This Sunday's Volunteer Day

Community work day this Sunday June 12th. Starting at 10am, ending at 3pm, lunch will be provided.

The focus for this Sunday's volunteer day is going to be chicken coops. We will be working on eight coops to be moved throughout the orchard as we convert it into a food forest. Each coop will hold 12-16 chickens which will be coming to join our farm in the next two weeks. After much evaluation of our current coops a friend and I have come up with a design that I hope to be snake, rat, and raccoon proof, meaning they can come and go as they wish without needing to be opened or locked up each day.

I hope to raise somewhere around 100 birds mostly rare and uncommon breeds on a diet of orchard grown greens, grains, veggies, and fruits from the orchard supplemented by the bugs out of the compost piles generated through the restaurant pick-up program. All in all from the food sources to the fencing to the housing I intend to create a thriving ecosystem that can be readily replicated at any scale by anyone, regardless of financial resources. The only elements of this 2/3 acre food forest that have been purchased are the trees, some irrigation pieces, and the chickens, (maybe some screws as well). Two of which, the trees, and chickens will readily reproduce, meaning that I will be able to share with others in the near future.

This method is more work intensive, but to me the work redefines my joy and forces me to ask for help. Which is the intention in writing this. We would love to work with you on the farm this Sunday, and for anyone interested in getting chickens we have enough salvaged materials to offer a few people the ability to work with us on a coop that can be taken home.

Useful materials we can use for converting the orchard into a food forest.

• bath tub/old hot tub shell (for ducks and geese ponds, as well as fish, bug, and amphibian habitat)
• tomato tying twine (for fencing)
• pieces of wire fencing of varying sizes (for gates)
• 2x4's 4 feet and longer (coops)
• plywood the larger the better(please no particle board)
• screws of varying sizes
• lots of cane grass/arrunda (looks like bamboo, but lighter and more prolific) (for fencing)

Thanks for your time, and support.