Sinfonian's Garden Adventure

December 19th, 2011

2011-12-19T21:05:00.000-08:00

Not much to say today, I've just noticed more folks following my blog of late so I wanted to thank them. To all who have stopped by and want to keep doing so, thank you! Sure it may not be the thousands that came after my write-up in the Seattle Times several years ago, but I like this even better. Folks not looking for a quick fix, but a sustainable future.

Speaking of sustainable. My hens may not give me eggs forever, but whoever thought their egg production would fall off in the winter (moi) was sadly mistaken. I've had to give away dozens and dozens of eggs just to not feel so bad about not using them. We don't eat eggs every day, but we do consume our fair share. But when the girls are giving on average 3 eggs a day it adds up quick.

I have to thank my wife for stepping up and taking care of the hens all week when I'm at work. She gathers the eggs, feeds and waters the hens, and gives them that added human contact that they like so much. And to think hens were completely my idea that I had to wear her down just to let me get them.

I still do the cleaning. Speaking of which, this weekend I had to clean out the coop after only a few months. I'm not sure how, but the bedding almost looked wet. I'm pretty sure I don't have leaks, though with all the ventilation I'm sure the dew gets in. That and since the hens have been cooped up almost exclusively since the grass stopped growing, they soil it more. Not that I'm complaining, the moist nitrogen rich bedding is great for the compost, which is almost full. If only I had some other greens to add to it. Maybe I'll have my wife swing by Starbucks for something other than a Chi Frappochino. Hehe.

Well folks, that's about it. My fall garden is not overwintering nicely so I will end up feeding it to the chickens, but at least they'll get something other than organic feed and kitchen scraps.

Take care and stay warm!

November 19, 2011

2011-11-19T22:20:00.001-08:00

I was just sitting here wondering what folks blog about in the off season. Nothing I'd growing in the garden and the overwintering broccoli isn't holding up like I wanted. That said I can feed them to the hens.

They'd like the fresh veg. I haven't been ranging them since the weather turned foul. I tried it a few times and they demolished the grass. It scared me, so, when they get out of the mini-run the arc stays right there. There's no grass there anyway. I feel bad, but they don't seem to mind. I even open the cleanout door when they're in the coop and they don't jump out. Go figure.

Lastly, the weather's turned amazingly foul this week. I've had a regular light bulb in there for the chickens for when the temps drop below freezing. I don't like keeping the hens in light all night, but they manage. The light adds 5 degrees to coop temp. Anyway, tonight we're getting into to 20s and that's just horrible. So, tonight I'm considering throwing the heat lamp in there. Not sure.

So, I hope you have a garden that either is growing now or was big enough to allow you to put up enough to be eating from your garden still.

Enjoy!

October 22, 2011

2011-10-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally cleaned out the chicken coop and changed the bedding. The girls were glad I did it too. By girls I include my wife, who had asked me to do it. She's been pretty much taking care of the hens since I went back to work. I am away from the house when they need tending to.

I really think I could have gotten more than 6 months out of the bedding if Fall hadn't arrived. You see, we've kept them in their coop during the day far more often then when the weather was nice. They tend to make a much bigger mess of the place when they're cooped up all day (pun intended).

Anyway, I got two wheelbarrows full of used bedding that went on top of my compost pile. I should really mix it in with some greens to speed up the decomposition, but until I get some more Starbucks coffee grounds, the chicken manure will just have to suffice.

I used up half a bale of pine shavings in the three nesting boxes and the coop. My brother picked up a bale for me from the feed store the other day. I was a bit disappointed that it was a national brand like you see in pet stores in small bricks. In the past we've purchased local shavings from Washington, just like our organic feed from Bellingham. The price was the same, but I just feel better using the local bedding. This will work, but next time I stop in at the store, I'll talk to them to find out what happened to their local source.

Lastly, the chickens haven't been foraging much at all this past week. The weather's been crappy, the arc is too heavy for my wife to move by herself and the grass just isn't growing. I'm thinking they'll just be home-bodies this winter, using the area in front of the compost bins as a run whenever we bring them out. There isn't much grass there anyway, and if they kill it, no biggie. About the only non-feed they're getting are table scraps and the occasional pear that drops from the spent pear tree. I won't eat the fruit, but they love it. They'll get the over-spotted apples when I pick them also. Boy I wish they liked morning glory! The rose garden is covered in them. /shrug

Enjoy your garden!

October 9, 2011

2011-10-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks Wishingbee for the kick in the pants to get back here to post. However, I can't say much is going on in the garden. It is fall of course, and the summer heat killed all my tomatoes such that I only got a handful of each variety to use. The good news is that our salads have been marvelous. We've got lettuce (only Italienshier grew for me this fall, but it's good), spinach, and tomatoes. If only I'd grown cukes this year, I'd have a perfect salad. Oh, and I never have timed my salads right with my radishes, they've all gone to seed. Shame, I do love a good radish.

Anyway, the girls are going strong, giving us 2-4 eggs a day, such that I gave a dozen to my folks and brother, since his chickens for some reason haven't started laying yet. It's odd since they're the same breeds bought from the same store on the same day. Very odd indeed. Of course 5 days after I gave away two dozen eggs I had another dozen to use. They're delicous but defnitely "large" variety eggs, unlike the extra large we get in the store. Haven't had an opportunity to bake with them yet, but I'm a bit worried about a recipe calling for 1 extra large egg. That we don't have.

I've seen extra large eggs from so-called "Production Reds" that are a cross between production Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds. According to my wife, they're not very cute, but who knows. Something to consider next time. I do like our birds though. They're cute, a bit loud, and friendly. About the only thing they don't do is use the roost. Oh well, no biggie.

So, I hope you all have an "EGGstremely" good weekend!

August 26, 2011

2011-08-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know you haven't heard from me in a while. I've been trying to fit a year into the last month of my summer before I go back to work, even if it's a temporary gig. So, I've been spending my days playing with my kids and getting the last of the to-do chores done. Fun over blogging. I don't feel bad about it.

That said, one of the things on my to-do list was to get the chicken arc ready for layers. So, last week, I finally got to it as my birds were getting to be 5 months old.

I started by building a platform with left over plywood and 1x2 scrap from the coop project that I'd been saving for this very reason. The placement was as high as it needed to be to reach the sides of the triangular arc.

Sure it doesn't look extremely sturdy, but really, how heavy duty does it need to be to be to support a few hens laying eggs?

After that, I decided to use recycled corrugated fiberglass panels from my broken compost cover for the sides. Not only is it water proof, but it adds more light, which will be good during the winter months. The door was a bit more tricky as I had no idea what angle my arc was set at, so we resorted to tracing it on the plywood and cutting it out. I used a left over hinge that was way too big for the application, but I had it.

My brother wanted to use a hook latch for the closure, but I have found eye-hook latches to be pains in the rear over the last few months. I like barrel bolt latches much better. Thankfully I had one on hand, so I used it.

So, as it sits now, it isn't pretty, but it's very functional and not particularly heavy. Just what the doctor ordered, and if you read yesterday's post, I built it right in time.

It's not finished yet. I still need to build in a lip to keep nesting material in there, and maybe build some sort of a ramp to let the chickens up there. I'm thinking of indoor outdoor carpet in the nesting box to help keep the eggs from rolling around when the arc is at an angle, which happens regularly, depending where it is in the yard.

I also want to replace the rusty chicken wire with some galvanized welded wire, maybe in the inch or two variety, to cover it. As winter approaches, it may be that the hens are out after dark some days, so I want to make it temporarily predator proof. I've got my work cut out for me.

Enjoy!

August 25, 2011

2011-08-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

It's been five months since I got chickens, so they're five months plus a few days old. They're definitely hens now, about as full grown as I expect them to get. They've got combs and waddles like you'd expect from hens. We had everything we expected, except eggs. I've been looking daily for a while now, with no luck. I haven't been concerned as my chickens are much bigger than my brothers (for some unknown reason). Let's just say I've been anxious.

So I guess I wasn't completely surprised, though very elated when I found this while I was putting the chickens away for the evening.

Our first egg!

As you can see by the quarter next to it, it's about 2/3 the size of a regular egg, or about the size of a bantum egg. Not at all bad for a first attempt, if I may say so. The shell's a bit rubbery feeling but otherwise it looks like a perfectly good egg. Not one of those partially formed mishappen eggs you read about. Maybe it's the fact that I switched to layer feed a few weeks ago, or maybe it's the 8 plus hours of foraging they get to do every day. Whatever it is, I'm proud of my girls!

And here's the last picture I'll bore you with. I love how different the egg looks as I rolled it in my palm.

Yay!

August 9, 2011

2011-08-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the girls escaped this morning and I was rudely awakened on my day to sleep in so I could round them up. Seems my kids didn't do as good a job locking the run doors as it sounded when they helped me put the girls away last night. I just can't see how they'd get the latch opened if it were properly locked. If not, a good push would open the doors and I know they're capable of that.

No harm done it seems, they all seemed to be hanging out on the patio or on the grass where they normally are kept in the arc. They probably want food as they seem to devour everything I give them in seconds. Well, all their regular food that is. They've seemed to sour on the cabbage that I chopped up and have kept in the produce drawer in the fridge.

I keep expecting to see some mis-shappened eggs, but as yet nothing. I also wonder if I should be baking and grinding up egg shells to supplement calcium right before the whole laying thing starts?

In other random chicken news, I saw the neighbors of some friends of ours using a spray bottle on their chickens to get them to quiet down, so today I tried it out. It worked like a charm, as they quieted right down and simply shook their feathers to get that nasty water off them. One of them even clearly liked the taste of it when she moved and got hit in the face by it. It was humorous and worked well, so I think I've got a new way to keep them quiet...ish. I expect they'll be their breed-typical loud selves when they lay and I won't stop that unless I get complaints from the neighbors (sure hope not as they agreed to me having them).

Anyway, it's all chickens all the time around this blog of late since my fall garden isn't doing much and my spring garden's all bolted. I'm still hopeful about the countless flowers on all my tomato plants though. Maybe tomorrow I'll take some pics of the green tomatoes that are growing on a few plants.

Hope your garden is doing better than mine!

August 3, 2011

2011-08-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe a short post as an addendum to last night's. Chickens are crazy!

I think I mentioned that I'm taking care of my brother's flock while they're gone. I should have mentioned that when I let them out at night (my brother's method to get them into their coop), they mill around for a second, then do their best to get under my feet as I transfer stuff back to the coop and refresh their food (they go in as they want their food that they JUST had access to in their arc, crazy, right?). So as I'm refreshing their food, they like to jump up next to me and get the first pecks in. Tonight they even jumped on top of the tray while I was trying to open it to refresh it. It was then that I realized that his chickens don't like the top part with the holes any more than mine do. I had it partially off and the one in my arms dug in like there was no tomorrow. So, I took his top off also. Sure enough, the girls didn't even let me get out of the way when I opened up their run. In seconds they were all diving into the open tray. No wonder his birds are a tad smaller than mine. I've had my top off the tray for weeks. So, long story short, his are people crazy. They didn't care that a relative stranger was putting them away, just that I had food. ROFL.

Now for my chickens. I may have mentioned that they're getting more vocal. But tonight, we heard them from across the street. I thought either they were trying to lay an egg or something was trying to attack them. I ran over and they quieted down. I have no idea what got them riled up, but I sure hope they stop bocking so much, or someone may complain and I'd have to get rid of them. Wouldn't THAT be horrible?

Anyone knowledgeable in chicken raising know why they all of a sudden got so loud at 4 months?

August 2, 2011

2011-08-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Summer may be waning, but my chickens are getting closer and closer to laying. They're developing waddles and combs at record paces, just in time to need them as temperatures SOAR into the upper 70s. That's right, we've had exactly 78 MINUTES of temperatures in the 80s this year, meaning we're way behind our zone for warm temperatures.

This week I've been busy keeping tabs on both mine and my brother's chickens as they're on vacation. His birds are a bit smaller than mine, but will do anything you ask for food. Mine are holy terrors when it comes to food and devour it whenever they have any. Like a fool I keep filling it. Hehe. These girls are going to eat me out of house and home. Nearly two 40 pound bags gone in 4 months. Yikes.

Anyway, I finally fixed this problem with my coop...

You see, I've taken to leaving the pop door down all night to allow the girls access to their mini-run in the morning before I go out to let them into their arc. So, while I've got hardware cloth around the entire run, this gap at the bottom worries me for small critters that may be able to do the hens harm. I've been trying to figure out a way to keep them closed. I thought one of those magnet cabinet closure pieces would work, but I didn't want to have it rust in the damp Pacific Northwest weather. A trip to my local True Value led me to a different type closure that I'm quite happy with.

A bent arrow-shaped piece of medal fits in between those rollers. I had a devil of a time placing these, as they need a fair amount of overlap to attach them. Thankfully I convinced my eldest to crawl into the run and mark the best placement for the rollers and arrow piece. They're not in the same place on the coop, but who cares where they are if they work.

Now it closes like a dream and I can feel safe keeping the pop (chicken) door down all night.

That project down, I also finally threw a hook lock on my arc. A week ago I actually forgot to get the girls in for the evening, and shortly after dark there was a bocking and pecking at the sliding glass door. They'd got out and came to the only light source, our house. It wasn't hard getting them in as they don't move in the dark, but I had to keep them from pushing the door of their arc open. I didn't think they had it in them, but I was wrong. So, now there's a hook to keep it closed.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a pic of the girls to show how they've grown. One month left before they start laying (hopefully).

Enjoy!

July 24, 2011

2011-07-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Ah, what a beautiful summer day! Weather's in the upper 70s and the boys and I had a blast. We rode our bikes til the tires fell off and got to spend time with a really nice neighborhood couple and their two girls that are the same ages as my boys. After we all got tired riding, we were treated to Otter Pops and watermelon in their back yard. Can you say yard envy!? They had at least 100 feet by 50 feet of southern exposure flat back yard. I just couldn't resist drooling over it and telling them that I could do wonders with their yard.

I then proceeded to suggest what they could do with their side garden areas. They were growing a bit of stuff, though mostly weeds (aren't we all). Of course, they were growing great flowers. We ended up taking about three beds that could be used to grow food. I explained how they could grow tons in those beds. I wasn't about to go all Mel on them, but I did talk of intensive gardening and succession planting. They seemed impressed. I even offered to help how I could. Man, if only I could make money doing this, hehe.

We sure had fun, but talking lettuce to them was a bit of an issue. The husband is Asian, so I had to change my tune to bok choy and the like. Came home and looked it up in the "book", only to find Mel's not big on Asian greens. Best I could find on the internet was 9/SF, which makes sense as they harvest baby bok choy. They seemed happy that after the initial work outlay, there wouldn't be much work, and also that they could grow tons of fresh veggies. Best of all the ability to save tons of money on produce costs was a big hit.

Our last topic of course was compost. They've got a great spot for it. Anyone have any good ideas to cheaply keep dogs out of your compost? I don't have that problem. I thought of a pallet to block it, and of course chicken wire, but what else?

Alas, sorry for yet another post without pictures. I just don't have the camera with me these days. What would you grow if you had 150 SF?

Enjoy your garden!

Chickens: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

2011-07-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, the skinny on being urban, or suburban chicken livestock keepers. Having done this for exactly four months today, I thought it was high time I shared my experience, mostly from today alone.

I'll start with the Good. Today I had the incredible opportunity to partake upon the Coop of Dreams tour in nearby Everett, WA. Apparently it's a tradition of backyard chicken keepers there to have a self-directed coop tour, where they open up their yards and flocks to inspection. I saw it advertised in the paper last week and set out to go with the kids. We had a blast, so that's the good thing. I got to talk to like minded folks and see what necessity, ingenuity and creativity did for them, and how different it all turned out. There really are 1,000 ways to raise chickens. Amazing really.

I also got to see about a dozen different breeds, many I recognized from my own flock, but many I've never seen in real life. So many happy, healthy chickens of various ages. Very cool!

Now for the Bad. I was polite and civil as always, holding my tongue, but spending a bit of time on Backyard Chickens.com will indoctrinate just about everyone to the rule of thumb that says chickens need a minimum of 4 SF per bird for a coop and 10 SF per bird for a daytime run space. That's what I went off of when building my setup, and my birds seem quite content with it.

So, when I was going around the the various tour sites, I couldn't help but internally critique their setups. Every coop was completely different, which was the point of the tour, though in general, folks gave their birds far too little coop space. The worst offender had one of those A-Frame style portable coops with the siding most of the way down and a run underneath. However, they had like 10 birds in a 12 SF coop! No wonder they were squawking up a storm the whole time I was there. I know, chickens are overwhelming raised in cages where they can't stand up or stretch their wings, but come one!

Only one of the 7 we made it to before the tour time ended impressed me for space. It was a 10x10 shed for 10 birds, and they free ranged. Simple but elegant. I was very impressed.

Finally, the Ugly. Being a livestock farmer is tough. No, the 10 minutes a day I spend taking care of my chickens isn't tough at all, except that it HAS to get done. I can say I'm still not used to it after four months of doing it. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. I beg to differ. I have yet to master the forethought of looking out at my daily schedule and making sure they chickens get in before dark. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a predator-proof arc, but I still have chicken wire on it. Take today for example. It's a busy summer Saturday. We've got a packed schedule that requires dividing the forces, meeting up at an amazing party at a dear friend's home in Monroe, about 45 minutes from home. If I had planned better, I would have had my wife put the girls in their coop and mini-run around 3 PM, forcing them to survive on 8 SF MORE of combined space than their arc allows. Instead, we were forced to leave the party way before it was over, just when the band was starting, to head home to put the girls away. Sure, it's not nearly as bad as being parents, but it does require forethought. Live and learn... my brother didn't put his away either, so I stopped by his house to do the same for him.

I'll leave you with a cool tid-bit I learned today. Apparently Buff Orpingtons can start laying as early as 4 months, so Buffy will be 4 months next week (she's a week younger than my other girls). Not only that, but when they start laying, it starts the others to do so as well, so I *could* be getting eggs soon. Wouldn't that be cool!

Enjoy!

July 17, 2011

2011-07-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid there hasn't been much to post about of late. The weather here has been blah at best. As one blogger I know has put it, it's great for transplanting plants, but that's a bit too much glass half full for me. The only thing to germinate in my Fall garden so far has been radishes, which will germinate in any sort of weather.

On the bright side though, my ignored indoor germinated brassicas weren't all a total loss. My cauliflower were toast, but my broccoli seemed to be hardy enough to survive. Here's a pic I found on my phone when I was backing it up. Sorry if the resolution sucks.

Though the cauliflower on the left never bounced back, the broccoli seemed to be ok, even if the leaves do look a bit waxy.

As I had four (five if you include a double sprouter that I missed clipping), and only 4 SF to plant them, I decided to stagger them within the square to give these huge plants as much space to grow as possible. Of course, they haven't grown an inch in the week or two since I planted them. /sigh Gotta love this crappy summer weather.

In other news, the rain and warmish temperatures (highs in the upper 60s, lower 70s means grass grows fast around here. And despite the chickens doing an admirable job of keeping the grass short, I still needed to mow. I still haven't had to change out the shavings in the coop as they don't spend much time in there and I went 4 inches deep (not quite the Deep Litter Method, but close), but I'm still using the stored shavings from the brooder to layer in with my grass clippings when I compost.

Pretty cool that I made it to the top of my 3 foot tall bin. I won't be adding quite as much to it in the future as I will be giving some of my grass clippings to the girls in their mini-coop. I guess they like it a lot and I've got nothing growing in my mini-coop after I leveled it with dirt. They do love giving themselves dust baths in there though.

I actually learned about feeding chickens grass clippings from a couple I met at a kids birthday party my eldest was invited to the other day. While chatting with the parents, I came to find that they lived in a rural-ish area of the Pacific NW and have 10 chickens. They've had chickens for years. It was a very good conversation. Gardening and chickens turn strangers into long-lost friends it seems. Don't you agree?

Lastly, to end this hodge-podge post, I thought I'd share a pic of how I get the girls in and out of their coop daily, along with a funny story.

As you can see above, the arc door is opened and moved to within 2 feet of the mini-run, where I've opened one door. I use both doors to create a tunnel between the arc and coop. The girls are pretty good about heading from one to another, except my Barred Rock Twinkidink. However, the other morning she kept going back and forth between the arc and run, so when I finally pulled the arc away to close the door, she and the others made their escape! Catching one chicken in the yard alone is doable, but catching all four proved very challenging indeed. As nobody else was out of their PJs yet, I had no help. Thankfully a friendly guy on BackyardChickens.com told me long ago that he uses his coop cleaning tools (a short-handled rake and scoop) to herd chickens. I only had a rake, but it worked pretty well. Silly chickens, they just want to free range. No luck in my yard though. They get plenty of space and a new area to forage daily. They'll just have to make due.

So, go ahead and brag about your gardens and how great weather you're having. I can take it.

Enjoy your garden!

July 11, 2011

2011-07-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a bit since I posted, so I'm throwing one together tonight. It's going to be brief however, since we're going camping for the first time this season and I won't be around to do anything about my garden for a few days. Such is life as everything's bolting.

Speaking of everything bolting, today's post is kind of about it. Since I'm horrible at weeding, we've had massive weeds growing up. Not so much the dandelions, even though we do have some of those, but others I can't name.

The good news is that these weeds are very popular with the chickens. Not only do they eat the leaves, but sometimes they'll actually pick apart the stems. Very cool. Even cooler is when I pull one out, roots and all, and stick them through an upper portion of the chicken wire in the arc. It ends up hanging down into the arc and the girls have a blast pecking away at it. I've even seen them jump to reach a higher leaf. Chicken TV! Anyway, here's my little guy feeding weeds to the chickens.

You can see the girls have a field day with the weeds. If only I could be confident that they'd only eat the weeds if I let them loose in my strawberry patch, where there are weeds growing up along the fence line something fierce. I've just got to take 15 minutes a day and weed. It worked in our front yard when I used a weed popper to basically clear our yard of weeds a few years ago.

Fast forwarding to today, I was deep watering the garden for the camping trip bumping up against a 7 foot tall mustard green plant, dropping yellow leaves and who knows what seeds into the fall garden, when I had an idea. I ripped it out, knocked some of the dirt off the root ball and stuffed it into the chicken coop. It took up most of the space and the girls went to town!

And here's the girls munching away on it.

