Inner City Farmer

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!

The chicks I got in late March are now nearly full grown. They’ve been living in the same coop as the three older hens for about the last six weeks. They have a separate “den,” essentially a box made out of scrap particle board with cinder blocks covering the entrance, where they can eat their own food (first “grower” and now “developer”) in peace and escape the hens’ wrath. To get inside the den, they sneak through and around the cinder blocks, something the fat old hens can’t do.

One of the funniest things about my five chickens is that they are all different breeds. I have a Wyandotte, a Black Australorp, a Rhode Island Red, a hatchery-created breed called an Ideal 236, and a Polish Crested, which might be the freakiest-looking chicken of all time. Here’s a close-up of its face, as seen through a cinder block:

As my garden continues to burn out and fade away, I have become even more dependent upon eggs for sustenance. Much to their credit, my hens are producing, usually at least two eggs a day. In fact, I’m getting a little sick of omelets. Who’s up for a trade?

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 30%

Despite appearances, this blog has inspired a slew of comments that have made the journey I’m on so much easier. Funny thing though, the majority of these comments have been sent to me via email. I’m not sure if this has been done out of modesty, fear, or laziness… but it must stop! The answer to many of the problems we face as a species can be found in our highly developed ability to communicate with each other, so, for christ’s sake, let’s start talking, even if it’s only to say: “You haven’t flushed your toilet in a week? That is so gross!”

The latest batch of comments to put a smile on my face was sent by a man living in one of the hotbeds of sustainability, good old Vermont. A woodworker and a musician, this man’s got serious skillz, whether he’s making a table or strumming a guitar. Here’s what he had to say:

Re: imperfect cob arches: It’s the unofficial motto of my woodworking biz, “Imperfections reveal and highlight the mysteries of the process.” Hell, yeah, a human made it, from natural materials that behave a little differently here and there. If you want uniformity go buy molded plastic, but if you value interacting with a formerly living, organic material then it’s going to have variations, texture, oddities, character!

Re: meeting the neighbors, egg swaps, sharing gardening tips, whatever: Nothing will be more important as we go than relearning how to give and take and share and trade and support the people we live next to and near. In the future our lives take place at home and in the neighborhood and at the village commons.

Re: okra: Pickled okra kicks ass.

Re: packaging: Packaging can go fuck itself.

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 30% (I lost a chick this weekend to the jaws of an opossum, which means there will be a slight drop in egg production in the future.)

Until yesterday, the Inner City Farm didn’t have a compost bin. When I started my garden in the early spring, I actually went to a s-t-o-r-e—but, admittedly, a really cool one—and bought ten bags of their Revitalizer Compost. Nothing makes you feel like a bigger idiot than buying dirt, and shitty dirt to boot. I vow never to do it again.

I blame my hens for my lack of a compost bin. They have been getting all my kitchen scraps, and it’s hard to deny them this pleasure. They live to eat the stuff most people toss into the garbage. Whenever they see me walking towards them with the compost bucket from the kitchen, they race towards me with such enthusiasm it’s almost frightening. As excited as they get, there are certain things they just won’t eat: banana peels, lemon rinds, coffee grounds, onions, and their own shells, to name a few. These used to sit on the ground, rotting and attracting flies, but no longer.

My motivation to make a compost bin yesterday can be traced to a specific event—I mowed my front yard for the first time this year. Yes, I confess that I actually have a “real lawn” in front of my house. Because it consists almost entirely of Bermuda grass, it doesn’t require any watering so I have no real objections to it. Then again, if it were suddenly to die I wouldn’t be very upset either—I would happily plant native plants in its place. To mow my yard, I use one of those old-timey push mowers that leave the cut grass pretty much where it had been standing so it’s really easy to rake up and throw on a compost pile. One of the great downfalls of a compost pile from what I’ve read is lack of greens, but thanks to my front yard that shouldn’t be a problem this summer.

Building the compost bin was a fairly straightforward procedure. Luckily, I had all the materials I needed on hand. I knew when I hauled off the eight sheets of particle board I found at the fraternity house last fall I’d eventually find a use for it, and so I did. I have to laugh (and cry) when I hear of people spending a hundred bucks at Home Depot to buy a plastic compost bin… as if the world needs more plastic. I put together a bin in a couple hours and at no cost, other then my own labor. Its best attributes, as far as I can tell, are its size (quite large) and functionality (it’s got two compartments). I do fear that it might not allow enough airflow, but I’ll address that problem only if it actually becomes one.

As happy as I am to finally have a proper compost bin, I’m actually far more excited about the idea of sheet mulching, which involves adding a thick layer of newspaper or cardboard on top of your soil and then heaping a pile of mulch on top of that. Not only does this prevent weeds from popping up, it also helps build your soil. Basically, you’re composting in place. Ecological gardeners swear by it. If you want to read more about it, I recommend checking out Toby Hemenway’s book Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture or Ruth Stout’s classic The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book.

My trip to New Orleans was as enjoyable as expected. That town never fails to thrill me, and it’s particularly vibrant during Jazz Fest. The highlight for me occurred on Friday night when my krewe and I took a trip to the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Katrina. We attended a free concert put on by Michael Franti and his band Spearhead as well as the Rebirth Brass Band. We’d heard the rumor the day before, and it was confirmed at the Fairgrounds: the show would be taking place at an elementary school at the corner of Claiborne and Caffin to benefit Common Ground Relief.

Those adventurous enough to stray from the beaten path most tourists are advised to stay on while in New Orleans discovered a real treat: one of the most uplifting bands you’re ever going to see, playing for less than three hundred people. At one point Franti talked to the crowd about the difficulty of trying to affect change in a world that seems hostile to it. It was an inspiring pep talk with a simple take-home message—all you can do is do your best and eventually the little acts of kindness we perform will have a huge impact. Change will come.

I found his words particularly moving because lately I’ve been struggling to find meaning in my urban-farming project. So what if I am able to reduce my ecological footprint down to nearly nothing? So what if I’m able to grow all my food right here on this lot? So what if I build a tool shed—my next project—entirely out of natural and recycled materials? Franti’s words reminded me that what I’m doing matters, that it’s important, and that I must continue to do it.

And then I returned home to discover that one of my chicks had died during my absence. Six weeks ago I started raising four chicks in a cardboard box in my garage. Right before I left for New Orleans I moved them into the chicken coop, separating them from the three hens with some chicken wire and building them their own temporary shelter. The space they had was triple what they had before, but evidently it was still too small. Three of the chicks went psycho on the fourth, pecking it to death. It’s a sad lost but not an unexpected one. The attrition rate for chicks is extremely high. If a raccoon or disease doesn’t do them in, something else will.

Zephyr doesn’t know about the chick’s death yet, but once he hears I doubt he’ll be too upset. We’ve lost chicks before and he’s come to understand that death is simply a natural part of life on the farm. One of the main reasons I started this project was so that he could learn such things, concepts city kids have grown completely out of touch with. I’ll be sure to tell him the news while he’s collecting eggs so that he can see that life and death go hand in hand.