A seed saving resource.

apartmentgardeningproject:

I came across A Guide to Seed Saving, Seed Stewardship, and Seed Sovereignty though the Winnipeg Community Garden Network’s page.  This is something I need  to look into.

This is a pretty handy little guide if you want to save seeds (which I do!)

Put the roof on the sucker

I finally got the waterproof roof affixed this weekend. It, like everything in the experiment, took way longer than I thought it would. The screws I got to hold the roofing to the frame were screws in one sense, but not in the sense that you could put them in with a screwdriver, and my ratchet it broken, so I had to do it with a wrench, which kind of sucked. Then, once fixed it to the frame, and propped it up for run-off, it appears I underestimated the rigidity of the materials.

So, you can see the edges drooping, which makes the whole thing look like a sad tugboat to me. I made little wings that now hold it up.

Whether or not any of this holds up under snow remains to be seen. Maybe it won’t snow at all, like last year. Or maybe it will snow as much as the year before that, and the whole thing will collapse, and the chickens will have to live in an igloo.

As you can also see, I finished the brick and pebble moat around the whole thing. This is to hold down the hardware cloth, and keep things from burrowing under. It also looks much nicer.

I had been feeding them using a cat feeder (one of the ones you fill up and more food falls down as they eat), but they kept knocking it over, so I ended up buying one that would hang. I could have made one out of a bucket, but I think that would be much bigger than I need, and might not have fit under the coop. That’s where it needs to go to keep out of the rain.

As you can see, they are freaked out by it. This is highly unusual. They are usually so easy going. They got used to it very quickly, since they like food.

So far, my favorite part of the day is opening the coop door in the morning. They all fight to be the first one out, and it’s all flapping and clucking and falling off the stairs. If you’re familiar with the story The Poky Little Puppy, you’ll know the terms, roly-poly, pell-mell, and tumble bumble. It’s not just puppies who do this. 

Movin’ on up … to the outside!

Too soon? RIP Sherm. Anyway, the chickens are in the coop! It’s not 100% done, but it’s done enough for rock & roll, as they say. Here’s Suzy Creamcheese en route.

The chicken inspector approves!

Anyway, this weekend was long, but we got it done. My mother in law came both days and helped. Saturday looked like we were going to make really good progress, and then of course it starts pouring, cutting things short. We did get all but one corner of the “apron” in place. That’s where you put hardware cloth on the ground for two feet out, to keep anything that wants to dig into the run from doing so. Like so:

Anywhere there’s an overlap, we secured with zip ties. You can stitch it with wire, but that might be the only thing more annoying than zip ties. We had little hooks made of wire to help loop them through, and it still was tough. My fingertips are also a delightful array of tiny puncture wounds from the edges of the hardware cloth. I didn’t have gloves that fit snug enough to wear during this. Yay!  So anyway, we did a lot of this, then it rained. Boo. Crap. Dog fudge. 

Sunday was another day. I got up early and did the last corner of the apron just to smote its ruin on the mountainside. Then we zip tied some more, and set to work tidying up any loose ends that might result in an insecure run. 

After my uncle’s chickens getting wiped out, and his subsequent idea that electric fences are the only way to keep out raccoons, I bought a small one for the coop. (I trust him. He’s a scientist. He specializes in volcanos that shoot raccoons.) I have been seeing a lot of roadkill raccoons out there, so they’re around. And maybe coming back to life to eat my chickens. I have now gone one day without zapping myself. Let’s see how long I can keep this up. I bet not very long. It doesn’t kill anything, it just zaps enough for the animal to realize this is not a good idea and to go elsewhere. Hopefully we don’t even need it, but I don’t want to take chances after all the work I’ve put into this.

Electric fences need a ground rod pounded into the ground. You then run a wire from the electrifying thingy to the ground rod. Ground rods are comically oversized. Ours was 8 feet long. Seriously. After about an hour of hammering with a regular hammer and making no progress between two of us, my mother in law ran to the store right before closing, and got a sledgehammer. That helped. We still have about four feet to go, though.

I figure I’ll hammer it a few times every time I go out there, and in like a year it will be all the way down. Because of all the hammering, I can barely use my arms today. I feel like a T Rex.

