Cornucopia

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by wystansimons in healthy eating, sustainable living

Tags

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWv2O_MDIqF/

This has not been a stellar year for the Simons gardens, as I may have mentioned before. And even so, EVEN SO, once you start really paying attention to what is growing in your yard it is amazing what there is there to eat.

For instance, how about this. Scrolling through Instagram (cell phone use has spiked these past few weeks) I found this GORGEOUS photo of steamed Brussels sprouts leaves wrapped around meat and rice. Looks yummy. I thought this even a thing? eating the leaves of plants from the brassica family?? Brassicas are the cole crops, that is broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, collards, etc. That’s great news for us since we can grow the leaves pretty well. It’s what comes after that just doesn’t work out. At this moment I have big beautiful leaves on plants that will probably never see broccoli heads or Brussels sprout bulbs climbing a stalk skyward. At our house, if the chickens don’t break in and get them, them get MUNCHED by caterpillars — or could it be voles?

I went out into the garden with a flashlight tonight, and harvested a quick handful of beautiful Brussels sprout leaves from the two stalks that survived, and chopped them into my Indian/Asian fusion invention (chopped onions with tons of curry, tumeric, and garam marsala, ground meat, diced scavenged thin-walled peppers and last of the green tomatoes, currant, diced Granny Smith) and we ate this over steamed cabbage noodles. (Thin slices of cabbage steamed, another idea that I stole from Instagram, many thanks to Amara and Martin!) I meant to get a photo for you all, but it was so good…we ate it all up without a technology stop in the middle.

It was difficult year for the Simons Gardens — first cold, then dry, then very wet, and cold again — just contrary! our green beans, tomatoes, and pepper plants struggled!! — and yet. And yet the soil gave us enough peppers for lots of salads and some to slice up with onions and freeze. The garlic heads didn’t grow large, but three bunches are dried and hanging on the kitchen wall. Jars of dried herbs lie in the cupboards – lavender, sage, oregano, thyme stored with leftover stay fresh packets from vitamin bottles to preserve them.

We didn’t get that many cherries from our trees, but more than before. We ate and froze some blueberries, black raspberries, and strawberries. We did great with salad greens! Grew onions for the first time ever.We only lost one hen over the summer, and the little chickens raised by the adoptive mother last spring have laid their first little girl eggs.

Then let’s not forget the piles and piles of pruned crape myrtle that I made everyone cut into sticks and stack on the kindling pile! Looking over this year in our gardens as we wrap up our harvest, I’d say yes, in spite of the frustrations we’ll do it again. It can be maddening. But we love growing things. And there is something to be said for learning to let things go, recognizing how little we control, appreciating what good arrives in our basket or on our plate.

There is always more to learn, always more to understand about the way weather and soil and insects and even irritating #*%#!! voles operate together, a symphony that we hardly understand. So we make guesses. We chop down tall foliage to create more light, raise beds higher to ease our aging backs, build new enclosures to better rotate the chickens, and set up rain barrels locally in more gardens to simplify watering in the coming year.

But for now as cold creeps over the ground, we’ll cover our beds with leaf mulch to rest them and us for a season. Enjoy the fireside. Crush the dryer sock full of lavender in the laundry room….and dream of what might be possible next season…

Lunch

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by wystansimons in chickens, healthy eating, sustainable living

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens, permaculture, sustainable living

burger

Even in a suburban garden, you sometimes get to witness remarkable wildlife in action. Such was the case the other day when I turned around while feeding my chicks, to find a magnificent clean up operation going on.

Maybe I just identify with beings that stuff their mouths. I really do like and appreciate the snakes on our property just much as I dislike and cuss at the mice and sparrows that invade it, spreading their vermin inside and out. True, those grungy sparrows are just trying to make a living and get dinner — but then, so is the snake.

Even if snakes are not your thing, I hope you can appreciate this remarkable achievement in a young snake’s life –

Go snake.

