Re-purposing and Recycling

The Making of a Cackleberry Castle

Cackleberry Castles are not found at Wal-mart® down the lego® aisle.  They can be enormously expensive and much harder than lego's® to put together.  We believe that to be truly sustainable a project cannot cost more than it will be able to repay before natural termination.  Most chickens slow down at laying eggs into their 2nd and 3rd year.  They really need to pay for themselves before the end of year one.  So, that means housing cannot cost an arm and a leg.  We put on our creative caps and came up with a Cackleberry Castle of wonderful dimensions that (only) cost us (LOTS) of time, two 2x4's, equipment fuel, and a roll of chicken wire.  Here's how it worked.

I know there’s a daunting amount of words but the pictures will come.  Promise.  Stick with me for a show and tell involving two tractors.  Yes, we used tractors on our Cackleberry Castle!

One of the most important premises to any successful renewable farming project is re-purposing and recycling.  What is the difference? 

Are you still with me or did you totally lose focus and head for Krispy Kreme?  That's totally sounding good to me too.  Remember, those doughnuts are not good for you.  Avoid making it a habit, okay?

ANYWAY, let's drag ourselves back to the subject at hand,

Definition of repurpose according to Cambridge :  to use something for a different purpose to the one for which it was originally intended:

Google’s definition (because Cambridge reads like a professor) of recycle: convert (waste) into reusable material.

On Cackleberry Farm in Modesto (Find us on Facebook with that title) we do both and are proud of our efforts! 

Example of recycling on our farm:

Jeremy brought home a bundle of old redwood fencing that he had removed for a customer.  He built me a raised bed then he had the children help.  Wow, does that ever take time – letting children help!  They built me three 3 x 12 beds for the garden.  We still have some material left for another project.  

We took trash (unbelievable what people will throw away) and made something wonderful.

Hard at work

 

How things grow inside my recycled redwood beds.

I’ll admit, now I’m just bragging!

The trouble with chicks is that they grow and lay eggs.  All this requires planning on the part of their humans.  What are they going to live in and where shall they lay their eggs?

For starters, we use an inherited hen house (from my maternal grandfather who never called an egg anything less than a cackleberry his entire life).  It’s our broody house and cannot properly house more than six adult hens.  A broody house, by the way, is not a place for moody birds.  It’s where a structure and people take the place of a broody (momma) hen and raise chicks to a viable age.

Bright idea!  Offer to haul away someone else's unwanted item.  Then re-purpose said item to fill your need.

We asked for an old, unused cherry hut that belonged to my paternal grandparents.  We have repurposed it into a cackleberry castle.  Here is the chronicle of that adventure!

First, the building had to be loaded onto Jeremy’s trailer for hauling.  I wasn’t there for this part.  Then the tractors had to be roaded to our house – via as many canal banks as possible.  Since this was exactly one week before our new baby’s arrival; I wasn’t there for this part either.  

The part I got to see -

At 13'8" this is just 4" inside legal height limits.  Moving an 8 x 12 building intact requires serious ingenuity!

Placing boards for lifting the building.

Our 13 year old helper, Nolan.  He did a super job, many adults can't run a tractor with his finesse!  Yes, his eyebrow is taped shut.  He ran into a semi-trailer with his bike.  The man spent weeks fixing his trailer with a welding torch.

Daddy giving instruction to a very nervous boy!  Afraid he'll do something wrong.

The bucket is using aforementioned boards as leverage.  Daddy is instructing the proper angle of bucket here.

Why we needed our son to help.  Goes better with two tractors -
and I can't do the job he can, even if I could fit inside the cab!

Jeremy hops out of the bobcat, pulls the truck forward and Nolan (see his body language) takes a breather.

This is a trick you don't see every day!

Scooting into place.

And if that doesn't work, have your son haul it into place.  (Joke people, it's a joke!)
Oh, that mess in the background is where new countries are invented.

A load of chickens in a re-purposed ice-chest, being introduced to their new home.  We use this ice-chest for many different animal related chores.  I don't know how many times it has been sterilized and re-used!  It is integral to our project as it's what we use when our chicks are brand new.  It makes a heat lamp super-efficient at keeping babies warm!

I should have gotten a picture of the girls.  They cleaned this building out. It had been empty - except for spiders - for years.  What a dirty job!  But they tackled it beautifully.  Once we had straw on the floor we started moving birds. 

A few weeks after moving in - happy pullets!  No eggs yet

We are in no way done with the cackleberry castle.  It still needs laying boxes.  More on how we re-purpose 5-gallon buckets into a lovely tier of egg boxes - another day!

Getting Chicks

How does one get cackleberries?  First, do any of you need a definition of said berries?  Have you ever heard a hen laying an egg?  Enough said.  So, back to the first question.  Many of you just go to Super-Target or Wal-Mart, maybe even Costco (I bought Costco organic eggs for years!) and that’s how you get cackleberries.  Well I think there is a difference between eggs and cackleberries.  A happy hen chatters; an unhappy one does not.  At least that’s what I’ve been told.  We have no personal experience with unhappy birds.  

Did you know that in commercial egg production they will reduce their feed bill by keeping the birds in the dark until they are old enough to lay full-sized eggs?  This means that for months a bird is kept in the dark where they will eat less and they skip the pullet-sized eggs altogether.  I guess if I was a chicken I’d like to learn on something smaller than a full-sized egg.  Besides, who wouldn’t miss the sunshine?  Wait, I said kept in the dark.  Many chickens just get lights; they never get real sunshine and never see the outdoors.  They get ornery and pecky in that dank environment so their beaks get cut off.  It’s a never ending horror story.  Our birds are happy.  They cackle.  

