Confession of a Serial Plant Killer

The front garden

I am notorious for killing plants.  I admit it.  Occasionally I kill potted plants accidentally due to lack of watering.  Other times, I buy plants on an impulse and then neglect to get them in the ground in a timely fashion.  As a gardener, I should have learned by now.  However, after almost 18 years gardening, I still do it sometimes.  Aside from those accidental plant deaths, I sometimes actually plot my plant killing.

Nursery plants: waiting to meet their demise in our backyard

Each year, I re-evaluate what is working well for us and what isn’t.  After a few successive seasons of a plant not performing well, I just rip it out.  I don’t discriminate; I won’t hesitate to take out a mature fruit tree or a 8 or 9 year old grape if I feel I have to.  I like to collect plants, but since our yard is so small, I have little patience for things that are susceptible to disease, don’t produce like gangbusters in my zone, not well suited to where they are in the backyard, or I don’t end up caring for the fruit on.   For other non related reasons, I lost a few other trees this year that I can’t be indited for.

Black Monuka Grape climbing along the veggie garden fence in Early Spring 2008. Planted April 2003. Murdered January 2012

My fellow gardeners would be shocked and dismayed at the plants I have pulled out over the last decade.  This is just my list from this year:

• Black Monuka European Grape- Although extremely vigorous, grows a few feet each week, and it produced yummy grapes, it didn’t produce very many in comparison to the other grape varieties I grow, even in the years it didn’t suffer from mildew.  I hacked it to the ground last week.

• FlameEuropean Grape-Technically, it is still alive, but not for very much longer.  Within the next week or so, I will be out there with my loppers, hand saw, and shovel.  We have such foggy summers some years, and this grape regularly has issues with mildew.  I don’t like spraying my trees and vines if I don’t have to.  I would rather grow varieties better suited to our climate and more tolerant of our June gloom.  I like our red Canadice American Hybrid Grape just fine, and it has not had any mildew issues to date.  I see no point in keeping two different red seedless grape varieties that produce so close together.  Out this goes and in goes Interlaken.

• Apache Blackberry- This was too seedy for my tastes.  I know all blackberries are seedy, but the seeds were all I noticed when eating these.  It was nice that it ripened later than my other blackberries, but I didn’t like it enough to let it keep taking up valuable space. I thought I successfully killed it in the winter of 2009-2010 to give more room to my other berries, but it has tried to resurrect itself again and again.  Throughout this past year, I was persistent in removing any little bits of it by hand.

Canes of Apache Thornless Blackberry in April 2008. Planted April 2006 - First tried killing it winter 2009. It appears to finally given up in 2011.

Close up of Apache flowers

• Indian Summer Red Raspberry- After about 3 or 4 years growing it, I decided that since the berries were small and just okay flavored, I didn’t need to waste anymore space on it.  I like Bababerry SO much better, and it is much more prolific.

• Kadota Fig- I sold the giant potted fig at a plant sale.  This victim narrowly escaped my neglectful lack of watering, and since it was in a pot, it was easy to rehome.

• Panamint Nectarine- I didn’t want to lose this very productive standard sized tree.  It was a fabulous tree.  It ran along the original property line adjoining our backyard to the lot behind us.  In 2001, the previous neighbor and we agreed to replace a falling down wood fence and build a block wall to line up to the back side of their garage, not behind it, giving us additional garden space behind their garage.  However, the new owner wanted the wall moved, in order to store wood behind his garage, causing us to lose those 80 square feet of space we had been cultivating for the past decade.  The beautiful tree and all that wonderful fruit will be replaced by a pile of scrap wood.  The demolition and construction mess depressed me so much, I am just now starting to do a bit more gardening back in veggie garden again.  Most of the summer, I stayed out, only picking our berries and tomatoes when necessary.   I bought a replacement Panamint Nectarine tree last week with an H& H nursery gift card my folks gave me…  “Thanks Mom and Dad!”  The hard part of starting over is it will take a number of years to get it to be as productive as the other one was.

• Babcock Peach – With the same block wall mess, I tried to save this small ultra dwarf tree by pruning it back and potting it up in a 7 gallon size pot to replant later during bare root time.  It appeared okay all summer and fall in its pot.  However, it must have been a little too stressed and it now has sticky sap dripping down all over the trunk from tiny holes.

A photo from 2009 taken of the Panamint nectarine in blossom in the back corner of the veggie garden

Anna and Dorset Golden Apples

Part of my winter chores this time of year is caring for my semi-dwarf apple espaliers on the back of the garage.  The two varieties, Anna and Dorset Golden, never really go dormant in my yard.  They are both very low chill apple varieties, recommended by many gardeners as a couple of the easiest and most dependable to grow in Coastal Southern California.  Anna was originally from Israel and Dorset Golden came from the Bahamas.  They always seem to have a few apples, they put on fruit at multiple times during the year, and the majority of the leaves hold on to the tree throughout the winter.  I spent a few hours last Sunday picking off each and every leaf and even a few straggling apples in various stages of development.  I also cleaned up any leaves that I found underneath the trees.   The two trees are almost ready to flower because a few blossoms had already opened.

I have learned that is helpful to pick off the leaves to avoid fungal issues like apple scab.  If the previous year’s leaves are left on the tree, it can foster disease just as much as fallen leaves left on the ground.  I also pick off any ‘mummies,” fruit that never matured or went unpicked and decayed on the tree.  When I had an apple scab outbreak in a cool foggy year, it was aggravated because I neglected the clean up chores until it was too late.  Fortunately, Anna and Dorset are such heavy producers for me, we didn’t loose too much fruit to the unsightly disease.

Winter photo of Anna Apple Tree right after pruning and leaf removal (taken Jan. 15th, 2012)

Summer photo of Anna Apple tree. Taken in summer 2010

Since the trees have been in the ground for more than a decade, they both have tons of spurs, and I actually found it necessary to cut out some of the densely located older ones this year to provide more air circulation later on.  Training in an espalier pattern probably helped encourage such prolific spur development.  When branches are in a horizontal position, it helps stimulates fruit development.  I intentionally keep the trees in picking height and keep them very small with pruning whenever needed.  My personal fruit tree management style is “If it is taller than I can reach with a small hand pruner, it needs to be lopped off.”  This keeps me from having to use a ladder or pole in the garden for harvest and makes it possible for the kids to pick fruit themselves when they feel like it.  A few of the neighborhood kids say “that our yard grows the best apples ever!”  I think they feel this way because they are able to pick them themselves.

My largest main crops on both, are usually ready to harvest sometime in July, with Anna just a tiny bit behind the Dorset.  Anna and Dorset don’t keep well, but they are excellent fresh eating apples, similar to a golden delicious.  The trees start flowering again almost immediately, if not while the summer crop is still on the tree.  We usually pick a smaller fall crop, and then a few scattered apples in winter, up until the trees get their annual clean up.  For low chill apple varieties, Anna and Dorset are hard to beat.  After their second year, I have consistently had good harvests throughout the year, regardless of the number of chill hours during the winter.  We had a really warm winter in 2004/2005 with only about 60 chilling hours, and these still produced just fine, but my some of my other trees suffered that season.

Close up of spurs just after clean up this year. The same area on the tree is is pictured below from a previous year in early Spring

Closeup of spurs with flowers and new leaf growth: taken in Feb 2010.

In Spring, once the immature apples are about the size of the end of my thumb, I thin them out to just one apple per spur. Otherwise, the apples are tiny and crowded. If a batch gets too heavy with fruit, it will droop or even snap off. This picture was taken two years ago, maybe in March, just before I thinned it out.

From what I understood when I planted them both back in winter 2000/2001, it is necessary to have the Dorset planted nearby the Anna for cross pollination.  Both will set fruit on their own, but Anna is more fruitful with the Dorset for a pollinator.  The first few years, the fruit quality was only fair. Plus, I had yet to learn how long they needed to be on the tree to be good.  The first few seasons, we ate some apples that were either overly ripe/ soft or a few that weren’t quite ready which was disappointing when we only had maybe 10 apples that first harvest.  The only negative I can think of these days, now that the trees have been mature for many years, is I wish the crop was later in the year.  In summer we have so much other home grown fruit ripening that we kind of take it for granted that we also have the apples in July.  The kids get much more excited about Anna’s and Dorset’s lighter fall crops because other than citrus or kiwi, there isn’t much fruit we are picking in the backyard around that time.  Along with fallen fruit clean up, the early timing of the apple crop does help the trees to avoid typical apple pests, like apple maggots, that attack some of the later varieties.  I also let the chickens in area in the fall and winter to help clean up under the trees.

The two trees planted near each other in the back garden behind the garage. They are on a South facing wall and get almost all day sun. This photo was taken in 2009

Dorset and Anna apples harvestes last summer (photo taken in July because they are poor keepers)

A side note on Apples in Southern California:  There are other varieties I would like to eventually try growing.  My folks have had success with Fuji, just a little further inland than me, and two seasons ago their crop had some of the best apples ever, better than any farmer’s market fujis.  I also would like to try a local variety, originally grown from a seeding in Long Beach in 1949, called Pettingill, but I have yet to make room for another apple.  In Riverside, at a tiny nursery, called Kuffel Creek, they propagate a large number of low chill and non low chill apples.  They have had remarkable results, seen in this video, with dozens of varieties of apples us Californians have been told we can’t grow.  After following their website for the last 3 years, I have noticed each year they do take a few varieties off their recommended list, however, that list is still pretty extensive with some unusual apples and the list is growing.  They also invest in importing heritage varieties from places over seas.  Nevertheless, since they grow where there is much more summer heat, and still a bit more chill, than what we get on the coast,  I will wait and see which of those  “out of the ordinary” apples other local gardeners start reporting having success with, too.  Don’t get me wrong, Anna and Dorset are a couple of my favorite fruit trees in my yard and I won’t be removing them. It is just when it comes to edible plants, especially fruit trees, I am constantly looking into new varieties so I have a few things to pick in the yard year round.

Cock-a-doodle-do

My crowing hen

I love weekends.  Winter weekends especially, with the sun not coming up until 6:45.  On the weekends during this time of year, when the kids are between sports, our family sometimes actually gets to sleep in as late a 7 or 8 am.  Well, that is until recently…

I know it sounds crazy, but around 5:30 AM, I have been woken up to crowing!  About 8 or 9 times, over the last month, I have been hearing this awful “gaw—gawk–gawk–gawk—gaaaawkkkkkk–,” in the predawn hours.  Really, how could that be? We only keep hens, and I am sure we have all girls in the coop because a couple of times a week, we get 5 different shades and shapes of eggs from 5 different chickens.  I can even tell you who lays each egg by just glancing at them.

As soon as I am awoken by the distinctive sound, I bolt out of bed, and run out the back door (usually at 5:30ish) in only my pjs and socks.  The first couple of times it was in hopes of catching the culprit in the act.  Sadly, I quickly discovered it to be my sweet little Penguin, a 1 1/2-year-old black bantam Cochin.  Each time I catch her in the act, there she is all proud of herself, neck stretched out, on her tippy toes on the roost bellowing out a pitiful crowing sort of sound, unlike anything a hen does at another time of day.  Off to the isolation pen in the garage she goes, and hopefully I don’t hear later about how “my chickens” disturbed anyone, especially my husband.

I have read it is very rare, but not unheard of, that in the absence of a rooster, a hen may take on the responsibilities of flock protector, including crowing.  Great.  Just my luck.  I must have won the chicken lottery, not once, but twice, because this is the second crowing hen I have had in 3 years.

The crow is not an extremely loud or even a stylized traditional “cock a doodle doo”…but it sure isn’t an egg song.  We have had crowing cockerels for brief periods when our broodies raise chicks, so I have learned to recognize the sound of a cockerel with a novice crow that just needs a bit more polishing.  To make matters worse, Penguin’s crow is just loud enough to wake me with the windows closed and the coop 25 feet from my bedroom.  That means it is probably loud enough to wake the neighbors, come summer when everyone has their windows open.

I really wish it could be a different hen.  Penguin is very calm, friendly, and easy to handle, plus she is a great mama hen when she has chicks.  I am hoping that this is just a phase.  Recently, I have seen the Easter Egger challenging her when they are all out in the yard.  Hopefully the EE will move to the top of the pecking order and Penguin will give up the crowing.

My neighbor, K, who really likes Penguin, has mentioned that if Penguin doesn’t stop in the next few weeks, she could take her.  K keeps red stars, which are much larger than a bantam Cochin.  I hope it doesn’t come to it, but Penguin may have to move across the street in order to move to the bottom of a pecking order and to get her to give up crowing.  I will update if anything changes, but for now, Penguin is staying at Hanbury House.  However, she will get to sleep in garage on weekend nights, just in case.

Almond Oatmeal Soap

I have been curious about making soap at home for a long time, but until this year, I had not gotten up the courage to try.  The main part that had been holding me back was working with lye.  As an organic gardener, I my initial instinct is to avoid strong dangerous chemicals.  And to make REAL soap, there is no getting around using Lye in the processing.  Lye is caustic and is a basic ingredient in most drain cleaners.  Eeeek!

The other roadblock to me trying was the cost of the natural ingredients, especially organic ones.  Anyone who knows me well, knows I am generally frugal.  It is much cheaper to buy ready made soap in the store now a days, than make it from scratch at home.  If I messed up the process, it would be a big waste of money.  Therefore, I had to do it right the first time.

I repeatedly watched a few youtube videos on soap making.  My favorite video, and the one the recipe below is adapted from,  is of a gracious Mennonite lady, Marsha, making her soap outdoors near a beautiful natural spring on her property in Tennessee.  Marsha claims the soap is so gentle, it is the kind she uses on her grand-babies.

Okay, I guess I could try this…..Here is my finished product with labels (for giving as gifts) and tied with rafia:

My finished oatmeal almond soap

Almond Oatmeal Soap

3 c.  water
17 oz lye (100%  sodium hydroxide / caustic soda)*
6 lb oil (do not substitute animal fat lard in this recipe)  Below are the oils I used in this batch:

• 2 lbs  coconut oil
• 2 lbs. soybean shortening
• 2 lbs canola oil

2 c. lemon juice
1 oz powdered goat milk
2 oz stearic acid
5 oz  almond oil
2 oz  oatmeal (ground in a stick blender)

Click here to view “Homemade Soap at Marsha’s” filmed by Misty Shooter223 at youtube.

This is a cold process soap that takes about 3 + weeks to cure.

The hardest part of making it, for me, was actually getting all the ingredients and materials together.  I wasted a lot of gas because it took me a few days to shop around for everything at reasonable prices, plus I wanted as many of the ingredients as possible to be organic.  No single store had all the ingredients; my ingredients mainly came from Stater Bros., Sprouts, and Trader Joes.  From what I read on the internet, 100% lye is the hardest ingredient for homemade soap makers to come by, and for a few reasons: meth makers buy it all up, stores would rather stock name brand liquid drain cleaners instead of old fashion pure lye, USPS prohibits shipping lye in the mail, and UPS charges a premium “hazmat” fee to ship lye via their service.  I found it at a local Ace Hardware.  I had to order the Stearic acid from an online candle and soap making supply store.  That meant waiting for days again before I could get started.  Stearic Acid is used as a hardener and an emulsifier in the recipe and since I have never made soap, I didn’t want to alter the ingredients list much.  Since I was unable to buy anything wholesale or in bulk, over all, the ingredients cost me approximately $40.  I didn’t make or buy a mold, instead repurposing a plastic bin lined with press and seal plastic wrap.  It came out okay, but I had to do a lot of trimming to make it look nice.  Next time I will use a box or make a mold.

We have been using the soap now for a few weeks, and I must say, I really do like it and plan to make it again in the near future.  I gave the majority of the bars away for Christmas to love ones, so I only have a few left.  The one thing I will do different in the next batch is make the bars a little larger.  The bars started out bigger, but since I had never trimmed down soap before, I made a lot of opps before I got the hang of it and how to make a nice shape that I liked.  These ended up around 2 1/2 -3 oz.  I think I want a 4 oz size next time.  I also plan to use olive oil in the next batch instead of canola, now that I am comfortable with what I am doing.

*Making soap is an exact science and lye is very caustic.  Always follow safety procedures with lye and all soap making methods, including wearing protective eye gear and gloves.  Here is a link to a good source for lots of recipes, methods, trouble shooting, and more.  I would recommend starting there if you have never made soap before, and even if you have there are lots of great resources.

Kettle Corn

About 15 years ago, my brother gave us a specialty stove top popcorn popper with a wooden hand crank.  It works simply with just a couple of parts, and no batteries or cords.  Therefore, there isn’t much to wear out or damage in washing.  It has seen regular, almost daily use since we first got it.  On my vintage Wedgewood gas stove, we can make a batch of popcorn in less than 3 minutes.  What’s great about the stove top popper is, it is also perfect for making homemade kettle corn.  I used to pay the premium prices at the farmer’s market when my kids were really little, that is until I started experimenting with home made versions about 10 years ago.  I don’t measure the ingredients precisely, but the proportions below are pretty close to what I use for each batch.  It fills about 3 to 4 cello bags or a bowl with enough for our family to share as an afternoon snack.

1/2 cup pop corn

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 T. Kosher Salt

Other cooking oils can be used, but I like the flavor with Coconut oil the best.

Simple ingredients to make homemade Kettle Corn: coconut oil, popping corn, sugar and salt

I add popping corn, oil, and sugar to the popper all at once, stirring constantly over high heat.  The popping begins within two minutes or so.  When the popping noises are more than 1 or 2 seconds apart, I remove it from heat.  Then I quickly dump hot popcorn into a large bowl (or large paper bag at Christmas time for giant batches) and add salt while it is still hot.

*At Christmas time, I also add food coloring to the separate batches along with the oil/ corn/ sugar mix prior to cooking.   I pop it up dozens of times over an hour or so, then mix together the different colored batches, and bag it into small cello bags. We pass it out, along with the other homemade gifts we make this time of year.

Our Easter Egger Chicken

Back in July, Penguin got a very sweet gentle Easter Egger chick in a bantam assortment from Ideal Poultry.  As a chick, it was kind of pale buff and grey colored.  As seen in the photo below on the the right, in comparison to my other bantam Cochins, it is a little larger than bantam.

