The Chicken or the

The other week my phone dinged and it was a notification from my Google photos, one of those "remember this day?" pictures.  It successfully brought tears brimming in my eyes.  It was the day that our first hens started laying after their winter break.  Man, I miss having chickens.  I mean, I REALLY miss it.  Solution? We should get chickens again! 

The first time we got laying hens as local egg farm was downsizing, they were gladly giving away hens gratis.  It was lucky and those ladies served us well until they got served up for coyote snacks. 

 This time around we're back inside city limits which means technically we should limit our flock to 5 hens. We'll see.  I have heard such magical things about Silkies.  The teddy bear of the chicken kingdom.  A great pet and layer and lawn ornament.  With advertising like that, how could I not want in?!  Problem is, I was finding it really hard to get Silkies economically.  Sure the hatchery websites say they're $3.77 but then add the small order fee and shipping and handling and you're looking at a pretty penny for just a couple birds! 

I decided to do it the long way this time and hatch out chicks at home.

I got an incubator from Amazon.com and bought some eggs from a small farm in Louisiana, a mix of Silkies, Easter Eggers, White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds.  I'm not a huge fan of Rhode Island Reds, I find them pretty ornery, so I was glad when the egg box arrived and the seller had only sent one RIR egg. 

I ordered the eggs on a Friday and they arrived the following Thursday.  I was puttering around in the garage with the door open and the letter carrier called me over.  He had a mail tote labeled "Live Animals".  Cautiously, he lifted the lid and shielded his face. Then he peered inside, to see a Priority mail box covered in "Live Animals" stickers.  He handed it to me gingerly and told me he didn't want to put "them" in the package slot of our community mail box.  I thanked him and giggled as I went inside.  I let the eggs rest outside of their wrapping on the kitchen counter for six hours and then placed them inside the incubator set at a cozy 37.5 C.  
*side note: there is some really interesting stuff out there about incubation temperature and the effect on chicken sex.  REALLY INTERESTING!

While I wait the prerequisite 21 days for our little peepers to pip into existence I thought I should prepare their eventual home.  I perused Craigslist, nah,

Ringing in the New Year Right

When we moved to Reno in 2010 we had a 5 year plan. 

 Live, love, grow in Reno and then come home to the PNW. 

 In 2016 we realized we had overstayed our plan in Reno and we desperately wanted to move our family back to the Evergreen State. In August after we completed the legal adoption of our two sons, my husband started applying for jobs in the Seattle area.  We were three months pregnant, expecting our third son and fifth child in the middle of January.  The months went by and he got a couple of nibbles, a phone interview, but nothing solid.  Then in February two days after our son was born the call came that would signal and turning tide. A biomedical research company north of Seattle was interested in him for multiple positions.  Two weeks later they flew him up for an in person interview and a few days after he came home he received a formal offer.  We wanted as little down time between jobs as possible. He gave his current employer his two weeks notice and told his new boss he could start in three weeks. Those three weeks flew by.  We got a real estate agent and started packing up non-essentials.  The week before he left we got a curveball thrown our way.  Our adopted sons have a younger sibling, a two year old girl, and she needed a forever home.  The week my husband started his new job in Washington was the week that she started living with us full time.  From the end of April to the middle of June I was a single parent to six kids, 3 months, 2 years, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years, and 10 years old.  Me and the kids worked to sell the house and the livestock from our homestead.  We had a herd of Oberhasli dairy goats in milk, a flock of 35+ chickens and a trio of Guinea Hogs. We found homes for all our animals and a buyer for the house.  I got temporary legal custody over our future daughter #3.  Five days after the kids got out of school for the summer, we got out of Reno for good. My husband had been house hunting in the Northwest and ten days after the sale of our Reno house we were getting the keys to our new digs North of Seattle. The rest of the summer is a blur of signing the kids up for school, unpacking boxes, re-carpeting bedrooms, an emergency re-model of the kids bathroom, 4th of July, filing for permanent full-time custody, getting the new house re-sided, birthdays, establishing care with new doctors, and I'm sure I'm forgetting more.  

2016 and 2017 were about moving forward.

 Just keep moving. 