Mischief Managed.

Enjoy this piece? Check out the “Part Two” at my other blog, embracingchaos.net

Unexpected August Harvests

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by wystansimons in Summer Harvest, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cancer, permaculture, sustainable living

0831170811

Sometimes I hate August gardening. Or so I say to myself as I pick my way through humid, wet, over-grown tomato plants that tangle with wild morning glory vines. Those crazy vines grow so fast, and twist around and around every vertical stalk or post or fence, through the other leaves, around the other plants, an agony of overgrowth. They scramble my view of any harvest. What harvest? That is what I am out here looking for, after all. Last month I wrote of heat, but this month of outrageous amounts of rain has seen barely enough sun and heat to turn my fat tomatoes red, or my green peppers into green peppers. Ugh. Will there really be NO HARVEST?

But I know this feeling from of old. I remember how just when I am are ready to say “After all that work?? Is everything sick and dying?! I quit!” that the plants seem to groan, “Okay, okay” and searching around under those piles of messy, mottled, chewed on, sprawling leaves (and scrambling vines, damn them) yields ripe tomatoes! Green beans! and peppers that you didn’t see at all at first. Suddenly, sure enough, I can bring in supper from our own yard.

0831170813a

But this August is a little different. This last week of August, my harvest included some unexpected and unwanted tubers. I did not plant these ones – at least not on purpose. These tubers are in fact breast cancers, growing in the soil of my body along with everything else.

To be seeded with spores and growing a harvest of cancer should not really be a surprise for me . Both my mother and my great-aunt fought this same weed of the body. But the mind can play tricks. My cerebral cortex just did not really believe that I would get cancer. Why? Because it would be too obvious? Because I grow and eat a lot of veggies? Because my role as the mother of a special needs young man would protect me? Superstition made me immune. Only, it didn’t. And as surely as the morning glories run wild all over my gardens every summer, my body has been growing a useless and invasive crop.

As Edward and I gather in the green beans from the poles this week and watch the acorn squash mature, I am also gathering my energies, preparing to be weeded, and to wrestle out the roots of disease. I am making better habits, getting rest, eating well, stretching and working my muscles. I am reading, educating myself to know my enemy, just as I have poured over pages on plant diseases during other troubled harvest times, trying to plan my attack on marauding viruses, bacteria, or parasites. Will it be chop, or burn, or poison? I favor chopping this time — less toxic, and perhaps more permanent. I will consider all my options. As Edward and I worked through the garden beds over the weekend it was satisfying to rip down useless vine off fences and out of netting, wrench roots from the soil, and watch the liberated plants shake free and breathe. I will think of that as I am healing.

But there is still more to the Simons garden harvests this August — can you believe it? What a rich month we are having!

The most superior harvest for our family was expected in September – but could not wait. And so in the last week of Augyst she was coaxed from her mother tree, and out into her father’s arms. Four pounds four ounces of pure sweetness. Baby Marlee Faryn Simons was born a wee bit early. Edward and I are grandparents, and before too many more days we will fly into September in the Rockie Mountains, leaving Maryland far behind. For a little while at least.

Marlee Faryn Simons

0831170815a

How Does Your Muscle Grow?

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by wystansimons in Winter Garden

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

permaculture, sustainable living, winter gardening

At least the chickens can still find something to eat out there…

So friends, ’tis true, your garden beds are bare. But there is something that we gardeners can still be growing — even in this dark and dreary, un-gardenable season. You don’t even have to go outside to do it.

Yes, I thought, as I huffed through a plank (yes one plank) this morning, this is the best thing I can do right now to insure a good harvest next season! PLANKS! Eww, sick, I know. But the solid truth is that gardening can be really hard on my bod. During the off season I do a lot more sitting,get soggy in the middle, and have a lot more back, neck, and shoulder pain than in the summer.

