Weeding and Gathering: Heartsease

Viola tricolor or heartsease, a common "weed" in my garden.

It's definitely time to switch up my chore routine. In winter, I do outdoor work in the afternoon. In summer, I do outdoor work in the morning. It all has to do with the coldest and hottest parts of the day!

The other day, my morning chore was weeding my lettuce and multiplier onion bed. My fall planted lettuce (mesclun, actually) was well established, but the spring planted lettuce was just beginning to sprout. It was being shaded out by violets and heartsease, so I needed to get a little light to it.

Multiplier onions, lettuce, violets, and heartsease

I confess my definition of "weeds" has narrowed considerably over the years. Besides companion group planting, I find myself leaving volunteers and any other plant I learn is beneficial in any sort of way. The result is rather hodge-podge, messy looking beds, but oh well.

When the lettuce needed sunlight and room to grow, I pulled and saved the heartsease to dry for my herb cabinet. These common little flowers (also called johnny jump up or wild pansy) have both medicinal as well as culinary value and so are worth collecting.

The whole plant can be used and is collected while in bloom. It can be used in infusions (tea), tinctures, poultices, and creams. It acts as an expectorant, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmatic, diuretic, and anti-rheumatic and has a laxative effect. Common medicinal uses include treatment for respiratory problems (cough, asthma, bronchitis, and whooping cough), joint complaints (rheumatism, inflammation), urinary problems (cystitis, bedwetting, bladder stones, kidney weakness), as a spring tonic to strengthen circulation and metabolism, and topically for skin complaints (rash, acne, eczema, psoriasis, and cradle cap). For more complete lists:

Heartsease at Remedial Herbs 
Heartsease at Botanical.com

The flowers are the focus of it's culinary use: salads, garnishes, frozen in ice cubes.

Violets (Viola odorata) are in abundance at the moment as well! We have them all over the place. I reckon they should be next on my list for foraging and gathering.

Weeding and Gathering: Heartsease © April 2014 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Chicken Coop: Walls, Windows, Floor, Roost

Progress on the chicken coop continues.

Quarter inch plywood walls

We bought the plywood at our area builders surplus store. It is kind of junky but nothing a good paint job can't hide.

Cutouts for windows and chicken door. 

The windows are different sizes because they are the old storm windows.

Good old barn paint. 

I splurged on oil based barn paint for, hopefully, better protection of the wood. I used one of those foam craft brushes to paint the bottom edge of the plywood. That edge is often overlooked but needs to be protected from rain and water too.

After the paint, windows and trim.

Windows installed and trimwork in progress

1x3s finish the corners and cover the seams between sheets of plywood. More 1x3s are nailed midway between the seams, so that they are placed every 2 feet apart. These ones are decorative but, once painted, will give the building a more finished look.

Cap block floor for the storage area of the cop

Next Dan worked on a floor for the feed storage area. We priced materials and he decided on a cap block floor, The dirt was leveled and the block dried in, i.e. there is no mortar.

Wall to partition off the feed & equipment storage area

He used scraps of leftover plywood to make the wall between feed storage and coop areas. If you look closely you will see it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling. That's partly because I didn't think it necessary for him to rip a narrow section of plywood to finish it off. Also, I wanted to leave a gap for air circulation and light. If chickens manage to escape through that(!), we'll cover it with chicken wire.

Last but not least, I'm very excited to show you the roost Dan made.

"Tree" roost, eventually replaced with a conventional roost. Details here.

He had a cedar post which was too short for a fence post, but the perfect length for a tree inspired chicken roost. The poles are indeed branches, which are anchored to both the post and the wall.

As you can see, we're almost done! Nest boxes are next, shelves for the storage area, doors, and of course I have to finish painting. I just hope the chickens are as impressed with all this as I am.

Next post, Chicken Coop Countdown Checklist.

Chicken Coop: Walls, Windows, Floor, Roost © 

April 2014 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Chicken Wrangling

Are ya'll tired of baby goat pics? With 8 new kids I have plenty more, but here's a post I had prepared to go before all the kidding commenced. 

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I admit it. I am not an adept chicken wrangler. Fortunately, most of my chickens are pretty cooperative; they get over the fence occasionally and have to be herded back. Calling "chick, chick, chick, chick, chickens" and a handful of scratch usually does it. The Silver Laced Wyandottes and Speckled Sussex will actually run up to the chicken gate when they see me and wait to be let in. But not my Buff Orpingtons. For some reason, whenever they see me, they take off in the opposite direction.

Buff Orpington hens. 

This may go back to when the oldest ones were chicks. They were raised by one of my Welsummers, who liked to take them for walks around the yard. When they started getting too close to the garden or the road, I would herd them back. I would take a bath towel and walk behind them flapping it crisply so that it sounded like hawks' wings. I would call out, "Shoo, shoo," as they made a terrified scramble back toward the chick yard. That must have been more traumatic than I realized. Now they run away any time they see me.

This has became a problem recently, because I have been trying to establish our little buck pasture. Some of it's doing fairly well.

Last fall I seeded with annual rye, quite a bit of which has started to grow.
Hopefully, so has seed from my sustainable pasture experiment. 

But some of it is pretty scratched up thanks to the chickens.

From a different angle there are large bare spots in need of seeding.

I began to work on ways to keep them out. The first thing I tried was to reroute them into the doe pasture. I closed all the gates and covered any chicken size openings. That stopped all but four persistent Buffs. I observed that most of the fence hopping occurred at the cross members of the H braces, so I used baling twine to create a barricade.

This detered them somewhat. They would make a terrible fuss when they jumped up and had to negotiate the twine, but it didn't stop them.

As I racked my brain, I thought of our former hawk deterrent efforts, and reading that shiny things like CDs help keep hawks away. The only thing I could think of was to attach a row of aluminum foil strips to the top of the fence.

Aluminum foil is well known for it's anti-alien properties and I figured that if it worked, I could make my fame and fortune by proving that chickens are aliens in disguise from another planet. At the very least I could make my debut on George Noory's radio show; maybe even get a contract to write the screenplay for MIB4.

Alas, this did not work. Those four stubborn Buffs still managed to jump the fence in the morning and work that pasture. What made matters worse was that they couldn't figure out how to get back into the chicken yard. I would try to herd them, but they insisted on running away in the opposite direction!

This went on for several frustrating days until at last I decided they had to be caught and wing clipped. You'd think this would have been my first solutions except that these didn't go into the coop to roost at night. Rather, they roosted at the top of the cedar tree in the chicken yard. Now they couldn't get back and were roosting in the bushes in the buck pasture. I figured I could catch them at night, clip their wings, and all would be well.

I figured I'd have a good chance if I waited until after dark and caught them unawares. Except they weren't unaware, they saw me coming in the moonlight. After freaking out the first two hens, I went after the other two with the flashlight. It blinded them so that I was able to pluck them out of the bush easily. The first two were also blinded by it and simply hunkered down. That made them easy to catch too.

All four had both wings clipped and were placed in the coop that night. For now, the buck pasture is safe for forage seed planting and growing. Except I will likely have to do the planting at night so no chicken is tempted to try to get into the buck pasture again. Stealth planting anyone?

Chicken Wrangling © April 2014 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/