Chris built a chicken coop this weekend.  I helped some, screwing on the flashing and attaching some of the hardware cloth, but it’s really Chris’s baby.

We decided on a design based on the A-frame “Ark” style of chicken coop, like the Wentworth Mountain Arks.  This allows the coop to be moved from spot to spot in the garden, so that the chickens can cultivate and fertilize a new area every few months.  It’s also got a lot of cool and convenient features for managing them.

One whole side lifts off and pulls away, so that it’s easy to get access to the whole top portion.  This is useful for cleaning.

On each end, there’s a triangular door that hinges down to allow access for egg collecting.  Each short side has two nest boxes, and there’s a roost that runs the length of the center. I put two handles on each end, but even with the handles, it’s a heavy and ungainly thing to move.  It’s portable, for a given value of port.  I’m planning a lightweight “afternoon playpen” type of thing for them later on, made of bamboo and convenient to pop around the garden for them to weed and feed.

The chickens have access to an enclosed ground area below the body of the ark, by way of a gang plank that you can see in the picture above.

This rope pulls up the gang plank, sealing the chickens in safely for night.  We haven’t seen evidence of a lot of nocturnal prowlers in our area, but this security gives us peace of mind that the chickens won’t be dinner for some racoon or feral cat.

One end of the coop has a screen door that hinges up.  This allows us to get in to change their food and water.

While it’s not exactly comfortable, it’s possible to get entirely inside the coop.

The chickens in their new home.  I tried putting two in the top and three in the bottom, hoping that they’d call to one another and figure out the gangplank; this was a failure.  Chris ended up crawling into the run, catching each chicken by hand, and passing them up to me to put in the coop portion for the night.  Chickens are not very bright.  They just sat there doing their best “The Sky Is Falling” imitation, interspersed with random moments of  “Ooh, a bug!”  We’ll see if they can figure it out in the morning.

Kego was *fascinated* by the chickens.  She’s got a lot of herding instinct; I’m hoping that in time, she can be helpful in chicken management.

The squashes are blooming like crazy.

Unfortunately, today’s crop are all boys!  I need to learn how to make the stuffed-and-fried version; I understand they’re quite a tasty treat.

Looking closer, there’s something in them… the bees are still asleep this early in the morning, but the blossoms already have visitors.

Ants.  Tiny ants are visiting the squash blossoms.  I hope they are tracking pollen!  There’s a little opening at the base of the flower; it almost looks like a secret ant clubhouse.

Most of the tomato blossoms look like this.  This is a Better Boy plant; its blossoms come mostly in clusters of four or five, while the cherry and grape plants put out clusters of six to a dozen.

But on one plant, many of the flowers look like this.  They’re not double, in the sense of having two rows of petals – they look like two flowers worth of stuff packed into one flower.  This is still a Better Boy – same seed packet as the first one, growing in the same bed.

Then some of them (on that one plant) look like this.  Anybody know what’s going on there?

It doesn’t seem to be stopping the plant from setting healthy fruit, but they do have a slightly more ridged texture.  The brown mark appears to be just a little bit of schmutz from the remains of the flower, I don’t think it’s blossom-end rot.  We’ll see what we get… as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Hopefully they’ll taste OK!

I pulled the Shanghai bok choi and the remainder of the spinach, radishes, and salad mix.  Once we started getting ninety-degree afternoon temps, the lettuces all turned bitter and started bolting.  I had envisioned saving the seed from the bok choi, but then I learned that members of the cabbage/mustard family can all hybridize, and we’ve got a strong population of wild mustard in this part of Texas – I’d be much better off getting fresh seed this fall.  I put in seeds for more squash and some more of the purple orach.  I am planning to pull the rest of the mustard and plant some seeds for grain amaranth and pearl millet.

Because we’re doing the garden organically, I’m particularly on the lookout for pests.  These are squash borer moths.  Their eggs (you can see two of them, near the center of the photo) will hatch out into hateful little grubs which will chew their way into the squash stems and hollow them out, killing the whole plant for a small bite.  We’ve been spraying the squash with BT (Bacillus thuringensis, a natural insecticidal bacterium), but I figure any moth I can catch with a butterfly net equals 100 to 200 little caterpillars I don’t have to worry about.  They are a wasp mimic, and it’s amazing how well-ingrained the “don’t touch that, it stings” instinct is.  These two are in a little plastic tub, awaiting execution by pecking squad.  The verdict: the chickens declared them delicious.

I inspected the hive again this evening after work, and got to show Chris’s parents all (of what little I know so far) about the bees.

The queen is doing her job, laying like mad.  This is one busy little frame of comb – it’s honey along the top (although I’m pretty sure it’s “honey” made from the sugar syrup I’ve been feeding them), and pollen below that, and open brood below that, and some capped brood in the middle bottom.  She appears to be laying in a good radial pattern, although there are some odd honey cells in the midst of the bees.  I think this will even out once there is more drawn comb.

