The Great Recycling Garden Project

This summer has yielded a bumper crop of vegetables.  I have this wonderful recycling/conservation project in my backyard, it turns out - I've got a very small (what they call a "micro-flock") of hens in the back yard, a Spitzhauben-Appenzaller I call Swiss Miss, a Buff Orpington named Blondie, and the newest arrival is my Ancona, Sadie.  They're in a reasonably sized enclosed run with a house, and I keep them well-stocked in vegetable scraps, dried worms, feed, and oyster shells.  They have a bedding of pine in their run and house, and as I do the deep-composting strategy this means I just keep adding fresh bedding to it to keep it nice and thick, and then change it out twice per year.

Now, the wonderful thing about the chicken bedding is that it naturally composts - the chickens do their part by....shall we say producing nitrates via their waste, plus any leftover vegetable scraps they don't eat, and the deeper layers break down as fresh pine is laid on top.  Twice a year when I do the great coop scoop, I use my wheelbarrow to move all that great chicken litter over to my raised garden bed on the side of the house, and mix it into the dirt there.  Then when the spring comes, I plant my vegetables in the chicken litter/dirt mix, and wind up growing and harvesting the most ridiculously large and healthy vegetables I've ever seen.  Honestly - you wouldn't ever believe these were organic if you saw the size of my zucchini!  I know know what they mean when recipes call for "baseball-bat zucchini".  They really are that big, no kidding.

The best part?  If there are any veggies that get a little bug damage or nabbed and half-eaten by our local bunnies (who have moved into our yard to enjoy the summer harvest), plus any scraps left over from dinner....well, those go out to the girls to snack on and enjoy.  Turns out chickens are a little less discerning than hubby and I about whether or not ants or bunnies have munched on a little of their tomatoes, so it all works out.  The girls get the veggie scraps from the garden they helped produce in the spring, produce more litter for me to clean out in the fall and next spring, and that helps contribute to fertilizing my newly bedded vegetable plants throughout the summer and fall.

I love my little "cycle of life" going on in our suburban back yard.  And my family and friends love its end results!