Open Door Policies

Sunday afternoon, Daniel and the Hubs helped put the chicken wire around the chicken yard. Dad bought 6' tall chicken wire. 

The chickens won't be out all day yet. We have a lot of farm cats and they like to sit outside the chickens' door and watch them. We may be installing more fence across the top of the chicken yard so the chickens can't fly out and the cats can't jump in. For now, they get to run around in the yard for a couple hours every evening.

Freddy weeding; he doesn't like morning glories

Freddy is about to stay outside all day. He doesn't know this yet. He'll be 11 weeks tomorrow and for some reason I think 12 weeks is the magic number. There's a little bit of fence fixing that needs to be done at Grandma's house so that he doesn't crawl out under the chain link.
I don't want him to be chained to a tree all day. Eventually, I'd like to get to the point where he can run free on the farm, without chasing tractors and trucks going by on the road, and without digging up the garden.

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The chicken house, that is, not me!

This weekend, Dad and I tackled the chicken house. He bought new plywood and shingles yesterday morning, and then we tore off the old roof. Then we put the new plywood on.

Before yesterday, the chicken house was looking a little worn down. The roof had several bad parts, and some of the shingles and plywood were held in place with pipe flanges.

A couple weekends ago, Dad and I shoveled the inside out. I think we had three loads of dirt/composted chicken manure that went to the garden.

  

After we tore off the old roof, we blew the inside of the chicken house off with compressed air. Dad has this attachment nozzle that he made out of copper pipe, that he uses to clean out the gutters. It worked really well for airing out the chicken house! So glad we waited until the roof was off to do this!

At one point, Dad went to the shed to get some brooms for us to brush off the walls with  and I grabbbed the air nozzle and started working. He said something to the effect of "That's not very lady-like" to Mom, and she responded "No, but that's Anna-like". It's impossible for me to be offended by this comment, because my whole life I've been rather tom-boyish. It just made me chuckle!

By the end of the day, we had new plywood in place. It was a little windy yesterday to tackle the tarpaper, and the shingles were a little cold. 

 Ended the day with a rather beautiful sunset on the farm.

Today, Mom and I are picking out which chicks to order with Grandma Ettling!

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