chickens

  • chickens,  food,  garden,  green,  sustainable living

    garden gal

    Did I say the garden was taking off? It is, kind of. And kind of not. Seems like the weather has been cooler, more overcast this year, thus far, and so I’m not getting quite the volume I hoped for. Yet. (Garden photo, LEFT, taken this afternoon — can you tell we live in California? Green roof to left/rear is the chicken coop roof.) I should try to do as the Dervaes family does down in Southern California and chart my productivity from the garden. Their goal for the year is 10,000 lbs. of produce, including duck and chicken eggs, honey, fruits and vegetables. We won’t get anywhere near that. But so far…

  • chickens,  family,  food,  Food Stamps,  frugal,  garden,  green,  kids,  sustainable living,  writing

    Answers!

    Wow, great questions coming in from readers near and far. Thank you for reading and for all your interest. This post will just answer questions — I have today’s stuff to write for the JFSC but don’t want to leave you hanging on unfinished business. And, by the way, thanks, Katy Wolk-Stanley, for blogging about me on your NonConsumer Advocate blog. You rock the house! So — 1) Will I write about more sustainable, green, urban homesteading, frugal topics, etc, henceforth? Yes. Funny, this blog started out as a how-to for writers; if you look back in the archive, you’ll see that at least for the first year or so (2004), I ended…

  • cats,  chickens,  garden,  kids,  sustainable living

    yeah, well, so it’s Monday.

    So what has occurred since last time I posted? The Tax Man. We’ll leave it at that. Meanwhile, we spent the weekend digging up dirt (not on the neighbors, but for the garden). Planted more strawberries (8 new plants), and one new artichoke. Next spring will be crazy with plants. Will we still be here? At the current rate of attrition of children-leaving-the-nest, one wonders. We’ve been thinking about how long to stay in this dreamhouse as the nestlings fly away. A 5-BR house was perfect when we moved in in 2006. Now there is one empty bedroom, an office, and the other two girls make noises like they might go live…

  • chickens,  garden,  green,  Mr Husband,  My World and Welcome to It,  photos,  sustainable living

    Lordy Lu: What’s new

    Such days, such busy days. Been reading, working in the garden, taking care of chickies, cats, birds, people, and self. Weather, projects, house, life. Busy days, I tell you. Biggest project has been the raised beds. Here come the photos, my little chickadees. So here’s the chicken coop with a new green corrugated roof. That took us a weekend day to repair. The coop still needs a solid door, as we discovered last night — either an electric fence or steel spikes dug down at least a foot into the earth. Yes, our raccoony friends were here overnight and dug underneath, into the coop. Luckily, the chickies still sleep in the garage,…

  • chickens,  family,  garden,  green

    weekend wrap

    Just winding down from a mostly sunny and productive weekend. We started excavating our garden to make room for the chicken coop yesterday. We’ve had a very productive and successful garden for 3 years (see typical view, above) but with the addition of the chickies, we needed to rearrange things. Plus, the large container/box we’ve used for 3 years, made of plywood, is rotting away. Note to prospective raised-garden folk: do not bother with plywood. Luckily, we never paid for any of the materials but had Dumpster-found them, so we’re sending them on to landfill much more shredded than it originally was. We’d burn it but plywood is not good…