And then there were four . . .

We must announce a dreadful occurrence which happened today. When making our rounds checking the homestead today, we noticed one of our Delaware hens under the coop dead. Not sure what happened to her really.

I've been on a two-month vacation (more about that in future posts!), and all I had noticed when I returned last week was that she was the only one that had not grown a comb. She was noticably larger than when I left and about the same size as our other four hens. Then yesterday (or the day before, I'm not sure) when I was walking by their pen, I noticed that she seemed to be vomiting (if chickens can do that) a clear liquid - waterish, but snottier. She seemed to get over it well enough and I didn't think anything of it until we found her body.

I'm sorry, Diana/Artemis (we're not sure which was which ever since our two Delawares molted). We were blessed to enjoy your company as long as we did.

A World Premiere!

Here's what I found under the chicken coop this morning! It's pretty small, but very heavy. Now if only we could have figured out which one laid it!

We've opened up their nesting boxes now (which had previously been blocked off so they didn't mess them up unnecessarily), so hopefully they'll start laying their eggs in more accessible places.

My darling husband says this is the most expensive egg ever produced since we've spent almost $500 getting to this point. I say it's all downhill from here. I sure hope so.

Backyard Update

First question we continually get is "How are the chickens?" The answer? Peachy. They're all growing up marvelously and one has even stopped peeping like a chick and has started clucking like (we hope) a hen. I've got my eye on one in particular that keeps doing what I take to be aggressive things. Hopefully she's just a really butch hen and not an adolescent cock trying to macho himself onto a dinner platter.

Here's a group shot of our blue oregano, cilantro, carrots, and the broccoli behemoths. We got one crop of radishes (which I had planted between the broccoli plants) before the broccoli shaded them out. I've since moved them to the watermelon bed since that'll be bare earth for another couple weeks/months.

The cucumbers, peas, beans, and butternut squash are doing great. I'm planning on getting up their growing supports in the next week or two. This little lettuce plant is a volunteer from last year's garden which is a good thing since all the lettuce seeds I planted where I wanted them have failed to grow. Nothing. I think ants or some other crawly thing is eating them. I have no proof for this theory, but that's my final answer. (For now.)

The corn is growing fast. This year we expanded to include sweet corn in addition to the popcorn we also had last year. My son thinks it's the coolest thing in the world to eat popcorn he grew himself.

You can also see the Mammoth Russian Sunflowers creeping along the fence. We had these last year and we all loved them. I left most of the plants for the birds, but did keep one or two for ourselves.

This strawberry is now in my daughter's tummy. She proclaimed it "the perfect strawberry." Can't beat that, right?

Next year I'm going to make this an herb pot and attempt to grow strawberries in one of the beds. Hopefully that way we'll have more than one or two berries ripe simultaneously.

We planted these jasmine plants last year to someday cover the chainlink fence and create an arbor over to the other side. We weren't sure if we did a sufficient job protecting them from the winter frost (it didn't help that they are intertwined into a metal fence which got dang cold), but they're growing like crazy with lots of buds, so we must have done something right.

Looky what I noticed for the first time today!! The broccoli is beginning to bud! Such excitement!

These radishes, on the other hand, are having issues. The one on the left looks okay. The one in the middle is a bit sad and chewed on, but saveable, I hope. The one on the right (if you can even see it), has had all its greenery chewed away. Poor thing. Again, I'm blaming the ants. I've seen them all over the plants and haven't been able to figure out what they're doing.

Being the ever-observant gardener, I didn't even notice the actual fruits on this tomato plant until I took this photo to show off the blossom! Such a dork!

You want to know what I love best about my garden? The daily serenade I get from this little guy (gal?). The sounds this mockingbird dreams up are awesome. I thank him verbally every day (yes, I talk to birds, so shoot me) and he thinks it's pretty cool to sit in his tree, watching me do my thing, and singing his little heart out. It seems we have this mutual crush thing going and I, for one, LOVE IT!

The Coop deVille

As nice as it is, it's amazing we have a garden at all this year, because for three weeks in February/March, I had been "distracted" by the urgency to build a chicken coop.

