Well they're movin' on up! (Movin' on up..)

To this DEELUXE apartment in the sky-y-y...


Well, after months of being crammed into a hutch made for two chickens, my girls finally got a new home!
I spent a lot of time researching, thanks to the folks at Backyardchickens.com, and came up with a design that should work well. Then I hired my carpenter to build it for me. Here it is.



It's got three nest boxes (no more screaming because someone else is using the box!)

And a roost conveniently located near the windows:



I think they like it!


Why didn't I try to build it myself? Well, because I value my marriage. Ramon got started around noon last Sunday, and within a couple of hours had more done than Matt and I could have done in weeks. There would have been hundreds of dollars of ruined materials, several extra trips to Home Depot, tears, recrimination, divorce papers, etc.

As of this writing I have the girls locked into the coop so they have time to settle in and get that it's now "home." But once I let them back out, they not only have the run, but an additional 20 sq feet of extra space under the coop to stretch out in. This is a good thing, because after a couple of weeks of letting them free-range around the yard, I've now decided they really need to be confined. Not only do they dig huge holes on my hillside in search of tasty bugs, but they just poop EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I knew chickens make poop but I was truly stunned as to the sheer volume of this poop. We literally couldn't step outside the kitchen door without stepping in it. So, for now, they will have to make do (no pun intented) with an hour or so of free-ranging in the evenings.

Please Do Not Adjust Your Monitor.

I'm fast learning that chickens aren't like machines..even after calibration, they don't necessarily produce perfectly shaped, evenly-sized eggs. In the past week, the girls have produced some perfect eggs, and some that, well, could most kindly be referred to as "gone awry." Some had soft shells that broke open in the run; some were rough-shelled and almost bleached white. I have started wondering how the farmers at my local farmer's market manage to produce cartons full of so many eggs all shaped exactly the same.

Still, the lack of uniformity is what's so very exciting about this process. Each time we check the nest box, we might find something extraordinary. Last week, I was about to run off to work when I checked the box and found this monster, courtesy of Veronica, I believe:


The egg on the right is actually a jumbo-sized egg: it was 2.5 oz. The monster on the left weighed it at 3 oz. on the nose. To give some perspective, here it is in the carton with the others.



It was indeed, as I suspected, a double-yolker. Very exciting!




On the other end of the spectrum, Gertie gave us this tiny little quail-sized egg, shown below next to a regular-sized egg. Most peculiar.


Tomorrow, Ramon the carpenter is coming to build my new coop. I'm so excited!

And then there were two. And three.

I'm a bit behind on the updates. In the past three weeks, Derby the Barred Rock started laying her eggs, and just the other day we finally got our first egg from Veronica, our Black Star. Derby's eggs are a perfectly smooth color of the lightest cream, which makes a lovely comparison to the burnished amber color of Gertie's eggs. They started off very small, as you can see here. Derby's egg is on the left, Gertie's in the middle and an egg from the farmer's market on the right as comparison. As you can see, Gertie's eggs are now as big as the large eggs from the market. Since taking this photo, Derby's eggs have grown considerably and are now almost as large as Gertie's.

Shortly after Derby started laying, Veronica started giving us "the squat," which is the dead giveaway that eggs are on the way. "The squat" is hard to describe, but you know it the moment you see it. You'll go to touch the pullet, and instead of sliding gracefully out from under your hand, she suddenly drops into a crouch, lifting her wings slightly and then freezes. Its as if she is trying to protect a very important and fragile cargo; which I suppose she is. Getting "the squat" from a chicken for the first time is cause for celebration around our household. Whoever spots it first goes dancing inside to tell the other, "Guess what I just got?" (what can I say, we live simple lives). Veronica seemed to take a long time to finally actually lay an egg; she was giving us "the squat" for a full 10 days before finally laying her first, long and skinny egg next to Derby's almost full-size cream egg. Two or three days ago our last pullet, Ginger, finally gave me a squat as well.

I only wish my poor little winter crop was doing as well. So far whatever wasn't ripped out by squirrels was plowed under by Gertie, who kept managing to get in behind my attempts at protective fencing. I have to say though, if you need your soil aerated, chickens are ideal. Gertie managed to scratch up an entire box full of soil and any seeds that were in there. So I now have a perfectly aerated and fluffy, nitrogen rich pile of soil if I decide to try planting something again!

The other bed has fared slightly better and some of the onions I planted have so far survived. The broccoli and the carrots both sprouted quickly, but haven't grown at all. Unfortunately they are not getting enough sun at the moment, as the position of the house relative to the North-South axis is not ideal in wintertime.

The final insult to my poor carrots was my own husband. I sent him out to cut me some greek oregano for a chicken I was roasting. He returned with a fistful of my carrot tops. *sigh*

((Drum Roll Please))

Ladies and gentlemen....

From our very own Gertie...

One beautiful, perfect little egg!

I couldn't be more eggcited than if I laid it myself. And yes, I promise that will be the first and LAST time I make that awful pun. I've been waiting almost 20 weeks to make it so I figure I earned it.

Matt was the first to find it. He gets up a few minutes before I do so he usually let them out of their run in the morning so they can have some free-range time before I have to leave for work. I was in the shower when he came dancing in singing, "Guess what I saw, guess what I saw!"

I said, "What??' (I'm sort of slow first thing in the morning. Actually I'm sort of slow all the time.) "What?? An EGG??"

He was kind enough to leave it in the nest box so I'd have the fun of checking myself. It was, I have to say, a really cool thing. I mean, I expected to get eggs, that's why I got the chickens. But to actually have nature work, right there in front of you; well, its just a really neat thing.

