this moment {from the coop}

joining soulemama

busy weekend

This weekend John finished the new chicken coop.  I have been a bit obsessed with A-frame architecture lately, and he sweetly took that into consideration when he designed the coop:

The back has a fold down door for easy egg collection for the kids.  And they can comfortably fit in the small run so they can feed and water the chickens.

When the little bits get bigger, we'll place this coop into a larger fenced in area so they can free range.

As I was walking around the coop, surveying the handiwork, I had a little shadow- Mr. Gingersnap kitty.

He kept wrapping around me giving me leg hugs.  He's the sweetest kitty ever.

I got to spend Saturday at Bee Keeping school!  I have been trying to make this school for the past three years.  Now that I actually have space for bees, I was most happy to make it this year.  I learned so much- too much!  I cannot wait to start my bee adventures!

In other news, it is spring in Texas!  And here in Central Texas that means one thing- bluebonnets!  Consider yourselves warned!

le peep {round 2}

Did you know that a group of chicks is called a peep?  A peep of chicks!  Is that not the cutest thing you've ever heard?

I wouldn't normally recommend getting two peeps of chicks, two weeks apart, but the breeds we wanted were going to be arriving at the feed store at different intervals so we decided to wait.  In this shipment we got four Australorps (my favorite backyard breed for our climate), two Araucanas, and three bantam Silkies.  Bantams are miniature sized.  Would you just look at how tiny this girl is?

Here she is cuddled up to a regular sized chick:

That is not a trick of perspective, the bantams really are that tiny!  And they can be found snuggled up to the larger chicks to keep them warm.  This particular chick is the loudest of the bunch.  I can hear her right now cheeping away in the garage.  I keep checking to make sure they are warm enough and it appears all of the other chicks are content.  This one is not happy unless she has a big sister to cuddle with.  Now I'm beginning to understand why the woman at the feed store was so excited to give us this bonus chick.  Awesome.
Anyway, back to the bantams.  They are not only smaller in size, but they also lay smaller eggs.  The perfect size for my favorite breakfast treat, a bird in the nest.

It is imperative to keep chicks of different ages separate from each other so while these sweet peas are in the garage under a heat light, the older chicks are out in the yard loving life in their Omlet coop.

We borrowed this "in between" coop from a friend and I love it!  If you live in the city, or only plan on getting two or three hens, this is a great option (they also have larger sizes for more hens).  It is easy to move, easy to clean and easy to use.  Can't say enough good things about it.



Next week I plan to do a couple of posts over chick care.  If you're interested in such things, please let me know of any questions you may have and I'll try to cover that!

one week later

Remember last week when we got our sweet, fuzzy chicks?

Look at them one week later.  Still sweet, still a little fuzzy, but getting their feathers in.  This is Dusty.  She is an Auricana (or an Americana, whichever you prefer).  She will lay teal eggs for us and we will love her for it!

Dusty likes to perch on Moonpie's finger and fly up to her shoulder for rides.  It's amazing to me that just one week after birth, they are already trying to fly.  Today we move them out to a temporary shelter (ie: rabbit hutch) in the backyard.  They are just getting too big for their little feed trough in the garage.

And speaking of things getting too big:

 ***sigh...***

this moment {chick days}

joining soulemama

farewell cocoa

photo credit:  Moonpie

This weekend we lost our last little chicken, Cocoa.  She was a beautiful araucana and laid green tinted eggs.  After we lost Blackberry, she developed a bit of a crow.  We thought that maybe she was crying out for her buddy, feeling a little lonely and lost without her sidekick.  She spent her last days roosting up in our live oak tree- we couldn't get her in her coop at night to lock her up safe.  Poor little thing.

We are still on the quest for the raccoon.  He is old and smart and will have nothing to do with our live traps.

We've decided not to replace the chickens until we catch him and remove him from the area.

It's weird not the hear the cluck-cluck of happy hens first thing in the morning.