It's a good thing they love weeds as they're grass foraging has been curtailed since I finally mowed the back yard. I hadn't really needed to since they do a pretty good job keeping the grass short. Frankly I wouldn't have cut it except there are places I just can't put the arc. hehe.

So, what are you doing with all your weeds? Composting them? Putting them in your yard waste? Or feeding them to your chickens? I love comments and will be confirming them while I'm away assuming I get cell service.

Enjoy your garden!

July 5, 2011

2011-07-06T01:22:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning still tired from a very late night of fireworks watching with the family. In bed I always use my phone to check email, the weather and my blog dashboard. Today I saw a post by Erica about it being late to start your fall garden. That news was enough to make me bolt upright and jump out of bed, throw on clothes and head out into the garden. Thankfully I never replanted after my failed carrot germination this spring, so I had a bed open. Immediately my mind started racing as to what to plant where. I knew my broccoli and cauliflower would go in the back in front of the peas which are still going despite the lack of trellis.

Yep, I was shocked and amazed that I had peas when my brother and his horizontal pea trellis doesn't. Boy were they yummy! By the way, that's just a piece of scrap board I am using to keep the peas from flopping over onto the rest of the garden.

Anyway, I knew my broccoli and califlower needed to be at the back by the peas, so I ran upstairs to grab them. Little did I realize that this hot weather we've been having had completely drained the water out of the trays and killed the plants. Crap. I've been keeping these babies alive for months waitng for the right time and now they die. GRRR. Anyway, I direct sowed 2 rows of brassicas and will hope for the best. In front of that I planted 4 SF of spinach, 2 each of Space which is my favorite, with one of Bloomsdale Savoy and Tyee. I overplanted seeds to make sure I get good germination. I don't have time to replant.

I should have said first thing I did was toss about 2 gallons of compost on the 8 SF and mix it losely into the top lair of soil. When I realized I was planting the whole bed, I asked my boys to fill the 5 gallon bucket I was using to transport it from the compost pile. That 5 gallons worth finished off augmenting the rest of the bed.

In front of the spinach, I have my row of lettuces. I planted one SF each of Salad Bowl, Red Sails and Italienshier, my favorites. I left one SF open for when I steal some arrugula from my brother. Sorry to say at that point I'd reached basically the end of the bed. It's my second shortest bed, but the only one open that gets full sun. In the triangle front of the bed, I threw in a hodge podge of fall crops. Onions, radishes and beets rounded out my salad garden, with a little space held out for some mache I hope to plant if my brother can spare the seed. As you can see, I'm hoping to have salads well into winter as I can throw my season extending

This picture is taken from the path between the beds so it's looking back to front with my lone surviving carrot in the middle. I'll harvest it before the other stuff needs the space. Oh, as you can see, I'm using dollar store popsicle sticks and sharpe markets to label my crops. They don't last much more than a season, but I got a thousand of them for a buck.

Also, while I was out there, I found my broccoli had finally headed. The best along looked like this.

This picture was actually from a few days ago. I should have harvested it then. Today it was a bit looser and I was starting to see some yellow flower-like color in the head. So I harvested it and had it with fried chicken and gnoochi. Yum! Boy don't I wish I had a whole bed of this to preserve for winter use. Grrr. This weather's been horrible. No Spring or Summer to speak of. Not sure how farmers in our area do it.

Enjoy your garden, I hope you've planted your fall garden by now.

July 3, 2011

2011-07-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

This post isn't exactly what I'd planned it to be. I've been working on a concept for a bit but it just hasn't come together. However, going through my pictures I realized I took a fun chicken video that I wanted to share.

So this post will be short as I'm just getting in from a fun pre-4th BBQ at my brother's. He makes the best burgers on the planet. He takes the amazing recipe I've used for years (since he shared it with me) and has doctored it further to add home-grown spices galore. It is so flavorful it's unreal!

Anyway, I've always said I picked the wrong Buff Orpington. She's way too aggressive for such a docile breed. Don't get me wrong, from the way they eat at the food trough or when I put the treat bowl in their ark (left overs and scraps), it's like she's 4th fiddle.

I know I say some harsh things about her in this video, but she is still a sweety... a strong willed one but cute as a button. Just don't pick her up as she fights like mad and tries to get away. I can't remember how many times I chased her around my garage when she got out of the brooder. hehe.

Otherwise, all the chickens are growing well. I believe Buffy is the largest bird, barely overtaking Summer for the biggest. I saw my brother's birds today and his Buff Orpington is one of the smaller birds. Odd. Anyway, sorry if the video quality is poor. I tried uploading again from Photobucket and it didn't work, so this came directly from the camera uploaded to Blogger. Anyway, it's the audio that's important.

Enjoy! And Happy 4th of July to all of you. Stay safe!

July 1, 2011

2011-07-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

Man, I feel like this is just another chicken post one after another. No, it's not a chicken post, but for a while there that's all I had to talk about. Now it's yet another strawberry post.

Yes, we've been regularly going out to our strawberry/blueberry patch to harvest that day's ready-to-eat strawberries, but today was not about our patch. A good friend of ours of about 5 years invited us and the boys to go strawberry picking at an organic farm out in Monroe. Since we really didn't need a flat of strawberries ourselves (the boys have had their fill from the Costco flat we got a few weeks ago and our own harvest), we asked my mother along. What we really want this year is home made strawberry jam, and this year, we envisioned having it made from fresh-picked organic strawberries!

It was a beautiful 75 degree day with the sun shining and the kids had a ball. They haven't seen their friends much this year because they're in different schools. So they played and ate more than they picked, but that's most of the fun of U-pick farms.

Meanwhile, we were serious berry pickers. Of course I had to sample the merchandise, but mostly I only ate the ones that came off the stem without the top in place.

In the end we left tired and sated, with 18 pounds of organic strawberries. At my mother's house we proceeded to take the tops off, wash and cut the berries, then sorted them into 6 cup bags. All in all, we got 5 batches of jam making material, which will deliver 20 pints of jam as needed, fresh frozen for optimum taste. My mouth is watering just typing this. Sorry there were no shots of the strawberries, I didn't think of it before we started topping them, then it was so messy that I didn't dare touch anything.

For now, the only evidence of our work is a quart zip lock bag full of the best of the bunch for fresh eating, along with 3 cups of strawberry tops that the girls LOVE! I had given about 3 cups to my brother as well so he can see just how much chickens like strawberry tops. The majority of mine are in the fridge for use over time.

I hope you can enjoy some freshly picked strawberries this season, they're like nothing you'll find in any store, or even at a farmer's market as they lose taste the moment they're picked.

Enjoy your garden!

June 25, 2011

2011-06-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

If it's June in the Pacific Northwest, it must be the start of strawberry season. For a month or so I've watched the flowers bloom and the plants grow strong and healthy. I've also seen berries form and plump up. Having grown up with the tiny berry plants, it's good to see that I've got slightly larger varieties. I have no idea what variety I've got, but June bearing comes to mind. Anyway, I'm just thrilled to get a harvest this year. If you recall last year my young boys harvested all the berries one morning before we got up, ripe or otherwise.

So, you can imagine our thrill to see berries ripening all over my berry bed.

This year, the boys have been sternly warned not to pick any berries without mom or dad around. So on Logan's last day of school, as a treat we went picking. Anything that was fully ripe and in danger of being eaten by slugs or birds was harvested. We got a very good harvest and left several more fairly ripe berries in the garden.

As you can tell the boys had a blast!

I think he looks happier than his brother, don't you?

Over the last few weeks or so, we've been working through a Costco flat of strawberries. In my experience, they've been tough and relatively flavorless. These babies on the other hand, melted like butter on a hot day when I was cutting the stems off. The girls didn't seem to have an opinion on which they liked better, Costco's or mine. They devour the tops in one gulp. We on the other hand, were in heaven eating those perfectly sweet and tart juicy red pouches of goodness. Makes my mouth water just writing about them. Tomorrow we'll have to harvest more! And to think we've got close to 100 berries left on the plants in various stages of growth! That, and the plants continue to send out runners that I train to go where I want. MUAHAHAHAHAHA! Soon will be blueberry season! Yum!

Now you see why I won't let my girls free range. Rather they get a new patch of 32 SF of grass every day to forage in. Not a perfect world, but a nice arranngement over all.

Enjoy your garden!

June 24, 2011

2011-06-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

Well, the beginning of the week meant that Father's Day was over and the chicken coop progress could continue. There were several last minute details to finish up before the hens could go into their new home. The biggest of which was the hardware cloth needed to be installed on the mini-run. Three of the four sides were easy, just cut the pieces and install them. I used half-inch staples rather than my hammer-staples for ease. I sure hope it's secure enough. Thoughts?

If you notice I made sure to let the extra fan out onto the ground. In a perfect world I'd bury the cloth so it would be unnoticeable to all but the digging creature, but I'm ok with it for now.

The three sides went easy enough with my brother's tin snips (boy was cutting the chicken wire with wire cutters insanely slow). However, construction was required for the front as it would be two gates to let the girls in and out daily. Constructing them out of 2x2s was fairly easy, the only issue was the fact that during the fall the middle support moved a bit. Rather than fixing the support beam back in place, I just made one door a quarter inch longer than the other. No big deal.

Taking my brother's advice, I installed the hardware cloth while the doors were on the ground. It may have been easier to install the wire, but it made installing the hinges more of a pain.

They went on pretty smoothly though I had a bit of a problem with them staying closed, even with the hook and eye attached.

It's possible that I need to increase the distance a hair on the hook. I haven't tried that, but my other thought is to go get some of those magnetic cabinet locks and install them on the doors. Not sure if they have ones rated for out-door use. For now this works, but I'm not happy with it.

That same day I took on a number of other projects, in order to get the girls into their coop.

The first was simply installing the cleat to lock the rope in place when the door is closed at night.

The next was not really a coop project per se, but rather one for the ark. I wanted to get the door installed once and for all. It took a while to get the sizes right and how to complete the triangle and where to put the hinges. I actually used a set of hinges planned for the run doors because the T-hinges I had purchased before I ever started building the coop don't work very well on 2x2s. They hang over the 2x2s on the run door but I put them on the door less opened and don't care.

If you can see, I ended up using a 1x2 on the top to combine them to make sure it cleared the handle. It was a last minute fix, but works well. The good news about this door is that I installed it using a paint scraper to set the clearance with the bottom board. The effect is to have a door that rubs a bit. The friction is just enough to keep the door closed if chickens push up against it, but not enough to keep me from opening it whenever I want, without an eye hook. The only problem with it is that the door opens at a 60 degree angle or so, which will never stay open on it's own.

The solution for it right now is simply to keep one of my small bungee cords to keep it open. I'm not happy with it as a long-term solution as the effect is to bend the chicken wire which is rusting at an alarming rate. On that note, I don't want to us 1/2 inch hardware wire on it. Sure, I know the chickens don't care if it's rusted, but going in and out of it and moving it around, it's common to scrape yourself on it. I know it's been a while since I've had a tetanus shot, but my kids have never had one, so it scares me. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and go with 2 inch cattle wire on it. Suggestions?

Other small projects I did to the never-ending ark project was to add a platform for the food. Mostly I wanted to be able to move the ark around without removing the food. Since I didn't have anymore 1x4 material, I went with a scrap piece of 3/8" plywood. I attached it with scrap 2x2s in the opposite corner across from the water platform. It's a bit longer than the food tray, but I decided not to cut it. I figure I can put a dish of grit or crushed egg shells later down the road. As you can see, the ark is never done. The goal is to improve it, not add weight.

As for further improvements, my brother added a roost to his ark, so I threw one in. I'm not thrilled with how badly it blocks off the back half of the ark, so it may not stay.

The girls aren't using the roost yet, but who knows.

The last project of the evening was a feeder for the coop. I had already painted a pressure-treated 2x6 but built up the walls with scrap plywood. It'll work for now as it was getting very late and I wanted to get the chickens in that evening. After that was done, it was simply a case of nearly emptying a bale of shavings into the coop.

The set-up was finally ready for the girls. I plan on putting more bedding in the coop, but not until I raise the level of the boards around the chicken door. Still figuring out the best way to do that. Some day I plan on doing the deep litter method where you don't change the bedding but once a year, letting it compost in place. This will have to do for now.

Finally, it was time time to introduce the chickens to their coop. It was far too late in the evening to put them in the run and let them figure out the ramp, so we simply put them into the coop via the clean-out door.

The only problem with this plan is that the chickens quickly learned they could jump out of the coop the same way they got in. That led to some late night chicken chasing. In the end I placed them into the coop, unceremoniously by cracking the door and dropping them in. Not the best idea I'd had. Oh well, they got in for the night.

And there they stayed all night long. Doesn't everyone look happy with the chickens in their new home?

So there you have it. The chickens are now into their coop. YAY!

Enjoy!

June 20, 2011

2011-06-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

Belated Happy Father's Day to all those dad's out there. Makes me feel glad this post will contain picks of both my dad and one of my kids. Couldn't ask for a happier coincidence. Before I start though, I should say that the reason for my silence of late is because Father's Day was celebrated at my house, meaning all the junk my kids left around needed to be picked up and the house scrubbed from floor to ceiling. Oh yeah, I also had to make up the best burgers in town, but that's another post all-together.

When we left the caped crusaders, the chicken coop was on it's side and all seemed hopeless. But thanks to community, all is right in the world. Of course family jumped into action, but with aging parents we needed more muscle. My brother's best friend has done more for my family than I could ever do in return, but he drove from Monroe for this. All my good friends were otherwise preoccupied Saturday morning, so I did what any desperate man would do. I begged. Yep, I went door-to-door trading future eggs for muscle. Not really, I simply went across the street to the family of my kids' buddy and asked for help. He was home and told me to come on over when we were ready.

I had no idea how hard this would be. I could barely wiggle it despite building it as light as possible. My brother could lift an end but who knows if he could move it with his bad knees. Sorry I don't have any pictures from the righting or moving project. I didn't feel like I should beg help and then stand around and take pictures all morning.

Anyway, we had the two fathers, my brother, his friend, a neighbor and myself to do this. As there was really only two places to lift (the top corner of the wall by the roof on both sides), my brother and his equally strong friend lifted the coop enough to place a block under the roof line so we could get our hands under it. Then it was simply all hands on the roof. My father was on the back to make sure it didn't tip over the other way. In the end, it took an hour to figure out the best way to do it and exactly one minute to right it. It really was light after all, just awkward and top heavy. That said, I never want that to happen again.

Stood up, you could see the damage the fall caused. Thankfully it was only the fascia board that was mangled by hitting the ground and having the weight of the coop resting on it. I'm not sure if I'll fix it or not.

Once it was up, I let my neighbor go back to his Saturday morning routine, but my brother's friend (who helped install my furnace and new duct work throughout my house a few years ago) stayed to move the beast. Again theories were thrown around, but in the end, the simplest plan worked best. They simply threw the wheels on the front of the coop (the bottom of the side wall) facing out, not down. Then 2x4s were attached to the floor joists on the other side, creating a large wheelbarrow. Then my brother and his friend each took a handle and I and my father-in-law were in the front to help steer. It took ten minutes to maneuver the coop into position, and despite very uneven ground, I never felt the coop was going to tip. In the end the whole process was very easy with all that muscle around. I am very grateful to the folks that helped. There are eggs in it for them when the girls start producing. Whew, what a relief.

So, here is the coop in it's final resting place. I positioned it 2 feet from the neighbor's fence so in case the chickens get back there I can chase them. It'll also allow for the installation of the hardware cloth in the back, which still needs to be done.

You can see the ruts in the grass where the skids dug in during the move, but who cares, the coop's in place and the grass will grow back. You can also see how the trees are perfectly trimmed around the coop. They used to be hanging down so bad I had to duck under them constantly when working with the compost piles. We cut them down to allow for maneuvering the coop into place. I like it much better now that I can move around in there without ducking.

Speaking of trimming the trees, I forgot to post some pictures of my youngest helping me get the site ready for landing the coop last week. He's off from school already so it's fun to do daddy and son things without my eldest. He got that kind of treatment when he was younger, so it's only fair. Here he is helping to fill the yard waste bin after cutting back the trees and bushes. I don't compost branches like that because my chipper is on the fritz. Let Cedar Grove compost it. They're better equipped than I to handle those things.

And here he is having a blast jumping down in the 96 gallon bin smashing everything down so we could add more.

His helping made it such a pleasurable experience. We had a blast!

I hope you enjoyed your weekend. Time to stop writing and get the chicken coop finished! But that my friends, is another post.

June 17, 2011

2011-06-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

Had a bit of a crisis happen today. With Father's Day being celebrated at my house this Sunday, today was the day to move the chicken coop off the patio so I could clean up for the festivities. My brother and father were on hand to help. We first painstakingly raised the coop up onto 4 bricks per corner in order to lag in my brother's 4x4 with pneumatic tires attached. This of course took multiple trips across town to my folks place and to our neighborhood True Value.

All was well after a re-inflation of one tire and we were in the process of lowering it down onto the wheels when disaster struck.

Timber!

Thankfully no one was hurt. I was the closest to being under it as I was on the far right removing bricks when it tipped. I stupidly tried to hold it up with my left side and failed. Also thankfully, the only major damage was to what we call the toad stool, which is the concrete seat that got smashed. It's ok though as we didn't like it anyway. Now we just have to figure out how to get the rest out of there. I'm hoping the roof made it ok, it's tough to tell if it racked or not. Oh, and the toad stool did tear a chunk out of my trellis 2x4 that we'd screwed into the floor joists to give something to lift as we drive it to the final resting place.

Anyway, I'm not really sure why it went. I figure it was several reasons rolled into one perfect storm. Let's see if I can name them all... The bottom right tire is over too far toward the middle, the front roof is much longer than the back and thus heavier, the pavement is sloping that way, and the jack may have been not perfectly on center when I was raising the coop off the bricks. Any or all of those things could have caused it. Safe to say it doesn't matter though, it happened. And now we have to fix it in a hurry so we can have Father's Day out there. Heck, I still haven't taken the cover off the BBQ to see if it's ok or not. Man, there's too much to do.

So, at 10:00 AM tomorrow morning as many big guys as I could arrange will be descending into my backyard to lift it back into place. Oh, and if you happen to be in the area and want to help, there is the promise of eggs come Fall in return.

About the only good thing to come out of it is that I got to install the Trex pieces to the bottom boards from the bottom and not the top. Not that it matters much, but it's done.

Wish us luck tomorrow as I've got to get this thing off my patio and hopefully the girls into their coop. Sheesh!

500th POST! - June 13, 2011

2011-06-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

Wow, I can't believe it. I didn't believe it when my Google dashboard said I'd published 499 posts. I know I've been posting for a few years now, and I used to post every day, but yikes, what a milestone! I know I should bake a cake or something like the TV industry does for a show's 100th episode or something, but somehow that just doesn't seem appropriate for the topic of this post.

Now I'd asked (rather poorly I may add), for topic ideas and batted around a few of my own in my mind over the last few days, but it wasn't until this morning that I stumbled upon something I'm very interested in. It even has more to do with my garden as it sits now than I would have ever dreamed when I first read about it in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food after taking my son to the bus this morning.

No clues, well, I didn't have one either. In short it's Omega 3s. That's right, something everyone knows a very little about, but if you're like me, most are misinformed at best. Now I'm not going to get into tons of detail here because there is a bunch of great reading material out on the net and in various books, but I will share what I've learned in a few hours and how it's given me a new respect for my crappy spring garden.

First off, a very brief background of what I've learned from years of "hearing" of Omega 3s and a morning of reading my book and a few web sites. By now everyone knows that Omega 3s are good for you and that eating ocean fish is a great way to get those 3s. Most also know that if you CAN'T get access to fresh fish, then flax seed is an alternative. Lastly, what I knew about them is that freshly laid chicken eggs are higher in 3s than store bought ones, and that food scientists are trying like mad to throw Omega 3s into anything they can because it's the new buzz word in nutrition.

So when I read in Michael Pollan's book today about the Western Diet's ratio of Omega 6s to Omega 3s running between 10 to 20:1 and that Omega 6s lead to bad things in the body like heart disease, diabetes and strokes, I became more curious. So curious that I was upset that Mr. Pollan didn't simply have a list of what I should eat to get more Omega 3s in my diet.

As some of you know by now, I don't like fish much, despite growing up on the PNW coast my entire life, which means we've got more fish than beef here. You can imagine my delight when I read in Mr. Pollan's book that fish aren't that great for Omega 3s anyway. Fish only get Omega 3s from THEIR diet of algae. If I think about it, it makes me mad that I didn't know this already. It's like fish had a monopoly on Omega 3s when they were just smart enough to eat stuff that's good for them. Why can't we go straight to the source also?

So, impassioned by this new found shred of knowledge and frustrated by Michael Pollan's total lack of compassion for my zeal as to provide a detailed list for me, I put down the book and went to the Internet. A quick search that literally went like this... "which organic vegetables contain the highest levels of omega 3s compared to omega 6s?" I quickly found a decent reiteration of Pollan's argument, siting the same sources, specifically Susan Allport's Queen of Fats. While this article lacked the list of foods to eat other than fish, it did have a few sentences that Mr. Pollan left out (probably because it is the topic of his book). It was those sentences that made me write this post. "Fortunately, omega-3 is widely available in all greens, especially in spinach, romaine, and arugula." The one downside of Omega 3s are that they become rancid very quickly (yes, Omega 3s are a fat, despite that fatty acid label). In fact, removing Omega 3s from standard oils is what kept them from going bad and thus increasing shelf life. Joy, oh joy! Omega 3s can even go rancid in your digestive tract, leading to the development of bad free radicals. It's suggested "to combat this problem, make sure to include a large variety of fresh fruit and vegetables in your meals that are rich in antioxidants, such as blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, plums, oranges, grapes cherries, beets, red cabbage, colored bell peppers, kale, and others."

Reading that made me think of the times when we've secretly added spinach to our smoothies. No, not the "green" smoothies such as are promoted on that site I was reading, but rather adding minor amounts of green leafy vegetables to be masked by the fruitie goodness the family loves. We've experimented with various veggies to add to our smoothies over the years and found broccoli stands out too much but nothing in small quantities shows in the final blend. We've used spinach extensively, but now I know I can use lettuce with equal abandon! I'm looking forward to using much more of this in the near future...

Doesn't that salad green bed look healthy? You can just make out in the top right corner my failed carrot bed (first year carrots have failed me). I can see using most of this on either salads or smoothies and I'm definitely going to plant more greens for fall, and more for winter harvest. My brother's growing Mache and Arugula so I'm excited to try them to make sure I want to grow them this winter.

