A summer morning bounty: Blackberries, wild field mint and eggs from our hens.

One of the first things we wanted to do after moving to the ranch was get a few chickens because, really, nothing says farm life better than chickens. But with an expanding menagerie comes feed bills and it was (and still is) important to us to be able to live within our current means. In other words, there has to be a benefit to offset the cost of pretty much everything we hope to accomplish and the chickens are no exception. So, in return for food, shelter, water and bedding the chickens provide a few eggs, fertilizer (manure), pest control and weed management…or at least they will as we grow our flock. Pastured eggs in our area run about $5 a dozen and require a drive into town and since we want to follow the permaculture principles synthetic fertilizers and toxic pest control products are not items we wish to use.

But first things first.

We had to build a coop. It gets really cold here and our hens would need refuge from the elements. We also live in a area with predator birds and I think I would be scarred for life I witnessed a poor, fluffy hen being whisked away by an eagle or hawk. We also have our fair share of foxes, skunks and even a cougar or two. Having immersed myself in the study of permaculture, which included reading a crap ton of books of the subject, I had ideas…big ideas…about how to build our coop and a chicken tractor!

Because our property already had a free-standing shed of sorts it made sense to try to use it for the coop. However, it was kind of an eye sore and it’s more ramshackle than we’d hoped but, it’s what we had so in the spirit of thriftiness we devised a plan. We would build a hay bale chicken coop! Why hay bales, you ask?

Picking up a load of free hay from our neighbor (and admiring his views). It’s a symbiotic relationship…we get the hay needed to build our coop, add to our compost and mulch new trees while he gets space cleared for his new cuttings.

Here’s our reasoning:

1. Hay bales (much like straw bales) are generally cheap. As a matter of fact, I sent an email to all of our neighboring farms asking if anyone had old bales they wanted to get rid of for cheap…stuff that maybe had been rained on and were no longer sell-able as feed but weren’t rotten or moldy. Instead, I got several offers for FREE hay as long as we could pick it up ourselves. We hooked up our trailer to the Jeep and ended up with 38 bales of free hay, some of which was actually feed grade!
    
2. Hay bales act as great insulators. If you’ve read anything about the straw bale house movement then you know that the thick, compact bales are better insulators than most other building materials. Many houses made of straw bales require no A/C or cooling units and are cheaper to warm in the winter. Our chickens were going to be comfortable!
    
3. Hay bales are great for composting and mulching! Since we’re pretty sure we will want to tear down and eventually rebuild the entire ramshackle shanty we didn’t want to invest in expensive lumber only to tear it all out one day. The shanty really does need to be rebuilt but that will be a project for another year. It appears to have been pieced together and repaired over the years and nothing really lines up. It wouldn’t pass any building codes to be sure. The good news is all those hay bales can be put to great use in the garden with absolutely no waste!
    
4. Hay bales are quick and easy to install. Okay, so maybe not as quick and easy as we first thought. It requires some muscle to hoist the bales high enough to reach the ceiling. And there’s a little bit of forethought that has to go into the whole thing…like where you’re going to put a door and how you’re going to attach the roosts (we reassembled our coop several times before we got it right). But the hay was much more forgiving than measuring and cutting wood. Bales are held together with either plastic twine or baling wire so it is possible to cut these, remove some of the hay and then retie the twine in order to customize the fit.

How we built it:

Stacked bales. Clark is shortening a bale by cutting the wires, removing a few flakes and then twisting the wires together. We ended up having move the bales in the foreground once we decided where we needed to install the door.

Basically, we just stacked our hay bales in an offset pattern. Since we had a few 2x4s laying around we used those for bracing but you can also drive lengths of rebar through the bales for more stability. We actually ended up using rebar to “nail” our door frame into the ground and the surrounding bales of hay and it’s held up really well. We stacked our bales to the ceiling, packing “flakes” and loose hay in any gaps both to keep predators out and for additional stability. Then we wrapped the outside  of the bales with chicken wire (can you tell we were worried about our chickens safety?).