Unlike some of you athletic people, I was not endowed with a hearty frame. In fact, I’m pretty proud of what this scrawny ectomorph-ic structure has been able to do. Much as I have always hated to see myself as frail, I was a sickly kid. I spent years eating foods that irritate me, being chronically sick, and carrying Kleenex around in all seasons. I could blame my scoliosis (an S shaped spine) for what I cant do – and it is the major reason why the life a real farmer is not for me. But what I do in the garden is great for strengthening me. When I am outside again, hoisting boards, shoveling dirt, and balancing wheelbarrows for a portion of every day, I do better – PROVIDED I have strengthened my supportive muscles. At 53, I am careful about what movements I make (not bending at the waist, not lifting stuff), but it doesn’t stop me much. I believe in creative solutions.

Isn’t it tragic though how muscle tissue melts away sans regular use? Sob. Gone with summer’s golden brown tan. So, I am going to advocate – to myself and you – to grow your muscles this winter season. YOU are part of your permaculture! Yes – don’t fuss now – I am planning on a winter of daily yoga and strengthening!!

There was a time when Edward laughed at me if I had tried to get him to do yoga stretching. I could see how tight his muscles were, but time for stretching was outside his frame of reference. “Yoga, yogurt, and tofu” all belonged in the same phrase to him, signalling what was goofy and not part of his world. But no more. (Although we do not eat tofu) When Edward developed an incredibly painful, mystery back condition two years ago, stretching out with Rodney Yee every morning was about the only thing that helped. The pain in his back was healed six months ago, by an excellent acupuncturist in DC. But AM Yoga with Rodney Yee is still part of his morning ritual before the dog walk. To enjoy making your garden grow, you need to be relatively strong, and relatively flexible. Flexible in lots of ways…

So, here I go – three months to enjoy my seed catalogs – and do my planks! (Ok,ok, I know… turning off the computer – leaving for the gym….)

The most muscle in winter garden -last Parsley struggles on

CEOs Grow their Own?

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by wystansimons in Winter Garden

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

gardening, growing your own, organic growing, permaculture

file_000-1

Salad greens picked this December morning – not that big a deal for a full-time grower, but we aren’t that. Edward and I struggle to fit gardening into our schedules. He is a CEO and I am a writer, when I am not everything else including landlord, which is my contribution to the cash flow. We are suburban Marylanders with chickens. I love the idea of calling myself an “urban farmer,” but it isn’t really true (only in the most romantic sense – and the fact that I would consider farming romantic is a dead giveaway). We are growers though, and proud of it.

And those greens, small a harvest as they are, are pretty impressive considering the bed isn’t even tarped up in plastic sheeting, but just sitting out. Oh yes, of course I was going to make a mini greenhouse over the top of those plants! On the south side there – it’s the perfect spot! I can just see in my mind’s eye how to do it. But we haven’t made the time. Still, a bountiful parsley and some tiny kale plants grow, in this semi sheltered garden, with the house between them and the north wind. (That reminds me, I should move the fig over on this side…hmmm) It just shows what’s possible, if you set out to grow some of your own.

Why would I? you ask. Are you nuts?

Yes I am generally considered to be nuts, but the answer is “It’s yummy.” Our eggs, our peppers, green beans, lettuce – everything grown this way tastes so good. Better than the beautiful, organically grown stuff in my favorite health market. And miles better than the cardboard-y stuff you can get at a big grocery store. There just is no comparison, flavor-wise.

It’s a lifestyle. Edward and I agree that moving soil, planting and growing things, observing how things grow, and getting our life into the rhythm of eating from the garden (that means picking in the morning, not harvesting beans right when you need to be making supper! ack!) is part of us. We love being connected to those earth cycles of growth and decay and regrowth.

