Lemons and chickens

Today I did volunteer work for the Master Gardeners, at the Farmers Market. It was foggy and chilly this morning, and I was glad to get home and work in the yard. The chickens came running when they heard me open the back door of the house. I broke a bunch of walnuts for them and they ate with gusto. Later I saw them sitting on the yellow garden wagon, taking a break from being on the cold ground. They stayed there a while and then they all took off and flew/ran to the back garden where they ate various weeds and other plants.

Since I had my camera out, I thought I'd take a photo of the big, yellow lemons growing on our tree in the front yard. They just started turning yellow last week and now the tree is laden with bright yellow, creating a cheery burst of color at the house entrance. So far we have not had a cold enough snap to harm the fruit, and I'm glad about that. One year the cold came early and all the lemons turned black and fell off the tree.

Autumn in the garden

Leaves are dropping off the trees around the yard. Cool weather and brisk winds are helping with the process. Short days make for not too much time spent outdoors, and that time can be a bit chilly.

Today I watched the chickens make their rounds to various locations in the garden. They came out this morning and I gave them walnuts from the trees in the front yard. I crack the nuts with a rock and then toss the pieces around for the chickens to pick through to find the nut meat chunks. Some of them will take pieces of nuts from my fingers. I'll hold out pieces of nuts and they'll look at me, cautiously, and some of them take me up on my offer. Those brave chickens encourage some of the others to try it out. I do the same with bits of fruit, and they'll take it right from my fingers.

Later I went out to rake leaves in the front yard. This was a body-warming exercise. The walnut trees have really started to shed lots of leaves. I rake them up into piles around a few fruit trees and into the plant border along the edge of the road. The piles of leaves act as mulch and they eventually break down and condition the soil. The leaves are free organic matter falling from the sky. What could be better? I don't have to rake them up and put them into a plastic yard waste bin to be taken off the property, and I don't have to buy soil amendments from somewhere else. It is a good use of permaculture principles. I don't worry about the allelopathic properties of the walnut leaves. The plants I have under the trees don't seem to be bothered by living within the root zone of the trees, which also have allelopathic properties.

This evening I picked a bunch of collard leaves to add to a one-pot chicken, potato, onion, and garlic dish. The collards are doing well with the cooler weather, and the chickens seem not to eat the green leaves. The chard is another story. The chickens devour chard, which is fine with me. I'd rather have the chickens eat the chard than the gophers eat it. I have some plants out of their range, so I can eat some if I want. Though tonight we'll eat collards.

Working with reclaimed concrete (aka Urbanite)

I've been wanting to delineate the space in the front yard with a border of sorts. I want to build a dry-stack wall at the back side of the berm that is planted with various plants. I'm not particularly handy in this regard, and so I thought I'd do a test run on a smaller wall. A friend of mine has a pile of broken concrete at his farm, free for the taking so long as I load it. I went over there and picked through for pieces of the stuff I could imagine picking up more than once. I don't want to strain my old herniated disc in the course of this experiment. So my pieces were 8-15 lbs.

I've been thinking about this project for a while, but I hadn't really done much planning, other than knowing I'd cover the grass with cardboard, cover the cardboard with the concrete, and fill in the space with soil and plants. Measuring did not occur - this is only a test.

Space before the wall. Grass invades bed, space is not clearly delineated.

Rough draft.

Close up with herbs planted in between slabs. They will act as mortar once their roots grow.

 I've built this thing and filled it in with soil and plants, and I'll take a look at how it goes for a while. When I think about it, and observe it, for a good while, I'll think about tackling the wall that will be about five times longer. I planted culinary herbs, since the bed is near the kitchen, I moved in some irises that were out of the spotlight, I planted a couple of echinaceas that my neighbor brought over. Good thing too, since a gopher just made a snack of one of the existing echinaceas in that general vicinity.

I've since dug a trench in front of the wall, and turned the sod over, sowed it with daikon, wheat, and fava beans (my favorite fall mix). I've also put in some cuttings of rosemary and some salvias in front of the wall. This will all help to build soil and to create a place for many of those beneficial insects and pleasant hummingbirds I welcome into my yard.

A hail storm

About a week ago, the skies darkened and thunder roared through the sky. When the clouds burst we were pelted with hail of mixed sizes, from pea sized, up to walnut sized hail. All the chickens ran for cover, except the Polish rooster, who was running around the back yard in a frenzy. I grabbed a cardboard box for cover and went out after him. I caught him and put him in the box and put the box in the coop. He screamed and screamed, as roosters tend to do, and when I opened the box in the coop, he was limp. Must be some sort of playing dead, survival technique. Anyway, the hail passed and the chickens were unharmed.

