Spring on the Backyard Farm

 Our city farming chores began this spring with re-queening our beehive.  The colony successfully survived it's second winter, which makes us happy, and content with our version of beekeeping that is a little more hands-off than many beekeepers.  However, after the swarming and subsequent self-re-queening that occurred last summer, we ended up with a pretty  grouchy colony in the fall.  Our first attempts to check in on them this spring reconfirmed their general anti-social genepool so we made the decision to re-queen.

We ordered our new queen and tried to keep her alive long enough for it to stop raining so we could do the ol' switcheroo.  What we needed to do was systematically go through the hive to find the old queen, dispatch her, leave the hive queen-less for two days until they were getting nervous about not having a queen around, then introduce the new queen causing a wave of relief amid the bees to increase their likelihood of "accepting" her. 

We don't use marked queens, so in our three seasons of beekeeping, we've only seen our queen one other time, so we knew it was going to be difficult to find her.  Adding to that the grouchy (read: sting-happy) colony, and poor spring weather we knew we were in for quite the needle in a haystack hunt.  But we suited up, ultimately prevailed, and I was the only one that ended up getting stung.  (On my big belly of course, because I couldn't button up my bee shirt over the baby!)  But, the colony is now busily buzzing away for the season.

 The chickens all weathered the winter fine and began laying again mid-February.  But mid-March we went on vacation for spring break.  We were only going to be gone a few days so we simply filled up the chickens' water and food and left.  We came back to a big pile of 14 eggs in the laying box, and thought it had all gone off smoothly.

 Until we realized that the two bantams (our 3rd-year mini-hens) wouldn't leave the nesting box, and had stopped laying their little miniature eggs.  That big pile of eggs in the nesting box made their mothering instincts kick into gear, so all they could think about was raising baby chicks.  So they stopped laying eggs, and would sit all day in the nesting box trying to hatch the (unfertilized) eggs the other hens were laying.

Florence finally broke out of this broody nonsense about 4-5 weeks after we got back, but Gertrude, here, is still going strong in her broodiness.  We may have to take some drastic measures (more drastic than me going out a couple of times a day and just tossing her out into the run off the laying box) to get her to knock it off.

Since we don't know how long we'll be here we didn't get any laying hen chicks this year--but it's really hard to resist those baby chicks at the farm store.   Jeremy decided he really wanted to raise a few meat birds instead.  So we just picked up the one breed our store carried--the Cornish Cross.

We were already a bit morally opposed to the breed (they're the ones that have been bred to grow so quickly that they often die of heart attacks before reaching their 7-week accelerated maturation date because their hearts just can't keep up), but after raising them we are even more certain that we would never buy that breed again.  The crazy thing is, they not only grow too fast for their heart, but I think they grow too fast for their brains too!  They were so stupid--for lack of a better word--but when you thought about it, it made sense because they were really just baby chicks still, but had the bodies of full-grown chickens.

They just seemed a little more sickly as well.  We never put them around the other chickens--there's a risk of the chicks having disease from their hatchery, so since they weren't going to be permanent members of the flock, we didn't risk putting them together.  They had really watery droppings.  But once they got big enough that we let them start wandering the yard a little bit (so they were eating grass and things) their droppings solidified.  That just reconfirmed the validity of some of our chicken-raising practices as well. 

Sadly, (icky real-life stuff ahead warning) we came home from church last week to find the chickens had been attacked.  Our best guess is it was a yappy- neighborhood dog, because it attacked all four of them, they were all wounded on their back-sides (like they were running away from something), but it wasn't actually able to kill any of them--it left that job for Jeremy and me.  So, we processed the birds, cutting the meat away from their nipped backsides, freezing the rest, and making stock from the carcasses. 

One of the saddest things about this is that one of the reasons we raise our own birds, is to give them a less traumatic existence and death than the commercial alternative.  We want them to live happily and die peacefully.  So, unfortunately this was not a calm, humane death for our chickens, we don't know how long they were out there wounded after being attacked.  But, these are the realities of keeping animals, and on a country farm it would just be foxes and hawks we'd be dealing with instead.  This simply is the reality of animal husbandry.

