Chickens!

I’ve been researching breeds for our hens for the past few weeks and have narrowed the decision down to three:  Black Australorp, Barred Plymouth Rock, and Buckeye.  Each of these is an above average layer, cold hardy, docile and friendly, and adaptable to free range and confinement. Further, I can’t stand seeing any of my girls get bullied, so I wanted to make sure that for the most part each type of bird we got would get along in a mixed flock.  Since our girls will get names and end up being backyard pets,  we chose breeds that would enjoy our company and allow my daughter to carry them around and sit on her lap (as she does with my neighbor Mary’s chickens).

Thanks to Mary who blogs at http://columbiaurbanhens.wordpress.com/, I will be ordering our hens through Bourne feed who gets their shipments from http://www.cacklehatchery.com a hatchery in southern Missouri. All the images below are from Cackle Hatchery.

The Buckeye is a somewhat rare breed from Ohio.  Buckeyes are known for being easily handled and friendly, and are very cold hardy. She will grow to be about 6 1/2 pounds and produce about 3-4 eggs a week. I like the idea of supporting hatcheries that carry rare breeds and the Buckeye fits the profile of the kind of hen I would like to have around.  She’s pretty isn’t she!

The Barred Plymouth Rock will mature to about 7 1/2 pounds and is considered a good layer as well as meat bird.  Plymouth Rocks apparently have increased in popularity along with the rise in popularity of backyard chickens in general.  They are considered dependable, calm and adaptable birds.

I am most excited about the Black Australorp hens!  I love the silky black feathers that look iridescent in the sunlight.  These are also considered above average layers with about 5 eggs per week, very calm and docile and cold hardy.  Some folks have reported that these are very broody (sits on the nest to attempt to hatch her eggs), even annoyingly so, but I’ll take the risk.  Gorgeous!

Even though the city of Columbia limits backyard chickens to 6 hens (no roosters), I will likely order 3 of each because of the likelihood that some of them will be sexed wrong.  If not, having a couple extra hens will be fine with me!

Update!  When I called the feed store to make my order they had a minimum of 5 per breed.  After talking with my girl, we decided to go for 5 Buckeyes since they aren’t sexed and we will just get two random bantoms when we pick them up.  The Austrolorps are on back order until the end of May.  We can’t keep roosters in the city, so we can order Austrolorps later in the season to replace what roosters will have to go.

Can you guess this plant?

This is one of my all time favorite medicinal plants. I use it as a simple (on it’s own) for easing irritation of mouth sores, decreasing pain from repetitive use injuries, and easing tension.  I often combine it with wood betony.  Those of you who’ve used my medicinal tinctures have likely come across this herb already.  Any good guesses out there?  I’ll post a full profile of this plant in the next few days.

Seedling Update

Heirloom Red Onions

A variety of greens planted on Valentines Day sprouting around Fall planted Garlic Can you see their little purple leaves?

Kale

Other things sprouting:  broccoli, carrots, skullcap, gravel root, hyssop, witch hazel and brussel sprouts.

Look What Came in the Mail!

Horizon Herbs is my favorite medicinal herb supplier.  They provide detailed information about how to grow each plant from seed, growing conditions and common medicinal uses.  Many of the herbs I ordered this year require cold conditioning.  After seeds are planted, they are exposed to fluctuating temperatures in order to mimic the plant’s natural rhythm of casting seeds in the fall to over winter and sprout in the spring.  I have already started several seeds in the hoop house where they will be protected from hard rains and wind but will still experience minor freeze and thaw conditions.  By the time I am ready to start my veggies, the herbs will be ready to move to bigger pots or be transplanted to the garden.

Hoop House

Lots of left over mess to clear out from the foundation project

Lots of southwest light.  Location is behind the greasy spider.

Moved the pallets the Fergus brought over to where the new compost piles will go.

Screwed together a 2×4 foundation for an 8×10 frame.

Connecting PVC in the center with stinky chemicals and lots of bad jokes.

Attach the PVC ends to the 2×4 foundation with brackets.

Dave came to help too.  The ends of the house are framed with wood.  A better design is to put the door in the middle, but we put very little effort into making this project the ‘right’ way.  I was competing with Jamie’s commitment to the True False Film festival work to get this done.

Framed in a quick door

Seedling table in. Ready for plastic wrap.

It says its clear, but it was very opaque.  Unfortunately, we could not find clear plastic that was the right size. We ended up having to use two pieces to stretch over the top.  Not ideal.

The south side can be rolled up for venting.

Green Valentine

Have you planted your greens yet?  It’s time!  Every year on Valentine’s Day I sprinkle lettuce and spinach seeds in a few spots around the garden.  Even if the ground is covered with snow or ice, lettuce likes the cold and will sprout as soon as the ground softens. Sometimes I don’t quite get it done ON Valentines Day, but always within a week or so.  You can have multiple fresh crops of greens staggered throughout early summer by waiting a week or two between plantings.  This works better if your later season plantings are in  cool shady spots so that they will resist bolting.  Or, plan so that your last plantings of lettuce will grow under a larger veggie that will keep it cool and shaded.

Where Have We Been?

Since September a lot has happened on the Kroll Homestead.  Our biggest accomplishment was supporting, digging out and re-pouring  a new foundation under our house! But, as soon as we got the dirt put back around the house and installed the temporary steps up to the front door, Jamie fell off a roof and shattered his calcaneus (heel bone).  That happened in mid October.  Three months and one surgery later, he is now almost off of crutches and graduating to a cane. Jamie was not allowed to put any weight on his foot at all for 2 months, which was one month less than originally expected because he has been healing well. But, needless to say, the foundation project, front porch, and kitchen addition have been on hold all winter as well as my original plans to have a chicken coop and green house up by spring.  I had intended to write in more detail about the foundation, but at this point I think I’ll just post a few pictures.  I also planned to post more about the incredible amount of support that our community has given us.  We couldn’t have made it through this without all of you!  Special thanks to all of you who fed us, ran errands, hauled wood, knocked down supports in the basement, collected grease and who kept Jamie company when he was stuck at home!  You know who you are.  We appreciate you all very much.