HM the Q.  I think it’s cool that only one of her wings is clipped.  She certainly has done a good job so far;  I look forward to seeing all her lovely children start hatching in another week or ten days.

Chris and his mom and Dad.   And a little better perspective on the insane amount of honeysuckle.

Passiflora x “Incense.” This hybrid makes these amazing grape-purple flowers all summer long; they’re about the size of my palm.

The package which replaced the first one has fared MUCH better.  On instruction from Laura (my bee dealer) I confined them in the hive for two days, and then gave them a tiny entrance starting the third day.  They have been eating their syrup like good little bees, and carrying in pollen of many colors.

I opened the top of the hive, and things look pretty good.  There were a decent number of bees on top of the frames, but they ducked inside when I smoked them.  The space where the queen cage was hanging made a little wider gap between frames, and the bees decided that it needed another row.

I looked through the frames one by one.  I removed the queen’s empty cage, and checked on the bees’ work.

The bees have been hard at work drawing comb, gathering pollen and nectar.

“Noooo… you can’t take the honey!  Noooo!!”

Unfortunately, the piece of freestanding comb was joined to two separate frames, so it came apart when I lifted them out.  I’m not sure if I should take it out, or leave it in.

All the different shades of pollen show up really nicely against the fresh new wax.

And I’m not sure if I’m seeing little eggs here, or if this is just reflections.  It’s pretty close to the right look for eggs, but I couldn’t get the camera to focus in deep enough.  For reference, what I’m looking for is like this.

This package had a bunch of these pale, golden-blond bees.  I think they may just be very young.  You can see that they’ve put up a huge amount of “honey” – I think it may be the sugar syrup that I’ve been feeding them, as it’s completely clear.

As part of our ongoing efforts to be the Weirdest Guys on the Block, we decided we needed yard birds.

I have had a couple of chickens once before, back when they were legal in the old neighborhood. Farmers Branch decided to crack down on them, probably on account of many roosters, and so I hadn’t had chickens again. The City of Dallas only restricts roosters, and doesn’t put any limit on chickens until you get to the point of “Commercial Agricultural Production,” so we’re good to go!

I wanted Ameraucanas for their lovely olive-to-blue eggs. If I couldn’t get Ameraucanas or another “Easter-egger,” I was going to try for black-feathered birds, which I have always found striking. I figured they’d go well with the weird garden. After calling around, I discovered that nobody had Ameraucanas in stock in any of the local shops – but finally, Randy at Aggie Feed and Chick told me that he didn’t have any in stock in the store, but he had some of his personal birds that he could sell me. Cash only, after closing time. They are black-feathered Ameraucanas. Hot damn. For twenty bucks, I could get a small flock of four, and have the best of both worlds.

I SO wish I had taken the camera to this place. It’s huge, and has the look about it of a business that was booming about thirty or forty years ago. Shelves were often half-empty, some merchandise was covered with cobwebs and dust, while other items were clearly new and fast-moving. They sell everything from garden seeds to commercial agriculture chemicals, and they specialize in poultry.

It was almost like buying drugs… or raw milk, or something else illicit and under-the-counter. We had to buy our supplies, the chick feed and pine shavings and the brooder lamp, before the store closed. Big bags of supplies were carried out to the car by a cheerful young man with the face of a country cowboy and the voice of a sweet five-year-old. Randy, who was running the register, had to wait until everyone else was gone to go out back and get our birds. As he left, disappearing into a maze of backroom storage, Chris and I looked at one another and said, “And they were never seen alive again.” Fortunately, we didn’t end up in a horror movie, but instead Randy came back with a box of bouncing little birds.

These are week-old Ameraucana chicks. He picked out the ones likely to be roosters, so that we could eliminate them from consideration; we just want laying hens. There were three that were clearly black, and one that he said might be blue, or might be “smutty” – a blue-black. For these birds, “blue” is a grayish color, which is fine for us too – we have a blue Sheltie-mix dog. Chris was very excited about the blue chick, so Randy went in back and got us one more – he said that he’d throw it in, and it was surely going to have the blue coloration.

They’re known for being a bright and curious breed, and I hope they do well in our backyard. We’re going to set up an “ark” style chicken coop, with a small run for their exercise and scratching room.

This is Myrtle; she’s the one that might be blue, or might be smutty.

We haven’t seriously considered names for the three black chicks. With a little work, you can distinguish one from the other – but they’re very similar. I’m thinking maybe we’ll see how their personalities sort out, first.

Chicks change amazingly fast; I already need to take new pictures. I took these pictures and started this post as a draft on Tuesday, but didn’t get to post it until Thursday – they’re already different. I’ll try for new photos (and pictures of their new brooder box, which Chris made!) this weekend.

This sweet-faced baby is the bonus blue chick.

Chris instantly named her “Freebird.”