First hard working day of Spring

Today was my first hard-working day of spring. Unfortunately, I woke up with a slight hang-over, and was not excited to get up and get going, but in hindsight, I'm glad I just busted through. Now it's early in the afternoon (tea-time) and I have sore muscles and a sense of accomplishment.

Our main tasks today were to clean out the chicken/duck coop and to set up our deer-netted bed.

We clean the coop seasonally, and especially in the winter when the birds just want extra insulation, we just add more bedding as needed. We use pine shavings and straw. We shoveled and swept the debris out, scraped it out, scrubbed it clean, hosed it out and are now waiting for it do dry in the sun and wind. Will carried bins and bins of coop bedding down to the garden compost. I just had to crawl inside the ammonia smelling coop to scrape it clean and scrub it until my knuckles bruised. No big.

Last summer Will made a perimeter around one of the beds in the garden with deer netting that we got from my sister when she moved to Colorado. (The stuff is expensive but super useful!). This year, we wanted to expand it and do it early enough that we could plant all season in there. The perimeter of the bed is deer netting about 3 or 4 feet up, staked into the ground, and with boards holding it down on the outside to discourage tunneling under by our frenemies. We managed to salvage all the boards we needed from the property, especially along the riverbank. Will mentioned that it made him feel like the Nearings, gathering driftwood from the sea and building with it.

We saw an intact but dead vole and a mostly intact but dead garter snake. There must be another cat around, because we couldn't think of any animals that would kill them and then not eat them. We checked for ramps and fiddleheads on the island, but they aren't popping up yet. Still a few more weeks for those!

Before

After.  Of course, bedding was added next.

Chickens

About a week and a half ago, we got chickens.  Well, not chickens exactly, but 6 Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks.  For the past week and a half, they've been in a box in the kitchen peeping away every second of the day and night.  I worked like a madman to construct a coop (which happens to be the best carpentry project I've ever successfully completed).

We've talked about getting chickens for a bit now, probably ever since we started to stray from veganism.  We were trying to figure out what to do with the small garden by the house that we neglected last summer, when I came up with the idea to turn it into a chicken run.  The biggest step was getting permission from the landlord, which was a piece of cake.  Then I began with the coop.  I had an idea of how I wanted to coop construction, but needed some real plans so I didn't waste a lot of materials and time making it work.  I found some good free plans through Purina Mills.  I set out to building it, and finished in 3 days.  I'm really proud of that thing!  I kept thinking that I was going to modify the plans to suit our setup, and after much deliberation, I realized that everything in the plans was just fine. 

The coop is now done, except for the nest box, and a close-able door for the chickens to use.  Luckily, they're still too small to be outside, so I have time to finish it.  I also need to finish closing off the run on the top, but that should be easy to do as well.  The only thing that has been stopping me from finishing is trying to catch up on planting in the garden. 


Below are two photos for comparison.  The first is the little garden, taken on 5/28/10.  The second was taken today, 5/29/12 of the same garden, looking through the chicken run.  What a different place! 

I started off small with the part of the run that will be enclosed.  I designed it so that I can extend it easily and cheaply.  I will do so as the summer goes on, especially if we get more chickens (which I'd love to do!).  Finally, here's a video of the little peepies playing with a piece of lettuce: