Ron Ferrell

THE FRIENDSHIP SEED AND PLANT EXCHANGE VENUE HAS MOVED.
CHANGE OF VENUE!!! CHANGE OF LOCATION!!
EARTH TO URBAN (a community of businesses) is comprised of EARTH ELEMENTS KITCHEN (celebrating 15 years in the fresh food business), April Harrington and URBAN AGRARIAN, Matt Burch. They have invited me to move this event to their new location at 1235 S.W. 2nd St, in Oklahoma City, in the original Farmers Market Plaza. 405 231 1919 is EARTH TO URBAN'S phone number.
The event will now include MUSIC by local BANDS of a group of great musicians. FOOD SAMPLINGS by Earth Elements and other VISITING CHEFS and some foods will be for sale. KIDS ACTIVITIES. A KIDS PLANTING STATION. SEE THE NEW ORGANIC GARDEN at Earth to Urban. Meet Matt and Terry of FERTILE GROUNDS composting services. LOTS OF FREE PARKING.
PAUL MAYS iconic poster says it all. We strive to have NO TRASH. Bring a PICNIC, your GARDENING SHARING GOODIES, a CHAIR. Hang out and LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, MEET NEW FRIENDS, SHARE GARDEN IDEAS. NO DOGS please.
Any questions rferrell1@hotmail.com Bring a friend. Please share share share this event on FB and bring your friends!! FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE SHARED THIS EVENT WITH YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS, BE SURE AND REPOST THIS NEW INFORMATION!!!!!!!

It's time again for the Friendship Seed and Plant Exchange. The poster featured here says it all. This free event is planned to help create community, friendships, mentorships, and a food based network of great folks! Come join us!

My Educational Journey Continues. Idealab Speech

PAGE ONE
The Bible was the only book in our house when I was growing up, but I never caught anyone reading it. My Father seemed to disdain books. IF YOU’RE READIN’, YOU’RE NOT WORKIN’.
I was born the fourth of eight children in June of 1950 right in the middle of wheat harvest in Dewey County, Oklahoma. I grew up on the homestead settled in 1898 by my great grandmother Martha Ferrell and her three sons. She received her land patent in 1900, and the Ferrell clan was firmly grounded on one of many red hills in Western Oklahoma.
I attended Leedey public school for 12 years, and graduated one of 27 students. The spring of 1968 after I graduated high school, I was driving the tractor getting the soil ready for planting crops, and a voice in my head said
PAGE TWO
‘I need to go to college or I will be driving this tractor forever’.
I had given no thought to college prior to that moment, and had little idea what was involved in going to college. The most exciting thought was the ‘going’. I had butted heads with my Dad on the farm for all of my life and I was ready to move on.
In the Fall of 1968 I enrolled at the Jr. College in Sayre, Oklahoma. I joined a world of strangers. I was totally terrified as I’d barely been out of my home town where my family attended church 3 times a week whether we needed to or not. My first semester of college, I discovered sex, alcohol and marijuana and church soon was a dim memory. My parents were not pleased.
PAGE 3
Upon graduation in May of 1970, I moved on to Southwestern State College in Weatherford, OK and I joined another bunch of total strangers.
Anonymity, once my demon, became my friend.
I majored in Speech and minored in English, joined a drama group, became an outstandingly average student and had lots of fun. I should have changed my major to party with a minor in sleeping.
In the early 1970’s the Vietnam War was raging, the deaths of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys and all manner of social unrest was simmering, but I was mostly oblivious as the student protests didn’t make it to Weatherford Oklahoma.
PAGE FOUR
A college deferment protected me from Vietnam, so I chose to put my eventual reality on deferment too…the draft.
Amazingly, I graduated in two years with a Bachelors of Arts in nothing. Vietnam was still raging, and I couldn’t make a living with a degree in nothing, so to avoid being drafted and shipped to Vietnam to shoot at people I didn’t know, I joined the Air Force. They saw my degree and determined that I should be in electronics. I spent the next 3 years testing the guidance systems of sidewinder missiles in the genteel countryside of Great Britain. It was paradise.
I was honorably discharged in 1975 and I realized I couldn’t make a living with a degree in nothing, so I decided to enroll in a welding
PAGE FIVE
program offered through the state Vocational Education system, courtesy of my Vietnam era Veterans educational benefits. I’d never even heard of Vocational education.
I fell in love with welding and completed my welding certification in 1976. At the time there was an oil boom in western Oklahoma so I interned on big iron in the oil field.
In 1978, because I had a degree in nothing AND I could weld, I was offered a teaching position at an Oklahoma VoTech school. I loved teaching school, but after 2 years the oil field was paying great wages, and I went back for more big iron.
The Penn Square Bank Collapse in the late 70’s and early 80’s ended the easy, unregulated
PAGE SIX
money for the oil field AND the entire country. Sound familiar. My welding career was over.
While teaching school, I’d worked on my Masters degree, so I moved back to Stillwater and enrolled at OSU to complete my degree. My graduate classes were at night, so I also enrolled in the carpentry program at the Vo Tech school in Stillwater, where a few years earlier I’d taught welding. I wanted to learn carpentry, so I attended Vo Tech every morning for 3 hours and attended OSU at night, completing both programs in one year. All courtesy of the GI Bill.
After rebuilding my parents fire damaged house in the summer of 1983 with my newly learned carpentry skills, I moved to Oklahoma City and enrolled in Cosmetology school.
PAGE SEVEN
Yes beauty school. Once again courtesy of the GI Bill. One year later, I was working in a hair salon.
I cut hair for the next 7 or 8 years and simultaneously created a successful T-shirt business based on Rt. 66, and for the next 10 years I sold T-shirts. Lots of T-shirts! That business allowed me to invest in real estate, setting the stage for where I am today. Living debt free in my recycled house.
I had one more fit of escapism in 2005. I enrolled in truck driving school at the VoTech school in Drumright, Oklahoma. On my inaugural truck driving trip, about midnight, somewhere in the Texas panhandle, I said WHAT IN THE HELL AM I DOING. I came home to start building my ecohut.
PAGE 8
Americans now have more student loan debt than credit card debt, making the VALUE of a formal education redundant.
The unemployment rate for recently graduated professionals is far higher than for skilled labor. A friend, recently completing law school, told me that the unemployment rate in Oklahoma for new attorneys is over 25%. Architectural graduates hold a similar statistic. Pay scale for a certified welder is likely higher than that of beginning lawyers and architects. AND THERE ARE JOBS!
The irony is that for all the talk about the unemployment crisis, there is virtually no public discourse about the value of the trades.

PAGE 9
Oklahoma has the # 2 rated VoTech system in America with over 60 campuses. For all enrolled high school students, when a tech school is in the school district, that Vocational education is FREE!!!
America needs to wake up to the fact that getting dirty at work pays great, and there is a shortage of skilled labor. My experience is that trades people usually are skilled at a few trades, because those basic skills transfer easily to other areas.
The sustainability movement encourages learning through workshops, mentorships and internships for food, housing, energy and skills that promote the concept of debt free living. With this educational model, friendships grow and a community develops. In that community
PAGE 10
there are many folks with many skills willing to help, share and pursue goals NOT based solely on monetary gain.
My new mantra is DON’T INVEST IN WALL STREET, INVEST IN YOUR STREET. Pay your home off, live within your means, get to know your neighbors, grow food, grow water. Build a community. AVOID UNNECESSARY DEBT.

My biggest question to everyone is this, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE? If that goal requires a formal education, then pursue that with all your heart. Otherwise, attend a workshop, take a free class, volunteer, intern, LEARN THAT SET OF SKILLS.
DON’T GET A JOB, CREATE A CAREER.

