The Hens Are As Excited About Spring As I Am

The chickens are laying, full speed ahead:

Right now I have 2 1/2 dozen eggs, and I have been sharing them with a friend and making scrambled and boiled eggs and baking cakes and pancakes galore. I get 4 eggs on most days.  That's an egg per chicken almost every day.  That is very good. I recommend this breed to anyone who asks.

The chickens made it though the winter just fine. The worst part of it was that the chicken coup was wet and messy rather than dry and sandy, and the chickens couldn't dust bathe not matter how clean I kept the coup.  The heated waterer worked well.  They did seem to get a bit stir crazy when I didn't let them out for a while.  They seemed to like to get out and explore even when it was snowy.

Now that things are greening up they love to go out to their daytime tractor that gets moved around the grass in the front yard.  They thatch and mow the grass pretty efficiently, and don't damage the lawn unless you leave them in one place too long. I have learned the hard way they can not be trusted to roam around free in the yard when there are seeds or seedling to dig up or tasty plants to eat. I love them, but they do know how to get into trouble if you let them.

I also have a neighbor's cat that is a little too interested in the chickens.  I don't know if he would really hurt them, but I don't completely trust him alone with them. His name is Billy, and he is a lover, but I've heard he loves to eat the little birds. He might look at my chickens and think, "those sure are the fattest, tastiest house sparrows I have ever seen.  Now to sneak up behind one while it has wandered off alone."

Chickens: 7 weeks old and full of sass.

Wow! The chickens are growing.  They are still just as friendly as they ever were, but they sure are sure of themselves.  When I first put them outside in their coup during the day, the neighborhood cats scared the crap out of them.  Now they have figured out the cats can't get in, so they taunt them.  It is ridiculous.  I will try to get a video of it one of these days. One of the neighbors likes to come over and feed them grass from her hand.  They tear into it with gusto, only occasionally missing and pecking her hand.  I feed them from my hands every day so they learn to come when I call them.  I give them grass, weeds, or just their crumbles.

Here are Fluffy (who is the least fluffy of them all now, by the way) and Ginger.  They are sitting on their outside perch.  This is where they have been sleeping at night.  I have been trying to get them to go in the little coup house at night.  They like to run in there when they get scared, but it is very hot in there when it is 90 degrees outside, so they prefer the outdoor roost.

This is Brie and Lilith.  They are the most friendly and curious.  In this picture they have run over to see what treats I might have for them.

Look at those girls.  They are running over because I just opened to the door to the run.  Shortly after this they pecked the camera to see if it tasted good. I am loving that they are outdoors all day and night now.   They were getting too messy and smelly for keeping in the house.  All of our neighbors love them.  One neighbor said she is thinking of getting some herself.  My evil plan is working.

Cold Nights, but Warm Sunny Days Led to Progress on Small Projects

For the last week or so the low temperatures overnight have been down in the twenties, leaving a good frost on the ground and cars.  The days have been mostly sunny and warm, though, with two days even getting up to sixty.  That means that working outside has to start a bit late to give the ground time to thaw, but the middle of the day is just perfect for working outside. We have been trying to finish all of our smaller projects up before I go back to work April 1st.  These include the chicken coup, the compost pile, the basement window wells, and the shady side of the house needs to be cleaned up and planted.

When we bought our house there was a flaking and shallow terra cotta pot on the porch.  I always thought that I would like to have a huge wide pot there full of cascading million belles and petunias.  I have been shopping for the pot I want, a few different times.  I still have not seen a pot that is anything like what I have in mind, so I decided to just pick one of the pots I had around and plant some flowers in it.  It is too early for million belles and petunias, so I planted some pansies and violas for now.

These are the ones Heath and I picked out.  I really love bright colors, and I have been forbidden from planting pink flowers.  Yellow, orange and purple it is.

I know, it isn't exactly cascading, yet. I like it anyway.  It adds colors to the front yard until the tulips and dutch irises bloom.

