Happiness is Hydroponics!

I haven't posted about the hydroponic system in a little over a month, so I thought it was time for an update.  I'll start with before (February) and after (last week) pictures.

We've been enjoying eating and sharing with friends (and dogs next door) our snow peas, beets, onions, kale, tatsoi, rape, lettuce and swiss chard.  The broccoli is starting to do its thing and we have one small head of cauliflower forming.  I'm actually surprised that those are doing as well as they are given the heat.  The brussels sprouts aren't producing yet, although the plants are thriving, and the strawberries, while prolific, proved to be disappointing in taste.  Next year, we'll double the amount of snow peas since those have been our best performers so far.  The yellow ball squash, patty-pan and zucchini are all producing flowers and fruit. If I can keep the grasshoppers off of them, we should have a good harvest of all of those.  I need to clear out the beet box and get the cucumber I've been nursing along in the pot I bought it in a month ago put in their place.  We have plans for a bean bed and a pea bed, as well as a place for okra in mind.  I'm looking forward to getting the beans in, especially, since I've got  red noodle beans and dragon's tongue varieties to grow.  The red noodle bean is about 20" long, and the dragon's tongue is a yellow bean with purple streaks on the pod. 

The heirloom tomato "Mr Stripey" was put in before the other 5 heirloom varieties, and has had quite a head start.  We've got some Florida Sweet Onions resting on the shelf under the grill so they can crisp up their skins.

  

It's been a learning experience, that's for sure.  We keep finding things we'd like to have done differently. For example, we would like to turn the bottom bins perpendicular, and spread them out a bit more so there is more airflow, and so the snow peas don't grab hold of everything with their twisty tendrils.   All in all, though, it's been a lot of fun, and has allowed us to feed ourselves, and share with friends.  A good man once told me that food is love.  He was right.  When food is grown with love, it's even better!

Hooray for Volunteers!

A few months ago, when we were starting the chicken project, we began by potting up all of our daylilies that were in the back yard, so we could keep them safe during construction.  During that process we came across dozens of tiny tomato plants all mixed in with the daylilies.  I confess. I know how those got there.  Our kitties' daddy/granddaddy/uncle/brother was in our yard a lot, and I admit, I chucked not a few yucky tomatoes from the garden in his general direction on several dozen occasions.  The result of my pitching practice was little tiny baby tomatoes.  That was the first of the volunteer garden army that began to spout up this season.

Next to arrive was what we thought were just weeds growing out of our compost bin.  Due to the proximity of now-deceased ficus trees and our general neglect of proper composting behaviors, the compost bin had gotten full of tree roots and had stopped being 'hot' enough to kill seeds.  I realized one day that those weren't weeds.  They were potatoes.   And nestled down in the potatoes were very pretty little Scarlet Pentas that had been pulled up to make room for something else. 

Around the same time, we noticed that our tatsoi had gone to seed in the hydroponic garden, and some seeds had fallen next to the water tank.  A brand new baby tatsoi plant is now happily growing there in the ground, without any assistance from us or the water system.  We haven't had much rain except for this past weekend, but it seems to be doing fine.  I'm leaving it there, in case the grasshoppers find it easier pickings than the tatsoi that is growing four feet up in the tower.  Maybe they'll eat that and leave my tower plants alone.

Finally came the squash.  Patty pan, to be specific, now that it has made fruit and can be identified. I noticed it when it was small, 5 or 6 leaves, smack in the middle of the yard, on the edge of what we called "the Pile of  Crap" that was chicken coop construction debris.  I skillfully managed to keep it (the PoC) out of most pictures of all of the yard elements, but trust me, it was there in all it's tetanus-potential glory. The squash is about thigh-high now, and growing really well.  I couldn't crop all the PoC elements out of the photo.  I think it's really cool that these plants have just decided to make the best of their situations and bloom where they've not-been-planted.  Yes, it's inconvenient to walk around that squash for now, but I'm glad it's here, and am honoring it's willingness to volunteer in our yard.

Chicklet Update

We've had the chickens a little over a week now.  Progress has been made on the name front for half of them.  The Frizzle is now Phyllis, and the Cochin is now Babette.  We're still struggling over what to name The Twins.  They are all developing their own distinct habits, but really only Babette and Phyllis are showing any signs of personality and behavioral distinction.  The Twins are more skittish (actually, everyone is skittish around me unless I have soybeans or bulgur wheat)  Jay is a much better chicken whisperer than I am, and is more willing to chase them down and force interaction than I am.  Whenever I go out there, The Twins are convinced it's bed time and troop up the ladder into the hen house.  Babette comes waddling over to see if I've brought a treat, and Phyllis starts to follow The Twins up the ladder, but stops half way to see if Babette is onto something.

 

As far as coop improvements go, we've made some adjustments and enhancements.  We noticed the girls are panting a bit (and it's only April!!!) The coop is very shady until the late afternoon, when that western sun hits it and the reflective roof isn't much help. We found an outdoor roll-up shade and attached it so I can go out in the afternoons and unroll it to give them more refuge from the sun.

