I have jerk chickens, update on some of the garden, a very long day and soggy day, and attempting to bubble gum fix my coop 😊
Well I have some cool news! I have TWO pumpkins!!
They are about the size of a softball if not a bit bigger.
I also got an okay amount of green beans.
Wish I could figure out the best growing technic for Alaska/my area. I have all these great ideas for peas and green beans, but it never works out for some reason.
I love what @sagescrub did with his peas in this post. Those trestles for peas are awesome! I am always worried about over crowding my plants though. But I may try his idea next year!
My carrots are growing okay. My kids keep trying to eat them every chance they get.
I found one ripe raspberry.
No I didn’t share. It tasted amazing too!!
Then the last thing for the garden...
I had my cucumbers sitting outside the green house in a tote of water so they could absorb from the bottom. Well my chickens found them.
Freaking jerks 😠😒
But being angry wont bring my cucumbers back. They ate three by the way, two of the biggest and one small one.
Well yesterday I had to run to Anchorage to make a house payment and land payment. We also went to Costco. Remember it’s two hours away.
Please note I put the dried blueberries back, payday shopping had a hold of me
So I drove two hours in, spent two hours in Anchorage. Went to the ASPCA thrift shop, bought growler bottles to make mead from cranberries. Then drove two hours home.
Then a kid insisted the world sucked major because they couldn’t fish.
So we went drove another 45 mins to got fishing, at 10pm...
It was raining.
My kid made me wear a garbage bag poncho. They got the idea from me, but still.
This is the whole lake. The little white dots are my kids in white garbage bags. LMAO!!!😂
Shortly after taking the photo I MADE the kids move closer, with a lot of complaining and arguing with me they finally came closer.
We sat in the rain in our garbage bag ponchos for two hours so they could get their fishing fix.
We lost four hooks, and one bobber.
We caught nothing but a chill.
This is how dark it was at 12:09 am when we pulled anchor.
Then we drove back home, another 45 mins in the van.
That night my belly and back started to hurt so bad from the Endo. I fell asleep in a heating pad sandwich.
As for today I tried to sit on my ass and veg out, HA!
That didn’t happen.
I fit full sheet of plywood cut into two 4’x4’ sheets into my van. We got six 2”x6”x8’ boards, another bucket of roof paint, two bricks of sawdust too.
My coop floor is starting to rot. 😞
So now it’s bubble gum time, we cleaned the floor and layed the plywood in. I should have bought more. But I put it where it really needed it.
Sorry guys I didn’t have my phone for photos, it was at 6% and charging.
We are now prepping for winter full force. Fixing things that we noticed in the winter, adding insulation where needed.
The coop door broke off the henges this past winter, so I have to fix that. Right now they have a screen door.
Well that’s been the random small stuff here on the homestead. All that I can think of right now anyways.
I hope you all are well. I am so tired I want to sleep the whole day tomorrow. But it’s back to picking berries. I just hope it isn’t raining again. 😞
I love going to thrift stores! Never knew the ASPCA had one; around here it is usually Goodwill or Salvation Army. I could so much time wandering around these stores.
GREAT harvest too! I just picked some beans last week myself - they were so good! Nice and crunchy!
Yeah they have one. I avoid the Salvation Army, good will and savers/value village. I stick with thrift shops that give back locally and keep the money local. Like bishops attic, and turn a leaf.
I avoid those one who have religious affiliations, I tried them and they are corrupt, sketchy and very rude! Been there done that, won’t step foot in there again. Just remembering how I was treated is making my blood boil, yeah it was that disrespectful!
Cough Thrifters Rock cough oh excuse me. LOL
My harvest is okay, I wish it was more.
My kids go into the green house all the time and check the plants. Then ask if they can have a pea or green bean. As long as they don’t hurt my plants I don’t care!
But I have to limit them or they will eat everything. LOL
Hi.
You see that you put a lot of love and time into cultivating your land,
It is possible that beans and other grains are not very good because of the weather. have patience and try other crops you have the one that best suits your region,
I congratulate you and I hope you continue with your project.
Greetings from Venezuela
Alaska has some of the best growing seasons because of all our light.
Every year is different here in Alaska. This year was a very good year. We have had rain and sun equally to grow wild plant amazingly.
