My Introduction to Backyard Chickens

It all started with Ol' McDonald. He had a farm, and on that farm he had some chickens.

So did my Nanny and Papa, and as does every other respectable farm in the world. 

But when my Aunt Katura and Uncle Dave built a coop in their backyard a few years back and got some chickens, duckies, and guineas of their own, I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. And then my very best friend did the same thing at her little family's new house outside of the city were we grew up. My sister-in-law and her husband also have a nice big free range flock at their place. My husband's good friend and his sweet wife live in a beautiful wooded area way south of here and they have this fantastic hand-built primitive coop complete with a nice little brood right next to their cabin. And most recently I discovered that two of my favorite people from high school have found each other's hearts, in addition to a flock of sassy Buff Orpingtons that absolutely adore the ground their humans walk on.

Justin with our niece and some of her family's chickens

The old school stereotype of chicken-keeping being limited to full fledged farms like Old McDonald's, I've found, is more-or-less over. People with just a couple acres...people with less than a quarter acre (!) are keeping chickens for fresh eggs and/or a meat source with integrity, and making it look easy and fun all the while. 

That being said, since nearly everyone special in my life who's lived outside of big city limits has experimented with backyard chickens at some time or another, and typically with much success, my husband and I were never doubtful about the notion of eventually trying it out for ourselves. 

When exploring the option of moving from our apartment in the city to the rural nearby county where Justin grew up, my first romanticized small livestock dreams were more-or-less limited to keeping dairy goats. After visiting some petting zoos and watching some YouTube videos, I grew to love the idea of having some fuzzy, quirky milk producers right outside my front door. They would provide us with endless entertainment, and dairy for consumption and for making our own soaps and lotions--I was sure of it. I went so far as to buy a few books about keeping goats, insisted on going to flea markets every weekend to look at the different breeds for sale, and completely lost my mind with excitement every time we passed a property with the playful little animals jumping and grazing about. I was also hellbent on having a cashmere goat so I could spin my own yarn from its fur, and then crochet all of our textile needs with it.

I know, I know; lofty goals and sky-high naivety. That's Cara for you.

Anyway, once we actually got our house and acreage in the country, and after doing some very serious research and having some very serious conversations with experienced goat-keepers, I learned that I needed to start smaller, livestock-wise...especially considering (until recently) the only animal I've successfully kept alive is my little black cat Wednesday, and taking care of her is an absolute breeze. I only suffered from minor heartbreak when I learned I wouldn't have any goats any time soon.

To be perfectly honest, even though I'd read a few books I still knew next to nothing about animal husbandry outside of giving them fresh water and feed daily, keeping their habitat clean and free of predators, and being at least marginally prepared for illnesses and injuries. It sounds straightforward and perhaps I *did* have the gist of things, but it's all quite a bit more complicated in practice. There are the across-the-board money issues, considerations for the space you're willing to allocate to your animals, and then actually building all of the necessary fencing and covered shelter (A LOT of work). And all of that has to be done before you ever think about what breeds of animals you want, and finding a trustworthy place from which to purchase them.

After assessing the old metal shed on our property as a potential chicken coop, checking out our finances, spending a good bit of time with my sister-in-law's chickens, and obsessively researching poultry, the husband and I were finally confident enough to give the chicken thing a go.

Before we ever went and picked out our first bird we had to make sure we could give them the closest thing to a palace to live in that we could, and that's where the aforementioned old metal shed comes into play. After living at our new place for a couple months, the weather and our motivation was reasonable enough to tackle the clean-up and preparations associated with turning this apparent POS and total eye sore of a shed into a reasonable habitat for animals.

We started by pulling all of the branches and debris off the roof, spray painting the outer walls to cover the rust and lighten the color (I insisted on Tiffany blue, and my husband was sweet enough to oblige), and cleaning out all of the garbage and ground cover left by the former owner.

Notice we took the big metal doors off so the coop will open out into the run. We're rethinking this now that winter is approaching, but we needed some better doors anyway. 

Once we got through the gross, grueling stuff, it was time for us to figure out a design for an attached run, and how we would go about building and placing roosts and nesting boxes. Mind you, my husband and I have very limited carpentry experience (we'd only built a small rabbit hutch prior to this), but reasonable enough design skills and basic knowledge of power tools, so we felt confident enough to get the job done.

The run design I must attribute entirely to Justin. He did most of the building by himself too (I was dealing with a bout of bronchitis during the time he had to work on the construction) and did an absolutely fantastic job, if I may say so. I took it upon myself to construct some primitive ladder-style roosts out of privets (horrendously invasive in these parts, so we were glad to cut a few down for this purpose) and twine, and they actually turned out super sturdy and just the right size to pitch in the corner of our coop.