Oh, and I can't leave out my smoothie staple. My spinach bed is finally growing, though I'm fearful that the succession planting failed.

Anyways, I'm excited again at all that salad bed has to offer. We just don't eat salads every night like some friends of ours do, so much of my spring lettuce harvest is given away or composted. Now of course the left overs will be given to the girls, but that, my friends, is another post!

Enjoy your garden, and go eat some more Omega 3s!

June 10, 2011

2011-06-10T02:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. It's been crazy around here gearing up for the little one's 5th birthday party. Having it at a park was supposed to be easy. Not so when the kid said he wanted a Harry Potter themed party. My wife went into muggle mode and went ape over the whole affair. Everything we/she's done has been extremely labor intensive and time's slipping away. Nights go like this. Get the kids involved at bed time, going to bed an hour or two late (poor kid who's still in school). Then the real work begins. Around 2 AM I go to bed as someone has to get up with the school aged boy. She works well into the morning then sleeps til 10 and we start the day over again. Thank goodness the party's tomorrow so we don't kill each other.

That said, the coop HAS to get done, so one day this week was spent working on many of the final details to get it chicken ready.

The first order of business was to tackle the chicken door. For the clean-out door, we'd cut 1/4 inch of each side to make SURE it fit in the opening. For some reason we didn't do that on the chicken door. Silly us. We paid for it for an hour or two, sanding and sanding to try to get it to open under the force of gravity. In the end I took a hand saw to it to chunk off far more than a sander could. Then we attached the pulley system to raise and lower it.

Yeah, we took off a bit from the front with a skill saw without a plywood blade on it. Touch up painting was in order. However, it was the far left hand side that caused us all the grief.

The rope goes all over the place, but I wanted two things. 1) to keep the rope out of the chickens' way as much as possible, and two, to have it come out where I will be most often.

The pulley system comes out at the nesting box side since it's where I'll be every morning.

I think the only thing I'd do differently on the pulley system would be sturdier eye hooks. I've bent one and my son another. I've got one left in case of another accident. Anyway, doesn't the finished ramp look great? Here it is from the chicken's perspective.

Next up was to seal off the nesting boxes. I'm not sure where we got the idea to do this, but it's a very good idea since my brother's chicks have taken to sleeping in his, which is not the intended purpose. We'll remove the chicken wire when they start laying eggs in a few months.

Now for the last project inside the coop where I would need to crawl around in it. Here's a hint, it's pictured in the pic above and is missing something.

I'm quite pleased at how the vent turned out. In the end we just needed WD-40 on the mechanism to make it open and close smoothly. And the border on the outside not only allowed for something for the screws to go into, but it gave us something to attach the insect wire to. Nothing's getting in through that vent. Oh, and that same mesh fit perfectly into the 6 foot vent on the front.

Oh, I totally forgot that we hung the doors for the chickens to use and those of the nesting boxes. Glad my brother was there to help as I understand it's hard work. My brother made it look easy. Thanks bro!

Touching up the painting was a pain in the rear as I refused to tape off the hinges etc. I stayed a hair away from them in most cases, so I hope it weathers well.

Anyway, up until now, the day was mostly tackling smaller projects. I'd say the biggest one was the clean-out door, which was next. We had to frame the door on both the door and around it to make sure it had a place to seat and to attach the barrel bolts to lock it.

You'll see that we didn't place a frame 1x2 at the top. It wasn't needed and it's just a chicken coop. Anyway, welcome to my chicken coop...

At least it opens! Finally, we could install the siding on the right hand side. I can no longer access it from there, but there's nothing else to do in there that I can't do from the clean-out door.

Even the roost is in, which can easily be removed to scrape as necessary.

And here is what my coop looks like on the inside.

I've come to realize two things. One, painting the inside protects it sure, but it also makes it very dark in there. Oh well. As my brother says, they'll mostly be just sleeping in there. The second thing is that the wall I built up around the door is insufficient at about 4 inches. I need it 4 inches above the level of the bedding, which will be four to six inches high. And I thought I wouldn't need to break out the paint again. Boy is it going to look silly with a 2x3 on top of a 2x2, capped with what? a 2x4? Silly, silly, silly.

Lastly, I took a moment to cut some pieces for the door to the ark. It'll be a simple 2x2 triangle on hinges to swing out of the way. Not the perfect solution, but it is the best I can come up with.

I can never manage to measure right when it comes to boards with angles cut at the ends, so I basically guessed. Sure hope it comes together. I had to stop to head out with the boys, but some day I'll finish it, maybe when the girls are NOT in there at the time. Hehe.

Enjoy!

Hey folks, I just came to my attention that my next post will be my 500th. In a perfect world, I would make a post asking for suggestions on what the theme should be, but instead I'll post it here. Please give me your thoughts below. Thanks!

June 4, 2011

2011-06-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

Well, based on KitsapFG's comment, I should start this post by saying, it's not quite DONE! However, I did do as she said, I used the beautiful weather to my advantage and worked from nearly dawn to dusk on painting my coop Friday. Saturday of course was all-day base ball games for the kids, followed by the celebration of my youngest's 5th birthday. Friday however, he was my little child labor buddy.

That's right, he begged and begged to help me paint, so I obliged. And where better for a little shortie to paint but the mini-run below the coop. Like I wanted to crawl around on the ground painting?

Though, I digress. First things first. What's the first rule of painting? It takes 2 hours to paint and 3 hours to prep. Well, it didn't work out quite like that, but I did have a bit of prep work. Less because I purposely painted before I installed the hardware. Smart huh?

Those are from left to right, the two doors to the nesting boxes, my clean out door on top of the final side wall siding, the chicken door and my roost.

I also had to vacuum the coop, but there the little boy wanted to help, so he vacuumed while I tapped.

As you can see, the day started out a bit cloudy, as the forecast was for possible morning showers. I had a tarp ready for the doors if that happened, but alas, the forecasters were wrong for the 365th time in the last year, and it just turned sunny and hot. So hot that I threw a T-shirt over my neck to keep from worsening my sunburn. Then we started painting (finally as my son said, hehe).

I didn't really have a plan, but rather just saw something and painted it, starting with the trim, which may get a second coat of a different color.

After a while, I couldn't keep straight what needed to be cut in vs. rolled (of course I was rolling this, I almost broke out the paint sprayer, hehe), so I did a little bit of both, where ever it was needed.

Don't I look attractive in my paint clothes and Sahara head dress? My youngest should have had a similar set-up, not for sun protection, but a painters hat would have been nice. That paint DOES NOT come out of hair. Oops. Anyway, as you can see, my youngest paints faster than I do, he's almost done and I'm not even done with the outside.

Hmm, I wasn't sure what time it was since I didn't stop to look ever, but since my eldest was in that picture, I hadn't started the inside until after 4:15 when he gets home from school. He wanted to help but it just wasn't good timing with swim lessons at 5. Unlike every other time, I didn't go. I had a coop to paint and the weather was perfect for it. Our first 70 degree day of the year, or something like that. I just had to get to that inside. I decided to just paint everything since I had the paint and it would protect it from rotting (I used all untreated pine to build this, which would rot in our wet winters. Oh, and what do you think of the color? It's the trim color for our house. We painted last fall and I bought way too much trim paint and since you can't return it, I used it here. Whatever works!

Hehe, as you can see, I was a bit exhausted by then, so I not only crawled on the coop floor that we didn't think would hold me, but I crawled on it, sat on a stool on it, and even a CHAIR! Yep, I was tired and it made it easy to reach the ceiling. I just stayed on the floor joists whenever possible.

All I can say is man, the inside was much harder to paint than the outside. All that cutting in around the 2x3s, whew! Finally though, I got to the very end, painting the floor on my way out...

Hehe, you can see by the shadows, that it's late, but let's just say it's well after the kids bed time. And I still had to paint the doors. Let's just say I painted the reverse side of the siding while the one side was still wet, then brought the chickens in while there was just enough light to see. Then I cleaned up, took a bath to ease sore muscles and collapsed into bed, all to wake up bright and early this morning for a 9 AM baseball game.

Tomorrow will be much better though, I get to get up at the crack of dawn to join my brother down in Puyallup (about an hour drive) for the Mother Earth News Festival! He went today and had a blast, he met Joel Salatin and got to talk with the Editor in Chief of Mother Earth News. He got him to consider making urban homesteading a bigger part of the magazine. Way to go bro!

Anyway, that's about it for me for this post. I'm tired, it's midnight and I have to be up in a few hours. Hope you enjoyed this installment of "How the Coop Turns"...

June 2, 2011

2011-06-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

I know I said it in the last post, but the weather's been less than cooperative this Spring. Not only has my garden suffered, but my chickens have too. Crappy weather is no fun for building a chicken coop. Specifically, I need to paint it to seal the wood from future weather issues, if only I could get around the current ones!

However, I have been doing a few minor things to get ready for painting, then the final push to completion. For instance, I used up the last of the caulking tube of door and window sealant to seal up cracks and holes, mostly in the floor where the wall plywood came to the very edge of the floor plywood, but not an eight of an inch farther.

You can't see it but the gap's there under the window, so that entire wall got a bead of caulk, especially the left hand corner where there was a hole. I also caulked a huge hole in the top where the siding didn't cover the entire wall. I kind of felt silly sealing it since it's right next to the 3 SF whole in my coop for ventilation, but I wanted to be thorough. Silly me. I also caulked as much of the nesting boxes as I could, since I don't want those drafty when the girls are laying their eggs.

The rest of my work since my huge coop progress post has revolved around cutting plywood. You can see that there's a wall missing in my coop to allow greater access to the interior, but I cut it anyway.

Alas, for some reason it didn't turn out as perfect as I'd expected, despite precise measurements, so I had to notch the middle a bunch to fit around the rafter holding up the roof. It'll look bad, and likely need more caulking, but it's the back side where no one will see and it's only a chicken coop. Heck, the plywood I used is the warped piece I took off the roof. Who cares.

While I had the plywood out, I also cut the doors for the nesting boxes. Those also didn't go in as they need hinges I don't have yet.

The only plywood I actually installed was at the bottom of the back wall. Having it be 4 inches short helped greatly when it came to installing the floor and the chicken door. However, those parts were done so I slapped up some scrap plywood to seal it off.

Whereas the wall on the front side comes precisely to the bottom of the floor, this plywood goes a few inches beyond the floor. I didn't feel like ripping a board a few inches off over a 6 foot length. It's the back where I won't be accessing much if at all. Again, the chickens won't care. Function over form. Oh, and you can't see it very well in this picture, but the bottom piece was a few inches short of 6 feet, so I grabbed another scrap (actually the piece I cut out of the vent shown in the picture above) and threw in a piece to finish it off. Here's a close-up to show just how bad it looks.

Yeah, it looks horrible, but once it's painted, it should look fine. And only the joining seem is prone to gaps because the other three sides have 2x3s to seal it. I plan on throwing some extra paint in the crack to help seal it. Of course I have looked and can see no light. I used the factory edge on both pieces to join them. Best I could do.

So, aside from painting, I have to install some drip edge on the back side to protect the fascia board, install Trex on the bottom boards to protect the boards from rotting, install hinges and hang doors (heaven help me Pam) and install the wire after building the front doors to the run.

Not bad if you think about it. Very doable with decent weather. I expect to paint tomorrow if the weather forecast rings true for a change, then wrap it all up early next week.

Please comment if you have anything to ask or say!

Enjoy!

June 1, 2011

2011-06-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Please someone tell my garden that it's June first! I swear it thinks it's April 1 instead. Aside from the calendar, Spring has yet to visit the Pacific Northwet. I'm posting this because I saw a post on another blog I read about all the things that should be going on in the garden right now and unfortunately, most of them are right for the calendar, but wrong for the weather. The funniest is that I should be starting seeds indoors for my broccoli and cauliflower Fall crops when I still have my spring crops up there. I have yet to plant out my succession plantings because it's pointless. The first planting is not growing at all and just being nibbled at by slugs. I have carrots that overwintered and are going to seed, but I haven't pulled them because I'm feeding them bit by bit to my hens and I don't need the room until I plant out my brassicas. Aside from that the entire bed of carrots I've planted have yet to germinate. I'm about to give up hope on them and plant again as my brother's just started coming up (finally!). Oh, and my cool weather peas... what did germinate have grown a total of 3 inches. I haven't even found the need to set up the trellis for them. Insanity reigns in June.

About the only thing growing in the garden is my salad bed. It seems my lettuces are growing, albeit slowly. But we have been harvesting them for salads and garnishes etc.

As for my tomatoes, they haven't grown at all, despite regular doses of fish emulsion. I'm trying, but the best I can get is I have one plant that flowered under lights that is finally setting fruit... three tomatoes.

Lastly, I know I'm behind on planting out my cucumbers and squash, but really, what's the point? I don't have a greenhouse to grow them in, they don't transplant well (cukes that is), and even if they do germinate (big if), chances are they'll never grow. I'm feeling a bit disappointed by this garden season.

I hope your garden is doing better.

May 30, 2011

2011-05-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ah, the end of a very nice Memorial Day weekend! Tea and blogging, a perfect combination. Saturday was spent with my eldest dressed in his Class A Cub Scout uniform and the rest of us walking around the Floral Hills cemetery in Lynnwood, placing flags on veteran's graves. It was a great way to discuss the true meaning of the holiday.

This blog post will be about a little adventure my kids had last week. It was a beautiful Friday off from school and we had just moved the chicks out to the ark. I was getting ready to putz around on the chicken coop when I heard a ruckus from outside. What did I find when I went out back? Two new chickens had joined the flock!

The boys were really very good with the chicks. Despite being a bit bouncy, they gave the chicks their space and didn't block off their food and water. The episode didn't last long, but it did last long enough to catch this on video.

I then left them to their play in the yard. Later making a snack, I had to snap these pics. It's great being able to look out the kitchen window and see not only the rose garden, but the chickens playing in the yard.

What a beautiful day for the kids to play outside and the chicks to forage in the yard. They actually do a pretty good job mowing the lawn. If I work it right I may not have to mow the backyard much. And both my brother and I have found that two days after the ark has been in a place, you can't find any trace of their droppings. They get absorbed into the ground very nicely! I love it.

I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend and got a chance to think on the significance of the holiday.

Enjoy!

May 29, 2011

2011-05-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

As it has been a while since I've posted about the coop construction project, I suppose it is time to catch you up a bit. A ton has happened over the last few weeks as my brother finished his coop and has lent his new found knowledge to my nearly identical project. I've found I am very productive when I have someone there watching over me, so between the two of us, a ton has gotten done. Normally it is he who says let's tackle this and then tells me what to do. I've always said, if you tell me where to swing a hammer, I can do it. I've proven it on the roof and now I had a chance to prove it with the rest of the coop.

When last we've left you, the coop was looking like this at twilight...

First off, in my brother's absence, I did actually tackle a few of the small items myself, based on conversations with my brother on what to do first. For instance, I purchased the lower louvre vent that can open or close as necessary for proper air circulation. I placed it about 18 inches off the floor to keep it over the hens' heads but still providing the some air flow. Mostly it was all about wrangling a very heavy skill saw to do vertical plunge cuts after drawing it out based on the inside dimensions of the vent. After that it was measuring and cutting 1x2s for each side to attach the vent to.

Oh, and I guess we also threw up siding on the nesting box side and cut the whole for the nesting box frame. And all right, you got me, you can just see the whole we cut for the clean-out door in the front of the coop. That was actually a more drawn out project as we decided man handling that heavy skill saw for such a precise cut was not a good idea. So we took the front siding down and cut it out horizontally. Aside from having to pull dozens of 2 inch staples, it worked well, it just took a while. You can tell we were cranking and I forgot to take some pictures.

Here's me installing the 1x2 stops on the three sides of the door so the door has a place to rest and doesn't let air in when it's closed. Next up was simply attaching the nesting box frame to the siding. My brother's grip clamps came in handy a ton on this project. So much so that I bought some today. He calls them his little friends (Scarface reference for all you youngin's).

It was about then that my brother had to leave me for the day. But since we've been having nice weather and of course it's staying light later, I kept working. He suggested that I side the nesting box. Oh, and I needed to add a few more pieces of wood to the frame too. Namely a middle 2x2 on the bottom to attach the separator board, and a 1x2 to attach the bottom siding in the back and the hinges for the doors on the top of the back. It actually went faster than I expected since he left his tools, including a battery powered 6 inch skill saw which was much lighter and more accurate than my ancient one.

Hehe, here you can see my fatigue setting in. On the left side the siding drops a half inch from the top of the rafter because I couldn't read my writing. I thought it said 19 and a quarter inches, but it was actually 3/4". Oops. No biggie of course since the rafter is solid there. Can't say the same for the separator board as it I didn't want to notch it to fit around the 2x2s. It just has to provide some basic cave-like privacy, which it will do nicely. You can see the shadows moving on into evening as I finished up the siding project with the roof.

At this point I should toot my own horn for forethought. I cut the roof a few inches wider than the siding to keep rain from running down the walls. I also made the roof 36 inches wide so that a 38 inch roofing tile would hang over just enough to curl over over time. Smart huh?

Then I considered the weather for the next day. It was supposed to rain. I thought of the way the 3/8" plywood warped early on, requiring replacement, so I couldn't stop here. I remembered my father-in-law saying if you have tar paper down it is decent rain protection. Oops, I was out of staples to attach it. A quick call to my dad and a dash across town to get more staples from him and it was time to cut the felt paper. Thankfully I had just enough paper to fit the nesting box roof.

Don't the nesting boxes make great places to store tools? I'm not sure I'll let the girls use them, they're so handy! Anyway, by now I was on a roll. Why couldn't I finish the project that night? Mosquitoes be damned! The race was on.

I didn't care if the pattern of the tiles matched or was offset like it was supposed to. I just wanted to get it covered fast. The first two tiles worked perfectly, but then I started getting sloppy. I knew I needed to cut the last tile to fit against the wall, so I cut it before measuring. Bad idea. It was short. So I just used the part I cut and made it work. It is a chicken coop after all. The chickens won't care!

Didn't I do a great job!?

Now all it needs is a paint job and the access doors. They're still waiting on those things as the hinges we bought way back when are not right. Here's a shot from inside the way the chickens will see it.

Boy did I sleep well that night. But the next day came bright and early. We didn't get quite as much done that day as the weather turned foul mid way through, but we did get the floor cut and the chicken door cut and framed out. You can see how tired we both were as the reveal 2x2s didn't line up well at all to form a perfect frame. Oh well.

We also added a bunch more floor joists to both support the floor and to build the chicken door. No, the chickens aren't heavy and no human will be walking on it, but the last thing we wanted was for the floor to warp. I could stop there, but I don't want to bore you with too many more chicken coop construction posts, so I'll continue through the work days.

You can see though, that with the roof in place, everything inside is nice and dry. The next day I rested. All I did was secure the floor once we knew the chicken door was right and we wouldn't need much more access to the inside of the coop.

The next work day we tackled the permanent ladder and the door part of the ladder.

We cut the ladder 12 inches wide and spaced 1x2s every 5 inches to better accommodate the chicks now as well as the hens later. Oh, and those raggedy pieces of 2x2 are the handles I cut for the ark. While I was alone I built the roost. I decided on a single roost 24 inches above the floor, hoping they like to crowd together rather than sleep apart. Who knows? They don't use the mini-roost in the brooder much.

The next day we installed the permanent ramp.

I had to put this shot in because my brother was adamant that this was my blog so he wasn't to be in any of the shots. BS! If it weren't for my older brother, none of this would have been possible, in more ways than one (he was my inspiration for getting chickens in the first place). Here he is bonking his head on the floor joists in the mini-run. Speaking of which, this coop was clearly built for me. He's a few inches taller than me and has hit his head on doors and floors constantly. Hehe.

I love the gentle slope to the ramp. One of the many things my brother would have done differently on his had he known better. On mine he could.

The next time we met it was time to install the Plexiglas window in the clean-out door. I took over most of the measuring and cutting as it was determined that my younger, steadier hands cut straighter. MUAHAHAHA, take that big bro! hehe.

I must say the window fit perfectly, with a 1/4" gap for wiggle room, by design. Then we cut and installed 1x2s with a 1/2" reveal to hold the window in place.

I must say the trim was pretty heady stuff. We made on or two mistakes but ended up being able to use the scrap pieces of 1x2 elsewhere so it was no big deal. Here is a shot of the window in place. Didn't we do a bang up job?

Note that the side pieces look darker because I ran out of 1x2s and needed to use some scraps from my brother's project. He had spruce rather than pine. It's the inside and will be painted, so who cares.

Not much happened over the next few days as my brother was tired and busy with other projects over the Memorial Day weekend. I did get a chance to caulk in the window to keep it from moving and to weather proof it. At first I used a small tube of clear fixture silicone caulking, but found it didn't create a big enough bead and I clearly didn't have enough, so a quick trip to my neighborhood True Value and presto, I had a whole caulking tube full. It made quick work of it.

I think it turned out pretty nice, despite the hiccups along the way.

The last thing I've done to-date is this morning I built up a wall around the chicken door to keep as much bedding as possible off the door and out of the mini-run. If my brother's coop is any indication however, it's a lost cause. Anyway, I started by filling in those gaps that you see above. Not because I'm shooting for perfection, but I found one area where there was a small hole in the floor as a result of the reveal boards being too short. The simple fix was to cut a series of 1 inch pieces of 2x2 and attach them to the boards to extend them. Simple. Then I built it up with scrap 2x3 on edge. It was here when I ran into problems. We'd long since ran out of 2.5 inch screws and 2 inch screws just wouldn't cut it for a 2x3 on edge. That's when I ran to True Value again and got more screws, along with my own little friends (grip clamps) on the way to a BBQ at my brother's house. Finishing up will have to wait until tomorrow as the sun went down before we got back.

The saga continues, but that's plenty for today's post and all I've gotten done to-date. Please comment and tell me what you think. What would you have done differently?

Enjoy!

May 28, 2011

2011-05-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

First off, a bit thank you to everyone who's followed this new blog site! We just hit 50 folks. Thanks and I hope you enjoy it.

Many of you I've returned the favor and have found several new blogs to read on a regular basis. I try my best to comment when the post strikes my fancy. However, I'm very frustrated at the moment. For some reason I can no longer comment on folks posts. It now says I have to choose a profile. When I choose google, it asks me to log in (I should be already logged in). So I log in again, and it takes me back to my post. However, now it says "anonymous says" and then I type the word and it takes me back to logging into google. That process continues in a loop.

