In the Garden: Fall Clean Up

Its Fall in the garden and time to the put the beds to bed for the season. I don’t normally mulch my planting beds in the fall, but the chicken coop needed to be cleaned out, so what the heck, might as well use one thing for two purposes. I don’t know what other urban chicken farmes use, but lately, we have been using straw to bed the hen-house and roosting boxes.

I ended up pulling out all the old straw and hen turds and threw them into the garden beds. My thought…straw will help keep weeds down and existing plants warm till next spring, while the girls’ little surprises add nutrients. Genius. I know.

 

 

Almost all cleaned out. 🙂

I still have some cabbage in the garden, so I just placed the straw around  the plants still above the soil. Notice the bitty rosemary at the bottom of the pic. I am really quite proud. I threw down some rosemary seeds last spring/summer and then realized I was supposed to start them indoors(oops)…. well, to my surprise a few of my seeds popped up! I really hope they make it through the winter. Pretty, pretty please! I have not had good luck with rosemary in the past….

 

Now, that I’ve got all the old stuff out, the new must go in…..

 

 

 And I’ve got my littlest helper with me, although, me thinks he thinks the coop could use a little deodorizer. 🙂

 

Alright, the fresh straw is down and ready for some eggs!

My hope is that, throughout the winter as I clean the coop, I’ll add more old straw and droppings to the rest of the beds, and by next spring I’ll have a most awesomest soil my plants every did see! ;D So…. we’ll see….

 

 

 

Chicken Report: The Eggs Are BACK!

The girls are feeling the holiday spirit…or something. Cause they are cranking out eggs like CRAZY. A few weeks ago, we were lucky to get an egg a day from our four girls.

Maybe, they are just happy about the new digs? Maybe, they get the run of the yard ( in between storm clouds)? Or maybe, it’s because they got a new light in the coup? Whatever the reason, I am not complaining. We are up to four eggs a day now! I better get baking. 🙂

NEW and improved chicken coop

Today was the day! The hubby finished the new chicken coop and not a moment too soon. With in minutes of being done, the rain came down. The girls moved in, and are happy and dry in their new digs.

This is the old coop that was in the garden, that we moved out of the garden, into the yard, to build the new coop.

The start of the rebuild. The pallets came from a warehouse my mom works at.

ok, so this pic is mostly of the garden, but you can see we painted the pallets in the background a pretty green. 🙂

Here it is almost finished. All that’s left is to move the chicken house back over.

You can see a dismantled chicken run in the background with a missing house…..

…that’s because the house has been moved over to the new run, with the hubby putting finishing touches on the chicken wire.

With the new run and new roof, I am hoping the chickens will stay drier this winter and happier. They had a few roosting bars in their coop/house, but we added more bars for them to hang out on at the far end of the run ( by the green pallet) This run is also longer, so they have more room to spread out and we made it so that the feed and water are now hanging, which will hopefully mean we are cleaning out the water less (YAY!)

ps. if you didn’t notice the plants in the garden and the change in each picture…..this project took a few months to finish! what can I say….we are procrastinators. 🙂

Meet the Girls

Ok, so I mentioned that I have chickens and would like to introduce them….

                                                                                                        Florence our large Australorp

                                                                                                             Hazel is our Ameraucana

Agnes our Wyandotte

                                                                                                          Diana the small Australorp

  And last but not least, Henerietta the Barred Rock

They all lay varying shades of brown eggs, except for Hazel, she is our blue egg layer

And then there is our dog….. he keeps the chickens in line and visa versa.

                                                                                                                          Meet Indiana.

We have had our chickens for about 3 years now and are ALWAYS learning new things. For example….. dogs and chickens CAN co-exist. I would just love to see what goes through Indiana’s mind….given that he is a bird dog that my husband takes hunting every fall. He must be throughly confused, but he has learned that they are NOT to be hunted and are not chew toys. They all get along great now.