Justin and our tomcat Doobie--almost done!

My privet branch roosts.

While we spread the entire project out across late spring and through the summer, the total building time was only about three days. Granted we were lucky enough to already have a structure on our property to use as a coop, but it needed A LOT of work in order to be habitable, even by birdbrains. The bottom line: if we could do it, you probably can too.

The finished coop & run, before the chickens moved in. 

Now comes the really exciting part: buying your waterer(s), feeder(s), feed, bedding, and finally, your chickens!

Around the time we were ready to get our chickens, Justin's sister and her husband had become a bit overwhelmed with their flock. They'd bought some hatchlings in the spring and, on top of the chickens they already had, ended up with way more birds than what they really wanted. Because of their predicament and our readiness to take on a flock, they were kind enough to let us come pick out some pullets and cockerels to get us started.

At this time, we really don't know much about breeds, so we just picked out birds based on size and color: one solid white handsome cockerel, one big white pullet with black tail feathers, one iridescent black pullet, and one little bitty white pullet. Four in total, and we felt comfortable with the idea of only having one boy, because our intentions are for egg production, not breeding.

Well, a couple days later after everyone seemed to be settled in, I started to become very curious about what breeds my chickens might be. I knew none of them were the same, but I also didn't know a thing about crossbreeds, either. I created a profile on BackyardChickens.com, posted some photos of my babies, and inquired of those with a more experienced eye what breeds I had.

To my surprise, I found out very little about the breeds, but DID learn without a shadow of a doubt from anyone that read my thread, that I actually had 3 cockerels and 1 pullet--not the opposite.

Our White Plymouth Rock cockerel, Captain. We never doubted that this was a boy!

We were feeling a bit defeated, silly, and frustrated at this point, but were inspired to start doing a lot of specific research about sexing young chickens, and studying breed characteristics. BackyardChickens.com proved to be a fantastic resource for this.

After having our first four birds for a week, we decided to go to our favorite flea market and pick out a couple more pullets, to balance out our ratio. It's suggested that you should have one male chicken per every three female chickens. We were way off, so we went to the market and picked out a couple cute barred rock pullets and took them home with us.

A week later, we went back to the same flea market and purchased a couple beautiful French Black Copper Marans pullets and brought them back to the coop. At this point, we had all eight chickens that we still have today.

Now that they've gone through an adjustment period, established a pecking order, gotten over a respiratory infection, and become quite comfortable in their coop, we've turned them out to free range and they absolutely love it.

The first day we let them out to free range. 

I must say, it was quite challenging and even a bit stressful at first, especially when they got sick, but now we get endless enjoyment out of our little flock even though we haven't gotten our first egg. Hopefully this is because they're still young, and not because their maturity was stunted when they got sick or because we, in fact, have eight cockerels instead of three and five pullets.

We're learning more every day and are constantly thinking of ideas to improve our coop design for the love and health of our chickies. Right now we're working on a plan to weatherize the old shed in preparation for next January and February's harsh winter weather.

In reading this post, I hope that if you've been considering getting your own backyard chickens, I've given you a fairly realistic overview of what you're getting into. Please look out for future Backyard Chickens posts regarding:

• Coop designs (including nesting boxes & perches)
• Our experiences with breeds & behaviors
• Dealing with illnesses
• Free ranging
• Feed and treats, etc. 

Happy chickening.

Much love,

Cara

Mushroom of the Day

American Caesar's Mushroom

Amanita caesarea, or

A. umbonata

I decided to go mushroom hunting at a park in the nearest city today, just to see what would happen. I'd been there to go walking a few times before with my husband, but those instances were always pre-season. After becoming completely familiar and, frankly, a little bit bored with what I've seen around our property over the last few weeks, I was craving a new place to go foraging. I recalled this park having lots of beautiful, mature deciduous trees and a good number of conifers as well. The park management has also recently created a fantastic network of unpaved trails through meadows and heavily forested areas outside of the main park area (for the purposes of the high school's cross country team), so I thought this would be an awesome place to go. 

And I was right! I saw all kinds of lovely little boletes, some neat shelf mushrooms, and more amanitas than I'd ever seen in one place in my whole life. It was fantastically exciting, not to mention a beautiful day to go out and immerse oneself in nature. I wandered around for a few miles, snapping pictures and collecting samples before I decided to head back home to study what I'd found. 

