• Meet the Chickens!

    Last weekend we drove up to The Urban Chicken for their Annual CHICK DAYS Celebration and FLOCK SWAP. I had never heard of this before, but just happened to check their Facebook page an hour before the event was supposed to start. Initially we thought we might wait until the kids were on Spring Break as the coop and run weren’t complete, but word slipped out we might get chickens that day, and the kids were so ecstatic, there was…

  • Treehouse Chicken Coop

    For the past several mornings, I’ve woken up with what I refer to as “fire fingers”. My fingers tingle, and the numbness goes up to my shoulder. I’m covered in scrapes, and my hands feel like sandpaper. My husband now has the neighbors thinking he’s a professional carpenter. We haven’t been to the gym in months — we haven’t done anything social. We haven’t signed up for spring soccer. We skipped THE BIG chess tournament. We have worked our patooties…

  • Chicken Coop Progress Pics

    For now, I am just posting a quick update. In the middle of the week, I decided to start building the coop on my own. I spent a couple hours doing sketches (trying to be responsible), but the plans kept changing as I was trying to work with materials already on hand. I ended up having to buy a new sheet of plywood and several 2x4s. The walls are now mostly framed out. Joe and I rotated the coop and…

  • Resolutions for 2017 – Homegrown Hospitatlity

    When I was in Romania during the summer of 2002, we spent a week out in the country side of Șăulia, where I was so impressed that the homes grew fruit trees along the road side as a means of showing hospitality to travelers. Over the last few years of gardening, I’ve had a growing desire to make the garden more hospitable. I’ve moved a rosemary bush down to the curb, and grow a patch of sunflowers this summer to…

  • Bok Bok

    We visited family in Virginia over the weekend. My brother has a coop with six chickens. He and my sister-in-law hatched two of them and purchased four others. They are giving some away to friends. The weekend the first two hatched, our family, which is spread across several states, all eagerly awaited pictures and videos on Facebook with as much excitement as if we were getting some new nieces. The Man-child enjoyed tossing seed into the coop and watching my…