An interior shot of my 700 s.f. greenhouse. I grow a fair amount of food in this space during the winter in the form of chard, spinach, kale and now I have a hydroponics set up with 2 tomatoes plants. I've now added an 18 bushel compost tumbler for rapid, hot composting. I can now make a rich batch of compost out of shredded leaves and food waste in 2 to 3 weeks! More to come.....

Here is a fairly recent photo of my ecohut. A westward looking view with the greenhouse on the south. More to come....

GOT H2NO?

Spending 8 days in Austin, Texas, last month was a harsh reminder of what it will be like to live in a desert environment. The springs around Austin that have always flowed, are now dry.

Last weekend, I was in Vici, in western Oklahoma, and they have had less than ¼ inch of rain in the past year. Pastures appear dead, crops are non-existent and cattle are being sold because of drought. This is not a ‘what-if’ scenario, this is the new reality.

Farmers are selling their pond water and well water for oil field fracking, and reports of farm wells going dry is a common story.

I grew up in rural Dewey County and every family farm had cisterns, as did many of the town folks. There was NO public water supply. To say we did not waste water is an understatement.

There were two cisterns on our farm. We caught water off our big barn into one cistern and that was for general family usage. Another cistern at my Grandmother’s house caught all of our drinking and cooking water. Our drinking water was pulled out of the cistern on a rope/bucket pulley system, and that continued even after I went to college.

Water was then, and will be soon, a major issue.

We waste water, we crap in potable water, we dump it on our lawns, we have no idea where water comes from, but all we have to do is turn on the tap, and it magically appears. So far………

In third world countries folks have to haul five gallons of drinkable water on their head for miles and miles. They do not use what water for their crap or to keep their bermuda grass alive. THEY are using it to survive.

I use to think it would be peak oil that puts a halt to suburban expansion, but now I believe it will be a lack of water. So now OKC is trying to buy water from Sardis Lake, and personally I hope the Indian tribes refuse us, because we are wasteful, irresponsible and arrogant.

In my opinion, it should be illegal to water a lawn out of the public water supply. If you don’t catch it off your roof, then let it die. Our precious water should be limited to food production and drinking water. When we run out of potable water, it won’t make a shit of difference how green your lawn is if you don’t have drinking water.

In my opinion, every homeowner should be required to catch water off the roof for incidental watering. Currently rainwater, one of the cleanest forms of water, is considered ‘runoff’. WASTE WATER. Let it run down the sewer system to be contaminated by all the other toxins flushed down the sewer system.

Historically, societies do not change until after collapse. We see this crisis looming, but what will choose to do to prepare? Green lawns or drinking water?

COMPOST TEA

At the time I decided to build my ecohut, I had a vague idea that I might like to have a vegetable garden as part of my homestead project. Having grown up with parents who gardened and canned food in order to raise a family of 10, I understand the value of home-grown food.

As I was building my ecohut, I planted a dozen or so tomato plants around a barrel buried in a weed patch of what was the previous owner’s long ignored garden. The previous owner said that his dad used this technique by filling the barrel with horse manure. He would then water the horse manure which leeched out to the tomatoes. The water leeched the nutrients out of the manure in a diluted form and wouldn’t burn the tomatoes.

At about the same time I attended a permaculture workshop. In a matter of a few hours a lawn was covered with cardboard and then a thick layer of compost to create a strawberry bed. I quickly saw the benefits of the cardboard and heavy straw, and added this technique to the barrel in my garden.

I was building a house, and had no time to weed a garden. Over the next few months, I had a terrific tomato crop. I made tomato cages of concrete reinforcement wire, and the plants grew to amazing heights and I had a tomato crop that was enviable. Beginners luck, as I have been trying to achieve a similar success ever since.

The next summer I started digging weeds and trying to carve a small garden out of a weed patch. Luckily I had sandy/loam soil that I didn’t know existed when I bought the property, so moving forward I mainly needed to add organic matter of any and every variety.

