• Garden,  Urban Homesteading

    Summer Garden Recap

    My food growing was a disaster this summer. At least that’s how it felt as I surveyed the mass of weedy overgrowth this evening. I put all my energy into the new pond and quail keeping, and I let the weeds run amok and didn’t feed the plants or top off compost as I should have. For my future self, I’m documenting the season and will start with the positives because no one likes a whiner. Wins One apple tree out of three and one pear tree out of two finally started producing just a few but still very exciting fruits. One really good peach tree yielded 35lbs of peaches.…

  • Projects,  Urban Homesteading

    Coturnix Quail Newbie Cost Analysis

    Honestly, after three weeks of keeping quail, I was regretting bringing them home and assuming I’d be done with quail after this flock dies off or sooner if I were able to pass them off. They weren’t laying, they were messy, and the grow-out pen I was using was impossible to clean. Then Joe built a hutch that is easy to access and clean out and gives the birds much more room. It even has a storage shelf! I’ve outfitted the hutch with some habitat enhancements and vintage windows to cut the draft, timed lights to lengthen their daylight hours, and pulled up the deck chairs so we can comfortably…

  • Urban Homesteading

    Meet the Coturnix Quail

    Here at Love Sown Garden (I feel a little ridiculous naming my garden), there is a new flock of feathered friends. I went to the monthly flock swap at The Urban Chicken and came home with six young quail. Why? They were there, and I had a grow-out pen that could comfortably hold them. I honestly had no intention of getting into another kind of animal, but some of my friends have been talking up the ease of raising quail and how wonderful their eggs are. After I brought the first six quail home, my quail friend looked at my pictures and determined that I had three males and three…