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We’ve been keeping chooks at our nursery for 7 years now. They are not only our pets, but also our composters, veggie patch fertilisers and a regular source of the most local, organic eggs. If you’re looking for a pet to tick all the boxes, a chicken is about the only one that can do that. It’s a symbiotic relationship that reduces waste, creates food and perhaps most importantly, provides companionship. 

Chooks typically live for between 5-8 years (yes ours are getting quite old…), and begin laying after about 6 to 12 months, typically when conditions are warmer in spring or summer. Like most things in a garden, laying is most prolific in the warmer months and will subside a little during autumn and winter. Once a chook begins to lay, most of the egg production is achieved in the first 3 years of its life, however if a bird is healthy there is the potential for it to lay an egg a day until it dies. 

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It’s hard to ignore the collective change in behaviour when it comes to our recycling and composting habits. At last we’re beginning to see waste from a different perspective - the ‘wasteful’ one - and we are now considering the cycle of our unnecessary rubbish. Like the one use plastic bag to hold some groceries, or the coffee cup that we thought was recyclable, and in particular, the organic matter that should always head towards a composting unit.

Composting has always been limited by our behavioural habits. With the exception of a few, most will chose whatever option is the easiest and that takes the mess the furthest from our minds. Conventional home composting is often seen as too unsightly, too messy or too inefficient to consider. The smaller the scale, the more that these functionality problems are pronounced.

For one, even the smallest composting bins are large, hulking objects. Not only will they take up valuable garden real estate - that fewer people have - but in a world of increasing garden vanity, a tower of black plastic is never the object of desire we want it to be, yet alone fit in most peoples’ yards. Another issue is that they are easily infiltrated by pests.  A lot of compost bins are open at the bottom, which means that any motivated rat with a little initiative need only to dig a couple of centimetres to reach a sumptuous vegetarian buffet.

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All life, whether in plant form or otherwise, is made up almost entirely of water and relies on it more than anything for survival. We ourselves begin life at our most water condensed version - approximately 75-80% of the stuff - but then develop more dry matter and regulate to 65-70%. Having once been obsessed with Survivorman, Les Stroud, I know that we can survive more than three weeks without food but less than three without water. This makes a few millimetres of moisture condensed overnight on a tarp a more valuable proposition than a mouthful of miniature rock crabs.

Plants however trump us and are made up of around 80-90% water. It’s a statistic that always reminds us that, while we may forget to do any number of things in the garden, the one thing we mustn’t forget is to water. This unfortunately is never the case. The simple truth is that we’re constantly forgetting to give our plants the one thing they are screaming at us for, and for those joking about having black thumbs of death - do you see your plants laughing? No, nor can your hear their piercing shrills and cries for hydration.

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Sometimes life fells too aspirational, to the extent where everything we really want to do remain ideas at best. Whether it's the weekly exercise routine or the edible garden we're always planning to set up, life becomes saturated and can't hold anymore. This place however is different. Tasmanian forces a shift in speed that allows you clear out and then jump on, to experience all that it has to offer. You can help but find people that are doing all the things that we only aspire to do, and sometimes without a very clear broadband signal. It's game changing.

After writing three of our books there, Tasmania is becoming more than just our favourite cool climate island, it is our spiritual home and a constant source of inspiration. If you're looking to invigorate your food growing aspirations - in fact those of your life in general - a journey south is a prerequisite. And while the whole island demands exploration (you will often find that the last place you visit in Tasmania becomes your new favourite place to visit) we have settled on the run-off of the Huon Valley which hosts the not so sleepy township of Cygnet. Around it are some of the country's best cherries, strawberries, apples, purple garlic, fish, oysters, pork, cheese, etc... all within an easy 40 minute drive from the capital and an even easier boat ride across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny Island. 

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