Category: Hobbies

The Chicken Chronicles

Whew! This was a big week for the chickens!  Saturday was a beautiful day, which could mean only one thing: it was time to get one of the run extensions built!

To give a little history, I have long wanted to build a northern and southern run extension, which when done would triple the run size, allowing the chickens more room to roam when we can’t let them out to play in the yard.  Ultimately, I would love to get to a point where these could be moved so we could actually let some grass grow in a spot, move the run on top of it, and let the chickens decimate eat the grass.  😀  Anyhow, that is a long way off.  This weekend was time to build the Northern Run.

First, I had to get the materials.  People often laugh at me when they see me leaving the home improvement store with 2x4s heading to my economy car, but let me tell you, this little thing can haul stuff!  No, it is not a pickup, which I dearly want, but it it does the trick.  Look at my Toyota Matrix loaded up with 20 2x4s and other building materials!

The Materials in my Amazing Matrix

The Materials in my Amazing Matrix

So I decided to build this run much more sturdy than originally planned.  My original plans were to make this modular, meaning wall panels that could be easily moved, but I decided that a semi-permanent extension was better.  When I say semi-permanent, that doesn’t mean immovable.  It just takes at least two strong people, if not four.  Here’s the eastern and western walls, which provide the basic strength for the run extension:

The East and West Walls

The East and West Walls

It wasn’t long until I had this thing framed up and ready.  You can see by the looks of this, it was not light at all!  It is 6.5 feet wide by 8 feet long.

The Frame

The Frame

One of the main things I wanted in this was a feeding door on top.  The original run has doors on the northern and southern side that lift up.  While this is fine for letting the birds out to play, it isn’t so convenient when you just want to throw some scraps in there for them to eat, as they quickly run out!  It is also a pain when it comes time to change their water or food, as you have to climb into the run, which is under 3 feet tall, to get to the food and water.  With a feeding door on top we can now throw scraps in without them getting out, and we can hang the waterer and feeder from the 2×4 next to the door for easy filling.  Sadly, I only realized after getting far into the project that I will have to put some sort of roof on this to keep the food from getting wet.  Another project for another day.

Easy Access Feeding Door

Easy Access Feeding Door

As mentioned above, we haven’t liked the doors that swing open from the bottom.  This is our new door that will open out to the side.  MUCH more convenient!

Easy Access Recess Door

Easy Access Recess Door

And this is the completed run before we moved it to the coop:

The Completed Northern Run

The Completed Northern Run

Here it is in place on the northern side of the current run.  You can see it effectively doubled the side of the run, giving the girls a lot more area to roam, including the ability to get out in the sun more.

Completed North Run Extension

Completed North Run Extension

After we installed this, the ladies spent the rest of the afternoon poking around in the new area.  I take that as a sign they were happy.  😀

Happy Chickens in the New North Run

Happy Chickens in the New North Run

I was a bit worried they may try to roost outside, as it was such a mild day and evening, but apparently the events of the day had them all tuckered out.  Nine of the ten are on their roosting pole, while the other is on the other side of the coop hanging out by the watering bowl.  Silly bird!

Night, Night.  Nine of the Ten Ladies Calling it a Night.

Night, Night. Nine of the Ten Ladies Calling it a Night.

As if this wasn’t enough excitement, the ladies had another increase in egg laying this week.  It seems the Easter Eggers are getting back in the swing of things.

The next two projects are chunnels (chicken tunnels – you are going to enjoy this when I get to it!) and the southern run extension.  It is going to be a weekend or two (or more!) before I get to those projects though.  There are just too many other things to do.

Happenings Around the Homestead

It has been a busy weekend around the homestead, with the bulk of that time spent building the northern run extension for the chickens.  Check back tomorrow for pics and details on that.

It seems that every weekend I have more on my to-do list than there is hours in the day, and this weekend was that way and then some!  On Saturday I intended on finishing the run extension, then working on winter sowing (am I ever going to get to this!?), roasting coffee, and the normal weekend chores.  I only finished the run extension and roasted coffee though.

