Thursday Morning Miscellany

• I broke my washer last Friday.

There is a 3" slit in the gasket 

I had an underwire bra go amok and slash a huge hole in the door gasket. It's a freak accident that is going to cost me $250 and  a week and a half without a functioning washer. In the meantime, what am I going to do about our laundry? 

I decided to wash it all by hand. 

I'm spending lots of time here

I've got detergent, plenty of hot running water, and even a dryer. I thought that there was no reason why I shouldn't be able to take care of it. Well, several days in, it's apparent that washing laundry for six people by hand is very tedious. I need to invest in a few simple tools that will make the job easier should I have to wash laundry by hand in the future. Something to agitate the laundry would be nice, and something else that would wring out water is essential. My laundry remains so wet after I wash it that it takes forever to dry. I just keep telling myself that this is an excellent learning opportunity and I'm counting down the days until my washer is fixed. 

• We finished our chicken moat expansion. 

The fencing now encompasses the new duck house area and connects all the poultry
together in a circuit around the garden

I'm glad to be done with construction for a while. We're taking a brief breather and catching up on backed up garden chores. In a couple of weeks we'll have to address our turkey housing issues. 

• My Ancona duck eggs are due to hatch today. When I woke up this morning, two of my eggs had pips (little holes in the shell). Thirteen of the 15 eggs made it to the end of the incubation period. I hope that I get a wide variety of colors and patterning and that most of them are girls. That's not too much to ask for, right? I found homes for any extra birds that should hatch. I should admit that things are moving slow enough at this point that I hope I get any ducks to hatch. 

Come on and hatch, little ducklings!

Our Chickens at 15 Weeks

I realize that this blog is titled "The Harried Homemaker Preps", not "The Harried Homemaker's Poultry". The problem is that I've been spending all my prepping money and free time on poultry-related projects, so this blog reflects that. I do think keeping poultry is an excellent preparedness project, but I know not all of my readers can have chickens. To that I say (only slightly in jest) you should move to somewhere you can keep poultry. Hang in there with me and I promise to return to a greater variety of topics. :)

Foraging in the cool of the evening

My chickens are 15 weeks old and haven't given me a single egg yet. If they were from one of the high-output hybrid breeds, I might expect my first eggs in the next week or so. Since they are heritage breeds, I have longer to wait. It can take up to the age of 24 weeks or so to start laying. Most will begin in the 20 to 22 week range. 

If I desired, I could start butchering the chickens. Most of them have reached a size where they would dress out as a nice sized carcass. We are not planning to eat any of our chickens yet but will probably cull them for the soup pot when they slow down their egg production in a couple of years.

Other than being ornamental and fun to watch, our chickens have already done a lot for our homestead. They have made a massive dent in our food and garden waste. They eat food that would normally get scraped off a plate into the trash or garbage disposal. They covet the strawberries that the ants got to before we did and slurp down tomato hornworms like spaghetti. How cool is it that the very stuff we throw away can be turned back into yummy eggs and meat?

Our roo-in-training

Here's our Buff Orpington cockerel. (Until one year of age, boy chickens are referred to as cockerels. After one year old, they get the venerable title of rooster.) I was slightly leery of purposely ordering a future rooster since they have a reputation for being mean. I really want the option of hatching our own chicks, however, so a rooster was a necessity. So far, he seems to be pretty nice and I think he is awfully handsome, too.

One of our Barred Plymouth Rock pullets

My favorite chickens are our Barred Rocks. They aren't an exotic breed, but I really think they are pretty and they are the most friendly of our chickens. This one is pretty advanced in her comb and wattle development, so it may be that she will be one of the first of our pullets to begin laying.

"Little Silver" the Silver Laced Wyandotte

It seems like I lucked out when I pulled the last Silver Laced Wyandotte out of the bin of straight-run birds at Tractor Supply Company. I'm pretty certain I ended up with a pullet. I think she's pretty. But then again, I think all my birds are pretty. :)

A Gold Laced Wyandotte

Here's a Gold Laced Wyandotte for comparison. None of my Wyandottes are particularly friendly. But none of them are as skittish as the Silver Lakenvelder.

"Noodles" the Silver Lakenvelder

Noodles is a complete nutcase. She is convinced that humans are evil and she does her best to stay out of sight when I'm around. This is the one breed of chicken I wouldn't get again. I don't need lap chickens, but I prefer to work around birds that aren't so neurotic and skittish.

