Friday, July 29, 2011

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.

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