Chicken coop renovations, Part 53

Kim loves her chickens. You know that, I know that, everyone in a 20 mile radius knows that. She loves them for their personalities, and for their interesting social structures and psychologies. But most of all (I suspect) she loves them because they give her an opportunity to build things.

In the two years we've had a flock at Mucky Boots, Kim has built internal walls inside the coop, built new nest boxes, built a chicken tractor and then a chicken yurt, built chicken doors and chicken fences, and built Chicken Alley as a way of getting the chickens from coop to orchard without trashing my vegetable garden along the way. She has built moveable roosts and fixed roosts, gates and brooder boxes, and then when we transformed the tool shed into Coop #2 she got to do much of the above all over again. As Kim often says, one of the great things about chickens is that if you build them something, they use it. (For a brief but thrilling history of chicken building at Mucky Boots, go here.)

Once she saturated the market here at Mucky Boots, she began to look farther afield, and so she started building nest boxes for other people and selling them at chicken swaps all over southern Vancouver Island. And that was great, until one fellow came up to admire the boxes and ask about their construction, and then said that he had been experimenting with nest boxes mounted on the exterior of the coop, to free up space inside the coop and to make egg collection easier.

I was standing there as he said it, and a little voice inside my head said "Oh, no." And sure enough, pretty much as soon as we got home Kim began working on a design for an exterior box for Coop #2.

There were some technical problems to consider, like how to keep the overhanging roof of the boxes from getting in the way of the drop-down doors, how to best protect the boxes from the elements, and how to organize the construction and box swap with minimal disruption to the poor hens just trying to lay an egg. But this weekend the old boxes came out and the new ones went on, and don't they just look lovely.



It is a five-part nest box, with three comfy spots for hens in Coop #2-A and two for those in Coop #2-B. This photo shows the internal dividers, and the holes Kim cut in wall of the coop. The box itself was built with scrap lumber (my honey is a thrifty one), with only the door hardware purchased.



All the egg collector needs to do is walk around to the back of the coop, unlatch the door and drop it down, and voila, there are the eggs, right at eye level just waiting to be collected.

Here is the view from the inside (Coop #2, Enclosure B)...

...and the finished product, complete with roof.

These new arrangements are taking some getting used to for the hens doing the laying. Just imagine, there you are, nestled in a cosy nest box laying an egg, when all of a sudden the wall behind you disappears, leaving you open to view. There have been some indignant squawks emanating from the back of Coop #2 today...

Dust bath

If you wandered over to Mucky Boots today you might be excused for thinking there is some kind of archaeological dig going on, or maybe a hunt for buried treasure. Because everywhere you look there are excavated hollows, with all the vegetation in a two foot radius coated in dry dirt. But no, it's just dust bath season.

Chickens like nothing better than scratching out a chicken-body-sized hollow in the ground and then wallowing and flapping in the dry dirt. They work the dust deep into their feathers, to help keep them clean, dry and in good condition, and to discourage any pests from taking up residence. The entertainment factor for human spectators is purely incidental. (Go ahead, click on that link!)

The birds at Mucky Boots, always keen to excel at their chickenly duties, take their dust baths seriously. Hector and his hens staked out the orchard as their preferred location which, happily for me, meant that the job of weeding around the trees was done for me. 

In fact, the base of a tree seems to be one of the preferred sites for dust bathing - that and the sunny side of the workshop, all along the foundation.There has been so much excavation around the roots of two of the big cedar trees near the workshop that I began to wonder if the chickens could undercut the roots enough to make the trees unstable. But I suspect that's just my natural ability to find things to worry about talking...

Bambi

What does the name "Bambi" bring to your mind? Probably a baby deer or a starlet, am I right?

Not me. Not any more. These days Bambi is my favourite salad green, beating out my old standby Anuenue hands down. Bambi is a gem romaine, which means it's the cutest bundle of crisp, dark green, tasty leaves you've ever held in your hand. The fully-grown heads are grapefruit-sized, and make a generous salad for one, and they're the best thing I have grown, as far as I'm concerned. And since I'm someone who doesn't naturally gravitate to lettuce salads, that's saying something.