As it grew, it was generally lavender (pale gray) with accents of yellow and a little buff around the neck and chest.  Based on temperament and on feather growth on the wing bows and tail, for the first few months, I was pretty sure it was a pullet.  Then it started to change colors, first getting a dark slate blue colored head around 6 weeks old, then around 13 weeks old, reddish patches in the shoulders and wings.  Ugh Oh!  I was getting really worried about this change in color because I read in one really long thread at BYC about sexing EEs by color alone, and that Easter Eggers are always males when they are light colored like this one, especially if they get red on the wings. However, the comb was still very pale and tiny with only a single row.  Also, I didn’t see any hackles, sickles, saddle feathers that screamed rooster so far.

When this Easter Egger was 13 weeks old, I posted it’s picture in the “What breed or Gender” forum at BYC to see what the experts thought.  The photos above are from the post.  Based on the photos, the votes were mixed, but enough so that I decided to keep this chicken until it either crowed or laid an egg.  Meanwhile, I set up an isolation pen in the garage.  Just in case it started crowing, I would have a place to keep the noise muffled from disturbing neighbors (or husband) temporarily until I found a home that could take a rooster.

Four weeks ago, at 4:45 AM, loud repeated crowing came out of the coop, enough to wake both my husband and I up from a sound sleep.  Oh no, it must be the Easter Egger!  So outside I ran in my PJs to see what was up and to quiet the culprit down.  Well, after a few minutes of spying on the coop, it turned out to be Penguin!  She has done it a few times before on the rare occasion over the last few years.  So, into the garage isolation pen she went, along with a stern lecture about how “the city prohibits crowing fowl and that she would be looking for a new home if she makes a regular habit of it.”  She must have gotten the gist of the conversation because we haven’t heard her crow since.

Fast forward a month and the chicken is now 20 weeks old.   I went on a Girl Scout sleepover with my troop at Sea World on Saturday and left my son in charge of the chickens.  I returned home last night to warm hugs and a wry smile from my son.   He went to the fridge and proudly pulled out a green egg!  Boy was I doing the happy dance!  This chicken is definitely a pullet after all; she officially laid an egg because none of my Cochins have ever laid that color.

Even if I thought it was a female for sure, I would have said we were weeks away from her laying.  The egg took me by surprise because the chicken has not been vocal like a pullet getting close to point of lay, or squatting, or even very red in the comb yet.

The new green egg next to Penguin's egg (top right) and THX 1138's egg (bottom)

The Bantam Easter Egger Chicken at 20+weeks old. Taken the rainy day after her first egg

A photo outdoors to show her color. Sorry about the poor focus.

Naming the white chicken

Back at the beginning of the school year, my 13 year old son took on the responsibility of caring for his own chicken.  Actually, he leased it with the option to buy.  I know it sounds weird; the post can be found here.  One of my conditions was he didn’t get to name it until the end of the lease period.  Toward the end of the lease, my daughter and I began offering all sorts of cutesie suggestions for white themed names for the pretty little white pullet.  Our favorites were Pearl (my personal favorite,) Snow White, Cotton, Snowy, and Snowball.  He didn’t want any of them.   Instead, he said he was considering names like “Halo or Attila the Hen.” My son announced recently he has finally chosen a name for his chicken… THX 1138.  What? Hgh?

It turns out that THX 1138 is the id number/ name of the storm trooper uniform Luke steals and wears in Star Wars episode 4.   Okay, my son is a smart-aleck; he did come up with a white themed name.  Storm troopers and clone trooper are usually white, and apparently THX 1138; and 1138, is used repeatedly by George Lucus throughout the Star Wars movies, Clone Wars on Cartoon Network, and many other things, including the title of his first movie.

The hard part of me now is getting used to calling a chicken THX 1138.  How could I shorten that some how to a nick name?

Here is a pic of my son back at Halloween this year in his costume that we made out of craft foam and sweats.  I probably should have guessed back then that the name would be something Star Wars related.

My son in his homemade Clone Trooper Halloween costume 2011

Meet THX 1138, the White Cochin pullet

Harvesting Vincent Kiwi

Fuzzy Kiwi Vines sprawling on backyard arbor in early summer

We have been eagerly waiting since late May for the flowers on the Vincent Kiwi to turn into the yummy egg sized fruit.  It didn’t help that i was frustrated with the  two vines this spring… just as the Vincent flowers were fading, the male vine finally began to open a few blooms. There were only about 50 female flowers remaining, out of 400 or so it had initially.  Therefore, I took matters into my own hands.

Male Kiwi flowers in bloom around memorial day

I spent the morning up on ladder with a tiny paint brush, tickling a male flower (pictured above) and then a female flower, repeating until I dabbed each one.  I am sure the bees and bugs did the job as well, but I wasn’t leaving it to chance with so few female flowers left.  About a month later, it was clear that it did set some fruits on those 4 dozen or so flowers.  The vines are 7+ years old this winter, and this is our second year harvesting kiwis.  We harvested about 50 fruits this week and are waiting for some them to soften, while others wait for later in the fridge.

Kiwi fruits growing under the canopy during the summer

What I have learned about when to pick “Vincent” Fuzzy Kiwi fruits:

• Wait as long as possible before harvesting, at least until the vine starts to drop a couple of leaves.   We didn’t have a hot summer this year, so I decided to leave the fruit on a whole month longer than last year.  About 1/4 the leaves have fallen off at this point.
• Be careful squeezing or testing the fruits because they bruise easily.  Firmness is not a factor in determining if it is time to harvest.
• Pick one full sized fruit and cut it open.  If the seeds are black, it is time to harvest.  If the seeds aren’t yet black, leave the rest of the fruit on the vines, and then try it again in a few weeks.  When there are enough sugars, the seeds will turn black.
• Leave the firm fruit on the counter or in a bag with an apple to slightly soften and ripen.  Most of ours took 5 to 10 days to ripen.  Store unripened fruit in the fridge.
• Around here the fruit can also ripen on the vine, but we also had a few drop on the ground and bruise when we weren’t paying attention.

Note: We harvested in late October last year, and a few of the fruits had not developed enough sugars yet to sweeten.  Some fruits were totally delicious, but some remained firm and tart even after weeks on the counter.

More Homemade Soy Candles

My 10 year old daughter's own batch of homemade soy votive candles, colored purple and pink for Advent and scented with vanilla and apple cinnamon

Last year was the first time I tried making my own soy candles as homemade Christmas gifts.  I enjoyed the process so much, I did it again this year.  So if you are a friend or relative…guess what you might be getting!  My daughter, B, also eagerly helped me this time.  This morning, she even took the time to make 3 extra purple soy candles.  This way, we had some of them for ourselves for Advent.  Soy is a good choice for votives because it burns longer and cleaner than other types of wax.  However, it is too soft to make good tapers.

Materials

• soy wax ( I go through 3.5 – 3.7 ounces for each candle)
• 4 oz mason jars with lids (I like the pretty crystal looking kind for this project)
• ready made lead free braided candle wicking – I bought a big spool last year
• *Crayola crayons or other commercially available wax colorants (I have read crayons are not ideal for coloring soy candles, but so far after 4 batches, it works okay for me)
• fragrance oil
• clothes pins
• aluminum pitcher designed for candle making.  Really any pot will do, but it is hard to clean the waxy stuff off afterwards, and it isn’t as easy to pour.
• water filled pot to make double boiler with pitcher
• long handled spoon for stirring
• candy thermometer

Soy wax flakes before measuring and placing in melt pitcher

I am weighing the wax before melting to make sure I have enough. Unmelted flakes look like a lot more than it really is. The volume melts down by about 1/2 to 2/3.

B stirring the melting soy wax over the stove

Melted Soy Wax just after adding red crayon for a medium pink color. It looks red when melted, but it cools to a pretty pink. If we wanted red candles, we could use many red crayons or a wax colorant block.

Candles after the wax is poured into jars with clothes pin holding the wick centered and steady

My candle making steps

1. measure out 3.5 oz soy wax flakes for each candle mason jar I plan to make
2. slowly melt wax in pitcher over double boiler on stove
3. meanwhile trim wicks long enough to reach bottom of jar plus extra to position inside clothes pin holder
4. dip each individual wick inside the melted wax and set aside on tray or plate to cool
5. gently add coloring at 180 degrees
6. stir until melted completely
7. remove from heat and set aside to allow to cool to 140 degrees
8. when wicks are cool to touch, clip clothes pin on wick at desired length to rest over and inside jar. Set aside.
9. add fragrance to pitcher once cooled to 140 degrees
10. stir
11. slowly pour wax into jars
12. add wicks with clips to hold in place during cooling period
13. let cool
14. if any candles have concave tops after cooling, add a thin layer of remaining remelted wax from pitcher, but pre dipping wicks helps prevent this.
15. remove clothes pins and trim wick to desired length

2+ dozen soy candles ready to give as gifts. Notice the finger print smiley face B made on one of her purple Advent candles.

*The process takes me about 3 hours from start to set and cooled.  Once completely cooled, I add the lids to keep in fragrance.  On average each candle costs me about $2 to make, and that is using a coupon to buy the wax.  Other types of waxes are much less expensive to use, but I like that soy burns cleaner and longer.  A similar sized specialty candle, like Yankee candle , retails between $8-$12.

Learning to Can: Concord Grape Jam- Part 2

Yesterday, my neighbor, G, and I processed 1/2 of the frozen concord grape juice we made at the end of summer into jam.  As I mentioned in my previous post about the first half of the grape project, Learning to Can: Concord Grape Jelly- part 1, G has been teaching me what she knows about canning.  She was mentored by an older friend, whose mom passed down the knowledge and skills to her.  We made about 80  @ 1/2 pint jars over the course of about 4 to 5 hours, not counting clean up.  As before, we set up outside. I was thankful it was a beautiful, warm, but calm fall day.  G organized our work area into an assembly line of bbq burner, camp stove, table work area, and then my husband’s heavy duty turkey fryer burner base.  There was also a large two tiered shelf to rest the cans on.

Canning Pot and rack with 7 jars of grape jam processing in boiling water on top of the Turkey Fryer burner base.

Tips from my neighbor, G, for success with canning:

• Always follow a proven recipe and practice safe food handling.  Each jam or jelly variety requires a different amount of fruit/ juice and different measurements of sugar.
• Do not use the lids that came attached to the jars in packaging.  Buy a pack of lids, even for brand new jars.  And never reuse lids in canning.
  
• Use only Kerr’s brand lids.  The only time G has had jars not seal is when using Ball brand lids. Ball jars are fine.
• don’t use cheap “made in China” jars or lids
• Watch for store sales on the jars. Sometimes jar cases can be as cheap as $6 at retail, but rarely go on sale around the holidays.  Typically jars are about $8-$10/ doz., depending on where you buy them and the style. 
• Thrift stores and yard sales are a good place to get used jars really cheap, just run a finger around the edge to make sure they aren’t damaged or chipped before buying.  Chipped lips on the jars prevent proper sealing.
• Store empty jars with old lids and rings attached to avoid accidental chipping in storage.
• Work outdoors to avoid steaming up the house and kitchen.  Constant boiling water releases a whole lot of steam and a day of canning can make the walls and windows drip.
• Save the card board cases for jar storage later, even after giving away a bunch of cans to friends. Used jars can be stored in them until needed, and the boxes make it easier to move jars around.
• Share and trade varieties with friends and love ones.
  

Portion of the driveway work area set up for canning grape jam. I was shocked at how much sugar we were going to need; we went through it all.

Grape Jam

5 cups grape puree/ juice
7 cups sugar
1 pkg Sure Jell fruit Pectin
water + 1 tsp butter
+ 1 tsp butter

makes appox. 8 cups.

*G mentioned we were actually making jam, not jelly as I called it in the first post, because we did not strain out all the pulp.  Jelly is usually clear,  jam is not.  Well, I actually prefer Jam, so it is fine with me.

Finish product, however, this is one day's work is only 50% of what my summer grape harvest produced

Here are the basic steps we followed:

1. Prewash 80 glass jars in dishwasher and dry.
2. Set up canner pot 3/4 full with water and bring to boil.  Turkey fryer base burner (burner #2)
3. start small pot of water off to side for hot water for lids.  Bbq burner (burner #1)
4. place 9 jar lids, not over lapping in casserole dish and set aside for later use
5. measure 5 cups grape juice/ fruit and bring to boil (burner #3)
6. add 7 cups of sugar to boiling grape juice and dissolve (still on burner #3)
7. Add tsp of butter to grape juice mix
8. in separate small pot ( burner #4) mix 3/4 cup water with 1 pkg SureJell fruit pectin, stir until blended, and bring to boil
9. pour boiling pectin mix to grape juice pot (burner #3) and bring to full rolling boil for 2 minutes
10. skim foam off top of grape juice
11. turn off grape juice pot
12. pour boiling water (burner #1) over lids in casserole dish
13. pour grape jam mix into funnel over jars or ladled into jars,  1/8 inch from top lip
14. wipe edge of each jar with clean rag dipped in boiling water to make sure there is clean full contact with lid.  This ensures proper sealing.
15. use magnet wand to remove hot lids from casserole dish and place on each jar.  Seal tightly with rings
16. Place 7 jars in canner with boiling water on the metal rack.  The rack keeps the jars off the bottom of the pot.  Lower rack into water.  Set timer for 15 minutes.
17. Meanwhile, start another batch. To do this go back to step #3.  Repeat until all juice is processed.
18. When timer goes off, carefully remove jars with jar tongs and place on counter or shelf.  During the next few minutes to few hours, the jars with “pop” and seal with a vacuum effect created with the heat.
19. Once jars are cool, check lids for seal by pressing top of lid to see if it springs back.  If a jar lid does spring back, it did not seal on its own, refrigerate those jars.
20. Store in cool dry place unopened jars up to 1 year.  Once jars are open, refrigerate and use within 3 weeks.

Predator Attack

Almost 2 years to the day, we had a red tailed hawk kill one of our free ranging chickens. Obviously perturbed at me for ruining its meal, it watched from overhead on the telephone wires as I cleaned up the carnage, with tears running down my face.  After that, I became more cautious about when I let my chickens out and for how long.  With supervision, I do let them enjoy at least an hour or two most days for a little foraging.  Although I know there will always be the possibility of another hawk attack when we free range the chickens, they are happiest when given some access to the outdoors.

Our bantam flock out free ranging one fall afternoon in the back yard.

I have always figured that the one place my chickens were really safe was inside their coop, within our secure backyard.  When I built the coop 3 years ago, I used 1/2″ welded wire on the run doors and added two latches to each door, one at the top and one at bottom, just in case an urban raccoon is lucky enough to figure out one latch. It was supposed to be chicken fort knox.  Well, it is, but only if it is actually latched up tight on both latches.  I found this out the hard way recently.

My dog, George, went to a neighbor’s house to play with their dog, a Brittany.  The two dogs are good friends and love to play together.  Back at my house, I had the gate open to bring our giant “Big Mac” pumpkin through the gate in the wagon, and I neglected to immediately close it behind me.  Bad move on my part!  About the same time, the neighbor decided it was time for George to go home, and the two dogs got so excited about the prospect of going out that they bolted out the door and down to this end of the street, with my neighbor, C, following far behind.  The two dogs happily bounded up to the house and through the open gate. George paused to greet my folks and I as we worked on the pumpkin transport project, but the Brittany kept running past, straight to where she had learned the chicken coop was on a previous visit!  She crashed full on, with all her force, into one of the doors of the run, causing the top of the door to pop open.  (The top latch must not have been locked.)  Immediately, it created a narrow 12 inch gap at the top, and out flew a spooked 12 week old pullet.  Instinctively, the Brittany went into predator mode in hot pursuit of that chicken.  I quickly grabbed the nearest long handled thing I saw, to smack the dog and try to snap her out of it.  No good; it didn’t even phase the dog. No matter what I said (actually more like yelled) or did, made any difference.   A brief but insane chase ensued with me, the crazy chicken lady, berating and trying to grab hold of the dog, and the dog pursuing the panicked chicken throughout the fruit trees, backyard shrubs, and eventually into the open garage.  We must have looked like something out of a cartoon.  My neighbor heard my yelling and came running as fast as she could.  It ended abruptly with my neighbor forcefully dragging the dog out of the back of the garage by the collar where it had trapped the terrified chicken, just out of its reach.  Even as the Brittany was being forcefully dragged out, it was still focused only on the chicken.  I am positive if my neighbor let go of her tight grip, the dog would have been back on the chicken in an instant.  There were feathers everywhere, but other than stress and a few bald spots, the pullet is okay.  Needless to say, that chicken didn’t want to come out to free range with the rest of the flock for a few days after that.

My neighbor felt absolutely terrible about what her dog did, but it really wasn’t her fault.  I knew previously from reading at www.backyardchickens.com that pet dogs are one of the top predators of backyard chickens.   Brittanys are a high energy breed of dog, originally bred to specifically hunt birds.  I can’t blame a dog for instinct and if they haven’t been trained to leave chickens alone, they are very likely to go after them either as toys or food.  Lesson learned: keep the gate closed and the coop latched tight.  The whole situation made me appreciate what a well behaved dog George is with my chickens, and I feel that the time I spent training him was well worth it.

Goji Berry

First fruits of Goji Berries / Wolf Berry "lycium barbartum" in summer 2009.

3 years ago, I purchased three tiny 4″ goji berry Lycium barbarum plants from a fellow edible plant collector during bare root planting season.  At the time, I was reticent to pay $10 for a small plant I knew very little about, and even worse, never tasted.   I like collecting edible plants, especially ones that are exotic for Socal backyard gardens, hard to find the fruit sold as organic in stores, or would cost me a premium to buy the fruits at the store.  Blueberries, Kiwi, figs, everbearing raspberries, and now Goji fit all of those.  I took a chance and bought 3 to see how they would do.  A neighbor found out I had the 3 gojis and promptly asked to buy one from me at cost.  Apparently she was already a fan of the dried berries and would sometimes purchase them at a health food store.  That left me with just two plants that resembled a couple of spindly sticks with a few scattered leaves.  I planted them in two different locations, with one in a pot, to see what they really preferred exposure wise.

