No flogging!

HA!

HAHAHAHAHAAAA!

I got my whole list done--DONE, I SAY!  And I was having a record-breaking crappy weekend.  Crappy enough that today at church, various kind people approached me quietly to make sure everything was okay.  Well, no, not a bit actually.  But nothing is wrong that I'm at liberty to discuss (and yes, that includes here as well, sorry).  And having that list of stuff to do hanging over my head did wonders for focusing the mind--sort of like the hangman's noose.  It actually provided some respite for the tormenting thoughts I was otherwise having.

So what did I accomplish?  Let's review:

• temporary chook pen:  done and done.  It is the definition of the word "kludge," but that's where my DIY skills max out, so it's just as well.  I'll try to get pics soon.  The baby chicks are now happily installed in their new homes, protected from outside evils like raccoons, owls, and the adult hens eyeballing them through the chicken wire.  The interior of the pen is a bit difficult to access--I did mention that it's a total kludge, right?--but otherwise, it's all good.  And though it was designed to be temporary, I might keep it up as an isolation area, in case I have a sick chick, or a bully that needs to get taken down a peg or two.  Of course, if I do, then my next weekend list will have to include "paint roof of temporary chook pen."
• I made the new waterer with the chicken nipple, and gods alive, they figured it out!  I ended up using the "put jam on the nipple to encourage them" method, which was just the trick.  The babies now have fresh and clean water in an easy-to-refill setup.  And the hens have taken notice since they've been outside.  I think I'll make another one and hang it on the outside of the pen, near where the baby chick's one is, and see if the old hens can be taught any new tricks.  (Wondering what the hell I'm talking about?  Click here.)
• I made a wheel of Wensleydale.  I'm not sure how it will turn out, though.  I might've been too rough with the curd during several of the milling steps, and it's also really quite hot in our house.  I think the combination of these two factors might have created a "catastrophic butterfat loss" situation--it was leaking out everywhere.  Ah well, we won't know for another 3 weeks when it comes out of its cave.  My guess is that it'll be good, but very crumbly rather than smooth and creamy.  Live and learn, right?
• Garden paths:  weed-whacked.  And I totally deserved the flying object right in the eye, since I couldn't be bothered to take an additional 5-10 minutes tracking down my safety glasses.  No harm done, but it was a good warning shot.
• Blackberry brambles are as back under control as I'm likely to get them this year.  And some of the blackberries are neeeeaaarrrrllllyyyyy ripe.  Mmmm, blackberries...

So I'm digging this whole "public accountability" thing--I got more done this weekend than I have in a long time.  On the other hand, that's just about the maximum I can get done in one weekend, and I really didn't have any time to relax or enjoy myself.  True, I do enjoy doing much of what was on my list, but a bit of time to kick back, read, spin some yarn, whathaveyou?  Yeah, that didn't happen.  Maybe I'll get some spinning done tonight.  I've got some lovely suri alpaca roving gifted to me by my dear friend Dave, and I've been itching to get to it (and he's been needling me, too).  Pretty soon I'll be getting my niece's adopted llama's fleece to process, which he'll be helping with, so I'd better clear this other roving out of the way first, right?

Right??

New chickens

As most of you know, I live on a pretty regular city street.  You know, a double-lot, which is 60'x140' (yeah, I know, long & narrow).  Lots of neighbors, who generally all love my chickens.

Except for one neighbor, for whom I just didn't know one way or the other.  One day a chicken got loose in their yard, which may have freaked them a bit (and totally fairly, I might add).  I'm reasonably sure one of their dogs got loose and killed three of our chickens, but seriously do not know for sure and never made any accusations.  So I was a bit in no-man's land with them, and they're right next door.

That is, until about 3 weeks ago, when they showed up in our yard with their own 9 baby chicks.  Okay, I guess that answers that question.

BUT, they were the classic Rural King suckers.  The lady got lured in by the adorable cheep-cheeps on chick day and bought 9, with no other obvious long term plan, like having a feeder or living situation or anything.  So they offered some to us, and I said I would take up to three of them once they were a bit bigger.