I soon came to understand the value of heavy cardboard and straw in the garden: weed barrier, moisture loss barrier and the temperature of the soil was cool and encouraging to the plants even in very hot summer temperatures. I have employed that system ever since. Ruth Stout was right…..heavy mulch is very important.

On my journey to grow a vibrant and lush garden, I read many books, attended local workshops and thought all I needed was organic material incorporated into my loamy soil since building the soil was important for a good garden. I hauled truck loads of ‘stall mix’ from surrounding horse farms, purchased hay for mulch and still my results were less than great. It became apparent that even though I had a terrific growing medium in the garden, my garden was severely lacking in nutrients.

I do not remember what led me to YouTube, but once I discovered that successful gardeners post some of their techniques in order to sell products, I became obsessed with garden videos posted by folks from all over the world.

The videos that grabbed my attention were of Alaskan gardeners who must be very successful in a very short growing season. These guys were growing gigantic, lush, beautiful vegetable plants and there was one common theme from all of these gardeners: Compost tea.

This compost tea was super tea, not leech tea. A tea made with hyper-oxygenated water, molasses and other additives. Some of these videos were for the purpose of selling their brand of tea additives, but after watching every video I could find on the subject, it became clear that the hyper-oxygenated water and molasses was standard in every recipe. The additives however, were flexible and diverse in origin.

Books on composting stress that the more diverse the additives to the pile, the richer and more robust the finished compost. The goal in composting is to have as diverse a microbial population as possible for rich, vital results. The point of composting is to allow all those diverse materials to break down so that the nutrients and microbes are available to the plant.

Compost tea is revolutionary in that beneficial microbes, which grow on oxygen and sugar, can be ‘grown’ in a bucket of hyper-oxygenated water in a matter of hours, whereas a compost pile takes months to break down so that the beneficial microbes are available for the plants to assimilate.
Now, rather than buy a truckload of rich, organic, expensive compost, I buy one bag of rich, organic, expensive compost and produce hundreds of gallons and billions and billions of rich, microbially diverse, compost tea.

COMPOST TEA RECIPE: (very flexible)

• For 5 gallons of water use an aquarium aerator pump and diffuser.
• For 50 gallons of water I use a large air pump. (large enough to power 15 aquariums)
• If you use city water, aerate the water overnight to allow the chlorine to evaporate and to elevate the oxygen level.
• If you use well water, aerate a few hours before adding molasses. UNSULPHURED ONLY. SULPHURED MOLASSES KILL MICROBES.

(Now that I have a fish pond, filled with rain water, I have specifically created this to water my garden, and I use this fish emulsion water as the basis of my compost, incorporating the fish emulsion microbes in the tea. Very rich.)

• To this prepared 5 gallon of water add 1 cup of each dry ingredient or for 50 gallons of prepared water add approximately 1 gallon of each dry ingredient.
• When adding trace minerals or bio dynamic elements, follow the directions on the packaging for recommended amounts.
• Dry ingredients you may use are very diverse.
• Remember, the more diverse the ingredients, the more robust the tea!
  

Here is a list of additives I use:

• Bat guano
• Worm castings
• Cow/horse/rabbit/llama manure (no dog or human manure)
• Alaskan peat moss, sea kelp
• Alfalfa meal
• Cotton seed meal
• Fish meal
• Fish emulsion
• Finished compost

Do research on compost tea on YouTube or search Google for compost tea. There are many scientific research papers available online regarding compost tea and more and more information available online.

I’m not telling you how to make compost tea, I’m telling you how I make compost tea … and it’s never the same recipe for me. I use what I have on hand, but I keep a very diverse arsenal of components on hand.

I am telling you that making compost tea is simple, inexpensive and very beneficial for your garden. I use it to water in my baby plants and once the plants gain in size, I use it as a foliar spray. Much research suggests that using compost tea as a foliar spray has added advantages in bug control in your garden.

