5 chicken lessons (see you in 2017!)

This is going to be my last post of 2016. I'm looking forward to spending the last half of December focusing on family and the holidays and hopefully enjoying some new, deep snow on my fat bike. I will, of course, still be tending to the urban farm's chickens and indoor plants, and starting in January I will officially kick off the new growing season, so there will be a lot to talk about next year!

So now for my chicken lessons learned:

1. Chickens hate snow. I let them outside to run around after we got a few inches the other day, and they immediately ran under the big evergreen tree and refused to walk back to their coop. (I chased them, caught them--eventually-- and carried them one by one over the irritating white stuff!). I'm glad that we built a covered run so they can get some sunlight and hang out snow-free.

Until we can find some hen-sized snow boots, the chickens aren't having anything to do with it.

2. Chickens love to stand on top of things. I now feel extra sorry for the factory farmed chickens who have to walk around on the ground all day. Chickens love being high up and playing queen of the hill. The "playground" equipment in their run should keep them more entertained over the winter and will hopefully keep them from trying to stand on top of their feeder.

This wood from a friend's cut tree works great!

3. Providing water in freezing temperatures is a challenge and having electricity in the coop really helps things out. We have finally settled on a system (until I can find a better one) where there are two sources of water. The first is a Hen Hydrator with a bucket heater. The water in the bucket stays thawed, but the nipples freeze overnight and don't thaw until quite a while after sunrise-- this doesn't mean that the day has to get warm, but when the sun comes up there is usually enough radiant energy to thaw them out. I'm going to really like this hydrator once spring arrives. It's easy to fill and see-through so you know how much water you have. It's also keeps the water source very clean!

FFA-approved (except, apparently, in freezing weather).

The backup system is a heavy, shallow, rubber bowl that I put fresh water into each morning before the sun comes up. This water (surprisingly) has been staying thawed throughout the day, even when the outside temperature stays well below freezing (see item #4). We'll see what happens when the high temperature is 0F. If it gets too cold I will remove the Hen Hydrator and put the bucket heater into the rubber bowl.

It doesn't stay as clean as the hydrator, but it won't tip over and if I need to put the bucket heater in it over the coldest winter days I can.

4. Coop winterizing is essential. We keep hardy breeds, but protecting their run from wind and snow has proved very worthwhile. The plastic not only keeps the run dry, but it's significantly warmer than outside in the wind. And since we have a source of electricity, a heating lamp can be used in the run if needed. I've also installed temporary weather stripping in the coop, so they can stay warm over the long, cold nights.

The run is covered on three sized by thick plastic sheeting. The hens like sunning in the open south side.

5. Hens like having a sand box. The chicken run is built over an old children's sand box, so the soil is very sandy in some areas. They hens love to take dust baths, and over time they dug a 6 inch hole in one spot. Today I filled it in with some new sand. This will give them something to dust with and dig around in over the long, snowy days when they'd rather be foraging for worms and grass in the yard.

I added new sand so they wouldn't dig themselves out of the run!

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Peace on Earth! See you back here in 2017!

Indoor/Outdoor

Last of the outdoor harvests

The upper Midwest is getting a very late start to winter this year, so I was able to harvest salad greens and kale through end of November! But it's freezing at night more consistently now, and this week our hardy Swiss chard finally gave in to the cold. So even though tomorrow is supposed to be up close to 50F, I'm calling it-- winter is here! Time to bring in the last of the fall veggies.

These are the Short 'n Sweet variety of carrot that does well in shallow beds or heavy soil. They are also very sweet and I like to roast them whole.

The hens love eating the leftovers and scraps! I'm also working to winterize the chicken run with plastic on the north and west sides to protect from wind and blowing snow.

Last of the outdoor greens. Frost-sweetened and delicious! I could use a double walled tunnel to continue to grow outdoors, but since I have the space and interest, I have decided to move production inside for the rest of the winter.

Oregano has been a very productive herb. It is very hardy, disease resistant, and saves beautifully. I harvested it today, picked off any bad leaves, washed it and air dried it on a towel.

Then I then bunched it up and hung it to dry. Once it's dry (a week or two), I'll break up the leaves with my fingers and put it in an airtight container.

