A whole new level of backyard chicken keeping

Fair warning.

This post and the accompanying links may not be for the squeamish...  It is all about our family taking a new step into keeping a backyard flock of chickens.

Chickens lay eggs and they are food too.  That is your last hint...



In the last few weeks I have become more convinced that one of our newest chicks was not a potential egg laying hen (which are really called pullets), but a potential noise maker and hen hassling roo (which are actually called cockerels).  In a backyard flock of 10 (now 9) birds, roosters aren't really desirable especially by the neighbors.

A few days ago The Boss Lady bought a magazine about different chicken breeds.  The suspected rooster was an Australorp and he had huge, long tail feathers.  The magazine all but confirmed my suspicions.  But conventional wisdom says that you don't know for sure until the bird gives you either a crow or an egg.

That noise I heard this morning when I was walking to the car?  Yeah, that was NOT an egg!

I posted an ad on our local chicken message board, but I knew that this guy needed a new home quickly if we were not going to make the neighbors mad. Yeah, their four barking chihuahuas?  That is another story...   No nibbles on the ad, AND Wednesday is trash day which would make it a lot easier to get the "leftovers" taken care of quickly.  It was looking like the rooster's fate was sealed.

This evening The Boss Lady and I decided to butcher the bird ourselves. So, like all good urban farmers, I hit up Google and found this link:

How to butcher a chicken in 20 minutes or less... 

After a few hours of reading up on how to best process and butcher chickens, I decided that this was the best method for us to try for our first time. We would skin the bird, instead of scalding and plucking all of the feathers and there was not even a small chance I would eat the livers and gizzards...

Cut to the chase.  We did the deed and it took less than an hour, including the times that we stopped to read the instructions I printed out.  Now the bird is in the freezer and we will cook up some chicken and dumplings later this week. 

When we started with backyard chickens, I promised the kids we would not be eating their pets.  But this seems like we are kind of coming full cycle with having chickens and growing our own food in the garden. The Boss and I decided that we will tell the kids about the roo and give them a choice when it come time to eat the chicken and dumplings.

Front yard re-do, Part 2

A follow up to my last post, Front yard re-do, part 1

I'll come back and write up a little more about the specifics of our yard makeover, but I think that the results are worth more than the $500 we dropped on this project.

 After two and a half days of work, we are almost done.

 The focal point pieces of our new flower beds.  Two horse water troughs.

Loving the new look!  No Asian Jasmine and a lot more water conscious!

We will get the planters filled next weekend (or during Spring Break). 

What we started with.  That is a big difference!

One of my goals for this project was to re-use as many plants as possible.  Everything that we had growing is water conscious and either native or adapted to Austin's climate.  Plus, the neighborhood deer leave all of this stuff alone!

Lots of the big shrubs were growing out near the street,  so they moved to a better spot in the new  beds, swapping places with much smaller plants.  Of course, that meant that I am now re-doing the flower beds  out by the street, but that project will not be photographed for a while.  

In the end, we only spent money on the planters, some mulch and a roll of weed block fabric.   I am thrilled with the results.  My yard  chairs are no longer facing the street.  We repositioned them, too, so that we  can admire all of our hard work.

Front yard re-do, Part 1

Our house is in need of some serious TLC.  When I was home full-time I kept a pretty close eye on repairs and maintenance needs around here.  In the last year and a half our 30 year old house has started showing her age.

Next month we are having some foundation work done and I have been really wanting to get the yard back in shape.  Today we started cleaning up and renovating a big flowerbed in our front yard.

The front flower bed.  A mix of 1982 fabulous and a 2005 re-work that is looking a little tired and boring.

After Day 1.  

Lots of clean up and digging out of 30 year old ground cover.

There may not be a lot of obvious progress in these pics, but I have the blisters on my hands to prove that The Boss Lady and I did A LOT of work out there today.   I dug out about a mile of Asian Jasmine ground cover that was here when we bought the house.  This stuff is notoriously hard to kill and even though it is brown and dead-looking in the top picture, I am sure we have not seen the last of it.  In fact, I didn't trash the jasmine, I moved it to the backyard to fill holes left by the dog, kids and chickens.  We have a retaining wall that is a pain to mow or weed-eat, so ground cover will be perfect up there.  

