Being 'The Change'

I rarely go a few hours without thinking of my yard or chickens now. How can we be more self sufficient and teach our kids some important lessons along the way? Many Americans are getting back to the more simple things, or common sense stuff. For example, buying organic since spraying the food our children and ourselves will eat with chemicals is harmful. San Diego just changed their laws on keepin chickens, goats and bees because there has been a huge increase in backyard chicken keeping. Instead of talking about change, be the change you wish to see. 60 years ago the American public was encouraged to keep their own flock of chickens and have a garden so we wouldn't be wasteful and your family could depend less on others. I'm not saying I'm without flaws but I'm taking steps to be better.

I like to include as many people as I can on my quest to be the change. So my girlfriends and I took all of our kids to the local feed store to show them chickens, bunnies and anything else they had to occupy a couple of curious 2-3 year olds attention. Im sure the store workers were thrilled to see our troop walk in! Turns out they had fish, tarantulas, snakes, finches etc. the kids were very entertained and that gave me a chance to talk with a lady who is well educated about chicks and the raising of them! After seeing the chicks, talking about the breeds they had on hand and pricing out what we would need to get started, I was getting excited about this new hobby but I didn't want to buy anything without my hubby. So our adventure of change was short but sweet. It did however continue onto lunch/park date which made for a great time.

My mom had come along for the trip and she had me cracking up about her first chick purchasing experience. Apparently my problem with doing everything on a grand scale is in my genes! When my mom had decided to get some chicks (back in the day when her and my father were still together and living on their 5 acre ranch) she ordered 2 of each breed of hens from a catalog to get her started. Turns out there were 25 different breeds... Yes, your math is correct. My mom started with 50 chicks to see how she'd do!!! Ha ha ha see, it's in the genes!

Heath was so onboard with getting chickens that he took the next day off. In the morning we loaded up the family and headed back to the feed store to get our chicks. This worked out because they got another shipment in that morning. The chicks were $3.95 each and after talking about this with my husband, mom and new found chicken guru we had decided on 6 chicks total, 2 of each breed they had- 2 Plymouth 'Barred' Rocks, 2 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Amerucanas (Easter Eggers). They did not have any Australorps until spring or later and since flocks should be raised together we went with the highly recommended (from my mom and chicken lady) the Rhode Island Reds. Our total with a book on raising small flocks was about $80. Not bad for initial costs.




Heating lamp, check. Hay, check. Water, check. Food, check. Ability to leave the poor baby chickens alone, not so much. 3 were hatched on the 18th of Jan and the other 3 were hatched on the 25th (yes i will be celebrating their birthdays). They are cute to watch trample over each other and peck at everything. Even cuter is when they fall asleep while standing there and kind of just slump down onto each other and cuddle up. Growing at a ridiculous rate is their strong suit right now but we are prepared with an even bigger Rubbermaid tub to move them into soon. We have about 5 weeks until they will be in a coop so we need to build it soon. I am researching coop plans and we should have our Redwood planks next week for our garden beds. We also have to research the trees we want. Busy busy but happy happy- peep peep :-)

Totally Chicken

I got side tracked while trying to work on our first project, the garden. Heath has been working all day then going to wrestling practice and the two youngest have been hanging with Mom. When they sleep or play for a min, I clean or try to catch up one of the other chores. We were also lucky to have a lot of play dates this past week. We even discovered an awesome dairy farm that is close to us, thanks to my girlfriend Beth.
The hubby and I did find a little time to talk about the garden and even walked the yard to try and get more ideas. We started discussing where we could place the trees and planter boxes but then something happened...
Remember when I said that we can't do anything on a small scale? Well it happened again. We were planning our attack on the yard for garden coordinates and next thing I know, we are researching which breed of chicken would be a good fit and which ones lay colorful eggs! I told you, it never fails. I can't say how it happened but now we are totally chicken crazy! Heath researched our county laws and home owners association stuff and we are good to go. Many hours of reading... wait for it... blogs :-) and websites I've been able to narrow it down to 3 different breeds and a beautiful chicken coop. I am sure some farmer would not approve of the words 'beautiful and chicken coop' in the same sentence, o well.

And again, since I'm a visual person, here are some pictures of the coop I want and the breeds of chickens that we think will be a good fit for the fam bam.





I can't tell you how many sites we looked at before I stumbled upon this coop but once I saw it, I knew I was done looking. This is it! I found the coop on www.HeatherBullard.com and she even had blueprints drawn up. (Farmer is really shaking his head now!)

I probably have a 5% working knowledge of chickens after reading about different breeds that would be a good fit. So with my new found wisdom we have decided that the hens we want are (drum roll please)...




An Australorp hen. This breed was ranked #1 by a lot of people for their ability to withstand heat and cold, lay eggs consistently and they lay Large to X-Large brown eggs.





An Easter Eggers hen. They lay medium green and blue eggs. How cool is that? and last but not least





A Plymouth Rock hen. I love the black and white feathers!

All of these ranked in the top 5 on BackyardChicken.com and a couple of other websites recommended these breeds for their temperament. I think that is important considering our kids and our friends children will be around these birds.

We have a lot to learn about gardening, fruit trees and now chickens but if we waited until we knew everything before doing it we would never get anything done!
I am ecstatic that we are doing all of this to the backyard. The family will get to work with the land and even though it is a very small scale I know that it will have a big impact. The memories we can make just creating all of this will be worth every second!
Fingers crossed that in a year from now we have our garden, orchard and chicken coop all up and producing an abundance of good food for our family and friends.

