As you may have seen on our facebook page, we're thinking about getting chickens here on the farm. Well, really, we're planning on getting chickens, but right now we're in that lovely stage where we're dreaming big about what our chicken operation could look like. There are a lot of possibilities, and we're pretty excited about the benefits of raising chickens: beautiful animals on the farm, nutritious eggs to eat, highly efficient pest control, and an excellent, free, and natural source of fertilizer. We haven't decided yet on what exact breeds we'll be raising, or even if we'll get chickens this year (keep your fingers crossed), but we're moving forward with our plans for a coop, and the planning is pretty fun!
Here's where we are thus far:
We initially considered only raising hens on the farm since we know that roosters are noisy by nature and can be rather aggressive. We want the growers to be able to interact with the chickens comfortably, so having a potentially aggressive bird on the premises didn't seem like the best idea. However, after we paid a visit to Poplar Springs, a local animal sanctuary that calls itself home to many a happy chicken, we learned that roosters are an important piece in the life of a healthy flock. Roosters, it turns out, are great watch dogs. They're far more likely to be keeping an eye on the sky and the perimeter of the run and thus looking out for predators. And their natural noisiness, though perhaps irritating to the neighbors, acts as a highly audible distress signal to their human caretakers. When the rooster starts squawking in the afternoon, you know it's time to run to the chicken coop!
We currently stockpiling building supplies for the coop, and are hoping to have a chicken coop raising day to get the structure on the ground. We're doing this on a very tight budget, so if you have any building supplies that you'd like to get off your hands, or if you feeling like donating to the "chickie bank," we'd greatly appreciate your support! We're trying to do as much as we can with re-purposed materials, but we're still going to need to purchase some basics, such as 2x4s, 1/2 inch hardware cloth, and pvc roofing. We have plans though to save on bedding costs, by cutting and drying our own grass on the farm to use as straw in the coop. We'll see how that goes.
Welcome to Week Three of the CSA! This is an A week, which means groups Arugula (Wednesday) and Asparagus (Saturday) are picking up.
Our project entailed planting White Turtlehead, the host plant of the Baltimore Checkerspot, in small fenced in areas in the wetlands. Stands of White Turtlehead have been increasingly hard for the butterfly to find because White Turtlehead is a favorite snack of White Tailed Deer which are in abundance in the Maryland/DC Metro area.
While deer have always enjoyed snacking on White Turtlehead their interest in the plant has only become an issue for the Baltimore Checkerspot recently. As development has encroached outside of the beltway the deer have seen their habitat shrink and they have in turn found themselves pushed into the only areas where housing and shopping centers are not being built: the wetlands. White Turtlehead naturally grows in wetland areas and is the only plant that the Baltimore larvae will eat. With more deer grazing less land, and in particular grazing the wetlands, White Turtlehead has become more and more difficult to find. Without their host plant to lay their eggs on and the larvae to eat, the Baltimore buttterfly has gone into decline in Maryland.
With the help of our enthusiastic volunteers we were able to plant 135 White Turtlehead plants in deer fenced areas. We had put in numerous plants last year in various areas in the wetlands, but found that the White Turtlehead really took off in one particular spot, and so we concentrated our efforts close by. It's our hope that we'll see one large continuous stand of White Turtlehead develop so it can feed a large population of larvae. We'll keep you updated on any BaltimoreCheckerspot spottings as the season evolves!
a GREAT spring picture of everyone- a little damp and a lot happy! We love garlic scapes!
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