I had only read about Goji berries, and never located a goji plant at a nursery.  From reports I read online, when goji plants are started from seed, it takes 3 to 4 years to get them to set fruit.  The lady I bought mine from said she acquired her first plant years earlier from a small specialty nursery in San Diego and paid the premium price of $30 for a 1 gallon size.  Ouch!

The plants I was sold were root division grown, and the woman said they should probably produce the first summer, due to that fact.  Even though the gojis weren’t huge plants that first summer, she was correct.   We had a light crop, with a few of the first berries pictured at the top of the post.  Over time, the plants have easily multiplied, a bit like raspberry plants or mint.  I keep mine in a confined location in the veggie garden where they don’t get too invasive.  When eaten raw, I would compare the flavor to a bitter sweet red bell pepper.  Do I like them fresh?  Nope, not at all.  Apparently, most folks dry them and add them to other foods.  They are considered a super food.  They are bright red, oval, and about the size of raisin.  Chickens love to eat them, too, and the gojis are the first thing my hens head for when I open the veggie garden gate and allow them in.  My plants grow about 3 to 5 feet tall, depending on how much sun they are getting, shorter with more sun.  They do okay in half day sun and limited irrigation.  They do have a tendency to get a little mildew once  in a while, but it doesn’t harm them or the fruit.  The lady that sold me my original plants said this was to be expected with them.

More info on growing conditions for Goji can be found Davesgarden web.

The Furry Freeway

There are regular sightings of opossums, squirrels, and rats in our neighborhood; and the majority of these sightings are along the Furry Freeway, as my husband calls it.  It is the system of the power lines that run between the park and the houses.  The connecting lines are a safe expressway where they are able to by-pass the dogs and cats below on the ground, confined in fenced backyards. The power poles are then used as the off ramps down onto the roofs or onto the fences dividing the yards.

The Furry Freeway at dusk over the neighborhood access street

SQUIRRELS:

George will attest to the fact it is a safe haven for them because, almost daily, he is taunted by one or two different squirrels traveling overhead on their way to other safer yards deeper into the neighborhood.  They usually pause to chatter at him below before moving along.  George always responds with leaps, whines, and frustrated barks telling them how much he would love to sink his teeth into them for their insolent behavior.  Only once in the last few years has a squirrel made the mistake of coming into the yard while George was around.  Once George spotted it, he kept it trapped in a giant camellia shrub for more than an hour.   Have you ever seen a dog repeatedly body slam a Camellia?  I have.  I eventually drove the dog off so the squirrel would leave and George would stop pacing, whining, and recklessly destroying my precious Camellia Japonica, “Nucci’s Pearl.”

The section of power lines over the driveway where the dog gets taunted by the squirrels

 

RATS:

Due to the abundance of backyard fruit trees and pet food left outside overnight, the squirrels, opossums, and rats are all pretty common in Southern California neighborhoods.  In regards to our chickens, the rats have not been an issue with our coop so far.  Beyond the preventive steps I take, Gracie, our cat, loves to patrol the backyard around dusk and dawn, and I believe she helps with preventing any kind of rat infestation in our yard.  Every once in a great while, she manages to catch one and tries to share the triumph with the family by bringing it up to the back door.  Ewwwh.  My one fear with this is the possibility of another neighbor putting out poison and Gracie accidentally eating a rat that has ingested the poison.

Gracie, the cat, caught on camera with a mouse or small rat in 2007

As a gardener, I do my best to keep the yard tidy by preventing and removing the kind of places that rats like to hang out, but I learned this one the hard way.  One summer about 5 years ago before we had Gracie, we had found a few drowned rats in a kiddie pool, so we knew something was up. We then discovered the jasmines on our patio cover were being used as a rat nest and it gave the rats safe cover and great access to the patio roof and from there, up on to the furry freeway.  We decided it would be best to remove the beautiful dense pink jasmine vines.  I was sad to see the jasmines go, and I really miss the smell each February, but we have had very few sighting of the rats in our yard since then, except along the power lines at night.

CHICKENS VS. RATS:
• Built the coop really tight without any little spaces for rats to crawl through.  I made sure there were no spaces or gaps bigger than ¼”
• Chicken feed storage bins are locked away where rats can’t get access to them.  Metal bins are great for preventing pests from chewing into them.
• I Don’t leave any chicken feed outdoors after dusk where rats could get to it.  If any is spilled, I clean it up.  The same goes for dog and cat food.  But both pets eat everything in one short sitting.
• If the chickens get an extra treat while they are outside free ranging, I make sure it is not more than they can eat in 10 or 15 minutes, and then I clean it up if they didn’t eat it all.
• I try to regularly keep fallen fruit cleaned up under trees (My chickens usually like to do this with me!)
• Trim vines, shrubs, and fruit tree branches away from buildings, power lines, and fences.
For expert advice and info on rat prevention and control visit the UC’s ANR Publications.

OPOSSUMS:

In general, opossums haven’t been a problem for our yard.   The same stuff that keeps rats away, seems to keep opossums away.  I did build the coop like fort knox in order to keep them, and raccoons, out of the eggs and away from harming the chickens.  I think the chickens eat enough of the bugs that there isn’t a lot left to keep opossums interested in our yard, except maybe snails.  My chickens don’t seem to care that much for snails.  Keeping a dog probably helps a little too.

Peter the Giant Talking Pumpkin

Just after dark, on Halloween evening,  Peter Pumpkin, a Giant Pumpkin, usually makes an appearance at our house.  He is a Big Mac Pumpkin that comes to life on Halloween to talk to the neighborhood kids that stop by.  Peter once told me he is the cousin of the famous “Great Pumpkin,” mentioned in the Peanuts Cartoon, Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.  Over the years, Peter has also learned Spanish and is sometimes bilingual.  The pumpkin gained a bit of weight this year topping out at 160 lbs! Most years he is 100 to 140 lbs.  Peter grows each year in San Diego County, outside of Escondido at an charming place called Bates Nut Farm.  Getting him out of the field and home is usually the hard part.  Thanks to the creativity of my parents and ingenuity of my father, Peter’s magic has astonished kids and adults alike, longer than I can remember.  The pumpkin asks all sorts of questions and verbally interacts with the visitors to our home.  It drives the grown ups crazy that they can’t figure out how we do it, especially since there is nothing around the pumpkin to really hide stuff.  Hee, Hee, Hee!

B and J talking to Peter Halloween 2009

Halloween has always had a big spot in my heart, and I think this pumpkin was the beginning of it.  Below you can see a picture of me at 2 years old, posing in my bunny costume next to Peter in the early years.

Me and Peter Pumpkin, Halloween 1971. 40 years ago today.

My folks used to make a really big deal about Halloween back in the early 70s through the 80s with a haunted house, a candy monster, and Peter, who was the center piece of the celebrations.  To give you an idea about how much this influenced my love of Halloween, my husband and I were married on Halloween 19 years ago today.

Before my husband and I bought Hanbury House in 1997, we had already been celebrating Halloween with lots of decorations, monsters, and themed parties.  Once we moved here, we started carrying on the tradition of Peter Pumpkin (with major help from my father on the set up and technical portion.)  We probably would not always go to all the trouble to bring Peter to life, if it was not for my father’s help.

This year, my 13 year old son took on a large part of the responsibility giving Peter a voice.  Hopefully, one day, he will also carry on the tradition at his own house, too.

Note: I have the greatest dad in the world and he does so many special things like Peter the Pumpkin.  Thanks Dad, I love you!  Happy Halloween!

Leasing a Chicken

The Leased Chicken

My son, J, came to me at the beginning of September and said “Mom, I want to buy that white chicken.  How much is she? I have my own money.”  He knows I regularly sell my chickens and wants us to keep this one.  But then again, my kids would like to be able to keep them all.  J explained he would be responsible and take good care of her.  But as most parents will attest, when a kid buys a pet, no matter how much they promise before hand to care for that pet, eventually some, if not all, of the care and expenses fall on the parent.  I responded “I don’t plan to sell her right now, but when I do I will sell her to someone else for $30.”

He was persistent in his campaign over the course of a week or two, and eventually we came to an agreement.   I explained what a lease contract was, and that some things, like cars or homes, are either rented month to month, leased (kind of like renting) for a preset period of time, or purchased in full.  I also explained how some leases come with an option to purchase the item at the end of a term. We talked about how with cars there was maintenance requirements and maximum allowed mileage, or the leasee would incur a steep penalty.  In my opinion, leasing a car is never a smart way to buy a car, but it made for a good example.  I agreed to lease him the chicken with an option to buy it at the end of 3 months.  If the chicken didn’t already live here, I probably would not have agreed to it, nor would I ever agree to this for a new pet.  However, this would give him the opportunity to prove he was a good pet owner.  Three months is a long enough period of time that the novelty could wear off or he could slack off on chicken chores.  If he did, I would take back the chicken, as outlined in our contract.

After writing the contract together, we both signed it.  J is 13 and old enough to understand the consequences of our contract agreement.  The terms included daily care, feeding, scrubbing and refilling the waterer, and regular roost cleaning.  In the case of this chicken, it meant occasional baths since white chickens seem to show dirt more than other colors.  Another contract condition was he could not name the chicken until the end of the lease period.  There was also the clause that if he neglected his chicken’s care or missed a single $5 payment, he forfeited his lease and option to buy (an additional $15) at the end of the 3 month term.  That meant he could not go out and spend all his allowance money on video games with nothing left for the monthly chicken payment or final purchase amount.

I got to say, he has been way more conscientious about this than I expected, and I am really proud of him.  The lease began on September 15th when he made his first $5 payment, and he hasn’t missed a day of care yet!  His second monthly payment was made on Saturday.  He is actually doing twice as much as I thought he would.  As soon as he is done getting ready for school and as soon as he gets home, he is outside taking care of the chickens.  Two weeks into it, I realized that the other chickens were unfairly getting the same benefits of his care and feeding (minus the cuddles the white one was getting,) that I told him I would give him an additional $5 a month toward his allowance for this.  Therefore, cost wise, he is breaking even on the lease payments, but still needing to be responsible.  Although he doesn’t get to officially name her yet, he secretly discusses with his sister some of his crazy choices for names.

Update:  Click here

Gruesome Compost Bugs

Another gross post, just in time for Halloween:

One disgusting by-product of composting is the beetle grubs.  I wrote about the other gross insect in the compost, black soldier fly previously.  As a novice, when I first started composting, I really hated these bugs.  Now, for me, they have become such a common part of composting and gardening, I will pick them up with my bare hands.  What has become of me?  Yuck!  Ewww!

Green fruit Beetle Larvae: cotinis texana or cotinis mutabilis recently picked out of the compost bin

However, to the delight of the chickens, we have tons of them, and this is why I take the time to pick them out. This is a chicken delicacy and their version of peel and eat shrimp.  My chickens look like a bunch of Black Friday Christmas shoppers rushing into a store for a door buster sale at 5AM.  It is a total mob scene if I make the mistake of offering only one or two of these gruesome bugs.  The reason I don’t wear my gloves when offering these to the chickens is they are used to treats coming in bare hands.  With a glove on, it is a little scarey to them and they avoid my hand.  With “no glove on” it must be something good!

Pictured above, a chicken is about to snatch a grub from my hand. Prissy, this buff Cochin, could really use the extra protein since she is going through an awful molt right now.

Most of the grubs are larvae stage of the green fruit beetle.  Yesterday afternoon, I emptied my compost bin.  As a result, I managed to pick out enough grubs to fill half of a quart size mason jar.  It was an all you can eat buffet for the chickens.  I then used the compost to fertilize the lawns.

A Mad dash of chickens to get to the first grubs I offered yesterday. Lucky for the lower ranking hens, I had a pint worth for them to share.

Pretty Creepy Crawly

I found this in the yard recently, perfect timing for Halloween.  This species is one of my 3 favorite native spiders.

White banded crab spider on Stephanotis florabunda by the driveway

Misumenoides formosipes – Whitebanded Crab Spider is commonly called a flower spider or crab spider.  The formosus part of its name is from Latin for “Beautiful.”  And I agree, they are some of the prettiest spiders I find regularly in the yard.  They don’t make webs and instead lie in wait for their prey to visit the flowers they hang out on.  The females’ patterns and colors can vary from yellow to white, and the color usually matches the color of the flowers they are on.  The unfortunate thing about them is, when I find them with captured prey, it is always a lovely butterfly.  However, I leave these be where I find them and enjoy seeing their natural camouflage on the flowers.  With the majority of spiders I find, I appreciate having them in the yard as natural pest enemies, all except the widow spiders which I wrote about here.

Kit Cat

Our new cat, the "Kit Cat" clock

My kids sometimes consider my preference for vintage decorating, totally uncool.  Plus, if I was single,  I would surely become “a crazy cat lady.”  I have dropped numerous unsubtle hints over the last year that I would like a “Kit Cat” clock.  It combines my love for cats with my passion for retro details in our home.  I first pointed one out to the kids when they were watching the movie “Cats and Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore.” Lucky for me, the kids agreed that these clocks are cute and bought me one this year for my birthday.  It fits perfectly in with the era of our house, having been manufactured since 1932.  My son helped me mount it on the kitchen wall, and later that day, both kids brought friends over to show off clock with the wagging tail and rolling eyes.  I love it!  Furthermore, I especially like that the original Kit Cat clocks are still made by the same company since the 1930s and continue to be made in the USA.  How many products can I say that about now a days?  Here is a link to their website:  Kit Cat Clocks  Thanks for the Happy Birthday, kids!

Fairy Ring

Fairy Ring in Southern California neighborhood

We apparently have fairies dancing at night in the neighborhood!

I found this in a neighbors yard last fall, late one night, and I have been meaning to post the photo I took of it. Prior to finding this ring, I had only read about them, and never actually seen a fairy ring in person.  Of course, I made sure not to step inside the ring.  Being of Irish decent, I knew better. There are so many tales of how they are made and what can happen if you step inside one.  For those who don’t believe in fairies, here is modern info on fairy rings from UC Davis ANR publications.  I find mycology, the study of fungi, very interesting, but a little scary.

8+ years ago, my 5 year old son (at the time) came running up to me shouting, B ate a mushroom!  B ate a mushroom!  With the rain we had that year, the mulch sprouted unseasonable tiny mushrooms overnight and the toddler found them before I did, down the side of the yard that now has the hopscotch path and grapes.  After quickly calling California poison control, we rushed off to the emergency room with my daughter, leaving my son with a neighbor.  It was the worst emergency room visit ever, and I won’t go into many of the details because it still upsets me to this day, but we later found out nothing in her treatment was done correctly.  I thank God, that she is okay.  That night and many others after, I spent dozens of hours, reading everything I could about mushrooms, their toxicity and affects, and sorting through pictures.  Although my kids are older now, and they definitely know to leave wild mushrooms they find around alone, I still can’t help noticing mushrooms anywhere we travel.  Boo also still loves to eat mushrooms, but only the kind we find at the supermarket.

To Light or Not to Light

 

Lighting a chicken coop in the shorter daylight hours of fall and winter is not all that necessary here in Los Angeles.  Our local daylight hours drop down to only about 10 hours in midwinter.  We don’t have the extremes folks do at more Northern latitudes, where there would be more of a need for extending the light to avoid a dramatic drop in production in winter.  Despite these facts, I have decided that I prefer to add light to my coop.  I have maintained my flock both ways, with added lighting and not lighting.  By using a timer, I add a couple extra hours to the coop in the evening.  I add it at the end of the day, instead of the morning, to avoid early rising hens disturbing the neighbors (or me!)

Our "FRESH EGGS" sign on the side of the garage that points to the coop. Hopefully it is true all winter.

Here is my personal experience with winter production and artificial light:

• My Leghorn and Barred Rock pullets laid right on through winter, only slowing down slightly, with no added light.
• My Easter Egger stopped laying all together for about 3 months that same winter.
• My Buff Orpington took 6 weeks off laying eggs, and started up again in January.
• The flock across the street did similarly their first winter, with the most of the hens laying.
•  The second winter with no added light, the neighbor’s Easter Eggers became total free loaders and stopped producing eggs from November until almost March.  It drove my neighbor, K, crazy since her family eats a lot of eggs.
• Since my second winter with chickens, I have been keeping a low wattage light on in my coop from early evening before the sun starts to go down, until around 8 o’clock.  As a result, my Cochins lay all through the winter.  Unfortunately for my neighbor, her coop is not near any access to electricity so it is not practical for her to add light to it.

Domestic chickens were bred from Red Jungle Fowl that are native to South East Asia, closer to the equator, where daylight hours only decrease slightly by a few hours with the change in seasons, down to about 12 hours of daylight. This Sunlight Calculator can be used to determine local day light hours, just adjust the setting to the closest big city.  Many folks keep their lights set to provide a day length of 14 hours.  I add light, but only enough to make day length mimic their native environment, if they were not domesticated.

One common misconception in regards to lighting is that chickens need to rest their reproductive systems, sort of like a bear hibernating through winter.  There is also the camp that worries adding artificial light will cause health problems for the hens.  The only times I am aware of that flock owners can run a risk of health problems for their chickens with lighting in winter is with:

• Inconsistency. Even in just one or two days, can cause the hens to go into an untimely molt.  Use a timer.
• Poor management of developing pullets. It causes problems with Prolapse in young pullets not yet of laying age. **See Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, by Gail Damerow for an explanation.  An excerpt can be found at: BYC
• Starting too late in the season or not gradually. For layers, lighting should start in September if it is used.
• The hens are confined indoors in too small of space for the number of chickens. If so, they are more likely too pick on each other.

Learning to Can: Concord Grape Jelly – Part 1

For many years, my family has been blessed with dozens of cans of homemade jelly from our concord grape vine.  However, I can not take credit for anything other than the simple acts of planting, pruning, and rarely watering. My next door neighbor has been doing the time consuming, messy part for us, in exchange for a share of the grapes’ bounty.  Most years, she even does the harvesting. I felt like we were definitely getting the better end of the deal, especially after reading a few books on canning and how much work goes into it.

Therefore, this August, I asked if I could help a little more.  Well, it turns out, she really needed my help this year, so she didn’t hesitate to take me up on the offer.  She was going to back to college, just started a new job, and her older friend that taught her years earlier, no longer could do it with her.

