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Tag: beginners

  • Our first year with chickens: what we wish we had known

    Our first year with chickens: what we wish we had known

    A friend with a flock said, “Get six, you will be fine.” We got six. We were eventually fine. The first ten weeks taught us most of what we needed to know.

    We underbuilt the coop

    Every chicken book says “4 square feet per bird inside, 10 outside.” We thought we could get away with less. We could not. We rebuilt in August.

    Predators come at twilight

    Not at night. Twilight. A raccoon does not knock. A hawk is a flying knife. Lock the door at sundown, every single day, no exceptions.

    Feed eats your budget

    Or rather, the chickens eat your budget. Buying the big bag from the feed mill saved us about a third versus the pretty bag at the hardware store.

    Three years in, we would still get chickens again. We would just build a bigger coop the first time.

  • Three mistakes we made in our first vegetable bed

    Three mistakes we made in our first vegetable bed

    Our first vegetable bed was a 12-by-24 monument to overreach. Everything we got wrong:

    Too big, too soon

    A 4-by-8 bed done well will teach you more than a 12-by-24 done badly. Half of our first bed went to weeds in July because we could not keep up.

    We bought “good soil”

    A whole truckload of “premium garden mix” that was mostly sawdust and broken dreams. We should have built it ourselves and waited a season. We know that now.

    We planted what we wanted

    Not what we would actually cook. Six kinds of squash. We hate squash by August. Two kinds of beans we never finished picking. The eggplants did nothing. The tomatoes did everything.

    Year two is one small bed, six things, all stuff we eat. So far, perfect.