To keep the cost of the renovation down, I am going to move several plants to new locations in the landscape.  When we are done with the cleanup and new pea gravel ground cover, we are adding some large planters.  You'll have to wait for those details though.

I need a minute

Or maybe a few days.

This working for a living thing is highly overrated.  Especially the parts that involve rolling out of bed before 7am and back into bed after midnight.  I think I'll be burning a day off this week.  I'm not really sick, but I guarantee I could hack up a lung on command just to make sure that my request is taken seriously. 

I was thinking about taking off Monday, but I have evening meetings that I can't miss.  Might as well go in for the whole day.  Exact same thing for Tuesday.  Wednesday would work except that the students get out early on Wednesday, so that is the first day I can actually head for home at a decent hour.  Don't want to miss that!  Of course we have a meeting with The Princess' kickball team that night, so I won't ACTUALLY be at home very early...

Thursday isn't as good as Friday, but this coming Friday is Friday Fun Day.  On these days I let the students work on hardcore math like strategy games (checkers and chess are big hits) and online math games.  That is a day without a lesson plan.  And that is a good day.  Can't miss that one.

So Thursday it is. That is the soon to be (and much needed) scheduled day for my mental health break.



Please don't call.  I'll be very contagious and weak.  I won't be able to answer the phone.  Or email.  Or faxes.  Or text messages.  Or smoke signals.

If it isn't raining I will probably be found out in the garden.  If it is raining, I may still be found out in the garden.  Stop by and plant something for me.  'Cause I am sick, remember?

It is cold. Lettuce grow some veggies!

Yes!  Two posts in two days, smartass. Get over yourself.

Yesterday we out running some errands and stopped by Home Depot.  We were looking at flooring options for the kid's bedrooms but the kids and I got sidetracked almost immediately inside the store.  There were racks and racks of seed packets displayed just inside the front door.

I admit.  I am the worst kind of gardening junkie.  I don't eat that many veggies and I have never, ever been able to grow a cucumber or tomato that costs less than the grocery store variety.  I'll take The Boss Lady's word for it that they TASTE better.  What I really like is the planning, the prep and playing outside a lot in the Spring.  As my grandma said, after that it is just scratching dirt and petting the plants.

Last fall I kicked the addiction.  I was planning a big fall garden but my real world commitments won out.  There was no time left.  The chaos that is currently my backyard proves that is true. OK, I didn't KICK the addiction, but I didn't make my gardening addiction worserer.  That is a win, right?

Flash to yesterday, just inside the doors at Home Depot.  I tried to be a good, reformed junkie.  I glanced at the displays, but we were here to find floors dammit and not seeds.  Floors are made of made of hard stuff and colors and hardly ever make you sweat or give you skin cancer.

That is what veggie gardens are for.

The store didn't have what we wanted.  And we were headed out.  But I couldn't resist one more glance at the pretty seed packets.  Junkies will tell you, it is the second look that will get you in trouble.  When I first saw the garden displays my animal brain was like "Look, stuff in small envelopes with pictures. Interesting."  But when we went by the next time my inner garden junkie was all like "C'mon. You can pick up just one.  It is the perfect time to plant lettuce and snow peas.  No one will know.  Just be cool, dude.  I dare you!"  Damn.  A dare.


Thirty seed packets and $25 later, I was out the door with a Spring's worth of work ahead of me and just enough starter soil to get a few transplants ready to go in the kitchen windowsill.  After all, I was there already, right?  No need to waste time making another trip to a garden center to buy seeds.  I was saving time and money by getting my fix.  But right in front of the kids too?

Well, they sort of started it.  The girl was looking for packets of Blue bell flower seeds.  And The Talker?  He didn't help either.  He was checking out all of the cool colored veggies that neither of us will ever eat.  He started it by talking about those cool, purple carrots.

So blame them when I don't answer the phone on the weekends.  I'll be busy, out in the garden getting my fix.

Prophetic words

A couple of years back, when I was trying to decide if I really wanted to pursue the teaching gig, I was talking to one of my neighborhood buds, Law Talking Guy.  He is a lawyer, so I tend to tune out about 50% of what he says.  But one of his insights has certainly come true.

I don't remember if it was during the Spring or Fall, but I remember that he and I were hanging out in the backyard and I was telling him about my plans to expand the garden.  More space, more veggies, more self-sufficiency...  I bet I listed off all of those great reasons.

