Boys in the 'hood

Napoleon

Two of our bantam cochin frizzles turned out to be male.  Littleton ordinances clearly state no roosters - but we will keep them unless one of our neighbors complain.

Napoleon is half the size of most of the hens, he is even smaller than Chocolate (Indica's bantam naked neck), but he takes his job seriously.  While the hens are busy eating and scratching he stands off to the side keeping a keen lookout for predators.   He puts everything he has in to crowing - even though when he does he sounds more like a children's squeeze toy than the cock of the rock.

Scrappy

Scrappy is near the bottom of the pecking order.  He does not crow and spends most of his time hiding under one of the standard cochins - for both safety and warmth I think.  He is a frazzle.  The frizzle gene is dominant and he seems to have had 2 frizzle parents, which makes his feathers brittle.  He's kind of sad looking, but he lives of to his name.  If he was a person I think he would be Urkel.


This year I would like to seperate Napoleon with any other bantam hens into a separate coop - possibly recommission the playhouse coop - and see what happens.  Frizzle naked neck or Frizzle silkies would be awesome.

I would leave Scrappy in with the larger hens, to see if as the only rooster he would be allowed to feather out more.  And maybe be Stefan Urquelle instead.

Adapting to spring snow

 As I have said many times, the chickens do not like snow.  After waking the girls (unnecessarily) for school I had gone outside to find the hen yard empty.

With now 30 chickens in our coop that is truly maxed at 15, I needed at least the older flock to go outside.

By the house they have a tarp covered area that stays mostly clear - even with the wind blowing the snow around it is protected.  But it was also all the way across their yard.

I have 3 words.  Frosted Mini Wheats.  At the bottom of every box there is an inch or so of "leavings" that no one eats.  Sometimes I use it in apple crisp or a muffin recipe, but sometimes it gets lost in the back of the cupboard and found only after it is long stale.

But the hens enjoy it.

After spreading a couple sections of straw in their covered area I made a path with the crushed cereal.  As you can see, all the hens were enticed out.

Then I made an area for the pullets.

A folding card table, some more straw, and a waterproof table cloth is a little ghetto, but it works.  Because of their age the light is on 24/7 in the coop, but this should encourage them out a bit also.

It kinda reminds me of the annex for the Minneapolis flock.

They canceled school for this?

Spring

Easter is a celebration of spring and all of its inherent new beginnings.   The easter bunny always brings us seeds and plants along with the requisite chocolate. 

This year a peppermint plant and some fennel seeds - both noxious, yet very tasty, perennials - were in our basket. Next to Rhiannon's purple Peeps were seeds for yard long Asian beans and Joseph's coat Amaranth.

The day was relaxed and enjoyable.  After feeding the various animals and moving the new chicks outside we relaxed, taking Riley for a leisurely walk and eating the traditional ham dinner.  Although I had planned on planting peas, Jerusalem artichokes,  and potatoes with the girls, but the daylight seemed to be gone before we got around to it.

The chicks with their new beginnings out of the bathtub and in the coop. 

This I realize is the part of my life that makes me not a real farmer.  The luxury of procrastination.  If I feed the animals enough one day I can sometimes skip the next, knowing that there is food & water to tide them over until the following morning.  The seeds can be planted tomorrow, or the next day.  I have put off harvesting daily, shrugging off the lost harvest.  This is not a personal trait I am proud of.  I think successful farmers must be type A personalities - of which I am most definitely not.  In the beginning I am always full of grand ideas that fade into missed opportunities.   Making a change always seems to be with the handful of other tasks never crossed off my to do list.

I sound so melancholy.

I'm not.

I want this year to be different.  I want to harvest enough peas to freeze some.  I want to store enough potatoes to eat through Christmas.  But these two items are perfect examples of how I am improving.  Two years ago I had only a handful of snow peas - last year we had enough for a meal or two.  The potato harvest of 2011 was nil - last year we had a meal and I stored 2+ dozen small ones well enough successfully to use for this year's seed.

I revel in the cliche of  baby steps.

Chickens are officially mainstream

Available at my local Costco.

Too big for the bathtub

We have a e-store!

We are now on Etsy.com.  It is a craft and vintage online store with thousands of vendors.  We don't have much up yet.  Each of us in the family will be making various items and they will be available for sale.  So far only Chris and Indica have things available.

We are starting to keep track of our "farm" expenses and  hope to offset the costs of feed etc with sales from the store.  Also we have things on our wish list (a greenhouse for instance) that we can save for.  This is our first step to the ultimate goal of an urban farm store.

The link is to the right under our 2013 goals list.