We first had gem romaine at the Genoa Bay Cafe in a deconstructed Caesar salad, with the individual leaves stacked log-cabin style on the plate. I tracked down the seeds at Johnny's over the winter, and started them in the greenhouse in early March. We're eating it as fast as I can grow it - I'm on my third planting, and can see many more in my future.



Our local bunny is a fan, too. I'm thinking that once I plug all the holes in the fence he's using to make his way into the inner sanctum of the vegetable garden, I'm going to have to plant a little patch of Bambi in the pasture just for him. A bunny and his Bambi. It could be a movie...

New kid

There's a new kid in the Mucky Boots flock, and it ain't a chicken. It's a rabbit. 

We first spotted it a couple of weeks ago, hanging out in the back pasture where the chicken tractor and chicken yurt are, and now we see it every day. Just a regular rabbit, but it doesn't seem afraid of either us or the grown-up chickens wandering around very close by. Gump and his flock cruise around the pasture eating grass and bugs, and there's the rabbit right beside them, nibbling back dandelion stems like pasta strands. Does s/he think s/he just blends in?

We're charmed, even though the little bugger has found a way into my vegetable garden and is helping itself to my lettuce...

...but we're also a little concerned, because Miss Comfort Queen herself, Petunia the cat, is an expert and somewhat bloodthirsty rabbit hunter. We know this because a few times a year she leaves the bottom half of one on the door mat. (Yes, the bottom half - neatly severed at the waist line, and no, we don't know what she is doing with the top half. Perhaps that's where the tastiest bits are.) We love our Petunia, and want her to live out her kitty destiny, but we'd rather she left this particular rabbit alone.

Come to think of it, Petunia gives the adult chickens a wide berth - after all, most of them are bigger than she is. So maybe our rabbit is hanging out with the chickens for a little protection.

What a smart rabbit.

Just for Jean

What's that growing in my garden? No, you are not seeing things. That's kale.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably know I don't like kale. I have tried really, really hard, but I really, really don't like it.

My friend Jean, on the other hand, loves kale and thinks I should too, because it's so darn good for me. She's right, of course, and when I read that my go-to greens (spinach and chard) contain enough oxalic acid to add to my struggle with arthritis, I knew it was time to get over whatever feelings I may have about kale and just start eating the darn stuff.

So now there are two lovely rows of kale in my garden - Red Russian and Lacinto - and here is a photo, just for Jean.

And now I need some good ideas. What's your favourite way to eat kale?

Cerinthe

Do you know this flower? It's an annual, which means I normally wouldn't look at it twice (I'm all about perennials, you know) but it caught my eye a couple of years ago on a trip to the Butchart Gardens. It was used in the planters that decorate the top of every garbage receptacle (only at Butchart would the waste bins be horticultural works of art) and I fell in love. What a colour!

So this winter, when I was trying to inject a little whimsy in my oh-so-practical planting list, I added cerinthe to my seed order. I was imagining the small, trailing version I saw at the gardens, so I didn't read the description very carefully. Imagine my surprise when my little seedlings grew, and grew, and grew. They're about 18" high at this point, which makes the container I planted them in completely unsuitable, but once they started to flower I didn't care. 

These flowers could make me not care about a lot of things. It probably sounds ridiculous, but somehow most items on my list of things to worry about just fade into the background, when I have these blooming on my porch.

Feta

Close your eyes and cast your mind back a few thousand years. You're stirring a vat of milk over a fire, and someone walking by accidently drops in the stomach from a just-slaughtered calf. (I'm sure you could make up an interesting if implausible story to explain that.) And a miracle happens: cheese is born!

There were no calves or camp fires here this week, but I am happy to announce the birth (or coagulation?) of the first Mucky Boots cheese. Yes, we made cheese! Goat's milk feta, to be precise.

Our interest was piqued by our friend Rebecca who began making hard cheeses a few months ago. She has had us over for a couple of cheese-making experiences in the last few weeks, and we came out of them with the confidence to try it on our own.

So I ordered a couple of different cultures (one for feta and one for chevre) and some rennet from Glengarry Cheesemaking, and sourced some local goat's milk just in time for a visit from my dad. Put a Math teacher, a Science teacher and an engineer in the kitchen with pots and thermometers and bacterial cultures, and for sure something interesting will happen!

