Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

A week after their arrival, the chickens at three weeks old are doing fine. They settled in no problem, eat like maniacs, drink a lot, and I guess they’re too young to fight, ’cause they’re all getting along. I’ve been cycling through music—a radio is always on in the chickenhouse, to scare off PREDATORS—started with a couple of days of country, then a stretch of classical (they go a little crazy during big, building crescendoes), and now it’s rock (”’80s, ’90s and whatever”…a weird-format local FM station). So far, behavior seems pretty much the same no matter what’s playing—the experiment continues, maybe they want custom mix tapes. And they’re growing. They started off about the same size, but there are definitely some big guys now amongst the White Rock Cornish X, and the Frey’s Special are all at the smaller end, faster-feathering, too (there’s one on top of the waterer). They’re all getting along, but Bob noticed a red pecking spot on one of the White Rocks, so I’m gonna be watching the blending of the breeds: I read that sometimes the WRs get pecked (attacked?) because they’re slower to feather than others… The gang (the posse, the flock!) does keep busy, exploring corners and cracks, piling up and napping in sunlit patches, zipping around, drinking a lot, and of course, eating…

Definitely a lot of eating…

A couple more CHICKEN PICS »

Whitewashed the meat bird half of the Chickenhouse today, using the traditional purist blend of nothing but hydrated lime and water. This is an old school farming standard from Bob, completely new to me. The lime is a very fine powder that comes in bags. Mixing was easy. A power drill mixing attachment churned it to a thickness a bit lighter than regular paint, and then on it went with big brushes. The lime is a bit caustic, so wearing a mask when mixing, and gloves and goggles to avoid splatter, is probably a good idea, although I didn’t this time around. Afterwards (it’s follow Bob’s lead), I did some reading and, not surprisingly, was quite amazed: yet another simple, inexpensive, effective approach that’s been complicated (in this case, into the costly world of high tech paints and sealants). Classic lime whitewash disinfects, repels insects, and preserves by sealing surfaces and wicking up water. It dries to an opaque white that beautifully reflects light to brighten up dim spaces. It’s also safe for animals (which, yes, includes us humans), and can be used in chicken litter to keep it dry. There are lots of applications, interior and exterior, for wood and masonry. It’s not as permanent as oil or latex paint, will rub off a bit, and needs to be refreshed every year to keep it in top shape. But, it’s also INEXPENSIVE: a 50lb (22.5kg) bag was about $7, and you can mix up at least 15-20 gallons from that, the way we used it. That means you could whitewash an entire small building, inside and out, for maybe $20! For big jobs, a sprayer would make it real easy. You can tint it, and there are also various recipes that include alum, salt and other additives that may improve adhesion, but the tried-and-true basic is just lime and water. You need hydrated lime, not the garden stuff; we got ours from the feed store. I’m not sure how popular this sort of whitewashing is these days, but it’s certainly still used, and a few decades ago, this was a standard type of paint. Anyhow, it looks and sounds great, and we’ll see how the chickens like it!

Work on the Chickenhouse has been moving along. It’s not a huge job, but all of the little bits and pieces take time, including foraging through the barn and drive shed for material to recycle. Here, you can see the bottom of the new door between the main sections, for baby meat birds coming in a couple of weeks, and the mature layers, due in June. And there are six new nest boxes. Most of the boxes I’ve seen in photos have a top, which I gather is partly to discourage roosting on the walls and the subsequent crapping into the nests. But I’m fully deferring to Bob’s design, based on his decades of all-around farming. He says it shouldn’t be problem. For me, I’ve been doing my chicken reading and chicken chatting, but it’s mainly learn as you go with Bob in the lead on this one!