So how do you know when the tea is ready? There will be an abundance of bubbly froth on the top of the water, and this indicates microbial life. This froth is very similar to the froth created when making dough with yeast. It’s called LIFE!

How to apply the compost tea: Pour it on, spray it on or use a drip application.

Any questions? Feel free to ask. I may or may not know the answer.

Garden on!

FRIENDSHIP SEED AND PLANT EXCHANGE 2011

In 1995 I moved to the country to homestead an unfinished house and five weedy, junky acres. Last house on a dead-end road, surrounded by an old growth oak forest had a great deal of appeal to me.

At the time, I was living in a condo in Oklahoma City, so the move to a primitive, unfinished house in the woods was a bit frightening. The only heat source was a wood pellet stove and I was sure I’d freeze to death as I had not even heard of such a stove. It turned out to be a terrific way to heat my house and I used that stove exclusively for my heat source the entire five years that I lived there.

I remember having this ongoing sense of anticipation that I couldn’t identify when I first moved there. Then one day as I heard a siren in the distance, I realized I was waiting for the noise to begin, and it never did. I’d forgotten how quiet the country can be. I could even hear a train whistle off in the distance most nights.

I burned, I slashed, I weeded and slowly a wonderful five-acre retreat began to emerge. Until then, I’d never even operated a chain saw. My brothers came on week-ends to help me build large porches all around the house, and we sheet-metal’ed the entire house. New roof, exterior walls and porches were now covered in a sustainable material, steel!

The squirrels that once inhabited the attic and walls slowly were forced to find a new place to live. Nothing quite like squirrels fighting and mating in the attic in the middle of the night to piss me off.

I only had one friend who thought my new location was a good idea, and would regularly come and hang out. She now lives in that house.

I decided that my city slicker friends needed a day in the country to get a taste of the good life, so I came up with the idea of having a covered dish event that I called the Friendship Seed and Plant Exchange. To my surprise everyone was excited about such an event and the turnout was great!

Everyone brought a covered dish and the food was terrific. The wine and beer flowed! They also brought their left over garden pots, seeds, bulbs and tools to pass on to others and a new event was born: THE FRIENDSHIP SEED AND PLANT EXCHANGE.

Since 1995 I have hosted this event approximately 10 times, and with each passing year, the turnout has increased, the food has gotten better and the amount of left over garden supplies shared has increased tremendously.

Two years ago was the last time I held this event and there were approximately 125 people in attendance. By the end of the day I swore I would never have the event again, as folks wanted to hear about the Ecohut, and I wanted to eat and party, and I was exhausted.

This spring a friend asked about the event and I said I just couldn’t cope because of the demands, and he immediately volunteered to help, so I reconsidered and agreed to host it again, so long as it wasn’t at my house.

So, I will again host the …

• Friendship Seed and Plant Exchange

• Saturday, April 16

• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

• Will Rogers Park in Oklahoma City, South Pavilion

Everyone is invited to come and enjoy the 15th Annual Friendship Seed and Plant Exchange!

Please bring a picnic, a lawn chair, your left over garden supplies and join us for a casual day in the park. This is a fun, community event where people can share their garden experiences, seeds, plants, and tools as well as great conversation and outdoor fun. Meet your neighbors!

This is a NO TRASH EVENT! We encourage you to consider bringing your re-usable plates, utensils, cups and napkins and please take them home with you! If you bring cans or glass, we will have recycle bins.

Encourage everyone to invite their friends and family, and there is a new playground for the kids. Parking is onsite, and volunteers will be there to direct you in case you have any questions.

NO DOGS ALLOWED

Happy Spring 2011 --

 
Ron Ferrell

A YEAR OF MY OWN

My Mother passed almost a year ago.  New year’s eve, 2008.  She woke up in another universe New Year’s day, 2009.  Out with the old and onward with what remains. 

By mid-summer all her legal issues were mostly over.  We had a house and land to sell in a tanking housing economy and this was causing stress in the ranks of my brothers and sisters, as we were paying interest on borrowed money and little faith that her house had any sales appeal.  But with the driving determination of my sister, we prevailed. 

