Hugelkultur and Huhns

I am so excited about two new developments at our little "homestead." 

The first is the Huhns - I mean, hens (I just wanted to say it in German to sound cool with "hugelkulture" in the title).  Ours have taken to nesting in the daffodils (cute!), pooping on the patio (nasty!), and producing amazingly delicious eggs (amazing!).  Every time I go to the grocery store, I rejoice a little bit because I don't have to buy eggs!

In other news (since I know you've all been waiting eagerly to hear), the "dead sticks in a bucket" that my husband has been patiently enduring are starting to turn into baby grapevines in a bucket (only 2 of the 5...the rest may have been planted upside down!).  These will soon be planted at the base of our huge trellis.  I don't know how many years it will take for them to become a huge, shady vine over the porch and walkway, but we have to start sometime!

Here is where my other German word comes into play: hugelkultur.  In this case, I had a really good reason to use the German word, since the English translation is roughly "A bunch of rotting wood buried in the ground, with lots of organic matter mixed in and a garden growing on top."  I've tried to also incorporate a swale-and-berm combination, so this hugelbeet (the name for one such buried-wood-mound-garden) will hopefully take advantage of rain water coming down the hill in the garden, too.

Here are some stolen pictures of hugelkultur and swales-and-berms so you can see what the heck I'm talking about:

First, a hugelkultur hugelbeet:

picture credit: FuoriBorgo

And second, a series of swales and berms built on a slope: 

picture credit: GardeningInHell

In the photo below, you are looking roughly downhill (the berm is built as close to on-contour or level as I could eyeball it), so see how the water will go right in the little depression?  It will work perfectly...I hope.

I've been saving my pennies by doing crappy-looking things like growing my grapevines in ugly buckets, and have saved up for my first ever blueberry bush (on the right) and comfrey (the weedy-looking thing in front of the bush).  Apparently, comfrey is like the holy grail of nutrient-collecting plants, and lots of permaculture-type gardeners love it.  There are also two rhubarbs in that mess of potatoes and radishes, which I hope will be a good start toward more perennial edibles to round out all the annual veggies.

Posted at Simple Lives Thursday, Common Sense, Small Footprint Fridays, Homestead Barn Hop, From the Farm

Getting to Work in the Oregon Springtime!

Spring is a glorious time when you are not pregnant (like I was this time last year...hugely, beluga-whale pregnant).  Instead of "It is beautiful and sunny out, but I feel like laying down and sleeping... who wants to watch Curious George?," this year I can say, "It is beautiful and sunny out - let's go dig in the dirt!"

This is an important difference, since I am coming to realize that Oregonians get very little sunshine from November 'til about...now.

Here is what the precipitation looks like at the town nearest us (sorry if you don't think graphs are as fascinating as I do):

You can see that October is when we lose all hope and become depressed after a glorious summer.

So instead of staying inside and, you know, doing dishes and putting away laundry like I should be doing, I keep dragging the kids outside with me to work on stuff.  Just kidding.  They love it.

I am quickly learning that gardening in the Pacific Northwest (especially west of the Cascades) is about as idiot-proof as it gets, and extremely rewarding with very little effort.  Case in point: I accidentally killed a potted primrose when we moved here.  I put it on the back porch, it fell off and out of its pot, I didn't pick it up, and the plant magically came back to life as soon as it started raining.  Here, you have to fight off nature to keep it from growing out of control, as opposed to where we used to be (9000 feet, semi-arid), where you had to nurture growing things, pray, and beg them to survive.

Anyway, here are a few of my projects for this year.  If you think that all my projects look pretty redneck, please keep in mind that my monthly garden budget it $15... so I am doing everything as cheaply as possible.  

Project #1: Grapevines!  I am attempting to propagate some grapevine cuttings to grow along the huge trellis off my back porch.  Somewhere between cutting and planting, I lost track of which ends are the...uh...root ends and which ends are the growing ends, so we will see how this goes.  Note the classy 5 gallon bucket pot (with drainage holes on the bottom...my husband was thrilled that I ruined his bucket).

 The poor chickens who stand in mud during the rainy season have been getting lots of downed branches in their run.  It helps.  It is still muddy.  They now are allowed out of the run during the day to eat bugs and grass and poop all over our patio.  They are happy, fat, and gloriously healthy.  We are tired of stepping in poop and shooing them out of the house.  We are working on that.

