*recipe obtained from Serious Eats.

 
I love my new urban ag family at the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance. While we gather to organize resources to promote urban farming and to educate, most importantly, we gather to share wisdom of how to cultivate and manage livestock. The group attracts expertise in a number of areas- hunting, cultivating, composting, cooking, and much more. This month’s golden nugget was learning that one can make a rooting solution from the bark of a curly willow branch.
 
Apparently the bark lets off a rooting hormone that can be used to propagate. How cool is that. I have been soaking my branches in water to prompt roots of their own as I’d like to grow a willow (thought they get up to 30′ so I’ll have to be careful about where it goes). However, I’ve also been using the water the branches are sitting in to water a Curry Pata plant I have (the leaves of a curry pata are used in Indian cooking – super delicious) recently transplanted.
 
After some reading, I have learned that one can brew a stronger tea by chopping the branches into 1′ pieces, covering them with boiling hot water and letting them sit overnight. You can then strain the water into a jar, cover and place in the fridge for up to two weeks.
 
Tis the season to get going with propagation so this lesson was perfectly timed!

 
As cities move to support urban agriculture another layer of resource issue comes up, predominantly, land use. That is how to access land in the first place. This is assuming you are either expanding beyond your own backyard or you don’t have a space and having been eyeing the blighted lot down the street for years.
 
Lots of folks are working on this very issue of best way to access. I expect to see guidebooks issued and workshops held on the very topic over the next year. That said, the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance was generously given permission to use an amazing checklist of steps to take to inquire and access private and public land from The Essential Urban Farmer the new book by Novella Carpenter (author of Farm City) and Willow Rosenthal (founder of City Slicker Farms).
 
You can find it in their Land Access toolkit (click).
 
The book has many more fabulous resources. Its well worth the modest $25 they charge for it, you can get it here.

With that, I have been paying close attention to the rhythm of my little farm project for the last year. I’ve also been paying attention to the amount of energy I put into the project as this is one of the first questions folks ask me when they tour the space. How long does it take? How much effort is it? My answer to them is that if they are maintaining their space to be tour worthy each season, it takes a ton more time and energy.

I’ve also decided on some changes. First, I don’t eat enough rabbit meat to require a full rabbitry (this is what I am calling my two doe, one buck set up). With several friends now keeping rabbits, I can actually seek out their bucks to impregnate my doe. This means two of my rabbits found a new home. I miss them and feel sad but I can also visit them so that helps.

I am also doing something I never thought I would do. I am clearing a portion of my main growing space to accommodate a new building project of my significant other. I wrestled with this as I have been working to build the health and fertility of that soil for nearly eight years. However, my husband is a clever man with many great ideas. So, though I have to witness my soil being covered by concrete (or some such material), I have confidence it will be well worth the sacrifice.

In the midst of this my bee colony disappeared…or died or both. It happened in December. I did not know they swarm in December and I never saw proof of this but lo and behold, one day the hive was dead silent. I checked it and only a few dead workers remained. They were just dead in the middle of whatever task they were doing like their battery plum ran out. So odd. However, with an empty hive I can now move it to a new space without risk of disrupting my colony. Though a loss for now, the timing was incredible. They also left an amazing bounty of honey behind.

Now I set out with the challenge of reconfiguring growing and walking space and try like the dickens to keep up with our Bay Area pace of the season. Good lord. We only get one month off in our season. Its January and I can already see slight buds swelling on the bare tree limbs, which means I have to prune asap. December was my only reprieve but it was a well used one.

Wow. I am finding it hard to keep up with the flurry of articles about projects and initiatives that are generating a new food landscape. Here are a few to catch up on over a cup of hot coco.

Oakland City Council approved a pilot project that will allow mobile food vendors to offer their creative concoctions in more areas around the city. In fact, we can look forward to a new year of food events through Oakland where caravans of food trucks (and bikes!) will huddle up to new areas, kind of like a lonchera flash mob. It will be fun to stay up to date and catch these hip events! Read more.

Now imagine if you will, a pod of mobile food vendors located adjacent to an Oakland urban farm abuzz with community members. If you need any inspiration as to what this could look like, read about this very thing unfolding in Brooklyn.

Wondering if this is pie in the sky thinking? Don’t think you can make this happen in your city? Well consider the District of Columbia’s “Food Production and Urban Gardens Program Act of 1986.” Read more about it here.

 

Picture taken by Catsmuvva

These last three pictures have shed intestinal lining in them – quite normal, not a cause for concern.

Coral coloured Urates

These are frequently deposited overnight and are quite normal

Oily and Foamy

The range of “Normal” is huge  :shock:

Ceacal

These are produced from the caecum of the chicken and are mustard to dark brown froth. They are expelled every 8 to 10 droppings.

Fly Maggots

(picture curtesy of Vember)

Flies will lay their eggs on moist chicken poo and in warm weather they will very quickly hatch into small maggots.

Watery

Watery droppings can be produced by hens which are too hot.  It can be a way for them to cool down by drinking a lot and losing some of their heat in frequent wet droppings.  It can also be a sign that the hens are not eating enough too.

Abnormal poos

Coccidiosis produces blood in faeces.

The hen who produced this specimen was an older bird who became very thirsty.
She is producing a large amount of watery urates the cause of which is unknown, but could possibly be a kidney problem.

The hen who produced this specimen was about 25 weeks old. She went off her food and ate so little she became underweight. She held her tail down and was tired. She may have had worms and/or egg peritonitis.

Worms

picture taken by smiler43                                                      picture taken by Lindeggs

Sulphur yellow, foamy dropping can bea sign of Blackhead (Histamonosis) which is caused by a protozoan parasite infecting the gut.  It is however rare in back yard hens !

This picture was taken after 2 days treatment with flubenvet.  The worms are probably Ascaridia galli, they don’t cause much harm to the birds unless they are present in large numbers.  It is not unkown for them to enter the reproductive tract from the digestive tract via the vent and be found inside an egg  :shock:

The apples were languishing on the branches. The figs being stolen and half eaten. It has started to get chaotic. With a more aggressive schedule, how do I keep up? My approach is to do frequent walk throughs and take small steps each day to keep the space in balance. Though I  let go of the reigns with the apples and figs. They just all came in at once. So I did what I could. I schlepped the ladder from its storage place and set it up, left it there overnight and with the threat of rain and being barked at by the hubby for leaving the ladder out in the rain, I was motivated to strip the tree of apples and grab the figs while I was at it. Now to deal with 23lbs of apples and 5lbs of figs. I need great fig jam and chutney recipes. Anyone?

A toolkit providing a framework and model language for land use policies that local policymakers can tailor to promote and sustain urban agriculture in their communities (click on image to download pdf).