News from the Homestead

I haven't sent an update to my Kickstarter followers in awhile.  As I interact in the community, surfing, going to events, it's amazing how often people ask me how things are going with the beehives or with the chickens.  It's like another unexpected effect, the parade of families or folks walking dogs who make it part of their journey to give the chickens a visit.  I see children talking to the chickens every day!  So to my community of readers on the internet...whomever you may be...here's the update.

Topbar Hive inspection with friends from the Bee Society

The bees have proven to be a complicated and slow endeavor with much wonder and exploration but very little honey.  You can catch up on my bee chronicles by reading this post and this post and this post and this post and this post.  Where we stand today is total loss of Hive #1.  It has been dismantled and awaits a new colony next Spring.  Hive #2, the topbar hive, is thriving.  The bees have built out several new frames of comb and the Queen is busy laying eggs.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of honey, so I haven't harvested any comb and have basically left this hive untouched.  My plan is to give these bees this first season to establish themselves and then next year I'll probably be able to harvest honey twice, once early in the season and a second time towards the end of the season.  There is a little bit of a mothy, sticky insect laying eggs with little white worm larvae.  I am encountering them in the spaces between the wooden bars, the area where the bees fill in with propolis.  I seem to split the little larvae's bodies open when I use my hive tool to pry the bars apart.  But it is so far only a minor infestation and I have left the bees to deal with the problem themselves.  This weekend I will be getting some much needed training.  A topbar hive specialist, Les Crowder is coming to San Diego to offer a two day workshop for members of the San Diego Bee Society.  So I will spend the weekend immersed in all things bee and I will have a lot more to say about my own hive next week after an inspection with all my new bee knowledge.

The chickens are doing great.  With the weather getting colder and the days shorter two ladies have stopped laying eggs, but two are laying daily.  My babies have grown up so much.  They are almost 5 months old and so far it looks like they will both be keepers, I think they are both hens and not roosters.

Here's my Yellow Baby

And here's my Grey Baby

Eating fresh grass makes for deep yellow yolks rich in beta carotene.

Goldie is joining in the Fall Spirit with some pumpkin scraps.

A proud mom with her best egg layer, Goldie!

Updates and Chores

It's been two weeks since I've written anything (I've been busy posting at my new blog paraguay1994).  I am deeply in my routine of country chores.  So many things to do daily and weekly to keep it all clean and productive.

Mom says, look what I've got here!

She does a great job making sure the chicks eat lots.

The baby chicks are an amazing joy in my life.  At about 4 days old their little wing buds began to shoot out and now they have beautiful little wings.  I don't think they will be feathered like the mom, a silkie.  I think they will have standard feathers.  But they do have feathered legs and feet like their mom.  Yesterday I noticed a little tail pop out on both chickies just like the wings had sprouted.  I've named them Cloudy and Yellow.

This is Yellow. 

This is Cloudy.

Notice the little tail that has sprouted!

The honey bees have a new vertical garden to give them more protection and environment.  I planted them with seeds of morning glory and spinach as well as small strawberry and marigold plants.  The spinach hasn't sprouted, but everything else is growing well in their small pallet spaces.

A vertical garden made with pallets, screening, staple gun, compost and plants

Morning Glory sprouts

Sunrise on the apiary.

The first hive continues to struggle.  I opened it two days ago and I was confused by what I saw, a queen, but no pink marking...what happened to my new queen?  and who is the queen I spotted?  And most importantly, where is the brood cells?  I would characterize this hive as sick and unproductive.

