The Chicken Tractor Build

Check this baby out! Tom worked on this quite a bit on Saturday when we weren't running errands (two times to Parkrose) or taking a union break.

The best part...was finding the Chicken Wire at Pioneer Feed Saturday at only $27.99 for the 48"x50' roll. That is the best price that we have seen yet without having to order it and wait for the delivery.

The annoying part was having to talk to one of the Parkrose guys and his experience with chickens and how much feed they waste and how we need to use the system that he uses. Uhh...dude, we just want the carriage bolts, washers and nuts...plus our chickens don't waste a lot of food, just the grit and oyster shell - because they forage quite a bit, not because they want to, because they only get feed and supplements in the morning. If they are lucky, a neighbor will come over with treats for them so they don't have to totally forage all day long. Although, they do anyway - with or without snacks.

Anyway - The tractor is coming along nicely and Tom was able to do a little more work on it yesterday before we went to a friend's house for Easter lunch. The little girls could possibly be relocated sooner than the weekend! We'll see how things go!

The little Java Girls are just over 6 weeks old

They are getting so big...and fast! It was such a nice day on Saturday that I thought that they might like to sit in the sun during the afternoon. So we were able to drag the brooder over and put them in the sunshine by the open garage door. They were a little confused by the brightness and heat of the sun. Yes...littles, this is what your future will consist of. Bright sunshine and lots of grass to play on (even though you are still in the box)! Also, if you look closely, the one in up against the back of the brooder had her "hairs" on her neck standing up. I'm not sure what that meant, but they seemed happy enough. After a little while, I think the brooder was warming up and they started panting...drink some water girls! They figured out that if they went to the opposite end of the box they wouldn't be nearly as warm. The temperature for the past couple of weeks has been on the cool side, so they have been in the dark, literally, since we brought them home.

This relocation is just the first step to them going outside. Soon they will be playing and foraging on the lawn. they will be able to scratch for little bugs and whatever catches their eye. The only thing that they need is a roosting bar - I have seen them perching on the rim of their feed pan. It's time to graduate them for sure!

It has been staying light longer into the evening - which means we can do more stuff outside everyday! It's not enough that I work full-time, I need to maximize my time away from work and do stuff on our farm too!

If I could stay home and work on our property forever I would. Until that can happen, I have to divide my time and plan when I can take time off to accomplish my goals for this season.

Here's a little something from from a year ago on the Great American Farm Tour...

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!

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!

Making a Difference

Here's another video from the Great American Farm Tour - I liked this one a lot, this guy had a lot of different things growing in his front and back yards. Granted, this was in Florida and it was also one year ago. One year ago today we had a VERY NICE DAY. After several days of rain, showers, downpours...we had sunshine! 

I want a food forest...(she said in a whiny voice)

Yesterday I was cruising through YouTube checking out what videos were recently uploaded and I came across this title: Can One Family Make a Difference? Once I read that and saw whose video it was attached to, the only family I could think that the family would be the Rhodes family.

We started watching their YouTube channel a couple of years ago...back when they were doing their 100 Days of Growing Food challenge. The truth of the matter is that Tom is the one who had discovered them. At first I wasn't impressed...homesteaders? I don't know. I kept with it though and after awhile watching their videos was part of the evening routine and I loved the family! Seriously their Chiddlers are pretty cute!

It's because of those early videos that my dream to do something more with our property started to percolate. So much so, that soon after we started watching their vlogs I promptly visited their website and signed up to receive emails and also saw that we could get the plans for the chick-shaw. The plan was to get some chickens sooner than later...as it turns out it was after they started on the GAFT when we got 10 chicks from the feed store and started on our own journey ourselves. Before the chicks came I took a staycation and we worked on building the coop. Let me tell you - there are about a million pieces that go into making that thing! We used Justin's model of having a guard goose and since we were told he would need a pal then the duckling happened too.

Then things got a little crazy with watching all of the really cool farms that were on the tour. The one that really stood out was John Suscovich - you may have read about him in an earlier post. He's all about the chickens so that was a no brainer...I got the book, then a sweatshirt for Tom and a mug and another sweatshirt for me.

Anyway - back to the original question: Can one Family Make a Difference?

Yes, they can and boy did they ever. This tour really opened up my eyes to the different types of farms that are out there and just how many people are homesteading. The bottom line is that all of these people are really no different than me. They had a vision and they went with it...and that is an encouragement to me. There were a couple of people that actually got into a homesteading lifestyle a little later in life, so that was good for me to see. Not that I'm that terribly old, but I'm not in my 30s or 40s and getting started on my dream. My dream did start a few years back, but the timing is just right now.

So, if you want to check out the series of videos that were created as a tribute to the Rhodes start with this one:

From this one I believe that you will see the other ones.

As of this moment, I am in vacation mode! Bring on the projects!

DST and All Around Busyness

Man oh Man! We did so much around the house this past weekend! And it was Daylight Saving Time?!

Saturday - we were out and working on getting the chickens and the dudes moved to the new area. Instead of just letting them roam half of the garden at a time as we did for December & Janaury we got them set up to work the WHOLE garden and the grassy area all the way to the road which also included the wood chip pile. This took both of our Premier poultry netting (one is 100' and the other 160'). I don't gauge distance very well and I'm not spectacular at thinking out things ahead of time, whatever I got set up was taken down...booo. However, it was good for me to figure out exactly where we would have the opening, so not a total fail. 

