Saturday, July 9, 2011

Striving for Sustainability

At the end of June, my husband and I celebrated our fifth anniversary as homeowners - which is hard as ever to believe!

Over the past five years, I have slowly acquired a passion for learning to take care of the Earth (and I daresay my husband has, as well ;)). It sounds silly, I know. But if you would have asked me about anything eco-friendly five years ago, I probably would have laughed. At that point in time I really didn't see the point in trying to live in harmony with this wonderful world God has blessed us with. There were just too many other more important things to worry about, and I figured we could always move to Mars or something once we had used up Earth. Today, I could probably talk your ear off about recycling, growing (at least some of) your own food, my upcoming cloth-diapering adventure, or (of course) our chickens!

And so, caring about the environment has become an important part of my life and something that my husband and I strive to pass on to our kids, as well. 

In our attempt to be more self-sustainable (and because it's fun to eat the food you've grown!) we planted three separate veggie gardens in the backyard this year, and they are all doing pretty well! I just snapped some pics of each one this past week as we were harvesting some of our first baby beets, broccoli, radishes and lettuce. It is so fun to see our daughters get so excited about veggies!



Here are a few pics...
Madeline holding spring mix lettuce and radishes, and Savannah holding baby lettuce
in front of Little Garden #1 (tomatoes, lettuce, spinach and basil)

The Big Garden - beets, broccoli, watermelon, peppers,
carrots (that have since been trampled by chickens),
and tomato plant forest!

Little Garden #2 - tomatoes, cukes, radishes, and lettuce (which
has mostly been eaten by chickens!)
About three days' worth of eggs from the ladies!


Do you have a story to share about your own journey to green living?

What do you have growing in your garden this year?

I'd love to hear from you!


Friday, July 1, 2011

The New Coop!

This post is long overdue...

We moved the ladies into the gorgeous coop a couple of months ago! My husband made this AWESOME coop with his own two hands (and a few tools ;)). I am sooo impressed with his mad skills and the chickies really seem to enjoy the bigger place! We really saved some $$ by making it ourselves (I did help screw in a few sides! :)) and we know the coop will hold up well throughout the seasons!

My hubby Chris hard at work! 
Our lovely daughters testing out the coop!




Now moving it from the garage to the chicken pen was quite a task! Well, I was just the photographer...


It was pretty heavy...



They hopped up on the spacious roost right away!


We still need to paint the outside, so it has been covered with a tarp to protect the wood since we moved it outside... but here is the finished (unpainted) product!

The back of the coop, complete with a chickie-sized door and window


Front view, with people-sized door
(there is an awesome nesting box on the other side that I'll have to get a better pic of soon!)