Setting up and testing out the new indoor grow space

I've always had an interest in indoor growing-- greenhouses have been a part of my entire adult life until very recently. But since we currently don't have a greenhouse, I'm exploring indoor options. The main purpose of this growing space will be for seed starting. It will allow us to save money on plants (seeds are much cheaper to buy than seedlings) and will allow us to produce interesting and more well-adapted varieties on the urban farm.

The new lights reflect a lot of the light produced, saving energy and providing the bright light needed for young plants.

The test basil is looking good! I can't wait to eat it!

Another test is with tomato seeds/seedlings. We want to make sure our transplants next spring are sturdy and healthy, so I'm looking at different distances between plants and lights.

I've also started growing lettuce indoors for my own wintertime salads. Perhaps someday I'll be able to produce enough to sell. For now I'll share it with dinner guests! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! It's a great time of year to visit family, catch up with friends, or spend some time with yourself doing something that you love!

No leaf left behind

Fall has not typically been my favorite time of year. I'm not a huge football fan, I really miss the warm and bright days of summer, and fresh tomatoes are missing from my salads. But autumn does bring one gift-- leaves! I do love the beautiful trees, especially the maples that turn brilliant red, orange, or yellow.

Our red maple provides cool shade all summer and then its naked branches let light into our south-facing windows all winter long.

When the leaves have just fallen, they are like a colorful carpet!

But what to do with all those leaves? Our neighbors, for the most part, rake them up and the city hauls them away to a compost facility. In the past I have done this as well, but I realized I could put them to good use (and save money, too).

I could also go on and on about how much fuel the giant trucks use to drive around and suck up leaves or how many leaves end up in the lakes because they get raked into the street and go down the drain. And those things are indeed true, But really, when it comes down to it, I like to pinch pennies until they scream for mercy, so I just can't see throwing free mulch/compost away and then turn around and buy it at the store.

And using leaves is really easy, especially if you have a bagging lawn mower. Just set the lawn mower on the highest setting and run over dry leaves. Then use the bag to move the chopped leaves where you want them. Alternatively, you can wait until the leaves are brittle and put them into a bin and crush them (or stomp them like grapes!).

A few ideas on how to use your leaves:

• Mulching around perennial plants
• Spreading over garlic
• Raking into existing vegetable or flower beds
• Using as a "browns" layer when sheet composting/lasagna gardening or in a traditional compost pile or bin

Because my lawn mower is broken, I've been picking them up in buckets, crushing them by hand, and moving them around. When the lawn mower is back from the shop, hopefully the ground will not be snow covered and I can mow them up into smaller pieces. If not, no worries. Nature is amazing at breaking things down.

These leaves were spread over the garlic about a month ago and are already composting nicely.

In other news...

A big shout out to my friend for letting me babysit her Red Wigglers and learn all about worm composting. Hopefully I'll learn a few things and blog about it later this winter!

So enjoy fall everyone! Watch football, get your favorite sweater out of storage, or do what I do and go for a nice crisp bike ride. 😊 And think about putting at least some of your leaves to good use. You may be pleasantly surprised!

The urban farm in four short bullet points

I've been working on our farm plan, and one important step for me is determining the big picture of what our farm stands for and what our goals are. Today I'd like to introduce the four ideas that determine how the farm is run, what and how we grow, and the reasons behind our bicycle-themed name.

1. Two Wheels Urban Farm grows food sustainably using only organic practices. We do not use synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, nor do we plant genetically modified seeds.

2. We farm in town, taking advantage of land that would otherwise grow only grass.

3. By living and farming in the city, we are able to use bikes as a major source of transportation as well as recreation. The farm has an ongoing goal to utilize bicycles for more than 50% of all trips.

4. We strive to make farming as local and accessible as possible, growing and marketing delicious food, while fostering relationships with consumers and neighbors and reducing food miles.

Speaks for itself!

Living and farming in town offers many opportunities to bike for pleasure and transportation.

This week at the urban farm

This past week we finished building the raised beds at the home plot. Before the weather turns cold I'll have them all filled and ready to compost over the fall and winter. By spring, with some added finished compost before planting, we should be good to grow!

The new raised beds more than double the growing space at our home plot, and because they are terraced, our hill is now farmable!

Even though my instincts tell me this could be a bad idea, one of our hens now has a name: meet Lucy, the Buff Orpington with the small comb. She enjoys long walks around the yard, eating worms in freshly turned soil, and peeking into the window to spy on unsuspecting humans.

