The Duck's New Home

Jeff describes our home as an ongoing experiment and sometimes our adventures work out well and other times we don't realize what we are getting ourselves into. Unfortunately, the ducks turned out to be in the later category. Over the last few weeks, we have been having more and more problems with them. Their bedding needed to be cleaned weekly as opposed to the chickens which only need to be changed every two to three weeks. Even when I did clean them every week, which was expensive and time consuming, they still smelled. They were also beginning to out grow their pen. As much as I loved Quack and Louie, my responsibility as an urban farmer is to always maintain the health and well being of all my animals and sadly, I could no longer provide that for the ducks. We made the tough decision to find a new home for the ducks. Through craigslist, we found a local hobby farmer who took them. This isn't like when our parents tell us the family dog is going to the farm to live! Quack and Louie are going to  a small country farm that has three ponds, a heated shed in the winter, two other Peking ducks friends and countless other chickens. The gentleman who took the ducks doesn't want them for food- they are just pets for his kids! While I miss the ducks tremendously, I am glad they are now living the ultimate duck life! (The chickens also seemed pleased to have the basement back to themselves!)

Lasagna Garden

It is that time of year- getting prepared to put in our garden! There is nothing more exciting than the hopefulness of gardening. This year, we decided to expand our garden. However, I didn't want to dig anymore than I was already going to have to for our patio. I began seeking an easier answer online and discovered lasagna gardening! The most common method is to put down a layer of cardboard or newspaper (wet it) and cover with alternative layers of browns (leaves, paper, etc) and greens (vegetable/fruit waste, egg shells, etc) and then let is compost over the winter. Well since winter was already past and I didn't want to wait until next year, I put down six inches of finished soil over the cardboard. While my method is more expensive and required me hauling a lot of bags of topsoil, peat moss, perlite, etc it did give me an "insta-garden" without digging! Getting all that cardboard was another story..... First I raided our office cardboard recycling bin but that barely made a dent in what I needed. Then I got the idea to go to a local wholesale club to the free box bin. I spent over an hour there breaking down boxes and got stopped twice by employees wondering what in the world I was doing but when I was done I had an entire grocery cart filled with flat sheets of cardboard. I laid it all out and had to laugh since all the boxes were for food products, I had what looked like a big billboard of grocery store ads! We had everything from Spam to Snickers boxes! I wish I had remembered to take a picture but in my exhaustion I totally forgot. Our final garden is now 30 ft by 20 ft and last year it was 10 ft by 12ft! 

Farmer in the Office?

"Oh sweet, I found the grow bag I have been looking for!" - me
"What!!! You can grow bags???"- Sweet but confused co-worker
"No, they are bags you grow things in!!" - me

Impulse Purchase

Today's activities can best be summarized by Jeff's responses-

"Hun, I have to disagree. Apple trees are really not an impulse purchase even if they were on sale."

Upon looking out the window, "And contrary to what you seem to think, your Civic is not a truck."

I am that chicken mom!!!

This past weekend Jeff took me to Montreal for my birthday weekend. While at dinner, I kept hearing myself ask him if he thought the girls were okay and wondering what they were doing at that moment. My rambling came to a screeching halt as I realized I was that mom. You know her, the one who talks incessantly about getting away for a few days and as soon as she does, talks non stop and worries about the kids while she is gone. Here I was with my wonderful sexy husband in one of the most romantic cities in the world enjoying a wonderful glass of white wine by candlelight in a French restaurant and I am wondering if the girls are going to keeping changing nesting spots at night. Yup, it is official I am way too into this.

Update- the next night I pulled it together and stopped talking about chickens and ducks while on vacation and thanks to my mom and dad for watching the girls. 

Egg Production Back to Normal

I feel like statements like that make it sounds like I have a spreadsheet and a clipboard keeping track of the eggs per day. We really don't. Basically the way it goes whoever gets home from work first goes to collect the eggs. When the other one of us gets home we ask how the girls are and get a response like, "Good it was a two egg day."

Regardless, we are happy to report that the slowed egg production caused by the molting is now over. We are back to our normal two eggs a day. Which for only two people adds up quickly- does anyone need any eggs? 

Body Check Eggs

Yikes! A couple of weeks ago we were collecting our daily eggs and noticed that one of them had what looked like a pimple on the side. I was worried about eating it, so Jeff did some online sleuthing and discovered we had what is called a body checked egg. (On a side note, isn't it cool to know terms like that? Tomorrow, I am going to have to figure out a way to fit that into conversation at the office.) Basically the egg cracks inside the bird, but she is able to heal it before laying it. Isn't that just incredible? It never ceases to amaze me what nature can do. The egg is perfectly fine to eat (and was yummy as always) but what concerns me is that body checked eggs often come from birds who are stressed. (This happened before the ducks moved downstairs so it isn't my fault!) I am going to keep an eye out to see if this keeps happening.