Update on the Mushroom Tree

As I was out feeding the chickens this morning, I spotted something kinda gross looking, and potentially very exciting.

Last fall, some of you may remember, I got the idea to inoculate a stump in our chicken yard with wild edible mushrooms. Due to the species of the tree, I chose Chicken of the Woods mushrooms (Laetiporus sulphureus), and set about plugging the stump.

The beautiful bloom depicted on the right is not the stump in my back yard, but a bit of a dream picture of what it could look like as early as this fall.

Below is a picture of the state of the "dry" or "inactive-looking" plugs in the stump. If you click it to get a better view, you can see a number of the dowels sticking out from the bark, looking quite "dowelly", and not super biologically active.



And next are two picture of what look to me to be fully active, early-stage spots of growth at some of the "active" plugs. Unless this is newbish ignorance, like some kind of successful immune-response from the stump, I believe we have liftoff. They are even a creamy orange color, which fits the species of mushroom I chose to grow in this stump.





Enjoy turning waste wood into beautiful food,

Bp

[top picture courtesy of Wiki Commons]

Urban Homesteading -- not just in the Portland Bubble

I was very pleased to see this New York Times article talking about the steadily gaining popularity of backyard livestock in urban and suburban areas of the East Coast and Midwest. Goat and bees were mentioned as well as the ubiquitous backyard chickens.

It seems that laws are being changed around the country to accommodate this lifestyle. As a natural extension of a home garden, a couple animals or backyard livestock only makes sense. Portlanders are all over this, with our coop tours and whatnot. I love it.

I'm often shocked when I start making assumptions about the rest of the country based on what I see in my home town. I'll see a push (albeit hard-fought) for public transportation, or bicycle access, for instance, and then travel elsewhere in the country and find these things utterly non-existent. Not that I think Portland is some paragon of how to do it right -- not by any means. But it is a progressive city as far as the U.S. goes, so it's nice to see one of our little citizen-led green movements actually getting a foothold in the rest of the country as well.

Thanks Nana Povi for sending me the article.

Enjoy knowing where your food came from,

Bp

[photo credit in linked article]

Spring starts for the garden -- plants and animals

We lose our breakfast nook in certain seasons. Spring is a big one -- it's a nice south-facing 3-windowed space, practically a greenhouse. T. does his starts there and begins the hardening process, and this year we have chicks too.

The starts in the picture are too numerous to name -- but a good mix of veggies and flowers.

The wee ones are a mix of Australorps, a very pretty black chicken with green iridescence in the feathers, very steady laying breed; Silver-laced Wyandottes, a hearty laying hen with amazingly beautiful plumage; and the special rare-breed, Delawares. Looks like the new generational theme in the flock is black and white formal.

Whenever we raise chicks, we raise many more than we'll ever need because there are always folks looking for pullets later in the season. Plus, our friends up on the mountain have a ravening band of mutt chickens in a big forest enclosure, and any new breed to add to the mix just makes their flock hybrids stronger. There's always room for more up there.

And we have the roughest chore too -- to pick up and play with the chicks a lot as they're growing up. It's a tough one, but we suck it up and do it. We've found that the adult chickens are so much easier to deal with if the chicks get handled and talked to a lot. Jobs like catching them to clip wings and check feet are much less noisy and dramatic.





Enjoy bad photography of lovely spring garden tasks,

Bp

Making mushrooms out of lemonade... er

As you can see from the sidebar, I've been reading Paul Stamets's book Mycelium Running. This has me thinking about mushrooms and mushroom cultivation.

SO -- we had this Blue Spruce in the chicken yard that was dying. Possibly beetle infestation. We had our friend who is an arborist cut the tree down, leaving the stump good and tall so we could use it as a framing member.

And then I realized: we could inoculate it with mushrooms!!!

It's a conifer, and not one that grows in our area, so I don't know what mushroom would be best to grow in it. I'm going to use Fungi Perfecti's plug spawn to do it. I'm thinking Chicken of the Woods or the Conifer Coral. I called Fungi Perfecti and told them the situation, and Paul his'self is going to get back to me with his suggestions.

I'm thinking Chicken of the Woods growing in the chicken yard has a certain poetic ring to it. I'll report back when I hear from the fungal superstar.