I also bought a small shallow storage bin.  I am deciding between making it a chicken pool or a sand box.  Both water and sand have cooling properties.  Jay added roosts to the hen house.  They don't get used at night unless Jay picks them up (which they hate) and puts them up on them, but I see Phyllis and the Twins on them a lot during the day.

I got a new chair to sit on in there, and added a small roost across the top of a bushel basket so they could practice.  Here, one of The Twins is practicing. She fell off immediately after I took the shot, but now that I have it full of paving stones, at least it doesn't topple over when they fall off.  I'm hoping that, since they obviously understand the concept of roosting, they will eventually decide it's a neat way to sleep at night and we won't have to traumatize them every night by moving them up on top of their snazzy roosts in the dark.  Normally they snuggle up under the roost bar - except Babette.  She finds a roost in the coop to sit on and has to be moved the whole way into the house at night.

I haven't had as much time to spend with them as I had hoped, but I go out every night for a little while when it's cool and hang out in my chair with them.  I really enjoy just watching them peck around and peep at each other.  Sometimes when I'm at the kitchen window I look out and see them chasing each other around or just flying for no apparent reason across the coop.  I see some occasional chicken chest-bumping, but nothing ever really mean going on. 

The Chicklets have Landed!

We brought the toddler chicks home yesterday afternoon.  They seem to be adjusting well, taking to the feed immediately.  We put them up in the hen house last night before we went out to the Plant City Livestock Auction (good Lord... I'll have to post about that someday).  When we got back last night around 10:30, we realized that they had left the hen house and had gone back down the ladder and were huddled in the corner of the coop in the dirt.  We trooped out there in the dark with a flashlight,  picked them up and put them back in the hen house, where they stayed until this morning.  They weren't raised in a coop with a roost, so we'll have to teach them how to use one.  Things will stay cleaner when they sleep on the roost at night. Jay is building the roost, and a little door to shut them in the hen house today.

We haven't settled on names yet. I have to observe them for a while to see their personalities.  The Black Cochin is the oldest, born January 3.  ((A Capricorn!) She's the first one to figure things out and seems the most independent.  I don't know if that's just 'her' or if it's because she's nearly a month older, or if it's because the other three were nestlings and she was from a different brood.  Either way, here she is.

The other three are nestlings and were born January 31.  (Aquarius!) They are all three Ameracaunas, however one of them carries the Frizzle gene, which means her feathers grow in a such a way as they appear inside out.  She is very fluffy, and unfortunately her coloring makes her appear to be very dirty.   She figures things out from watching the Cochin.

The other two, called "The Twins" for now, are easy to tell apart in person, and in photos as long as they are both present.  I am already having a hard time telling them apart alone in photos.  One of them (the dark one) is bigger and a little slower than the other. These two are pretty tight.  Where one goes, the other goes.  They chatter and peep to each other as they bustle along.

This morning, I was able to coax the Cochin down out of the hen house with a handful of Gamecock feed, which is a really nice blend of seeds and grains.  Right now, they're busily eating the Bermuda grass that has been Jay's nemesis for years. I put in some kale from the garden, and the Cochin and the Frizzle liked it, but I couldn't get the twins to notice. 

Toddler Chicks!

I feel a little bit like a first-time expectant mom must feel after finding out her baby is coming early.  I'm not ready! My bag isn't packed! The nursery isn't ready!  We've gone back and forth a few times on getting peeps vs pullets, and ended up getting what I'm calling "toddlers."  They are three months old, and have been hand reared.  Because we're getting them from a backyard hobbyist instead of a hatchery, it's still possible that one or more may turn out to be male and have to go back to the people we bought them from.  Hobbyists don't bother sexing chicks... they just wait a few months until they hear crowing and know, at that point, they've got a rooster on their hands.  That's actually one of the reasons I went this route. I know that they will be loved and cared-for and not have to worry about finding a new home, or that they'll be used as a food source in that new home.

The black one with her tushie to the camera is a Black Cochin. She'll have fluffy feathers on her legs.  The one with her beak to the camera to the left is a Frizzle Ameracauna.  Her feathers grow curly.  The other two at the top of the frame are also Ameracaunas, but their feathers are flat.  The twins are a buff color, and the Frizzle is a blue-gray.  She looks like a little old lady with a bad perm. None of them were particularly interested in having their picture taken. It was dinner time and they're really busy filling their faces.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we still have two walls to put in the hen house so they don't fall out at night, and a roost to build.   The nest boxes aren't quite ready yet, but we've got 3 or 4 months before we need those, anyway.  I'm excited and nervous at the same time.  I have done a lot of reading about backyard chicken ranching, but have absolutely zero practical knowledge or skills to rely on. 

Re-Coop-erating!

After almost a solid month of weekends where we had other obligations, we finally got to get back to working on the coop.  I've been pretty anxious about getting it completed to the point that  we could safely order our chicks.  I wanted to get them settled as soon as possible as we have an even busier May than we did March. 