Law Talking Guy cautioned me not to make the garden too big.  "Once you take a new job, you won't have time to deal with any of your hobbies".  Boy, was he ever right!  My garden never did get any bigger and that is good.  Because since starting the teaching job (and suffering through the worst drought of my lifetime), the plot has received about 2 afternoons of attention.  I planted one Sunday last Spring.  I pulled out the failed, dry plants a few weeks ago.  And that was about the extent of my garden time this year.

Geocaching on weekends?  Yeah, I haven't even had a minute to maintain my own 'caches that are hidden only a few thousand feet from my couch.  One of them has needed a new log since July (maybe longer...)  I haven't even peeked at the main website in two or three months.  Heck, for all I know someone may have hidden a geocache in my classroom.

The Chickens?  Yeah, they are paying the price, too.  Still have them and they are doing OK, but there is never any time to sit and enjoy them.  I throw out feed in the morning and lock up the coop at night.  Actually, that is not always true, either.  Last week I forgot to close up the coop one night.  We now have one less bird thanks to a neighborhood raccoon/cat/Chupacabra. 


One of the neighbor dudes has bought a 1980's Toyota Land Cruiser.  It is a cool rig.  And watching him work on it every night is kicking me in the gut.  Marge, my 1968 Chevy truck hasn't seen the outside of our garage since Halloween night of last year and she hasn't been on the street since July of 2010.

Heck, this blog seems to get a little attention about once a month now.  And sitting on the couch and typing is something that I OUGHT to be able to handle in the evenings.  An example, I just realized that there was still a link to my old Geocaching blog on the sidebar.  I deleted that blog at least six months ago - maybe even a year ago.  Just got around to removing the dead link today.

There is a lot to like about the new teaching job.  And I am down to my FINAL requirement to complete my certifications.  I have one last state exam to pass and then I'll have my full teaching certificate.  For now I teach on a provisional/emergency certification.  Still, I find it ironic that for the first time in more than a decade, I have a little bit of $ to throw at some hobbies and I have absolutely not a single minute to spare for any of them.

Catching up after a busy start to the summer

The Princess had a fairly big surgery last week. I won’t go into a lot of detail here since The Boss Lady has blogged the surgery elsewhere. Email me if you need the address to that blog. Due to the personal info posted over there, I won’t link to it here. Now, 4 days later, she is doing great. She is currently singing Taylor Swift songs and splashing in a nearly empty bathtub.

Elsewhere in the AtHomeFamily kingdom, it is HOT! 100 plus for something like 12 days in a row. So I have thrown in the towel on the garden. This morning I took down the gate and let the chickens have the parched and burned up leftovers.

This is not the first pampering the birds have gotten this week. It has been so hot out in the back 40, that I bought a misting system to help keep everybody cool in the backyard. If you are sitting right near the mister, you can notice a big difference in the temperature. Not that I want to hang out there anyways. I hung the misters in the trees near the chicken coop and I saw that 6 of the 7 birds (and 1 cat) were hanging out under there during the hottest part of the day yesterday.

The kids bought me a 12 bottle wine cooler for Father’s Day. I am always looking for something new to learn about (previously it was trucks- which I am still working on, boats- that I lost interest in and set sail on craigslist, cigars- which I enjoyed but annoyed everyone else with, guitars-which I still can’t play but somehow now own two and… The Boss Lady can give you the entire list). This year I have been soaking in as much info about wine as I can handle. I still have no vocabulary to describe wines that I like or don’t like, but I am having fun shopping for bargains and reading up on different varietals and vintages.

Cruising the ‘net for wine info, I ran across several sites about bottle trees. Our neighbor used to add all of her empty wine and beer bottles to the limbs of a dead tree in the middle of her yard. You could see it from our kitchen window and it actually was pretty cool when the morning sun hit the bottles. And it was only half as tacky as you might think. Anyways, I started my own bottle tree this morning. I don’t have a dead tree to decorate, but I do have a bunch of wooden trellis surrounding our garden/chicken fun park. So with the addition of some 1/2” dowel rods, we have the start of a spectacular piece of yard art. I’ll post some pictures of the bottle trees soon.

Best of all, it isn’t in your yard. You are welcome.

Spring Garden and Fam News Update

It is hard to believe, but summer is almost here. Oh, sure, the calendar rings in the new season some time in mid-June, but anyone who has spent May in Texas knows that REAL summer begins quickly after the last frost.