The chicken moat turned out to be a great idea

Here's Mr. Man leading some of the ladies (Noodles, Prissy the Delaware, and Tawny Kitaen the Easter Egger) down the moat. The chickens keep the weeds and grass down just enough that they don't kill it completely but we don't have to mow the moat. They hunt insects and eagerly wait for the treats of bugs and weeds we throw into the moat from the garden.

"Lita Ford" the Easter Egger

None of our chickens were supposed to get proper names under the theory that it's easier to eat something that you haven't named. Well, the kids started naming them and then I got into the act. I thought the Easter Eggers looked like they had big 80s hair, so I named them after 80s icons Tawny Kitaen and Lita Ford. I've started to wonder if Lita Ford is actually a cockerel, though. Any guesses?

"Little Red" the Rhode Island Red

"Bella" the Salmon Faverolle

Poor Bella. Faverolles have feathers on their legs and hers always look messy and muddy. I think I'll stay away from feather-legged breeds in the future. She's a nice bird otherwise.

A Buff Orpington pullet

The Buff Orpingtons just kind of blend in with the crowd. From the looks of their comb and wattle development, they will be one of the later birds to begin laying. Compare this photo to the one of the Barred Rock above.

In the next week or so, I will remove the barricade that is keeping the chickens out of the nest boxes. I'll place nesting material and fake eggs in the the boxes to encourage them to lay there when they start feeling the urge. We will also be moving the turkeys into the chicken moat and our duck eggs will hatch. Plenty more   action in the poultry department on our homestead!

Fellow Poultry Keepers: What's new in your flock? 

My June Lunacy, I mean, Preps

In case you haven't noticed, my thoughts, time, and prepping budget have been dominated by poultry-related purchases recently. Hubby Dear has come up with a term for the disease from which I suffer - Poultry Acquisition Disorder, or PAD for short. I don't think PAD is such a bad thing; Hubby Dear begs to differ!

There is a consequence of PAD, however; the cute little buggers grow up and then you have to figure out where you are going to house them. My June and July prepping budgets will be spent on turkey and duck housing and associated paraphernalia.

Oh, you didn't know I had ducks? Technically speaking, we will have ducks in 28 days since my ducks are still in ovo. I've got a batch of Ancona duck eggs in an incubator. Stay tuned for a tutorial on incubating duck eggs in an upcoming post.

We have three big projects underway.

1) Build a duck house


Hubby Dear and I shelled out big bucks for a pre-made chicken coop, but you can't just buy pre-fab duck houses. And using a chicken coop for ducks can be problematic as ducks have different requirements. For one thing, they don't roost. Their legs are also more delicate than chicken legs, so some of the taller designs with long ramps aren't ideal. They also need the nesting boxes to be at floor level.

We considered a lot of different options and nearly settled on converting a doghouse kit into a duck house identical to this, but we wanted something larger and with more versatility.

I ended up buying a chicken coop plan from the very cool Fresh Eggs Daily blog and Hubby Dear and I are building it ourselves. The coop is very duck-friendly and is large enough to house up to 9 Ancona ducks. We don't have a very good track record with home improvement projects, but so far it is going well. If you are handy, you probably don't need to buy the coop plan since she has a pretty detailed blog post about the coop, but Hubby Dear and I appreciate the cutting diagram and parts list.

The pile of supplies. We had to buy a circular saw and jigsaw plus all the lumber and miscellany, so the total came to
about $400 dollars. If you have the tools already, plus some scrap lumber on hand, this could be FAR cheaper. 

We're still cutting all the plywood, etc. and priming everything before we put it together.

Primed bits and pieces

Since ducks are so notoriously messy, I'm going through the extra step of painting the duck house both inside and out. I hope this will make cleanups easier in the long run. Right now it just seems to be slowing the process down!


2) Figure out the turkey housing situation

A brooder in my basement isn't going to cut it for my turkey poults much longer.

I think my turkeys are around 3 weeks old. They are already larger than my chickens were
when I allowed them out of the coop and into their run. Thank goodness I only bought four!

For one thing, I'm going to need my brooder for the ducklings in less than a month. And the turkeys are ready to get out of the brooder. They've already escaped several times despite the bird netting! They are little Houdinis, that's for sure.

Here's the problem: turkey poults are very delicate and disease-prone. Should they get too hot, too cold,or  too wet, they'll drop dead. People tend to baby their poults until they are 8+ weeks old, and even then many people will keep them indoors or in wire cages.

