Cultivating Chooks

The chickens helped me prepare the vege beds for the next round of planting.  We have fenced off two of our 6 beds to protect the leafy greens from both the chickens and the guinea fowl.  We were thinking about fencing in the whole vege patch, but that would have taken over 100m of horse resistant fencing, and I realised there was a better way after seeing how writer Jenna Woginrich had protected hers at Cold Antler Farm.   I bought enough mesh to fence off each bed individually, but Brad had the bright idea of  fencing both together, leaving a walkway to make it easier to  get in to harvest the veg.   We just used 7 star pickets and under 20m of mesh.  I am using an old bed frame as a temporary gate.  As soon as I started pulling weeds, the chickens found their way through the open gate and started scratching and digging through the ground, breaking up the clumps.   They also ate a lot of worms, so I shooed them out when I was finished.  It was pretty relaxing hanging with the girls as they cooed and clucked and worked their magic.