Backyard Chickens & Bees

I’ve been brewing my own beer for a good long while now, and in the last few years have been brewing all-grain recipes. This results in a lot of spent grain that usually goes into the compost bin. Spent grain is great as compost. That is, unless it’s in the middle of summer and hot [...]

We tried to integrate the young chicks with the chickens a few weeks ago, but George had other plans and constantly attacked the little chicks (they were only about a month old at the time). So, we separated them again and let the chicks get a bit larger so that they would be able to [...]

Two things have been going on recently, somewhat behind the scenes, that have been taking up a lot of my free time. They’re both things that incorporate many of the pastimes that I really enjoy doing: yard work, planning and building small contraptions,  and playing with computers (which is why/how you are reading this). Well, [...]

Well, we introduced the older chickens and the 11 new chicks this past weekend. For now they are being supervised, as George likes to chase them around (she is, surprisingly, the dominant one; Emily is just very vocal about it all: see the video below for a demonstration) and pecked at a few, resulting in [...]

I was at home this morning (after having gone to the opening day for the Portland Farmer’s Market and working on various chores) and Matt came by to say that they were heading over to The Urban Farm Store on SE Morrison and wondered if I was interested in joining them. Of course I was! [...]

Well, this past weekend was dedicated to the March CHIC (Community Home Improvement Collective) and additional work on building the new chicken coop. We worked at Matt and Kristin’s place this month (they are my immediate neighbors to the South), with a long laundry-list of tasks to complete, including a full remodel of the chicken [...]

A few quick links and some thoughts on each: