Fort Knox

Coop construction began shortly before the ladies arrival at our lil urban farm. We’re building a 3-by-4-foot henhouse that sits inside a roughly 4-by-8-foot enclosed run (the henhouse is over part of the run). Since raccoons are a big problem for chickens, and we’ve seen raccoons in broad daylight in our neighborhood, we decided the coop needed to be as secure as, yes, Fort Knox.

Since raccoons can reach through regular chicken wire and do nasty, horrible things (like eat your chickens piece by piece), we heeded advice to use ½-inch hardware cloth mesh instead. Doors will be locked, mesh is buried a foot underground, and the ladies will be shut in their henhouse at night.

Seattle tends to get a bit of rain (I know, shocking!), so we decided to cover the run so that the ladies can use it in all but the coldest weather (which is not as cold as chickens in some parts of the country have to deal with). We went with metal roofing from the hardware store.

I’ve seen and heard 50 different opinions on when young chickens can be moved from the brooder to the coop, but we’re confident that we’ll have the coop move-in ready before that date arrives.

How does my garden grow?

It’s spring break, which means things have been hopping at the farm, with chick buying, coop building and (yay!) seed planting.

Improving my mostly clay soil is a work in progress. It still tends to be wet and cold in early spring, partly because a big chunk of my the "back 40" doesn't get much sun until the sun's east-west axis shifts after the spring equinox. With four springs under my belt in this house, I’ve learned that it doesn’t pay to rush seeds into the ground. For this year, we had intended to lay down compost in the fall so that it had a chance to kind of casually work into the soil over the winter. But our joint decision to return to school kind of messed that idea up. So we finally got the compost down this week…not ideal, but I’ll make do.

I’ve veggie gardened long enough that I know better than to plant out bean seeds and tomato starts in March, but I still flip through my trusty Seattle Tilth Maritime Northwest Garden Guide to know what to plant when, month by month. This week, it was safe to direct sow, among other things, spinach, Swiss chard, arugula, radishes, peas, turnips, onions, cilantro, parsley and chives. So I did. I also started tomato and pepper seeds indoors, about month later than I would have liked, but they’ll be fine.

The veggie garden is a pretty barren place right now, save the rhubarb, the fruiting trees and shrubs, my herb plants and the emerging asparagus, but I know it won’t be long before things are exploding!

Brooder basics

I am much in debt to Lyanda at The Tangled Nest for her super-easy suggestion for setting up a brooder box. I followed her guidelines to the letter, swinging by Target for a big plastic tub and picking up a heat lamp, pine shavings and a chick feeder and waterer at the feed store. We already had a 40-pound bag of organic chick starter food from a local buying club. The little peeps seem happy

We have chicks!

We have chicks! Four tiny little fluff balls from a feedstore in the next county that stocks about 80 varieties each spring. We’ve been thinking about raising a few backyard chickens for years (and stupidly didn’t do it when we had a house on a half-acre lot). But this year is the year, and we moved a few gignormous rhubarb plants in our small-to-average size urban backyard to make room for a coop.

Here’s the lineup:

Lady Marmalade (a Buff Orpington)

Coco (a black Australorp)

Miss Buttons (a Barred Rock)

Babette (a Blue Wyandotte)

They rode home on my lap in a recycled Henry Weinhard’s 12-pack beer box, peeping all the way. They do a lot of that. Peeping. And pooping. Peeping and pooping. And pecking. The three P's.

I dutifully dipped their beaks in water when we got them home and into their brooder, even though I wasn’t sure if I needed to do that with chicks who didn’t arrive in the mail direct from a hatchery. I was quite relieved when, on the gazillionth time I checked on them, I actually witnessed each one eating and drinking. Whew! They were tired from their journey, and I knew from my research not to freak out if they collapsed so hard they looked dead, which they did.