 If we stopped to really think about all the plates we had in the air we might have crumbled under the weight of reality.  After living months on top of months of just nose to the grindstone, get it done and move on, it has been hard to slow down and settle.  We are in a new city, with a blossoming family, in a new home, the kids are at a new school, we found a new church.  Its all been a lot to process.

I find myself thinking back to Junk Farm and what joy I found in that project.  Urban farming was something to delight in.  I like the bustle of city neighborhoods.  The challenge of small spaces.  I felt like part of something bigger.  I never felt alone. 

It's time to settle. 

At least for a little while. 

And what better way to do that than with a garden?  

Time for some light reading.


 

   

Resolution Time

Another year has passed, time to dust off the old blog.  A lot has changed in my life since the last time I sat down to write.  Life has done a good job of keeping me busy.  But with the New Year comes the opportunity for setting goals. 

Resolution #1: I would like to write a post once a month.

I find that I enjoy my life more when I have to opportunity to sit down and write out my experiences.  Maybe its like counting my blessings.  I was never great at that, personally, it was anxiety inducing, like, hmm, what am I forgetting?! When you think about it we are pretty darn blessed.  I was also never good at journaling, I get into my head as a narrator and wonder what my "voice" should sound like. Where is this storyline going? This time I'm going to give myself a break. Does it have to be perfect? NO! Does it have to be coherent? Not even! It just has to be mine.  Me putting my words down in an effort to make sense of what is going on in my goings on.  What will I write about?  WHATEVER I WANT! 

Resolution #2: I would like to read more.

I tried watching the first season of Black Mirror and was so thoroughly shaken that I had to call my husband.  As soon as he came home I made him watch the two episodes that I had watched, while I curled  in a ball in the corner peeking from between asking is it over? He made it through the episodes without any crisis or soul shattering anxiety for the future. But me, I still refuse to watch more of the show. I rarely refer to myself as sensitive but in regards to the digestion of media, that's exactly what I am.  Ideas and emotions seep into the open pores of my being and I become shellshocked from news articles and TV shows.  What's the solution? Well I don't know if there is one. But I can think of a resolution! Read more. That means reading more fiction AND nonfiction. Going to the library. Taking moments of solace in the sweet close air between stacks of books.  Listening to the calm that all those pages absorb.  And learning.  Keeping my vocabulary skills sharp. Feeding my mind with more than BuzzFeed articles and melodramas. Practicing the art of mono-tasking.  Devoting all of my attention to one thing.  Giving my imagination space to stretch, walk, run, maybe do some tumbling. Reading has always been one of my all time favorite activities. And yet it is one of the first things I sacrifice on a daily basis in favor of making school lunches, doing laundry, yadda yadda, fill in the blank with menial mom duty.  NO MORE! I want to take back more beloved literature.  Here's to a new year of page-turning thrills and invigoration!

Resolution #3: I would like to research the heck out of projects before diving in.

One of the biggest lies I have ever told myself is that I "learn by doing".  It's not a complete falsehood.  But I think there has to be a better way that doing something wrong first to learn how to do it right.  This year I'm going to try to break that habit.  Let Resolution #2 inform me before tackling new projects.  The most fun, I have found, is in the planning stage of a project.  I love envisioning and sketching what could be.  The actualization is okay too.  But while the idea is still just a scribble on a piece of graph paper the possibilities are endless. Nothing too big or small, nothing too extravagant or too picky.  I want to feed that itch.  I want to design and research and sketch and research and doodle and research and throw it out to start over.

Cheers, cue the bullhorn, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2018!

Free Range Ain't Free

I have been experimenting with free ranging my poultry.  My imagination ran wild with the notion of a symbiosis, birds picking gently through vegetable beds and removing unwanted insects.  These chickens and ducks are supposed to relish slugs, snails and insects, right?!  I started this garden because I wanted to feed my family!  So far all I have succeeded with is feeding my birds!

First was the ducks... They gobbled up all my greens and seedlings before they even had a chance.

Then I tested out a couple chickens... They didn't eat the seedlings but they did scratch up the dirt, disrupting any chance the seedlings had at life and ate the seeds that had not yet sprouted.

