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Summer and fall seem to have gotten away from me; winter is coming now and I will hopefully be back to posting on the blog.
Summer got very busy, and the blog had to take a back seat. I plan on getting back to posting regularly within a month, but we will see how that plays out. I have plenty of content to write about; I just need to take pictures for most of it and sit down and write it out.
Building The Chicken Coop
First, we needed to build a coop and fence for our flock of birds that could not seem to keep themselves out of the road. We spent three months of the summer clearing a fence line out in the woods, setting up the fence, and building a coop, from scraps which made it take a little more planning and time.
I don’t have any in-progress pictures, but we started with four cut-off tree stumps for the corners of the coop. Some of the rafters are made out of logs as well and some extra boards that we had lying around. We had to buy a few boards for the roof joists so that they would be one piece, but other than that our only expense was time and screws.
The walls are made out of pallet boards, some whole pallets screwed up with other boards covering the slats. And others are just pallets that we took apart. It might not be pretty, but the pallets were free and it works.
The roof is plywood, taken off of pallets, and covered with plastic roofing that we also picked up for free. The back and front walls have a piece of roof at the top to let in extra light and the front wall is just pallets without the slats covered for more airflow.
Building The Fence
For the fence, we cleared a fence line around about 2 acres in our woods out back and put up electric netting. We went with electric netting because just plain electric fencing was not keeping the geese in or the predators out.
We also went with the electric netting because we want the fence to be able to be used for more than just our birds without building a new fence. The fence we put up will work for all poultry, goats, and pigs which are the only things we have plans for soonish (the next 5 or so years).
Does This Fence Keep Preditors Out?
Before putting up this fence we had a large problem with foxes and coons getting to our birds. However, since putting up the fence we have not lost any birds to them.
I have seen the foxes and the coons since putting up the fence, but none have made it into the pen.
What Else Have We Done?
Having two toddlers and a large garden kept me pretty busy as it was, but we also (mostly my husband) re-did the driveways and ran water and electricity underground to the birds outback.
We wrapped those projects up about a month ago, but about the time I was feeling like things had slowed down enough to get back to blogging, we found out we were expecting our third child. This kept me from blogging because I got so sick that I literally couldn’t do anything. Now I am starting to feel better and it is cold and snowy outside so I plan to get back to blogging.
So that’s about it, just a short something to say I’m still alive and I plan to be back with some new posts and recipes soon!
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