Once the fence was functional, it was time to move the ladies. This involved also freaking them out. Chickens seem a little high strung. 

Here is the coop, clean and unspoiled one last time:

Then filled with bedding and a Mandrell Sister.

Here’s Suzy Creamcheese looking freaked by herself in the run. We decided to just stick them all in the coop for the night, since it may have been too much. Once the flock was broken up, they were all agitated, but they calmed back down once everyone was accounted for.

After the reunion, there was a lot of happy wall-pecking, so that was a good sign. 

So, last night I was awoken by an alarm from down the street going off. I thought “man, that electric fence is high-tech!” Then I remembered I had heard this once before, and it’s either the gas station or sports bar. I went back to sleep. Then I heard what sounded like a raccoon gorging on chicken. I awoke to our obese cat with allergies snoring. 

In the morning, I went back out, and was greeted by more happy wall-pecking. I said “Hi chickens!” through the vent, and they all starting peeping happily. Their god had returned!

They took a while to warm up to going outside though. Lots of peeking, but not much bravery.

Boss Chicken was the first one out, and almost immediately ate a tick. IT BEGINS. Hopefully by day’s end she will have eaten a bag of ticks. When I left, she was still the only one in the run, but was eating bugs like gangbusters. Collin said the Mandrell Sisters were out there too when she left. Hopefully tonight they will all be there, and will go back into the coop without issue. But I suspect I will be rolling in dirt and chicken crap trying to grab a chicken in the far reaches of the undercoop area.

In a couple of weeks they will be used to their home, and we can start letting them out for free-ranging, under serious supervision, though. At one point Sunday there were three hawks circling overhead. Step off, hawks.

First cherry tomato of the season!

The first of like 900 to come. A lot are there, but not ready for picking. The plants are as tall as I am, and I suppose I am not short.

Shitty Mandrell is becoming aggressively friendly. If I lift the screen in the chicken pen for anything, she charges and wants to be picked up, or she jumps onto the edge of the pen and sings a weird chicken song at me. I suppose it’s nice to be popular, even if you are only popular among one chicken.

So close!

And yet so far. I swear next weekend this coop will be done. It has to be! I expanded the indoor porta-coop, and they seem much happier, but they need to be outside, pronto.

Here they are exploring their new addition.

So, I took Friday off and got to work, starting with the front door/window thing.

Got the window in place, got the hinges working, everything is good.

The back is hinged, secured, and ready to go.

The bottom is screwed in, but that panel comes off for big cleanings.

Then the front door went on.

If you really want to look for it, there are red 2x4s holding down the edges of the linoleum.

I have almost no recollection of what went on Saturday, but this is what I came out to Sunday morning, so I must have done something.

Oh right, the frame of the run. Apparently I am not that great at judging the straightness of 2x4s, or they warp after you buy them, because some of these are real wavy. I guess it adds to the general grooviness.

Saturday night we heard something out waling around in the trees, so I went out to see what it was. Of course, as soon as I step outside I realize it could be a bear or something, but too late. I saw a reflective collar briefly, so I assume it was a dog from the campground behind our house. But it got me worried about how often campers let their dogs loose and we don’t hear it. Then Sunday morning my mother called to let me know all my uncle’s chickens got killed by a raccoon and he says electric fences are the way to go. I appreciate the advice, but at the same time my mother really knows how to set my day off into an anxiety spin.

Anyway, after that, my mother in law came by and helped out. We got a lot done.

The run is almost entirely enclosed. I added the top of a solar walkway light into the window to see how it would work.

It lights things up. I keep seeing it at night, and bask in the soft glow of my workmanship. Though, since it only shuts off when the battery drains, it may be too much light. The dark months are too dark for productive egg laying, but this may be swinging in the opposite direction. Chickens need sleep too. Unless they are in college pulling all-nighters, but the papers they write will not be as good as if they had just planned ahead and done it sooner and revised.

I added the chicken door. And when I say “chicken door,” Collin will say “Two points to Chickendoor!” and we laugh like goobers.

Anyway, it’s good that we got a lot done, because Lord Vader stopped by to make sure we were making progress.

I’m glad it was him, and not that dink Grand Moff Tarkin. He’s always telling me I overestimate the chances of predators getting in the coop, and then a minute later he gets eaten by rats.