But these experiences do make us feel like we've earned the right to call ourselves backyard "farmers". 

 

And since we have no immediate plans to leave we added summer crops to our vegetable garden.   The peas, broccoli, cabbage, onions, and kale were already doing well, so we added tomatoes, peppers, basil, and some runner beans.  We will still be adding more, but this spring was really crazy.  We got snow 10 days after our "last annual frost date" this year!  So everything is a bit behind.

And who knows with the baby coming (this week, maybe? please!) this may be all the planting we get to this summer.  But, there's always fall crops!

Trust the Chickens

 We let our chickens roam free in our backyard almost every day.  They love to scratch all through our yard, eating bugs and grass.

We noticed last summer that there was a certain weed that they also liked eating.  We would pick them and hold them out for the chickens to eat.  And they would seek them out on their own as well. 

A week ago I was reading a blog that identified (all the way down at the bottom) our mystery weed as lamb's quarters.   I'd heard of lamb's quarters before as a wild edible suitable for people to eat as well.  I guess we'll have to give them a try sometime.  

The scientific name is chenopodium album and lots of people eat it in any way they would eat spinach or other greens.  Some people even plant certain varieties of it where it doesn't grow naturally. 

I guess the chickens aren't as dumb as people think--maybe we should pay closer attention from now on to whatever else the chickens are eating as well. 

Spring Additions

 We're adding to our backyard flock this year.  I went to "the farm store" intent on getting some chicks that would lay blue eggs--just for fun of course--but we couldn't get over how cute the little bantam chicks were.
So we brought home four bantam chicks instead.

 Bantams are basically "mini chickens"  Their adult size will be only half or a third the size of our other chickens.

 After a few weeks in doors we put them outside with the other chickens.  They are doing well out there however when we come over they run away like we are their natural predators as opposed to the truth: we are the ones with their food.

Sometimes you can't help but yell, "Oh, don't be such a chicken!"

The bantams all look totally different, from each other and our older three chickens. They add a lot of personality to the flock.

 After checking out our city code we agreed to accept four more chicks last week from an elementary class that "hatched them".  They are the basic yellow leghorn chicks and will grow up to lay white eggs. With a straight run of chicks there's a 50/50 chance of being hens or roosters.  In reality we could end up this year with up to 8 hens or up to 8 roosters (I hope it's the first one).

Our city code actually doesn't forbid roosters like many do.  And there isn't a maximum flock size either.  They simply regulate the position of your coop in relation to the neighbors.  Also, they prohibit letting your poultry run at large through the city.  That may sound like a pretty strict regulation for chickens, but rest assured the code also prohibits letting rhinoceroses, and chimpanzees run at large through the city as well--yes by name. 

I am a little nervous about how many eggs we'll be getting.  We're getting two eggs a day from the older chickens.  If 4 of 8 are hens that will be an additional 4 eggs a day their first year.  Of course the bantams will lay mini-eggs.  So I only think we'll have trouble with too many eggs if more than 4 are hens.

Afterall, I do have three young boys to feed now, so we may be just fine.  I've been amazed lately at how quickly we have been going through food.  Jonas is just really starting to eat more, and Wyatt has recently gotten old enough to start eating some of everything we're having.  We used to be able to snack on a pint of grape tomatoes over the course of a few days.  Now that pint is easily gone in one snack lunch.

That's precisely the reason I like having chickens--If we are going to keep (and invest money into) animals for the fun and entertainment of the family--why not have them be animals that provide for some of the physical needs of the family as well?  Everyone is happy.

Poultry Statistics

In the beginning we bought four chicks for our backyard flock.  One turned out to be a rooster, so we ate it. But it was part of our plan that if it turned out one was a rooster-we would still have three hens.  (If two were roosters then we'd just be outta' luck!)  Chickens are social and so three is a good minimum to have.  And we really thought that the products of three hens would be quite plenty enough eggs to have as well.