I did the harvesting of about 50 lbs of grapes one Friday morning, not long after my post about the raccoon incident.  I don’t recommend this job to anyone who is squeamish about spiders!  Spiders and grapes go hand in hand.  The downside of being an organic gardener is, almost every grape cluster had one.  My vines grow over head on an 8 foot trellis and provides shade in the summer to the West side windows on our house.  While I worked underneath the vines clipping off clusters, every 10 minutes or so, my husband said he could hear me scream.  This was because every few minutes, another spider dropped down out the vines and on to my head or face.  None bit me nor were they the poisonous kind, I just hate them on me regardless.  Next time, I am planning on hosing the vine down ahead of time; maybe that will reduce the spider surprises at harvest.

My neighbor's 2 vintage pressure canning pots sitting on the camp stove.

Once harvest was complete, my neighbor and I spent the rest of the day washing, picking stems off, sorting out bad berries, cooking down the fruit in pressure canners, straining, and temporarily storing the grapes’ juice in plastic bottles.  Now, it is in the freezer, ready for when we  both have time to do the processing and canning.

I would never have thought to set up an outdoor work area for the cooking and straining.  My neighbor said she prefers to work outside to avoid steaming up the kitchen and heating up the rest of the house in the middle of summer.  We used her camp stove, a fold up banquet table, and a sun shade out on her driveway.  It made clean up pretty easy at the end of the day, and with the outdoor washing up, there was no risk of bringing those hidden spiders in the house.

Outdoor canning work station in the driveway. The grape vines can be seen hanging over the fence on the right.

Although I have read books on canning and lots of articles, having my neighbor lead me through it, made it a pleasurable learning experience.  Plus, working with someone else is always more fun. Based on the 8 gallons of juice, my neighbor said we should end up with around 80 jars of jelly to split between us.

Note:  Here is a link to one of the books on canning I checked out at the library before hand: Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.  There is definitely a science to canning and experts recommend following proven recipes’ instructions carefully.  If done wrong, the end product could spoil or make someone ill.

Growing Up and Moving Out: Penguin’s Brood

The hardest part of letting my hens raise bantam chicks is we can’t keep them all, especially males.  Penguin just recently decided she was done being mommy for her brood of chicks. Since I still have not gotten up the courage to process a rooster, it was time to rehome the extras we can’t keep in our little coop. They were 9 weeks old.

Golden Laced Cochin Cockerel 9 weeks old

This little fellow in the above picture went to a new home today, along with a buddy, a white bantam cochin cockerel.  They went to live in Signal hill at a home with lots of other chickens, quail, and guineas.  The partridge cochin pullet went to live in another small backyard flock in Yorba Linda.

However, Miss Prissy still has her little boy, a Birchen Cochin, and my neighbor still has 3 males that I need to find homes for in the next month or so.  The other brood has a Silver Pencilled Cochin cockerel and two Black Cochin cockerels being raised by Miss Frizzle.  If you would like a bantam cochin male or two (or three or four,) fire off an email to me.  ivy562@gmail.com

The kids have convinced me we must keep the buff pullet out of Penguin’s brood for now.  She is super docile, comes up to the kids, and calmly sits without complaint.  Usually our Cochins don’t get this easy going until after point of lay.

We also have an Easter Egger.  I don’t know what to make of it.  It isn’t exactly a bantam, but it isn’t really that big either.  I thought there was a good chance it was a pullet until two weeks ago.  Recently it started getting red splashes on the shoulders.  Pullet Easter Eggers are usually relatively plain in color and boys get the striking color combinations. But it has almost no comb showing, it is a thin single row peacomb, and yellowish pink.   I guess I am stuck waiting to see it lay an egg or hear it crow.

Update on Chick Pick

Awhile ago, I posted about my guesses on sexing Bantam Cochin chicks based on my visual observations as they grew.  With bantams, it is the only way to sex them, that or spending $25 a chick to get them DNA tested like Silkie breeders sometimes do before selling chicks.

I raised, well Penguin raised a clutch of chicks recently.  They turned 8 weeks old on Monday.  Penguin had 6 chicks, but one is an Easter Egger.  4 cochins (white, partridge, buff, and golden laced) had early feather development all over, and one (self blue/ lavendar) had very slow wing and feather development.  At a week old, I guessed I had 4 female cochins and 1 male. See the link to my other post to see what I was going by.  I was wrong…I ended up with 3 cockerels and two pullets out of the batch (and I am still waiting to be 100% on the Easter Egger.)  The slow featherer was definitely a boy.  He had a bright red comb at 3 weeks and was still mostly fuzz all over. The feathering on the Golden Laced and the White kept pace with the pullets, but both started growing bigger combs and wattles around 5 to 6 weeks old, and by 6 1/2 to 7 weeks old they were as red as my adult hens.  The buff and partridge pullets’ combs are still light pinkish yellow at this point.  With partridge cochins, the boys feathering pattern was different from the girls by this age.  My hopes on consistently using feather development as a method to sort the genders earlier than 6 or 8 weeks isn’t looking good.  I would say I am a little better than a coin flip on guessing Ideal’s buff, black, and self blue, but none of the others.

Above is a photo my son took of an 8 week old partridge cochin pullet that Penguin raised this summer. By this age, the boys are usually getting more colors in their wings and tails. The pullets have a barred look to their lower body feathers at this juvenile stage.

I am still very curious about my crazy eyeliner theory with the silver pencilled cochins.  My neighbor got one in an assortment last month.  It did not have any eyeliner, and I told her it might be a boy as a result.  4 weeks later, I know it is a boy by the bright red comb and dark/ mostly solid color and sparse wing feathers.  However, 4 chicks in a year doesn’t make a theory proven.  I will need to see at least 10 chicks develop before I can comfortably say eyeliner IS a way to sex silver pencilled cochin (aka silver partridge pekin) chicks at hatch.  However, I am not ready for more chicks for quite a while.  Hopefully the hens don’t get any ideas of their own.  They go broody whenever they feel like it, not when I am ready.

Guide to Backyard Chicken Coops and Tractors

Two weeks ago, I got an exciting package in the mail.  It was a backyard chicken coop construction book!  I know, I know, I already have a coop, why would I be excited?  Because… my coop was used for one of the chapters in it!  The publisher contacted me back during Girl Scout Cookie season in the Spring.  I was so busy then, I never had a chance to post about working on the pages for the book.  With my regular responsibilities and extra duties as troop cookie chairperson, I barely made the editor’s submission deadline.  The book can be found at Amazon: Backyard Chickens’ Guide to Coops and Tractors: Planning, Building, and Real-Life Advice  It has my coop and 15 others, each with a project cut list, an owner’s bio, lots of photos, and detailed construction plans (much better than what I had complied myself on my blog.)  Both of the kids were delighted a photo they helped pose the chickens for was used as the main photo for our coop, plus my daughter’s coop murals were in it.

On a side note, the coop in the photo is not really a practical coop, nor is it from BYC.  That coop on the cover would be hard to keep clean or collect eggs from, but the publisher felt it conveyed the coop construction idea well. I first saw that photo 5 years ago on the inside of another book I used to regularly check out at the library called Keeping Chickens, by Jeremy Hobson and Celia Lewis.

Inspiration for a Mid Century Bathroom

I have to give my husband’s best friend’s grandma a big thank you when I see her.  Back in the 1940s and 1950s, after she and her husband bought their home, she created a scrapbook full of clippings of home decorating ideas she liked. It has hundreds of either black and white or color images from a variety of old magazines and catalogs, everything from cute kitchen nooks, to furniture, to baby nurseries.

Sadly, a few years ago, her home was taken over by emanate domain and bulldozed to make way for a hospital expansion.   It broke her heart to leave the home she created with her, now deceased, husband.   In packing up the home, her Granddaughter-in-Law remembered my love of mid century things and passion for history.  I was graciously given 3 of her vintage ceiling lights, removed from the house prior to the demolition, and the scrapbook.  The lights are very nice, but it is the scrapbook that I really treasure.  Thank you, Mrs. Crabtree.

I used the book to help pick out a color for my vintage couch when I had it reupholstered.  The upholsterer claimed it was not really a vintage color, but I knew better, because this exact color was on a couch, similar to mine, in the scrapbook.  I keep going back to the scrapbook for more ideas on decorating and whenever I need to pick a new paint color.  Now, I am using the book again for the inspiration for the bathroom we are currently working on.

Recently, I have begun to scan the images into the computer to preserve them, and eventually I will need to do it to them all because some of the paper is starting to breakdown.

Update: For more bathrooms than the few found below, the remaining bathroom clippings were scanned finally and now can be found in the side bar static pages to the right side of my blog under the Mid Century Scrapbook: Bathrooms.  So far, I have only done the bathroom ones, but I plan to do the rest when I have more time.

 

Peach and Tan vintage bathroom. I really like the linoleum in this one.

Yellow, blue, and black vintage bathroom

Mint Green, Black, and beige vintage bathroom with a corner tub. Cool flooring in this one too!

Vintage bathroom with details in burgundy, royal blue, beige, pink and Black

Cream and pink retro bathroom with black stripes

Orange, red, and white retro bathroom tub area

Mint Green and black vintage bathroom

Some Progress on Remodeling

Our 1940s house’s bathroom and mudroom

This timeline of the project doesn’t account for the daily, sometimes multiple trips through out the summer to Home Depot, Lowes, OSH, or the mom and pop hardware store around the corner.  I think they will all know me on a first name basis when we are finally finished.

Late June

Well, the week after school got out for summer, we broke out the tools and removed the paneling and dry wall to see what we were dealing with.  There was no turning back now.  We decided to work within the existing footprint to limit construction waste and a few of the costs.  We started interviewing subcontractors and getting bids to do the work beyond our home improvement skills.

Most of the stuff we were removing could not go into the city trash because the city sends our trash to a facility that burns the trash and turns it into energy.  We had a neighbor use a WM service called Bagster, and we decided to give it a try.  After reading online about the pick up fees, we bought the bag at home depot and set it up on our driveway.  It filled up fast.  The Bagster didn’t save us any money, but it was convenient.  Actually, it was down right expensive at a cost of $29 for the bag, $150 for Waste Management fee to pick up(we knew about this one,) and then when we scheduled the pick up, the city added their own $30 fee on top (this was a hidden fee.)  In retrospect, I would get a dumpster.  On the bright side, it was kind of fun watching the crane show up, drag the bag down the driveway, and load it.  Yup, I took pictures!  I wanted to get my money’s worth.

Bagster Pick Up

July

We celebrated the 4th with friends, family, and the neighbors at the annual block party, then had a lovely short vacation at Asilomar.  Then we waited, and waited, and waited to get started on the actual construction.  We were waiting on a handyman and plumber to be available, who was married to a friend of my husband.  In the meantime, I started shopping for fixtures, pantry cabinets for the laundyroom/ mudroom, vanity, mirror and faucets.  I knew the big box home improvements stores don’t keep much mid century reproduction stuff in stock.  Special order items would take forever to get here, so I had to get started.

My son asked why I went around tapping all the faucets as I browsed.  Apparently, it is really hard finding a faucet without chrome  plated PLASTIC.  Since I wanted a durable all metal faucet, including the drain, I had to special order it. Eventhough it killed me to spend the money, I settled on an expensive faucet from Franz Viegener that was much more than I budgeted for.  I didn’t want us forced to replace it in a few short years because the chrome quickly corrodes off the plastic on the cheap faucets kept in stock at home depot and Lowes.  In my opinion, it pays in the long run to buy quality products.  This is indirectly a  green choice because unlike the cheaply made products from China, they won’t end up in a landfill within a few years.  Plus, replacing faucets is a real pain.  I know remodeling isn’t generally environmentally friendly due to all the construction demo ending up in landfills, but I am doing the best I can by making long lasting choices or buying “made in the USA” wherever possible.

I went under the house to see just how bad the crawl space is. I hate going under the house, but I am much smaller than my husband.  I also hate heights so we have an agreement…he goes on the roof; I go under the house.  Well, it is worse than we thought.  The 1971 addition was build partially over an old concrete patio.  It ran the length of the original foundation and out into the addition by 6 feet.  The only access was a tiny crawl space channel, 2 feet wide by a foot and a half tall, less than half the space for moving around under the of the rest of the house.  It looked like the opening was cut to accommodate the pipes, and that is it.  I am petite at 115 lbs. and even I had a hard time navigating under there.  This space problem really limited our choice of plumbers unless we wanted to remove the entire sub-floor or haul a jack hammer under the house and remove all the concrete out.  Aggghhhh!  We decided to remove some of the sub-floor boards in the bathroom to access most of the plumbing.  With our plan to reuse as much as possible and keep as much construction debris out of landfills, this seemed like the best option at the time.

This remodel was quickly turning into a huge can of worms, and not the good kind for compost.  There was no room for the toilet drain to fit in where we had planned to put it, due to the crazy concrete patio under the house.  My husband ended up renting a jack hammer from home depot and took out a small section of the patio under the floor, just wide enough for a plumber to crawl under and later fit the toilet drain plumbing.  200 lbs of concrete debris later, we were now looking at this remodel as if it was built on a slab whenever we were making choices.  We removed a few additional sub floor boards, around the area the tub was going, and where the old sink came out of.   I re-cut the replacement sub-floor boards and helped with some of the new framing.  My husband was very meticulous about the framing and and did the majority of it.

The kids and I had fun visiting a local vintage tile factory in Gardena.  They still make all the old retro colors and sizes that they have been making for 60+years.  The tough part was deciding what colors to use.  After browsing for 45 minutes or so, they kindly sent me home with about 8 free color samples: Creamy Banana Yellow, Mammie Eisenhower Pink, Robins’ Egg Blue, Sky Blue, Minty Green, Seafoam Green, and Black.  I will definitely use the black as an accent, but I am torn between the others.  I really like the pink, and my husband said it would be okay, but I know he doesn’t really want it.  He compromised on the tub instead of a shower, so I think I will cross the pretty retro pink off the list.

Early August

Plumbing and electrical finally began.  During this time, I spent a few days chemically striping the years of old paint off the kitchen door that we found in rafters of the garage when we first moved in.  We saved it just in case we could ever use it for this project since it matched all the other doors in the house.  It had at least 6 layers of paint, including some of the colors I currently have our house; it colors included minty green, seafoam blue, butter yellow, and pink, plus many shades of beige.  The only color the door had that I don’t currently decorate with is the pepto bismol  pink. It was a cool 3 panel door that still had the hardware to swing both ways in between the livingroom and kitchen, just like in “I Love Lucy’s” TV show kitchen.  We think it was probably removed about the same time the was addition was added, based on the last colored it was painted.

As we uncovered the paneling, moldings, and drywall in the mudroom, we discovered lots and lots of termite droppings.  For many years, I put off treating for termites, as long as we could, until the kids were old enough that I would not have a panic attack about doing it, but before the house fell down.  Anyway, 3 years ago, we finally had the house fumigated for the termites, and apparently it really needed it.  Although when we opened the walls, we only had to replace a few studs, they were busy little bugs while they were here.  They ate most of the window framing in the bathroom.   Just in case, while the walls were out, we had the two rooms inspected for new live termites.  I was thrilled when the owner of the company said we were fine and didn’t need any treatment.  I avoid chemicals whenever possible, so this was great news.

In demo, we also found petrified rat droppings in the tiny 6 inch gap between the flat roof space between the laundryroom ceiling .  UGGGHHHHH!  We had roof rats in the attic briefly when we first moved in 15 years ago and spent weeks getting rid of them through trapping, poisoning (I won’t do that again,) and sealing the space where they chewed through to enter.  I freaked out about the rats in the attic back then, but had forgotten about them until the demo.  It gross finding the old droppings, but at least there are no more rats sharing our house.   Gracie, the cat, enjoys helping out with pest management whenever she can.  She has enjoyed the remodel process and keeps inspecting under the house through an opening in the bathroom wall that goes under the hall bath tub to the crawl space of the main house.

Gracie the cat likes that the walls are open. She had been sneaking under the house through the space under the hall bath tub. She has even removed the plastic covering the door opening a couple times to get through, she likes it so much. Bad kitty.

Back to the bathroom: We moved up the opening in the window to give the room a bit of privacy.  The window really had to be replaced, both because of the termite damage, but also because it had two 30+ year old holes from a b-b gun used by the previous owners son when he was a teenager.  We replaced it with a double pane vinyl awning window with low e coating.  Unfortunately, I will have to do some re-stuccoing outside for this one.

During the planning, I really wanted a cast iron tub, but my husband was dreading the installation, plus he really preferred a large shower stall.  He must really love me, because he agreed to the tub.  The first plumber we hired said he would plumb it, but not bring it in to place.  Once drain plumbing was nearly finished, my husband and his best friend added additional joist cross bracings under the area the tub would go.

When the tub showed up in a giant crate and was brought to the driveway on a fork lift, I understood why everyone was so reticent, and why cast iron tubs aren’t popular remodel choices these days.  It was super heavy, and with added weight of the crate, it weighed 440 lbs. according to the shipping label.  Opps.  My husband and his friends aren’t college kids anymore.  Back then, they would help each other out by moving anything, as long as free pizza and beer were at the end of the day.  They made a good try at moving it, but decided to wait until morning when there was more light and no one was tired.  Instead, after much consideration and a sleepless night, I hired professional furniture movers from a local moving company to bring in the cast iron tub.   The company sent out 4 huge guys built like linebackers.  45 minutes later the tub was in place.  The movers stuck around while we made adjustments, came back in, and then moved it a little more.  Money well spent!  I joke that it saved our marriage and my husband’s back.

My husband also ran the venting for the bathroom exhaust fan up through the roof, and then finished of the new flashing around the vent for the sink while I insulated the interior walls.  Remember, I don’t do roofs so I was happy to insulate.  We also added extra 2 x 4 throughout the bathroom walls in all the places we would later be putting towel rods and hooks.

Late August

We spent an entire day installing the old original door into the new opening to our bedroom.  Now, I know why so many people buy pre-hung doors!  It was really hard building the jams from scratch, routing for the hinges, dealing with a tiny warp in the door, and leveling it all.   I have yet to put in the vintage “new old stock”  Schlage handle I bought on ebay…maybe next week.  By the looks of the old Schlage box, my husband thinks there is a good possibility it was manufactured at the same time his grandfather used to work for the company in San Francisco.  It matches the rest of the door hardware in the house.