The academic year is winding down. The kids have 9 daze left and it is showing at the middle skool. There will be no new learning until the fall semester.

Dunring the week of Spring The Princess helped me plant the veggie and flower garden. We haven't had much time to tend to the plants this season but everything is growing nicely. Actually, several crops were utter failures this year. A combination of poor timing at planting time, not enough rain and some "helpful" chickens is going to keep us out of beans, peas and broccoli this season. Also, some of The Princess' flowers did not germinate. But she planted enough other varieties to make up for the weaklings.

This season we planted our garden a little differently. No structured rows of plants all lined up this year. We decided to mix things up a little bit and did more of a "square-foot-garden" thing. Of course we have a few hundred square feet to work with, so we kind of went crazy. I really like the way the garden looks this year. I am sure that we will do more of this type of garden in the future.

A few pictures from our plot:

Our first time growing kohlrabi. Still haven't eaten any of it. You first, OK?

The survivors - onions, corn (another first timer in our garden), watermelon, spinach, eggplant, zinnias, kohlrabi, morning glories, loads of different herbs and marigolds.

A sneak attack form one of the helpers.
The caterpillars and chickens have done a real number on the kohlrabi leaves.

A few minutes before the photo shoot, the cats were both helping in the garden, too. They have recently been evicted from the house and I no longer care if they eat grass or leafy greens. If they barf outside, then I don't have to clean it up. Or I can at least use a power washer.

Regular readers here or over on my facebook page will know that my job situation changed quickly a couple of months ago. There is still no promise that I will be returning to the same skool (or any skool) next fall, but things are starting to look a little more promising. Hopefully we will know something definite, shortly.

The Princess will be having a pretty big surgery in a few weeks and that is of course the biggest issue on our horizon. Having to miss a few weeks of swimming is not the best way to start a Texas Summer Break but this works best so that she won't miss out on a ton of skool in the fall. And the flower garden should be looking great by then, so she will be getting fresh cut blooms each day that she is at the hospital.

So there you have it. I haven't updated in a month or so, but you are officially up to speed with the AtHomeFam in less than 7 minutes.

Full on Summer

It is hot out there. Now you know.

We have already gotten into a routine of playing outside in the mornings and evenings, with the heat of the day broken up with movies and video games. Not the most exciting summer, but it is workable and the chance of heat stroke goes way down this way.

Not only are we feeling the heat, the backyard farm is, too. The chickens have slowed down on their egg production to the point that I contemplated buying eggs at the grocery store yesterday. Head dips in shame.

The garden is suffering, too. I can't water enough to keep the plants from wilting. This morning I did manage to harvest the 4 puniest strawberries ever grown. Still, they tasted so good that I am not ashamed I didn't share them with anyone else. I found a couple of Roma tomatoes and a handful of green beans, too.

Today is another hot one so we are hitting the YMCA pool. Perhaps a few times.

Summer update

We are almost a week into the summer break and life is just as exciting as always around here. the kids are wearing themselves out playing all day and sleeping late in the mornings. So life is great for everyone.

The Princess and I picked up with a forgotten tradition a couple of days ago. When she does not have to be asleep by a certain time, to be ready for school the next morning, we read together. The last story we read was the original Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont. That is truly a short story and it only took us a few nights to knock out.

A few nights ago we started on Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. This is a much longer book and we will probably spend most of the summer nights working through it. I haven't read this since I was a kid, and I may have to read ahead soon, just to decide how we will read through (or skip through) the "bad stuff" that happens later in the story. The biggest downside of reading this story with a 6 year old girl has already happened at least once though. "Daddy, I REAAAAALY want a horse of my own."

It isn't a pony, but The Princess has recently gotten something else great. A new family has moved onto our block and they brought their very own 5 and 12 year old girls with them. The Princess is beside herself to have a new playmate living 4 houses away. There are more than 40 kids on our 2-block street, but there were no other 5-6 year old girls. Now we are fully stocked!

The Talker is loving the end of the school year. After 6 days of summer break he has yet to announce that he is "bored". And that may be the biggest success of our entire summer.

