adulting the adult adults

[tielan]

I have adulted muchly this weekend.

Friday night, I made bechamel sauce and assembled a lasagne. Two, actually. I also adjusted/modified/fixed my exchange fics for this weekend, and they'll do, although I don't think they're as good as the two for Rarepairings.

Saturday morning, I picked kumquats off someone's tree by arrangement. She took some seed potatoes, planting garlic, and a pumpkin in exchange, and then I headed out to swap the last of the winter produce (fennel and winter greens and another pumpkin, seed potatoes and planting garlic and suchlike) for honeycomb and eggs and quite a few seedlings. So far as I'm concerned, I came out a winner!

Back in the garden, I 'bagged' the fruit trees against fruit fly, and deep-watered the newer trees that haven't been doing quite so well. I arranged to rent chickens from Rent-A-Chook (a program that allows you to try keeping chickens in your backyard) and I expect they'll call in the next couple of weeks to arrange for delivery and set up and explanation. We'll see how they do as the weather warms up!

I also measured up a section of the house for a couple of slimline water tanks to hold water when we start getting rain again. (It's been a crazily dry winter, which has been nice on the 'not getting stabbed in the eye by an umbrella on the train' front, but not so great on the 'persuading things to grow' front.) Eventually, I'd like to run our toilet and our washing machine through the rainwater tanks, but right now, I'm settling for just the garden...

This morning I played in my team's hockey finals, and assisted in the sole goal scored during the game. It was a pretty amazing game; we definitely brought our best play this week. People were doing all the right stuff, things came together, and we won! We really needed things to come together, though - the team we played against were tough stuff, and next week's team will be, once again, a hard game.

On the plus side, my body doesn't ache as badly as it did last weekend. Now I just have to hold it all together to next weekend. (You should have seen the face my sister made when she discovered we'd made it through to the finals; she's 'eh' on winning/losing, but since she gets to listen to me complain about how my body creaks, she has a vested interest in me not playing.

Then I came home, washed the kumquats and made kumquat brandy and kumquat whiskey. There's still enough kumquats to make some spiced preserves, though, so I might have to get to that tomorrow.

And now I'm going to angst over my nominations for Yuletide. Only three slots for nominations? WHERE'S THE LOVE?!?

Comments

[saturnofthemoon]

I'm pretty sure Yule nominations were the same way last year, but don't quote me on it.

[tielan]

Oh they probably were. But I would notice this in a year when I want LOTS of nominations... :)

[umadoshi]

I arranged to rent chickens from Rent-A-Chook (a program that allows you to try keeping chickens in your backyard)

What a great idea! ^_^ I hope it turns out well for you!

I love the idea of backyard chickens, but have never had to/been able to take that as far as serious consideration, since we've never lived someplace where we'd be allowed to just decide to do it. (I'm not even sure if it's allowed in Halifax overall, but going from a co-op to a condo with restrictions means we wouldn't be allowed anyway.)

[tielan]

I've wanted to keep chooks for at least twenty years, but nowhere I lived was possible. Now that we're in the new place, it's at least a possibility. The downside is that we have several sets of neighbourhood cats, so they're not going to be fully free-range. I'm going to work up a couple of coops so they get a bit of space to roam, but...I guess that's the point of the test run - to see how it works out!

One of the things that you may have to observe are local council laws. For instance, livestock (which chickens are classified under) can't be kept within 4m of kitchens on the property. And there's a rule about no roosters, but I'm not sure about the details of that. But things have relaxed a great deal in the last dozen years, as people become more aware of food chains and want to do their own vegie gardens and chicken runs...

[umadoshi]

I've heard about many places having a no-roosters rule, which seems reasonable to me (from my position of near-total ignorance on the subject of chickens, where all I know is "roosters crow loudly"). I look forward to hearing how your trial run goes!

I mostly really like living where I do, but the condo corp's board is...not exactly flexible on matters like "what to do with the greenspace, including the parts that technically aren't communal". We had a no-clotheslines rule until the legislation changed (I forget if it was municipal or provincial) to explicitly forbid the forbidding of clotheslines. Now we have rules about the exact use of the clotheslines they can't forbid anymore.

All of which is to say, somehow I can't see them going for chickens.

[tielan]

...what else would people use clotheslines for? *feels like she may be lacking in imagination*

[umadoshi]

We haven't gotten around to putting our clothesline up (although we bought one! I was very pleased when the legislation changed!), so it's been a while since I checked the exact condo rules, but the restriction I remember is that we're not allowed to leave clothes on the line overnight. So it's just normal usage, but there are picky details to minimize it being ~unsightly~ and potentially bothering neighbors.

[tielan]

I'm always a little bemused by the kinds of laws that are there to keep things from being "unsightly". Then again, I've only once lived in a condo, and while they had a group clothesline, people mostly hung their clothes out on a small clotheshorse on their balcony...

But yes, somewhere that's going to argue about clothes on the line overnight is not going to give a pass for chickens...

[jenab]

My dad used to raise chickens and it was always nice to have fresh eggs on hand.

[tielan]

The eggs will be wonderful, but what I really want the chickens for is their poo for my garden (and their ability to scratch at the soil, eat pests, and process kitchen wastes)!

I suspect I'm probably one of the few people who think this way, mind you, so it's kind of funny...

[jenab]

Their poo is very good fertilizer. My parents had a really great garden when there was chickens about both for that and them eating the bugs.

[tielan]

Linda Woodrow was the first person I heard sing the praises of keeping chickens, in her book The Permaculture Kitchen Garden: they turn over the ground, eat your kitchen scraps, add to the nutrients in the soil, and give you eggs as an added bonus!

It convinced me way back in the late 90s, but the problem then was having somewhere to keep them. So I'm kind of interested to see how it will work now...

[beatrice_otter]

Much adulting, yay!

[tielan]

It was pretty tiring, all things considered...