I drilled a small hole into the laundryroom exterior wall to accommodate the new “to code” grey water diverter valve and piping.  While the walls were opened it was easy to brace the pipe to a stud not far from the laundry sewer drain.  Now my laundry hose for the greywater will no longer have to look bad and go out the window to the surge tank.

Around the same time, we also recessed all the other laundry supply lines and drain pipe into the wall, recessed the dryer gas line, and had the plumber add new lines for the cast iron laundry sink.  One of the things we didn’t like about the laundry room was the washer and dryer had to stick out about 8 inches extra from the wall to allow for the gas and drain.  This change is getting us a few more inches to move around the room.  In a tiny house, a few inches can make a difference!  For the last 3 years, we had a make shift laundry sink, kind of Frankensteined into the old exposed laundry pipes.  My husband bought the plastic veritek sink at a yard sale for $2 as a temporary fix until we had the time and money to do this remodel.

One cool thing happened recently…I got the matching sink to our “Memoirs” cast iron tub for a great price, I mean a really great price.  I was planning to buy it anyway.  Lowes mis-listed it at $8 on their website, and it should have been $183 like the in store price.  Even though the internet would not let me check it out at the crazy price and kept giving me error codes, I decided to call and after about 20 minutes of being put on and off hold multiple times, the customer service supervisor honored the price. With tax it came to $8.70.  Yeah!  We now have it waiting in the garage for installation.

I really liked that the 1/2 bath used to be adjacent laundry room.  It came in really handy during the baby and toddler years.  It had a layout that I was able to set it up the perfect cloth diapering station.  I had a changing table, storage for wash clothes, diapers, and diaper bail. The sink was right next to it all.  It was great for diapering since it was next to the hot water heater and gave us almost instant warm water for wash cloths to clean baby bottoms.  (No disposable wipies here.)  It worked out well, being adjacent to the laundry room for washing the diapers, only having to carry the pail a few steps.  Had I not had the extra room, cloth diapering would have been much less convenient.  This convenience is now gone FOREVER.  For the last month, the laundry room has looked like someone took a machine gun to it with tons of holes to run the new wiring through. The dry wall went up the third week of August, and the opening between the rooms is  now gone.  It looks like a complete room again, just empty and white.

Chick Pick

Back in early February 2011, my neighbor and I split an assortment of 2 day old bantam straight run cochin chicks.  Her kids came over in the evening to select the 5 cochins they wanted out of the 15 to choose from.  I already had plenty of friendly hens at the time, so I wasn’t too particular what i ended up with.  I, well Lady Cluck, got the 10 remaining cochin chicks.  A day later, I noticed one of Lady Cluck’s chicks was getting frizzled wing tips already, and knowing my neighbor’s daughter REALLY wanted at least one frizzle, I added that chick to Daisy’s brood, making my neighbor’s total 6 cochins.  Well guess what?  Out of the five chicks the kids picked, only one was a pullet (female) and the rest were cockerels.  The frizzle I added ended up being a pullet.  Therefore, the lesson I learned out of this straight run chick picking experience…”Don’t let your kids pick your chicks!”  or in other words, at 2 or 3 days old, odds are pretty good, the friendliest chicks are probably the boys.  Because of this experience, I am more likely to keep whatever is left in an assortment of chicks, not pick chicks first.

What else I noticed on the genders of this assortment:

• “Girls wear make up.” Looking back on the chick pictures, out of the three silver penciled cochins, the two with eye liner like lines around their eyes ended up being pullets; the one with no “eyeliner” was the rooster.  This could be just a coincidence.  I will have to raise a few more chicks of this variety to see if this is a consistent way to sort for gender.
• “Girls develop faster than boys.”  The chicks with the fastest wing and tail tip growth were almost all girls, in about 75+% of the chicks.
• “Little boys have bare shoulders.”  Around 3 weeks, the chicks whose wing bows/ shoulders feathered in the slowest were males.  At 3 weeks, boys are still pretty fuzzy.
• At a few days old, boys are friendly and girls are sometimes shy.
• Exception: the silver pencilled cochins developed much slower than the other varieties.  Both boys and girls had almost no primary wings sprouting until about two weeks old.  Both genders feathered in really slowly all over and were still mostly fuzzy even at 5 weeks.  Based on feather and comb growth, even at 6 weeks, I would have said both my pencilled cochin pullets were males, but they both lay eggs now.  They had pink combs at 4 weeks, like the male chicks.

The Ratio of girls to boys was slightly higher in this bantam assortment.  We had 15 chicks between my neighbor and I.  girls 10: boys 5.  I am really curious about this.  I will have to order more assortments and see if it holds true.  I am guessing, that since select breeds are boxed earlier in the day at the hatchery, maybe more shy girls stay toward the back of the bin, and then don’t get picked for the assortments until the end of the day when the chick bins are getting low.  Hmmm.  Well see.  If you have any experience with this, please comment.  I just got another assortment, and I kept six different colors.  I will report back in a couple of months.  Click here for the update.

Concord Grapes and Midnight Mauraders

Thank goodness for old reliable Concord.  I must say, it is my favorite grape vine.  I bought it on clearance for $1.00 about 10 years ago, at Target of all places.  I was very reticent to buy it, especially because it is only rated up to Sunset Climate zone 21, and I am in 22.  But at a $1.00, I will give almost anything a try.  It never gets mildew or other diseases, it does great in our cool foggy June and July, and produces like crazy with or without expert pruning.  What more could I ask for in a grape?  I sure can’t say the same about a few of my other varieties (Flame: soon to be removed.)  Concord smells of sweet grape soda outside my bedroom right now, so I know it is ready for harvesting, that, and the fact the vines were rustling at 2:30AM this morning.  Apparently, I am not the only one who noticed its sweet aroma and need for harvesting.

Concord Grapes from the under side of the grape arbor

The grape thief was so loud, both my husband and I were woken up the sound of the vines and leaves rustling.  My husband grabbed the flash light to see what it was through the window.  Even with the light, the noise didn’t stop, but we also couldn’t spot what was making it either.  It would have helped if my glasses weren’t in the bathroom.

It was time to call in reinforcements, “Go get it, George!”  Once we told the dog there was something out there, he bolted out the back door, and straight for the…veggie garden?  That is always the first place he checks to make sure his nemesis, the squirrel, doesn’t try to sneak into our yard via the power lines and pole (the furry frwy according to my husband.) Once George figured out where he needed to patrol, the protection instinct kicked in and he sounded like a vicious pitbull going in for the kill.  There was no kill; the creature heard him coming the moment we opened the door, and scurried up the vines and into the canopy of the flame grapes at the end of the side yard.  The grape vines are a dense jungle this time of year.  We could see little grapes falling one by one to the ground, but still no animal to account for it.  Thinking it was probably an opossum, and it would freeze in one spot for hours as long as the dog was out, we went back inside.  George continued his pacing and occasional barking.   Peaking out through the blinds with a maglite from my son’s room, my husband finally spotted it, the biggest raccoon he’s ever seen, straddling the top of the arbor.  By the time I gathered up the courage and go back outside to chase it off with a broom, it had decided grape soda smelling grapes weren’t worth it and moved along on its own.  Unless we want another midnight intruder waking us up, I better get out there and start harvesting instead of writing.

The scene of the crime: The driveway grape arbors just after picking all the dangling branches off for the chickens.

My Dog with the Chickens

A big concern for many chicken owners is dogs, especially their own.   Pet dogs are probably the number one predator that kills chickens.  A backyard chicken can look like a fun toy to play with to most dogs, especially when the chickens are spooked.    My dog was probably no exception.  He is a bird dog by nature.  He is obsessed with squirrels, has caught wild birds before, and I have to keep a careful eye on him when we are next to the duck pond.  He has actually jumped in after the ducks once when I wasn’t being observant, despite being on a leash. Had I tried to keep hold of the leash, he would have pulled me in with him. Based on this experience, when I first got chickens, the dog was my biggest worry.

George out with the chickens

Now adays, I have no worries about George and chickens.  I would love to take full credit for his training, but in reality, I have been blessed with an obedient golden retriever that is very eager to please and quick to learn.  George should really get the credit.  Training might not be  as easy or the same with all breeds.  I spent many months of gradual exposure, with rewards, and close supervision to train George to be a good dog with chickens around.  I started training him when the chicks were just a few weeks old in the brooder in the house.  There are lots of tips on www.backyardchickens.com for training dogs to be with chickens.

Here is what I did with my dog, George:

•    Chick Weeks 2-6=Inside in the bathroom with the chicks walking around out on the floor, I had the dog lay down and just hang out with us while we held the chicks.  I did this daily.  My dog got positive reinforcement and treats for not looking at them or letting them peck and walk on him.  He was told to just lay down or sit there.  I verbally scolded him if he appeared interested in the chicks.

•    Chick Weeks 6-8=Outdoors I had a Fenced pen or tractor for chickens while the dog was outside.  No unsupervised time for dog to be around chickens at all.  During this time, he got the smell them, see them regularly, and see that they were part of the family.

•    Weeks 9-12ish=I started letting them out together in the yard with no pen, but supervised.  Same treats and praise to ignore chickens/ Scold if watched them.

•    Weeks 12+ I would play ball with the dog and sometimes try to spook the chickens by throwing the ball in their direction.  The dog would ignore the cackles and fluttering. At this point, I was comfortable with George and the chickens outside with out me.

Other chicken keepers would tell you, that they would never completely trust a dog to be alone around their chickens.  I disagree. I do not feel that way about George.  I think it depends on the dog and the breed.  We had a hawk attack a couple years ago.  Poor George was stuck in the house while I was away from home, but the chickens were out.  He almost hurt himself trying to get outside to go after the hawk.  When I got home, probably within minutes after the attack started, I opened the back door seeing George’s panic and he bolted out to chase the hawk off the chicken.  I was devastated about loosing a chicken to predator, but now my chickens aren’t out unless George is too.  He is a really good dog.

George just lays around with the chickens but never bothers them

The Bantam Assortment

All the chicks arrived alive and well early this morning.  Please keep in mind, when I ordered over the phone for the last hour special, I asked them if they could make a note that Cochins are my favorite breed.  I doubt most of Ideal’s bargain assortments are this Cochin heavy, but boy was I tickled when I saw how many they sent.  Here are my best guesses of what showed up in Ideal’s Special Bantam Assortment:

• 1 Blue or Self Blue Cochin
• 3 Black Cochins (one has a little more yellow, maybe it is a birchen)
• 3 White Cochins
• 7 Red and/or Buff Cochins.  These are always tough for me to tell apart
• 1 Golden Laced Cochin
• 1 Silver penciled Cochin
• 1 Easter Egger, but it looks really big, like a standard, large fowl size chick
• 1 Partridge Cochin
• 2 Golden Sebright
• 1 White Japanese
• 3 Golden Duckwing Olde English
• 2 Red Pyle Olde English? Or maybe  Buff Orpington Bantam?

I will post pictures of the ones I keep a little later.  For now they are all eating and drinking to make up for the time in transit.

Update: During the night Penguin adopted a half dozen of the chicks.

More Bantam Chicks

After 6 weeks of hoping Penguin would stop sitting and brooding, I am giving in.  She really is a good mama hen, so I don’t mind letting her raise chicks, but the timing isn’t the best of us.  We just recently started remodeling our 1/2 bath into a full bath, so I am kind of busy.  However, Penguin is starting to feel a little thin, despite making her get off her nest to eat and drink once a day.  I don’t think it would be good to have her wait too much more and she doesn’t want to give up.

Penguin out for a quick bite and a drink, before she sneaks back into the coop to sit on her non existant eggs she thinks she needs to be brooding.

Maureen, at Ideal’s customer service,  said they were out of enough chicks for me to fill the order with any specific breeds this afternoon (Cochins of course,) so I ordered a bantam assortment instead.  Getting Penguin exclusively Cochins isn’t that important.  She won’t care what kind of chicks she has, as long as they are tiny, just a few days old, and fuzzy.

Update: I kept 6 of the chicks from the assortment and sold the other 20.

There were a lot of possibilities of what kind of chicks we might end up with from the bantam assortment.  It was fun figuring out what they will grow up to be, at a just a few days old.  Click here to download Ideal Poultry’s Retail Price List of Bantams for 2011.  There you can see all the different varieties that might end up in an assortment.

Good-bye Avocado Green

After 14+ years of talking about it, there is no turning back.  We tore out the floor, walls, and avocado green sink in our home’s addition in 1971 of a half 1/2 bath and bare laundry room.   It is our huge summer project of changing the bathroom into a full bath, opening the adjoining wall to our bedroom, and then adding badly needed storage in the laundry room/mud room.  We are working within the existing footprints of the spaces.

The 36″avocado swirled cultured marble green sink was actually too small for the room and the cabinet had no drawers.  We put it on the curb, listed it on craigslist, and it was gone in 30 minutes.  Although I learned to like the avocado by working with the color over the years, rather than against it, it never really fit in with the rest of the house, and it was just too 1970s.  Back in 1998, I did paint the chocolate brown cabinet a soft shade of white to tone down the 70′s look.  Not that I don’t like some of the funky stuff from the 70s, just not in my 1940′s house.  Since those colors are back in style, I am sure the sink has a nice home now.

Avocado green sink after removal, sitting in the yard

My daughter thinks I am nuts that I love all things mid century.  Our house was built in 1944, it is small, and contemporary decor just doesn’t fit the scale or character of the tiny house.  Therefore in updating our house, we are trying to go back to the 1940s and 50s.  I love a blog called RetroRenovation and visit pretty regularly for ideas and sometimes just to feel like I am not the only person with a love of old vintage tile and colorful bathrooms.  It always aggravates me to watch “home improvement” shows tear out beautiful mid century tile and fixtures preserved in older homes.  It is disimprovement in many cases!

Well, we have a local tile store that has been in business for more than 70 years that still makes colored tile on site.  They use the same colors they have been making since 1940 and earlier.  I was like a kid in a candy store when I went in there with my children.  They had so many colors to choose from, I had a really hard time deciding.  When I came home with a bunch of free samples, my husband said I could pick the pepto pink, if I really wanted.  Now there is true love!  Well, out of fairness, I settled on a baby blue, banana yellow, and black color scheme.  I will post more details as the project progresses.

My Earliest Ripening Grape – “Canadice”

Ripe Canadice Grapes (sometimes called "Candice")

We don’t have an ideal grape growing climate, so I have to choose carefully what varieties I plant.  “Canadice” was reported to do well around the Puget Sound area, so I thought it would not mind our mild weather we usually have.  This is its third summer on our narrow driveway strip of planting space.  It gets sun after about 11 AM since it is in a West facing location. We have had one of our very cool, foggy springs and  “June Gloom”  until last week.  It is trellised on a an 8 ft arbor and helps to shade my new Anne Raspberries.
This is our first year we have had much of a crop on this grape, and it has about 15 clusters.  The  grape clusters are small, similar in lenghth to my concord grape’s clusters, with the individual grapes at about the size of a dime.  “Canadice” is a sweet red seedless variety, and I would compare it to “Flame” in flavor, the next to ripen at our house.  When I planted this variety, I knew little about it or the flavor; I just wanted to try something new.  I would give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 for flavor.  It tastes as good as most grocery store red variety of grapes, just a lot smaller berry. My favorite is still “Fantasy,” which is my last variety to ripen, in mid to late August.

Here is a what I know about Canadice:

• It is red, early ripening, medium sized
• Seedless table or raisin grape
• sweet with good flavor
• I have read it is fine for juice, jellies, wines.
• Ripens late June to early July here along the Southern California Coast
• Good in Sunset climate zones 2b-9, 11-21
• Should be spur pruned

Creating Wooden stamps

One of the completed wooden stamps. Off on the side of this photo is the book bag that is being stamped. The girl scout logo was an extra large stamp I made as a proto type.

One of the many badges my Junior troop worked on this year was Prints and Graphics.  It recommends the girls make their own stamp by using something like a potato.  I was never a fan of stamping with a carved potato and it only lasts for a few hours before it looks gross.  I came up with an alternative simple method for the girls to make their own stamps that are reusable.  I used scrap wood and cut it into smaller pieces, similar to the sizes used for store bought stamps.  Most were 2 inches x 2 inches x 1 inch or smaller for the letter stamps.  The personalized stamps used pieces closer to 2 x 3 or a little larger so the girls could be creative.  The girls designed their own stamp on the sticker side of the peel and stick craft foam sheets.  Then they cut out the design and stuck it to a small wood block.  To use, we either dipped the simple designs into paint on paper plates or we used a paint brush to paint on to the stamp.  Next, we placed the paint dipped block on the paper or material we were stamping.  We used these stamps for a variety of things including decorating our troop T-shirts, canvas book bags, and homemade cards.

For letters, most were easy to make by just applying a letter to a block.  Some letters like N would turn out in reverse if we just stuck them on with the sticker provided, so they were glued down by hand with hot glue on their face.  Then we removed the stickiness where the paper was by touching the adhesive until it no longer sticks.  It works as well as the other stamps.

Materials needed:

• Wood scraps cut into small blocks ahead of time (I did this myself ahead of time)
• Craft foam adhesive sheets, the kind with a sticky back that the paper pulls off to use
• Scissors
• ball point pen for drawing on the back of the foam
• carton of assorted letters for names and words

Making the logo stamp

 

For less than $10, we made enough stamps so that each girl in the troop had all their own letters for their name, the troop numerals, the word “troop,” and two personally designed stamps.  Here is just a portion of the total we made.

I should not get attached to my chickens

“Chickens are farm animals, not pets.”  I should make myself repeat that 3 times a day until I convince myself of it.  But it is hard for me to keep that in mind. I enjoy having the hens follow me around the yard as I garden.  They come up and look to me for treats, just like the dog.  They come when I call them “chook, chook, chook.”  Penguin and Miss Prissy (formerly Greasy Chicken) both hop on my lap for attention when I sit outside with a cup of coffee.  It is really hard not seeing them as pets sometimes.

