Chookie chook chook, bushfires and ecological footprint

Well lots has been happening in our neck of the woods lately.

First we got chooks.

Second we had to evacuate with said chooks as well as Fish, Chips (our two dogs) and Olive and Gizmo (or black cat and white cat as our daughter knows them) to our good friends, P & J's, place.

Third, we returned home to our unburned house and installed chooks in their "Chicken ranch": not my name the name on the very classy coop we bought. And no, D and I did not have an argument putting it together (this is the usual course of things when we buy an assemble yourself number. Needless to say the couple of days following an IKEA splurge are spent wishing we hadn't gone near the place. Like childbirth though, we always forget.)

Fourth we evacuated again when there was a BIG fire in Upwey just around the corner. We may have to evacuate again tomorrow. We'll see how we go.

The solar powered radio is doing overtime playing ABC fire alert updates continuously. Sick to the back teeth of living with emergency bags continuously packed and not being able to make plans. People who have lost family and friends and property in these recent horrific fires, though will have little sympathy for my crankiness I imagine. :-)

But back to the chooks - we have got our first eggs! Our morning ritual of letting them out and giving them food scraps is delivering dividends. We are on our way to being egg sufficient. Woohoo.

Plan is we'll eat less meat and more eggs and reduce our ecological footprint. Well that's the hope. Ha.

Now we're discovering all sorts of cool things about chooks. Like, they follow you around the garden, they eat the insects that eat our vegie patch :-) and they eat new seedlings in our vegie patch :-(

Methinks the purchasing of chookie chook chook related paraphernalia: coop, feeders, hay, wood shavings, grit, grain, and pellets is more an exercise in adding new pets to our menagerie than an attempt at food self-sufficiency! But Ssssshhh don't tell D I said this. The other argument was what worked in getting him to cave. Worked so well, even had me believing it.

OK maybe in ten years we'll work out ahead in the cost-benefit analysis, but in the meantime I'm just enjoying hangin' in the backyard looking at our ever so busy but easy-going chookie chooks.