Attaching the laying boxes to the frame.

An old screen door gets re-purposed.

We ended up finding an old screen door on the property that worked perfectly for the coop. In the summer it allows for the flow of air and, now that winter is coming, we’ve covered it with a sheet of plastic we saved  from our new mattress (it came wrapped in heavy duty plastic) to keep drafts out. We also found scrap roofing joists for cheap at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore which were perfect for making the laying boxes. And, because we have so many trees on the property we opted to use their branches for the roosts but I keep my eyes peeled at the ReStore for old wooden railings so we can eventually add more.

For the exterior pen, Clark cut in a little door/ramp so the chickens could come and go at their leisure (however,we do lock them in the coop at night). We obtained some free pallets from our local hardware store and stood them on end to act as a fence base for the pen using more scrap rebar to “nail” them into the ground. A few scrap pieces of 2x4s attached to the pallets enabled us to make the pen tall enough for us to walk around in. We stapled chicken wire around the whole thing and built a small door (for us) out of an old full-sized headboard (stood on end).

We now needed some chickens!

I was scouring the local Facebook sale and swap groups, keeping my eye out for anything that would be useful on the ranch, when I came across someone’s trying to sell two white silkie hens. Now, I’m no chicken expert and I had idea if silkies were laying hens but they sure were cute. Often called the kittens of the chicken world I convinced Clark that these two hens would bring us much joy (and maybe a few eggs). We immediately contacted the seller and picked up our new family members a few hours later.

Within an hour of arriving at Mutiny Ranch one of the silkies crowed. If you’re not sure what that means I’ll tell you this…only roosters crow. And only hens lay eggs. Now, before you guys think we must be big dummies buying a rooster I need in explain…the guy who sold these silkies to us was in the chicken business so when he listed them as “hens” in the sales ad we believed him. And when we went to look at said chickens he claimed they had recently started laying eggs and his son offered to go get some out of the fridge so show us. Sadly, we declined.  Also, silkies aren’t like other breeds of chickens…the roosters don’t grow big combs or fancy tail feather or any other telling characteristics. Really, go ahead and Google it………See! It’s almost impossible to tell a rooster from a hen in the silky world.

Being the positive people we are we tried to turn this trickery into hope. Hope for the future. If one of our silkies was a rooster and the other a hen then that would mean we could raise our own silky chickens! We’d have dozens of adorable baby silky chicks running around. I don’t even know what they look like but they must be super cute!

And then…

A week later the other silky crowed.

I’m not even joking.

We had been duped. We had two freakin’ roosters (and we paid for them…most people in these parts give roosters away!). There would be no eggs, no baby silkies, no nothing. Silkies aren’t even exactly edible (their bones are black, their flesh is grey and they are small birds). We were also attached to them already. We went back on the hunt for some hens and found some from a tiny house living, homesteading couple just down the road from us. Brittney and Matt were kind enough to gift us two beautiful Brown Leghorn hens who actually laid eggs for us the same day we brought them home. Gerty and Frida are beautiful, friendly ladies and I love them to pieces (well, not as in breast, legs and thighs…I mean as family members).

Frieda (closest) and Gerty.

Heckle and Jeckle,, our roosters, are another story. Cute and comical but kind of a$$holes. However, all four birds are bonded now. The hens give us an egg a day each (production is slowing down now that the days are shorter) and the rooster are good protectors for being little guys.

The Chicken Hay Fort completed!

The coop is holding up well and we’re happy to report that we’ve had no predators as of yet but we’re also not fooling ourselves that they are a reality of farm life. The chickens spent most of their summer days in the chicken tractor (there will be a separate post on this), helping till the future garden plot and eating lots of grass and weeds.Now that winter is here they are enjoying kitchen scraps and freeze dried meal worms.

We spruced up the laying boxes with some homemade flags.