What things looked like before the big move:

The back yard has been officially fertilized by the feathered creatures

They get another opporunity to poo up this area before we plant in a few months

I took zero pictures of my other Saturday activities which included:

• Weeding a garden box, broadcasting some cover crop seeds and getting the cover over the top of it. 
• "Working" for Mr. Shelly by digging up worms for snacks while he "supervised" and offered quality control by eating all that he could find. 
• Getting some onion seeds started in a small tray and doing some general clean-up in the hoop house. It will need to be organized since I'll be getting the trays out and starting all sorts of stuff while I'm on vacation next week!
• A trip to Freddy's to get my 99 cent cereal! There was a special download coupon good for Saturday - so Honey Nut Cheerios baby!
• Tom worked on splitting some wood and stacking it up.

Sunday was a more relaxed day - kind of...maybe not:

• Worship time - I was on the Info Desk schedule for the morning. I like it because I just stand around and talk to people. Which I could do every week, but don't. The introvert in me goes and sits down and waits for the service to begin.
• After we got home I made another loaf of egg bread and tried making egg noodles.
• While the bread was in the first rise I made some soil blocks and got my tomato seeds going. The other seeds I got out were Shishito peppers, cucumbers and I think some sweet peppers.
• Small group time was all about games last night. So good to be with our people and playing together and laughing together. So. Much. Laughing.

Thought I would try making noodles - it's really a messy project, hence the bowl

My noodles are a bit thick, but I think they'll do just fine

Making bread just doesn't get old

Another thing that we figured out is just how smart Mr. Lenny is. We have been known to not always eat the crusts off of the toast that we have for breakfast at times. Those crusts go out to the chickens. Well, they are supposed to. Lenny actually gets to the treat first and eats up the tasty bits first.

SO - last night we sat out in the yard and ate our sandwiches (late lunch = easy dinner). Well Lenny & Shelly were out and about foraging when Lenny spotted the sandwiches and came right up to Tom and stood as close as possible. He was filled with so much excitement about the bread that he begged and begged and begged. Worse than a dog! That goose - he knows what he likes and he doesn't miss anything! Again I didn't have my phone, so there are no photos proving that this actually happened. It was pretty funny actually. At one point he was next to me, but I just kept eating and he just kept watching. Ever hopeful. 

Note to self: Don't let the dudes out to forage while enjoying dinner on the lawn!

I would rather see this:

Now that Spring is really just around the corner we have all sorts of projects in the queue for the next few weeks.

Here's another Great American Farm Tour video for your viewing pleasure. This one is titled "Turning Rotten Coconuts Into Eggs"

Happy Friday!

I've decided to post the Great American Farm Tour videos that happened one year ago here and there as something a little different to do.

Today's video is from a guy who lives in Southern Florida and now that I rewatch this video he seemed to be a little hyped up. He has a cool garden though and I love his drive...but he's a little wacky! He had to be the one person who I would have never pegged as an urban gardener. I don't know why - his personality...a little out there.

As I remember back, I was thinking how cool it would be to grow stuff in MARCH. Not just greens and stuff, but tomatoes! He had red tomatoes! I would love to have fresh vine ripened tomatoes in March. I wouldn't move to Florida though. So I'll be waiting until summer as per usual.

Go ahead...check the video out!

Another GAFT favorite

The Great American Farm Tour. How I ever sat myself down almost everyday to watch the daily video from Justin Rhodes is beyond me. We did it though, although, there were a couple I just couldn't sit through. Otherwise we watched them all! Some of them a few times even.

The farm feature was waaay back in May of last year. The Farmer is John Suscovich. The farm is Camps Road Farm in Connecticut. The book is Stress Free Chicken Tractor Plans.

The first video that was featured:

The moment he kneeled down to help out Mr. Brown - I knew this guy would be awesome! 

Then there was this video:

By the time we had watched these videos we already built the Justin Rhodes Chick-Shaw. The chicken tractor with a million pieces...hahaha! Actually the chick mobile is awesome! It did take some time though. When I found out that Farmer John had a book I HAD to check it out. Not only that I ORDERED it and we have been studying it and will be building one of these bad boys soon.

Everything about this guy...his experience kind of clicked with me and I understood what he was saying. The way he farms, the way he learns while doing stuff and then makes adjustments when things don't work out...boy I get that. He is for real people...a farmer, husband, father...YouTuber. He is a farmer...not a homesteader. We all know how that word has no meaning to me. It is over-used. Enough said. Also, not that I would do this, but he toured the part of the US on his bike, visiting farms along the way. What a life! There was a time that I thought I might want to do a bicycle tour, but that's an unrelated story.

We had the chickies before we saw these videos, but the video about the chicken tractors got me thinking about raising meat birds. Something I wanted to do last year, but let's face it, with the new chickies (gosling & duckling included) and trying to keep my pathetic garden from totally dying off I don't think that a batch of meat chickens would have helped. What we did end up doing is processing three of our extra cockerels at approximately 19 weeks old or so. That was quite the experience - one that I am happy to say I survived and didn't get totally freaked out about. Go HERE for that post.

Last summer he did a few videos on raising pigs and how beneficial they are to the land. Our property was once part of a much larger cattle farm operation years ago and our plan is to add a breeding pair of American Guinea Hogs that will help make our property healthy again. All we have done for nearly 20 years is mow the grass. Only last year did we actually introduce the chickens to part of the pasture. I have plans to keep the pigs moving around the property and increasing the food growing areas. Fruit trees, berry bushes or gardens, I want to add them all! 

What else about this guy...he is all about sharing information on YouTube - all free which is a bonus. He does have a "store" on his website, Farm Marketing Solutions. If you are looking for suggested reading, he's got a list of books. Apparel, yup. His published books...oh yeah. Like I mentioned before I got the chicken tractor book. There's a new book in the works that I'm planning to order to get our market going. 

In the time since watching these two videos, I have started to follow his channel - SO GOOD! I've commented on his videos and sent him an email of appreciation (and got a reply!) - he is seriously cool! 

Go on...check the videos above and check out his channel on YouTube. I'm going to start planning again...