Well, when we move from here and set up a new "homestead"  we are officially getting more chickens.  We need more eggs.  We've started buying eggs from the store again.  There's a number of reasons.

The first time we bought eggs in a year and a half was at the end of this summer during the hottest 2 weeks of the year.  The chickens couldn't take the heat and their laying almost stopped. It picked up again once it cooled down a touch.  Also, Buffy is molting, and has been for a little while.  This is common in the fall.  The other day I saw quite a few of Super Girl's Feathers around and wondered if she might be starting as well.  The decreasing day length in the fall can also be a reason for slowed production. 

But the most annoying reason of all -- the stupid chickens are pecking their eggs!!! It makes me want to say threatening things to them like: "What do you think we keep you around for?  This ain't no chicken resort.  you'd better start pulling your weight around here or I'm gonna turn you into chicken stock!"  But that doesn't really fit with our feelings about a respectful slaughter, and probably isn't a good sentiment for my boys to repeat, so I restrain my tongue.  But it does make me really mad. 

Egg-production does naturally decrease with age--but most chickens lasting a good 2-3 years.  So maybe the answer for next time is not more chickens initially- but a chicken rotation.  Start out with a few chicks, and get a few more each spring.  Then turn the 3-year-olds into soup. 

Sounds like a plan.

Trouble in the Henhouse

 We had an unwelcome visitor to the backyard a few weeks back. . . a chicken hawk!

I heard a ruckus in the backyard and sent Jeremy out to feed the chickens.  Owen ran in telling me there was an "eagle" in the backyard.  Well, that "eagle" had cornered Tomato by the run and attacked her. 

--we think--

It's kind of hard to pin everything together, but this is what we know: 

After admiring and taking pictures of the "eagle" for a while I walked over to the corner by the run and found a giant pile of red feathers.  (Big enough for me to wonder. . .)  So I looked around for Tomato, and found her clucking around. . . without a single feather left on her little chicken bum!  Just her little pink bum, and a fresh little trickle of blood running down one side. 

So either the hawk went for her and was scared off by Jeremy and the boys coming outside, or Buffy and Super Girl have been wanting to taker her on and just waited to make their move until the unsuspecting chicken hawk hapened to be suspiciously swooping around in complete innocence. 

You decide.  CSI: The Chicken Chronicles. 

 Chickens and little boys. . . They're always up to something mischievous. 

And Tomato survived through the quality care I gave her injury by doing absolutely nothing.  And (thank goodness for her little chicken self-esteem) her tail feathers are now almost completely regrown.

How Does Your Garden?

We got a late start on our garden this year. I had the baby as Kansas reached it's annual last frost date. So we definitely didn't get out much those first few weeks of prime gardening season, but we've been trying hard to play catch up since then.

We revamped the chicken coop and run early this spring. We let the chickens roam the whole yard over the winter, but as soon as spring hit they were eating up any green thing that dared pop out of the ground. So, we fenced in a corner of the yard--that way they could have more open space than last year, but the plant life in the rest of the yard could be safe.

They were really mad at us for fencing them in, but they're getting over it.

The back yard is starting to make real progress. We've planted potatoes, peas, two kinds of onions, and beets.
We're starting to see our first successes in our little garden. We gave the first of the peas to the boys. We want to keep them excited about the family garden.

But really, what's not to love about digging in the dirt?

They are boys afterall.

What to Cook with Eggs

Spring is here, and Easter is near. That means it's time to take advantage of the big sales on eggs at the grocery stores. That is, if you aren't lucky enough to have your own laying hens.

We love our backyard flock. There's something amazing to be said for the feeling of walking 10 feet out your back door and returning with nutritious food. With three hens we get approximately 2-3 eggs a day or 18 eggs a week. Well, what in the world do we do with our 18 eggs a week?

Whatever we want!

