Eat The Yard

Egg salad and fried egg sandwiches, brownies, several batches of chocolate chip cookies, and lots of pancakes: Since our chickens started laying on June 28, we have collected 37 eggs — and for the last 11 days straight we’ve gotten at least two each day. It took a few weeks of fits and starts for [...]

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I have tried many things to keep safe this latest round of edibles, so it’s hard to say which of the many worked best, which was the bellwether of our current good fortune.  Likely, our flourishing garden results from a confluence that would be hard to parse. Insects have ceased to be a serious threat, [...]

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Despite industrial agriculture’s co-opting and subsequent diminishing of the descriptor “free range”, it is rewarding to be able to describe our chickens as such and mean it.  They aren’t limited to a euphemistic “access to the outdoors” — typically a meager chicken run meeting the minimum USDA standard and meant to dupe consumers.  Our pullets [...]

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With just two weeks to go before, by most measures, the egg laying should commence, our four chickens have become decidedly anti-nesting in their dispositions.  At 18 weeks they are full grown, combs and all.  They just don’t seem to possess a nesting bone between them. I have been waiting expectantly for some sign that [...]

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At 10 weeks old our chickens are very chicken-y.  Which I guess is what you hope for with chickens. They have become foot-tall, four-pound birds with vibrant colors and sleek feathers. Yet, despite their appearance, they still have some growing into themselves to do.  They all have lingering tufts of fuzz here and there that [...]

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I had originally intended to wait a few more days before transferring the chicks to the coop, but the weather’s been warm — and I just couldn’t take any more attitude.  Those little birds have been wearing me down. Over the past week the chicks have gone wild, turning from adorable little tufts of fuzz [...]

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For weeks — even before our shipment of chicks arrived — I have been reading about the perils of being a chicken.  And there are many.  However, our brood will not face most of the horrors about which I have lately learned simply because of its size.  As with any animal, high population density encourages [...]

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Yesterday the farm-ish-ness of our suburban fifth acre took a big leap forward: Our shipment of baby chicks arrived.  Our first farm staple.  We ordered them in February from an online vendor, My Pet Chicken, that had an informative site and wide variety of breeds — despite the superficial name.  The main criteria for selecting [...]

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I have had this … pile in my yard for nearly six months.  It grows and shrinks, but mostly just sits there doing nothing spectacular — at least nothing I have been able to notice.  Six months is the amount of time I have most often read that it takes for a pile like mine [...]

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Over the past few days I, and my friends Paul and Charles, built a green-roof chicken coop in preparation for the chicken raising that will be going on in my yard this spring.  I’ll be ordering three or four day-old chicks when they become available in February.  We can hardly wait. I researched and designed [...]

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