3-week chick and a brief video

A few photos of my (fairly) tame chick, who I take for a walk with me almost every day.

 This is a "felfie," aka a "farm selfie" with Olive. See more about felfies.

Olive and I looking toward a bright future together.

A little video of Olive and I. Her peeps at the end are my favorite.


Betsy Ross insisted on sitting on my shoulder during our walk.

Madison's annual rain barrel and compost bin sale May 3

Madison's annual rain barrel and compost bin sale is Saturday, May 3. This year they are offering a modular rain barrel (really, it's a cube looking thing). I've been to the sale before, get their early. I mean, really early, not only to avoid the line but not to be disappointed after waiting to not get what you want. They sell out!

• Saturday, May 3, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
• learn more at cityofmadison.com/streets/compost/compostbinsale.cfm
• Alliant Energy Center parking lot

Madison Sweet Potato Project

Sweet potatoes? In Wisconsin!

Interested in growing a new crop?  How about supporting local food pantries?  If so, then the Sweet Potato Project is for you! Through the Sweet Potato Project, growers are provided with sweet potato slips free of charge with the understanding that half of their harvest will be donated to local food pantries in Madison and Dane County.

Please join John Binkley, (Equinox Community Farm) and Joe Muellenberg (Dane County UW-Extension) for free trainings on how to successfully cultivate the delicious, nutritious sweet potato in our climate! For more information and to sign up for trainings & free slips, please visit www.madisonsweetpotatoproject.org

A colleague of mine accepted some "slips" last year and planted them in her community garden plot, and was amazed by what she dug up later in the year. Another colleague of mine went to the Goodman Youth Grow Grow Local farm in the fall for their big harvest and told me "It was so much fun." You can experience either of these exciting things by requesting your own slips and sharing half of the sweet potatoes with a local food pantry.

Free Sweet Potato Cultivation Trainings

• May 13th 6:30-8:00pm    (Willy Street Coop West)  (I'm going to this one!)
• May 14th 6:30-8:00pm    (UW Extension, 5201 Fen Oak Drive, Madison) 

What I'm planting right now

This past Saturday was a cool but sunny and dry day. Nothing like the forecast for the next 10 rainy days. So I took advantage of the weather to get some plants and seeds in the ground.

I started by moving the hay off my beds and filling one that had settled quite a bit.

I then planted beet and parsnip seeds, with a few radish seeds sprinkled in the rows. Both beets and parsnips are slow to germinate (but we'll see with all this rain :), so adding a few radish seeds in helps identify the rows and makes for easier weeding.

I covered the beds with remay cloth to help keep them moist, keep birds off and help keep any warmth the soil may take up during these cool days ahead.

I also planted brussels sprouts and kale plants that I started and a few brussels sprouts of a variety I haven't grown before that I purchased from the Mifflin Street Planthouse (just two doors down from our own house!)

Finally, I planted onions (Copra and Redwing), two varieties that are good keepers for storage. I planted them quite a bit closer than the instructions call for because I just don't have a lot of space in my community garden. I think the only downside is I will get smaller onions.

I then put hay between the onion rows, and finished up the day by mulching between the rows of garlic that is up. Last fall we planted 120 garlic cloves and it looks like most of them survived the winter.

Our goal this year is to have enough onions and garlic to use generously with canning this summer, and have enough to last until next year's harvest in July and August. I think we'll make it!

Are you at all concerned about your seeds rotting in the forecasted wet soil?

2-week old chicks; breeds, parents and names

Our chicks are now two weeks old (they were born on a Sunday night). I want to introduce you to them, individually, by name, breed and "owner."

Breed: Silkie
Parent: Marissa
Name: Flora
Adult weight: 4 lbs.

Distinctions: currently the largest chick, but will eventually be the smallest. Silkies are a bantam breed, meaning they are a small bird.

However, the fun part about owning a silkie is the way they look as an adult. As this one grows, up, there will be many photos, and I'll ask Marissa to write a guest post about her very fun-looking bird!

Breed: Ameraucana
Parent: Matt
Name: Betsy Ross
Adult weight: 5.5 lbs.

Distinctions: so far, the loudest and most talkative of the flock. Americana chickens are also known as "easter eggers" because they lay bluish to greenish eggs.

Betsy Ross can also be credited for the sudden move into larger quarters. The photo below is what I found when I went into the garage late last week! Betsy had found her wings!

Breed: Silver-Laced Wyandotte
Parent: Josh
Name: Olive
Adult weight: 5 lbs.

Distinctions: Olive and I have bonded. She now sits in my hand without holding her still, and often won't step off it when I lower her back into the brooder.


She will have silver-tipped feathers and is a striking bird as an adult.

Breed: Buff Orpington
Parent: Jay
Name: Prissy (Lady Priscilla d'Ova)
Adult weight: 6 lbs.

