March

Wow! March is almost over - so crazy to think that it will be April soon. Is it just me or is time going really fast? Maybe it's because there is always something to be done when I'm not at work...that must be it.

Well, let's take a look at the happenings for the month. Weekday stuff is hit and miss depending on what after work activities I have on the calendar. Let's get started!

As usual the chickens were moved the second Saturday of the month. I remember that day being pretty cold, but it was clear and then was sunny later in the day. So that was a plus.

Thor and his girls quickly got to work on the chip pile

I have also noticed that since then our feathered creatures have been "admired" from the road - whether people are walking by or driving. Sometimes people will slow down to take a look or even stop their car in the road and gawk - Oh, I see you people out there...keep it moving...chickens we have chickens people! However, I do like it when there are walkers and they stop to take a look. If we are lucky and see them we will go out and meet some of them - like...A mom and her two young daughters who live across the street and down the road a little. Lenny was making a fuss of some sort, so I had to look and there they were in the driveway just looking at the chickens. So we walked out and talked to them for a few minutes. She is another kindred spirit as far as eating "clean" food goes. She is very passionate about feeding her family food that is grown without the yuck-o stuff and opting for pasture raised meats. Tom even took the girls to gather the eggs for the day. That was a fun connection that day - they kids have since been by to visit the chickens with their nanny.

Vacation time! I took a week off from work and we worked on a couple of things, but mainly the Chicken Tractor. It's still under construction, but I am hopeful that we can get a lot of the metal work done and hopefully installed soon. Then we'll be able to attach the hardware cloth and the chicken wire. It has been a long project for sure, but it the Justin Rhodes took longer than my vacation week for sure.

The weekend before vacation week we visited Tsugawa's Nursery in Woodland and got some bare root apple trees (3) to start out mini orchard. We are going with the Mother Earth News small tree method. Check that out HERE. That was a couple of weeks ago and this is what they looked like when we put them in:

I took a look at them this week and they are starting to bud out a little bit. At least we didn't kill them by cutting off more than half of their "body." These trees should stay at around knee height. We'll see.

On the first day that I didn't have to wake up and go to work I worked on getting some of the spring veggie seeds into one of the garden boxes. Right now that consists of Spinach, Arugula and Bunching Onions - Red and White. Over the next few days more seeds were sown into soil blocks, veggies and flowers. Some of those are actually sprouting now. I need to get some peas and carrots planted and maybe some lettuce too.

Hoping for all of these to sprout so they can all go into the garden

One of the garden boxes that was cleaned out during vacation week

We had to run some errands to pick up supplies for the chicken tractor build so that took us to Harbor Freight, Parkrose and Shurway. Those places were more of a necessary evil rather than a fun trip for me, but not terrible when you factor in that Parkrose has free popcorn!

The Java girls are growing like crazy and they REALLY need to get outside soon. I'm thinking of how we can get some sort of small kennel-like/cage thing put together for them so they can at least spend some time on the lawn. 

This was last Saturday - they are a little bigger than this now!

I've been looking on Craigslist for an outdoor kennel or some sort of cage thing that we could set up. I'm starting to feel really bad for these little ones they could totally use some fresh air and finally get out of that box. Even the Jerseys had some time outside before they went outside full time. Maybe this weekend I'll figure out an outdoor pen for them.

Overall, this month has been good and I really need a break from the craziness at work. I'm looking forward to attending the Good Friday service at our church tonight and then worship time on Sunday. 

Happy weekend!!

It's Time to Go Back a Year!

Yeah, so I didn't have a post on this blog a year ago, but there is a great GAFT video from this day one year ago! This was from Full Circle Farm in Florida. This is titled "When Organic ISN'T good enough..." as well as "The BEST way to cook pork chops"

We have been trying to eat better, that is make choices when we grocery shop. Having a steady supply of eggs really does open up all sorts of opportunities for creativity. This is something that I blogged about a few posts ago. Since our eggs are fresh as fresh can be the option to hard boil them is really a no go option. We would have to use older eggs if we want to peel them without taking half the white part away, we don't usually keep eggs around that long. I had forgotten that from my time at home and all the eggs that we had coming out of our ears then. I suppose we would have to buy eggs, but why would I spend money on eggs that are not as good as our own?