Eggs are useful in so many different ways. As we are exploring all the uses of our eggs I thought it would be fun to catalog them and create a new recipe feature on my blog:


First, for the curious (or skeptical) our eggs are consistently the size of normal grocery store "large" eggs--sometimes even bigger.

This will vary based on the breed of chicken you have, but for us we can use our eggs in baking recipes without any concern.

At first we stored our eggs in old egg cartons, but those break down over time, so recently we found this fun thing in the camping section:

It's sturdy, stackable, reusable and holds a dozen eggs. Jeremy marked one end "NEW" with a sharpie and we rotate the eggs down as we use the "older" ones. And when the carton is full that means it's really time to make something.

Below please find a listing of things we have made using our eggs. I will link the recipes as I add them, along with adding more recipes, then they can be accessed as a group by clicking on the "Using Eggs" button on the top of my blog.

(I'm not sure about how to organize the categories so it might change)

Breakfast:
Crepes
French toast
McMuffins
Scrambled eggs
Soft-boiled egg
Swedish pancakes
Cowboy Toast

Lunch:
Egg-salad sandwiches
Hard boiled eggs
Huevos rancheros
Poached egg salad

Dinner:
Fritatta
Quiche
Cheese Souffle
Pasta carbonera
Baked eggs in marinara

Dessert:
Creme brule
Meringue topping
Meringue cookies
Pudding
Cream puffs

Extras:
Egg wash for breads and pastries
Coating ingredient for frying shrimp etc.

Not to mention all the baked goods from pancakes to cookies that use eggs as one of a dozen ingredients.

Cooped Up

After a long rainy gloomy week it's finally starting to feel like spring around here again.

But with the rain and consistently above-freezing temperatures, little green things have started to shoot up all over the yard. This is wonderful except for the fact that our chickens, who have been free-ranging it most of the winter like to eat tender green shoots.

So. . . sorry chickens, but you're gonna get fenced in.

Since we've apparently established that there are minimal natural predators of the urban chicken in our neighborhood (aka. none have them have been eaten yet), we're just fencing off a corner of our yard instead of re-doing the all-enclosed type chicken run I built originally. This way the chickens will have more room to move about, and will hopefully be content.

So this afternoon as Owen and I were watching Jeremy work on the back side of the coop, we could hear Jonas at the front side, squawking in to Tomato who was trying, amid all the chaos, do do her chickenly duty up in the roosting box.

After a few minutes I decided to check up on him.

Ok, so he was apparently being more bothersome to Tomato than I had originally thought.


"See mom there is this little bar that's the perfect height for me to sit on and be right next to my chicken."

Peek-a-boo!


Yes, he thought he was so clever.

And you'll have to excuse the blurriness of this picture. See, there's only so long that I can stay in a squat before this belly throws me off balance and I topple over backwards.

And if you came here for your daily dose of humorous Owen antics. . . Look back at the first picture and notice the 4-inch nail sticking out of the front of the coop. That was Owen equipping the coop with "guns" (aka. anything long and skinny that sticks out from something bigger).

You never know these days, even the most humble chicken coop should be fully defensible.

Frozen Chicken(s)

On Monday the chickens didn't seem overly stressed out by the moderate dusting of snow we had received the night before. They pretty much went around the yard up to their normal shenanigans.

The only difference was their resemblance to a flock of flamingos standing on one foot whenever they needed a break. Apparently their "feet were cold." Who knew.

That night they slept in their coop, but were chagrined to wake up to about 3 solid inches of snow on he ground. All day Tuesday they simply sat under their coop refusing to set a single foot on the snow. This did present a problem as the new heated water bowl we bought them only has a 6-foot cord and they would not venture over to the side of the house where it was.

To make matters worse the forecast predicted -5 degrees for that night. We'd been talking over ideas for a while of what we thought we should do for their winter situation, but never acted. So now the time came that required immediate action.

