Book Review: Keep Chickens by Barbara Kilarski

Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces

If you are on the fence whether or not you want a small flock of chickens, this book will convince you to have them. Like me, the author grew up a city girl, but had a burning desire to have chickens. She lives on a very small plot of land she calls "postage stamp sized" in Oregon. The authors obvious love for her chickens shines through her writing. This well written book is entertaining while very informative. Keep Chickens has all the information you would need to get started with your city flock of chickens without being overwhelming. Included in the book are reasons for keeping chickens, the basics of chickens, neighborhood laws, definitions, what is required, coops, picking baby chicks, and chicken care. She has a very realistic view on the time, effort and cost involved with raising chickens. If you are looking to have a large flock or run into problems with your chickens, this book does not cover it. Even if you already have your very own suburban flock of chickens, you might learn a thing or two, I know I did. All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get started with their own small flock of chickens, what an entertaining book!!!

~marisa

Heirlooms 101

When my friend Meghan suggested we have a whole section dedicated to heirlooms on this blog I thought she might be placing a little too much emphasis on them. To me, an heirloom was a pretty tomato - a vegetable grown by mega-serious gardeners who wanted to impress their neighbors with rare produce. How wrong I was! After a lot of reading I am a changed (and educated) woman. I can now say that in the future I may not plant anything BUT heirlooms. Want to know why? Well first let's define what an heirloom vegetable is...

Heirlooms are:
1. Old - Usually associated with plants dating from the 1920's and older. It's hard to date them but some American heirlooms varieties are believed to be Pre-Columbian (meaning before Columbus came to America). Many heirloom seeds may have been carried by your ancestors across the ocean to America hundreds of years ago! There were reasons people held onto these seeds...

2. Open-pollinating - meaning if you gather seeds from your plants you'll get the same plant next year. You might not know this but if you tried to gather seeds from your garden center tomato plants and grow them the next year you wouldn't get the same plant from it. These plants are not able to reproduce and are often sterile. (Unless of course it's an heirloom) Over hundreds of years these seeds were gathered from the best plants of the harvest and continue to produce that same quality. Think of the savings!

3. High quality - The best of the heirlooms really are wonderful. They have it all. They taste wonderful, look beautiful, and are easy to grow. The vegetables and fruits you buy in the grocery store were not bred for flavor or quality - but for uniformity and ease of transporting. Which means that many pale in comparison when it comes to taste. Many people say that once you taste an heirloom vegetable you'll realize you have been eating the cardboard version of this veggie all your life. How exciting to taste flavors that mother nature intended you to have - unadulterated pleasure! At least as much as food can give you - which is a lot to a foodie like me!
Heirlooms were cultivated for many years to produce strong, disease fighting, climate hardy plants. In fact, some heirlooms were very locale specific - sometimes as much as a small valley with very specific weather patterns. The plants you purchase from the garden supply may tolerate your climate but they aren't complex creatures ready to thrive in your climate - but your heirlooms just may be.

Diversity and variety are good not only for our taste buds but also for our gardens. Another vital reason to maintain heirlooms is to keep their genetic traits for future use. When old varieties of food crops are not maintained, the gene pool grows smaller and smaller. This may lead to increased disease and pest problems. You may have pest or disease problems in your garden but with many different varieties the likelihood of all of your plants being affected is very low.

While this is just the tip of the iceberg(lettuce?) when it comes to heirlooms and their distinction, I hope you feel as inspired as I do to try out these treasured plants. So, this year when planning for your garden why not try some heirlooms? You may feel you are connecting to the past and sharing a heritage with your forebears in the planting of these wonderful vegetables and fruits. (There are also heirloom status livestock - animals that are better suited for the free range instead of the factory.) You can order heirloom seeds from several different companies including the Seed Savers Exchange. This company has a free seed catalog - order one even if you're not ready to plant heirlooms - just to acquaint yourself with these treasured plants!