We’re so happy to have our little flock and it really does feel like a farm. We weren’t going to get any roosters for fear of their early morning (and sometimes all day) crowing but we enjoy hearing Heckle and Jeckle calling out to the world that they better not mess with their women. Thankfully, they are late sleepers and, being on the small side, they don’t crow very loudly.

We love your questions and comments so leave them below and we’ll get back to you as quickly as our Internet allows!

Inspiration for our Chicken Hay Fort came from the book Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil by Andy Lee:

Note: Since we basically built the chicken coop as a room inside out existing shed we ended up only using hay bales on the two interior walls. This helped us preserve floor space for our chickens, especially since we hope to get a few more. We needed to keep room in the shanty for storing our equipment (ATVs, mower, attachments, etc). If it this design proves to be too cold over the winter we will either add heat lamps and/or redesign the coop next summer with all four walls made of hay or straw.

Well, it’s been three months since we moved out of the RV and into our new home on the farm. In case you missed it, we decided to trade the fulltime RV lifestyle for farm life and are making a home in South West Colorado (you can read about our why here). And a lot has been going on…

Shortly after signing those closing papers and getting the keys to the modular mansion I (Lynn) attended a nearby permaculture convergence. I had heard the term permaculture before (the ashram where I attended yoga school also offered permaculture courses) but I wasn’t quite sure what all it encompassed. The two day event offered 1-2 hour topics ranging from worm composting to grey water harvesting to foraging for edible weeds in your own back yard. I was able to gain a greater understanding of the lifestyle and farming methods as well as meet local people who are already embracing permaculture principles. There will be lots more on that in future posts.

Since our move in date was June 13th and we had a few things to coordinate for the move-in, we decided to hold off until next year to put in an official garden. First on the list was to get our scant belongings out of storage in California. When we first hit the road in 2012 we got rid of nearly everything we owned except for a few pieces of handmade furniture, Clark’s dream couch and a few momentos that we decided to keep since we had room in our storage container. “Rent” on the unit was cheap enough to justify a few years of payment and, now that our house is at least partially furnished, we’re glad we kept it all. At least we have somewhere to sit and haven’t had to go into debt to do so.

We also got our ATV’s shipped from South Dakota, where a good friend was taking care of them in exchange for their use. Since we have a couple of acres to take care of it’s nice to be able to hop on an ATV and go from one end of the property to the other. We have irrigation rights so checking on the water flow several times a day isn’t uncommon. And, since we live on a county road it’s perfectly legal to ride our ATVs to other farms and public land access points making it slightly more fun than using the Jeep all the time. Wooohoo!

Taken from our backyard looking toward the town of Cortez…

Some of you may wonder if we will get bored being stationary, if the itch to travel will creep up or if we might regret (or feel “over our heads”) with our decision to get off the road. So far, it’s a resounding no to all of that. We don’t have time to be bored, the scenery and seasonal changes are so dramatic that we don’t feel the pull to find something more “exciting” or “better” or “new” and there is no regret…it feels utterly and completely right to be here at this point in our lives.

Milkweed blooming near the pond.

Here’s a little breakdown of what’s been keeping us from getting bored with our sticks n’ bricks existence (look for more detailed posts with how-to’s soon)…

Projects:

Stacking bales to build a chicken fort!

Hay Fort Chicken Coop: Although our new home needs a complete makeover we got the crazy idea to obtain a few chickens in the hopes of having farm fresh eggs every morning. One thing I detest is buying eggs at a grocery store where “cage free” doesn’t mean anything other than a steep price and consumers are duped into thinking their doing something good by purchasing eggs from “hens fed a vegetarian diet only” (all chickens are omnivores and, given free range, will dine on grasshoppers, fly larvae and other “meat”).But first, we needed a coop.

I contacted our new neighbors scattered along a 20 mile stretch of rural county road and asked if anyone was selling mulch hay or straw. Within two days we had 36 bales of free hay (half of which were feed quality) and we set to task on building a hay bale chicken coop for our future flock. Inspiration came from the straw bale housing movement along with Andy Lee’s book Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil.