Mostly. Let’s be real – there are times when you slave over planting and neglect to prepare the soil as the plant likes it, and watch the blueberry bushes die. Or you plant all the beans and forget to put strings on the bean tower (one of our favorite mistakes) or, worse, you don’t fence the garden and the ever watchful bunny bites through the bean stalk for reasons known only to itself, killing the whole vine. Or you plant a lovely flowering shrub, but forget to water that lovely shrub, and tune back in at the end of August to find a shriveled dead thing in it’s place. Growing food has joys and sorrows, like anything else.

But the point of this blog is that YOU, the ordinary person, can contribute in a significant way to your food supply without being a hippie and even if you have no desire to retire to the country and generate your own power or wash your clothes in a stream. My point is that, in spite of a recurring fantasy about being a farmer, I LOVE suburban life. I love going to the movies, and theater, and having access to the metro (when it’s working).

Not my life… Photo from Nourishing Days, by Shannon Stronger

I recently got a posting from the blog of Shannon Stronger a Mennonite farmer (check it out Nourishing Days). Now I love reading this lady. She is charming, and inspiring, and honest, loves to ferment foods and has messy kitchen. What could be better? But I could let her passion overwhelm me. I could never keep up with her gardens, or her canning. And I believe that many “ordinary American suburbanites” think that this is what growing your own has to look like – either this, or Martha Stewart the glamour goddess of domestic engineering! And that just isn’t true. You don’t have to be a totally put together god-dess nor a totally off the grid and self-sustaining to GROW YOUR OWN guru.

It is possible that “you do you” and you do growing food – at least if that firre is in your belly. Of course ya gotta wanna. But you don’t gotta be a goddess, of any description.

Let me add that I admire Martha and Shannon equally. They both are fighting for the same thing, in the end. They are preserving wonderful knowledge that parents and grandparents used to teach and now mostly no longer know how to teach. I do not resent that. I love what they do. I am grateful. And I am no goddess – just lucky enough to still have some parsley on the south side of my house.

Flowers for Chickens and Living Forage

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by wystansimons in chickens

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

chickens, feeding chickens, growing your own, living forage, Paul Wheaton, permaculture, supplementing processed feed for chickens

Take a Course at Forested! First of all, I must let you know about my friend LincolnSmith’s workshops series at his forest teaching garden, Forested, this spring – here’s the link! https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14cd4a6cf3709800

Flowers for Chickens? Why? This idea is totally stolen from an inspiring website I looked at and have not been able to relocate. But search “chicken garden” and you find this subject is on flockster’s minds. Because chickens benefit enormously from grass, yet this is what lawn looks like after a winter under the tender mercies of my 13 chickens:

(It took them about 2 weeks FYI.)

The lady whose great website I cannot find plants her chicken run with living forage, grass, but things beautiful as well as tasty to peck. What an inspiration! A run could be something other than a wasteland? She is constantly on the lookout for plants which co-exist happily such as ROSES(!) – given how prone to being buggy roses are, this could be a real source of nourishment. She sets large rocks or pavers to protect roots from scratching claws. Beware the long list of chicken toxic plants – http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/627282/comprehensive-list-of-poisonous-plants-and-trees – Also listed below). So, thank you lady!! wherever you exist in the blogospere. You have changed the way I am going to manage my chickens this summer.

Oh-Oh!

Edward and I had already planned to add living forage into and around the run this year – and here’s what we have so far:

A Mulberry sapling – we are growing a mulberry bush into the run. The first step was to a convince Edward not to kill it, since he considers mulberries invasive, water-stealing, horrible plants. MULBERRIES are a very nutritious food, easy to grow and tough (yes dear) and voila! free food that our chickens can feed themselves. You can see that despite Edward’s dislike, this plant is very happy. Sadly, he says, it probably will thrive. I have the roots outside the run wire, so it’s roots are protected most of the time, and leaves outside the run roof get tons of sun.

Berries – one of the areas the chickens will be guided toward is under the brambles, to clean up the fallen fruit.

I have JUST hatched an idea to grow Black Raspberries (black caps), a plant that loves us, ACROSS a small wire paddock, so the chicks get fruit from under it and we can harvest from the top. I will post photos soon.

