Life is moving along right now. It’s busy as we prepare not only for a new baby, but for a new gardening season. Also, it seems that the local home learner’s group is much slower in the winter, and then picks up over the spring and summer, rather than the other way around like the public school system.

One of the newest highlights has been our latest venture: beekeeping. I’ve written a lot more about that on our other blog though, as well as updates on our garden and will be writing some new posts about our chickens and ducks as well.

Meredith recently participated in an art project and then a totem pole walk with a local home learning cooperative group, where she discovered a love of (and affinity for) mapping. We may wander around and map our neighbourhood or look into geocaching or something, as she really wants to do more mapping and similar-type activities. While Meredith was in the art studio (they were doing a Mother’s Day project so I wasn’t “allowed” to know what they did), Fiona and I walked around downtown and found a spot In a park with lots of ants and flowers, and Fiona had a great time just watching the ants working. Afterwards, we all walked to a nearby playground and played until the kids were exhausted.

We also organized a co-op with the local home learning group to get some caterpillars to watch grow into butterflies, that we picked up this past week. Meredith spent the first day drawing pictures of how they look, and looking up what to expect in the chrysalis and butterfly stages and drawing those as well. They’re not very exciting yet, but Meredith does make sure to check on them every day and see if they’ve changed, and is looking forward to the butterflies.

We signed up for a 30×30 nature challenge, and so far have been able to get out every day. We do try to get out every day all year, but sometimes we forget to stop and look around us and see the nature even in busy places (like the ants Fiona found in the middle of a small city park), so I’m hoping it will give us some new ideas and motivation to get out even on not so nice days.

The kids were thrilled (and tired!)

It took about a yard and a half of sand to fill it this much! They won’t run out any time soon though. We still need to get seats and build little diggers for it too.

The swing set is a little wobbly still. We are going to anchor it to the trees somehow and then it should be perfect.

There is room for a third swing on there. Meredith wants one she can stand up on. We need to move the see saw and the trampoline down to this area, and it will be done for now. Though there is still lots to do (a pirate ship play house, a tree house, some balancing equipment, a rope swing of some sort, etc).

I’ve started watching a friend’s son two days a week and the situation is pretty ideal. They live close, her schedule is flexible, and the little boy is just the sweetest, mellowest little kid. I was worried since he is only just barely a year old that he might be a lot of work, and he is (he’s very busy), but he’s also very calm and happy pretty much all the time. Meredith adores him and asks when he will be coming back again.

Otherwise, not much new. The ducks are around 4 weeks old now, and entering the teen years where their adult feathers are starting to come in, so they look pretty funny. They are super sweet though. They came down to where we were building the sand box to check it out (they have been free ranging with the hens now during the day), and walked right up to us. One even crawled onto Meredith’s lap for a worm. They come right up to us when we are outside and aren’t skittish in the least. They are very messy though. I can’t wait until they are outside full time!

If we didn’t already have so many chickens I would be seriously debating just having ducks and foregoing the chickens altogether. I guess we will see once they start laying how their eggs are. Some people don’t notice a difference, and others find they taste fishy (and think it’s because of all the slugs they eat). We have lots of slugs and I’m hoping they will eat them, so we may not get yummy eggs from them.

5 yards of dirt ready to be moved!

I had the date the chicks should hatch marked on the calendar but wasn’t expecting much. The day came and went with no chicks, and we were trying to decide the best way to get her off her nest full of eggs. Then the next day I walked in the coop and heard cheeping. Despite the eggs having gone cold more than once, she managed to hatch out four chicks over the course of three days, though one was born with a weird bump and she ended up dying unfortunately. The other three are doing fantastic though. It is really amazing to watch a mama hen raising her babies. She keeps them warm, protects them from the other hens, leads them around to food. It has been so much easier doing it this way than inside the house, though we haven’t done a full integration yet. If she’s out with the other hens I make sure I’m right there with them. The other ones mostly leave the chicks alone, though our Barred Rock did peck pretty hard at one and a few of them have gone at the mama.

They’ve mostly been sticking to the coop, but it’s been nice out and they’re getting a bit bored locked in a dog kennel all day, even if it is a big one, so I brought them outside to run around for a bit.

