Tammy Wynette is #1

Tammy Wynette is a Blue Wyandotte chicken.  She is the leader of our egg-laying flock.  She weighs in at over 8 lbs. and has huge dinosaur claws. 

Tammy has a quiet leadership style.  She is not mean-spirited, but will give the lower chickens a peck if necessary.  I've seen Tammy protect Bawky-Sioux from the other chickens when Bawky-Sioux was ill.  Tammy puts up with Cordon Bleu being psycho and chronically broody.

We used to make fun of Tammy for looking manly, but we got over that, because she has proven herself such a solid chicken.  Her features have softened a bit, now that she's older.  She's three years old now.  Thanks for the eggs, Tammy-Lou!

Veggies - To Grow You Is To Love You

I know,  I said this week's post would be about cute-as-pie pet chickens, but I'm learning that you don't have to do something just because you said you would do it!  HA!

John wanted me to post about the food we grow on the farm.  We grow many vegetables, and some fruits.  We see vegetables being the way to a healthier diet.

Hooray, it's Salad Season!

It's difficult (and boring) to list everything in the garden at once, so I'm going to break it down into a few different posts.

This post is about lettuce and greens - and the nightly inspiration that is salad.

Some of our favorite lettuces & greens (some are actually red):

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
Red Mizuna (mustard)
Endive Olesh Tres Fine
Tokyo Bekana Cabbage
Magenta Orach

Lettuce sprouts quickly, so it really helps us feel successful at growing food. "Baby" greens are ready within 15 days (great for growers with short attention spans).  We like to "cut and come again", cutting or pinching the outer leaves, and letting the inner leaves keep growing.

We started saving lettuce seeds last year.  When the plants are going to seed, some of the seeds fall on the ground, and come up later as "volunteers" (some call this invasive).  We love lettuce volunteers!   We allow them to pop up where they choose, and they have been feeding us well this spring.

Marvel of the Four Seasons lettuce.

Red Mizuna from last year.

Black Seed Simpson Lettuce - one of our favorites.   

This is the inside of our raised bed hoop-house. It is a large raised bed with PVC frame on top.  The frame holds the custom cut piece of poly which we ordered from a super nice man named Bob Davis. We are so happy with our hoop house, I have to share the website:

http://www.northerngreenhouse.com/

I like the hoop because it looks like a covered wagon. This hoop made a big difference for us last winter.  It allowed us to enjoy some decently fast-growing food in the dead of winter.  We used this hoop to get our starts going this spring.  We remove and store the cover when it warms up, and use the space as a raised bed.

Meat Birds Deserve Love Too!

Okay, before y'all get too comfy on this here farm blog, adoring our cute-as-pie, egg-laying, pet chickens, let's have a reality check:

We love chickens!

We also eat chickens.

Don't worry folks, we don't eat our pet chickens!

Our pet egg-layer chickens live good lives. When we started keeping those chickens, we started contemplating the lives of other chickens. Specifically, the ones we eat.

We heard terrible things about factory farms and the poor quality of life the chickens endure on those farms. Not to mention the icky things that go into those chickens - things I do not want to eat.

As a result of this knowlege, we started eating less and less factory-farmed chicken. Our chicken started getting more and more expensive. I was openly mocked at work for buying a $23 chicken from Soul Food Farms ($23 does seem like a lot of money for one chicken, even if it WAS delicious).

In early 2010 I started lurking in the "meat birds ETC" section of the forum on backyardchickens.com, and browsing tutorials on YouTube.

In April 2011 we picked up seven Cornish Cross chickens from the local feed store. I had been contemplating the best, most humane way to kill a chicken for many months now, and it was looming large in my mind.

Book learning and online education were great, but it helped even more to have some local farmers SHOW us how.

Rachel and Tom from Dog Island Farm came over and graciously taught us how to process chickens (We were very nervous). I can't recommend this enough - if you are urban farming - connect with other local people who are doing what you do, to share skills and resources. Don't be shy! Send that email, knock on that door, stop and talk to your neighbor when you see him out in the yard, join the local bee club, etc.

