Summer Chickens

My backyard hens are doing well in the summer heat, although they get a little pissy in the late afternoons. I've been letting them eat around the edges of my vegetable beds. This adds a healthy dose of kale, mint, and oregano to their diet. Their favorite snack is still a handful of meal worms, though. When it gets over 100 degrees, I usually take a shallow pan of ice to the hens. The ice melts quickly, but the water is cool and refreshing for the ladies. Gladys likes to stand in the water and cool off her feet.

May Garden Report

May is here and I'm so happy for the glorious weather and growing greens! This weekend, our little upcycled coop was featured on an urban coop tour. My favorite description of it came from a neighbor who called it "a steampunk gypsy wagon". Perfect!

The garden is in great shape. The heat of summer is still a ways off and the scattered rain has kept my beds deeply watered and happy. Right now in my garden, I have 6 heirloom tomato varieties, lazy wife pole beans, one pickling cucumber, four different varieties of squash and zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, kale, chard, red and yellow onions, basil, mint, oregano, sage, lavender, sunflower, nasturtiums and one lone strawberry plant. I also planted a Jersey Black Apple tree this spring. It won't see fruit for a few years, but it's nice to plan way out in advance. I also have a happy Asian Pear tree and a Meyer Lemon, which is in its first year of bearing fruit!

Here are some photos of my May garden. I'll be transplanting the watermelon elsewhere in the garden this month, because I can already tell its going to take over! I'll keep posting throughout the summer so you can see what thrives and what dies. (Something always dies. I'm a trial and error gardener, so I don't mind when something tanks.)

How is your garden this month? 

What are you growing? 

Are you trying something new? 

What are your old favorites that you always grow? 

I'd love to hear from you in the comments section!

We had a post-coop-tour afterparty and this was the cake!

So cute, right?

Spring Fever

The crispness of early spring has definitely shifted here in Texas to welcome in the humid air and slow breeze of early summer. Everything in my garden is green and growing fast because of recent rains. We're gearing up for a coop tour happening on May first. It's called Peep at the Coops and the tour showcases urban chicken coops. All proceeds benefit a local school garden. So in preparation, I've been cleaning the beds, wiping down the patio furniture and adding some annual color here and there. Here are a few shots of my back yard to end the week. Have a beautiful weekend and I'll see you back here on Monday!

Do you live in Dallas?

Are you interested in attending Peep at the Coops?

Find the information below:

My Favorite Backyard Farm on Instagram

If afternoons on the back patio, chicken in lap and handcrafted Belgium ale in hand, sounds good to you, then let me introduce my friend Deanna - who I met briefly back in school days in Santa Maria, CA. Deanna and her husband are urban homesteaders in Santa Barbara County who share their work on Instagram. Its my favorite feed on the web right now and I thought I'd share it with YOU! (Although, as evidenced by her almost 19K followers, you may already know all about her.)

Deanna and her husband grow veggies, raise hens, can and ferment their harvest, make Kombucha by the batch and build awesome shit in their yard. I'm envious. Not in a cloying grass-is-greener kind of way, but in an inspired get-out-there-and-make-the-world-a-better-place kind of way. Take a look at Deanna's photos below and definitely hop over to her Insta-feed and enjoy!

Find her on Instagram HERE. 

February Chicken Report

It's Monday - time for our weekly installment of Radical Homemaking. Interested in learning more about what that means, check out THIS post and THIS post. 

This week, Gladys began laying again! It's been a stressful winter for the poor girl. Molting began with a vengeance in late November and all egg laying ceased as the temperatures dropped. Then in January, Gladys witness a bobcat attack that picked off everyone of her flock mates. So the stress of the season and the predator attack really knocked her off her egg laying cycle. But this week, she's back!

We replaced our lost hens with three new ones last month. The girls are happy in their new home and Gladys has been very amenable, showing them around the yard and pointing out all of the good grubs and sand bath locations. She's quite the hostess.

Now that the weather is nice, we're repairing some broken pieces in the coop. Our 100% recycled coop has held up surprisingly well over the past 14 months. Since everything is old and repurposed, it needs to be retooled every once in a while. Plus, we're getting our sweet coop ready for a local coop tour on May 1st. Our girls are going to be local celebrities!

Gladys started laying again!

Left to Right: Olive, Myrtle and Gladys

Pearl is our flock leader.

Repairing some winter damage on the coop.

Radical Homemaking | New Girls on the Block

It's Monday - time for our weekly installment of Radical Homemaking. Interested in learning more about what that means, check out THIS post and THIS post. 

Last week, I shared the sad news about our backyard flock. It could have been a coyote or a bobcat. There was no carnage, no bodies or signs of a fight. It was as if our hens had been raptured. So strange. Our sole surviving hen, Gladys, has been nervous and lonely this week. Hens are meant to live in community with other hens, so today I took my family to a local farm, east of Dallas, to select some new coop mates for Gladys.

We selected three 4-month-old hens to join our backyard flock. I really wanted to add some color to our egg supply, so we decided on an Americauna, a Deleware, and a Welsummer. I'm happy to introduce you to our new girls!

Wilma the Welsummer (dark terracotta egg color).

Pearl the Deleware (creamy brown egg color).

Maude the Americauna (blue-green egg color).