Earth Day Introductions

After spending several evenings and spare moments glued to the Oxford City Codes and Ordinances, my own neighborhood covenants and considering the various and sundry ways to bribe my neighbors, I am finally ready to introduce our newest family members to the internets.


What started out as this:

Waiting to come home with me!

Are now these:

Strutting hard at 8 weeks.

I love that picture of #4.  What a pretty (although stubborn and sometimes easily excitable) girl!

They are currently living in the rabbit hutch because several things have to happen before their big girl coop is complete.  Mostly the building of the coop, but also the removal of the tree Marco started to cut down last year, and the completion of the fence (I know, I haven't mentioned that yet, but it's coming, I promise!).  The seem content enough right now though and are really enjoying the sunshine. I am really enjoying them not being in the guest room so everyone wins.

Now to answer some common questions while I jump into more pictures of my girls.

Do you have a rooster?  Nope- nothing but ladies.

What kind of chickens are they?  Plymouth Rocks or Barred Rocks.  They'll be big and fat with black and white spots and red combs (the things on top of their heads).

Going through their "ugly duckling" phase when they lost their down feathers and started growing real ones.

So, about their eggs...? Their breed lays an average of 250 brown/pink eggs per year, times 4 chickens that's looking at about 1,000 eggs a year once they start laying.

Are they laying eggs yet?  Nope- most hens need to be about 6 months old before they lay eggs, so we've still got about 4 more months.

What are you going to do with all of those eggs??  Use them to bribe the neighbors not to complain (there is nothing in the codes or covenants that prevents chickens, but bribery never hurt anyone either) and sell what we can't use.  

Do they smell??  Yes, right now they smell like grass clippings.  When they move into their big girl coop they will smell like cedar and by the time the leaves start to fall off the trees, they will smell like leaves.  Oh, you meant do they smell bad!  No- we are committed to keeping our coop and our girls clean so that they are healthy and don't smell.  Plus, we have a few neighbors who already want some of their compost, so I don't think we'll have a problem getting rid of any excess.

There are few things at cute as a sleepy chicken pile.

Alright, other than eggs, why chickens??  So.Many.Reasons.  They are great, low maintenance pets.  Although ours still face a chance to end up as soup (that is yet to be determined),  they really are fun to handle and watch.  They eat ticks, mice, snakes, snails and grubs.  I have no love for any of those things, so the chickens can have at them.  They compost like crazy.  Whatever bedding we put down for them (grass clippings, leaves, wood shavings, a mixture of all three) they will dig and break down while adding their own fertilizer.  Add in their food scraps (plenty of veg and their own chicken feed) that get composted along the way and BAM garden gold that can be mixed into the garden up to 30 days before we plant.  Or composted and mixed in all season long.  Plus they are natural tillers, weed killers and soil amenders.  AND they are way cheaper than the alternatives- tick control or snake poison, bagged fertilizer, renting a tiller for the garden, weed killer, mouse traps, buying a second compost bin, and lawn service to de-leaf our yard... all for about $75 a year in chicken feed.  We were sold.

Can we come visit them??  Of course!  They love visitors!  They get a little excited when I pull them out of the hutch, but they love to be petted and picked up.  The neighborhood kids have fully tested the "Will it peck me?" question and the answer is "maybe, but it doesn't hurt."  Plus, I am taking them to campus on Wednesday as part of Go Green week, so if you are around the Union between 12 and 2, you should come find us.  I'll be the one with the wagon full of chickens...

The Day the Worms Came

So.  I got another pet.

Well, technically, I got about 900 other pets.

900 worms to be exact.

I'm not even kidding.  I bought worms off the internet.  But not just any worms.  Oh no.  These are the goose that laid the golden egg kinda worms, except, replace goose with worms and egg with worm poop...

Perhaps I should explain further.

Worm castings, or "black gold" as some call it, are one of the best fertilizers and soil correction supplements around. They don't have to be trained.  They don't run away.  They make zero noise and produce no dander.  They require a little prep work, but after that you just feed them and keep them damp.  Then after a few months of eating, digesting and reproducing, you have yourself a nice amount of composted worm fertilizer.  What more could you ask for in a pet??

Alright, they don't wear sweaters... but you can't win'em all.

For anyone who may also be interested in the benefits of worms- whether for a garden or a classroom pet- here is how we started ours.

