A garden for the new year

The new year brought new projects for the yard and a need to tidy it up so I also thought it would be fitting to tidy up our blog too.  I have added a way for people to get notified about new posts - you can enter your email address to the right and you'll get emailed a copy of the new post.  I've also removed some out of date sites and added quite a bit of links, blogs, and books for gardening, chickens, and gluten-free cooking that we have found ourselves using regularly or telling others about - check them out along the right side of the page! 


We spent the long holiday weekend after the New Year gardening and tending our new chicks.  Once we felt like the girls were getting settled in, we turned to getting the garden up to snuff for their inevitable move outside.  On New Year's day, Wade and Larry trimmed some bamboo back to make room for the coop (and I'm hoping we can build something with it!), put up some green wire fencing along the neighbors fence to keep the girls from slipping through to their yard, and Mom and I weeded the yard where it was getting out of control.  We also ordered some more free mulch from our arborist and Wade started spreading that in the side and back areas of the yard that hadn't been mulched yet.  Chickens love bug-hunting in mulch, and they also love dust bathing in it, so we're trying to make the whole yard as chicken friendly as possible so they can free range when we're out there with them (we also haven't used any pesticides or herbicides in the yard since we bought the house in 2010).  Mulching the whole yard also means we don't have to waste water on grass, which has been our plan form day one - we planted natives and some edible fruit trees with the goal of it all growing in to make a lush, but grass-less yard.  For now we do have some native grasses/weeds that have grown into one section we have left that we call "the meadow" and we might leave that in its natural state for a while.  Thankfully, that's all the grass we have to mow with our little Amish-style push mower.


Right after the holiday weekend we took down our Christmas lights, only to put them back up 2 days later.  We were having frost and freeze warnings and Wade had read about people in Florida using Christmas lights to keep their fruit trees warm (the older incandescent ones, not the LED ones).  So he gave it a shot and wrapped lights around all of our fruit trees, some of our younger native trees, and ran them through the veggie beds.  It worked like a charm and we didn't lose anything!  So we kept them up for another week since we were supposed to get another cold front.  Our next door neighbor emailed to tell Wade how much she loved them and that she and her husband thought about coming over to wander through the lights with a glass of wine. :)  They did look pretty cheerful and we're thinking about getting some white lights to put up for parties since it lights up the yard nicely too.


The veggies are also loving the warmer weather and have really taken off.  We've been "harvesting" from the garden... lettuce, spinach, strawberries, kale, carrots, many different kinds of herbs (thyme, oregano, 2 kinds of basil, rosemary, sage, parsley, mint, chocolate mint) and edible flowers.  The tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, and collards look to be ready soon!  The quinoa, amaranth, onions, leeks still have a ways to go.  Our only real flops so far have been the summer squash and the radishes...  We're also hoping to get some sweet potatoes in soon to get them ready for summer.

Wade watering the long 12 foot bed in the garden.

Check out the garden's progress on our Picasa site.

Chicken Q&A

After our first week of chicken keeping, we realized we needed one more chicken.  Dottie appeared to be having a nervous breakdown for a week and to this day we still aren't sure whether she was ill or just stressed beyond belief.  We tried absolutely everything short of taking her to the vet, and after 5 nerve-racking days she finally settled in.  By that point Clemmie was quite a bit bigger than Dottie (they grow so fast!) and was beginning to bully her a lot, so we had read 3 is a better number to prevent one bird from always getting picked on.  (Although, the term "pecking order" has a new meaning for us and we can truly appreciate it now).  So a week after getting the first two we headed back to the farm to get another chick the same age as our first two (important if you want them all to get along).  This time we picked out Ruby, a little caramel colored girl with some spunk and seemingly no fear - and true to her nature, she wasted no time putting Clemmie in her place the moment we introduced her (nice to meet you large scary white bird - respect my space or I will peck you in the face again)!  It's incredible to watch how the girls each have their own distinct personality and as they grow their persona evolves too.


But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me address the common misconceptions and questions we have already gotten:


1. No, they will live outside in a coop that Wade is building, so well, yes, technically they live in the house right now in a rabbit cage we call the Chicken Palace.


2. Chickens are not that noisy because we do not have a rooster. All these little pullets (teenage female chickens) do is chirp at each other, and eventually they'll cluck and coo at each other which is not louder than normal human speech. However, they do have an alarm call if they're being attacked and frankly we want to be able to hear that.


