Giant Zucchini

Yipee... I think I let this one go a little long and it might have gone heavily to seed, but WHO CARES! Perfect for zucchini bread or shredded with some Padano cheese.

So, I started waxing poetic tonight, because I went out and cut two more of these zucchini's an Italian squash, plus giant parsley, sweet basil and some cilantro. How much cooler can this be. Growing your own food? It is awesome. Typically we take these and slice them, dredge in egg (anybody need a chicken?) and then bread it, fry it, then bake with cheese, tomato sauce and some parsley. Man I am hungry... gotta go

Sunflower Progress...

I am knot speling wehl...

Honestly, this thing is attracting attention. It is like we are bragging about a child.

"Yeah, it's ours...I know, I know, 12 heads, gorgeous yellow hair, it's a superstar!"...


OK maybe an alien child, with the 12 heads, but seriously, I have not seen anything like this before, although we grew a Sunflower a few years ago, that when I ultimately pulled it down, I nearly threw my back out due to it's size. I would guess it was about 17 inches across and was a "freak" of nature. Like me!


We now have pumpkin shoots that appear to move when you walk by them, like a Venus-Flytrap. I keep thinking it is going to grab my ankle and drag me into the garden never to be
seen again. If Stephen King was reading this he'd have himself a new novel. One I would never read, since his stuff is so foul. I don't know, the world is strange enough, why muck up your life by filling your soul with blood and dismemberment. UGH. And speaking of Venus FlyTrap remember him from WKRP in Cincinnati?


Here is the sunflower, it is stunning and a joy to watch explode.


I am thinking a wall of these across the front of my property, why not. Interesting observation though - we are getting very small birds who perch on the branch, just before it leafs and they peck and eat the leaves. They seem to stay away from this one, but are taking my other ones to town!

A Slight Digression...

I am sorry, but last night we got to see something not normally seen. This author lives in the San Francisco Bay Area... and instead of losing brain cells to TV, we opted to go for a drive. What we got to see was unprecedented for us.

First it was raining - It never rains in the summer - ever.

Second we saw a double rainbow...

This picture is looking southeast which would be overlooking Oakland Hills and the picture below this is looking towards San Francisco and the Bay Bridge.

More chicken fun later today... they are all out in the garden at present and I need to get back there and start digging my pond.

Sorry a little over exposed, but here is Hoot and Kapi in the garden. They love hanging out in the corn. Duh!!! I am noticing a very cool by-product of the their free-ranging lifestyle, they are keeping the weeds in control and soil scraped up. Oh yeah and they do their business there too. All in all a pretty symbiotic relationship.

I will get back at blogging tomorrow morning.

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Creepy, but cool.....

Besides the fact our chickens have been free to roam the garden since 8 am ( it is now close to 11), they have eaten every spider along "Spooky" fence there is. Yes, we have one of those. You know, the fence that is slightly rotten on the bottom and has spider webs everywhere. Well one of the chickens pulled out a Woolly Mammoth of spiders. It was the size of the chicken. They all wrestled for it ultimately tearing the spider from limb to limb and devouring it in no-time at all. While this a creepy, nothing compares to this...

http://www.duncraft.com/Feeders-Houses-Baths-Foods-W117C202.aspx?gclid=CPvt8aeLupsCFRFMagodmhgHAA

Why do we insist on having talking Avatars, are people too creepy? Too expensive? Too large a file? I think this is Animatronic hell. "Hi buy my bird feeders and they will attract pterodactyls and then you won't sleep cause you'll be thinking about my talking head" ( you need to read this with one tone and a little herky-jerky). Why do people think this is cool? Let's think of the market. Outdoorsy people, farmer-like, gardners, possibly older.... 35+ Do we (me included) think this is a sell?

Anyway, I think my point is... chickens are incredible pest control. I have read where farms no longer have flea problems due to chickens...really this is all too cool. Manure, pest control, food and fun. My Aussie is fun, but leaves a lot of poopy to haul, that is worthless and sheds everywhere. Thank goodness he is scary, cause it keeps the creepy door to door sales people from peddling their $100 a pint citrus colon cleanser.

Buying Local And Health

As I have blogged previously, backyard, locally farmed eggs sell quickly at Farmers Markets. Perusing the web and asking people, in my sphere of influence (which are all the personalities in my mind - so at least 100 people) who are more locally focused, about whether they would buy eggs from backyard farmers, it is apparent they will and do and pay more for it. I have a cadre of people who know we have chickens and are lined up for the extra's. I realize I am not going to have enough to bring to a farmers market and that is OK, cause I need more things to do like I need a virus. Economics may dictate my change of mind, but then so could sleep. So, I was curious about the eating local food issue... Is it better to eat local and what factors are effected in eating local. I am not talking about the local BK or California Pizza Kitchen... I mean locally grown food. So here goes -

According to a study by the New Economics Foundation in London (I know it is around the world, but economics are economics), a dollar spent locally generates twice as much income for the local economy. When businesses are not owned locally, money leaves the community at every transaction. Think about this - going to Safeway or Piggly Wiggly... sends your money off to another state or part of the state, where this money is then sent to suppliers around the country. It is likely your $5 worth of strawberries just went to Chile. Nice... so my $5.00 is not going to be spent by a local grower who could put their profit back into the local economy?

