Who is smarter, humans or chickens?

I'm thrilled to report that the ladies have put themselves to bed TWO nights in a row! Such a relief that they are behaving like proper chickens!

I don't know who deserves the credit though...

• Me, for ditching the ramp in favor of a perch and platform along the front of the henhouse (and the husband for building it), thereby successfully suckering the chickens into toeing the line, or 
• The chickens for refusing the to use the ramp, thereby successfully suckering us into providing them with something more fun (since they do love to perch).

Sunday night, I could hardly believe my eyes when I peeked out the window around 9:30 and saw the telltale shadows that meant four feathery ladies were up on the high perch in the henhouse (the shadows are from the heat lamp, which we've been turning on at night since the temps dropped back down into the upper 40s...barely OK for tomatoes, possibly not OK for smallish, adolescent chickens).

In other bedtime news, I've noticed that the ladies are at their noisiest for about 10-15 minutes before they finally settle down for the night. I mean REALLY noisy. Just a flurry of peeping, pseudo-clucking and trilling. They only time they are noisier is when you are foolish enough to walk past the coop with a LARGE, SCARY OBJECT!!! [Sigh.] I need to find out if this is a common phenomena...

The Chicken Report

The ladies have been adjusting nicely to being in their coop 24-7. Their primary activity, besides eating, is digging their way through the Earth's crust. At the rate they are going, we are hopeful that they will reach the Earth's molten core by mid-June. From there, they continue on to China.

All that digging, along with constant rearranging of the straw in their coop, has necessitated an increased regimen of daily naps. The ladies have come a long way from their early daytime coop visits, when they were four feathery bundles of nonstop activity that came to a crashing end as soon as we brought them back into their basement brooder for the night.

If the mornings are cool, they'll snuggle together under the henhouse after they eat breakfast, and I've caught them resting thusly off and on throughout the day, when I'm home to peek at them frequently.

Our primary obstacle right now is to get the ladies to put themselves to bed like chickens are allegedly supposed to do. They will peacefully let me put them into the henhouse one-by-one, if the conditions are right,* but otherwise they would spend all night crammed together on one end of their outside roost, I'm certain.

*Two things I've learned in the past few days. First, do NOT try to put the ladies to bed early before it is suitably dark and they are suitably sleepy on their perch. This results in much frantic squawking on their part, and much frustration on my part as Babette (or Little Bob as we usually refer to her) decides to run under the henhouse, only to start freaking out when she realizes she is the only chicken left alone in the coop!! 

Second, do NOT try to put the chickens to bed when the heat lamp in the henhouse is not on, even if they were quite content to have it turned off right after retiring the night before. This only leads to each chicken trying to escape the henhouse as you are trying to put another one in. This is not fun. Especially when pine shavings are preventing you from closing the door, and you are being beaten on by small beaks.

I've decided that they don't like their ramp, because they slide around on it too much. This weekend, the husband has kindly consented to build them a sloped ladder that they can perch on and use as an intermediate landing point before henhouse entry. I want them to use the henhouse during the day, and so far they have not. I think if they get used to going in their as they go about their daily business, they may be inclined to put themselves in there at bedtime. Fingers crossed!

P.S. We've seen at least one raccoon almost every day, even in the afternoons. No hint of trouble yet, knock wood.

Woman on the verge of tomatoes

A week ago I booted the chickens out of the basement for good (gently, naturally) after a week or so of hardening off. Yesterday I booted my tomato starts out of the basement (gently, naturally) after a week or so of hardening off. Not so different, really.

Planting out my tomatoes always feels like an endurance event, never more so than yesterday after an anatomy exam, lab, and studying.

