Our very first egg!

On April 20th, 2011 five little chicks came into our lives at Walnut St. Coop.  Over the past 5 months we’ve spent copious amounts of time tending to their daily needs, building a safe and secure home for them, and (whether we wanted to or not) have grown greatly emotionally attached to our little feathery friends!  All of our efforts have been put forth so that one day our care for our chickens would result in love back to us!

Yesterday, on September 25th, approximately 5 months later, we were pleasantly surprised to find that one of our birds had laid their first egg! Hooray!  This small token of appreciation comes as a great relief to myself and the household. We were becoming doubtful that we wouldn’t see an egg before next spring.  Chickens lay with chicks in mind.  In Oregon the fall and wintertime are filled with rainy, chilly days and often times chickens may not lay or greatly reduce their egg production due to their survival instincts.  We were becoming worried when we hadn’t seen an egg yet, as we were told by the local chicken expert that our Cinnamon Queen Sex-Link could lay as early as a month ago.  However, we became optimistic when we started hearing more commotion from the chickens in the morning and spotted “Sex-link” jumping in and out of the coop throughout the days.  Yesterday, Dana spent several hours constructing a door frame, space for their water and feeder, and installing a chicken ramp for coop access.  Yesterday was also the first “Oregon downpour” of the season.  I was curious how they would respond to the harsh conditions, and to my amusement….. it was after the rain had stopped that I went out to the coop and found the egg.  Sigh, I’m still beaming! I like to think that they were happy with Dana’s progress on the coop and wanted to give us a sign of appreciation.

Project Chickens = Success.

We hope that (what we assume came from) Sex-Link’s egg will inspire the other chickens to start laying and soon we will witness the chicken operation in full swing!  We anticipate about 25 eggs a week.  Five chickens X about 5 eggs a week = 25 eggs!  We’re curious to see how the season will affect their egg production and how they adapt to less sunlight and plentiful rain. We’ll keep you updated and wish us luck!

-Katy

Photos of the girls!

 
 
 

A flurry of garden

The Walnut St. Garden has been having its ups and downs, we won’t lie. But in the end it has been pulling through some beautiful food. We have had a TON of fava beans (which are hard to prepare and no one really knows what to do with, but damn are they productive), kale, one carrot , chard, tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, mustard greens, leaf lettuce, arugula, peppers, sunflowers, nasturtiums, calendula, lavender, squash and a few snap peas. Plus our cherry and fig tree and raspberry bush out front and apple and pear trees out back have been giving us tons of good fruit.

We have been making some great concoctions with our homegrown delights.

I will detail them here for your viewing  pleasure:

Raspberry chocolate oat muffins 
Cherry cake
Tomatillo salsa
Fava bean spread
Roasted Figs with goat cheese on italian bread with balsamic
Lavender ice cream (it was vegan and kind of soppy
Fried green tomatoes
Gazpacho
Figs in balsamic and agave
Pumpkin bread pudding

Future plan of attack:

Home made mustard
Apple sauce/pear sauce
Spiced pears/apples
Lots of fermenting!

Don’t worry, we haven’t eaten the chickens yet!

  

A handful of walnuts and a chicken in the Hundred Hen March!

The Hundred Hen March took place as part of the Eugene Celebration Parade 2011. Local farmers and residents marched with their chickens through the streets of Eugene to raise awareness about urban farming and chicken keeping.  We had a great time marching/riding/clucking in the parade and meeting so many lovely people that share our backyard farming passion!

For more photos from the parade visit Katy’s Flickr page!

We have a Hen Nunnery! Bock!

 

Community Supported Agriculture

We in the Willamette Valley are incredibly lucky to be situated in such a cradle of fertile land and food enthusiasts!  In a society that still promotes McGarbage and insane and backward food subsidies, we can still find ways to eat well and have fun doing so.  Here at Walnut St. co-op, we’re excited for our newly revamped, up-and-coming garden to provide us with a small bounty of delicious and organic produce.  Aside from the garden we are able to buy organic foods in bulk, though not all of it comes from very nearby, geographically.  Luckily, we can and do jump on the chance to support our local farmers (beyond the local foods we buy from the store) by subscribing to a CSA (community-supported agriculture).  Most years in the history of Walnut Street we’ve subscribed to a CSA and we are now in our second consecutive year with Groundworks Organics, from whom we receive delicious, organic, and local produce.  We couldn’t be happier about it!  Our subscription provides us with a weekly share of a wide variety of items such as baby bok choy, greens, beets, peas, tomatoes, strawberries, and much more!  All of it is top-notch, and pleases our palates while providing a plethora of nutrients to keep us happy and healthy.

Not only does our CSA help us to eat wonderfully and healthily, it is convenient to boot!  We travel a mere 4 blocks to pick up our weekly dividend of divine delectables, which makes it possibly the most ethical way to obtain our food aside from our wonderful home garden.  Save the day, join a CSA!

-Joel

Chickens in the Backyard! Five feathery tales

Chirp Chirp! Each fluffy chick is born and placed in a brooder at the local chicken store where it will be surrounded by the dozens of other little fluff balls that look exactly like themselves. A little cloned army of cuteness.

You hear chirping from across the room … but you can’t see out of your several-story tall, steel containment and thus, it becomes white noise. Every day a blur of giant faces appears overhead staring in at you, periodically reaching down and taking one of your friends away. They don’t come back. You don’t understand. All you know is … you’re tired, you’re hungry, thirsty, and hope the giant hands from above don’t reach down and grab you. They reach in. You run for your life.

