Hatching Day!

Today was hatching day for Milk. Since she's a bantam (small) chicken, I put only three eggs under her. All three hatched but only two survived.

Fun fact: the grey chick is a standard-sized breed and will soon grow to be bigger than Milk. Here it is, sneaking under its mama for warmth.

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First Day of School

Today was Ava's first day of school - fifth grade.

We walked her to school. Well, we walked her to the edge of the school and no farther because - "Independence," she said.

Compare the independent fifth-grader to this little girl on her first day of kindergarten.

"Time flies never to be recalled." - Virgil

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Laundry - Old School Style

When we first moved to the ranch, we had to set up many things, one of which was the washer and dryer. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but due to space limitations inside the house, it was difficult to add the typical mod cons. So for a while, this was our dryer.

Those were the dark days. It would take me sooo long to dry laundry. Imagine picking a single item and then pinning it to the clothesline. It would take me about as long to pin a sock to the clothesline as it would take to throw the whole laundry load into the dryer! *shivers* And to add insult to injury, our clothes and towels would be stiff and rough to the touch.

Since those tough times, we've installed an electric dryer. But there's still one thing that we like to dry in the sun... bed sheets! Sun-dried bed linens have a naturally fresh scent to them, and they're so nice and crisp.  They're definitely worth the extra work!

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Cactus

I got some cactus from down the street to start our own cactus patch. It's the nopales variety. I'm interested in it for its edibility, and Ava likes the the prickly pear fruit that it produces.

We have hot, dry weather and the dirt is mostly sand in Oakley - perfect conditions for growing cactus. It's also supposed to be easy to propagate from cuttings so I thought I'd give it a try.

I had cut the cacti and set it aside for a few weeks so that it forms a scab at the root. By the way, the only place that I could think to put it under to rest was the big tree in the front of our house that Ava likes to climb! Lee questioned me about this placement, and Ava also chose this time to climb the tree! Okay, it may not have been the ideal spot for it but what can I say?!? Desperate times calls for desperate measures!

Anyway, I may have set it aside for too long (over three weeks) so if this planting fails, I'm going to attribute it to that! It's also possible that it may fail because I planted it during a heat wave - which is unavoidable in Oakley in July.

Area of planting before:

And after:

Fingers crossed for a successful patch!

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Hatching Day!

It's hatching day for Feathers McGillicutty!

Excited about our first silkie chicks!

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Tomatoes!

It's official, tomato harvest time has started! In the past two days, this is what we've picked.

Monday:

And today:

I have to include a shot of our little urban farm girl with a selection to share with our dear neighbors.

We planted around 14 heirloom tomato plants and varieties this year. We put them in different spots than the previous years', and they thrived very well in the new locations - thanks to the chicken manure. This is how tall the plants were at the end of June in comparison to our urban farm girl:

In case you're curious, here are the some of the varieties that we've harvested.

Red brandywine:

This is easily the largest variety so far.

Next up is the Berkeley Tie Dye:

The Blush:

One of my favorites, the Green Zebra:

And the Champagne Cherry:

Deliciousness all around.

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A Saturday in SF with Audrey

Lee is in Tahoe this weekend, so Ava and I took the opportunity to hang out with one of the coolest peeps I know, my sister Audrey. We had a fantastic day eating, drinking, shopping, and more eating!

We first filled up with pasta from Pasta Moto. We were too busy eating and catching up to take photos here. :P

After stuffing ourselves, we made our way up Powell Street and hit the shops. Here's Ava and Audrey at Uniqlo:

Ava had fun trying on eyeglasses.

She settled on this pair:

We were on our way to Tout Sweet for our next stop, but Pinkberry was right there at the entrance to Macy's so we had no choice but to stop for a treat.

After that, we had fun sampling fragrances and makeup at Macy's!!!

And then it was finally to Tout Sweet for some bubbly and sweets.

The J Pop Summit was going on across the street in Union Square and we had a great view of it.

After our sweets break, we walked around Union Square and watched the performers for a bit...

And then made our way down to Belden Place for dinner.

We decided on Belden Taverna - good food and great service! Again, no pics here as we were busy enjoying ourselves. :D

After dinner Ava and I parted ways with Audrey and took BART back to the East Bay. We continued to have fun on the train:

And out to the parking lot:

It was a lovely day!

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Hatching Day!

We started hatching chickens naturally late last year and I loved the whole experience. It's fun choosing which eggs to hatch; anticipating the hatching day (21 days from incubation); watching the mama hens interact with her chicks; and letting the mama hens do all the work of raising the chicks instead of us.

Early this year I was itching to have a hen go broody so that we could have chicks. There were a couple of false starts and the Backyard Chickens (BYC) site had a planned hatch-a-long for Easter, which only made me more anxious to get some chicks around here. We didn't get any for Easter, but our olive-egger hen did go broody right before that so I was happy.