 This is a mini, pathetic version of a sweet idea I saw somewhere, where the bottom of a chicken coop was all mesh, and things were growing underneath for the chickens to eat.  Also, this way the chicken poo just falls down to fertilize the plants beneath.  My version is just some rye seeds under a slightly protective mesh platform out in the chicken run.  We'll see how it goes.  At the very worst, the chickens will eat all the rye seeds and call it a tasty one-time snack, at the best, the seeds will sprout and grow, and the chickens will have something fun to eat in the run if we can't let them out for some reason.

Given the whole low-budget thing, I was super excited the other day when I found out that our Fish and Wildlife Department was giving away free native plants!  There was originally a limit of 3 per person, but we showed up late, and they gave us as many as I could carry without jabbing plants into the face of the squirming baby.  These fortress-fortified plants (chicken and husband-on-lawnmower proof) are mock orange trees and some wild roses.  The mock orange supposedly smells amazing when it blooms.  Right now it looks like a tiny dead stick.  Come on, Oregon climate, work your magic.  My husband thinks I am slightly crazy to be putting fortresses around dead sticks.

More free natives.  The purplish thing in front is a wild Oregon creeping grape, then the twig behind it is a red twig dogwood.  These guys are by the chicken run, and I am hoping when they mature, they will provide some bug habitat and fruit for the chickens (all the stuff I got has fruit or foliage or both that is edible for animals).

This is the last native.  It is a narrow-leaf buckbrush, which apparently thrives even in drought.  So it is way out in the garden where I don't water regularly during no-rain season.  It is a nitrogen-fixer (my permaculture-newbie self got excited about that), and I am excited to plant things around it someday that are cooler than the current dead grass.

 This is the southwest corner of our large, deer-fenced garden area.  It had previously been a bizarre plant cemetery where the people who lived here before us dumped a bunch of perfectly good stuff straight from the nursery and left it to die (I guess they got busy?).  Like hundreds and hundreds of baby plants.  The cheapskate in me was absolutely appalled.  So I dumped all the good dirt out of the pots, am reusing lots of the pots for growing seedlings, and cleared the rest out to make room for a little raised garden bed.  There are a bunch of left over cinder blocks hanging around the property that will become lovely little walls around this mound of dirt. Stylish, I know.  But hey, veggies don't care what their garden bed looks like!  The only thing I don't like about this raised garden plan is that because of its weird placement far from the house (it's the best sunny place that is fenced), I will be lugging bucket loads of water down to it in the summer.  Hopefully the little one will be walking by then?

Here is what is going on with a bunch of those salvaged plant containers.  They are housing seedlings!  Hooray!  And yes, the seedings live on top of the trash can.  That is the only place on the sunny back porch where the chickens can't eat them and the dog can't knock them down with his tail.  We currently have baby tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, and impatiens.  There were nasturtiums, but they were taking over and blocking the sun from the other seedlings.  I killed them.  My 3-year-old cried.

This is the beginning of project number... 3 dozen?  I've lost count.  Leaning against the trunk of the badly-pruned tree are a bunch of branches that I pruned off the apple trees.  They are going to hopefully become a little bean tipi for the kids to play in.  I always knew my tipi building experience at my last job would pay off! And... is tipi building knowledge the kind of thing I can put on a resume someday if I go back to work?

"Homesteading" Goals for 2013

I love to use the word "homestead," although it's a bit of a stretch in my situation.  It just sounds pleasantly old-fashioned.  Do a garden and chicken coop (and dog the size of a cow) count as a homestead?

I know people generally do this kind of goal-setting around New Year's, but hey, we are non-conformists.

Here's what's been accomplished so far this "rainy season":

• Compost "bin" made from chicken wire

• Chicken coop thoroughly mucked
• Fallen evergreen branches placed as floor of chicken run (you can see that the kids ran out of patience about halfway through, and I have a bit more to do, but 50% mud is better than 100% mud)

• Apple trees pruned, plum trees sort of pruned, grapevines sort of under control
• 30% of Himalayan blackberries hacked out (pure evil, those things).

• Leaves raked and placed over veggie beds for mulch

And here's what I'd like to accomplish in the next few months.  This may be a bit ambitious since, ya know, the kids spend most of their time in the garden saying things like,  "I'm bored," I want to go inside," "Can I play with the hedge trimmers?" and "Mommy, the baby's eating grass!"  But if I don't make a list, then nothing will get done.  This way, if I accomplish 1/3 of what's on the list, at least something happened.  

