Chickens in the Garden

We use a lot of mulch, so much so, in fact, that I have a set of neighbors who call me "Mulch Lady".

That's ok.

What is not ok is when I find gross things in the mulch pile. I find bones, dead animals, and lots and LOTS of bugs. Hey, I get the fact that decomposers are necessary, but when I'm putting down mulch for a vegetable garden, I start to wonder just how many termites are good for tomatoes. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing I have too many.

So, I put my chickens to work!

They LOVE eating bugs from the mulch.

And a bonus is that it keeps them busy while the babies test out the chicken yard:

Right now the babies are a bit overwhelmed by the yard, even their little quarantined section of the yard where the rye grass has grown so happily. Huddling together behind the waterer seems like a good idea. The older chickens aren't too fond of the babies and squawk loudly at me as if to say, "There are some strange birds in that grassy area of our yard! Do something!"

The babies still come in at night to sleep under their heat lamp in their refurbished pack-and-play.

The Tale of Katniss, Our Survivor Chick

 This is the tale of Katniss, our survivor chick.  Like the character in The Hunger Games, Katniss just keeps on going! She started off her young life as the dominant chick in our new batch of three spring babes.  She had a knack for posing for the camera, too.

 "Girl On Fire!"

 At age 2 weeks, Katniss got her foot caught in a perch in the middle of the night.  Who knows how long she dangled upside down by her small leg.  When we found her (on our way out the door for school) she was lifeless.  But once we held her for a while, she perked up!

 The vet told us she had nerve damage (she was lucky not to have any broken or misplaced bones) and would take time to heal. She needed to be quarantined for her own safety, since a chick who can't stand up is bound to be at the bottom of the pecking order.  Chicks are very social and need to see and hear each other, but at night, they also need to snuggle together. So we placed a fish tank inside the chicks' playpen and put a stuffed ducky in the tank to keep her company while she sleeps.

One of the sweetest things I have ever seen, though, was the next morning: Katniss was sleeping in the corner and her sister chicks were sleeping on the outside of the corner. (In the pictures above and below, Katniss hobbled out of the corner before I got the camera, but you can see her sisters waiting for her return.)  So, even though they couldn't all huddle in a cozy pile of downy feathers, they still managed to be together.  So sweet!

Katniss has made a fantastic recovery and is now out of the fish tank and back in the huddle with the other two chicks.  She is now using her foot again almost completely normally and we couldn't be happier for our Chick on Fire.

New Life

Spring means new life. And we have plenty of it around here!

Our butterfly house is full of Painted Ladies.  We plan to release them on Easter when the family is here to celebrate with us.  We've had unusually warm weather around here, so the butterflies should do well outside.

In the shot above, you can see the inside of the butterfly house, with two Painted Ladies clinging to the wall.  The red dye on the wall and floor of the house is leftover after their transformation from rather homely caterpillars to colorful butterflies.  We never before wondered where all that color comes from.  They make it themselves; how cool is that?

Another addition to our menagerie is a second Queen Bee.  Hers is the smaller hive.  The taller hive has two honey-supers on top.  We've been so unseasonably warm this year that we expect to harvest honey well before summer.

And finally, nothing says spring like NEW CHICKS!!!  Three Golden Buffs (aka Red Stars) joined us this week.  Their names are Katniss, Ginny, and Churchill.  You may or may not be able to tell what my children are each reading based on these names.

Happy Spring!

Fox-Proof Fence

This is the tale of our Fox-Proof fencing. And of how we learn as we go.

Before we dreamed of chickens, we had a small garden. It is long since gone (there is now a shed on the spot where our first vegetable garden once was), but it taught us two things about fencing: if the fence isn't tall, the deer bounce right over it; and if the fence isn't buried, the bunnies go right under it.

So, the next fence we made was buried several inches.

Then along came the chickens.  We built three large garden plots.  The chickens spend a year in each plot, and we rotate both crops and chickens so that there is a nice cycle of tilling, fertilizing, and bug munching.  When we first built the plots, we researched fencing and learned that a fox-proof fence should include a buried section that prevents a fox from digging under the fence.

We thought: chickens=chicken wire.

But only four years later, that chicken wire had rusted so badly, that there were gaps in the fencing that bunnies, foxes, and even chickens could manage.

This weekend I added a new, galvanized hardware cloth over top of the chicken wire. (It would have been too difficult to remove the chicken wire since it is half buried.)

Near the gate, I left gaps because transporting the coop through the gate door will require us to fold down the hardware cloth.

The most difficult stretch to manage was the side of the fence near the trees. In order to install the hardware cloth, a foot of earth needed to be moved, the 'cloth' needed to be rolled out and folded into an L shape, the floor was secured with landscape pins, and then the earth was added back on top of it, covered by a layer of mulch.  Finally, my boys and I used galvanized 18 gauge wire to tie the hardware cloth to the existing fence.

I did not use the camera during that long ordeal, so for the shot below I dug away a bit of earth to show how the hardware cloth folds out into the mulched area about 12 inches.

We know that foxes can climb, but we did not add the curved section at the top of each fence to prevent anything from climbing over.  We did have aviary netting secured over all our garden plots at one point, but a freaky October snow destroyed all of that and we haven't bothered replacing it.

I'm hoping foxes don't read this blog.

Chickens as Gardeners

Besides laying beautiful eggs each day for us, our chickens are fantastic gardeners.  They till one garden plot each season for us (they follow the squash garden and the Italian garden follows them), turning the soil, eating all the weeds and spent plants, and removing bugs who have overwintered in the soil.  This year, they've also agreed to monitor the pole beans for us.