My tomato planting process goes thusly:

1. Have husband dig wide deep hole. Dig a spade full of organic vegetable fertilizer into bottom of hole. Fill with water and let settle.
2. Plant leggy tomato start deep, up to the first true leaves. Fill in hole gently, then water well to allow the filled in dirt to settle.
3. Repeat with remaining 9 plants.
4. Mulch area around each plant with composted steer manure.
5. Have husband hammer a rebar stake (preferable for sheer durability) or bamboo stake (preferable for looks) into the ground within a few inches of the plant after warning him several times to not hurt the plants!!!
6. Place tomato cage around plant, not to actually hold the plant up (that's what the sturdy stakes are for), but to support the lynchpin of this whole setup...
7. The Wall-O-Waters! Place Wall-O-Water around each plant and spend what feels like one million years filling each little channel in with water, while stooped over in the most NON-ergonomic of positions. Stand upright every so often to rub lower back and complain a bit. When hose nozzle breaks not even halfway through the job, declare yourself to be a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and whine that you want a beer.

I think this is the year where I have officially come to hate Wall-O-Waters. But I love what they do, which is to remove much of the uncertainty about whether tomato plants will do well in our sometimes too-mild-for-their-liking Pacific Northwest summers. I've successfully grown hurking huge long-season heirloom tomatoes with the support of these turquoise beasts, so who am I to quibble. I even had a tomato-growing tip published in a recent issue of Mother Earth News, so I can't back down now.

Well, lower back pain and mental anguish nonwithstanding, the tomato planting is done for 2010, I had my cold beer (my only one for the week since I don't study Saturday nights...usually), and now I just have to vow to actually keep the tomato plants in line instead of letting them take over, as they usually do. And probably will again this year. (Sigh.)

Jailbirds

"There's gotta be a way through this wall. Think! Think!"

The chicken learning curve

When I went to go let the ladies out of the henhouse yesterday morning, I of course peeked at them through a crack, first (I really wish we had a Chicken Cam). They were on their roosts! I was so excited! The three big ladies were on the low roost, and little Babette was queen of the world up on the higher roost. I wish I had a picture, but instead I have this one from later in the day:

Aren't these the cutest chickens in the world?

I'm attempting to train them to put themselves to bed. Around 8 p.m., I turned on the heat lamp in the henhouse. Shortly before 9, I peeked out the window and saw Lady M and Coco on the ramp, looking toward the light, but they flew back down. Drat!

I finally intervened around 9:30 when they were all lined up on the coop roost, much like in the photo above. Oh, well...it's early days. They'll learn. Except Miss Buttons...she's not too bright.

Garden plans and silly chickens

I came upon a link to this "All-American Vegetable Garden Plan" on the Better Homes and Garden site and thought it looked interesting. It takes up only 6x6 feet, so it's great for someone who has minimal space. Since tomatoes and beans are included, it will require a sunny spot.

The plan includes snap peas, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, Swiss chard, and sweet peppers. The plan calls for Brandywine tomatoes, which are a very large heirloom variety. I have grown it with success, but it can be tricky in mild Pacific Northwest summers. A novice gardener would probably have a better time growing tasty cherry tomatoes or a smaller-fruited standard tomato like Stupice or Siletz. The link to the BHG page is here. To get the detailed plans (a nice 2-page PDF), you have to sign up for free online membership (via another link on that page), and they will entice you to subscribe, but you don't have to.

In chicken news, we didn't get home until after dark last night, past the ladies' bedtime. We found them clustered at the bottom of the henhouse ramp. Clearly they are not ready to put themselves to bed yet. But they were all nice and mellow. I picked each of them up in turn--one, two, three, four--and placed them in the henhouse. (Not like Sunday evening, when they went to the furthest unreachable reaches of the under-henhouse part of the coop and I had to fish them out, which they responded to with much squawking.)

I pet them for a few minutes, as they gently peeped and pecked around their pine shaving bedding. Even Miss Buttons didn't object to petting, and her response is almost always the chicken version of "Ahhhh, no! What are you doing to me? Oh my god! Stop! Stop!"

I shut the henhouse door and listened as they settled down with gentle peeping. Tired ladies.

Good Morning!

The ladies had a lovely night in their new sleeping quarters. As soon as the sun was well up and the chill was off the air, we opened their sliding door to let them out. They were quite excited to get up in the morning and explore without first being carted somewhere in an orange box!