Mama ventured out first to look around, but then the babies followed soon after. They’re around two weeks old now.

Meredith wanted to name them water names, because she decided they like water. So we’ve called them Calypso, Neptune, and Doris. In the above two pictures the other hens were around, and mostly leaving them alone, but then I wanted to go inside and didn’t want to leave them out unprotected yet so I put them in our fenced off garden area.

I threw a pumpkin in with them, and it was pretty fun to watch them go at it.

I went inside for a little bit and came out to check on them (though we can also see that area from our window), and discovered all the other hens standing watching them as if they were watching a movie.

Though a little later we watched a crow swoop down at them, which freaked mama out and she went running. I had a scary moment when I ran out there when I couldn’t find one of the babies, but she was hiding near a log. I ended up locking them back up in the kennel again for a day, which is too bad because they really enjoy running around. The area is way too big to put any kind of cover over though, so I’m going to have to think of something else or just risk it. The cubes we used for the chicks last time have been repurposed as book shelves so won’t work, but we have some scrap wire I could probably bang together into some sort of makeshift tractor for them. Then I can even put them with the other hens and let them mingle but they’d have a safe place to escape to too.

This chicken thing is turning out to be a lot of fun and a good learning experience for us all. We’ve learned so much about chicken reproduction and how they raise their babies through books and, of course, watching it first hand.

For anyone who is interested, there’s a page about all our chickens too.

Now that the weather has started to get nicer, we’ve been getting out more and meet more people and other kids. We’re actually supposed to be going to an LLL meeting in 15 minutes but Fiona fell asleep and she’s been sick, so I’m not sure if we’ll end up making it or not. Depends on when she wakes up.

There is a local, homeschooled teen who is going to start coming over one afternoon every other week, and in return I’m going to teach her piano. She came over last week and Meredith adored her and had a lot of fun. To start with, she’ll likely mostly play with Meredith while I wear Fiona and get some things done around the house. I’m hopeful that as Fiona gets older she’ll be able to play with both girls.

Anyway, the sun is shining, and there is lots to do! I’m going to try and post more but as the days gets nicer we’ll see if that happens.

We’ve planted our fruit trees, and the ground they’re in is just solid clay in some areas. I have sheet mulched one area, but realized very quickly that there is no way I will get the entire area sheet mulched this year. A friend suggested a way to kill the grass naturally and help the soil rejuvenate somewhat, but even that seemed like a lot of work considering everything else we need to get done. So I’ve decided instead to use green manures in an effort to bring nutrients to the surface, break up the clay, and provide some organic materials to the soil.

That side of the house always has a lot of birds (unlike the other side, where I’ve hung our bird feeder, go figure), so it seemed like a good time to try seed balls. I will mention now that though I will write the “proper” way to do it, we didn’t technically do it correctly. The seeds are ones I happened to have on hand from a couple of years ago, and I’m not certain they’re still viable anyway. I also miscalculated how many seeds I had and didn’t make enough of the clay/compost mixture for the amount of seeds, but didn’t have room in the bucket for much more. Oh well, we had fun making them and if these ones don’t sprout we’ll do a real batch a little later.

Seed balls

Mix together 5 parts dry red clay*, 3 parts dry compost, and 1 part seeds**. (My materials were all soaked since it’s been raining here, which is the biggest way we didn’t do it “right”.)

Once the dry materials are all mixed together, start adding about 1-2 parts water. You want the mixture to be wet enough it will stick together, but still easy to work with and roll into balls. I’ve seen pictures of people using cement mixers to make these, and when the right amount of water is added they will actually form into balls on their own. This probably doesn’t work as well doing it by hand though. We skipped this step since our materials were more than wet enough.

Next, pinch off pieces of the mixture and form them into balls. The balls should be about pea to marble sized. Lay the balls out in the sun to dry out. (We skipped this step too, and it is fairly optional if you are getting a lot of rain at the time you make these.) Then spread them around the area you are trying to seed. About one ball per square foot is the right amount. Once you get enough rain, the seeds should germinate and sprout.