I miss them.

hunkering down

In an effort to ward off the carnage that ensued the night before, we did a bit of shifting last night.  The bunny came in to sleep in a dog crate and our one last chicken was placed in the bunny hutch.  I was up with the sun this morning letting Goldie out of the hutch.  As we all know, the early bird gets the worm and she was not happy to be held up in that hutch one moment longer!  I will continue doing this arrangement until John is able to rework the chicken coop and we find a live trap to remove the biggest coon ever known.

Speaking of John...

He is my hero.  Even from afar he was busy taking care of this family of his.

I texted him after the run in with the coon at 4am.  By 8am he had a college age boy I have never met at our house, crawling under the beams and retrieving the carcass.  I couldn't bear to look, but he said it was bad.  Really, really bad.  This boy, he was precious!  Can I say that about a 19 year old young man?  Just don't tell him I said that, ok?  He showed up completely prepared to crawl under my house and come face to face with a beast.  And a completely gutted chicken.  As we were chatting, he mentioned that he was leaving for Columbia today to go work in some orphanages.  See?  PRECIOUS!

the kids were a rapt audience for Tyler.  and kept him busy with all sorts of questions about
Star Wars and Pokemon.  Two things they've seen  at the thrift store and are sooooo curious about!

After my new best friend Tyler removed the body, our friend Farmer Jason showed up to help out too.  He is super busy this week but made the time to stop by to check on us and see what he could do.  Here's my new motto:  a mark of a good friend is the willingness to crawl under your house and scoop up a dead chicken.  The end.

goodbye blackberry

it happened in the middle of the night.  or the wee hours of morning.  depending on how you look at it.  i heard a strange noise, like scraping metal.  after wandering the house a bit, peering out windows, checking on kids, i was stumped.

back to bed.  then it hit me.  metal.  the right side of the house.  the chicken coop!  i scrambled for a flashlight.  by the time i made it to the kitchen window to see, sans flashlight, blackberry was clucking something terrible.  and then i saw it.  the largest raccoon i have ever seen.  and he got her.  i checked this morning.  all i see are feathers.

she's gone.

she was my favorite.

oh mr. sun

Oh my stars! 

 Look what we found when we went out to check on the hens last night!

Looks like we're not the only ones enjoying the extra day light!

photo credits:  Buddy and Moonpie

gone broody

Blackberry, my australorp hen, has gone broody on me. This is common for a hen her age, and for her particular breed. I suspected something was up last week when I went out to spread scratch and she didn't come. Typically she is my most voracious eater and chirps happily at snack time. But she was nowhere to be found. And this has gone on for 4 or 5 days now. I began to worry and started forcing her out of the coop to eat and drink. Broody hens can sometimes starve or become dehydrated if they are not watched closely. I realized she had gone over the edge when I was holding her and realized all of her chest feathers were gone. GROSS! She looks like she could be wrapped up in cellophane and sold on the super market shelf!

So what to do with a broody hen? We don't have eggs to hatch and her hogging the coop is discouraging the other chickens to lay. Not to mention that she has stopped laying as well. The best way to discourage broodiness is to separate the hen from the rest of the flock into her own smallish pen. I've read that it's best to make the pen as uncomfortable as possible. John is going to rig up something tomorrow, so for the time being she has been banished- to glory land. Her punishment is free reign of the entire backyard.

Take that, Blackberry!

Signs you have a broody hen:

1. her comb has gone from red to pink

2. her chest feathers are gone (this is so the heat can be more easily transferred to the eggs)

3. she puffs up and pecks when you come near her while she's nesting (fortunately, Blackberry is extremely docile- not one peck!)

