For weeks now Emma has been holding in a surprise event for this weekend. The weekend is here and she actually didn't spill the beans. We left the house and I had no idea what we were doing until we got to the mysterious event. It turned out to be an Urban Farm Tour by Seattle Tilth!
We biked to the first place, which makes chicken coops and got lots of great questions and conversation. A great precedent to start for the day. Everyone was so nice and friendly and doing basically what we are doing.
There were so many things people were doing which we had eithe not thought to do or were too lazy to implement but it turned out would be really useful/big time savers, such as:
- Nipple waterer. Not having to fill up/clean their watering container every 2 days would make life way way easier.
- Mulch. Another great idea we saw: mulch instead of straight bare, dry dirt on the bottom of the run. We thought we should be doing something but mulch is kind of pricy for that much. Gives the chickens something to dig in, keeps moisture and thus little worms/grubs around longer too. One lady suggested The Dirt Exchange in Ballard where we can get a cubic yard of arbor chips for less than 30 $.
- Drip irrigation. Another thing that is constantly on the list of things to do but never done. We'd probably need a pressure reducer, an extra valve, and some splitters splitters to make this happen in out yard.
- Soil/rock screen (made from chicken wire doubled up). Our garden beds get full of rocks somehow. We need to screen them.
- Linoleum for chicken floor.
- Anti bird netting for fruits etc.
- Temporary chicken run scroll. 2-2x3s
- Dead grass as mulch for the garden beds. Perfect for this super dry weather we've been having.
We have our work cut out for us. Over all we learned a lot, biked 19 miles, and got to talk to lots of great people. Good day!