Lastly, the turkeys and our pekin duck.  For weeks it seemed like this was ideal!  Our Royal Palm hen even made a little nest in one of my beds (she's laying like an egg a day!) without disturbing the squash or sapling growing there.  But alas, this last Friday I came out to see all three of them climbing my herb spiral and nibbling my herbs down to the nubs.  Bahhh!  Up to this point the herbs seemed like the only greens I could successfully grow.  That didn't last.

I am going to try one more time to re-fence the garden area and encourage the turkeys to hang on the lawn with the rabbit tractor. I don't feel like I have many other options because the turkeys are too big for the chicken run and the ducks are not fond of strange birds.  Its too early to butcher these suckers so they better start behaving!

Vege-troubles

I feel like I haven't written very much about gardening and that is for good reason.  I seem to have some pest issues (althought some of my pests are domestic).  I have yet to catch any wild pests but I know they are there.  My attempts at growing cold weather veggies was laughable.  I started some broccoli and cabbage inside and then when I moved them outside they were stripped down to bare stalks.  My garlic has even been picked through and I have perhaps a quarter of what I started with. I should be harvesting radish and lettuce now!  Instead I am mourning over beds of whimpy, perforated leafy bits.

I seem to be having better luck with my warm season veggies.  I put out tomatoes en mass and have only suffered a few casualties but that was due to the weather.  Corn is coming up (now that there aren't chickens pecking it up), beans, squash, cukes, melons and quinoa.  I had been religiously keeping track of what I planted where until my notes seemed worthless because I had to replant beds so frequently.  Now I have a new resolution.  If it grows, it grows.  If it grows well then I will hopefully be able to save seeds from it for next year. 

Discouraged by annuals I went and boosted my spirits with some perennials.  More currant, elderberry and (new) some goji berry shrubs. 

Baa Baa Baad Goat

We have been working on leash training our goats by taking them for walks to the park.  Some days they do well, some days we have to practically drag them the entire way.  It helps when Adam takes the girls and walks ahead so the kids have something to follow.  Carmen is growing a lot she is a bundle of spindly legged energy.  People who see us walking down the street are often intrigued and ask to pet the goats.  We oblige, but warn that Carmen is sassy.  She invariably lunges at the poor people and jumps up, prodding them with her stiff hooves.  Rico just sidles up, fat and agreeable.

Adam and I recently replaced the dog crate with a more permanent housing structure, a three sided lean-to made from pallets.  I thought that four feet would be high enough to deter the goats from climbing up on top.  But that Carmen, she is incorrigible! For the summer we are leaving it as is but when fall comes around Adam is going to insulate at least two of the sides. I haven't put in a permanent feeder yet but we are getting close to weaning them.

Rico and Carmen, little miss sassy pants

New Home!

They only have approximately an week separating them age-wise and yet their sizes are still very different.  I thought that Rico, being a male, would have had a growth spurt and caught up to Carmen in height.  It hasn't happened yet but maybe that is the effect of castration at such a young age.  This slow growth is making me curious about the lineage of my goats.  Rico very much looks the part of a Boer goat but I expected him to be putting on weight more quickly if that were the case.  Maybe he will escape the butcher block and I will sell him as a pet... We will see how much weight he puts on by September.

I am constantly perusing Craigslist to see if there is a deal on goats that I just can't pass up.  At this point I am leaning towards purchasing a doe and buck, so I can get Carmen serviced without taking a blood sample and going through all that business.  In theory it makes sense, if I can get a decent deal, that I would get a two goats from the same place. Keep the buck around long enough to impregnate Carmen and then send the new buck and Rico to the butcher together.  Logistically we will see what works out.  I just hope that September won't be too late in the season to find some decent goats.

In other news, Lavender is doing well. She is hopping differently, keeping her tummy aloft as she gingerly moves around her cage.  I have been trying to leave her alone for the most part, ever since Adam reached in and she snapped at him.  It could be that I am imagining it, but she seems to be enjoying herself, like this is what she was supposed to do in life.

Candace is sitting on a nest full of eggs! Last time I counted there were twelve, it could be there are more now!  I am excited for ducklings! I don't want to get too excited though, the Muscovy duck incubation period is 35 days, gasp! That is a long freaking time!  I can't tell but I think Lucy started laying too.  Both are looking ragged from breeding.  The feathers on their backs are grimy and shredded.  Ducks really get the short end of the stick with mating.  At least I don't have a water feature for Ken to drown them in as he does his stuff. It's bad enough that he is twice their size.