The second hive gave me a good scare two weeks back.  I made several mistakes.  First mistake, I treated the hive influenced by my experience with hive #1 instead of giving the hive the proper respect and assessment that each hive must be given.  I wore some gloves that have been fine working with #1 because I couldn't find the proper leather gloves I have been using.  These gloves have a rubber palm with some stretchy knit material on the backs of the hands.  Second mistake, I didn't have proper fuel for the smoker and I did not use the smoker effectively to calm the bees.  When getting several frames in to my top bar hive inspection, moving and lifting bars of comb and bees, the bees began to sting my knuckles and tops of my hands through the gloves.  It happened very quickly, in just a few seconds.  Maybe 5-10 stings, 4 on one finger!  My hands swelled up like sausages for two days and I moped around, drugged up on antihistamines.  It has definitely given me pause to think about bee tending as a hobby.  I am going to keep with it for now, but my respect has grown.  When I revisited hive #2 this week I wore my wetsuit with my overalls on top, boots, veil, leather gloves, duct tape seams.  I collected dried pine needles and got a good smoke from the smoker.  Everything went well and the hive looks healthy.  I didn't spot the queen, but I did see larvae and have been observing the collection of pollen by foragers which is a sign of the feeding of brood.

Potential...

My vegetable garden is finally showing some success.  I finished a second batch of compost and added that soil to my raised bed and mixed it in with straw.  I planted seeds of lettuce and arugula.  I couldn't keep my chickens out of that wonderland, and had them confined in there coop for a week until we finished a chicken wire fence surrounding the bed to protect it from their scratches and pecks.

Swiss Chard protected from curious chickens.

Land prepped with fresh compost and straw.

Lettuce sprouts...and ficus berries.

Lettuce growing...enough for harvest!

Homesteading Miracles!

Please read my post from yesterday first, Homesteading Challenges.

Tuesday I cracked an egg.  Thursday an egg went missing and we moved Lady Moonbeam and her two eggs to the new nursery.  Friday morning I checked on Lady Moonbeam.  I didn't want to turn the light on because it seemed to make her too hot.  But I also didn't want to leave her in the dark all day.  I had a fireplace screen I had been using to keep the chickens out of my vegetables.  I decided to open one door of the nursery and place the screen in front so she could have a little light and ventilation.  She continued to rest on her two eggs.  I became busy in the house when I heard the most horrible screeching and panic from the chicken coop.  The dogs had gone out to explore and my italian greyhound had manage to get behind the screen into the nursery!  He was stuck, with Lady Moonbeam screeching!  I pulled the dog out and got them both back inside and closed up the nursery.  I didn't even want to check what happened, I just wanted to leave her alone.  After an hour or so I was ready to find out what had happened.  I opened the nursery and saw half of an egg and was sure it was all over and my dog had killed them.  But I could hear little chirps.  I lifted Lady Moonbeam and from under her wing emerged a little grey fluff ball!  Her baby chick had been born from its egg!  I was so surprised and amazed.  I left her alone with her baby chick and her remaining damaged egg.

Mama explores her new chick

I couldn't resist and had to pick up the miracle, so soft...I'm in LOVE!

Later in the day I checked on her and the damaged egg was chirping and moving inside of the egg.  The chick had begun to crack open the egg, to pip, and a little hole had been made in the shell.  Later that day I found the second chick wet and almost unable to move chirping away.

The second chick recently emerged, still set with the fluids she had been living inside for 21 days.

A few hours later she had dried off and fluffed up into a delicate little puff of yellow!  What a miracle, the egg I had cracked had survived.  I was very surprised by the different colors.

They had a red father and a white mother and yet the chicks were there own independent yellow and grey!  Today I watched as Lady Moonbeam would peck at the food and drop the little pieces at the feet of her chicks and guide with her beak their beaks down to the food.  I didn't expect to raise chicks, its a blessed miracle that has found me and I am so grateful.  I pray at least one of them is a little girl so I can keep her all the days of her life!