Now they're a bit bigger.

So here are some of the things I'm gonna need to do, or be aware of, soon:

• Get back out the old brooder, to keep them in isolation for awhile
• Wait until they're big enough to be able to hold their own in the main chicken yard
• Construct a makeshift pen in the chicken yard, probably right off the side of the current run (that's my thinking anyway.  Probably a metal post & chicken wire affair, with a "whatever I can find that will work" roof system.
• Spend roughly the next two months letting the chickens either grow or get acclimated to the other chicken.
• Wait with baited breath to see if I got myself any (any at all) roosters.  If so, I'll have a few options:
• See if my other neighbors were serious about preferring the sound of a rooster crow to an alarm clock.
• Bite the bullet and learn how to butcher (um.. but where?!)
• If I have more than one rooster.... sh*t, that's bad luck.

Honestly, I'd rather like one rooster.  I think the girls would be happier, and they're good defense for them (damnit, I hate how unliberated hens are!).  But I have serious doubts about my neighbors truly enjoying the call of the wild at the crack of dawn.  I understand that roosters aren't any louder than dogs, but no one likes to hear dogs barking at the crack of dawn, either.  We'll see how this plays out.  

Chickens + compost = WOW

(Fair warning, this post comes to you via my iPad, and I'm not a thumb-typing prodigy, so I'm vagely concerned that this will end up on "damn you autocorrect!". But my husband has our main computer, and besides, I'm outside...)

I redid the fencing for the chickens yesterday, giving them access to the compost pile for the first time. Oh, what I wouldn't give for before and after shots! When they started in on it, the pile was essentially a fermenting mass of ick (that through some miracle, didn't smell). But they joyously scratched, pecked, scraped, and just generally partied down right through that pile. When I returned, the pile was a lovely, crumbly, black humus--almost exactly what the textbooks tell you it should look like. True story, today I put some of this gorgeousness out on one of my garden beds, and I didn't even screen it. (Mostly due to laziness and the fact that I don't own a screen, but still, it worked.) I actually had to put the fourth wall slats back on, since the pile was now such loose crumbliness that it wasn't staying put anymore. This, incidentally, required that I put the top brace back on to hold the sides together, which makes a lovely perch. The compost pile is now my chicken's most very favorite place to be.

I've got a day off tomorrow, since I've been working 10-14 hour days for the past week with a group of Spring Break Service Trip kids, which was awesome. I probably got too attached to them, given that I knew they'd only be here for a week, but ah well. They did such a great job and worked so hard. I think they genuinely absorbed our message of a faith-practice focused on care of creation.

Oh, and along those lines, we're also running a pilot version of Lent 4.5 both at my work and at my church (Unitarian Universalist--yeah, tell me you're surprised). If you have any inclination to a faith-based ecological perspective, I heartily encourage you to look into this program, its vey good stuff.

Under the wire

Ha!  Got my urban homesteading post in just under the wire for the Monday Day of Action.  Score.

Today, my post will be short, but poignant.

FIRST EGG!

(I took pictures, but they were all blurry & awful.  Don't know what has happened to my macro function.  Grrr.)

I wanna learn permaculture

My chickens are doing wonderfully! They're digging on their coop, scratching up a storm in the run, and practically killing each other every time I pull up a dying kale plant to toss in for them. (OMG, they are seriously hilarious.) I must be in some kind of chicken nirvana, and we're not even getting any eggs yet. (And we won't until spring, so don't ask.)

But this whole chicken thing, paired with an article in the most recent "Urban Farmer" magazine, has pushed me again to want to investigate permaculture. I'd love to give you a brief discussion of the highlights of permaculture, or a quick glossing of its main points, but the simple truth is, I don't know. I do know that it has something to do with creating systems in your environment that reinforce each other, and I remember a nifty drawing I saw once of a permaculture garden where you could practically feed a family of four from the 30' diameter circle surrounding your family apple tree, but otherwise.... I know that I know nothing.