The garden took a good beating. Tomatoes, peppers, chard, collards, pumpkins, and lots of other plants were shredded or dented beyond usefulness.

Hail on the back patio

Pomegranate

One of my pomegranate plants has been laden with about a dozen fruit this year, its first year of fruiting, and the fruits have started to get that nice, red color. Then the rain came and I worried about the fruit splitting. Pomegranates and figs both split their fruit when they get too much water timed with ripening fruit. The figs split, and the chickens didn't mind eating those. A couple of the less-red pomegranates split, so I picked them and tasted them. The variety is called Sharp Velvet, and these two fruits are definitely under ripe, yet edible. I don't mind tartness in certain fruit. I am hoping the other fruits get to ripen more before more rain comes, just so I can find out what kind of sweetness this pomegranate can produce.

I think these are the most beautiful fruits around. The garnet sacs surrounding the seeds are jewel-like.

The Chicken Show

The chicken show. The small ones.

Small chicks

Just a few of the eight smallest chicks in their straw yard.

The smallest chicks have been out in the small straw yard, sharing it with the bigger chicks. There is some definite territorial enforcement going on, which according to the chicken book is normal and doesn't need refereeing from me. The two groups mostly stick to themselves except when a larger chick decides to show its dominance and go after the smaller ones. A lot of peeping ensues and the small ones run off, herd like, to another side of the enclosure. Mostly it is peaceful co-existence.

The small ones still sleep apart from the larger chicks, just because their secured enclosures don't offer much room for escape for the small ones. And I can wheel the small ones into the garage overnight if it is going to be too cool at night, which I've done the past few nights. Tonight I am leaving them outdoors, under the covered patio, with several layers of row cover and a topping of burlap on their wagon. The air is still tonight.

My neighbor asked me what I'm going to do with all the eggs once the new ones start laying. Partly it depends on the size of the eggs, since the ratio might be two of their eggs to one large egg, and I could use up quite a few in making fresh pasta and such. The d'Uccle egg size is listed as "tiny" and the Cochin egg size is listed as "below average." I don't know how that relates to standard egg sizes, so I will weigh the eggs when they appear and go from there.

I sort of realized that I hadn't really put a ton of thought into what happens if I get a dozen eggs every day, no matter the size. Obviously my friends are willing to help out by accepting eggs from my chickens, but I could still have many eggs to deal with. It is several months off, so I will make a preliminary plan, and see what happens. I'm still not sure all the chicks are females, so that could knock a few eggs out of the mix.

At any rate, they are so much fun to watch at this point, I had no idea chickens could be so endlessly entertaining. I guess fifteen years without television can do that to a person.

Figs

Two different types of figs. The purple one is a Mission improved, the stripped ones are Panache. Both are delicious. All the fig trees have been producing this year, the younger ones have made fewer figs than the older trees, but that is to be expected.

I have found that my Polish chickens like figs, so if a scrub jay has hacked on apart and left it on the tree, I'll throw it to the chickens. Also the fallen figs were devoured by the chickens when they were out under the tree.

My oldest fig tree is Conadria and it makes small, greenish yellow-skinned figs with sweet, mellow interiors. They are apparently good drying figs (they'll even dry on the tree, I've read), and I have a tray of them in my solar powered food dehydrator. Hopefully good results will ensue. The dried tomatoes and dried peaches worked beautifully.

I love to eat the figs fresh, right off the tree. During fig season I usually have several figs off the tree throughout the day. They are one of my favorite edibles. They are drought tolerant once established, which is a bonus in our Mediterranean climate. The wild birds also love figs, and this year I tied flashy bird-scare tape to the largest tree, and it has worked better than no tape last year. More figs for me.

More on the new chicks

Partridge Cochin possibly crossed with d'Uccle

All 13 chicks spent their first night together. In the morning the larger five were picking on the smaller eight, so I separated them, leaving the five in the borrowed growing coop and moving the smalls into my yellow garden wagon. They all seemed much happier being with chicks of their own size. 

Today I rolled out some temporary fencing in a small spot outside my office so the five could get out and scratch and dust in the soil. I opened the fold-down door and they were all out on the ground on their own accord, pretty quickly. I threw in some chick scratch and moved their waterer on the ground and they've been exploring the small patch of garden, under a bamboo plant. After they were clearly comfortable with the space I threw in a couple of biscuits of straw, which they took to immediately, scratching at the sides and climbing around on it. 

