Wherein We Set Up Outdoor "TV"

Yesterday we finished building and installing our "big screen" outdoor TV.  It gets one channel.  The chicken channel. It's our fave!

 

We can also change the channel by picking up our chairs and moving across the street to the big green barn (in the background) they get the cow channel!

Family Time & The Family Economy

With our new school schedule we have added an evening "family time".  Our first family time together last week was met with mixed reviews.  Farmer John wanted to get everyone involved with his future business, Bamboo On The Fly (tentative name), and so we all tumbled out to the garage to work on his current Bamboo Fly Fishing Rod.  I must admit only John and our two littlest (Reagan and Taylor) were overly excited to do this.  Later I realized that I had to confess sin because I was less than championing my husband's vision at the time. (Which is really silly because I very much want him to leave his "corporate" job for a home-based, family biz.)

Yes, we put a blowtorch in the hands of our 13 year-old son!

 

 And our 15 year-old daughter

 Not our 4 year-old- she was content to make up her own games with balls and badmitton birdies!

 

Here I am with the torch.  The pieces of bamboo for the rod are slid into the copper pipe and then the pipe is heated with the torch.  This dries the bamboo.  You could see the steam being released at the tube ends.

 

 

As you can see the garage is highly unkempt.  Farmer John is on vacation this week and so one of our projects (practical arts for school) will be cleaning the garage.  By mid-October we'll be getting heavy frosts/freezes and the cars will need to be parked inside overnight. (Farmer John does not want to scrape ice at 3:30 in the morning!)

 

Leave me a comment if you are interested in a Handcrafted Bamboo Fly Rod!

 

If you are wondering about family economies check out Kevin Swanson's Generations Radio show (search the archived shows for "family economies) and Herrick Kimball over at The Deliberate Agrarian writes frequently on this topic too!

 

Mrs. Q Thinks She Is People!

Mrs.Q wanting to be on the inside.

 

Today was another hot day.  When we weren't down by the creek we were hanging in the back yard under the trees and who was hanging out with us... Mrs. Q.  My dad commented that he had never known a chicken that liked to hang out by itself.  That is when it dawned on me that she wasn't hanging out by herself.  She was hanging out with us.  We are her new flock.  She thinks she's people!

 

The other day when we were gone but my parents were in their trailer they said she stood at the slider door off the deck and cackled and clucked for us.  Today when I was inside for a moment she followed me right up to the door and thought she was coming in.  She squawked with indignation when I didn't let her follow.    She also hangs out under the picnic table when we eat outside.  We don't have a family dog... we have a family chicken!

Martha making Mrs. Q. Jealous.

 

 Martha isn't sure what to make of Mrs. Q and I'm sure Mrs. Q wonders why Martha is on the side of the door she wants to be on.  But here's a hint... Martha uses a litter box and I'm not buying chicken diapers.

Making rope and keeping cool.

 

 When we weren't hanging with the "Q" we were down at the creek.  Farmer John doesn't like to just sit around and he doesn't like to read or write like I do so he gathered a bunch of dried grass along the bank and wove rope.  Very ingenious! Last year, after a shoulder surgery, he used his downtime during recovery to make himself a "straw" hat out of dried daylily leaves.  We'd sell them but it took a lot of time to make and I don't think most people would pay $100+ for a daylily hat.

$100 or more for a handmade hat?

Ingenious Chicken Feeding Contraption

 

Earlier in the day he finished setting up our teenage chicks' "Protein From Thin Air" bucket.  There is a smaller bucket inside the larger.  Inside the small lidded bucket are the entrails from butchering our roosters.  We allowed flies to land in there and lay their eggs.  The eggs will hatch and the maggots will fall out of both buckets. (Courtesy of the holes drilled in each bucket.) Then the chickens can feast.  The smell is masked by grass clippings stuffed in the bucket to keep predators away. You can read about the process in depth in Harvey Ussery's book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.

Snowball the teenage rooster

 

Clearly the maggots aren't dropping yet or Snowball wouldn't be escaping his enclosure and free ranging in my garden!  He is so funny to watch.  He'll fly to the top of the chicken tractor and crow to let all the ladies know he's in charge!  Only his crow isn't quite developed yet.  My mom thought she was hearing a cat in the morning.  She figured out today it was snowball "crowing".  Keep at it little guy!

A Monday On The Homestead...

Apparently 1/2 my teenage chickens have decided that they should be free-range.  I am consistently finding them outside the pen.  They fly to the top of the fence and then jump off or fly to the top of the chicken tractor.  I wouldn't mind so much but I don't want my garden eaten up by them.

 

The only chickens that do have permission to free-range are Mrs. Q. and Mrs. P.

 

If you noticed, at the end of the video were my two adult roosters, Jack (shorter/fatter) and Sawyer (taller/thinner).  Also, if you noticed, on the fence there are two killing cones my husband made and mounted.  Those boys are more trouble then they're worth.  One of my hens has a horrid wound all down her side because of them and most of my other hens have puncture wounds.  We filed down the fellas' spurs but it didn't really help much. So, this coming Saturday, we will be inducted into the butchering club.  I'm not really relishing it because I do enjoy them and they are pretty but I think my adult hens will fare better and in two or three more months Snowball will be mature and take over rooster duties without anyone to challenge him. 

