R.I.P. melons

I guess it was just a question of time as it was not season for them to grow big. But now the rogue melon seeds from the compost have officially died.

At least I know when to start next year

Mourning for them was a spider sitting across the garden in his net.

Can you spot him?

I got to meet the lady who has the next door field/orchard. She was there to harvest some fruits and I said hello and had a small chat. I told her a little about what I am doing etc. Did NOT ask if she wants to sell the land... thought it would be more tactful to get to know them first...

Finished!

Here I listed the things that are finished.
The gate is ready

gate

I shall plant something sensible on both sides and probably also arrange with fencing... The ugly can be seen on the left side. All the logs and our bicycles now live in the carport.

The coop is ready

coop

It took its sweet time, but finally I made it. Everyone who sees it says the heart is the best part. Not sure if I should take that as an insult or a praise.

The run is ready

chicken run

It only took a day and a half. I burrowed the poles a meter into the ground. Hopefully they will hold...

The chickens are ready

chooks

The four girls arrived on Monday. 2-3 months old and still too shy to come out of the coop. I gave them some grasshoppers which they took immediately. I will try to spend some time with them to get them accustomed to being near people...
The waterer I bought as short term solution, and the feeder is also put together as a short time thing, just a bucket on tray. I will monitor and decide what works well for them.
They are not interested in the roost or the nests it seems... oh well, I will give them time.
I haven't given them names yet.

The eggs are NOT ready

no eggs

Either they are too young or they are still stressed from moving so of course no eggs.

Run run run ngngng

After a bit of thinking I decided to expand my run plans. Here is a map of the big run (HAhahah)

Traditionally extracted from THE MAP!

The coop is that brown thing on top right side, and the run limits shall be along the dotted blue line. South is already fenced by JR. The round brown thing north of coop is the tree trunk, and the green round thing is the bush...
The arrows show where I took a couple of pictures to make it easier to understand.
First, the white arrow:

panorama

Turning a bit to the left and right gives us the following two pictures:

On the left side, is my old discarded fence from the previous apartment we lived in. I guess I could move it to the back, to the big drop.
On the right side, is the discarded wooden fence from the ugly part near front of the house where I am now cleaning up. Behind the fence has gathered a lot of branches and stuff which I shall remove too.
Maybe I can reuse the wooden fence as door to the run...

Back to the map, the picture corresponding with the orange arrow is below:

Messy messy

The tree trunk is right behind the bush. Once chickens move in I think things will become tidier as insects and small animals will no longer be living there.

And finally the pictures corresponding to the pink arrow:

That hairy thing by the way is not a spider leg, it is my arm

 Yep, the green net is where the drop happens. Behind it, "protecting" things from falling/rolling over to my neighbor are a couple of bamboos I stuck in there. And lots of branches on both sides...
The ground is solid enough on my side but it is small and may erode easily.

How to get rid of bamboo

I hate you

The American Bamboo Society recommends a simple and repetitive approach to getting rid of bamboo: cutting. Since their specialty is bamboo, I would lend the most credence to their advice, which, in sum, runs as follows:

1- Cut the bamboo shoots down
2- Apply water to the area
3- Cut down the new crop of bamboo resulting from #2
4- Repeat the process until shoots stop coming up.

The idea behind doing all of this is to deplete the reserves of energy in the plants' rhizomes, after which they will not be capable of sending up new shoots. Those reserves are no longer being replaced because you are removing the plants' mechanism to do so (photosynthesis) by depriving them of vegetation. They can only hold out so long without being replenished.
As a concluding observation about using this method, the American Bamboo Society writes that, once you are done, "The rhizomes will be left behind, but will rot away." The reason that these old rhizomes will rot away is that they have been depleted of their energy reserves.

Although this can be done any time of year, I guess ideal time to do it is in spring. I could already now go and start cutting away whenever I have time though...