Less impressive at the moment is the beginning of our Vegetable Garden Tower beside the mulberry (yes, you unbelievers, I will prune the mulberry heavily! so that the tower is not shaded!). This is an idea I got from Ben Friton of Can Ya Love.

The fabric cloth will hold dirt in, and plants can be inserted to grow and hang out all the way up. Chickens can harvest their side, plus the lower regions of front when they are in Paddock 1. We can harvest the upper section. I’m going to try cukes up there. I threw this together using some old fencing and row covers from last summer. Learn more about Ben’s work from his website at www.canyalove.org. A grower friend of mine, Lincoln Smith of the teaching garden Forested (http://forested.us/), introduced me to Ben and his book Can Ya Love? which describes the creation of his vertical garden concept, and shows how he has used it to help hungry communities around the world grow their own greens.

Swiped from his website, Ben’s vegetable pillars:

Have fun in your gardens this weekend!!

HERE’s the Evil For Chickens List:

Backyard Chicken’s Comprehensive List of Plants Toxic to Chickens:

ARUM LILY

AMARYLLIS

ARALIA

ARROWHEAD VINE

AUTUMN CROCUS

AUSTRALIAN FLAMETREE

AUSTRALIAN UMBRELLA TREE

AVOCADO

AZALEA

BANEBERRY

BEANS: (CASTOR, HORSE, FAVA, BROAD, GLORY, SCARLET RUNNER,

MESCAL, NAVY, PREGATORY)

BIRD OF PARADISE

BISHOP’S WEED

BLACK LAUREL

BLACK LOCUST

BLEEDING HEART OR DUTCHMAN’S BREECHES

BLOODROOT

BLUEBONNET

BLUEGREEN ALGAE

BOXWOOD

BRACKEN FERN

BUCKTHORN

BULB FLOWERS: (AMARYLLIS, DAFFODIL, NARCISSUS, HYACINTH & IRIS)

BURDOCK

BUTTERCUP

CACAO

CAMEL BUSH

CASTOR BEAN

CALADIUM

CANA LILY

CARDINAL FLOWER

CHALICE (TRUMPET VINE)

CHERRY TREE

CHINA BERRY TREE

CHRISTMAS CANDLE

CLEMATIS (VIRGINIA BOWER)

CLIVIA

COCKLEBUR

COFFEE (SENNA)

COFFEE BEAN (RATTLEBUSH, RATTLE BOX & COFFEEWEED)

CORAL PLANT

CORIANDER

CORNCOCKLE

COYOTILLO

COWSLIP

CUTLEAF PHILODENDRON

DAFFODIL

DAPHNE

DATURA STRAMONIUM (ANGEL’S TRUMPET)

DEATH CAMUS

DELPHINIUM

DEVIL’S IVY

DIEFFENBACHIA (DUMB CANE)

ELDERBERRY

ELEPHANT EAR (TARO)

ENGLISH IVY

ERGOT

EUCALYPTUS (DRIED, DYED OR TREATED IN FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS)

EUONYMUS (SPINDLE TREE)

EUPHORBIA CACTUS

FALSE HELLEBORE

FLAME TREE

FELT PLANT (MATERNITY, AIR & PANDA PLANTS)

FIG (WEEPING)

FIRE THORN

FLAMINGO FLOWER

FOUR O’CLOCK

FOXGLOVE

GLOTTIDIUM

GOLDEN CHAIN

GRASS: (JOHNSON, SORGHUM, SUDAN & BROOM CORN)

GROUND CHERRY

HEATHS: (KALMIA, LEUCOTHO, PEIRES, RHODODENDRON, MTN. LAUREL,

BLACK LAUREL, ANDROMEDA & AZALEA)

HELIOTROPE

HEMLOCK: (POISON & WATER)

