January 13, 2011 by Chad Groetsch.

The end products we hope from our flock are eggs but the raising of chickens provides other things as well. No, I am not referring to anything like meat or even pest control as they walk around the yard eating anything they can find that resembles a bug. I am referring to “it” and they make a lot of..errr…well, it. It is manure.

It is not an issue in the coop during the summer months as they spend the lion share of their days outside in the chicken yard or wandering around the property. During the winter months, though they are encouraged to go outside, they usually prefer to spend most of their time huddled in the coops.I don’t blame them as the only source of warmth besides the infra-red light on the exceptionally cold days is that of their sisters and brothers in the coop with them. This usually allows for a great build-up of it. If not properly managed, the buildup inside the coop can be significant.

Think of this as a short photo tour of the cleaning process we go through throughout the year. People seem to be curious about what goes on through our Facebook Fan Page called Chad’s Eggs so consider this an extension of that.

Every hobby has an unpleasant side to it. Mucking out the coop is one of the most unpleasant experiences aside from culling the flock or extracting passed or passing birds. Though a little manure on the floor can actually be a good insulator to the wood floor, it still needs to be removed regularly. What happens is that the top layer of the manure will dry and will be a serviceable walking surface for the birds but underneath that top layer is a decomposing layer of gas producing filth. As soon as you break through that layer you are in for a fowl experience. Depending on how wet the packed manure is will determine how bad the smell will be. Also, I have been advised by a couple doctors that it is inadvisable to clean out the coop without wearing a filtering face mask to breathe though as the airborne contaminants can cause illness in the lunch. Rather than challenge their knowledge base by looking it up, I got ahead and comply. Even though it is probably a foregone conclusion,never go in there wearing anything you don’t immediately intend to wash after you are done. Caked on manure will dry over time but is wholly unsanitary to bring into your home. Yes, that is a Minnesota Jaycees hat on my head…if my head was going to be in manure I would definitely not be wearing it.

This next picture is intended to show the color difference between the top crust and the rest of the build-up. It is almost like sandstone in this respect with each layer piling on top of previous layer. The bottom layer is almost always hay/straw or wood shavings which is clean bedding placed on the floor.

This stuff will make some fantastic  fertilizer by spring and I encourage everyone to get some, especially if you are in an area with very sandy soil or excellent drainage. Only use lightly in a more clay based ground otherwise you may burn your plants off. Too much of a good thing is still too much. Where we live it’s pretty sandy soil and we have never burned our garden out even with putting copious amounts of manure yearly in the garden. Given the sandy nature of the ground it becomes necessary to make sure you are adding enough nutrients to the soul to ensure your plants will have enough to grow big and strong.

It’d a good thing our operation isn’t any bigger than it is (51 hens) because I have to hand carry an five gallon garbage can of manure out over and over again. There’s probably a better way to it but this is how I’ve been doing it since I started with my first twelve partridge cochins back in 2002. It seemed a lot easier back then. Of course I cleaned out the coop weekly during the first couple years.

As stated previously, depending on the flock I usually use hay/straw on the floor as a start. Not only does it give the chickens something to pick through that is vegetable based but it also harbors bugs and seeds that they can eat to supplement their diet. For bedding in the nest boxes I’ve found that pine or cedar shavings work best for our flock of gold stars but the newer flock of black sex linked(BSL) hens tend to prefer they hay/straw for bedding over the shavings. It will be interesting when we consolidate the two flocks into the same larger coop because they will occupy the same nesting boxes. That is a project for later this winter.

In the end, we have a clean floor and clean nest boxes. The project is ongoing so the roost platform over the nesting boxes still needs work and that horrible splattering effect under the nest boxes will need to be addresses. Nothing is every really clean in the chicken coop for more than a couple minutes before a bird will come along and decide it’s a good place to leave some droppings, then another one will step in it and spread it around the coop.

Just to show everyone how much manure can be generated by twenty-four birds, I have included as a finale the pile created by the experience. Yep, that whole pile is what was extracted from that one coop. After it ages and compresses that pile will be enough for our garden for a whole year. It is the only fertilizer we use in our organically farmed garden. Want some? Bring a bucket in the spring or find a chicken farmer near you.

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January 13, 2011 by Chad Groetsch.

While soul searching for something more to write about it is always good to go back to the things you know. After all, what kind of authority on any subject are we if we write about things we don’t know. It’s as if the world has gone toward the web in order to report on things that they only seem to know a little about and make up the rest.