Researching Gardening in Southern California

Found this blog while researching stuff for our garden. Learn something new everyday. theGardenPages So Cal Gardening: My Solution For Preventing The Next Arcadia Woodla...: My dear garden readers; Would you throw away pristine, nutrient-rich silt? Would you hack down 11 acres of old-growth forest for a dumping...

First Project- The Garden

I thought about it on and off all day and I have decided that the garden should be the first project we tackle. Like anything thing else we do, the garden has gone from a simple planter to offset the cost of our veggie and fruit bill

into a full blown orchard, garden and pumpkin patch. I'm sure that the simple garden never had a fighting chance anyway. In this household, we are good at making things way bigger than need be. We can rarely do anything on a small reasonable scale. However because of this trait we have the room for said garden, pumpkin patch and mini orchard because we also bought a house that has a yard that can handle my farmers market. (paid 50k over our home buying budget too, go figure) Anyhow onto the mission. I am a visual person and love to look up pictures before starting projects. Some of my favorite gardens  are

And what would any garden be without lights?

So the planning begins. I am a lover of organization but I am stumped by our V shaped yard. I would ideally like to have 3 garden beds, an herb box and my husband wants 4 trees- citrus, apple, peach and avocado. We also have to plan for the other items that we would like to have in our yard in the future like a splash pad and one of those huge (surprise) swing set fort things. Here is our yard now (actually the day we signed our papers 7 months ago), or 'BEFORE' if you will...

The yard looks way better now than it does in this pic but lets use this pic for the extra dramatic effect lol. Our first progress picture will make it look like we already made leaps and bounds ;-) OK- so what do I want to plant? I want onions, carrotts, celery lettuce, beans, strawberries, broccoli, lettuce, peppers and Im sure I will think of more. We also want a herb garden and we found an awesome way to plant herbs

Rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, chives etc. I am probably the most excited about the herb garden because it should smell divine! A side note to all of this is that we have rabbits and birds that I am sure will be dining freely on our beautiful creations so we will have to plan for that as well.
Last year we planted Giant Dill Atlantic pumpkins (300-500 pounds- told you we can't do anything small) in May... oops because I should have planted them in February or March. Lesson learned and so this year we will be ready! But hey, last year wasn't a total loss, the kids had fun and nothing says 'It's Fall' like a pumpkin patch at your house! We will also add a couple of different types of pumpkins. Our 3 year old is ecstatic about it and that makes us just as anxious to get them going :-)
Now that we have an overview of this project complete with pictures and goals and annoucing it on the internet, I hope that in a couple of weeks or less I will have progress pictures to share with you!

Balance

I have no balance in every sense of the word. I can't skate, I can't walk a balance beam and I have so many projects going on that I'm sure things don't always get the attention they should. Other than the kids that is, plenty of attention there :-) But when I do something, I try to do it well. No "half assing" allowed!
Let me name off what I do on a daily/weekly basis which will be no surprise to my fellow moms- cook, bake, sew, clean constantly, just started homeschooling our 3 year old, work a part time job, coupon and balance my 2 oldest living with their dad in Vegas (more on that later).

The projects I will be working on will be- Turn our dining room into a play/school room, make memory books for each of the kiddos, sew an awesome diaper bag, plant a garden, grow HUGE pumpkins for Halloween (have to start in late Feb or early March), get my dance wear exchange and resell business more clients, start school for event planning and management, continue to homeschool our 3 year old, organize our house room by room or drawer by drawer, paint and organize my garage, o and pay off our credit card debt. This reads like an over zealous New Years Resolution list but hey I really really want to do these things! I'm going to be posting pictures of the projects as I start them. If it is something I can't take a pic of then I will post updates on the progress.
My husband works full time and recently started coaching wrestling at a high school about 30 min from our house. Most days he leaves for work at 5:30am and comes home about 7:00-7:30pm. On nights that they have meets he comes home about 9pm. It has taken up time we could use to finish projects but the season will be done in 2 weeks.
Wow I just read what I wrote and we have our hands full! I guess writing things down really does help put it into perspective lol. O well, it's our life, we created it and I love it!

Welcome to our Perfect Circus

My name use to be Adrianne, well it still is, I just hear Mom, Mom, Mom way more often nowadays. Honestly I wouldn't have it any other way and hopefully our most recent baby is not our last. Children are such amazing creatures that it is hard for us to say "we're done". Plus (a huge plus) my husband is a great father so that makes being a parent that much more fun. We have created a hectic life that suits us perfectly. I was born and raised in Las Vegas and he is from Ohio. I'm not sure how it has worked but we have been together for almost 9 years. We live in Southern California and try to take in the "So Cal Life" when we can fit it in.
I'm mom to 4 awesome kids! 3 girls ages 12, 11 and 3 and a boy, 6 months. I work part time and I am starting a business. We also bought our first house 7 months ago and it turns out that DIY projects are our thing... Finishing the projects however seems to be a different story lol. I coupon as a hobby and fantasize about the day I can get carts full of paper towels for free, recycled of course. But for now I rejoice in little victories here and there when I can stick it to the man! I was able to find 30 min of free time in my days and I decided that I should go back to school. I am really excited about it but I am sure this will just help prove that my OCD is alive and well.
Now that you know a little about me I am hoping to share some of my silly, happy and ridiculous life moments with you and hopefully inspire you to bite off more than you thought you could chew. Welcome to my circus!