Inadvertently, this blog has been napping. Uff da. A lot has
been going on since my last post. Harvest 2018 did finish, we survived the
craziness of life during the holidays and have finally seen spring. At least
the grass is green if the weather isn’t exactly sunny and balmy yet.
There’s something about being exhausted tired from harvest
in between rain and then stressed from the holidays that saps my creative spark
down to an ember. And we dealt with a few losses in the family, grieving takes
its own time.
Now I find with the warmer weather (aka lack of snow and
ice-kissed wind) life is perking up with a CHEEP! Just a disclaimer, this was
originally all hubs’ idea a couple of years ago and he’s not here to defend
himself. 😊 Originally his shock and awe plan was for a
couple hundred of chickens. Yes, hundred plus.
Then I said we weren’t doing free range as his last attempt
of chicken herding sadly failed and he concluded he didn’t want to build a barn
‘just for chickens’. And I wasn’t thrilled to do an ‘Easter egg hunt’ style of
collecting eggs every day. No thank you.
So we talked, okay I did most of the talking and research. Somehow
he decided he was too busy to build a coop so while he was online shopping
(what I facetiously call his online auction sales and bargain hunting) he came
across a guy who built large garden sheds.
A hop and a skip some time later, we were proud owners of
two large garden sheds.
‘Do you want to paint them?’ he’d asked.
‘Nope,’ I replied, “red tin with white trim.’
You should have seen his eye roll, I was impressed. But if
we do it right, we’re investing for down the road because I really despise
painting buildings. Logic for the win. And no paint brushes to clean in my
future!
The coop turned out really cute, almost like a mini barn. In
between seeding/planting we’ll be working on getting the outdoor run put in and
enclosed to keep unwanted critters out. And there’s plans for a little cupola
to be put on top for air ventilation.
We’ve had these chicks for almost a month and they’re growing
like crazy! Right now, they look like they’re in the awkward chicken teenage
stage with baby down molting and real feathers coming in.
Hubs came in one day after working in the shop all disgruntled.
To my surprise he was irritated about how the chicks were making the shop office
so terribly dirty. We kept the chicks in a DIY brooder – Scooter’s old dog kennel
– lined with cardboard borders and wood shavings. I changed the bedding weekly,
kept the food and water fresh and a heat lamp kept them toasty warm.
I about fell off my chair laughing over that. It’s an
office, in the shop. Hardly used because men tend to congregate around coffee
and food or around equipment. To say it was ‘clean’ before the chicks moved in
would be untrue. The office holds more of the grain samples, dust, some office
supplies and a few small parts.
But now they’re happily living in the coop and they seem to
have grown the moment we moved them there. In the mix, we have four Amercaunas,
about ten barred rocks and the rest are mixed mutts but they sure are good
lookin’ birds.
And hopefully by late fall, middle of harvest, we’ll be swimming
in eggs.
But what is the other shed for?
When you just can't keep your head tucked for a nice long nap...
