(If you’re seriously wondering you’re not even paying attention…)
I dug up approximately two thirds of the garlic today, or 31 bulbs with 13 remaining to be dug up later when they’re more clearly done for the season. They’re not much bigger than last year on average. I was expecting bigger as the soil’s that much better. Maybe next year?
And I heard a weird sound while checking on the chickens…sort of a juicy fart noise. Suddenly on the ground there’s a shell-less egg: just membrane, white and yolk. And just as fast it’s gone as the apparently not-shy-about-eating-their-young flock gobbled it all up. That at least made me feel better about sitting on the deck with a glass of white wine and a scrumptiously roasted chicken for dinner.
It seems like three or four may be laying now. We are getting a steady two eggs a day.
No eggs yesterday, though the Buff Orpington was agitating and hanging in the nest box last evening…but no egg. Today brought two though: probably one from the Buff Orpington and another now from the Plymouth Rock. Yesterday we freshly clipped flight feathers after the Plymouth Rock’s excursion on Saturday. We may have to put poultry mesh over the run, but have been trying to avoid having to do that. Paul’s also added a few fence posts and stretched some poultry mesh along them to add some additional optional run space on a nice day. He’s been building some paths and has moved sod over the the extended run. I think the birds will really appreciate having that to play in on occasion and we can do that just rarely enough to keep it green and not let them scratch it to bare earth.
Last night we actually went out to see Kim and Trenton (and Naomi and Maia) in Seaside and in a random store I came across the first decent wire egg basket sort of thing I’ve seen since we starting working on this chicken project, so I sprang for it. It’s sturdy and large enough to hold probably four dozen eggs for a walk around the neighborhood if/when we get overwhelmed with eggs and half to give some away. I’ve wanted something I can hose off on occasion if needed, or even bead blast and repaint every now and then. This should do the job.
Before we left for tonight’s Timbers game I went to pay the chickens a visit as I was hearing them sounding off a bit. Counting them I came up with one short. I told Paul the Plymouth Rock was missing and went to get proper shoes and Jenn to start a hunt, but heard her on the deck as I was going in the door. She was hiding under the BBQ. As Jenn came out I pointed her to look through the window as the bird started to walk toward me. Jenn kept looking under the BBQ and asked as I continued gesturing to the bird she asked if I was going on about the bird or the egg. I didn’t believe her but had to look and sure enough there was a slightly pecked egg there under the BBQ!
I’m guessing she got weirded out by whatever was going on in her body and flew the coop, when towards the deck as she’s the most social and acts like she wants to be up with us all the time, and then found a safer place. Judging by how much she ate and drank after we put her back and the egg temperature, this probably was a few hours ago.
The beast was the Frigidaire Ultra Quiet III that came with our house. A go kart driving around the living room would have been quieter. Plus our neighbor’s failed pretty quickly after they moved in. And their replacement also did recently. We figure with data points like that ours wasn’t likely to last much longer and we’d rather move on to something else before being forced to, perhaps with an associated flood. And it was a pretty easy decision that moving on was going to be to a Bosch.
I pulled out the beast because I suspected it was sitting in an echo chamber. The cabinet turned out to be even worse than I thought with lots of extra space around the dishwasher and gaps allowing sound to reflect straight out. I bought a sheet of heavy plywood and built a cabinet within the cabinet sized specifically for the new dishwasher:
It’s not silent, but it is so much more quiet. I think getting towards truly not knowing the dishwasher was running would have required a big step up to the thousand dollar more expensive unit which trims quite a few more decibels off the noise level of their more reasonably priced dishwashers. The 500 series unit and a $30 sheet of plywood seemed like a good compromise.
And happily there was no water damage. We’d been starting to suspect it was leaking a little on occasion. For extra measure I added a coat of fresh sealer on the wood floor in the cavity before the new washer arrived. I also sprang for a higher quality water hose with good compression fittings instead of the cheapo plastic one that was on the original hook up. Should be safe from floods for a while now (we’ve had enough water fiascos in this house already).
June was very dreary. The solar panels produced only 243kWh’s for the month. Their production last year was starting to approach 100% of what our household consumed. This year that ratio is probably around 30%.
Posted in Home and Garden
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Tagged solar
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We were bottling beer this afternoon and heard some loud squawking from outside and thump on the wall and a lot more squawking. Turns out one of the birds (I think that’s a Wellsummer up there) flew the coop. We’d been trying to decide if as juveniles we’d need to clip their flight feathers or not. Guess we’ve figured out. The culprit got both wings done and the others each got their right wing. We’ll see if that slows them down and how long until they molt.
The chickens are seven weeks old and with the slightly warmer weather have graduated from their cramped brooder box in the garage out into the coop/run. I think the only think I have left to do is get some rock and pave a path over to the coop.
I got home from school this evening and it seemed like the rain was clearing out and it was a bit warmer than it’s seemed lately, so…took the birds out to scratch around the run. At first they mostly hung out under the coop but with a bit of food we tempted them out for a little while. Hopefully the weather will warm up in the next week or so and they’ll permanently move out to the coop. They’ve definitely outgrown their brooder box in the garage.
March in northwest Oregon had a lot of sunny weather again like last month. We produced 227kWh’s of electricity. This month that amounts to about 34% of what our household consumed.
Posted in Home and Garden
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Tagged solar
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After a full day working on the chicken run (fence almost completes) and coop (just needs doors and roof shingles) it seemed like a good reason to pop open some special beers: two bourbon barrel aged and two chocolate/coffee porters. Specifically 2009 Abyss Reserve, 2010 Top Sail, 2009 Black Butte Reserve XXI, and our home brewed 2009 chocolate/espresso still porter not stout despite more recipe tweeks. I wasn’t expecting our home brew to compare to the other big beers, but am pleasantly surprised by how it has continued to bottle condition and improve. The carbonation is definitetly off and the color difference next to the others is striking in it’s non-blackness (great description I know)…more tweeking to do in the next batch.