My tentative plan is to move them out into the duck house (with an attached run) when they are 5-6 weeks old. I'll give them plenty of shade and ventilation and hope for the best. They can get to know their new chicken roommates, and hopefully by the time I'm ready to move the ducks outside, I can integrate the turkeys in with the chickens. I'm taking a bit of risk by keeping our turkeys with the chickens (chickens can potentially give turkeys a disease called blackhead), but I'm willing to chance it.

Eventually the turkeys will be too big to go in and out of either the duck house or chicken coop, so they will get their own shelter. We plan to build a smaller version of the range shelter shown in Storey's Guide to Raising Turkeys. It will look similar to this:

Turkey range shelter - Ours will be quite a bit smaller because we only have four turkeys!
Image from http://www.freetimesw.com/blueoakranch/turkeys.htm 

3) Expand and fortify our chicken moat

Our chicken coop is attached to a moat that goes around our garden.

Current plan of the chicken moat

Since we're adding in a 4'x6' duck house plus a turkey range shelter and a whole bunch of new birds, we need to expand the run.

We seriously considered using electronet and making pens for the new birds out in the pasture. (You can see what that would look like in the photo of the turkey range shelter.) The birds would love that and we may do that in the future, but we have a special needs child and a toddler so I am concerned for their safety.  We decided instead to expand the chicken moat. We will bump out the right side of the moat to match the existing left side, giving a total of about 1,150 square feet for the birds to roam in safety.

We are also going to add a layer of chicken wire to the bottom of the fencing. We used welded wire mesh with 2"x4" openings to build our fence and little ducklings will easily be able to slip through for the first couple of months. And if any of my chickens go broody next spring and hatch some chicks, we'll be all ready for that!

A duckling could slip out or get stuck in the holes in the fence. We'll cover the lower
2 feet with chicken wire just to be safe. 

As you can see, I've got plenty to keep me busy over the next month and a half! I'm just trying to refrain from adding geese to the mix!

March 2012 in Review, Part I: Chickens and a Lost Toddler

My goodness, March has been a crazy month! In the midst of even more than the usual chaos (and a whole lot of basketball watching - we are a family of rabid college basketball fans) we managed to get quite a lot accomplished. In fact, I have so much to talk about that my usual monthly review post grew outrageously long. I realized that no one would read a blog post the size of War and Peace so I decided to split it up in parts. Here's part one. 


Chickens


We had a few misadventures along the way, but our chicks arrived in mid-March and we've settled into an easy rhythm. We completed the final bit of the chicken moat before the little buggers even arrived. Hopefully it will keep our chickens secure because a coyote has been sighted around our place recently. 

The north end of the chicken moat finished and attached to the coop

Of course it will be a little while yet before the chicks leave the security of their brooder and are allowed to roam the moat. At two weeks of age, I moved their brooder out of one of our bathrooms and into the coop. I really enjoyed having them in the house - it was so delightful to hear their antics while I was doing school with my children - but they were starting to produce quite a bit of dust. Thankfully the unusually warm temperatures we've had this year meant that the coop was plenty warm for the little chooks. I even turn off their brooder lamp during the day because it has been getting upwards of 90 degrees in the coop. 

Brooder set up in the coop. 

Unfortunately, the little runt chick we named Ora (short for "Ora et Labora", which means "Pray and work" in Latin) ended up dying three days after the chicks arrived. I think she never fully absorbed her yolk sack and was doomed from the start. Ora's death combined with Meyer Hatchery shorting me a chick meant that we were two chicks down, so I went to Tractor Supply Co. and bought two replacements. Apparently TSC has a policy of selling a minimum of six chicks. I managed to browbeat  persuade the lady in charge of the chicks to let me buy only two chicks by swearing that I had 15 more at home in my brooder. I came home with one straight-run Silver Laced Wyandotte and this little girl who I selected from the "Red Pullet" bin.

"Little Red" on the day we got her. She is probably a Rhode Island Red or Production Red 

Despite the fact that we have chickens of fancier breeds, it is Little Red who has become our favorite chicken. Little Red isn't so little any more. I can't believe how much she and all the other chicks have grown already.

Little Red and her flockmates 

They are quickly losing their chick down and feathers are growing in. They aren't as cute as they were two weeks ago, but they are starting to look edible, so that's some consolation!

"Eek! There's a human trying to pet us!"

They aren't so sure about me and run to the farthest corner of the brooder whenever I approach. I think they are trying to help me not get attached! 

