Back in November, I wrote a post about the new chicken pen: a fenced-in space at the bottom corner of our hillside that we gave over to the hens. It continues to be a great space for them to wander around, peck in the dirt, take dust baths and dig like crazy with their long claws. In fact, they have been such aggressive scratchers and diggers that they completely eliminated all the weeds and ground cover previously growing in that section of the backyard. The only things that survived were some bigger bushes and one little pine tree we planted many years ago.

This poses a bit of a problem because, as I mentioned, our backyard is on a hill. Plus, it I'm not in love with the idea of 1/6 of my yard being a giant dirt patch. So, we planted some bushes over the last several months.

The key to their survival is that they must be enclosed in a circle of fencing. If not, they are immediately defoliated, dug up and destroyed by the hens. In fact, we went away for a couple of days several months ago, and while we were gone the fencing circles around some small rosemary plants were knocked off. When we got back, there was no sign of those bushes--not even a stick or a root ball.

We also noticed that some plants are tastier to chickens than others. They don't seem interested in eating sage leaves. That's good news, because there are many lovely varieties of sage, and most require very little water to thrive. So, they are a perfect choice for our chicken landscape.

At the moment, the whole area looks pretty scrubby. Most low-water-use plants start off pretty slowly, and we're at the start of summer, so it should look that way for a while. But, I expect in another year they'll bush out and fill in the space.

This coming Fall I also want to plant a small tree, maybe a Crepe Myrtle, to add a little extra attraction and some additional shade to the space. Just because it's a chicken free range zone doesn't mean it can't be kind of pretty.

In positive chicken landscaping news, the Vanilla Trumpet Vine I planted a few years ago on one side of the run has really filled in. It's covering a good part of two sides of the run and bloomed really nicely last month. So, that worked out well.
When I originally got it five years ago, I thought the vine would have purple flowers for some reason. It turns out they are kind of a creamy white--vanilla-colored, I guess, which makes sense. They smell good, too.

Well, I'm afraid Linda continues to live at the bottom of the pecking order. I've started calling her "Baldy," because she's still got a red featherless spot on her head where the other girls were picking at her during the worst of the bullying. It seems to have healed up okay, which is a relief, but I'm not sure if the feathers will ever fill back in. I hope so.

The new chicken pen has definitely helped with the aggression problem I was having since it allows all the hens plenty of space during the day. But, at night Linda still sleeps out on a perch in the run. Somehow, Doris, the White Rock, finally managed to get an invitation to sleep inside the coop. I'm not sure if it was bravery or some recent broodiness that caused her to sit in the nesting box for several days. Whatever it was, Doris made it into the cool group, leaving Linda all alone. Poor Baldy.

Since the climate is pretty mild in Southern California, I don't think it's that big of a deal that Linda has to sleep outdoors every night. BUT, we've recently had some raccoons lurking around. The other night Dakota even caught one hanging out right outside the coop. So, I think I may need to figure out a way to help Linda get inside at night. Do they make anti-bullying pamphlets for chickens?

Does anyone have any idea what kind of insect makes this chrysalis? I found it growing on a dead branch of a Copper Canyon Daisy bush a couple of weeks ago. It's a little bigger than a quarter in size and kind of golden brown and scaly.

Anyone seen one of these before and know what kind of butterfly or moth might come out? I'm very curious.

We got pretty crafty with my son's birthday party this year. He chose "camping" for his theme, and his father and I wholeheartedly signed off on his choice. The party itself was at our local park, which provided an excellent backdrop for our campsite decor.

Dakota did most of the projects, honestly, although I helped out where I could. My primary contribution was the campfire cake, adapted from one I saw on Pinterest (of course). It's a regular cake, but I melted red, orange and yellow lifesavers to make candy "flames" and then used chocolate cookie sticks (Pocky) to make the logs. I am not a very adept cake decorator, but this technique was easy enough for me to master.

Dakota made some simple wood A-frame tents, and I attached flat sheets with sewed-on elastic loops. They turned out very cute, although I admit that the kids spent most of their time playing inside Dakota's old blue boy scout tent.

You can also see a cardboard "campfire" to the right there. Several of our partygoers had a fun time adding real sticks to the fire and adorably sitting around it on camping chairs.

