Get chickens. Part Two, part one

There were two garden sheds in the yard when we purchased our home.  One of them houses the lawnmower (I won't tell you which one, so if you're aiming to break in to steal it, there's a 50% chance it will take you twice as long. This will give our lazy hound dog time enough to wake up and start barking, and Abe time enough to hear and come after you with our b.b. gun.).  The other is now our chicken coop.

contemplating chicken coop conversion

The first step was emptying out the shed, which was full of random things, like a brand new Swiffer mop, 15 years of cobwebs, dust, and spiders, a humane animal trap, and a kerosene heater, along with a complete set of dishes we now eat off of every day. (We washed off the spiders.)

The next step was to build nesting boxes (where the chickens lay their eggs) and roosts (where the chickens sleep).  See?

The garden shed turned out to be a lot bigger than we needed for our new flock, so Abe put up a wall dividing the front third of the shed from the back two-thirds. 

Behind the pullet and the shovel in this next picture, you can sort of see the divider.  The top of the wall is the metal fencing you can see behind the chicken; the bottom of the wall is OSB and has a door cut from the center (human size, for egg collection).  This keeps the chickens out of the feed and other junk we store in the front portion.

Being a talentless photographer with an aging point-and-shoot digital camera, I can't seem to get decent photos that show the whole inside. I decided to draw you a diagram instead, never mind that I'm also a talentless artist.

We cut two windows in the back of the coop, because even chickens love natural light.  Abe used old picture frames to "frame" them - that way the glass is already pre-cut just the right size.

Here's a cost breakdown:

Garden shed:  FREE  (came with the house)

Wood for nesting boxes:  $12

Bamboo for roosting:  FREE (harvested from the side of the road)

Having a pet who makes you breakfast:  Priceless

With the hens restricted to the back of the coop, we found that there's just enough space in the front for MORE ANIMALS (exactly what every garden shed needs).  Abe framed in an area on the right side to hold our rabbits and cut a separate door on the exterior wall to they could hop around, dig tremendous tunnels, and ruin the yard outside. Now that the rabbits are in the freezer, that space is perfect for our young spring chickens.  They have warm space inside (with a brooding light that we've unplugged now that it's so warm), but they can also explore the rabbit tunnels on sunny afternoons.

quite possibly a rooster... and soon to be dinner

EDIT:  I forgot you were waiting on my advice re:  naming your chickens.  Here it is:

1.  Don't.  When Abe and I first got chicks, there was Winona. She was the tiniest but made up for it in spunk. She was sociable and darling, also the only one I named. Then a hawk ate her.

2.  Pick a theme.  To get you started, names of flowers (Daisy, Iris, Tansy) and kinds of cars (Buggy! Tacoma!), although now that I'm thinking of these awesome names, I'm going to need more chickens.  I'm also partial to old lady names (ahem, Winona,* Harriet, Gertie, Myrtle**)

*See also: names of celebrities

**See also: names of flowers 

3. Make sure you can tell your chickens apart.  Abe has one chicken he calls Friendly. (#4 - Don't put Abe in charge of naming your chickens; ruins the theme***). To me, she looks exactly like one of our other Rhode Island Reds, so now we have two chickens who both think they might be Friendly.  The real Friendly is bow-legged, so I only know which she is when she's on the run. It's no good to have a name for a chicken you can only remember while laughing at them. (You can call me Unkind.)

***exception: names like Snow White's dwarfs

Planning a garden

Last week I bought my 2012 planner.  I love me some papergoods, and planners are my favorite.  I love the blankness of a whole year of  pages, and the potential of that year to finally be the one when I got organized! had a social life! remembered the dog's heartworm medication!  I love writing in the birthdays of the people I love, and looking forward to those celebrations.  I love pencilling in visits and vacations and coffee dates.  I like to plan, and to know what's coming.

As a financial counselor, I preach about planning.  I teach budgeting, saving for retirement, planning major purchases.  I love planners, and I am a planner.

But I have never planned a garden. The closest I've come is sitting down with Abe and a seed catalog, making a list of things we wanted to grow.  If memory serves correctly, we forgot the list when we actually went to buy the seeds, and we ended up with five kinds of tomatoes and several herbs that we never even used (the shame).

Here are at least four

 benefits of planning your garden:

1. Saving money.  It may be easier to pick up young plants from a nearby nursery or home improvement store, but it's sure cheaper to grow your own from seed.  Planning ahead allows you to get seeds sprouting in time to avoid paying retail prices for plants.
2. Saving time.  Every year by July, it seems we've come up with a new plan for a lower-maintenance garden.  Of course, if we'd started planning before we planted, we could have saved ourselves the effort this year, too.
3. Saving effort.  We're lucky that just about every yard in our neighborhood has a kitchen garden. Last year, we traded cherry tomatoes for romas and squash for peppers.  If you know what your neighbors grow best, you can save yourself the trouble of duplicating their efforts and swap produce. 
4. Saving seeds.  If you pay attention to what grows well, and keep a basic record of your garden from year to year, you may be able to save seeds.  This is important to our farm because we're pinching pennies  increasingly, large agriculture dictates what home gardeners grow, and heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables are lost. For that reason, we don't mind paying more for seeds from Seed Savers - it's an investment in our right to continue to grow whatever varieties we want.  If home gardeners don't invest in that right today, we won't have the same options in the future.

With Superbowl Sunday fast approaching, it's almost time to start some indoor seeds.  That means it's time to get planning!

Willy Nelson sells out

Tonight Abe wanted me to look up a Coldplay music video on Youtube. (I know.)  So I went rogue, and instead clicked on a video that said it was Willy Nelson covering Coldplay's "The Scientist."  (I know!)

We were watching along (you'll see), and I hear Abe say, "aww... I like this..."

 
Until we get to the end, and I hear him again: "...until they Chipotle Mexican Grill your ass!"

the farmer and the tax man

We've talked about farming for a long time, but only recently taken some of the big steps to get there. (1. acquire land. 2. acquire hound dog  3. grow stuff?)  I've known that there was some tax benefit to farm land, and now that we've started to grow stuff, I wondered if we might be eligible.

source

So I did some in-depth academic research and was disappointed to learn that our 2/3 of an acre doesn't even bring us close to qualifying for a North Carolina farm tax ID, which requires that you own at least 10 acres.  I don't think we can include 9 1/3 acres of our neighbors' yards, even though our farm dog and chickens occasionally roam there. But Google didn't seem to know for sure, and tried instead to direct me to invisible fencing sites and forums where people talk about how to stop their dogs from chasing their chickens. Easy: trade in your dog for a house cat.