It will be a while before the small ones get to go on the ground, but they seem to be doing well in the garden wagon, with a mesh screen on top to keep them in and predators out. I cover the thing with floating row cover at night to protect them from any breeze.

Weather forecast is suggesting thunder and lightening for the next two days, with cooler night temps, so I'll have to make sure the small ones stay warm enough.

It is definitely different having all these chickens that can actually see their surroundings quite well. They are fast too, when going after a fly for example.

The Polish chickens we've had for a year have excellent hearing, but not such great sight on account of their puffy feather heads. It will be several weeks before the five can get put in with the Polish, and them more time still for the small ones to be introduced. It will be an adjustment for not only the chickens, but for the humans too. Good thing both chickens and humans are very adaptable creatures.

Chicks

My friend got a call about some chicks a woman was looking to send to a new home. Today they showed up.  There were two boxes of them. One group of eight we figured were about 3 weeks old, and one group of five are about five weeks old.
This photo is of the smaller ones.
They are peeping away outside my office door, as dusk falls in their new yard.

Parentage is Mille Fluer or Cochin, or a mixture of the two.

Propagation success

I pruned my pomegranate during the winter. When I found myself with some long pieces of pruned  material I thought I'd stick a branch into the soil and see if it would take. It looked mostly like a dead stick poking out of the ground most of the summer, and I planted all sorts of other things around it. Squash, tomatoes, beans, and some weeds grew there too. It is in a spot I don't get around to very frequently, and today I noticed, beneath the cover of some squash leaves, the stick had sprouted leaves, about 8" high. This has been a good year for various of my propagation projects. The seedling peaches made good fruit, a fig I've nurtured from a cutting finally took off and is fruiting like mad, and it looks like even one of my olive cuttings might have survived. Seeing the pomegranate leaves today made me very happy.

The plant from which I cloned is about three or four years old and is finally fruiting. I will try propagating more of the plant when I prune again this winter. There is a time vs. money trade-off in the process. I have the time to increase my plants in this manner. If I didn't have the time I'd be spending about $25 each for almost any of those trees. More than those two factors, I like the challenge of propagating trees in this way.

Permaculture Teacher Training

I've just been to a week-long permaculture teacher training and retreat in New Mexico. We were 22 students who have all been through the PDC training. Scott Pittman and Larry Santoyo were our teachers. It was a great and intense experience and it has given me much to think about in regard to the directions I want to go in to explore my place in the permaculture community.

Permaculture and Community

Recently I had the luck of finding out that a friendly couple down the road had an organic garden. I've been walking, cycling, and driving past their house for years and through a series of events and correspondence, found myself invited for a visit to the garden.
Community is important in Permaculture and I've struggled somewhat with that portion of my practice. So it was incredibly wonderful to get to know about the organic garden down the road, and the gardener who tends it. Her garden, like ours, is in gopher infested land. She has several raised beds with hardware cloth under them to keep the gophers from accessing her bounty. Her trellises are sturdy wire (cattle panel) supported by stakes. Her tomatoes were tall and well-supported. She waters with what appears to be a drip system. The set-up produces quite an impressive yield. I came away with my bicycle basked filled with trombetta squash, tomatoes of various sorts, and some Asian cucumbers, all grown on trellises. Sharing from the garden seems to be a fairly common trait among my gardener friends and it was great to bring organically grown vegetables home from her garden.

I brought along a container of winter pie pumpkin seeds for her to try growing next year.

When I return from Permaculture teacher training, I plan to invite her over for a visit to my non-linear permaculture jungle garden. By then the pumpkins and squash will likely have taken over most of the front and back gardens.

Tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers from a garden down the road.

Seedling Peaches

The large peach tree in the back yard has been in decline since before we moved here. I made a few years of mistakes in thinning and pruning the tree, causing it to lose a few limbs in the process. This year I thinned the fruit extensively and was able to get a good crop. We had a late rain in July, it rained all day and night, and the weight of the rain on a couple of branches was too much and there was more breakage. The tree still has several good, strong limbs though.
The peaches are delicious and I want to propagate the tree via grafting and have been growing rootstock for that purpose. I tried some bud grafting early this year. My grafting knife was brand new and extremely sharp. Fiddling with those tiny buds and trying to slice the exact shield shape off the rootstock ended up with me having two bloody thumbs and grafts that didn't take. I've decided to try cleft grafting in the next go 'round.
Meanwhile three of the peach seedling trees put on fruit this year. I've tried the fruit from each of them. One of them is completely sweet. One was a little bitter (I think the fruit might have been slightly under ripe) and one only had three fruits, two of which the birds devoured and the third fruit I picked when it had only just softened, and it was pretty tasty.
From the seedlings I'll have good peaches until I can teach myself to get a successful graft going from the old peach tree onto a seedling tree.