Homesteading Challenges

My corner has become an educational center for sustainability and connection to nature and our food sources.  I was just about to hop on my bike the other day and head off to work when a man stopped me and asked about my chickens.  He wanted to know how much money I had saved and whether raising chickens was a smart move financially.  I told him that it was not saving me any money and that it was costing me money.  I told him that saving money was not the point, that my desire was from a different motivation.  The agribusinesses have got the formula down and they can produce for you anything you want for cheap!  Raising the chickens for me is about understanding where my food comes from, how nature works and what work is involved in its production.  It's about control, controlling what my chickens eat and drink, how they spend their days, where they sleep and what is done with their waste.  Today I was sitting in my house and I could hear outside a girl with her dad, maybe 10, maybe on bikes.  She had a great voice and with wonderful projection said "Dad, we have GOT to get some chickens!" and that is another reason I love to raise my chik-a-dees.

I've been feeding and cleaning and loving an assortment of chickens for 5 months.  I think I've harvested about 30-40 eggs and have had the opportunity to gift just a handful.  In a sad chain of events, I found myself with an assortment of roosters.  The last dude to strut his stuff had a week of masculinty with my silkie, Lady Moonbeam.  It was scary to see the big red ameraucana mounting the little white silkie, and I was happy to get rid of the rooster.  About 3 or 4 days after the rooster left, the silkie became broody.  This means that hormonally she had transitioned from an egg layer to an egg tender.  She had begun to sit in the hen house not just to lay an egg, but all day long.  For the first few days I would find her sitting on the last egg she had layed, and if the new copper maran, Madame Chocolate, had layed an egg she would gather the other chicken's egg as well and be sitting flattened out over the eggs, keeping them warm.  For the first few days I would shoo her away and take the eggs.  Then after a few days of this she stopped laying her own eggs and just sat, on the copper maran egg if she could.  I decided that she was not going to be convinced out of this, I had three of her eggs saved up in my kitchen, not refrigerated, and I offered them to her.  She took them gratefully and began to sit on her three precious eggs, keeping them warm, turning them with her feet from time to time, leaving each day only for a few minutes to eat and drink and go to the bathroom.  I wasn't sure if the eggs were fertile, I mostly just wanted to make her happy by giving her what she wanted, although she would have been happier with a dozen eggs instead of just three.

The days passed in to weeks and she continued to sit all day and night on her precious eggs.  I worried that she would starve to death but began to notice that she would come down and out of the hen house once each day for just a few minutes to eat and drink and relieve herself.  In this comedy of errors one of my many mistakes or unaware missteps was to not write down the date when I gave her the eggs.  On Monday it was starting to feel like a long time to me, and I worried that she would sit forever on eggs that were duds.  I had awoken that morning from a dream where I cracked open the egg and removed the chick, she wasn't conscious and I began to massage her body with my fingers and I resuscitated her...in the dream that is.  So on Monday, mid morning, I noticed her come out of the coop to eat and stretch out.  I peaked in the hen house and removed one egg, the smallest of the three.  I walked to the other side of the garden and gave the egg a little tap on a brick.  The end flattened a little and I peeled up a little piece of shell.  Inside I saw the membrane thickened, a bit drawn away from the shell and vascular like a thick leaf.  After a few seconds I noticed the pulse of the membrane, the pulse of a heart beat and I flipped the shell back down and returned the egg to her mother...cursing my stupidity!  Later that day I checked on the eggs and the one that I had cracked had puffed its shell back into its original shape, I could see the crack lines, but it was a nice egg shape.

The next morning when the Silkie was out doing her think I checked on the eggs, there were only two!  I began to sift through all of the pine needles, looking for an egg, a shell, something!   I looked around the coop, and could find nothing.  But with my head in the box looking around I could hear little baby chirps.  I thought the chick had fallen out of the box, but when I took my head out to look below, no chirps.  When I put my head back into the box I could hear the chirping.  I lowered my head and realized the chirping was coming from the eggs!  I thought I was going crazy!  I decided that the other chickens probably ate the first chick when it hatched, so I called in the reinforcements.  My husband came home and we set up the bottom of our chicken coop/armoire as a nursery.  He drilled a hole and installed a light.  I lined the floor with cardboard and fresh pine shavings.  I placed Lady Moonbeam into her new home along with her two remaining eggs, the one I had cracked open and the other untouched egg.

to be continued...

