Chip Drop: Free Mulch for Your Garden (And All Your Neighbors)

A few years ago I heard about Chip Drop, a service that connects homeowners with arborists. You offer to take a truckload of wood chips, the arborists get to unload their goods without driving them to the dump, and the environment is happy for both of you. I initially thought that it sounded kind of iffy - what kind of garbage were they going to dump on my driveway. But I did my first Chip Drop and I was hooked. 

Back then I only had 10 fruit trees and four garden beds in my yard. I figured I would see what I could do with that mulch, between topping the garden beds and mulching the fruit trees. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to spread out a load of wood chips. 

Dwarf Black Mulberry Trees

This is mostly for my Arizona friends, but it may pertain to others depending on where you live; please consult your local nursery... 

I have a new favorite tree: the dwarf black mulberry. I planted a dwarf black mulberry about two years ago as a two-foot-tall stick in the ground. Within a year it was about ten feet tall. By year two it was so tall that I needed to massively prune it to keep it at a manageable height since it was well over 15 feet tall. So quick growing? Check. 

But it also produces massive quantities of delicious fruits. After one year of growing, we were excited to have the tree covered in berries. They are much more flavorful than the wild mulberries I remember eating in Illinois as a kid (those were essentially tasteless berries that we ate just because they were there). These berries are large, plump, and flavorful. One of my kids described the flavor as a mild blackberry/raspberry mix. 

So why is this a recommended tree? First, fast growing trees in Arizona are pretty important, as they provide a lot of shade in a short amount of time.

Backyard Chickens - One Year Later

Just over one year ago we got backyard chickens. This came after almost ten years of working with the town council (i.e. badgering them) to change our town's ban on chickens. The week after the chicken bill passed, we had our chicks in a brooder in the garage. 

If you want to read about the beginning of our chicken era, you can check it out here. 

But here are eleven unexpected things that were learned through our journey. 

1. Easter egg hunts are real life - We had a two week period when egg production went down. I was trying to figure out why they had stopped laying, and my friend, who has raised chickens for a long time, said that they must be laying eggs somewhere else in the yard. I looked around and didn't find anything. Several days later I was checking the landscaping. I saw a chicken in the bushes, and sure enough, I found the nest with half a dozen eggs in it. This happened again yesterday, with 7 eggs from at least two chickens being found under a different bush. If you think your chickens have stopped laying, they very well could be laying somewhere else. 

2. If  you don't want the daily Easter egg hunt, consider some portable nesting boxes. I built  three of them, and placed them around the yard where the chickens tended to congregate. One gets used daily. The other two occasionally. 

3. One square foot of artificial turf works great for nesting boxes. You can find these as samples in many landscaping stores, often for a dollar or two or for free. These can be washed and brushed out, and the chickens tend to enjoy laying on them. A lot less work than regularly replacing straw. 

4. Do you remember the McDLT from the '80s? It keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold? Raising chickens is like a year long McDLT. In the summer, we have to keep them cool (check out the article linked above for that journey). In the winter, we have to keep them warm, but we don't have to do much. Unless temperatures are well below freezing (which they are not in Phoenix), they do not need a heater. They just need an enclosed coop where they can stay warm at night. Not convinced that that is enough? Consider adding some red pepper flakes to their feed or scratch in the winter. My chickens love scratch with red pepper flakes, and they seem quite content, even in the 35 degree mornings. 

5. Chickens love interacting with people, especially if you start when they're chicks. To keep them
comfortable with people, my family and I will regularly let them eat seed or scratch out of our hands. The more you feed, pet, and hold them, the less skittish they will be around people. In fact, when I come home from work, go into the backyard, and say, "Here chick chicks", the entire flock will come running to greet me. It is fantastic! 

6. Hens need around 14 hours of light to stay productive with their laying. In the winter months, as we have fewer daylight hours, I have added a string of Christmas lights on a timer to the inside of the coop. I went from one egg every other day to three eggs per day. 

