- Good day, I'm Mark from "Self-Sufficient Me."
Remember that raised garden bed
that I made the other day?
The one that was made from recycled plastics,
like coffee cups.
Well, today I made a composting area
down the back there
for the chickens to turn it over.
Let's see how it goes and let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
But before we do get into it
a little bit of sad news.
Unfortunately, we did have eight ducks
now we've got seven.
Two nights ago, I don't know.
I wasn't thinking I was tired
and I forgot to lock the little fellows up
in their hut, which is snake proof.
And you guessed it,
I came out the next morning
and one of the ducks was dead.
I can't positively say that it was a snake.
I mean, it could have died from natural causes.
But to me it looked like it had some trauma
and there were some telltale signs
of a boa constrictor type, you know,
carpet snake attack.
And that is, you know, a bit of bleeding
or trauma from the nose.
In a case like this,
they will typically strangle a duck or a chicken
and then not have enough time to eat it
or be too small to eat it.
If they've got through half, trying to swallow it
and they can't and daylight's coming,
they don't want to be exposed out in the open.
So they abandon their prey
and slink off into the bush
and bed down for the day because they're nocturnal animals.
And so what did I do?
I buried the poor fella in the asparagus bed.
So hopefully, that will just add to that bed.
I usually bury them underneath the banana trees.
I bury lots of things underneath those banana trees.
And that's why we've got so many bananas, but yeah,
I dug a nice big hole so let's hope
that we don't lose any more.
And my intent is that we don't.
And so while I'm on that subject,
I want to thank everyone for giving me
their suggestions and feedback on how
to improve this operation.
I've read through just about all the comments.
There were lots, I'm sucking them all in.
I haven't made a decision just yet,
except to have made some improvements.
Just some simple ones straight from the shed.
And I really got them because of your ideas.
And what I'm liking at the moment
is that I've been able to move that pen
pretty easily just by a few items from my shed.
Things that we already have.
A really simple thing is a trolley jack,
you can get them from auto retailers.
I think you can get bigger ones.
It's something I might look in to.
But for now, it done a surprisingly good job.
Almost good enough.
At the moment I'm working with it,
but I still do want to probably attach
a little hut or something to that.
So let me ponder it a little further
when I've got more time,
I'll keep improving on that
and we'll see how it goes.
All right, let's talk about the composting
that I set up down the back there.
When I got that raised garden bed,
or two of them from David at Plastic Forest,
he also sent me 10 meters
of 400 mil,
40 centimeters high, plastic sheeting
to use for something else.
And I've always been thinking about working out
some type of composting area down the back.
Well, anyway, have a look at it.
And basically this is how I made it.
(dry leaves rustling)
(pick ax thudding)
(plastic ties snapping)
(electric saw whirring)
(hand drill whirring)
(pick ax thuds)
(electric saw whirring)
(shovel scraping)
See, it's already started.
They can't help themselves.
These are curious hens,
they're worse than cats.
There she is, already starting to turn it.
(plants rustling)
So what do you think?
Do you think that's gonna work?
I reckon it will.
I mean, the girls were keen to get in there
and start working straight away.
Gosh, they're curious, those chickens, aren't they?
I reckon it's going to produce some
top fertilizer compost for the garden.
I'm really looking forward to it.
You guys might have several other things
that you could use that shaded plastic for
in a sense of self-sufficiency.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, make sure you give it a big
composting thumbs up.
I couldn't even think of what to do.
But make it a big thumbs up, whatever you can call it.
Thanks a lot for watching.
Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.
Share the video around, because that helps.
Bye for now.
I'm going to put these ducks to bed.
I don't want another one taken by a snake.
All safe.