weekend to do

take in this movie with the girlies. (a character that - not by coincidence! - looks like one of them! i'll let you guess...)
taxes!

around the house
paint wall with wallpaper primer
plant cut flower bed
clean out coop and chicken run. sadly we lost our sweet sweet girl chick-a-dee. sigh. many great memories. we have decided to take a chicken-keeping break, returning rhoda to her previous loving home. i'll keep you posted. xo

a bit of a zoo

the girls' friends are always excited (even the teenagers!) to spend some time with our wee menagerie. currently, we have two chickens - a rhode island red aptly named "Rhoda" and a buff orpington (from our original flock!) who answers to Chick-a-Dee; two red-eared sliders (Giselle and Juliette); and of course our pup Moxie. i spent this morning cleaning ponds, coops, treating a sour crop and conditioning a turtle shell. we don't take pet-ownership lightly - and this little zoo has had its ups and downs - lost loves and all. i have taken on ailments i never dreamt of (some the stuff of nightmares!) and am proud of the lessons e and k have learned through the journey.

i often wonder if i'd do it again.

the dog - most definitely.

the turtles (who came to us as rescues)- most likely.

the chooks (a mix of raised-from-chick and rescues) - harder call.

i love them dearly. chickens have so much more personality than i ever imagined. but i am a lousy farmer. i get too attached. and their care has been the most demanding. the girls adore them. we all do. especially Chick, who at six, is now an old lady hen, no longer laying and preferring to go to bed at 3:30 in the afternoon these winter months. (chicken life expectancy runs about 8 yrs, sheltered from predators and illness.)



i've written about backyard chicken keeping here and here.

and a bit on dog ownership here.

i imagine there could well be a horse in our future. i have one very passionate rider on my hands. and i do believe these home-zoo experiences will have prepared us for much.

the love and companionship of an animal - big or small (e used to play hide-and-seek with her goldfish!)- as well as the lessons of responsibility and care outweigh any downside in my book.

so chooks then - yes. i'd do it again, happily. i'll temper that with when we started was the right time in our lives. i'd do it again with young kids. (i don't think i'd start again now.) but who knows. bolstered by what our "zoo" has taught us all. there may be more ahead.

meet the ladies

you'll remember Chick-a-Dee perhaps.

here she is with her two newest roomates "Miss Cavendish" aka "Candy" and "Miss Rafferty" aka "Taffy". (thank you mr. nash.)

they were two scrubby rescues we took in at the end of the summer. the transition was a little bumpy at the beginning, but quickly smoothed out and now they all get along swimmingly. (and looking quite lovely if I do way so myself.)

and we are back in business!

back in business

we are home. i am back to work. the girls are at camp.

and the new hens are laying up a storm.

happy monday.

farm walk

we spent the first half of the day at Low Sizergh - part of the Castle Sizergh estate since 1239. ambling along the 1 1/2 mile farm walk loop, talking to the sheep and chickens, dancing along the creek and 400 year old hedgerow, marching through the paddock along the ancient wall, enjoying a picnic of farm cheese and local oat biscuits then looping back through the forest.

the farm is a family-operated, sustainably managed working farm, with sheep, chickens and dairy cows. (700 free-range chooks! the girls were smitten.)

little red hen.

we lost a chicken over the holidays. thankfully a very dear friend and fellow backyard chicken enthusiast was caring for them. i know she was in a good place in his gentle hands.

i wasn't going to put anything here. but found myself looking back through photos of january 2009 and our first eggs and got sad all over again.

she was an amazing chicken. a confidant. a playmate. more pet than the other two. she is greatly missed.

outside.

happy friday!

feels like spring around here

it is cool. and breezy. but sunny. and all seem to be happy about it. (including me.)

all three hens are laying again. and my greens are happy and seemingly oblivious to the triple digit temps that will be their demise in another couple of months.

until then...

clucking

part II of my piece on (sub)urban chicken keeping over at sewgreen!

talking chicken

over on the sewgreen blog today!



check it out.

birds of a feather

flattered and excited to see jumilla chooks feathers show up in this installation by one of our favourite artists!

lisa congdon's show opened last night in sf at BellJar and runs through march

as always her care toward installation looks to make this show one not to be missed. just wish we were closer...

chickens (and girls!) are very proud to be part of it!

Miss Chick-A-Dee

completely proved the notion that there is really no such thing as a truely vegetarian-fed-free-range chicken. no matter how hard we try.

she is always chasing bugs in the garden. but today. today she caught a mouse. a teeny tiny mouse. and as e and i tried to get it from her she turned and swallowed it in one quick gulp.

nice.

best part. my girl squealed. not with fear or disgust. but with mousing admiration for her chicken.

first

thank you little red hen

sew sew

oh right. i like to sew.

trying to reacquaint myself with my machine, and get some holiday goodies together.

k had been asking for a "chicken jacket" for a while. i put this together last night on a hand-me-town hoodie. it's a little wonky to me. but i am pleased she likes it. this morning she told me she was "totally happy" (yes my gals are true valley girls!). that it is chick-a-dee.

what to do next?..

