current happenings on the backyard farm

Recently, we've needed to upgrade the fencing around our yard. We replaced a large portion of rusty old 4 ft chain link fence with a freshly milled, beautiful cedar 6 ft. The reason for this (in addition to aesthetics) was so we could provide a safe, much larger area (than their current run) for the girls to free range throughout the day. The new fence would keep them in and any neighborhood dogs, out.

looking for goodies under fresh straw mulch - they're sure there must be something under there!

However, after some careful consideration, we agreed that, while the happiness of our girls is always a priority, none of us wants to turn the whole yard into a "poop zone". We didn't want to lose the already limited clean, green play space that we enjoy around our small home. From experience we know that the chickens would, eventually, turn it into bare, slippery, gray, clay ground like they have done with their large run. Yuck. I also knew that I'd be seriously limiting our gardening space to the small area in front of our house. No good!

So we decided instead to enlarge their run in the backyard even further and put up a new 6 ft multi-purpose wire fence around it; one they can't jump over. It works great for us, and they've got lots of space, but unfortunately it means they can't free range, find fresh weeds, grass or bugs...


So instead, we do the chickens free ranging for them :-) Luckily at this time of year we do not have to walk far from our home to find an abundance of dandelions, chickweed, grass and a plethora of bugs and worms.

S and H like any opportunity to snip with scissors. This is great, because the hens have a hard time eating really long weeds/grass that have been pulled out of the ground and aren't rooted down so they can nibble bits off. So H and S snip our harvest into more manageable bits for them before tossing it in their run. I'm sure the girls are grateful.

backyard farms provide manageable yet satisfying work ;-)

The kids also enjoyed the opportunity to freely toss an entire bale of straw into the air and everywhere, to add a fresh layer of mulch to soak up the moisture from our clay ground. Chickens don't like constantly wet feet, it isn't good for them! So the straw works perfectly. Over time, once it is really broken down (by our walking and the hens scratching), we'll rake it up and use it in the compost and as mulch in the gardens (with the added bonus of nitrogen-rich chicken poop!). Then we'll replace it again.

Happy girls, waiting for their salad (extra croutons -aka bugs- and hold the dressing, please).