Musings of a Back (and Front) Yard Farmer

Here, in Southern California, the weather is starting to look like spring.  Even though it is still winter, there are days when it is 80 degrees outside. The weather tends to flip flop from beautiful, warm and sunny to cool and rainy and everywhere in between.  As the beautiful Spring-like days become more common, I start to think about gardening.

Then, I go outside and start inspecting my little backyard farm … and realize maybe I don’t want to think about gardening. Ay-yay-yay. There is a lot of work to be done.  Granted, I haven’t done much work on it during the Winter months.  But, as I look around, I see I have a lot of catching up to do.

For instance, the Melon Patch, as we affectionately call it doesn't even resemble a melon patch. It kind of resembles more of a garbage patch.  Or, at the very least, it resembles the junk pile on a real farm bigger than the size of a backyard. We have an empty chicken tractor there.  The last chicken vacated that tractor (by dying) months ago. Next to that is the broken up skeleton of what used to provide shade on our patio.  

The plants don’t resemble the corn, beans and melons that I like to plant there.  I found a few ripe tomatoes on a volunteer tomato plant, which is pretty exciting for wintertime.  I also see the remains of a once-thriving butternut squash vine that I didn’t plant … because we don’t really like butternut squash. On the wall are some dead vines. Although, I do see that my berries are starting to make a tiny bit of progress. However, the dragon fruit plant is, sadly, not doing well. And, as you can tell by the weeds overrunning the place, the chickens haven’t even had a chance to work on that area as they usually do in the winter.

I thought I’d do better if I checked out the garden beds. But, alas, not much luck there, either.  The first two beds are looking good.  The chickens have been working the soil there for a while.  We had a nice, thick layer of leaves on top that the chickens have worked into the soil. It’s nice to have the chickens do this work for us, especially since they don’t lay eggs during the winter.  In addition to preparing the soil, they also kindly eat our kitchen scraps for us. Those are some well-fed chickens, I tell ya’. The second bed has a millet plant that not only can I not get rid of, but it apparently doubled in size since last year.  And, the third bed just needs the chickens to work on the leaves.

However, beds 4 and 5 seem to be getting the best of me.  I can’t figure out how to keep them from getting completely overrun by grass. You actually can’t see all the grass because it’s covered with leaves. I’ve tried pulling all the grass out by hand, roots and all, but it still crept back in from the surrounding grass. I also tried covering the grass with cardboard and then dirt before planting. That didn’t work, either. I covered the walkways around the beds with thick, black plastic, but it doesn’t seem to help. And, that last bed has really not grown much of anything for me since we started the garden several years ago.

On the bright side, though.  I do have one beautiful specimen of a chard plant growing in one of the beds.  It supplies me with lovely greens for my green drinks.  I even manage to get a leaf or two into the kids’ smoothies. Try not to be distracted by the farmyard junk in the background.  We're just trying to keep it the ambiance right.

Moving to the front yard, I find climbing roses which have never quite looked healthy; although, last year we got several beautiful roses out of it.

 I have my Nuccio’s Pearl Camellia that I splurged on because I love the flowers it is supposed to grow.

However, for the last 3 years, the best I have gotten is buds that end up turning brown and falling off.

I even managed to kill a mint plant, which, I think is a pretty impressive feat in itself. I didn't think anyone could kill mint.

And, last, but not least – my parkway. It’s supposed to be filled with thick, lovely creeping thyme ground cover like this.

But, sadly, I have never gotten it to look any better than this. I will even admit that this picture was taken immediately after weeding the parkway.

I can’t really explain to you the incredible amount of hours that I have put into weeding this parkway.  It began when we had heavy rains that flooded the parkway after we planted the seeds.  I didn’t know which plants that grew after that were weeds and which were thyme.  When I finally figured it out, I had quite a weeding job to do.  And, I’ve spent countless hours weeding it ever since.

The yard isn’t looking too bad considering we’re just coming out of winter.  And, over the last several years, I can slowly see the goal coming into bloom.  I see I have my work cut out for me in the months to come.

I did find one exciting thing while I was out there, though.  The freesias are blooming!

Egg!

We were eating dinner in the back yard two days ago. We had friends over and one of them walked over to the chicken tractor and said, "You have an egg in here, you know." What?!?! Everyone went running over to the tractor and sure enough, there was an egg. We didn't think the chickens would lay until September, so we were pleasantly surprised.

Rebekah got the egg out. After we took a picture of it, she let the little guys hold it. Apparently, someone told Elijah to "look at it closely". :)

Then Rebekah put the egg on the table so she could get a bowl ready. Unfortunately, the egg was in Arianah's reach. When Rebekah tried to get the egg back from her, it fell on the table and dented.

So, we had to cook it.

I think four people got a taste of this little, tiny egg. Rebekah said it was extra tasty.

We're definitely looking forward to more eggs.

Chickens 101 and Getting to Know Your Neighbors

It looks like we're going to make as much of a farm as we can out of this 7000 sf suburban lot that we are blessed to live on. The garden is really starting to do great, now that it's actually getting warm enough to call summer. And, our most recent project is chickens. Yep, you heard me right, chickens. A month or so ago, Rebekah asked if we could have chickens (she had spent the night at Grammy's and Grammy has chickens). I told her to first call the city and see if it was OK (she did, and it is) and then ask her dad (she did, and he said OK).

After that, we had to build a chicken tractor. That was Jim's job and he did a marvelous job of it. We will need a couple of upgrades, but it's all a learning process and we are learning.

After he built the tractor, Grammy brought the chickens over. Last Monday, the kids were all excited and gathered around as we put the chickens in the tractor.

Arianah loves the chickens. Of course, Arianah loves all our animals. From the dog and cat to the lowly worm. (Every time we work in the worm composter, she wants to hold a worm.)

The next morning, the learning really started. Rebekah came upstairs first thing, looking very distressed. "Mom, the chickens are gone!" What?!?! Sure enough, Scooter, our golden retriever had broken into the tractor and let the chickens out. He even left a telltale tuft of golden fur on the torn edges of the tractor to make sure we could figure out it was him. After all, the day before, he had paid no attention to the chickens after his first cursory examination of the tractor, so we wouldn't have suspected him. Thus began a week of chicken chasing.

Rebekah and Hannah went door to door, knocking and asking neighbors if they had seen our chickens. They left fliers on the doors where no one was home. Rebekah pasted fliers up on the poles around the block. Trust me, it's not often you see a "lost chicken" sign in our neighborhood :)

To make a long story short, after much chicken chasing all over the neighborhood, many phone calls from neighbors, going from back yard to back yard, climbing trees, reaching under bushes, chasing down the street, hearing neighbors say "chickens?", "did she say chickens?", "how tall is the chicken?", throwing whiffle balls on the roof to try to scare a chicken down and much help from our neighbors, we finally retrieved Strawberry (the red chicken named because Elijah says she's red like a strawberry) on Thursday evening and Henrietta (the black chicken) on Friday evening.

So, if you're looking for a good way to get to know your neighbors, try getting some chickens and releasing them in the neighborhood. It works great. We have lived here 9 months, but we know many more neighbors now than we did a week ago.