We Broke Ground!

 

Here's a lovely aerial photo of me with my trusty ground-breaker, Ford Mattock Ford, in the middle of doing the last of the post holes for the chicken coop. The coop will be 6x12 on a south-facing slope, with the north end close to the house. It should be well-sheltered and have great drainage. To the far left of the picture, you can see the fallen logs we used as brakes to level the ground a little. The many cubic yards of dirt we managed to dig out of the postholes, as well as bales of stuff raked out of the yard, are forming the basis for leveling the hill a little. Those lucky chickens will have a lovely view of the creek.

 

 

The view from the ground. The yard in the foreground will be fenced off for the chickens' use. The yard in the background will also be fenced off, and there will be two chicken doors, the plan being to let them "tenderize" the ground by scratching and depositing their own special brand of compost, and then scattering grass seed and letting nature take its course while they do the same for the back pasture.

 

The last look at what will be our future chicken house. The floor is going to be made up of "droppings boards" - wooden frames with 1x2s set 1" apart on the top and wire screening on the bottom. Droppings boards are easier on the chickens feet, they keep their waste from building up on the floor where the chickens can scratch in it, and they encourage ventilation so that the chickens are less prone to respiratory infections. We're planning on 6 of them, 3'x4' each.

The footings have been sunken into concrete, so the bottom of the coop is stable. We think that digging ten postholes by hand, and then mixing the concrete by hand and filling them is probably going to be the most physically laborious part of the venture. The next step - putting in the floor joists and framing the walls!