And we combined our talents to make a bean bag toss game. Dakota built the wood part and I made the beanbags on the sewing machine. They're full of split peas.

So, overall, it was a successfully home made party, not counting the pinata. While I could have attempted to make one myself, I elected to head down to Los Angeles' Pinata District (Downtown just past the Flower District) to let my son pick one from the thousands available. That was a fun excursion of its own, and it reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would take us down to the local pinata store before our birthday parties every year.

When you have one nesting box and five hens, sometimes they have to share. Luckily, Janice and Doris don't seem to mind laying side-by-side, or at least they seemed perfectly content when I found them like this a couple of weekends ago.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my younger hen Linda was getting brutally bullied by some of my older girls. My temporary solution was to let Linda, and often her buddy Doris, out to free range every day, leaving the other three girls in the run. This let Linda's head wound heal, but it resulted in some collateral damage.

This is what happens when chickens get free access to your strawberry plants.



So, yea, it was pretty clear that if I wanted to have any kind of garden--container or otherwise--we needed to find some way to keep the hens away from the plants.

Initially, I was thinking of some series of wire mesh cages to go over my containers. That seemed rather complicated and elaborate. Plus, I have garden beds and containers all over the yard. I'd have to make the whole place a crazy fortress in order to keep the hens away from all my different fruits and vegetables. Clearly, the easiest and smartest solution would be to fence in the chickens. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that sooner, like three years ago.

Luckily, our chicken coop is situated in a part of the yard that's free of garden beds and largely unlandscaped. Even more luckily, I have a husband who is good at building things. Thus, our new chicken pen was created in only 2 short days.

Dakota used the same nice heavy gauge wire fence that he used in the run, and some green metal fence posts, to build a spacious enclosure in the bottom left corner of the backyard. Here's the fence that starts at the left side of the run and extends to the fence we share with our neighbors. I planted a few rosemary bushes just below this section to help hold up the hillside, and I'm going to plant some lavender on the uphill side this weekend.

After the fence was complete, he built a nice gate out of wood right near the door to the run. We kept the coop itself outside the fence, so we can still easily get to the nesting box, and I can re-plant the green roof (for the third time) without the worry that the chickens will destroy it immediately.

The new pen setup is working really nicely. We go downstairs every morning and open the door to the run, and all the girls head out into their free range area to dig and frolic to their hearts content. All our fruit trees and most of our plants are on the non-chicken side of the fence, so they are now safe from chicken claws and beaks. The hens all seem really happy with their new contained freedom, and Linda's head is completely healed.

I feel good knowing our hens have lots of space and fun stuff to do while we're away from the house. After all, the whole reason we got chickens was to get eggs from happy, healthy, free range chickens.

As longtime readers of this blog and my family members know*, I enjoy getting exceptionally dorky garden-related gifts. So, for my birthday this year, my parents got me a Worm Factory worm bin and 1,000 Red Wigglers. I was thrilled!

Both items arrived on the same evening, and my son and I had a great time prepping the bin for our new worm friends. It was a slightly more elaborate process than I expected, but, luckily, we had some dry leaves and composted dirt close at hand to add to the coconut coir and shredded newspaper that came with the bin.

I got a 3-tier bin, and so far we're still on Bin #1. The worms seem happy, and I've been casually giving them small handfuls chopped vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds and dry leaves for the last couple of weeks. It's hard to tell how well things are functioning, but the worms are active and growing bigger, so that seems like a good sign.

One nice thing about the Worm Factory is that is has all the important info printed on the lid. I think I'm doing a decent job with temperature and moisture control, but, since I'm a newbie, it's tough to be sure. I plan to shred up some junk mail today to add to the bin for the "fiber" part of the process. I also occasionally have little spouts growing out of the compost. I'm unsure if that's just an expected occurrence from adding plant matter to moist soil, or if it's an indicator or too much or too little moisture. Does anyone know?

My son is very interested in the whole worm composting process, which is an added bonus. He likes to show his friends the bin and tell them the worms are "making compost." And he's very excited to add the worm castings to our plants when the time comes. I'm happy to be able to share all my nerdy gardening interests with him. By the time he's old enough to have his own garden, he'll should be a total expert.

* These groups have significant overlap.