The remainder of their "Baby Cake" and dandelions

We are feeding the hungry little birds chopped hard-boiled egg, dandelions, and forage cake as supplements. They quickly polish off everything I bring them. They are such fascinating little creatures. I could spend all day with them if I didn't have children who require food, education and attention. Pesky things, children! ;) 

And then there's this little fact

My new official chicken farmer boots and my baggy, saggy pants

I have to roll up my pants when I go out to visit the chickens. That's because there's less of me holding them up off the ground and as a consequence they drag a bit. If I don't roll them up, I come back with all sorts of fun surprises stuck to them. 


Why are they so saggy you ask? Because I've lost over 30 lb. That's a whole toddler! Just had to share. 


Coming soon:


Part II, Bug Out Bag Upgrade

January 2012 in Review and February Preps

January was a quiet month for me on the blog, but not so much at home. I have been so busy. Between my kids' homeschooling, extra-curriculars, and the normal insanity of having two toddlers (including one who is doing her best to give up her afternoon nap), life has been pretty nutty. Hubby Dear and I have also been going full-throttle with diet and and exercise, which has eaten up time I normally spent on the computer. My derriere is thankful for the change, however, and I've managed to lose 10 pounds in the last month!

Even though I didn't get time to blog, I most certainly worked on preps during the month of January.

1. Sales!

I hope many of you were able to take advantage of the sales at markdown.com and Honeyville Grains. I am very happy that I was able to stock up on both Tattler canning lids and freeze dried foods.

2. Reading, reading, and more reading

I read quickly through The Small-Scale Poultry Flock and have been mulling over all the interesting ideas it gave me for the role poultry can play on our homestead. Next, I bought a copy of The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way. Talk about wow. If you are interested in growing fruit organically, you've got to get your hands on this book! The focus of the book is building plant health, starting at the soil level and working up. It has me re-imagining the layout of our orchard and has piqued my interest in permaculture. I really can't recommend this book enough.

3. Miscellany

I socked away items like work gloves, bandannas, and safety pins.  These are all cheap, readily-available preps that could be important to have on hand in an emergency. Bandannas alone have countless uses.

4. Chicken business

Our chicks are due to arrive in early March. I spent a good portion of my prepping budget this month on various chicken paraphernalia.

Feed storage

I bought a couple of galvanized steel trash cans to store feed in and a couple of bales of pine shavings. Since I intend to use the deep litter method of manure management, I need mucho mas pine shavings.

Random chick stuff 

I also picked up the supplies I'll need for our chick brooder. Hubby Dear and I weighed out a variety of options (including crafting our own brooder out of a plastic storage bin), but for reasons of ease, the number of chicks we'll be brooding, and because I'm a total sucker for a so-called complete kit, we bought the Deluxe Brooder Starter Package from Randall Burkey.

The Deluxe Brooder Package from randallburkey.com 

You're supposed to have at least 1/2 a square foot per chick in your brooder. This set up will give me just about the right amount of space for the 17 chicks I'm expecting.

I also bought chick-sized grit, a bag of starter feed, and forage cakes. I'm glad that February always flies by so quickly because I am more than ready for my chicks to arrive!

Oh, and there's this little something that arrived via tractor trailer.

After some trial and error (including a dead lawn mower battery and creative use of a tire iron),
Hubby  Dear got the coop hitched up and moved it around to the back yard

This is an 8x8' chicken coop built by Horizon Structures. The delivery driver arrived after sunset one evening and decided that he couldn't make the turn into our driveway with his 75' long trailer. That meant he had to put the wheels on our coop and unload it directly on the country road we live on. Then he and I wrestled this nearly 1700 lb coop off the road and up enough of our hilly, rutted driveway to finally make it onto our yard. Hubby Dear, of course, was at work and missed all the fun. ;) The next day, he hitched up the coop to the lawn mower and moved it around back to take its place of honor in the chicken moat.

It was tricky business to get the coop positioned in the moat. It took many tries to get it right.

Horizon Structures is located in Pennsylvania and I... am not. Take a look at the amount of road dust that collected on the outside of the coop during the long journey to our home! It would have been better to buy locally, but I didn't have any luck finding something with the size and features I wanted.

In place and ready for action! Now we just need to finish the chicken moat.

This coop has a lot of upgrades, including an easy-clean glassboard floor, electrical package, and automatic chicken door. I'm pleased with the overall quality of construction, but was disappointed that the roof and paint got damaged during transport. Thankfully, Horizon Structures is not only sending me touch-up paint and extra shingles but also hiring a handyman to make it right. That's a business that knows how to treat its customers.

What's up for next month?

