As the calendar turns to May, the weather is warming up and the project list keeps growing...but our routine of donations/pickup continues to become our routine.
Wednesday night I dropped 4 dozen to the food pantry at one of the local church's in town, and on Friday I made my trip to the food pantry in West Warwick with 2 more dozen eggs, and picked up a load of spoiled produce and a little bread.
The veggies this week looks like a lot of tomatoes, zucchini, and brussel sprouts, with a few apples, mandarin oranges, and other odds and ends. I expect the chickens will enjoy this load quite a bit. I threw them a few tomatoes when I got back from the pickup, but most of the produce will get processed and added to the pile on Saturday AM.
The pile has a bit of a sweet smell to it that I want to address, so I expect that Saturday morning I'll get out there early and add some more leaves, then turn the top of the pile over onto the leaves. I imagine this will uncover a whole bunch of worms for the flock to snack on. Once the flock has had a protein-rich breakfast, I'll add some more leaves, then this week's food waste.
In a few days, I'll cover with more leaves. The chickens are always deconstructing the pile faster than I can build it, but I'm hopeful this will give us a nice mix this week for a low-odor pile.
I also received 5 pounds of mixed cover crop seeds I had ordered online. I have 2 lbs of wheat seed and 1 pound each of barley, rye, and rapeseed. I'm going to plant some "fodder trays" for the chickens and also leverage a fodder cage in the run, but I also plan to throw some seed into the compost pile. The chickens will consume some of the seeds, I'm sure...but my hope is that some of them get turned in and have time to sprout. Those sprouted grains will make a great additional food source for the flock.