Distinctions: We've read that Buff Orpington's are the "golden retrievers" of the chicken world - that is to say, they are calm, quiet and love people. Prissy is no exception, she's probably the quietest (and at the moment, the smallest) bird in our flock. And she just hangs out with Jay, cool as a chicken could be.

Breed: Black Australorpe
Parent: all of us
Name: Mifflin, or Miffy (named after the street we live on)
Adult weight: 5-7 lbs.

Distinctions: Mifflin is our "just in case bird," but don't tell her that, and we don't really talk about it. She's also totally illegal.


"Just in case of what?" you may ask, and you might follow up with "Illegal?"

The Madison chicken ordinance allow for four hens per property. While gender identifying chicks is 95% accurate at one day old, there's still that little chance we could get a male. However, Silkie birds can't be gender identified until they are six months old, so we have a 50/50 chance of getting a rooster. And, this is nature and one of the chicks could die (disease, predator). So Miffy is our just-in-case bird. But since the ordinance is really about not annoying your neighbors, and since Matt and Marissa are in on this with us, we're not concerned about breaking the ordinance.

I just hope no one from the city is reading this :)

CUNA Mutual employee community garden opens

I had the honor and privilege of attending the grand opening ceremony for the CUNA Mutual Group employee community garden on Earth Day, 2014. A couple of years ago, a few very enthusiastic employees from CUNA Mutual visited our employee community garden at American Family Insurance. They wanted to know what we did to get ours started, and we were able to lend them technical support such as our guidelines, protocols and other resources.

So when the CUNA community gardens were scheduled to have a grand opening on the 2014 Earth Day, I immediately responded to the invitation with an enthusiastic "yes."

CUNA Mutual has a large campus with many buildings, but is largely land locked in an urban setting on Madison's west side. That didn't stop this group of enthusiastic employees. The proposed putting a community garden on top of the parking deck, which already had a large lawn. In fact, while I was up there, I remarked myself that you would never know we were standing on top of a parking ramp.

In order to overcome the thin layer of soil that was originally only meant to support grass, they are installing raised beds to add some more depth for eager vegetable plant roots. My understanding is they are going to have 40 10 x 10' garden beds. They will also build a couple of accessible garden beds, which are raised higher and have ample access to all sides for someone in a wheelchair.

I was greeted at the front door by Candace and a few other employees I have met along the way. We walked out to the garden area where many of the employee garden participants were waiting in the bright April sunshine.

Jesse Lerner from executive director of Sustain Dane, spoke about the importance of community gardens for employee health and well-being, and as an employee benefit. She also mentioned that as far she knew, this was the first rooftop employee community garden. 

In honor of Earth Day, the CUNA Mutual employees were able to purchase a sticker that allowed them to wear blue jeans on a normally business casual workday. One of the employee representatives announced that $1,700 raised from the sticker sales would be donated to the Lussier Community Education Center. Additionally, there will be two garden plots dedicated to producing food for the community center, and all employees are being asked to donate 10% of their own plot produced to the community center.

After taking a photo of the enthusiastic gardeners, I was asked to participate in a photo of people who supported the community garden project. It was great to be among my gardening peeps.

The garden is slated to be finished and ready for planting by mid to late May.

To till or not to till?

My friend (and garden blogger) Megan Cain recently wrote an entry titled "Stop tilling your vegetable garden!"

I was amused that I read her blog the day before I rented a massive rototiller. Megan's point is to not till every year, a premise I completely agree with. There are many good reasons not till every year, and you can read all about them on her blog. However, sometimes to make an omelette, you gotta break an egg. 

During the last 12 months, I have placed our permanent raised beds in a number of locations in our backyard. In good permaculture fashion, I did a lot of observing before finally deciding to locate them at the far back of the yard, where we have the most sun. This area of the yard had been completely compacted over the years, was a fairly weedy mess, and I kind of just wanted to nuke it and start over.

So I rented an 8-hp rear-tine rototiller and a trailer and brought it home. Within an hour Jay and I frothed up the soil so much it was inches taller than the surrounding compacted ground. 

We then spread many wheelbarrows of a wood chip + coffee ground compost I had been making all winter over the tilled soil. We even put down a plank so we wouldn’t compact it. I then tilled in the compost and returned the equipment within my 4-hour rental time. 

I then dug paths, throwing the soil into where the beds would be. Our paths are going to be filled with gravel to help move water throughout the garden that will be collected from a future shed roof.

As I filled the beds in, the soil was really piling up. Once the paths were dug, I measured the beds at least 14 inches above ground level. Now I know that they will settle, but I’m going to build our raised beds 14 inches tall to leave room for lots of mulch and to be able to continue to add compost to the beds.

The three chickens we were taking care of were out the whole day and LOVED digging in the freshly tilled soil (and pooping in it too :)

Since I’m not going to reinforce the beds with walls for a couple of weeks, I covered them with a huge tarp we had leftover from a roofing project years back. Glad too, the rains a few days ago would have set back a lot of the digging and tilling work!