The Birds and the Bees...an update

A few days ago, I started to loose my mind.  It had to do with a certain chicken named Julia Childs who was acting a lot like a rooster.  She was territorial, and aggressive, she had definitely given my hand a few hard pecks at times when I was trying to hold her and give her a look over.  But most importantly, she crowed, like a rooster, and lately more often and louder and louder...it was really only slightly annoying, but it gave me so much anxiety that someone would complain.  So this weekend I called the man who sold me the chicken and on Monday I drove Julia back and exchanged her for a French Black Copper Maran, a female this time!  We named her Madame Chocolate.  After two days adjusting to her new environment and crying a few tears for the beautiful rooster she left behind, she began to give us eggs!  Beautiful big dark brown eggs!  We love Madame Chocolate!  Ruby Rose is getting quite big, her comb developing, so I think she'll be laying really soon as well.  This afternoon I found my third egg and I must say that discovering them truly feels like finding a treasure, a jewel.

I opened our new beehive for the third time today.  The first time was a big endeavor, cutting comb growing from the lid and repositioning it into frames like you would do rescuing a hive from an undesired location.  The next time I opened the hive I was a bit worried by what I saw, heavy pieces of comb sagging and bowing out of the frames.  But today  could see the comb beginning to take better shape within the frames and it had developed enough integrity that I was able to adjust the comb a bit better into the frames without it all falling apart.  I also had more poise today and had developed my bee suit well so I was able to spend more time calmly observing all of the comb.  I was able to find the queen, to distinguish the drones, and at one moment I saw a young bee literally being born out from her little prism of comb!  The bees have not begun to explore the upper hive box I placed in inspection 2, next time I open the hive I will try Ron's pyramid technique to encourage the bees to build out the second story of their hive.

It was a satisfying week on my little farm by the beach.  The bees are doing well and with a change to our chicken community we now have eggs!

Introducing the Ladies!

One of the BEST ideas I have ever had was to get me some chickens!  I've had these four ladies for about two and a half months, and I love them!  They are so cute and fun to watch.  I enjoy feeding them and even cleaning out their coop, go figure!  I keep running home between appointments to give the girls an hour of free roaming time in the garden.  I find the chickens to be less work than a dog, really just about 5-10 minutes of attention a day and a little longer for a good cleaning once each season.  So, if you've got a little space and a little time and a little sense of adventure, I recommend you give it a try and raise some backyard chickens.  Here is the best website to get started www.backyardchickens.com.  Let's meet my ladies, all purchased on Craigslist from individuals raising chickens at their homes in San Diego.

This is Lady Moonbeam, she's a Silkie Chicken.

This is Ruby Rose, she's an Ameraucana Chicken.

Here's Ruby again with Julia Child up above her.  Julia Child is a French Black Copper Maran.

And introducing the spunky Ameraucana Chicken, Maria Flor!

Learn more:
About Silkies on Wikipedia

About Ameraucanas on Wikipedia

About Marans on Wikipedia

These four chickens live in a coop made of a cabinet and some pallets.

The Community Effect

 When I decided with my husband to become backyard chicken raisers, it was a decision that we mostly made for our own personal benefits and for the distant benefit of metaphorically liberating from bondage all those factory chickens that were providing us with eggs.  I did't think my decision to raise chicken would have an effect on my immediate community, at best, I was hoping not to be a nuisance.  So far we haven't gotten any eggs, our chickens are still purely in the realm of pets, not yet supplying us with nutrition, so I'm still waiting for that benefit in my life.  Instead it is the effect the chickens have on the community that has been the most profound experience so far.  We don't have a backyard, instead we have a nice garden in front of our house on a fairly busy intersection across the street from a high school.  The chickens have their protective ranging area right along the fence, and people walking by have a close up encounter with the chickens if they choose.  All day long I witness people stopping to interact with the chickens.  If they see me in the garden they'll let me know "I love your chickens."  People tell me about how there dogs are connecting with the chickens, that they refuse to walk past on the other side of the street, they want to visit the chickens!  Many young families walk past me house, strollers and toddlers and elementary school kids whose loving parents walk or ride on bikes past my house to and from school.  The kids get really excited, they love to see the chickens.  It's exciting to connect people, especially children, to this beautiful animal.  Many of us utilize chickens for our sustenance without considering the chicken as a living creature with a dharma and a personality, I know I have.  Every day my chickens bring me more joy and I am grateful for this unexpected effect they are having on my neighborhood....now if they would just start laying me some eggs!