So Tuesday night in the dark, with 4 inches of snow on the ground, amid a swirling snowstorm, and a toddler crying out the screen door at us the whole time (because he'd refused to let us put a hat on him and then tore his boots off during his temper tantrum and therefore was not allowed outside. . . ) Jeremy and I detached the run from the chicken coop and lifted the coop (trying-to-sleep-chickens and all), and carried it 20 feet to the side of our house, and shoveled out a spot for it to sit.


There it will hopefully be more protected from the wind, have a bit of insulation on the one side, and be close enough to the outlet that we could put a heat lamp in there for them, and so that when we get the run connected to it again that their heated water bowl will be within the walls of their run.

Being farmers isn't easy.

The coop definitely doesn't look pretty right now. We've got to get the run reattached before we leave for Christmas so the chickens will be protected, and we probably should replace their sagging roof. But as it was Jeremy thought the humble conditions looked seasonally appropriate. All we need is a manger to add to our impromptu crèche and we'd have our very own "Live Nativity" scene.

Eggs

It has begun!

Reflections on the Task

Slaughtering our rooster was definitely a strange and thought-provoking experience. One thing that helped me to "frame" the situation better in my head was talking to Owen about what was happening and why. The task of putting in to simple words the reasoning behind what we were doing actually helped me to deal with it better.

As explained to our four year-old:

We don't want to kill the rooster. It doesn't make us happy to do it. But the rooster is really noisy and he is mean to the other chickens pecking them, so we have to. But our Heavenly Father has given us animals for us to eat to make us strong and healthy. He wants us to use animals while giving thanks for them. And do we eat chicken every night? No, we don't. Heavenly Father has told us to eat animals "sparingly" that means not all the time, but sometimes to help make us strong and healthy.

One of my concerns going into it was the attitude with which we did the whole thing. I wanted to be sure we had a humble attitude, realizing that we were going to be killing a living thing.

We also realized that we were not making the decision then to kill it. The decision had been made when we first bought the chicks, that if one ended up as a rooster we would be willing to deal with the repercussions. So we were simply choosing what we felt was the most responsible and decent thing to do.

One irresponsible option people choose is abandoning unwanted animals in the wild- where they starve or are eaten by other animals. Another option could be to try and give it away, but in reality most people don't "want" a rooster, anyone in a position and of the temperament to keep roosters have enough already. Also, in that situation we would still be "loosing" our rooster, which would still be sad for us. Another option might be to give it to someone else to slaughter either for their own use or for ours.

Obviously we chose the option we felt good about. To respectfully slaughter the rooster ourselves, try and waste as little as possible, and to use it all for the benefit of our family.

In the end I think it was an experience I feel good about. It was not pleasant by any means. However, I kind of feel like I have a little more right to eat chicken now, because I have been through the process and know what it involves. And although it may seem cruel and heartless I think its more responsible than going out and buying 20lb bags of skinless, boneless "white meat" breasts while never thinking twice about where it came from.

Although I was worried about Owen's perception of the event, I hope that this will be a learning experience for him as well. I've said before we want to teach our children that food comes from nature, not just tin cans. (I'm pretty sure he gets it in this instance!)

On the other hand, I don't plan on doing this regularly. Lets hope that this lesson on respecting our food was enough to last a lifetime. And on a lighter note, in another month or two we'll start getting our free-range, fresh-air, 100% more-love-than-the-leading-brand chicken eggs. We can't wait!

Coq au Vin

***I promise this post will not be graphic, unless you consider looking at the chicken you buy at the grocery store graphic***

Saturday was the day we became true urban farmers. In keeping with our farming theme of the day we stopped by this liquor store to get our Pinot Noir. I don't know what the legalities are, but the only alcohol they sell in grocery stores here are 12-packs of beer--not quite what we needed for Coq au Vin. Also we stopped here, because I really wanted to take picture of the marquee. Hil-arious. And kind of scary.

Since we are not experienced in buying alcohol, Jeremy picked out a wine based solely on its label. See the monkeys? Did you catch the name of the wine? Say it out loud if you didn't catch it yet. . . yeah classy.