Pole beans are a favorite here.  They are easy to grow, give a large yield without too much effort, and the kids enjoy the growing plants and the finished product.  We were surprised last year to find, for the first time, Mexican bean beetles on our plants.  What look like yellowy-orange lady bugs eat the leaves of the pole bean plant, thus depriving the plant of photosynthesis.  We still got beans, but much less than normal, and the plants looked really ugly with their decimated leaves.

So, what's a gardener to do?

 That's right:  bring in the chickens!

Rather than rotating the pole bean crop to a new garden with the squash and cabbage, we planted them in the same spot as last year.  Normally, that would be an invitation to the overwintered bugs for a repeat performance, but this year, the chickens are in that garden.  I installed rabbit fencing along one wall of their yard, with bamboo stakes for support (and for the pole beans to climb).  The pole beans are planted in between the rabbit fencing and the fenced wall of the yard.  So far, the chickens have not dug under the fencing. I'm *hoping* that by the time they undermine the rabbit fencing, the pole beans will be well-established.  Once the plants are tall enough, the chickens will do little damage to them.

As the plants grow, any Mexican bean beetles that emerge will become chicken food (if they cooperate with my grand scheme).  Any that appear on the leaves can be easily knocked off for the chickens...integrated pest management and organic gardening.  It will be a win/win...if it works.

*UPDATE*6/5/11
This morning I found Indigo trapped in the pole bean part of the chicken yard.  We were not in the garden at all yesterday, so we didn't notice her in there.  She seemingly dug her way under the rabbit fencing and must have spent the night in there.  Needless to say, the pole beans are all broken and/or eaten.  I planted some more today.

Harvest Shot

I love going outside on a rainy morning and coming inside with something like this.  The pop of a strawberry coming off the stem, the thrill of looking under leaves to find something red and round, the smell of wet dirt...it is a good morning.

This is the first day we've picked strawberries.  Last year, we got a very low yield after weeding out some Creeping Charlie two years ago. The weed wrapped itself around most of our strawberry plants, so to remove it required unearthing each plant.  We also had a drought that summer, so the weeding and replanting and baking in the sun was a bit too much for most of the plants to take. After two years, we're finally starting to get some strawberries back.  The ground ivy is still a problem, but I've promised the strawberries I'd be more vigilant about weeding it before it strangles them.

Oh, and I found a pretty egg when I opened up the chicken coop this morning. (See it nestled in the strawberries, above.)

Another Use for Chicken Fabric

Found a great tutorial for a fabric keychain on U create and finally I got around to making my own version.  This is a great way to use a little bit of fabric you *really* like. It is also a great way to find your keys!

Happy Day!

This day started off rather dreary outside, but upon closer inspection there was a bit of happiness coming up from the soil.  Look carefully in the picture above and you'll see two butterfly-shaped cabbage leaves sprouting.  I tried growing cabbage last year, with no luck.  I am trying again so that I'll have a nice supply of red cabbage for the chickens all summer.  (I'll eat some, too!)

Yard Sale Chickens

I had the pleasure of going to yard sales this weekend with a friend.  I'm not sure what sort of vibes I was giving off that day, but as my friend gets offered free stuff ("Oh, I see you looking at that lovely [fill in anything here] so you may just have it for free!!!") I am haggling left and right for cheap junk. 
At one sale, we are told that everything on the picnic bench can be ours for $15 OR we can pay $1 a piece.  I pick up three items and say, "How about $2 for all these?"  The elderly gentleman running the sale barks back, "FOUR DOLLARS for that!"
What kind of crazy math is that?
At the next sale, my friend picks up a brand new Pottery Barn vase (price tag still on, $20 value!) and the grandmother running this sale chimes, "You can have that! It's free."  I pick up the blue chicken seen in the photo and offer fifty cents (generous, IMO) and the lady grimaces and shakes her head.  She explains that a few dollars is more like what she had in mind.

--Back up and read that sentence about Pottery Barn again.-- 

I pick up the orange tchotchky in the picture (I don't even know what it is, but it looks chickeny enough for me) and offer a dollar for both of them.  She begrudgingly takes the money and then makes it pretty clear I better leave. 
At the next yard sale, my friend gets free curtains and a matching switch plate thrown in as a bonus.
*sigh*

Chicken Fairy

My littlest guy has been on a fuse bead kick for a few weeks now, ever since we made plant row markers for the vegetable garden.  Usually when my children figure out that some sort of fun activity has a purpose, they no longer want to do it, but not this time.  "N" has made a fairy for the chickens, using a pattern that came with some of our fuse beads.  I hung the Red Faced Chicken Fairy on a pole in the chicken yard.  And I thought that pole had no purpose.  It was just waiting for the day when the Red Faced Chicken Fairy would arrive.

This chicken was not impressed at the turn of events.  When asked her opinion, she said, "Er...shut the door, would ya?" (That chicken is named Teriyaki.  Such a cruel name. No wonder she's so paranoid all the time.)

Here you can see the pole formerly known as Useless now holding the tiny Red Faced Chicken Fairy to overlook our Empire of Dirt.  No wonder I get the Nine Inch Nails song in my head whenever I visit the chickens. It all makes sense now.  (And if you haven't heard Empire of Dirt covered by Johnny Cash, check it out.)

Boo can't figure out why the chickens would need a Red Faced Chicken Fairy.  Hmmmm....