Chickens!

I told you a few weeks ago about my new found desire to raise chickens.  I went to my favorite creative resource, Pinterest, and began discovering the complexities and simplicities to keeping chickens.  We don't have a backyard, so hopefully, to my neighbors joy, our chickens will be kept in the front yard. 

They need to be completely enclosed, so that no animals or poachers can get at my chickens!  They need a nesting box to lay their eggs, a perch to sleep on, and area to scratch a romp during the day.  Luckily I have a man in my life who is handy with a tool built and found materials.  He rustled us up some pallets and an abandoned armoir and built us a chicken condo reminiscent of a horse corral.  We purchased chicken wire, chicken feed, pine shavings and a little invention called a chicken nipple.  I did the research, especially on a website called backyard chickens, and explained to my husband what chickens need and he did the building.  I was really impressed with how great the finished product looked, and for very little money!

Now for the chickens, I wasn't ready to start with little chicks, they need to be kept at a constant temperature and fed special food.  After a few months they grow their adult feathers and are called pullets. Depending on the breed, they mature into hens at about 4-7 months and are hens.  Chicks just cost a few dollars, pullets a few tens of dollars and egg laying hens more like $60.  You can find chickens for sale at all of these stages on....Craigslist!  So there is the age of the chicken, but there is also a variety of chicken breeds, just like dogs.  They have different color bodies, lay different color eggs, get to be different sizes, have different temperaments, etc.  I became fascinated with Ameraucana chickens because they lay a blue-green egg.  My other interest became the Black Copper Maran because their eggs are dark brown and are the most prized of French chefs!  I browsed the Craigslist offerings all through the construction of our coop, and when my honey said he was a half day from finishing, I began to make phone calls, and discovered two nice gentleman in the eastern parts of San Diego county raising chickens on their properties.  First I met with a young man and his wife and toddler.  They had a large coop on the property behind there home.  It was one big coop with about 50 birds, maybe 8 roosters.  He had Ameraucanas, Leghorns, and about 4 other kinds I can't remember.  In his house he had a hamster cage fills with little chicks.  I bought two 4 month old Ameraucanas from him for $30 each.  Then I took back roads west, passing over the 15 to a friendly older guy who I had already learned from our phone call, was all too happy to offer me all sorts of useful information on raising chickens.  He was more of a breeder hobbyist, trying to create the most perfect example of the French Black Copper Maran.  He had lots of smaller, but still big that you could walk in, aviaries each with one rooster and about 5 hens, as well as coops with younger birds and breeder filled with chicks.  He walked me around to each coop and told me about what he had going on.  It was great, I learned a lot, and can definitely call him now if I need for a question.  He sold me one Maran, also about 4 months old.  I was going to buy 2 month olds for him, but when I showed him the Ameraucanas I had already purchased, he picked out another older bird for me that he thought would be a better match.  She went into her own box and I headed west to get my new chickens to their new home on the beach before sunset.  My husband had put in all the finishing details while I was gone, nesting boxes, the ladder walk-way to get them in to their henhouse at night.  I put the ladies into their new home and fed them some chopped bok choy and cornmeal.  At sunset they instinctually made their way up their ramp to their henhouse and went to sleep.  It was amazing!