Lucy has captured the heart of our family, especially my mom and DD.

We're also already thinking about spring around here and experimenting with our new light system. Can't wait to start growing next season's seedlings!

Some barely sprouted test tomatoes seem very healthy under the lights.

Looking towards 2017

I've spent the last year or so investigating land options-- buying, renting, or backyard expansions. At a farming workshop I attended last weekend, New Farmer U, I met many new farmers who are shopping for or have recently purchased land. They dream of acres of vegetables or crops, quiet days and dark nights, lots of room for livestock (I loved learning about goat farming!), and raising children in the country. And then there was me...

I finally learned from all of my soul searching that although I really love visiting the country, I am a city farmer at heart.

Kids raised in the city can still grow food! My daughter grew these gorgeous 40 pound heirloom pie pumpkins this summer at the urban farm.

Bikes

It all goes back to bikes. Not that agriculture hasn't been my passion since I started working as an hourly for the cotton breeding program in college, but biking is such a large part of my life-- both for recreation and transportation, as well as biking instead of driving for health and environmental reasons-- I need to live somewhere I can bike as much as possible. The country would allow me road rides for exercise, but it wouldn't be reasonable to run errands by bike.

Adding beds to the urban farm. Having my plots in town allow me to work all day on the urban farm and then bike into town for happy hour (Capital Brewery anyone?).

Neighbors

My friends who grew up in the country will tell me that they had neighbors. But as a city kid at heart, I like have people close to me. Really close. I enjoy chats over the fence and waving at the lady across the street. I also like sharing my life with neighbors, showing them that you can grow food in the city. I've had several visitors just this summer who came over because they were curious about the urban farm. I love that! My hope is to get more people over next summer to tour the farm and share my excitement about local food.

Food vs. Lawns

I need to start off by saying I don't hate grass. My black lab, Olive, loves to chase her tennis ball and she needs a lawn to do that. But grass can be expensive (both monetarily and environmentally) because it can take so many chemicals and so much water to keep it looking perfect. This is especially bothersome to me if no one is out enjoying it. These are the yards that are underutlized and could grow vegetables.

Food or grass? We have chosen food. And hopefully we'll be feeding more people than just our family next summer!

Two Wheels Urban Farm's Future

Because of these reasons, the urban farm is staying within the beltline! We are expanding our home growing plots and moving into at least two additional yards this year (thank you awsome Land Owners!). The program works when a land owner trades yard space for a weekly share of vegetables harvested from all of the urban farm's plots. With the cost of CSA being several hundred dollars a summer, I am trying to provide a good value for my land owner partners. (This will also give me the opportunity to practice growing a weekly CSA). The rest of the vegetables I plan to sell at a local farmer's market. (Two Wheels Urban Farm now even has a tax ID, so we are official!)

My dad working on a new addition to a land owner's existing plot. Looking forward to the urban farm's expansion!

WWOOFing with the best of them

I spent the past week working on an honest to goodness CSA (community supported agriculture) and market-selling organic vegetable farm. I volunteered through a program called WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). WWOOFing works like this: you volunteer on a farm for anything from a week or two up to a whole season in exchange for a bed and some simple food. For some the adventure is in the travel or being free to move around the world cheaply. For me, this program provided the easiest way for me to get onto a farm and see how things work (and perhaps other farms in the future!). It also allowed me to put into focus what I want out of Two Wheels Urban Farm.

My week looked like this: 8-9 hours of work every day, and this included planting hundreds of garlic bulbs, building temporary tunnels to protect the veggies from the first frost of the year, harvesting, and filling CSA boxes. The farm provided me a comfortable bed and dry bulk items (rice, beans, lentils, quinoa, etc.) and all the veggies I could eat from the farmer box (veggies that didn't make the cut for the CSA box or the market stand, but are still super delicious!). It was tiring work, but the farm crew was awesome and I had a ton of fun and learned a whole lot of valuable information that will make the urban farm even more productive.

All the veggies I could eat! And I ate well for sure!

I took notes all week on the technical stuff, including some terrific varieties I'm going to plant next year. But these are some of the additional take-aways:

1) Farming is a labor of love. You don't farm to get rich, and most families have at least one person who works off-farm. This is something that I had thought about in other ways, but hearing the farmers talk about it in these terms made total sense. Like teaching, growing food is something that you love not for the money, but for the hard work and the non-monetary rewards. It feels great to grow food and feed people.