Needless to say, I have tons of comments I would like to make but have been unable to do so. Sorry folks. Anyone have any thoughts on how to fix this?

I guess for a blog post tonight, I'll talk compost! I haven't done that in a while.

Spring is the revival of my compost pile. This year, like so many others I'm doing a single pile while I use last year's compost from the other bin. It's not the way I would like to do it, but I just don't have the space for a three bin system.

Anyway, with spring comes the time to start mowing the lawn again. I've got a 1/4 acre of mostly grass, so when I mow, I have over a cubic yard of clippings. I was excited to be able to mix in my used bedding and droppings. A very new experience for me and one I've been looking forward to since I read how good chickens are for the garden!

Yep, one change of the potato bin brooder box creates about 10 gallons of bedding. At least it fills two 5 gallon buckets, hehe. I decided to use one bucket per yard.

After dumping the greens on top of the partially composted material, I added the kitchen compost, spread out the used bedding and wet it down.

Then, as my yard is so much work to mow, the next day I mowed the back and put it down on top, followed by the second bucket of bedding. I ended it up with the final bit of clippings.

So, in the end, one mowing created a compost pile that's 5x5x3'. My brother on the other hand, ripped out his front yard grass years ago and has to ask his neighbors for their clippings. Anyway, I need more browns in this bin. It was a bit stinky for the next several days as the nitrogen burned off into the air. Next time I guess I'll have to lay down more newspaper and mow it into the clippings. It's a good way to mix in browns. Odd looking but effective. Funny how I have access to countless sources of greens but very few browns in early spring. Sure there's the bedding, as well as leaves and twigs I mow up, but other than paper, what is there in abundance? And to think with this weather (rain one day, followed by a few days of partial sun) I'll have to mow again this week! It'll mean great compost next year.

Lastly, I was reading a back copy of my brother's Mother Earth News magazine, and there was an article about wood chips and sawdust as mulch in the garden. Apparently wood shavings with a bit of nitrogen material makes a great mulch and even though it breaks down slowly, over a few years it increases the amount of organic material in the soil more than any other mulch. It also makes an incredible mulch for blueberries and strawberries. Bingo! I just happen to have a blueberry/strawberry bed! I can't wait to try out using bedding as mulch to control weeds. I may just sacrifice using bedding in my compost if it means not having to weed that bed as often. It also increases the acidity in the soil, which blueberries love. Very cool. Hehe, I need more bedding, or another source of browns!

Enjoy your garden!

Special Tomato Post

2011-05-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Help, what's killing my tomatoes (now)!?

My guess is it's too much water on the leaves, as in we've had far too wet a spring than normal. Here's another shot.

It's not happening to all the plants, but a few of them. Other than that, none are growing despite multiple shots of fish emulsion. Very annoying. Makes me really want a greenhouse as my brother's store bought specimens are perfect because they were started in greenhouse conditions. Unfortunately the only place to put one is against the house in the front yard, well side yard. I am strongly leaning toward removing the grass and putting a half dozen 4x8 beds and a greenhouse. What's stopping me are two little boys that could use that roughly 30x40 space for all sorts of things growing up.

Anyway, my immediate dilemma is this problem with my tomatoes. Any ideas?

Lastly, I was talking to my brother during out coop building ordeal and I finally learned the difference between OP and Heirloom. Apparently all my heirloom tomatoes were orange last year because of cross pollination. Thank goodness I didn't save seed, because it would have bred orange going forward. As for heirloom, Gills All-Purpose can't be considered heirloom because it's not like 75 years old or something, it's only 25 years old. Gotta love rules like that. Very interesting.

Thanks for the comments!

Enjoy your garden!

May 26, 2011

2011-05-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

Man, I just checked my phone pictures and came up with yet another post... Boy they're piling up. I don't like to do more than one a day as many of my readers only check blogs once a day. So check back daily for the next few days as there will be many to read... and comment on if you're so inclined!

As promised, this post will be all about the chick's adventures outside. I confess that being behind in my blogging made yesterday's post seem a bit out of place... the girls have actually been outside most of the day every day for the last 5 days. And to say they love it is an understatement.

I have a timer on their light (a CFL now that their feathers are in) to effectively mirror daylight, 6 AM to 9 PM, but I don't take them out of their brooder until around 10 AM when my youngest is up and dressed to help. I start by moving the water and food outside. I still need to head to the feed store for bigger containers. Then it's time to move the chickens! Dot and Twinkydink are really good and just about walk into your palm. Summer and Buffy on the other hand, run away, though Summer only half-heartedly so.

Right now it's a very labor intensive process as I either need more than one person transporting them, or have both hands free to have one in each arm.

On this day however, I had more help than I could ever hope for...

Isn't he cute? Well, finally, we make it to the ark. I love how light it is so I can easily slide it around the yard to a new place every day. I actually move it before I take Summer and Buffy out for the evening, as I have to crawl in after them. I move it so I don't kneel in droppings. Which I am letting compost in place.

Did I mention the kids love to help with this part?!

They have been outside, rain or shine for most of the daylight hours of the day, which is my intention since my mini-run is only 18 SF and has no predator protection. However, I was talking to my brother the other day, and we agreed, that in a pinch, the coop could count as space to keep them content, so that's 38 SF, just shy of the 40 recommended for full-time space for 4 chickens. That would allow us to keep them completely under cover on really bad Northwest days. Though for the most part this is where they will hang out during the day. Of course before it gets to be fall, I'll need some sort of cover, which I am currently planning on 1/3 plywood to accommodate a nesting box in the peak. The way I figure it, with a handle on top I will be able to lift and lean and move it fine standing behind the covered part. For the remaining 2/3 of the ark, on really bad days I can throw a tarp over it. It would be great to get a clear 5x8 tarp with grommets to bungee cord in place as necessary.

So, there you have it, for the time being the ark is done. I find it difficult at best to work on the ark with the girls in it, so I may need to wait until the coop is done to make any more additions, other than a handle to move it. So enjoy the last video (Photobucket and Blogger weren't talking to each other well, so I had to upload them directly from my computer. Hope they turn out ok, and enjoy!

May 25, 2011

2011-05-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

Man, this chicken coop project is going nowhere fast and the chickens were getting more and more anxious. Maybe it was the sun breaks they could sort of see when I left the garage door open for ventilation, or maybe it was just that they were too big and getting on each others nerves. Women never do that though, do they?

So, with the prospects of moving them outside anytime soon fading like our sunny days in spring, I decided to do something about it. I may not be able to get very far on my chicken coop solo, but I could throw together some 2x2s into a chicken tractor (though I like the term ark better, and not because it's what they say in Europe).

It all started one day that I was frustrated by the slow progress on the coop, but didn't know how to proceed. The sun was shining-ish so I grabbed my screw gun, set up my chop saw and took a 2x2 off the pile.

I'm not sure whether or not I'm a visual learner, an auditory one, or one of those new-fangled kinetic ones, but I do like to lay out my projects, if only to see if I've got enough parts to build it. You may also notice I'm in the front yard, not the back. My youngest had noticed the sunny weather and began clamoring to ride his bike in the cul-du-sac across the street. This was my solution. He rides where I can see him, I get my work done. It had worked well when I mowed the front the day before.

Oh, and the chair is because I had just mowed the (foot tall) lawn, shame on me. Took forever and I was exhausted and sore the next day. Funny, I never really figured out how to sit in it and do the project. I did sit (read collapse) on the ground a few times. I was in my work jeans, so no biggie.

The cuts on this project (so far) were very simple. Take two 8 foot 2x2s and lay them out, then start cutting a mess of them in half. Two 4 footers for the bottom sides, and six for uprights as this is going to be a triangular ark. Then came the task of putting two screws into the end of 2x2s without splitting them. Good luck with that even if you pre-drill.

Ain't it purdy?! Sure the 2x2s are just leaning together, but you can definitely see the shape now. Very quickly this project was coming together.

Putting the top 2x2 on was a challenge. First off, nobody had a 10 foot 2x2 that wasn't pre-primed and bowed something fierce. So, I had to just make due with what they had. Next, the first side was going to be easy to attach to the top, but the other side would need to be cut at an angle. The problem was, which angle? I got lucky with my nesting box rafters with 15 degrees or whatever, but I didn't for a second thing I could simply divine the proper angle for a given situation. That and it's been way too long since High School calculus class (I regret opting out of college calculus using my AP credits). In other words, I can't for the life of me remember how to figure out the proper angle. Anyway, long story short, I got lucky again. It fit the first time, so I cut the other two and put it together. My wife had to help with the final assembly, it wasn't a one-person job.

Unlike my brother, who made a 3 foot high ark in the same style (can you tell we researched things and discussed them to death, coming up with the "best" practice?), I went with a 4 foot high (close enough) so I could crawl in to retrieve my stubborn girls. I hadn't thought it through clearly though, because after I flattened out my chicken wire, I realized that it was exactly 4 foot wide. Thankfully it stretches, more like bends, if necessary to attach to the frame. Besides, if I leave a one-inch gap at the top, it's not like they can fly through it.

For the "back" side, I simply cut a 4 foot square, attached it and cut off the ends. By the end, I would be regretting not borrowing my brother's tin snips. Using wire cutters for this project was a tiring process. The other side however, needs to be able to open to let the chickens in, and for me to crawl in after them. I have great plans for this ark, but for now, I just need to let the chicks have some outside time. I settled on a very temporary solution... bungee cords!

It may not be pretty, but it's functional. Have you heard that before from me? Yep, that's me, functional but not pretty. Hehe. All I have to do is remove two of the bungee cords and presto, the "door" opens. Tada!

Moving it is very easy as it's currently light as a feather. It will get heavier once the front door is on, and the paneling is up on one side to provide rain protection and a place for a second floor nesting box. Although it's very light, it is a bit awkward, so getting it into the backyard (through the gate) required my wife again. At least turning it upside down made it so we didn't need to lift it over our heads. Whatever works!

Next up, getting the chicks outside...

Enjoy, I'm sure the chickens will!

May 24, 2011

2011-05-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

Wow! What do you get when you add lots of rain, a little sunshine and three square feet of compost around an apple tree that produced exactly one apple last year?

Ahem, please ignore the buttercups in the background, they've gone wild and it appears the chicks don't care for them, so I need to just yank them out.

Back to the apple tree. This year, for whatever reason, the tree has just exploded with blooms!

I am so impressed that I really want to figure out what, if anything, we did to make this happen. I want to do it again next year. Of course, what's needed are bees for pollination, but thankfully, since I've been out with the chickens, or working on the coop, I've happily seen dozens of bees (both HONEY and bumble) playing amongst the flowers. Yay! Now if only they made it to the blueberries and will stick around until the plum tree blooms.

The only time in the four year history of this tree that we have gotten anywhere close to this level of production was the second year. That year I thinned out all but one apple per cluster. I will likely do that again, and maybe limit it to 15 to 20 apples total. Thoughts?

Oh, and just to let you know, this should be one of many posts in the near future as I work through my uploaded pictures. Lots of action going on at the Davies homestead! Exciting times!

Enjoy your garden!

May 21, 2011

2011-05-21T22:54:00.001-07:00

Boy, I've been so busy lately I can't imagine having time to work. I guess it's been more that we haven't had nice days like this in a very long time. In fact, I heard we hadn't had a temperature over 70 since November 3, 2010. No wonder even my cool weather crops are languishing. So here is another chicken post. They unfortunately are growing like weeds! Take a look.

I think I should give my alpha her due, so here's Summer, staying still for her close-up.

And now to show off her gorgeous coloring, here is her lovely feathering...

Even though she's closer to the bottom of the pecking order, Twinkydink definitely daddy's girl. She'll come right up to me and let me grab her under the breast, no problem, and will sit in my arms for about as long as I want her to. She's also my favorite for her coloring.

My next most docile would be Dot, my Wyndotte. She may very well grow into my favorite coloring if she gets that rare green sheen to her like some of her breed get. For now she's still up their with her golden flecks in those dark feathers. Pretty huh?

Last and certainly least, Buffy the Butthead, and no I don't use that name around the kids, but boy is she annoying. Not only does she hate me and run away from me every chance she gets, but she's taken to picking on the rest of her sisters. What a bully! Pretty though.

Don't think she looks ornery in that picture, take a look at these! My wife kept trying to get a good shot of her but she kept on squirming.

I finally had to hold her tight to keep her from flying away or clawing me. She's actually showing some signs of being a he, and if that's the case, I won't feel bad at all about getting rid of him. S(he)'s a jerk!

Well, that's it for our individual shots, now here's a group photo of the girls cleaning up their mess they spilled while I refill their food tray. They definitely pick through it to get the tasty seeds and leave the powdery mash alone. I've taken to just topping it off rather thank dumping it. Saves money that way.

To end, I will share another video that was taken a week ago. Shame on me not posting this sooner. Sorry folks. I will try to be more vigilant.

Enjoy!

May 16, 2011

2011-05-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

I know I really should have a garden post or two to throw in, though with the weather we've been having (coldest, wettest spring on record), not even the cool-weather crops are growing, and my brassicas are getting demolished by slugs. It's so bad I refuse to plant out my next batch until the weather improves. I won't have the slugs get to these babies. They may be all I get.

So anyway, not that you need one, but today's yet another chicken coop post. I mean, if you think about it, the chickens are getting so big and ready to go out, that I pretty much HAVE to finish this coop. If you've been over to my brother's blog, you'll see he's almost done. So, I've pretty much let my yard go to the weeds and every dry day (we've had 4 in the last 3 months) I've worked on my coop. The last such day was devoted to the nesting boxes, and thus this post was born.

The more I've watched my brother's coop go up, the more I've learned to appreciate scrap material. I bought a ton of 2x2s for building my nesting box, but I also have a ton of scrap 2x2s in the 3 foot range from my potato bin project a few years ago. Sure they've been exposed to the elements for a few years, but they all seemed in good shape, so I saved the pristine boards for another project (like my tractor that needs to be built), and started cutting boards based on my brother's box. I have pictures on my phone of his box and copied it the best I could. Here are the first four boards cut and laid out on the ground. You'll find I built it on the ground before anything got screwed in place.

I ended up cutting the front and back walls to provide a 3 inch fall for drainage. It is a bit more than I need (2 inches or so), but what the hey, I had the room.

Then came yet another decision... how deep to make it. My brother wasn't answering his phone (he never does... grrr), so I ended up choosing 16 inches deep. I was finding just the right boards to fit my needs, with minimal scrap. That more can you ask for?

For the actually assembly, I didn't want to do it on the ground, so I moved the pieces to the cutting table. There I laid it back out, making sure I had the best side facing the chicks, even though it will be painted. Then I drilled pilot holes and then screwed it into place.

After the first side was done, I started building the box for real. It was here where I realized my brother had it right when he borrowed my dad's screw gun so he had one with a drill bit and the other to screw in the screws. Good idea, but I only had one screw gun (and it's warped to boot after dropping it one too many times), so this build was slow going.

Finally! I had it built, just the way my brother did his...

Well, not exactly. I had it built and then realized that the top cross bar needed to be in line with the top of the front wall, not in line with the back wall. Oops. So I now have two holes in the frame that don't need to be there. No biggie.

Finally, I had to decide how long of an overhang to go. Again, without any guidance, I decided on 4 inches. I was fairly pleased with myself though. After thinking about my brother having to caulk the top rafters where they butted up against the coop, I decided to trim them at some angle to make it flush with the coop. Not having my protractor handy, I guessed 10 degrees. And I was right! It turned out perfect. Yay me!

Now I know I'm not done with it, but it was at that point family obligations took over. Still, I'm pleased with the results, and I didn't have to use a single board from my newly purchased material to build this. Very cool!

Hope you enjoy this post! Let me know your thoughts.

May 15, 2011

2011-05-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN DURING THE MAINTENANCE TIME AND IT FINALLY REAPPEARED, SO HERE IT IS!

Well, in case you're keeping track, this is my second chicken coop post in a row. It's not that things aren't going on in the garden, it's just that the chicks are getting SO big that I need to get this coop done. So, in preparation of good weather Tuesday, I set up a time to get together with my father-in-law and tackle the roof. I wanted a day of nothing but the roof so I could get the plywood up, and the roofing on so when we returned to rain Wednesday, the coop would be protected. That meant getting the materials Tuesday. What that actually meant was getting my brother to help after dinner. We started at 7:30 PM with me helping him install a few pieces of his nearly complete coop before we headed for Lowe's.

When we got there, we worked on my list that my father-in-law gave me. We went with half-inch plywood this time, the 3/8s was too flimsy for a heavy roof. I was thankful that we found a worker that late to help us in roofing, because I didn't have a clue. He directed us to some returns sitting on a pallet in the back of the store. Apparently there was a special order of a pallet that got some returned. The packaging was trashed, so they couldn't sell it. He gave it to us for less than half price. Small favors... Long story short, we left at 10:30 PM exhausted and not getting to Home Depot for the remainder of my list.

Jump forward to 8:00 AM on Tuesday and my father-in-law shows up. This was his first look at the re-built coop in it's current condition. He immediately saw where I had installed the floor framing incorrectly, so I had to fix that. It was almost 10:00 AM before we even started the roofing project. Apparently I hadn't made it clear that I needed the roof done before we finished. Not happy, he proceeded to cut the rafter ends to all be equal (I hadn't done anything more than try to get them close when I installed them). Believe me when I say the most over-used statement of the day was "it's just a chicken coop!"

Then we proceeded to install the 1x4 fascia boards. His idea was to give me 1 foot overhang on both ends, even though I didn't have rafters out that far (my brother does on his). He solved this by using false rafters made from 1x4s. Then we installed more rafter blocking in the middle of my coop because I was mistaken on how you orient your 4x8s on a roof. Go figure. I've misunderstood everything on this project so far. Hehe. Oh, and you may have noticed a lack of photos so far. I'm sorry to say the whole day it never crossed my mind to take pics of the progress. I was so hell-bent on getting it done.

Anyway, it was nearly 2 before the felt paper was down and we figured out how to access the roof. For the first time ever, I configured our 16' folding ladder into a 4 foot high platform. Throwing all my remaining building materials on top gave it enough strength to have nearly 500 pounds of weight on it. I swear a bundle of shingles must way well over 50 pounds. I could heft it on my shoulder but I couldn't climb a ladder like that. Thankfully, my father-in-law showed me how to install roofing by having me put it down for the first few rows before he left. By then I'd convinced my brother to drop what he was doing and come over to help. In the end he did more sitting around and playing with my kids than helping, but it was easier to have him on the ground prepping the half-tiles than cutting them in place.

All I can say is I'm very happy I didn't need to climb on top of the roof to install the shingles. I could reach the middle from both sides just standing on the scaffold. It was clear that with a few hundred pounds of roofing on the coop, that thing is so top-heavy it likely won't hold me. Hopefully once the siding is installed on the short sides, it will lock it in place better, but it will always be top-heavy.

In the end, roofing isn't hard at all, it was actually fun, though I'd hate to roof a house. That's for far younger people than me. It was after swimming lessons and dinner that I remembered to take pictures. I was cleaning up the tools so they didn't get rained on today and I was losing light. Hope you can make out our handy work.

Here you can see the fascia boards including the false rafter on the closest end. It turned out better than I'd expected.

I included this to show the scaffolding that worked so well. It wasn't wobbly at all, even with two of us moving around and moving past each other whipping it out.

Again, sorry for the darkness, not sure if the flash helped or hurt, but here is the best shot I had of the roofing material. It's actually two different brands, but dark charcoal goes with black nicely.

Enjoy!

May 8, 2011

2011-05-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there! Today we celebrated my mom, two aunts and of course, my wonderful wife! Yesterday was my mother-in-law. Anyway, just now writing a post on last Sunday.

I should start by saying we decided to move the coop to my house to continue working on it as it was getting way too heavy to move easily. So much for 2x3s cutting down on the weight much. To move it, we decided to take it apart to move it for several reasons. One was it was easier to transport. Two it allowed us to fix a few things we decided to change about it, namely the width of the coop and the length of the rafters, as well as replace a warped roof. And three it was much lighter to move to and from the truck.

Unfortunately, after it got to my house, I found the weather conspiring against me. I could count on one finger the days good enough to work on the coop Also, I've found I am not as good at construction as my brother is. He's been working little by little and is nearly done with his coop. Mine just sits in the back yard as I am afraid to do anything myself. About all I was comfortable doing was putting it back together the way my father-in-law helped, with a few changes addressed above. And even then, I had my dad there to direct me.

First things first, I cut 41 inch boards to create the spacing for the width of the coop. 36 inches didn't accommodate the two 2x3s we connected it to. Oops. That completed, decided while I was at it to re-think my roof plans. Water from the constant rain had warped the 3/8" plywood used for the roof, so it was removed and will be used for scrap. I decided to change to 5/8" plywood for the roof, and not to buy or install it until I could shingle it the same day. Oh, and why not, I would not use a single 4x8 sheet, but have a seem in the middle. That way I could have a bigger overhang. Bantering back and forth with my dad resulted in my getting my wish for a 2 foot overhang in front to give me shelter from the rain. So, 78 inch rafters replaced our 4 foot ones. More scrap. Here are the first two installed, along with the floor framing in place.

And here's me drilling pilot holes and starting screws for the rest of the rafters.

A few minutes later and presto, rafters up! Isn't this a gorgeous day?!

Not exactly why we decided on a 1 foot overhang in the back, but hopefully it will keep water from running down the plywood which will only be painted. Not shown is all the blocking that got re-installed. Thankfully I was only a fraction off the original spacing so most of the blocking pieces could be reused as is. Made quick work of it.

In speaking to my father-in-law about the changes, he said we really needed fascia on the ends of the rafters. I'll buy pre-primed fascia and rip it down to 3 inches so we can buy one board for both sides.

Anyway, it was at that point that I gave up for the day. And since it was planning on raining the next day (read week), I took out my multi-purpose hoop cover plastic and threw it over the coop. Rain wouldn't warp any more boards if I could help it.

And there it's sat for over a week. We've had exactly one good day in the last 10, Wednesday. The plan was to buy the roofing stuff and have my father-in-law over to slap it together. Then, as if someone were conspiring against me, I got a call for an interview... my first in months, for 2 PM on Wednesday, right in the middle of the day. Alas, that canceled the work party, and then today was the only good day since. Since it was Mother's Day, I thought it best not to work on my coop and cut out on the party. hehe.