Coop finished

Finally

Yesterday I had just enough daylight to finish the coop. I installed the rubber parts which hinder water form leaking inside. I put a strip on top of the roof where the wiggly boards meet in the middle, and a small strip above the nest lid.
I also finished the second layer of paint about 5 hours before rain started. Whew!
I also "waterproofed" the screws on the roof by dotting paint on each of them.
Now that the coop is finished, I can concentrate on the run, and to find chickens. I did read the details of the Chiba prefecture home page regarding keeping animals, and although they require yearly reports on sanitation and health laws being followed, it seems if you keep less than a 100 chickens (!) you only need to report the number of birds every year. The form contains absolutely nothing else, like say for example at least a statement saying I do promise to keep clean or to report disease or anything. Just how many birds you have, and your name and address. Pretty much waste of everyone's time. But it is simple enough so what do I care.
I will also have more time to tend to the garden, and maybe even to start with the forest plots. I now have a better clue how to start there by the way. I need to get rid of the bamboo, and then make a huge compost pile out of it. When it is kind of ready I shall cover the wood surface with cardboard and put the compost on top, and start by growing beans and crap. Then I can think about what kind of trees would like it there and plant them. But this is all for spring and onward when the bamboo shoots come out. For now I can finish the garden.
The run.... the front part is simple enough I guess, there is a slope but I can create a pretty tall fence with painted solid metal posts, and a small door for me to get through. It is the backside and the right side of the coop that will give me a headache. Backside we have the famous drop where I would really want to have a retaining wall and a fence on top of it. The right  side doesn't really need to be included in the run, as I have fenced the underside of the coop facing that direction already. But I do have a pretty big area with straws and branches which would be ideal for chickens to work at. The problem is that I need to fence it and although its drop depth is not near the backside one, it is still maybe 50-100 cm and unlike the backside where I do own a small strip of the land beyond the drop allowing me some freedom and space when it comes to barrier, the right side drop happens just on the border line...
Gotta think a bit more...
Anyway, in worst case, I can still go with the original plan of minimum area, still allowing up to 5-6 chickens plenty of room to play, without the right side, and with only half of the back area. 

Terminator

My neighbor (well actually no one lives there as it is just a big orchard) grows fruit in his land, among others chestnuts, which have started to fall on my land. I gathered them all and cooked them, it was real yummy.

This much and big ones too. Afterwards neither of us had space for dinner.

While walking past my salad patch I saw a praying mantis guarding it against bugs who come to eat the leaves. It does a good job I guess, but they are too many so I still find my lettuces and other greens are half eaten by bugs. Anyway, I took a picture of it and then noticed it was actually preying on a little grasshopper, so I took a couple more pictures while it finished the job. Good mantis! Terminator of the field.

waiting for the right moment

gotcha!

nom nom nom

Got a bit lazy

Although I had planned to finish the coop last weekend, somehow I got a bit lazy and still a bit remains....
Maybe I enjoy it so much that I don't want it to end.

What the coop looks like right now

I actually did a lot. Patching is all done, second layer of paint on the roof, and then the wiggly sheet on top for rain. The door and window and the storm door are all done. I did forget the rope which secures the whole thing to the ground, which was supposed to go under the roof wiggly sheet. Whoops. Maybe I can thread it in somehow.
What remains is not much really. Second layer of paint overall, and then detail painting just to make it look nice, putting rubber strip on top part of the roof and also above the nest lid, and door handle. Oh, yeah, and poop board and extra flooring.
All can be done within the week as it is not much. Actually it is gonna be raining tomorrow, so I need to finish the painting and the rubber and rope today...
I grew a bit indecisive about the exterior net and fence... I was just showing the coop to my gal and after I was done she asked where the boundaries of the chicken run would be. When I showed her she immediately reacted "isn't that too small?" so I am thinking to modify my plans a bit, maybe.
Anyway, I have still not found chickens, haha
Also I found some regulations on Chiba government hompage for those who want to keep livestock of any sort or quantity. So I need to go through it and be sure I am OK.
By the way, I did a bit of cleaning up, moved all the logs to the sunny bit in the carport which I don't use for anything else.

The ugly bush is still there...

This way I will get the logs all dried up and nice. In the picture you can also see that the entrance posts have been installed. The gate will arrive next weekend.