Agricultural Vinegar Weed Killer Available at Denver Urban Homesteading Indoor Market

The Denver Urban Homesteader's indoor farmer's market, which I blogged about here, has grown quite a bit since it first opened. As you walk through the big wooden doors off the buckled sidewalk, a sweet coolness descends. Ahead of you are buckets of local fresh produce, fabulous pictures of chickens, and local milk, eggs, and ice cream. Turn to your right to browse the many fabulous, local vendors selling cheese, pasta, plants, produce, meats, honey, and more. Or take a left at the front door for another big room of vendors offering veggies, teas, and plants. In this west-side room there is also a big comfy couch, a chicken coop (sans chickens), a brewing area, and resource table.

The main vendor, just ahead as you walk in the front door, also offers agricultural vinegar, a natural and non-toxic weed killer (just don't drink it or put in on your salad!!). We got a spray bottle and tried it on the weeds threatening to take over our xeriscaped front garden. It works like a charm: you spray it at the top of the roots on a hot day, the plant sucks up the vinegar, and it dies. It even worked, albeit with some less success, on the bindweed. You avoid the Round Up (which plants are showing to develop a resistance to!) and lessen the weeds. Agricultural vinegar can be hard to find as it's not regulated and therefore not sold in most nurseries. I found a great source for the weed killer in Denver!

By the way, I learned that bindweed grows in hard pan areas of low nitrogen content. So another way to beat the weeds is to fluff your soil and add organic matter high in nitrogen. After a while the bindweed will move on. An integrated system of improving the soil and natural vinegar weed killer is the best approach to rid your yard of invasive weeds.

The Farmer's Market is open Saturday from 1-2, and Wed, Thurs, and Fri from 1-6 at 200 Santa Fe Drive, Denver. We've had no problem finding street parking close by.

The Virtues of Mud

Yeah for soil! Let's hear it for the power of mud!

Combine the elements of water and earth for a powerful synchrony that can stop leaking oil wells, cleanse the skin, keep children happy for hours, or build a house.

Have you hugged your mud today? Go outside! Make some mud pies. Let it squish between your toes. Make a sculpture. Give thanks. Let your awareness sink into the mud and just notice. What secrets and powers does it have to share with you?

I posted a few weeks (months? my, time doth fly) ago about how one of our hens had gone broody, meaning she wanted to hatch some eggs. She hogged the egg box (the others could squeeze in and lay, but would have preferred their own space) and she stopped laying altogether. This meant a 33% reduction in our daily egg offering. Most hens don't just snap out of it, you either have to "break" them (which doesn't always work) by doing crazy things like setting them on ice cubes, or give them eggs to hatch. Since we don't have a cockerel, I had to find some fertile eggs. A lovely new friend of mine on a local backyard poultry meet-up group offered me six eggs, and when we got back from family vacation we slipped them under Sylvie just to see what would happen. I had no expectations. My primary goal was to gently break Sylvie of her obsession. Secondarily I would have liked to add another hen to our flock. My friend agreed to take back any males that might hatch and any extra females since we really only have room for a maximum of five hens.

Well. Five of the six eggs were broken and eaten by our chickens within a few weeks. I became vigilant then about fluffing the hay in the egg box, as our diligent "mama" was so good about digging a little egg hole right down to the wood of the box. I suspect this caused most of the breaks. I carefully checked on our one little egg, which slowly got rather worn looking compared to the fresh ones the other two were still laying. Then on day 20 (chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch), I held the egg up to my ear and heard a peep from inside! Oh, so exciting!

The next day my daughter and I checked on the egg and its adoptive mama several times over the course of four or five hours. I'm sure we were a total nuisance. First there was one little hole pecked (called pipping) and then a crack all the way around (zipping). Then we could see the orangey brown feathers, all wet and sleek still, peaking through a wide crack, but the baby wasn't yet free. Next time we checked, I found a smashed shell and no baby. We found it then on the other side of mama, still drying out, so sleepy from its hard work.

I checked on it several times, making sure it wasn't pushed out of the box again, as it once was. I wasn't sure what to do - move it? Leave it be? I read not to worry, mama will protect it from the other hens.

Sadly, this was not true. The next morning when mama took a break, another hen came in to lay an egg and pecked the baby to death. We buried it in the garden and my daughter named it Menda. She is very nonchalant about death, which I think is a good thing. When the existentialism of death hits when she's older, I hope the matter-of-factness of her experiences as a young child will help her through it.

I felt disappointed, but also glad to see the whole experiment through. Now I know that if we go this route again, we need to keep the hay fluffed. We need to be prepared to move mom and babies into a safe place on hatching day. At this point I don't have that safe place - in spring or fall the garage might work, but not in the heat of summer or the chill of winter.

And Sylvie? I'm not totally sure because she still sits in the box and ruffles her neck feathers every once in a while, but it seems she has snapped out of it. I'm glad for her sake, because broody hens eat very little and she's looking rather worn. She's been out and about, eating and being a normal chicken. She doesn't seem to be grieving the chick. So though I wish our chick had lived, I feel my primary goals were met and I know better what to do next time. I also have a hunch the little guy was in fact a guy, so we would have had to part ways at some point anyway. I hope for his sake he's happy nourishing the honeysuckle in the garden. He sure was cute.