Bp

Ps/Addendum: Fungi Perfecti got back to me, Chicken of the Woods it is. We were leaning that way anyway, because of the crazy neon color and the poetic nature of chickens growing with the chickens.

P.U.H. -- the Portland Urban Hayseed

Sometimes, when I'm driving home with a couple bales of straw strapped to the roof of the Subaru, little kids wave while I'm on the freeway. This got me thinking, that must look a bit unusual. And the other day, when I finally cleaned out the back of said wagon, I coined a term in my head -- the Portland Urban Hayseed.

I had been driving around with 100 lbs. of chicken feed, multiple large jars and bowls for berry picking, a clam rake, and a bunch of scrap metal in the back seat. I had to keep remembering that it was temporarily a two-seater due to all the crap in the car. I laughed as I was unloading all the stuff and thought, "my god, what a hayseed" and Boom, a new epithet was born.

I know a few other folks who live the PUH lifestyle, and I think I'm going to run it past them, see if we can get it to stick.

[What's the photo have to do with being a Hayseed? I dunno, it was one of the wiki commons responses to a search for the word -- "a California Hayseed" it's called. Wiki commons photos can be used without fear of copyright infringement, so there we go.]

Enjoy the spawn of a new label,

Bp

Laying hens produce cherries

You gotta love the N.E. Portland Backyard Barter economy in summertime.

Some of our delectable eggs,



Turned into these shiny beauties,





Enjoy bounty wherever you find it,

Bp

Free range eggs are much better for you

It's not like we didn't know this, but some folks have quantified the difference between free range eggs and standard commercial factory eggs. Mother Earth News performed the comparison tests in both 2005 and 2007. Here are some of the results, with pasture-fed birds providing eggs with:

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

The Mother Earth news article provides plenty more evidence, including some of the more ridiculous disclaimers from the egg industry.

[via Foodshed PDX blog]

Enjoy your local produce,

Bp

Alpacas guarding chickens

Interesting though it is, the idea of using Alpacas to guard laying hens that this article talks about, is just cute beyond reason.

Got to love the BBC.

Enjoy your foreign farming news,

Bp

Chicklet update: Esmerelda helps The Wife study for CPA Exams

Esmerelda wouldn't quiet down, so a little chicken study station was created to accommodate her on The Wife's desk (note the official study group t-shirt being used for good test JuJu).

The shoulder is *much* better.
























Accounting is tiring.

Chicken Run: S.E. Portland Edition

So last night our friend Reshi called us, "I've caught a chicken. I don't really know what to do, can I bring it over?" But of course. We were watching 40 year old Virgin with our friend Feeon at the time, paused the movie and here comes Reshi and his roommate with a little barely-fledging chick.

The Wife immediately went into MacGyver mode, and gathered up the makings of a brooding box in about 5 minutes (check out the broken down aluminum arrow for a perch, rocking). Reshi, his roommate and Feeon were all duly impressed by the swift and capable chicken prowess of The Wife in this minor emergency. We got set up in the kitchen and set the little thing into the box. It immediately escaped, so we had to reinforce the lid.

I think its specialty is escape, thus the reason it was wandering around S.E. Portland at 10:00 on a Saturday night. Reshi's house will be combing the neighborhood and knocking on doors to find out who the owner is. If it were 2-5 chicklets, The Wife and I would gladly adopt and just include them in our flock. But, introducing a single chicken, especially a young one (this one would be in a brooding box until it was a good sized pullet) into an existing flock is really hard, and often ends up with the new chicken severely injured or even dead. Chickens are not kind to strangers. In our experience, the best way to introduce new chickens to an existing flock is put 3-5 in at a time, then they can run around together and have company while the flock gets used to the idea. It greatly mellows out the picking and bullying that inevitably happens.

So, we've got this cute-as-hell chicklet now. Pootie hasn't really figured out what is going on, tho he's taken to sleeping on the kitchen floor because of the intriguing smells and sounds emanating from the kitchen table. Sula could give a rip.

We are developing plans for if we can't find the original home for this little guy. We won't raise it alone, because it would be very lonely and sad and impossible (or immoral) to introduce to our little flock. So, one plan is that if a home isn't found we'll try to find chicks of the same age and create a new flock to be raised together and introduced together. We've lost a lot of chickens this year to both predation and to old age, so a flush of new blood is in order anyway. Just tricky to find chicks this time of year -- most folks brood in early spring so their pullets are good sized by now and laying around October.