I have mullein growing back in the field which I plan on harvesting to use in herbal medicine.  I walked back this morning to grab a picture or two. 

Here are the killing cones up close and personal.  John spent last Saturday building and mounting them and then pouring over internet video and through our chicken raising books to learn what to do past the initial action.  I asked if he thought he got the process down and he said he did.  I hope so... I'm just going to be following his instructions.  I will probably blog about our process but I don't think I'm going to be taking pictures so everyone can let out a sigh of relief.

Now after all that cheery talk about offing offending roosters... let's have breakfast! Homemade scones with homemade strawberry jam and homemade whipping cream!  Yummm!!!!

Warning: Greenhorns Moving Chickens!

My family really should have its own reality TV show!  We spent Sunday prepping a home for our big chickens in the barn and then it came time to move them.  Two roosters and three hens got caught and moved individually and three more got moved in a box all at once.  The comical thing was the little peepers were out and about while we were doing the round up of the bigs.   It was so funny trying to catch them and keep them away from the peepers at the same time.

The best moment was when I was transporting a hen I had caught and I looked back at my son and husband who were trying to herd the big chickens into a corner.  The big chickens flew over the little piece of fence my hubby had set up as a corral, immediately started chasing the chicks and the chicks ran around the fencing and flowed out of the garden area into our yard.  It was one mass exodus of chickens and my husband and son standing flabbergasted.

Since I was already half-way to the barn I just shrugged and kept going.  By the time I got back, my daughters had been called over and the last of the chicks were being put back into the garden area.  Oh, to have had video of that.  Duck Dynasty doesn't have anything on us!

 Corner of the barn with makeshift roost of a 2 x4- they love it!

 Old "milk" crates being used as nesting boxes.  They don't really like those.

 Another 2 x 4 roost set up across the nesting boxes.  They don't really like that one either. I wonder if they smell remains of skunk odor from earlier this year?

 Their new yard!

 

Their grand doorway to and from the barn!  I was glad the previous owners had it already put in.

 

 

Now the peepers have the stylish chicken tractor all to themselves!

Meet Farmer John!

Meet my wonderful husband, John.  He is the CEO of the Lewis family and a great man.  He works as a manager for Costco by day and is farmer, fisherman, daddy, carpenter, artisan, husband and John-of-all-trades the rest of the time.  We will have been married 20 years this October! He is equally at home with a chain saw as with a sewing machine. He's a handy cook (much more cheffy than me.) and chief tickle monster! God has blessed me well! There isn't much he can't do.  (He can't write poetry.)

 He makes incredible walking sticks from branches found laying around.

 A little carving, sanding, polishing, varnish and string...

 He has just recently built his first bamboo fly-fishing rod and hopes to make it into a business.

He whipped out this handy little bamboo scooper from some extra bamboo he had in the scrap pile. We use it to fill the chicken feeders.

What can I say?  How can I go wrong with a man who like to relax by watching the chickens!

Chicken tractors and cars stuck in gardens...

My wonderful husband, John, built me a wonderful chicken tractor.  It has a nesting/nighttime area and a fenced in run area but he couldn't figure out a way to put wheels on it and still have it be flush with the ground and it is heavy!  So we move it with either our regular tractor or (like last night- when our tractor was at the repair shop) we pull it with either of our SUV's.

Last night after my husband got home from work and the chickens were shut up for the night he decided to move them to a new area.  He wanted to put them in our newly tilled vege garden beds to scratch up the tilled sod and to eat grubs/weed seeds and to poo. It is our very reason for purchasing them.

I mentioned the rain and flooding of last week here and we have had more wet weather since then, just not as bad.  The ground in the area of the garden beds is soft and wet.  Do you see where this is headed.

Last night around 8:30 there is a knock on the living room window.  It's John and could I please get my shoes on and come outside.

I'm met with his car and the chicken tractor in the newly tilled garden area and my car and a rope a little further up in another garden area.

"Did you get stuck?"

"Yep."

So I get into my car and start to pull him out except my car is in a wet garden bed too.  A few seconds later we have two stuck cars.

Plan B: Get all the kids out and have a family push/pull/dig session- in the dark.

We did get the cars out, chickens situated and everyone back inside although everything was a bit muddy.  But ohhh... my poor garden.  First the flooding and then tires digging in my planting rows. Sigh.  I'm so glad that I still have options when it comes to purchasing food.  The way my growing season has started we'd be starving in October with out other farmers.  Growing your food can be difficult!

At least the chickens got something good out of it.  We fenced in our newly tilled area and let them out onto it this morning.  They love it.  Even Sawyer was out for a minute before Jack chased him back into the coop. (I'm sensing a "how to butcher a rooster" post coming soon.)

 The Hen House

Tractor bottom and nesting box side

Back of the nesting boxes

Tractor in finished state.

Tire tracks in my garden.

 Where the tire got stuck the worst.

Happy Chickens!