While Patrick headed back East once more to say his final good-byes to Mimi, I stayed home with the girls and took on the task of building a long over-due chicken coop. Needless to say, our little baby chics were not young chickens anymore and their two cardboard box condo I had pieced together in the house was getting too small and …. stinky.

so, having never really built any type of structure before, I got out all Patrick’s power tools dug through the gigantic pile of scrap wood in our yard, sat down at the table, drew up some plans after extensive research on the web…. and I dove in. Needless to say, I had to call my mom the first day for assistance on getting the initial framing boards up. But, after that I was good to go. Now I know nothing about framing, so a 2×4 every 6 inches or so sounded reasonable to me. By the way this thing now weighs a ton.

Now the dimensions on this puppy are 8ft long by 4ft deep by 3ft high. it is lined on the bottom with chicken wire to keep out burrowing animals. I was out in gail force winds and heat for 4 days tackling this dang thing. Through sore muscles, drilled fingers, swollen joints and salty dusty tears, I finished the sucker. And let me tell you what, those chickens are psyched!

It has two nesting boxes inside, branches for roosting, a framed screened window. One side flips up to clean it out, the other side, the roof flips up to get eggs out. Needles to say, Luna the cat thought this was her vacation get away for awhile. Now there is a 10ft by 4ft framed and chicken wire run off the side where Luna is coming out so the chickens can come outside in the sun without fear of being eaten (before their time, that is) I’m pretty proud of myself, actually.