Chicken-y things to do:

1. Fix garden fence so deer can't get in, chickens can't get out.
2. Tinker with chicken coop to make cleaning and egg collecting easier (add one wall, add hinges)
3. Create some type of very simple paddock-shift system for chickens, where they get out of their sad, muddy run to eat grass, then a week later, I rotate them to fresh grass to give the old grass time to recover, etc.  Also, I'd like to reseed their run once I have a way to keep them out of it long enough for the grass to sprout.
4. Get the chickens into the fenced-in garden so they can eat some bugs before it's time to plant.

Plant-y things to do:

1. Prune the peach trees in February
2. Finish pruning the other trees
3. Hack out the remaining 70% of the blackberries
4. Get the grapes a little more under control so they don't attack the fruit trees anymore.
5. Plant some comfrey under the apple trees to replace some of the grass (did you know that grass under trees competes with the trees for nutrients, since both are surface-feeders?)
6. Plant early cool-season veggies in my established veggie bed
7. Start tomatoes and peppers from seed indoors (unfortunately, this should be prefaced with "clean out place by windows to sprout seeds).
8. Find some sort of seed to plant as a living mulch in my veggie beds once veggie seeds get established.
9. Make a "bean tipi" for the kids to play in in the garden.

Can You Guess...

Which eggs came from the store, and which came from our backyard chickens?

Hint: the ones from the store are huge and pale...

Did you know that eggs, when they are laid, are protected by "bloom," which dries and adheres to the eggshell until it is washed or rubbed off?  The bloom helps seal up the microscopic pores in the eggshell, protecting the contents from dust, dirt, bacteria, and other things that you probably don't want in your omelette.  It also helps keep the egg fresh for extended lengths of time, even at room temperature, by blocking oxygen from entering the egg.  Grocery store eggs have their bloom washed off.

Did you know that eggs from pastured chickens (who eat plenty of green, growing grass), can have 400% more omega-3 fatty acids than store-bought eggs, 40% more Vitamin A, and 30% more Vitamin E?

Sources: Comparison of Egg Nutrition Values, Mother Earth News

University of Illinois Department of Animal Sciences, "What is Egg Shell Quality and How to Preserve It"

Posted at Barn Hop and Monday Mania

A Very Slimy Disappointment

This is a gross post...just to warn you.  Well, not that gross, I am just a huge wimp.

Slugs.  We have lots of them in Oregon.  We had none in Colorado where we used to live.  They are huge (like 8 inches long) and gross, and they crawl all over the back of our house by the hose spigot and leave slimy trails on the back wall.

According to permaculture (sustainable gardening) wisdom, I should not think, "I have too many slugs."  I should think instead, "I must not have enough ducks."

Ducks apparently love slugs.  We don't have ducks.

We have chickens.  Chickens are supposed to like slugs too.  But only little slugs.

Mine are not little.

Google searching tells me that chickens will eat even large slugs if you train the chickens by cutting up the slugs first.

I have spent about the last 4 months wondering if I could cut up a slug.  Even thinking about it gave me the heeby-jeebies.  I shudder just a little when I even see the little suckers lurking there, all quiet and slimy by the spigot.  I told you I'm a huge wimp.

Well, morning is the time for slug hunting, and it is also when the chickens expect me to come out and check on them and bring whatever scraps we have from last night's dinner.

This is how incredibly squeemish I am.

Some potential victims, lurking near the hose spigot on our back wall.

He does not know what horrors await him.

The chickens think I'm bringing something good.

I tried giving it to them whole, hoping maybe they were just rare chickens who loved large slugs.  No good (There it is at the very bottom.  Notice the chickens totally avoiding it).

Don't worry, at this point, I realized that it is impossible to cut a slug with kitchen shears and hold a camera at the same time without slug-sliming the camera.

I chopped that slug (apparently slugs are mostly water inside... there was a lot more dripping than I expected).  I scattered those slug pieces.  It was kind of horrifying (I kept telling myself, "It's just a piece of meat, it's like cutting raw chicken.  Oh, that's ironic, sorry, girls...")

Those darn chickens won't touch it.

And my husband wouldn't let me tell him any of the gory details over breakfast, so I am telling you.

