Learning to live well on a budget
Follow along while I learn new skills and get creative raising my kids on a limited budget.
The chickens have really started munching on my garden to the point where I am not sure if it will rebound or not. Surprised at how much they liked the tomatoes. They don't wait for the strawberries to get ripe. The entire left two rows in my pallet raised bed are bare. Time to take control. You can see my failed attempts to quickly raise the level to keep the chickens out (wire fence on top of wattle fence, then later green string to keep them from going through the wire fence. All failed.) If you look closely you can see the new attempt. Wildlife netting. We used pallet boards to create a restricted area and stapled the netting to it at a height of about 4 feet. The chickens have their wing clipped so we are hoping they won't breech it. I added the white rope to the top of the pallet boards to alert the kids where the netting is as it's almost transparent until you are right up on it. So far so good!
We re-purposed our Christmas tree from last year as a roost for the chickens. We cut the branches off (to be saved as fire starters) and buried it into the ground about a foot. We used a hole saw and drilled some holes at varying heights and pushed some straight sticks (from a different tree) through the holes.
It took them a few days to accept it, but now they quite enjoy it. Coop still unfinished as of yet. Coop is getting closer to being finished. Boy, it takes a long time to amass that many cans! Mable is fine with the chickens. She and the chickens both love chasing other birds off of their property, especially blue jays. Perhaps this is how they bonded? A picture of my life. Barred Rocks are looking so pretty at 3 months old. An Orp under the clothes line. Because I have chickens, I also have this: Which means I also have to have this! "Now announcing chicken nap-time under the swing set. I repeat, it's chicken nap-time." We put a window in the coop because we want to ween them off the light bulb being on all night, but would like for them to benefit from seeing more sunlight in the morning and evenings. Especially on cold mornings when we don't let them out until it warms up. It's no fun sitting in the dark all the time, and it isn't good for egg production (when they start laying, that is.) The effect is hilarious at night when the light comes on! A friend told me she calls watching her chickens "chicken TV," but I think this takes it to a new level! Oh my bawck, look at what they did to this window! Just like kids and dogs, they gotta put their little bodies all over the (plexi) glass, and the static cling layer of dust isn't helping. Good things these girls aren't for eating, because it kind of looks like a deli case! I feel like voyeur! Made progress with enough tin cans to cover about half of the front panel and a couple old license plates too. Used a dead and fallen tree to make a rustic pine support for the overhang. We used some salvaged vinyl siding on the sides, and painted it the coral color from the front (not visible in the picture.) The girls begging to be let out. They just love people, and if we are out, they want to be out too. Added the speech bubble this afternoon. Sorry about the solar flares in the pic.
"Next to my sweet sweet ride" Playing hard to get. Sometimes they miss... "peek ;)" "what's up butter cup?" More missing... "CHEESE!" "Duck face? Chicken face is way better!" "Hanging with my peeps."
My husband is a genius of the Tom Sawyer persuasion. He talked my son and his friends into tilling up part of the garden to look for worms to feed to the chickens. The boys had fun, the chickens were thrilled, and the garden got tilled. I knew I married him for a reason!
See, reading does pay off! |
-About Luna-
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