We followed a recipe from here, but basically this is what happens:

Step #1: Gently heat the milk, add the culture, and let it sit for an hour.

Step #2: Add the rennet, stir, and let it sit for 40 minutes. [Our rennet came as liquid in a dropper bottle, which made me wonder how folks a hundred years ago would have done it. If I remember Laura Ingalls Wilder's account correctly, her ma got a piece of calf's stomach from a neighbour. But does that mean people only had cheese when a calf was slaughtered? It turns out people would dry pieces of the stomach and reconstitute it when it was time for cheese making. Go figure...]

Step #3: Cut the curd and let rest for 10 minutes. During this time the curds will start to release the whey.

Step #4: Hold at a constant heat and stir gently for 45 minutes. This "cooks" the curds and makes them a bit tougher.

Step #5: Pour into a cheesecloth-lined colander and hang to drain for 24 hours. After a few hours we turned the cheese in the cloth, so we would get a more uniform ball.

Step #6: Cut the ball into manageable pieces and let sit covered at room temperature for 2-3 days. Then cover the pieces with brine and refrigerate for 1-4 weeks. 

Step #7: Eat!

We're in the middle of Step#6, so it will be a while before we know if the cheese is any good. Even if it's fabulous, this experiment isn't likely to be repeated soon, since we used about $28 worth of organic goat's milk to get a ball of cheese the size of a large grapefruit. Not so cost effective, but worth the experience. One time, anyway!

Swap

Something unheard-of happened on Sunday: Kim sold six cockerels at the local chicken swap.

You need to understand that this is the time of year when everyone is looking hard at the chicks they have bought or hatched, trying to figure out how many pullets and how many cockerels they have. We call it The Great Rooster Lottery, and the end result is always the same: everyone tries to unload their cockerels. Some people raise them to eating weight and then butcher them, as we did last year. But Kim was really proud of her boys: she has been breeding for size, and the six cockerels she brought to the swap were fine specimens - good enough to breed rather than eat. Kim was determined to find new homes, good homes, for these six youngsters.

She didn't have great hopes. Neither did I. When we unloaded the crates the folks beside us came to have a look. "Cockerels?" they asked, and then shook their heads sympathetically. We all know this sad dance.

But nobody factored in how compelling the combination of Chicken Mama and Science Teacher can be. People may have wandered over just for a look and maybe to ask "How much?" but they stayed because of Kim's passion and knowledge. And then they bought because of the healthy birds, and clean cages, and because Kim answered every single one of their questions - clearly and patiently like the teacher she is. She sold one cockerel, then another, and another, then two at once, and then the last one - all to people looking to start their own breeding programmes, or for a rooster to help protect an existing flock.

Woo hoo!

It was an interesting morning for me, too - a lovely woman named Kate came over to introduce herself and to tell me she had been reading the blog. How cool is that!

Older and wiser

I was pretty much new to gardening when we moved out here to Mucky Boots. There was one small vegetable garden a long time ago that my house mate was mostly responsible for, and I remember a few failed planters on decks and balconies. At our house before this one we had quite a bit of landscaping, but all it really needed was maintenance, and so I learned something about how to weed, cut things back, and spread mulch.

So I think I don't need to tell you what a steep learning curve I have been on in our three years here. I have learned a lot about growing vegetables, and a bit about growing perennials, but I think the best lessons, the most important ones, have been about the graceful embrace of imperfection and the ebb and flow of the seasons. And about the acceptance of enough. Enough food grown. Enough work done.

And so here are a few of the lessons about life and about gardening I have learned.

Don't push the season. When we first started I was determined to get as much food from the garden as I could, and that meant starting almost everything in the greenhouse. I have learned that a lot of time and energy - and money, for all those heat mats - go into all those early starts, and a lot of it can be saved by just paying attention to what the plants really need. By starting winter squash in the greenhouse, for example, I had it in the ground earlier than I would have if I had just seeded directly, but by the time the early birds had recovered from their transplant shock, their direct seeded cousins had caught up. Or take beans, as another example. They really need warm soil to germinate, so there is no point seeding them before the soil is ready - they will just rot, or at best sleep until the conditions are right. This can be applied to my life, too: sometimes, when I'm trying to force something to happen right now, what I really need to do is step back and wait. I'm not so good at that, but I'm learning.