I haven’t had problems in the years past with my beans. It just seems that when you buy a plant from a store they grow bushier, and you get more from them. I don’t like crowding my plants like I said. But I might have too to get the results I want.
Chickens are total jerks. They steal and poop where they please, and squak at me for scraps - and they get them, those spoiled, lovable jerks.
I respect that van loading you did. A van should be loaded down like that once a week.
My boy is interested in fishing and I know zilch. He would love to be at that lake too. I'm terrified we are going to catch a turtle or a shark and I'm going to have to get it off the hook :D
I haven’t been able to load my van down like this with the kids, EVER! They are now big enough to sit in the front seat, so I can fold the back seat.
I could see how a shark could be problematic. We have sharks here to, salmon sharks.
Our one of those alligator snapping turtles 🙅♀️
I would start him off small, carps or trout. Something easy with less bite power. LOL
I am so jealous of your garden space! I would love to have a garden again, but in my current house there would be no space that is sunny enough besides right smack dab in the middle of the yard where the kids play. Maybe someday! Alaska is also on my bucket list for places to visit.
Thanks, I hope to expand in the up coming years.
Have you thought of window box gardens?
Or the ones that sit up top of fences or railings?
Some people even have roof gardens.
I had thought of a roof garden...I have a flat topped garage that is in the back. I'd have to create an easy way for me to get up there to tend to it, but I never got around to trying it. I've never seen fence or railing gardens! I might have to check into that option as well. There's nothing like fresh vegetables from your own garden or a meal that you've cooked that you started from seedling. Thanks for the ideas!
You’re welcome
Yeah chickens are jerks...
but we steal all their eggs.
I lined one of my chicken shed floors with a piece of rubber roofing tarp, and another with tar paper (to keep them from rotting) and I kept them elevated off the ground about 18 inches.
Yup we steal their butt biggest. 😝
I was thinking of plastic, 6 mil. Have some extra from the roof.
But I am pretty sure my ass hole goats would try to eat it. I layed some exrta shingles on a duck house the goats where climbing on. Was thinking it would help with their hoofs, the jack asses ate the shingles!🤦♀️
I used outdoor paint on the floor of the coop when we first built it. But I guess that doesn’t do squat.
My BFF layed tile in her coop, she had mini chickens. LOL
I will talk to the hubby and see what he says about rot proofing it better. I like that rubber liner idea for sure!
Do you know if I could find it at Home Depot or Lowe’s?
What do you mean you kept them elevated? Like with perches? My girl goats share the coop with chickens.
My goats will pee in the coop😡 So that so doesn’t help matters any at all!
If your goats eat shingles (seriously? haha) I can't think of any floor covering that they wouldn't eat. That rubber roofing is actually expensive, I just had a left over piece from when I bought a big piece for a pond liner. Linoleum is another cheap flooring (roll linoleum yummm) Maybe a second (sacrificial) wood floor.
I raised my sheds up with floor jacks and put concrete blocks under the wood joists so that instead of them being inches off the ground they had enough room to where there was plenty of air circulation and I could clean underneath them easily. Lots of leaves etc get blown underneath, trap moisture, and start rot.
If you have large animals like goats in with your chickens, make sure you have plenty of ventilation. In the winter this seems counter-intuitive, but the wet air from their respiration will actually make them colder. Just choose your vent placement so that there is not a draft blowing over the hens.
I had peacocks and hens living together in one shed, and just made a separate enclosure within the shed where they lived separate from the peacocks (the peacocks were in a loft over the chickens)
Maybe you could do a similar situation i couldn't get a good idea of what your shed is like from the picture.
Also, I would clean my coop every day and do a full down to the floor sweep out 2 or 3 times a month. Never had a problem with bird mites mold or flies.
Yeah we have thought of getting a linoleum rementent from a box store.
We have the coop up on cinderboxs, with pressure treat base boards.
We have a vent at the top of the door, and the coop door is only closed if by a fleece doggie door flap. So there is no straight breeze to hit any of the animals. I tried to block the breeze from the doggie door with another structure but I caused problems.
With all our snow it’s hard to keep moisture out. But we have had the coop for three years so it’s not to bad I guess.😕 Still sucks rocks!
