Rainy Week Comes To An End

Sept. 13th 2009

Its been raining here....a lot. So much that we couldnt even let the girls out to check out their new surroundings. Where Chris tilled up the garden looks like the only thing we can plant is minnows! Finally on Sunday the sun peaked out from behind the clouds long enough for me to let the chicks out of the coop. I think i now know where they got the saying "I'm feeling cooped up"

Its amazing how much they have grown in only 3 weeks. They have already gotten real feathers and the fluff of chickhood is fading away.

Even their feet have gotten big and yellow.

The goats are starting to get used to the hens being around and I am not worried about them trampling them anymore.

Although they are about 4 times the size as they were as day old chicks, still They cant take being out of the coop for more than an hour, as a breeze gets them chilled and they start to huddle together to try and stay warm.

Since Chris is recovering from surgery this weekend (poor baby!!!!) . I am looking at things to do to keep our spirits up and us motivated to keep the eye on the prize - moving out to the farm with the chicks.

We've been thumbing through seed catalogs and coming home with piles of books on gardening and composting from the library. Last weekend Chris had the garden all tilled up and ready to go. Then he made a trip up to West Virginia last week and picked up all the fencing we needed to get our garden up and going. He also made a pit stop at a few Farm Supply Stores too and brought home 2 new magazines that are way cool that we have to subscribe to: urban farmer and hobby farm magazine. http://www.urbanfarmer.com/

For today, besides taking the chicks out for a walk, I picked out a little project I can do that takes minimal Skill that was highlighted in both magazines - Creating a composting worm farm.

It only needs a few ingredients and the worm castings are superior garden fertilizer.

If you want to try one at home (or in your garage) here is how you too can have your own worm farm!

Rubbermaid container

Newspaper (to set on the bottom of the container)

Dirt

Compost (table scraps/egg shells/old leaves etc)

Drill - to make air holes in the container

and of course

WORMS!

We had some leftover bait worms from a prior fishing trip that were still in the garage fridge and

I am sure they were more than happy to be transplanted out of their small little container.

I mixed in some chicken manure and wood shavings from the coop so they will have plenty to munch on in their new home.