The Coop Scoop

For the second weekend in a row, we had visitors!  This time, my Aunt Amy and cousin Abby paid us a visit.  They brought a cooler of delicious food, bags of fresh fruits, four different dried bean mixes, and two Mexican puppies (not for eating).  It just so happened they picked the warmest weekend to come out – 68 degrees the first day and 78 degrees the following day!  13 games of joker, long, wet walks through shelterbelts, and hammocking were some of the merriments we took part in. We were even fortunate enough to see one of the resident bald eagles flying above the Lamb land.  As Amy and Abby were getting ready to leave on Sunday, my sister Jenny and her friend Elizabeth arrived with our other family dog, Mocha.  To celebrate the summery winter day, the four of us traveled 10 miles West to Fordham Dam.  The last time Claire and I visited this area it was 80 degrees colder, and the difference this time around was stunning.  Flocks of geese filled the lake, raccoon and pheasant tracks littered the mud, mourning doves and blue jays sang in the wind, and we even found a beaver skull.  Monday was still in the high sixties but the wind was raging.  Nevertheless, we walked Misty and Mocha and scared up a lone snow goose in a nearby pond. Elizabeth, Claire, and I played a game of three person-six person joker (an absolutely ridiculous experience in which three people attempt to play a six person board game).  To end their last night, the four of us grabbed our stringed instruments and jammed.  We’d like to extend a warm thank you to Amy, Abby, Jenny, and Elizabeth for bringing us food, company, and conversation.             

Connor, Claire, and Abby 

Connor, Jenny, and Elizabeth at Fordham Dam

We’ve begun planting seeds in earnest, trying to give some plants a head start before we transplant them into our currently nonexistent outdoor garden. Trays of soil with buried broccoli, onion, parsley, kale, and bell pepper seeds congregate in our windowsills. We mistakenly carried our raised bed outside this weekend, believing the rays would be good for our little sun deprived seedlings. My goodness we couldn't have been more wrong. Just to kick us in the butt for our slip-up, all but one of our Amish deer tongue seedlings perished, leaving a large bare rectangle in our raised bed ... where we’ve opportunistically planted more arugula!  We're learning, but sometimes it takes a big blunder like that to really sink the lesson in.  

Two weeks ago from today, Claire and I applied for tree planting positions through the Clark County Conservation District. Good news, we both received the position! Starting in mid-April we will begin planting a variety of tree species in restored prairies and shelterbelts throughout the country. The schedule will vary based on weather, but we will work around 10-12 hour days when the weather is dry, using a tractor and a planter. This is seasonal work and only goes until the end of June. It will be interesting trying to balance our own projects with this new job but we are thrilled to be back in the working world, planting trees!

Proud employees!

A couple of weeks ago Connor’s dad announced that he knew a man back in Minnesota who would let us buy laying hens from him. Just what we were looking for! As thrilled as we were, we put the offer on standby, rationalizing that we couldn’t afford hens unless we were given the tree-planting job we’d applied for. Now our four mystery hens arrive on Friday with Connor’s dad, and we had just a few scant days to build a coop for them. After combining two different sets of plans to suite our needs, we configured a “chicken ark”, a movable coop with a roosting and nesting area above a run. Our ark is 6 feet long and 4 ½ feet tall, half covered with plywood and half with hardware cloth. Having never owned hens before, little details like cracks between boards, roosting room, and too-steep ramps gave us anxious pause between tasks. What if they get cold, or wet, or cramped? At the same time, whenever an irreversible mistake was made – a board didn’t line up perfectly or a cut was crooked – we would pause then too, before smiling and saying, “it’s just for chickens, right?” And the thought that never left our minds was that soon we’d have to make some of these same cuts for our own home, which was, in perfect honesty, absolutely terrifying. We’ll finish the coop today and tomorrow with supplies from town. We’re both excited and simply petrified for this addition to our homestead. We’ve done our homework, dissecting our reference book, “A chicken in every yard” from cover to cover, but we both are fully aware there's a difference in being an expert by reading and being an expert by doing. I think our "amateur status" was summed up best as we shopped for laying feed in Watertown today. On the shelves in front of us were three bags of comparable feed, each advertising slightly different advantages from hen health to the golden color of egg yolks. We stood in front of them for ten minutes, stumped out of our minds, trying to decide if any of these differences were even important enough to be agonizing over. We sincerely hope not. 

 

Our half done A-frame coop

Blooper: notice the hair-attacking guitar