Be satisfied with enough. Sometimes ten tomato plants are enough, and I don't really need twenty-four. Sometimes one bed of blueberries is enough - three would mean lots more blueberries, but also lots more work. Sometimes stopping to admire one gorgeous tulip is enough, without leaping to thinking I need to plant a whole bunch more. Sometimes it's enough to stop after two of three hours of work, even though it means leaving a lot undone. Being satisfied with enough is about getting off the treadmill of more, more, more, and sitting on the porch with a cup of tea and enjoying what is instead.



Enjoy the first blush of spring and don't be sad when it's gone. There is a magic week or two in May when tulips, and iris, and columbine, and perennial corn flowers, and lilacs, and wisteria are all flowering. Everything is lush and green, and all is right with the world. Then I notice that ants have got at the climbing hydrangea again and those corn flowers are looking slightly mildewy, and the tulips fall over and look blah. I've learned not to worry - the hydrangea will survive, and the hostas are already growing in leaps and bounds to fill in the empty spaces, and soon the poppies and lilies will steal the show, and then the glorious fall colours will start, and then the quiet of winter will come, and then it will be spring all over again.



Choose your battles. Creeping bellflower. Some of my beds are full of it. I briefly tried to eradicate it, but there's a reason it's classified as an invasive species in some districts: you can dig and dig and sift and think you've got every last root and rhizome, but an inch further down are some you missed that are already planning their comeback. Here's how I look at it now: in the early spring it forms a lovely, lush green ground cover. A few weeks later, once the stalks are about a foot high, they are easily pulled out to give the other plants more room. Of course that's just the stalk, and all the roots are left behind, but I wasn't ever going to be able to rid of those anyway (see above) so now I mostly don't bother unless I am planting something new and want to give it some breathing room. I see it as a perfect example of the 80-20 rule: in 20% of the time I can deal with 80% of the problem, but to finish off the remaining 20% would take 80% of the time. Get it?

Poppies growing in the thyme patch.

Give poppies special dispensation. Our first year here I spent a long afternoon ridding the rhubarb and blueberry bed of what I thought were dandelions. Turns out they were poppies. I love poppies. They are a perfect example of a beautiful thing that can't be controlled or owned: they grow anywhere and everywhere, and you have to appreciate them in situ because they make terrible cut flowers. Now poppies get a free ride here at Mucky Boots - I'll leave them in any bed they appear in except where I'm trying to grow carrots. It's good for me to have something in my life that doesn't follow rules or plans or schedules, something that can't and shouldn't be controlled. That's the gift poppies bring me.

What have you learned from your garden?

Tulips

Yes, it's tulip season once again, and once again I have an obsessive compulsion to document every single gorgeous blossom. I did this last year, and the year before, so you'd think I'd know by heart every tulip here at Mucky Boots. But here's the thing: I am positively, absolutely sure that there are tulips flowering this year that I did not plant and have never seen before.

I've had that feeling before, and only half-jokingly suggested someone was sneaking onto the property in the fall to plant a few new bulbs, just to keep my life interesting. This year, if I said the same thing, I would be only one-quarter joking. What's going on?

Take these ones, for example: simple white with a demure fringe of purple near the edge of each petal. I know I would remember these. I'm sure I've never seen these before. I didn't plant them, and yet here they are.

Ditto with these: there are three of them in a bed where I don't remember seeing any tulips before. Am I going crazy? Am I overusing italics?

On the other hand, some old favourites have returned for another year. So enjoy: here is the Annual Mucky Boots Tulip Parade.

Tofino

Did you miss me? I've been enjoying a wonderful week with my sister, who was visiting from Toronto. We went thrift store shopping, played with the chickens, planted potatoes, went to an auction, cooked and ate and talked and talked and talked. And we went to Tofino overnight, so she could get an ocean fix.

Since it was a special visit we spent a night at the Wickaninnish Inn. This was the view from our window. 

The Inn is on Chesterman Beach, which wasn't busy midweek, so there was lots of room for walking and thinking and listening to the surf.

And now my sister is back at home with her family and things seem awfully quiet here at Mucky Boots. Come back soon!