Tuesday looks like the next good day, and I had better make hay while the sun shines, so-to-speak, because they girls are getting antsy and bigger by the day.

Maybe tomorrow I'll surprise myself and build the framing for the nesting boxes. Stranger things have happened.

Enjoy!

May 1, 2011

2011-05-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

This post is a little late as I temporarily lost my camera, so here's a post I started about last weekend.

Well, I'm sure you all had busy weekends, but I wasn't nearly as productive as I'd hoped to be. For one, I had two back-to-back baseball games for the boys on Saturday that blew the morning and part of the beautiful afternoon. Then I found out that my much needed coop construction was on hold for the day. I have come to realize I am not a construction guy, at least without clear direction. So I turned my attention to something I know, or at least think I know, my garden.

A quick garden tour told me I had tons of badly germinated spots in my pea row, so I started soaking some peas. Then I watered since as odd as it seems, we haven't had much rain of late, so at least the top inch was dry. I still need to replace the spigot on the hose bib in the back, so I have no water to the back yard, so I have to go around to the front of the house to get water and use a watering can. I wish I didn't need to turn off the water to the house to change it out. I am having all sorts of faucet problems this month. First it was the kitchen, then the main bath, now the outside faucet. Someone's telling me to set up my rain barrels after a year of sitting there.

What I could do right away was finally plant out my tomatoes. They were at a point where they either needed potting up or to be tossed in the trash. I figured what did I have to lose. So I grabbed some compost and mixed it into the SWC. I know you're supposed to not use the same dirt you used for tomatoes the previous year, but gardeners have been planting tomatoes in the same plot of dirt for eons, so I used half last year's Mel's Mix and half new compost. They'll either love it or they won't.

Then came the difficult task of getting the monsters into the SWCs. Some were easy because they were just bushy, or sticks, but a few were to the moon, which required my eldest son to hold the top while I de-potted it and planted it in the container. Don't these look nice? Oh, and sorry for the bad shadows, my main garden area doesn't get late afternoon/evening sun, and I was working late Saturday.

Next, I couldn't forget to fertilize. Per my garden buddy Judy in Alabama, the best tomato fertilizer is part Epsom Salt and part all-purpose tomato fertilizer. In a SWC, this goes in a shallow furrow between the two plants.

Then it was simply a task of placing the cages into the bins. I must say this was no simple task indeed! The plants were so tall and branches spindly that I didn't want to break anything. Eventually, they were planted out.

As much as I wanted to have tons of tomatoes this year. My poor germination earlier this year made me scrounge to fill three SWCs (6 tomatoes). In my third SWC went the volunteer that did so well and the one I grew from succession (read emergency) replanting. So I'll have two Stupices this year. One's flowering already so the other one can really be a succession planting. I sure hope I can figure out what that volunteer is, because it's growing so well and healthy, I'd like to grow it again, even if it means I need to save seed to do it.

Lastly, my final tomato did rather poorly, even more so than the others, when I hardened them off. Note to self, no matter how nice and calm the day, don't leave your plants out all day in the beginning of the process. When I took a look at the nearly dead one, I found it was my only "surviving" Sunset Red Horizon. I bought that seed and really wanted to taste it. Last year nothing grew well, so I was really hopeful for this year. So hopeful that I planted a stick.

Of course I didn't waste an entire SWC for that little sickly stick. Instead I planted it in the scrap SWC material I have next to my kids experiment gardens. I was planning on planting peas there (I found a package I don't remember trying before, but didn't want to mix them in the main beds). Now I don't know what I'll plant next to it. Maybe one of the really late growers I still have upstairs.

What a great segway to the plants still hanging out under lights upstairs. I had totally forgotten them. What's worse, I had forgotten that I had turned the fan on to help my broccoli and cauliflower not be so leggy this time. It had only been two days, but the fan must have dried out the plants. When I went upstairs to put the last of my tomatoes that weren't quite ready to plant, back under lights, I found this scene...

MY BRASSICAS!!!! I killed my succession crops of broccoli and cauliflower to hopefully be preserved for winter consumption. Still I had to try putting them on life support, so I ran and grabbed the defibrillator, aka, watering can, and tried to save them. I could keep you in suspense, but I won't. The next day I went to check on them and found this radically different scenario.

They have odd coloring, but the leaves all perked up nicely, so there's hope for them yet. I don't think I'll continue with the fan though. I'm just too spotty on watering my light system, out of sight, out of mind, as they say. Oh, and the other container on the right? It's got a tomato sucker growing that I'm not sure I'll plant out, as well as some wheat grass my son's preschool class planted. Is that something we'd eat raw, say in smoothies? Or something to feed to the cats or chickens? Not pictured here is the tiny seedling I had hardened off that I potted up into a quart container and put back under lights. Can't hurt to experiment can it?

Enjoy your garden!

April 27, 2011

2011-04-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I feel with this post, I'm finally catching up with myself a bit, blogging wise. I've been dying to write this post for several days now, but it just didn't fit. This is going to be very picture heavy as I wanted to show you everything. Yes, it's another chicken post, but it represents a bit of a milestone of sorts. The chicks are now just over one month old, well three of the four are. Buffy's one month today. So Monday after Easter, I finally took pity on the teenagers and gave them keys to their new car... no, not a car, but a new house at least. They've been acting crazy in their confined space, something I've read about, but never witnessed. I figured it was finally time to do something about it before they started pecking each other. In case you're wondering, this is how big they were on moving day!

My how they've grown in 4 short weeks! So, with the help of my youngest, who is off school Mondays, we cleared a space in the garage for the huge Costco potato box and I cut the octagon and placed it in the bottom of the bin to cover the gaping hole in the middle. Here my little guy wanted to be in the picture and in the bin, sporting his PJs.

You may notice the dozen or so holes at the bottom of the bin. My brother's bin didn't have those, so I spent about 15 minutes cutting small pieces of cardboard and duct taping them on the outside of the bin. I wasn't worried about the girls getting out those holes, but they'd definitely kick bedding out them, which would be a big mess. Then my son and I filled the bin with what seemed like a ton of wood shavings. We went about 3 inches deep.

Sorry for the mess, the garage still needs to be cleared out of all the stuff we don't want or need to find a place for. You know how it is. Anyway, I had been straightening out the 3 foot wide piece of 1/2" hardware cloth that my brother gave me for the roof, for several days. Though when I placed it on top, I realized there was a several inch gap on either side that would be problematic. I wasn't worried about the birds escaping as they're too big to fit through, but I didn't want them trying to escape and getting hurt on the sharp wire. So, what now? Well, I thought back to the cover I figured out for the previous brooder. I had plenty of window screens saved from our renovation project two years ago. I've used them with limited success to shade my lettuce during the heat of the summer to stave of bolting. Out back I had three big screens, so I grabbed two and threw them on top. Presto! I had my lid.

Oh and I took about an hour to figure out the proper position for the heat lamp. It took my three foot chain I bought for the lamp, plus a few saved chain pieces that came with my shop lights for my light system, but I got 70 degrees. I really should be at 65 now, but I decided to give them a few more days at 70 to ease the transition. I've found the temp on the other side of the brooder is about 60 degrees, so in a few weeks, I'll remove the lamp altogether.

At this point, it was time to move over all the gear from the old brooder. Boy were they confused when I took the water and food away. It was at this point that I had to do some tinkering with the pieces to fit the new brooder, as well as, their new larger size. For one, the 2x6 I used to keep the water bedding-free was too low, so I screwed some scrap 2x4s and 2x2s to the bottom to raise it up a few inches. Next, I took two 2x4s and placed the food on it rather than on the bedding itself to keep it from becoming covered with shavings. Finally, I had to figure a way to stabilize the roost. Before it was braced by the 2x6 that the water rested on, as well as, the brooder wall. Now it was just too wobbly on the bedding. So, looking around the garage, I found just what I needed... a paint stir stick. I cut it in two and screwed it into the bottom of the roost. Good as new. Hey, if you hadn't figured it out by now, I'm completely function over fashion.

So, here's their new digs before they moved in.

While this new brooder was sitting empty of chicks, the old brooder was sitting empty of gear, but full of chickens...

I promise this is the last picture of my spare bathroom you'll have to see. But it is noteworthy that I made use of my old versatile cone light with just a 100 watt bulb to keep them warm while I was tinkering with the new brooder and bringing it to the right temperature. Oh yes, I will also say that I will definitely miss having such close access to water next to my brooder. The nearest water to the new brooder is this same sink, about 40 feet away through three rooms. Hehe, yeah, I'm showing how lazy I am.

Next, it was time to move the girls. Rather than to traumatize them by moving them in the brooder, I brought each one at a time out to the new brooder. They all did very well, though Buffy is still skittish around me. So, here they are in their new digs! They don't look quite so big in it, which is the whole point of the exercise. Can you believe this box will only be used for another month! I shudder to think what they'll look like when they move out to their coop?

Later that night, I decided to change the roost yet again. I found it was way too short for them all to roost on, so I grabbed a scrap piece of 2x3 from the garden and replace the 2x2. Now it's definitely long enough for all them, and it is the same size board as their eventual permanent roost in their coop.

I've taken to spending a ton more time with them now that I don't have to sit on the thrown to watch them. I've spent hours sitting and reading my book watching them in their new digs. They've torn up all the bedding looking for worms (or maybe the grit I threw down knowing they'd dig). I may add a 2x2 to one side of the food to allow any of them that want to peck down into the food the ability to do so. Though Buffy can use it, I've found she isn't eating as much as the others. She needs to eat to catch up if she wants to be the biggest hen (she is by breed). Another possible change is to raise the height of the roost. There's not much room to go up in this box, but I could increase it a few inches. I'd like to transition them better to the coop, where the roost will be two feet off the bedding to be higher than the nesting box.

Anyway, at this point, I thought I show you my brother's brooder box for comparison purposes. I'm not sure everyone that reads my blog reads his too.

Similar, but different for sure.

Hope you've enjoyed my chicken adventure towards greater sustainability!

April 26, 2011

2011-04-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Man, my blog schedule is filling up. Must be Spring! But I wanted to get this post out there, so it'll offset the coop construction posts.

I was out the the garden the other day, taking my tomatoes for their walk and checking on the rest of the garden. What I found was my spinach bed was sprouting like mad.

I've been reading my garden buddy's blogs and found many using row covers for their spinach to keep the leaf miner flies away. I've had issues every year with leaf miners, so I figured I'd give it a try. I saw them with their fancy mesh covers and thought... "I've got something like that." Sure enough, I'd saved the mesh covers from our recent couch purchase for gardening. They tear easily, but I found a small one that was in good shape. So, I threw it over the bed and weighed it down with some scrap 2x2s my kids were playing with and left all over my garden.

That was all fine and good for a few days, but when it rained, the mesh would be plastered to the ground. That couldn't be good for the poor little seedlings. So I had an idea. I could use some of those scrap 2x2s to raise the row cover! I just leaned them up against the side of the bed, sort of wedged between the bed and the hoop cover stands.

It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but I manged to wrangle the row cover over the bed, held up by the 2x2s. It doesn't have to hold up to a Fall wind storm, and it's very temporary, so I don't care if it looks good. As you're likely well aware by now, I'm a function over fashion kind of guy.

Since this time, I've thought about maybe throwing my hoops up and draping it over them. I'd probably need one of the bigger covers for that. Of course, this is only temporary, RIGHT?!

How long does this need to be up? Watering's a pain, but not nearly as painful as destroying ruined spinach! If it needs to be up for a long time, I'll definitely get the hoops out and make something more user-friendly.

Thoughts?

Enjoy your garden!

April 25, 2011

2011-04-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we had the best weather of Spring, meaning it didn't rain and the sun was shining for part of the time. Knowing this was likely going to happen from the weather report, my brother and I had a plan. At 8 AM I called him and my father-in-law to set the ball rolling. My youngest cried and cried when I said he couldn't come, so my folks offered to watch him. Dropped off my eldest at the bus stop and raced to Home Depot. There I cleaned them out of decent 2x3s and bought a handful of sheets of 3/8" CDX plywood. Finally, I picked up most of the hardware needed for the chicken coop for the girls. Yes, Friday was the day it all started in earnest!

We ended up doing the initial assembly at my folks place as they have a flat paved surface next to their house. We set up there and started cutting.

Sorry, no pics of me, as I was the dolt behind the camera, on my knees screwing in boards. My father-in-law used his nail gun to keep the boards in place for me to then screw them in.

While the wall framing was on the ground, we took the opportunity to put on some of the plywood. Then we stood it up and carefully joined the two walls together.

You can see the gap at the top of the facing wall. That is going to be the primary ventilation for the coop. It will be 3 SF which is not quite the recommended amount for 3 birds, but I am still unclear on the proper placement of the louvre vents to create good air flow without creating a draft. I figure they'll be near the top in the middle to keep any air from passing by the roosts on one side and the nesting boxes on the other. I've read tons on ventilation, but the fear of creating a draft is really worrying me.

Oh, and In case you're wondering, I made the front (facing) side 7 feet tall to insure I had enough space to have the nesting boxes about 10 inches higher than the floor to allow for using the deep litter method if I so choose, while still having the boxes be higher than the bedding. Then the roosts have to be higher than the nesting boxes, all while allowing for an indeterminate, as yet, number of lights or heat lamps above that. Since I had 8 foot studs, I had the latitude. We also made the front wall 4 inches higher than the back to allow for rain run-off for a slanted roof. Speaking of the roof...

Man the rafters took a long time. Each block between them had to be measured and cut to different lengths. We didn't maintain an exact 16 inches on center. It's a chicken coop after all! The overhang will be about 1 foot to hopefully allow for some rain protection while I'm servicing the unit. Kind of a must for the Pacific Northwet. It also will keep MOST of the rain out of the vent area, which would add water to the coop in a bad way. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid getting water in if we get vertical driving rains, which happens some days in the fall.

As you can see on the left hand side, below the vents (with the block cripples) is an approximate 4x3' door frame that will be cut out, framed with 2x2s and hinged for a service door, right at waist level for me so I can reach all the way in.

At this point we stopped to cut the frame boards for my brother's coop so we could determine a list for Lowes the next day. Both stores are equidistant from my house and since I bought all the 2x3s Home Depot had and needed 15 more, I got them from the crap Lowes had for sale. I must have went through half a pallet to find 15 boards that weren't bowed, wracked, overly marred or split.

Although the coop is sitting next to my folks house in the front yard, I'm not afraid of anyone taking it. It took my brother and I to lift it slightly and walk it 10 feet, and we're not even half way done adding weight to it. It seems that 2x3s and 3/8" plywood didn't reduce the weight much. However, I feel sorry for my brother who's using 2x4s since he had so much scrap (about half the frame's worth). What he's saving in money will be offset by the weight of the final product. It's been decided that before we add any more weight to it, we're moving it to my house. It's going to be tough enough to get it into my brother's truck to transport it here as-is, let alone when it's finished.

We only worked Friday, and not Saturday, despite the nice weather, because everyone wanted to get ready for Easter. Since then it's been a combination of bad weather and a family get-together, so nothing more's been done, but I plan on doing more just as soon as the weather improves, and certainly not waiting for the weekend. Boy the girls are getting big, I figure we've got one month to finish this before they go outside.

Hope you've enjoyed seeing my coop progress.

Enjoy your garden!

April 24, 2011

2011-04-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter all! I hope you spent this time with family and friends and all the kiddos enjoyed it as well. Mine sure did, despite missing the egg hunt at our local nursery twice (we went yesterday too, a day early). We showed up at 9 am and it was "over" having started at 9. Ah well, it gave time for the Easter Bunny to make it to our house which was the main reason for going. Everyone knows the Easter Bunny won't come if you are watching... just like a pot won't boil or seeds won't germinate.

Anyway, I've not been posting much of late, as I've said, because my wife's been out of it so I've been stuck doing everything for the family. That hasn't meant I haven't been gardening, just not blogging. Priorities, I'm sure you will agree.

As much as there is good news on the chicken front to share, as Alton Brown of "Good Eats" fame likes to say, "that's another show." This post will be all about tomatoes, namely extricating them from my light system and starting the whole hardening off process.

As you may remember from my last garden post, I was at the end of my rope... er... chain again upstairs under the light system, and I didn't want to figure out a lower box to set the tomatoes on, so I'd left it alone for far too long. When I finally tried to move the tomatoes, several of them had actually grown AROUND the light bulbs, making me damage some branches removing them. In hind sight, I guess I could have taken the bulbs out, but I did it late at night and just wanted it finished.

As for the dead branches lower down, that's a lack of water. I just don't have big enough pots to pot up these babies another time. I've never had to before as they'd be much smaller when it was time to plant them out into the SWCs. This was a test to plant much earlier. I should have planned ahead and scrounged up bigger pots like my brother did.

So, one by one, with minimal light in the room as I couldn't get to turn on the lights manually with this extended setup, I moved them downstairs to the unheated garage. They would spend each night in that room sitting on top of my all-purpose chest freezer that is about the only flat surface of the house that is regularly cluttered but always cleared as we need to get things out of it (if only the whole house was like that). It took an inordinate amount of time, but finally they were downstairs and ready to rock.

The funny thing about the picture above, is that I couldn't fit all the plants into the picture. I could either get the bottom of the pots, or the top of the Black Cherry tomato plant. Man has it skyrocketed. It won't even say straight up with a stake in it, it's so top heavy. Actually, many of them are having troubles with the staking. They really need to get hardened off in a hurry.

The next day was the first sunny day in a very long time. I needed to get them in the best light possible as they would be up against the east side of the garage, which gets full sun from dawn until about noon. Unfortunately where it sits it's blocked by a garden bed. So, to raise the plants up above the bed, I grabbed two 5-gallon buckets and threw a few 2x2s over them to create a make-shift table.

In case you're wondering, if I ever get the funds to build or buy a greenhouse, this is the only spot for it. Not the ideal location given the sun conditions, but I could fit a 6x6 greenhouse there if necessary.

Anyway, the tomatoes went on two seedling trays to give them room to get enough sun. Boy to they look ready to plant! Too bad they weren't hardened off.

Fast forward three days and various weather conditions (they're protected from the rain by the eves), and they don't look very healthy, in fact, my Sunset Red Horizon is on death's door, and it's one of the smaller plants. Maybe I shouldn't have left them out there about 10 hours each day, sometimes until it was very dark and the temps had dropped to the mid 40s, but life commitments made bring them into a light setup after a few hours impossible. I sure hope they come back. I'd hate for all this work to be for not.

Enjoy your garden!

April 21, 2011

2011-04-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

Well tomorrow's Earth Day, and I'm not ready. The weather's been so cold here that I haven't even taken my seedlings for a walk yet. They're currently overgrown up in the light room, but it's all I can do to let them grow AROUND my lights. I need them out of there so bad!

My tomatoes are so big, they don't need staking as much as they need tomato cages already! I am dreading moving them once, let alone taking them in and out of the garage every day for a week! Actually, I guess after I finish this post, I'll brave moving them to the garage for the evening as the lights will be just about turning off by then. Then tomorrow's supposed to be fairly nice, so I'll put them under the eves in the garden area, fairly well protected from wind and rain.

I'm beginning to wonder if starting them the first of the year was such a good idea? I guess if Mother Nature had cooperated and had any sort of Spring this year, I could have planted them out early and been done with it, but we've had hail, wind, freezing rain and nighttime temps as low as 27 degrees. I call that an extension of Winter rather than Spring. /sigh

I guess I've been hiding out and hiding behind my sick wife as I do everything to take care of the kids and her. I haven't even taken any pictures. I promise I will as I move out the seedlings for the first time, and everything else that happens tomorrow.

Yes, I promise tomorrow will be a productive day. I have called all parties and intend to start the coop construction process! I even hope finally get the girls out of that tiny brooder and into some larger digs.

Hope you are staying warm and are enjoying your garden!

April 17, 2011

2011-04-17T21:55:00.001-07:00

Sickness still reigns over my house this weekend, so despite a beautiful day today, nothing got done in the garden. So, in order to have SOMETHING to post tonight, I took another video of the chicks. By the way they've grown, I'm not sure I can still call them chicks even though they're not quite a month old, but here are the girls.

As I say, Sunday's the day I've decided to totally clean out their brooder. I did this knowing I may very well not be using this brooder later this week. My brother called tonight and we both had the same idea. We cam to the conclusion independently that our chicks were getting too big for their tote brooders, so we are both planning on setting up the Costco produce box for the brooder. Looks like I'm going to have to put it in the car bay of the garage, as the kids have totally taken over the play room bay, as they should.

Anyway, I took some pics of the girls and thought this was the best one.

I love the close-up of the three oldest enjoying the fresh food. Twinkydink is doing what they all do these days, dive right in by standing on the feeder. They're big enough now that I may not put a board up against it for them to stand on to peck at the "ground" They don't seem to use it. Well, Buffy does as she's a week younger and a lot smaller still. I'm looking forward to her exponential growth over the next few days.

Enjoy!

April 15, 2011

2011-04-15T23:08:00.001-07:00

I realized it's been a while since I posted about the girls. I know I've said they've grown, but I hadn't had any pictures to back it up, and I know some of you have been anxious to follow my chicken adventures. So, instead of taking a bunch of stills, I decided to take one video tonight. The girls are hilarious in this one, but be warned, you get mooned and dumped on in this video, so it's not for the faint of heart. ROFL

As I say in the video, they're eating well. In fact, all they have space to do there is eat, poop and sleep. I have a box for them, but need to do a better job of clearing a space for them and their new produce box brooder. And the reason you haven't seen it is that my garage is a mess (again) and I'm ashamed of where they'll be residing for the next month or so. That and I'm stubbornly keeping them in this brooder until they're a month old, which will be on the 23rd. Amazing growth in a month, isn't it?!

Enjoy!

April 13, 2011

2011-04-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

No pics today, I just haven't taken any good ones as the camera is charging.

Man this weather's crazy! It's warm one minute, then near freezing the next. My plants don't know whether to grow or go dormant. Unfair!

As April 15 is our traditional Last Frost Date around here, I really should be getting my tomatoes out for a walk by now. They need to harden off before they go into the SWCs and become unprotected other than tomato cages. Alas, I'm not happy with the conditions to harden them off, even if they are staked. The wind was so bad today they wouldn't have stood a chance. Not sure that the rest of the week's much better.

