vanilla plant...

At last, I have a pot of vanilla plant. My sister bought it for me at the Amcorp Mall flea market. The plant cost for RM10 only, kinda cheap for 1ft tall seedling. Last time I found that the price for this size, can cost about RM15-RM18 each. I dunno when I can harvest my very own vanilla pod, but the book said, vanilla plant will take 2 years time to get mature and start fruiting. This is my 3rd time I 'meet' this plant in reality. The 1st time happened when I visited Singapore Botanical Garden during my 2nd year study landscape architecture. I was so amazed that time. The 2nd time, when I was visiting Flower Show. And, today I have my very own plant.
Vanilla (V.planifolia), is actually a member of the orchid family. Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron (I had opportunity to 'touch' the saffron plant when I visited Cambridge Botanical Garden in late 2003). I wish one day, I will have a jar or vanilla sugar which the vanilla pod is from my garden. Yeah...the photo of my vanilla plant will be updated soon.

hatching eggs...mealworms...sago palm

I think in a few days, I'll 'have new members to my flocks. Today, when I checked all eggs inside my incubator...I found that the 'big' egg which I care most, have like moving sound. Even I can felt the moving chick inside the egg. If the 'big' egg really hatch in few days time, I'll be happiest person on earth! I seldom practice candling eggs that make me confused most of the times. Normally I just felt and weighting the eggs that follows my instinct. If I found the egg has a lighter weight than the others, I just throw them away. 23.07 The 'big' egg hatched just now.

My mealworms culture doing well this time. I give my mealworms chick crumbles, carrots and longbeans. Any mealworms that reach the suitable size (the bigger the better), I'll give them to my below 1 month old chicks. They seem like it so much. And the best thing is, the chicks grow healthy and active. One of my friend taught me to give the mealworms a sugarcane stick. This will make the mealworms grow rapidly, to be frank I still don't try this sugarcane thing.

Last weekend, at my family weekend house, I decided to chop down one rumbia tree (Metroxylon sago), which also known as sago palm. When I was a kid, the kampung people at that time used this rumbia tree to feed their chickens and ducks. During the "darurat" days, the kampung people utilized this tree as their source for food. Mom said, her family used to cook this rumbia and make a "lempeng sagu" from it. Go to this website to read more...EatingAsia. And for myself, I cut this rumbia to 2ft long logs, then I divided into 6 segments from each log, later bring back to my backyard chicken farm, and finally have all of my birds to enjoy the sagu. And they loved it very much.