We moved to this Sherburne County back road the week of the tragedy of 9/11. Quite quickly upon arrival I proclaimed that I wanted to raise chickens. While I was not necessarily ridiculed by my friends and family, they probably though this was another one of my “hair brained” ideas. Incidentally, I think of it as divine creative inspiration but other do not. That next summer we built the 12×16 shed that was needed for storage and more importantly a coop.That was the beginning of one of my most peaceful hobbies and flash point that ignited my desire for a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Fast forward to January 2011. Now it’s over eight years into this “hobby”, which pays for itself and provides us and our extended family all the eggs they need.  It also has provided us with a little side business when eggs are available that goes back into providing our chickens with food, heat in the winter, and a great home… oh, and it gives me something to do that brings me peace. That will suffice for a prologue as I share our experiences and thoughts about our agrarian lifestyle.

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January 4, 2011 by Chad Groetsch.

Here is it 2011 and therefore it must be time to reflect on the last year and create a plan for the new year. Well, at any rate that is what people tend to do around this time of year so why not me….why not Sherburne County Backroads? After all there has to be some purpose to this blog and seeing as how I have not collected any income for the last two years there’s not enough to justify a blog about eating out.

The year of 2010 was a year of recovery for me. It was also a year that saw me become a much better father and husband. It was a year the culminated in my release from the bonds of business partnership and my ultimate battle with personal bankruptcy.(I have no qualms about sharing this personal battle freely on the internet with billions of potential readers.) It was a year, take it for all in all, I am thankful to have experienced and am ready to move on to something new.

I will be the first to say that in the not too distant past I did not live up to my own expectations as a parent. I was grumpy a lot. More than I needed to be for certain. The mountain of stress bore down upon my shoulders like a can crusher and rather than find a suitable outlet for my pent up frustrations at work I brought it home. My wife and kids were never in any harm of physical violence but that did not mean they probably wondered how little it would take before I would bark at them for some minor infraction or perceived one. Maybe I am making more of this than is due but in hindsight this is my perception.

By the time January came around I was spent and just glad I never had to see my ex-partner on a daily basis. It was time to heal. It was time to reconnect with my family on a very loving personal way. They definitely deserved it. One of the first things to go was daycare. Yes, it is one thing to say you are a stay at home dad and it’s another thing all together when you remove that safety net and actually spend all your time with your kids. Well, one of them anyway. The other child was gliding through Kindergarten and came home by the middle of the afternoon. This gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my kids in a way I had never imagine. Wait…reconnect? Let’s just call it “connecting” because, with the exception of my oldest child when he was a baby, I have been more or less disconnected and more consumed in what I did outside the home than in it. It’s sad to say but it’s true.

I love my kids. We have planted a garden together. They helped do everything from planting to weed picking and watering and to eventual harvesting. We played…a lot. We went to parks, shopping, exploring, and cuddling. This helped me to really grow in how I valued their closeness to me. It’s pretty incredible. At first I was almost ashamed of the title “stay at home dad” but the more people I told it to the more I was realized it was an important job. People would say, “That’s great!” or “It’s the most important job a parent can have.” As I grew in appreciation of the time we have together the more it became pleasing to me. The stigma I placed on myself being the man of the house and that I had to be the wage-earner slowly dissipated.

While I could have probably done with a little counseling, I battled through my own sense of failure over the end of the business I founded but owned very little of in the end.  The unfortunate by-product was my need to declare bankruptcy. This I will delve more deeply into in my forthcoming series entitled Confessions of a Recovering Businessman.(working title so if you have a book of the same name don’t sue me. heh.) My wife Robin’s patience was tested for certain as I fought with myself over what I needed to do but was too scared to deal with. Thanks to help from both my parents and in-law, and of course Robin’s support, I finally brought myself to completing the painful process of tallying up my debts and, with the help of a lawyer, filing chapter 7 at the end of August. By the end of November the lion share of my debts were gone and with that a great burden upon my psyche. I am thankful for having such a wonderful cast of friends and family that has helped me through it.

Ok, now what? Well, I have come to love my life. I love spending time with my children and focusing my positive energies on our home. Despite this we as a family need me to make some money. The salary of a teacher is modest but it is painfully clear we need a little more. We have rearrange priorities, squeezed budgets, and lived credit free(over 2 years now). We follow a budget and the principles of Dave Ramsey. So, for 2011 I will try as I might to peaceably marry my desire to be a stay at home dad with the need to work around our families schedule. I am ready to work and know I have so much to offer an employer but the trick is getting them to notice. Come on, 2011! I am ready for you after this.

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