While produce that is purchased in the supermarket or a big-box store has been in transit or cold-stored for days or weeks, produce that you purchase at your local farmer's market has often been picked within 24 hours of your purchase. This freshness not only affects the taste of your food, but the nutritional value which declines with time. OK, there! Its quite possibly healthier.

Ever tried a tomato that was picked and eaten right off the vine? No argument here!

Because the produce will be handled less, locally grown fruit does not have to be "rugged" or to stand up to the rigors of shipping. This means that you are going to be getting peaches so ripe that they fall apart as you eat them, figs that would have been smashed to bits if they were sold using traditional methods, and melons that were allowed to ripen until the last possible minute on the vine.

In a March 2005 study by the journal Food Policy, it was found that the miles that organic food often travels to our plate creates environmental damage that outweighs the benefit of buying organic.

Which gets me to eggs - with the average egg being 90 days old by the time you buy it at your local grocery store... and the way in which hens are kept in hatcheries, how in the world could these eggs be healthy? There is nothing natural about the way eggs are produced versus those in backyards and on true - Cage Free farms. Higher Omega 3, protein, Vitamin D and E...

I might become like Rocky Balboa and start drinking eggs....! Or vomit in my shirt pocket.

Hand Augering Wells

So, one of the benefits of living where I do is... the water table is at 15ft. Yes, 15ft... So, this gives me the leverage to "hand auger" a well versus paying someone to come in drill a well in my backyard. The price differential is about $3000. After researching this, I found a company on the East Coast, who specializes in hand-augering equipment for wells. The coolest thing here is; they are a Christian organization who's mission is to provide the means and the tools for countries where fresh water is miles away and where the water if not boiled, could make them deathly ill. HydroMissions provides the parts or a pre-packaged unit for hand-augering your well. The beauty of a well, is... our earth acts as a natural bio-filter for water, thereby extracting all the nastys that will keep you on the Johnny On The Spot... The water should still should be tested for microbes and alkalinity, but for watering your yard, crops and tapping it into certain household needs is very doable.

So, here is the link to HydroMissions:

http://www.hydromissions.com/

The steps will be; get the equipment, casing, pump and begin drilling. A 4" casing will be used and I anticipate hitting water at 15ft. I will need to drill to 30ft, as you need to double the distance to compensate for head pressure and usage.

Usually, outside of coastal locations, the water will be very high in mineral content and good for your crops and lawn. I would not recommend watering your chickens with this water unless you have the water chemistry tested. There are a number companies on the web or in your local area who can test your water for less than $50. To me this is worth it...as I have kids and animals, sometimes hard to tell the difference and peace of mind for health's sake is worth it.

I will report more later, but in the meantime ask around and find out where your water table is, see if you can't hand auger a well in your backyard and get off the grid.

Coop Maintenance - June 20, 2009

OK, so I did not post earlier because I was at Alamo Feed today buying some straw and some new bedding material.

So, with family in tow we traveled down to Alamo Hay and Grain. As I have mentioned before this is really an awesome feed store... You actually drive "through" the store. Ducks, chickens, rabbits, geese, pidgeons and every kind of hay, straw, bedding and feed is available. I need to take a picture and post it, which I will. Not only is this a feed store, it is in a very tawny neighborhood, which is weird since this place is a throw-back to 1920... with the fake horse on the roof and all.

Anyway, we grabbed a bale of straw and two bags of some stuff I was recommended to buy called ABM bedding. We let the chickens out to roam and they were like ducks out of water... (hmmm let me think about the analogy) anywho.. they roamed about freaking over the raking sound in the coop. I guess it is like us hearing a table saw in the house... loud, sawdust, destruction, mess. I raked it all up, dumped in the wheelbarrow and then replaced it with this ABM material.

http://eaglevalleyabm.com/advantage.html Please check this stuff out. I strongly recommend this. As you can see from the picture above the consistency is awesome, the smell incredible and its components allow for healthier environment for your chickens. I put some in our kids bedrooms and the family room, figured it couldn't hurt. I paid $8.95 for one cubic foot. This ended up being a very easy clean and by using this material I can use a stall rake and pick up the "swollen" pellets , which bond with poop and urine and then throw another bag on as needed. Wooo-Hooooo.

