Tag Archives: Permaculture

Mobile Chicken Housing: Photo Essay

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Here are the hens getting used to the new location after a move. They really like lawn clippings for their nesting boxes.

GUEST POST by Shaen Cooper

I guess an occupational hazard of running a mobile storage company like GO BOX Storage, is wanting to make everything “mobile”. Over the last few years, I have moved away from permanent structures to mobile structures for our permaculture activities. There is a real flexibility in going mobile.

There is no right or wrong way to do mobile housing. Nor will everything I do work in all situations but the idea of mobile housing for livestock should be considered. Many of us move regularly and having mobile housing will save money and increase choice. Moving livestock to new location — at least seasonally — will break the pathogen cycle and help maintain healthy livestock. The elements of our Mobile Chicken Housing are:

  1. A chicken hutch that can be moved with a forklift.
  2. Fencing that can be rolled up and moved to another location. The posts can be removed and used again.
  3. We use goboxes for storing livestock feed and farming equipment. The goboxes are moved with a forklift, making moving a breeze.
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This mobile chicken house can be moved with a forklift. The tarp catches the chicken manure for later use in the garden or to super-charge the compost pile.

I use cement blocks and wood shims to level the mobile chicken house so any slope is suitable. The white tarp is to catch the chicken manure that falls through the mesh floor of the chicken house. The mesh floor makes a healthy environment for the chickens and avoids to onerous task of mucking out the chicken house.

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This is one of two chicken runs for our layers. The goboxes are used to store feed and equipment.

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Chickens love to free-range, but they are vigorous scratchers, and can damage plants quickly.

Chickens are not vegetarians. Chickens are omnivores, like us. Their favorite food is bugs and they spend all day scratching to find their preferred food. Chickens that lay eggs need a very high fat and protein diet or they will stop laying.

Permaculture Course with Gregoire Lamoureux

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permaculture-workshop

Gregoire Lamoureux will be conducting a permaculture workshop at Thistle Farm on April 21, 2013 between 10:00am-1:00pm.

GUEST POST by Leilani Reid

Gregoire Lamoureux with Kootenay Permaculture Institute is a permaculture designer, consultant and teacher. “He is one of the most experienced permaculture teachers and consultants in Canada. Gregoire has been actively working with permaculture systems for over twenty years and teaching permaculture courses in many parts of the country.”

If you don’t know what permaculture is all about please see this series of videos by Peter Bane or watch this short video featuring Gregoire Lamoureux.

Dreaming in the New Year (World)

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During our busy days, how often do we stop and marvel at the rich complexity and beauty of the everyday world?

Back in December 2009 I wrote Boxing Day: You Are What You Buy (Believe):

I dream about a world where my needs can be met without those needs costing someone else dearly. I dream about producing food for our families in a way that won?t cost ?the world?. I dream about food that will nourish the body and community that will nourish the spirit. I dream about a world where our children are surrounded by a caring loving community that thinks about our shared future.

How do we become more enlightened about our behaviors so we can live our dreams? How can we change our thinking so our actions will follow? Maybe we need to just ?buy into? a new vision… Maybe we need to learn how to tame our technology and harness our brilliance. All the answers are out there, we just have to apply them.

How are you dreaming in the new year?
May your new world be filled with joy and bounty. May your dreams come true.

Peter Bane has written a book called The Permaculture Handbook which is an extensive book on permaculture principles and practices. Shaen says it’s the best book he has read on the topic. The author brings together threads of information from many different sources and weaves the material together in a very coherent and accessible way. Peter Bane edits a quarterly magazine called the Permaculture Activist.

Garden Harvest: Photo Essay

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This is a beef curry made from shank meat from our bull. The tomatoes for the curry came from last year's harvest at Gardengate. The yellow pear tomatoes and green peppers came from our garden. Shaen made Baba Ghanoush from the first eggplant he has ever managed to grow.

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Shopping for dinner is a short walk through the garden to the hoop-house. Everyday something different is ready for picking. This is fresh produce at its best.

I just wanted to share some of our garden harvest for this year. We are still managing to get lettuce and assorted greens from the garden for daily salads. We have been enjoying a range of summer squash and our winter squash are finally coming along. Shaen and the girls have been enjoying freshly dug potatoes from our potato permaculture patch. We have picked this year’s crop of raspberries and sour cherries. A friend harvested our currents so she could make jam. My girls had some wormy, scabrous apples that they thought were the best apples they ever tasted. We are just starting the harvest of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and eggplant. My girls love the yellow pear and cherry tomatoes and just pop them into their mouths right off the plant. A weed called mallow is taking over my garden; I am researching the medical uses of this plant, which are many.