It is funny, when I tell folks I roast coffee, the most often think I mean that I grind coffee.  They don’t realize I actually roast my own beans.  Not only that, I do it in a kind of old-fashioned way – in an iron skillet over a charcoal fire:

Roasting Coffee

Roasting Coffee

No, that is not me stirring the coffee.  My lovely wife agreed to hold the pan and stir while I snapped a picture.  This week I roasted mostly Brazilian coffee, but this batch happened to be a new one for me: Peruvian.  I just finished a cup as I am writing this, and it is a definite keeper.  I tend to enjoy the South American coffees best, and in my opinion this Peruvian coffee had that same flavor I enjoy.

Do you realize it is just three months until May?  That means it is just three months until my garden will be fully planted, I hope!  I know it seems so far out, but it won’t be long until the cooler weather crops are growing.  That reminds me – I need to be getting some peas sown!  Argh!  Maybe next weekend!  😀  No boredom, that is for sure!

Seven Specialty Crops

I am always trying to find a way to make my hobbies pay for themselves.  Photography is just one example of that, where I began shooting with the intention of making a profit in order to help me afford more photography equipment.  Believe it or not, that is true with gardening too.

The funny thing about gardening is that it already pays for itself, in my opinion, from the savings we have on food.  We are also able to bless others with the excess crops we have.  Even so, wouldn’t it be great to be paid to grow things?  No, I am not referring to being a big-time commercial farmer, but there are some profitable specialty crops that seem to fit well into small operations.  To be honest, I am particularly partial to #2 on the list.

Gourmet Garlic

Sanders Gourmet Garlic

No, I am probably not really seriously considering growing specialty crops for money, but it is fun to dream a bit, isn’t it?

 

Happenings Around the Homestead

Seeds.

I know I am not the only home gardener who struggles with this.  Each year I find something new I want, but I have more seeds now than I know what to do with.  I went through and organized all my seeds the other day, and was shocked at the varieties I have, and even multiple packets of the same seed.

While I attempt to organize this, I don’t do a very good job.  I do separate the seeds generally by the type of plant they are, and then I put a rubber band around all those packets.  That, in turn, is then thrown in a box which I keep in a refrigerator in the garage.

Sometimes I see other people with fantastic organization of their seeds, and I druel a bit, but I haven’t decided yet it is worth the effort to achieve what they have.  As I was searching for a picture of what I am talking about, I became a little convicted, as it is not that hard to do.  I just need to make the effort to get some photo albums.  Yes, I am going to just give you a link to more information: How to Organize Seed Packets.

It’s Sunday morning as I am writing this post, and I still haven’t finished the winter sowing I have been mentioning here.  I am going to try to get to this today, though we are expecting rain which might put a glitch in those plans.  We’ll see.

Well, I am updating this very early on Monday morning.  Winter sowing did not happen, though we had an interesting afternoon.  Let’s see if this tells the story better than I can:

Busted Water Pipe

Busted Water Pipe

Evidently sometime over the winter we had a pipe to an outdoor faucet burst.  Yesterday while that faucet was being used, one of our bedrooms ended up with water halfway out into the room.  SIGH.

While I worked on this some, my two oldest boys did the bulk of the work, and I appreciate them for that.  It is a basement level bedroom, so I don’t have to worry about floor damage, but the carpet may still have to be pulled up.  We have a dehumidifier and fans running in there now, and the boys have used a wet-dry vac to clean all they can.

Where was I at?  Winter sowing.  Perhaps that will happen during the week.  We’ll see.

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

If you know me, it doesn’t surprise you that I tried a new, unusual crop this past year: Cherokee Gourdseed Corn.

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

This is a traditional southern corn, as it is a longer season corn.  In other words, I am not sure the summer would be long enough to grow this very much further north than we are.  The books say about 125 days to maturity, and I believe it.  It took longer to mature than any corn I grew this year by a considerable amount.

It was a pleasant corn to look at though – the cobbs were nice and fat on the stalks, and they seemed quite hearty.  The stalks were stout, with no danger of blowing over.

The kernels are amazing though.  As you can see in the picture above, they don’t look crowded on the cobb, but that is because they are so thin and long.  They are often said to remind people of old man teeth or horse teeth.  Did I just say that old man teeth and horse teeth look similar‽  😀  No insult meant to all the old men reading this.  I didn’t really think of the kernels looking like teeth when I was shelling the cobbs, but now that I look at the picture, they are very similar in features to teeth, aren’t they?

