Garden on Corliss Homestead Journal

It is the holiday season! My family got together this Christmas eve to celebrate with my nieces to eat and share gifts. My wife spoiled me with this gift this year.



She is a keeper for sure! I can't wait to start embarking on learning the material after I wrap up a handful of books I still am working on.

Well, I feel like a terrible chicken keeper.

I have recently switched from pelleted feed to a crumble style feed. When I did the switch, I strangely started having issues with the chicken feeder dispensing feed. I didn't understand what was going on and topped it off for two weeks and just shook the darn thing daily to make sure the girls had something to eat. This weekend I finally emptied the thing and found some clumps of feed to my horror. Somehow some moisture got in and it was blocking up the feed dispersal holes.

It is now cleaned up and working properly, but I need to pay better attention to the feeder. Oops!

Frustration has been a familiar feeling these past few days.

My vehicle is not doing too well. Power steering has been leaking, coolant has been seeping, and I have a soft tire I need to inflate every few days. I was going to go to work yesterday and something was off. My car started, but it wasn't 'right'. I let it run for a little bit before I noticed the battery light was on, so I turned off the car with intent on turning it back on. Nothing. It was dead.

I hooked the battery to my old trickle but that seemed to have given up the ghost. Went into town with the wife and got a new trickle charger for peace of mind.



I hooked the car up last night and this morning, it has shown the battery to be charged. Unfortunately, the car still refuses to do anything when I turn the key. No clicks, no revs, no nothing. I replaced the starter a couple years ago, so my frustration levels are raised. I have also replaced the alternator a few years before that for good measaure.

I'll figure it out eventually. I just need to clear me head.

I have decided that I don't believe that the winter into spring season is predictable anymore so I am willing to hedge my bets.

I am starting some seeds now, ones that usually take a longer time to get to transplant size, with the anticipation that I might be able to plant prior to the traditional last frost date for my area. If I am wrong, I will have some rootbound transplants. If I'm correct, I will hopefully have a nice bumper crop of foodstuffs this year. The cost to make this bet is minimal as I have tons of leftover seed and seed starting mix from prior years I'm still working through so my guy math sees it as a deal.



I have decided to start a variety of brassicas, peppers, and onions. I also have a separate tray that is starting two varieties of rhubarb from seed but that is more of an experiment.



Now begins the slow process of plant starts overtaking any flat surface of my house. I love it!

I thought about starting some seeds today - I've got some that need a bit of cold for germination, so they could do with planting really. Too many other things took up the day: making marmalade and starting to coppice the year's trees. The weather was too good for indoor jobs and I need to cut the trees before they start growing again.
Look at your seedlings go!

Today is my thirty second birthday.

My heart is full from the love that I have been shown by friends and family. I truly am blessed to be surrounded by these folks. I reflect on the past year and look forward to the next.

Highlight from the past year is definitely getting married to my best friend.

My hopes for the following year include creating at least another hundred square feet of growing space on my property.

How the time starts flying.

Lets talk Mushrooms.

I have created several new deep mulch beds out of wood chips that previously was lawn space this past fall along with topping off some existing beds/pathways to mellow out over the winter season. I have intentionally added mushroom spawn to my existing beds and have found a great ally in Winecaps. Instead of buying more bags of spawn, I have started 'transplanting' mature Winecap mushrooms to new woodchip beds with the intent that the spores from the cap will spread and establish in the chips. As far as I can tell, it has worked well! Hypothetically I could create a slurry to work it into the chips more but so far I have had no need.

What I have not introduced but have come to become fond of are Stinkhorn mushrooms. They just 'appeared' one day and established a small patch in my existing chip pathways. For some reason, it seems to like the leaf/hardwood/softwood mixture and has slowly grown over the past season. I have seen Winecaps and Stinkhorns situated near each other which makes me question how competitive they are but this might be mitigated by the large amounts of organic material I provide them. Perhaps if resources were more scarce, there would be more obvious delineation between species?

My use of mushrooms is primarily to get a better quality soil than consuming the fruiting body so even inedible species are of interest to me if they help freak down lignin. There are sources that I have read that state you can eat stinkhorns that are in the egg stage but I am not that adventurous.

Another type of mushroom I'm planning on introducing (through sawdust spawn) are blewit mushrooms. The blewit is usually found in hardwood leaf litter which makes it attractive for processing down leaf litter that I collect in the fall. It is an edible mushroom that needs to be carefully identified if meant for consumption as it has look-alikes in the cortinarius genus.

