The growing season is not too far around the corner! Witch hazel is already blooming and my flowering quince buds are days away from opening. If we can get a handle on some garden chores now, we’ll be in good shape to maximize the harvest from our homesteads this year. When it comes to growing your own food, here is my short list of what
New Year, New Bathroom
It’s a new era for us in our Portland house and time for some updates. We plan to be here for a while and want to enjoy the house as much as possible. But like many houses, there are things here and there that drive us nuts. With a baby on the way, we decided that if we don’t make changes now they will never
The New Duck Coop
Construction is complete! The runner ducks have a new, permanent home here on our little homestead. It should be a safe, predator proof place for them to sleep, play and lay eggs. Ducks need a little more wiggle room than chickens. Allow about 4-6 square feet per bird in their duck house and 10-25 square feet per bird for the run. In our case, the
Holiday Prep
The holidays this year are something we are admiring from a distance, rather than actively getting into the spirit of. Boxes are still stacked like a maze in our house from moving and projects are lined up high. What we would do without our sense of humor about it all? The duck coop is getting closer to completion and I suspect the final touches will
Duck Coop Construction
The ducks are getting a new, permanent home – slowly but surely. Last week we did some deconstruction and site prep. This past weekend I drew up some loose plans and we started building. The duck house should give each bird about 4-6 square feet of space while the run area can be anywhere from 10-25 square feet per bird. This wide variation may have
Building the Shared Run
Ducks need more outside room generally than chickens, so we set about building a large run for our new flock. We planned on about five square feet of outside space per duck, which meant we needed a run that was twenty square feet total. Since we are renting this year, nothing can be permanent about the duck house and run. The chickens and ducks each
Building the Duck House
There are lots of ways to make a duck house and the one you build is based on any combination of the following factors: safety from predators carpentry skill level time money portability In our case, we are currently renting our homestead while I finished grad school. (So excited to get back to our permanent plot in Portland…) So what we build has to move
Poultry-Proof Garden
We love having our chickens free-range in our backyard. They eat a wider range of food, which saves us some money on chicken feed and also makes their eggs taste ten times better. But they can be really destructive in the garden beds – trampling seedlings in search for the next great worm. It’s even more important for backyard ducks to have some free-range access,
Fall Term Design Studio
As winter term of my landscape architecture program kicks in, I realized I should do a decent job recapping my project last term! I got to explore beneficial insect-attracting plants, plant species that do well in swales, and other fun ecological issues. I had the pleasure of working with a couple architecture students on the project, which was a challenging but fun learning experience. The