Firewood

First Frost

It's been a funny winter so far. Very wet to start with - when the drought ended - then some long dry spells. Some days it's been warm enough to sit outside for lunch - and plenty warm enough to work outside in short sleeves. And then we've had cold snaps too - including our first frosty windscreens since we moved here 4 years ago. Needless to say, we were underprepared and had to clear the ice with a credit card!

Competitive streak

I recently had the opportunity to enter a cupcake competition at work. I picked out an unusual recipe - spiced kumura cupcakes - and planned a Matariki theme - decorated with fish and silver cachous to represent the seven stars of the Pleiades which can be seen at the Maori New Year. 

Sadly I then caught a bug and was off work when the competition took place. Though that may have been a good thing as I tried the recipe out a few weeks later for an office morning tea - and I was really disappointed in my first attempt at proper cupcake icing. The lemon and cream cheese icing was far too wet to produce the beautiful swirl that I could see in my head. Luckily they tasted pretty good (if a little stodgy) and so all was not lost. 

The next competition is for the best scone at our local produce show. I think that I will start work now on perfecting an apple, oatmeal and Lancashire cheese scone. I have at least six months to get it right!

First fruit

Here are the first three fruit from our Bearrs lime tree (next to some shop-bought oranges). The skins were a bit tough - no good for zest - perhaps because I'd left them to ripen for too long. But they were beautifully juicy and gave a delicious tang to the (gluten free) lime and golden raisin loaf that I made for our gardening group (the recipe is here - I just swapped golden raisins for coconut).

Thank you, Katie & Brendon!

Line-up

Counting our chickens

It's almost six months now since our hens emerged from the bush with a brood of chicks in tow and we're finally able to tell which ones are roosters. We seem to have done quite well this time - probably only three roosters out of a total flock of 11 birds. Three roosters too many! 

It's only when we put out fresh food for the chickens that we see them altogether and can count them and check them. Normally they're spread out, foraging, over quite a wide area - and they move so quickly that it's easy to double count or miss one!

Two of the roosters are white - including the second from the top in the photo above - and the other one has the black and white markings of some of our original roosters. The striped markings must have come from the mother though as our roosters had both gone by the time that these chicks were conceived.

The white birds are evidence of our hens straying into next door - though which neighbouring property has a white rooster isn't entirely clear!

Daffy Down Dillies