At the post office.  The chicks came on Jeremy's (my husband) birthday.  

Do I need to explain how excited everybody is?  Really?  This photo needs a caption?

You may not have met my oldest children, our son is Nolan (13).  Next is Elsie (18 months younger than Nolan).  And Aislinn, my 8-yr old chicken whisperer.

Step one to getting cackleberries.  First you buy the chicks.  We mail-ordered ours from this great company in Iowa called McMurray Hatchery. 

We got our email notification at 2 a.m. on the 24^th of February, our chicks had hatched!  At 9:30 a.m., the same day, the post office called.  
Please come get your chicks!  

Wow.  Turns out chickens CAN fly! 

Step 2., Increase odds of survival.  We dipped all their beaks in the food and specially treated water.  We use probiotics (organic of course – but more on that later).  This tells them where to find stuff in their new home.

Next year we will be able to skip these steps as our hens should hatch their own brood.  We carefully selected different breeds based on their desire to go broody.  We'll certainly keep you updated to the success of that experiment and whether or not it's worth the roosters!

The chicks above and to the left (looking at you) are both Araucana/Americana's, aka Easter eggers.  We can hardly wait to see what shade of blue/green cackleberries each one lays.  These birds are the only non-heritage breed in our flock. They have puffy cheeks and are easy to identify by the chipmunk face and grey legs.

    

Step 3 is keeping the feathered pigs alive until they are old enough to leave the heated broody house.  This is pretty consistent monitoring of their food, water and temperature.  Also such lovely things as checking for sticky bottoms.  Really?  Yes, really.  

Since we use probiotics I had to do this less than some people.  However, these little fuzzy butts can get covered in pooh.  If their vents get stopped up they'll die.  So what, you wipe chicken bottoms?  Yup.  You wipe little chicken bottoms.  

If it gets hard you have to drizzle with olive oil and make your mother hold the chick while you pull most of its bottom feathers out cleaning around the vent.  Yeah, I know that story real well.  You (and your mother) survive and so do they!  It's a win-win. Well kinda, you're still stuck with the memory of pulling pooh off of fuzzy butts.  And one poor chick runs around with a bare bottom for weeks.  That poor bird.  He just stayed ugly the longest time!

So we turned on the lamp and proceeded to integrate these birds into our lives.  And you know one just had to die of failure to thrive.  

It was sad.  

We had to have a burial.  

It was a formal affair complete with mourners, kleenex,

 and a concrete birdie headstone.

It was a sweet little Silver-laced Wyandotte.

Just the most precious little thing, dead, all dead.  

Not  a breath of air left.

Just a little sack of feathers.

It was so sad.

A full grown sister of our dear departed chick.

Of course, this happened when the children were home from school and the girls (only the girls?)  were devastated.  Oh, and I was 6 months pregnant.  That may have contributed to the crying jag - maybe.  But we tried so hard with that chick!  I used a dropper and for 3 days around the clock fed it with a honey-vitamin solution.  According to the experts, a certain percentage (less than 3 percent) is considered a normal death rate.  I didn’t know that.  So we ended up burying this tiny little bundle of feathers and having a nice boohoo-orama. 

 It takes a full 20 weeks to get full sized eggs. 

That’s a lot of care and feed for no return.  

Urban farming rule = don’t expect immediate results.  

Your ROI may be LOOOOOONG delayed!

A Peek into our Farm

Today was a complete zoo.  I wanted to take pictures and Boone, our Barred Rock rooster, was on the prowl.  He kept giving me the eye and flapping his wings at me.  Whereupon I shined the camera his direction and flashed it.  All while waving my bamboo protection device (politically correct term for big stick) around to give myself some working space.  I really must learn to have my eight-year-old chicken whisperer put him in the hen house when I need uninterrupted time outside.  It's true, he's never charged her.  But me.  Oh yes, he charges me daily now.  Sometimes I yell and flap back and he decides I'm not worth it.  Other times I run for the house screaming "I need a stick! Somebody get me a stick!"  Whereupon no one ever gets me a stick.  But I digress.  I wanted to take pictures.  Something that portrayed the fun and joy of having an urban farm.  So here they are.  

This is my 8-yr old in her way-to-dorky socks and flip-flops leading the flock around with a bunch of grapes.  Who ever heard of herding chickens?  Well she does!   
In the background is Boone.  Checking me out in advance of a charge.




I'm amazed at how she can wrangle these chickens!

 Meet Aislinn.  She is eight and bilingual.  I'm so proud of her ability to speak animalese.  She may not be bothered with details like socks and flip-flops but she knows how to communicate with other species!  Guess the one outranks the other.

Oh, and the dog, Kona.  The dog is not safe for humans.  For either human consumption or companionship.  He's an LPD (Livestock Protection Dog) and if you don't belong to his clan, then you are fair game for an attack. 

 A barred rock hen.  Sad over the empty bowl.

A picture of Ugly, taken by Aislinn.  This is a young rooster.  His name is Ugly and his wife, a mail-order bride, is Uglina.  But that, my friend, is a story for another day! 



Thank you for joining me today.  Come again and see pictures of our journey from just-hatched chicks to a working urban farm that produces organically grown, cage free cackleberries!


A sample of our pullet sized cackleberries.

PS.  No animals, or more importantly to me - humans - were harmed in the photo shooting process.  My husband came home and his testosterone levels outrank the rooster and I got along fine.