Natural Garden Tillers

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in North Georgia. We had sunshine, a light breeze, and temperatures up in the 60's. It was exquisite!  I took this opportunity to spend some time out in all the natural glory.

Since we still have some work to do in order to clear off our new garden location I had the girls outside with me to move wood from the trees Tim cut for me.  We had moved about 6 wheelbarrow loads of firewood when I decided to take a break. We brought out chairs and loosed the natural garden tillers...

Chickens!

Our girls have their coop with a permanent run, but they have pretty much cleared out their run over the last year, so we extricated them and relocated the ladies to the garden area.  Since we have cats running about and didn't want the hens to roam away from home, as well as no fencing around the garden, we sat out in the sunshine and supervised the small workforce.

They scratched and dug for an hour, coming up with bugs, worms, weeds, and even one nasty large grub. (YUCK!)  All gobbled down with gusto.  In the meantime, the dirt was being loosened, leaves and twigs kicked to the side, and some very happy chickens had a new area to explore.  Oh, and let's not forget the deposits of garden-friendly fertilizer, a.k.a. chicken poop!

I'll bring them out a few more times before it's time to plant the garden, but really don't think my three girls can completely clear the large garden before planting season.  I'm thinking of installing a temporary plastic fencing so I won't have to watch them so closely, possibly allowing them to "till" longer during the day.

Now next year will be an entirely different story.  We'll have a workforce of nine hens (fingers crossed) and no trees to clear ahead of time.  Woohoo!