Garden Week 7: Chickens? Chickens!

Three of our four chickens!

(Fair warning: A picture heavy post!)

It's becoming easier and easier for Mike and I to realize that our dream is to own a farm (or a farm like residence).  We've been talking about it for a couple of years now (wanting a bit of land when we do finally buy a house), but the dream of owning a farm is growing like a deep seeded weed!  We'd been talking about asking our landlord for permission to have backyard chickens for a while now, but we'd been too terrified he'd say no to ask.  Finally, Mike got the guts up (to be fair, once a dream starts growing, it's a terrifying thing to take it outside and show it off.  there's the chance that a good breeze will catch you by surprise and snap it in half!) and by the grace of God, he agreed!  

Our planned coop location!

There are a couple of reasons we've been wanting chickens.  One is because their poop is great for our compost (and we are loving our compost!).  Another is for the fresh eggs (eggs like this are so much better than the eggs in the store.  both in taste and in goodness for you!).  And one of the biggest reasons is that it takes us closer to having that farm.  Our dream of owning a farm seems so big when we look at it right now.  The state of Michigan has some really awesome laws to help with those of us who dream of farming though!  (Sometime check out the Right to Farm Act and the Cottage Product Act).

Building the base for the coop.

With dreams that big, we've found it's easy to get completely discouraged.  Sometimes, little steps are the best paths to those big steps.  So, our first step (and the one that started us dreaming of having a little bit of land that lead to where we are now) was planting our first garden and it's been slowly growing.  So now, we have four ISA Brown Hens.  They aren't old enough to lay eggs yet (give it a couple of months), but when they do start, we're going to sell some, turn others into pasta (then sell that pasta), and eat even others!  

Mike attaching our coop door and me painting the inside.

So, as I said, we'd been dreaming of having a little backyard chicken coop for a while, but had been leery of learning too many details lest it become more of a burden of desire than a dream of what ifs.  When we got the permission, we were ready to act!  It wasn't the best time we came to find out, but it wasn't impossible!  (The chick selling season has already ended here in Michigan and finding chickens is a bit harder of a task.)  

Our coop (we plan on finishing painting it soon).

I really want to take a second here and give credit where it is due.  Starting this was terrifying for us (not just because it involves a dream close to our hearts, but because we don't want to kills creatures with our lack of understanding or knowledge).  There is a good deal of conflicting articles/blogs/forums online about chicken care.  We are so thankful that God led us to Destiny Farms!  The folks there are those nice people you wish you had known your entire life!  One thing Mike and I were worried about was the temperament of the chickens (we are patiently waiting for the Lord to give us children).  It all started with Mike finding them listed as a chicken seller, calling them to see if they had any, and them advising us to just come on out and visit to see if we like the chickens.  What a blessing it was!  These folks took us under their wings (no pun intended), took the time to show us around their farm, and walked us through the basics of our chicken care.  They even were kind enough to make sure to let us know if we have any questions that they'll gladly answer them.  These are seriously the nicest people I have met in such a long time!  Thanks to their help and learning their story, our dream that seemed so high that if we mimicked Icarus, we'd also meet his fate, slowly started changing into something that we can actually do wither perseverance.  It took that "If I ever win the Lottery" dream and turned it into "If I take it step by step".  If you live in Michigan, definitely make it a point to visit their farm and support them.  They love what they do and do an amazing job because of it!  Even if you're not planning on starting your own backyard coop (if you are, then seriously consider getting your chickens from them!  They are amazing little birds!), visit them to buy some of their produce!  They have been such a blessing to us!  I'll stop going on about their epic level of awesome and get back to the story!  :)

Chilly chickie

So, to shorten the story a bit, we ended up with four hens (we originally had planned on starting with two, but were told the benefits of having all four) and they are the sweetest, most laid back little birds one could hope for!  They all have names (because I like naming things..and it also makes it easier for us to communicate about them.  For example:  I can now tell Mike that Ponyo has been acting weird and he'll know exactly which bird to keep an eye on with me.) and they're pretty affectionate.  I believe we brought them home on Thursday night (I stayed up all night because I knew we needed to do some adapting to our coop to make it safe and was determined to keep predators away from them) and I'm updating this on Sunday (I normally try to update weekly on Thursdays or Fridays, but adjusting to having chickens and learning about the chickens has been a time consuming process!)

The tomatoes.  I'm going to have to separate them more
so they have more growing room it seems!

