Showing posts with label Chickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chickens. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

So you want to talk about Chicken Tractors...

I can do that.  I just hope I can stop once I get started.  

I have 13 chickens -- 5 assorted bantams and 8 Welsummers.  I love them all.  Even when they give me a little grief...







We keep them in a (somewhat) traditional chicken coop I made using an old satellite dish for the roof.  




But, I also keep a chicken tractor in the garden.  I rotate 2-3 of the girls into it every couple of weeks except for the coldest months --  January and February. 



What is a chicken tractor?  Chicken tractors are portable chicken coops without bottoms.  They are one of the top 10 inventions of all time.  I made that part up, but honestly, they are one of my top 10.



The chicken tractor provides shelter and protection while allowing the chickens to forage.  Tractors can be used on the lawn, in which case you'll want to move it daily, or in the garden, where it can be left for longer periods of time.

The size of chicken tractor can vary greatly as can their design. However, most urban tractors are small-ish and hold 3-4 chickens.

The advantage of chicken tractors to the gardener is a sustainable source of eggs, meat (not me), and nitrogen. Chickens excrete a high percentage of the nitrogen they consume. Raising chickens on green forage in tractors will also reduce your feed bill by as much as 30%.



This is how it works in my garden... 

Earlier picture of garden design
 
 I have 10 beds in my garden, each 3'x8' (the exact size of the bottom of my tractor) and each separated by a row of bricks.  When one of the beds is not in use, such as before planting or after a section is harvested, I move my tractor, sitting it down over the area where the girls can do their thing.  They defoliate, de-bug, till, weed and fertilize the spot in just a couple of days.  I will sometimes leave the tractor in one spot for 2 to 3 weeks but not too long so as not to overdo the nitrogen.  I might leave it longer for a bed where I'd be planting potatoes (they love nitrogen) and move it sooner for a bed of peas -- they don't like too much of the good stuff.


Chicken Tractor Design

Chicken tractor designs are pretty basic and can be made from scrap lumber. Our chicken tractor was made to fit 3 laying hens. One end contains three nesting boxes (with a hatch to gather eggs) that provide shelter and nesting space.



This design works great for people in town that want 3-4 laying hens and have a small to medium sized yard. Those living in the country need a more predator resistant and slightly heavier model than those living in town.

I like these designs but there are hundreds on the internet...














Eggs

On average, chickens lay two eggs every three days and do not need a rooster to lay eggs.  There are a couple of winter months when they stop laying due to shorter days but except for that, they are little laying machines.  Our eggs have large, rich, almost orange yolks and they taste delicious.   There really is a difference. 


I love my chicken tractor.  And who wouldn't?  A true chicken tractor is portable and gets moved around but even if you don't need (or want) your chickens to be mobile, chicken tractors are the perfect solution to house your backyard chickens.

You'll be surprised but many town and cities allow chickens (with some restrictions, of course) so check it out.

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Let's party here...


 Shanty2Chic
Hope Sudios
Craft Edition




C.R.A.F.T.
Dittle Dattle
Making The World Cuter
 The Girl Creative

*Under the Table and Dreaming
The Tablescaper - Seasonal Sunday

I heart Naptime





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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Tomatoes 101

 I grew up in the south where my next door neighbor was an elderly lady named Mrs. Ardis.  She could grow just about anything and spent her days in her garden where I was always welcome.  I realize now I learned about sustainable gardening from her although it was not called that back then.

8x6 Oil on Masonite
I painted one of my seedlings a couple of years ago...
I must really like tomatoes!


Mrs. Ardis rooted roses, azaleas, and hydrangeas by the dozens.  She planted her cuttings in old coffee cans.  Each was covered with a bread bag making a mini hot house.  She grew her vegetables using seeds she saved from one year to the next.  Once, she pinned a leaf to her kitchen curtain that sprouted tiny little plants all along the edge.

I was fascinated.

I was remembering her and her Dixie Cups filled with tiny tomato plants yesterday when I was working in my vegetable garden.  I have wonderful memories of my sweet little Mrs. Ardis.

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My first round of tomatoes were planted 5 weeks ago when they looked like this...



Now they look like this...







Planting Tomatoes

  • Plant a few hills early in the spring.  If we get a frost,  I just cover them up.  I just planted 3 more hills and will add another 3, a month from now.  I stagger my planting this way so that when one planting begins to play out, another one is just getting started -- I don't get all my tomatoes at once.  
 
  • I purchase plants (shame on me) from the garden center.  I like Celebrity and Sweet 100's and I look for plants that are not too leggy, stand upright, have no wilted leaves and no blooms.  

  • Grow two plants for each member of the family who will eat lots of tomatoes, as a rule of thumb. If you plan on canning tomatoes or making fresh and canned salsa, use up to four plants per person.

  • Plant in  a sunny spot.  Place tomato plants in a site that gets full sun (7 hours or more daily). Tomatoes need lots of warm sunshine.

