The Great Chick Escape! Where to Plant Next? Selling Success on Craigslist, Urban Homesteading Books

The Great Chick Escape!

You know just when you relax and think everything is secure you see... 2 chicks out in the dark wandering around the backyard. Or a chick OUTSIDE the netting hanging on for dear life. Oh my. Two night ago I went to close our living room curtains, looked out and thought- those are odd looking ground doves. Then I looked again and went- oh crap, those are chicks! I ran outside and they both came right over to me. Kind of looking like- where are we??? I put them back in the coop, they seemed happy. Then I worried all night! I kept looking out the window with a flashlight. I figured they wouldn't venture out again in the pitch black. Thankfully they didn't fall into our little pond and drown, or get grabbed by a random cat that goes thru our backyard. Anyway, Dave and I looked and it seemed like they flew up to the top of the inside coop dividing netting and flew over. Then they found a little hole near the floor and went thru. Netting is re-secured now, and we'll add some bricks or lumber to fix that permanently.

Yesterday I saw a lot of flapping and went out. Somehow one of the chicks was hanging on the outside of the netting, hanging with her peeps just inside. I found a small opening, put her back in and secured it. Dang girls! Ah well, all is triple secured now. The big girls seem to be ignoring them, so this weekend (when Dave is home) I'm going to let them all out together. Let the games begin. We'll see what happens. Hopefully we can normalize the yard and coop, if not we can wait a couple more weeks...

Where to Plant Next?
I was reading Wendy's blog post today Focus on Possibilities and it got me thinking. We're on a "standard" city lot. It's about 5,000 s.f. and I re-evaluate how we use it yearly. With a huge maple tree in the backyard, it cuts down on the sunny areas that we can plant in. I have a mostly shade raised bed that does well with herbs, kale, and collard greens. We've had the maple trimmed and thinned to increase the sunny area. That leaves the front yard. I'm still tying to figure out if I can plant more veggies there? We already planted 3 fruit trees, choke cherries, and service berries in front. I'd like to grow potatoes, carrots, etc., more root veggies. Maybe a raised bed? Still scratching head :) While we're not turf fans, I'm not comfortable converting our entire front turf area to veggies. I'm always thinking re-sale value in the back of my head. I want to have more land eventually. Think little house on an acre or two... For now I'm still thniking- where do I plant next?

Selling Success on Craigslist-
We bought a little stereo years ago that still worked fine. CD player, cassette, turntable, radio, big speakers. A couple of weeks ago I had a thought- a lot of people are getting back into vinyl, and I thought- time to sell it! We usually listen to music on our computers or in the car and really never used it. I dusted it off, made sure everything worked (except cassette, no tapes) and listed it. I intentionally started high- $165.00 to see what the response might be. No response. I lowered it to $100.00 and sold it Saturday! Ironically I think we bought it new for about $165.00 around 18-19 years ago. Now I have a big open space in the pine storage unit for cook books, and I may even add another shelf. Free cash and more room! Anya said she wants it to be a cat play room :)

Urban Homesteading Books- 
Here's a couple of good looking books! Thanks to Wendy for the mini farming one info! The Backyard Homestead  and Mini-Farming  Looks interesting!