Does anyone know how to get chickens to eat slugs?  Also, does anyone know if slugs carry any weird diseases that can't be removed from kitchen shears by basic sterilization methods?


Posted at Frugal Days Sustainable Ways

New Chicken Run! Quality Craftsmanship

My husband finished the chicken run!  Our poor little hens can now run around outside, munch the grass, and feel the sun on their feathers.

You can kind of see the little door from the coop to the run.  The gateway from chicken hell to chicken heaven.

 The kids and chickens have been getting some extra exercise the last few days.  I think it is good for the chickens to be chased a little to help them stay in shape and learn to run from predators... right?

You may notice the lovely 4x4's and sturdy gate.  My husband's doing.  He loves building stuff, and his family did some ranching/farming when he was growing up, so it comes pretty easily to him.  He made this run to last.  

Sometimes it's hard for me to allow him to invest the time and/or money to do things right the first time.  I love spending as little as possible on everything I do, but I am gradually learning (partly because of being married to this particular man) that in many cases, you really do get what you pay for.

I don't mean organic rice cakes that come in at $15.00/lb. 

I mean the $30 cast-iron skillet that will still be in great shape in 300 years, rather than the $5.00 Teflon cheapo that you will have to toss next year.

In our disposable society, where many of us shop just for entertainment, sometimes it's much harder to purchase a high-quality product than a cheap one.

When do you think it's worth it to spend a little more and get a high-quality product, and when do you like to save and pay the bare minimum?

Posted at Barn Hop

Keeping Chickens...Again

We once had chickens.  Then we moved to Oregon, boxed them up, and sold them on Craigslist (to mostly reputable buyers, I think?).

Once we settled in here in Oregon, we started thinking about chickens again.  There's just nothing as good as fresh eggs from your own hens!  We did wait a while, since I was vastly pregnant most of last fall/winter/spring, and I didn't want baby chicks to be forgotten when baby came.

But we bought 6 new chicks at the end of April, and they are close to laying eggs!

We thought for a long time about having a chicken tractor, since we have so much gorgeous grass for chickens to live on.  That is still the long-term plan, but for now, we are making do with what we have: an old woodshed in the backyard.

My husband got pretty excited about this building project and closed in half of the woodshed for the chickens.  He wanted it to be easy to access and clean, so he built a full-size door on the left, and a nesting box with hinged roof/lid on the right.  The next phase of the plan is a door in the left-hand wall that will go out to a large fenced area for the chickens to roam.  We like the idea of totally free-range chickens, but there are so many predators in our very rural area, that it doesn't seem like a good idea here.

The chickens have a 2-story house, with this little ramp leading up to the top (they usually just fly up, but it's cute, isn't it?)  Side note: does anyone have good ideas for keeping chickens from kicking litter into their water?  

These are the new girls: 2 black sex link, 2 yellow sex link, and two Americauna.

The next step, once the outdoor area is built, is figuring out whether/how to clip their wings so we don't have to build a roof over the whole enclosure (the only threat from above here is turkey vultures, which apparently only eat dead things...hopefully we won't have that problem!)

Our chicken-keeping is very much a work in progress.  Ideally, I'd love the chickens to be out on grass in the sunshine all the time (not that there's much alive on the ground during the summer here), and be able to eat all the grass, bugs, and worms they want.  But I think our chickens are still happier and healthier than the average factory-farmed hen.  We are moving in the right direction.

What do you think is the most important factor in raising chickens for healthy eggs?  If you have chickens, what kind of housing do you have for them, and what do they eat?

Posted at Barn Hop, Monday Mania, and Simple Lives Thursday

A New Adventure!

Long time no see, loyal readers.  It's been a few crazy weeks around here, and I've left you in the dark as to why.  Well, the decision has been made, and the moving van has been reserved, so now I guess it's time to alert the blogosphere as well.

We are leaving our little high-altitude home and moving to Oregon!  My husband has recently received basically the ideal (for us) job offer, so we're packing up (with boxes from the grocery store, above) and heading across the country. This means:

• I can no longer complain to you about my high-altitude gardening, and I will just have to suck it up and learn to bake - I won't be able to complain about high-altitude baking either, when I'm less than an hour from the coast!
• Canning will henceforth take less than half as long as I am used to.  Hooray!
• We will have a peach tree, an apple tree, and a plum tree, all in our own yard!  Also, the entire property is surrounded by millions of blackberry bushes (according to my husband).  
• Our dog may have to get shaved every summer.
• We are going to have to seriously ramp up our chicken security... apparently, our property is just teeming with bobcats.  I have a feeling bobcats may be smarter than the average coyote.  We will, however, have some time to figure out our chicken security system.  Lola and the baby chicks are being sold in 2 hours, and we'll have to start from scratch when we get to Oregon.  6 chickens in the back of my minivan for a 23 hour drive, sharing space with a 160 lb St. Bernard and 2 toddlers?   No thank you.  

