Two years ago, we started a leaf pile.  I staked down a circle of chicken wire at the far end of the back yard, and we’ve piled all our leaves in it ever since.  The reasoning behind it is that, if you put your leaves in your compost pile with other stuff, the leaves will mat together and take forever to break down, especially the big flat leaves like maples.  So you compost your leaves separately, and after a few years you get this really great leaf compost.  It just takes a long time. Read more »

I’ve wanted to put wheels on our chicken house for a while, to make it easier to move around.  It’s about all I can do to shove it from one spot to another, and I need to be able to move it every day to give them fresh grass and keep them from digging holes in the yard.  It should make for about a two-week rotation.

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Last week we got seven eggs in one day for the first time!  So now we know for sure that they’re all laying.  (For those who don’t know, chickens lay one egg a day at most, and usually skip every third or fourth day.)  One of the last ones to lay was the Ameraucana, and they sometimes lay a pinkish-brown egg, so we couldn’t be sure she wasn’t laying some of the brown ones until we finally got a green one.

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We’ve answered the age old question: the chickens came first, in late March; the eggs about four and a half months later.

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