Boy, were we ever excited when the Mast builders called to say our chicken coop was ready to be delivered. They are a Mennonite family that has been building small sheds, garages, and storage buildings for many years in our area. One of the very talented brothers, Micah, lives in the beautiful old house next to where their shop is located. When Joel and I went there to ask them about building a chicken coop for us, Micah took us out back and walked us thru his rather large chicken operation.
It turns out that Micah loves chickens. And he has a lot of them. Seriously. Soft, fluffy reddish Buff Orpingtons, spry black and white mottled Barred Rocks, and the self assured Leghorns, and many more that I couldn't name. He breeds them and incubates up to 300 eggs at a time and then sells the chicks once they hatch. We had our choice of chickens to choose from as he is going to incubate some eggs for us.
Micah had recently built himself a coop of his own design that he felt would take care of the needs of a brood of chickens. As he showed us his coop and explained each space we knew we had hit the jackpot. Instead of us buying a shed and having to renovate it to suit the needs of our soon-to-be-acquired chicks, we easily made the decision to have Micah build us a replica of his.
So last week, Micah himself drove up to the farm with this loaded on his truck.
And he followed Joel in the Polaris up to the spot we choose for the chickens...
Around the big garden....
And up near the tree line. Before I knew it Micah had already unloaded the coop onto the ground.
We had the coop painted to match Joel's shed with the same black shutters(yes, I still need to finish painting all the shutters on the house and pavilion) and white trim. It also has a green metal roof to match our other buildings. The double doors will allow us easy access to get inside to clean the coop and perform other chores.
The nest boxes are easy to access without going inside the coop by simply lifting the lid on the left to expose the eggs inside the nests. And we can control the air movement inside with the windows which have heavy duty wire over the screens to prevent predators from entering.
The nest boxes are on the left and the sliding door will have a rope pulley attached to it so we can stand outside the coop and just pull the rope to let the "girls" out. We choose to have a dirt floor to enable us to clean out the coop every few months from the layer of bedding we put down. Then that bedding will get turned into compost and used in the garden. Ahhh, the circle of life on the farm....
Joel and I still have to attach wire mesh to the outside of the coop all around and bring it out 18" and cover with soil so no predators can dig their way into the coop. Who would have thought you had to go to such efforts for chickens? It's going to be an adventure.
The "back" side has another wire covered vent up near the roof line for more ventilation and you can see the little white door that will soon have the pulley attached. We hope to free range our chickens unless too many predators make that impossible. giggle.....I know, I know, we've been reading books about varying methods of keeping chickens and I'm sure we're going to lose a few. But this is the learning part of our foray into small scale farming.
It's kinda hard to see but there are 3 roosts for the girls to hang out on, if they so choose. Micah even made them removable so they could be hosed off when cleaning out the coop. As far as I can tell, he thought of most everything our little coop will need to keep our flock safe and healthy.
I think the chickens have one of the prettiest places to "roost" on the whole farm. They are under the shade of the huge oak trees and their coop overlooks the valley below. Lucky girls! Now we just have to fence in the garden. Sigh. One thing leads to another here.
We got one more delivery last week.....a ride-on mower for me! As the saying goes around here, we're "bleeding orange". (Referring to the U. of Tennessee football colors) It just so happens to be the color of Kabota tractor, too. We even got baseball caps that say "bleed orange" emblazoned across the front of them from the tractor dealer.
Now I can help Joel cut down on his mowing time. We both mowed yesterday, Joel was on his big tractor and I was on my mower, and it still took us 4 hours together! That's a lot of grass. Between working in the gardens and mowing, I haven't been this tan since I first moved to Florida with the kids when I was in my mid-20's!
Well, that is what's new for this week. Thanks for checking in on us.
Till next time,
Debbie
