Here's the Coop

With all the POULTRY happening around Maggie's Farm this year, the old coop is looking pretty puny.

It's fine right now, adequate anyway, as our original flock is out "free ranging" all day, and the new chicks are isolated in the barn and sheep pasture. But come winter and 30 some mature birds, the old coop will not cut it.

And, I don't know if it's true of all chickens, but ours don't do snow. More than a dusting, and they'll just stand in the open doorway of the coop and pace and look... and look and pace and look some more for good measure. The brave girls who do venture out inevitably become stranded in snowbanks. They'll just stand there slowly lifting one cold little foot and then the other-- all day if you let them-- unable to lurck back to the shelter of the coop on their own. Oh, we rescued more than a few stranded chickens that first winter! Then we took to locking them up.

So the expanded flock will get some expanded digs. If we get really fancy, we might make a sheltered chicken wire run for them.

Lucky for me, Dan likes building. He enjoys the puzzle of it, I suspect, the coop growing almost organically from his mulling and pacing and staring at the empty spot on which it will appear. The kids have been interested in the process this time around. And I'm glad to see it. I was afraid the girls might catch my tool-o-phobia. Yup, I'm pretty... well, VERY... clueless when it comes to building and I didn't want them to think this was some sort of feminine trait. "Yes honey, women CAN build stuff... Women DO build stuff.... well, no, not this woman.... (I know, I have to get over this. And one of these days, maybe I will.)

Anyway, here's the crew helping out.

I'll post a finished photo of the new and improved coop this weekend (With luck and good weather, of course!)