The most interesting thing about this corn was not the kernels though, in my opinion.  Instead, it was the ease of shelling.  It was almost as simple as placing two hands on the cobb and twisting.  In fact, I wish I had videod to show, as it was so amazing.

There aren’t very many gourdseed corns out there: only three or four.  This is the Cherokee Gourdseed, and there is a Texas Gourdseed, a Carolina Gourdseed, and I have found some references to a Virginia Gourdseed.  I have my seed stock from this Cherokee Gourdseed that I plan on landracing with at least the Texas Gourdseed, of which I also have some seed.  I will probably hand pollinate some of each as well to keep the pure strains alive.

Happenings Around the Homestead

I think I am probably like most every other gardener in the northern hemisphere right now, perusing through seed catalogs trying to decide what I am going to grow this year.  There sure isn’t much going on around the homestead otherwise.

Wait!  That is not really true.  My middle son has been working hard all week getting all the leaves cleaned up from our yard.  He has dumped many of them in my garden to supplement the wood chips that are already there, but he and his brothers started a fire last night with some of them, as well as some old wood we had in the yard.  Besides making a great bonfire for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, it should have left behind a considerable amount of ashes which will be tossed on the garden soon.

Did you know that wood ash is a great supplement for the garden?  It is often considered so because it is a good source of potash, but it also contains minerals such as iron, manganese, zinc, copper, and more.  In other words, wood ash helps add back the trace minerals into your soil that are so often depleted and ignored, which makes for healthier food.

The other big thing around here is the beginning of winter sowing.  I had intended on completing the first round of winter sowing last week and getting a blog post up on it, but that didn’t happen.  I am expecting to finish it today though, so if I find the time, there will be a post this week.  I also have a few other posts I am working on that I cannot seem to find the time to finish.  May this week allow time for that as well.

The Chicken Chronicles

As mentioned yesterday, this was a big week with the chickens – the annual changing of the litter!  (listening for hens everywhere to start cheering)  It isn’t quite as gross as it sounds.  We use the deep-litter method with our hen house, which means I fill the coop with a very thick layer of oak leaves once a year.  During the year the hens poop in it, stir it up, aerate it, tear it up, and cause it to compost.  This means you never really have a strong smell, but instead you have soil being built.  However, you must change that out periodically, not only for the hens, but for you to have the benefits of it.  This past weekend was that time.

Okay, here is what it looked like before we began:

Year-Old Chicken Litter

Year-Old Chicken Litter

IMG_5372

You may notice it was not thick everywhere.  That is because of the hole in the floor.  The silly ladies knock the leaves down into the bottom of the coop, into the run, over time.  I typically then use a pitchfork to move it from the run back to the coop to keep a good thick layer there.  I haven’t really stated it yet, but as I understand it, the thick layer is essential to give enough dry brown material to keep the stench down.  It is really much like composting.

I first moved all the old chicken litter out of the coop and the run while the ladies were out stretching their wings:

Chicken Litter

Chicken Litter/Compost

You can see how much compost this created in a year, and this is far better compost than you might get from any store.  It is all organic, all homegrown.  I know what is in this compost, and I know it is good.

I then took a large pile of leaves that were good and dry, and I move them into the coop and run.  I know this looks like it would be uncomfortable for the chickens, and it may be, but it won’t stay this way for long.  I happen to think they enjoy it though, digging through all this new material looking for any sort of life (read: bugs) that might be in it.  As I said, it won’t stay this way for long though.  Soon the leaves will become shred under their constant picking and foraging, and it will pack down.  Anyhow, here is what it looks like in the coop:

IMG_5376

Fresh Oak Leaf Chicken Litter

Fresh Oak Leaf Chicken Litter

I also put it in the run because I need plenty of material to add to the coop throughout the year.  It is essential to keep a thick layer there.  As the litter in the coop runs this, I will scoop some from the run up into the coop.  Believe it or not, this will all be smashed down to a thin layer in just a few days.

