In the past, I have posted about my troubles rounding up chickens. If your hens don't want to go back in their coop after a session of free ranging, it can be pretty damn hard to convince them to do so. Chickens are fast and they can be surprisingly sneaky.
It's almost always a bad idea to chase an uncooperative hen, particularly for me, since my backyard is on a hillside. I'm more likely to fall on my butt than I am to actually nab one of my hens. But I don't want to have to keep the girls cooped up because they can't be trusted to return to the safety of their fenced-in run when I need to go to work. Luckily, I have come up with a new technique to herd them that I wanted to share.



All you need to execute my newly discovered Hose Technique (patent pending) is a good, long outdoor house and a spray nozzle. With these tools, you too can herd your hens right back into their run in a manner of minutes. Here's how it works:

Stand in a location that allows you to see your chickens and their run. Then, start spraying short bursts of water behind them. This will startle them a bit, but it won't hurt them, even if you accidentally hit them in the butt with a little water. Basically, the water will annoy them, so they'll run in the other direction. Using their desire to avoid getting wet, you can herd the hens with water the way a dog would herd sheep. It takes a little practice, but it works really well for me, because I can spray a stream of water much more quickly than I can run back and forth shooing my hens.

In fact, now that I've used Hose Technique a couple of times, my hens start to head back towards their run as soon as the first spray hits nearby. They know that as soon as they get in the run, that weird water will stop showing up.

I know some folks may not enjoy startling their pet chickens, and this technique is not for everyone. But for me, if it's a choice between very rarely letting my girls free range and using the Hose Technique, the hose wins.

I have exactly seven figs growing on my little fig tree this year. They looking pretty good and my tree is having its happiest and healthiest year yet. So, I'm hoping to taste some fresh figs in another month or so.

I'm considering tying some shiny ribbon to the tree or using some other anti-bird technique to protect those seven fruits. But I don't think ribbon is going to keep squirrels away, and I suspect they're the biggest threat to my figgy dreams. Any suggestion?

I've been cloth diapering my son for a little over a year now, so I thought this might be a good time to share  my diaper-washing method, in case other prospective parents stumble across this blog. First, let me say that, despite what you might have heard, cloth diapering is not difficult or expensive. Whenever I tell people my son wears cloth, they say, "Wow." Honestly, they shouldn't be impressed. Now, if I was doing EC, then they should say, "Wow," because that takes some serious commitment. But cloth diapering is no big deal.

Anyway, enough proselytizing. As I mentioned in a previous post, my son wears cloth pre-folds with waterproof covers. It seems like everyone has their own washing method, but here's what's kept my son's diapers clean and sturdy for the past year:

Note: I have a front-loading, high-efficiency washer.

Regular wash
1) Put dirty diapers, flannel wipes, covers and diaper pail liner into washer and run a "rinse/spin" cycle on COLD, no detergent. This is basically just to rinse off the, ahem, debris and keep stains from setting.
2) Add roughly 2 Tbl Sp of Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent* and 1/2 cup of vinegar to the fabric softener section. Run the "heavy duty" cycle on HOT.
3) OPTIONAL: If the diapers are particularly dirty or stinky, I sometimes run an additional "quick wash" cycle on HOT with just Borax
4) Remove from washer. Hang cloth pre-folds and wipes on the clothesline, preferably in the bright sun. Hang the covers and diaper pail liner on an indoor line or drying rack, because the sun can degrade the plastic.
5) OPTIONAL: After the pre-folds are dry, put them in the drier for 10 mins just to soften them up a bit.

Stink removal
- For stinky pre-folds, I usually fill up a big bucket with cold water and about 2 cups of Biokleen Bac-Out, and soak the pre-folds in this mixture overnight.
- For stinky covers, Thirsties recommends that you run a wash with a small amount of chlorine-free bleach powder, like OXO-Brite. This method has worked for me.

And that's it! Honestly, if you use pre-folds, you can purchase enough so you only have to wash diapers every 3 days or so. Dakota and I both have full-time jobs, and don't find diaper-washing to be a major time suck.

And now for a baby photo, just because. This is my son watching his dad build the deck.



* Planet is one of the recommended detergents on this cloth diaper detergent chart, and it's both cheap and wildly available.