Time to eat!

I just ate my first salad of the season--a modest toss of fresh spinach, sorrel, and onions. I added kalamata olives, homemade balsamic dressing, and croutons Huck made from homemade bread.  I could go on about the other courses of the meal, but I'm too stuffed to think about it!

Turnips, garlic, spinach, carrots

Most of he vegetables are looking good and have been thinned. Things range from cotyledon stage to a foot tall. One thing that really surprised me about the early planting is the cold tolerance of sprouting seeds and emerging seedlings. I would have thought kale and chard to be among the most stout, however they were the last of all things to come up and have been the slowest growers. The kale that I started inside then transplanted is looking great though, and they far outshine their garden-sowed same-aged counterparts. Peas, lettuce, and spinach are more stout than I gave them credit for--next year I will plant lots of each in my first plantings for the year.

Just-planted zukes and squash

Over-wintered kale going to seed

I've been working on making small rock beds on the ends of the wooden raised beds. They're for perennials and really make the garden look like a nice place to hang out instead of just a vegetable factory! I never would have thought a few shrubs and flowers could make such a difference. I even got my parents to dig up and send a couple of wild hazel nut trees to me. We'll see how they do!  On the sunny day we had a few days ago Huck grabbed his camp chair and said, "Mom, let's go enjoy the garden," to which he hauled his chair up the hill, into the center of the garden, and sat. We're really enjoying the native plants--from the delicate current flowers to the marsh marrigold flowers, from the frilly ferns to the wonderful skunk cabbage musk. While all the vegetables in the garden are off and growing, it's left me with time to do a bunch of native landscaping. It's been fun, and I'm on my way to my long-term goal of representing all of Juneau's plants in my yard. 

Villous cinquefoil

Trailing black current

Yellow marsh-marigold

Today Huck and I started picking spruce tips from the giant trees in our yard. It's our first time, and we're pretty eager to see what we can make. Huck decided to make tea and I chose jelly, which I found instructions for here. We picked about half of the 18 cups of tips we'll need.

Sunday Market

The first JAHC Sunday Market of the season is upon us and I've been crafting away. I have come nowhere near making what I hoped to by now, but that's how the family life goes! I've been working on some of my smaller projects: wooden earrings, prayer flags, peace magnets, art cards, and snack bags. I'm hopping to do two Sunday Markets a month with the crafts and hopefully a sidebar of garden abundance will manifest in July.

Stop by June 3 and say hello!

 Downtown at the JAHC - Noon-4 every Sunday

Yard Observations: Wild Birds

I've never really been a bird person, but my yard has been taken over by them and I can't help but be mesmorized by them! So I've been doing a little research--eating breakfast with my i.d. book in hand and looking up bird calls on Bird Jam and Bird Web.  It's amazing to begin to put the animals to the sounds that were always there and unknown! I haven't had any luck photographing any birds, so the pics here are not mine.

Brian Small and Robert Royse photo

Joseph V. Higbee photo

Of course, there's the robin. Who doesn't welcome the pronounced orange chest of a robin hopping around looking for worms? The varied thrushes and robins love to hang out at the edge of our driveway hunting for worms in the leaf litter of our giant cottonwood tree. Sometimes they chase each other off.

quasimodo4502 photo

  I love Steller's jays. I love that sqawk any time of the day! They are great at telling me that there's a hawk in the yard so I can lock up the chickens. Last year I went out to see what their commotion was about one afternoon and saw a raven fly off with a baby jay, mother jay in hot pursuit. It was wild!

Greg Lavaty photo

There's a beautiful yellow bird I've seen sporadically since we've lived here. I think it's a wilson's warbler. It darts around in the blueberry bushes.

Tom Grey photo

I first started noticing the juncos last year when they took a liking to the barn. Whenever I opened the door they would dart out the vents near the eaves. The white V of their tails in flight made them an easy first bird to identify. This spring they've been feeding daily on the lawn. (which is actually sparse grass and lots of plantain). This evening one of them stood guard, perched on a low branch, watching the other feed. As my dog walked across the lawn the feeding one flew up to perch on a fence, then landed inside and continued eating. The guard junco immediately changed the direction of it's perch to keep watching the feeding junco. It made for interesting observation and conversation as Huck and I ate dinner by the window. 

