Hi from southern NSW

Joanne

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I'm Jo, currently living on the far south coast of NSW, moving to our own quarter acre plot at Narrandera in the next few months.

The new place has well established fruit trees but sadly most are infested with fruit fly. I'll be treating them and getting the gardens under control first then I'm thinking of establishing an aquaponics system. My friend has offered to set it up for me and I'm hoping I can grow much of what we'll need and will give away any excess.

We have 4 chooky girls (3 Light Sussex and 1 Welsummer) already living at the new place and I plan on incubating more breeds once we've completely moved.

I hope to learn much and contribute to the forum in any way I can.

Cheers,
Jo
 

Mark

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Hello Jo and thanks for joining us here on SSC :)

My wife is from the southcoast nsw (Bermagui) and I used to live in Wagga Wagga so not far from Narrandera.

Perhaps you can run your chooks under the orchard to clean up the fruit fly larvae?

Best of luck with your move and establishing your property I'm looking forward to seeing/reading your adventures! Cheers :D
 

Joanne

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Hi Mark, thanks for the welcome :)

That is a coincidence... I'm at Dalmeny and much of my father's family are from Bermagui! She's not related to the Haywards is she? Now that would be interesting if she was! :chuffed:

I had thought of letting the chooks into the orchard yard while we're not living there full time, but when we move permanently we have 2 dogs moving with us and they LOVE fresh chicken...one has already disposed of 1 of my flock.

I hope to get plenty of photos of our plant and poultry wrangling so I'll share!

Have a great weekend :cheers:
 

StuartGrows

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Hi Jo! Welcome :) I'm in Washington DC USA myself!
 

Joanne

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Hi Stuart, thanks for the welcome! My girlfriend lives in Washington, but the state not the city. :)
 

Mark

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She's not related to the Haywards is she?
No, her grandparents were Reg and Joyce Loveland and mother Sandra they were at Bermagui for many years. Her mother only recently moved up here to Tweed.
 

StuartGrows

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I'd love to go to Washington State. I am certain it is probably like another country over there. Totally different from the buzz and bumble of DC. I kinda hate this place. It is confusing to navigate on purpose and boy howdy is that annoying.
 

OskarDoLittle

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I'd love to go to Washington State. I am certain it is probably like another country over there. Totally different from the buzz and bumble of DC. I kinda hate this place. It is confusing to navigate on purpose and boy howdy is that annoying.
Love your accent stuartgrows!
And welcome Joanne...I had friends who had a farm at bermagui - not sure if they still do - lost touch with them after leaving Sydney. (Learmont family)
 

Letsgokate

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Hi Joanne welcome, this is a great friendly site with everyone willing to share their experience. I recently came across a site of a guy who seems to be heavily involved with aquaponics in his backyard. He lives in South East Qld. http://www.bitsouttheback.net I'm not into that myself just came across it following links when surfing the net :) he also has a YouTube channel where he has a load of videos, he seems to be quite a character

 

Sasha Bushell

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Hi Joanne welcome, this is a great friendly site with everyone willing to share their experience. I recently came across a site of a guy who seems to be heavily involved with aquaponics in his backyard. He lives in South East Qld. http://www.bitsouttheback.net I'm not into that myself just came across it following links when surfing the net :) he also has a YouTube channel where he has a load of videos, he seems to be quite a character

Rob bob! Hes fantastic and i love watching his garden tours and he has never claimed to be an expert in anything and the amount of what he produces in his suburban home is absolutely outstanding!

And Joanne, welcome to the forum. I am also a newbie, from gold coast.

Look forward to seeing and hearing about everything you do. :)
 

ClissAT

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Hi there Joanne, & Stuart also (incase I didn't do that previously), I love Rob's backyard videos.
His aquaponics is great. As one who almost made a living out of selling hydroponic parsley to Coles right when I was leaving the army the first time, I'm rather jealous of his aquaponics! Unfortunately as much as I would love such a system I have had too many aquarium fish over the years to be able to kill fish now. It's not that hard to teach fish to do tricks:hook:, only slightly harder than teaching horses or chookles!:feedchooks:
So to then do the nasty & stick them through the brain seems rather back stabbing...... or would that be head stabbing? :facepalm:

I have thought about just having the same 20 or so gold fish or comets but have you seen how big they grow when well fed?:eek::cowmoo:
 

StuartGrows

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Ohhh that is great! I am REALLY interested in doing some aquaponics stuff someday!!!
 

