APRIL UPDATES!
(Shoutout to anyone who knows the book I parodied in the title of this post. Wasn't everyone forced to read it in 8th grade US history?)
A bunch of things happened this month, including a straw bale adventure:
Hay is for horses, straw is for gardening.
After I found an actual tack store in our area (!!!) - Trikee Tack in Glendale - I finally had a place to get bales of straw. The reason we needed the bales is to try out this thing I've read a lot about called straw bale gardening. Basically you get bales of straw, set them up on their side (just like they're sitting in the trunk of my car in the pics below), water and fertilize them until they start to rot on the inside, the plant crops in them! It's supposedly the cheapest way to "build" a raised bed and start creating healthy soil.
We also brought our foster puppy, Cairo, along for this adventure. He was not allowed inside the store and I don't think he was too happy about the straw.
Turns out you can fit FOUR whole bales of straw in a Subaru Forester. Who knew!?
Coop Progress
Remember when we found that archeological treasure of a cement post hole in the ground? Well guess what (chicken butt): it has a twin! And that twin just so happened to be in exactly the WRONG place this time.
Even though we had already attached the nest box (and entire frame that supports it) on the left side of the coop, we decided to switch gears - quite literally - and reverse the sides of the coop, moving the run to the left side instead of the right. This meant that the wall with the nest box on it had to be on the right side of the coop.
Then I had to leave for work - but Rick & Judy were able to come over again and help out TREMENDOUSLY with this part. The walls of the run were still assembled (or never disassembled, rather), but the real devil was getting the bottom put together just right.
This part is tricky because we're burying wood in the ground, so in order to protect it a little more we add a layer of sand around it. This helps the water drain, keeping it away from the wood and hopefully extending its life. This wood is also pressure treated so it's the best lumber for the job, but it still won't last forever (life is fleeting, and so is lumber).
THEN, we have to lay down hardware cloth (aka rabbit wire) over the sand to create a fully enclosed system that won't let any raccoons or possums or coyotes dig under to get to the tasty chickens inside.
It took Brandon nearly a dozen trips to and from the hardware store to get all the sand to our place. Turns out you can't just pack in as many 70-lb bags of sand as you want because you'll go over the car's weight limit for hauling. HOW FUN!
Even though we had already attached the nest box (and entire frame that supports it) on the left side of the coop, we decided to switch gears - quite literally - and reverse the sides of the coop, moving the run to the left side instead of the right. This meant that the wall with the nest box on it had to be on the right side of the coop.Then I had to leave for work - but Rick & Judy were able to come over again and help out TREMENDOUSLY with this part. The walls of the run were still assembled (or never disassembled, rather), but the real devil was getting the bottom put together just right.
This part is tricky because we're burying wood in the ground, so in order to protect it a little more we add a layer of sand around it. This helps the water drain, keeping it away from the wood and hopefully extending its life. This wood is also pressure treated so it's the best lumber for the job, but it still won't last forever (life is fleeting, and so is lumber).
THEN, we have to lay down hardware cloth (aka rabbit wire) over the sand to create a fully enclosed system that won't let any raccoons or possums or coyotes dig under to get to the tasty chickens inside.
It took Brandon nearly a dozen trips to and from the hardware store to get all the sand to our place. Turns out you can't just pack in as many 70-lb bags of sand as you want because you'll go over the car's weight limit for hauling. HOW FUN!
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| Lucky for Brandon, I can still fit fully inside the coop, making it a little easier to re-arrange this lifesize jigsaw puzzle. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the left and right sides of the coop, for better context. The left side is where the run will be attached and the right side is where the nest box will be attached.   |
Meanwhile, on the other side of the house (the front), Judy and I gave the front yard some landscaping help. While we worked separately across several days, we eventually pulled all the weeds and re-mulched areas that were prone to weeds. It takes a surprisingly deep layer of mulch or bark to completely smother the weed.The basic idea behind mulching (which I did not know!) is to completely block the sunlight from areas around the plants that you actually want to grow. Additionally, if you use dead leaves and rose petals and other organic matter as the mulch, it feeds the soil (and plants) as it decomposes!
I've enlarged this picture so you can see just how many weeds we pulled up. That greenish trash bin in the back? That's our "green bin" ENTIRELY full of just weeds.
TL;DR - mulching is really important and weeds are literally the worst. Mulch, mulch, then mulch some more!
I think that's it for April, stay tuned for more developments in May!!
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