The New Green

Here’s a strange chicken story that was in the Poughkeepsie Journal today:

SAUGERTIES — The Catskill Animal Sanctuary will soon be home to 40 scrawny chickens seized in a raid on an illegal methamphetamine lab in Kansas City, Mo.

Two volunteers with the haven for abused and abandoned farm animals inSaugerties are flying to Terre Haute, Ind., to pick up the chickens and then drive a rental truck the nearly 1,000 miles back to Saugerties, said Michelle Alvarez, sanctuary director of communications. The birds are expected to arrive in Saugerties late Sunday evening.

“They’re going to drive all night,” Alvarez said Friday.

The neglected chickens were discovered during a recent police raid of a property in Kansas City where a woman was operating multiple crystal meth labs. The police found the woman was keeping dozens of chicken in an abandoned house with no heat, electricity or water.

“The chickens were emaciated,” Alvarez said.

A local dog and cat shelter in Kansas City took immediate possession of the chickens while a search for a permanent home began. The fact that the Catskill Animal Sanctuary recently built a new poultry barn that holds up to 75 birds is one reason the 40 starved chickens will be traveling halfway across the country to recover.

“We’re delighted to be able to help, and so grateful to our volunteers for their superhuman effort,” said Kathy Stevens, Catskill Animal Sanctuary director.

The chickens will be given thorough exams and any necessary medical treatment when they arrive in Saugerties. As soon as the birds are healthy, they will be available for adoption to those living within a two-hour drive of the sanctuary.

The shelter, though, does not offer for adoption any of its farm animals for food production.

“If we can’t find them permanent loving homes, they’ll always have a home here with us,” Alvarez said.

“Chickens are delightful animals,” Stevens said.

The Catskill Animal Sanctuary is a 100-acre haven for 12 species of farm animals, as well as a center for raising public awareness of agribusiness. Since 2001, the sanctuary has rescued more than 1,700 animals and worked with law enforcement to bring animal abusers to justice.

An ongoing capital campaign will allow the sanctuary to increase its capacity from 200 to 350 farm animals, Alvarez said.

Our sweet girl turned 6 today. We used to count her age in days, then weeks, then months and now it’s hard to believe that she’s already six. She looks like a big girl with her skinny jeans. She acts like a teenager as she sings along with Lady Gaga and Beyoncé and begs for me to paint her nails. She is a graceful ballerina and a fierce warrior in Tae Kwon Do. She has an opinion on everything and is not afraid to share it with you. She’s smart, a gourmand (we’re going for sushi tonight on her request) and has a wicked sense of humor.

We joke that she was born with a top hat and a cane, but it’s pretty much true. It will continue to be an amazing journey seeing her grow up.

This beautiful card and package came from her godparents in Rhode Island, who are amazing artists and make beautiful metal kitchenware.

Have a wonderful holiday. See you in the New Year.

Here’s a great video of Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl, showing how easy it is to build a raised bed garden and hoop house. She doesn’t get into it in depth, but she keeps chickens and rabbits in cages over the gardens to help fertilize the soil.

It’s finally starting to get cold here and I wanted to save some edibles from my garden. On the left is lemon verbena and on the right is flat-leaf or Italian parsley. I washed all the leaves and they are on this wire rack to dry. I put the parsley in the freezer to use it in sauces. I dried the lemon verbena to use as tea. It makes a wonderful tea mixed with mint leaves. You can also chop up the leaves and put them into baked goods.

Here’s hoping you have a wonderful holiday with time to reflect on all the things you are thankful for.

Here’s a nice video showing a man and his son building a coop out of a lot of re-purposed materials. I can’t tell from the video, but my only suggestion would be to make sure the whole thing is sealed. It looks as though the back wall has an opening under the roof, which could allow raccoons in.

Neil is in our yard right now trying to figure out how to secure our coop to keep marauding raccoon claws out.

My chickens are in the final stages of their molt. At least all signs point to that. Chickens begin the molt on their heads and kind of work their way down to their tail and wing feathers. Edie looks gorgeous and fluffy instead of mangey like she did after her bout with mites. I’m not walking into their coop to find loads of feathers these days. I think they should be well insulated for winter with all their new feathers.

However, when I check their nest box all I find are little fluffy feathers. No eggs. It’s been about 2 months with NO EGGS. I have to buy eggs from the store, which doesn’t suit me at all anymore. So instead of staring at an empty egg holder, I have decided to fill it with the gorgeous grape tomatoes that are still coming out of my garden. They are getting smaller and smaller as the days get shorter and cooler, but they are still coming. Winter is a mourning time for me when I don’t have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, so I’m enjoying each and every one of these little treasures.

The other day I did some work in my garden to prepare for the winter. I cut back and pruned a few bushes and cut down many of my tomato plants. I didn’t cut down my grape tomato plants because they are still producing. Fall is in full swing here in Brooklyn, so I took out my trusty Toro leaf vac/shredder and sucked up a bunch of leaves. The act of shredding the leaves makes them take up much less space than traditionally raked leaves. One bag of shredded leaves could be as much as 5-8 bags of un-shredded leaves.

I dug shovelfuls of beautiful compost that’s been cooking all summer and spread them out on my flower and vegetable beds. The soil looks so dark and rich, which is in contrast to the dry, lifeless, glass-filled soil that mostly exists in my yard. I still have straw and hay from fall scavenging, so I decided to add all of the shredded leaves to my compost bin. This is the one time of year when I have an abundance of “browns” in my compost bin. They will break down quickly though with the help of the amazing chicken poo. I swear that stuff is like steroids for the compost bin. I showed a friend my compost bin and she just kept saying, “Yeah, but where’s all the stuff?” She couldn’t believe she wasn’t looking at a bin filled with egg shells and broccoli stems.

I am not a compost maniac. I think that everything will break down on its own without a lot of fuss that many people suggest (shredding everything before adding to the bin, frequent watering, no cooked food, etc.) and my bumper crop of compost was evidence of my success. You can read my previous post about having an easy and successful compost bin.

My plants will be happy to have the added nutrients from the compost. I know my chickens were happy digging through the compost for bugs and worms!

Check out this article by Kim Severson that was in the NY Times. It’s about people who have joined the local food movement and have gotten chickens. There are a bunch of people who have gotten in over their heads and have dumped their chickens off at animal shelters.

Keeping chickens has been wonderful for me, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Most recently I’ve had a raccoon in my yard, which actually got its claws on my chicken Edie. She has a nasty gash on the back of her neck, but I guess it could have been much worse!

I wrote a post about why NOT to keep chickens. If you are considering keeping chickens, please take a look at it and see if you still think you want to do it. If you are going ahead with getting chickens, please get in touch with your local animal shelter or pet finder to see if they have abandoned chickens. The photo above is Shirley, who I found on Pet Finder. She’s not even full grown and is available for adoption from the San Francisco Animal Care and Control.