I finished off the weekend's seed planting with two types of cabbage (Derby Day and Ruby Ball) and two kinds of broccoli (Umpqua and Small Miracle) in the front yard veggie patch. With as much sun as our front yard gets in the summer (some morning sun, plus hours of afternoon-to-evening sun, I thought tomatoes would do well there last year, but they did not do as well as they do in the back garden. So I'm trying the cruciferous veggies this year.

Here comes the sun...

...and I say, "It's alright!" (Take it away, George Harrison, may you rest in peace.)

Yesterday was sunny, gloriously sunny, which made it a busy day around Ye Olde Urban Farm. The biggest news is that the henhouse is finally done! There was much rejoicing, by humans and hens alike.

We feel confident that the coop is secure, but our fingers are crossed tightly nonetheless after two raccoon sightings yesterday. Around 4 p.m., a raccoon that looked like it might be injured came into one corner of the yard, but quickly left. Then around 8:30, right after we escorted the ladies up the ramp into the henhouse (they had been gathered at the bottom of the ramp, as if they were thinking, "Hey, it's getting dark, why are we still out here?"), we saw a healthier young raccoon traveling along the long back fence (aka the raccoon and squirrel superhighway).

I also got a lot of seed planting done (not that the first planting has done a lot, with the cool spring soil being what it is). I planted lettuce, spinach, arugula, beets, carrots, radishes, pac choi and cilantro.

I also did an amazing thing. I picked radishes before they grew to the size of my fist! I always plant radishes because I like them in theory, and they are one of the first seeds that can go in the ground, but I am notoriously bad about picking them when they are still edible. Not this year! Yay, me!

Sunny day and a new chicken game

Today was a much better day for the ladies. All day in the coop. They even stopped their incessant activity long enough to take a nap outside at one point: Lady M, Babette and Coco in one shady corner, Miss Buttons alone in a sunny corner. Something for every hen.

I distinctly heard some sounds that were something of a peep-cluck hybrid, so my little girls really are growing up, and have the changing voices to prove it (not something one normally associates with girls). Coco and Lady M both briefly flew up to the entrance of the hen house, which doesn't have its ramp yet. So they know it's about time. Chickens may not be the smartest creatures (especially Miss Buttons, who will be the last to catch on, I'm sure), but they know things.

We brought them in when we noticed they'd all been squashed together on one end of the roost for a while. (The roost is about 6 feet long, so it's not like they didn't have space to spread out.) Ladies were clearly ready for bed. But not before they had a fun bedtime treat!

If you have never fed pieces of spaghetti to a small flock of chickens, you do not know what fun is. Not only would you think these chickens had not been fed in days--days!--but they were just so excited to get a hold of one of the wiggly bits that they were practically climbing all over each other to claim theirs, then keep it to themselves. Good times!

Bah...baaaaah...wha?

It's been a bad week for the ladies. The one-two-punch of colder than expected temps and a unplanned kitchen repair that stole the time allocated to finish the coop has kept the girls indoors.

They keep knocking over their feeder (I blame Babette, who is small enough to roost on it and still fit underneath the brooder lid), so they are unhappy, and I am unhappy. Well, they actually seem happy enough, just happier when they get to flap around. I, however have to keep cleaning up when they do a number on their brooder that would rival that of a rock-star-trashed four-star hotel room.

The husband was the last one to leave the house today, and he texted me with the news that one of the girls made a non-peep sound like a "bah-bah-BAH!"

"So, she's turning into a sheep?" I replied.

Tomorrow, the ladies get to spend the day outside. And there will be much rejoicing.

P.S. I think they are starting to go through their second gawky adolescent phase. Lady M is starting to get a weird mix of feathers on her neck, like the next generation is starting to come in. In the photo, you can kind of tell that her neck is a bit tufty. And just when Babette had stopped looking like she had a bad case of mange.

Life is handing out lemons today

"What are you looking at?"

A coming week of chilly nights and a Saturday morning breakage of our kitchen faucet (which turned into the total time sink of running around to multiple hardware stores trying to find the right part) conspired against moving the ladies permanently outside into what was supposed to become their totally-finished henhouse.

So, it's another week of days outside (mostly) and nights inside. Drat!

Plus, I don't have working kitchen sink. Double drat!