HENBANE

HOLLY

HONEYSUCKLE

HORSE CHESTNUT

HORSE TAIL

HOYA

HYACINTH

HYDRANGEA

IRIS IVY: (ENGLISH & OTHERS)

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT

JASMINE (JESSAMINE)

JERUSALEM CHERRY

JIMSONWEED

JUNIPER

KY. COFFEE TREE

LANTANA (RED SAGE)

LARKSPUR

LILY OF THE VALLEY

LILY, ARUM

LOBELIA

LOCOWEED (MILK VETCH)

LOCUSTS, BLACK / HONEY

LORDS & LADIES (CUCKOOPINT)

LUPINE

MALANGA

MARIJUANA (HEMP)

MAYAPPLE (MANDRAKE)

MEXICAN BREADFRUIT

MEXICAN POPPY

MILKWEED, COTTON BUSH

MISTLETOE

MOCK ORANGE

MONKSHOOD

MOONSEED

MORNING GLORY

MTN. LAUREL

MUSHROOMS, AMANITA

MYRTLE

NARCISSUS

NETTLES

NIGHTSHADES: (DEADLY, BLACK, GARDEN, WOODY, BITTERSWEET,

EGGPLANT, JERUSALEM CHERRY)

OAK

OLEANDER

OXALIS

PARSLEY

PEACE LILY

PERIWINKLE

PHILODENDRONS: (SPLIT LEAF, SWISS CHEESE, HEART-LEAF)

PIGWEED

POINCIANA

POINSETTIA

POISON IVY

POISON HEMLOCK

POISON OAK: (WESTERN & EASTERN)

POKEWEED

POTATO SHOOTS

POTHOS

PRIVET

PYRACANTHA

RAIN TREE

RANUNCULUS, BUTTERCUP

RAPE

RATTLEBOX, CROTALARIA

RED MAPLE

RED SAGE (LANTANA)

RHUBARB LEAVES

RHODODENDRONS

ROSARY PEA SEEDS

SAND BOX TREE

SKUNK CABBAGE

SORREL (DOCK)

SNOW DROP

SPURGES: (PENCIL TREE, SNOW-ON-MTN, CANDELABRA, CROWN OF THORNS)

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

SWEET PEA

SWISS CHEESE PLANT (MONSTERA)

TANSY RAGWORT

TOBACCO

UMBRELLA PLANT

VETCH: HAIRY/COMMON

VIRGINIA CREEPER

WATTLE

WEEPING FIG

WHITE CEDAR, CHINA BERRY

WISTERIA

YEWS

YELLOW JASMINE

…I hope you’re still here and read through the list.

I know that as I typed it, I was reminded of many very common

plants that I had forgotten were unsafe for my flock.

Chickens Paddocks

13 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by wystansimons in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chicken paddocks, chickens, Harvey Ussery, Paul Wheaton, permaculture

Chickens head out into Paddock One

Chicken paddocks is a great idea. I have mentioned it before, and I am sure I will mention it again. For years we’ve allowed our chickens half the day in our back yard, for their health, for better eggs, because I am soft hearted — because they seemed to get into it no matter what I did anyway to stop them!…

But we really have had enough. We wanted our yard back, our lawn back. Our patio without poops on it, our flower gardens nicely covered in mulch, our straw mulched veggie beds mulched in straw. Instead of the lawn being covered in straw, the plants bare and broken by searching claws and beaks. An old classmate chatted with me at our last reunion and told me she thought of me every time she let her chickens out in the yard. And what she thought was “Yuck! how can she stand this??” Well, she can’t stand it any more.

“Can I make it over?”

