Kid Baltimore | Family Activities with Children in Baltimore, Maryland

Recycled Magazine Christmas Trees

We've been folding Christmas trees from old magazines. These are so much fun to make. Dave remembers making these as a kid from old TV Guides. You can spray paint them green, or gold, but I think they are rather nice plain. Little flecks of color show through, and since this one is made from last year's seed catalog, it's especially good. Little bits of spring, poking through the winter.

Crisp folds are important for this project, but some of us had a slightly more...organic approach. 

Grab a thick magazine, 200 pages or so and let's get started! 

First take a moment to break the spine, so the magazine lays flat. You may also want to remove the cover if the paper is thicker than the rest of the magazine.

1. Fold the top left corner into the spine of the magazine to make a diagonal fold. Crease neatly.

2. Fold in again to the spine. The shape it makes will look sort of like a neck tie.

3. Turn the magazine over and fold the bottom triangle up. Remember the tree will have a flat base and this is the fold that levels the bottom.

4. Tuck the triangle inside the fold.

I prefer to do folds 1 and 2 for the entire magazine, and then turn the magazine over to do the remaining folds. Pretty soon you'll have a table full of recycled (and recyclable) holiday trees.

 

Happy folding!

Chickens, for Reals

No more baby chicks. Not even awkard teens. Now we have full grown chickens and they are amazing. Two of them, the Buff Orpingtons, are laying now, so we are getting about a dozen eggs a week. The silkies are not laying, but in their defense, I'm not sure they are real chickens. More like chicken-muppet hybrids. What they lack in egg-production, they more than make up for in entertainment. The Buff Orpingtons are my favorite though. They come running up when they think you have a treat, and then nestle down in the grass to let you give them a pat.

Surprisingly, all of the chickens have decided that stink bugs are delicious. Another tick-mark in the pro column. And no, the eggs don't taste like stink bugs, although I wonder if there is a tipping point. Speaking of the eggs, they still aren't full-size, but pretty close. They are, however, delicious. When we make scrambled eggs, you really notice how yellow they are. I think it's from the free-ranging. We let them out of their run whenever we are home and they can roam around the fenced yard. There is still a certain risk of predators. We definitely have hawks. But so far so good and I have promised myself that if a hawk comes then I will forever tell myself that my chickens lived a good (short) chicken life. 

So what's next? We hunker down for winter. I'm not so sure that winter with chickens will be a-okay. We will have water to keep unfrozen and cold chickens to worry about. There are a few theories about how to keep chickens comfortable through the winter, but the one that make the most sense to me is discussed in the book Fresh-Air Poultry Houses: The Classic Guide to Open-Front Chicken Coops for Healthier Poultry. It's a pretty simple idea. Protect the flock from harsh winds (think west and north), but don't trap in the moisture that naturally happens from respiration. I'm hoping it works. 

First Egg

I've been a little obsessed. Last night I dreamed we found eggs all over the chicken coop — a big green spotted one, and more notably, a cube shaped one. Each one was different from the next, but each one was absolutely perfect in its own way.

We've been checking the coop for weeks now, but everyday it's zip. Nada. Nothing. And why should I expect anything different? After all, it's not like anyone told the chickens what they are supposed to do. I'm rather amazed how they seem to follow all the chicken rules without any instruction. The first time we watched them go into their coop, just at dusk, and put themselves to bed, I was dumbstruck. How do they know?

So today when I checked the coop, I was expecting to find nothing, except that the dream was still in the back of my head. And there it was. A tiny little egg, just where it should be, in the nesting box. Perfect, and fortunately for the chicken not a cube.

 Now, how do we split it 5 ways?

 

Chicken Update, plus Giveaway Winner

There are chickens living in my basement. Not cute fluffy chicks. Chickens. The finishing of the coop has been a priority around here, but the weather, and various commitments have not made that easy. 

I suppose it's a little too cold to send the chickens permanently outside just yet anyway, but I am pretty sure their welcome will wear off in the next week or two. Today they were able to get some quality playtime in the yard.

They have all been named, despite my warnings that chickens are not pets. The Buff Orpingtons, Lily and Hazel, are turning into lap chickens (and occasionally shoulder chickens, a habit that I think needs to end). They come over and hop on our hands. They climb up our arms. They flap madly when we try to put them back down because they just want to hang out with us, up high. They love the attention. 

The Silkies are fluffing out nicely and starting to look a little like muppets. They are more skittish, but over the last few days even they have consented to being held. Here they are checking out their new roost, in the coop. Their names are a bit unfortunate, but they stuck. Sassy, and Molassey. Sorry.

And here is the coop, still in progress. I'm becoming more concerned about predator protection. A Cooper's Hawk landed on our fence the other day, quickly identified by my daughter. It was as if he knew the chickens would be outside soon.

On an unrelated note, our giveaway winner is Jennifer! Congrats, and I will be in touch to arrange for your silhouette portrait.

What's in the Box?

This was on my doorstep. Perfectly on time. And peeping quietly. 

The website at My Pet Chicken warns you to open boxes like these away from kids. Chicks almost always show up just fine, but just in case I rushed home to meet my box and carefully cut the tape.

There they were. Four perfect little chicks, huddled together, but very much alive.

Does this one look angry?

I put them under a heat lamp, on some nice clean pine shavings and set up their water and food, then went to pick up the kids. I don't think the chicks have had a moments rest since they've been here. I caught a certain someone hiding in the "chicken room" doing homework. And every morning, the kids are ready for school extra early so they have time to visit.

We have 2 Buff Orpingtons...

and 2 White Silkies. Don't they pose nicely for their portraits?

And sometimes, after a hard day, they fall asleep, right in our hands.

 

 

 

Coop Dreams

We're getting closer to chicken day. 2 more weeks. So we've started planning the coop. 

This guy? He's a little too excited and started drafting plans right away, using Legos of course.

I was fairly set on ordering a kit, although nothing seemed quite right. Dave started drawing out some plans, and more plans, and more plans until he had something that started to work. Honestly, it looked a whole lot better than some of the kits, and judging from how the treehouse project turned out, I knew we would have a much better result.

The coop area, will sit off the ground, and give our hens about 16 square feet to nest. The attached run is 48 square feet. We have some foxes, hawks and racoons around, so everything needs to be predator-proof. And as much as I like the idea of letting them wander around free-range all day, I don't think they would last long that way. But I do plan on letting them wander around the yard while we are at home.

Dave started framing it last weekend and of course, his helper is never far from his side. Stay tuned to see how it goes!