The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

If there is one trait that characterizes Alicia and I it is decisive. Just last week our first flock (of 2) chickens met a violent end. Rather than dwell on it too much, this weekend, having the rare use of a car, I hit up Craigslist and found a few people selling off their extra chickens before the winter.

The first pair came from a family in Bothell with, I have to say, the McMansion of chicken houses. It was deluxe. I felt kind of bad for the two chickens we got from them; they’ve definitely taken a step down the socio-economic ladder.

The second pair were from a guy who up until the recent economic crisis was running a farm and hatching chicks. He had a couple nice chicken tractors in his back yard up in Everett, and had some good advice on taking care of the chickens. He grew up on a farm in Montana, so I kept my mouth shut and tried not to make a fool of myself (I certainly didn’t let on that a racoon or some other treacherous urban predator had gotten to our last flock of hens).

Hannah was excited to meet her new friends (”Daddy got new chickens!”) and she helped put sawdust in their coop, since she’s the only one who fits in there.

Leaves, coffee grounds, and burlap bags -- hopefully the ingredients to a well-fed garden next spring.

I’ve mentioned a few times that we’re preparing the gardens for the winter these days. It is a process with a few steps, starting with some basic hunting and gathering. It starts down at Caffe Vita, the local hipster coffeeshop / roaster, who are glad to part with the burlap sacks their unroasted beans come in. (At least when the baristas know what I’m talking about). Another stop is Starbucks, where they conveniently bag up “Grounds for Your Garden.” You don’t even have to feel bad about not buying anything because it’s right by the front door. Then it’s down the street with my rake and a garbage can to do an anonymous good deed by raking up someone’s leaves from the street (and benefit by getting good mulch for my garden, especially since our plum tree is holding on to it’s leaves a little longer this year.)

I’ve been putting down a pretty thick layer of leaves over the dirt, then sprinkling on a bag of coffee grounds, and then covering it up with the burlap. Toss on a couple rocks or bricks to keep it in place for the winter, and you’re set to go. I don’t know if I should do anything else, like mix it all in to the top layer of soil, so I’m just going to let it be unless anyone has any ideas.

Its 11:00 at night and I am avoiding bedtime by blogging.  Two points of general interest occurred to me:

1. I just noticed that Hannah is listed as an administrator on our blog. I asked Dan what her job on the farm is that would justify such a privilege and he said chief worm harvester, which is exactly right.  Anytime Dan is working in the yard Hannah thinks he is “finding worms” and she demands to help.  She either wants to dig for worms or chase the chickens, so I encourage the worm finding to give our poor chickens a break.

2. A chicken jumped on my head tonight when I was putting them to sleep and I COULD NOT get it off. I had a pizza in the oven and a child on the counter and thought I would just run out and pop the chickens in their coop and then finish dinner.  However one of the chickens (the supposed “nice breed”) would not go in and instead held on to my hair for dear life.  I honestly thought I was going to have to go inside with this animal on my head to get the pizza out of the oven.  Luckily I managed to shake her off into the coop without losing an eye, patch of hair or my tolerance for these animals.  I might have to tell them the tale of white chicken’s fate to put some fear into them.

As Dan and I were trying to come up with ideas for this blog he said, “we can always post about compost.”  Surprisingly enough compost is a tricky thing and one that is continual work on our small urban farm.  All the books about gardening make it sound so simply - pile your organic matter and wait until next year and you’ll have great compost for your garden.  Despite this relatively easy concept we’ve had to learn some things the hard way.  For example weeds can’t go in compost or else you’ll just spread your weed problem in your garden beds.  Also the bins need to be in direct sunlight at some point in the day (at least in Seattle) in order to break down stuff in a reasonable amount of time.  For some reason it also took us awhile to realize we need two compost bins/piles so one can rest while  you add new matter to the other. When we bought our bins from the city of Oakland them came with an instructional video (called Do The Rot Thing - seriously) which gave us some good basics, but we had to learn the hard way thateucalyptus leaves and palm fronds are too woody to break down.  The hard part has been how to get our compost to break down and be ready in a year.  I am sure some of our failed compost piles would have worked eventually, but its not much good if it takes more than a year. The addition of the chickens has helps since they sort of pre-process our food scraps.  Now we’re in the season of brown matter (i.e. fallen leaves) which will help balance out our very wet matter we have in there now (thanks to our apple pressing remains from a week ago). Plus we have a completed pile resting (or cooking) for the winter which looks like its going to be ready to add come early spring.  Hopefully we’ve gotten a good enough system down by now.  There is always more to learn, but yesterday Dan stirred the compost and got a beautiful sight - steam rising, which I think means we’re on the right track.

Our kitchen scrap bucket, which goes to the compost pile via the chickens.