Seedling peach. Sweet fruit.

Chickens and the clover patch

My small back yard lawn/pasture has taken hold. It is a mix of grass and clover, with a few various weeds. It took a while for the clover and the grass to get going and I kept the chickens out of the area until it was well enough established to bounce back from their foraging. The area is a small island of green in a mostly bare spot that used to hold a big pile of dead ivy that I'd pulled from the huge amounts of ivy growing in the back yard. Once the ivy pile was truly dead, I used it as a cover for cardboard and newspaper that I used to cover other areas of ivy. The newspaper and cardboard over ivy approached worked quite well. Cutting, pulling, and digging ivy is quite a chore. And with that area bare I decided a small, green meadow/pasture/lawn type space would be nice. And it is nice.
I moved the chicken fencing to allow them access to a portion of the clover lawn/pasture. They moved in to explore and have been eating the clover and grass. I bring them treats from the garden, fallen peaches, seed spikes from salvias - which they peck and scratch at to get to the black seeds, and sometimes a tomato hornworm or a cricket. Egg production has slowed some with the onset of hotter weather.

Rooster in the clover lawn/pasture

The clover has begun flowering and attracts bees and even hummingbirds. The clover takes well to mowing and grows very quickly after. It is fixing nitrogen in a spot that seemed depleted when we got the place, and it is serving wildlife, livestock, and the humans in this system well.

Foxtail millet

In late May I planted the seeds of German Foxtail Millet I'd ordered from Owen at Annapolis Seeds in Nictaux, NS. He keeps a nice blog about things going on at his farm. I am growing the millet so that I can feed it to the chickens once it matures. I'd previously grown pearl millet, which the chickens seemed to enjoy eating right off the plants. Millet is an easy crop to grow, it does not need as much water as maize, and it requires less processing than maize for it to be fed to chickens. The dent corn I've grown and used for chicken scratch has to be put through the grain mill before the chickens can eat it. 

The plants in the foxtail millet stand in the front yard have just started to send out their foxtails, which will eventually extend out of the tops of the plants and hang like fluffy foxtails.

German Foxtail Millet

The stand of millet grows along with some pole and bush beans, which I harvest for dry beans, a few decorative flowers, some soybean plants, several squash plants (which are finally starting their march across the lawn), basil, thyme, melons, cucumbers, and a young almond tree. They all grow together. The pole beans climb the millet stalks.

Seeds forming in bursting patterns.

Hot weather and chickens

The weather has finally warmed up and it is now officially hot. We've had a few days above 100 F and several in the high 90s (that's approx 36+ Centigrade).  The chickens do not appreciate the heat. They have feather coats on year-round, and since they are Polish chickens, they also wear rather fancy feather headdresses. So I put the mister on in their yard to help lower the air temperature, and I replenish their water dishes frequently. Still, they pant from the heat. When they go into the coop to roost they're still pretty hot, the coop has been around 80 F at around 8 p.m., when they go in.
I'll leave the door open for an hour or so, and close them up when darkness falls, still they are hot.
Since their coop is off the grid, putting a fan in there is not an easy solution. I wonder if the coop temperature would lower enough if I hang a block of ice from the ceiling. I will try it out.

At any rate, here's a super close-up view of chicken #2, with her mouth open in a pant.

Chicken #2

Front yard progression

It started with lawn and some foundation shrubs.

Feb 2007

It got a small strip at the road edge for planting, and a ginkgo, pomegranate.

May 2008

Some circles were dug out of the lawn and planted with sunflowers and maize with beans. The first pineapple guava was planted. Sunflowers an hollyhocks at the road edge.

July 2008

A larger excavation, building a berm and basin designed to catch water running off the road. Planted with herbs, more pineapple guavas, lavender, and more.

November 2008

The shrubs started to fill out the space more, and herbs expanded.

April 2009

A rugosa rose blooms in the berm, and various shrubs expand their reach. Volunteer plants started to grow, a fig tree was one.