Packing up the CSA boxes was a lot of fun. I thought of all the people involved in the CSA boxes I've received over the years and all the people who would be eating the food grown at this farm.

2) Starting small is ok. I feel like my ideas are creeping along, but that is a good way to grow-- slow and steady. The CSA farm I worked on last week started out 30 years ago with only 10 shares and an acre of gardens. Today they often have seasons where over 100 CSA shares are sold, they run a weekly stand at the farmers market, and they farm over 7 acres.

The veggie plots at this farm were very large and needed a crew to keep them up. If my urban farm grows slowly and I farm only what I am able to handle, my business and my sanity will survive to farm another year!

3) I learned this week that urban farming, especially going the route of farming small plots in city backyards, is really cool (perhaps I have underestimated myself?). And by living and working in town, I can live my values and use my bicycle as significant mode of transportation, something that I wouldn't be able to do if I lived out of town.

There are a lot additional advantages to urban farming: the very local community of both my neighbors and those with whom I farm and sell to, utilizing lawns to produce healthy, chemical-free food instead of input-heavy grass, and producing food without the land debt (often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) that many farmers face. Also, I will be able to have "high touch" with my high density plots, keeping them weed free and healthy to get the most produce out of small amount of land.

Unlike row crops, veggie farming is very hands on, and plants need babied throughout the season. I built these tunnels to protect sensitive lettuces from the first killing frost.

Have a great week everyone! Next week I hope to have some updates on the urban farm expansion project!

Expand-o-matic

As the summer winds down, I have been thinking about the future of the urban farm. My goal for next year is to produce enough vegetables to both feed my family and sell some at a local farmer's market.

I need more space!

I have a couple of options, in addition to the new raised beds I'm going to add next year...

1) Use land in other people's backyards. This would be the ideal way for me to keep my urban farm truly urban, while also putting someone's abandoned garden to good use or transforming lawn into something productive. Additionally, people who may want a vegetable garden-- but don't want to take care of one-- can enjoy the look of a garden along with eating fresh veggies grown right at home.

It might look something like this: I plant four plots in your back yard. You provide the chemical-free land and water and I do all the planting and maintenance. Two plots I harvest for me and two plots I harvest for you. (If you're interested in this option, please let me know!)

2) Rent or buy land. Buying an acreage is something we have been thinking about as a back-up plan. For now we could use the land for planting veggies and fruits and eventually build a house. I like living in the city, however, so this is an issue to overcome. Another option is renting land (an acre or less) and using it as my urban farm extension.


This week at the urban farm:

As I remove plants from the beds, some of them go to the chickens. In this photo they are enjoying a green bean plant. Most of the late pods I kept for next year's seed, but they got to enjoy eating these extra plants.

For the beds that are finished for the year I am using winter rye as a cover crop. This keeps the soil in place during the fall rains and adds organic material. It also suppresses weeds and just looks nice and lush!

Fall carrots are coming along.

Spinach and lettuce should grow well into the fall. I am planning to get some into the cold frame and see how far into the winter we can have salads.

Chicken dinner

We here at the urban farm are a multi-generational household. My parents are big fans of the hens (or as they call them, "the girls") and are, in fact, the reason we have chickens. I had been talking about possibly keeping hens for years, so for my birthday this year they broke down and gave me a coop. I say "broke down," because at first they weren't big fans of the idea of chickens in the city. But now things have changed. My mom even has a Buff Orpington who must have imprinted on her early. The bird now thinks she is her mother and follows her around incessantly.

Two Australorps and a Buff enjoying a zucchini.

So it was surprising to me when my dad texted the other day asking if I'd like to have chicken and dumplings for dinner. I believe the text read something like, "you provide the Australorp and I'll make dinner." What?!? Was he saying we should eat one of our hens (who are just now barely starting to earn their keep by laying eggs)?

Not sure they are really sweet or docile. But they are beautiful.

Apparently my parents have noticed that the chickens have been doing some singing. Now that they are laying a few eggs, the hens (mostly the Australorps) sing what is called an egg song. Every heard one? You would definitely know it! Here's an example I found (hopefully I can catch mine in the act one day soon and film it for posterity): egg song. They only do this once a day, so it's hard to catch.