OskarDoLittle

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Hi there Joanne, & Stuart also (incase I didn't do that previously), I love Rob's backyard videos.
His aquaponics is great. As one who almost made a living out of selling hydroponic parsley to Coles right when I was leaving the army the first time, I'm rather jealous of his aquaponics! Unfortunately as much as I would love such a system I have had too many aquarium fish over the years to be able to kill fish now. It's not that hard to teach fish to do tricks:hook:, only slightly harder than teaching horses or chookles!:feedchooks:
So to then do the nasty & stick them through the brain seems rather back stabbing...... or would that be head stabbing? :facepalm:

I have thought about just having the same 20 or so gold fish or comets but have you seen how big they grow when well fed?:eek::cowmoo:
Sigh...I really don't think it would be for me...I quite like fish as pets and find it hard to cope with asian restaurants with live seafood...stresses me out when I see someone come around with the little net! Which isenormously hypocritical considering I'm not vegetarian. Like most people I relish the faceless-ness of being able to pick up a little piece of meat that no longer resembles the animal it came from. And while my hat goes off to the celebrity chefs that insist "if you couldn't kill it yourself, you shouldn't eat it" I don't think the average punter should be trying to home kill and butcher their own beasts! Did have an argument once with a weekend farmer who tried to tell me it was no different to picking vegetables...then tried to tell me they have their own nervous system and feelings!
 

ClissAT

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I have always believed fish have a nervous system & have feelings.
If you observe aquarium fish, they don't bump into the ornaments in their tank unless they are trying to scratch their skin. That means they can feel through their skin. That means they have nerves. That means they can feel something because that's what nerves are all about. It might not be as highly developed as ours but it is there to keep them alive which is what life is all about.
If you dip an object down into the tank to block the path the fish usually take to get from spot to spot, they swim around it, not bump into it. That means they think. If one is sick it hides away or stays in a corner. It is doing that to stay alive because the others might pray on it (survival of the fittest). That is the balance of life at work. They have feelings & thoughts. Again not as highly developed as ours but there nonetheless. Same for chooks, everything.
I learned to spike fish from my brother who handline fished coral trout for a living. Those fish had to be kept in pristine condition in a 'live tank' on the boat to be sold live & flown to Hong Kong. Eventually the govt purchased back all those licences to protect areas of Barrier Reef so he sold his boat & progressed his skippers tickets to skipper much larger tourist vessels.
But if a fish was sick it was killed immediately, filleted & snap frozen. The spike was called something I cant remember the name now. It was a specialized tool that caused instant death when done correctly but the operator needed to keep well practised & the learning process caused many failures so the fish didn't die instantly. That showed in the flesh of the fillet which was then only saleable on the domestic market because we are so used to fish that have not died instantly that we can't see the difference in the fillet.

So theoretically home grown fish, spiked correctly & cooked that day would be the ideal way to consume fish. However if you didn't practise the spiking regularly enough you might not kill the fish instantly so you void the whole process which then becomes no better than commercial fishing.
The way I legitimize my consumption of meat is like this:- over the course of a year I would eat a total of about 20kg of locally produced red meat(goat, mutton & beef), 3-4 locally produced organic free range chickens, 3-4 fresh local fish, 2kg local prawns & 15-20 cans of imported salmon. If I had to grow & kill them myself I would not be practised so I would most likely botch it up. In Australia we have well practised humane killers in all types of abattoirs so best I leave the killing & processing to them. As for the imported canned fish, those are most likely netted in the open ocean so there is little I can do about that other than to stop eating/buying that fish. If I could afford to buy Aussie farmed salmon I would. Farmed salmon is usually killed by being dropped into iced slurry off a conveyor belt coming from their grow pen. Some from small farms is spiked if being processed in small numbers for certain types of fillets or for smoking, etc.

