Chicks & Garden Update
Since an ordinance was passed in my town allowing backyard chickens and permits were issued, we went ahead and took the plunge and got ourselves 4 baby chicks on March 21st! We now have an expanded garden, made new garden beds on the side of our house, built a small greenhouse (8′x8′) last fall with all reclaimed materials and are going to be building a movable chicken coop (with reclaimed materials, too) to fit in next to our greenhouse. It will be like a coop/chicken tractor so we can move it around the yard and the girls can graze safely on grass. I will let them out inside the garden to eat bugs and let them run around the yard while I’m out there with them. I’ve noticed a red tailed hawk in my neighborhood recently which doesn’t make me happy!
My husband grew up raising chickens so I am getting lessons first hand from him even though caring for them on a day to day basis will be up to my son and I. My husband has lots of other projects lined up to do!
We also built our son a funky tree tower next to the greenhouse because there was an Aspen tree in bad shape that needed to come down. My husband decided to make the tree tower for our son’s birthday in February and built it on any weekend that was not frigid this winter – and we had lots of nice weekends, actually.
Here are some pix of the peeps from 4 days – 2.5 wks old:
The two golden colored ones are Buff Orpingtons and their names are Daisy and Lulu. The two brownish ones are Easter Eggers – Americana’s, specifically and their names are Iris and Acorn. All 3 of us named them. They really are so very cute at this age!
Here is a picture of our (still unfinished) greenhouse that will be painted this spring and the funky tree tower to the left of it:
It’s located right in front of our newly expanded garden space, that’s the garden fence behind it. The tree tower looks like it’s all open in the picture but there is lots of cable wire going through the Aspen branches and it’s a 4 ft tall fence so my son won’t fall out! It’s very secure and he loves it!
The greenhouse was built so we could walk in there through a door (on the left side), it’s about 8′ tall at the highest point and has 2 large beds on the ground as well as a big shelf on the back wall under another window that can hold 4 large pots (or 7 flats of seedlings). The roof windows open for ventilation, too. There is a sprinkler head inside it from our sprinkler system so we can run a drip line off of it to the beds. We are also hanging up heavy duty hooks to hold large hanging pots in there, too. I want to grow the upside down tomato plants to have a longer tomato growing season in the fall (I admit I’m a little obsessed with growing tomatoes!). We have also worked out our glitches from last winter’s trial garden and will use the back of the greenhouse to help anchor the hoop house for better winter gardening this year. We are pretty excited for all of this additional growing space we’ve got now!
Many seeds have been started indoors this past week and my husband just rototilled in a mix of compost and top soil into all the new beds we created so now we are ready to plant! We will be direct seeding the new greenhouse beds this weekend with several varieties of cool weather greens and peas. This growing year should be a good one since we are done with the hardscaping now and can successfully do year round succession planting.
Now with the chickens, we will have free range, organic eggs from happy birds (and my son & husband eat lots of eggs), new fun pets to hang out with and we will be able to feed them many veggie scraps from the garden and compost their waste and bedding to eventually be put back into the garden. The cycle of life. Love it.
The thing I love most about gardening is all that you learn from nature. Everything is trial and error and you find what works best for your individual space and then when it clicks, you get to watch the magic of nature unfold in front of your eyes and reap the bounty! I find this to be so much fun!
April 03 2009 02:10 pm | Health and Home and food and gardening and green living and make it yourself and nutrition and organics and pets and photos and raw foods and sustainability
April 5th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Do you know about http://www.growlocalcolorado.org/ ? You can post your pictures there and inspire more people that way.
I can’t wait to hear how it goes with the chickens. Sounds like an adventure.
Have fun!
Melissa Taylors last blog post..Swimming Lessons – A Metaphor?
April 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Melissa,
Thanks so much for the link to Grow Local Colorado. Another good social networking site for growers. I’m on 4 now!
April 30th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Yeeeeah!!! Chickens. I love them. I am helping a biodynamic pastured chicken and sheep farmer develop their marketing and web site. Will send a link when it is up…
Look forward to your progress with you urban chicken farm…
And thanks for your recent ‘Vitamin D’ info on Crunchy Chicken’s site. That was definitely inspiring…
May 11th, 2009 at 12:28 am
[...] Chicks and Garden Update by Nature Deva — This is someone who is very much walking the walk if her backyard is any indication. Also? Pix of adorable baby chicks! [...]