Oh, while we are kind of (not really) on the subject of chickens I came across a fun little Safety Tip Sheet on the NFPA website - I'm not sure that I have mentioned that I work for a local fire district. Anyway, as I was looking at Safety Tip Sheet to display on the counter on the National Fire Protection Association website they had a NEW tip sheet for...get this...Chicken Coop safety! Go HERE to check it out. 

So, of course I have to take a look. To be honest it seems like the stuff listed on the sheet would be no brainers, but I guess there is always someone who just doesn't get it. 

You'll have to go to the website to get all of the tips!

I just don't understand. Chickens are pretty hardy creatures and they do alright when the temperatures go down at night. In fact, now that we have our first winter with chickens on our farm behind us, they did pretty good. Granted we didn't have any crazy winter snowstorms - which are rare anyway, but there were a few days here and there where we woke up to snow on the ground. Which was fun watching them contemplate leaving the coop. In the end the chickens did just fine. So did the Dudes. Why risk a fire by putting an electric heater in the coop? We wouldn't even think to do that since the coop we built is the Justin Rhodes chick-shaw. It really wasn't designed to hold a heater or heat lamp anywhere.

In other happenings - we are getting closer to getting those piggies on our farm. I was in contact with Cascade Meadows Farm yesterday (via text) just to get the bug in Jason's ear. In another couple of weeks I'll probably send an email to get the ball rolling. We have the tote to use as a waterer, pallets to make a shelter and Premier 1 hog electric fence to help keep them contained. After watching Art & Bri's video this morning I'm pretty excited to see how the piggies will help with our garden spots around the property. Check out their video:

It's almost weekend time! The next couple of days should be decent as far as the weather is concerned. Easter Sunday might be a little rainy. The forecast is ever-changing so I guess we'll see when we wake up that morning.

It's Only Wednesday?!

The days have gone quickly, but the week seems slow. That's probably because I'm doing regular work and not the kind of work that I enjoy - working on our farm.

Progress on the Chicken Tractor has slowed down to almost a halt, but not really. Tom has been working on cutting the pipe that we have already bent and using them to make proper angles and not curved angles. Somehow that makes sense to me - and definitely to Tom's engineering brain.

The solution:

Tom was able to use some old copper pipe that he had stored away from a past project and did some magic to make the copper pipe fit into the other pipe. Then some soldering and BOOM we are good to go! One down three to go! Actually, I think there are is one more thing that needs to happen to attach this to the frame. I am hoping that we can get this done before the girl Magpie ducklings arrive so we can get the Javas out of the brooder!

Another thing that I have been on the hunt for is a shelter of some sort for when the Javas go out into the chicken tractor - in a couple of weeks they may be big enough to not need a shelter. We'll see. Anyway, there was a dog house for FREE on Craigslist and I thought that it would be perfect for our needs. I tried several times to send a text as the person wanted and I never got a response. So I decided to forget about it. I didn't think about it much more until yesterday and I decided to look again and see if there was anything else available.

THERE WAS!

I saw that it was located much closer to our home and contacted the person that listed it. After some emails back and forth I got the address and found out that they only live not even a 1/4 mile from our house! The other thing that made this a much better deal is that this one has a roof!

$25 later and we have ourselves a nice (and light) shelter for our feathered creatures.

The best part of the evening would be our duck! What a little clown! He definitely has bonded with Tom and whenever he "appears" outside Sheldon immediately jumps into action. He ALWAYS wants to be let out of the hen pen and play with Tom - if you can imagine that. He likes me and all, but he is ga-ga over Tom for sure. Always under foot and always "talking" while trying to steer Tom in the right direction - which would be to race in the driveway.

We are heading to the weekend and looking forward making the most of the time we have to work on projects and play with the duck and the Goose!

Back To The Grind

Yep, I'm back at it and it's been quite a day of getting back into the work routine. While I continue to figure that out for the rest of today - here is a GAFT from one year ago for your viewing pleasure :)

Depending on what we accomplish tonight on the chicken tractor I may or may not post again tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Back To Reality

This is it...last free day before heading back to work. I wish I could say that I'm ready to go back to my job. What I miss is a routine. However, I could totally make my home routine my thing, but just knowing it has to end makes me want to maximize the time I have off and accomplish as much as I can. I imagine that life away from work outside of the home wouldn't be so full of things to do during most of any given day. It just would be nice to not have to make everyday a busy day.

