So much to do, so little time

We have been busy, busy, busy! Over the weekend we had some really good friends come out and help us get our chicken coop started. In one day they got from this:

to this:

It was really cool to watch the progress. I can’t wait until it’s done and we can stick the chickens out there. We are shingling it with extra shingles from when our roof was done, and I’ll paint it inside and out with mistinted paint.

The chickens are doing well. Here they are all lined up when they saw me coming. They were ranged all over the brooder and just came to see what I was up to when I walked up.

Yes, there are eight now. We actually lost one early on, so of course I had to replace her with two more. And then we got another two from a different breeder. And later this week I still have more day-old babies to go get… Kris says his one consolation is that our coop maxes out around twenty, so he knows I have a limit. The nice people on the Backyard Chickens forums call it “chicken math”. They warn anyone new to chickens to build their coops twice as big as they think they’ll need, and joke most people will have the coop full before it’s done anyway. (Which is pretty much holding true for us, ha!) They are absolutely fascinating. I really can’t get over how neat they are to watch, and how fun. And some of them are so sweet too.

We were out in the garden all afternoon today. We brought the chickens out and let them go to town in the little fenced-in garden area near the house. We got lots of stuff planted. Hopefully we don’t get another frost. (Technically I don’t think we are considered frost free here until mid-April.)

There is still so much to do. I have planted our fruit trees (besides one mulberry that will end up near the chicken run), but still have some berries to plant. I planted the peas and lettuces in the raised beds that are already here, but I’d really like to get at least one raised bed dug this year on the other side of the house. I have a ton of potatoes (more than I remember ordering!) on the windowsill right now and need to think of where to plant them. I want to just use two long trunks from the trees that we had felled and plant the potatoes between them. Kris thinks it will look messy and they’ll be in the way. I think no matter what I decide to do with them, they’ll take up a lot of space. There are a lot of potatoes! Maybe next year they will last longer than barely into October.

We also need to finish the chicken coop and make them a run plus figure out some sort of pasture system for them, since we don’t want to let them completely free range. (Stories of poo on decks and cars, plus there is a road fairly nearby.) I’m thinking portable electric fencing, but we may just make three different pastures right near the coop and rotate them between those. We also need to finish clearing all the wood from the trees we had felled. Most of the downstairs is finally painted, though the room the chickens are in still needs to be done and most of upstairs still needs to be done.

We won’t be bored any time soon, that’s for sure.

As a side note, PhD in Parenting and HoboMama are both great blogs that I have subscribed to through my Google Reader (though I don’t know if I have them up on my blog list, I haven’t updated that in ages). They write about breastfeeding, natural parenting, etc, and are both pretty well known. Imagine my surprise when I got a pingback notice that Fiona’s birth video was linked to from PhD in Parenting, on a guest post by Lauren! I’m honoured that she likes the video so much that she wants to share it with others.

Related posts:

1. Change
2. Unveiling
3. Starting small
4. Crunchy Orange Curried Chicken with Potatoes
5. Garden 2009