est. 2007

Whitewater Township, Ohio, United States
My wife Julie and I purchased our property in June 2007. Our home sits on seven acres of hillside overlooking the Whitewater River valley in western Hamilton County, Ohio roughly 20 miles west of Cincinnati. The property is well wooded and boasts a pond of about 1/5th acre. Our professional careers dictate we live in Hamilton County, which makes a country setting a bit difficult to find in a county of almost 1 million people. We share the property with our son Casey (3 1/2), and a herd of domesticated animals including 2 dogs, 3 cats, 3 parrots, and 4 Blue Swedish ducks, 10 Buff Orpington chickens, not to mention my oldest hobby aquarium fish.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Started Tomato and some flower seeds

I started 4 varieties of tomato plant on March 13. I went with the peat pots this year as opposed to the newspaper pots because I got sick of transplanting them to larger pots last year. I started Pineapple, Box Car Willy, Sugar Snack, and Victoria Hybrid. They've germinated and are about an inch tall on average, but have not yet gotten their first true set of leaves.

Today I started a bunch of Marigolds and Johhny Jump Ups. I did use the newspaper pots for the Johhny Jump Ups, but the same peat pots I used for Tomatos for the Marigolds. I saved the seed from the Marigolds last year and have no idea what variety they were, but we were impressed by the size of the blooms.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Garden and Chicken Run Expansions!!!!

After months of being holed up in the house, I took a "me" day today. Took the day off from work and dropped the kid off at the babysitter so I could work outside for a little while. Seemed perfectly logical considering the temperature has stayed above freezing for a few days in a row and the 1 foot of snow we had on the ground has diminished to about 2 inches in most places. I have been toying with the idea of a garden expansion for awhile, then we added 5 more pullets to our flock of 7, so the chicken run expansion seemed a good idea. So here's the plan....

The garden's original size was 25 feet by 40 feet. I am expanding the 25 foot dimension. I have decided exactly how far, but somewhere in the the 6 to 10 foot range, giving me somewhere in the neighborhood of 240 to 400 additional square feet, or put another way a 24% to 40% expansion. I started today by pulling the posts from the west side of the garden, and left it at that for now. Like I said I haven't definitely decided how much larger I want the garden. Decisions, decisions.

The chicken run expansion was more straight forward since I only had so much space to work with. The original chicken run was 15 feet by 20 feet or 300 square feet total. I am expanding the 20 foot dimension. The new dimensions will be 15 feet by 27 feet or 105 square feet more than I had before. At least initially the expansion will be separated by the original fencing which will give me 2 separate areas. The new pullets can be put into the new smaller area and hopefully when added to the flock will be integrated with minimal problems. I'm also hoping that once the new are living peaceably with the old I'll be able to put all the chickens into the newer run and get something green to grow in the original run, and rotate the chickens back and forth (at least spring through fall) growing grass and clover in one side while the chickens eat, scratch, and generally destroy the other. If that doesn't work out I'll remove the original fencing and just expand the run. The upside to that is I will be able to expand the chicken coop making more room for additional chickens. I can't keep up with egg orders as it is right now. I took 2 metal t-posts that I removed from the garden and put them into place. I also took the center wooden post I removed from the garden and used it for the corner post of the chicken run expansion.

I don't have any pictures yet since it wouldn't really look like anything has been done. I will post them in the future when everything is done.