"The Easy Lay" - Chickens!

Eggs from four of "the girls"

We've wanted to get chickens for several years... long before they were trendy, I promise! I first heard about urban chickens about five years ago from a friend in Raleigh's Historic Oakwood neighborhood. She was setting up her coops. When we moved downtown, we considered them, but we weren't quite ready for them in the yard when we had to uproot and head to the suburbs. When we settled on our 1/2 acre in N. Raleigh, Andy assured me we could have chickens, in time, and we were pleasantly surprised to find out one of our cul-de-sac neighbors already has them!!!

For the last 18 months, I was too busy feeding the "three hungry hippos" to consider having anything else that needed daily feeding and watering - in fact, I even ruled out having a Christmas tree last year saying "I don't need anything else that needs to be fed." But, when my Oakwood friend announced she was moving and needed to rehome her chickens, I couldn't resist.

And so, we've added five new girls to our family and established the "The Easy Lay" Chicken Yard:

Omelet, the Australorp and "boss"

Nugget, the buff orpington (photo by Jody Sorofman)

Silver, the silver-laced wyandotte (photo by Jody Sorofman)

My "funky chicken", Foggy Bottom, the silkie bantam (photo by Jody Sorofman)

We also have, Lovie, the Ameraucana, but I'm lacking a picture of her.

The timing was perfect since as a family we're eating close to 2 dozen eggs a week and buying free range eggs adds up! Besides, since Mason passed away, I've really missed having pets. We actually moved their coops from my friend's and have gotten them all setup in the back yard by the shed. Here's a picture of their digs. Next up is scraping together a "The Easy Lay - Chicken Yard" sign and putting up a 20" high white picket fence to frame their yard.

As usual, I did some chicken reading before we got our girls. Here's what I picked up and would recommend.

• The Joy of Keeping Chickens by Jennifer Megyesi
• Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow

Branching out

So life has changed a lot for me in the last 2 years. In fact, just saying that is kind of an understatement. These days I find myself home a lot. My focus has turned from a once busy corporate and agency career to taking care of my home and my kiddos all the time. And while I never really saw myself a full-time stay-at-home mom, here I am. I am trying my best to "bloom where planted".

In the old days, Andy did most of the cooking, but now I cook most of our meals and am experiencing a renaissance of culinary passion. Its nice to be home during the day to cook things the right way as compared to the past when we got home from work late and just wanted warm food to fill our hungry bellies as fast as possible. Delights like roasting whole chicken and making and baking baguettes and tarlets are new options for me that I'm delving into and loving. I'm shopping our local farmer's market every week and have actually established a relationship with the farmer's that grow our produce!

I've also been able to take on some fun crafty projects for the house and the kids. I've always loved crafting, but in the past I had no time for it (and frankly I could afford to buy a lot of what I wanted).  Lately, I've enjoyed sewing some clothes for my girls and doing some fun household projects.

At the same time, I haven't had as much time to work in the yard as I'd prefer as I'm indoors with the kiddos most of my days. My gardening budget was also more than exhausted last year with our landscaping projects. I am, however, taking on a few outdoors projects, like the chickens, an outdoor shower and vegetable garden beds for the Spring.

I share all of this to say that I'm branching out on the blog to cover some of my other interests - I'm a multi faceted girl afterall....some might say I'm a little too faceted - fractured even! I'd like to share some fun other house and garden projects and recipes going on around here. Hope you don't mind!

Next year this time....

The past few Spring planting seasons have passed me by and this year I've decided to not let next year get ahead of me. My timing is perfect as the three amigos are eating us out of house and home AND I finally have enough sun to produce a decent harvest. Andy's also encouraged me to read Animal Vegetable Miracle and watch Food Inc and so I've decided its about time this NC girl gets going in a vegetable garden! We are excited to see how and what we can produce off of our modest half acre lot - I guess suburbia does have some benefits!

As my foray into anything typically begins, I started doing lots of reading earlier this summer. Here are a couple of my top organic gardening picks that are laying scattered throughout my house marked up and highlighted like someone getting major major plastic surgery. No kindle or ipad here, still doing it the old fashioned way with dog eared corners and highlighter in hand!

• Backyard Homestead, by Carleen Madigan. Great resource on info for doing almost anything in your backyard from gardening to keeping chickens, fruit and nut trees, and even bees and lifestock. 
• Organic Gardening for the 21st Century, by John Fedor. This is an awesome resource for organic vegetable gardening. Everything from soil testing and fixing to, gardening planning, planting and harvesting to preserving and canning your foods. 
• Organic Gardening Magazine - Got this one free from Stoneyfield.

I've plotted out my beds. So far, I've been able to negotiate  two 4' x 16' beds and one 4' x 8' bed from my "yard boy"! So, currently I'm figuring what I can plant in my ~150 sq. feet of garden. More on that later when I've plotted out better plans for the various planting seasons, succession plantings and crop rotation. Its a lot to figure out and I have a whole new respect for our farmers.

So for this year I'm eating local produce from Cane Creek Farms, but next year I hope to be eating real local: backyard local. And so it begins.....