April 2010

Lots of herbs, blooming shrubs, the pineapple guavas are laden with blossoms this year, calendula rimmed the edge, bamboo, elderberry, lemon balm, lots of lavender and rosemary. Oregano was transplanted there in the winter and has taken hold. It will make a good, year-round groundcover. Thyme is also spreading.

June 2011

Quite a different view of the front yard from across the road now.

June 2011

June First - downpour

This time of year usually finds us basking in hot, sunny weather. We're usually irrigating the garden by now, and the warm-weather plants are usually on their way. Usually. This year has been an exceptionally wet spring. Good news is that it ended a three-year drought. Our water reservoirs and snow packs are all looking very well stocked. The trouble is many of us like the hot weather for which this area is known. Some things in the garden will be delayed or diminished. My white peach tree could be counted on for ripe fruit by July 4, but this year that timeline will definitely be delayed. On the other hand, some plants in the garden prefer this weather, especially the raspberries, which have produced quite well so far, and look like they will continue. Having a diversity of plants and microclimates in the garden is important when the weather is not "normal."

June 1, 2011 downpour

Today we had a big downpour, hail mixed with rain, thunder, rainbow. Last week we had all that plus a small tornado or two touching down out in the less populated area.
All this rain means water for the garden. This has become my mantra. Still, we are looking to be outside, sitting under our big shade tree, sipping refreshing beverages, and watching the resident hummingbird work the abutilon blossoms, rather than observing from inside.

At least I know my seeds and seedlings are being watered (some of the seedlings were battered by hail but many have survived). It will be an interesting season.

Weather variations

Generally by the middle of May our area has warm and sunny weather settled in. This year we've had a cold-ish early and mid spring. The garden has responded a little slower than in previous years. The strawberries are only just beginning to be sweet off the plant, cherries are slowly turning red, nanking cherry is just starting to ripen the fruit. Trees are leafed out and peaches are fattening on the trees, as are apricots. The grape vines have tiny clusters on them, and flowers are flowering. Gophers are having their way with anything they like, and the trapping has been modest thus far.

We'd had a few days into the 80s F, which were rather pleasant in the shade (and the mosquitoes found it lovely in the evening). Then we got a good wind blowing in from the south west (the direction which brings the rain). We had a little thunder, some lightning and the three waves of hail. Small hail was the first pass, then medium (pea sized), then a bit larger size. All this came along with a big rain event and I checked out my water harvesting areas – downspout to apple tree, road to basin/berm) and found it took a bit longer for the water to soak in than with big-ish rain events.

Hail in May

After the storm passed I noted some damaged leaves on various plants, but most things seemed okay.

Harvest

Aside from rhubarb there hasn't been much new to harvest from the garden. The usual herbs and chard are still around, and the weather has been cool for spring, so the strawberries have taken their time getting sweet. The few red ones were rather tart. Today I went and filled my basket with berries and washed, trimmed, and sliced them. Sprinkled with a little cane sugar they'll make their own light syrup and I'll put them into pint jars and freeze them. The batch of berries contains some sweet and some not so sweet, so by the time they sit in the sugar juice for a while they'll be pleasantly sweet. I did this with several quart jars last year and when I thawed the berries they had good texture, color, and flavor. I ate them just as they were. I also made a strawberry mousse for a dessert (which was much too rich for me to eat, but  my dinner companions enjoyed it).

Strawberries

The big white peach tree got a heavy thinning this past weekend (I still have one section to go) and the crop looks very promising. Another harvest on the horizon is raspberries, which I just ate off the plants last year, this year I think there will be a larger harvest to eat.

First tomato blossom

A friend gave me a few tomato plants, big sturdy things that had been grown in used paper coffee cups. I put them in the garden last weekend and noticed just today a few blossoms on one of the plants.
The plant is growing near an apple tree and its accompanying guild plants — yarrow, comfrey, fava beans, narcissus bulbs, and a few volunteer peach seedlings.

tomato flowers

Chickens - an update

White-crested, black Polish bantams.

The three chickens - two hens and a rooster - have settled into their yard and coop. They have become a family of sorts. Rooster first preferred chicken number one to chicken number two, and has since switched his preference. This seems not to change the peck order of the hens, since chicken number one will still give chicken number two a good peck on the head if needed. It just makes chicken number one a bit more independent, which I can appreciate. Chicken number two is much more compliant.

They are a family, actually. They are all siblings, but that seems to not matter to their sexual behavior. In fact I've read that it is preferable to breed a hen with her own sire. Chickens are inbred, and a little dumb from it, but with T Rex's closest living relative, we do what we can.