On the way back to the car I decided to take a different trail and happened upon these beauties--hundreds and hundreds of them, including a fairy ring! Not only were their vivid golden orange caps incredibly striking, but the sheer size of some of these fruit bodies stopped me dead in my tracks. I had a sneaking suspicion that they're A. caesarea because of what I'd read about their preferred habitat: warm climates, sandy earth, deciduous forests. I wasn't entirely sure, though, because I'd never seen one in person. Upon reading more about them and taking a close look at my samples, I concluded they really are Caesar's mushrooms. What a happy Friday!

Cap: 2-8 inches wide. Orange-red at center become lighter golden orange or orange-yellow closer to margin. Shiny, dry and smooth, but often a bit sticky when young. Radially lined margin. Convex becoming flatter with maturity. 

Gills: Free or nearly so. Close. Cream to golden yellow. 

Veil: Universal. Yellow to orange partial veil/annulus. Substantial fleshy white sac-shaped cup/volva. 

Stem: Yellow to golden orange. White interior flesh becoming hollow. 

Flesh: Cream to pale yellow. 

Odor: Non-distinctive. 

Edibility: Choice in Europe. Questionable/with caution in America. 

Additional Notes: Can be fairly easily confused with the poisonous A. muscaria (Fly Agaric). Remember, if you have the substantial white cup, a smooth cap and yellowish gills, you probably have the A. caesarea. Also, while the European version is considered a top-of-the-line, choice edible, it is suggested that the American counterpart is not entirely the same and is considered a mediocre at-best edible. I wouldn't advise ingestion, however. I think it's better enjoyed as eye candy. :)

Mushroom of the Day

Fragile Dapperling

Leucocoprinus fragilissimus

This is another happy surprise I found under one of our big oak trees this week. It caught my attention as I was walking to the back side of our property to check on the chickens. My first thought was that it looked like a delicate little daisy. There were two of them growing a foot apart, right at the base of the tree. About a quarter of one of the caps, as you see in the bottom picture, had already broken off or been enjoyed by a critter.

Upon doing some research on this species I learned that, like the countless Parasola plicatilis I was seeing all over the place at the end of July - beginning of August, its incredibly fragile nature makes collecting them for study exceedingly difficult. The cap also dissolves and collapses within a few hours of expanding, so I felt lucky that I got to see them in such pristine shape. 

Obviously, because I didn't want to destroy the sweet little things, I didn't pluck them to figure out what they were. I assumed their coloration, fragility and habitat were distinctive enough to identify them without collecting them. And I was right! :)

Cap: 1-5 cm across. Slighty convex to flat. Sometimes becoming concave with age. Small yellow bump/umbo in center. Deeply grooved. Whitish to pale yellow becoming darker at center. 

Gills: Free. Whitish to pale yellow. Fairly distant. 

Stem: 5-10 cm tall. Very slim (1-2 mm). Exceedingly fragile. Smooth. Bright yellow to white. Fragile white annulus present, which may dissolve in heat. 

Flesh: Unsubstantial. 

Odor: Non-distinctive. 

Edibility: Unknown

Additional Notes: Looks like a white or pale yellow daisy, or kind of like a large flea bane. 

Please remember that if edibility is marked "unknown," I don't condone or recommend using yourself as the guinea pig. Besides, this dude is so scrawny that it'd take 500 of them to fill you up, so it's just not worth it! 

Kuo, M. (2015, May). Leucocoprinus fragilissimus. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/leucocoprinus_fragilissimus.html

Mushroom of the Day

Violet-Gray Bolete

Tylopilus plumbeviolaceus

There are four of these pretty little guys coming up on the southwestern side of the big oak tree in my front yard, indicating they are mycorrhizal (in a symbiotic relationship with the tree.) The striking deep violet color caught my eye right away. I've seen a few of these here and there over the last few weeks, but have failed to positively ID them until today!

Boletes are a variety of mushroom that emit their spores through tubes or pores, rather than from gills on the underside of the cap. Often vivid cap colors, absence of gills, and the presence of the fruitbody under a big tree (such as my oak) indicates that you might have a bolete on your hands! 

Cap: Lilac to deep violet, turning dull grayish brown with age. Convex to flat. Slightly velvety and dry. 5-15 cm wide. Doesn't appear to bruise or stain when handled. 

Pores: Whitish or pinkish. No bruising when handled. 

Stem: Lilac to deep violet and/or brownish, sometimes becoming paler to whitish toward base. 

Flesh: Whitish to off-white, unchanging when sliced. 

Odor: Earthy, mushroomy.  Non-distinctive. 

Edibility: Not poisonous, but not recommended because of extremely bitter flavor. 

Additional Notes: Whitish protrusions or growths among mycelial threads.