And then finally I made a roost while waiting for lunch.

Next weekend we finish getting the hardware cloth up, and then tacking it down to discourage diggers. And I hope then move the chickens outside. Otherwise we will have to litter train them. And somehow make them not look delicious to cats.

Cluckers

One of the Mandrell sisters has begun to cluck a little. My girls are growing up! There’s still a ton of peeping, but like every third or fourth one is a cluck. This is pretty exciting, as I find clucking to be soothing. I have problems.

Anyway, these birds want out.

I really hope I can get the coop done this weekend. I’m taking tomorrow off to work on it, and of course am coming down with something. You won’t stop me, biological crud! I think that if the coop is done, but the run isn’t, that I can still put them in the coop until the rest is done. Then they have more space and get used to it. I want to think that enclosing the run will be a quick job, but nothing in this has been a quick job so I should shut up to myself.

The thermometer is back working again.

There’s one Mandrell sister that I can tell apart from the others lately, as she has some crap on her wing. I don’t think Shitty was a Mandrell, and I’m sure that if I refer to her as that, the calls from preschool will be coming in. So just clean yourself, chicken. Shitty is very nice, though. Just because someone has feces on their wing doesn’t mean they’re a bad chicken.

Attn: Lovers

YOUR TOILETS ARE READY!

I asked Collin if she wanted to pose on these toilets holding hands to show how they work. She said no. So try to imagine the magic. Anyway, the stalls are down, and ready to be used in the coop. I realized as I was figuring out how to take them down that the whole shebang was basically a box around the toilets, and what I needed was a box around the chickens. So I kind of abandoned my original idea of using all pallets (which could have required me to cut up the stall plywood) and will now use the stall walls whole, with no cutting. I still have to figure out how to make it all fit together, but hey, let’s wing it! Pun sadly intended.

Both weekend days had stuff to do that took way longer than expected that delayed a lot of coop work. Saturday we had to go get the 2x4s for framing the run, and everything took a long time. Sunday brought many visitors, and so building didn’t begin in earnest until around 2. Which is good, because it wasn’t really oppressively hot until then. My dad and I sank some cinder blocks into the ground to hold everything down. That took forever, because we needed it all to be reasonably level, and we are n00bs. But that got done. Then I laid the base 2x4 down on the blocks, and attached the first pallet, which will be part of the mechanism by which the coop is kept off the ground.

I will probably have to cut the pallets in half, because otherwise everything is going to be way too high for me to reach. If it’s hard to reach, it will be hard to clean. If it’s hard to clean, it will be filthy all the time. 

I also started a nesting box.

The linoleum is to protect the wood from the horrible things that come out of chickens. I asked Graham if he wanted to sit on this and pretend he was laying an egg. He said no. I am reconsidering this project now, because I originally had thought this would be on the outside of the coop, but I think I will have room inside with this new plan. Something removable and easy to clean might be good, since chickens crap on everything. Some people use big buckets on their side for nesting. Others have fancy set ups, and that’s nice and romantic and all, but at the end of the day, your romance will be covered in chicken crap and hard to clean. We’re a ways off from needing nesting boxes anyway, so I have time to come up with something.

My mom pulled a bunch of radishes out on Sunday, and they all were kind of weird and malformed, like that other one I posted last week. The theory is that the seeds might not have been planted deep enough. I took some of the greens and threw them in with the chickens, and they finally get the whole greens thing. They went NUTS. I told Collin to come watch the chickens go insane, and I think she thought I was using that as a figure of speech. Then she saw them act like it was Black Friday and this was a store with lots of cheap crap they didn’t need, and was duly impressed.

They’re roosting wherever they can now.

That’s the support for the peckin’ post, but whatever works, Mandrell sister.

Boss Chicken tried to fly this morning. She was on my hand and just went for it. It was remarkably not majestic. It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you’re surrounded by turkeys, but it’s even harder when you’re a chicken.

Old tricks

Boss Chicken is sort of at it again. Now when I take the screen off the top to fill their food, or pick one of them up, she jumps right on the edge.

Snooping. At least she can’t get up there when the screen is in place. I think this is extreme roosting. Maybe they’d like bungee jumping too.