The eggs come, two to a day, most days. It is pretty much maintenance level for the two humans in the house. The eggs are very good quality, nice and rich yolks and  strong shells.

Through observation I have decided to alter the fencing of their yard to provide them an amount and variety of space in which they seem to keep entertained.

At one end I've started a compost pile of sorts. I chop down various overgrown things,  former plants the gophers have eaten from the bottom, and figure the chickens will either eat some of it or bugs will come and live in the pile, which the chickens will eat.

I sometimes find myself a little surprised that three chickens live in my back yard, and I even want more. Maybe 3 or four more females. I'd like to share the eggs, also keep the rooster a bit more busy.

I look forward to adding the straw/sawdust/chicken poop mix of the coop bedding to the compost pile. I believe richness of soil life will ensue. The garden will thrive on such a richness.

Still they have no other names than those assigned regarding their gender or peck order. Rooster, Chicken number one, Chicken number two.

I've worked hard to be able to pick up the females any old time I want. They come to me when I go out to their yard. The rooster is less interested, much more macho, so he rarely gets handled, unless he's being too cocky. Then I'll catch him and hold onto him, telling him he's such a nice, soft bird, before returning him to terra firma. He does not care for it, but he's kind of a chauvinist, and I'm kind of not. It could all be for naught, but I do have sympathy for the hens when he gets a little uppity.

He's not a mean rooster though. So... I'm not thinking of learning to harvest anything other than eggs just yet.

I recently read a piece in the LA Times regarding urban chickens and the writer uses the term "owning" chickens. I don't really feel like I own my chickens. I feel like a family of birds, for which I am ultimately responsible, lives in my back yard. Somehow the term ownership doesn't feel right, though I do refer to them as "my chickens."

Rainy weather and planting blueberries

The weather took a turn toward cold, wet storms, with plenty of wind. It has been going on like this for weeks. The sun is a distant memory. On days when we've had a break in the downpours and howling wind, I've been able to get a little gardening done. I've been doing some weeding, mulching, observing the progress of various plants - red currants, gooseberries, black currants, raspberries, honeyberry - all of which are doing great in this type of weather. The blueberry plants are pushing out new growth, and in a moment of splurging I ordered eight more blueberry plants, which I managed to get into the ground and mulched with pine needles.  I'm not exactly sure how many blueberry plants I had already planted before these eight, but it could be a dozen. I've been working on building up my shrub layer, and the blueberries seemed a good shrub to increase in number. The berries are delicious and I have a good source of pine needles to use for a nice acidic mulch. The plants are also attractive once they get a little mass to them.

The cold and wet weather is  likely to continue for several more days, longer perhaps, so it is a good time to plant such things.

Blueberry plant with pine needle mulch.

Another hummingbird brood coming?

Shortly after the last brood vacated the nest, a female bird was there touching things up, and tonight, less than two weeks later, a bird is sitting on the nest. I'd seen her working throughout the day today, and tonight when I went out to close up the chicken coop I saw her silhouette in the nest.
I took a photo, dark and shaky though it is.

Spring – looking and feeling like it

Seedling peach tree in blossom.

Spring is not officially here until March 20, and the weather has been cold, wet, windy, and it even snowed for one minute within the last two weeks. Snow is a once every ten years event in these parts. I slept through the whole thing since it happened very early in the morning. I was around for the hail later that day though. Various weather reports foretold doom to fruit trees when the night time low temperatures were supposed to drop below freezing for several hours.

Today looks and feels like spring though. It is sunny and warm, with a light breeze. The bees are out working all the blossoms in the yard - nanking cherry, apricot, peach, rosemary, calendula, and more. The hellebore is in full bloom, right on time, and a few other perennials are starting to push through.  A few of the seedling peach trees I've grown are flowering this year, and if they make fruit this year I'll be able to determine if they are worth keeping as they are or if I should make a graft and let the scion be the dominant tree part. I have two good fruiting peaches (a yellow peach and a white peach) and have a friend who has collected scion from his peach tree, so I can still have multiple peaches on one good peach stock. I'll be practicing my grafting skills soon.

Today one of the two hummingbirds fledged, and the other one is still in its nest, working on perching technique, building up wing strength with various exercise sessions, and preening. The first to fledge has been flitting around in the mulberry tree while the mother bird chases away various interlopers (scrub jays mostly), and comes back to feed both her offspring. I did not take lots of photos with this set of birds, since they look just like the birds I photographed heavily last summer. It was frequently very cold during their incubation and subsequent rearing that I feared they would not make it, but the mother bird really worked on insulating the nest, and the birds made it. I'm hoping to watch the one still in the nest take its first flight.

