Week 17: Fun with Chickens and Homemade Composter

Well spring seems to have finally made an appearance! The grass is turning green, the Mourning Doves and Cardinals are starting to build nests in the yard, and our chickens are growing fast! They graduated from the chick feeder and are now eating out of a real chicken feeder.  We decided to let them go on a field trip upstairs into our living room.  All 16 chicks participated, and after a half a paper towel roll later of chicken poop, we decided the field trip was over and it was time to go back to their little home in our garage.

It looks like our beets never came up in the garden outside, so we will have to do some replanting.  Our old stock of radishes that we sprinkled out in front of the kitchen window didn't come up either.  In propagation everything came up except the jalapeno peppers. Again, those were old seed.

On the weekend Aaron made our composter which is going out in the back yard with the garden plots.  He constructed it out of the old fallen pieces of aspen and mulberry in our cedar fence line. The bottom is currently lined with the chicken's used bedding along with contents from our kitchen compost bucket. It took him about two hours to build the composter out in the sun where he got his first major sunburn for the year.  Whoops!

A month ago we went to the Chatham Home and Garden Show and gathered contact information from 4 local 'green' energy companies (solar, wind and geothermal).  One of those companies (OYA Solar) had some good info and seemed to be the most forward to put in the extra efforts and with zero up front cash-commitments to make a solar installation possible.

Currently the only way for solar to be feasible (economically) is to sign a 20 year microFIT contract with the OPA and accept a government subsidy for power generated.  Essentially what we have signed up for, presuming our MicroFIT applicaton is accepted by the OPA and we get the OK to supply Hydro One with our own solar generated power, is a 10kW fixed solar installation on the south side of our roof, with a 7 year payback on a system that should be viable for 30+ years (with a 20 year warranty).  This should end up providing a second source of income for the 7-20 year period after it is paid for, and give us the option be to be hydro independent in the 20+ year time frame.  We will find out if it is a go in 8 weeks.

WEEK 16: Here are the chicks :D

We finally received our chicks this week.  Aaron arrived at the normally quiet TSC store in Leamington which was packed with other people receiving chicks and ducklings.  We ordered 15 chicks and we came home with 16.  There are so cute and fluffy. We are now registered as a small flock grower with the Chicken Farmers of Ontario.

For now the chicks are living in our garage. 

 

 

WEEK #15: Getting ready for spring chickens

We ordered our chicks from the TSC store this week, so Aaron quickly whipped up a brooding box with left over plywood from the chicken coop, plus a few 2 by 4s ripped in half along their length.  We picked up a heatbulb sheild plus sheet metel from Marianne's Dad (not seen in the photo below), and we bought a chick waterer and feeder at TSC store.  We get the chicks on April 16th.  We are so excited!  Our original plan was to have the chickens lay eggs and then kill them for meat in the fall, however we now learned that Rhode Island Reds don't start laying eggs for another 4 months.  Looks like we will now be keeping them over the winter.

Aaron also placed roosts in the chicken coop.  The last thing to build for the coop now is a ramp to the door.

Meanwhile in propegation, the cabbage is growing beautifully and our long awaited peppers have finally made an appearnace as well.

 

WEEK 14: Spring Cleaning

We finally got our first wave of warm weather this week (10-15 celcius), so we decided to start some spring cleaning in the yard.  We spent all Saturday afternoon outside which started with chainsawing a fallen aspen and chopping it into firewood, then we hacked, slashed and pulled grapevines out of our cedar line which, in some areas, were so bad that six cedar trees actually succumbed from being smothered.  We will have to plant some new cedar trees eventually in some areas.

Aaron also raked the garden bed on the south side of the house and spread radish seeds.  He also rototilled the original garden from last year and planted two rows of beet seeds as we expect rain all week, and beet seeds need a fair soaking to germinate. Marianne's dad is going to stop by some day in April and work up the ground in the other gardens-to-be in the back field.

Saturday night into Sunday morning the wind picked up out of the southwest and a wave of spring migrants came in including at least 50 Golden-crowned Kinglets that were not in the yard Saturday afternoon while cleaning up.  Mourning Doves, American Robins and Grackles are also starting to build nests in the cedars, and spruces.

Our seeds are already coming up in the basement.  Tomatoes are of course leading the way. Seeing how they are related to weeds like nightshade, we are not surprised how fast they came up. In the wildflower department, the New England Asters are the only one that has germinated.

ROMA TOMATOES

We did discover one other thing that we did not want to see in our seed pots.....mould!  To remedy this we mixed up a spray bottle with 2 tablespoons of 3% hydrogen peroxide to 2 cups of water sprayed the seed pots, and turned on a fan to circulate the air to help prevent the mould from reappearing. By the next day, the mould was gone. On Sunday we planted cabbage and onion in our seed pots, and this time we watered them with the same water/hydrogen peroxide solution, and will continue to do so for the next few weeks to prevent any damping off.

MOULD!!!

We also ordered our chicks from the TSC store. We ordered 15 chicks altogether. 15 seemed like a good number as we are guaranteed only 80% females (the males will be harvested when they reach adult weight) and we will most likely loose a few chicks along the way as well, aiming for an even dozen chickens in the end. They are due for delivery on the 16th of April.  However, they will be two tiny for the chicken coop, so we gotta build a little brooding pen for them with a heat bulb.....Onto Week 15

:D

Week 13: Propagation

Finally got to planting some of our seeds in our newspaper rolls. We planted 36 roma tomatoes, 24 beefstake tomatoes, 12 cherry tomatoes, 12 orange bell peppers, 12 red bell peppers and 12 Jalepeno peppers.

We also started our wildflowers for a butterfly garden in little paper cups as well.

The top 2 shelves have seeds planted.  The bottom 2 shelves still have empty rolls to use.  Notice the space heater in front of the growing shelf as well.  For soil we did 2/3 potting soil on the bottom, followed by 1/3 steril medium

Wildflowers being started in paper cups with popsicle stick labels

WEEK 12: Canning Jar Roadtrip

Yay Kijiji.ca. !!!

 

Put out a request for canning jars and got two responses, one for 9 dozen near Thamesville, the other for 18 dozen in Chatham. After tossing about 1 dozen unsalvageable jars into the recycling bin, there’s about 9 dozen 1000ml jars, 16 dozen 500ml jars, a dozen wide mouth 500ml jars and a dozen odd/specialty jars, perfect sizes for canning foods for the two of us. 

 

We paid ~2.69 per dozen, which beats new by 50-75%.

Next we need to find an All American 30 quart pressure canner.

A few cans on our kitchen counter...lol

WEEK 11: Chicken Coop Nest Boxes

Finished the nest boxes this weekend, and attached them to the side of the coop. Was happy how they came together, though the hinges Aaron had don’t work as there was some clearance issues with the window frame.  He chose to build a common nest box, that is, one without dividers. Most of the literature basically came down to how chickens don’t care what they call a nest box, and that a single common nest box can prove more flexible and a better use of space than one pre-divided into single resident condominiums.