Yes, those 6 forlorn boxes in the picture at the beginning of the post are my (extremely grumpy) chickens, boxed up and ready to be driven down to meet their new people.  Lola is going to a sweet lady who loves Brahmas, and the 5 baby chicks are going to a slightly sketchy-sounding farm that I am trying not to think too hard about.  I have been promised that they will be used as layers, not meat, at least.

So, that's why I haven't been blogging much lately...my goal has been to pack 5 boxes a day, and the doesn't leave a lot of time for doing blog-worthy things.

I do have a question for anyone willing to tackle it:  Has anyone successfully moved yogurt and kefir long distances and had it turn out okay?  I'm thinking if I just keep it in the cooler for the drive out, it should be fine, right?  Any suggestions?  Will my kefir grains die if I keep them in an airtight container in the cooler, or is that fine?

Anyone have any great moving tips for me?  Especially moving-with-toddlers tips?

Real Life in the Way, and a Small Tragedy

Isn't it a bummer when real life gets in the way of all your spectacular blogging intentions?  It's been such a wild few weeks, but unfortunately, if I had blogged about them, the titles would've mainly included such treats as "No Time for Dishes or Laundry Again" and "Why Do I Overcommit Myself?"  Not exactly relevant to the average reader.

I do have one relevant tidbit, however.  We are down to 6 chickens.  In related news, I have lately become much more responsible about carefully shutting the chickens into their coop at night.  Something about glancing out and meeting the sight of one dead and one nearly dead chicken while eating my breakfast toast has woken me up to the inevitable consequences of being a lackadaisical livestock owner.

The next day, just when I was regretting ever buying our chickens, one of our "babies" began laying eggs!  Maybe the fox attack has scared the eggs right out of her, I don't know.  But it has restored my faith in the whole backyard chicken concept in a very timely manner.  The eggs are about half the size of the ones Lola has been laying, but they are just as delicious, with rich orange yolks.  I am excited for the rest of the girls to begin laying soon!

We have had a few more rather personal developments in our family that I'm not quite ready to share about yet, but that, nevertheless, are stealing some of my time away from useful blog-worthy pursuits like taking pictures of my glorious tomato plants or creating delicious garden-y snacks for the kids.  Well, even if it doesn't make for a very interesting blog, I think we all agree that real life takes priority...right?

Grass Farming Attempts

You've probably heard of Grass Farming: the practice of carefully managing grass so it can be used to raise healthy animals.  Joe Salatin of Polyface Farms is one of the most visible faces of modern grass farming; his pastures support cows, chickens, pigs, and rabbits, in an inspiring cooperation that nourishes the animals (and those who eat them) and improves the land.  Many small-scale farmers and homesteaders have adopted this method to improve their own properties.

The title "Grass Farming" is a bit of a misnomer in my case.  Where I live, most people don't have lawns (I don't think I personally know anyone in my area who owns a lawn mower), just native scrub.  I never really cared about this before, but having chickens has done something funny to my brain.  I see every blade of grass in my yard as potential egg-enriching nourishment for my birds.  Last weekend, while visiting family in a suburban area, I couldn't help but see every beautiful front lawn as a perfect spot to park a flock of chickens for a while.  If only I had their grass...

This is my grass.  Not exactly enough to nourish a flock of chickens.

Here is yet another example of doing what we can with what we have.  My chickens, sadly, can't eat delicious grass as often as they want.  They would completely destroy the grass that we do have.  But I cut some grass for them almost everyday, and a few times a week, they get to come out and run free in the yard.  I am hoping their droppings will help improve the soil and encourage the growth of new grass in the next few years.  I try to keep the most noxious invader weeds at bay, and when I water the garden, I let some fall on the grass as well.  That's about all I can do at this point.

