A New Community

After I posted the Chicken Preschool video that I made of our chicks playing in the aviary, I received a note from a friend telling me she thought it was so cute that she had shared it on her webforum. Of course, I had to go and check that out and I am so glad I did!

I've found a wonderful new 'chook' community full of friendly people and interesting discussions of all things to do with backyard chickens, purebreed chickens and even gardening!

It is called Poultry Matters and I am really enjoying chatting there. I've even found out why my kiwi fruit vine might not be setting fruit! I never knew you needed both a male and a female kiwi vine in order to get fruit. I will have to go and check our vine tomorrow and see if it has any flowers on it, so I can identify whether it is a male or female plant and act accordingly!

I have a feeling, from memory, that it might be female.

Female Kiwi (photo via Google search )

The flower pictured above is of a female flower and from memory, this is what our vine gets in springtime.

We need to get a male plant with flowers like this...

Male Kiwi Plant (photo via Google search)

Now if I can just find out what the problem is with the rest of our fruit trees...the hardly ever fruitng mangoes, plums, etc...

I get about one mango every other year and one plum each spring from the plum trees. We have more than one of each of these, so we are thinking we have male and female--if that even matters! I just want something other than the millions of citrus we get each year to eat!

Sure hoping I find flowers on the kiwi vine tomorrow!

In other news, we seem to be overrun with Roma tomatoes right now!

They are all ripening at the same time, so we will be cooking up some pasta sauce, I think, or maybe pickles/chutney!