Lee Barnes photo

Gregg Thompson photo

I know there are chickadees around because I hear them. I'm not sure which kind of chickadee they are, but maybe if I'd see one sometime......

This morning I noticed some new birds--I think they're savannah sparrows.They're nondescriptly mottled brown, but they have this great yellow stripe down their head. They and the juncos fed together and didn't mind each other one bit.


The humming birds are always humming, squeeking, and darting. They love the blueberry flowers and the feeders.We also hear the Canada geese, who are down on the wetlands. I often mistake their cackles for Huck calling me.

Glen Tepke photo, Dennis Paulson photo

Gregg Thompson photo

And my FAVORITE, the red-breasted sapsucker. I love the variety of sounds it makes, especially the crazy loon-ish call. Last year I saw one
almost daily in the garden. This year, as Huck was mountain biking on a new trail we had made, we heard strange flicking and mumbling sounds.
We looked up expecting to see a squirrel, but it was the sapsucker! We watched it for a long time that night as we whispered about how lucky we were to see the bird and to have it in our yard. Each time we see it we pause to observe as Huck falls into a quiet excitement--I wish I could carry one around with me for all those wild times! This evening we saw two running around trees doing that spring chase. We decided that tomorrow we should go searching for nest cavities. 

It's really amazing to listen and watch the birds in our yard. I don't foresee myself becoming a bird connoisseur, but I certainly am excited to learn about this new facet of my yard's ecosystem. I guess the more I think about it, Huck really seems to have strong connections to birds. He's been terrified of owls his whole life though nothing else seems to scare him....He will come running across the yard, "Mom! I saw a cool bird over there!"......He rides his bike through the juncos to watch them fly....... In the fall we watched a video on the wildlife of Bhutan. In it were cranes that returned each year to a monastery. They would circle it three times then land and dance wildly and gracefully. A couple of weeks ago we were biking over the huge new bridge at Fish Creek trail and he threw down his bike, turned in circles and started dancing. I didn't make the connection at all, but then during his completely joyful dance he managed to beam out: "Mom! I'm like the cranes in Bhutan!" He was certainly happy to have arrived to the end of the bridge!

Ripping it up on the wetlands -almost 4 years old.

A New Stage....and more

This composting project has been so interesting for me! Besides all the amazing science of live composting before my eyes, I've been inspired to do research on composting on all levels, from the back yard bin to the giant commercial factories. I  guess what I'm doing would be called commercial composting, though it is on a micro level and all (except for the actual collection in my car) is under human power. There are some monstrous operations out there!  Edmundton, Alberta has a facility you can take a virtual tour through. It's on such a large scale that the process is exceedingly technological and expensive. What I like about what I'm doing is that it requires hardly any technology (a thermometer) and it's economical and earth-friendly to run. If I can get more people doing micro-commercial composting I think we can get city-wide composting in Juneau to work! And actually, I was picking up buckets a few weeks ago I was greeted by a member who said she didn't need a bucket because she started her own compost pile! She also said she got inspired and will be composting coffee grounds from the Rookery! Wha-hoo!

Opening the bin

Mostly gone!

In new bin to reheat and age.

So in this experiment it's been a lot of collecting food scraps-- 4771 pounds in 4 months to be exact! It took

3 months to fill the Residential Bin, and I'm now on to a new phase. A month ago I pitch forked the entire bin out into a different bin to turn it and let it age. All food scraps except for a few avocado pits and egg shells were gone! I knew stuff had been "disappearing" quickly, but it was so wonderful to see that it had all been transformed, and all so quickly! The straw was still visible, but I'm hoping this second round of thermophilic action will take care of it. I'm going to let the new pile heat up again then age for a few months. I went out to Swampy Acres and got some pine pellets and I'm going to try that out for chicken bedding. I'm sure sawdust will compost faster than straw, but I'm slightly concerned about it compacting too much in the bin.  But how do you know until you try? So I'm going to try.

I'm also experimenting to see what happens to Bio Pac boxes and bio cutlery. I have a feeling that, if done right, Rainbow Foods can have a self-sustaining compost of it's own, i.e. it can supply the whole mix of browns and greens. I need to find some sort of shredding machine for the boxes/paper..... The Rainbow compost bin is also full and I'll be turning it out into a new bin once the top half cools down a bit. So much material is added to that pile at once that though it's full there's still a lot of digesting to be done in the top half. It's only taken a month and a half to fill.

