They are finally outside

The chickens are happy to be outside, eating insects and worms and enjoying the feel of dirt beneath their feet. And of course we are just as happy to have them outside in their own little home. Our big plans to build a coop went a little sour when we started actually reading the plans and words like gusset , gable, and J-channel edges stood out and we realized we had no idea what we were doing.

I turned to Craigslist to see if anyone was selling chicken coops and within a couple of days I found just what I was looking for. This coop is almost identical to the one we were wanting to build for ourselves. It was brand new and not a whole lot more than what we would have probably spent on materials.

The inside of the chicken's nesting box is where they sleep at night or go when they want to get out of the wind. We have a heat lamp in there now because the nights have been pretty cold still. The two "nests" are separated by a thin piece of wood and when they start laying eggs, we'll be able to open a little hinged door on the side and just reach in instead of going all the way into the coop. See? I even left some chicken poop out for you to see how happy and at home they feel here.


Ian has been become a pro at picking them up and putting them in their coop when they need to go back inside.

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On Monday and Tuesday we had our back deck completely torn down and rebuilt. It turned out exactly as we had hoped! Here's the before picture:

And here's the after:

We had them close off the bottom and put a gate underneath so we could store a few things. And then we put in a little fence and gate off to the side so we could keep the backyard more private and let Ian go out to play more on his own without worrying about him as much. Those are my raspberry bushes next to the deck and strawberries in the round wooden barrell. My garden boxes are on the other side of the gate which will work out nicely to keep them separated.

The guy we had do the work decided to build the posts inside the deck floor as opposed to attaching them to the outside and we love how it looks! Now all we need to do is stain it and it'll be ready to enjoy this summer.

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