We put some of our rocks in the bottom of the pot, so that it doesn't blow away. They also help it drain.  This pot only has a small hole in the bottom.

I couldn't resist snapping this picture.  Violas are so cute with their faces.  It makes me think of Alice in Wonderland.

We also finished the chicken coup.  Yay! I forgot to take pictures during the process.  It went up so quick and easy after we finished the foundation.  I posted a picture of the foundation we were working on in an earlier post.  After we got the first coarse of cinder blocks level in the ground we laid down 1/2 inch hardware cloth covering the whole thing.  Then the flat capstones were laid over the hardware clot to hold it in place and give the coup a flat place to lay. We filled the inside of the blocks with sand, like a sand box for kids and then assembled the coup over that.  That will give the chickens something to scratch and make it easy to sift out the poops in the yard.  It should also let it drain well, so it will stay nice and dry.

Here is a picture looking at the raised coup door and ramp.  The area under the raised coup is pretty small, but the chickens will probably like having the larger space to run around.

In this picture I am holding up the lid to the nest box.  All it needs is some bedding.

Here you can see the space under the raised coup better.

The raised coup or chicken house has a pull out drawer to allow the changing of the bedding when the chickens are out.  There isn't much space here so I will be limited to pine pellets or pine shavings, probably.  I might be able to use the straw that is all chopped up into short pieces.

This is the view through the front door of the chicken house. The nest boxes are on the left and there are two bars across  the floor for them to perch on.

Another project we are working on is the shady side of the house.  You may remember from earlier pictures that it is a rocky, weedy, dirty mess.  At some point someone had landscaped it with thick black plastic with river rock over it, but years of overgrowth by trees and bushes has left enough organic matter on top for plenty of weeds to take hold.  I have found loads of violets, which I love.  I have tried to save as many of them as I can.  We decided the best way to go forward is to dig up the whole thing, sift out the rocks and take out the weeds and plastic.  We made this sifter out of a two by four frame with two layers of chicken wire over it.  My hubby just happened to be working on the frame for the compost bin and I asked him if we could use some of the pieces temporarily for this purpose.  The down side is that the compost bin won't be done till we finish this, but that shouldn't be longer than a week.  We stood the frame up on these plastic sawhorses. Sifting out the rocks  is slow going, but the sifter is working well.  We have spent one and a half days on it so far.

I have the bucket handy for violets and worms I find. I plan on starting a work compost as well as a classic compost pile.  I am saving money to buy a compost tumbler to keep animals out of the compost and keep it neat.

We have been shoveling the rock/dirt/weed mix onto the sifter table and working it through with our hands.

The sifter leaves behind neat piles of dirt.  We will level it all out after we put in some shallow window wells around the windows.  At first we were planning on putting some weed block fabric and putting the rocks back in, but now we are kind of against that after seeing how much work it is to take them back out.  We are leaning more towards bark mulch now because it will just break down and make more soil instead.

That is all the pictures for today.  I will have a chicken update tomorrow. Look for that.  They are getting lots of feathers and trying to fly a bit.  The weather is supposed to be warm for the next 10 days.  It won't get down below freezing for that long so there are lots of things I'd like to get out and plant in the garden today. I will post an update about that later.

It's March, In Like a Lamb

The weather has been very mild so far this March.  We have been out in the yard working all weekend.  My hubby had a three day weekend and spent the whole thing out in the yard helping me build my last three raised beds and getting the chicken coup started.  I can't believe how much we have gotten done.

 Here are my hubby and Uncle Kevin working on the last of the raised beds.  They were doing that while I finished up the cinder blocks. 

Here is number five put in and level before we filled it with dirt.

I took this picture standing in the front yard right next to the first raised bed this morning.  You can see that we now have seven and they are all full of dirt.  That was my goal.  I am so excited.