The AtHomeFarm is growing again. The kids have four new baby chicks. Last week we brought home a week old Black Australorp and a Buff Orpington. And a few days later we brought home two, 2 day old Buff Brahma chicks. I have bought all of our birds so far at the last real Farm and Ranch store in Austin. And I still love that store, but it is about a 2 hour round trip to Callahan's. This time we bought our birds at a little family owned feed store right in the middle of the city.

Going into Buck Moore Feed Store is like stepping back into the feed and seed store that we went to when I was a kid. Maybe that explains why we have been there 4 times in less than a month. They stock chicken breeds that I have never even seen, like the Australorp.

The kids took the new birds out for their first yard visit.

5 day old Buff Brahma chicks

Our 3 grown hens are laying like crazy. They keep us stocked with eggs. Which is good, since The Princess has discovered that she really likes hard boiled eggs. FYI, Fresh eggs do not make the best hard boiled eggs. They are too hard to peel and it is almost impossible to keep from tearing up the egg white.

Since deciding to grow the flock, I have also decided to build a permanent coop. Once my design was finished and I priced the lumber at about $500, I have decided to build a garden shed instead. I can build a shed twice the size, for less than twice the cost AND I can divide it into enclosed coop space for the birds and storage space for my garden tools. Plus I will be able to finally retire my hand-me-down, hail-damaged vinyl shed. Now I just have to find The Boss Lady's checkbook, so she can pay for this thing...

The garden is already showing signs of playing out from the summer heat. We have had several 100 degree days already and I can't keep enough water on the veggies to keep everything nice and green. I took everything we had harvested from the garden yesterday and made a veggie/beef stew. It was nice and yummy. Hopefully it isn't last of the harvest.

So there you have it and now, you may resume your summer fun.

Oh cruel fates...

I robbed the garden of all the good stuff, tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeño peppers, onion and I even dug up my first ever garlic. Set to work and created a masterpiece of salsa goodness.

Finished it up, and then i realized we are out of tortilla chips. Dang. And this stuff smells gooooooooooooooood, too.


Locking the kids in the chicken coop and making a run to the grocery store. Back in 20.

Garden visitors

The garden has really hit it's stride in the last few weeks. We have already harvested potatoes, a few jalapeno peppers, several pounds of lettuce and spinach, a quart of snow peas, dill, cilantro, sage, rosemary and oregano. Also, birds have beaten us to the two or three strawberries that we have grown.

A few years ago we had our first experience growing dill and the kids were amazed by the caterpillars that munched down our few plants. Once we found out that the caterpillars would grow into Black Swallowtail butterflies, we left them to eat the dill down to a nub. Since then we have grown lots of dill, just for the caterpillars. This year I made 3 plantings of dill, about a month between. And the caterpillars have found the goods! Thanks to The Boss Lady for all of the pictures.





This morning I spotted another visitor to our garden, a Checkered Garter snake. I know they are harmless and we have seen these guys around our yard for the entire time we have lived here, but I still squeal and run away like a little girl anytime one pops out of the garden. This snake was resting underneath the potato vines.




For the record, since I know there are lots of bugs attacking the potatoes right now, I made peace with the snake and left it to get it's fill. Now that I know he is there, he can eat all the bugs as long as I get the 'taters.

The rest of the garden is going crazy right now. The Princess helped me plant everything this year, so for the first time ever I gave up some space for flowers. We have Zinnias and Marigolds in bloom along with tomatoes on the vine. The eggplant is starting to fruit out and yesterday I spotted the first green bean on the vine.

Soon we will be dining on grilled green beans and pan fried eggplant while we watch our butterfly crop flit about the garden. Good times!

Garden Tour

Blame it on Rick. He posted some pictures of his garden, so I had to follow up with pics from mine.

A few varieties of lettuce mixed together.

The lettuce looked better before I harvested a bunch of it this morning.

Eggplant, dill and ‘taters in the background.

Garlic, spinach and lettuce in the background.

Mint from my momma’s house AND proof that The Hat is worn in the garden.

After all, it is 96 degrees out there today!

Jalapeno peppers

The chickens chowing down on lettuce and spinach.

We also have rosemary, oregano, cilantro, green beans, snow peas, strawberries. After a really wet winter and with the help of the hen’s, there is about a ton of chicken poop in the garden soil this year, this has been our best gardening season ever.

Garden prep, day 3

The garden bed is finally prepped. This season I am using 5 rows, instead of a planting bed around the perimeter and one big bed out in the middle of the plot. I gave up my wide walkways and this will be tight to walk in when the veggies are full sized, but I was able to cram a lot more variety in this way.