7. Chickens love treats. We have their regular feed, and I recently got some scratch to try out. It's like candy! In fact, heaven forbid I come into the backyard with a plastic container similar to the one I keep the scratch in. They will follow me around expectantly looking for the scratch. And if I don't give them a treat, they will squawk like a two year old wanting another piece of candy. Or more scratch. Or worms. 

8. Chickens typically return to their coop at night on their own, but this needs to be verified. Once, we were out a little late, and unbeknownst to me, the door to the coop had been knocked closed by one of the chickens. When I went to close up the coop after dark, the chickens were asleep in various places around the outside of the coop. I had to scoop the sleepy birds up one by one and shove them into the coop. Another time, I did a head count and one was missing. I did a cursory search around the yard and couldn't find her. Fearing having to tell my kids that one of the chickens had been eaten by another animal, I frantically searched around the yard for her. After about 20 minutes, I found her in the corner of a planter tucked under a tree. And under her I found three eggs (see #1-2 above). Nightly headcounts IN the coop are imperative. 

9. Fresh, unwashed eggs do not need to be refrigerated. Eggs have a coating called the bloom on the outside of the shell. This coating protects the egg from bacteria entering into the porous shell. Eggs will stay fresh at room temperature for about two weeks. I did get tired of our cardboard egg cartons on the counter, so I made a wooden egg holder out of some walnut scraps just to add a little class to our egg production. 

10. If you have found eggs in the yard and don't know how old they are, or if you have messed up the rotation on your counter, you can use the float test to determine the freshness of the eggs. Submerge the egg in cool water. If it sinks on its side, it is fresh (but the bloom has been washed off and you will need to refrigerate it). If it sinks but stands on its end, there is some air in the egg. It is older but still good to eat. If it floats to the top of the water, it is no longer fresh and should not be eaten. 

11. Sometimes chickens look like death. They molt about once per year. They look like phoenixes that are about to burn up. They act weird, stop laying, and look absolutely terrible. This is normal (I guess), and once their feathers grow back in they get back to their previous selves. 

There you have it. I'm sure in the coming years I will have many more things that I will learn, so stay tuned for more chicken updates. Is there anything that I missed? Add a comment below and let me know about your chicken journey. 

Happy chicken farming! 

Dad-Made Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

A few weeks ago I took a "mental health day" prior to the end of the school year. The end of the year
for principals is crazy. I have multiple night events as everybody is wrapping up the year. Every Saturday is booked. And I was in such bad need of a haircut that I was regularly getting some sort of comment that contained the phrase "mad scientist." So my personal day consisted of a haircut, getting contacts, and having a late breakfast with my wife.

In the midst of my errands, my wife and I went out to eat. We shared something that I had never heard of: lemon ricotta pancakes with blueberry compote. They were delicious - so light and fluffy.

So that following Saturday I decided that I would surprise the whole family with breakfast. Instead of making the daddy standard - Dutch Babies - I decided that I would branch out. We happened to have some ricotta cheese (something about me thinking I would make homemade ravioli while my wife was out of the country), and we still had lemons on our lemon tree. I could use the wonderful Interweb and find a recipe for lemon ricotta pancakes, the whole family would think that I was a culinary genius, and Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry would show up at my door asking me for tips.

The Best Key Lime Pie in Arizona

Have you ever gotten a thought in your head that just gets stuck there? To the point that it becomes a quest, an obsession? Like one time when I visited my friend Marty in Houston, and we heard somebody mention the phrase "Rueben sandwich". It became an obsession for us that we just had to find the best Rueben sandwich in the city. We drove 30 minutes, paid way more than we were willing to pay, and the obsession was quenched. 

It happened more recently to me. About a year ago somebody started talking about key lime pie. Key lime pie has always been one of my favorites, but that conversation began a nearly year-long quest to find the best key lime pie in the state. 

What makes a great key lime pie? It takes a lot. It needs to have a good balance between the key lime custard and the whipped cream. It needs to have a good balance of tartness and sweetness (in my opinion too many key lime pies err on the side of sweetness, which ruins the key lime pie), with the best key lime pies having a tartness that gets you in your jaw. It needs to have a strong lime flavor, and it must have a great graham cracker crust.