Yes, I know, April 22th, the official earth day was several weeks ago but don't you think everyday should be Earth Day?
A day to celebrate our home. It continues to give us clean water in many parts of the world and enough food to eat. The earth continues to amaze us with its' beauty and reminds us to flow with ease, through the seasons of our life.
Spring came early in my part of the world; the North Okanagan valley. It's just early May and people have had their tomato plants in the ground for several weeks now. Normally, the Victoria day long weekend, (3rd week in May) has been the time when we safely plant our gardens.
But this year, we are hitting record high temperatures. Global warming? My oldest son, who will be graduating from University this June, with a Science degree majoring in Environmental science, would say climate change is real. Some people don't agree with that. I started working at the Garden center on earth day and while at the check out, several of us were chatting with our customers about the unusual warm weather and an older gentleman came by, over heard our conversation and scoffed at the idea of global warming; saying it's not unusual to have an early, hot spring, quoting another similar season 100 years ago.
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| A co-worker of mine, is big on reusing items and reinventing them in the garden...see unique planters above |
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| A view of the garden center from the veggie section |
I know scientists, like David Suzuki, has been trying to educate the world for over 40 years on the damage we are creating using fossils fuels etc and although we are still driving around using gas powered vehicles, I hope that in growing more food in our backyard it is one step towards our independence from outside sources. ( Check out the David Suzuki Foundation's 30x30 Nature Challenge for the month of May.) The more we become connected to the earth, the more we realize we can make a difference. We just need to get down and connect.
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| Victoria and Kathryn spend time observing a snail on our front walk....they wanted to feed it to the chicks! |
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| Then decided, it too had a special place on the earth |
Guess what is happening, FINALLY at our homestead?
My dream to have chickens has finally come true and as I write this blog post, two sweet little balls of fluff are dozing in their brooder box in our laundry room. They are wrapping their little newly feathered wings around each of us and their peeps are endearing.
It all started when I heard about the Hatch a Chick program put on by our local "Teach and Learn," store. They provide 7 eggs in an incubator and all the necessary equipment you need once chicks hatch. Our family decided to sponsor this program for our son Will's grade 1 class. Once the chicks hatched the class kept them for a week. The whole school was excited over the hatching chicks. Even the BIG grade 7's came in and lost their cool over the baby chicks. We were able to bring home the chicks that hatched. It was an exciting April around here and at Will's school.
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| Will checking out the eggs....21 more days! |
All good right?
Well not quite.
The downside is that in our rural sub-division the current by-law does NOT allow chickens. We have decided not to wait for the slow moving political system to grind it's gears. We are moving ahead and if anyone protests, I'm going to write our local paper's editor and start ruffling feathers. (Holding the vision that it won't come to that) We do have a 1/3 of an acre and we will position our chicken coop on our property in such a way that it will not affect our neighbours. Our baby chicks have been in our house for 24 hours and even our cat hasn't clued in. Hopefully, our neighbours will not hear a cluck once they are in the yard.
Our province's capital city of Victoria (which is a beautiful city if you haven't visited) allows chickens, our largest city in our province, Vancouver (which is becoming a role model for one of the greenest cities in the world) allows chickens, and even our nearby city, Vernon, of which we are closely connected allows chickens.
The motto as you drive into our area is "Rural Living at it's Best." I don't know what this is suppose to mean but if our chickens become an issue, I'm ready to educate people on the benefits of having chickens.
As far as I'm concerned they are pets with benefits. They of course will provide my family with delicious, organic eggs but I get rather excited thinking about having some help in the garden. Turning over the soil and readying it for the garden season. Nature's rototiller, ridding our yard of pests, weeds, etc without doing any harmful spraying. (which affect our bees...we are all connected) Also, I know this may sound funny, unless you are grooving in the garden too, but chicken droppings are excellent for amending soil....and I LOVE improving my garden fertility. ALSO, did I mention we are thinking of dropping our cable T.V? I've heard chicken T.V. is way more interesting.
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| This was Victoria today....she spent a long time sitting and watching the peeps |
Then there is the whole locavore and being sustainable movement. (Which I'd like to think I support by my actions) Keeping chickens is the next natural step, after growing our own food. Several winters ago, the highway to the coast was shut down due to winter weather conditions and our grocery stores were pretty bare after 3 days. I know in my neighbourhood, which is affluent, there may not be the heightened concern over food security, but no matter how much money you have, if there is some sort of energy crisis, or weather emergency, we are on our own as far as feeding ourselves. I'd like to think that taking steps to grow some of our own food, along with keeping chickens may assist us to weather that kind of crisis and become a stronger community.
If you are thinking of keeping chickens too, here are a few great books I would recommend.
and
and finally,
In the last several years, I think I have read every book written about chicken keeping, and there are a lot of books out there. It's been a bit of an addiction to keep growing my knowledge. So when we decided that we were going to move ahead with the hatch a chick program at my son's grade one class, I started gathering stuff for brooding our babies.
Of course the number one item was a brooder box. Which can be a simple as a rubbermaid container but baby chicks grow really fast and they would quickly outgrow this so I thought we would start off with the right size brooder box. I gave my husband a sketch of what I wanted and here is what he came up with. (This box can also be used if you ever need to separate chickens short term, due to illness or if one is being picked on)
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| My husband D, making the brooder box |
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| The kids got in the box and started peeping. The top lifts off and the front door opens too |
Then, like gathering things for the arrival of the newborn, I visited Buckerfield's, a farm store, and picked up a chick feeding dish, a water dish, a heat lamp and red bulb, some chick starter, some grit, ('cause chickens don't have teeth and grit is needed in their crop to grind their food) and of course, some paper towels and some pine shavings for the bedding,
Out of the 7 eggs in the incubator at my son's grade 1 class, only 2 hatched at 21 days. One came from a green egg, and one from a brown egg. One is yellow, and one is a beige. I'm hoping one is a Rhode Island hen. We were sad that the success rate was so low but happy with our two little ones who are currently without names. They are still being called, "the peeps."
The Teach and Learn Store says there may be some other chicks hatching at other schools and we may be able to add a few more to our flock. (Is two a flock?)
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| Here are our peeps, the day they had hatched.April 27th, 2016 |
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| Since our garage is still quite cold, we put the brooder box in our laundry room |
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| I thought this was a cute quote above our chicks....especially since they have wings |
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| Here are the peeps, safe and sound in their new brooder box. 1 week old, they are getting their little feathers on their wings |
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| Kathryn and Victoria LOVE their peeps |
Well, that is the latest around here. It's going to be a busy spring with me working full time and we have a lot going on, soccer, golf, music, swimming, ballet, and I'm trying to build a bigger garden area.
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| Expanding my veggie garden, digging up more grass and edging with stones |
I hope you follow along on our chicken journey. It's such a small thing but something as little as keeping chickens can help to heal our earth. We all play a symbiotic part on this planet.
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me,
Each blade of grass,
Each honey tree,
Each bit of mud,
And stick and stone,
Is blood and muscle,
Skin and bone.
And just as I
Need every bit
Of me to make
My body fit,
So Earth needs,
Grass and stone and tree
And things that grow here
Naturally.
That's why we
Celebrate this day.
That's why across
The world we say;
As long as life,
Is dear, is free,
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.
~Jane Yolen~
Until we meet again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.
Blessings from Hope
