course with the new deep freeze, I can freeze fruit like there is no tomorrow. Bananas tended to sit and get ignored until they went bad and got thrown out in the past. When I find good strawberries I like to buy a lot of them, wash them off and store them. Now I can just put them in the freezer.

I bought a whole watermelon today half of which I have frozen for the chooks in case we get any more of those super hot days. I’ve cut up a bunch of apples to freeze for them. I had frozen zucchini prepared for them on Tuesday which went into their water as ice cubes, they loved it enormously.

Speaking of Tuesday, which was a catastrophic fire risk day here.. this SMS came to me as a surprise, twice. Plus we got an electronic recorded message to the home phone.

I was still up when the sun rose on Tuesday so I went out and washed out the chickens water bowls and ran the sprinkler in their enclosure for a while – the water helps keep the sand cool and helps with their dust bathing themselves down to a cooler level of earth. It was already 31 degrees on my weather station before the sun even came up, but it was overcast so I went to bed thinking everything would be less hot than predicted.

Around 10am just as I was drifting off to sleep the safety switch tripped. I had to get up, get dressed, go out and turn it back on. Around 2, some telemarketer called me on my mobile which I had turned to ring from silent in case there was some kind of emergency. I was not making a great deal of sense on the phone seeing as I was asleep, lucky for the telemarketer else I would have gone off for being woken up. After I hung up, I woke up and went out to check on the chooks – the weather station said 44 degrees C. Hot time!

The girls were doing ok, chilling out in the shade under their coop, dustbathing happily. I put some more frozen veg in their water and went back to bed. Absolutely terrible sleep and then I had to go to work earlier than I had been used to – 5pm instead of 6. I nearly did not make it.

Tonight I am hoping to head back to bed at a more regular time having got up about 2 today and then doing a hard day of chores. I tried to do this last night – went to bed at 2, tossed and turned till 6, said stuff it, I’ll go watch another Dexter ep until I am tired, which turned into 2 eps.

Tomorrow it is off to Sydney for an Ikea & Costco trip. We’re heading up a little later than usual in the hope of missing all the peak hour traffic we usually hit on the way home – it is daylight until late now and Costco is open till 8:30pm. Will update you urgently! :)

cooking, country life, get organised, health, Home, prep for going paleo

Zucchini Update

Leave a comment Posted on December 13, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Sorry have been a bit busy this week, will have some other updates soon..

But for now, here is an update on my Zucchini! They are enormous!

Little kitty checking them out – they are nearly as big as she is, and she is pretty rotund lol.

The patch is looking a little ratty now but there are plenty more enormous friends growing in there.

Made a Zucchini soup with these two, plenty of herbs and a few potatoes.

garden, recipes

Garden Updatery

Leave a comment Posted on November 15, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Zucchini plants have gone nuts!

There are some lettuces – the ones the chickens did not get to when they escaped to the “outside world” while I was giving them a treat before leaving for work – and I could not get them back in. Out of 5 only 2 lettuce survived.

A couple of secret tomato plants have sprung up. I did not plant any – these plants grow from the seeds the chickens have eaten.

The yellow Zucchini are not quite as successful as the green ones. This could be because instead of growing just one zucchini at a time, they are trying to grow many!

Chickens, country life, garden

Looks like it does work.

1 Comment Posted on October 23, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

So that is a yay!!

It has been a long time since I have blogged here but I am still reading the majority of the blogs I always did in my google reader – I don’t have the time I would like to comment but believe me I am still there keeping up with your goings on.

My goings on – not a great deal. I hibernated for the winter. The chooks got their large “free range” area (how can it be free range if they are locked in a pen lol) but it is a huge space and they really enjoy it out there. Well they did until we put the sand down – now they think we have done something bad to their space and are kinda freaking out about it. They’ll get used to it, like humans, chickens are not a fan of change.

Once a month or so we make a trip up to Sydney to visit Costco and Ikea and all the amazing food places I am always reading about on the food blogs. Wow there has been an explosion in that, hasn’t there!

I’ve planted some Zucchinis and lettuce and still have work to do on the rest of the garden – much weeding and removing of old plants.

That is when I planted them – here is how they look now – with added solar lights from Kmart –

They have baby zucchinis already! These are a yellow zucchini so look for the yellow thing with the zucchini flower attached. ;)

I’ll put up some pics now. :) So yeah, now it is as easy as typing the text in here and saving as a draft, and then using the iphone to upload my pics, probly you will hear from me more often. :)

country life, garden