3.21.2009

Building my Chicken Coop

I've decided that, since I hurt all the time anyway from arthritis, I may as well ignore it and get something done. And, I have baby chickies to house.



I ordered the plans last night and went to the lumber store midday and started building.

Two phone calls to my Best Friend's Husband, one call to my son's shop teacher, one visit to the neighbor for a jig saw, one (scary) excursion to our own barn for a miter saw later, we got going.

My first cut on the miter saw. Notice that impressive 60 degree angle.

And here we are with the frame and the deck. Getting the deck attached was a pain; good thing I had such good helpers.


If you want to know more about how to build such an elegant chicken ark, just follow this link for a detailed materials list and step-by-step instructions. It's not ark, as in Noah's Ark, but ark as in Ark of the Covenant, with the handles sticking out the front and back.


We did lose one baby chick today. We were not surprised as he/she had been looking poorly since morning, not moving about, or eating or drinking. I had warned the kids that this can happen. They were pretty stoic. I think that holding the funeral when we were all cold and hungry helped hold the maudlin theatrics at bay.

If you are wondering where My Gift From a Generous God is in all of this, he is studying for a big exam and I promised him he wouldn't have to build anything for the chickens.

And Mina asked about breeds: 3 Rhode Island Reds, and 4 Polish Crested (2 blond and 2 black and blond).
~Suzanne


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Here I chatter about books, parenting, election 2008, recipes, teaching college writing, and the adventures of getting settled in with our two freshly (Fall 06) adopted school-age children from Russia. This blog is chapter two; chapter one is posted at Jamie & Suzanne go to Russia. I live in the City of Subdued Excitement, Cascadia, Land of the Free.

I am the wife of a man I call My Gift from a Generous God. I am mama to two lovely children, Dandy and Chickadee that became ours in September 2006 in a court-room in Siberia. I am the daughter of two people whom I love and admire. One of them, my dad, is a new (Dec 06) paraplegic.

In my previous life (B.C. - before children), I was a college English teacher, specializing in composition and ESL composition.

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This blog started life as hackosphere's neo and has been heavily tweaked and widgetized by Suzanne :: I got all the coding for the peek-a-boo posts over at hackosphere :: All my pretty little icons came from famfamfam :: The coding for the rotating banners came from Vince Liu :: The very cool tabbed sidebar widgets are thanks to the very cool hoctro :: The fun "Feeling Lucky?" toy -- which is currently disabled -- came from phydeaux3 (fido 3?) :: The pretty label cloud also came from phydeaux3 :: The elegant and easy to install related posts widget came from Jackbook :: I got all the social bookmarking icons nicely packaged for me at the aptly named Social Bookmarking Script Generator :: The 3 column footer came from Technodia :: The pretty sliding photo galleries are from CSSplay :: The recent comments widget is from Hackosphere::

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