Mom never had a room number at any nursing home.  That was really her main request in late life, and we were able to keep her worst nightmare from becoming a reality.

Thank the universe for home hospice care.  They were the saints I’ve heard about in the bible. 

To cope with the loss of my Mother, depression and a coming spring, I built a bigger garden and planted it with dreams and images from the seed catalogs.   Then to keep me busy, I added another 20’ of garden and I planted that.  Thank goodness I did because I had a marginal summer garden, but now my fall garden kicked ass and the last 20’ plot now has roughly 500 garlic planted there.   

In the late months of summer I harvested dual colored swiss chard, kale, bok choi, and sweet potatoes.  Beets and carrots are still in the ground and I break the frozen ground when I want a fresh tuber for a meal.  I have probably a thousand purple onions up and I’m guessing 500  garlic in the ground for winter growth and a spring harvest. 

More amazing to me than walkin’ on the moon is seeing a food crop emerge from those damn little seeds.  Astounding. 

About mid-summer the land and house sold! All the doubts about our decision to buy the house in mediation were gone.  We’d made some money in the sale and were able to pay the balance of Mom’s worldly debt.  Along with that came a successful closure of all of my Mom’s residual legal and financial issues. 

After the closure of the financial issues, I finally had my money and my life back after a two and a half year ordeal of defending my Mom from a fraudulent husband and his two evil daughters. 

Now what to do?  Seek peace perhaps?  Plant something.  Invest in my future.

Both literally and figuratively I needed a big dose of compost because I had depleted all of my nutrients and sustenance.   I’d come ungrounded. 

My garden is my connection to the earth.  We live on the earth, but our sustenance comes from the earth and we should never forget that simple fact. 

I’m intently working on next year’s garden soil in a new corner of the   garden.  I now have 30 or so chickens that are continually composting the spent grains from Coop Ale brewery and lots of veggie matter from 105 degrees restaurant.  They hardly eat a fraction of it all, but the rest breaks down into rich dark soil. 

To remind me that spring is not that far away, I received the first of many seed catalogs in the mail yesterday, 2 days before Christmas.  The dreams of a rampant spring and summer garden have begun to develop in my head.  Compost for my soul. 

WHICH CAME FIRST

Everybody should be interested in a proposition which offers to the man or woman with limited means a chance to produce an article of food at a cost far below the market price, and, as a rule, of superior quality.  The greater number of people are progressive enough not to let such opportunities pass by unheeded, and they are bound to take advantage of the opportunities possible in poultry raising.  What other article of food which can be produced in a limited space offers as many varied forms of use as eggs?  Eggs can take the place of meat, in fact they are more healthful, and just as nourishing.  It is a food that is recommend for the weak and the strong, for the workers and the invalids, for the old and the young, and for every one at all times and in every clime.

When one takes into consideration the limited space and capital necessary to equip a plant sufficiently large to supply the largest family with fresh eggs the year around, one cannot help but feel that the keeping of poultry is impossible, but these are much in the minority.  Even people living in flats, in large cities, very often have some little space which could be utilized for the poultry pen.  I know of cases where poultry has been kept successfully upon flat roofs.  I have every reason to believe the vast majority of families are so situated that they can keep hens, or, better still, to make the hens help keep them, and I am also of the firm opinion that it offers to them the opportunity to materially reduce the cost of living.  This opinion is also shared by the many thousands who are now doing this very thing, and who are in a position to speak from practical experience. 

Most any one can keep a small flock of hens in the back yard and make it profitable, but when it comes to embarking in the poultry business on large scale it requires some knowledge, some experience, and some business judgment on the part of the operator or manager.  A person without these qualifications or who is not in a position to employ some one with such qualifications should not attempt too much, but should start in a small way and let the business grow with the experience. 