February Preps:

1. Books - You know I had to have more books on my list! Continuing the theme of permaculture, I plan to get (the unfortunately named, but useful) Gaia's Garden. I also find the concept behind Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day to be very intriguing. I make all of our bread, but the recipe I use for homemade pizza recipe takes long enough that I don't make it very often.

2. Chickens - I still need to get a few odds and ends for the chickens, namely a long, high-quality extension cord so that my coop can have power. We need to finish constructing the north wall of the chicken moat as well.

3. Orchard planning - Our apple trees and blueberry bushes will arrive in March. Ahead of that, I need to work on our plan and get some of the supplies that I can't find locally.

4. Garden - We are expanding our square foot garden next year and so we need to build a few more boxes and make more Mel's Mix.  

5. First aid preps - I have a huge list of items that I have yet to buy. I hope to make inroads on this.

6. Feminine products - After my ill-fated cloth pad experiment, I kind of abandoned this area of preparedness. Time to get back to it.


So that's me. Any big plans for February or accomplishments from January you'd like to share? 

My Top Five Prepping Successes of 2011

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas. We had a lovely time with our extended family and it was quite a jolt to have to get back to everyday life on Monday. We homeschool our children and I wanted to squeeze in a few more school days in the hopes that we might complete our school year in May. This sounded like a perfectly sane and logical plan when I concocted it in November, but as I sat at the kitchen counter helping The Thinker with her Latin lesson, I seriously regretted my decision to forgo Christmas break. This led me to entertain some fanciful ideas about what I would do if I could get my hands on the ancient Roman responsible for the evil grammatical construct known as the declension. My fantasies were surprisingly creative considering the general stupor I was in at that time of the morning. That, my friends, is a classic case of  Post-Festivity Latin Declension Disorder (PFLDD for short) and is a key reason why you should never skip Christmas break.

Now that I'm mostly recovered, it's time to turn my attention to cheerier matters than dead languages: my top five prepping successes of 2011.

-----


5. The Great Chicken Moat Build

This little fencing project was a huge undertaking

The chicken moat is not technically finished, much less put to use, but I had to put it in this countdown because of the sheer amount effort that went into it. Hopefully the chickens that will live in this moat will greatly cut down on the insect and weed pests in our garden, contribute delicious meat and eggs to our diet, and will be a source of fertility for our soil. The potential benefits made this difficult project worthwhile.


4. No more store-bought bread! 

Much better than sliced bread!

I have been baking bread since I was a teenager, but I never before attempted to make all of my family's bread products. After I bought a NutriMilland then a Bosch Mixer,it became ridiculously easy to grind wheat and bake as much bread as we consumed. So I started doing just that and even figured out how to use a Sun Oven to bake bread.

It feels really satisfying to make something so delicious and healthful for my family.


3. Explored new ways to preserve food

I have a few new tricks up my sleeve when it comes to food preservation. I've been water bath canning for a few years now, but pressure canning was new territory. Not only do I now pressure can with the best of them, but I regularly can meat, something that was very intimidating to me in the beginning.

Dehydrating oregano

I also learned the ins and outs of dehydrating. My new Excalibur Dehydrator is awesome, though I must admit I find it very tedious to place all the pieces of food meticulously on the trays.

Vacuum sealing with the FoodSaver

My favorite new trick, however, is using a FoodSaverto vacuum seal mason jars of dry goods. I have stored brown sugar, nuts, chocolate, raisins, shortening, herbs, and many other items with this little gadget.



2. One year of food storage*

Some of the comfort food items I bought during our Food Storage Blitz Month 

We finally have one year's worth of food storage! Sorta. If you go by the number of calories stored, we do, but we are still short several key nutrients (such as calcium and Vitamin C) and I want to add more meat to our supply. And then we'll need to add more food as our children grow and need more calories. And more fruits and vegetables would really be nice... You get the picture.

I can't exactly rest on my laurels here, but I'm pleased with what we've accomplished.

1. Garden re-do

Our new square foot gardening boxes

Hubby Dear deserves most of the credit here. He transformed our decidedly sub-par garden of years past to the Garden of Eatin' by adding square foot gardening boxes. That involved a lot of carpentry and an insane amount of soil toting and mixing.

This year was so successful that we plan on adding 19 more square foot boxes to our garden, albeit in stages. This will double the size of our current garden. I can't wait! (Read this post if you are unfamiliar with square foot gardening.)



What accomplishments in the area of preparedness are you the most proud of? Was 2011 a banner year or a bust?