I have been incubating quail eggs too and the first set should hatch tomorrow... If they are going to hatch... ever.  I am not holding my breath.  The second set looked more promising when I candled them.  I might have to break down and buy an actual egg incubator.

I pickled seven quail eggs today.  I wasn't satisfied with any of the pickle mix recipes that I found or did not find.  So I kinda winged it.  I took apple cider vinegar and added sugar, salt, coriander, cloves, and ground red pepper. I microwaved it all in the mason jar and stirred, microwaved one more time just to be sure I got it hot enough and of course that was the time that I didn't watch it and it boiled over.  Then I added the hard boiled and shelled eggs to the hot mess and screwed the lid down tight.  I put the jar in the fridge and when I checked it a couple hours later the lid had sealed.  I am debating how long to wait before I try a pickled egg.  I hope to forget that they exist and surprise myself with them in a month or so.

Nothing helps me forget current projects like take my goats for a walk.  It is possible that walking the goats would be enjoyable if I did not bring my children along.  Not that my girls aren't adorable and lovely, because they are!  It's just their legs.  They have these little short legs and it takes them FOREVER to walk anywhere.  Unless, of course, you carry them.  But maintaining hold on two goat leashes and carrying one of two toddlers is a precarious endeavor.  Not that I haven't managed this task, I would not say I succeeded at it, but I have managed it out of necessity.  It requires a lot of guiding goats with your feet (to the untrained eye it might look like kicking), skillfully leveraging children onto hips and muttering frustrations always helps class up the operation.  I have tried to delegate and carry Aida while giving a tether to Mildred.  Most of the time Millie just drops the leash the moment the goat pulls against her.  The last time however, I was coaching her to hold on to it, hold on tight!  And a second later the leash was gone and she was picking herself up off the pavement in a deluge of tears.  Awwww, poor Millie.

Multiplying like Rabbits

At the beginning of April we had two American rabbits, Lavender and Jefferson.  Now we have five total.  I wanted at least a trio, two does and one buck, but when I went to pick up our second doe I couldn't help myself.  I found a breeder in Sun Valley that had 6 week old Californian/New Zealand crosses for sale, $15.  She made me a deal and for $25 I brought two does home.  Adam helped me name them Grace and Stevie.

Grace has slightly darker coloring compared with her sister

Stevie is a little more docile, the sisters currently enjoy sharing a cage

About a week later a woman on Craigslist was looking to unload a Californian buck because of a messy divorce. I thought it might be nice to have a back up stud.  Via text she told me he was five months old.  I was surprised to find him a little small for my taste but rationalized that perhaps he was not free fed, and the constraints of his cage could affect his growth.  His current digs are a big change of pace from the indoor cage equipped with a litter box that he had before.  Now he is sharing the rabbit tractor with Jefferson.  I named the newbie buck Harvey. He has beautiful markings and is gentle when handled.  He has a couple months before his stud services will be needed, hopefully he can pack on some pounds by then.

The size difference is particularly noticeable in this picture of the bucks side by side,  keep in mind Jefferson is a month younger than Harvey

Yesterday we bred Lavender and Jefferson for the first time.  I was apprehensive.  Maybe Jefferson wouldn't know what to do, maybe he would be territorial and attack her... I need not have worried.  As soon as she entered the cage and he got one sniff of her, Jefferson was all about business.  It took a couple mounts, Lavender was playing hard to get.  Finally he succeeded, though he did bite her once to achieve compliance for the final act. I was happy that things had gone so well and then immediately distraught when Lavender did not respond to Jefferson's post-coital kisses. He was hopping around snuffling her face, very sweet.  But Lavender was just lying there eyes closed, breathing alarmingly slow.  Rabbits are known to break their backs easily, maybe Jefferson's loving had been too rough! I yelled for Adam.  I lifted the tractor lid and he whisked her back to her cage. She was lethargic in her cage.  We just left her alone.  Maybe she was just processing her deflowering, physically and emotionally.  An hour later  I checked on her and she was hopping around same as always, whew! Tomorrow we are going to let Jefferson have another go just to confirm the breeding. In about a month we should have a nesting box full of fuzz balls!

