Monday, September 29, 2008

The chicken's fortress and other ramblings...




Ahh..I love Monday nights. Why? Listen.......................................do you hear that? no? that's because its Tae Kwon Do night! My husband and children have just scurried off and I will have 2+ hours of blissful, wondrous, dare I say ...orgasmic :-P ok..maybe not quite that good..maybe eargasmic is a better term :-P, alone time. Being and only child it's been particularly difficult to adjust to the noise level that 4 kids create, so any time that I can have to let my ears rest and my mind wander in quiet is time I covet.
Really I should be downloading stuff for this weeks schooling..I'll get to that, eventually. :-P
Today was a busy day. Mike's first full day off at home in a couple of weeks. We managed to get the new chicken coop framed...there it sits..waiting on sides and a roof..but wow is it BIG! It's 8 feet high in the front...6 ft in the back and the foot print of the building is 8x8'. I've been referring to it as the "chicken fortress". Of course it's on skids so we can move it with the tractor...at least that's what we say..really it's on skids so the town can't tax us for it. Shhh..don't tell :-P.
Here are some pics of the soon-to-be chicken fortress:

putting up the sides


after everything is up




The chicken fortress is arriving just in time, our chickens have gotten it in their heads that then need to wander farther and farther into the woods in search of bugs, unfortunately the farther they wander the closer they get to our neighbors lawn. I've been trying to get them to forage on the wooded hill between my garden and my driveway, and they were doing a good job of it until my other neighbor's cat decided she needed to hunt chicken. I've never seen Fes fly so high or so far as I did that day...it was almost as if he had spring boarded off the bank. Crazy Polish Chicken.

We had the opportunity to see a few more polish top hatters this weekend at a bird swap over in Johnson. There were so many different kinds of chicken, geese, turkey and duck..even pigeons! Tryphon was in bird-heaven. He loves his chickens.
We picked up a couple of new additions at the bird show, and as soon as they come out of the duck, uh..I mean dog-loo I'll introduce them properly..until then...this is the best I could do...You can kind of see Inga, Odin wants nothing to do with the camera, or us...I'm hoping they get more friendly as time goes on. They're both really beautiful Swedish Blue ducks. Hopefully they'll decide they like it here and mesh with the rest of barnyard.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A duck-loo...cute! I love ducks; I've wanting some for years, but we need a good source of water for them that doesn't involve us chipping ice in the winter.

Polish chickens are so cute with their head feathers. A friend who owns a few was telling me that they're the dumbest chickens she's ever had though. ;>

That is quite a chicken fortress! What are you going to use for siding? Can't wait to see more photos of your progress.

Kimberly said...

I love Polish chickens! Please keep them safe, I don't want to hear any "nugget" stories! LOL

When I was a kid we would get about 40 baby chicks at Easter. By Halloween, they were all in our freezer!
We had a whole variety of them. Every shape, size and color.

I missed the Easter chicks so much, that A few years ago, I surprised our kids with a half dozen chicks for Easter. My hubby freaked! We live within city limits and couldn't keep them, but we did get a few weeks of cuteness before the feather started to come in. Then I took them back to the feed store.

Holly said...

The Polish Chicken does look a little nuts...
Nice job Mike! Looks good!
And Stace, hope you enjoyed your quiet time!

Gayle said...

I love your Polish chicken. I used to have some of those...I am looking forward to ordering a bunch of chicks this spring. I have a couple more ducks I am supposed to pick up from a friend, but haven't. They have to spend so long locked in the barn at times it doesn't seem worth it. Plus,since the hose freezes I now have to pack water from the house for all the animals and it just doesn't seem worth all the work. (Can you tell I'm a bit blue today?). That is some chicken fortress. I'm not letting my hens see it...they would pack their bags! (I LOVE when you have photos. Can't wait to see more!).

Firefly Mom said...

As an only child myself, I can totally relate to your need for quiet!

I love that Polish chicken - it's so cute! And that is one heck of a chicken fortress! Though it seems like it's going to be more of a chicken high rise (and of course the theme song to "The Jefferson's" is playing in my head as I type ;)