On Hard Work

I am tired beyond tired. I am sleepy from waking each morning at first light to open up the chicken coop and feed the animals. My back aches from raking and transporting leaves from under the trees to where they will build soil for new garden beds. My wrists are thick with fatigue after skinning a deer. My calves twinge at every step with reminders of the moving boxes carried upstairs.

But my mind is free and alive.

My nose is full of the smells of our first bonfire. My ears remembering pleasant banter of family around the table at Thanksgiving. My eyes are anxious to look at plans for the orchard one more time.

This is the reality of hard, self-chosen work. My body is spent but my soul fulfilled. My brain motivates my aching joints because processing a wild animal, creating new growing areas, and setting up a more spacious home is what I have desired for so long.

I am tired and happy to be working so hard.

This post is inspired by James Ward, my grandfather, who died recently. He understood hard work as a child building airplane models, a young adult racing and fixing cars, and a home gardener and chicken keeper who turned rock solid dirt into thriving soil that grew the best strawberries I've ever tasted. We will attend a memorial service for him today. Rest in Peace, Grandpa.

Ohio National Poultry Show 2012

You may not be able to see, but Lil is bouncing up and down in this picture. The reason? The Ohio National Poultry Show.

The show runs this Saturday and Sunday at the Ohio State Fairgrounds in Columbus. Judges will award ribbons and trophies for perfectly conforming birds in all categories for both adults and youth on Saturday.

The rows of cages contain feather-headed chickens, fancy ducks, Buckeye chickens*, poultry for sale (expensive, show-quality birds), and dinosaurs. 

Really, who can deny that this chicken looks like a dinosaur?!

Amid cockrel cries and duck calls, a limited number of vendors offer books, equipment and information. Owners are more than willing to share about their animals. Several breed groups also have tables with information about their varieties.

Backyard chicken keepers, those curious about poultry, and photographers will enjoy the Poultry Show.

The Ohio National Poultry Show - website and show schedule (beware the colorful text, unaligned pictures, and lack of organization) Saturday November 10, 2012 & Sunday November 11, 2012 George Voinovich Livestock Building on Ohio Fairgrounds (near 11th and I-71, enter from 17th) $5 admission

*Slow Food Columbus and the fine chef at Knead are offering a 'beak to tail' harvest dinner featuring the Buckeye chicken breed on Monday. Buy tickets ASAP as they are very limited.

PVC Chicken Feeder Plans & Coop Video Tour

At last week's backyard chicken basics class, I admitted that our coop is a jumble of reclaimed parts and pieces, including two wooden boxes 'saved' from alley trash. Lil contributed a little whimsy with some Angry Birds pig faces painted on old rubber stepping stones. Our coop will not win any design awards but it works for us and shows that a coop can be made out of darn near anything.  Alex's PVC chicken feeder is a bit more brilliant. Made from four pieces of durable, inexpensive pvc pipe, the feeder uses gravity to allow our hen access to grains at all times. We buy the Gregg's Organic Ohio-grains layer feed from City Folk's Farm Shop - I am so thankful to have it available locally now!

Cami Snyder, a lovely sophomore intern from Linworth Alternative High School, recorded and edited this impromptu chicken coop tour starring me, Lil, and Austra the Australorp hen. My favorite part of the video is when I'm showing off the next box and Austra is cooing.

Gravity Fed PVC Chicken Feeder

Materials: 2-3 foot length of 4-inch diameter PVC straight pipe 1 4-inch slip-fit cap 1 4-inch to 2-inch coupler 1 2-inch 180 degree elbow with male end and female end PVC cement hand saw (we like the Japanese-style Fine Cut Pull Saw) sandpaper 2 stainless steel screw eyes 2 s-hooks, screws, nails, and or wire on which the feeder will hang

Assembly instructions:

1. Work in a well ventilated area. PVC cement can stain, so you may want a covered surface.

2. Cut food storage compartment (4" pipe) to desired length based on capacity you want it to hold. Ours, measuring about two feet, feeds our single hen and snitching sparrows for about five days.

3. Use PVC cement to attach reducer to bottom of 4" pipe by painting the inside of the reducer with PVC cement and then setting the straight pipe in place.

4. Attach the male end of the elbow to the 2-inch side of coupler with PVC cement.

5. Using a hand saw, trim feed end of elbow to horizontal with the ground so that chickens can feed easily. Use sandpaper to smooth the edges.

6. Twist screw eyes into the back of the 4 inch pipe near the top, allowing for the cap to fit.

7. Fill feeder from the top. Twist on the cap. It may need a little sanding to release easily.

8. Hang feeder from s-hooks mounted on a wire or nails on the run rail so that the bottom is 6 inches or so off ground.

She Was Hiding Something

Can you spy the oddity in this picture? How about the chicken egg behind the bush?Which, upon looking closer, turned out to be a whole nest of eggs. It seems our chicken Austra has been laying for quite some time.

We had our suspicions when her feathers grew back in completely and comb turned characteristically bright red, a sign of egg production.

