Our organic veggie and fruit garden was made more sustainable (arguably) this week with the addition of chooks! We have been waiting to buy hens since January when our neighbour John helped us to install the henhouse. Then the pandemic hit, and people decided that chooks were the way to survive the zombie apocalypse lockdown. So we have been keeping an eye on all the usual places, but every time chooks became available, they sold out straightaway.
In our area, things have settled down, and we finally managed to get hold of four point-of-lay pullets. I really wanted heirloom breeds, but settled for reliable, friendly ISA Browns, because four chooks in the henhouse is better than none…in the henhouse.
We have already discovered that they each have their own distinct personalities. Vanessa is the boss and the most inquisitive. When we let them out for their first free range today, she was the one to lead them out of the henhouse, and the first to work out how to escape our (admittedly shoddy) barriers. She’s the first to get her gob in the food trough too, and the one to flap her wings at me indignantly if I get in her way. She’s the one giving the stink eye to the camera in the photo above.
Hercules Mulligan was the last to be named (after my husband couldn’t come up with a name, I helpfully took over naming duties), and is the shyest. She took ages to come out of the box upon arrival (eventually I just tipped it up and she had no choice) and the last to timidly step out of the henhouse into the big wide world this morning.
They have already started laying little pullet sized eggs, like troopers. I am happy about the eggs but I will be even happier about adding their manure to my compost. Chook poo is great to activate compost.
While the chooks free ranged and my husband chopped wood for the fire like a champion, I started fertilising the veggie patch with pelletised chicken manure (Rooster Booster), and weeding. I was pretty laid back today: it’s pretty cold and I was mostly interested in the chooks, tbh. But I pulled out weeds as I found them, and checked out the veggies to see how they are going. Cabbages are heading nicely, if the green caterpillar (see below) doesn’t eat too much of it.
The Romanesco broccoli has started heading too:
I love Romanesco, they are my favourite brassicas (or Nebraskas, as my daughter calls them). It looks gorgeous, and tastes great. Also, they grow the best of the brassicas in my garden. Most of the other broccoli has gone straight to seed this winter as it has been unseasonably dry (or seasonably, depending on your view of the changing weather patterns). But Romanesco always grows really well here.
And that’s it. Chooks and weeding, it’s all I’ve done. I’d better move my caboose and feed the fruit trees next weekend or there will be a dodgy crop at best in the Summer.