Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
The growing season is not too far around the corner! Witch hazel is already blooming and my flowering quince buds are days away from opening. If we can get a handle on some garden chores now, we’ll be in good shape to maximize the harvest from our homesteads this year. When it comes to growing your own food, here is my short list of what
How many coops have I built now? Ah, best not to keep track. I honestly forgot that we had a chicken coop still here at our house in Portland (pictured above). Past tenants were interested in keeping chickens, so we left it here. It sat empty while we were away and isn’t really needed anymore. We have a great coop now (pictured above) that has
Whose idea was it to move from Eugene to Portland while I am seven months pregnant? Oh, right… it was my idea. As stressful as a move can be, things went smoothly and we had tons of friendly hands helping us lift boxes, chicken coops and duck houses. That little yellow house was good to us, but it was never “ours”. (Yikes – look at
The chickens are looking a bit shaggy and disheveled, which means it’s that time of year: molting time. Molting is the process chickens go through of shedding feathers and replacing them with a new, fluffy coat. They are never completely featherless, but rather they lose feathers and regrow them in patches. The temperatures dipping are a signal to the girls that winter is around the
I’ve been keeping chickens for several years now and have always counted myself lucky that I never had a run in with mites. Up until this summer, I had never lost a member of our flock to an animal attack. Losing one of our ducks to a raccoon earlier this summer was the first sign that my excellent track record was about to hit some
Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the backyard of Brian and Tara, thirty-something parents who just started keeping chickens. They used the standard sized chicken coop plans from my book Modern Homestead to come up with a variation that would work for their backyard. It was really cool to see what a basic plan and a little imagination can come up with. The modifications
My chickens have never been great jumpers, probably because they are fairly lazy and spoiled. My neighbor’s chickens, however, are expert jumpers. It’s not uncommon for them to hop the fence into our yard to hang out, but lately they have started hopping their back fence into the nearby alleyway. Tragedy struck last week when one of my neighbor’s beautiful Black Sexlinks hopped the fence
The two runner ducks we raised from ducklings this past spring have both started laying! Those first few eggs are always a little goofy looking. I went ahead and cracked them all in a cast iron pan to fry up for breakfast. You can see how the smallest egg doesn’t even have a yolk! They get a little bigger with each laying. Our adopted ducks
We found Milt a farm! Our drake, or male duck, is now spreading his love among a large flock of ladies living on a farm just south of Eugene. Whew! We were not looking forward to having him for dinner. I think Bess, Pepper, Gladys and Ramona are enjoying the peace and quiet. We are getting a steady supply of eggs already from both Gladys