We'll see.













Even though the inquisitiveness of this little chicken leads us to believe it is a little boy, we've named it Esmerelda to set a bit of intention toward the "hen" end of things -- in case we're *forced* to keep it. We can't keep roosters, as our neighbors would lynch us, and probably our roommate as well.

If you happen to live around 45th between S.E. Stark and Belmont, and have or know anyone who is keeping chicks, please email me so we can get this little person back ot its flock. A single chicken is a lonely chicken.

Enjoy your fledgling-free Sunday,

Bp

The power of Not-Studying, a burial

The Wife is studying for her CPA exams, in this case her 2nd of 4. It's a stressful time, she has 2 days left to prepare for this monster. What effect does this have? Well, for one I didn't have to bury TaTa. Lines have been crossed, duties have been subverted, all in the name of Not-Studying.

You remember back when you were in school -- how tantalizing that unkempt sock drawer looked to you when you had a big paper due. "Oh, it won't take long, it's affecting my concentration I'll just organize it." Boom, forward to 3 hours later, 11:00 pm the night before a paper is due, and you've moved on from the sock drawer to vacuuming underneath the bed (which of course entailed cleaning all the old socks, magazines, dried food, and vermin out from under there), and are planning to finally get to cleaning that pesky spot behind the toilet that gathers dust and pubic hair. You've suddenly become June Cleaver on Meth. All in the name of Not-Studying.

So tonight, I humbly posit that this was the motivation behind the unusual event that ensued. It was after dinner time when we realized little TaTa hadn't been buried yet (busy morning) and The Wife said she'd go "get it all set." I assumed that meant, I don't know, picking a spot to dig. The Wife's not so big on the whole death thing anyway (not a wuss by any means, but still), thus the division of labor in our marriage. Instead, she hauled the dead carcass, dug an impressively deep hole, and buried the little bugger before I realized what had even happened. This is completely out of line and out of character, as she is supposed to be the "Care of Small Living Things" department of this marriage, while my beat is "Death and Compost." It is amazing what happens to personalities under stress. It was a good break from studying, nonetheless.

She's so going to beat me when she reads this, I better get it edited and published quick.

Geese Aplenty, yet another chicken Obit., Golden Compass trailer

Many things to present this morning, small things, mish-mashed things.

First off, I found a new blog and this one is so good I thought I'd share it with you. This guy knows how to write, and is very funny. The blog is called Geese Aplenty, by Greg Howard. Normally I wouldn't bug you with another blog, but I saw a few posts and had to pick a favorite to share. Here is an example of his work, make sure to get to the end, it has a couple punch lines, of sorts, that rock.

Secondly, we lost TaTa this morning. Another banty from the old days, same batch as Mata Hari. Both of these chickens were full grown pet chickens when we received them 4-5 years ago, so they lived to be a ripe old age. TaTa was a barred-rock colored (I know there is a more technical term for black and white speckled, but can't bring it up in the memory banks at the moment) banty with a nice spray of feathers over her feet and quite the attitude. TaTa and ChiChi were a little dynamic duo when we first got this batch of chickenlets. ChiChi had so much attitude we decided to farm her out to a few friends with a bigger straw yard than ours. TaTa was always mellow and stayed with us. Now to find a spot in the yard that 1. hasn't been planted yet, and 2. doesn't already have a chicken buried in it. We have lost 3 this year now, the first due to opposum then the more recent little girls of old age.

Enough morbidity, time for movie fantasty. The Golden Compass, a really great "young adult" fantasy book has been adapted to the screen. Not only that, but it's nearly done and has a trailer finally. I would be decently excited about this, because I actually enjoyed the book (and I'm not one of those Harry Potter fanboi adults either, I can't get through the first book of that series), but The Wife is really revved up. I wouldn't say beside herself, but while both T. and I were still completely bleary-eyed, she regaled us with descriptions of the trailer and the books despite the fact that she didn't have a fully conscious audience. If I can get my hands on the fabled 10 minutes of sneek peek, I will post it toot sweet. Also, this is only one of a trilogy called His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman (probably should have mentioned his name earlier in this post, eh) -- so there are two more movies coming. Good news for The Wife, she's quite excited.

Ya'll have a good day now, ya hear?