First we had to find a container to house the worms.  You can buy kits from several places online or your local garden center.  I'm cheap so I didn't do that.  I had this one laying around since I started our seeds last year.  It wasn't really the right size for the seeds, too deep and not large enough across the bottom, so I am using it for worms.

Then I added the bedding- that's shredded newspaper, some leaves from the yard and some garden soil- not potting soil, real live dirt.  It was hard to find real dirt and I was pretty upset about having to delegate some of our precious dirt to the worms, but I figure the return will be worth it.  **The lack of decent soil is why we got the worms.  We are trying to compost in as many ways as possible to try to correct our sandy, clay, soil.**

Then I put in some crushed, cooked egg shells.  We used the eggs for pasta so they were raw.  I had to cook them by putting them in water in the microwave for a few minutes, but this wasn't really a big of a deal.

I gave the box a gentle shake to mix the components.

And added my worms.

Let me tell you, it was super exciting.

** I had to do crazy things to the expose setting so you could actually see the worms in these pictures.  Please excuse.**

Then I left the box out in a sunny place in the house to encourage the worms to dig in.  They actually moved really fast and soon it just looked like dirt.

So now all I have to do is mist the soil every few days (damp, not wet) and feed them regularly   Red Wigglers (our worm breed) can eat about half their weight in food each day.  That means that the two pounds of worms we started with will need about a pound of food a day.  They can eat bread, fruits, veggies, egg shells, and sometimes coffee or tea bags.

Basically, about half of the food we throw into our regular composter will now be used to feed the worms.  The compost in the back is a fairly slow process because it is so large and we mostly use it for "big items" like leaves, grass, garden scraps and the unusable leftovers when we can.  The worms will take care of the smaller, day to day composting from cooking and cleaning out the fridge.

And in a few weeks we should be able to harvest our first worm castings!  Who's excited??  I'm not sure where we're going to put them... probably into the big composter actually.  But then straight into the garden!

Now who's ready to come watch these guys (and girls) go??  Anyone up for a worm party?

Dear Vernooner: A Letter to Our Cat

Dear Vernooner,

It has been more than a month since I snuck off to find the most badass cat in the county and brought you home instead.  Sure, you ignored that mouse and could not have cared less about protecting me from that bug, and your instinct to kill that spider was overrun by your instinct to look up at me and demand more food... but you're a sweetheart and I love you.

Some people would be turned off by the way you drool when you purr, but I want you to know that even though Daddy and I have allocated "Nooners Napkins" to wipe your face like a baby, it is purely out of love.  The way you snuggle under my chin when I'm reading at night and the way you fit perfectly into the small of my back when I roll over to go to sleep... those moments are very special to Mommy.  And the way you climbed onto your Daddy's chest this morning for a little snuggle session and then sneezed in his mouth instead, that was also very very special to Mommy.

I am so glad that your big brother was able to get his shit in check and not eat you during that first week we brought you home.  Remember that epic face attack you two shared?  The one that left a giant scar across his nose that is just now healing but still hasn't regrown fur?  I think that moment specifically made all the difference.  So now when you rub against him or curl up on top of him to take a quick nap together, my insides get all warm and fuzzy.

I could continue to write more gushy stuff- about how all of your extra hair has re-awoken my passion for felting or how sweetly you leap into my arms for snuggles every time I bend down, even if I was just bending down to pick up something off the floor... but you are currently bellowing so loudly for breakfast that I am afraid you will wake the neighbors.  Thank you for picking me to be your mommy, and thank you for agreeing to give it a shot, even if we had two dogs who have never lived with a cat before, and super thank you for not throwing up that hairball on the bed this morning.  I am still sorry that my "remove the cat from the bed" maneuver was actually more of a "loft the cat across the room, curveball-style extraction" but I was concerned about the clean sheets I had just put on the bed not five minutes before.  Thank you for understanding.  Mommy loves you my lovely Grumpy Gills.

Rabbit People

I spent most of Saturday morning complaining that Marco wouldn't let me have one of the free kittens we saw on the Square.  FREE KITTENS.  In fact, I spent most of the time we were making tire decisions, bike decisions and lunch decisions discussing all of the reasons I should be allowed to have a free kitten.  Marco continued to say no.

And then I got a group message from co worker- L describing how a rabbit family had been recently murdered by dogs and only one tiny survivor remained... did she know anyone who was willing to take care of it and love it forever??  Apparently she did.

He is a very grumpy bunny who does not like drinking from his bottle, but he takes his fancy Bene Bac and that is really what matters the most.  Here's to the best compost in Oxford!