Big Foot Food Forest

COVID: Hunkering down

10/29/2020

It was early March and Charlotte (our older daughter) had just arrived from Holland to escape the Corona virus that was starting to rage there, accompanied by my sister Sabine - who wanted to hold on to a planned trip despite our nephew's wedding having been cancelled. Everything was still open and nobody was thinking about masks. We went on an extended family excursion to our farm in Montague to do some early Spring work there, when a call from our brother Joris told us that Sabine had to get on a plane back home right away, because all flights from the US are being shut down without further notice. That was it. And so began the COVID-19 time period.

Chicks move to the farm!

7/8/2020

Dear Family and Friends,

Today, a Big Day arrived! Those little tiny Easter Egger chicks that came out of their eggs in our house not so long ago: they were moving to the farm. In the back of our janky 2005 Toyota Matrix. In boxes (with burlap on top for breathing!). ROAD TRIP! Yeah baby!

For many weeks, Charlotte and I, with some help from Mark, Josephine, and Charlotte's friend Robin, worked very hard to build a very gigantic version of our backyard coop, so we can house up to 100 chickens, feed them food scraps, have them make lovely compost for us, and let them get up and go to bed when they please (meaning we don't put them in a separate coop where we - people - have to put them to bed in the evening and get them out of in the morning). In a next letter we should describe some of that building process, which had many interesting moments...

Hatching more than an idea …

5/16/2020

Proud egg-mama

Dear Friends and Family,

What came first, the chicken or the egg? After some financial considerations Babette and I decided that perhaps it made the most sense to get fertilized eggs as oppose to day-old chicks. The incubator was an investment for years to come and per (hopeful) chick, the cost-comparison was firmly in the camp of the egg.

I must admit I was not totally honest in my previous letter — while, of course, we did move the Marans to give them space and us a (less) stinky attic, we also had to move them before our new babies hatched!

A New Dream Home for the Marans

5/13/2020

Dear Friends and Family,

You know how when you are little people always say “wow! You grew so fast!” but since you are the little one, you don’t actually know what they mean? I have never had a baby, so I haven’t really had the experience of someone ‘growing up too fast.’ But now I can say with some certianty that babies grow up fast. Certainly chick babies.

Our Marans, once cute, cuddly (?) balls of fluff are now awkward-pubescent dinosaurs. And like human teenagers they are stinky and they want their SPACE! We agreed, they were looking quite crowded in their brooder - even once it had doubled in size with an addition and the dusty smell was too much for us as well.

A simple, low-maintenance, affordable, bird-friendly backyard chicken home

4/26/2020

Dear Friends and Family,

I want to write two posts on designing a run and coop (home) for chickens fed on compost. This one is about the design requirements. We ended up building our own chicken run and coop, in part because it was fun and because it was cheaper, but also because if you are feeding chickens on compost, the ready-made coops and runs available from the farm store or online won’t work. By building the coop and run ourselves we were able to add additional features: super relaxed chicken care; chickens empowered to get up when they want; setup for better winter-egg laying.

Loss and Learning with Chicks

4/20/2020

Dear Friends and Family,

In spite of our best intentions, documenting the chicks has not been as thorough as we had hoped. Big Foot and her inhabitants have been busy as ever with all sorts of projects. Many of these pertain to the chicks and so, an update is due.

It’s been a mixed bag of a week for our little chicks. Lots of excitement (including some involving excrement), learning (for humans and chickens), and, unfortunately, some loss.

Excitement: The big excitement, which was scary, was a power outage last Monday. Of course the chicks rely on the heat lamp and the heat blanket, both of which rely on the outlet, which relies on … power. As soon as we put two and two together, all hands were on deck. Josephine procured a hot water bottle, while Babette fished some old foam insolation out from the basement and covered the top of the brooder with as many sweaters as could be spared. Nerves were high – would it work? How long would the power be out? Was there a fire hazard if it came back on unexpectedly in the night? The first and last question did not receive an answer, for as soon as we had set everything up the power returned. BUT now we know we have a plan for the next power outage! Woo! Or … if we wanted to do electricity free chicks.

Corona Times with Chicks

4/10/2020

Dear Friends and Family,

It is evening and I am sitting upstairs in one of the attic guest rooms next to a box of 40 sleeping baby chicks. It is so peaceful; all is right in the world – as it should be. These tiny new lives, so delicate, are utterly calm and content. Their feeling of content expands around them in a bubble a wave, and envelopes me. What a gift. Thank you little baby chicks.