But my chickens are making me think. Chickens are fertilizer machines. Chickens love to eat grubs, bugs, and all manner of other things that I do not want in my garden. Chickens scratch and aerate soils. These things are good.

However, chickens also decimate crops. Chickens scratch up seedlings. Chickens eat an entire year's crop of lettuce. Chickens roost on my neighbor's car. These things are bad.

There must be a practical way to capitalize on the good, while at least minimizing the bad. I have heard and read stories of people with chicken-bearing gardens who only suffer minor heartaches, but I'm not sure how to make this happen here in my own backyard.

Yet.

I think permaculture might provide a key. A principled method for integrating the two in a way that neither destroys my crops, nor pisses off my neighbors. (Currently my neighbors are either quite happy that I have chickens, or quite blissfully ignorant--I'd like to maintain the status quo in this instance.)

So it's off to the library website to reserve a copy of Gaia's Garden. Other suggestions?

Well now, that couldn't have been more differenter.

So here is where I spent Wednesday:


As before, this isn't literally where I was on Wednesday. This was taken at a Volunteer Fair in 2005 at some university somewhere else. But it was the same one that I was at yesterday (except we used laptops instead of CRT monitors).

As a purely academic exercise, flip back two posts ago--you remember, the one about psychic damage? Look at that photo, then look back here. Then back at the first post then BACK TO ME.

Er, whoops. Sorry. Slipped into an Old Spice commercial there.

*ahem* Anyway, there are a few instantly noticeable differences. No vortexes of black power suits and drool. Liberal use of color, smiles, and happiness. Heartfelt desire to use the time you have on this planet to make it a better place for everyone.

I got to slide into the volunteer fair because I recruit volunteers as well as interns, and my interns "count" since it's for a non-profit. And even thought it was at exactly the same location (to the building!) as the Career Hell I'd just attended, neither it, nor the recruiters, nor the attending students, bore any resemblance to each other. However, there weren't chair massages at this one, so it wasn't perfect.

Great gods, I felt like I'd come home. We got a home-esque cooked vegetarian meal before the fair opened. It was really good--even the eggplant casserole, which is just asking for disaster--although someone apparently mistook cayenne pepper for nutmeg on the apple crisp (no, I'm not making that up). The only thing bittersweet about it was that no such fairs existed (or were available at my college at least) when I was in school, except for volunteer opportunities at the school/in the city. Now, those are great, and I'm a fan, but we were recruiting volunteers for places like inner-city Detroit, rural sustainable farms (ahem), and villages in Paraguay. I was politely turned down by several people who were looking for a year or longer commitment (we typically have 3-6 month internships). I spent three hours talking to all manner of engaged, eager, happy, go-getter students who wanted to use their power for the forces of good.

It could heal one's soul.

And in entirely unrelated news....

MEET MY NEW PEEPS!

Here they were just 1.5 weeks ago:



And here they are today:


(OMG they've grown so much! Can you see the feathers on their wings already?!)

And here will be their home in about 4 weeks:


(This has now been painted an unsightly color of primer-white, but will hopefully soon be transformed into a more pleasing hunter-green).

Silence is golden.

Oh dear, I seem to have 22 followers. Twenty-two of you are invested enough in what I have to say that you've bothered to add me to a feed? I'm both surprised and flattered. =) I suppose this means that I really ought be getting on with writing more stuff here, doesn't it? Well, it's past my bedtime now, so I won't do it just. at. this. moment.

Buuuut....

Teaser: I have a new CHICKEN COOP! (no chickens yet, though)

More soon.

Hey all you Urban Gardeners!

Get yer butts over to The Urban Garden Project and JOIN UP! Stand up and be counted! The only requirements are that you are gardening (and yes, containers on your balcony count) within the city limits, so get to it!

And, in other Adapting news, my neighbor and I are getting dangerously close to getting chickens. "Close" meaning that we've been emailing each other design plans for various coops.