We also have temps of -30°F to -40°F.
I tried not to have heat in the coop this past winter and I lost about 12 chickens including the pretty white rooster you see below. I always heat my coop, even if it’s just above freezing in the coop. It’s better then -30° or lower. Prior years when I heated I never lost a bird to the cold.
Was wondering if having the coop straight on the ground would be a good idea. So that we get the heat from the earth too. But I just don’t know.
The strange thing is we ended up with holes under the nesting boxes. Where only the hens lay. So I don’t get it. But in the summer, we open the door and put up their screen door.
This was awhile ago but the set up is the same.
I tried this, this past winter to keep the snow away from the door. It kinda helped.
I'm going to show you the way I handled my bird coop to deal with winter.
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(please don't think of me trying to hijack your post =p I really respect you as a homesteader and steemian and only want to try to share anything that might help like I would if you were my neighbor!)
As the weather got colder I would put down a layer of hay/straw because that makes for the best winter insulation (air gaps in between the layers of straw, also the decomposition of the straw emits a little heat) In wisconsin I don't think we ever got to 30 or 40 below but we got to 20 below, and I never lost a bird in winter. I actually had chicks born at the end of winter that a hen hatched outside in the coop from eggs. I had to bring her food (cracked corn for warmth and sliced up grapes to keep her hydrated) cause I don't think she ever got off those eggs except to make a quick run downstairs to poop and grab a quick drink. Also in winter I would pretty much give the birds as much cracked corn as they wanted because that has the most calories and keeps them warmer. I got more eggs in the winter than I did in the summer.
It's messier cause it's a lot harder to scoop off bird droppings from hay than shavings but not to brag but my chickens and peacocks were "clean" i.e. they would choose a spot to poop in and that made cleaning easier. Guinea fowl: forget it.
Since heat rises, the heat that the chickens were putting off from below the peafowl would warm their floor. Not a whole lot, but it's those little things that when added up, count the most.
You can see that I had a branch perch for them and then nesting "shelves"
The thing that keeps them warmest is when they cuddle together. Some would choose to cuddle on the branch, and the rest were able to cuddle on the shelves. When it came to laying eggs they would just take turns laying in the corner shelves usually. And some of them didn't care about having that "cozy" spot and would just use a slot in the middle of the shelf.
Again, by designing in a way so that the chickens (and peafowl) lived vertically all on one side of the shed, this kept that side of the shed significantly warmer. Never even had a problem with frostbit combs. here's my winter mama and her chicks
You can see at that point that I had moved the heat lamp underneath the bottom platform which made it a favorite spot to roost above and then made another warm spot below.
Honestly, the chickens didn't go outside if it was below freezing. They had no interest in it. So in winter I would just set up the feeding tray inside, then clean up around it regularly. I built a weighted wooden container to hold a rubber water bowl tightly so that they couldnt knock it over and make an ice mess, and then it made water changes easy: just stomp the ice out of it outside, and then pour warm water from a gallon jug inside. They'd do all their drinking for the day before it froze, and pretty much drink almost all of it.
I actually got tired of messy hay so instead I started searching for the biggest curliest wood shavings that i could fine. (bigger shavings mean bigger air gaps, they don't get packed tight like fine shavings) if you can't find large pine shavings, you can mix in cedar shavings which are always large.
As to insulating the floor, if the walls and ceiling of your coop aren't insulated, then it is pointless. But keeping it off of the ground is still important to keep the boards dry and prevent dampness from building up.
The picture above is from before I jacked the shed up and raised it another ten inches and found just gobs of wet nasty crap under it that had started to rot the bottom. Lucky nothing too serious so raising it saved a lot of future work. When I put in the second shed, I started off with a good raised foundation.
For a while I just had poly sheeting stapled to the floor which worked great as a lining but eventually pulled it out because the chickens would get startled, take off, and slip and fall on the poly and I felt sorry for them.
Hope that some of this helped! When I did chickens I had already read everything I could but still innovated a lot of ways to do it even better that worked really well for me, so hopefully at least something will give you an idea or two, since I know raising chickens in the harsh Alaskan winters must be a giant challenge.