Okay, back to the meaties (as we affectionately call them). We do not name them individually. We DO name them as a group to remind us of their ultimate purpose. The first batch was named "Delicious". The second batch was named "Tasty". Our third and current batch is named "Succulent".

We pet them and talk to them every day. We could have as little contact as possible to spare our emotions, but that is not what this experiment is about. This experiment is about knowing and respecting our meat. Handling the meat birds frequently reduces stress for them on butchering day, because we don't have to chase them to catch them.

We are not "saying grace" kind of people, but because of this chicken raising effort, we now say "Thank you, chicken!" before starting every chicken meal. I can understand the $23 price tag now.

If I were a farmer depending on eggs and/or meat for income, I would not have had the luxury to "grandmother in" my six egg-layers as pets. I promised those six chickens they could stay forever, and a promise is a promise, even when the dorky, novice farmer doesn't know any better.

Next week: Back to the cute-as-pie pet chickens.

The Easter Story from Yes It's a Farm

It was December 31st and the new reports started coming in from Borneo at around 3:00 p.m. pacific time - and the news was not good. It wasn't the 'Happy New Year" celebrations we expected to see. No, nothing of the sort.

Pink chickens, blue chickens, chickens with white spots, and stripes, chickens with shiny glitter-like feathers, green chickens, purple chickens, rainbow chickens, totally psychedelic chickens. Hundreds, no thousands, no MILLIONS of them.  They were pissed off and attacking any human in sight. Pecking, clawing, screaming, jumping, flying, you name it. They attacked men, women, children, it really didn't matter. WTF?????


And so it came to life that fateful year:  Zombie Chickens!!!!


It was revenge day all around the world.  The zombie chickens were avenging all the eggs which were dyed, decorated and wasted in the name of some inexplicable human holiday.  Why would anyone take such a delicious, nutritious, and valuable thing such as an egg, decorate it so beautifully, only to waste it.  The humans could have avoided this cosmic chicken cataclysm if they had just eaten the eggs, and not wasted them.  Even feeding the eggs to the cats would have prevented this zombie poultry apocalypse.  


Carnage was the scene, both human and chicken.  The aftermath was something to behold.  Lots of dead chickens - all of which had to be eaten to avoid another possible zombie incident.  For the next few years, the world ate chicken, and lots of it.  The chickens weren't wasted.  And going forward, all Easter eggs were eaten.  No extreme waste and no more zombie chickens!


John and Paula have a small quarter acre farm in Pleasant Hill, California and they still sleep a little uneasy at night when some of their harvest goes to waste, be it animal or vegetable.


Happy Easter!

Bawk, Bawk, Bawky!

Bawky-Sioux is a Barred Rock chicken. She is number four in the peck order. Her nick-name is "Bawky-Love-Bug" because she is such a sweet girl. She's a camera-hog, which makes for some goofy close-ups.

Bawky was one of the three barred rocks we bought in 2010. Her sisters, Sioux-Bawka and Pecky-Sioux have gone to the great chicken ranch in the sky, but Bawky is a survivor.

Bawky laid lots of eggs last fall when all the other girls were resting their ovaries. In December, she molted HARD. She lost almost all her feathers in one day. She started staggering around like a drunk. I told her to lay off the sauce.

The next morning, Bawky-Sioux was not coming off the roost, and Tammy Wynette, the head chicken was staying with her. Tammy was protecting Bawky from the other chickens. Chickens are not nice to each other when they suspect illness or injury. It's natures way of keeping the flock healthy. I gently took Bawky-Sioux off the roost and put her near the food and water. She wobbled as she tried to walk, and Gener the Ameraucana chicken immediately attacked her.

We had to separate Bawky from the flock for her own safety. We have another chicken run adjacent to the main run where our poor drunk girl could sleep it off in peace.

I fed her scrambled eggs and baby vitamin drops for a week and a half. Maybe the eggs & vitamins worked, maybe she recovered on her own, but I'm glad she's back.

Bawky-Sioux now reintegrated with her flock, and is thriving with a luxurious new coat of feathers.

"Bawk-bawk-bawk-bawk, bawda-bawk-bawk-bawk!"