Farm-Girl Genes

My daughter holding Elsie

I have always dreamed of being a farm-girl. When I lived in the city in Florida, I would line my journals with poems and pictures of the life that tugged at my soul. The desire to connect with the land and nature in this way overwhelms me at times. I have pondered, during moments such as these, where that particular dream may have come from.
The obvious answer is that I inherited it from my once upon a time Farm-Girl Mother.
Were those my formative years then? I was 8 years old when my mother and father moved us from the pavement smothered, smog filled highways of San Diego to 14 living breathing acres in the Flathead Valley, to Montana.
I watched as empty barns and faded out-buildings were dressed in fresh red paint. I played in the dirt as fences were repaired and painted, and I caught frogs in the deep shade of the gulley while, as if by farm-girl magic the animals appeared. 50 hens in the coop, goats in the paddock, 2 cows for milk and 1 for meals, pigs for bacon and horses for riding, a farm dog for companionship, and a striped little barn cat to handle the mice.
I can see her now, bandana kerchief holding back her beautiful chestnut hair, blue jeans and a flannel shirt. She is walking to the barn as the sun rises with milk pails in her hands. The cat follows with her tail raised high. There is bag balm near the sink, sterilized gallon jars lined up neatly on the  counter top, waiting for their morning fill of creamy fresh milk.
She is on her knees in the pea patch, nearly 1/2 an acre of garden around her. She is grinding grain, selling eggs, putting food by in glossy happy jars. She is mixing herbs, and making tinctures, plucking feathers, and bottle feeding goats, sewing aprons, and baking bread. She is a living example of everything I would grow up wanting to be.
Of course! I think to myself, it is her. My mama, the starter for my farm-girl loaf. And then I pause, my chickens scratching about the yard in the early morning light leaves me breathless with a contentment that reaches far beyond my bones, deep deep into the marrow of my existence. This is bigger, much larger than me, larger even that the remembered perfection of a little girl for her mama. I can feel in moments such as these, a connection. I am all at once connected to the women before me. It is as if our apron strings stretch out across time, and I am feeling a breath of their contentment with their own farm-girl life. It’s like electricity traveling along a wire. I hear strains of music from their life-songs~ it is sweet and mournful and it mingles with mine. I haven’t asked her, but I imagine that my mom felt much the same thing. What I do know, is that I am blessed to love this. I am blessed to have this. I am blessed.

The Lazy Chicks Method of Gardening

Its been a lazy Saturday. Its been in the high 40's but for some reason feels cooler than that. Not quite gardening weather just yet. My chickens begged to differ.


I woke up this morning to a horrible screeching/crowing sound coming from Elsie (the lighter colored blond in the video below). I had never heard her make that particular "screech" before and was somewhat concerned. It sounded as if she was attempting to crow, but was not quite up to Rooster quality. While she performed her own little opera, she paced the run. It was odd behavior.

In the past, she has paced the run when she wanted to be out of the enclosure. As in, pooping and pecking in the middle of the yard or fully ripe garden. Pace only though, not shout at the top of her lungs demanding to be let out. M'Kayla was good enough to slip on her shoes and go open the Coop and run door to see if this was the problem. Orabelle jumped up and out of the run as soon as M'Kayla opened the door. Poor Elsie, not being hatched with the escape artist ingenuity of Orabelle began to grow frantic until she realized the Coop door was open as well. In through the little chicken door, through the Coop and OUT! Once out, she flapped her wings and ran to the garden box.She hasn't made so much as a peep all day.

I am pretending that Elsie is concerned that my garden looks hardly ready for spring. The real reason is that said garden is filled with all manner of worms and goodies beneath the lovely leaf mulch that covered it last fall. Newly thawed, moist and delicious...its every chickens dream.

This video was taken at 5 in the evening and as you can see, Elsie and Goldie are still hard at work tilling the garden for their lazy mama. Adding heaping helpings of fertilizer as they toil. Sigh, a chickens work is never done.

Spring Chickens

I am having so much fun with my new chicks. There have been updates in the chicken world of late though and I thought I would post.

After talking with one of the ladies in charge of chickens at Murdoch's, she said I would have no trouble selling my Bantam Roo and several of his ladies. So I did the thing that comes natural to any chicken mama in a feed store filled with troughs of peeping beaks.... I bought three more! To be more accurate, I bought 2 more. Mike bought 1. He bought a White Crested Polish pullet with an adoreable little top knot of fluff. (crazy looking hair do when she grows up though). I bought another Buff Orpington like Elsie. She is pictured above on the right. I also purchased a Speckled Hamburg, which lays porcelain white eggs. She is pictured on the left.

