It's a Chicken Tractor not a Turkey Tractor

I spotted this little guy inside the Chicken tractor, when I grabbed my camera he started to take off

Signs of Spring on a gray day

The Great Chicken Escape

Let me preface this by saying this is the first time my family or I have ever had chickens so their is a learning curve. We have been keeping the chickens in the kitchen in what we referred to as their play pen. The play pen is a cordoned off area, lined with newspaper, designed to contain them, but also give them some room to run.  The walls of the play pen were not very tall and I bet you know where this story is going! Needless to say we left the house to run a few errands and came home to chicks gone wild! They had been running all around the kitchen and living room and left a few presents around for us to clean up. Not their fault we should have known better. The chicks are now living in "affordable housing", but at least they have windows. They have been growing quick, I think we will be moving them, and their "housing", down to the basement. I also think it will still be at least a few weeks before they can go outside.

Busy...busy weekend

What a busy weekend...Saturday I moved the rest of my veggies to 3" & 5" peat pots, they were outgrowing the TP tubes and needed to be transplanted. After that I went right back to work on the Chicken Tractor. Saturday I added wheels and a nest box. Sunday, I did the rest of the wood work and applied two coats of cedar stain. The next step will be adding the wire fencing and pulleys to work the door and feeders. Hopefully that will finish it. You can see pictures taken at different stages on this link  Chicken Tractor

Spring is coming!

The rumor is...we are supposed to have a warm weekend, in the 60's and almost 70 degrees on Sunday. Hopefully this is a sign of more to come. It will be perfect weather for working on the Chicken Tractor and hopefully finishing it up. The chicks are starting to turn into little chickens, they are getting their feathers and once the feathers all come in they will be able to go outside. We also had our first bloom, the Hyacinth closest to the house foundation is in bloom, it even beat the Forsythia....

A great book if you want to learn about growing food

Great read, lots of good ideas and different perspectives (like using TP tubes for seed starting)

Come on Spring I know you can do it

Just when I started to think Spring was getting close we got a few inches of snow on 3/31. And, for what was hopefully the last snow storm of the year, it went out with a bang, well kind of. The highway department did the banging as they destroyed my mailbox with their plow. The mailbox made it all year, through one of the worst winters in history, but I guess when they came by in the wee hours of the morning on April fools day it was just too much for Mr. mailbox and he must of decided to commit suicide...I say suicide because the highway department already told me it wasn't their fault and they would not replace it so that is the only logical explanation. He must of jumped in front of the plow when it came by.... But I say this, if sacrificing my mailbox to the winter gods will bring spring I will gladly bear that burden....come on spring!

The beginning of the end for Mr. Mailbox

Morning Glory & Zinnia...now on the window sill

 

The girls playing in their designated play pen area. They are growing fast. Hard to tell from the picture, but they are already starting to get their feathers. I am hoping to start working on the coop soon, just need the weather to cooperate.

Everything is upstairs now. The peppers are tiny, not sure why. Also in this pic, tomato, lupin, cucumber, watermelon, eggplant

The summer squash & zucchini seem to be really happy. If anything, I think I was too early on these little guys

Chick update

The chicks are doing well, I have just three now.  They eat & poop all day, but are fun to have in the house. My kids love playing with them and named them right away. We have Maria, pronounced Mar-E-a (the female version of Super Mario), Ang (also off of a cartoon) and Aurora (a.k.a Sleeping Beauty). We had a little bit of excitement this morning as Aurora flew out of the box...we only found out because I think she scared herself and began chirping frantically. I put her back in the box and covered the top with a piece of left over window screen...I think I am going to find them a bigger box and they will soon be moving downstairs to the basement.

The Chicks have arrived!

Th feed store I bought my chicks from received a shipment of 600 and sold all of them in 1 day. They require a minimum purchase of 6 so I bought 6 and will be giving 3 of them to a friend and his family, this is the first time either family will have chickens!

Spring is in the air, oh, wait, it's snowing, AGAIN!

It's March 24th, nothing like waking up to a snow storm...yes, I said snow. It's snowing..Again! When will this winter end?

It will be a while before these little guys can go out

My veggie patch with a fresh layer of the white stuff

Completely winging it

Ok, at this point I think it’s safe to say I am completely winging it. The purpose of the toilet paper tubes were to give the roots a deeper cell to grow in, which would also allow me to directly transplant them tubes and all into the garden and minimize root disturbance.  The tomatoes and peppers are still on course, but the squash and peas have a different plan. I’m not sure if I just planted them too early, but as you can see they are outgrowing their homes.  The TP tubes are getting black mold on the outside and the roots are hanging out the bottom so I decided to transplant them.  I commandeered a star wars table cloth (left over from my sons last birthday), dug out some old pots I had in the shed, and got to work on the kitchen table.  

Now here is the dilemma, a major reason why I used the TP tubes in the first place was to minimize root disturbance, but if I remove the tubes to transplant I am defeating the purpose so what should I do?  Not sure, so I am going 50/50 I removed half and transplanted the other half tubes and all into larger pots. It will be interesting to see if one outperforms the other

A few more steps

Took a few more steps forward on the coop