As I investigated grass farming for this post, I came across a review of a Bud Williams article on Grass Farming - the review itself is so-so, but comment that follows is particularly informative.  If you're interested in grass farming and the positive impact it can have on our health and economy, you should read the comment.

The Sweet Smell of No Chickens!

Last evening, I went to a children's consignment sale all by myself while my husband hung out with the kids (shopping along is kind of a big deal around here).  When I got home, I found the fam playing in the front yard, having recently returned from the playground.  We all walked into the house together, and guess what?

The house smelled good.

It's not that it usually smells horrible, usually just kind of neutral.  We are not really into Febreeze, Plug-ins, or Scentsy, and if it smells like I've been cleaning, it just smells like vinegar.  But it smelled good when we walked in last night.

I think it's because the chickens are out of the laundry room forever, and they were so stinky that their absence is immediately noticeable.

Hooray!

High-Altitude Gardening: Drawbacks

This is what my garden looks like right now:

Here is my covered raised bed

And my new little 4x4 raised bed

This is why we don't plant until the end of May.  This is why we don't grow tomatoes and watermelons and summer squash and all those good things without some serious planning.  This is also why my giant, stinky baby chickens are spending the whole day fouling up (ha!) my laundry room.

Happy Chickens

Now that we're having consistently nice weather, I've been gradually plugging away at my outdoor to-do list.

The most urgent item on the list was moving the baby chicks outside to their coop.  For the next few weeks, it will still be too cool at night for the chicks to be outside, but I was absolutely desperate to get them out of the laundry room!  So we compromised.  The chicks have been happily playing outside during the day the last two days, and coming in at night.  This way, they can get all their energy out during the day and actually sleep at night inside, instead of being restless indoors all day and night, and running around the laundry room at all hours.

They seem to love it outside, and they are eager to explore their coop, the chicken run, and the rest of the yard, when I let them.  Lola hasn't exactly warmed up to them yet.  She seems to view them as small, annoying intruders, and she clucks pathetically at us when we put them in with her, and then stays on the opposite side of the run.  I try to tell her that they will have to get to know each other and be friends eventually, but she doesn't seem convinced.

She thinks that we are her flock now, I think, and she actually runs toward the kids now, instead of away from them (unless they are trying to pet her, then she runs away again).  She hardly takes her eyes off us when we are out near her.  I think in this picture, she is begging us to let her out.

Samson is fascinated that the little fluff-balls from the laundry room get to play outside with him now.  He is incredibly sweet and gentle with them, and they can all share the yard together peaceably (hooray!), as long as I am there to supervise Samson-Lola relations.  She runs.  He chases.  I scold.  He stops chasing and looks at me like, "Well, what do you expect me to do when she runs?"

Unfortunately, at this point, the chicks all look so much alike that they have remained nameless.  My husband finally got on board with the naming and suggested "Figaro" from the Pinnochio movie as a blanket chicken name.  I guess they can all be Figaro.

Warm Weather At Last: Outdoor To-do List

Oh, the weather.  It's that one thing about our carefully-planned lives that we just can't control.  The destructive storms that have been in the news lately (or maybe in your own backyard!) make me so thankful for my family's safety, and thankful that we don't live in a very disaster-prone area!  Interestingly, it turns out that my area is more disaster-prone than I thought it was, and according to this fascinating map, if I really want to risk-proof my life, I should move to Corvallis, Oregon.  Whaddaya know?

Anyway, after a few days of cold, wind, snow, and wondering if maybe spring forgot about us this year, the temperature is finally back up to a balmy 55 degrees!  Now that I can actually see my yard, I can continue working on my plans for improving it this summer.  These include:

