Chicken-adjacent events

There’s too much to write about in a single blog post, so this is a pre-post post.

First, everybody’s been asking us how our dogs are doing with the chicks. The answer is…good, we think. They haven’t shown aggression, or in Cora’s case, much interest at all. But we’ll never trust them with the chicks, all the same. There’s that predator-prey relationship, and all that.

If anything, we think the dogs are only distressed because they’re getting less attention from us. They’ve both been kind of needy.

We’ve been cautiously letting them approach the poultry pets.

Baobao is quite tense around the chicks. Maybe because he’s a wild dog with a strong prey drive. Maybe because I growl when he gets too close or stares too long.

Cora sniffs around the chicks (in their new brooder), but stays calm.

Just to make sure the dogs still feel loved, Rachel made them a tasty tray of garden goodies, like a charcuterie plate.

Don’t worry, Rachel kept the biggest tomato in the garden for herself.

Meanwhile, for months we’ve been doing other chick-related work around the house and yard. It kind of reached fever pitch this week.

Turns out much of the stuff I was doing for our garden already, pre-chicken, benefits them directly. So I’ll include them here.

Many of the plants we grew this spring and summer, like sunflowers, herbs, calendula, and our clover ‘meadow’ will be tasty treats for the chicks. We’ve dried and stored many of these treasures.

Once we decided to get chickens, we planted additional shrubs in the meadow. Rachel chose raspberries, blackberries, and several kinds of blueberries.

We always grow lots of herbs in the garden because they’re easy, beautiful, and smell and taste terrific. This year we have an extra use for them. We’ve been picking and drying lots of herbs for the chicks to nibble on. They love lavender and mint, especially. I throw a bunch in the brooder every day. When the chicks move out to the yard in a couple of weeks, the herbs will keep their coop smelling nice.

Then there’s chicken yard projects.

One of the first things we did upon committing to the Chicken Dream was to buy and assemble a backyard coop. We had looked into building a coop from scratch, using redwood from Rachel’s outgrown playhouse. However, that just wasn’t in our bandwidth. Buying an easy-to-assemble coop from The Chicken Coop Company was a much better choice for us.

We’ve stained the coop to protect it from rain. I still need to predator-proof it from below using hardware cloth, because we’ve got raccoons, skunks, and foxes in our neighborhood. Nobody’s going to get to our chickies while they’re sleeping!

Next, because chickens are prolific poopers (as far as gardeners are concerned, this is one of their superpowers), we needed a better home composting system to take full advantage of that garden gold.

My first construction project in a long, long time, that took a long, long time to finish: a double compost bin. The frame is mostly out of redwood from the playhouse, the rest scrap wood from free pallets. Most of the hardware was recycled. The sides and tops are hinged for easy dumping and harvesting.

Here I am unfurling some hardware cloth to rat-proof the compost bin. It’s nasty to work with! Got poked and scratched everywhere.

We’ve already started using the compost bin. Now that autumn is here, we’ll soon have a lot of “browns” (dry leaves) to layer with our “greens” (kitchen scraps and fresh stuff), all mixed in with the, er, valuable offerings from our chicks.

Next project, fencing the chicken meadow. We needed a way to keep chickens in and dogs out.

After spending money on a coop, I couldn’t bear the thought of also paying for a real fence. Instead, I constructed a crude but effective one for minimal bucks.

First, the posts were stained and set in concrete.

Then we secured 6-foot livestock wire to the posts. Apparently, chickens can fly. Three of ours will likely be too heavy to get far off the ground, but the little bantam, Beyoncé, has already shown herself to be a great flyer and escape artist.

Last, a gate for the chicken yard. Thanks to my DIY-handy neighbors Leslie and Jim, I had plenty of scrap wood to add to my stash, making for a unique but functional and sturdy gate.

While all this was going on, our chicks outgrew their brooder box. I could see they were getting restless. Online, I saw the idea for repurposing a (human) baby’s crib as a larger brooder.

Freecycle to the rescue! A neighbor was trying to get rid of her chewed-up old crib (a teething baby, apparently). I hauled it home, assembled it, and lined the sides with hardware cloth. A thick layer of pine shavings and a simple lid created a cozy new home for the chicks.

Lastly, on Saturday we attended an inspiring community event at a local urban farm store in Berkeley.

Biofuel Oasis started as a biofuel station (and still is), but now hosts educational events and sells supplies for homesteading activities like gardening, chicken- or beekeeping, and fermenting foods.

We got fun supplies like beeswax (for making waxed cloth, an alternative to plastic wrap) and kefir grains to start our own culture. Also, we got beautifully colorful homegrown eggs!

Other fun activities: a pumpkin weighing contest, honey extracting, and treats like goat’s milk-caramel apples.

We all really enjoyed making dolls out of produce.

One of the main people at Biofuel Oasis, Novella Carpenter, is also the author of Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer. That book really inspired me. Joe made me talk to her though I was shy about fan-girling. She was super cool.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for an actual post about the chicks!