Man, this chicken thing is taking off. Julie and I spent our weekend working on a coop from scrap material -- the polite term is "repurposed." She was out at Home Depot on Saturday to pick up nails 'n stuff, when the phone rang. It was our pal Richard (a CC blog reader, btw) calling to see what we were up to.
"Building a chicken coop," I said.
"You're kidding!" he said. "I was calling to say that Jacqueline and I had decided to get chicken too, and I wanted to talk to y'all about a coop."
So they ended up over here with their chirren, and we worked on the coop together. It's a cobbled-together thing, and there's probably not a straight line in the little chicken house. But it's strong, and it will be a nice little place for Dorothy, Cleo and Pat Buckley once we finish it and the run. We also got a Flip Mino camera in the mail this weekend, which is a pretty great little gadget, I have to say. The video quality is much better on our computer than what you see on YouTube, but still, have a look. Julie was going to video me by the coop, but seconds after she started recording, the chickens ran back into the run she built, and she couldn't drop it for fear of squishing one. So you get only a side glance at the coop in our backyard. It's not going to win the Pritzker Prize, that's for sure, but like I said, it's not going to fall down, either.
We came inside after dark and ate pizza and drank wine and talked about Wendell Berry and stuff. Good times, good times. Richard and Jacqueline, who live in the city of Dallas, are also getting a pig. Given what all us urban crunchy cons are turning into, I hope they name him Arnold Ziffle
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Are you planning on eating these chickens or just having them for eggs?
Your children will get distressed if you decide to kill them in the back yard. Just wondering.
Well, we only have hens, not roosters, which are illegal in Dallas. Right now they're only about a month old, so they stay inside at night in a Rubbermaid vat, and in the daytime (except in the extreme heat) they're outside in a covered run Julie built. When we get the coop finished, they'll be in the far end of our yard, living in the coop and in the other run we'll attach to it. We'll put them in the mobile run during the day when Julie wants to have them scratch and fertilize a certain part of the backyard.
We're not planning to eat them. We got them for the eggs.
I hope in the next video, I can show you the actual coop. I intended to do it this time, but what you can't see is Julie was holding up the run as well as the camera. The chicks ran back towards the run, and Julie couldn't let it down without risking squishing one of them.
Wow! What a fun and exciting weekend project.
I wish we could have chickens here. Or goats. Especially goats. It's way too hot for my husband to have to keep mowing the approximately seventeen blades of various weeds (it's not grass, believe me) that keep popping up despite the heat, getting us nasty letters from the homeowner's association.
Good start Rod! If you want further inspiration see what a family is doing on a postage size yard in Pasedena CA at pathtofreedom.com.
great job! I'm sure that you will be able to make that thing into a fort knox! Just use a lot of nails!!! Make sure you do a David Elsewhere victory dance. (check out the www.motorola.com/e8 videos to get an idea)
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.