In fact, I still have some space that is not occupied or reserved for a specific plant. The Princess talked me into trying carrots this year, so we have a row set aside for those. This year I am also adding eggplant to the mix. It has been a few seasons since we grew any. Like last year, the tomatoes will go back in the big pots.

The Princess and I will hit up the garden center one more time soon, to buy our tomato plants, an eggplant and some carrot seeds. I had hoped to keep the garden cost to about $100 this season and it looks like we will be coming in at less than half of that.

I think you can zoom in the labeled ares by clicking on the pics.

Looking Northeast

Looking Southwest

Garden progress

The Princess has been excited to get the garden underway this year. On Monday she and I made a trip to the farm store for seed potatoes and sweet potatoes. The store did not have sweet potatoes in stock, so we will miss out on those this year. Growing both types in our garden was going to take up a lot of space, so we were not too disappointed.

This afternoon we planted our Red La Soda potatoes. But like great potato chips, we couldn't stop after planting just one thing. We planted a second round of Melting Sugar Snow Peas We will make one more planting of these in another week, to spread out the harvest a little bit. , some Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach, some Bouquet Dill and an entire row of lettuce, using a mixed pack that included a mix of Black Seeded Simpson, Grand Rapids and Prize Head leaf lettuces and Bibb head lettuce. The head lettuce varieties never make well for us but the others do well and make for an instant salad.

Since I re-shaped my garden this year (and have gotten rid of most of my nice, wide walkways) I should have some extra space for plants. We still have to get eggplant, green beans, jalapeno peppers and Roma tomatoes. After that I'll see how much space we have left. Maybe we will be able to add some more herbs to the mint, sage, oregano, rosemary and chives that we keep out there year round.

Cheep Labor

This afternoon I hit the Tri-fecta! The Princess is gone with The Boss Lady, The Talker is out running around with a friend and it is a beautiful day out in the backyard.

Gardening this time of year is mainly about the hard work of getting everything ready. The easy part comes later, when the veggies and fruit are ready to be picked and enjoyed. But I think this is still my favorite time of the gardening cycle. The hard work hasn't killed me yet and the bare patch of soil seems to hold tons of potential right now. And then of course, there is the garden center. All of those seed packets with the nice, pretty, monster-sized veggies pictured on the packets really makes me want to increase my garden space. Please remind me of this post later in the summer, when everything has dried up and we haven't seen rain in a few months.

This past fall I dumped my garden tiller. I was tired of tending to it before every garden season and only using it for a few hours a year. It went away quickly on the local Free-cycle list. Without the tiller I faced a chore that I have not attempted in about 10 years, turning the soil with a garden fork.

After an hour of work I am almost done with that bit of fun. And I am sure I will feel it tomorrow! But this year I had some unexpected help once the earthworms started popping up in the newly turned garden soil, the chickens.

It took one wiggling worm to draw all three birds into the garden. I was tired 30 minutes ago, but the chickens don't seem to show any sign of slowing down. With all of the chicken scratching and digging in the garden, some of the biggest dirt clods should be broken down soon, saving me some time with the hoe and garden rake.

Brutal winter weather :)

A picture I took before the opening of gardening season.

For my legion of fans who live north of Waco, I apologize up front. I spent much of the day outside. Gardening.

True, we probably have another cold spell or two in the works before the 100 degree daze of summer hit us, but I decided to get a jump on the veggies this year. If we have no more cold weather, then I'll have a nice, showy garden a month earlier than anyone else around here. In case you don't think gardening is a competitive sport, hang around a garden center/nursery on a Saturday morning.

I started off a few days ago, thinking about the layout for my garden plot. Each year I plan out my garden on paper and think that I should increase the size of my garden. And each summer I complain that the large plot I already tend is a lot of work. So this year I am keeping my garden to the already established 250 square feet. Step one, done!

When we got the chickens I knew that getting rid of the "by products" would be a hassle. I decided to try composting the stuff in an enclosed bin and have had good luck with it. Since I use wood shavings in the chicken coops, the mulch still has a lot of wood in it, but it breaks down pretty quickly.

Today I dumped (that's a pun, son) almost a year's worth of "by product" onto my garden plot. I'll get it all mixed into the existing dirt with some peat moss. Once all that is dug in, the garden soil will be good to go. (Should I say good to GROW?)

