Week 5: It's not a coop, baby. It's a house.

The girls, Josephines, are beginning to look like
awkward adolescents.  The one looking at the camera
has a distinct personality already.  We call her the
curious one.  That's what killed the cat, you know. 

As you can see, the siding is on the chicken house.
We laid prairie hay around the perimeter to soak
up the mud.  We have had some good rain.

This week we moved the chickens to the garage.  We did, after all, need a bigger box.  They now live in a washing machine box, and as they produce more and more fertilizer, our next project will be to figure out where to locate a compost pile. The chicken manual, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, instructs us to let the fertilizer cure for a year before adding it to the vegetable garden.  Our place is beginning to look more and more like a farm. Old Ms. Donald will be my new moniker.

We are recycling the steel-tube fencing from Jim and Cindy's.
We will cover it with more fencing and then chicken wire.
This is the chicken run area and it will have a top made from
chicken wire.  We have electric fencing, too.  Not sure we'll
use it.  We'll see.