A lot has been done since the last post about the coop.  The trench around the bottom has been filled back in (and yes, I did fall into it one evening while I was looking at some potted daylilies.)  I used some bags of pine needles we snagged from my sister-in-law's apartment back in October to put around the perimeter to keep the black dirt from getting tracked everywhere.  I'm planning on planting sunflowers and edible peas or beans around the sides and front to help give the girls some shade, and to expand our food growing capacity.  It'll make things pretty, too.




The hen house floor has been built and covered in linoleum, and the egg boxes and access door (for cleaning purposes) have been built.

 The next steps are the roof installation, (waiting for the order to come into Home Depot) building the door, shingling the roof of the egg box, painting, and installing the latches, chains and locks.  We also need to construct a brooder box for the peeps to live in once they come home, but that's a pretty quick process with a rubbermaid bin and a heat light.

You can see, I'm not the only one excited about this being completed!  Once he finishes this, Jay is going to build the raised bed for the remaining 55 daylilies that have been waiting patiently for their turn to be planted in a nice new home.

                                      

Heavens to Etsy!

I realized after a friend posted an article about Etsy.com on her FB page just how many times I've turned to Etsy in my pursuit of living a more eco-conscious life.  Etsy is a community of hobbyists, artisans and crafts-persons who have come together to sell their items.  You can find everything from Accessories to Woodworking and anything in between.  Many vendors recycle and upcycle, and make the most creative things.  I first became aware of Etsy when my cousin Kari started selling her jewelry on her Etsy store  kari1121  Kari also sells at local craft shows, but since she can also  post a link from Etsy to her Facebook page, I was able to snap up a cute pair of peace sign earrings she had on her Etsy store before they were gone.  I've been  hooked on Etsy ever since. 

When I started looking for a green alternative to disposable panty liners I turned to Etsy again.  I was really thrilled with the sense of community I got from the experience. All the women I've dealt with have been completely committed to customer service and take a lot of extra time and energy wrapping their items in pretty papers and eco-friendly packaging and are almost all open to special requests for certain fabric types (hemp vs organic cotton) or fabric patterns.

My next foray into Etsy started with a desire to use less paper towels.  I'm not an extreme person by any stretch of the imagination.  I think that sometimes people can go to some extremes in their quests to be green, and forget that one of the 3- R's of living an earth-friendly life is REDUCE.  I know I will never eliminate paper towels from our house, but we certainly can reduce the number we use.  I found a great vendor on Etsy who sells Unpaper Towels and Towel Houses  They're about the size of paper towels and are beautifully finished.  The Towel House sits on the counter and takes up just as much room as a paper towel dispenser takes.  You stuff the towels into the house (no folding), and pull them out a slot on the bottom when you need one.  They've all washed up great. I just toss them in with the load of kitchen towels I'm already doing anyway.  Kai packaged them up in a nice brown kraft paper and tied them with a piece of twine, an included a personalized note as well.

Around the same time I stared eating clean, and cooking a lot more (in addition to baking all the breads we consume in our house) I realized that I was always tossing on an old t-shirt to cook in.  I felt really frumpy.  So I went looking for a cute apron and found them at another Etsy Store my cousin Kari recommended: Momomadeit  My aprons are SOOO cute and girly. They are called Flirty Retro style and have a Donna-Reed-with-a-modern-twist vibe to them.  The patterns are really pretty and the fit is great - but the best part is the absolutely flawless tailoring and finishing.   You can really tell that Joan cares about what she's making.  Again, they were packaged very beautifully.

While I'm baking in my apron, and wiping up messes with my unpaper towels, Jay gets the most use out of my next Etsy favorite: organic cotton crocheted dish cloths from NeedleCreations   They're soft, durable and very well made. 

My woven agave-fiber soap saver bag started to finally wear out a few weeks ago, so I went on Etsy to find a replacement.  I found it at Orangefuzz's Etsy store  There I found a hemp-fiber crocheted soap saver bag, along with a bar of handmade soap made with organic ingredients like basil, mint and lime.  I like knowing when the bag starts to fall apart I can put it in the compost bin.

I know I could probably make some of these things myself. (If I had ever been patient enough to really learn to crochet or sew like my mom tried a million times to get me to learn).   I just don't have the patience or spacial awareness for it.  (proven by every shirt I ever sewed with the sleeves upside down and the one sock and one mitten I made and never finished the partners to)  I know I could just go down the street to Target  or my local health food store and buy almost everything I've purchase on Etsy and say that I've spent my money 'locally.'   But by supporting Etsy, I'm also supporting a LOT of 'local' economies, a lot of moms or not-moms who have a passion, and a skill and a desire to produce goods that are worth more to me than what I could get made in China, Pakistan, El Salvador, etc...  I'm not saying that the people in those other countries don't also deserve to make a living, too.  But after watching The Story of Stuff I also realized what a huge price is paid by those workers who produce countless things that we just don't need.  I'm also reducing consumption overall, and choosing to work with people whose values I share and whose vision I respect.

So with that, I say, "Heavens to Etsy!"