3. Chickens aren't disgusting and stinky if you regularly clean up after them - like any other animal. Also, we only have 3, so it's manageable.


4. The coop consists of an enclosed sleeping/roosting space and nesting boxes and an outside fenced/covered pen to protect them and keep them from wandering off. (Seriously, just about everything tries to eat chickens and their eggs - dogs, raccoons, possums, foxes, weasels, rats, snakes, hawks, owls, you name it)


5. No, the coop is not an eyesore, it's on the side of the house and we are going to cute the hell out of it with a Key West style cottage theme, complete with a tin roof and fun paint job.  We've gotten inspiration from online and these two helpful books: Art of the Chicken Coop and Building Chicken Coops for Dummies.


6. The ladies will also be able to roam the yard to peck at bugs and weeds while supervised and they LOVE doing this - it's chicken behavior at it's most entertaining and natural. It's also great for them and for their eggs. Otherwise, we have a vegetarian organic whole grain/seed/legume feed we give them that we buy through a local food co-op and they'll get plenty of scraps from us and the garden (basically, if you eat it, chickens will).  Watching chickens fight over a blueberry is like watching a pee-wee football game.


7. We will be getting eggs from the ladies as early as this spring. For the next few years we'll get almost one a day from each of them. They'll start laying marble-sized eggs around 5-6 months and they'll grow from there.


8. They seem to be dumb as a box of rocks sometimes, but are HILARIOUS to watch and are hands down way more entertaining than watching TV.


9. Despite my answer in #8, they actually seem to be pretty nosy and clever when they want to be. They also seem to enjoy being held and hanging out with us. As chicks they would fall asleep in our hands or enjoy perching on our shoulder.


10. The ladies are 3 different heritage breeds (we think): Clementine (aka Clemmie) is a Ameraucana that will lay blue/green-shelled eggs, Dottie is a Sussex with brown eggs, and Ruby is a Rhode Island Red with brown eggs. It's hard to be certain until their adult plumage comes in since their chick fluff isn't always telling.


11. We have 4 chicken books (City Chicks, Raising Chickens for Dummies, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, and Keeping Chickens) and I've been reading for the last 2 months so it's a work in progress, but keeping chickens is fairly easy and straight forward. There are also lots of online communities for back yard chicken keepers, especially this one, which are really helpful: Backyard Chickens.com


12. We got them from Martin Farm about 20 minutes north of town from the nicest lady in the whole world. If we decided we want to trade in our chickens when they stop laying she'll take them back so 4-H kids can adopt them for show pets. The underline question people really want to know is what do we do when they get to the end of their road since we're vegetarians... and all I can say for now is that we'll likely end up having these ladies mentor our next flock in a few years and they'll still serve as garden helpers long after they've stopped laying.  So we'll cross that bridge when they come to it, which could be 8-12 years from now.


13. Why? Well, if you did a little research, you would understand why we'd rather eat eggs from our own well-fed chickens that we can ensure live a healthy and happy life. We have been getting our eggs from a local farmer, but we've been on such a self-sufficiency kick with the yard, we figured chickens are the logical next step.  I also have missed having birds (had cockatiels as a kid), and chickens are useful for gardening - free fertilizer, weeding, bug control, and entertainment!


The ladies seem to be settling in nicely to their caged life, but are growing and feathering out quickly.  They're almost ready to go out into the coop and Wade has been diligently working on the coop to get it ready for them.  They have also been getting some trips outside into the sunshine when it's been nice out and despite their initial shock they have been thrilled with their new found ability to scratch in the dirt and mulch for goodies or to bathe.  I have gotten in the habit of putting them in their enclosure then sitting nearby reading my Thor comic omnibus while we ladies catch some sun.  It's a delightful way to spend the afternoon - despite the cats crying at the door to be let out to join us.


Oh yes, that is one interesting development.  Marley doesn't really know what to think of the chickens, but Hilo seems to think their "his" chickens.  He dutifully watches them, he sleeps in the room with them, and absolutely will not tolerate someone in with the chickens without him and will cry at the door to remind you of that.  He has even taken to watching them calmly like it's an interesting television program and it's pretty funny to watch it all.  He has even tried snuggling in my lap while I'm holding the chickens and he seems oblivious, if anything, maybe a little jealous?

To check out all the chicken madness, here are the pics on our Picasa site.