Today after worship, we ran a couple of errands to look for some fittings for the pipe that we are not going to use as bent frames, but as cut pieces to make perfect angles. If I'm honest, I'm glad Tom came up with an alternative. I would have spent the few hours we had left just fretting about getting the bends right and not enjoying the day. The bender was due back at Parkrose by 2pm.

The solution to the problem we ended yesterday with was to cut the stock we had and use the fittings to do the frame of what will be the roof.

The Chicken Tractor as of earlier this afternoon

This is a lot like how we ended vacation week last year...with an unfinished project. It's all good though, we'll work on it in the evenings as long as we don't have anything else going on. 

So, really in the last week we worked on the chicken tractor, I got a bunch of soil blocks made and seeds sowed...sowed some spring greens and bunching onions into one of the garden boxes and hosted some friends for dinner. Also got out to try to get I to a running routine as well. 

The week has been full and I am satisfied in that. 

It's Saturday Evening?!

What happened to the day? It was cold, Cold, COLD today!

Yesterday was my day to cook Indo food for a chosen few. It's my way to end my vacation week, hanging out with friends.

Progress on the chicken tractor project slowed down a little bit. There is a door frame in place along with the panels that we put together a couple of days ago.

The thing that we are stuck on currently would be bending the EMT conduit. In the Stress Free Chicken Tractor book it says that bending the conduit can be "tricky." Yeah we got tricky down...

This wasn't accidental - just trying to figure out how the bender works

Oh - we rented a bender at Parkrose -

This did not come with instructions

Tom took some time this afternoon to try to get the tubing bent in the right places and the right angles. He got frustrated and declared that all 5 tubes would not work and went back to Parkrose to get more EMT. After he returned - I decided to take a turn with this seemingly harmless device.

I studied the section on how to prep the tubes for bending...then tried to make a bend. Well, I found out very quickly that my short stature would make this task a little difficult. The tubing is ten feet long...TEN FEET! However, I had to do it in my own to figure out what needed to happen to get things set up. After some moments of being annoyed and stretching and twisting AND stepping on one end of bender to make it work...I DID get it to work! Since I was just goofing around I made a sculpture instead. Oh well....I got a better understanding of how to accomplish the task. The instructions in the book helped, especially the illustrations.

We will have to get busy on the project as soon as we get home from church tomorrow morning since the bender needs to go back in the afternoon.

NO PRESSURE.

One of the EMT tubes that Tom formed

After I played around with my first bended tube I took a look at Tom's "rejects" and did a minor adjustment and it seems to work out okay. It won't be like the book says, but it will work. All we need to do is get three more to match it as close as possible - perfect is too much to ask for. This is a chicken tractor after all and the chickens aren't going to complain.

It's a hobbity sized door!

These little chickies are just over 5 weeks old!

Once the Java Girls are old enough and the weather stays at a reasonable temperature they will be the first to take up residence in the chicken tractor. They will need to go out in about three weeks if not sooner. The Magpie girls should be arriving by then! Then when the ducklings outgrow the broader they will move into the tractor next. I'm hoping that we'll be able to integrate the Javas in with the Jerseys and Aussies when that happens. It shouldn't be too difficult as they will all be in the same area, but separate. So, until further notice their is no vacancy at the Chicken Tractor Inn.

My morning project - making a loaf of Egg Bread...SO GOOD!

Ready for the oven

This shape is the most interesting yet!

One more day away from work...sigh...

March 22, 2018 - The Project Continues

Last year at this time we were finishing up the Justin Rhodes Chick-Shaw. At this point in the project I think we still needed the wheels and few other odds and ends to finish up. Check that post out HERE.

I also had some pretty good looking Romaine lettuce growing in the garden. These were transplanted in mid fall of 2016 and survived all sorts of crazy weather! There were a variety of other items as well, but the lettuce really well.