I decided the Barred Rock who was up until now nameless will henceforth be Suzy Creamcheese. No real reason, just seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I felt bad because the Buff Orpingtons don’t have names. The problem is that I can’t really tell them apart because I am a chicken racist. So I decided to call them the Mandrell Sisters.

This one could be Louise! Or Irlene. I had to look her name up. I think she was my dad’s favorite. There are two things people always forget: 1. There were 2 talking pig movies in the summer of 1995, and 2. The third Mandrell sister.

Anyway, I think I am putting myself into danger by naming them all, but too late. 

Yesterday my son asked “Did you put a webcam on the chickens?” No parenting book (or chickening book) had prepared me for this question. “Yes, son,” I said. “That is something that I did.” Openness is important.

This weekend I hope to start the coop in earnest. I have had good luck with the “scrap wood” bin at work for bits and pieces, but I think I may have to buy some long 2x4s to frame the run. We’ll see. I am trying to do this as cheaply as possible, but some stuff I don’t think I can skimp on. 

I pulled another radish yesterday.

A little bigger than that other one. It tasted o.k., except for the part closest to the leaves, which was tough. I assume that was the butt. 

There are enormous milkweed plants down the road.

I would take a picture of it next to me for height reference, but that’s all poison ivy down there.

Here’s everyone roosting like champs.

So excited to do something I am bad at in 90 degree weather this weekend! (Build the coop.) 

Varmints!

Something ate some of my sunflower sprouts, even though I put blood meal around them. And it didn’t even eat all of them, it just bit one in half and left it there. This is why we can’t have nice things. Eating something I can understand, but vandalism is uncalled for.

So, I took some screen and made this silliness:

We’ll see what happens. Graham was very excited how these were going, so no damn chipmunk better mess it up.

I pretty much have to assume that any time I go in to tend to the chickens that I have to allow enough time to pick each one up, or they get offended. Except Henny Penny, but she is getting a little bit better about freaking out when picked up now. I feel bad because two of the Barred Rocks have sort of been given names, but that leaves one with no name. I am sure she is upset about this.

The line for pick up.

On Tuesday I cleared a lot of weeds and invasive things out of where the coop is going.

There seems to be some sort of invasive pricker bush popping up everywhere. There’s a giant one that bunnies live in, but then you pull out the other weeds, and there are prickers under it. We’re leaving the bunny house, but I may pull up some of the small ones, since they will just pop up somewhere else. We also are covered in bittersweet.

Here’s some I cut last year. Several of our trees are either dead or close to it, because it’s climbed up and choked them out. From what I have read, you never get rid of it, you can only keep it in check. I bought some horticultural vinegar to help with this. It’s 20% acidity, instead of 5%, which is food-grade. So in a week when I’m complaining about chemical burns, we can all say we saw it coming. Still better than Round Up. I swear if we had goats, they’d have taken care of all this now. Like in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, but instead of the Dead Men of Dunharrow, it’s goats who sweep in and save the day. I am obviously Aragorn in this scenario.

At least this guy isn’t after my chickens.

Reap the bounty

There’s a room on the far side of the house that used to be a day care. I has it’s own clearly marked bathroom, as you can see below.

It also has stalls that remind me of camp. They give you that “I’m sitting on a board crapping down a hole” feeling on regular toilets! 

I’m going to take these down and use the plywood to make the exterior of the coop. Then we will have what I like to call “lovers’ toilets” - two toilets next to each other, so you can hold hands while doing your business.

I started the side with the nesting boxes yesterday. 

That picture really doesn’t tell you anything. But this thing will have a nesting box on it, and I cut some wood with power tools and still have all my fingers. But this project has a way to go, so keep the digit removal pool going.

Gratuitous chicken photo!

Really more of a shot of the screen. The screen is NICE.

The more I read about predators, the more terrified I become. I realize knowledge is power, but that power comes with a side of crippling fear. Probably in part because I have seen fisher cats around, and they seem very hard to stop. So, I will continue to plan my fortifying of the chickenhut. 

I “harvested” some of the lettuce yesterday. It made about half a salad when divided between Collin and I. But behold the bounty of the Earth.

Now I know how the pioneers felt. They loved salad.

If you are 8, like I am, you will enjoy this graphic from one of my how-to books. It’s a whole new world of naughty bits in poultry land.