I truly despise renting, which is part of the reason I have been so stressed about housing the last few weeks leading up to my move to Eugene and return to graduate school. My motivation for buying a house was driven in a large part by my desire to paint the walls whatever color I wanted, grow my garden however I determined, and keep a
Chicken Attack
First off, everyone is now safe and alive. But we have our first brush with death here on the urban homestead with our flock of chickens. It wasn’t a raccoon or a possum. It was a much friendlier and surprising culprit. We have a gentle greyhound, Howard, who is a retired racer and leaves the chickens alone completely. We decided to dog-sit for another greyhound
Intro to Beekeeping: Part III
The first post in this series covered the roles of different bees in the colony. The second post in this series talked about reproduction, swarming and environmental needs of a colony. This final post will focus on equipment needed to start keeping bees in the city and potential disease. Glen Andresen advised that a love of nature and a love of puttering is a good
Intro to Beekeeping: Part II
This is part two of a three part series on the beekeeping workshop I attended recently. Reproduction: It was interesting to learn that it is up to the female worker bees to determine when it is time to hatch a new queen bee, more worker bees, or drone bees. The worker bees are the ones who prepare the cells (areas in the comb where eggs
Intro to Beekeeping: Part I
Last summer I was introduced to Glen Andresen, a local bee-keeper, at the Lents Farmers Market. He gave a short overview of bee-keeping and I signed up to receive notices about future workshops he typically hosts in the Spring. I was lucky to snag a spot in one of his recent “Intro to Beekeeping” workshops in Portland a couple weeks ago, which eventually sold out.
Spring Eggs
Today is the first day of Spring, and there are signs of it all over our urban homestead. We are back in full egg production! Maude and Florence have been laying steadily for a couple months now. But even our old biddy Pearl decided to hop on the egg band wagon! We estimate Pearl is about 4-5 years old and she stopped laying altogether last
Building Fort Knox
One giant compromise of letting the chickens free-range in our backyard is allowing them to ravage our vegetable beds from time to time. They scratch up seeds, eat young shoots, and sometimes decide a newly planted bed is a terrific place for a dust bath. Every year I get a little smarter with how to protect my loved green things from the girls, and this
Winter Chickens
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my flock of urban chickens, who have been quietly keeping toasty during this unusually cold winter. We had a spot of snow again last night, so I checked on the girls this morning. When the temperatures drop below freezing, we make sure they have thawed water and fluffy straw to keep them warm. There were icicles hanging from
Snowed in Chickens
Different people have different ways of dealing with cold weather and chickens. Some build coops better insulated than our old house. Others wire the coop with electricity so they can run heat lamps out there. My feeling is that their molting process in the Fall equips them well for colder temperatures, as they grow in new, dense feathers. They fluff them up to hold in
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