Coop Fit For a Chicken

It needs a few finishing touches on the outside, but the coop itself is ready for occupancy. The interior boasts two staggered roosts, and three cozy (and easy to clean) nestboxes. Tomorrow I'll spread the pine, cut the back out of the nestboxes for outside access to eggs, and get the feeder & waterer scrubbed & ready. 50 lbs of organic laying feed is in the trunk of my car (along with diatomaceous earth to mix with the pine). Sunday we'll brave the ever-so-slowly dying poison ivy (we used a mixture of 1 gallon of vinegar, 8 drops dish detergent, 1 cup salt) and get the pen done. My hope is that Monday evening Linda will pick up the three new hens on her way home from work, and we'll get them settled in. Then we'll hook up with the neighbors and collect three of the ones we gave to them last Fall when we abandoned this venture the first time around. There's still a fence to put up (we're using 8' high batting cage netting; Linda's a genius!), but we'll want to keep them close to home in the pen for the first couple of weeks anyway...

I'm pretty ready to tackle the many other things on our Summer agenda, like the gardens, so it'll feel so great to have the chickens safely ensconced. We can move on with our lives....

This is a view of the coop from our front door...cute, huh? It's all Linda, folks...she made it work.

Cooped Up

I couldn't take today off to work on the coop, so Linda worked on it alone. After emptying 'two bathtubs' worth of rain' from the tarp with a bucket & rope, she installed two of the windows (the only two that are actually real windows w/ panes and glass). We'll put trim around them for aesthetics, and to cover the gaps.

Two of the roof rafters are built. We have to build two more, get them up, then cover with plywood, tarpaper and shingles. Then we lay down vinyl flooring, paint the coop, and get a pen set up. Chickens can move in then, and we'll have a week or two to get the rest of the fencing up so they can free range (I know, 'fenced free-range' sounds like an oxymoron, but we'll be fencing more than 1/3 of an acre for 6 hens, and it will include both open grassy area and shrubby underbrush. So we're quite comfortable calling them free range). I'm soooo hoping we can get the roof rafters and plywood up this weekend....

Quickie Update

I owe you pictures, but for now:
  Kittens are doing well, except for a little problem with...shall we say 'eliminating'. Even with lots of help, it's still a challenge, but this too shall pass (couldn't resist; I crack myself up sometimes). Vet is pretty sure Bear, Marbles and Stripe are boys, and T-cubed and WC are girls. WC's eyes are half-open, and everyone else is in varying stages of peeking at the world. Linda is a saint, a trooper, and very, very tired.
 Coop is moving along, but we're at that part where, at the end of five hours of work, we stand there with aching muscles and say "Really???!!! That's all we got done today?". We're working on the roof rafters; we wanted a peaked roof and it's tough-going. But we're way ahead of where we were this time last year, so that's good. We decided against chicks. I'm sorry...all those fuzzy chick & kitten photos would have been adorable, but time is not our friend, and five fragile babies in one season is enough. We'll be taking back three of the nine we gave to our neighbors; alas, their daughter has grown fond of Mama, so Mama won't be coming back, but Millie will! Then we'll round up three more laying hens born this year. In an ideal world, we'd find an Australorp or two, and an Ameracauna, but we'll see. There may be a livestock auctionin our future.

  Coop-building  has exacerbated tendonitis in both hands so I can barely knit or spin; heck, yesterday I opened a jar and had shooting pains up my wrist and arm for an hour. I was all the way up to the heel flap on Linda's second sock, got confused and made such a mess of it I couldn't begin to figure out how to undo it. So I pulled it all out & am starting again. Deep and heavy sigh.

  The whole eating thing: it's been interesting! Had a Coke recently for the first time since starting, and it was rather nasty...way too sweet (a thing I've rarely--if ever--said about anything in my life) with distinct chemical overtones. I prefer my half fruit juice/half club soda beverage now. So my palate is most definitely being retrained. I've been told to go wheat & gluten -free for several months, with my late-May birthday as a half-way assessment point. Gluten-free is a struggle. Brown rice pasta is fabulous (who knew?) but can't be eaten cold (geez, talk about al dente!), so I'm despairing the loss of warm-weather pasta salad. Quinoa has become my friend. I miss real bread. But this week did a lunchtime happy dance in my office over a fresh, simple salad of arugula, pea shoots & cress (all from the Farmers' Market), peppers, zukes, tomatoes, chicken & olives, with a homemade balsamic vinagrette. This is a big deal for someone who used to happily eat bad cheeseburgers for lunch. The disappointing thing is that all these changes haven't resolved the hives,which was the whole point.

  The garden is growing, but slowly. We haven't started tomatoes yet, but will be harvesting a mesclun salad soon!

  Lilacs and honeysuckle are blooming, too early. The grapes are flowering before we had the chance to prune. Slow down, please? There are deep cracks from drought, and I worry about the well. There's rain forecasted for Sunday...we need it.

  And I'm ready and longing for those Summer Fridays off (we're closed on Fridays in June & July)...I can taste those three day weekends already. And it appears my beloved is no longer working Saturdays, so we're readjusting to actually being together on the weekends; each one so far (there's been two) is such a gift!!

And that's all, folks!!!

Walls!

We put up three of the four coop walls today:

This view is facing the back (North) wall.

The bottom opening on the left wall (West) is for nestbox access from outside the coop; the opening above it is a window. The opening on the right is also a window. Both windows will have hinged drop-down 'covers' that will latch above when open. We still need to install a vent in the top of the right wall, and the hens' pophole in the bottom of that same wall.

The remaining wall is more challenging; it will have our door into the coop, as well as a decorative window. Linda found a fabulous door, old and still sporting not only a porcelain knob but a porcelain skeleton keyhole. Problem is, I love the door she found, and it's an interior one. I fear it won't withstand the elements, and will work so much better as the door to the second bathroom (if we ever get that done), home to a clawfoot tub. So Saturday we're going door hunting, and hopefully will get that fourth wall done Sunday. But this was a great day's work...I think we'll definitely finish long before June, which is when we finished the previous coop last year!

More Pictures than Words

We've been busy planting seeds (so far we've planted mesclun mix, arugula, radishes, snow peas, beets, kale & chard) and starting the new chicken coop, but there's also been time for a little knitting (less once we started building; hammering exacerbates tendonitis) and appreciating Spring...

We realized that the future coop was in danger of being drowned as water poured off the garage roof, so before we could start building, we needed to remedy that situation. We installed a gutter (no downspout yet)...I was even the 'handy one' this time, in that I actually read the directions!

Once we installed the gutter, we could begin building!

It may look odd, but that is one sturdy--and absolutely level-- floor.

I finished the first sock! It's too big, and the kitchener stitch was weird, but it's a sock. Now I'm working (when my hands will let me) on sock #2; once that's finished I can try some of the easier patterns people have shared with me.

Working outside lets us really appreciate the glories of Spring, like shy hyacinths, 

dancing daffodils,

and exuberant, exultant forsythia!