I guess what I need to do is to bring them out and shelter them somehow from the wind. Unfortunately that's not even the worst of my problems with my tomatoes. They're so big and entwined in my light system frame that it's going to be a pain in the rear getting them out. I'll water the plants tonight but save tackling the extraction for another day.

Other than that, I'm just waiting for plants to grow, which isn't happening with this wacky weather we're having. There has been signs of life in my beds where I direct sowed various varieties of seeds last week, but it could very well just be weeds popping up. Time will tell.

Lastly, the chicks are entering their gawky teenager phase, so maybe it's good that I don't have pictures of them. Their feathers are discheveled a bit and getting rougher, they're growing taller but not filling in as fast, and they're getting real antsy, wanting to borrow the car, I mean get out of their brooder. I bet next week they'll be moving out to the garage into the potato box I got from Costco. Oh, and that coop sure isn't building itself, hehe.

Yep, I've got my work cut out for me. I hope your garden is keeping you busy!

April 9, 2011

2011-04-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

I've been dying to get this post out, but the girls deserved yesterday's post all to themselves. Yesterday I went up to do my every-three-day musical plant game, only to find the reservoirs dry and the plants bumping the lights again.

The good news is that the closest two that are still on the shelf are growing stalky rather than tall. That's a good sign for appropriate growth. The rest, despite all attempts to avoid it, are getting a bit leggy. I may need to stake them more when I harden them off, or they'll flop over. Speaking of which, do you think it's time to start doing that? I'm nor relishing the prospect of moving them in and out of the house on those flimsy trays, let alone extricating them from the framework of my light system. Eek!

The bad news is that this is what I'm dealing with with the first plantings...

So, it was time yet again for another furniture change. Let's see, what do I have laying around the storage room. What am I going to do when the kids move up here and I can't use this great southern exposure room over the garden for my light system. Maybe they won't mind sleeping on the couch for a few months each winter? hehe This box will do...

No pics were taken during the moving process, because I definitely had my hands full with moving out a monitor box and moving in an orange crate while holding a tray full of heavy tomatoes stuck inside the frame of my light system. How I did it I have NO idea, but here is the result...

I figure this will give me almost a week. Maybe by then I'll just move them outside during the day and in the dark garage at night. It would throw off their light schedule, but isn't that one of the points of hardening off? Oh, and what did I find when I was watering them? One of my Legend tomatoes had set flowers!

I never know whether to pollinate them or pluck them at this stage. This plant's pretty good sized (not one of the huge ones but the next biggest). Sure would be nice to have a few early tomatoes, but I hate to have the plant devote all it's energy to tomato production rather than plant growth. Of course they'll get a shot of fish emulsion when planted out, in addition to my all-purpose fertilizer and Epsom salts. Thoughts?

Lastly, I was going to create a separate post on this, but it really doesn't deserve it. I've been playing with milk-jug cloches with some interesting results. Of course I simply cut the jugs in half and poked vent holes in the "tops".

Then I simply dug them into the soil a bit over the top of my seedlings. In this case it was my tender broccoli and cauliflower starts, one of which got eaten by slugs (see a post a few days ago).

What I found was that the seedlings wilted quickly, kind of like a greenhouse effect, so I was always removing them on "warm" days, as in around 50 degrees. Tonight I just left them off all-together. I've sprayed for bugs so let's hope the slugs stay away. Maybe tomorrow I'll hit them with a shot of fish emulsion to jump start them?

Enjoy your garden!

April 8, 2011

2011-04-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

Man am I exhausted! Yesterday was an entire day of trying to replace a broken kitchen faucet (and to add to Murphy's Law, today the bathroom faucet broke). My arms and back were sore from that one, hours under the sink. After these projects are done, I should have enough hours under my belt to be a journeyman plumber... just kidding, I'm useless.

Today was beautiful weather, the first day without rain in 47 days, so I'm told, so I took the fleeting opportunity to mow the lawn. Just to be nice I mowed the front first, and as a result, I'm hoping it won't rain tomorrow so I can mow the back for the kids. Ah, to have chickens to do this for me. You see, on top of being sore and tired, I'm highly allergic to grass, especially the fresh cut kind, ROFL. But the compost likes me.

First I grabbed the very full kitchen compost bucket, and the much lighter chicken brooder compost bucket, and mixed them with some grass the kids "cut" with their scissors the other day. I added them to last fall's leaves in the empty compost bin, which will be this year's hot compost area.

I must have been very tired because I didn't even snap any shots of the HUGE pile of grass clippings and various brown materials dumped on top of this. I must have a 2 feet tall 5x5 pile now. Unfortunately I was too tired to de-winterize the backyard hose bib and hook up the hose, so I didn't add any water to it like normal. Here's hoping it will still heat up from the moisture in the kitchen compost and the grass. If it does, I expect it will be cut down to 6 inches in less than a week.

Update: I snapped a shot today and didn't want to clutter a post with it, so here's the loaded compost bin with 2 feet of grass clippings about 5x5.

Well, it's only fair that I've been talking so much about my garden activities lately, I should really show you just how big the girls have grown in less than 3 weeks.

And just to show off how beautiful they are, here are some of my favorite shots from the last week.

Here is Summer trying to fly away from me when her sisters caused a commotion.

Aren't those wings beautiful!? And so big too. Some day I'm going to have to cut one of them. Not looking forward to that.

Here's a pretty common sight these days. I think I mentioned that the Barred Rock learned she could jump from the roost to the top of the mason jar water container. I finally caught her on film.

She likes to peck at the screen. Makes me wonder if I'll get a month out of this brooder after all.

Well, short post for tonight. I have plenty of other material to share so hopefully I'll get many more posts out over the weekend.

Enjoy!

April 6, 2011

2011-04-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

Quick post for now. I need help!

What's eating my broccoli seedlings?

I had it under a milk jug cloche that was fairly well seated in the soil. I wonder if it's not the same thing that's continuing to eat and eat again my butter crunch lettuce head in a different bed?

I couldn't log onto Gardenweb for some reason, so I'm pleading to you all for advice. What is it and what do I do about it?

I tried to look it up on the net and found only cabbage moths, which I know I have problems with, but have not seen any moths yet this year. Also, remember that my beds are 16 inches tall and surrounded by inhospitable gravel for paths. I thought of slugs, but haven't seen any and have no idea how they'd have gotten in with those obstacles to overcome. Unless they came in in the compost?

Thoughts? Thanks for any and all comments!!

Enjoying the sudden snow storm here in the PNWet?

April 5, 2011

2011-04-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

So, to give equal time to both my gardening and animal husbandry obsessions, this post will be about plants rather than chicks.

Despite the rain, mixed with heavy rain mixed with light showers over the past week, I found time to make it out to the garden. Mostly I was out there to plant what NEEDED to be planted out. However, I couldn't help but admire the growth (albeit slow) of my initial salad green plantings. I definitely can start harvesting outer leaves of these for salads. That said, we prefer to wait until more items are ready to go into our salads, like radishes, carrots and the like.

During a break in the weather, I took some time to augment my tiny bed #3 with compost, and plant a mixture of Savoy Bloomsdale Spinach (from Laura) and my traditional Space spinach (from Territorial). Given the size of the seeds, and wetness of my compost, I didn't even bury them, but rather used the board trick I got from Laura. No clue if this will work or not, but it is worth a try. I mean, who has a supply of dry sifted compost on hand to sprinkle 1/8" deep over a bed, hehe?

I also did something similar to several varieties of carrots to replenish our supply. The ones that overwintered are very hairy and need to be pealed to eat. Speaking of which, it is about time to harvest them so they don't go to seed. Thoughts on what to do with carrots you need to peal to eat? Hmm?

Anyway, now to what I actually went out there to do. In the back of bed #4, I augmented the soil with a kitty-litter-bucket of compost.

And with my hand trowel, I worked the compost into the soil a bit, chopping up tons of worms in the process. Poor little guys. This back portion of my only bed without a trellis will be the home of my initial plantings of broccoli and cauliflower.

This season I'm planting more cauliflower than broccoli, as my wife likes it better, but I am planting a ton of it to freeze for the off season. My goal is to add it to mashed potatoes, saute it with bread crumbs, use it in stir frys, etc. Don't these seedlings look good?

That taken care of, it was time to turn to my flat of succession salad greens. First to be planted were my green wave mustard green experiment. I'm sure long-term readers recall my fascination with mustard greens, leading back to my trying one from a local CSA. The rainbow colored wavy leaves had a nice mustard bite to them, and would be perfect to add to our salads since I don't like to use dressing for home grown salads. Unable to find the variety I knew I liked, I have settled for this variety from Territorial. I went with two plants to see how it grew and if I'd like it. They germinated well, but were slow growing under lights. I wonder if they'll take off in the ground?

Then, as the rain began to pick up, I raced to get rid of the rest of my salad green seedlings. It was very easy to peal apart the soil blocks from their neighbors and throw them in a shallow hole, pressing the compost in around them. For the seedlings that were growing in the wrecked soil blocks, I did my best to plant them in straight compost. It doesn't look pretty, but I'm hoping it all grows in nicely as spring moves into high gear.

Oh, I forgot, I also filled in the row of green onions above the salad greens, and filled in radishes where I could find space. I still remember the first year I planted radishes. The package said 22 days, so I was expecting to eat radishes every month. Wrong! The first planting took 5 weeks to germinate and mature. It wasn't until my late spring succession planting that I got anywhere near the 22 days it published. Deceptive advertising, ROFL.

So, now my garden is coming along nicely. I still have space in the back of Bed #1 (above) and in the front of Bed #4 when I remove the carrots. Not sure what I'll plant in those places. Maybe some beets and a squash plant or two, both for roasting. My brother introduced us to them last fall and I wanted to grow a limited number of each to try my hand at adding variety to our veggie diet. As I've said many times over on NW Edible, I wish I could cook half as good as the former chef, now stay-at-home mom and urban homesteader Erika. /sigh

Enjoy your garden!

April 4, 2011

2011-04-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

Man, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. I have no idea what I should talk about, so many little things have been going on, each could result in a short post that I should have made if I had been thinking about it instead of watching for comments. Hehe.

I guess this will be a chicken post and tomorrow I'll throw together a garden one.

First off, I just realized I've taken a few videos of the girls and hadn't posted them here. Shame on me. I figure to get them both in, I'll use the old ruse of "Look how much they've grown!"... think it will work on you? Well, here's one of the first three chicks on the second day.

And now for the second video taken a few days ago. My how they've grown!

Now that that's done, I can move on to more trivia about my birds. The first bit I'm happy to say is that Summer (our Welsummer) lost her outtie belly button yesterday. I was cleaning the brooder and she was sitting on her roost, showing me her tail, and presto, it was gone. I'm very happy about this as the risk of a pecking accident that could result in an infection was high. Now it's gone and she can be safe around the little brute of a Buff Orpington. Anyway, here is a picture I took with my phone while she was being cooperative for a change. She still likes to jump from heights.

To show them in their new digs, with a configuration of the brooder that still is in effect today, here are the girls in their freshly de-papered home. Funny that they must have gotten their dust baths out of their system in the transfer brooder, because they really haven't tossed the pine shavings all over their brooder.

Speaking of the transfer brooder, it's much shorter than the regular one. So much shorter, that Summer can see over the side when she jumps, trying to get to her flock. Note to self, don't move her first, but second so she has company. Maybe she remembers her day of isolation in that bin. She really hated that.

The next shot below is one I took zoomed in from outside the bathroom. I rarely get to see them sleeping because they jump up and hide when they see me. Notice how Summer is on the roost with her #2 while the others are lower? Classic pecking order stuff. Fascinating! Oh, I don't worry about Buffy the baby Buff Orpington being lower than the Barred Rock, she probably was cold so wanted to sleep under the heat lamp, while the others want to sleep as far from it as possible.

I've since raised the heat lamp a bit early. I figure Buffy can sleep on the corner of the roost under the light if she's cold. The others had their mouths open (panting) a bit much for my liking. Yet another reason not to get chicks too far apart in age.

The last picture is my failed attempt at showing them standing straight up. They are getting so tall when they want to extend their necks up!

So, we've got names for three of them, and having kids that are 7 and 4, none of the names are profound... The Welsummer is Summer; the Buff Orpington is Buffy; and the Golden Laced Wyndotte is Dot, though Jinny says it's short for Dorothy. My eldest is trying to name the Barred Rock, though he's only come up with Shamrock so far... we're hoping for something different. Hehe.

Oh yeah, lastly, I posted these questions on BYC, but in case any chicken owners have thoughts out there, I'm all ears.

What kind of pooper scooper do you use with shavings?

I recently took them off paper towels and have them just on pine shavings. The trouble is, I don't want to dump all the pine shavings every day. Do you folks simply use a litter box scoop like for cats?

I've heard folks say they use one designed for reptiles, not sure what one of those is or where to get one? I can see having the ability to attach a long handle to reach into the coop later, but for now, something short will do.

This morning I just cleaned off the board they use as a step ladder to peck down into the feed tray and to drink from (need to find a good scraper for that too).

Seems I've got a bunch of supply questions. What do you folks suggest that works for you?

Enjoy!

April 1, 2011

2011-04-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well, the cats got into the light system room and wreaked havoc on the plants. What they couldn't eat, they knocked over. What a mess and all that work down the drain! I had planned on a tomato post today, but what's the point? At least last year my brother had a crappy germination and seedling growth and still did well buying starts from the farmer's market.

Thank goodness my lettuce starts and broccoli/cauliflower seedlings were outside hardening off for the last day before planting them out, so I'll still have some brassicas to grow this spring. I'd planned on a big succession planting to freeze for winter next year, but now that too may not be possible.

Don't let this happen to you! Toddler gates don't work! Big cats can simply knock them over and most cats can jump them easily! Your best bet is to close the door and lock it, in case they learn to turn knobs, or in my case where I need the door open to allow heat in, electric fencing is the way to go! Nothing cruel mind you, just the stuff they use to keep small dogs from leaving the yard should do it.

April fools! None of this actually happened, but it is a fear of mine, so I have two toddler gates stacked on top of each other. In reality, this will be a tomato based blog post with some of the above issues thrown in, but this time truthfully told.

First off, I have ditched the TV tray for a lower storage box with goodness knows what in it. It was just in the storage room, sturdy and the right height.

As you can see, it's give me a few more inches on the tallest of my tomatoes. However, their rapid growth has caused some of the lower branches to be too heavy and start to droop and some even break off. So to help a bit, I've taken to staking them up with bamboo poles from my folks place. I knew I was going to miss their old house when they moved because they had a bamboo plant that we'd use for gardening as we thinned out the dead canes. Thankfully their new home had a much bigger mature plant that provides all any of out three families need.

While I was up there, I continued to bemoan my limited stock of viable tomato plants to plant out in a few weeks (weather permitting). Thankfully my existing stock provided me with some options for expanding my garden. A few plants had slow germinating seeds finally sprout, allowing me to semi-successfully transplant them to new 9-ounce cups. Other plants had already grown healthy suckers (branches growing out of the middle elbow of the stem and another branch). Suckers themselves won't grow tomatoes as branches, but are great for planting for succession plants in their own right. Funny how they won't grow tomatoes on a plant but AS a plant they grow them fine? Nature's funny that way I guess.

So, I decided to experiment a bit. Why not, for some reason I have the space in my light system. After looking around at all my plants, I found tons of possible additions. Some more viable than others. One of my more wacky attempts was to pull a drooping branch off a plant and plant it in a cup. It was far too long/tall to stand on it's own, so I staked it.

Fast forward a day and I'll tell you, it didn't work. hehe. However, my other attempts did better. Of the two seeds that finally sprouted, one was salvaged with enough roots to take hold, and as of last night, the sucker was holding it's own, though VERY small.

Sorry for the bad photo. The tray with my tomatoes is in the back, sitting on a couple of VHS tapes to raise it up closer to the lights. The lights have to be that high for the tall tomatoes. So I had to be creative. That's one of the benefits of doing this in a storage room. There's always junk laying around to use that nobody is going to miss. That's why it's up there. ROFL.

Speaking of finding creative ways to raise plants. I mentioned my massive succession planting of broccoli and cauliflower in my poorly executed April Fools joke above. Well it's in the foreground of the picture above. As you can see, I hadn't yet raised it up closer to the lights. You can even see the seedlings laying over, trying to find light on the top of the fridge. Well, thankfully I found an old box laying around. Worked out well enough, don't you think?

For the last pic of the post, I have been pretty much leaving the salad greens and initial plantings of broccoli and cauliflower outside all day long, bring them in at night. I saw no point in taking them back upstairs to the light system every night, so they hung out in the garage and taken back out in the morning. Time to plant these out I think, don't you? Come on, I love comments, please...

Lastly, I've mentioned my brother tons of times in my blog. He's the one who convinced me to start my garden, helped design and build it, and even was my inspiration for wanting chickens. Well, yesterday he finally decided to take the plunge and start his own blog. I really shouldn't give you this link, because he was a journalism major in college and writes extremely well. You may not come back to my babblings. hehe. Seriously, I encourage you to follow his blog and mine and see how two brothers make the most of their small suburban yards on a journey toward greater self sufficiency.

Enjoy your garden!

March 31, 2011

2011-03-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

Well, the rain is coming down like crazy and has been for the past two days, making gardening difficult for all but the most crazy among us. Now normally I'd be one of those out there in my rain gear doing what I could in the garden, but since I got my chicks, I've had better things to do with my time.

So, this post is going to be about the chicks so far. Mostly, it's going to be about the pecking order ritual. I keep telling folks you could write a paper on this stuff, and that's just what I'm doing.

With my first three chicks, I found it interesting that the most active chick became the alpha, for lack of a better term. The others would, after a while, simply let my Welsummer just peck at them, while they literally turned the other cheek. What I didn't see was how the second fiddle got that job. Sure the third in line was so docile that she simply sat there and did nothing while the others took their places, but all I saw her doing was staying as close to the alpha as possible. That couldn't be a tactic, could it?

While all that was interesting, I didn't realize just how fascinating it all was until the Buff Orpington entered the picture. I chose her because she was running around, best not to get one too lethargic as they could be sick.
Boy is she cute!

That change in dynamic seemed to start the process all over again and this time I found myself watching their behaviors closely.

It seemed at first that she was just trying to find a spot under the heat lamp, next to a warm chick. Of course the original three wanted nothing to do with the tiny intruder. Then all of a sudden, one went to eat, and it quickly became "let's see who can eat the most" in the Davies brooder.

I've never seen the chicks eat so much in a day as they ate in that five minutes. You thought we were out of food. Boy am I glad I turned the 2x6 board such that they have more room to stand on it and peck down into the feeder. Anyway, the older chicks kept nudging the little one out of the way, so much so that she ended up against the side of the brooder eating from the other side of the tray.

I just realized something. The chicks are actually demonstrating my next big point in the last two pictures above.

Although at first the chicks were all pecking each other, especially the baby, this little fluff ball kept on pecking while the others were content to just ignore her. It seems that the one I picked out was not only fast, but clearly had some serious ambition. I mean, she's half their size!

It took a bit to notice, but by ignoring the chick, I found they were actually grouping together in a set formation.

As you can see, the Welsummer is stationed in the middle, flanked by her second and third in command. They kept that formation everywhere they went, including to the feed tray! Any time the chick tried to get in between them (which was frequently), the closest one would peck at it. It became clear they were protecting their leader.

It's funny, I don't think I've seen the Barred Rock peck so much ever. Maybe she was trying to keep the chick away from the leader, or maybe she was trying like mad to keep her place as third fiddle and not the bottom of the heap?

On it went, for hours. This chick was clearly not settling for the bottom. She had her sights set on number two, if not the top dog! We left for the evening confident that these week-old chicks were not going to push around the little one. She seemed to just wear them down.

So, now I'm not sure where she fits. She's clearly one or two. Whenever I think I've got it pegged, something happens to change my mind. Like she'll race to catch up to the three of them and squeeze her way next to the Welsummer. Then later she'll peck at the leader only to have the elder turn away in possible submission.

Either way, this little girl has stormed onto the scene and made a name for herself (we're thinking of Buffy the Worm Slayer, hehe if we can convince the boys). And the way she's eating she'll catch up to them in no time.

Ain't she cute?!

March 29, 2011 Part II

2011-03-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, I hadn't planned on this post today, but my brother and sister-in-law convinced me that I had far too many pictures on my photobucket site and the last post was way too long ago. Here is a separate post on the chicks. So much has happened since the last post, I'm shocked. As a result, this post may be longer than normal. And if you're only here for the garden, scroll down, there is a post earlier today about peas and child gardens.

First off, I hadn't seen the chicks eating from their tray, not once. Sure I wasn't with them 24/7, but you'd think I'd witness it in the hour or so a day I'm with them? All they seemed to want to do is hunt and peck on the ground. Silly chickens, there's no food on the paper towels, only the bedding you kicked up onto it. Oh, and a bit of grit I sprinkled down to make sure they've got some in their gullets.

A solution to this "problem" came by chance when I was helping my brother finish up his plumbing remodel of his bathroom vanity. He has the same block of wood for the water to sit on, but he had his block turned toward the feed tray, right up to it in fact. I saw his chicks standing on the block with their heads in the holes, pecking out the food. BINGO! My chicks love to peck. So when I got home I turned the block like he had it. Thankfully it fit in my smaller brooder. Almost immediately the chicks were at the edge of the block, pecking food out of the tray!

Ever since I turned the board, half the time I see them they've got their heads buried in the tray. So a note to chick raisers, give them a raised platform to peck down into their food. It'll be interesting to see how fast they grow now that they're eating more. Oh, and in case you're wondering why most of my pics are fuzzy, I take them from outside the bathroom through the frosted plastic bin to make sure they don't see me and stop doing what I want the picture of. Sorry for that and the red tint to all the pics due to the heat lamp.

Next, if you notice in the pic above, there's a 2x2 board resting on the food tray and the water dish. This was my first attempt at a makeshift roost for the girls. They seemed to want to sleep right there so I gave them a trial roost to get them used to it. Well, it was a bit wiggly so it wasn't used much. Then, after seeing my brother's scrap-wood roost tonight, I decided to throw one together. Two four-inch 2x4s and a six inch length of 2x2 later and presto!

I'm not happy with the location directly under the heat lamp, but it's the only spot I had. Tomorrow I'm going to try to find a better configuration for everything. But I'm hopeful they'll like it. Speaking of tomorrow, bright and early my brother and I are heading out to wait in line for our ever-so-popular Buff Orpingtons. We'll be 4 strong tomorrow, and for now we'll be done!

