Chicken update

Nearly a month at home in the backyard coop and the girls are getting big. I got in touch with the farm who sold them to me because I forgot to ask the exact day they were hatched. The three older chicks hatched 2/21/10 and the younger one 3/8/10.

Today was the second day that they walked themselves into the coop in the evening, with just a little encouragement from me. I'm trying to train them to learn that it's time for bed when I start singing 'Goodnight Ladies'.

This is also week 2 for a small, somewhat conventional garden (I say 'somewhat' because I do not plan to use pesticides and hope to fertilize with compost enhanced with chicken manure) I created using some of the great pile of soil left over from when they installed the sewer system next door. Under all the fill dirt below the first couple feet of digging was the compressed, rich black remains of the wetland area that existed under this housing development back in the 50s when it was considered an improvement to convert all those useless, mosquito infested acres for the good of the economy. At least I'm trying to also plant native plants for the benefit of some of the descendants of the critters that were displaced half a century ago.