The only other thing going on with the hens this week is a bit of an upswing in egg product.  Last week was eggs, whereas this week we had 29, and 9 of them were Easter Eggers!  If we compare that to last week, we see the Rhode Island Reds laid the same amount (20) and the Easter Eggers upped their production by 7 eggs!  Go Easter Eggers!  It won’t be long until we see those numbers really jumping up.  I am very anxious for that.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Like much of the US, this past week has been a nasty week, so there wasn’t much happening around the homestead this week.  That certainly hasn’t stopped my mind from wandering on spring planting though.  😀  Like most gardeners, I get so ready to spend time in the garden this time of year that I cannot hardly stand it.  This year is that and more.  I am so ready to get this larger garden planted and see what comes from it.

One of the things I had hoped to be able to accomplish this week was some winter sowing.  What is winter sowing?  Ah, I am glad you asked!  😀  Winter sowing is something I read about not long ago where you make miniature greenhouses out of 2 liter bottles, quart or gallon milk jugs, or any other container that is mostly transparent and made of plastic.  You then set the containers out in your yard in a mostly sunny place and let the seeds do their thing.  They freeze and thaw, and eventually start growing inside this somewhat protected container, which allows you to have the benefits of a greenhouse combined with the benefits of not having to harden off your plants.  Oh, I can see I need a whole post on this!  Let me do just that later in the week.  In the meantime, you can see a really good video on it here:

I also roasted some coffee this weekend, but essentially botched it.  I had my fire too hot and ended up with a French Roast instead of my normal light roast.  SIGH.  It is still a very smooth cup of coffee though.  Surprisingly smooth.

The other big project around the homestead that I did get to this week was changing out the litter in the chicken coop.  You’ll be able to read more about that in The Chicken Chronicles this week.  However, this is one of the big reasons we have chickens.  They are fertile soil making machines!  I like the way some describe it – my chickens are fertile soil making machines that happen to also lay eggs.  😀

 

The Chicken Chronicles

Whoa! Talk about a tough week for relatively new owners of outdoor chickens – this week has been one of the hardest so far. We had an some unusually cold weather come through the region this week, like much of the country, and it really challenged my thinking on taking care of the ladies.

If we step back a short month or two ago, we had some temperatures in the high teens, and at that point in time I chose to attempt to heat the coop with a red heat lamp. It was obvious the birds did not like the light, and I didn’t feel it was helping that much anyhow. When they started talking about single digit temperatures this past week, I was really puzzling over what I would do.

We had already insulated the coop with plastic on most inside walls, which helped more than the red heat lamp in my opinion, but it still was not enough for single digit temperatures, at least it wasn’t enough to make me feel comfortable. I wasn’t worried about our hens dying, but I was worried about the Rhode Island Reds getting frostburn on their combs and waddles. They are cold hardy bird, but that exposed skin worried me. The Easter Eggers, on the other hand, do not have much exposed skin, so I wasn’t too worried about them.

I spent some time reading up online to see what others had chosen to do, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one suffering from indecision. I think it is because most chicken owners look at their birds as pets that happen to lay eggs. That is certainly how they are seen here. I was able to find references of folks who used the red heat lamps as I had done before, and others who used other heaters, but the resounding message from the experienced chicken owners was that people worried too much. I found examples of people who lived in some very cold places who had never heated their coops, and from what I could tell, if you could keep the wind out and the coop dry inside, the birds would likely be fine. So, I decided that was what I would do.

Even so, there was a small concern: water. How would I keep the water from freezing? I decided to use a heated growing mat under their water dish to try to slow down the freezing. When that didn’t seem as effective as I had hoped, we surrounded the water bowl with some insulation (old towels in plastic bags), which seemed to help quite a bit.

Second, we took a large tarp and draped it over the coop on three sides and part of the fourth. This provided two things: a reduction in airflow and a insulation.

The Coop Wrapped in a Tarp

The Coop Wrapped in a Tarp

I was shocked at how well this seemed to do. Thankfully we had built the coop with enough ventilation at the top that even with three sides covered, there was plenty of ventilation for the moisture to escape. This seems to be one of the largest concerns. I read a great piece of advice that said if you notice frost on the inside walls of your coop, you have too much moisture. We did not notice that at all.

After a day or so, I began to be a little concerned at the lack of light in the coop. I didn’t want to introduce the extra heat or risk of fire, but I wanted to add some light in there, so I mounted a fixture on the ceiling and put an LED bulb in it to help with the light.