Surprisingly, none of our friends showed up to help us slaughter our rooster. We tried to do the whole thing without much fuss, tried to be as quick as possible, and tried to do it when the boys were distracted and not looking on.

Jeremy and I did OK with the whole process, but in the end my squeamishness demanded that we remove all the skin from the meat so I could be sure all the feathers were gone. We ended up with something that looked pretty similar to what you get in the grocery store. (Rainbow Bright was about the same age as broiler/fryers that they sell in the grocery store.) It just took 4 hours longer than a trip to the grocery store.

The skin was too hard to remove from the wings, so those went in a plastic bag in the freezer along with the carcass to make homemade chicken broth some other time.

We used Alton Brown's recipe for Coq au Vin. It is a two day process in itself, so we began Saturday evening.
Sunday dinner was, I would say, a success. (aka. no one started gagging upon taking the first bite of Rainbow Brite)

It's funny to me that we in America think of Coq au Vin as a fancy french dish that they serve in restaurants, but really it is peasant food. Peasants are the ones that couldn't afford to waste even the tough old meat on an old rooster. So they mixed it all up with a lot of strong flavors and then cooked it for a really long time to try and make it tender.

So, I wouldn't say the dish was my favorite. It seemed very heavy, but I may have liked it more in the winter time, when heavy dishes taste so cozy. Jeremy says he wants to make it again some time-but with storebought chicken, so I guess we'll see. That would be assuming that I'll ever eat chicken again! More on my thought about that subject in a few days.

Chicken Capers

The thing about baby chicks is it's hard to tell if they are a girl baby chick or a boy baby chick. It takes someone trained on order to "identify" the correct chicken parts to tell the difference. Once they are sorted the girls or pullets are sold in a group called a "sexed run" (aka you know what sex they are.) Chicks from a sexed run generally cost a bit more than chicks from a "straight run" (aka a group of chicks whose gender is --as of yet-- undetermined)

When we went to go buy our chicks we wanted to get a variety of breeds--to make our backyard flock more interesting. The problem was most of the chicks were in straight runs. In the end we bought two sexed chicks, two from straight runs, and crossed our fingers.

This little chick was the one we named Rainbow Bright. We named her that because she was from a run of assorted rainbow layers-meaning they can be different breeds in the group but they are all supposed to be good egg-laying pullets(girls).

After a few weeks Rainbow Brights comb and waddle started growing in. Wow, we thought, That's strange hers has started to grow in before the others even though she is the youngest chick.

And as she continued to grow (along with her waddle and comb) we tried to convince ourselves, She's maybe just a different breed with a more pronounced comb.

Finally, early one morning (Fathers' Day actually) I was laying in bed with my baby, and I heard heard it

"Cock-a-doooooo!"

=pause=

"Cock-a-dooooooooo!"



A ROOSTER!

Well I suppose "Rainbow Bright" was quite a fitting name after all.

The trouble is, we don't have room for a rooster in our backyard flock. For one thing he's rather noisy. He serenaded us this morning (our first morning back) for about 20 minutes. And really--How long do you think the neighbors are going to stand for it?

Secondly, I've heard that roosters are embarrassingly relentless when it comes to performing their "man of the flock" responsibilities. I'm just not quite ready to explain that to my 4-year-old.

So to cut to the point--while still skirting around it--I guess it's good that our new set of Good Eats included Coq au Vin (rooster in wine). It's also a good thing we live in Kansas, because I need to follow the yellow brick road to ask the Wizard for some more courage. I'm going to need it.

Earth Day Sunshine

Since it was a beautiful Earth Day, we decided to let the chickens out to actually experience it for their first time.


They found a worm and hilariously chased each other around snatching it back and forth.



The rest of us enjoyed swinging in the hammock Aunt Kara brought us back from Puerto Rico. (Though it apparently causes some static electricity!)



The hammock is perfect for two boys.



Or a boy and a mom.

A beautiful day!