4. she doesn't leave the nest- even to eat- and when she does, she guards it fiercely

Those of you that are more chicken knowledgeable than I, please share your experiences and advice!

egg count

Whenever someone mentions that they are casually thinking about getting backyard chickens, I enthusiastically tell them that they indeed SHOULD get chickens! Chickens are so easy to raise. They are less maintenance than a dog, and they bless you daily with delicious eggs! I have been trying to keep track of the eggs being laid around here for the past month. From March 13- April 13 our four chickens (3 full grown, 1 bantam) have laid 57 eggs (and that doesn't even count all the eggs Buddy has broken while on egg collecting duty)! I think that's pretty great for a small backyard flock!

the girls are back!

the hens are finally laying again! hooray!

it only took a few threats under my breath to get them back into production. well, that and sunshine.
we are only getting green right now, and 2-3 a day. that's pretty good for 3 full sized hens and one banty.

look at this super cutey! who needs a workbook when you can just sequence beautifully hued eggs???

lucy too

the kids and i spent the day out of town today. before leaving home i went out to check on the chickens. they all were fine and they had food and water. i decided to leave them in their run- a new practice we are trying in order to take back the yard. well, i just went out to feed them some scraps and found lucy, our auricauna, dead. oh man, i feel awful. it got up to 103' today and the poor thing couldn't take it.

this weekend i will be setting up a new spot for them under the trees.

so for the record- that's 2 chickens lost this week.

and i know this is common. i know chickens go down in the heat, but man, it really stinks. trying to live 'simply' can sometimes be really hard.

i haven't even told the kids yet.

peeps watch 2009

oh man, i knew this day would come, really i did. but did it have to be the day john left for camp? one of our sweet little bantams ('peeps') is on her last leg. we have built a little bed for her in the old dog crate and she is just lying there with her head turned back and resting on her back. her eyes are closed and her breathing is rapid. she is dying. the kids are so sad! this is their first experience with death- what a hard lesson it is. moonpie is sure that when she gets to heaven, she will have a farm house and peeps will be one of her chickens.

sounds good to me...

on a happier note, gardenmama is having a fantastic giveaway- 2 vintage aprons (one for mama, one for child). i have just recently began reading gardenmama's blog and i am really enjoying it. she has a real gentle quality to her living. check it out!

-------------------------------update----------------------------

we took peeps out to yonderway farm and farmer jason took care of her for me. that's a relief! she was doing really poorly and the other chickens started pecking at her. she couldn't even move or open her eyes. poor little chicken...

homestead update

life around here has been pretty wet lately. i've been kicking myself over not having our rain water collection system in place. our summers are very dry...argh!!! because of our backyard chickens our backyard has been plucked of all grass and has created a giant mud pit. which has been lots of fun for the kids. they have been out there daily taking mud baths and loving life! our shower is never going to be the same!

our dry days have been lovely and full of outdoor work. john has built our raised beds. we made them extra long and skinny this time, but we are still able to practice the square foot method (the beds are 2 ft x 10 ft). i have planted tomatoes (6 seedlings from the farm and 4 varieties from seed), 4 varieties of eggplant, 2 varieties of bush beans (elvie and ozark razorback) with carrots around the perimeters. we have scheduled to build our bean pole teepee soon for the kids out of some bamboo we harvested from a nearby lot. that was an adventure- 1 mama, 2 kids, 5 poles of bamboo = a recipe for success!


in this pic you can see our 2 raised beds, the bed on the outside of the fence is planted in texas natives. we are adding as we find good deals on plants, or find plants we can take cuttings from to root. these will extend to the mailbox. on the opposite side of the fence i'm putting in an annuals flower bed to attract pollinators. up under the tree i have my herb bed planted with oregano, basil, calendula, bee balm, poppies, chamomile and across the path, lavender. in front of the house we have some low water flowering bushes and nasturtium coming up on screens. the large bed on the right is our strawberry patch. i think we've done 'ok' for our first year. i hear they're better every year, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

here is the amazing living area john built for us a few weekends ago out of reclaimed deck wood! i love it! he built the screen to grow my cucumbers up. buddy is crazy about pickles so we are planting 2 varieties of pickling cucumbers this year. this will also cover the attractive phone box in the front yard. when we moved here this whole area was covered in giant bushes. not pretty...

the chickens are as ridiculous as ever. they are roosting in the tree, in obvious need of a wing clipping.

however they are laying lovely, colorful eggs, about 6 a day.

there is also lots of baby wearing going on around here.

baby wearing...

and baby licking...

good news!

apparently the strike has ended and the chickens are laying again! yahoo! we got two beautiful brown eggs today. the first in many (many) months.

and in other good news, when i asked the kids what they wanted for lunch today, they both replied 'salad'. buddy's with 'tans' (pecans) and moonpie's with almonds.

oh happy day!

