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apron fence
As we prepare for keeping chickens, fencing our garden is a critical task. Late winter is an excellent time to take care of this, on the coast, as the plantlife is still bare enough to allow for...
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dyeing eggs
Gathering for the vernal equinox, a rite in celebration of spring, of the growing light and all the beautiful food that comes with it – this is what Gather Victoria set about to do. I laid a table in...
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incubating eggs
Hatching eggs have arrived at the lakeside cottage! With great joy we opened our post box to find a box of hatching eggs from a heritage breeder in Northern BC. These are marked with letters indicating...
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candling eggs
On the eleventh day of incubation, we candled a couple of the chicken eggs. Shining a bright light behind the warm little egg, you can just make out a mass in the middle of it, and veining lines all...
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a hatching egg movie
Watching our incubating eggs pipping, then zipping, then hatching, was such an extraordinary thing. I thought you might like to see a time-lapse of our firstborn chick. Sped up, the rhythm is quite...
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newly hatched chicks
Everyone gathered round the incubator to watch the hatch. Around the 21st day of incubating, the pipping began. Having spent a lifetime with eggs that do not move or cheep, an egg that does is...
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coop design
Knowing our hatching eggs would arrive at the end of April, hatching out in May, and ready for their coop end of June, in the winter I began searching for plans for a chicken coop. Searching and...
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When the chicks were quite small, some of our play with them looked a bit like training. We’d see if they’d come to our call of “Here, chickens!” and later, to their own name. We asked them to be...
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Our little flock at a few weeks old, falling asleep to a lullaby. It is so brief, this moment of growing in feathers, and napping in the day. The chicks remind me of every other baby I’ve known. They...
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coop rafters
Let me show you how I got the rafters framed up on the coop. This bit of the design required plenty of telephone conversations, wrestling with hypotenuse and getting my head around the concept of the...
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dividing comfrey
One excellent way to become more self-reliant about improving soil fertility is to grow comfrey. Comfrey is a perennial herb, related to borage, also known as knit-bone or boneset…also known as a...
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hen-sitting
What a delight, to take care of chickens! A friend of ours in a nearby village has four beautiful hens, and we went over to take care of them while she was away. My tall girl has been ill and couldn’t...
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