• Building a new raised bed (just a little 4X4) for my cool-weather crops (yes, we grow our cool-weather crops in the middle of the summer here).  This will be covered in wire to keep the dogs and chickens out (hopefully...oh, please, please, work this year)
• Finishing off the cover for my 8X4 raised bed, which my husband has been working on for me.  The goal for this bed is to attempt some warm-weather crops.  We will see how successful it is, but I've heard positive rumors about neighboring gardens actually being able to grow tomatoes!  Tomatoes are my goal this year.  I also need to add some more compost to that bed.
• Building a new compost bin.  The one I have now is based on a plan I found online where you punch holes in a large lidded trash can, then roll it around the yard to mix the compost... yeah, it didn't work.  I don't know how the lady in the YouTube video got her trash can lid to stay on, but I need some pointers.  Also, my trash can already had some large-ish holes in the bottom, and I think chipmunks have been sneaking in all year and stealing the good stuff.  I keep adding and adding, and it never fills up...  Anyway, I will probably be hunting around for some abandoned pallets and making one of those three-sided square bins, so that I can have easy access to mix it periodically.  But mine will need something to keep the dogs out, and I guess the chipmunks will continue to have unlimited access.  
• Moving the baby chicks outside!!  Hooray!  This probably won't happen for a few more weeks, because they are only 4 weeks old, and a few are kind of runty and don't have all their feathers yet.  And it snowed yesterday.  Warm box indoors to snowy chicken run?  Sounds like a recipe for cold chicken disaster.  Oh, how I wish we had a garage.  Or any other kind of outbuilding.  I have 7 chickens in my laundry room.  They are no longer cute balls of fluff.  They are huge, stinky, they emit astounding amounts of poo, and they are starting to yearn for adventure (i.e., escaping from their box and running all over the laundry room, pooping).  So they are going outside as soon as it seems safe for them.  

I know, this probably doesn't seem like a very extensive outdoor to-do list.  Someday (maybe...far off in the future) we will have our own place, and my to-do list will include all kinds of exciting things like greenhouse-building,  major landscaping projects, planting glorious fruit trees and perennials, having a goat, and making our yard the permacultured oasis I dream of.  But we do what we can.  And this little list will take a really long time to do anyway, because I'll be spending three quarters of my outdoor time making sure the kids aren't whacking the chickens or riding their scooters off the steep hill in the backyard.

Now if only the weather would stay nice...

Posted at Domestically Divine Homemaking at Far Above Rubies and Titus 2 Tuesdays at Time Warp Wife

New Chicks Have Arrived!

Although our local feed store won't start getting chicks in until early June (when most danger of snow is past), we were just too excited to wait.  So we went down the hill to lower altitude where the temperatures are warmer and the chicks are hatching.

These are our seven little girls, straight from the store, pre-pine shavings.  It's amazing how adaptable they are to being moved.  A few minutes, a little water, and they were running around like nothing in their little 2-day old lives had changed.

The kids are fascinated by the chicks.  Einstein (2 1/2) is old enough to gently pet and pick up the chicks so they're not scared (he tried to hold one up to the TV to watch Veggie Tales with him this morning), but Euler (16 mos) has earned herself the name "chicken terror."  We will keep working on it.

Posted at Seasonal Saturday at la bella vita

Chef-Approved Eggs!

Okay, I know I'm no chef.  But my latest cooking adventure made me feel like one... you'll see.

For those of you who have been following along with our chicken saga, you may remember that our sweet  hen, Lola, laid her first egg Thursday evening!  We were out of town at the time, so we just heard about it over the phone.  She has since then followed up with two more.  The kids and I ate them all for breakfast, scrambled up with one store-bought egg.

These eggs are amazing.  I read (I think it was in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilema) that when "real" chefs are looking for a source for high-quality eggs for their restaurants, they look at the egg's yolks to judge them.  The best eggs have yolks that are bright orange instead of pale yellow, and very firm (they don't flatten much when you put them in a pan).

I have been buying eggs from the grocery store, and since my store doesn't consistently carry organic eggs (and when they do, they're waaaay out of my price range), we buy a popular national brand that claims to be "the best" in terms of nutrient content.  The yolks of the "best nutrition" store-bought eggs are twice as orange as the cheapo store brand, but the yolks from Lola's eggs are even brighter.  They keep their shape extremely well, too.

See for yourself!

The yolk on the left is from my store-bought egg, and the four on the right (yes, that back one is a double-yolker) are from lovely Lola.  The color difference is quite apparent, but the most striking thing is how Lola's yolks still look like little spheres, while the yolk on the left is flattened and seems to be barely holding together.

I am way impressed.  Also, consider this: Lola is not eating any special diet: just the normal inexpensive chicken feed from the feed store.  And, it's still the dead of winter here, which means she hasn't been getting any green sprouts in the yard, or probably any bugs either (they don't show up until May).  So if her "lowest quality" winter eggs are this much higher-quality than the "best" the world of conventional eggs has to offer, it sure says something for chickens living like chickens in the great outdoors, instead of in factory farms.