With most of the chickens I have raised and sold, once they go to new homes, they are gone and I rarely hear anything about them again.  Generally, I have not kept most of them long enough to get too attached, all except the Joey, Amber, and Cruella.  Well, tonight I had an automatic email from an old thread at Backyardchickens.com that I started 2 years ago; it was about Joey and Amber.  It got me wondering how they were doing, and I decided to see if their owner, Michelle, had posted any new photos of them.  I liked that she posted photos of them getting adjusted to their new home last summer via twitter.  I guess I should not have gone looking at her website again…Amber was the victim of an urban raccoon.  I cried when I read it, especially since she included a copy of Amber’s 10 day old baby chick picture I gave her.  Amber was a good PET chicken.

Amber getting ready to kick the cat off her favorite perch in the yard

Joey, one of my son's friends, and Amber on the swing in the backyard

Amber getting into mischief. She decided to check out the view from the roof of the coop while all the other hens when into roost for the night.

Amber, the Buff Orpington (Feb. 3, 2009- Jan. 10, 2011)

New neighbors moved in today…Feral Bees

Close up of the swarm that moved into the parkway Carob tree

It comes as no surprise to me, our quiet culdusac is invaded once again with a swarm of bees.  For years the home owner two doors down from me has tried to eradicate bees from his city park way tree.  He has tried everything from poison to stuffing the tree with steel wool, to filling it with spray expanding insulation.  Usually he or another neighbor calls the city and they send out an exterminator to kill the hive.  It is a real shame.  However, eventually a new swarm of bees will find the tree attractive for some reason.  I am unsure if it is the fact the tree is hallow from years of termites or if it is a smell thing.  As a gardener, I totally love it that they are there, but boy do the kids on the street freak out every time they notice the bees are back!  I am sure one of their parents will be calling the city to come back out before I know it.  Bummer, because bees are just what my kiwis, berries, tomatoes, and grapes could use right about now.  Well, other than posting the bees photo here, I am not telling anyone else on the block, including my own kids.  That way the hive can stay as long as possible.  If anyone knows a bee keeper looking for a new hive to capture, fire off an email to me.  Click here to see my video of this newest colony.

A view of the cloud of bees around the tree

Mourning Cloak Butterflies

I am real a nerd that at 41,  I still like to play with bugs.   I love butterflies probably the most out of all insects; they are like floating or flying flowers in the garden. A couple of Saturdays ago, like a child, I was outside scooping up caterpillars in the yard, off the tree trunk, on the side of the house, just about everywhere in the backyard.  I secretly brought them inside with a few branches of Chinese Elm and stuck them in a pop up laundry hamper in the back bathroom out of sight.   However, my project was promptly noticed by the kids, and they started regularly checking up on them.  Today, my daughter came running out from the laundry room giggling and shouting “We’ve got Butterflies! We’ve got Butterflies!”

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

Every few years, typically in the Spring, we get an abundance of these Mourning Cloaks caterpillars in our Chinese Elm tree.  Their presence usually follows a fall tree trimming.  By the time they start climbing down from the tree, they are two inch long caterpillars, all black and prickly with red dots. They leave their host tree to pupate on other plants or man made structures.

Mourning Cloaks are an easy butterfly to take care of by feeding them cut up fresh fruit and spraying them a few times a day with a light mist of water.  When my daughter was three, we collected so many one day, we took them into preschool and each child got to take one home to pupate and release over the Spring break.  My son also did a science project on the Mourning Cloak’s metamorphosis in 4th grade, in 2008.  That was the last time we had these butterflies in abundance.  He determined that they emerge up to 3 days earlier when brought inside.

Laundry Hamper with the recently emerged butterflies in front of a window

Mourning cloaks butterflies roam and migrate.  Because of this they are found almost everywhere their host plants are found including parks, suburbs, openings, woods and especially on the banks of rivers, all over north America excluding the gulf states.  Adult Mourning Cloaks eat a variety of things.  Tree sap is their favorite, and I think that is how they notice our tree most years after a trimming.  They also eat decaying fallen fruit.  The larva eat elm, willow, poplar,  floss silk trees leaves.  The caterpillars metamorphosis into chrysalis and are in that stage for 10 to 15 days. Once the Mourning Cloaks emerge they can live for 10 to 11 months, but we never keep them longer than a week or two before letting them go.

George gets Buzzed

George catching the Bees!

George, the dog, is on the look out for one of his arch enemies…the honey bee.  Don’t get me wrong; I love bees! But George doesn’t and spends endless hours in his pursuit to snap them out of mid air and kill them.  He stakes out a buzzing bush, staring quietly as he tracks one.  Then snap! He actually grabs one out of mid air, followed by lots of paw rubbing on his muzzle.  When that method is unsuccessful in killing the poor bee on the first try,  he resorts to smashing a bee down to the ground with a paw.   He has been stung numerous times over the years on the nose, mouth and paw.  What drives him to keep going back for more?  My son says George kills them it to protect his best friend, my son.  In my opinion, I actually think the crazy dog likes the feeling of being stung or the buzz.  Bad Dog!

Native bee visiting flowers on a radish that went to flower at the end of winter

Unlike my dog and son, I try to encourage bees presence in the yard.  We need lots of pollinators this time of year.  I love fruit and veggies, and most of them need the honey bees and other native bees to help pollinate the flowers for fruit set.  Although it is sometimes unsightly, I intentionally let a few broccoli (or anything else in the brassica family) go to flower at the end of the winter growing season to attract a variety of bees to my yard.  Their flowers are usually early enough to help attract the bees into the garden to also stop by and pollinate the blackberries, stone fruits, kiwi, and raspberries.  The radish flowers, alyssum, and borage also help to bring in the bees.   By always keeping a variety of flowers blooming throughout the year, we seem to get plenty of bees visiting our yard.

Pretty yellow Broccoli gone to flower with one of the dozens of bees on the plant

By the looks of it, we either have a few healthy feral colonies nearby or a bee keeper. I would love to be a beekeeper myself and have home grown honey, however, it is illegal in this city.   I am sure no one would notice if I kept a hidden hive in back corner of the lot, however, my dear son despises being around bees.  I joke that if I did get an illicit hive,  he would probably call the city on me.

For a list of good plants to attract pollinators throughout the year visit: Urban Bee Gardens

And for info on local treatment free bee keeping, check out the Backwards Bee Keepers

A Gardener’s Enemies: Pest plants

Certain plants are invasive or aggressive and spread by hidden under grown runners or by self sowing prolifically, eventually taking over a garden and growing out of control.  I am not talking about weeds, but plants that are intentionally introduced by homeowners.   A variety of plants sold at big home improvement stores and some nurseries behave like weeds after spending a season or two in the garden.  Eventually, the gardener will wish they never planted them in their yard in the first place.  It happens to all good gardeners at some point in their gardening lifetime, including myself.

I have been fighting a regular battle with morning glory creeping over the fence from an adjacent backyard.   The twining vines reach over and try to choke my fruit trees branches and drop their seeds on our side of the fence.  After spending a few years regularly weeding to eliminate four o’clock from my yard, I intentionally re-introduced it when I realized the chickens don’t eat it as a mature plant, but they do keep the seedlings weeded with their scratching.  I must be nuts!

Morning Glory- Very pretty, but will self sow like crazy

Here is my list of top gardener’s enemies:

• Morning Glory
• Mexican Evening Primrose
• Shamel Ash trees
• Bamboo
• Nut Sedge
• Horse Tail
• Sword Fern
• Fountain Grass
• Honeysuckle
• Periwinkle
• Pampas Grass

Desirable plants, like berries, I manage to co-exist with by choosing the right spot where they can be kept under control.  When selecting a new plant, I have learned to double check my Sunset Western Garden book to see if it is listed as invasive, spreading, or “naturalizes.”  I don’t recommend the following plants to novice gardeners or individuals that don’t want to spend much time gardening.  Plant with caution and in only in a controlled location or with a barrier.

• Asparagus fern
• Japanese Anemone
• Ivy
• Creeping fig
• Four o’clock
• Passion flower
• Blackberries
• Bermuda grass – It tenaciously crawls into flower beds, but it is a better lower water choice for local lawns than most fescues.
• Wisteria
• Raspberries
• Borage
• Mint

Triple Crown Black berry. Blackberries will spread by tip layering anytime a cane touches the ground.

I also recommend checking invasive plants at California Invasive Plant Council before planting anything you might be unfamiliar with.  Some non-native plants are escaping from yards in the Southern California region and invading wild areas. Because of their aggressive growth, non-natives plants can degrade native habitat, cause flooding, or increase fire risks.

Foster Moms

Daisy with her babies

Cochin hens make great foster mothers.  My cochins don’t seem mind that they are not the biological mothers of the new chicks because they give them love and care as if they were their very own.

The chicks arrived at the post office early Thursday.  We brought them inside the house to our back bathroom, where I set up a brooder with a heat lamp ahead of time.

The shipping box moments within opening. They are all crowded together to survive the unusually cold weather Texas was having the day they shipped.

The temporary brooder box with water, food, and a heat lamp in the bathroom

They spent the remainder of the day eating and drinking.  I also made sure they were all doing well.  Late that night, I slipped my hand under each brooding hen, pulled out a few fake eggs they had been sitting on and quietly pushed  a few chicks under.  About 15 minutes later, I repeated the process.  I did this until all the chicks were under their new moms.  At first Daisy was a little flustered, but I stayed and observed that she really was just trying to get comfortable.  I came out at dawn the next morning to check on them, to find both mama hens carefully covering their foster babies on their nests.   Now, they call the babies when they have a tiny tidbit to show them to eat, they calm them with their cooing, alert them to freeze if they see the cat or other shadow that scares them, and regularly cover the chicks when they chirp that they are cold.  None of my cochins mamas have ever tried to peck at me when I handle the chicks, and the mothers show the chicks human hands are safe things to get treats out of.  They make the job of raising chicks so much more delightful and easy.

Daisy with a chick playing piggy back...they do this all day long

Lady Cluck, sitting at the edge of her open pen, contemplating if it is warm enough to take the kids out for a stroll in the sun.

Yup, warm enough! Time to take a dust bath.

The other ladies come check out the new babies while George enjoys the warm sun in the background.

Spring 2011: Garden Tours and Plant Sales

It is the time of year I start filling up my calendar with my favorite plant sales and tours.  Here is what I have collected and added for this year…

A photo taken on my phone from the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour, last year

 

Tomato Sale- over 100 varieties available

March 4th-6th, 2011
10 to 4
Fullerton City College Horticulture Department

http://horticulture.fullcoll.edu/TomatoListMain.shtml

3/17/11
Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale
Fullerton Arboretum
The annual Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale in 2011 will be the biggest sale of its kind yet! This sale grows in popularity each year and in 2011 more tomato and pepper varieties will be available than ever before.  Regular sales hours on March 18, 19 and 20 are 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. This event is free to the public, however voluntary donations at the front entrance are encouraged to help support the gardens and education programs.  A “Members Only” preview sale is scheduled for Thursday, March 17 from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Green Scene
Fullerton Arboretum
4/16-17/ 2011
Come bring your wagon to the Fullerton Arboretum for a spectacular, weekend long outdoor garden event. Green Scene is the spring event to find bulbs, succulents, organic vegetables, varietal plants, garden accessories and garden products.  *This year will be first time in 17 years I will miss this garden event. I have a conflict and I am devastated!

Long Beach City College
April 20-23rd, 2011
Long Beach City College Horticulture Department Annual Spring Sale (This date is based on the fact in past years the sale has always been the week before Easter Sunday.  The LBCC has not published the official public announcement yet.)

The 22nd Annual Southern California Spring Garden Show
South Coast Plaza
Over 75 specialty garden vendors offering exotic plants, unique garden accessories, and more.
April 30 and May 1, 2011

Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour
April 30-May 1, 2011
The Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour is a yearly, self-guided charity event held by the Mary Lou Heard Foundation, a California nonprofit organization dedicated to continuing Mary Lou’s life work.  Homeowners open their private gardens and yards to the public from Long Beach to Laguna.  They publish a list of the gardens usually by April.
May – Huntington Botanical Garden 
Annual Plant Sale 1151 Oxford Road 
San Marino, CA 91108 
(626) 405-2100 
publicinfo@huntington.org 
Free with museum admission.

Babies for the Broody

Between December and January, 4 of my 5 bantam cochins went broody.  “Broody” is the term used for chickens when females go through a hormonal change that causes them to want to sit on eggs and hatch them.  Typically they growl or fluff up their hackles to tell people and other chickens to leave them alone with their nest of eggs.  It normally takes 21 days for a hen to hatch eggs, so I waited that long to see how they would do.  First I gave Harley a few feed store Buff Orpington pullet chicks, then Penguin hatched a Trader Joe’s chick a week later, and meanwhile, Daisy and Lady Cluck staked out two of the nests for themselves.  Since the first two hens defended and integrated their babies so seamlessly in with the other hens, I decided we might as well get the remaining two broodies some chicks I would actually like to keep, instead of breeds that get big.  And of course that meant Cochins!

My friend and I shared a mail order shipment of day old chicks from Ideal Poultry.  I ordered 5 silver penciled bantam cochins, my friend ordered 2 Black Sex-Links and 2 Gold Sex-links, and we split an assortment of 16 other bantam cochins.  I was pretty worried when I heard how bad the weather forecast was in Texas and the Mid West, and even more worried we might have a box of dead chicks.  Thankfully, our box of chicks shipped out of Austin, instead of Dallas where the DWF airport closed on the day of shipment.  Two days later, the majority of chicks made it okay and were only cold, noisy, and hungry.  Sadly, 2 silver penciled, plus 2 buffs, a black, and 2 red did not make it in transit.  Ideal did a nice job packing them for the record cold they had, but I was surprised they sent NO extras.

I just wanted to share their pictures that I took today:

Black cochin bantam #1 1 week old: This one was set aside to go to another home, but ended up staying. (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

Black bantam cochin chick #2 at 1 week old. Its a frizzle. (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

Silver Penciled Bantam Cochin chick #1 at 1 week old (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

Silver Pencilled cochin #2 at 1 week old. (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

All white colored bantam cochin chick at 1 week old (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

This one came close to dying the day the shipment arrived. It didn't want to eat or drink and it kept getting pushed and trampled. Its wings were droopy, and I was sure it was a goner. I figured it would not hurt to be put in early with the broody hen that afternoon. The warm gentle care of a mama, all to its self for a half of day, made all the difference. It is now thriving. Although I originally thought it was a buff chick, it is getting white wing feathers. (update on 3/31/11: went to new home before a conclusive decision on gender)

Red bantam cochin (I think) at 1 week old (update on 3/31/11: Pullet)

Buff Bantam cochin chick at 1 week old. I have two exactly the same. I am not sure which is which, so one photo is enough for now. (update on 3/31/11: 1 Pullet and 1 Cockerel)

*The red and buff chicks in the shipment look almost identical, with the red just slightly darker all over.  I don’t really know if they are red or a dark buff for sure, and I will have to wait and watch them grow in feathers.  Some of the chicks at my friend’s house look like they might be frizzed because the tips of primaries on the wings are slightly curved.

Lady Cluck, is really enjoying all of her foster babies.  She adopted them all extremely easily, even the extras that another lady never came to pick up.   After waiting for pick up for 3 days in an heated brooder, they now have a mama too.

 

What do we do with the Roosters?

If you are a stanch supporter of PETA or a vegetarian, please skip this post.

Over the last two weeks, I have been asked multiple times what I do with the roosters that we raise when we have straight run bantam chicks.  My short answer usually is “I use craigslist.”   What happens to roosters can be a touchy subject with new comers to keeping backyard chickens, but it is something most folks that raise chicks, not just people like me that like to raise bantams chicks, will probably be faced with at one time or another.

When buying day old large breed pullet chicks, occasionally a few will still end up being roosters because professional sexers in the hatcheries are only about 90% to 95% accurate.   I had to find homes for two large fowl cockerels in the past few years that were sold as pullets, one was from a feed store and one we hatched as part of the trader joes grocery store egg project.  Had I not been through it with those two cockerels, I might have been more apprehensive about ordering straight run bantam chicks the first time.  Before owning chickens, I worried “What will I do with the roosters I can’t legally keep?”

The only way to avoid the chance of ever having a worry about what to do with an unwanted cockerel is to buy mature pullets.  The major down side of buying mature birds is running the risk of possibly bringing in outside diseases or parasites from someone else’s flock.  For people considering getting adult birds, I always recommend they verify that the owners practice good biosecurity and check out the facilities carefully, and then quarantine any newcomers for 30 days, just in case.  Another downside of buying adult chickens is sometimes birds raised in large flocks aren’t socialized to be gentle and friendly around kids.  For people just looking for an egg machine, purchasing pullets from someone that raises them for a profit might be the easiest option.  I like to make sure my birds are 100% organically raised as well as really calm and friendly around my active household.  I prefer to do it myself where outside disease is never brought in from other people’s adult chickens.  Therefore, we raise our own chicks straight from the hatchery, sell any extra pullets at about what it cost us to raise them, and then deal with the roosters when we have them.  I have never had a problem finding someone willing to take a cockerel, and usually I get multiple responses to my craigslist posts.

A 6 week old Easter Egger cockerel at my neighbors house. It was purchased along with her other chickens at a feed store that only orders pullets from the hatchery they use. He turned out to be a really pretty Partridge patterned fellow. He ended up at a farm outside of Barstow.

I do not wait until the cockerel is a problem or is disturbing neighbors.  As soon as I know it is a boy, I list it in the farm and garden section on craigslist so I will have enough time to find the right person to take them.  One batch of boys went to a H.S. Agricultural dept. along with a few of the girls I sold them.   Roosters also get listed at BYC or MeetUp all the time. Those sites don’t have a lot of folks locally that need roosters around the urban or suburban parts of Southern California, unless they are from breeder or show quality lines.

Most roosters around L.A. and Orange County either sell for between $5 to $10 (if the sellers are lucky,) and more typically go to someone for free.  I am very careful about not letting the cockerels go to folks that I think might use them for fighting, and with the bantam cochins, it has not been much of an issue.