But if there was a person who was proficient in killing food animals who went around from house to house or farm to farm, it would most likely be a good simple process. That would make it viable for people to grow their own meat at home. Like in the 'old days' when the country butcher went around & killed & processed 1 bullock on a small farm or some sheep, pigs, etc. When I was a jillaroo, it was part of the monthly work to kill a bullock & some sheep or pigs & of course anyone might be asked to chop the heads off & pluck a few chickens for Sunday lunch. I can shoot an animal in the head but not cut its throat while still alive & looking at me! I have chopped chicken heads off with a very sharp axe. These days I will put a chook out of it's misery if fatally ill but that's the extent of it.
 

ClissAT

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Some time we should all do a farm/garden crawl! And go to places like Rob Bob's.
We could do the vehicle crawl too. That's is where the first person drives to second house then they switch to the second persons vehicle to drive to the third place where they switch again & so on up to the largest vehicle taking the most people being the last garden then return in reverse order or do a complete cycle around. That keeps the group together but no-one drives too far. It requires a bit of logistics to plan from smallest to largest vehicle & furthest to closest garden. Sometimes needs 2 cars & in some cases people opt for an overnight stay to really lift the weekend. I've seen it done in town but not sure it would work in rural or very scattered gardens/farms. We used to do it in the army for big nights out before the advent of breathalysers. :p:cheers:
 

StuartGrows

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Sigh...I really don't think it would be for me...I quite like fish as pets and find it hard to cope with asian restaurants with live seafood...stresses me out when I see someone come around with the little net! Which isenormously hypocritical considering I'm not vegetarian.
I actually am a vegetarian. Have been for 5 years now about. This is why I would keep fish though, so they could fertilize my plants :) It makes me really sad and nervous when I see that sort of thing myself.

@ClissAT Your post above about spiking fish was very interesting. I didn't know much of that. Thanks for teaching me something today. You sound like you have had quite a life thus far. Living in an offgrid shack, spikefishing, and killing animals. While I haven't directly killed any animals like that, I think that I could if I had to. But I am thankfully in a situation that means I don't have to....so I don't. Whew.
 

OskarDoLittle

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I have always believed fish have a nervous system & have feelings. .

Sorry, should've made that clearer...I had a "weekend farmer" (I use that term loosely because he was a bit of a fool who thought keeping stock that we're going to be slaughtered meant it didn't matter about their quality of life) who tried to tell me vegetables had a central nervous system! Fish clearly have a nervous system - no issue with that from me! :). He was trying to debate that I was hypocritical in being able to "pick" vegetables, but wouldn't kill an animal. (Really?!!)
 

OskarDoLittle

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I actually am a vegetarian. Have been for 5 years now about. This is why I would keep fish though, so they could fertilize my plants :) It makes me really sad and nervous when I see that sort of thing myself.

@ClissAT Your post above about spiking fish was very interesting. I didn't know much of that. Thanks for teaching me something today. You sound like you have had quite a life thus far. Living in an offgrid shack, spikefishing, and killing animals. While I haven't directly killed any animals like that, I think that I could if I had to. But I am thankfully in a situation that means I don't have to....so I don't. Whew.

Kudos to you stuartgrows...I really wish I could go vegetarian! I don't actually keep fish myself as pets because I just have no luck with them...I've killed more Siamese fighting fish than I care to remember! And I really don't know how/why...maybe I kept the water too clean. Even tried keeping one in a tank with a filter...still died within a month! I quite like the idea of an Oscar can't remember their botanical name - solitary fish (well...you can add other fish, but they'll eat them) and they definitely do come to recognise their owners. Will grow as big as the tank will allow them. Great pets!
 

StuartGrows

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Being vegetarian isn't for everyone, much to the chagrin of other vegetarians and vegans lol

I'm really surprised, Betta fish are some of the easiest fish to keep. Did you make sure to de-chlorinate the water? what temperature did you keep it at? The filter will help immensely. I have some bettas and corydora catfish and also otocinclus catfish. I keep the temp at 75ish and change the water once a month or so. I take the water from the tank and put it right into my garden :)
 
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