More seed links:
Victory Heirloom Seeds
Amishland Heirloom Seeds
Heirloom Vegetable Gardener's Source


~Megan

A lot of my information came from this wonderful site and this amazing book(I'll be reviewing this book very soon.) Images from Mike Donk & Scott Bauer

Ramblin' Roses

I've recently moved into a new house, and shortly after I moved in I noticed roses in the front yard. I'm not exactly sure what kind they are, I think they are a sort of Climbing Rose. Maybe a Trailing Rose? Either way they were unkempt and didn't have many blooms. I have killed many a rose bush in my day, and instantly thought "Those are goners." However, one day my mom walked past them, put her good ole' Texas A&M Agronomy education to use and said, "You know if you will trim these to the second five they will do great." The second five??

She explained, after a bloom dies look down the stem and you will notice the leaves grow off the stem in bunches alternating of threes and fives (sometimes you will get even numbers in the mix as well). So walk down the stem and find your first set of five leaves, then keep walking down the stem until you find your second set of five leaves. (You may pass many non-five leaf groupings on your way down the stem. That is okay!) Then trim right above the second set of five!

Now I have such healthy happy roses. I feel empowered and I can tell they are rapidly becoming my babies.

~Sarah

My First Egg

Waiting for your first egg is almost like waiting to deliver a child. You can expect your hens to start laying eggs once they are about 5 months old, their "due date". You might even mark it on your calendar! Your chicks start out so cute and small, just like your body. Then the growing begins, your cute little body, I mean the chicks, get big. You wonder how big your bum is going to get just like you wonder how big your hens are going to get. As the due date gets nearer, you start the official countdown - and people start excitedly asking you if you have gotten any eggs yet. Waiting for the egg past the due date is so 'laborious' and some hens may not even 'deliver' their first egg until they are up to 6 months. Let me tell you, when your hens are 'overdue' on their first egg, it can be very frustrating. Every day feels like an eternity - let alone waiting four more weeks! You might even begin to think that the egg is never going to come, but it will. Every morning you run to the coop to see if there is a little surprise egg waiting for you, and when it's not there the disappointment is real. You have to check a couple more times during the day, because maybe the hens were too cold that morning or maybe they wanted to wait until after they ate. You start to think you must be doing something wrong. Maybe you could get the chicken on the trampoline to get that egg out, or is there some sort of special foot rub you can give to get the labor started? A nice long walk might jar it out. Can you harness a chicken and walk it on a leash?

But eventually it does come.

The excitement of getting the first egg is amazing. It is nowhere near the beautiful experience of delivering or receiving a child, but it is exciting none the less. If you are unfamiliar with farm life like I am, you may be a little apprehensive to eat that first egg. We waited and stressed over the first egg for weeks, but when it finally came we were scared to eat it! I triple dog dared my husband to eat it and he survived, so the fear disappeared after that. Now, after having fresh eggs for a year, I might call myself an 'egg snob' because there is no comparison to store bought eggs, but I will save that for another post.

~Marisa

Website Review: www.mypetchicken.com

While Marisa got her chickens from craigslist and I got my chickens from the local feed store - one the best ways to get chickens may be through a registered hatchery. Obtaining your chickens this way allows you to order the specific breeds you are looking for as well as better control the sex of the chicks. Chicks can live for the first few days after birth without being fed - they are still gaining their sustenance from the yolk sack which they absorb just before hatching. This enables day old chicks to be shipped directly to any customer that lives within a two day journey from the hatchery. There are hatcheries all over the nation and you might find one locally but a great resource for getting started is www.mypetchicken.com.

At My Pet Chicken a person can order all of the supplies needed for raising chickens - excepting the feed - or just get some very helpful information. My pet chicken has a free chicken care e-guide as well as forums and FAQ pages for help getting started and troubleshooting. They also sell pre-made coops and runs as well as plans for building coops. This cute coop plan is called the "playhouse" plan and will run you at $35.00/plan.