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The sunchokes are way over my head. The lettuce has finally bolted but I still can get leaves for salad everyday.

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At our elevation the nights are already getting cool. The hoop-house is becoming a warm haven. Shaen realized he has too many plants and will reduce the number next year.

As promised I have let my garden go wild. The only weeding I am doing is in the spring and mostly we are sheet mulching with straw. Shaen wants to try deep mulching for next year to try and reduce the need for watering. Shaen is also letting the plants go to seed for two reasons. One is to have a more of a permaculture garden and the other is to collect seeds for next season.

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Our plums still need to ripen. Plums are my favorite dried fruit. I have never found a commercial dried plum as good as the ones I dry myself.

We have had a number of wild visitors to our garden this year. We have had a numerous visits from what we think are Black-chinned Hummingbirds. Sonja saw what she thought was a very strange hummingbird. Erika later identified it with her Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North American as a Sphinx Moth. The Tree Swallows have disappeared with the last of the mosquitoes to be replaced by the Oregon Junco. The most exciting visitor for Meadows our warehouse cat, was a big green caterpillar with pink stripes and a big spike on its tail. Meadows wisely decided not to eat this strange meal. The caterpillar looked most like a Privet Hawkmoth but they are not found in North America.

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If you have very little space, container gardening can be the answer . Look for the micro-climates around your home. Here are some hot pepper plants.

We have become converts of container gardening. Container gardening allows us to find the micro-climates around our house and use these spaces for food production. At our elevation, frost comes early, and many of our plants are just starting to produce when the season is over. With container gardening, we can move the plants to more protected areas around the buildings. We can move them into the hoop-house if only a few weeks are needed for the harvest, or even bring them indoors to extent the season even longer.

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Containers allow you to grow food anywhere. This tomato plant is right in the middle of the GO BOX Storage parking lot. This plant is a real producer.

Updated October 26, 2012: Earlier this week I had special visitor to my garden. I was just about to exit the back door, when there in the Russian Olive was a Burrowing Owl. We both looked at each other in shock. I gasped, those yellows eyes took me in, and the owl flew away. I have only seen Burrowing Owls in pictures, but the long legs and size made me sure I was seeing a Burrowing Owl. It was my understanding that this rare, endangered species was not found this far north. Thanks to the internet I found a video of Burrowing Owls in Lac Du Bois Grasslands Conservation Area.

Urban Chickens: Part I

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GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

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A permaculture guide to healthy hens, eggs and soil.

We left our beloved Pritchard homestead under less than ideal circumstances. Fifteen acres, river front, cows, chickens, hayfields, barn and shop. We had it all. The story of that parting is best told in person over a cup of hot tea.

We had made the decision to move into town, but my line in the sand was drawn. I WOULD have my chickens. And so began the search for the ideal house with the ideal bit of town property suitable for a backyard chicken coop. Internet searches and phone calls to city hall revealed that indeed, you needed to have at least one acre to have chickens. Deeper reading of past city council discussions brought up comments indicating that if neighbors didn?t pose a problem, bylaw officers wouldn?t come pounding on your door demanding to confiscate your birds. In any case, the house we ended up with is in rural Barnhartvale, on not quite one acre, with neighbors who are used to horses and dogs, bears and deer. A few chickens wouldn?t upset the ecological balance.

The problem now became what to house these birds in. Our previous property came with a father-in-law who was quite the handyman. He built a sturdy chicken coop and pen that served us well for years. However, he wasn?t making the move with us. So we began the three part journey to chicken ownership satisfaction ? a journey that hasn?t quite ended four years after we started.

My handy teenage son was recruited to build our first chicken home. We home school and this satisfied his love for carpentry, especially when he could be outside pounding nails instead of inside writing. Based on the concept by Andy Lee a chicken tractor was soon in the conceptual stage. After much discussion and pages of graph paper designing, we soon had a rectangular, floor-less box moving its way across our back yard. This box was 8 feet by 4 feet by 30 inches. One half was an open pen. The other half was closed in with an attached nest box and a roost. The water and food containers sat on the ground. Both halves had lift-able lids with handles. The lid of the open pen was chicken wire.

By moving the pen to fresh grass every few days this size was plenty for the three chickens that we acquired from a Vernon farmer. I chose to keep the flock to three so as to perhaps be a prototype for an urban chicken raising example should I ever take part in political action.

So there we were happily enjoying our fresh eggs every day. But winter was coming. How would we handle cold and snow?

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The chicken box is not exactly as we originally built it. In the meantime we?ve gone on to something else and this has been adapted for a different use. But the basic idea can still be seen.

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The joy of an urban flock is happy hens, delicious eggs and healthy soil.