I have kept chickens long enough to understand that it is the lot in life of most roosters to end up on the table at some point, and I am okay with that.  While they are alive, they are happy and well cared for at my house.  Our roosters will have lived significantly better than the majority of chickens purchased for meat in the grocery store or restaurants, or left unsold by hatcheries.  I am not a vegetarian, although I don’t eat a lot of meat.  I am not bothered if someone else is willing to take the time to humanely prepare a rooster for a chicken dinner for their family.

I have a next door neighbor that has told me, more than once, if one day I have a rooster that I can’t find a home for, she would love to have a free organic fryer.  She grew up on a farm in rural Mexico where they always ate their extra roosters, and she has offered to teach me how to humanely dispatch and dress them.  Since I hope to instill an appreciation in my children where food comes from, the labor, the life, and not to waste it, I might take her up on her offer one of these years.

For anyone curious about what happens to the all the cockerel chicks left behind at the hatcheries because of all the pullet only orders, it really depends on the hatchery and the breed of chicken.

• “Packing Peanuts.”  They are added to shipments of purchased chicks when there are too few to survive without more shared body heat.  I like this one because I hear many rural folks keep and grow out the packing peanuts to maturity.  Usually at least one or two end up being layers, not roosters.
• Dog or Cat food.  Males are used at a day old for pet food.  I am sorry, I know this sounds gruesome.  But most chickens are used for food.  These chickens were just used for pet food at day old instead of people food at 7 weeks.  This is typically generally done by the hatcheries that raise chicks for the commercial egg industry ( suppliers of grocery store eggs.)
• “Fryer Specials.”  Heavy Breed males are sold at steep discounts to small farms.
• Light breeds are sold for food for reptiles and zoos.
• McMurray puts one “Free exotic Chick” in every order of chicks.  People on BYC report they usually do get rare breeds, but always cockerels.

Bottom Line:  Roosters are almost always used for food at some point in their lives by someone.  A rooster that gets to be in charge of his own flock of hens, probably one day will be displaced by a younger stronger rooster in an awful fight or by the owner needing a more virile stud for his hens.  It is only the rare rooster that lives to old age.

Poisonous Plants

I waded through a lot of the different Poisonous Plant lists when I first got a baby tortoise from a friend in 2004, and then again when I got chickens.  Some of the lists were misleading by making no distinctions between a toxic plant that causes rashes and one that will kill my pets if they eat it.

A view of the backyard in mid December, 2010. Pittosporum, considered a major toxic poisonous plant, is to the left of the rain barrel. The chickens ignore it as a food plant but love it for the shade and safe hiding place.

Through my research, I realized I actually grew a large number of plants in my yard that are considered toxic, but I also learned there are varying degrees of toxicity in plants.  My garden would be an all you can eat buffet for the chickens if I only cultivated stuff that was good for them to eat.   Most of the toxic offenders in my backyard generally cause dermatitis or gastric problems (minor toxicity,) but I do have a handful of plants that have major toxicity.  My chickens leave them alone, and if they have taken a nibble over the years, they never bothered them again.  Warning: Hungry chickens will eventually eat almost any plants if there is nothing else green to forage around or no other good food source, even major toxic plants!

Here is a short simple list of major toxic commonly grown plants found in yards around Southern California.  Most of these could cause serious illness or death to the chickens, the dog, or me if I ate them.  It is NOT a complete list of everything toxic planted around SoCal yards, just the more popular stuff.

• Apple (just the seeds)
• Azalea
• Black Locust (seeds)
• Brugmansia sanguinea (Angel’s Trumpet)
• Castor Bean
• Cherry (just the seeds/ pits)
• Chinese lantern
• Coral tree
• Daphne
• Datura stramonium (Jimson Weed)
• Delphinium
• English Yew
• Foxglove
• Ground cherry
• Heather
• Heliotrope
• Hydrangea
• Lantana
• Larkspur
• Loquat (just the seeds)
• Morning Glory (seeds)
• Nectarine (just the seeds/ pits) or any stone fruit pits in the Prunus genus
• Nicotiana glauca (Tree Tobacco)
• Oleander
• pear (just the seeds)/ seeds from the pyrus genus
• Peach (just the seeds/ pits)
• pittosporum
• Plum  (just the seeds/ pits)
• Star-of-Bethelehem
• Vinca

I finally decided to worry only about the really worst offenders that are deadly.  I have kept a watchful eye, and noticed my animals leave all the toxic stuff alone that we grow, and instead they stick to other stuff around the yard, but that might not be the case for everyone’s pets or chickens.

U.C. Agricultural and Natural Resources keeps a good data base of toxic plants and their levels of toxicity. There are more detailed lists and explanations of the different types of toxicity in plants.

Mama hen with a baby chick

My Partridge Cochin with one of her foster chicks peeking out from mama's fluffy feathers.

I love this photo and had to share.

One of the best things about keeping Cochins is they really enjoy being mothers.  When they are broody, they will easily accept foster chicks or will hatch fertile eggs.  Harley adopted a few feed store Buff Orpingtons and Penguin sat on 3 Trader Joes eggs and hatched out a leghorn pullet.   The mothers insured the babies were safely integrated into the flock and protected them.    I am a softy for chicks and love having some around all the time; Cochins give me an excuse to have chicks more than just once every year or two.   Anytime one goes broody, I will probably consider letting them have some baby chicks if the timing works for our family.  The only hard part of letting the hens raise chicks is I prefer to keep only 5 or 6 adults; picking my favorite hens or downsizing is always hard.

Marionnette Puppets – Big Fluffy Birds

Marionnette hanging on a prop the girls made for the parade

My girl scout junior troop was in a Christmas Parade this year.  The theme we had to work with was Christmas Around the World. After some extensive research we decided to represent France, since we had berets from the Cultural Fair.  One tradition we kept reading about was the popularity of puppets and puppet shows for Christmas.

Completed String Puppets all lined up and ready for the Christmas parade. Each girl choose the color to make her own bird puppet.

We settled on walking with puppets, but when we priced out how much large ones would cost the troop, it was more than our budget could handle.  That meant we had to make them ourselves.  My troop has some very artistic girls that love to craft, so I thought they would be up for the challenge.  I came up with this design after examining a store bought furry puppet my husband purchased many years ago.  From start to finish I can make one of these myself in about 30 minutes.  However, when I taught my Junior troop girls, 4th graders, it took more than 1 hour to do everything but the wiring, which I did for them due to the difficultly of balancing it all out.  Our sister troop of Cadettes, 7th graders, were able to do the entire project, but it took a little more than 2 hours to complete each one.

Marionnette String Puppet - White Bird

Needed Materials:

• 1 fluffy Turkey Feather Boa – approximately 5 feet in lenghth
• 1 Maribu Boa – approximately 5 feet in lenghth
• 1/2  bag of Florist u shaped pins/ fasteners
• 2 Extra Large Googly eyes
• 1/2 sheet of yellow Craft foam
• 3 styrofoam balls – 3 or 4 inch diameter
• 2 washers – about the size of a quarter in diameter.
• 5 small Hot glue sticks or 2 large sticks
• Hot glue gun
• Heavy duty fishing line (40 or 50lb) appoximately 10 feet or a little more.
• 2 thin flat wooden pieces (can substitute wooden rulers or paint stir sticks.)
• 4 clips that can fasten on to the wooden pieces.

Some of the materials needed to make the string puppet

To assemble:

1. cut 2 shapes out to form the beak, and form into a cone.
2. Glue beak on ball #1
3. Hot glue Turkey feather Boa around the beak and ball where they meet.
4. Continue to cover ball with feather boa
5. Pin part of boa to fasten it as neck meeting the head
6. Leave 10 inches between ball #1 and and Ball #2, then glue and pin bottom of “neck” to ball #2
7. glue remaining boa around ball #2
8. cut maribu boa in 4 equal pieces
9. glue and pin two maribu pieces for legs on either side of ball #2
10. cut remaining ball #3 in two halves
11. glue 1 piece of maribu on each half of ball #3
12. pin and glue each maribu leg to back side maribu covered ball feet
13. glue washer on bottom of feet
14. glue two wooden pieces in a cross shape like a small letter “t”
15. attach the clips to each end of the wooden “t”
16. attach 1 piece of fishing line to each clip
17. tie other end of each piece of fishing line to a florist pin
18. insert and glue pins in 4 points on the puppet: one centered on the top of each foot, one in head, one in tail.

The clips that connect the strings to the T are to make it a quick release to fix any tangles in the String Puppet

Broken Trash Can becomes a Compost Bin

Like most avid gardeners, I love to compost.  Along with improving home energy efficiency,  practicing water conservation, and reducing the amount of meat the family eats, home composting is one of the most environmentally beneficial activities we can do here.  Instead of buying bagged soil amendments, I create my own endless supply.

I have tried using many kinds of compost bins and piles over the last 15 years.  I had an expensive black plastic bin that came apart in sections that I used for a decade, I have created piles, and have used chicken wire in a cylinder.  However, my current bin is by far my favorite: it is the broken trash can I turned into a compost bin.  I asked the trash man one day as he was changing out a broken trash can for neighbor what the city does with the municipal trash cans that they haul away.  He said they sit around on the city’s lot.  After talking to him for a little bit about the design I saw at Make Magazine, he gave me one to re-purpose into a compost bin.  It had a crack in the wheel, but other than that, it was in almost new condition and didn’t even smell like a trash can.

I drilled one inch holes all over it.  Then I cut an access door in the front toward the bottom with my saws all.   I close the panel up with a bungie cord when I am not scooping out compost.

To use, I just keep adding material to the top, turn, add water as needed, and eventually it comes out the bottom.  I like to turn it with a spading fork every few days or when I add material.  When I am actively caring for the pile and not adding much extra, it makes finished compost in about 4 to 6 weeks.  It reaches 150 to 160 degrees with proper care.  I enjoy seeing the steam coming off the top and testing the temp with my thermometer.  When I am lazy, the compost takes about 3 months.  It just sits next to my city trash cans in my side yard.  Best of all, it fits perfectly next to my city trash and recycling cans, doesn’t have as big a foot print as some of the others, and it is tidy in comparison.

I open the flap on the bottom and scoop out small or large amounts.

It is full of red wigglers year round that multiple readily. In the warm months of the year, I get beneficial Black Soldier Fly larvae in it as well.

How to Hard Boil Really Fresh Eggs

For the last two years we have only been hard boiling our oldest eggs for deviled eggs or pickled eggs.  I would hide a carton in the back of the fridge and wait a few weeks before making a new batch of pickled eggs.  Lots of sources say old eggs are necessary to get perfectly peeled eggs, and never to use fresh eggs.    In addition, I have read all sorts of different ways and times to cook them depending on size and to avoid discolored gray yokes.  NOT ANYMORE!  90% of the eggs I have cooked using the following technique listed below have peeled cleanly and easily, and the absolute best part is the eggs can be of different sizes in the same batch and either really, really fresh or not.    The details can be found in a thread at www.backyardchickens.com with lots of testimonials to its success.  Here is a link to the thread. I was very skeptical until I tried it myself, but it works beautifully, even with our small 1.3 0z bantam eggs.

Instructions:

• Bring Water to a rolling boil
• Gently lower each egg into the boiling water ( I use a spaghetti fork)
• Boil for 14 minutes!
• Remove and quickly chill in an ice bath
• Once cool, peel and enjoy

Joe Josts Spicy Pickled Eggs

A local Long Beach watering hole, Joe Josts, claims to have sold 6,000,000 Spicy Pickled eggs since 1934.  My husband has eaten his fair share of that number.  He loves to cook and this was the first thing he said he was making when we got chickens.  We like spicy pickle eggs so much, that rather than immediately start eating the Bantams’ eggs when they started laying, I set the eggs aside to save for pickled eggs.  Bantam eggs are the perfect bite size hard boiled egg.

Homemade Spicy Pickled Eggs

Awhile back this was a version of Joe Josts egg Recipe published in the Long Beach Press Telegram Newspaper. ***I have also heard this first recipe is what Joe Jost’s shared with the paper, but in reality their secret isn’t that complicated.  They don’t actually use all the pickling spices, etc.

Joe Jost’s Picked Eggs Recipe***

* 8 eggs, hard-cooked, peeled & still warm
* 1 jar (12 oz.) yellow chile peppers
* 2 Tbsp pickling spice
* 1 c wine vinegar
* 1-1/2 scant cups water
* 1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp salt

Instructions:
Mix all ingredients in glass container, adding eggs last while they are still warm. Don’t refrigerate. Keep in sealed jar for 2 days. The marinade may be used again several times. Use within 2 weeks.  Yield 8 servings.*

_________________________________

***Alternate Recipe – and the way we do it at Hanbury House

Joe Josts Pickled Eggs

* 8 eggs, hard-cooked, peeled & still warm
* 1 jar (12 oz.) yellow chile peppers

Instructions:
Mix ingredients in glass container, adding eggs last while they are still warm. Don’t refrigerate. Keep in sealed jar for 2 days. The marinade may be used again several times. Use within 2 weeks.   Yield 8 servings.*

To Serve:
Joe Jost’s serves their yellow picked eggs over a bed of pretzels with a few of the chile peppers to garnish, add a couple of dashes of pepper on top of it all, and serve with beer.  They used to serve pickled eggs typically with an ice-cold Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap.  But just about 2 years ago, they switched to Busch Beer; it was a big local controversy.  My husband serves them with PBR.

They just use MEZETTA brand peppers and the brine the peppers are in.  That is it!  It already has the spices you need to pickle the eggs in the brine and this method duplicates the Joe Josts flavor.

Unfortunately, a small jar of the mezetta peppers you buy in the grocery store doesn’t have enough brine for a small homemade sized batch.  Once you reuse the brine and add a second jar of chile peppers to the egg jar, you will have enough brine.  We get around this one of two ways.  1. by opening a second jar of peppers, eating the peppers, and putting the brine in the egg jar with the full jar of Mazetta peppers and eggs. or 2.  Add some vinegar – enough to cover everything.  Then let it set an extra 2 days before serving the eggs.

Do not use a container with a metal lid.  The acidity will corrode the lid and ruin the eggs before the end of the 2 weeks.  After two weeks the eggs get rubbery, but they usually don’t last that long around here.

Chicken Proofing My Garden

The chickens get access to the majority of my backyard for free ranging, but now a days you would not realize it just glancing around the yard.  The first few months with chickens free ranging, the yard didn’t look as good as it did in the years before chickens.  With a few months of all day free ranging, there was poop on the concrete, plants uprooted or heavily munched, and holes in the lawn. Over time I have learned and figured out strategies for keeping the mess and damage down. Now, two years later, it looks lush again, clean, and the grass is the greenest it has ever been.  This was not achieved through permanently incarcerating that free range group of chickens.  By implementing a few changes in my planting techniques, using fencing, choosing better plants, reducing the number of chickens, and understanding what chickens like, my yard returned to a pretty garden again.

Fencing

I keep my veggie garden and other yummy plants fenced off from the area the chickens get to occasionally roam. The fence is picket style and they don’t like to hop on top of the pointy shaped boards.

Joey longingly looking into the veggie garden from outside the fence

Pet fencing used to protect a small newly planted area from the chickens 

I do allow the chickens access to vegetable garden either in their pen (a dog exercise pen with bird netting) or when I am able to supervise.  At the end of the growing season, I allow them into the veggie garden to help “clean up.”

Plant Protection

Since getting chickens, I have been using chicken wire around the base of the root zones of plants when I first put them in the ground. I lay it on the ground with any sharp parts trimmed off or poked in the ground. Then I put landscape staples or clothes hanger pieces through it to hold it in place and cover with mulch. The chickens avoid scratching over it, but are able to walk on it. This prevents the chickens from digging the plants out before the plants are firmly rooted in the ground.  Here is a photo of some of one my chicken proof planting methods.

Chicken Wire protection for a new plant 

I have learned to keep a few large areas open for digging and dust bathing so the chickens don’t make new holes in the lawn or at the base of a favorite plant for the same purpose.

I love this weird photo of Vader. It looks like she is a scary headless chicken. In reality, she dug her self the perfect dust bathing hole in the middle of the lawn. 

Less Time to Damage

With our second flock, I have limited the amount of time they get each day to free range, and some days I don’t let them out at all.  They only come out when I have time to supervise. I do not want them to get into the habit of expecting to be out all day long like our other flock did.  Also, bantams are a nice size treat for hawks so I am more careful with them.

Choose Wisely

I keep a list of my plants the chickens leave alone here at my blog and at BYC.  I also check Sunset Western Garden book before purchasing new things to see if they are “deer proof.”  Most deer proof plants are also chicken proof.  Large shrubs and fruit trees seem to work especially well with chickens, but with a little extra care, smaller stuff can work too.

Small Flock

6 adult LF hens was more than my yard could sustain.  When we reduced the flock to 4 hens, it made a big difference and we still had plenty of eggs for our family.  My bantams do even less damage than the large breeds did. 

Chicken Poop

To minimize the droppings on the concrete, I use the same portable pet fencing to temporarily block off the areas I want to keep them off.  I found two of them on craigslist for about $10 each, and the other two were given to me.

Portable dog fencing enclosure to temporarily contain chickens 

Soy Candles

I was frustrated not finding Advent Candles this year. I ended up dipping white candles in colored wax to achieve my desired look.  It was easier than I thought because I was given some candle making supplies by a neighbor who had cleaned out a storage unit.  It got me thinking, and I decided to try my hand at making soy candles for a few gifts.  This was the first time I made candles from scratch.

My first try at making candles from scratch. 3.7 oz. Lavendar Soy Wax Candles

Supplies Needed:

• Soy Wax
• Double Boiler
• Hot Plate or low flame on stove
• Wicks
• Small Glass Jars
• Fragrance
• Candle Dye

Cooped up in the City

Cochins in our postage stamp side city backyard.

I would love to one day have a hobby farm, but where our home is located, we are probably in the best place we could be for our family based on our neighbors and the convenience to many things in walking or biking distance.  According to a website called www.walkscore.com our exact address scores an 83, which is not far behind dense downtown places like New York City and San Francisco.  We will continue to make the best of it right here, growing whatever I can in the limited yard space we have.