Coop Improvements and Garden

A. painting the coop, red with white trim, building a gardening and staging shelf on the side and adding cedar shakes to the roof. B. Garden is in process... with bush beans, peppers, arugula, carrots and more corn coming up in the foreground. C. New decomposed granite path will be put in to the left with control valves in 4 locations. D. Fence to be prettied up E. Small fence surrounding the garden so the chickens do not lay waste to it.

If you'll remember a neighbor gave this coop to me...and while I love building things, taking time away from landscaping my backyard and finishing up the remodel on the house to build a coop would have propelled me to making the coop liveable for me, therefore electricity, AC, heat, HDTV and the internet. Tough in a 4x8 space and chickens. My wife would have thought it was "cute". Me? No so cute.

I am looking into an automatic waterer and I not talking about the kind you fill-up.. I want something based on a float mechanism.. gets low, it fills...without me being there. I know me... me can be forgetful, me can be A.D.D. "Oh look a squirrel"... and off I run. Just ask my family. Ultimately I am going to need Jetson's like egg collector...something that the egg drops into a hole which triggers a conveyor belt which then delivers them into a soft little blankie in our kitchen...

Flax and Chickens

So we surpassed 1000 today, which is very cool thanks.

Something I wanted to share today is something I picked up from an organic egg producer. This producer sells two types of eggs; 1. Organic eggs and 2. Omega-3 eggs. It is classed as an Omega-3 egg for one reason, they feed the chickens flax seed. Purportedly, when chickens are fed flax seed the conversion process within the chicken is the equivalent of putting a putting a dish in the dishwasher and pulling out a Wedgewood china vase. So, pictured to the left is flax. A super easy plant to grow, propogates like bamboo and produces beautiful flowers that when finished blooming turns into these little tan balls of 6-10 seeds in each. These balls become completely dry and once crushed in the fingers, simply blow away the chaff , collect the seed and add to the chickens food. You see my daughter holding the remnants of two bulbs. We simply add this daily to the chickens food. Viola' the chickens dawn capes and begin flying from one end of the coop to the other shooting Omega-3 eggs out like a machine gun. Their mental acuity becomes so good, they actually place their eggs in their own cartons and sign the package.

So, here is the challenge... plant some flax, feed it to the chickens. WOW not an Olympic moment here, but a challenge nonetheless.

By the way, eat these yourself too. They taste very wheat-like, but - as my daughter thought, watermelony. Which, in retrospect is very accurate. Enjoy!

Chicken, Gardens and Agrarianism

While deciding to become and egg harvester and chicken babysitter, I decided to get back into gardening. I have taken a 10 year hiatus while I turned my house into the Winchester Mystery House. I really can't help myself as I love gardening, am enjoying this chicken craze and will soon be hand-augering a well in my backyard so I can irrigate everything. I have a small piece of property it is 100 x 100 and 35% is house another 20% is driveway and lawn. So I am not a land-barron and don't want anyone feeling inhibited by a perception of money... negative tower.... no money here. Which leads me to my next point.

My desire is to get off the grid; solar on the house, eggs in the coop, veggies in the garden and water in the well. In as much as I can tell this is neo-agrarianism. Since we don't live in villages where someone is stomping out wine or kneeding bread or pressing olives or making some shoes. The best we can do is; water, sun, wind, dirt, seeds and chickens, unless you have land and ordinances that let you slaughter - then meat..I don't and wouldn't anyway, unless I had to.

I have read enough to know, our economy will never be the bloated self it was from 2002-2006. That was 4 years of Fantasy Island. I also know from my years studying and applying economics in business, that we are in for lean times. As the government turns on the printing presses, our money will buy less. This begs the need to keep it in your pocket and food being one of our larger monthly expenses, why not provide it for yourself - no matter the size of lot you have.

Above are kaliedescope carrots. These are offered by Cook Gardens. I have bought many seeds from Cook over the past 20 years and they have been the best - by far. They are awesome to eat, beautiful to look at, kids like them and they "sell". Many local gardeners can make money selling to neighbors or at Farmers Markets, but more importantly you can provide for yourself.

So, while I am tending to my chickens, I will be harvesting some veggies too. If your not doing it, give it a try. Neo-Agrarianism is coming to a street near you.

Le Coop du Jour T-Shirts coming soon.

Coop maintenance and your garden....

I stumbled across this video on You Tube. Grab your pillow and a binky, cause this guy should be professional bedtime story-teller. After I wiped the drool from my keyboard, I realized he had some great information. Pine shavings and chicken waste, already cut down and ready to be amended into the soil - brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljyyhk1xESA&NR=1

Nighty night.....