Wall 'o Water Hick Hack

I have been attending Grow Your Own, Nevada! which is a gardening class put on by the local cooperative extension.  A couple weeks ago the lecture was on growing tomatoes.  The Wall o' Water was a key tool the presenter suggested using.  Quick intro to Wall o' Water, it is a circular cone made out of plastic that has cylindrical pockets that you fill with water and then the water acts as a barrier and season extender for cold sensitive plants.
 


 I wasn't ready to transplant my tomato starts yet but I had received my Burgess Seed Co. purchases and included in that was my hardy kiwi.  I was worried about the kiwi because its young leaves are cold sensitive regardless of its name.  I dragged my family out to a local nursery but, alas, they were sold out of these precious Wall o' Waters.  This gave me an idea, why spend money when I can make my own?  I had seen several of my mom friends post of Facebook about the DIY Backyard Waterbed (http://www.playathomemomllc.com/2012/02/giant-outdoor-waterbed/) and this inspired me.  I used the sturdy red plastic bags that Burgess sent my plants in, parchment paper and my iron to whip up a couple.

Not as pretty but getting the job done!

My Happy Hardy Kiwi Female Snuggled In

The plastic was not as sturdy as a legit Wall o' Water so I added some structure by placing cut up milk cartons inside.

My neighbor called me over to offer me some used bird cages.  We went into his backyard to grab them and he showed me their modest garden beds.  Their nursery started tomato plants were already two feet tall, sturdy and showing signs that flowers would be setting in a few days.  I was discouraged, thinking about the tomatoes that I had started from seed two months ago that just now were putting out true leaves.

Cardoon, Tomato, Cantaloupe, Eggplant, Okra and Peppers

Tomatoes, Eggplant, Cuke and herbs and onion (that aren't really thriving)

Tomato Starts

If his tomatoes discouraged me his radish and cabbage utterly debased my inner gardener.  They were perhaps a week from harvest.  My attempts at cool weather crops had so far been largely a failure.  Ants and sparrows were stealing my seeds and decimating my seedlings.  *Sigh*  I was also challenged by this revelation of neighborly success.  I immediately wanted to move some tomatoes outside, who cares if they are tiny?  If they grow outside they are still growing.  I had used all the red plastic making the two barriers for the kiwi.  I googled diy Wall o' Water and someone had said they used packing ballast. So I gave it a shot.  I took some milk jugs wrapped them in ballast, duct taped it together then transplanted some seedlings, set the jug/ballasts atop and snipped some holes in the top of the ballast pockets.  I filled the pockets with water using a funnel and water can. I moved a total of four starts out side, three Plantano and one Purple Cherokee.

These are the most flimsy. I have to top them up almost every day.  I am using them as modified cloches, putting the jug caps on overnight.  The tomatoes seem happy so far.

The weather has been phenomenal lately and I have been tempted enough to start planting.  The experts at my gardening class said that between May 15th and June 1st is the optimal time to plant warm weather crops like corn, melons and beans.  I just can't wait anymore.  The 12th of April I did a test planting of summer squash, cucumbers and watermelon.

Summer Squash

Charleston Grey Watermelon

Seeing these seeds take off has given me courage to go hole hog planting warm weather crops. From May 1st-3rd I planted beans, corn, cantaloupe, summer squash, winter squash, cucumbers.  I also planted more peas, beets and greens. 

I planted this entire bed with vining crops, I am hopeful that this will be a blanket of intertwining squash and melons

Here is a natural trellis (apple branch) that I stuck in the ground for my peas

My next garden challenge is to create row covers to protect my crops from these bothersome sparrows.  If His eyes is on the Sparrow and I know He watches me.  Then God is watching be get pretty pissed. I have been all over town looking for Remay (light weight fabric that can be used as a floating row cover), another tool talked of often at Grow Your Own, Nevada! Yet every nursery or garden center I go to has no idea what it is.  Perhaps I have had bad luck and the employees I talk to are dolts that are uneducated about their field.  Or perhaps remay is like a unicorn and the more I hunt for it the more rare it is, I just need to stop looking and it will appear one night in a meadow, lit up by the moon is a silvery glow... Probably not.  Next stop thrift store to get some gauzy used curtains.