Howdy all

It's time to unleash my thoughts and practical developments concerning the design and use of the backyard wood bbq upon my grander audience.

So briefly:
Wood bbq's are the best. You smell the bush and celebrate the great outdoors
Below is what works for me for:

• minimal / efficient fuel use,
  
• cooking space for 20 in one go
• cheap and easy to construct , even take away

Special equip.: use a piece of roughly 2cm hole size steel mesh cut to oversize shape with bolt cutters (small ones will do it) or angle grinder (mesh is about $24 I think for 2.4 by 1.2 metre size from Metalcorp in Nth Geelong. It's useful stuff for greenhouse shelves, etc, anyway.
The pic below is an earlier version where I placed it over a half dug fire pit.


I say don't make a fire pit (digging) . Do it at ground level.... make a horseshoe shape with bricks or rocks on sides and back with lots of airhole spaces all around. I haven't tried it, but on a less windy day even just supporting the corners may work, although I think smoke and irest heat may be more of a problem Aim to get the mesh about 20 or 30cm above ground, 10 to 20 above the coals.

Get your fire going and hot with max size big wood 10 cm diam. Recommend in pref order: hard wattles (black wattle, golden wattle), she oaks (casuarina), melaluccas, then eucs (great variety in how they burn). But all should be dried for a least a year.

Also, one can use dried fruit tree prunings which the smoke from will be vaguely fragrant of the fruit
Once flames subdue, smoke minimal, but hot, whack on the mesh and get cooking. Long tongs. oversize mesh cool on edges gives you holding place.
Watch out for real windy days when dust and dirt can get on to food easier when closer to the ground.
Because you've got heaps of space and pure heat over a big surface area of the food it's great for cooking stuff like eggplants, mushies, capsicum, tomatoes, kale leafs, chicken wings, sausages,
You can also early on put on a frying pan for sautéing onions while the flames are high, along with a billy for drinks later,
You can cook stuff in foil or clay in the coals underneath like potatoes or bananas for sweets. Marshmallows on sticks for kids treat
If you have a tin pizza tray and a rough lid cover, you can cook a really crisp, toasty pizza in about 15 mins c/f 3hrs plus and half a ton of wood for a pizza oven to get ready.
Very handy also to have a higher fold up table (eg card tale) for wine, keeping food out of reach of dogs, cutlery and plates, etc..


Good luck, hope this might be of use.
CU

pics and music

Some pics of the season:
good o.. its up

one of my beautiful favs with welsummers behind and behind agian is cross bred wyandotte with 5 little favs
















Here's a test run to see if I can also upload audio ok
This is a little ditty.... or dirge as some would have it... from my old band about a farming community.. a path in the road past travelled... a doomed relationship.
You know... Some relationships come with baggage, implications, even a landscape ("carpet of yellow" ie canola crops)

Chook self sufficiency

Hi there,

I'm working on a pen system to give us chook eggs all year round and to be able to eat a bird once a week.

Faverolles are my main bird of choice. They lay in winter. They look fabulous and they are revered by the French for their culinary prowess and even have their own special dishes. Appearntly they are "dressed up" .. presented in the butcher's windows.

I also have some austrolorps, (one is at least over eight years and she is still the crankiest and boss hen), welsumers and Wyandotte crosses. Wyandottes make for great broodies.

So... two flocks , one bigger 9 and rooster, one smaller, 4 and rooster with two houses each with two large runs to rotate and help break worm cycles, fox and dog proof. Then a broodi cage ... to be replicated by 6 ...so broodie chooks can sit on twelve eggs. sparrow proof, only used once a year. .. Say 8-9 hatch once half size can be reared together in third large compound.

I mainly feed them mixed grain and greens and chook edible kitchen scraps. I must try growing a wheat crop for them.

I

Guinea Pigs and Compost

Here we go ...
Reprinted from GOG dec 09 newsletter:


Guinea Pigs For Compost - the Case Fur

Guinea pigs are great little animals for generating a lot of really good material to make up a Berkley style hot compost. Guinea pigs go to it.