Jack the Miniature Donkey has been amiably hovering around, checking out the construction with his head stuck in the door. Here, he’s hanging close to the Chickenhouse even when no-one’s home. The chickens will soon be his neighbors. He’s a friendly fellow, also quite territorial, and he can kick, so he ought to be good for protecting that flank! All in all, I’m really incredibly excited. I guess the city guy in me is still in there looking out… ;)

Checked out the chickenhouse today to make up a materials list for the renovation. Here’s a view of the south-facing side (the usual daily view is from the barnyard to the east; the barn and silo are to the north, and hidden behind them is the market garden). From this side, it has that ramshackle cabin-in-the-woods look. I quite like it: 200 sq. ft. of open-plan living, big windows for lots of natural light, electricity, running water…instant home! Like most things on the farm, it has its history. The structure is 80-90 years old, purchased 50 years ago from the farm that used to be across the road (now a village subdivision with a bunch of houses, and untended fields), dragged over by tractor, and set on a concrete pad. It was used as a pony barn for a while; harnesses are still hanging on the wall. For the last 15-20 years, it’s housed a few chickens and turkeys, or been unused. Now, it’s back! There’s not much to do, besides a good cleaning: banging in a defensive baseboard (in the pic below, that’s a GNAWED not-so-little hole under the window), a window to fix, nests to build for the layers, and a coat of lime to disinfect and whitewash (that’ll be interesting). Outside, T-bars and chicken wire to fence in yards, and that should be it. Most of the materials we can salvage on-farm: the fencing stuff, lime, and plywood should be all that requires cash! There are even a bunch of feeders lying around. All these bits from the past, unused and still in place after years and decades, would be a little creepy, if we weren’t coming across them on the way to getting new things started!

This February, tiny farming for me is mostly about, inside, watching seedlings in a growing number of plug sheets under lights, and outside, watching the weather. In this zone, Feb is a little early for thinking about garden conditions. Well, “normally”, it would be. Now, given the increasingly erratic winter, I’m trying to figure out a new early season production strategy. Conceivably, end of March could be shockingly warm and the ground dry enough to work, and instead of just seeding early peas, I could try some super early field transplants. But then, what if winter happened to come back, not for a day or two of April snow, as sometimes happens, but for a week or two, with freezing temperatures. Early plantings could get killed off, and then I’d need a second set of seedlings! This is how I’m kinda starting to think, about trying to plant around the weather, take advantage of unpredictably good conditions, while expecting some weird bad turns as well. What do last and first average frost dates really mean, given the last five years? Is a 30-year local rainfall average still in any way a useful guideline? Am I…exaggerating? Two days ago, it was 40°F (5°C) and raining right through the night. I was sure the forecast for an even warmer Wednesday would come through to finish off another, fourth big melt-off. Instead, yesterday morning it did a sudden 180, froze up and dumped a ton of snow. Today, there are 7-8′ snowbanks all around the barnyard (from snow plowing). The once and future chickenhouse practically disappeared… ;) Will spring and summer be different from that?!

Chicken coop? Henhouse? I like ‘em all. This weather-beaten little building has been empty for a while, but a little fix-up and it’ll be ready to go. You can see the electricity cable and water hose snaking out at the top left of the pic. All the modern conveniences! The last tenants, three years ago, were half a dozen turkeys, lead by crazy Tom, an increasingly aggressive male known for a flying drop kick that could stagger a grown human. I didn’t have any close encounters with Tom, although I was curious. Before that, when I first started the garden five years ago, a dozen or more incredibly colorful ornamental chickens roamed the barnyard, darting out of hedges, zipping under fences, you never knew where they’d pop up. These were all, like the goats, kinda pets, and were eventually given away. Now, the loose plan is to get, well, WORKING chickens, for meat and eggs. At first, it won’t be directly part of the organic veggie garden, more of a side project that I’ll do with Bob. We were going to start last season, but that wound up on the still-to-do list. Yesterday, I took a quick look at the chicken-raising regulations—here in Ontario, there is a quota system that requires buying permits to raise chickens, with an exception for small numbers, and I imagine it’s similar everywhere in North America. Oh, well, more on that as it happens!