Chickie house

The Architect and I put together the girls' house yesterday.  It's a Chick-n-Villa made by WARE manufacturing, the same company that made the rabbit hutches I bought.

It's super cute and was easy as pie to put together.

There's a few modifications it needs.  It needs a door for the henhouse.  We already swapped out the latches to ones that are more raccoon-proof.  We already know that we're going to extend the run out a good few feet.

We've got a bit of a cool front right now, and the girls have been in the house since we got them.  They stayed outside for a little while yesterday, but I could tell they were cold.  It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, so I think they can stay outside for the majority of the day.

Garden Update 1.0

I promised an update a couple days ago, and then my brain decided to short circuit and present me with a rather debilitating migraine.

For those of you who get those things on the regular, ugh, I feel for you.  I've only had maybe three in my whole lifetime, and those are more than enough.

Anyhoo, for my slightly overdue garden update, I have to admit: I think I've kind of buggered something up.

I started with the discs? Pellets?  Things?  On the left.  I neglected to leave the clear cover on it per the instructions, because I am a doofus.  However, despite being exposed to the air, I've had a mold/fungus problem with the discs.

Despite that, I still have managed a few viable seedlings - I transferred those to the stand alone peat pots furthest to the left there.  There's a few bush beans, a few cucumbers, a zucchini, and a squash.

So, while still taking care of my first set of sort-of-failure, I started another pallet of discs.  This time, I left the clear lid on them 'til stuff started sprouting.  The zucchini, squash, and cantaloupe have gone nuts.

The tomatoes are sadly lagging.  And some of these discs have mold/fungus starting to fuzz on them, too.  I don't recall having this issue last year.  It's very frustrating.

Oh, well.  At least spring has arrived.  :)

Chick Update #5

The girls are three weeks old now, and really starting to look less ragged and more like real chickens.  :)

Heart-shaped chickies!

And here's a quick video of the girls in the yard. 



Tomorrow, I have a garden update! :)

Chick Update #4

 

Lucille, Petunia, and Gertrude here.  Norway is out of frame.

For those unaware, don't let anyone tell you that chickens cannot fly.  Oy....

Some cool photos-

I wanted to share this link of a bunch of pictures from about 1880.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/23/from-the-archive-frontier-life-in-the-west/2713/

As an aside...

...I am COMPLETELY baffled at the number of people who do not understand that you don't need a rooster for hens to lay eggs.

Blog Award! :)

Lamb over at "Waiting on the Other Shoe" gave me this for blogging my gardening and homesteading efforts! :)

In return, I must award it to three more awesome gardening/homesteading blogs, and they are:

OlivYew Farm (I love reading about her rabbits and new chickens!)
BerryVine Farm (I love all the pics she posts!)
and the gang at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-Op (they have fabulous tips and how-tos!)

Keep up the awesome, everyone, and spread the love!  I hope everyone has a great day!

Why?

I've had a few friends and family members ask why in the world I want to farm and grow my own garden, and, eventually, raise and eat my own livestock.

Personally, I find it hypocritical of anyone who eats meat but is unwilling to kill the animal themselves.  I feel, as a whole, people are too disconnected from what goes on with their food.  I think that it's appalling that livestock are kept on feedlots knee-deep in their own feces; or in tiny cages with no access to the outside or to sunlight, without room to sprawl or stretch their legs.

No, I am no PETA enthusiast.  In fact, I abhor the organization, but that's another post.

It means enough to me that the animals I eat for food get space, grass, sunlight, the best feed I can afford, and love.  Because it is that important to me, I'm willing to do everything I can to move away from commercialized meat and dairy products.

It means enough to me to have fresh fruits and vegetables, untouched or modified by Monsanto or their ilk, that I'm learning to grow my own food as organically as I can.

Furthermore, I have very little faith in this country remaining stable in any meaning of the word for much longer.  I pray I'm wrong, but my gut tells me that I'm not.  Besides, on a much less dramatic scale, it wouldn't take much to disrupt the flow of food to the supermarkets.  A gas shortage.  A trucker strike.  A natural disaster...

I feel that the more I can provide for myself and my family, the easier and more comfortable we can survive anything that's thrown our way.

While we don't have a farm yet, The Architect and I will make the best of the acre we have until we do.

Maybe I can't save the world, but I CAN save my part of it.

Chick update #3

It's gorgeous outside so we took the chicks out for a few minutes.

Blaze desperately wanted to play with them.  Not that I would ever let her do so, but I honestly think she just wants to play and wouldn't hurt them on purpose.

The chicks are growing like weeds, and are starting to tame a little bit.  I got them to eat mealworms out of my hand today, and they're doing better about being handled. 

I've noticed that their little "voices" are starting to change, too.

We've changed Chaps' name, since both the araucanas are developing tails.  We've decided on the name "Norway," since there's a running joke in the house that The Architect thinks that anything with ear tufts is a Norwegian Forest Cat, and one of the araucanas has very distinct ear tufts.  :)

Garden 2.0

Well, here we go!

I started some seeds yesterday.  Bush beans, tomatoes, cucumber, melon, peppers, etc.  The Architect and I are totally going gung-ho this year and making a much larger garden than what we had.

Bubba and Crash have offered to give me a bunch of their compost, so we'll be attaining that in a couple weeks to till in.  After that, I've got to lime.  I didn't lime the garden last year, but it still did very well. 

One other thing I didn't do last year that I meant to do was to mulch.  I'm going to make sure that I mulch my garden this year.  Weeding what little I had last year was bad enough, and now we're making it bigger?  Ugh, my back would absolutely rebel.

I still need to get a couple window boxes so I can keep salad greens and broccoli in the house since they tend to not do so well in the summer heat.

The Architect built me this awesome seed starter/light box for my seeds.

It's made from PVC and has two 120 watt grow lights.  All the parts were about $80, and took us about an hour to put together.

Unfortunately, the way our house is situated, none of our windows get direct sunlight, so the light box is kind of imperative.  I hope it works out.