Chicken Tractor

 

The garden is quiet these days. There is a lot of pruning waiting to happen—hedges and trees--  and a few more leaves to rake onto beds, but, for the most part, if I don’t get out there, it will wait. The only thing that has to happen regularly is moving the coop, which is a chicken tractor.

When we first designed our gardens, I found a book on our co-op’s lending library shelf: The Chicken Tractor. The basic idea was a moveable chicken coop that would shift from garden bed to garden bed over the course of a year. Because we live in the Pacific Northwest, where we can garden all year round, this was a great idea. We proceeded to build out our garden beds four feet wide by ten feet long, and overbuilt the first coop as a four by five by five foot square with plywood sides. It weighed a ton. It did, however, sit neatly on the garden bed frame. We learned our lesson, and, when we rebuilt the coop five years later, the design—from Mother Earth News—was a much lighter A frame, still sized to sit on the bed. When there are two chickens, they root around on half of the bed and we slide the coop over after two weeks, then, two weeks later, move it to another bed. When there are more than two, we fence the entire bed off and let them at it for a month.  If I pay attention, we can rotate through all of the beds between late September and late May.

We moved the coop this afternoon. The ladies were thrilled to be let out for a bit. They ran, flapped, and flew over to the rabbit hutch to root around in the fallen straw. We cleared the way, lifted the coop, and moved it over two beds, then re-fenced it, leaving a space for the ladies to move in when it grows dim and dusky.  I turned over the old bed so that the straw and leaves, mixed with poop, had more surface area with the soil underneath, disturbing several fat earthworms in the process. Sometimes Aussie will come over to “help” with the soil turning and eat the worms, but, today, she was jostling for straw and missed out.

This combination of chicken, straw, composted in place old veggies, and leaves keeps our beds full of organic matter year after year. We have not had to purchase “fertile mix,” which is half compost, for 15 years, at least.  The soil tilth is lovely and rich. The garden is lush all summer long and I can save the compost Mark generates from the piles of trimmings in the far back corner for all of the beds that are not tractored by the chickens. And, even when a chicken is too old to lay an egg, she is still contributing to the household economy.