Yes You Can: a thank you!

I want to publicly thank Ohiofarmgirl for encouraging me when I lost a few birds and for featuring me on her blog. Check it out. The connection has sparked some fun opportunities and I look forward to sharing them on my blog. In late September I will travel with scalder and plucker in tow to a town just North of us to help a family butcher their chickens. Without the Ohio connection, the family and I would have never crossed paths. It is funny how two west coasters need an Ohio transplant to connect:) In all of this, I see the best the Internet has to offer--real relationships, with real people, doing the most honest work: taking care of each other.

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. -Wendell Berry

Potatoes and Weeds

My friend sent me a text message a few days ago, "You know the saying, you can't see the forest for the trees?" I knew what he was saying, "I can't see your taters, for the weeds." so yesterday we loaded up the fam and set out to do some billing and weeding. Little did I know there would be a jungle.
BEFORE:

It took us five hours of hand weeding--the trusty hoe could not be used. The girls were interested in helping, but that is where it stopped--they played. The taters were doing great once we got past the jungle.
AFTER:

Weeding is always on the top of my list of things to do, but it seems to get ignored. However once I am doing it, I find it deeply interesting. My mind gets a chance to wander in ways it doesn't usually. The last few big weeding sessions, I've been thinking about how much my vegetables need me and how much I need them. The weeds are a part of that process of needing and cultivating; they aren't the enemy, just part of the caring process. I suppose the weeds keep my "sowing eyes" from getting bigger than my stomach for hoeing.

Garlic Harvest

Garlic is a gateway drug. It is not usually used by itself for long and leads to the growing of many more delicious vegetables.

Tater Update

Our friendly neighbors plot is coming along nicely. Our weather has been pretty mild with not a lot of rain. I have only watered once and let nature do the rest--it has rained twice since planting. the Kennebec are really going for it. I need to get over their more often and do a little hoe work. The weeds aren't too bad yet, but a little work now will help save a lot time later. Once they are a bit taller I will mulch around them with straw.

Share Cropping: Tater and Bush Beans

My friend can't get to his garden this year, so I've become a sharecropper! His plot is about 25 miles from our house, and is a bit of a drive. However, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to try some "larger" scale growing. He used his tiller to re-break the soil and I used my trusty hoe to create seven 80 ft rows. It was good honest work.

I'm hoping to get enough taters from his plot to keep us in the carbs for the winter. I wanted to plant a more diverse patch of the little miracles, but Yellow Finns were the only seed our store had left. I'm liking the idea of planting in more than my own yard. It is not as secure felling, but it opens all sorts of opportunities for building trust and relationships.

Details: four hours of hand hoeing, 38 pounds of Yellow Finn seed, 100 bush bean seeds, in seven 80 ft rows.

Neighborhood Food

My neighbors have been really supportive of our backyard endeavors. They share their kitchen scraps with our hens and now they are sharing a piece of their backyard! I planted three rows of potatoes: Yellow Finn, Makah Ozette, and Kennebec. The Ozette has a great history and it is fun to contribute to its spread--even if it is in a small way.

Details: Three 3 inch deep trenches, 20 feet long. 18 inch spacing between taters in rows 36 inches apart. Organic Kelp Meal in trenches.

Next and To Do Differently

I have a list of things I would like to do differently, however I am trying not to be too hard on myself:) (If you are reading this post, you might want to visit the other posts to get caught up to speed.) I will break it down into to stages.

Brooder:

• Use pine shaving for bedding. I used hay and it compacted too much and held too much moisture. I suspect that the moisture contributed to the birds I lost.
  
• Clean brooder every day. I know this seems obvious, but I thought tossing new hay over their old, soiled bedding would save me time by not having to clean it out.
• Make sure the waterer does not leak. I had an auto waterer in the brooder and it leaked in one corner. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, because the birds wouldn't be in there long--wrong.
• Build a brooder with a bottom that can be scraped clean. I am not sure what will work best, but I have a garage with a concrete room. It might work best. My only concern about it is the cold that radiates from it. I suppose with three inches of shaving on the floor that wouldn't be a problem.

Tractor

• Build a more portable tractor. The tractor I built would have worked with more space, however it was so big, I couldn't rotate it enough in our back yard. The manure became too much to manage. I felt like the birds had a lot of room to roam, but I only moved the tractor four times in 30 days--too much poop in one spot!
• Put the tractor on the side of the house. The smell wasn't too bad and the noise wasn't a problem. However, with a small tractor and new location I figure I will be able to move it every day and it will only visit the same spot twice in 30 days.
• Make the feeder easier to access. My girls helped a lot with feeding the birds and because the hatch was hard to access there was a lot of spilled feed.
• Make the waterer easier to access. My auto waterer was not cool. It didn't work well and I suspect it was my fault:) We ended up buying a five gallon waterer, but it was raised off the ground with bricks. If I move the tractor everyday, I need to figure out a way to keep it suspended.
  

Butcher Day (Probably the easiest part of the whole process--thank you youtube and local resources)

• Try to coordinate the scalder and plucker with another neighborhood "insurgent." The cost is not bad--25 bucks--but the set up and cleaning is the same for 25 or 100. It could also be a good way to bring more of the neighborhood together.
• Use different bags for the finished chickens. I knew I should have used other bags, but we had gallon bags in the house--the four pounders fits fine, but the five pound fellas didn't.

Feed and Misc

• I was happy with the feed and price.
  
• Maybe raise more birds. I wonder if I could do 40 if I moved the pen everyday. I don't want to get greedy or do more than my patch of ground can handle, but the work is all the same. I will go out and talk to 5 birds or 40 birds.
  
• Welp Hatchery is worth another try. I lost 9 birds. One right away, two were a different breed and got smothered, one died from a heart attack, and the others died from what I am calling a failure to thrive. I know it is not chickenese, but they did not look like the others. The birds that made it to term were, healthy and feisty. They didn't charge shipping, which shaved 24 bucks off of the order.
• I am sure there is more.
  

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