Then last week, we came home from a short walk and the dogs were at odds with each other. We stopped big hound Devie from barking and uncovered the desired object from little hound Hawise: a pale pinkish brown chicken egg. On the couch. Inside the house. Could they have brought an Austra egg in from the yard? But she hadn't left any in the nest box in months! When I uncovered the eggs on Saturday, we knew we had to reacquaint Austra with her nest box. She was going broody - sitting on the eggs and trying to hatch them - but we couldn't have her laying eggs on the ground where they might freeze or be crushed or snatched by a dog.

We moved several of the ill-lain eggs to our designated nest box. Shut inside for a bit, Austra settled the bedding into a nest and laid an egg in the proper spot.

Later, to the tune of her anxious clucks, I removed all the other eggs and raked up the leaves. I even pulled up the cover evergreen, a plant that doesn't quite belong in that place. Yesterday, we could find no egg in the nest box or Austra's ground nesting place. We all wonder where the next egg will be hiding.

Backyard December 3, 2011 {What's Growing}

Who says a late autumn garden is dull and brown?

Ours is hanging on to some color with rainbow swiss chard and greens, some of which self seeded when I neglected to pull the flowering mustard green plants. Austra the Australorp chicken regrew her jet-black feathers after molting and her comb is starting to redden up. On yesterday's unseasonably warm evening, the sunset was full of bright hues too.

Surely the color will fade or be covered with white snow soon. In the meantime, I am enjoying every bit of intensity.

What's growing in your neck of the woods?

Mothering A Molting Hen

This is the face of our molting Australorp hen, Austra. Her pin-like feathers look prickly and uncomfortable. Austra is a generally affable character but molting makes her seem frenzied. I say comforting things to her and only joke about the awkwardness of her feather loss behind closed doors like every good chicken mom.Her roost in the morning appears as though a pillow exploded overnight. The nest box hasn't held an egg for over a week. I added excess bedding to be sure our chicken stays warm despite feather loss.

As Austra helps to put the garden beds to rest, one witnesses the full molt. Her downy feathers are showing beneath the missing top feathers. She is eating constantly to fuel growing new clothes. I am feeding her scraps from the kitchen as always and tossing bird seed into her run for extra fun and nutrition.

On the upside, when the molt is complete in a few weeks, her singed tail feathers will be replaced. Our Austra will be returned to her former iridescent black glory, not to molt again for another year.

Have you ever watched a hen molt? I still find everything about chicken rearing fascinating.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday.

Rest In Peace Sussie, 2009-2011

This week, we lost our speckled sussex hen, Sussie. Suss had not been active, or laying eggs, for a few weeks. We tried several recommended treatments but she continued to lose weight and strength. On Thursday, Alex found her dead in the coop.

In life, Sussie was the most skittish and shy of our hens. She had a funky gait and I wonder if she battled a weak heart or other congenital defect. Lil loved Sussie and frequently engaged her in silly acts, like riding a bicycle.

With the two noisy Orpingtons sent to a farm (not a euphemism; they are happily squawking on a friend's spacious piece of land now), Australorp Austra is a single backyard chicken. She is healthy and producing one egg a day but clearly saddened to be without a flock. Her black-feathered self spends much of her day close to our back door, greeting us with endearing coos when we step outside.

Only time will tell the future for our city chicken coop. We eventually want more hens and are possibly ready for the experience of raising them from chicks. The roost and run can use a redesign, so perhaps we'll focus our efforts there first.

In the meantime, we mourn Sussie and are thankful for the time we were able to spend with her. Rest in peace, sweet speckled bird.

Homestead Heroines {Book Hounds}

Last month I devoured three accounts from fellow female real-food lovers. I read Kristin Kimball's The Dirty Life, The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker and How to Eat a Small Country by Amy Finley. Each was part inspiration, part 'what not to do' and thoroughly enjoyable. Finley's How to Eat a Small Country is the tale of a family reconvening in a foreign land from the verge of dissolution. Amy, her husband, and two young children leave their home in the US for an extended stay in France. They live in a farm house owned by an adventurous couple and their children. The families slaughter animals and eat French delicacies together, enthralling and appalling the Americans. Through their travels, Amy and her husband relearn how to enjoy their marriage and family.

The Dirty Life tells how Kristin Kimball abruptly changes the direction of her life when she meets future husband Mark during a writing assignment. After a short period of dating, they move to a neglected new england country estate. Mark's passion for feeding others through hands-on, horse-drawn organic gardening slowly transforms the land and Kristin's habits into a viable whole foods community supported agriculture experience.

Alice Walker is an approachable but formidable writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize among other awards. In The Chicken Chronicles, she considers her flock of backyard chickens. The book's short essays convey Walker's complex values through seemingly simple conversations with her chickens. For part of the book she is writing to the chickens as she travels in India. A woman who misses her birds while visiting with the Dali Lama is a woman I can understand.

Walker's blog is a constant source of amazement. She is an activist with a gift for writing about her incredible experiences in an everyday accessible way. She is in Gaza right now and I am addicted to her updates.

Each read offers encouragement to urban homesteaders of both genders. The Chicken Chronicles is the quickest read and the most thought provoking. How to Eat a Small Country was a great warning sign to me: proceed with caution in the food media world. And The Dirty Life made me desire the farming life ever more.

What books have inspired you lately?

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 51.