groovin'

yes we seem to have slid somewhat painlessly back into the groove the school year brings. i credit a lot of it to the fact that e has a teacher who is also a dear friend and neighbor. i have always been very keen on the idea of a child having the continuity of teacher and classmates through their early years - but alas (gotta love them!) lausd doesn't agree. but this works as well. e's ease and comfort with mr. john have allayed her shyness and have her actively participating in class. (last year she didn't speak in class for the first four months.)

k is enjoying her pre-K year - and the morning transition with her seems to be smoothed out by the bike ride to school. nothing like 20 minutes of hearing the wind blow and watching the birds as your morning commute.

and i am back in "my shed". checking things of my list. digging around our raised beds. and daydreaming about the possibilities our (now in shambles) backyard holds. i am going to take these classes. and ask the chickens what they thing i should do. ahh yes, the chickens. (for you shanna!) they are very settled in. with free run of the backyard whenever we are home. and their comfy coop when we have to dash out. they also have a new fondness for the shed. good company. i have to say they are very good pets. albeit they do leave behind a bit of a mess. (i am not encouraging the time in the shed - and much prefer them to be fertilizing the garden!) they are very friendly and social, and have been spotted falling asleep in e's arms. yes. lots of chicken love over here.




p.s. my beloved camera's run-in with the nanaimo bar didn't go well. am looking around for ideas. any suggestions? love/hate what you are using? thanks!

coop de ville

d put outdid himself once again designing and fabricating our chicken coop.



after much research, we decided against a permanent coop, and opted for a "tractor" instead. the thought behind this being that we can move it around the yard, fertilizing as we go. we looked at what was available commercially (and were tempted by this), but felt that d could build one that answered all our criteria and was budget-minded as well. we needed a safe place for the chickens to sleep, with good ventilation (the henhouse) and a safe area for them to play and eat in during the day, with extra shade for our hot summers (the run). we also wanted to take advantage of the byproduct of all the food the chickens consume (and they do like to eat!). we settled on a variation of the many "ark" images we found. the droppings in the henhouse fall into bedding of shredded newspaper and all that can go straight into our composter, and the droppings in the run go right on our "lawn". the henhouse contains a perch for them to sleep on, as well as a nesting box, for when they are ready to lay (somewhere between 6 mos and a yr). the run will serve them when we aren't home, but the plan is, when they are a little bigger, to let them roam the yard when we are around.

we are enjoying our three girls so much. they are such fun to watch (really!) and each has their own distinct personality. little red (a rhode island red) - the curious one; chick-a-dee (a buff wyandotte) - the little sister, always trying to get someone to play with her; and annie (an aracauna, we think) - as in oakley - (or fluff, depending on who you ask) who is very brave, a great performer, but also very cautious.

perched

on the verge of becoming a crazy chicken lady who constantly posts pictures of her birds...



humour me. i am sure it will pass...

green{er} thumb

i have this dream about growing chrysanthemums. (alas, these are from trader joe's) the girls have wanted to grow some ever since the early days of reading this favorite. the elderly filipino man who lives across the street from us grows the most amazing spider variety ones in his front garden. i have asked him his secret but could not understand his response. (his english is quite broken - we call him "mr. big mountain" because that is what we think his pronunciation of his name sounds most like. as well as the fact that he is big and strong and has the most amazing smile - this name seems to fit nicely.) they really are the most amazing chrysanthemums i have every seen. the blooms fitting into my two hands cupped together.

i am learning how to work our soil. our dry hard-packed clay soil. the plants we put in this spring are doing well. especially considering the drought and heatwave we have been going through. i haven't lost any yet. and now we are starting to dream of the cooler days of fall. (october - i know you are just around the corner... hellllooo halloween...) thinking about four beds in the backyard to try our hand at square foot gardening. (inspired by this book. i am so loving it - every page gets me looking to try something new. blueberry bush in a pot - yes!)

and more natives around the pool.

and that chicken coop being filled. (we have had a chicken set-back. the chicks we were looking to adopt ended up being all roosters - and this mother hen just wasn't prepared for that. we have a new lead through path to freedom and are hoping to have two - or three - hens soon!)

and mustn't forget. room in the raised beds for chrysanthemums.

happy wednesday!

cooped up

so as we trounced around berkeley our friends were anxious to show us this...



we have been dreaming up chicken coop designs down here. at first i was going to bite the bullet and invest in one of these (i do think they look great, and the coop itself isn't that much for what you get)- but then the shipping knocked me down (half the price of the coop itself!?) and we decided to put pencil to paper and do it ourselves. (steph's truck is still the winner for me so far.)

are there any coops in your neighbourhood you could share?

happy (can it really already be!) thursday!

de-lovely

perfect weekend. good food and good friends and good family too.

love watching the girls all get together.

and my mother-in-law arrived with these lovely gems in hand for me. i have not-so-secretly coveted them for some time. now i smile with each opening of our cupboard. thanks bubbe!



and as you may have picked up from the changes on our reading list, it also looks like we are going to be chook-keepers! our neighbour's hen just had 4 chicks and they would like to pass on 2 to us. e and k are thrilled. they are lovely little bantams and i think i too am excited. i think. anyone with chickens out there? any advice?

happy tuesday. (already?)