I wasn’t sure how much Meredith would be interested in this, but she actually seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. She has been asking a lot about the various soils and mulches I’ve been using, wanting to know the differences between compost, top soil, bark mulch, etc, so we talked about about why we were using the materials we used and what they would do for the seed ball. Then she helped roll all the balls and had a blast spreading them around.

This could be a fun thing for kids to make at a party with a butterfly flower mix or something, and then bring some home with them (if you can think of a way to dry them out faster without killing them), or make them ahead and send them home in the favour bags.

* The clay from your garden won’t work as well as potter’s clay. Part of my garden actually has red clay which is what I used, since I didn’t want to go to the expense of potter’s clay if the seed wouldn’t even germinate. I’m sure it’s not the same as the benzonite clay most of the instructions recommend.

** I used some Dutch clover, a revegetation mix meant for our area, and some mustards and greens.

My plan with this move has always been to start small and build from there, so as not to overwhelm ourselves. So that’s why we will soon have 17 chickens and I placed an order for thirteen fruit trees, as well as various berry bushes and shrubs. Now we just need to build a coop and some runs, clear the area where the trees are going, and dig some holes. I guess that’s my idea of starting small.

The chicks are doing really well. We had a bit of a scare the other night when a tree knocked out the power to our house for about twelve hours. The room got really chilly and the younger chicks were obviously cold, so we lit a fire and I moved them into the small tote they had been in originally in front of the fire. I checked them a couple of minutes later and the heat was up over 100F and the chicks were now obviously too hot. In order to get the temperature right, we had to keep them in the rabbit hutch with the fire going and a window (not near the coop so no drafts) open, and add more wood to the fire about every 45 minutes (and of course this happened in the evening… it was a long night).

Yesterday was pretty nice out, so we brought the two older chicks outside for a few minutes. They pretty much stood in the tote and stared out at the grass. I even tried bribing them with crickets but they’d only go for them if they were in the tote too. The look on Meredith’s face in the picture above pretty much sums up how thrilled she is with having chickens in the house.

The chicks are really comfortable around Meredith, which is nice. Fiona and her fast movements and loudness don’t seem to both them much either. My favourite is the little Dorking cross. She comes racing to the door when I open it, and is really sweet with us. She’s bossy with the other chicks though. She will grab a cricket right out of the bigger one’s mouths and push past them. Makes me wonder if she’ll end up being the top hen. (And if she ends up being a rooster, maybe she’ll be the one we keep if she’s still this funny and sweet when she’s bigger.) Here’s a little video of her running to the door, grabbing a cricket, and then the rest of the birds coming to see what I’m up to. This was taken yesterday. Today, four of the five birds will come right to the door when I open it.

Chicks

Having the chicks actually here has really motivated me to look more into some ideas that had previously piqued my interest but I haven’t had much of a chance to look into yet. I’ve been reading about open-air coops, and have that book coming into our library. (Hopefully soon, we need to get our coop built.)

I’ve also been reading about feeding chickens from the land and homemade chicken feed. That topic is pretty confusing, since so many places say commercial feed only, but since that’s what most people say about cat and dog food too (and we raw feed them), I’m skeptical. I’ve found quite a bit of interesting information now about feeding chickens more naturally, and feel we can probably feed them at least mostly off our land in the summer for sure. I’ve found some information on sprouting grains and homemade food that I want to find out more about before winter.

The Orpingtons are six weeks old and the rest are two weeks old. I’m actually kind of glad now that we have them that we started with older chicks. They’re not as fragile as day olds and Meredith can hold them and love on them (gently), and hopefully by the time we get the day olds they won’t be such a novelty. It also gives us a little leeway as far as the learning curve.

Anyway, here they are. I’m aware that the tote they’re in is way too small. That’s what happens when you buy chicks when you weren’t planning on it. We plan to move them into a rabbit hutch we have that’s quite a bit bigger, as well as off the ground and more cat proof. We also ended up moving the light that’s on them. They don’t need nearly that much heat at their age. I’ll take better pictures of them as they become a little more comfortable with us. This was just a snapshot I got last night when it was pretty dark already.