Harvest Monday

October 12, 2015

First, some pics from last week. Here is the damage to the coop. I will not show you the damage to our flock (you’re welcome). Raccoons ripped the door clean off!

On a lighter note, we had a more varied harvest this week. We had our normal tomatoes, raspberries, and green beans. We also harvested some carrots, celery, our first peas, and cucumbers this week! This week, we boarded up the coop to keep the raccoons out. Since the chickens did not have a chicken door to go in and out of the run, we opened the big door and let them free range a couple of days. They ate into a watermelon a bit so we went ahead and harvested it. Thankfully, it was very sweet 🙂 It’s nice to get a late watermelon (we aren’t as excited in September when we are eating them every day)!My husband put up a new wall on the side of the coop and an overhang. For some reason, that side of the coop alone has been rotting over the past three years. Raccoons had already ripped a hole into another part of it previously but were (thankfully) unsuccessful at gaining access.

I put the shingles on the overhang this past week (quite the feat for this 24week pregnant old lady!) and painted the first coat of paint. I am going to paint the second coat on the wall this upcoming week.

I also need to re-cover my brassicas (uncovered because of high winds of Joaquin), plant some more greens and root veggies, harvest, and spread compost this week. I am having the hardest time getting everything done now that we’re doing school again. The kids concentrate better in the morning so that is when we do school but most of my energy is gone by 1pm, when we’re done with school, so gardening as gone by the wayside. 😦

Check out what other gardeners are harvesting at Our Happy Acres 🙂

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Chicken Coop Update

March 21, 2013

Coop building seems to be never-ending but here, at least, is an update.

Day 1: Get Materials (ReStore for Habitat for Humanity)

Build Floor and One Wall

Day 2: Build The rest of the walls, level, and put up plywood

Day 3: Roof (the coop plans we got off the internet came sans roof so this was completely flying by the seat of our pants!)

Crazy windy! and we ran out of tar paper…on to…

Day 4: Finish the roof (with shingles left over from our house and my MIL’s house) & put wire on vents (between roof and walls) to keep critters out.

Day 5: Door (aka: Bane of my Existence)

Day 6: Locks (pictured above), Chicken doors, and a Roost

We still need to put handles and locks on the chicken doors. The chicks were getting WAY too big for their box though so we nailed the doors shut for now and the chicks are in the coop!

More pics to come later, i promise! They are growing by leaps and bounds!

I was really nervous the first night and day but they are doing really well and I am enjoying my clean kitchen without all of the fluff in our food 😛

In the next update, I’ll show pics of the area that was cleared that will be their run, more chick pics, the tractor that we are in the middle of building, and any other updates. Like I said, NEVER ENDING.

For anyone new to the chicken gig (as I am), the reason for the vinyl and table under the roost is for easy clean up. It is easier to wipe vinyl clean and it does not rot, as wood would.

Our chickens (once no longer under a heat lamp) will be outside all day. When they are little, they will be in the tractor, prepping the garden for planting, and when they are larger and laying, they will be either in the tractor or in the spacious run. The only time they will be in the coop will be at night, when they will likely be roosting most of the time.

Therefore, most of the poop will be concentrated on the table under the roost. Whenever necessary, I will take a hoe & scrape the table clean (to use as compost tea in the garden) but the rest of the coop floor (covered in hay) will not get very much poop on it so it will not need to be cleaned but once or twice a year. Talk about a time saver!

I am linking to Simple Lives Thursday, as moving the chicks to the coop makes my life easier 😉 And even though having chickens, especially building a coop when we have never build anything EVER, does not make life simple for the moment, it will make our lives more sustainable in the future!