…

After weeks of both chicken enthusiasm and hesitation, Sarah and I went to the Eugene Backyard Farmer store and picked out five baby chicks. We decided to keep things interesting, and thus walked out with five different breeds that would thrive in an urban setting. How do you choose? Do you pick the ones that run away from you, declaring their early onset independence or go for the ones that seem timid, docile and ready to start their life with you? All very different and spending their lives together. A co-op of chickens you could say. We chose the following:

1 Buff Orpington
1 Barred Rock
1 Silver Laced Wyandotte
1 Cinnamon Queen sex-link (yes, that is the real name)
1 Dominique

Each chicken will lay about 1 brown egg a day. ~ 25 eggs/week.

We arrived home with our box of chicks, all respectively terrified. We placed them in their brooder, to be carefully monitored for the following weeks. Let the great chicken experiment begin.

…

BWAAACCCKKK!
Cluck cluck cluck.
Bock , bobock, bock, bock, bock, bock, begowwwwk
buck,buck,… buck… buckAHHHH!
cheep cheep cheep cheep
brrk, brroock, broock, brk-ooock

…

We have chicks living in our basement. We have CHICKENS. LIVING. IN OUR BASEMENT. We’re urban farmers. We’re really doing it! We’re reading books, reading online forums, attending community chicken classes. We even attended the tour de coop, an event that allowed us to view coops throughout Eugene’s urban setting in people’s backyards.

We’re taking each day at a time and learning as we go. Weeks have gone by with no problems. The little ones seem happy and they’re growing rapidly. They’re developing individual personalities and becoming our sweet little friends. Nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen.

I walked downstairs to check on them, and found a bloody chick (alive, don’t worry) in the corner with several feathers missing from its behind. BLOOD.

The establishment of the pecking order has begun. Our little friends are declaring their dominance and letting each other know who’s on top of the social ladder.

…

The days are getting warmer and the little ladies are feathered up and ready to go outside.
Ready for bellies full of wiggly worms and insects.
Their chirping has turned into clucking.
they can fly a little TOO high, and can run a little TOO quickly.
Laughing anxiously as we chase them about the yard.
Ah, the joys of chicken keeping!

The chicks first adventures!

The chicks are about 5 weeks old now and only have a couple more weeks before they’re ready to make their transition to the great outdoors! Since their arrival they’ve been living in a chicken brooder in our basement, staying warm, growing feathers.  It’s quite incredible how rapidly they’ve been growing, and it has been a constant reminder that we need to build the chicken coop NOW!

Chicks move outside around Week 7 so we’re currently in the midst of  preparing for the  coop construction.  This consists of preparing a space in the backyard (moving the giant pile of leaves we use for composting), finalizing a design (which was graciously designed by co-op friend Eli and further inspired by all of the beautiful coops we visited on the Eugene Tour de Coop!), trying to scavenge as many recycled materials as possible and actually building it! Our constructions skills are lacking in the house … so we’re optimistic that work trades with friends and neighbors will bring us the knowledge and leadership we need!

                                               

Pictured above: Talula/Luna the Silver-laced Wyandotte (Top left), Cinnamon/Christopher the Cinnamon Queen Sex-Link (Top right), Buffy the Buff Orpington (Bottom),

Not all of the chicks have been named yet because we didn’t want to become emotionally attached to them while they were still navigating their vulnerable childhoods. They all look healthy at this day with the exception of our dear Cinnamon-Christopher. She has been our “funky” chicken… which apparently all chicken owners have. Her breed yields smaller hen weights so we have our fingers crossed that her significantly smaller size isn’t a reflection of her health. She has also had a lot of problems with curled toes so she’s currently quarantined with splints on both feet. Hopefully she’ll kick (ha) the bad habit soon.

Meanwhile, the chicks have been spending short amounts of time outside on sunny days and are pecking about the yard.  They find mouthfuls of bugs, worms, and tiny things we’ll never see with our naked eyes. Welcome Spring!

Across vast prairies, mountains and hills…

At last, my travels have brought me to the Pacific Northwest and dropped me into a warm, inviting quirky home, the Walnut St. Coop! After spending the last several years in Champaign-Urbana, IL studying the politics of music and community engagement, I found myself craving a new environment to explore.  Arriving only a few weeks ago, I already feel a strong sense of support from my housemates and understand how valuable living in a cooperative household will be for my growth in Eugene. I’m excited to be part of a community that strives towards sustainability and am currently working with other roommates to build a Walnut St. chicken coop!  After driving 3,000 miles across the country, through vast prairies, mountains and hills, I find myself in an unfamiliar place, yet am comforted to be situated in a house whose mission is familiar and rings true to my own.

-Katy
Walnut Housemate, March 2011

Rambling ol’ blog!

Welcome to our new colorful and rambling ol’ blog! The Walnut St. Co-op has been around since September 2000 and is an intentional community located on the beautiful tree-lined streets of Eugene, OR.  Please visit our website for the “nitty gritty” on our co-op!

This is the first time we’ve ever attempted to have a house blog … so let the great experiment begin!  We aim to provide insight into our house projects and respective passions here… and have fun sharing them with you all!  Our house is busting at the seams with projects … which seems to be the perpetual state of things around here … so take a gander at some of the things we’re working on!  It’s beginning to get warm outside again and we’re past the last frosts (we hope) so we’ve been hard at work on our garden, busy sprucing up our house to get it back in shape after the winter months and recently had five little chicks move in!

We hope you enjoy learning about our projects along with us!