Here's a comparison shot of it next to an egg from the Farmer's Market so you can see the size. It's actually a really good size for being the first egg, usually chickens have some trial runs before they get into the groove. I can expect them to get larger in the coming weeks. Now if only her sisters will get into the act as well!

A Pause

It's been awhile since I blogged. This isn't because I have nothing to say, so much as there isn't much to report, if that makes sense. The garden is pretty quiet right now, with only a few things growing. This is mostly because many of the seeds I planted were eaten shortly after sprouting, either by birds (my own or the indigenous species) or squirrels. Either way, it wasn't until this past weekend that I got around to finally trying again to plant some more seeds. I fertilized them and then put up some fencing all around the perimeter of the boxes. It doesn't look very pretty, but I don't care as long as it works!

The only things hanging in there are the carrots, some onions and a couple of broccoli plants. The seedling seem to be healthy, but only the carrots appear to have grown in the last few weeks. The broccoli seems to be almost in stasis.

My gardening class last Saturday was really interesting; one of the most interesting so far. It was on pest control, with the emphasis on organic methods, or even better, no methods at all. If you garden organically, you soon learn to accept a certain amount of crop loss to occur. But if your garden is essentially healthy and diverse, our professor pointed out, you will have an equal number of predator species to balance out the pest.

I spent much of the rest of the day thinking about this, picturing a little African Savannah scene in my yard, with herds of aphids crossing a great plain of a leaf, while predators like Lace Wings, Wasps and Ladybug larvae lie in wait for them. Here are some of the fascinating things I learned.

*The time in a ladybug's life cycle when they eat the most aphids is actually the larval period. Once they become adults with spots and wings, they mostly are interested in nectar and don't eat many aphids. So those little containers of ladybugs you get at the garden store are of dubious value. By the time they get settled in your garden and lay eggs that hatch, the aphids or whatever will have already gone through your plants. However, if there is food for the adults (in the form of flowering herbs like thyme and other small flowers), they will hopefully stick around and lay some eggs so the next generation of predators are born. The problem is, if you saw a ladybug larva, your first reaction would be "oh my god KILL it!" So to help, I've include this picture.



* Did you know that ants actually tend flocks of aphids like humans tend cattle? They feed on the fecal matter aphids create (called "honeydew") and will fight off aphid predators like ladybugs in an effort to protect "their herd."

* When plants are attacked by a pest like aphids or thrips or caterpillars, the plant will release a chemical scent that is particularly enticing to exactly that predator who will eat that pest. The plant can alter the scent in a thousand different ways to attract exactly the right predator species.

* This chemical scent also instantly alerts all the other plants to ready their defenses against attack, thereby making the other plants stronger and healthier. Did you know plants have such a sense of altruism and community?

The professor said one other thing that I thought was poignant. Pesticides (whether petroleum-based OR organic) tend to kill everything indiscriminately, including the all-important microbes in our soil. They might be effective in wiping out the pest, but they also destroy the predators and therefore disrupt that entire ecosystem. Therefore, the professor said, if you have to use pesticides to control the pests in your garden all the time, "you owe it to yourself and the planet to give up gardening."

Food for thought indeed! So, I've made it my mission this month to get outside and ID as many of the creepy-crawlies in my yard as I can. I'll report back on what I find.

Chickens Love Psgetti!

I have coop envy. Major,major coop envy. This is because I've been perusing some of the other coops made by the folks on Backyard Chickens. People with a a bit more room and some serious table-saw skills. These are coops that look like wee barns and playhouses, complete with all sorts of handy storage and flower boxes and painted trim and lighting schemes. These coops are nicer than my house. Unfortunately I am gifted with neither major carpentry skills nor a spare couple of g's lying around to pay someone to build me one of these chicken tajs, so in the meantime, I thought I could at least build the girls a decent nest box. So I trudged back down to Home Depot ("Sara!" They all shout down there now when I walk in, like Norm in Cheers) and got some more lumber to make simple box. Because I have the math skills of a grunion, a very nice and patient employee helped me eventually cut the right sizes. So I managed to cobble together this box, and then with Matt's help, we cut a hole in the back of the coop and then screwed the box on. It's like a whole extra wing!

Here's a photo from the inside of the coop:

The girls checked it out immediately, and Matt reports that Ginger was already inside it. Of course they immediately kicked out all the fresh pine shavings I had put in, so I cut down a piece of wood and wedged it in the front as a sort of stop.

I also found out that chickens LOVE psgetti.

Is it Fall Yet?

It's been a long time since I posted! That's because there hasn't been much going on in the garden. This is usually a transitional time of year; from the long, slow pleasures of the hot summer garden to the (usually) short but sweet fall garden. A few weeks ago I planted all my seeds, some in little flats and some directly into the raised beds. I watered them all carefully and then just left them to do their thing.

Unfortunately, the Santa Ana's hit, in a big way and along with the devastating fires. While we were fortunately not in harm's way, the unusually warm weather has delayed the germination of many of my seeds, including almost all of the ones in the little flats. Fortunately, the plants in the raised beds are doing better, and I now have the almost 2-inch high beginnings of broccoli, carrots and cilantro. The lettuces have been much slower (owing to the unusual heat, no doubt) but I am still hopeful that at least a couple of varieties will make an appearance. I'll post photos soon.

The chickens continue to get small upgrades as well. I decided I don't like the nesting box that came with the henhouse I bought, so I built a new nest box that I'll attempt to mount to the outside of the hen house. This will give them more room inside, as well as a more private place to lay, once they are ready. They still have about 6 weeks to go I think.

I have to say though, looking at some of the photos of coops posted on Backyardchickens.com, I have SERIOUS coop envy. I really need to get some power tools. *sigh*