The adage of "be careful of what you wish for" is so true in this case. Since that time, we have constantly had one or more broody hens. Currently, we have four broodies. Here's the three broodies in our EGGS coop:

The eggs under the hen on the left are now hatching. Here's a couple of the chicks...

Goldie is a good name for this one, don't you think?

How cute is this tiny Muffin?!? She fell asleep in my hand.

There's several more chicks so stay tuned for more cuteness overload!

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Pumpkins

I planted some pumpkin seedlings tonight. The seeds were started about three weeks ago and I probably should have gotten them into the ground last week, but they should still be okay.

This is the third year of planting pumpkins. We haven't had luck in the previous years because of the #!@$# gophers. This year, I put chicken wire underneath the mounds and also planted seedlings in two containers, so we should have better luck. Fingers crossed!

Update: Between the gophers and the chickens, none of our pumpkin plants made it to October. Blegh.

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Chicken of the Day

Meet _____. She is a sizzle, which is a silkie chicken with frizzled feathers. Silkies are notoriously broody, which means they want to sit on eggs and hatch them. As it so happens, _____ is currently broody and sitting on 5 eggs. They're due to hatch 7/24.

One of the drawbacks of having a large flock of chickens is that we don't have names for all of them. But then, there are also chicken owners who don't name their chickens so that they don't get too attached to them because the chickens are also meat birds. Our chickens are currently used for eggs, but at some point in the future they will be also used for (cover your ears, Ava) meat.

In this case, we have temporarily run out of names so _____ is referred to as the black sizzle. What would you name her?

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Hi!

Hi I'm Ava, Lily's daughter. I will post on here about every week. I hope you like my posts!

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Artichokes

I love Craigslist. And I love free stuff. So combine the two and the result is a bunch of great stuff that we've gotten since we moved to the ranch. Let's see, off the top of my head, there's been: manure, firewood, a gazebo frame, Bunny, a rabbit hutch, pallets, bicycles, Razor scooters, and of course - chickens. Just today, I picked up nine buckets of wheat (to grow wheat grass fodder for the chickens) and a bale of hay.

Back in April, someone was giving away artichoke seedlings on Craigslist. I knew nothing about artichoke plants, but upon reading up about them, they sounded like a must-have.

Artichokes are perennial plants and they produce lovely blossoms that are edible. That's all I needed to know! I believe not many urban gardeners plant artichokes because they require a lot of space - something like six feet across.

I picked up six seedlings from a kind gardener who shares her seedlings with others. Her name is Lisa and she said that folks from all over have received her seedlings and grown them. It's exciting to think that from just one person, many people have propagated the artichokes.

The seedlings resembled long, skinny Romaine lettuce leaves. I wish I'd taken a photo of them. In any case, I planted them and they looked pathetic. Lisa had told me that they would look that way for about a week, but that with sufficient watering, they would recover from the transplant shock. I anxiously watered and monitored them, expecting the worst (we haven't had the best of luck with plants around here, but that's another post). But sure enough, after a week, they bounced back!

Since then we have lost a couple of plants due to the chickens scratching for worms (they will wreck a garden!), but three are doing really well. One even has a couple of blossoms on it already! Can't wait to enjoy these!

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Those Crazy Chickens!

Even though the chickens have been trained where to lay eggs, once in a while we will find eggs in unauthorized places! Normally it's just an occasional transgression, but in the past 24 hours, we have found sizeable clutches in three different spots!

Out in the field:

Under the pool pump shed:

In the well pump shed:

I'm not sure how long these eggs have been there, but I'm guessing about 2 weeks. That was right around the time that I noticed a slight drop in production. I could test to see if the eggs are still fresh, but I'd rather not go through the trouble and save these eggs to feed back to the chickens.

Did you know that you can test for egg freshness by putting the eggs in a deep container of water? If the eggs sink, they are fresh. If they float, they are not. Older eggs have a bigger air sac, thus they will float.

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New Blog!

It took way too long, but we are finally updating our blog. Our old blog was on Tumblr, which had some cool features, but it wasn't as easy to manage as I'd hoped. Thus, this new blog on Blogger. Ta-da!

Much has happened since the last Ranch update over a year and a half ago:

• Built a playhouse for Ava (thanks, Lee!)
• Painted the exterior of the house (thanks, Lee x 2!)
• Replaced the pool liner
• Got solar
• Added a work shop
• Planted around 50 trees
• Got bees
• Added three chicken coops, one of which Mom & Pops built!
• Got a bunny (named Bunny)

And as you probably know, our chicken population exploded. It went from 4 to over 40. We are hatching our own chicks and I'm still acquiring new breeds so the flock continues to grow.

In any case, we hope you enjoy this chronicle of life at the Jolly Ranch!

- Lily, Lee, & Ava

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July Will Be a Good Month

According to Ava

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