Let me explain.

In most of the other places we've lived, it was feasible to own and raise chickens. Even in downtown Seattle, a raging metropolis, one could have a minimum of three hens (more if you have the space). But wherever we lived (Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho), we didn't have the space or time to keep chickens. We figured by moving to Texas, and into a house with a large yard to boot, surely the allowable quantity of poultry would raise exponentially. This is the country, right?

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I called the city to ask about the poultry code and was told chickens are not allowed in the city limits unless you have more than an acre of land which also must be zoned agricultural. So I pouted, grumbled under my breath, and tried not to be jealous when I saw friend who lives just down the road (but in another city's jurisdicion) and her lovely hens.

She was the one who suggested that this might be a time to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and that a gift of eggs to keep the neighbors happy and silent may be just the way to go. Would my neighbors go for something like that? Let me think. Hmmm . . . they're both county sheriffs, so I'm thinking they may not be willing to look the other way on something like this.

Such was my pathetic life UNTIL one of my husband's co-workers mentioned something about his chickens. But wait . . . you live in the same city we do. You can't keep chickens! I called the city - they said NO!

"Oh, they may not like you to, but just follow the city ordinance - they can't touch you!"

Five minutes on the internet and I find this. Scrolling down to page 10, we find this gem:

SECTION 2.800 FOWL

2.801 LIMITATIONS ON NUMBER OF FOWL

(1) This Section shall not apply to property zoned AG.

(2) It shall be unlawful to own or keep fowl within the corporate limits of
the City unless the number is limited and they are kept in enclosed pens
as set forth below:

(a) If fowl are confined within an enclosed pen which is located fifty
(50) feet or more from any building or dwelling occupied by any
person other than the owner of the fowl, the number of fowl is limited
to no more than ten (10).

(b) If fowl are confined within an enclosed pen which is located less
than fifty (50) feet, but more than twenty-five (25) feet from any
building or dwelling occupied by any person other than the owner of the
fowl, the number of fowl is limited to no more than five (5).

We quickly measure the distance between us and our nearest neighbor's house (thank goodness we live on a corner) and low and behold, it's exactly 25 feet between their house and our fence. We're good as gold! Can you guess how grateful I am that we have a large drain culvert at the back of our property which added the needed distance.

So now that we knew it was legally possible, we just needed to figure out how to do it. My husband was not as thrilled as I was to learn that we could keep chickens. I'm not exactly sure what he envisioned, but I'm sure it was ugly and smelly or else expensive. Needing to work within those boundaries (cheap, but cute), I got to work.

We found the bases for free when we were looking for pallets and flooring crates thinking that we could reassemble them into a suitable coop. We quickly gave up on that idea, but still use the crates to contain our compost piles.

Knowing our Texas summers would test our chickens' heat tolerance (chickens don't sweat, remember), we wanted to raise up the coop so that they always had access to shade. The added bonus being that vermin can't make nests under your coop when it's raised.

We knew we wanted an easy-to-clean floor, but I wasn't willing to pay $40 for it. This is, after all, for chickens. Gaia guided me, however, back to the hardware store yet again where I was meant to meet Manager Dave. Once I explained my dilema as I was wandering the flooring aisles one more time looking for suitable, yet inexpensive flooring, he donated two boxes of linoleum tile which were out of inventory and he was going to destroy that afternoon. Dudes, he gave them to me for FREE. I was floored, no pun intended. There was actually just enough to lay two layers of tiles with seams offset.

Now we have two sides up. I started with the easy square sides (okay, I guess technically they're rectangles), but then had to stare at the coop for a couple days while I figured out how I was going to frame the angled sides.

You can see at this point the vents along the top of each long side which were my attempt to keep the air circulating within the coop. Also, the angled roost supports were just some extra lumber from one of the crates.

As I pondered the angled side dilema, I focused on the easy projects that had nice square edges like the nesting boxes. Rather than slope the roof of the nesting boxes (to keep the chickies from roosting up there), I figured we could use that space for a storage shelf. With only five chickens, we may have gotten away with having just one nest box, but I just liked the idea of two.