So, I know this post is going to be picture heavy (but the garden post normally are) and I know I've talked alot about our chickens.  The garden seems to be doing well this week.  The folks at Destiny Farms helped us out with a strawberry plant, a sage plant, and a Zucchini plant that you cage!  (I don't have pictures of this as it came home after I took pictures!)  We'll start with the tomatoes!  They are getting tall!  Maybe next week I'll get Mike to help me take pictures and I'll stand next to them so you can see!  Each of the plants has several little green "baby" tomatoes growing!  In some ways, the garden seems at a stand still.  This could be exaggerated by the momentum that the chickens have (since we are learning so much so quickly), but I do remember from our first garden (since last year's garden didn't do well due to the Black Walnut Trees) that these lulls feel like they happen right before the plants practically double in size.  I think it's also like a pot of water won't boil if you watch it (it will, but it feels like it takes longer due to the focus and attention you're giving it).

An example of the baby tomatoes.

Plants won't grow if you're watching them!  I know the tomato plants are growing though.  I keep having to separate them to keep them from being too close so the leaves can dry out!  My mother-in-law visited during the week and was amazed at our garden's progress.  She kept trying to tell folks she knew about it just to have them deny and accuse her of talking about our plants end of the season last year.  She called me and had me send some pictures over for her.

From right to left: Bell Peppers, Green Beans

I haven't heard what happened after I sent the pictures yet.  Now, in the pictures of the container gardens, you'll notice they are all sitting really close together.  This is because they were.  When our yard was mowed, the plants got moved and we hadn't taken the time to move them until yesterday (which was once again after the pictures for this post were taken).  We also cut down a bit more of one of the trees that over hang our yard.  Not the black walnut like we'd like, but it should give us a bit more sun none the less.

From right to left: cucumbers, eggplants/bell peppers

So, that means that next week there'll be an update to our garden layout!  The cucumbers have (since the pictures were taken) started to grow taller and show signs of being ready to trellis!  I can't wait to make pickles and sandwiches with our cucumbers!  It seems that planting the flowers in the beds has worked as well (or maybe just the planting flowers in general) because I've seen a vast improvement in the amount of bees and pollinating bugs flying around!  I do need to take the time and decide what I want to do with feeding the

The pea plants just working on growing on up.  Oh...and Luclin is smelling
them.

birds and squirrels.  Technically, feeding them can attract things like raccoon (which are bad for the chickens) to the yard, but it can just as easily lure them away from the chickens to an easier food source.  I suppose the hummingbird feeder is safe either way, I'm just still undecided on how I want to manage feeding the other critters.  Last year, we had a few of the pea plants, but thanks to the tree, our harvest wasn't really enough to do anything with.  We don't eat a good  deal of snap peas on a normal basis, but I don't

A strawberry plant!

see much of a problem with adding them in.  We love a good stir fry and I'm sure we can just toss those in!  I'm so excited to start harvesting things!  Mike and I have talked about keeping a log and weighing all the produce we get so that at the end of the season we can recount exactly what our garden produced!  It seems like it will be fun and a good way to gauge our garden year from year.  I actually am slightly surprised that it looks like we'll have tomatoes before we have peas.  For some reason, peas have always struck me as an

early crop.  The pool seems to be doing well (even if it is a bit sparse).  I went through and now that the plants were getting big enough, weeded the weeds I recognized.  Our turnip greens and radishes (as well as the random vine that came back) seem to be extremely happy.  We weren't entirely sure that those carrots were carrots so we did the "what's it going to hurt" pull test...only what we thought was one ended up being five.  I think in the process we lost one, but it seems like the others are starting to recover!  I'm eager to see what that vine ends up being.  I don't think it's cucumbers

Hiding behind the perch.  Warning:  cedar it turns out is bad for chickens.
A perch is fine, but I guess it can make them sick.  We are trading out
the cedar perch for a 2x4 one.

since the leaves are so much paler in color than our cucumbers.  My best guess is that it's some of the honeydew I planted last year.  If that's the case, let the honeydew start coming!  After I weeded, I planted more herb seeds to see if I couldn't get more to grow!  

So I guess now is a good time for a early week update!  We just had our first heavy rain storm since putting our coop up.  Of course since we actually have flash flooding around our house (if there's still standing water tomorrow when it's light out, I'll update this with a picture) we went to check on the chickens.  They seemed happy to see us and as far as we could tell, their coop was dry.  Just to ensure it stays dry we added a tarp over the roof and used it to make a little "porch" overhang.  I guess that will be one of the next improvements to the coop we make!  We also checked our neighbor's chickens the best we could (we used our flashlight to look over the fence and see if we saw anything amiss...that makes the second time tonight!  When Mike came home he scared a skunk and it ran to their yard, so we made sure it wasn't making a break for their chicks.).  Well, I think this has been a pretty thorough garden update and hopefully this next week's update will be back to it's normal time!  Sometime this week or next I'll be doing another BzzAgent review (only this time for their new yogurt Popsicle).