The John Suscovich chicken tractor has been a fairly straightforward build so far. Yesterday's progress was mainly us getting the pieces put together. We were able to get quite a bit done before the rain started. Tom had an appointment at noon so I went to do some grocery shopping during that time. When I walked out of the store I saw the rain...boooo...oh well. We live in the Pacific NW - sun breaks are a treat during the spring and if they last for a couple of days we take advantage of it! The rain keeps us humble...maybe.

The top photo is from the morning and the one below was taken after we returned from errands.

The first side panel assembled and ready for glue - then screws

The different parts of the frame all glued and screwed together

Our favorite glue

There wasn't a lot more to do after we returned, just one more panel to finish up before calling it a day.

Today - it was rainy most of the time, windy at times and there was hail later in the afternoon. I think that today was supposed to be the most rainy of the week. Tomorrow should be less rain, but who really knows for sure?

Welcome back rain!

Before applying glue and then drilling in the screws

Since there was rain the project needed to be moved into the garage. Not because it was dry...but because it was less wet. I'll tell you what this thing is HUGE! The Chick-shaw wasn't nearly as big, it was more of a square. This dude is longer and wider.

It's a different type of coop - this is pretty squatty

It's hard to see just how big this is, trust me - this will be spacious

Today we took the bones of the tractor and put them all together. Since Tom was using lumber that was from an existing shed at the back of our property; all of the pieces were cut to the dimensions that were listed in the book. While the book assumed that the person building this chicken tractor would be buying the materials at a local home improvement type store. So, the pieces were slightly "off," but we'll make it work. The main thing is that the changes aren't terrible and it will still work as it should. That would be - a house for the little chickies that we have. They are tiny by comparison, but when this gets finished and they are big enough to move outside, they will be just fine. 

Today's trip was to Parkrose Hardware where we got the 10' half inch EMT and some brackets. Parkrose is great - the conduit was $3.49-ish which was probably a 1/3 of the price of Grovers. Forget you Grovers! When I decide to do my low tunnels we'll have to go and pick up a few more. 

I believe that we'll be renting the conduit bender tomorrow from Parkrose - $10 per day. We really should have asked if we could bend the tubes there, this job shouldn't take very long at all.

The thing about tomorrow is that I will not be working on anything that is farm related. We will have some friends over for dinner - so I'll be spending a good portion of the day cooking!

As my vacation comes to an end, I'm happy with all that we accomplished in the few hours each day that we spent on the Chicken Tractor. I also have several trays of soil blocks and seeds started, so that's a bonus!

One more day and then back to prepping for going back to work - but until then, I still have three days of staycation time! 

March 20, 2018 - Chicken Tractor Build Day 2

Tractor build started a little later today after running a couple of errands and me getting a haircut. First stop of the day was for coffee, then off to Shur-Way for some special screws and some gussets/brackets. Afterwards we made our way to Wilco for rewards day. Pretty much everything was on sale and I already knew that I wanted to get some of their potting soil - professional grade no less. Two cubic feet for $6.50 - yes please! That's a big ol' bag, I'm set for the 2018 garden season.

Today was all about getting the lap joints all cut out. What is a lap joint you ask? I had to ask myself - Thank you Wikipedia!

photo credit Wikipedia - I had to edit it myself - not bad eh?

Construction Zone

Basically Tom did the cuts and I chiseled out the little pieces -

Before the pieces were chiseled out

All smoothed out

I finally got tired bending over at the old stump and moved to sitting in the driveway - it's totally normal

Our big accomplishment for the day - it's celebration time!!

Before I started helping out with the tractor project I got some more soil blocks made and started an entire tray of Lavender. I had a tray started last year, but I ended up neglecting them and they died. So, this year is the year that things will work! The other tray is all Seed Savers Exchange seeds, flowers, cukes and filderkraut. I have a few other things that I would like to get started, but nothing is critical at this point. I'm going to focus on making the garden a success and not trying to do too much this year. We already have enough happening anyway, I don't need to stress out about growing flowers and veggies!

Perfect day playing in the hoop house

So far this has been a relaxing vacation. I don't feel like I need to accomplish everything during this week. It would be nice if we could get the chicken tractor nearly done and ready to use when the Javas are ready to go out. Anyway, we are making goals as each day comes and if I don't get something done, no biggie...I will get to it another time. Hopefully the next day. If I could stay home and work on our mini farm I would be one happy farmer chick!