The spore print for this guy is in the works. According to the description of this mushroom by Michael Kuo at mushroomexpert.com, the print should be pinkish brown. We shall see. :)

Kuo, M. (2004, July). Tylopilus plumbeoviolaceus. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/tylopilus_plumbeoviolaceus.html

Why we're here.

I am widely known among family and friends as a chronic blog-creator entirely lacking in motivation to perpetuate content production and maintenance of said blogs. I kid you not, I've probably had two or three dozen blogs in my lifetime, none of which have come into fruition. I feel a pretty massive sense of obligation to have a blog or regular writing outlet of some sort, as a self- and university-proclaimed professional writer and English nerd. I put a lot of pressure on myself to write often and about meaningful things, but like I said before, that never really happens. My blogs always become unfocused and neglected, and then I beat myself up over it and give up a short time later.

It wasn't until I really found myself in a niche that I could think of countless potential posts of informative and/or humorous nature truly deserving of their own blog. (Well, there's that, and I worry that my Instagram friends are kind of tired of all of my chicken and mycology pictures, so I began exploring other outlets for those. Congratulations; you've found yourself in that location.)

Anyway, in May of this year I quit my job as an English instructor at a local college and finally felt OK about acknowledging that maybe I'm just not cut out for a 9-5. My dear husband has never put pressure on me to work, and even encourages me to stay home where he knows my anxieties are at a minimum and where I can do all the things I love the most. Up until recently, I felt an incredible sense of guilt over not having a paying job because, yeah, I am like over my eyeballs in student load debt, am capable, skilled, healthy, out of school, and ambitious, so I oblige myself to work for pay--except that I inevitably become miserable in whatever employment setting I find myself in. I don't just mean miserable though, but depressed, uncomfortable, lost-feeling, self-conscious, and then lethargic and useless when I come home. It's not a pretty sight. I can't hang, and I'm not afraid to admit it. 

Of course I know how incredibly fortunate I am to not have to suck it up, go out, and work for someone. But growing up in a family of women who have always worked full-time jobs, sometimes I feel like there's something wrong with me because I don't crave a career. Except, there's not a thing wrong with me. I just have different priorities and a different way of reaching my goals, and this is not to say that I'm not capable of working extremely hard. I simply prefer to work extremely hard for my family, and not for anyone else. 

If I can't afford something, I don't go work for someone to make the money to buy it. Instead, with my own two hands, I simply try to make, scavenge, or fix whatever it is I'm in need of. If I can't make it, find it, or purchase it within my means, I know then that I likely do not need it. It's pretty simple. 

One of the primary intentions of this blog is not to prove, per se, that one can absolutely provide for his/her family without going out and working for someone else, but to illustrate it for you day-to-day. The idea of "providing" isn't limited to bringing home the money necessary to pay for the things that keep your family going. "Providing" means just that: providing your family the things it needs to be healthy, happy, and protected, regardless of the whole money thing. 

I'll go one step further to explain that "self-sufficiency" (which is what my husband and I aspire for, relatively speaking) is the absolute antithesis of relying on someone else's services and money for your own livelihood. It can be damn-near impossible to create a self-sustaining system at your dwelling when everybody that lives there is out in the world making lots of money and providing services for somebody else.

What I have found that many people fail to do is look right in front of them, in their own yards for example, to find wonderfully wholesome, natural, things that can help give themselves and their families a good, happy life. Your food and drink is out there. Your medicine is out there. Your fuel is out there. Your building materials are out there. So is your entertainment, and possibly even some transportation! What more does anyone need?

Through the Captain & Rosemary blog, I plan to share with you all of my findings, experiences, research, and know-how pertaining to the creation of a simpler and more self-sufficient lifestyle, specifically here in the Deep South. 

Topics of discussion shall include, but are not limited to:

• Raising backyard chickens for eggs, meat (eventually), and entertainment (inevitably)
• Seasonal flower and vegetable gardening (most pertinent for plant hardiness zones 7 & 8)
• Amateur mycology (the study of fungi/mushrooms); edibles & inedibles  
• Foraging; all the easily overlooked tasty bits that can be found as soon as you step out of your front door, and all the way down your favorite walking trails
• Home improvement projects
• Canning
• Sewing & crochet
• Arts & crafts
• Bargain hunting

I hope you find C&R informative, inspiring and, if nothing else, humorous. If you have any suggestions for content or blog development, please don't hesitate to send feedback via comments or email. Please remember that Captain & Rosemary fosters open-mindedness, and don't forget that this weirdness is just my way of doing things. I am of the belief that what I'm doing here isn't hurting anyone else, so that's reason enough to be respectful, right!?

Please be patient as I continue to improve and add fresh content to the site. We're only just getting started, after all!

Thanks for visiting.
Much love,
Cara