Bp

Fancy Chicken Food, and Chicken Obituary

Many moons ago T. worked as a Server for a high-end catering company that used to be based out of N.W. Portland. He'd bring home pounds and pounds of fancy foods for the chickens. It was major entertainment in our house, listening to him present the carefully-crafted dishes while the chickens were riotously inhaling all around his feet.

"This is a wild-rice pilaf, with spring vegetables and a champagne vinaigrette."

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP *CHICKENBURP* CHOMP CHOMP

"And here we have some lovely crepes stuffed with smoked salmon and cream cheese, lightly sprinkled with minced chives."

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP *fight over positioning, squawk* CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

T. would look up from his duties and say "Hell, this is just like work!."


This morning, the girls got a nice big stalk of bolting chard that we let overwinter for their first course. We have lots of green leafy vegetables that overwintered, look pretty beat up, and are getting big and tall while bolting for spring. They are great chicken graze. They also got a nice big bowl of The Wife's famous Puttanesca on wavy noodles, and over-ripe banana and some flour leavings. They're macking right now as I type.

Between kitchen leftovers, greens, and the worms I toss in with shovelfuls out of the compost pile, our chickens get some great nutrients added to their standard "high lay crumble" food diet. This is how we get such incredibly rich eggs, with deep sunflower gold yolks that stand up very high. There is a lot of variety in the eggs as well, since not all chickens go for all the different types of food we give them. Some are all over the worms, some the greens, etc.


Chicken Obituary: Yesterday, Mata Hari was interred underneath one of the last vegetable beds that hasn't been planted yet. She was old, probably the oldest chicken we had. She was a banty, black body and gold-lace head and neck -- very cute, very sturdy little bird. Had I known she was going to be leaving us, I would have taken a portrait. I'm thinking she was at least 7-8 years old. She went in her sleep, as they often do when they die of old age. She's now earth food.

One never knows how cool their house is til they show it to a 7-year-old

After a middling showing at a chemistry quiz last night, Doctor Octagon gave me the ceremonial ride home. On the way he picks up Squirt, so I get a little bit of kid-time in, which is nice. As he pulled up at my house, I realized that Squirt hadn't seen our chickens. I took him to the house to give a quick show-around before they took off.

Walking with him through the house, I realized that this place is pretty dam cool. Squirt's eyes darted here to there; the purple walls, the Peruvian angel icon paintings, forged iron Minora, and orchids in bloom. He wasn't super into the orchids until I told him that they were deep forest plants, growing on tree branches in steaming jungles in the amazon and such. His eyes got wide and he took new interest.

We walked out back to say hi to The Girls. They were just roosting up. I warned him the inside of the coop may be stinky -- he pinched his nose shut and went right in. The Muppet impressed him the most, which is only right. As we went back into the house, I pointed out the straw bales I use for archery target backstops. His eyes just about bugged out of his head.

"You have bows and awwows?" (he's not so hot on the hard "r" sound just yet)

"Yeah, wanna see?"

His look said -- "do I wanna see... HELL YES I WANNA SEE!"

I showed him the hickory flatbow I made. Showed him some arrows... he fondled them and was lost in his imagination. It was just too cool for words. He was absolutely mesmerized. The reality of it struck him I think. In his world -- full of Pokeman and Superheroes -- all weapons are made of ice or metal and shoot flames or acid or butterflies. The simple woodiness of this bow, its heft and size kind of stunned the little guy. I strung it for him, and he twanged the string -- still lost in some newly-created fantasy world in his head.

Before he left, Squirt decided to run around our house and count all the "gardens." He came up with 16 -- get that, we have 16 gardens at our house, does that rock or what? I kinda tried to explain that a separate part of a big garden is called a "bed" but I could tell it was starting to harsh his buzz -- so I relented. "Yep, 16 gardens, pretty cool eh?"

So there you have it -- our house is full of superhero weaponry, little feathered prehistoric monster beings, and 16 gardens! Who woulda thunk it.

ps: I did a Google search for "Dr. Octagon and Squirt" to get a possible image for the supervillan sidekick, and the first place selection was my own dam blog, the infamous Utopian Bathroom and chemistry study group post. That's kinda... wow.

Chickens as peacekeepers

Dirk sent this to me, it's genius. I can just hear them now "oh yeah? You think fighting's good ha... do ya?" I love how the chickens stand their for a minute, then walk away like "my work here is finished."

