Saturday, January 25, 2020

New video uploaded on making chicken stock out of kitchen scraps.
https://youtu.be/iL3oqVKPbcA

Friday, January 24, 2020

Painting with a Toddler


Now that the chicken coop is (mostly) done it’s time to paint. It takes a while to find a day with nothing else scheduled. On the chosen morning, the two-year-old and I drop the older kids at school and change into paint clothes, because this won’t be pretty.

We lock ourselves into the fenced chicken coop and baby girl immediately starts chasing the chickens saying ‘chichens, hug. Chichen, I yuve you’ and trying to ‘hug them, love them, and call them George’. I start painting as fast as I can, holding the full paint can at shoulder level so she can’t throw in dirt, or rocks, or chicken food, or shoes. Or drink it.

She soon gives up the chase and looks for something else to do. Each stroke of my brush is punctuated with me saying ‘don’t eat the chicken food.’ ‘don’t eat the chicken droppings.’ ‘leave the chickens alone.’ ‘Don’t take off your clothes.’ She finger paints where I just painted, or decorates the fresh paint with handfuls of dirt. I can't brush all of it off. I realize why lumberjack always says I’m a terrible painter. I know deep down I was a bad painter long before I had kids but I’m more than willing to blame the kids for this, along with the fact that, like Clara Morrow, I’m always a mess.

‘Nummy drink.’ I hear and stick my hear around the corner to see that she has pulled the lid off the chicken’s water bucket and is sticking her face inside.

She comes up behind me while I’m kneeling and tries to pull my pants down. I don’t think much of it because I’m wearing a belt and she isn’t going to get far. I shriek as her little arm goes right down my bum crack.

I sing nursery rhymes, ABCs, and Laurie Berkner until I’m ready to move to a convent and take a vow of silence. I tell her not to lick the paint on her hands, not to wash her hands in the chickens’ water, not to paint the chickens.

We finish three sides and I decide we’re done for the day.

We put things away and tiptoe in the house, trying not to track in paint. Bath time. I take off her clothes and put her on the toilet. Nothing. She splashes in the tub while I wash her face and hands and hair. I had the foresight to put on long sleeves and pants so the rest of her isn’t too bad. We drain the water,  add fresh, and wash again. This time I watch her sparkly eyes and infectious grin while she blows soap bubbles. Her laugh bounces round the room. She gets out and I put her on the toilet again. She squeezes out a few drops and is rewarded with a jelly bean while I contemplate how many more boxes of diapers I’ll have to buy from Target before she’s potty trained.

I feed her a sandwich with my homemade raspberry freezer jam which she crumples and throws on the floor. I contemplate a second bath because of the yogurt smeared all over her. I put her down for a nap and head to my own shower with relief. I know we’ll have to finish the job soon and repeat today. I also know it looks a mess. But what does it matter if the chicken coop looks like a two-year-old painted it? The chickens don’t mind. And for the rest of my life I’ll look at the coop and think of my girl when she was young, curious, adventurous, and safe. 

Before she goes out to face that crazy, scary thing called life. 







Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Friday, January 17, 2020

Chicken coop

Last summer Lumberjack set out to build us a chicken coop for the chickens we already had.



  Living at 8oooft altitude we knew we had to build a better than average coop. Our fence has done a great job of keeping out predators, but we needed it strong, just in case. Also, because our winters can be long and cold we needed to protect our chickens from that, too. And while we're at it, maybe make something that was convenient for us.

Good thing Lumberjack is an engineer for his day job.

We built the chicken run, inside the fenced-in garden. Because gates are weak spots, we put the gate inside the garden.  Hopefully that gives us double protection.  The chicken run is covered with wire fencing to protect from hawks and other aerial predators. A big concern up here.

We did have a bear try to get into our chicken run once. He gave up and went on to demolish our garbage shed, instead. So, I guess it's working?

When Lumberjack designed the coop we had some needs we wanted addressed.  They needed to be warm. Not only to keep them alive, but hopefully warm enough to keep them laying during winter. We wanted food and water inside so when the snow is two feet deep they don't have to come out. We wanted easy access to clean, gather eggs, and check on the chickens. Speaking of cleaning...we wanted to do as little as possible, while still keeping the coop fresh and having a way to get the droppings for the compost pile.

Behold the chicken palace!

Standing in the garden looking at the chicken run and coop.


This is quite spacious for our seven birds, even with their food and water inside.

The six nesting boxes can be reached from the garden so we can gather eggs without going into the run. Very nice for our kids. The bar that the arrow is pointing at controls the door so we can close the chickens in when it is very cold. Again, without even going in the chicken area.  The roof is slanted because of the snow load, but also, we have plans to install a gutter and pipes to catch the rain water and direct it into tanks inside for the birds to drink. For now, we just put their heated water jug into the coop, along with their food bucket. Later, we will add a tube we can fill with food from outside that goes into a container inside they can eat out of. 

The corrugated plastic windows allow the sun to come in and warm the coop. Seems to be working, we've collected a dozen eggs in the last four days. Not too bad for winter, from what we hear. The coop sits about two feet off the ground, which gives a small area underneath for them to sit in the shade in summer. Or, in winter gives them a protected area to scratch in when the rest of the run is covered in snow. 

On the left side you can see an electrical box. That is a switch to control a light inside. We can give them extra light, or put in a warming bulb if needed. Plus, we can plug in heaters for their water. The other side of the coop has doors that open, so we can ventilate in summer if the windows keep the coop too warm. Or, we open up and can clean the bottom. 





We ordered dog flooring from Amazon for the bottom. It is an open grid that allows droppings to fall through. Not all do, so every now and again we open it up and rake the floor, which pushes everything through the grate where we can easily rake and scoop it up. The open flooring does keep the coop from getting as warm as we had hoped, but the chickens don't seem to mind. We have boards strung across the inside and the chickens love roosting on them.


One thing we've noticed is when the snow is deep and fresh and the chickens can't go out they go a little stir crazy. Or, rather, scratch crazy. They need to scratch things, so they turn to the nesting boxes. We've had to replace the bedding in there almost weekly because they just scratch it all out. We're considering putting a layer of cardboard over the grate floor and covering it with stray for them to scratch when they can't go outside. That would help keep the coop warmer, but it would mean dropping stay in the straw and get fragrant and harder to clean out.  We'll keep experimenting and see what works best for the chickens.

All in all, the chicken coop as been a huge success and we're pleased with how well the birds are doing. 


Friday, January 3, 2020

Winter Catch Up

Winter has started with a bang. We're still getting a good bit of snow, though it is punctuated with sunny days, and, occasionally, warmth.

 It started so early we didn't get all of our fall preparations done. We've used all the logs we've already split so we'll be doing more this weekend. We didn't get the manure on our garden beds to compost over the winter. That will be a problem in spring.As is the fact we didn't get the garlic planted.

I have posts from this fall that never got posted. I'll be rectifying that problem, just beware you'll see pictures of summer time.

Even though the garden has a foot or more of snow right now we're planning for spring planting. While we can't do much outside lumberjack has been making shelves and planning an addition and finishing up projects. I love getting things done. Especially when he's the one doing them. :)