The top photo is of the fab brooder box my husband set up. We went to Sears and picked up a couple of range and freezer boxes. Mike flipped one on its side, cut the side (which is now the top) out, and cut ends from the other box. Some packaging tape and wala! Insta brooder!

You will also notice the window. He had a sheet of plexiglass so he cut a window on one side of the box and duct taped the plexi in. Perfect viewing window for Lulu who pleads with me daily to please please just let her kiss one of the babies. Right.

I also bought vegetable seeds at Murdochs! They were running a sale for 9 packages of seeds for .96 cents! Now I just need a grow light and somewhere to put the baby plants.

You know, when I was younger, I didn't care much for spring. Infact I could easily have said (and probably have said on many occasions) that it was my least favorite season. I would generally complain of mud, and that half in half out of winter bit that brings on a never ending restlessness. Part of it could be that I was in my first few months of pregnancy in the spring with my kids, and had morning sickness 24 hours a day. To this day if I hear Sinead O'Connor sing "Since you been gone I can do whatever I waaaaant"... I could literally almost throw up, that being the artist I was "in to" at the time!

But now? Now I realize how much I need spring. I realize how much I long for the promise of respite from the dark cold place of winter. Here in Montana, the line between winter and spring is much more vivid than it was in Florida. There was Spring in Florida, but you had to pay close attention to the natural world around you not to miss it. This winter, with my illness and, has been especially dark. I long to feel the steady heat of the summer sun on my skin. To close my eyes and let the sunlight fill my body with seretonin and vitamin D. Spring promises summer, bless her heart.

Spring holds more than just the promises of Summer. I am a Christian now. It is in springtime that we set aside a day in remembrance of what our Lord did for us on the cross. Giving my life to Christ has been its very own Spring. In Christ, the bible says, I am a new creation.

Wow, this post was just supposed to be about chickens! : )The snow blows crazily outside, winter doesn't want to let go. The days are longer though, and warmer and I am so grateful for all this season brings.

Ready and Waiting!

Here is a photo of my chick brooder. This is what I have used previously for the first couple of weeks, and then I switch to a large appliance box. I love the visibility factor, allowing the chicks to see out and us to see in. I think it has made my hens the friendly sweet girls that they are.

I am so excited to bring the babies home. It feels something akin to being 9 months pregnant and waiting.

I use pine shavings in the bottom of the brooder, and if they are not out of stock, I will also pick up a bag of paper shavings which really absorb moisture and work well both in the coop and the brooders.

I am going to try something a little different this year when it comes to watering the chicks. I am going to use a rabbit or hamster water bottle instead of placing the mini chicken waterer inside. Due to the fact that chicks run, jump, flap, scratch and play they tend to get shavings in their water rather quickly. Even when I placed it up on bricks inside the brooder I would still have to rinse it out several times a day. I am hoping that the hamster method will be cleaner, safer and less mess.

The other mess issue is the shavings that inevitably end up on the kitchen floor. The cage that I am using this time has a deeper pan, so I am hoping that it will reduce the mess without adding a bumper cover around the outside.

Well.. I will next be posting when the babies arrive! Poor Murdoch's is probably getting tired of me calling! I definitely have the "nesting" instinct!

Goldie Locks

This is Goldie. Goldie was one of the chicks that my husband brought home last spring. We would feed them meal worms when they were tiny little balls of fluff, and Goldie would always get the worm.

She is the most photogenic of all the girls, always posing for the camera. Turning her head just so and clucking at me to get her good side.

This morning on our little farm, its crisp, cold and bright. The contrast between the bright blue sky, the glittering ice covered branches and the brilliant white snow is magnificent.

When I come out of my back door, I have to open the latch on the gate to enter the backyard. As soon as I touch the latch, the girls hear the sound and begin calling to me. I imagine it goes something like this "We haven't had food for days! We want bananas! Can I have a drink of water? I want to come out of the coop! What do you have? Do you have something? Do you? Because I want something. How about oatmeal? Did you make oatmeal?"

When I walk into the back yard, if they are free ranging, they lift their wings and run to me. I know, I know.. you have to be a chicken mama to understand, but it is possible to love a silly hen.

I open their coop door and reach down to check the water level. As soon as I touch it, all of the girls gather round to drink as if the water hadn't been there before I touched it. I pick up their feeder and swirl it around with turns of my wrist to evenly distribute the food. They then run to the feeder, pecking at the crumbles as if now they are fit to eat.

I gather the eggs and scold them. One of the girls forgot to jump down from the nest box before relieving herself. Naughty girl.

