Tastee delights!

We left the ladies in the caring hands of our neighbor while we were camping last week. She got fresh eggs  (and two bottles of wine) as a thank you.

The girls had much to tell us when we got home (they are very chatty, and had a week's worth of news). They made good headway on their excavation-to-China project, and left us two perfect eggs, one in each nest box. We got two more today (since we know three of the four chickens are laying, I want to know who the slacker hen is!).

It's quite nice to have them for (chatty) company while working in the vegetable garden. They were rewarded amply, with greens and calendula blossoms and their first ever tomatoes (we had a few that had split while we were gone). Now that's good eating!

Eggapallooza

As of today, we have three laying hens!

Coco has granted us a small, perfect egg every day except Thursday (she was tired), and Lady Marmalade and Miss Buttons started laying today.

Lady Marmalade (she may be alpha chicken but she's acting like a dumb blonde) laid her egg out in the coop right under the hanging feeder. Miss Buttons laid hers in the hen house, but not quite inside one of the nest boxes.

Babette is younger than the other three ladies, so she should be laying within the next week or two.

So exciting!

Good eggs, from a good hen

Today is Day 4 of farm fresh eggs from our own lil' urban farm. I think Coco is still the prize hen...the other ladies best get their feathery egg-laying butts in gear!

I haven't been home for breakfast in the mornings, so Jeff has been the one to enjoy the fruits of the hen's labor. He tormented me by e-mailing me this photo yesterday:

Sigh. Doesn't it look yummy? I hear that it was.

A day of firsts

It was hot as the dickens here in Seattle today, so I wiled away the pleasant morning hours puttering around the garden, doing my best to tame the jungle with strategic snips of my pruning shears and flicks of my weeder.

Roughly every half hour, the ladies would raise the worst racket for about 3, 4, 5 minutes. Of course, it felt like they were at it for five HOURS because they were so…very…LOUD.

Buttons and Marmalade were the worst. I would go over and try to play Chicken Whisperer, but they would just carry on while looking me straight in the eye. I had to remind myself very, very hard that endured the barking and whining of a neighbor dog for three years (before they got rid of the poor neglected thing), and that really, a little chicken noise mid-morning on a weekend was no big deal.

Still, I was mortified.

Oddly, the ladies kept going in and out of the hen house, which they never do. They go in to sleep, then come out in the morning. End of subject. Jeff asked me if I thought some attempted egg-laying was afoot. I had read that chickens can raise quite a commotion when they are laying, and had in fact already considered that possibility. So every time they reached 100 decibels, I checked the nests. Nothing.

After a while, they became the boy who cried wolf. I decided to just ignore them. They had food, they had water, they had leafy greens, they had fresh straw in the coop and fresh pine shavings in the henhouse to rearrange. They were fine. Noisy, but fine.

Still, they were especially quiet after the last kerfuffle…and guess why?

Ta da!

The ladies’ first egg. Small, but perfect in every way! I think Coco gets the credit, but I’m not sure. Whoever it was, she laid it right in the nest box, like a seasoned professional. We couldn’t be more proud.

Of course, the egg stole the thunder from the tomato plants, which finally offered up the first ripe fruit late this afternoon:

Chick lit

I mentioned that Lady Marmalade was quasi-famous. Here's what I was talking about:

That's right, prominently featured in a major metropolitan newspaper. (Jeff was the designer, so she sort of had an inside track on the modeling gig.) I will say that she's matured since that photo was taken. Especially her comb. See?

14 carrots

Well, 17, technically. All organic, all delicious.

Coming attractions

I'm going to be a big tease, here, but I just have to say that there may be some exciting developments in my urban farming adventures very, very soon. I can't say more, because it doesn't just involve me, and it's not official, but here's a hint:

Great grapes!

Three years ago (spring 2007) we planted two grape vines on trellises next to our backyard patio. Table grapes, not wine grapes, and varieties that do well in a cooler western Washington climate.

They grew steadily, but produced no fruit the following year, which wasn't unexpected. Last year, they produced several clusters of small, exquisite fruit. These are not your supermarket grapes, no ma'am. So fragrant, with nuances of flavor that I can't even begin to describe.

This year, all I can say is...oh my goodness. The vines are everywhere, and there are so many clusters of grapes, it's just insane. From TWO vines.

Last year, the birds didn't discover the grapes (I can't say the same for our blueberries...grrrrrr!). This year, we could feed ten neighborhoods' worth of bird and still have more grapes than we can eat, I swear.

With school/work craziness, I haven't been exactly the boss of the vines. I should probably cut them back so they don't take over our large-ish Japanese maple. Maybe tonight.

A chicken bedtime story

When we tossed aside the "rule" about not letting young chickens live outside full time until they reach 16 weeks of age, it was still fairly chilly at night here in Seattle, so we rigged up their henhouse with a heat lamp to keep them toasty at night.

Eventually, it was warm enough where the extra heat at night was not a good idea. We started setting the light on a timer so it would come on long enough for them to go to bed and get settled in on their perch before turning off. We saw this as a brief transition before doing away with the light altogether.

Yeah...that didn't work so well. The first night we tried no light, the ladies made no move to go to bed. So we plugged in the light, they went to bed, we unplugged the light, all was well. The next night, we were determined to stand firm. No light.

It was just pathetic. Lady Marmalade, Miss Buttons and Babette were all huddled together on the landing right outside the henhouse door as it grew darker and darker, but they would not go inside. So we caved. We turned the light on. But the hens stayed on the landing.

"Fine," I huffed, as I went outside to intervene. I entered the coop...and the ladies didn't move. They were sound asleep. I had to gently roust them and nudge them inside...and in the process I discovered that Coco was already on her roost. She was the lone chicken who went to bed without the light.

Coco: Smart, or just lazy?

"Coco is officially the smart chicken," I declared to Jeff, who was observing the proceedings.

We turned out the light, and all was well.

The next night, we decided we were really, truly going to hold firm. Around 8:30, I looked outside...no chickens. They were all in bed already...without the light! We were so proud! We were also a little puzzled, because at 8:30 p.m. in July in Seattle, there is still a good hour-plus of light left. Hmmmm....

The next night, I kept watch out the living room window. Around 8:20, Coco flew up to the landing, her whole demeanor saying, "Come on girls, it's time for bed!" She would go inside, then come out when no one followed her. Finally, one by one, the other three ladies followed her lead, making their way inside. We've watched this scenario play out exactly the same way several times now. So is Coco the smartest chicken, or the laziest chicken. Hard to say.