I was already heading in the direction of somehow containing and rotating my girls after reading Harvey Ussery’s recent article (Organic Gardening Magazine, Sept. 2014) about creating debris piles for his Icelandic chickens – “Icies” – who love to forage in debris. Ussery is all about sustainability – helping chickens access fresh natural foods rather than expensive, likely rancid, processed pellet. Chickens naturally prefer it. Then I came across Paul Wheaton’s blog about Chicken Paddocks – and that clinched it. Paddocks combines all the things we want from and for our chickens. The point is to create a rotation for them, so they can be in a space with bugs, new actively decomposing debris piles, hopefully grass, and then be moved on to the next fresh one, before they are standing on a bare patch of mud. No animal wants to stand around all day on mud. Ok, earthworms. They can’t stay healthy in that setting.

I am not willing to move my chicken coop and run around the yard – ours is permanent, at the center of gardens. So our paddocks will encircle the run – and maybe we will get more creative in the summer. For now, they have three.

Edward and our 16 year old son Oskar, motivated by the idea of no more chickens mucking up the lawn, got right to it and have now fenced off Paddock One attaching tall 2x2s to existing fence and stapling plastic mesh to that. It’s about 10 feet high so the girls don’t just fly over it (ha-ha see ya sucker!) as they have tended to do. At least they always come back at night to roost. Our very patient neighbors are also relieved. In a month, we’ll send them out into Paddock Two, which is our kitchen garden. No grass, but they LOVE to dig in the soft soil (any plants that are still active I’ll have wired over). I am going to cover all the pathways with heavy straw, and they love to kick straw around. Paddock Three will be the garden beds to the front. Any of these areas could be subdivided..we’ll see how it goes.

I can’t complete this post without admiring the new roof Edward has put over the run, so the hens will be dry as the winter weather starts in. Corrugated metal interspersed with corrugated plastic that will let the light through. Last winter I spread layers of plastic sheeting over the top, and that was ok – until melting days, when a hundred tiny holes let all the drips through. I have a plan to collect that water into a drum, but let’s get it roofed first. Winter Vortex, we’re ready!!

Going to search for any birdseed I might have thrown to encourage foraging activity

Link

Ahhh – Renovated Chicken Run

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by wystansimons in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

broody hen adopts baby chicks, chickens, permaculture, sustainable living

All Day Roadkill Diner hangs in the chicken run

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – look at that beautiful tidied chip yard! On Saturday I spent most of the day cleaning up the run and house for winter and for the addition of five 16 week old poulets to join our current flock of 8 laying hens. Eight is just not enough, as it turns out, to keep four “Paleo” eaters in eggs. Thriteen will be enough to have some to sell too. If I sell a couple of dozen eggs a week, that will subsidize the cost of organic layer pellet ($30 a bag). There are many ways to encourage hens to forage and feed themselves too. I am always trying to figure out how to make “suburban farming” practical and sustainable, a way to bring fresh organically grown food to suburban kitchens, cheaper.

In the photo above right you see my All Day Roadkill Diner bucket, which used to hold a dead racoon I found lying in the middle of route 301. The idea (from Paul Wheaton’s website video) is that the straw on top will manage the odor, the flies will populate the dead carcass with their eggs as nature dictates, and the subsequent maggots squirm out the holes at the bottom of the pail into the mouths of waiting hens. Thus voila, a municiple problem becomes a healthy and free food for hens. Chickens are not vegetarians – their eggs are more wonderful the more they are able to get bugs. One problem: that straw on top is not really up to the task. So, depending how much space you have, the Roadkill Diner may not be practical for your suburban backyard… Next year I hope to grow sunflowers, dry them, and store in a metal can for the chicks to pick apart themselves. I also plan to plant “gardens” specifically for them in their run areas.

The divided chicken run and coop

Chickens who are handled by humans become quite tame (depending on the breed – I’d like to see someone tame a flighty Italian Leghorn!). But chickens are not all that nice to each other, again depending on breed. When introducing the young group to the old it is generally painful to watch. I have become tougher after 6 years of doing this – eventually the hens decide who’s what I call the Bitch Chicken, and who comes next and next. We currently have a scapegoat chicken too – everyone picks on her, no one will sleep near her. My challenge is to introduce new chicks to old in a divided run and house, so Saturday I staples chicken wire (recycled! I knew that old wire would come in handy!) thru the center of the house and the length of the run. If they are side by side long enough, the theory is, they will become accustomed to each other. I will let you know how that goes.