Heckle and Jeckle in the chicken tractor.

Chicken Tractor: Permaculture utilizes systems that work together for the benefit of all involved. In the case of the chicken tractor the idea is that you can enclose a specific area where you want your chickens to fertilize (poop), till (scratch and eat plant matter) and control pests (eat harmful insects like grasshoppers) while getting sunshine, “free” food and protection from predators. We get weed and pest control, spend a tiny bit less on chicken feed, reduce the labor to add fertilizers (and eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers) and get eggs for Clark’s breakfast. The chickens are happy…even ecstatic…when they get to go into the tractor. The ground is prepped for garden planting without much effort at all.

Our charming rooster, Heckle.

Chickens!!: We follow a few local Facebook groups set up for people to sell or swap pretty much anything. There are people posting llamas for sale, cars for trade, requests for people to buck hay and some looking for pasture to graze their sheep. Well, we found someone selling two white Silkie hens, which we bought that day. The next day one of them started crowing (like a rooster…because it was a rooster). A week later the second one started crowing but we were already attached to them. But we wanted eggs! So, I sent an email out to our neighbors up and down the canyon and soon obtained two beautiful laying hens (they were gifted to us as a “welcome to the neighborhood” gift). And now we have eggs!

Worm Composting Bin: After watching a demonstration at the Permaculture Convergence I felt like this was a project I could easily make without much effort. It’s taken some trial and error, but I think it’s going well (at least my worms are still alive!). A very helpful book is Worms Eat My Garbage.

We expanded our 3 bin to a 5 bin system. The center bin is a passive bin (throw stuff in and forget it for a year or two) while the outer 4 are hot compost bins (active bins maintained to keep high temps resulting in a finished compost in about 3-4 weeks).

Reclaimed Pallet Compost Bins: A top priority for us was to establish a compost pile as quickly as possible. It’s something I wish we had been able to do while traveling fulltime because #1: throwing out organic materials (like food scrapes, egg shells and vegetable peels) is extremely wasteful and #2: without those items in your garbage bin there’s virtually no odor, no need for plastic garbage bags and it takes longer to fill (less trips to find a dumpster). Plus, we’re making soil now! We feel like we’re a part of nature now…not just robbing the land for our own benefit, but contributing to the health of the soil, the microbes, insects, air and water. (Note: We got all of our pallets free, simply by asking the local hardware stores).

Recycling Storage Center: Now that we’re stationary we can easily recycle the things we can’t compost. Sort of. Our town’s waste management facility doesn’t currently offer roadside recycling service (there are plans to incorporate it in the near future) so we have to physically take our stuff into town…and it has to be separated. They also only accept #1 and #2 plastics so we’ve had to be more aware at the point of purchase to *try* to ensure if we have to buy something in plastic that it can be recycled (or reused). Case in point, I recently changed shampoo brands because my old shampoo containers are plastic #6. Anyway, we have 5 separate bins and Clark has been working on an amazing storage area for them in our sunroom. Photos coming as soon as it’s painted!

The first hugelkultur bed we built using tree branches we gathered on our property. Large beds are often dug several feet down and filled with full sized trees. The idea being that each layer gets a finer material (trees, branches, woodchips, straw or hay, soil/compost, cover crop) and, as the wood decomposes the ground becomes a sponge and rarely needs watering.

Hugelkultur Garden Beds: While it may sound intimidating, a hugelkultur bed can be one of the easiest methods for creating raised beds that hold water like nobody’s business. Basically, it’s a garden bed made from decomposing wood, layered with other organic materials like newspaper, hay, straw, wood chips, etc. They can be made utilizing any size trees, or branches, you have available. My friends at the Provision Project are building a huge hugelkultur with full sized trees while my three beds are made from tree branches and wood chips from our tree pruning. These beds are pretty much self-composting piles that will only become better with age. We’ll keep you posted! There are plenty of books on the subject but Edible Landscapes With a Permaculture Twist helped take away my fear of making these beds.