I'm hoping diversity of wood/duff eating mushrooms increases the breakdown of material through different seasons/conditions and increase my organic matter where I need it most. Where my plants grow.

Guess what today's fun project was?



I'm never confident that the bedding is truly to the point that it is 'spoiled' but I see no harm in giving the hens fresh shavings. I shoveled out their coop and added the mass behind my hillside retaining wall to compost down and act as fill. We have a good rain system moving in so it will help settle the dust and remove air pockets here shortly.

It was neat to see the different layers that have built up. I definitely had enough carbon.

I want to preface this post with the fact that my wife and I have very little building experience before undertaking this project. There was a bunch of in-the-moment learning and after the fact epiphanies. I will do my best to point out things that I would do different as well as potential weak points that I am keeping an eye on. I still think this was a massive success and am incredibly pleased with it.



I got the idea of having chickens at the start of the 2020's but was adamant that I wanted to have the structure built and ready to go before ordering chicks. It took about three years to complete the coop and run doing work every few weekends. It was not a priority but it was a process!

I did A LOT of online searching as well as watching coop 'tour' videos to try and figure out features that I wanted. The #1 priority was safety for the hens. I live near a river and have seen numerous ariel predators over my yard on a regular basis. I have also seen possum and fox and didn't want to take a chance.

In a perfect world, I would have wide open pastures for the hens but in the name of safety I had to figure out a run size that was as big as my wallet could handle. Fencing is hard to find deals on, but I had some luck!





I never like the idea of "You need X amount of square feet per hen" because that, in my mind, is generally the bare minimum requirements and they deserve better than that. I padded the amount of space available for primarily the hen's wellbeing but secondarily being able to not be overwhelmed with manure. The only times I might notice a whiff of something is the spring thaw after winter. Adding more carbon in the form of shavings or chips tends to solve this issue. I am thinking of starting to rake/shovel out the compost this has been generating in order to regain some floor depth. I really have built up a lot of volume!

We went back and forth about where we wanted the entrance to the run to be and settled on having two doors. Each doorway can be utilized to allow the hens to come out into a fenced paddock and enjoy time outside while being supervised by a human. The opposite door then can be utilized to enter/exit the run for maintenance.



My wife is better at fine-tuning things and took on the creation of the doors. We added latch locks that have locking carabiners on them to deter racoons. We also have door stoppers on the base of both doors that fits into a slot in the ground so the door can't be pried open at the base. My wife insisted on the metal strapping and I'm not worried about anything short of a bear getting through the fence material.



We utilized cheaper larger gauged galvanized fencing on top of the run with a double layer with no issues. I regret not putting together a roof for over the run and have kept my chickens appeased in the winter by just laying some plants over the top of the run. The fencing does accumulate leaves in the fall but a few minutes of plucking takes care of accumulation.

Enough about the run, lets look at the coop shall we?



We went with a double door on the end of the coop. I figured I could reach the other side with a rake for cleanouts and we picked the side that tends to get the least amount of wind. Another shoutout to the wife for putting the doors together.



Four perches, one lower with three higher, and a small depression to hold bedding. I really should of made it deeper in order to better utilize a deep litter method. I make due, but a lot of bedding ends up in the nesting boxes and then the hens tend to try and make nests in the main coop. It works, but that would of been a nice touch. We have ventilation in the eaves and mesh across the entire top of the coop to prevent intruders. I have only had a whiff of ammonia once when I first started out but have a maintained system now where there is no odors.



When I was watching videos, there were a few creators that encourage the building of swing-down nesting boxes where the door access doesn't come from above. They theorized that opening up nesting boxes from the top and reaching down might freak out a chicken who thinks a hawk is swooping down. I like the swing down because it makes cleaning out the coop super easy! Park the wheel barrow next to it and shovel it out.





I have four nesting boxes and a large middle part that I was going to figure something out for but still have not utilized it. It holds shavings! I also utilized the ye-old bar across the door security system. I cut some rubber strapping and loop it around the board to keep it from being knocked out from its holsters. No issues with it.

Now down to the small details.



A ramp is a ramp, or so I thought. I honestly should add double the cross pieces for better chicken ergonomics. It works but could be better



Check out my review on the ADOR1 Automatic Chicken Door. I am on the third year with the same lantern battery and this thing is still going strong. Well worth the investment.

And that is my build! I hope you like it because I sure do.

Thank you for sharing your detailed design.
Keeping the birds safe would be my #1 issue too. We have escaped American mink here which can devastate a coop....
You say that you wish that you had a roof on the run - is that to keep the chicken dry outside, or for another reason?