Neat Facts:

A whole, unrotten spaghetti squash will be half a paper-thin rind after two weeks
Small Biobags are completely gone in a hot pile after two weeks
Produce stickers remain completely unchanged indefinitely.....



Oh, and did I mention that I'm also composting for the Wild Oven Bakehouse? Daniel Martin runs a neat bread bakery downtown and calls me when he has leftovers. What I'm so jazzed about is the fact that he doesn't have many leftovers! If bread is still good but not in prime selling condition, it goes to the Glory Hole, the homeless shelter downtown. If they can't pick it up or can't use it all he calls me. My chickens eat well and the compost grows. Every business should network like the Wild Oven does!

 

It's spring--what better time to start your pile? I recently made a new bin using some--gasp--purchased roofing. I threw down $45 and I made a clear cover for my newest compost bin. I have enough left to roof one more bin, so it was a pretty economical impulse buy. My plan? I'm going to harness the heat from the pile and the light from the sun to grow my seedlings in flats directly on the compost surface So far, so good--kale seeds took 3 days to sprout! We'll see how they like growing there for a few weeks. I have a tray of oregano, a flat of two different kinds of kale, and a flat of two different kinds of sunflower. Yes, sunflowers can grow here! Get out and try something new!

Juneau Chicken Summit

Today was the first-ever Juneau Chicken Summit. It was definitely interesting to gather interested people, and it served as a good basis to expand for next year. I was asked to be on the Q&A panel and also gave a short talk on composting. I was a little nervous at the idea of talking in front of a large audience. The only other "speech" I've given was in a college class, and the peer reviews I got included lots of "not very professional." But I decided to give it a go anyway, and this time I had lots of positive feedback! Talking to other chicken raisers and seeing other set-ups on the Tour-de-Coop sparked me up a bit, and I'm going to try to write a bit about birds here in the next few weeks. Tour-de-Coop, by the way, isn't a bicycling tour like the Tour de France, as I was envisioning. We definitely drove our cars all over town! Anyway, here's a copy of the handout I made: 

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Chicken Manure Management   
Lisa Daugherty, farm enthusiast and experimenter

Animal manure can be pollution or it can be the gold that makes food grow.  It might be able to be other things……If you don’t have the time to design a car that runs off manure, or piece together a house that is heated by it, you might try composting. 

Cold vs. Hot Composting

 
                                                Cold Composting                                         Hot Composting      
time investment                           minimal                                                      slightly more      
structural investment          minimal (scrounging) to extravagant                          same      
time required to yield        1 year adding material +                        1-6 months decomposting,
                                         1-2 years decomposting and aging                    2-3 months aging  

pathogen and weed                           no                                                             yes   
seed destruction

If you aren’t interested in composting and don’t want to spend time dealing with or thinking about it, freecycle your waste into someone else‘s garden or cold compost. If the idea of turning poo into kale and carrots excites you, then hot compost so you won’t have to wait long to fertilize your garden!

Manure Collection 

Bedding Types:

• Purchased: straw, wood shavings, pine pellets
• Scrounged: leaves, moss, shredded paper

Bedding Systems:

• Spick and Span: muck out the bedding completely once a month.

• If you continually muck you continually add small amounts to your compost pile. It will probably be cold composting, where organisms such as worms and fungi slowly decompose material. If have quite a bit of bedding and you’re adding adequate greens you may have hot composting.

• Continuous : regularly rake bedding to mix manure; muck out once or twice a year

•  If you rake manure in weekly, your bedding will go much further.  If you have a thick enough layer during the winter, the top layer will be frozen but the underneath will be composting. Muck out coop in spring and fall into compost. You will be able to make large compost piles all at once. if you add greens you’ll be hot composting; if you don’t add greens, it could go either way but will probably be cold.

Composting  Setup

The Bins
Any large (3x3foot) container should work. I make my  bins out of pallets. I screw three full-sized pallets together to make a U shape. I position them so the bin is wider than it is tall. I cut a fourth pallet in half and use one piece for the front. As the bin fills up I add more slats across the front as needed. I cover the bins with plywood, metal roofing, or tarps. Air can get in through the pallet sides but rain stays out. It usually costs me the screws to put it together. Freecycle and the roadside are amazing tools!