Hummingbird yet to leave the nest.

Nanking cherry in flower

First break of dormancy on the lemon verbena shrub (I was worried it wouldn't survive the cold weather)

Chicken out on the pasture.
Both hens are now consistently laying their eggs in the nest box.

Making food with what we have

I've been perusing the web for good recipes in which I can use eggs. We get at least one egg from a chicken each day, some days we get two eggs. Rarely does one hen skip two days, giving us a day off. So I've made fresh pasta with the eggs before, with delicious results. Last week I used up four eggs in some banana bread. Today I counted eleven eggs in our carton and thought some action was required. The recipes I found online are mostly custards, cakes, quiches, frittatas, and breakfast egg dishes. So I resorted to making a batch of pasta (with a twist) and turning it into ravioli. The twist was some lemon zest added to the pasta dough.

I had to decide on the filling so I looked around at what I had, and thought about what would taste nice with lemon, and came up with the idea for a filling composed of some cooked chicken (left over from roasted chicken), roasted pumpkin (I've had the pumpkin on display for months), and some garlic greens, parsley, and chard – all from the garden. I added a small pile of parmesan shavings, some more lemon zest,  and two eggs to help with adhesion, and went to work making the ravioli.

When I cut open the pumpkin, to scoop out the seeds before roasting it in the oven, I found some of the seeds had sprouted and grown roots inside the pumpkin. It was a remarkable sight, so I took some photos. I also carefully extracted a couple of the rooted plants and put them in pots. 

A tiny garden growing inside the pumpkin.

One of the sprouted seeds I planted

The rest of the scooped out interior, with a jumble of sprouted and unsprouted seeds

The experimental ravioli filling ended up being absolutely edible, but rather lemony. I was going to serve it with some reheated tomato-based sauce I had in the freezer (left over from a batch of lasagna I'd made a while back). When we tasted the sample ravioli I cooked, it seemed like it would be better with an alfredo sauce. Well I nixed that idea on account of my cholesterol and my waistline, plus it would have meant a trip to the store. So we had it with the tomato sauce.  

I froze two trays of ravioli though, so maybe we'll try the alfredo sauce when we cook the next batch. I'll have to invite company though, so I can justify buying the heavy cream.

Almond Blooming Season

The almond trees are exploding with blossoms. The weather has been cold and wet and I wonder if the bees are even out pollinating. The almond crop might be compromised this year.
The almond trees are the first to flower, and they really brighten up the back yard when they bloom.

Almond blossoms

Just an egg

Chicken #2 laid an egg.

Egg

Chicken food

Chickens eating walnuts.

These chickens have well adapted to their new, larger range. I've made a very large yard for them to use for foraging and whatnot. I bought a few rolls of black plastic fencing, which is very light weight and easy to maneuver. Their area now includes a space underneath  some small trees that had collected lots of leaf litter for them to dig into. They can also dig around under some shrubs and young olive trees. Since these chickens are not particularly large, they don't seem to do too much damage to the trees. In fact, they are keeping the grass down around the trees, and foiling any pest build up. On occasion I'll let them out of that area and they inevitably head over toward the house and the granite patio. I'll let them hang out around the house for awhile and then lure them back to their own fenced area by cracking walnuts with brick. They know what the sound of walnut shells breaking sounds like, and they make haste to get to the spot where I crack the nuts. They love to eat walnuts, and do so with a real fervor.
Walnuts have lots of that healthy, omega 3 fat in them, so I'm thinking that will make the eggs omega eggs.

The eggs are coming two days on and one day off, from chicken number 1 at this point. Chicken number 2 looks like she's getting ready to start laying (her bottom is starting to get larger).

I am enjoying the chickens much more, now that we have grown more accustomed to each other, and I love that the hen eats bugs and walnuts and other things I don't like to eat, and then makes eggs out of them. The rooster has grown into a beautiful, bird, glossy black feathers shine green in the light. His ruff and tail feathers are fantastic.

I can see how important it is to have animals in a Permaculture situation, they offer so much as labor and as food. They keep weeds down, create food with their eggs, and break pest cycles. They also make fertilizer for the garden. The coop litter (straw and wood shavings) will mix with all their crap and become a wonderful addition to a compost pile.