By far, my favorite and most used feature at the site is the breed finder. It asks you a few questions to help determine your needs/wants and then produces a list of chickens that meet your requirements. So, if you are looking for high egg producing chickens, chickens that are cold-hardy, or chickens that lay colorful eggs - this is the easiest way to find out the breeds that are best. Or you can search through their VERY thorough list of breeds. Other sites may list a few breeds but this list tops all other I've been able to find online.


Once you've selected a breed you can click on it's name to read all sorts of good stuff about it. This page has excellent color images of each breed - another thing that's hard to come by. I really haven't seen better images of so many breeds all on one site.
Each page details breed history, size and weight, personality, and egg laying characteristics including egg color. At the bottom of this page is also a listing of all of the hatcheries that this chicken is available for purchase from. What a helpful tool that is! I have been known to spend a serious amount of time on this site. It has also helped me to identify the breed of several of my hens. That has helped me to better understand their personalities and the amount of eggs I should expect from them.

This wonderful site also has books, art, clothing, and stationary all to support your love of everything chicken. Including some of those cute tin signs sporting such phrases as FRESH EGGS and Chicken X-ing.

I chose this site as my first website review because I believe it's the best there is when it comes to chickens. It's ease of use and graphic layout make it my top pick. These people really have thought of everything! It's also a great time to be looking at this and other sites because chicken orders will be starting as early as February and will be in full swing by Spring. Some of these beautiful breeds do sell out - so get your orders in soon! (I'll be ordering some blue Americaunas. They're beautiful hens that lay green and blue eggs!)

Here is an example of some cute prints from mypetchicken.com!
~Megan

Clothesline Preview

This past weekend I got my clothesline in the mail from Amazon.com and I am so excited to install it. I am really stoked about this particular clothesline because it makes drying clothes outside so much more user-friendly! Check back soon to see my complete post on it!

~Megan

When Gardeners garden...

This is my paternal great grandparents working in their garden outside their home in Utah. Circa 1930

When I was eleven years old I announced to my parents that I wanted to be a shepherd when I grew up. They assumed I was just trying to make them laugh, but I was completely sincere. I had thought about how I wanted to spend my time as an adult and the life of a shepherd seemed fitting. I can see now what I was reaching for - a quiet simple life, my days spent out of doors, with animals and mother nature. Though I don't want to be a shepherd anymore, I still yearn for the same things I did as a child.

My mind is always going. There are all sorts of names for my type but I prefer to call myself a dreamer. Sometimes though, my brain can get fuddled up with noise - all of the things I heard/read/saw that day from websites, the news, phone calls, music from the car radio, my kids running through the house screaming, or the dog barking. The only thing that seems to help is going outside and doing something with my hands. When I'm outside it feels like all of that confusion and stress just slips off of me and is replaced with a quiet strength. I know that sounds silly but I mean it!

I see the same in my kids. After too much television or video games - they are like wide-eyed zombies ready to attack. I've found if we take a step outside and pull some weeds from the tomatoes, or gather some basil for making fresh pesto, or just watch the chickens scratch around for bugs, that they return to their former selves. They're curious and thoughtful - they're happy (and a little dirty).

I recently came across a quote from Ken Druse, a gardening guru, writer, and photographer, that said:

When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow,
but the gardeners themselves.

He succinctly puts into words what I find to be true in my own life. I have realized that to live an abundant life I need more time in that element and away from computers, television, and radios. More than ever before, the world we are surrounded by is constantly bombarding us with both visual and auditory noise. It gets harder and harder to have even shorts amounts of time away from technology. I finally got a cell phone a few months ago and I have a hard time even blow-drying my hair without it in my gaze. I easily become a media junkie who needs a garden to save me on a day to day basis!

So, that is why I am so excited, or should I say obsessed, with this new blog. These activities that have been lost in the last two generations or less are essential to living full & peaceful lives! I really do hope that it will serve as a reminder and a help to my family and yours in our quest for better lives. And if not, at least in our quest for some darn tasty eggs and homemade pesto!

~Megan