Edit: as far as ventilation, soooo important. Make sure you are putting it OVER the heads of the highest spot they will roost at. So right up along where your walls meet the ceiling. That way, drafts will not be hitting the birds. Also, you can arrange them in a way so any cross-drafts between vents aren't going over birds but instead around where they roost.
But if you aren't venting all that wet respiration air, the coop is only getting colder for the birds no matter how much else you are doing right. Dry+cuddling+high calories=warm
I don’t know how to start this without sounding like an ass.
So, I have R-30 in the ceiling, R-15 walls, and I spray foamed the floor when we built it.
We might have to jack the floor, I agree on that. This past winter we had snow and run off that actually came up to the bottom of the base boards. I was very worried, hubby shrugged it off. 👎
It is very hard to get large pine shavings here. There are a few saw mills but most don’t sell shavings as far as I know.
We do use straw in the coop most of the time. But when it’s $20 a bale it becomes very pricy. Then geese are very sensitive when it comes to the bacteria that grow on straw when it gets wet. So that is now a no go.
I was thinking of an arctic entry inside the coop.
Maybe a shelf under the roosting bars, with a box that goes around the doggie door. Then a heat light like you did under it.
The ventilation I have is one hole in the very top of the man door(use to have a screen to keep the wasps out, but the dust clogged it) and the doggie door.
The man door sucks. We made it. It has a lot of gaps. Also the hubby never got around to finish insulating the door of the coop... So I am playing catch-up on that too. Trying to figure out how to mount and insulate it. I’m thinking that since the door is off already I might as well spray foam it, hang the door foam side out. Damn goats eat everything, they eat my plywood... Anyways. So I also have to switch the hinges around.
We have a heated water float/sink that we use for their water. We have a black rubber bowl too, two different sizes. We noticed the larger the bowl the worse the heater preformed. So we switched to a smaller bowl, and fill their water daily with hot water.
When we built it we had power cables run to it and set up. But my hubby hasn’t hooked it up for me. I guess I will have to do that too, if the goats haven’t eaten the wires.
Sigh😔
No need to get the kid gloves out to handle me =p
I know you have to be very smart and resourceful to make it where you are, I'm just monologuing here =p
Sounds like you have it well insulated, but honestly (and I don't know what you could do aside from building more shelters) it sounds like your shed is seriously over-crowded and definitely under-ventilated. Geese are incredibly messy, goats are also messy and also destructive. And birds have lungs that are very sensitive to infection from bacteria and molds that can thrive in an over-wet environment. When I ran power to my shed I ran it through steel conduit to protect it from rodents. It was just an extension cord from the house, drilled through the bathroom wall into below the sink vanity.
I know most of you Alaskans have your own chainsaws. Maybe something that you could do is start collecting your chainsaw shavings to supplement, and then dry and store them for winter. I would do that, along with collecting pine needles again storing and drying them in 50 gallon buckets. Smells great, and is free
I would also hit up all the local woodworkers/cabinet makers/mills a lot of them throw their shavings away. So after doing all that, the cost of buying bales of horse bedding wasn't too bad. Again it depends on what is available to you, i understand.
If you ever need my input on anything let me know I'd be happy to help you try to problem solve or design. If I was there I'd just bring my tools over and we'd build more shelters for you =)
Back when I had chickens, I would grow extra zucchinis to give to the chickens. The darn things will eat almost anything, so keeping them out of the garden was always important.
Congratulations on your growing garden!
Two hours is a loooong commute for supplies! I guess that's something you have to do if you want to live in the woods. When I lived in the Adirondacks we did major food shopping about once a month and a trip into town was about an hour's drive.
As for the jerk chickens... There's a recipe for that. LOL
ps - not sure you saw this
Thanks!
Yeah it takes an hour to get to a big-ish city, and two hours to get to the biggest Alaskan city(Anchorage).
Yeah it’s worth it because I can get some of my everyday things for $4 cheaper!!! Seriously!
Hahaha thanks for the recipe, but that has a lot for stuff I don’t have or use. I love poultry seasoning and bay leaves. 🤤 That’s the good stuff!
Sorry I didn’t see that post until now.
Thanks 💗💗💗💗
I have been berry picking. Just about to make a post 😊