Our plywood planked flooring purposefully rustic, made with our own hands, installed with love (and a lot of nails).

Plywood Plank Flooring Project: Now that we’ve moved from less than 300 square feet of living space to just over 1500 (holy moly, it seems huge), we realize there’s going to be a lot of flooring in our future. This house needs a complete remodel…old carpet removed, walls painted (at the very least), counter tops replaced, etc. Since I love to read other people’s blogs I found a unique concept to make our own planked flooring for slightly less money than manufactured flooring which gave us the farmhouse look we desired. It’s plywood plank flooring. Basically, you take 4’x8′ sheets of plywood and rip them down into 6″ (by 8′) planks, attached to the subfloor, sand and then either paint or stain them. We decided to use one of our spare rooms as a testing ground and are (so far) thrilled with the results…even if it was a lot of work.

Benny: If you’ve been following our blog for a while you’ll notice a trend…we like to adopt dogs at the most inopportune times. We adopted Nellie a week before we crossed the Canadian border for our Alaska Adventure last summer. Well, we got another wild hair and adopted Benny the Border Collie a few weeks after moving into this home…because, there’s nothing like dealing with a 5 month old, highly active puppy while trying to remodel, build stuff and settle into a place. Hey, who says we’re not living on the edge now that we’re not traveling? He’s been a great dog…challenging at times, but really great…and super cute. In case you’re wondering, Nellie loves Benny and is finally learning how to be a dog and play. Avi, the male, grey cat also loves Benny and they hang out together often. Miso, the calico cat, thinks all dogs are dumb.

Getting to Know the Area: When we’re not working on projects (or resting) we try to get out and about meeting neighbors, checking out local stores, finding hidden gems and generally trying to get to know the area. We’re surrounded by National Parks and Monuments. There’s plenty of hiking, biking, rafting, fishing, ATVing and outdoor activities all around. There’s also more local resources than we had first thought. Part of moving to this area was so we could focus on growing our own food and sourcing local products as often as we could. We’ve now learned that there’s a flour mill in town, a corn mill in the town just to the south and a milling company in the town north that sells dried beans. There are two small wood mills with locally sourced wood (and wood chips). There’s a plethora of local breweries as well as distilleries and coffee roasters. Our town offers a Farmer’s Market all summer (there are two others within a few miles of us) as well as a winter market at a local greenhouse/nursery. Colorado grown (or made) products are proudly labeled and sold in most stores. The sense of community is abundant here…and it makes us even more sure of our decision to live here.

Learning to forage these all came from our property one morning. Top: Cat Mint, second row (l to r): mustard seeds, goose foot (aka lamb’s quarters), mallow fruit (aka cheese wheels), bottom row (l to r): broad leaf plantain, narrow leaf plantain, field mint, purslane, wild asparagus.

Getting to Know Our Land: We’ve harvested cherries and blackberries as well as foraged for mint, purslane, dandelion and mallow. We’ve picked peaches at one neighbor’s house and pears at another. So, some days have been spent pitting cherries, slicing and drying various fruits, make jams, homemade ginger ale and kombucha, baking bread from locally sourced flour and pies from our own apple trees. Soon we’ll be harvesting hundreds of these apples and figuring out to do with all of them. The learning never stops and neither does the thrill of eating our own foods. Next year we hope to have a few garden beds planted with annuals (tomatoes, peppers, corn, melons, etc).

Looking over this list it seems I’m missing so much! Everyday is an adventure and seems to bring a surprise. The biggest struggle so far has been dealing with Internet (something that most fulltime RVers can empathize with). Because we’re so far in the canyon we have limited options. So, I’ve put off updating the blog for fear of using up all of our limited (and crappy) Hughes Net gigs. But, everything is happening so quickly that I want to stay on top of all the changes here. Thanks for coming along with us on this new journey!