******update**********

i just ordered my seeds! more good news for this beautiful day! i mean really, check out our weather:
http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USTX0152_f.html

chicken update

well, the day has come. our rooster, mr. handsome man (from the juicer attachment fame), has been officially carted off to the farm. but when i say 'the farm' i really mean 'the farm'. it is not a sneaky euphemism for death (like my childhood kittens). he was getting out of control. the kids were afraid to go in the backyard to play, and come on, this momma needs some backyard time! so the gracious jenny made a spot for him. i'm sure he's happier there....i'm sure of it!

the girls have started laying again- hooray! they have been molting, but the bantams started up production 2 days ago. so again, the eggs are tiny, but mighty tasty!

tinted eggs (what i'm not getting right now!)



moonpie channeling her inner 'fern'


last man standing

the girls

moonpie, chicken midwife

This morning Moonpie ran into the kitchen holding a beautifully tinted green egg.

Moonpie: "Look Momma!"

Me: "Oh, good job babe, you found another egg" (her 3rd of the day)

MP: "Yeah, Goldie was just sitting in my lap and then she started laying this egg"

M: "She laid an egg, IN YOUR LAP?"

MP: "Yeah, and when I saw it coming out I just went ahead and pulled it a little- like this" (demonstration ensues)

M: "Wait, the chicken was in your lap laying an egg and then you pulled it out?"

MP: "Yep!!!"

There was more, but you get the gist. That crazy girl, delivering chicken eggs. She has a future as a midwife- a chicken midwife.

This incident solved a mystery for us. We thought we had one serious producing Arecauna, but it turns out our Wyandottes lay tinted eggs as well. Good to know, I was feeling a little sorry for ol' Lucy, thinking she was turning out 3 a day!

Upcoming post: our trip to SanFran. Oh the anticipation!

napolean complex

i have a confession to make. i am afraid of an eleven inch tall bantam rooster- mr. handsome man. now, before you go and start making judgements, let me make one thing clear; he is ruthless. here is how this morning played out. i went out to feed the chickens the pulp from our carrot juice. i bent over to dump it out and when i righted myself, he was after me. he lunged himself and caught air at the same time coming into my belly region. i, of course, screamed and shielded myself with the juicer attachment i was carrying. he landed and then was back up in no time coming at me again. this time i hit him harder and screamed again. here's the saddest part. after screaming i yelled out for help...from my 4 year old. she is fearless. he attacks her several times a day and she has no qualms about picking that little man up and giving him a talking to ("now listen mr. handsome man, you are a chicken, i am a person. you DO NOT peck people"). so here she comes a running to my rescue, carrying a big stick. and she whacked him once saying "no handsome man". he immediately hid under the coop. she then stood guard as i exited the premises. it is official. I AM A WEENIE.
when we made it back into the house it was my turn for a 'talkin' to'. moonpie informed me that i needed to carry a stick when i entered the chicken run. and then, gently, she stated, "momma, i think it's time to eat handsome man."



so, for all you chicken wranglers our there, can you eat a bantam? (angie, i'm counting on you here!)

my hero!!!

all things bright and beautiful

here are some recent shots from around the micro-farm

mr. handsome man and blackberry. they are in constant competition for the job of boss. he's a bantam, but he still wants to be in the lead. blackberry gives him no respect!



the new hen house and chicken run that john built. he's added another 3 feet to the fence to keep the chickens in.

the ladies

our ever present reminder that we are urban dwellers (well, that and the train right behind the water tower)