The temperatures did get very cold, with two days being in the singe digits.  If it didn’t hit 0° F, it sure came close.  When I woke one morning it was 1° F, and I suspect it had been colder.  The second wave didn’t get quite as cold, but it was still single digits.

A several things I noticed through all this. First, there was no frostburn, and the ladies seem little bothered by the cold. Second, they miss their recess breaks out roaming the yard. Third, I think they like the light during their daytime hours. Fourth, the Easter Eggers are either smarter than the Rhode Island Reds, or they need more heat. Why would I say that? Because those little ladies finally started roosting on the big plastic container which contained by heated growing mat and the water bowl.  ALL SIX of them made this their sleeping quarters. 😀

Easter Egger Hens Huddling Around the Water/Heating Pad

Easter Egger Huddle

The big plastic container is to keep their water from spilling into the coop’s bedding.  The heating pad is in the big plastic container.  There is a 1 gallon water bowl in the big container, and it is surrounded by towels to hold in the heat as much as possible.  The hens are either in the container, on the side, or at the edge.

Thankfully this bitter cold spell is over, but I feel better about future cold spells now that we have been through this one. I am sure the birds do too.

Oh, even throughout the cold spell, the Rhode Island Reds continued laying, though I think the numbers were a little less than they have been. Perhaps that was due to the decreased lighting for a few days.  I show the Rhode Island Reds laid 20 eggs this week, and the Easter Eggers laid 3.

Yesterday Charity let the hens out to play for a while, and they were thrilled.  I guess they had cabin fever after being locked up for so many days.  Freckles must have really been that way.  As we were trying to get them back into the coop, she flew up into a tree!  This is at least twice as high as I have seen a chicken fly, if not three times the height:

Freckles in a Tree

Freckles in a Tree

We finally got her down though after threatening to clip her wings and poking her with the blunt end of a pole pruner.  😀

Oh, I also had to repair the coop some yesterday.  Both doors to the run had boards that had broken which was causing the doors to not be able to be propped open easily.  Both are fixed now, though I sure wish they would break in warmer weather next time.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Like most of the country, we have been in the middle of a bitter cold spell the last week or so, which has resulted in not much happening around the homestead other than protecting the chickens.  More on that tomorrow.  Even so, I have been blessed with another surprise shipment of seeds this week, which gave me a bit of a mystery to solve.

On Thursday I received a package containing numerous bags of corn.  The name on the package wasn’t entirely familiar to me, though the last name caught my attention.  The corn included one I was very interested in, Texas Gourdseed, which happened to be one I have been trying to find.  It also included Drought Hickory King, Kaanga Pango (a New Zealand corn), Cascade Maple Gold, and Cherokee White Flour Corn.  After further research, each of these were corns that could be used as flour corns, which is something else I had been looking for.

I headed off to a gardening forum that I frequent, and I felt confident after a few minutes of research that I found my benefactor, a very nice lady in California who knew I was looking for the Texas Gourdseed Corn, but there was still a mystery to this: how did she get my name and address?  I sent her a message, thanking her for the corn, and asking how she knew my contact info, to which she replied that I had given her that some time back when I was searching for flour corn, and she had been unable to send it then.  So, the mystery was solved, and now I have a ton of new corn to plant this year!  Woot!

The Texas Gourdseed is one that particularly interests me, and I actually already have a post written on why that is.  I will make a few edits to that this week and get it posted soon.

The Kaanga Pango also caught my eye some, as I had never heard of this corn.  I am having trouble finding a lot about it out there, but it seems to have come from the Wellington (New Zealand) Seed Library.  It certainly looks to be a flour-type corn, and from what I can find on the Internet, the Maori, the indigenous New Zealand people, “historically used corn to making a fermented corn, they ate corn fresh, they make something that looks like a tamale, and they ate a pudding/mush from corn.”  That doesn’t tell me for sure they used this corn this way, but it is probable.  Again, it seems flour-like to me, so it will go in my flour landrace this year.  Here’s a picture of the Kaana Pango Corn:

Kaanga Pango Corn

Kaanga Pango Corn

On another note, the popcorn trials are complete for the year, the results of which I am going to share in a post of it’s own.  Despite some challenges in the testing of popping ability, I finally got through all my samples and have a great selection of popcorn to grow for the new year.  More to come on that.

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