I enjoy living in town and actually like to hear our neighborhood's sounds--song birds, playing dogs, a bicycle bell, the owl that wakes me up occasionally, happy children, the trash truck, and even the noisy geese as they make their final decent to the pond on fall evenings. So I hope my parents and neighbors can find some joy in their song.

Have a great week everyone!

Psst... check out my Instagram photos! (Click that little blue button at the top right of this page)

Recipe day: what to do with all those cherry tomatoes

I've had my second year in a row with a bumper crop of Sunburst cherry tomatoes. I was amused the other day walking through our local grocery chain when I saw this display:

10.5 ounces of conventionally grown tomatoes for $3.49 seemed like a good deal until I looked back and realized that so far this summer I've harvested over 10 pounds of these tomatoes from two plants (not including the ones we pick and eat while working outside). And my tomatoes have zero food miles and are grown organically.

Cherry tomatoes are often very prolific, but who REALLY needs 10+ pounds of cherry tomatoes over just a few summer weeks? There are only so many salads one can eat, only so many tomatoes the neighbors will take, and even though the chickens love to eat them, it seems like such a waste to feed them to the birds.

My friend Molly gave me a wonderful tip last summer on how to dry and save these tiny, sweet tomatoes. I tried it last year and liked it so much I knew I needed to share this secret. Whether you grow your own or you get too many cherry tomatoes from your CSA, this is a wonderful way to stretch the joy of the harvest out into the winter without too much trouble.

You can use these tomatoes in the same way you would use any sundried tomatoes. We especially like them on pizza or tossed with pasta, olive oil, and shredded parmesan. I've also thrown them in stir fried vegetables for an added sweet and tangy flavor.

How to do it:

• Lightly grease a baking dish
• Pre-heat oven to 250F
• Chop tomatoes in half and arrange them skin side down
• Bake for 2 hours (I check them about half way through)
• The tomatoes are done with they have mostly dried out
• When finished cooking, allow the baking dish to cool completely
• Place baking dish in the freezer for a few hours until the tomatoes are frozen
• Using a spatula, pick up tomatoes and store them in a baggie or other freezer-safe container
• The frozen tomatoes should last until the next summer

Tomatoes ready for the oven.

Dried out and ready to freeze. Like berries, freezing these separately on a tray keeps them from sticking together and makes them easier to use.

Oven-dried cherry tomatoes will be delicious in a fast weekday meal or on my Super Bowl pizza this winter!

In other news!

The little rain garden that I planted early in the summer has attracted Monarch butterflies, and we now have caterpillars. I am very excited about this urban farm update!

Have a great week everyone!

The good, the bad, and the really darn ugly

Since returning on Sunday from a camping trip, I have been very busy this week harvesting, mowing, weeding, and cleaning up plots. As I start to take out the old summer veggies and plant the fall lettuce, spinach, and cabbage, I'm taking a good look at how everything has gone so far this season.

I gorge myself on salads all spring. About the time I am ready for salads again, fall is here I can plant them to my heart's stomach's content.

I'm still tallying up total pounds of vegetables and fruits produced, but this is my photo evaluation of things that are going well and some things that are just plain ugly.

First the ugly:

The tomatoes aren't picturesque as they once were. After a couple of strong thunderstorms, all of the tomatoes and tomatillos are lying sideways. The chickens are enjoying eating the ones that fall on the ground (luckily not too many), and tomatoes on the ground are also easy targets for hungry prairie voles. But nonetheless, the tomatoes are producing very well.

The bad (also really ugly):

The popcorn was almost completely devoured (most likely) by raccoons. But better them eat the corn than the chickens!

The potted butternut squash that stayed very small and hasn't produced a single fruit convinced me that I need to learn more about growing plants in containers.

And because I like to end on a happy note... the good:

In our case the chicken came before the egg. This is the Buff Orpington hen who's egg is pictured below. And as of yesterday there is a second chicken laying eggs!

Egg #1 (It was delicious!) These first eggs are tiny, but experienced urban chicken ranchers have told me that they will get larger over time as the hens mature.

I canned Bloody Mary Mix for this first time. Since I have so much pasta sauce, I decided to divert some tomatoes into brunch.

I've noticed a dramatic increase in pollinators with the addition of the teeny tiny rain garden. I am very pleased!