Guinea pigs are: small and furry, cuddly, make really cute noises, never seem to stop eating, breed rather well, and .. well,, if times are really tough... there are recipes available.... but I keep my six for compost and they have names like Muffin and Tiddles. Additionally, the eating variety are called “short-haired giants” or something, and they do provide a sustainable form of protein for millions in South America where they were iconic in pre-European colonisation time.

If you aren’t able to keep chooks (or a real pig in a pen like in the old days) guinea pigs are useful
for recycling much of the household scraps. But I have found my Guineas to be highly complimentary to keeping chooks - in terms of the type of food scraps and grasses and vegie crop dregs they can eat, which chooks can’t or shouldn’t).

A big bonus is Guineas love to be fed many fresh weeds and grasses (wild diet) so that keeps your hand in, so to speak - imposes a weeding discipline, especially since it’s so hard to ignore their range of very cute noises. But there’s more...

Guinea Pigs - or cavies as the enthusiasts call them - can transform all of the following into magic compost input material :
· newspaper bottom and straw bedding (changed every couple of weeks with a shovel and wheelbarrow) – another discipline that gets you making compost.,
· a lot of food scraps that chooks can’t eat such as watermelon and pumpkin peelings, banana skins, oranges, etc
· forked or woody carrots, parsnips, brassicas going to seed., excess or second best cabbages or other vegies and fruits, that need pulling out, etc
· windfall fruit
· hardened seedy and/or rhizome typed perennial grasses such as phalaris, barley and also grasses of the stringy couch, buffalo and kikouo types..

Guinea Pigs break down their bedding and food into a pre-moistened urine soaked (lower down) mix of newspaper, straw or hay with masses of poo pellets. Judy Cameron informed me it is recognised as being one of the best manures and as you have to clean it out on a regular basis you get all the benefit, unlike chook stuff which largely seems to disappate relative to the inputs.

Guinea Pigs - go to it! Guinea Pigs - go to it now!

Guinea Pigs are goers. And they need to be sexed and separated. They have the ability to conceive at six weeks and can do so while already carrying an unborn litter. I learnt how to sex them off web pics and descriptions... (eventually).. eg: It was Barney who had the pups (babies), and Muffin was the stud boar, alpha male.

I also learnt Guinea Pigs really need around a square metre each for play. (better as a rectangle so they are easier to catch)
And they need: $10 water bottles; vitamin C in their diet (like humans, but unlike rabbits and nearly all other animals); checking for ringworm, mange; compatible personalities and sexes; enclosures that are dog proof, sparrow and raptor proof, hinged lid, non wire floor; hidey holes and boxes for visual security; protection from cold, wet and damp, heat and hot sun.

On the last needs – housing and bedding: I know a few people that lost their Guineas from cold and also in the Black Sat type heat waves, so it’s really important to have a good place to keep them. In the USA they are popular as indoor pets We have had success keeping them on the gravel earth floor in a South facing open six bay shed. They seem happy enough in the subdued light conditions and don’t dig at all. We also have a little cage where they are sometimes taken inside and for cleaning out their main housing.

Be aware with Guinea Pigs I have found you need a fair bit of application and info to keep them healthy, sex them, etc and vet fees don’t go down just because they are small or free. Guinea Pigs are prone to ringworm, a range of contagious skin fungus growths that can spread to humans too. Be aware also that as childrens pets the novelty value doesn’t last and there are foods such as rhubarb, mushrooms, mouldy foods, processed foods, etc you can’t feed them. Potatoes and peelings are of mixed opinion. I’ve never had a problem but the chooks get most of them.

There’s a lot more, of course, which I’m unable to put here, but if anybody wants extra advice on things like making good enclosures then I’m happy to share my experiences. gavingamble@aanet.com.au, 0410 505 936, ah 5281 5115

GOG’s – go to it.