Preparing the Garden for 2013

Well we have been insanely busy down here in the Maketewah Valley.  This year my boyfriend and I are working at 3 different garden spots in the neighborhood, with help from some friends too!  It's been rather tough working full time, and spending every free hour of sunlight digging and turning beds!  I’m worn out, but the big projects are done!  Here is a brief overview on what we’ve been doing…..

One of gardens is in a friend’s yard down the block, just a big grassy backyard; perfect for bigger plants that need more water (easy access to a hose).  We dug a few beds out last year, but this year we made them larger and used the cut strips of sod to build up a natural border.  Added compost and leaf mold so they are ready! 

The border will be nice so we can keep building up that soil.  The two long beds in the back grew our corn, beans, gourds and amaranth last summer; but this year I’m trying tobacco! More about that later :)  The huge bed adjacent to the tobacco beds will be full of peppers and okra.  We threw some peas in for now; they should be about done by the time the peppers are going in.

At our house we are starting lots of seeds. 

Everything is doing great!  We have a small hoop house for starting seeds and storing tools.  We set up a heater a couple nights last month when the temperature dropped below freezing, but for the most part the hoop house stayed warm enough.

Here is a look inside….

We put our seedlings in tubs with glass or plastic bags over them to keep everything warm and moist.   Now that the temperature is rising, we remove the covers in the morning otherwise the seedlings will get fried. 

We used these old metal storage containers to hold planters and then wrapped a large trash bag around them at night.

My boyfriend started some basil in these 2 liter bottles.  Just cut them in half, add water and a cotton “wick” and plant.  Seem to be working out so far, and you don’t have to worry about watering.

For this large, floating tobacco tray we just set up scrap wood barriers with glass and plastic on top.; which worked perfectly for starting greens.

Our compost piles....

We have been having beautiful weather here, so we took this opportunity to turn our compost piles.  We have two big piles and two small ones, so we started with the bigger pile.  Fork it up, then turned the adjacent pile into the first pile.  Once we got all the stuff that was still decomposing turned into the first pile; we collected the pure, worm filled compost in plastic tubs and trash cans.

The plan is to let the compost dry out in these tubs over the summer.  The tubs and trash cans are pretty deep so we will have to mix them up so the compost dries evenly.  Drying the compost makes it easier to work with.  Rather than adding a handful of compost mush to your soil, you’re adding dry compost mulch that easily forks into the soil and spreads evenly.

We covered the tubs in plastic bags to keep the rain out, and we will go from there this summer.  We turned the smaller compost piles onto the large pile.  Now we have one huge pile that is close to being done.  The chickens get to scratch around in this pile; turning it up, eating bugs and pooping all over making our compost into gold!  We throw our food scraps in the smaller piles, layering it with yard waste and old hay from the chicken coop.  Another benefit of having our compost organized in various stages of decomposition is that we don’t have to worry about the chickens eating things they shouldn’t out of the food scraps, like egg shells and avocado skins.  Dirty work, but the plants will thank us later!

Winter rye was planted all over last fall as a cover crop. So we turned it all over and added leaf mold and compost to prepare those beds. Took a bit of work, but the soil looks beautiful and ready to go. 

We also rolled all the plastic off our hoop houses, so the garden is ready for spring and summer.  Currently we have peas, onions, greens and lettuces planted.  The fruit trees are blooming, all our perennial herbs are coming back and the seedlings are growing strong.  This year looks very promising! 

 

               

Preparing the Chickens for Winter

I should have posted this a few months ago, but towards the end of fall we started to winterize the chicken coop.  Our birds are pretty much out in the open so we needed to give them protection from the elements.  We tend to just work with what we have, which luckily is a lot of gardening equipment left from the previous owner.  So a few tarps, some PVC, recycling and lots of hay has gotten our chickens through the winter!

We covered the roof and two sides of the coop in a large tarp.  The back of our coop is also almost all covered, except for a 2 foot strip of chicken wire which has been left open for air flow.  The front side of the coop is also left open, and we have a large board that we can place in front of the coop for extremely cold or snowy nights.  Air flow is important because too much moisture in the coop can lead to frostbitten chickens!

 

We had issues in the beginning with water pooling up in the tarp flat across the roof.  So we rigged up a mini hoop house by feeding PVC pipe through the lattice roofing.  The rain and snow just slides right off and keeps the coop relatively dry.

The chickens sleep in this box, which has a wire floor.   Throughout the winter we keep the bottom layer full of hay.   I have to clean it almost daily, or every other day just to help keep the moisture out.  I just use a small shovel and clean it like a litter box, changing the hay out every week or as needed.  We put another tarp over the little house on extra cold nights, below 20° F.

We have also made few additions to the coop since they started laying eggs.  The nesting box is simply an old dog cage with 2 milk crates full of hay.  Works perfectly!

We hung their food bin from the roof which has kept it much cleaner.  I want to hang the water but I’m a little afraid of the weight. 

This is where the grit and oyster shells are.  Simply an old plastic sugar jug cut in half and stapled to the wall.

So far so good, all the chickens are healthy and happy.  And hopefully only another month or so of cold nights to get through!

Chicken Coop Addition and the Adventures of Integrating a New Hen

What a busy month it’s been!  Lots of projects in the garden preparing for winter, and a million things to make for the holiday season!

