Not So Little Anymore

It happens every time but I’m never ready for it.  These little chicks are now these:

JJ is the smaller one hiding under the wheelbarrow. Garcia is much bigger than some of our older chickens.

And one, Morgan, is a roo. We are working on rehoming him.

Can you believe those are the Easter Egger babies? We finally named them Guinevere (black and white) and Morgana (brown and black).

And because I can’t resist here are some shots of our older ladies:

This is Grandma, one of the Orpingtons we got last fall. She’s broody and mad at me for kicking her out of the egg box and away from her plastic Easter eggs. I tried to give her day old chicks to raise but she tried to eat them instead.

These were the babies until we got new chicks this spring. They are White Leghorns and they don’t have names because we can’t tell them apart! You can see Garcia in the background shaking her tail feathers and Black, the one that sat on the chicks.

Speaking of chicks…

Ya, I know, I have a problem. Black and Grandma went broody at the same time after raising the Easter Eggers. An extra chick or two never hurt anyone, right?

And last but not least, Red.

 

Some questions we get a lot are:

 

How many eggs do you get?

Right now we are getting 3-4 eggs a day. Black and Grandma are broody/raising chicks and none of the chicks are old enough yet. Egg production should pick up anytime now though! Even through the winter we were getting 6 just about every day!

 

Do they stink?

Some of my friends tell me that I have the most hyper sensitive nose they’ve ever seen. I can’t smell anything coming from our chickens, their bedding, or anything else. They have so much room and they are outside. Clean air and sunshine does wonders.

 

Are they friendly?

While they aren’t big fans of being cuddled they certainly won’t attack you or anything. In fact, if you got close enough to touch one you’d be lucky.

 

Is it hard?

I guess everything is relative but in my opinion , no. You have to clean their coop just about as often or less than a cats littler box. They don’t need bathes or brushed or walked. The closest thing I can compare it to is a fish tank.

 

What do they eat?

Chicken food. Table scraps. Weeds. Plants. Bugs. An occasional rodent. 

Upcycled Gardening Containers

I wrote earlier about how I would love to try a key hole garden this year. I thought and thought and thought about different materials I could have used to make one but they all required buying at least a little money or a lot of work to make them. BUT as my mind was chewing on the idea we were working on the chicken coop and ended up doing this instead!

It’s made out of wooden garage doors that my husband picked up for free off of Craigslist. They came with a garage door motor and he was going to use them as a garage door. I kindly pointed out the lack of insulation and light they would provide in the winter so they just sat in our back yard for over a year!  Finally I said he had to think of something or toss them, what I ended up with is a MASSIVE garden bed! Early next spring we will add pvc pipes and contractors plastic to make a wonderful little hoop house.

Need some other ideas?

How about a feeding trough? 

We used to keep our turtle, Fred, in this 50 gallon rubbermaid trough. They are pretty expensive to buy new but if you see one laying around…

Tires

I thought about ditching my tire garden this year but even though it’s ugly you can’t beat the practicality of it. Used tires are free and the black rubber does and excellent job warming the soil for our cold northern climate.

Bet you weren’t expecting trash cans to make the list!

Our entire neighborhood switched trash services and they only take square trash cans. I think it’s weird but whatever, we just take our trash to the dump. After thoroughly cleaning the trash cans my husband came up with the idea to use them to grow potatoes in.  He starts out with just a little bit of dirt at the bottom and adds dirt as the plants grow. In the fall he just dumps the whole can upside down on a tarp to harvest!

5 Gallon buckets

The wonder and glory of the 5 gallon bucket never ceases. I’ve seen them used for upside down planters, hydroponic systems, containing invasive plants… the list goes on. Here my husband is trying potatoes this year. We also have one in the chicken coop that grows chick weed.

Don’t for get rocks and trees!

A great deal of my gardens are raised and separated from the grass with rocks we’ve collected over time. They never decay away and they are everywhere! A good sized log will last you quite a while too.

Filing my Fabric

 

Today I had the itch to get something creative done. I didn’t care/know what but something! So I turned to my 2 B Knocked Off Pintrest board and found something right away.

Inspired by this pin here’s what I did.

I found these extra files from before we had our legal sized file cabinet.

Then I took assessment of my fabric drawer and tossed the tiny or unusable scraps.

Wanna know something really cool? My drawer just happened to already have rails for file folders!!! I love it when that happens1

I just folded my fabrics over the file folders and tada!

Quick organization and eye candy.

What have you been Pinteresting lately?