Hummingbird nest being refurbished

A hummingbird hen has been working on updating the furnishings of last year's hummingbird nest. The nest was in such a protected spot that it suffered little wear and tear during the winter winds and rains (thus far). A hummingbird has been sprucing up the place, adding pieces of spider silk, and other materials, to the exterior and interior. Soon, I suspect she'll be sitting on eggs, though it isn't even February. I did witness various hummingbird mating activities in the past month or so. The male soaring way up high and other macho acts.

Last year's hummingbird event was so incredible! It is looking as if it will happen again. We have had a pretty mild winter, but we're barely half-way through it, so I'm wondering if she'll lay eggs soon. It will be clear though when she starts sitting on the nest. I'll try to get more photos of the process, but will be mostly content to watch it and not bother the birds.

A Sunny January Day

Today the weather report said sun and temps of 75 F.
It was a lovely day to spend in the garden. I let the chickens have the run of the whole yard. They like to hang out on the decomposed granite patio and also to dig in the Mulberry leaves, which cover the mostly ornamental beds nearby. The hen that is laying is very focused on finding bugs to eat. She scratches at the leaves and then snaps up any bugs she sees. The rooster and the other hen do the same, but with less focus.
While they were visiting various places in the yard I spent some time collecting scion wood from the white peach and the Moorpark apricot. I'm going to work on grafting in the spring and want to have some dormant wood to work with. I'll try grafting them both on various peach seedlings I have growing in a few places. I also took some black currant cuttings and stuck them in the ground.
Around 2 p.m. the hen which lays went into the coop and settled into her little dent in the straw, and went about laying an egg. I watched her from the window for a while and she seemed to not be making progress. Then the rooster and the other hen came in, and he stood right by her and the other hen took a little nap nearby. All this went on for some time, so I left and waited, until I saw them come out of the coop, to go get the egg. It was still warm when I picked it up. I now have half a dozen peewee eggs in the fridge. This is a collection from the past week or so.
The peewee eggs translate to large eggs with four peewees being the same as 3 three large. Last weekend I used four peewee eggs to make a batch of fresh pasta that I then used to make ravioli. The yolks were such a deep yellow that the sheets of pasta were a brilliant yellow when the sun shone through them.
Chances are good I'll repeat the procedure. The raviolis were delicious. Fresh made pasta is a wonderful food.

Hydrologic cycle & three more eggs

Sunset Jan 2011.

We visited the Pacific Ocean for five, mostly-sunny days. Every day we walked on the beach, a little further each day. On our last full day there we walked seven miles on the beach, in bare feet. The water was cold and the sand was cold, but there was enough sun to keep us warm, so long as we kept moving. Many days of rain preceded our visit, and some areas to the north and the south of where we stayed were experiencing landslides and broken sewage pipes leaking into the ocean. I wanted to visit Moonstone Beach State Park near Cambria, but that beach was considered too toxic from a sewage leak and other toxins in the water system, and was closed. Knowing that our water will make its way to a creek, river, lake, or ocean, should  keep us keenly aware of what we put into it as "waste." In April of 2010 Time magazine did a piece about various pharmaceuticals making their way into water supplies. The hydrologic cycle is a local and global concern. It sure is beautiful to look at too.

Three eggs, in the carton now, with the pointy end down.

When we returned I found three more eggs deposited in the chicken coop. They were on the floor in a corner, not in the nest boxes, so I've put two fake eggs into a nest box to help encourage the chickens to lay in there. I'm not sure if the chickens will get it, since the eggs are purple and green. They are musical shaker eggs but they were the only "fake" egg-shaped thing we had around just now.

After consulting a chicken book I weighed the eggs and found that they weigh 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 ounces each. The formula for figuring out their weight is to multiply the weight of one egg by twelve to get the carton weight. These eggs rate as "peewee" sized eggs. The book also says the eggs should get a bit larger in the coming weeks, so I'll weigh future eggs to check on that assumption. Every chicken book I consulted said that chickens would not lay with less than 14 hours of daylight (which is one reason why many people put lights in their chicken coops). I have no artificial light in the coop, so I'm still not sure what the scoop is with that idea. We are only getting about 9 hours 45 minutes.

First Egg

Well, there it is. 

What a surprise to find a little white egg in the chicken coop, this second day of January.

The books I've read said the chickens wouldn't lay with less than 14 hours of sunlight, so I didn't expect any eggs until spring.

I admit it was exciting to find the egg.

First egg interior. A very deep yellow yolk, which is held high in the white.

The first egg yolk (top) is much deeper yellow and the white is much firmer than the commercial egg (bottom). These two eggs were put into a batter for banana bread.