Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
Like a crazy woman, I went back to the local farm to u-pick more strawberries. Our cupboards are stocked with jam and I am getting tired of standing over the stock pot stirring. So this round I decided to just freeze them all – easy and versatile. I lightly rinsed the berries, since they can be little sponges and soak up excess water. I then
Time flies and here we are already at the summer solstice. The sunrise was at 5:30 am and the sun will set at 9:00 pm. It’s going to be 81 degree outside today. Boy, did this just turn into summer overnight? The changing of the seasons is always time for me to take stock of what’s happening on our little slice of homestead. There is
We love having our chickens free-range in our backyard. They eat a wider range of food, which saves us some money on chicken feed and also makes their eggs taste ten times better. But they can be really destructive in the garden beds – trampling seedlings in search for the next great worm. It’s even more important for backyard ducks to have some free-range access,
Our backyard flock has been taking it easy this winter. They have been enjoying a mild winter and took a break from laying eggs. Florence, our Rhode Island Red, and Maude, our Brahma, decided there was enough natural light to start laying again. Since then, the two girls have been giving us an egg or two a day. Pearl, on the other hand, is not
My sister raised a new batch of hens this past September and I was with her and my nephew when they picked out new chicks. We brought them home and noticed one of the baby chicks had a slightly crooked beak – like millimeters off. It didn’t seem like a big deal… at the time anyway. Weeks went by and the crooked beak became much
The chickens have been patient through a very wet, cold Spring in Oregon. Wet conditions in a chicken coop can often lead to increased chances of disease and bacteria, so a dry coop is important to build. Mine held up pretty well, but things still got soggy. I like to do an annual deep cleaning of my chicken coop – sometimes every twice a year.
My flock of urban chickens have had quite the busy and productive Spring this year. They enjoyed free-ranging in the backyard in the early months while I had my row covers on, but on now back on ranging hiatus in their coop while the garden grows in. Since late February they have been steadily producing eggs. Pearl will be entering her fifth or sixth summer
“An egg! An egg! An egg!” You could hear the excitement in my voice carrying through the neighborhood on a recent, drizzly evening as I did my regular check on the chickens. A little brown egg quietly laid in the nesting box. I then recalled how my urban hens seemed to be making quite a ruckus on a recent morning – and the dots connected.
Yesterday I had a couple sunny hours ahead of me before dusk, so I decided to tend to a few minor repairs on the chicken coop. The roof had been leaking in a couple spots and a damp coop can increase the likelihood of pests and disease infiltrating the coop. An even bigger issue, I have been noticing that something has been burrowing into the