Here they are from the other end.  You can see the last one in the back is raised up.  We decided to put in a step up to the back yard with cinder blocks.  The yard sloped pretty steeply towards the front and as we leveled the spaces for the beds we were having to move more and more dirt.  We made the back yard a whole step up from the side yard.  We still have to raise the tops of the window wells and fill the dirt back in against the house to make the yard really level and not sloped towards the house. We decided to wait until the temps are more concrete pouring friendly.

 

 

Here I am almost done with the tedious chore of putting in the cinder blocks all level and in line.  They aren't perfect, so no making fun, but I worked hard on that.

 

I lifted each of those blocks in and out at least five times.  My hands and arms are tired.

I planted some peas on March 1st.  They like cold temperatures, I planted one wide row along the edge of this bed.  two weeks later I will plant another second row and put in a climbing fence between them.  I love fresh peas.

I also put in some garlic and onion sets.  I hope the garlic gets frozen enough to set heads of garlic.  It got down to 28 degrees last night. I should have planted it last fall, but I didn't have enough space ready.  These packages of sets were really funny.  The instructions were written as if you were planting flower bulbs, and not vegetables.  I got a kick out of it.  I think some new gardeners will get screwed up by that, but luckily I have grown onions and garlic before.

 

We made some major progress where the chicken coup is concerned.  We are putting in a beefy foundation to help keep out digging predators and scavengers. Here you can see the cinder block foundation layer. Over these we will lay some sturdy hardware cloth and..

 

these flat blocks.  That will give a good three to four inches of depth to hold in the sand I plan on putting in for the hens to scratch and dust in.  That way we can just sift out the poop like a litter box and it will drain and stay dry and smell free.

The location we chose for the coup was also where the birch tree was until we cut it down last year.  These are all the roots we had to chop and dig up to make room for the foundation.  That was a chore, let me tell you.  My hubby helped so much with that.  We used a reciprocating saw, a hatchet and a heavy splitter, not to mention shovels, to get all these out.

We ended up buying a prefab coup kit at Coastal Farm and Ranch.  I began to really doubt my ability to get the coup built in time this year before I have to go back to work on April 1st and this kit was actually less expensive than the lumber I was planning to buy.  The only things I am not crazy about are: it is shorter, and therefore you can't just walk into it and it isn't quite as sturdy as my plans were.  The frame is 1 by 2's instead of 2 by 4's.  It does, however, have a nesting box that you can just reach into through the hinged lid and separate doors for the coup part and the run part.  It is close to the same floor space size as my designs were. It also has a little door on the end for adding a larger run on. This is a picture of the model one they had set up in the store.

 

Here is the latest picture of our house from the street.

You may have noticed that there is a curious blue sprinkling on the lawn area.

 

We decided to try seeding our lawn in.  My hubby has been put on watering duty.  Even though it is march, it is very dry. I think we had rain one night so far and yesterday we had some good wind to dry it out. 

We got the seeds with the water absorbent coating to help them stay moist.  You can't really tell but we did lightly work the seeds in with a rake. The ones you can see are probably about half the seeds we put down.  I hope they do well.  I have not noticed any birds checking them out.  The coating must help with that, too.

If you look very close here, you can see two very small miniature irises poking through the bark mulch.

The dutch irises are really coming strong everywhere.  I am so excited about them.  I have not seen any tulips peeking out yet.  I hope they do.  They are very pretty ones.

 

Well, plans for this week include buying our chicks on Wednesday.  They will be kept in a brooder in the house until they get their feathers, so we have a while to get the coup finished.  Also, my mother ordered seeds for both or us from our favorite local seed company: Irish Eyes in Ellensburg.  We should be getting those soon.  I want to start the tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages indoors soon. We have a couple south facing windows that should work well for that.

 

We ordered potatoes, scarlet runner beans, our favorite carrots, and bunches of other seeds.  I also ordered some cranberry beans from another company.  I got those last week.  I have wanted to try growing those for a while.

 

Have a great first week of March.  I will post pictures of the new chicks when we get them.  I can't wait.