  • Prepare the garden bed by adding lots of well rotted compost if you have it. 

  • Remove the leaves from the bottom half of the plant and plant deep in the hole burying 50-75% of the plant.  This is hard for me to do when I buy such a nice, tall plant but it's a must!  It makes for a stronger plant.

  • Give each plant about 1 gallon of warm water within ten minutes of transplanting to avoid transplant shock.

  •  Space tomato plants 18 to 36 inches apart.  Don't forget to leave yourself enough space to get in between the plants to water, weed, and harvest. Those cute, little seedlings may not remain that way for long. 

  • Use a tomato cage or a tall stake to support the tomato vine about 14 days after transplanting. 

  • Choose whether to use chemical fertilizers. I am lucky to have chickens and all the chicken poo I want.  I use soiled hay from my coop as a mulch for each plant being careful not to let the mulch actually touch the plant.  This is the only fertilizer I use because I have a chicken tractor that's been on all of my planting beds so the chickens have already fertilized each bed.  If you choose chemical fertilizers make sure they are made for vegetables and not grass and follow the manufacturers instructions!

  • Shake your plant poles or cages gently once or twice each week for about 5 seconds once flowering starts to promote pollination of the blossoms (from one flower to another).


  I'll have to post about chicken tractors soon but here is a look at mine in last year's garden...

Click on the picture if you'd like a little backyard tour with some pretty shocking "before" pictures!


Ha! Notice the tomatoes gone wild!

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I'll be hooking with these fun ladies...


May 27 - Favorite appetizer recipe
A Little Knick Knack 
Fireflies & Jellybeans
Tales from Bloggeritaville
Brambleberry Cottage
My Repurposed Life
French Cupboard
Beyond the Picket Fence

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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Black Bird on my Clothesline

 All my adult life I've wanted a clothesline.  My grandmother had one and I loved hanging clothes out to dry with her.  "Mac" had a washing machine right in her kitchen and a large aluminum dish pan she used to carry wet clothes to the line.  I'd give anything if I had a picture of her at her clothes line.



I'll have to be honest though, sometimes her towels were stiff as a board.  In later years she started using that new stuff -- fabric softener.  After that her towels were a "soft" kind of stiff.  I happened to like stiff towels.  I've never been better exfoliated in my life...




So, after living in a dozen neighborhoods hooked on restrictions (one being no clotheslines) I'm finally here, a place where I do anything I want.  

First on a long list of atrocities was chickens, check.  Next was my very own clothesline,  check.  


I did have one restriction of my own -- it had to be cute -- so I cut the cross boards a little curvy and added a "watch bird" for....... protection.  Yeah, that's right, protection.








I don't know what the other birds think of him but I think he's wonderful... 








Sheets on the line...


  Life is good.




I'll be linking up here:








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Monday, October 11, 2010

Summer Backyard Sharefest

"Gone are the birds that were our summer guests."
                                                 ~ Longfellow


I've been working in my backyard the last couple of days (not because it needs it but because it desperately needs it) and gathered these flowers...probably the last of the season.  I'm sad.  I love fresh cut flowers and I've had a steady supply all summer long.  

This summer has been super hot and dry and my backyard has suffered.  But, back in June, our house was on a non-profit fund raising home and garden tour.  This backyard picture was taken the morning of the tour.  

 When we bought the house, it and the yard had been abandoned for several years.  Here are some before pictures of the yard
....I hope you're not eating.





Two years later...


The "stepping stones" are recycled sidewalk concrete and the brick edging was found buried in the yard.






All together, I've planted a fig tree, 2 peach trees, a plum, a pear, an apple, 3 blueberries, 6 blackberries, a scuppernong vine and a vegetable garden. Oh, and 2 potato barrels.

I used humongous (20' - 30' long!) vines I found in the woods for a support system for the blackberries.  The posts were salvaged from the original fence row. 



The chicken coop, made from a salvaged satellite dish, is in the back corner and is guarded by Cornelius.  

I did have the real thing -- a rooster who first learned to crow early one Sunday morning.  I was mortified.  He was waking up all the neighbors so I did what I always do in an emergency -- called 911.  

Not really, but I did google "How to stop a rooster from crowing" and the number one answer was ..."To stop a rooster from crowing on Sunday morning, cook him for dinner on Saturday night!"  That's a true story.  You just can't make this stuff up.



In the opposite corner, there's a small vegetable garden with a chicken tractor housing two hens who have the job of cleaning, tilling and fertilizing the garden.  The 4'x8' "tractor" fits perfectly on 10 garden beds of the same size.  Of course, I did the math before constructing the tractor and checked into poultry labor laws. 

During
The paths in the garden are made from old indoor/outdoor carpet we pulled out of the house.  


Noah with Millie and Chick - a - dee in the garden
 
I practice "no dig" or "almost no dig" gardening in my vegetable garden and my flower beds that goes something like this...  

 
Not very glamorous but if anyone's interested, I might do a post on the process I use.


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