Now, if you've done the math here, you're probably realizing that at Lola's rate of 1 egg every 1-2 days and our ability to eat 4 eggs for one breakfast, we're still going to be doing the store-bought egg route for a few more months until our future little chickies start laying.  But I have seen the light!  Also, all this factory farm chicken talk aside, I am quite confident that even the cheapest egg is a hugely healthier option than boxed cereal.  So I will buy my chicks, bide my time, and do what I can to feed my family the best food I can.

Posted at Hearth and Soul at A Moderate Life, Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop, Works for Me Wednesday at We Are That Family, and Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS, and Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet

Chicken Success!

Our beautiful little Light Brahma (i.e. Lola the chicken) has laid her first egg!

What a time poor Lola has had in the past few weeks.  Two days after five sixths of her flock was eaten by coyotes (yes, you read that right, she is the one sixth who survived), she was confined in a box and driven 3 hours away to a new home.  Once she arrived, her stress increased: she had to figure out her new surroundings, learn whether the toddlers were safe, run from a curious St. Bernard, and get barked at by a hungry black lab.

But she has persevered!

In a few days, she'll be joined (well, they will be inside and she'll be outside) by 7 (or so) new little chicks.  She doesn't know it yet, but in a few months, she'll have a much more active little chicken social life.

Do any of you chicken pros out there know how a single chicken will adapt to being suddenly part of a flock again?  Will I need to gradually introduce them?

Posted at Seasonal Saturday at la bella vita

Arrival of the Chicken

You may recall from a few weeks back that we've been planning to adopt my sister-in-law's chickens.  Well, due to some unforeseen events involving coyotes and said chickens, the flock is down to one.  Our one lonely girl arrived yesterday and is enjoying free reign of our backyard while we work on finishing her run.

The kids love the chicken.  Einstein chases her around saying, "hey, little guy!" and "Mommy, she likes chicken food!"

The dogs think there is an intruder in the backyard that needs to be promptly dispatched.  They are not enjoying sharing their yard-time.  As soon as the chicken's run is finished, they'll be able to share yard space, but for now we have to keep them away from each other.

Now that we have our little hen, we need to come up with a name for her.  Any suggestions?  Should we go with a chicken-y name like Henny Penny?  I kind of like Lola.  We will be getting a new batch of chicks as soon as it warms up enough for them up here, so we may want to have matching names or a theme... what do you think?

Posted at Raising Homemakers and Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS

Chickens!

My sister-in-law's family is moving from the country into a housing development, and their chickens are not allowed.  So we are adopting them!

Drawback: we don't get to have cute, chirpy little balls of fluff.
Advantage: they are laying eggs like crazy, so we get to start enjoying them right away!

Now, here is where my over-analytical side takes over.  I do not feel comfortable having 6 animals (even chickens!) placed in my care with no idea how to care for them.  So I've got some serious reading-up to do.  I know they are supposed to be easy, but questions abound.  Ready?  Yes, these questions will display my total chicken-ignorance.  But I know many of you dear readers have chickens and other animals, and I'd love to hear what you have to say.

• If I give them store-bought chicken feed, will their eggs still be healthier than factory-raised conventional chickens, just because they're running around out in the sunshine doing their chicken thing?  Or should I be hand-mixing organic grains in exact proportions and making sure they each get to eat 17.3 bugs per day in order to make their eggs uber-healthy?  Or something in between?  
• What does "free-range" look like in a large-ish backyard?  I have heard about chickens who just live in their enclosure all the time and do fine, and I've heard about chickens who roam the yard, eat bugs out of the garden, and snuggle with the family dog.  Do they have to be socialized well with other animals as young chicks to get along well in the yard with the family?  I'm not thinking free-reign to run around all the time, which doesn't seem safe for them, just some supervised "get out and stretch your chicken legs in the yard" time.
• When your hens stop laying well, do you eat them?  If this is the case, do you give them names?  The kids would love (okay, really, I would love) to have cute names for our little hens, but will it be emotionally devastating for us to eat Henny Penny?  Or if some kind of wild critter gets into their heavily-reinforced enclosure, will we feel worse if they have names?

Clearly, I have no experience with farm-animal relations.  My only animal experience is with pets, and our dog is very much part of the family.  So the very idea of having animals that are kept for a practical purpose instead of a companionship one is new.  We will see how it goes.

Posted at Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFLGINS, Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade, and Fresh, Clean, and Pure Friday at la bella vita