 

And to add to all the chaos I brought home a young hen to add to our flock.  There were supposed to be 2 little hens, but one was killed by my Dad’s older hens.  So I was really cautious about integrating The Buffster, as we have come to call her.  She is a Buff Orpington, and we kind of just liked that as her name, so Buff for short.  This page is an excellent resource for integrating chickens.  Apparently some people just put the new hens in with their flock when they are sleeping, but my city chickens are pretty tough and much bigger than Buff.  I used the other two options, seperate spaces and caging the bullies.

 

Unfortunately the 2 quail that were living in the garden died a couple months ago, but I was able to use their old cage for Buff.  I set it up next to the chicken coop so all the chickens could see each other and get used to the changes. 

This is how the integration began:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not horrible fighting, but lots of pecking and chasing.  It was mainly the #2 hen, Corn Flake, that would pick on the Buffster.  I seperated her from the others a couple times when she was out of control.  It was strange though, her aggression seemed to bump her up in the chain of command and now she is the Alpha Hen.  We gave them time together almost every day and let them scratch around the backyard where there was plenty of room for Buff to run away if she needed to. 

 

After about a week the older hens didn’t bother her much at all.  So it was time for full integration.   We decided to actually combine the 2 cages.  The original coop needed a bit of reinforcing to begin with.  Once everything was covered in small mesh chicken wire we lined the quail cage up next to the chicken coop with the doorway facing in towards the coop. 

 

We cut a matching doorway out of the side of the chicken coop by cutting a vertical line through the center, then horizontal cuts along the top and bottom of the door.  This allowed us to bend the cut chicken wire into the quail cage to secure the gap between the two cages.  We used gorilla tape around any sharp edges that we couldn’t bend smooth. 

 

 

The overall plan is to add a sunroof to the quail cage section using an old window pane.  We plan to use the top of the main part of the coop to catch rain water, store supplies or turn it into a green roof. 

Even though there was still a little pecking and fighting between hens at this point, we left them alone together to sort out their differences.  And they were fine!  It took another 2 or 3 days until the older chickens let Buff sleep in their house, but now they are one happy flock.

 

Here is one last addition I’ve made to the coop that has made a big difference.  I saw this idea here.  The purpose of the rocks is to keep the chickens from throwing hay and dirt into their water.  Basically I laid a couple logs down in the corner of the coop to close in a square section which I filled with rocks and bricks.  It’s not perfect but much cleaner.

Today’s Harvest – Feathers, Veggies, Herbs and Art

I love days when I don’t have to go to work!  I can do so many wonderful things!  I started the day with a little photo shoot, taking pictures of a couple new skirts to put up on Etsy.  There is this amazing alleyway next to my house that is filled with colorful graffiti, so I can literally walk 2 minutes to a perfect back drop for my photos!

I came home, cleaned up some chicken poop and collected a bunch of feathers. We didn’t choose our chicken by breed, just took a group of random chicks my dad’s neighbor hatched. And at first I was disappointed that 2 of them are white, because I thought their feathers wouldn’t be that exciting. It didn’t occur to me then that this was a wonderful thing because now I can dye their feathers. Apparently you can use good old Rit dye easily and get all kinds of colors. I also have been interested in experimenting with pokeberries, so I plan to dye feathers this way as well. I found this great site for information on using pokeberries, which you may very well already have growing in your back yard!

Along with the feathers we also harvested these amazing veggies and made a big salad for lunch.  Then I picked a ton of herbs and made Italian herb bread.  Actually I made 3 loaves of bread; one for dinner tonight with a few friends, one for making bruschetta tomorrow for dinner with my family and one for the house!

And in between the bread rising and baking I splatter painted some fabric for future rock and roll skirts!  As you can see!  I wish everyday could be a day off “work”.  One day.  I also officially started my future farm savings account last night so I’m ready to get serious!

Mini Death Shrine Earring

Ok, so it’s not really a death shrine, but it sounds way cooler calling it that!  And I did go through a lot of pain (at least monetarily!) getting those wisdom teeth removed!  The dentist looked at me like I was a little crazy when I asked if I could keep my teeth, but I knew I could do something cool with them.  Plus with the addition of some of my chicken’s feathers, this is a totally unique and personal earring.  So if you have some old teeth and feathers lying around, here’s one idea of what to do with them!

MATERIALS: teeth, feathers, wire, earring hook

First I wrapped the 2 teeth together with wire and added a little bit of glue on the back to hold them in place.  I did the same with 3 feathers, wrapping them as tight as I could and adding a bit of glue.  (Unfortunately my glue was so old it already turned yellow, but at least it’s just on the back!)

  

I also left plenty of extra wire attached so I could connect them once the glue dried.  I simply wrapped the teeth onto the feathers and then attached and earring hook.  Super simple, you just have to get the teeth and feather lined up how you want them and wrap away until it looks right.  Cut off any excess wire and you’re good to go!

Chickens!!!

This weekend was very busy, and amidst the craziness my 3 chickens were finally ready to be picked up!  We aren’t sure what breed they are exactly, because they were hatched by someone’s wild backyard flock, but they sure are adorable!  Luckily the guys I garden with already built a coop out of one of our hoop houses we took down, plus some scrap furniture found around the neighborhood (if only I had been home to take pictures of their process!).  So far it’s holding up just fine and the chickens are happy! 

I will be posting more about our chickens as we learn more and start incorporating them into our gardening.  We still have several months before they start laying eggs, so right now we are just trying to get them comfortable in their new habitat and making sure they are totally safe from raccoons and other predators.   I’m so excited to learn how to raise chickens and start this new adventure!