At this point, I think I'll share some of my favorite pics from the last few days. The first is my youngest watching the chicks. He's so cute just sitting there all GQ on the edge of the sink.

Then, to be fair, here's the best of my oldest petting the normally docile Barred Rock that my wife is holding on to for dear life.

Now for a pic of a chick that wanted so badly to be out of my wife's hands, only to perch on her pinkie and not want to get off!

Isn't our Golden Laced Wyndotte a pretty bird!?

Well, I guess that's enough for today. If I am obsessed with my chicks, can you blame me?

Enjoy your garden!

March 29, 2011

2011-03-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Well, Laura and others commented that I likely have chick-fever, so, when I looked at what she did last weekend, I immediately realized I was behind again on my planting. Seems I should have planted my peas but didn't. So the night before my kids and I talked gardening and peas. Their interest in peas came from one of those PBS snippets between cartoons. The kids planted snap peas, then came back to pick and eat them. They called them sugar packets. All of a sudden, they wanted to plant peas. So, we got some Cascadia Snap Peas and soaked them overnight. They also wanted to plant corn, so we did the damp coffee filter in an open Zip Lock bag to germinate those. I also took the time to plant several new succession broccoli and cauliflower. As you can see, I am big into repurposing containers for gardening.

The next day was sprinkling a bit, but we trooped outside anyway to plant our peas! The kids got their own SWC scrap gardens to play with, though I told them what I would do. First thing's first, weed and add compost (they loved counting the worms we found in the compost). Then we planted 5 peas in each bin in two rows with one in the middle. Pretty generous spacing, but the plan is to interplant two corn stalks in each back corner. Hopefully the corn will grow fast enough to provide something for the peas to climb. If not, I picked up a bunch of bamboo from my folks place. I'm sure I could build some sort of trellis for them. The front of the bins will probably be carrots as we're running out of veggies that they like. Still, a good exercise in intensive planting!

After that, I decided to dig my beds out as Laura suggested, then add compost and plant my peas. I didn't do it exactly like she did, but I used some of her techniques. Here you can see the results of half my bed being dug up by rocking a pitchfork back and forth.

As you can see in the pic above, the kitty-litter bucket full of compost isn't sufficient to augment the entire bed, but it was more than sufficient to plant peas in the back of the bed. I know the SFG spacing for peas is 8 per SF, but I just kinda scattered them around the back of the row between my two blue SWCs. Now is when I really took a page from Laura's play book. I grabbed a piece of scrap wood and pressed it onto the soil to make sure the peas came in good contact with the soil.

Finally, I sprinkled a bit of fresh compost on top of the row. Normally I'd water them in, but it was raining by then, so I let Mother Nature take over.

Lastly, I took my broccoli and salad greens out for a walk and accidentally left them out over night. They seemed fine in the morning so I left them out all day and just brought them in Sunday night. They're out again this morning and will be planted today!

See, I AM gardening in addition to playing with my chicks! But don't worry, I will give both passions time in my blog. Comments anyone? I love comments! Makes me feel loved, hehe.

Enjoy your garden!

March 26, 2011

2011-03-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

Chicken update:

Well the folks at Backyard Chickens came through for me, but not before my jumpy girl tried for hours to jump out of the isolation bin.

It seems that what I was seeing was not a disease, but an outie... that's right, all birds have some sort of belly button where the umbilical cord connected to them in the egg, but some have these bloated parts. Apparently they fall off in a few days. The main concern is that the area is pecked and becomes infected, which can happen during the pecking order ritual.

So, when I had the Welsummer in isolation, she and the other two were very unhappy. The two "healthy" chicks braved the brunt of the heat lamp to sit shoulder to shoulder up against the wall closest to the quarantine bin, while the Welsummer was inches away in the her bin. The chicks were VERY vocal that day, and very unhappy. Seems even after a short time together, they didn't like having their flock separated.

Oh, did you notice how much shorter the make-shift bin is than the brooder box? Well, the "sick" girl showed just how healthy she was by jumping repeatedly to try to get to her friends. She came within a few inches of peeking over the edge! Man that girl has hops!

So, after reading all about the situation from the folks at BYC, I had to decide if I wanted to risk putting them together. One comment suggested putting one other hen in with her for company, but that would leave my remaining chick alone. Having three is not a good situation right now. Hehe. So, cautiously I put her back in the brooder.

The odd thing is that after just one day alone, she seemed significantly smaller than her sisters.

And then the pecking order ritual resumed. This time however, she had to work extra hard to prove she was boss. And at one point, the Barred Rock even started pecking her from behind. I was nervous so I shooed her away. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but I'd hate to lose her to an infection because I put her back in the brooder too soon.

All of my concern, all seemed well this morning. They seem happy together, though it's unclear if there's been a winner in the pecking order contest.

One thing I've noticed in my few days as a chicken wrangler, is that they don't seem to like to eat out of their tray. They much prefer to hunt and peck. So I've taken to sprinkling a bit of food on the ground, which is 50% scratch. They seem to like eating that way better.

So, all is well in chickenland again!

March 25, 2011

2011-03-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

I've read about it, skimmed over those sections of the books, but today I had to quarantine my Welsummer.

Yesterday morning when I was changing their paper towels, I had them next to the brooder in the shoe box I brought them home in. As I was transferring them back to the brooder, she jumped out of my hand, landed on the edge of the counter and fell about 3 feet total to the ground. She seemed fine afterwards, but was "in bed" earlier than her sisters. I just had to take this picture of her last night. I don't think it's a bad thing, but she was VERY cute.

In case you can't tell through the frosted plastic bin and in the red lamp light, she's got her body on the water board with her neck draped over the edge toward the heat lamp. The black lump behind her is the Barred Rock. The Golden Laced Wyndotte is behind the feeder as far from the heat lamp as possible. Maybe 95 degrees isn't the right setting for them anymore?

Anyway, later that day I noticed a spot on the Welsummer's tail. I took a picture of the big brownish-red wart on her back end, just below what I believe is her vent. Sorry you can't see it well through the feathers, I couldn't hold the bird, clear the feathers away and take the picture. My third hand is in the shop.

So this morning she was a bit slow to get up, at least until the CATS decided to investigate while I was at the other end of the house. Yep, I found the sickly one on the toilet seat/viewing area and my big boy cat on the counter! They scattered when I opened the door, but shame on them! Anyway, I decided it was officially time to quarantine her and ask for help on BackyardChickens.com.

At this point, I had to rig up something for a quarantine bin. I had always planned on using the brooder as a quarantine area eventually, but I hadn't imagined I'd need to quarantine a chick. So, I grabbed a currently empty storage bin from the garage (it's new so clean), threw down some paper towels and got a couple of custard cups for food and water, and set it up right next to the bin, over the sink.

It was THEN that I realized I needed a heat lamp for the quarantine space too. At first I thought of rigging up my old dish lamp with a 100 watt bulb, but then I thought of stretching chain to make the heat lamp cover both bins.

Then, to hold it in place, I grabbed another S-clip, grabbed the very hot chain and hooked it to the medicine cabinet. Pretty ingenious if I do say so myself.

So, for now at least, the brooder box is looking mighty lonely with just the two chicks in there. You can tell they're missing their sister.

Of course I'll keep you informed. In the end, I am already getting another chick next Wednesday, and could easily replace her if she doesn't make it. I just hope she's ok.

As an update, boy are they loud being separated! They just sit as close to each other as possible looking at one another. The good news is that the temp in both bins is the same, around 95, and the Welsummer is a bit more active. Boy do I want to play with them.

Enjoy your garden!

March 23, 2011

2011-03-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

Mission Control, the chickens have landed! We have three new fuzzy-butts in the house and boy are they cute, even if all they want to show me is their tails, hiding from the big featherless person.

What we have here are three of the four birds we'll be getting. Sorry to say they're pretty camera shy so far, but they'll get used to it. In order from above, here is the Golden Laced Wyndotte:

Look at the markings on her, she's going to be a looker. Oh, and before you call the ASPCA on me, they wanted nothing more than to escape and plummet to their deaths, so I had to have a firm grip, though it was a cage-like one, no squeezing occurred.

Here is our Welsummer:

This little heart-breaker is definitely going to deserve to be on the Corn Flakes box (yes, the chicken on the cereal box was a Welsummer, though a rooster, not a hen).

Last but certainly not lease, is our Barred Rock:

I just love the little white spot on the top of her head. Though when she'll develop the silver striation, I just don't know.

The final hen in our quartet will be a Buff Orpington, which doesn't arrive until next week. However, we were told to arrive extra early as they're very popular. I guess it's a good thing I don't have a job to keep me from getting there and waiting around.

As for my experiences from the first day of chicken ownership, I guess you can say I Mother Hen'd them a bit. Two of them were a bit lethargic after the ride home. I guess I brought too big of a shoe box to bring them home. Thankfully they perked up after a few hours of warming under the 95 degree heat lamp. They're definitely eating and drinking, though I've only really seen them drink. I know they're eating by the indents in the feed where they've pecked.

Mostly, they hang out under the heat lamp, or on top of the board near the water dish. Of course there isn't much space other than those two places, but there is a cooler spot on the other end of the food tray. As for when I show up, they are always trying to get through the plastic to the wall, away from me. I hope that regular visits, talks and holding will make them like me enough to go where I lead.

Lastly, I've got the paper towels down to protect from sprattle-leg for a few days, but already one was showing signs of scratching for food. It didn't work through the towels, but it didn't stop her from trying. I was so proud of my little girl... hehe.

So, the years of wishing and months of planning have finally came to fruition. We are officially a chicken family, and one step closer to sustainability.

For now, both they and I wish you good night...

Enjoy your garden!

March 22, 2011

2011-03-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

First off thanks for all the comments on my last post. I love comments. It shows folks care about what I babble on about. While the seedlings grow upstairs with relatively little aid from me, I turned my attention to CHICKENS! Yes, they arrive tomorrow whether I'm ready or not. And no, you haven't missed all the posts about me building my chicken coop with my brother and father-in-law, because there haven't been any. Our coops are not started, let alone done. The good news is that we won't NEED them for a few months, but life is going to become a bit more chicken crazy until then, so taking time out to build two coops is not as easy as it sounds... hehe. But as my brother said, everyone he's read about had grand plans to build their coop before they got chicks, but didn't, and they turned out ok.

The main reason we haven't built coops has been the weather. It's rained off and on every day for the last month, making it tough to work outside. That and I tried to get my brother to work over here but he must not have liked that idea because he's never mentioned it again. Oh, well. It'll get done, especially as the weather improves.

For now, I've got more important things to worry about. The chicks need a home. I've been accumulating supplies over time and now believe I have everything I need for the first month or so. Last night I set it all up for a dry run. Since the chicks need to be kept at 95 degrees for the first week, I wanted to make sure I had the light hanging at the right height to give me 95 degrees on the floor of the brooder box. A few adjustments and a few hours later and presto!

I liked the water dish that hooks up to a mason jar. It's not like we don't have THOSE lying around, and they go through the dish washer well. I had planned on getting the metal feeder that did the same thing, but after talking to the folks at the Bothell Feed Store, the small feeder wouldn't be enough for when they get bigger, so I got the 18 inch tray feeder. It's a bit overkill for the brooder box, but for now I'm pinching pennies so it'll work for their entire lives. Oh, and did you notice the direct access to water there in the spare bathroom? Quite handy. Hehe. Now here's my brooder box looking down.

I sure hope this gives them enough room to for 4 to 5 weeks. I hope my four girls don't out grow it until I have a chance to set up their teen-age box in the garage. Also, I hope the weather heats up enough that I won't have to heat the garage other than the heat lamp.

On the gardening front, I actually took the hoop cover off the salad bed to allow Mother Nature to water again. I was a bit worried because it had been 3 days and no rain was expected that day. What was I to do? I haven't de-winterized the outdoor faucets yet, so I have no water outside. That reminded me that this spring's other project is to hook up my rain barrels. Fun, fun times!

When I got the cover off, I noticed the lettuce was growing well, except for one plant that looks like it's been devoured by something.

Slugs maybe? Sure hope it comes back. I've got no more buttercrunch seedlings started. I'd have to plant something else in its place. Time will tell I guess.

Well, I hope you're interested in my chicken adventure, because I expect you'll be seeing a lot about it in the coming months.

Until then, enjoy your garden!

March 20, 2011

2011-03-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

First off, thanks for all the great comments folks and to all my followers. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Deb, thanks for the offer. I may end up taking you up on that if this final batch doesn't germinate or grow well.

Before I get into my continuing tomato saga, I'd like to talk about the week that led up to Spring, 2011. If it wasn't raining, it was windy as could be. It seemed every day I had to go out and re-cover my salad bed. The laundry clips I got from the Dollar Store weren't quite holding up to the power of the wind.

I especially had to take care of the two green onions that were transplanted out. the back end of the hoop house kept blowing in, flattening them. Happened twice before I wised up and clipped the plastic in place back there. Sure hope they survive. Speaking of survival, gotta get out and water them tomorrow. Mother Nature isn't expected to help for a few days and I bet they're thirsty under there.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programing. This week on How the Tomato Turns, I ran out of vertical space in my light system. I knew this day was coming as the three initial plants were growing about 2 inches every three days.

It's a jungle out there doesn't even begin to cover it. I had to do something drastic. So, for the first time in 3 years, my light system was moved. No, not to the other end of the house, but about 2 feet to the right, off the board. Some careful plant movement and creative Jerry-rigging and I gave my tomatoes a few more inches.

Yep, it isn't pretty, but I've got a tray sitting on a TV tray. I don't like how far the lights are from the rest of the plants, but for now that can't be helped. I've got a month before my tomatoes can be planted out. I'm actually quite proud of my achievement there. Necessity is the mother of all invention.

Speaking of tomatoes, I'm kind of bummed. I worked so hard to get my earliest producer, Bloody Butcher, to germinate. After three attempts with two seeds each, I finally got something to grow. Unfortunately it wasn't getting tall, but rather just sitting on the surface of the dirt. At first I thought it was just that the seed was too far down. Then when I was moving things around, I snapped this picture and all became clear.

I'll be darned if that isn't a weed from a seed that must have overwintered in my cold compost bin. What else could it be, it definitely isn't a tomato!? Guess I'll be not only down a plant, but missing out of a very early producer.

Oh, and in case I wasn't aware, bigger plants need more water than little lettuce seedlings. Look what I found when I went up after three days to water and move plants around.

I wonder if this withered branch will still make a decent root when I pot it up into my SWC?

So, for now, this is my compromise of a set-up upstairs.

Gonna have to be creative about what to replace the TV tray with that's shorter and can hold up all that dirt and plant weight.

Hope you enjoyed the first day of spring in your garden. I sure knew it was the first day as I took my first allergy pill of the season!

March 15, 2011

2011-03-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

Beware the Ides of March... My wife was born tomorrow way back when, so I like to say she's perfect, born right between the luckiest and unluckiest days of the year.

Speaking of unlucky, this didn't happen today, but today's the perfect day to share it. I was making a smoothie for the family and needed to get out the frozen fruit from the freezer. I had checked the tomatoes on top of the fridge the night before but thought nothing of it, until this happened...

Crash! Dirt everywhere, water everywhere, and no seedlings from this THIRD attempt. Pissed at myself, I cleaned it up, and figured I'd give up on them. So I went upstairs and counted my viable seedlings... 7, just seven. I needed 8 and wanted 10. So back out to the garage and maybe the four time is a charm. January 24th I planted my first tomato seeds of the season, and the last are being planted March 15th. How crazy is that? I definitely will over plant next year, this is ridiculous.

If these don't go, I'll simply direct sow them and see what happens. Yeah right, in this climate?

Today was one big thunder storm, not quite Spring, yet I hope you got to...

Enjoy your garden!

March 13, 2011

2011-03-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

I kind of feel like EG when he said, sorry for yet another seedling post, but what do people expect... in late winter what else is there... unless you want me to talk about my chicken research. hehe.

This post is all about tomatoes. Let me start buy saying I've learned my lesson and next year I'll way over plant seedlings like my brother and only keep the best. I just don't have room to keep tons of tomatoes. More on that soon.

Last post I mentioned that I really needed to pot up my tomatoes, especially the one that was breaking off mid-stem and the two-seedling cup. Here is the state of affairs right before I re-potted them.

As you can see, they were very ready for bigger homes. I know some folks like to pot up tomatoes several times, but I just don't have the supply of containers to do it more than once. So those big quart sized pots is what I use. I salvaged them from a nursery recycling bin a few years ago. For the cut stem, it was still connected so I buried it. Not sure if that's sufficient, but if it grows I guess it is fine, right?

For the dual seed cup, I did what EG suggested. I soaked the soil completely and gently pulled the seedling apart from the dirt clump. It was like stringy thread. I tried my best to spread it out in the soil of the new pot and buried it. Really it should have been a two person job, but I didn't bother the kids for this. In the end, here are the three new comers to the party. And no I didn't plan on succession planting tomatoes.

Now, in case you're wondering how my initial crop of tomatoes were doing, here is a pic of the tinkering I did to make my flat of lettuce work with my really tall tomatoes. I'm not happy using one light fixture for the entire flat of lettuce, but it can't be helped. Hopefully they lettuce will mature fast and I can plant it out under my hoop cover. Maybe I'll hit it with some fish emulsion tonight when I water.

As you can see, the tomatoes are getting really big, and it's only mid-March. I've got a month to go. No fish emulsion for them! If you look closely, you'll see I don't have much room for them to grow more. Heck, here's a pic to save your eyes.

Unfortunately a few more days and I'll out stretch my current light system. However, as necessity is the mother of all invention, I think I have a solution. I can move the light system over a foot or so and set up some sort of stand for the tomatoes to rest on, then move a tray down there. If I can't go up, I can definitely go down! That of course is a post for another day.

Enjoy your garden!

March 11, 2011

2011-03-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

Short post today on my soil blocks and succession planting. Mostly I wanted to make it through the last of my pictures and topics from the last week so I could get to the newer stuff. I'd like to say I saved the best for last, but I didn't. Soil blocks aren't the sexiest thing out there, but when they work, they work amazingly. Most of this post is about when they DON'T work.

Having dutifully grown indoor lettuce in 4 blocks per variety over the last month due to the inability to plant out in this inclement weather, I decided to go with 8 seedlings per variety this time. Of course by now the aged compost and vermiculite potting mix I had stored in a kitty litter bin in the garage was gone, so I made more. My overwintered compost was great. Worms were plentiful and everything but the egg shells were broken down nicely. My new potting soil was made up of rain-moistened compost and a conservative dose of vermiculite, as I'm running out and don't want to buy more in our economic situation.

The soil blocks turned out great! They compacted nicely and came free of the soil block maker easily without breaking. I was really quite pleased with myself as I hear so many people talk of complex potting soil recipes. I just don't have access to all that material and I'm certainly not buying anything I don't have to.

As always, two seeds went into each divot and the whole tray went into the kitchen. My wife wasn't thrilled about putting back the stand I use to keep the tray off the counter, but she didn't complain about the clumps of dirt in the kitchen... maybe... just maybe, I'm growing on her.

All was well for the first day, but as these blocks dried out, they started to fall apart. At first I thought it may actually be a worm or two that got into the blocks that were doing the damage, but then it started happening to all of the blocks, especially when I watered them the first time. I was so unhappy. All that seed and work to make those blocks. Not to mention I actually had rapid germination from this year's Red Sails.

Unfortunately it was even worse by the time enough had germinated and I sent the tray upstairs to the light system. Boy did I have to tinker with the lights and tray placement to keep optimum light distance. Kind of a fun little puzzle.

So, how are your indoor seed starting adventures turning out this year? I'm sure many of you have flatS of them going at all times right now, but some of you may be just like me, with a small garden or just starting out, and you're wondering if starting seeds indoors is worth it. Well, for less than $100 I built my light system will be making my own soil block seedlings forever. And if you would just feel silly just starting a few plants, don't. I do it all the time. All the better to park on top of the fridge to germinate. So let's hear it. What works and what doesn't? And as always...

Enjoy your garden!

March 8, 2011

2011-03-08T23:46:00.000-08:00

Let's call this the tomato post. In case you haven't been reading, you know I have a whopping 3 tomatoes out of 10 that are going gang busters. Another handful are languishing and three are refusing to germinate despite multiple attempts with 2 seeds each.

So, just how amazing is the growth of those big three? Here is what they looked like the day before I decided to pot them up.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the CD case is just there for perspective, and to raise seedling trays to allow for gravity to feed water to the plants better. And I used to like Depeche Mode. Hehe.

Yes, I know the seedlings were past time to be potted up. I don't know what I was thinking? When I went to re-pot them, I realized I really don't have a good place to do that, other than my chest freezer in the garage. Since I gave them a brief walk in the yard, I decided to do the surgery on top of my yard waste container. Don't they look like they want to start flowering already?!

Well, my waiting so long to pot these up was immediately apparent when I tried to free them from their 9 ounce cups. They just DIDN'T want to come out. One plant actually started to fall apart from the potting soil, such that I was very worried that it wouldn't survive the transplant. Anyway, here's what they looked like before I threw them on a tray and brought them back upstairs for their tanning session.

My brother says he pots up his young seedlings up to the first leaves. I bury them up to the first true branch. Not sure which is right, but I want the dew leaves or whatever to become roots.

Aren't they magnificent looking? I sure hope the compost I planted them in isn't too fertilizer rich that they shoot up again. I can't handle more than 18 inches including the pot in my light system, and it's a long time before April 15 (our traditional last frost date).
Speaking of roots, my Legend seedling (shown on the right below) that's about ready to be potted up looks like it's been almost cut at soil level in it's cup. I would HATE to lose it since my other Legend planting is one of the never germinated 3. I have got to pot that up tomorrow.

Another one I need to pot up is my 3 seedling cup (on the left above). I've since noticed one of the seedlings has simply disappeared, so now it's just two healthy seedlings battling for dirt in that 9 ounce cup. The question was still, which seedling is which. THANKFULLY one seedling has potato leaves and the other traditional tomato leaves. A quick search online found that Stupice tomato plants have potato leaves, so I know which one I need to survive. The other is gravy. Well a bit more meat and potatoes than gravy, since I don't even have enough tomatoes to fill my SWCs yet. Here's hoping EG is right and splitting tomato seedlings is easy. I get the process but I hate playing with fire.