Effing opposum got one of my chickens

This isn't a picture of the one I caught tonight -- this one was caught in a trap, not by hand. But there has been a call for graphics on the blog so here ya go.

Man, they are relentless. Tonight is I believe the 11th I've removed from the property now.

I was taking out the garbage tonight, before I was going to go lock up the chickens since we've had some egg stealing going on lately. Turns out I was too late, I heard some squawking coming from the coop, grabbed a flashlight and looked and sure enough there's a juvenile opossum chewing on the neck of one of my blue Andalusians. I got mad.

I locked him in the coop, and was planning to kill the little bugger, despite having been dedicated to live-catching and transplanting them for quite some time now. I don't know what it was, I was tired, had some problems with a friend I've been chewing on, long day -- all that. The Wife could tell what I was thinking and talked me back into doing my normal thing, which is to catch em by the tail and dump them into a rabbit cage.

I bought a nice fancy fancy live-catch trap (pictured above) but it's on loan to some friends up on Mt. Hood who have a raccoon issue going on.

So I bent a piece of pvc over my knee to make some "opposum tongs," threw on some leather gloves and went in the coop to get the little bastard. He tried a few tricks but I got him by the tail eventually and got him dumped into the rabbit cage. I was frustrated and even said something stupid like "you're lucky my wife's a nice lady ya little bastard," and kicked the cage.

I cooled off pretty quick. I spread newspaper on the back seat of the Subaru in preparation for his transport. By the time I was carrying the cage to the car he looked like they all eventually look -- just a dim little omnivore trying to get along in the world. I'm real glad The Wife talked sense into me, I'd've felt like a dick if I killed him. He's just a little dude doing his thing -- that thing just happens to conflict with my thing.

So I drove him out to the Bible College and let him go, as is the tradition.

Why Bible College you ask? Well, it backs up on Rocky Butte, which has acres and acres of prime opossum habitat, for one. For two, there's a nice dark turnaround with a good spot for me to let em go. Also, it's probably 5 miles away, and has both a large freeway as well as many well-lit and very busy streets between their new habitat and my back yard. Finally, of course, there's just something poetic to me about giving these huge rats an opportunity for Old Time Religion as part of their rehabilitation from a life of crime.

PS: Little Missy, the Blue Andalusian who is no longer with us, will be buried deep under a vegetable bed in the back yard, providing nutrients for I believe Tomatoes this year and who knows what in the future. She was a brassy little thing, having escaped once and evaded capture by my whole neighborhood for 2 full weeks before she was trapped by the aforementioned apparatus and returned to her flock. May she rest in peace.

Pie for breakfast

If anyone at The Wife's work is reading this, the Girls would like to thank you for the breakfast of "berry medley" pie that you donated to the cause yesterday. Although the pie was sub-par for humans, they are finding it QUITE delectable.

It sticks to their beaks a bit, and there is a bit of in-fighting -- both of which make me anxious to replace my stolen camera.

Pie -- it's what's for breakfast.

The Muppett -- Our Little "Manx" Chicken

Figured it was time to introduce the chickens. The first picture is them staring down the barrel of a near-naked man in a purple bathrobe shoving a digital camera in their face.

The second picture is one of our favorite


chickens, she's new to us. We don't really have names for them anymore -- that stopped about 3 years ago -- but this one we do call The Muppett. She is a fine Polish cross, and we love her so.

In the third picture you can see that she looks like a Manx chicken, but she is not. She was attacked by a possum one night, and since they are horribly ineffective predators (dam generalist omnivores, get some jaw muscles would ya?) he only got her tail feathers before we ran out there with torches and pitchforks to run him off.

And the last picture is today's haul of multi-colored eggs. We have chickens that lay green colored eggs, tan, and creme. We have Blue Andalusians, as well as a gold-laced Wyandotte and some banties (miniatures) -- which don't really count as chickens, they're more like little couch pigeons. The banties and The Muppett are quite mouthy and will follow you around the straw yard while you are doing your chores and Tell You All About It.

It's a drag that we have to lock them up at night lately, as I haven't caught the latest (which would be the.... 12th or 13th) possum that has decided our back yard is Nirvana. When that does happen, there will be photos and explanations, because just saying I release all possums caught on my property at a local Bible College won't quite make sense without some more background.