It's finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, unbelievably (and more importantly before the 12 month aniversary) we've finished the new coop and chickn run!

Here's the new "Palais et jardin d'oeufs"  :)

Le Palais: New entrance, and the new perches and nest boxes...but same old chickens!

 

 

Le Jardin:

 

 

All those tyres will have sunflowers and other pretty delights come summer. We will also be gradually working on making covered beds in the actual run to grow thigs for the chooks to nibble on.

I can't tell you how good it feels to wake up on a weekend morning with a new world of possibilties now that coop building isn't on the agenda :)

If it's the weekend...

...it must have been time to work in the garden again! We did a bit more roofing work on the chicken coop as well- it's about 60% complete now.

I also relocated 3 rhubarb plants from the raised bed vege patch to the front garden. They really didn't need to be in those beds, and they were taking up valuable space that could better be used for other things. In the new 'rhubarb patch' they will have plenty of room to grow, and will look decorative as well. I picked just under a kilo of rhubarb from the plants before moving them.

We also planted out our new strawberry plants (10 Milewa and 10 Lowanna organic runners from the lovely folk at Cornucopia Seeds - I can higly recommend them for great service and fab range). The Milewa plants went into a long section of excess large drainpipe we were given by a neighbour. He had even pre-drilled drainage holes and cut the top out!

We've put this outside the greenhouse, set on some bricks that are resting in trays of water. Why? To try and stop the dreaded millipedes - scourge of every in-ground strawberry crop we have tried to grow. The 10 Lowanna plants I've put in pots in the greenhouse - again a millipede management strategy. I am DETERMINED to be enjoying home grown strawberries this summer!

And finally Jerry has been installing some solar powered LED lights that we bought (1/2 price!) in various useful places around the property - by the front door for those times we forget to leave a light on and can't see to put the key in the door, by the gate, and one on a tree on the path up to the house.

So this evening I just have to cook the rhubarb, bake the sourdough bread, make lasagne (sauce simmering on the stove as we speak), do some ironing...and then put my feet up!!!!!!

(Almost) gone in 5 seconds

Remember Jerry's fab new chicken coop? It looked like this...

And now thanks to a very large tree limb it looks like this

There are only 3 good things to be said really:

• Jerry wasn't working in there at the time (but had been 2 hours earlier)
• All but one of the timber poles of the coop don't need to be replaced
• It didn't take out the existing coop and fox-proof area
  

It did however KO the fence that we'd just had repaired after another limb incident, and much of the support wire that we did on the weekend, and most of the tin roof pieces and part of the back will have to be replaced...

SIGH.

And as the fence is no longer rabbit proof I hope no bunnies find their way into the vege patch before we can get a friend to chainsaw the tree tomorrow so it can be moved.

New coop - the work continues

Now that Jerry is fully recovered, it was time to get back to work on the chicken coop. Friends lent us a powered post hole digger to speed up the process of digging the holes for the support poles.

Unfortunately either the soil was too clay-hard, or we didn't have the technique quire right, as we ended up resorting to the manual auger for most holes ...

On Sunday, it was time to start stringing the wire that will hold the chicken and aviary wire.

The chickens will have some of the best views!

Building a new chook shed Part 1

We (well, Jerry mostly) are building a new main chicken coop, with more undercover space for feeding and dustbathing when the weather isn't so good.





Last weekend we 'rescued' 2 sides and half a roof of a shed from the tip, and the rest of the corrugated iron and colourbond was also 'rescued'. It won't be the prettiest, but it ticks the recycling box, and the only things we've had to buy are the pine support posts. Even the hardwood cross beams were 'rescued"!