We can’t legally keep most livestock on our tiny lot, but we can keep chickens.  Chickens are integral part of Permaculture in our small yard.  Here are the most common reasons people like us want chickens here an urban or suburban backyard:

• Easy and inexpensive to maintain after the initial coop setup. (coops cost on average $200 to $2000 depending on what you want.)  I built our coop from mainly recycled materials.
• Locally produced source of protein.
• Fresh, great tasting, organic eggs (we feed certified organic chicken feed to ours.)
• Chemical Free Weed and Bug Control.
• Manufacture of fertilizer and compost additive.
• Chickens can be fun, friendly pets with personality if you hand raise them.
• Confidence knowing they are cared for in a humane manner, rather than in a battery cage or fed a poor diet.
• If they free range and have a variety of foods, the eggs are far more nutritious than a conventional factory farmed egg.  See Mother Earth News.
• They make less mess and noise than the average dog.  Unlike a dog, chickens don’t make noise at 2:30 AM, unless you have an illegal rooster.
• Scratching in the mulch (micro tilling) and leaving behind droppings, they improve the quality of our soil.

Cochins at 24 1/2 weeks

It was a Happy Thanksgiving this year…two of the Cochins started laying eggs the day before, at 22 weeks and 2 days old.  The partridge bantam cochin, Harlequin, and Penguin, the Black Bantam Cochin, both laid their first eggs that day and have been laying steady ever since.  As of today, we are up to 29 eggs.  The eggs were 1.0 oz and 1.1 oz.  In the 2 1/2 weeks they have been laying, the eggs have increased to 1.3 oz, and now Lady Cluck, the other Black cochin, started laying three days ago.  Neither of the Buff cochins are laying yet, but their combs just started turning vibrant red so it should be any day now.  They are gentle, quiet (except when they lay,) outgoing and friendly, and don’t mind staying in the coop and run when I don’t have time to be out in the yard with them.  I am officially in love with the bantam Cochin breed, and now with eggs, they seem like the perfect city chickens.

The little backyard flock foraging with George on the look out

Greasy Chicken, Buff Bantam Cochin at 23 weeks old

Penguin, Black Bantam Cochin at 23 weeks old (George, the dog, isn't supervising the flock very well)

Lady Cluck, Black Bantam Cochin Pullet 23 weeks old

Daisy, Buff Bantam Cochin 23 weeks old

Harlequin or "Harley" as the kids call her, our Partridge Bantam Cochin Pullet at 23 weeks old

Water Storage

I love to repurpose things whenever possible.  My latest projects involve Greek Olive Oil Barrels.

Greek Olive Oil food grade Barrel for water storage - Before clean up and project alterations

Project 1: Drinking Water Storage.

When we put in the tankless/ on demand water heater, one major concern was we would no longer have a tank water heater for an Emergency Water source in case of disaster like an earthquake.  We needed to find a green alternative.  I hunted around for a food grade barrel that could be utilized for the purpose.  Lots of articles online made it seem like companies just discard these or  give them away.  Not anymore; there is a whole repurposing and recycling community for them now.  The resale prices range from $20 to $50, and some business even charge $80 a drum.  After a lot of searching for the right type of barrel that could be opened easily, thoroughly scrubbed with soap and water, and plumbed to accommodate a hose bib at the bottom, I came across olive oil 55 gallon drums in a pretty terracotta color.  I was delighted the place was only asking $20 each, especially after seeing much higher prices online and calling around.

Everyone keeps asking me why I wanted a hose bib on the drum.  I would need to change over the water to keep it fresh every 3 to 6 months.  I am a bit a weakling and dumping the barrel would be difficult since a full drum probably weighs 300 pounds.  I didn’t want to do the siphoning thing if there was a easier alternative.  By putting a hose bib on it, I could empty and divert the water easily to the garden by just attaching a hose and opening the valve.   The 2 drums are raised up on cinder blocks to help gravity empty the water when the time comes.  One bonus, the terracotta color is not too distracting in the garden.

Project 2:  Since I had to drive 45 minutes away to get one barrel and they were only $20 each, I decided I might as well get as many as would fit in the car, and it turns out that was 3.  Two are now used to hold our emergency water.  I decided the third could easily be turned into a rain barrel even though it doesn’t rain often enough to make an impact on our water bill.  I did the same plumbing of a bib at the bottom, but I also added screening to the underside of the lid to allow the water to pour in without leaves going along with the water and to keep mosquitoes out.   The downside of this project is now I want to expand the amount of gutters we have on the house to get as much water collected as possible.

A New Farmers’ Market

Some produce I can’t grow because I either don’t have enough space in our little backyard (like artichoke,) enough heat or chilling, or they are too difficult for me to grow organically without a lot of effort.  Therefore, farmers’ markets are the answer.  In addition to buying the things I don’t grow, I enjoy attending farmers markets to sample new or unusual varieties of fruits and vegetables.

Recently, I saw a sign posted for a new Farmer’s Market that will be starting  locally.

Beginning Nov. 14th, 2010
Old MacDonald Farmer’s Market
Sundays, 8:30 – 1:30
5000 E. Spring St. Long Beach  (Corner of Spring and Clark, one block away from the 405 fwy/ Lakewood Blvd near the Long Beach Airport)

http://www.oldmcdonaldsfarmersmarkets.com/photo_gallery.html

Update Nov. 15, 2010:  I attended the opening day with my family and was delighted to see almost 100 venders, booths, and lots of activities for families with kids.  There was a wide selection of citrus, summer and winter vegetables, grapes, persimmons, apples, asian pears, nuts, free range eggs, fresh sustainable oysters, chicken, and more.  The activities for kids that day included a girl scout booth, YMCA, pony rides, giant hamster ball, video game truck, and balloon animals.  There was also live music, craft booths, dessert booths, bakers, funnel cake, handmade soy candles and soap, and a half dozen food booths with tables and grass to sit at.  This was the opening weekend, so there was probably a little extra, but we will be back for more produce in the future.

A New Farmer’s Market at Spring and Clark, Long Beach Press Telegram Nov. 15, 2010

The  other local Greater Long Beach farmers markets are as follows:
Cerritos Town Center
Saturdays     8AM – 12Noon
Park Plaza Drive & Park Plaza West, just north of the Performing Arts Center.  My Review: There is always an excellent selection of Asian vegetables.  The aisles are wide and parking is easy, as well as close to the 91 frwy and Bloomfield.  Just remember to have your own canvas bags; none of the vendors have plastic bags.  There are usually at least 2 or 3 organic vendors.  The prices are competitive at most of the vendors.  Booths usually include at chicken eggs, quail eggs, duck eggs for balut, nuts, flowers, spouts, mushroom, exotic things like dragon fruit and sapote, nuts, landscape and succulent plants, seasonal fruits and vegetables, bakery products, and a half dozen prepared food vendors.  Until recently, this is my favorite farmers market.

Southeast Long Beach – the Marina
Sundays     9AM – 2PM
This market is held on the parking lot of the Alamitos Bay Marina, on E. Marina Dr  south of E. 2nd St, just west of Pacific Coast Hwy.  My review: I don’t like  this one because the narrow aisle is too crowded to comfortably stroll down, making it hard to walk with my kids without a good hold on them to avoid getting separated.  Parking and driving access is always a problem unless I get there early when it opens.  I avoid this farmer’s market if at all possible unless I absolutely can’t get to a different one.  Some of the vendors have premium prices.
Local Harvest Farmers Market
Marine Stadium
Appian Way and Nieto
Long Beach, CA 90803
Wednesday 3-7

Downtown Long Beach
Fridays    10AM – 4PM
The City Place.  North Waite Ct & E. 5th St, and on a small lot next to a parking structure, a block east of Pine Ave.  I have not attended this one in more than 2 years since regularly attending other markets listed here.  Therefore, I can’t give it a current review.

Uptown Long Beach – Bixby Knolls,
Thursdays     3PM – 6:30PM
Atlantic Ave & E. 46th St  (between Del Amo Blvd. and San Antonio Dr)

Long Beach Sunday Market, the farmers market at Longfellow School, 3800 Olive Avenue, in the Bixby area of town, just recently announced at the beginning of October, 2010, that they will be closing down.

There is another new farmers market currently in development, a Monday Market, in Hawaiian Gardens, West of the 605 Freeway on the south side of Carson Street across the street from the Hawaiian Gardens Casino.  However, the hours and opening date of this market have not been advertised so far.

There are other farmer’s markets I like, but they aren’t as conveniently located to us.  Two of them are the Wednesday Fullerton Farmer’s Market by the DMV on Valencia and Euclid in Fullerton and the Torrance Farmer’s Market on Crenshaw near the Fire Station on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Long Awaited Kiwis

I planted the male and Vincent (female) kiwi vines in January of 2004, and we have been patiently waiting for our first fruits.  George, the dog, accidentally root pruned the female vine a little more than two years ago and we have been getting tons of female flowers on it ever since.  I was starting to think the male would never flower and thus pollinate the female.  However, the male did end up flowering this year, but I only found two male flowers, and it was a little later than the Vincent (female.)  After 6 years of waiting, we finally picked our first crop of Vincent Kiwi!  It was a tiny crop of just 15 kiwi fruits, but the first ones we have tried are the best kiwis I have ever tasted.  My daughter and I were doing the happy dance on Sunday when we tasted it.  The fruit is about the size of an extra large egg and the flavor is traditional kiwi but stronger and very aromatic.

two Vincent Kiwi compared to a extra large brown egg

After sharing a few with the neighbors, here is what we got this year.

Cochin Pullets at 16 weeks

Below are the latest pictures of our five bantam Cochins.  The pullets turned 16 weeks on Monday.   The kids have managed to name them all, even though my husband explicitly told them not to: Penguin, Lady Cluck, Daisy, Harly-quin, and Greasy Chicken.  My daughter wants to change Greasy Chicken to Bockachelli, but my son is standing his ground with Greasy Chicken because of her odd looking feathers.  In general, they are very gentle, outgoing, pretty quiet (unless they see me walk past the coop,) and content to stay in the run most of the day.  I could not be happier with them, but they have yet to start laying.

From left to right: Lady Cluck (black Cochin,) Greasy Chicken and Daisy (2 buff Cochins)

Fluffy back sides of the buff and black Cochins: Greasy Chicken, Daisy, Lady Cluck, and Penguin

The whole flock of Bantams

Penguin, black bantam cochin pullet; she is still the kids favorite.

Hot Water

What do you buy an old fashioned, practical girl for her birthday? Not diamonds, clothes, or furs; a tankless hot water heater!  According to my husband, it was my birthday present this year since it was completed the night before my birthday.  He did get me a few other things, but this was best.  I will no longer be stuck with tepid or cold water since I am last in line on school days for a morning shower.

Noritz tankless water heater installed outside our kitchen

We had a number of reasons why we chose to replace the old tank water heater with a tankless unit.  Primarily, our house is really small and every square foot matters.  It freed up 9 sq. ft inside our back bathroom readying it for a second shower and small redo.  If we wanted to add that square footage on to the house, it would cost us approximately $150 a square foot, thus the new water heater adds a total value of $1350 to our house by freeing up that interior space.  We relocated it to the driveway side of the house not far from our fixtures.  The new water heater is relatively small in comparison to a traditional storage tank water heater, only sticking out about 8 inches from the wall.  The other main reason we chose tankless is it much more efficient than its predecessor. The model we chose is energy star rated at 83% efficient.  We will use less natural gas by only heating the water as needed and none when we are away.  By locating it near the main water fixtures, there is little wait time for the hot water.

We considered a number of different manufacturers and types; plus, we did a lot of research on the pros and cons of tankless water heaters over the last couple of years.  We felt our small home and lifestyle were a good fit for one.  After learning everything we could about models from Bosch, Eternal, Navien, Noritz, Paloma, Rheem, Rinnai, and Takagi, we settled on one from Noritz.  We were very interested in ones made by Navien and Eternal that would have been more efficient due to the fact they were condensing water heaters. However, neither would have been good candidates for our outdoor location.  Theoretically, they could have gone outside, but they aren’t designed with it in mind.  Both would have had an unattractive appearance due to a strange exhaust configuration they needed outdoors, like giant metal bunny ears, and no skirt to cover the pipes.  It would have been ugly in a very high traffic visible part of our yard.  I preferred the streamlined built in exhaust and skirt of the Nortiz.  We talked about putting one of the condensing ones in the attic, but servicing would have been a challenge and if any potential problems arose, it could cause significantly more damage to the house than an outdoor unit.  Therefore, the Noritz was the best choice for our home.  With Navien and Eternal, we also could not justify the additional $1000 cost for the small % increase in efficency we would get out of them.  Maybe over time, the technology will come down in price.

The 28 year old water heater about to fall apart.

The tankless is working really well so far since it is only about 8 feet away from most of our fixtures.  We read about concerns with high efficiency washers not working well with tankless water heaters.  After doing some research, most of the complaints were against LG washers which will fill a load of laundry in spurts and tumbles.  Fortunately, the Samsung front load washer we have doesn’t fill that way, instead filling consistently for about a minute and getting plenty of hot water (not that I wash clothes all that often in hot.)   My only remaining concern now is I need to find a spot in the garden for water storage for the family in case of emergency.

Green Fruit Beetle Season

Every year from late July to early August, I often hear an approaching green fig beetle before I see it.  It sounds like a Valley Carpenter bee, an insect I really like, so I usually pause and look around, but more often than not this time of year, the noise is a fruit beetle on the hunt for fruit or a nesting spot.

As a child, I enjoyed catching these beetles, which very likely was the beginning of my fascination with insects. They seem to aimlessly fly around, bumping into buildings, garden structures, and even people,  making the beetles appear to be either blind or stupid.  They are actually trying to locate garden fruit not by sight, but from the odorless gas emitted by the ripening fruit.

a Green Fruit Beetle on one of our grape arbors

Our yard is a popular spot for the adult green fruit beetles because there are lots of available food sources this time of year with the grapes, peaches, and nectarines. In addition, the mulch and compost make ideal nesting spots for them to lay their eggs. I should be grossed out by the grubs in the compost, but the chickens relish the larvae, and it means more free protein rich snacks for the chickens next spring. The adult fruit beetle is a large green and tan metallic beetle (1.25 inch long) with a scarab shape, just like in the Egyptian artwork of other dung beetles and scarabs. The larval stage is a C-shaped, white grub, that feeds on decaying organic material in the soil, piles of manure, compost, or lawn clippings left in a pile.
I have tried for years to figure out exactly what our pretty green beetles are because local gardeners call them by so many different names, and I enjoy taxonomy of plants and animals.  I have heard some folks mistakenly call them Japanese beetles (which is a completely different beetle, Popillia japonica, and is generally an east coast pest that feeds on lawns in the larval stage.  According to U.C. Davis, these shiny green beetles are commonly called Green Fruit Beetles or Fig Beetles/ Figeater Beetles.
There is much debate in the scientific community about the exact species we have locally. It is definitely in the Genus Cotinis, but whether or not it should be called coninis texana or cotinis mutabilis, is where the debate remains.   Genus Cotinis – BugGuide.Net The adults are definitely a pest insect in the garden, despite the larvae being a yummy chicken treat.  The grubs are actually beneficial in a compost pile helping to break down the organic matter, but they are usually discouraged by gardeners because of their awful looking appearance and the damage caused by the fruit eating adults.
Adult beetles eat soft fruit such as tomatoes, grapes, peaches, nectarines, plums, figs, and apricots, causing substantial damage in some cases.

Trying to completely control them is pretty futile, but there are a few organic management techniques to deal with them. The adult beetles will find our garden fruit from a distance by flying in, even if I eradicate every grub in our yard.  There are a number of homemade traps  like a sweet juice (try grape or peach) or molasses in container with a cone shaped entrance.  It will trap and drown the beetles.  Harvest fruit early and keep fallen fruit cleaned up.  For the grubs, some of the methods include: turning compost frequently to heat it up, flood it for a few days (wasteful in this drought), or open the compost to the chickens to go through.  The chickens will pick out every last one. If you don’t have chickens, pick them out by hand when turning the pile, drop them into soapy water to drown or squish and put back in compost.  Hey, I know it is gross, but it’s is better than spraying uselessly with poisonous chemicals!

Beware of Brown Widow Spiders

Generally, I really like insects, and very few bugs make me squeamish, but this one really freaks me out: the Brown Widow (latrodectus geometricus.)  I was showing someone an egg sack to look out for today, and figured I could post about the spider since they are now a regular occurrence in the garden. I didn’t enjoy taking the photos at all.

Brown Widow spiders have moved into Southern California from Florida, where it was introduced from the tropics.    In recent years, reports of this spider have been widespread throughout Florida, coastal areas of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and Southern California. We have been finding them in Long Beach since about 2007.   I did some research after a neighbor brought me one in a jar that year, and I originally thought it was just a juvenile black widow spider.  Around that time was when we also started to notice the new unusual egg sacks, too.

Around our neighborhood, they are found on the undersides of the trash can lip where we would normally grab to move the can, children’s plastic play equipment, wagons, patio furniture, around the bbq, plus any other places that the black widow likes, like corners or crevices.  They make messy cobwebs.  I have seen the chickens eat these spiders! Unfortunately, most of the brown widow spiders are in places the chickens have a hard time reaching into.  Instead I keep an old pool cue handy near the trash cans, and I try to regularly tip things over and squish the brown widows and their egg sacks.  I usually don’t like to kill spiders because they are beneficial, but these guys seem less shy than black widows when disturbed.  Brown Widows are more poisonous than black widows from what I have learned, but they inject less poison in their bite.  I find it necessary to kill these when I find them.

Brown widow spiders can range in color from light tan, dark brown, or almost black.  They may have different markings such as white, black

Brown Widow Egg Sack under the trash can lip , yellow, brown and even orange on the back of their abdomen. The ones I find around here, the legs are often striped or banded. The hourglass or other marking on the underside of the abdomen can vary from yellow, orange, or red. They have the shiny “plasticy” look that black widows have and the same shape. However, the egg sacks are very different. They look like liquid amber seed pods, spiky and prickly in beige. They often have more than one egg sack.

Sorry, I don’t have any great pictures of the abdomen markings. As soon as they move around, I freak out and squish them rather than try to turn them over for a better shot.  For good photos of the underside, do a google search or go to my favorite bug site:  What’s that Bug for a brown widow belly picture.  Here is another excellent source for more info on Brown Widows and other invasive insects: UCR Center for Invasive Species Research