Reaching into their warm pine scented nest is probably the sweetest part of my day. If I'm wearing an apron I will lift the hem and gather the eggs gently in the fold. Once I placed the eggs in my over large coat pockets and then forgot they were in there...well thats not exactly true. I did forget they were in there, but it wasn't my coat pockets, it was my husbands. Imagine his suprise.

There is just something so yesteryear about gathering eggs. I feel as if I am in line behind a long chain of women, lifting eggs from nests and placing them in aprons or skirt folds. I am standing in the present and living the past.

It's a lovely thing.

A Late Beginning

I have decided that I would like to keep a journal of sorts, tracking the changes that time and hard work bring to our smallish Urban Homestead.

3 years ago this spring, we moved into this little apartment in town. The building is a 4plex, 2 up and 2 down. It was built over 100 years ago and was once the very first church in Kalispell.

We are blessed to be able to use the backyard in whatever manner we would like, as it is my very own awesome farm mama that owns the building!

We began with a backyard that was covered in a carpet of grass, just like most backyards. In one corner was a giant lilac tree and in the other corner a very fruitful Italian Plum tree.

The urge to cultivate any bit of land I have access too was imprinted upon my by my mom. I hold her fully responsible for my crazy urban homesteading.

The first year we lived with the yard as it was. I was sick with an intense lupus flare, and didn't have the time, energy or inclination to begin. The second year, still sick but beginning to see the light at the end of the lupus tunnel, I convinced my awesome and incredible husband to craft me an A-Frame chicken home. He is amazing when it comes to building anything, and in no time at all he had designed and built a chicken ark. Roosts and nesting boxes up top, little run underneath. I wanted something very unobtrusive and neighbor friendly. I had called the City of Kalispell to check on chicken ordinances, and found to my delight that I could keep as many hens as I liked, but no roosters. I also found (and have stored for future farming) that we could keep two miniature dairy goats and two pot bellied pigs IN OUR BACKYARD!! Living in Montana definitely has its perks. Late August 2007, as soon as my husband had pounded the last nail, I had four delightful young hens moving in to the ark. I named the girls after ladies I had cared for in the nursing home. Elsie, Lucy, Mae and Polly.

7 months later, my husband brought home a box full of peeping cotton balls. He had been at the feed store and decided to surprise me with 4 day old chicks and a promise that by the time they were old enough to live outdoors, he would have a proper coop and run for all the girls. (See, I told you he was awesome).

We raised 4 adorable, crazy, personality filled chicks in a big appliance box in our kitchen. It was so very much fun, and incredibly frustrating at the same time. Oh they were fine when they were too tiny to hop up out of the box! I have some great photos though, and wonderful memories.

As promised, I had a gorgeous red and white 12X4 coop and a 20X20 run just waiting for the girls when they were old enough to live outdoors. Can I even describe the bliss I felt at watching my girls peck and scratch around their new chicken run? I woke up at 5 am the next morning, pulled a stool up to my kitchen window and drank steaming hot coffee while waiting for my hens to come out of their new chicken door and into their run. Pure bliss.

Shortly after, he also built my daughter a rabbit condo, where our mini lop bunnies enjoy life, and a 5X25' raised bed garden area for me to plant. He also fenced in the back yard which gives us more privacy and a place to let the dogs run about.

Sadly, since beginning I have lost 4 chickens. One to cold, one to heat and two to an unknown illness, possibly Marek's disease.

Currently I have Elsie (the only original girlie left) Orabelle, Maggie and Goldie. They are all healthy and happy and laying like crazy. Soon I will be making the trip to Murdochs to pick up some new babies. We are going to get 8 more babies and plan on selling surplus eggs next fall.

We have a compost pile to make use of the wonderful growing elixir the hens and bunnies create just by being alive, and will be adding even more to our raised bed lasagna garden this year.

Neighbors would stop by last summer and tell me that I must be an incredible gardener as rarely had they seen a garden take off like mine did. I told them the secret was in the layers, and I am in high hopes of having an even more successful garden this year.

Mike will be building me another box, this one in a shadier part of the yard to plant the lettuces in as they bolted too quickly in the heat of last summers sun. I am hoping to plant a thick row of peas around the perimeter of the chicken run. This will give the peas something to climb on, the chickens something to nibble on, and something to freeze come harvest time.

I will also post here when I make my batches of soap, sew aprons or other useful items, discover great recipes, can and freeze harvests and knit or crochet something fun.

There is such joy for me in the earth and all of God's glorious creation.

I am reminded of that worship song that says "All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Oh Praise Him, Alleluia Alleluia!"