Here we have the shelf above the nesting boxes blocked off from the chickens by a culled piece of plywood I found for 51 cents. At the time I didn't know how I might use it, but its value was quickly apparent.

We've also framed in the angled side walls and have the roof supports up. Don't look too closely as nothing is square or level, but remember this project's mantra immediately became "Good Enough For Chickens". This mantra, by the way, has now come in handy in a variety of situations, none of which involved poultry of any kind.

Now it actually starts looking like a house when we put up the roof and start on the siding. Months ago my husband had befriended some construction workers (when they were expanding a local road and replacing everyone's backyard fences with a new stone barrier) and saved about eight cedar fence panels from the landfill. We've been wanting to expand our fence to enclose our front yard in with our back yard to enjoy the shade of our tree without sharing with everyone on the street. Of course, the only way we could have this project look seamless would be if the "new" fence panels were as aged as the old panels.

We had more panels than we thought we would use with the fence, so we used some of the extra boards for the coop. On the plus side, using aged, warped, and otherwise imperfect boards made my construction imperfections less noticeable.

Luckily for me, I realized before I put up the next wall that it would be 20 times easier to put up the chicken wire at the bottom of the coop without the siding boards in place. Glad I read the fine print on that one.

Finished the angled side which is actually a "magic door" that is completely removeable for easy access to the space under the roosts for semi-annual cleaning. Started siding the other long side which was originally going to have a big door, but I ended up framing in a viewing window at the last minute.

Here's a close up of the vent covers and the quick and easy roofing trim I put up to cover the exposed ends of the roof supports. Plus to cover up the sloppy cuts on the siding, we trimmed the vent and window openings with faux-wood trim actually made out of corn. Seemed fitting for a chicken coop.

My choice for an easy, inexpensive, yet sturdy barrier to keep out the chicken-eating beasties? Gutter screens.

Here's the access to the nesting boxes which was originally going to be one door, but is now two since we removed the door originally planned for the long side. These are the doors for daily use - one for feeding and watering, the other for storage and nesting box access (egg collection when the time comes).

Starting on the chick's yard, we've already starting painting. You can see the garden in the background.

Here's the yard almost completely fenced in along with the matching planters I whipped together. We originally wanted planters at the foot of every post to grow some sort of vine that would climb the fence to keep it all from looking too much like a concentration camp, but we're too frugal to shell out $15 a piece for six planters. I ended up making these for $2 each, but they were larger than we thought they'd be, so we only needed three. Gotta love that.

We originally were planning on making their entire yard critter-proof so we wouldn't have to hassle with locking them up at night, but that would have been a lot more work. We quickly settled on making their yard chicken-proof and making their coop critter-proof. Much easier this way.

Here's the almost complete coop (just missing the gate on the right which completes the yard enclosure) still wanting some trim paint.

You can also see the chicken door that is removed each morning to let them out. It's just some 2x4s with a double-layer of chicken wire around one side.

I tacked on the chicken ramp about 20 minutes before we left to go pick up the chickies. Sure looks homey, huh?

Here's our brood their first day out in the sunshine running their toes through the grass. The two Delawares were originally named Cajeta and Canela (Spanish for caramel and cinnamon), but their superior bug hunting skills made us quickly rename them Diana and Artemis. The Black Australorp is named Onyx and the Buff Orpington was named Lizzy by my son after Liz from the Magic School Bus books. The Ameracauna, Oreo, was promised by the breeder to lay blue or green eggs. The other four should lay brown eggs. We're still crossing our fingers that they're all girls. The kids know that the day we hear one of them crow, we're having fried chicken for dinner, but that won't make it any easier if that day comes.

Every time I go out in the backyard, I'm so pleased and grateful to have our little chickies doing their thing. I find myself stopping to check in on them throughout the day and then ending up entranced by them for half an hour. It's very soothing to watch them. Now we're just waiting for the eggs!