Inner City Farmer

Waller Creek runs right by my house. Or should I say Waller Creek is “located” right by my house? Because Waller Creek isn’t “running” at all right now. It’s dry as a bone, which provides an excellent illustration of the drought we’re mired in. During the three-year period I’ve lived in Austin it’s only rained with any regularity and volume for two months last spring. Otherwise, nada.

The lack of rain makes everything that needs to get done on the farm that much harder: keeping the garden watered, the chickens hydrated, the clay dug from the ground, the fruit trees growing. Water is life, and without it the farm isn’t looking so lively right about now.

But wait. There’s hope. Relief is on the way, thanks to Hurricane Dolly. While the national news is trying to portray the storm as some sort of “monster” and “killer,” here in Austin we’re ready to welcome it with open arms. Sadly, as of five minutes ago, we hadn’t gotten more than a sprinkling of rain while San Antonio and Houston are getting pummeled. What up with that?

This is what happens to a broody hen. I grabbed her by the feet as soon as it got dark last night and stuffed her into this dog cage. Yes, I do feel bad about it. But her time in captivity should only last a day or two, which hopefully will be long enough to break the hormonal cycle she’s stuck in.

Don’t you wish the intersections in your neighborhood looked like this? If you live in the Northwest (of the country, not Austin, sadly), there’s a good chance at least one of them does. The City Repair Project, an “organized group action” that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live, was created in Portland, Oregon in 1996 by citizen activists who wanted a more community-oriented and ecologically sustainable society. The movement and its ideals have since spread up and down the West Coast to towns like Eugene, Olympia, Seattle, Santa Monica, and Oakland.

Could Austin be next? If so, I know of a perfect intersection, Nelray and Chesterfield, which is right here in my neighborhood. A guerrilla gardener has already hit one corner of the intersection, creating this beautiful array of flowers and vegetables:

On the northwest side of the intersection sits this pleasant-looking bush, the name of which escapes me:

This was the shrub that was sporting pretty lavender flower just last week. I think it might be a Bush Germander?

Together these two corners of the intersection show the inherent natural beauty of the area, but the the two corners opposite show the present-day reality.

Nice tag on the curb, huh? The southeast corner has also been hit with a splash of graffiti:

To me, this intersection represents all that my neighborhood is (as well as could be). Instead of allowing some high-school punk to lift his leg and piss on all of our street corners, wouldn’t it be nice if we were to come together and take back our streets? A City Repair-type action is the most beautiful way of doing it I can think of. Anyone want to join me?

No one ever said raising chickens was easy. I had just gotten the two chicks born this spring (nearly full-sized now) integrated with the three older hens when one of the older hens suddenly turned “broody.” About a week ago, the Black Australorp, fueled by some surge of hormones, decided it was time to hatch some chicks (even though I don’t have a rooster and it is, therefore, impossible). She’s pretty much been sitting in the nest box ever since.

Driven by their natural maternal instinct, broody hens will rarely leave the nest. So committed are they to sitting on their eggs, they can actually die of starvation or dehydration. This instinct has been bred out of many breeds, but evidently not this one. I believe it was brought on by the long days we are now enjoying.

I don’t think this hen is so overwhelmed by her biology that she’s going to starve while sitting on the nest, but I am upset about the precipitous drop in egg production. While the Australorpe is sitting in the nest box, the other hens can’t lay their eggs. So what can I do about it?

There are many ways to discourage broodiness, most of which sound pretty cruel. For example, dunking the hen in water! Or making her sit on an ice block! What you want to do is reduce the hen’s body temperature in order to disrupt her hormonal cycle. I think it might be enough to put her in a wire cage for a couple days where she’ll be unable to keep her body temperature as high as it needs to be to incubate chicks. It’s a bit of work I’m not really looking forward to doing… but I need my eggs!

Yesterday evening, I was walking the dog around the block when I ran into a neighbor, Adam, who was pushing his daughter Ada in a stroller. We got to talking about a bush on the side of the road that had recently flowered but only for a couple days. All its purple petals lay on the ground, their color rapidly fading, as we spoke.

Adam made his keen interest in horticulture immediately apparent. He pointed out a plant at the edge of the dry creek bed (taro, I think it was) and informed me that it was edible. Which got me talking about the pond I hope to create in my backyard someday and the plants I hope to grow in it. Which made him think of Tony, who lived just down the road from where we were standing and who I just had to meet.

Like Adam, Tony was my kind of guy. He spoke the same language I do, peppering his sentences with references to “synergy” and “feedback loops” and “aquaculture.” He seemed especially well versed on the last, and I made it known that I wanted to hear more. He promptly led me to his backyard where he showed me his aquaculture system (some of which can be seen in the picture above). In its heyday vegetables—mostly salad greens—grew in the three bins, which held gravel and nutrient-rich water that came from an aquarium full of fish. After the vegetables purified the water, it returned to the fish tank. It was a perfect closed-loop system that grew both veggies and fish… until it got so ridiculously hot and shut down. The same thing happened to the aquaculture project at the Rhizome Collective.

The whole explanation of how it works only took a couple minutes, but it was enough to get me hooked. I now know what Project #91 is.