Anyways, I stopped at the farm store for some chicken supplies today and they had seeds and garden supplies arranged all nice and neat, at the front of the store. I could not resist picking up a few seed packets. And some onion sets. And some garlic. And some...

When the kids got home from school we planted the garlic, the onions and some snow peas. All those should be OK if we happen to get any more cold weather.

Another shot before the opening of gardening season.

Field trip wrap up and news catch up

Sorry if you have been suffering through AHD withdrawal. Life has been crazy. The kids have been doing well in school, The Boss still loves her new job and for a guy without a job, I seem to stay pretty dang busy.

I went with The Princess' class on a field trip to the Austin Nature and Science Center. The kids had a lot of fun digging in the dino pit and then we ate lunch at Zilker Park. Zilker is the crown jewel of Austin's park system and one of the greatest city parks in the state. It always amazes me when I am there with a new bunch of local kids that many of them have never been to play in Zilker Park.

The Talker won for his grade division in the school science fair, with a project investigating probability. The probability that dad helped with that project? Not very likely, since I couldn't figure out the math involved. For his strong effort, the boy gets to display his project at the city-wide Science Fair in March


The Princess won a second place ribbon. Kindergartners are not allowed to compete in the city-wide event, but she had tons of fun exploring how to make different colors by mixing watered down food coloring samples.


The Princess is preparing to make her athletic debut in a few weeks. She will be playing in a girls only Kickball league. Northwest Austin Kickball has a great history in the area and I am glad the we are getting in on the game this year. Of course, my attitude may change a little later in the season - I was just begged coerced bribed recruited asked to be the team's head coach. So long as they don't give a team full of Kickball veterans I should be OK. I have coached enough kid's soccer and Special Olympics bocce to know a little about what I am getting into.

Spring is almost here. And I have been getting geared up for some full on veggie gardening. The chicken coop has been sitting in the middle of my garden plot since October. I moved the coop today it's Spring location. And the extra "fertilizer" the chickens have added to the ground and all of the rain we have had lately means that my dirt is good to go. And good dirt is the biggest part of a good garden. Happy soil=happy veggies!

Our computer has been dying for several months. It is four years old, and we use the heck out it so I am not surprised. Still, we are so dependent on having a computer now that I have been trying to keep it limping along. A few days ago I finally picked up the first part of the replacement for our desktop machine. I bought a Gateway netbook (I saved almost $50 since I was willing to take buy the red one instead of the identical machine in a black case!) and have been moving all of our important documents (and music) over to an external backup drive. In a few days we will be reformatting the old tower and if we can get it to run smoothly enough, then it will become the kid's computer. (Isn't that like Purgatory for a computer?) After we get all of that set up then we will be buying another new machine to be our main family computer. For the first time ever I am seriously considering using a laptop as our #1 machine.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, gets you up to speed with all of the goings-on around here. Aren't you glad you made the effort to stop by?

Garden update

I hope my fruits and veggies turn out better than the photos.

I noticed tonight that we have cantaloupe and watermelons on the vine. So I decided to make a quick walk through the garden with the camera. Out of 50 or more photos I shot, one turned out decent. And it was not even a picture of the melons.

Peppers and green beans are coming in sporadically. I have only gotten one good serving of green beans this season.

There are tons of tomatoes on the vine right now, too. But tomatoes are nasty. They only grow in my garden because I am a smart enough man to grow really great tomatoes (that my wife dearly loves.)


Hopefully we will be macking down on some July 4th watermelons this year.

I couldn't skip the growing season after all

I swore after last year's miserable failure of a garden that I was quitting. No more gardening for me. I was moving into the poultry farming business.

Remember that? Yeah, well, evidently I forgot.

Now that we have had a little rain, and the grass is greening up nicely, I hit up the garden center. I wanted to pick up a couple of plants to fill in the new flower beds and pathways that I created a few months back.

The Boss Lady really likes my 'maters. (You can take that ANY way you wish...) And even though I happen to think they are evil, my wife gets what she wants, (except for a husband that folds clothes. She can get one of those after I am dead). So we are planting a few tomatoes and some veggies.

And some cantaloupes. And watermelons. A couple of varieties of peppers. Some green beans. And a few more flowers.

But that is all. Because I am NOT gardening this year.