Our current layers were raised by an adoptive mother, set under a broody hen last spring rather than in a box under a heat lamp. A broody hen is one whose “mother” switch has flipped on, who sits and sits on infertile (in our case) eggs, in the mothering mode. The hen adopted baby chicks in trade for the eggs without a problem. (Watch a video to see how to do this – link below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRl5I2yZZ0

Our Wellsummer with her adopted chicks

And all seemed magical, as she taught them to scratch and to roost, until one day she decided they weren’t her babies any more. Then she began to treat them as competition and pick on them. I guess the chicken “mothering” hormone shuts off kind of abruptly. She also turned out to be kind of unbalanced herself, and would randomly run across the yard and jump on another chicken’s head. I suspect that she taught these aggressive behaviors to the chicks. She herself was one of a flock of Wellsummers who were aggressive to each other, and tended to pick on her. The best way to break general chicken bitchiness is see it coming, and redirect them – give them compost piles to dig through, weedy gardens to scratch up, leaf piles to break down, dig up some dirt for them to work over instead of each other. Hens like to have something to do. But a hen who attacks has to be got rid of – or that cycle of domination and fear just keeps repeating. Animals and humans both tend to treat others the way they have been treated… So I will do everything I can to ease the creation of this new flock.

I talked to a farmer about chicken woes last spring, and she suggested hanging old CD discs (PS why not those bird seed balls used to feed wild birds?) to distract them from pecking each other. Some turkey farmers do this she said. In commercial poultry farming a common practice to solve the problem of chickens pecking, damaging and killing each other, is “de-beaking.” The breeder clips the beaks of very young chicks, blunting their ability to do damage to each other. But only chickens (animals) who are confined to too small a space, without any chicken-like things to do would engage in tissue-damaging levels of pecking. Given some space to spread out in, they would rather hunt bugs in the grass.

New hen observes the old flock thru the wire fence

Our new five hens are now installed and seem to be getting comfortable in their part of the run. But yesterday as I watched them settling in, I realized that they are victims of debeaking. I called my friend at The Feed Store and told her that if I’d known I was supporting debeaking I wouldn’t have bought them. Since they are here, I will have a chance to learn how debeaked hens function – and let you know. But how they look is ugly. Hopefully they can still enjoy foraging. I count on my hens to find some of their own food. And entertainment!

Does the idea of supporting the mutilation of animals bother you? Then redo your life and budget to accommodate buying organically raised meats. And try raising your own eggs, from chickens in your own backyard.

November

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by wystansimons in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

gardening, growing, organic growing, permaculture

Fall garlic emerging

November is here. The October garlic is in – most of it. We wish we had planted more. The pole beans are still producing. We wish we had planted more, way back in July, before we ran away from the August heat to a family vacation.

The fall lettuce and spinach look great – only we wish we

ld have planted more. The carrots might grow big enough before the ground gets hard – I plan to help hold the heat with a very thick layer of straw (an idea I took from an old Ruth Stout article in Organic Gardening magazine). The fall planting of broccoli and cabbage are hesitating – will they subside into food for caterpillars? or grow gorgeous green heads?

Things are slowing down. Except the caterpillars, apparently. Time to go and pull some of those off, and throw to the chickens. Mulch heavily with straw, water them — and wait and see.

tiny broccoli head coming…

suburban growing

~ ordinary people growing their own food

Tag Archives: permaculture

Cornucopia

Lunch

Unexpected August Harvests

How Does Your Muscle Grow?

CEOs Grow their Own?

Flowers for Chickens and Living Forage

Chickens Paddocks

Ahhh – Renovated Chicken Run

November