While we were out chatting while the hooligans were out and about I was commenting on how having fresh eggs really make a big difference in how much of our own food that we grow ends up as a part of one of our meals. Eggs are like an essential ingredient in so many recipes and dishes. We have been making more breakfast wraps, scrambles...fritatta, baking bread etc. It's awesome! So really eggs is helping us eat more healthful (most of the time) and eat at home more often.

I have to say that today was a great day to be on our mini-farm.

March 19, 2018

Wahoooo!!! Waking up and not having to go to work is the BEST feeling! Already the start of vacation is nice - weather-wise. Unlike last year with rain nearly every single day. The 10-day forecast calls for rain later this week. That means we'll have to get all of the outside stuff we want to do all done and move the chicken tractor construction into the garage.

After a pretty busy weekend, I kind of took it easy today. I did get some seeds into one of the garden boxes - Red Bunching Onions, White bunching Onions, Arugula and Spinach. Also, got the two hooligans out and let them wander around.

These two add a little bit of fun to vacation time!

After Tom made a trip to the dump we had lunch and then got to work on the chicken tractor.

photo credit Farm Marketing Solutions

This will be for when we raise the meat chickens, but until that happens well use it for a temporary outdoor area for the Mottled Java girls. It will be a an excellent way to introduce the new girls to the current flock.

The biggest thing that needed to be done was prepping the lumber that we salvaged from the old equipment shed that needs to be taken down. This will be awesome because we are repurposing the lumber.

All of the lumber that we'll need for the project

Penny photo bomb

Fresh Eggs!

Project #1

The fruit trees...

March 18, 2018

Another project has been started and is done!

Today is the last day that Tsugawa's Nursery will have bare root stock. So right after worship service we made our way out to Woodland.

When we arrived and looked at the trees that were still available. There were 5 or 6 different apple trees available so we chose King, Liberty and Braeburn. The last apple tree that we had was a Braeburn, but we never took care of it and ended up taking it down a couple of years ago. In all of the time that we had that tree I didn't use many of the apples.

Now that we have a couple of new varieties, I am looking forward to when we will have a harvest of them to process and make pies and applesauce.

The method that we are trying is from the Mother Earth News website HERE. I like that the trees are of a manageable size and it will be easier to take of them if we start them off small.

Before the trees got whacked and planted

The main thing we had to do is cut each tree down to around 18" they may be closer to two feet. We spent $24.99 a tree just to cut it down to about two-thirds the original size. You would think that it would bother me to do that, but not so much. I'm going to have mini fruit trees!

  

2018 Staycation

I am so excited to be home all week! This is what I long for...staying home to work on projects on our mini-farm.

The morning was productive as we got out and did tbe chicken chores together. When I'm home the two hooligans get some extra time away from the cluckers so in keeping with tradition they were released from the hen pen.

After some worm hunting with Mr Shelly I decided to work on getting another garden box cleared out and ready for some mushroom compost. A garden project is never complete until the almost 11 month old gander gets involved.

Big boy Lenny inspecting my work

Upon closer inspection....

Meanwhile, Thor and his girl crew were happily working on the pile of wood chips. It's good to give the kids something to do...

King of the mountain

The littlest girls aren't so little anymore...they are now entering into the not so cute stage of chickhood -

Chow time!

Whew...we went out looking for some supplies for the Stress-Free Chicken tractor. That took us to Harbor Freight and Parkrose Hardware. Since we have most of the lumber which a friend of mine took down off of our huge shed we only need hardware type items. We picked up enough items to round out the stuff we need to construct the frame of the tractor. Many of the other items can be purchased later as they are not critical to the early construction of the frame.

Our haul from the hardware stores

We had a couple of other stops to make with the last stop at Shorty's to check out if they carry bare root fruit trees...it didn't appear so. We'll have to head to Woodland tomorrow and visit Tsugawa's. Just to be sure they still had trees I sent them a message on Facebook. This weekend is the last weekend to get the bare root stock. I'm glad I took the time to contact them! We didn't leave Shorty's empty handed though...they did have a nice variety of seed potatoes.

Growing potatoes is one of my favorites and so easy to do!

This is just the beginning of what will be a very productive week away from work!