The above paragraphs are the PREFACE from a book entitled “SUCCESS WITH HENS”, by Robert Joos, copyright, 1914 by Forbes and Company. 

The book covers every facet of raising chickens in the early 1900’s, but does not answer the age old question of "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

“SUCCESS WITH HENS” is based in the wisdom of the time period.  The necessity of great food stuffs produced as cheaply as possible in your back garden was the goal for every American.  Corporate egg production didn’t exist in the early 1900’s, so eggs that city dwellers bought were produced by local farmers and sold to the local grocery-man, as was milk, cream and other farm based food products. 

Farm regulations for the ‘health’ of the consumer did not exist in 1914.  Now farm regulations that protect the physical ‘health’ of the consumer really protect the fiscal ‘health’ of corporate agriculture. 

Don’t kid yourself, your health falls low on the corporate list of priorities when challenged against their profits. 

Having presented that bit of history on eggs, brings me full circle to my brilliant neighbor Matt “Happy Eggs.org” Miller.  Matt has been tending a flock of chickens for close to a year now, and sells his wonderful, beautiful organic free-range eggs through the Oklahoma Food Coop. 

His eggs are terrific, beautiful, healthful and I eat 2 of them almost every morning of the world.  I recommend you do as well.  The side benefit that really peaks my interest in Matt’s flock is their value as garden soil builders.  His chickens will convert most any organic food matter into nitrogen rich compost. 

I warned him to never pass out inside the chicken pen, as the hens would eat out his eyes, and then the rest of him within a few days. 

Currently, Matt has one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve seen all summer and the compost was created in large part because of his flock of chickens, in less than 1 year.  Truly amazing!

Over the past year Matt and I have dumped many loads of horse ‘stall mix’ into his chicken pen.  Those chickens can flatten a huge pile of stall mix in a matter of hours as they sort though every morsel of horse manure looking for left over grains, grubs, and anything remotely edible.  The wonderful outcome of their efforts is soil building nitrogen rich manure and eggs.  Beautiful, nutritious eggs—a miracle of nature. 

I warned Matt to never pass out in the chicken pen, as they will eat his eyes out and then him.

A terrific food source for Matt’s chickens are the spent grains from COOP ALE brewery in Oklahoma City.  The chickens love the grains and spent grains are very nutritious.  Coop Ale owners Mark and J.D.’s goal is to recycle their spent grains in a responsible fashion, so Happy Eggs hens are happier and healthier because of Coop Ale.  Thanks COOP ALE. 

And now for the rest of the story.  Matt has been after me to have a flock of chickens, but I have resisted…..until now.  I resisted because I didn’t want the responsibility of mouths to feed, and another name for chickens in a pen is ‘bait’. I didn’t want to have to deal with the varmints in the woods around my house.  I resisted until I have seen how successful Matt’s first year garden is ... because of his chickens ... because of the nitrogen rich compost they provide and because of those beautiful brown eggs. 

Matt offered me use of one of his electrified poultry netting fences and the fence charger to start my flock.  This electrified 4’ high fence strongly deters coyotes, foxes, possums, raccoons and any carnivore that fancies chicken as a meal.  One good jolt from this fence charger, and they look elsewhere for supper. 

Last week I answered a CL ad for Welsummers chicks that are 2 ½ months old.  Welsummers are a heritage breed, beautiful and strong.  So with 25 pullets and one rooster, I am in the chicken business. 

I situated the fencing over an area in my garden that I have just begun to develop.  I dug up as much of the grass roots as I could and then covered the entire area with heavy cardboard.  Add to that many loads of stall mix and now CHICKENS!!!! 

These baby Welsummers are so darned cute.  They eat protein rich commercial chicken feed non-stop as they are growing rapidly.  I will slowly add in Coop spent grains and left over veggie matter from my table and a local restaurant or 2 in town as their food source.  They will dine on these food ‘wastes’ and in turn produce nitrogen rich manure for my garden and eggs.  Glorious eggs.  

Recycling at it’s best.