Depending on how large your operation is, you’ll probably want multiple bins. Three is a good number, as it allows for one bin to be added to, one to be composting, and one to be aging. If you’re hot composting two might be sufficient.

The Biofilter
A biofilter is a natural material that filters…in this case the smell of decomposition. You’ll need one! Always cover your pile. If you add anything that smells to your pile, cover it with a biofilter.  A good biofilter has lots of air space that it can trap odors in. Examples are leaves, sawdust, straw, dried seaweed, moss, and shredded paper. Always have some on hand.

The Tools
Things will be much more pleasant if you have: standard rubber gloves and rain pants; a tote or bucket; a pitchfork, rake, or hand rake; a scrub brush; a hose.

How To Compost

Cold Composting

• Put the coop muckings into your bin
• Add your food scraps
• Keep doing this until the bin is full….(maybe a year)
• Start a new bin and let the old decompose.
• Check on the old bin occasionally. When you can’t recognize anything you put in, it’s compost.
• Let the compost age a while (2-3 months)
• Use it! Till it into your garden and watch everything grow!
• Eat some delicious food from your garden that all started with a seed and some chicken poo!

Hot Composting

Similar to above, but also:

• Acknowledge that a compost pile is alive. It needs nutrients, fiber, air, water, and protection.
• Mix traditional “greens” and “browns” in the pile. Divert stuff from the landfill or find stuff in the wild. Manure adds microbes, so don‘t worry about finding those.
• Add lots of material at once. Get scraps from neighbors; the more the merrier.
• Give the pile air. Layer bulky things in the mix to add pore space. When it cools, turn it and add more air.
• Monitor moisture. Add water as the heat evaporates some; add dry material if the pile is soggy. It should be moist, but you shouldn’t be able to squeeze water out of it.
• Have a big, covered pile. This protects the pile from the rain and makes it self-insulating from the cold.
• Have a biofilter. Put  several inches of dry material on top/sides of the pile to filter our smells and keep critters at bay.
• Have a composting thermometer. It lets you know what is going on so you know what to do. If it's not heating up, you need to check the above list. If it's too hot, split the pile in two.
• When the pile cools fork it into a new bin, trying to get the edges of the old pile into the center of the new pile. Repeat as needed until it doesn't heat up and looks like compost.

Other Considerations

Dirty Water 

• The chickens’ water will occasionally become dirty. Pour this water onto the compost pile instead of leaching those nutrients into the ground.

• When you scrub totes and buckets used to transport manure, pour the used water on the compost pile. If you use a biodegradable soap, it’s all good!

Carcasses

• Chickens compost! Toss them in the pile and don’t disturb. If they haven’t decomposed when you find them, they will STINK. If you’re hot composting they will disappear quickly.

Feathers

• They compost! But also consider using them (or passing them on) for art projects, fly tying, and jewelry making!

Composting can be as easy or hard as you make it. Don't worry about what you NEED to do--just experiment! You can read about lots of things NOT to do or ALWAYS to do, but it comes down to this: No one is the boss of composting! Every situation is different: different climate, different resources, different schedules, different set-ups.....Be creative, get to work, and see what you can turn into soil!  You’ll come to think of cleaning out the coop as harvesting manure! 

Helpful Resources

• Composting - the #1 best way to learn about composting is to do it!
• Cooperative Extension publication HGA-01027 - http://www.uaf.edu/ces/ah/soils/#compost
• The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins - about composting human manure but very applicable to composting in general

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And to this I should add:

Trouble Shooting

• Bad smell  in coop -
• poor bedding mix - rake manure into bedding and add more bedding.
• stale air - get some fresh air flowing through the coop
• Bad smell in compost pile  
• too much nitrogen (chicken poo or food scraps) Add carbon, i.e. straw, leaves, shredded paper, sawdust, wood chips. 
• not enough biofilter. Add more material to top/sides of pile.
• not enough air - jam a piece of rebar into the pile and wiggle back and forth to make an air hole through the pile. Make several holes. 
• pile too wet. If it's wetter than a wrung out sponge it's too wet and will compact into an anaerobic stink! Add more carbonaceous materials. 

• Pile not heating up 
• not the right mixture of greens vs browns. Add greens (food scraps or live plant material)
• too dry - add some water to the pile

• Pile too hot (>160 F)
• too much microbial action - split pile in two to avoid killing microbes
• pile too large - 3x3feet is a good size to avoid over-heating