Now before you post that I should really plant more seedlings next time, you''re absolutely right. My brother has the right idea to plant 6 of each to keep the best one and give away the rest. I have always had good luck with planting multiple seeds in each cup, but only one cup. My results were horrible this year, so I'll make room for more next time. Maybe I'll just start them in soil blocks and pot them up sooner. I could fit many more in soil blocks than I can with those unwieldy cups.

Well, that'll just about do it for tonight. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I got some money that I'll use to pay bills and maybe even fund the construction of my chicken coop!

Enjoy your garden.

March 5, 2011

2011-03-06T00:43:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful day for a birthday! I didn't wish for anything, but if I had, a little bit of spring would have been at the top of my list. Mother Nature came through for us. Partly overcast with highs in the mid 40s isn't amazing, but compared to what we've had for the last few months, I'll take it.

I finally got out into the yard today. I must say I've been a bit disheartened by the foul weather we've been having, staying cooped up inside most days, even when I had time to get out. I think I'll spread out my eventful day into multiple posts though. I've seen other bloggers I read do that, though mostly they work long hours so can't do anything during the week, but as one can never count on good weather here, I'll just talk about my compost today.

You see, I haven't touched my compost in months. Sure I've added my kitchen scraps to it whenever the kitty-litter container was full, but the last time I tried to turn it my pitch fork hit rock! Today was very different.

Aside from countless egg shells that didn't break down because last year I wasn't crushing them when I put them into my kitchen scrap bin, my compost was nearly finished. Turning it was just like I imagine a worm farm to look like when you're feeding it. Every turn generated a dozen or more worms wiggling in the dirt. The funny thing is the first thing I thought of when I saw them was my chickens would love this place! My second thought was how good they are for the compost and garden. How sad is that. I'll have to turn in my green thumb for that one.

When I was turning the compost, I was smashing the egg shells into smaller pieces, so they'll eventually compost in place. Then my youngest and I decided it was time to weed the garden beds. I hadn't touched them, other than to harvest carrots, since last fall, and I had many weeds growing.

Don't those weeds almost look like lettuce? I have let them grow thinking they may have been volunteers. Today I made the executive decision to yank them though. Of course it took all of 5 minutes to pull them and the moss out. It all went into the yard waste bin rather than my compost. Let Cedar Grove worry about it. They're better equipped to ensure 150 degrees to kill everything.

When I was cleaning, I did notice my beds had settled even more this year. If you look closely, you can see one whole 2x6 is visible now. It may be time for a few yards of Cedar Grove compost as I don't generate enough to do more than augment my beds.

Although I couldn't add much in the way of depth with my scant compost reserves, I could do some major augmenting with the compost, so I added a wheelbarrow full of compost to the front part of this bed, then finally planted out the seedlings that were in dire need of more soil. They weren't looking so healthy when I put them in the ground, but I'm hopeful some water and tons of great compost will perk them right back up.

Lastly, you can see that I throw my hoops up. I actually got the plastic over the hoops at around 10 pm after getting back from my birthday dinner at the folks place. Here's hoping they survive the night in the low forties...

Hope you got to enjoy your garden today!

March 1, 2011

2011-03-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

First off, sorry for my absence this last week. I had a bit of a computer panic to deal with. You see, I was a computer geek in the 1980s, when the PET and C64 were all the rage. Of course, like most non computer people, I never kept up with the Morse Law, and thank my lucky stars I didn't try. Who wants to learn a whole new language every 18 months! Anyway, I'm a bit of a computer dummy right now. I'm not even good at learning to use new programs like I used to be. I blame that on MS Office 7. It is SO user unfriendly it's unreal, but that's a topic for another blog. Anyway, my Internet Explorer crashed on me the other day. I couldn't go anywhere or do anything on the net. So I couldn't update my blog or even catch up on my reading. After days of trying to figure out what was wrong, my computer guru friend that does technical writing for Windows at Microsoft figured out that I had a stuck key on a keyboard I only use for writing long blog posts or job applications. Who knew it could cause such turmoil! In the end, nothing's wrong with the computer, but I did read an entire book trying to keep busy.

So what has been going on in the garden do you ask? Well, we've had sub-freezing temperatures with off and on snowfall for over a week. As a result, it hasn't felt quite springy around here. On the plus side, my seedlings upstairs are going gang busters. The downside is that even with my hoop covers in place, I wouldn't trust them in the garden right now. It's just too cold. The shock alone would kill them and I'm afraid to take the flat for a daily walk to acclimate them to the weather. I guess I should just start harvesting salad greens indoors.

I wish I'd checked on my seedlings while the lights were on, because you should really see my earliest tomatoes that germinated. The plants are downright ready for potting up, or selling as ready-to-plant at a garden store. I've got 3 really healthy plants that are probably a few weeks away from setting flowers! A few more are getting their first true leaves, including the one that I have three seedlings in a 9 oz cup. EG, I sure hope I can duplicate your success with separating them from their confines. Wish me luck when I do pot them up...

I finally got to read Laura's blog, only to find that she planted her brassica's (cole crops or broccoli/cauliflower if you will), a few weeks ago. GRRRR. I hate being so far behind her. I totally missed it. So before I wrote this I ran out to the garage and threw together a handful of soil blocks and filled them with broccoli and cauliflower seeds. This tray is now resting on top of the bin I'm using for the three remaining ungerminated tomato cups on top of the refrigerator.

Oh, the one off block was planted with the last of my 2008 cauliflower seed. Let's see if it germinates as well as my 2011. Just an FYI, each block has 2 seeds, so I'm expecting to thin.

It's funny how I am such a garden optimist, when my brother is the opposite. He likes to say he's an "accidental gardener." He says he plants 10 seeds to hope to get 2 seedlings, when he really ends up with 8 or so. I plant 2 to get 1 and hope to thin. Odd how our philosophies are so different for gardening, but in the rest of our lives, we're reversed. Today my wife said I was too negative, which is true and probably related to the economy and my inability to find a job. Thank goodness I've got my garden and possibly chickens to cheer me up. Come on spring!

Enjoy your garden!

February 24, 2011

2011-02-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Every so often I think I should be posting, but then I realize I have nothing to say. I'm not like some bloggers that grab an idea from the news or research and expound on it. This blog is solely about my gardening adventures. Right now, not much adventuring is going on.

Even my spring garden plans seem to be in stasis as snow is falling here in the Seattle area. Sure it's not much, not much at all, but it's darn cold and anything but spring-like. For some reason, spring seems like a whole season away, rather than a month or so.

Of course, you wouldn't know it looking at my light system, though it's pretty much on auto-pilot except for watering every few days and moving the lights around if necessary. And boy has it been necessary. Here is what my light system looked like a few weeks ago.

And here is what it looked like a few days ago...

Yes, it looks like I could start harvesting lettuce already, and the root systems are actually growing together from one soil block to the next. If it weren't snowing, I'd be planting these out now. They may very well go in the ground this weekend under a hoop cover. Not sure.

Here are the tomatoes that I successfully germinated this year.

As you can see, there is a real difference in the ages of the various seedlings. Though I started germinating seeds in my kitchen weeks ago, I have had several failed attempts and replantings have been necessary. Maybe two of my original 8 actually grew. And yes, I still have a good handfull of cups on top of the fridge trying like mad to germinate. Grrr.

That said, I should give a word of caution for anyone that was frustrated like me with poor germination and replanted new seed into the same cups that failed to germinate. I strongly believe I gave up on a variety and planted another in this next cup, only to have three seedlings germinate eventually. Now I have no idea which is which.

According to my gardening buddy EG, it is simple to separate out seedlings like this when potting up. I however have never had luck doing it with tomatoes. I am not sure if I'll try it or just pick a random seedling to survive. That'll teach me not to remove the top half inch of soil before replanting a different variety.

Lastly, I should mention that my brother may not be getting chickens this year. As he was my chicken buddy and motivation to take the plunge, I am not certain I will either if he does not. Of course I would be very disappointed, but I don't think I could do it without him. Silly, I know. Here's hoping I can convince him to go through with it.

Enjoy your garden!

February 18, 2011

2011-02-19T00:12:00.000-08:00

I was just inspired by KitsapFG's post about her garden area and the pros and cons about it, so instead of immediately responding to her post, I decided to come here and steal the idea and post it here first. Thanks!

Like Laura, I too did not pick my house for it's garden potential, though I do find myself looking at houses that way now, especially those for sale. Also like my good friend, my house has many pros and cons for gardening, not all real estate related.

Pros:

I had a great southern exposure fenced in area with a large reflective wall at the north end that I wasn't using for anything.
I have other areas in my secluded back yard that also have amazing southern exposure, perfect for container gardening. Some folks, like my brother, have their front yard facing south, forcing them to create neighbor beds.
My garden area gets plenty of full sun to grow just about anything this climate will allow... 8-10 hours a day during the growing season.
What the wonderful Pacific Northwet doesn't provide us directly in rainfall, I have access in my garden area to a torrent of rain to fill my rain barrels (project still to be completed).
If I want to create some neighbor beds, I have access to about a 20'x20' area where I could expand in front.

Cons:

My garden area is severely limited, though maximized at about 150 SF including containers, just over 10% what Laura has to work with. Even with intensive gardening techniques, I just don't have the space to put up much for the winter.
My lot, though sizable at 1/4 acre, is pie shaped with the small tip in the back yard where my garden is, and a great deal of shaded space in the front yard.
Though I could technically expand my garden in my back yard, I have 7 and 4 year old boys that need a place to play, and their childhood takes priority over my garden. The potential for my side front yard to be used by the kids as they grow is why I haven't expanded to that 20x20 area.
I too have very tall trees along the property line to the south that block the low winter sun from my garden for most of the day, limiting the potential for year-round gardening, though it hasn't stopped me from trying.

So, just like Laura, my home is not ideal, and I'm constantly drooling over homes in the area with better gardening potential. However, we bought this house specifically for the size, location, and availability of two identical rooms above the garage for our two kids. I'm not moving until they're out of the house, and maybe never.

So, in keeping with Laura's concept of what makes your garden good or bad, feel free to let me know! And if you're not a reader of Kitsap Freedom Gardener's blog, it's amazing and beats the pants of mine.

Enjoy your garden!

February 17, 2011

2011-02-18T00:27:00.000-08:00

Well, as you can see, I've successfully migrated just about everything over to the new blog site. I say almost because I have hundreds of comments that were left on my pages that didn't transfer over. I believe this is because they were hidden on my word press blog due to the theme I was using.

I'm not sure which blog site I will use going forward, but I wanted to try this one out, so I'm posting here tonight. I won't go into all the factors I'm weighing, but so far, I'm leaning toward my old site, mainly because I still get hundreds of hits on my potato page that I wouldn't get here. However, the working spell check is a HUGE bonus here (you know I'm a bad speller if you've read my other blog).

OK, enough about my blog woes, you came here for garden stuff. All that I can say is I'm having germination issues. Several of my tomato seeds have failed to germinate, or they're taking their own sweet time. That said, one of the three mustard seeds I planted has germinated already, which is lightening quick. I'm pretty certain it's not an old seed left over from the previous failed germination, because it's a little 4-leaf clover and nothing I planted starts that way. So now one more plant's made the journey upstairs into the light room, where today I added the fan to give it some pseudo-wind to deal with. Spring is coming along nicely in this house!

Lastly, my brother got let go from his work the other day, so he's up in the air about getting chickens. I've been out of work so long I just have to go with it, but if he won't, I'm not sure I'd do it solo. So, maybe chickens will be next year. I sure hope not.

Enjoy your garden and thanks for following my blog!

February 12, 2011

2011-02-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

Not much in the way of garden topics tonight. First off, I wanted to let you know to check out my new page, 4) Hoop Covers. I've been toying with the page for a year or two, and just decided to finish it, especially since I came to the realization the hoops could be used to tractor my chickens in the beds in Fall. Also, I just realized that this theme does not allow comments on pages. I've got hundreds of posts nobody can see because the theme won't allow it. Grrr

Next, I wanted to apologize if you got yet another message that the site's been suspended. I've tried to contact the site owner, without success. Since I don't own the site, or pay for it, I have no say. My wife thinks I should switch to Google, but I see a few problems with that. I don't have a clue if or how I could save all my posts and transfer them over. If I couldn't transfer my blog in its entirety, I wouldn't want to move. Second, I would likely lose all the traffic I get here, which used to be formidable... And a distant last would be learning a whole new set-up. Ah well, something to think about.

About the only garden activities I've had of late are the occasional sprouting of tomatoes, which go up to the light system. Boy are these taking a long time to germinate. One of the latest to germinate was one of the new varieties. I am worried because it germinated right at the edge of the cup, not in the middle where I planted it. I'm afraid it won't root well right near the edge and I'll lose it. I may pot that one up sooner to give it more dirt on that side.

I also got from my folks a few of their pill bottles so I can try my hand at building a new soil block maker. Mine works fine, but I kind of wanted the taller one. I get so many stubby soil blocks that I wanted them to start taller. Just what I need, more projects! EG I'm not!

On the chicken front, I've finished Chickens for Dummies and am still bumping around Backyard Chickens.com (see sidebar). In my research, I'm now concerned that the 4x8 ark I'm planning will be too small for 4 chickens. At 32 SF, that'll hold a maximum of 3 birds, not 4. I don't want to make it bigger as it would become awkward to move around daily, especially if I wanted to lift it over the fence to have them hang out in the front yard for a change.

Lastly, my wife's Facebook friend has started a blog. She's a chef and it's mostly a gardening/self sufficiency blog. And where I got a boost in 2009 from the Seattle Times, she just got one from CNN... in other words, I'm not in her league. Hehe.

Well, there are several random thoughts, but that's how my mind's going today.

Enjoy your garden!

February 9, 2011

2011-02-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

Quick housekeeping issue. When I fixed the posting issue I opened up so anyone could register. Since that time I've had a SLEW of folks registering for my blog. That is awesome, however, I haven't heard from any of you. I hate to assume that folks are registering for any other reason than to learn about gardening and our adventure in sustainability. So, I would like to hear from folks that don't post regularly. Just a quick line or two saying what why you are here or what your garden is like, or how you found me. Anything really. I just want to know that I got 30 odd registrations in a few days because folks care about what I'm doing here. The last thing I want to do is to delete the registrations of anyone or change the settings.

Ok, enough of that. I finally made it over to my father-in-laws to chat about the coop design from a carpentry standpoint. Gotta love having a Master Carpenter in the family. Anyway, he was a big help, even if he did keep relating all our fancy coops, brooders and research to his previous experience with chicken raising. All he did back in the day was let them free range and collect a few eggs a week. That sure is one way to do it. What I found out about our design is that it's solidly built and should work well for us. To make mine lighter I'll use 2x3s instead of 2x4s except for the trex on the bottom to keep it from rotting. I also found I should use tons of L brackets to firm up the structure so it doesn't torque if and when it's moved. Speaking of moving, since I don't plan on moving it regularly, we're not going to put wheels on it. Instead we'll just use a hand truck to drag it where it needs to go. Lastly, he recommended for a natural light source to take the entry door for coop cleaning an feeding and make it out of plexiglass. That side gets late evening sun so hopefully it won't heat up the place too much. Oh and of course he offered to help build it... YAY!

I finally got digital copies of my coop design so I thought I'd upload them here. Feel free to comment on them, though I warn you, they've been altered a bit, especially in the roof design.

The new roof design will be a slant shed-type roof to reduce the weight. No trusses. Oh and of course aside from the bottom 2x4, the rest will be 2x3s now. Also at the roofline will be a 6 inch gap in the plywood wall to allow for ventilation. I hope that adding louver vents in the back side will create appropriate air flow rather than that dreaded draft!

Let's see, what else. The chicken wire is going to be welded wire or the like to keep out predators. We've got a bad raccoon problem, and that'll keep them and anything else, out.

As you can see by the last pic, we'll have 2 nesting boxes and an electrical hook-up. It'll be one that requires an extension cord to power the outlets on the inside.

Enjoy your garden!

February 7, 2011

2011-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Well, let me start by saying that KitsapFG wasn't entirely right when she said my comments would pick up after I fixed the comment problem... Either that or I'm losing my touch to get folks to disagree with me... hehe.

Anyway, I've been doing nothing garden wise since my last post. Well, that's not entirely true. I have been mother henning my tomato seeds in the kitchen, trying to force them to germinate. I've been alternating them from one side of the stove to the other in the hopes of providing them the optimum germination environment. On one side there's the direct air from the heat vent to warm the soil, but I can't use the lamp there because it causes too much heat. The other side gets no benefit from the heat, but the lamp with an incandecent bulb generates too much heat also.

In general I'm finding that the fluffy seedling mix I used for my latest plantings of more Legend, Stupice and Stiletz tomato seeds dries out very fast, at least on top where the seed is sitting. What that means is I am regularly spraying the cups with water. It's insane the amount of energy I'm putting into these seeds. Boy I need a job, and not just for the benefits...

On the chicken front, this evening I had a good chat with my brother who's the cause of my chicken obsession. We worked through several issues in about 30 minutes, some I didn't even know I had! I hate to say that I called my dumb brother a genius on more than one occasion tonight (I always say he's the dumb one because I did far better in school than he, hehe inside joke).

We were tentatively planning on two separate chicken doors in our small coops. One would lead down into the mini-run below the coop, the other would lead out to the yard where I could deposit them directly into my ark. We decided to change the gate for the mini-run from the 6 foot side to the 3 foot side. Hopefully I have the space to place the ark on the side of the coop and then let them just come out into the ark. However, as I type I find one problem with that. If they don't want to come, I can't very well reach in 6 feet to get them... something to consider. Gotta love designing your own coop.

Now for the reason I called him a genius. He totally changed my mind about the type of ark I would build. My plan was to build a hoop-house type ark our of PVC, though mine would be adjustable in length to fit on any of my garden beds during the fall to let the hens till and fertilize my soil for the next year. I worked hard to design a way to make that work using different sized pipe for the bottom supports such that they could slide into one another to change the lenght of the run.

The genius part was when he made me realize that I didn't NEED an ark for my garden beds. I already have one! I was going to put a hoop house covered in bird netting into my beds. I already HAVE hoop houses for all my beds. All I need to do to make them chicken friendly is to replace the 4-mil plastic for bird netting and presto, instant chicken ark! Brilliant. I can't believe in all my pondering I didn't think of that until tonight. My excuse is that I was spending so much time learning to care for the hens and building my coop from scratch that I hadn't spent much time on the ark.

So instead, both my brother and I are going to build light-weight triangular arks, similar to the ones with plans for sale on the net. Ours will be simple 2x2 frame construction with light 1/4" plywood on 1/3 of the ark for rain cover and maybe a nesting box, though I do like my idea to use my cat carrier as a portalbe nesting box.

As you can see, nothing is in stone yet, but we are rapidly approaching the time to build our coops (he wants them built before the arrival of the day-old chicks). Decisions are going to have to be made soon, and I need to get over to see my father-in-law for his take on lightening the coop to make it more mobile.

Fun stuff! Enjoy your garden!

February 3, 2011

2011-02-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I owe KitsapFG a word of thanks for making me figure out why I wasn't getting comments. Seems you had to be registered, but you couldn't register yourself. Double whammy. How those boxes got checked I have no idea, but it's fixed now, so I welcome your coments!

Today was all about tomatoes. In the end, out of the five cups I started with two seeds each, only three germinated anything. I even dug around a bit to try to find a deep seed or something and found nothing but dirt. Yuck, especially since one of the cups I'm out of seed for that variety. No biggie, it allowed me to plant another cup of each of my new varieties. I had already decided to plant tomatoes in one of my scrap SWCs, so I had two more plants to start.

In digging around the cup, I found the dirt had settled a bit and was firmly packed, not very conducive toward roots forming. So in when I replanted the failed germinating cups, I dumped out the compost mixture and added a bit more vermiculite to lighten it up. I also added my mix of bloodmeal and 10-10-10ish tomato fertilizer. Can't hurt I guess. I didn't add much.

So, now that two of the cups have moved upstairs under lights, I filled their spots in the kitchen with two more cups. One more is germinating, so once it stops being curled up and spreads it dew leaves, I'll move that up too.

Lastly, part of me wants to go upstairs and steal one of the ungerminated soil blocks and plant Green Wave mustard greens in it and start it germinating in the kitchen. Unfortunately I have no idea when to plant that out. Is it like lettuce, or something else? First time growing for me. All it says on Territorial's site is soil temps for germination, but since I'm starting it indoors it doesn't matter what that says.

On the chicken front, I'm just trying to work my way through Raising Chickens for Dummies... boy is that a comprehensive book compared to Idiots. I'm so glad my brother had me read Idiots first. Speaking of my brother, I may as well share our friendly debate that we've been having over flock management. Specifically, what to feed the hens. We agree on using starter feed for the first part, but when they reach maturity, I plan on using commercially produced feed that's balanced nutritionally for layers, supplementing with kitchen scraps and scratch. My brother's gone to his local independent grocery store where he shops and spoke to the produce manager. Seems they have about 10% loss for their produce. That's stuff they can't even give away to food banks. Apparently the manager feeds it to his pigs, but said my brother could have some for his chickens, so my brother intends to go about 50/50 with feed and scraps. Chapter 8 in Dummies makes quite the compelling argument against trying to manually get the right balance of protien, carbs and the like for your chickens. Not only is it hard to do yourself, but the consequences for failing could be malnutrition, leading to poor egg production and even mortality. That's just not a risk I'm willing to take.

Of course, that's just my brother for you. He's trying to make it so his coop costs him as little as possible, using free materials whenever he can, and he hopes not to spend any money on caring for them either. He even talked to a few mills or whatever, that generate wood chip waste. About the best I plan on doing is talking to the arborist down the street. He always has logs he's chopping up for firewood. I'm pretty sure he still has a garbage can full of chain-saw dust. A few years ago I made the mistake of putting a wheel barrow full of those wood chips into my compost pile. They didn't break down for a year!. I bet they'd make good bedding for my hens. Something to consider. I'm sure he'd be willing to part with as much as I wanted for a dozen eggs every once in a while.

Speaking of giving eggs to neighbors, I finally caught my former farmer neighbor today and spoke about getting chickens. He was very cool with it, as I knew he would be. He even told me that once upon a time, he could get a catch a chicken and put it in a pot for supper in 7 minutes flat. I can't imagine doing everything it takes to cull and prepare a chicken for cooking in 7 hours let alone minutes. Gotta love old farmers. Now I just have to convince my other neighbor to not report me for noise violations every time they peep.

Well, that's enough for me. Take care and enjoy your garden!