Some of the foundation madness that ensued….

View the entire project here. Some of the 130 photos are out of order, but you’ll get the idea.

Jamie’s foot fiasco….

6 Screws.

finally made it outside

cooking again thanks to a borrowed wheelchair!  Thanks Scout!

Ok, time to focus on upcoming spring projects!

39th Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival.

I can’t, I’m going to Winfield

Every third week in September for the past four years we take off work and pull the kids out of school to go to Winfield Kansas for the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. In a way, this has become a kind of community building project since each year we convince more and more of our community to join us.  We load up our bikes and camp necessities and share one large camp.  Each family plans to cook at least once (sometimes twice) and we share the meals communally.  This year there were 4 families and our friend David for a total of 9 adults and 7 kids.  In fact, this may be the first year that adults out numbered the kids!

We always bring our 1963 Airstream travel trailer named Charlotte and pack her full of bikes, bedding, a communal keg of Schlafly APA, and whatever doesn’t fit in our friend’s cars.  We fit 6 bikes in Charlotte this year including my xtra cycle!   The best part is that we don’t concern ourselves with any political guilt pulling such a heavy rig because Jamie collects used fryer grease from local restaurants, filters it, and burns it as fuel.  We have to use a little bit of diesel, but we only spent about $40 to go nearly 700 miles round trip.

Jamie is filtering grease and filling up cubies for the trip

All the cubies and containers get wrapped in plastic and stored in the back of the Suburban.  Jamie always brings extra filters just in case one gets clogged on the way.

This year was by far the most pain free trip we’ve taken to Winfield. Something has gone wrong every year between adjusting to using a greasel system and problems with pulling a vintage trailer.   The only problem we ran into this year was getting stuck in the mud at the festival as we pulled into the camp ground. There had been a major storm and a tornado there the night before that destroyed many campsites and turned the roads into mud pits. We thought we would be fine since we have four wheel drive. But about 1/4 of the way to our site we got stuck because the four wheel drive wouldn’t engage. Fortunately, there was another rig stuck up the road and a nice farmer with a tractor was already there pulling them out. The tractor ended up pulling us out twice and hauling us right into our camp site.

covered in mud, but happy to be back to our walnut valley home!

Food not Lawns

yep, that’s corn.

Well, I guess we did do one major gardening project when we moved.  We were able to purchase two houses next door to each other.  We live in one, and the other is our workshop, affectionately called “The Greasy Spider” (more on that later).  We knew when we bought our houses, that the one we live in would require a new foundation so there was no point in establishing any gardens until that was finished.  However, the front yard of the shop was a solid mass of bermuda grass that seemed like a waste of space, and I hated to mow it.  I decided to try an experiment to get rid of the bermuda grass and make a front yard garden.  The challenge was that bermuda grass is extremely invasive with an underground root system that is not only tough, but one little nodule of root will start a new plant.  Plus, the roots can just go dormant and grow back later.  This project took two years and is just now ready to plant for the spring.  Here’s what we did:

Covered the entire yard in thick mil black plastic held down with bricks and rocks.  We left it covered for an entire year.  The neighbors had lots of questions.  Our yard became a landmark of sorts.  “we live just north of the house with the black plastic yard…”

wish I had a pic of the black plastic

We removed the black plastic and  brought in 2 large dump trailor loads of horse manure.  First layer was about six inches directly on top of the dead grass and soil.  I did not do any digging as I didn’t want to risk waking up any of the roots.  Then we covered that with a solid layer of cardboard with another couple feet or so of manure.  We let that sit for another year.

This summer I finally began digging in paths and now we have another layer of good hummusy mulch on top.  It is ready for spring planting!  So far, the only bermuda grass is what is creeping in from the edges.  I’ll just have to stay on top of pulling it out, but its better than a whole yard of it and no chemicals or pesticides were used.

I didn’t go by the books on this one. We could have used something other than just manure to layer the soil and add nutrients, but I just didn’t take the time to track down other resources. (see books on no-till gardening).  Instead, I used what was easy and available at the time.  I also let the weeds growing out of the top layer of manure get pretty out of control a couple times this summer until I finally pulled them out,  dug in my paths and brought in the mulch.  Working full time has forced me to let go of doing everything just right, and most of the time, I’d rather be sitting on my porch having a beer and playing my banjo.  Now that there is mulch, which means no weeds, I should have plenty of time to do just that.

There is no sign of bermuda roots anywhere which I hope means that they have composted and been eaten by worms.  I guess we’ll see over the next year if it really did work.

Oh, I forgot to mention, this is actually Violet’s garden.  We’ll see if she helps with the planting and planning in the spring.

Welcome to our Little Herban Homestead

We are located in Columbia Missouri on about 1/3 of an acre in the heart of the city.  For many years we have dabbled in growing our own food and medicine, raising chickens, commuting on bikes and we even recycle fryer grease to run our truck. However, very few of these projects have sustained because we’ve moved 5 times in the past 12 years.  Seems like as soon our gardens were getting established we would move.  The benefit has been that I have put in many gardens, and we’ve learned a lot about chickens, medicinal herb growing and fryer grease.

We’ve lived in our current house for 2 years now and we’ve decided we’re staying put.  We enjoy the simple life of a cheap mortgage and living close to everything we need.  We will be doing some major renovation on our home and starting from scratch with our gardens.  This will be a space to chronicle some of those projects.