Thursday, April 30, 2009

Chicken Coopywood


We have been working very diligently on our coop as well as our garden. You can see in this blown up version of the “to date” progress picture that the pen is beginning to take form. My (over)engineer is going to make sure that this puppy is strong and stays in place. Which is of course, how we really want things. The deck of the coop itself will be removed and replaced. The chicken door is going to be where the window on the left side is currently and there will be a chicken “platform” with a ladder that goes down into the pen. I am very excited about all of this. The chickens happily peck away at their litter currently but are confined to the coop only. Soon they will be able to forage for bugs and plants at their leisure all day long. The pen will be a covered pen because (quite unfortunately) we have a hawk that lives in our woods and frequently circles over our house. We do have tree cover but its too scary to consider having to deal with multiple chicken deaths due to hawk hunger ;)




Monday, April 27, 2009

News on the homefront

Not much has happened on the shmoopywood front, in fact, we haven't gotten up there yet. We have recently suffered a loss in our family (my dad) and so it has been hard getting everything done we need to and dealing with that.

We have been working on our home stuff though! This year Harry and I have decided we wanted to grow alot of vegetables and see how we fair. Add to that, we have been trying to get the Coopywood stuff done so we can move on. We have been busy.

I apologize for the lack of SWood information and updates (and to be honest I feel guilty about not being able to get up there) but to make it up to you, please have a look at our newly updated backyard.

The last few weeks the back yard has been a disaster with us prparing to do all this work. Just piling stuff up. Dave and I have been working really hard, so hard that neither of us can move at night, but we are both really proud of what we have accomplished. We still have to finish the coop (nest boxes, pop door, and roosts) and the pen has not been completed. But we are about 95% done with the garden and have only to install our "dane proofing" fence. In our garden we have growing: tomatoes, carrots, radishes, green beans, cukes, squash, broccoli, lettuce, cherries, corn, potatoes, eggplant, strawberries, cantelope, onions and chives.



YOu can see (click for larger) we have 4 small raised beds and 2 large ones, we also have 3 tire planters for the tomatoes. We already have eggplant growing in the center there. You can also see the little house in the background. That little house is actually our chicken coop. THere is a pile of wood out there too because it is going to become the chicken pen.





In this view you can see another small bed on the bottom left corner is where our baby cucumbers are living. Hopefully they will grow up big and strong!










Dave also installed a hose on a post for me to water more easily :)











And this last picutre is the home of our future pen. This picture was taken yesterday but today we have installed and cemented 4 of the 6 posts that form the pen.
So... Thats what we have been up to. How are you?