egg collection

so happy the new ordinance passed. our ladies can come out of hiding!

how does your garden grow?

quite well, in fact!
had kale for breakfast and dinner today. so good.
tomato plants in their cages.
bok choy ready to be grubbed on.
radishes are nice and peppery.
carrots have beautiful greens on them.
and the beans are starting to grow up the lattice.

boulder farmers' market

every saturday morning we make the trek north to the boulder farmers' market.

jonathan has always loved to talk to the farmers and ranchers there. last week he chatted up the wisdom's natural poultry stand. he's curious about the origins of food but he's also curious about finding sustainable and local sources for the menu at his restaurant he's currently working on opening (more about that later). well, these fine folks just plopped a 4 lb broiler and a dozen eggs in our hands. how about that for some R&D! we went home, made a simple roast and enjoyed. delicious. some of the best chicken i've had. the eggs were great too, though i am a bit partial to the freshest of fresh eggs i get from my own ladies.

seedlings.

here are the beginnings of our precious little seedlings that are starting to sprout! inside we started cabbage, jalepenos, eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, various peppers and six kinds of tomatoes. we're quite proud of how they're growing.

i wanted to use them as a background to showcase the awesome new postage stamps the usps debuted recently. i'm a geek for postage stamps. as i've been quite disappointed with the selection this year i was pleasantly surprised to find these go green guys on a recent trip to the postal office to send an ollie's package. each stamp has a different directive for ways to live green. simple things really. and i suggest you take a look if you are wondering in what ways you can simplify your living and minimize your carbon foot print.

hungry chickens

while ladybird was busy being broody on the nest, eleanor, jackie, jenny-from-the-block, and neko (clockwise from noon) got to grubbin' on a cracked egg. sometimes that happens in the excitement of collecting them and the chickens love it and, no, it isn't weird or cannibalism. trust me. it actually helps them lay thick-shelled eggs.

getting our hands dirty

this year jp and i bought our grab-bag tin of seeds from baker creek. we've never planned our harvest so far in advance and were giddy to begin. after we organized the seeds, made a planting chart, and gathered all the appropriate tools, jp and i headed out on a shady tuesday afternoon to the gardens to sow some seeds. jp and i were astounded by how unique many of the seeds look. we've never had such a variety in our possession so we were squealing with delight over how exotic seeds from simple veggies can look.

we use square foot gardening to plan our plantings and we've found that it really makes weeding quite easy. additionally, it makes the most use of small space and seems to increase the bounty. last year we didn't plant too much: some tomatoes, squashes, greens (most bolted), cabbage (which failed us), zucchini (was coming out of our ears) and some other miscellaneous green goodies. this year, there's a whole lot more variety and we're using discarded crib sides we found in the alley to train our pea and bean vines. we're quite proud of our head start.

we use planting mix that we get from the local landscape supply store and we supplement that with nutrient-rich soil from our chicken pen (which is our compost bin). thank you, ladies.

can't wait to see what bounty we get!

garden beds

last week jonathan built us some fancy new garden beds. we've started some seedlings inside and are currently making our plan for planting other seeds directly in the beds.

so much to do. so much good food soon!

grandpa and i down at the farm

RIP junebug

last night, after a wonderful birthday party for a coworker, we came home to find junebug, our buff orpington, dead in our backyard. she had escaped the pen (probably flew up on a hollow tree trunk we had for shade and then flew out of the fence). otto has access to the backyard via his doggy-door and it's most likely that he got a hold of her and shook her to death.

hens are killed (editorialization: obscenely and inhumanely) every day for the meat many buy at the grocery store, but we were not prepared for this. especially since we had recent plans to slaughter her ourselves and use her meat for some pot pie. i don't say this to be funny or morbid, but it is quite ironic.

after the shock subsided and sadness grew to realization of how animals hunt and are prey, we said our goodbyes and buried her in our fire-pit area at 2:30 in the morning. our biggest regret is that we couldn't honor her death with what she was intended to be: healthy and humanely-raised meat for our cooking and ingesting.

junebug was at the top of the pecking order with our hens (the three others are ladybird, jackie o and eleanor). she certainly kept us on our toes with her constant bellowing that orpingtons are known for and we will miss the way she danced and hopped around the chicken yard chasing moths and keeping the other ladies in line. we love you, juney.

the following photo, used for our 2010 valentines, paints a thousand words.

note to self

rub sunscreen in all the way. let set.

and don't try to pick your nose after you've been playing in the garden.

new shed doors

when my parents were here they helped us build this amazing penned-in area that included the shed in our backyard. we eventually want to get two nigerian dwarf goats for milk and we were also sick of having the nowhere to put the chickens (besides the entire yard) and having them poop all over the place. so up went cedar posts and welded wire fencing. we put the chicken coop within this area so they would have a place to sleep at night as well as a contained area to forage. like i mentioned before, we pour all our compost in here and their shuffling about in the straw helps to break all of that extra goodness down. next year we are going to have the most awesome dirt.

the shed was here when we first moved in. it was spray painted a horrible red so i took some leftover paint from our house (the people we bought it from graciously painted the whole house for us before we moved in) and painted it a nice creamy white. however, the doors had to be removed to meet FHA standards (they were chipping and contained lead-based paint). so even though our shed was painted nicely, it had no doors. white. trash.

jonathan built two new doors. the one on the left is a regular door to hide our tool and garden shed. the door on the right (the side that currently houses our tandem, tall bike, and cruiser, as well as supplies for the noble swine supper club) has a top and bottom to open up separately for livestock.

the chickens love it. otto especially loves it because now we actually keep the doggy door open and he has 24/7 access to a large yard and refreshing grass and shade.

all that needs to be done now is add some extra siding and finishing touches to the fence and paint the doors to match the shed and hardware (crossbeams will be an ultra black exterior paint and the paneling will be the creamy white used on the house and shed).

just waiting on those goats after that!