TRAPPED! With the Chickens, Part II

What had happened?

Steve's best guess was that the string, which was several inches too long, had wrapped itself UNDER the latch. So, every time he pulled the string to lift the latch, he was pulling it down tighter.

He looked around. The walls were all attached, although he supposed he COULD break through one, given time. The windows were jalousie-style, and much too small for him anyway.

He was over 200 feet away from the house. Debbie wouldn't hear him shouting, although the dogs might...

"What's that, Sadie? You say daddy is stuck in the chicken coop? And he's cold?! And his LEG is BROKEN and he needs a shot of INSULIN!?!"

"Woof! Woof!"

Too much to hope for.

He was planning to put a wireless phone extension in the barn, but that wouldn't help him in the chicken coop. If he had his netbook or his PDA, he could try to email for help--he might be in range of the Wi-Fi, there weren't any OTHER networks around to interfere.

And if he were a hen, he could lay eggs.

He remembered that Debbie hadn't waved as he went out. Had she seen him go? He remembered how tired she looked--what if she went to bed? Worse yet, what if she woke up and couldn't FIND him?

He knew exactly how she would react.

She would quickly become convinced he had suffered a heart attack, and was laying somewhere, dead. Panic would ensue.

He had to get out of this alone, and he had to do it soon.

TRAPPED! With The Chickens

"I'm going out to water the chickens and close the coop for the night," said Steve, walking toward the door with a 3-liter bottle of water and a flashlight in his hands. He waved an "I Love You" at Debbie, still sitting at the table after dinner. She didn't wave back, and Steve thought, "Boy, she looks tired. I hope she goes to bed early tonight--we could both use a long sleep."

He trudged through the yard, past the barn and into the darkness. He flicked on his flashlight, and let himself through the gate into the pen around the coop. The chooks were no fools--when the sun went down, they all trooped into the coop and huddled up for warmth. He stepped into the coop and pulled the door around behind himself.

He turned on the 100W bulb they had put in to help warm the coop at night, and turned off the flashlight. December 30, and there were 4 new eggs in the corner! These girls just wouldn't quit laying! 2 dozen eggs a week, even when the temperatures had been below freezing. He picked them up and put them in a plastic bag from his pocket.

Then Steve checked on the level of feed in the hanging feeder. He had filled it the day before, so there was no worry the birds were hungry, but it paid to keep an eye on the level. A couple times, the birds ate the bin dry and he and Debbie had to scramble to come up with short-term substitutes--bird seed, peanuts, sunflower seeds. Once they popped popcorn, which the chickens seemed to really enjoy.

Finally, he picked up the water bowl and turned to the door to empty it. The door had fully closed, but there was a string leading to the latch. He would just pull it, and...

Pull it and...

Now THAT was a problem. The door wasn't opening.

Steve began to laugh. Overconfidence had bitten him right on the keister, and it was his own fault. He had just locked himself into the chicken coop.

On the Third Day of Christmas...

Hope you all are warm and well!

Here on Honeyhill Farm, the temperature is in the high 20's F, but the wind is around 30 with gusts. Our 1" of snow is DRIFTING, for heaven's sake!

We have had to resort to an old-fashioned way of watering the chickens: we carry it out twice a day. They have an annoying habit of tipping over the bowl.

We ran power from the barn to the coop via extension cords, and we have a 100W bulb we turn on at night. It's not much, but we have had fewer frozen water bowls and the chickens aren't all huddled together in the morning.

We poured several pounds of sugar into each hive on the last day we had above 40F. Sometime around the end of this week, it is supposed to be in the 40's again, and we'll have to top them off. But both hives are still alive!

Debbie received a spinning wheel for Christmas--an Ashford Traveller, second-hand but in wonderful condition, off Craigslist. Do yourself a favor and check out Craigslist.

Debbie got me an Android/Linux PDA, which has been interesting because all the documentation is in Chinese.

Today we are both a bit under the weather--fevers, aches, pains, and other unpleasant symptoms--but it seems to be a short-duration illness.

Stay warm and happy!

More about the Chickens...

Well, the back wall got replaced just in time to move the chickens in for the party. 4 months on, and I STILL need to paint it. I added another gate latch to hold the coop door OPEN, as once the chickens were kept OUT of the coop on a windy day. Here's a suggestion for you: paint your doors ASAP. When it's humid, or rainy, the door swells and sticks. Paint helps keep the moisture out, and that means the door doesn't stick! Now, you may remember that I said we weren't ENTIRELY sure about the sex of the chickens. Well, it turns out we had cause to wonder. We had purchased 2 Buff Orphington chicks, because the Buffs will lay longer into the winter. Well, that's not gonna happen, because BOTH the chicks were roosters. But we aren't suffering from any shortage of eggs. Since they started laying, we've been averaging about 5 eggs a day from 6 hens, or THREE DOZEN A WEEK. We have over 6 dozen eggs in the refrigerator, and we can't eat them fast enough. Maybe we need to eat a hen or two. (Just kidding, Debbie!) Getting water to the coop has been interesting, as well. The spigot in the barn, as far as we can tell, attaches to NOTHING. We've never been able to get a trickle of water out of it. On the other hand, there's a valve in the house that leads OUT through the foundation and disappears, and we can't find the other end. And the spigot on the front of the house seems to have been shut off and the control valve walled in, completely inaccessible. So we drag a hose off a reel near the one head we have in the front, across the yard, to a chain of 3 dry hoses. We pulled these out of the barn, where they were left by one or more of the previous owners, added some Y-valves, and VOILA! 200 feet of farm plumbing. That puts the water within 20 feet of the coop, so we don't have to carry it very far, and puts a spigot near the kitchen garden, near the barn, and near the paddock as well. Of course, we can't run them all at the same time, and I have to turn on and off 6 valves to make the water go. And what am I going to do when it gets cold? We've already had one night in the 20's and the oldest hose already has a small crack that bubbles when the pressure is up... By the way, would you like some eggs?

The Housewarming Party

The BIG reason we needed to move the chickens was to get ready for VISITORS.

My kids were coming from Utah, and we needed the sewing room for my daughter. It was kind of Important that she not be sleeping with the chickens.

And we had a party to put together--after all, after living here for 5 months, it was about TIME for our housewarming.

So on July 24, we had about 50 people over for lunch. Of course, it was the HOTTEST day of the summer--about 108F, or over 42C.

It was kind of like Hell.

But it seems--right--in retrospect. I mean, after we froze for 3 weeks trying to move in, we certainly had a houseWARMING.

The next day, we had a windstorm that seemed just shy of tornadoes. Some places HAD tornadoes.

The rented pavilion was torn down. The steel buffet we moved from the back porch for the party turned into a bunch of twisted scrap. The patio table and umbrella were picked up and tossed into a tree. Glass table top shattered everywhere, but the umbrella was STILL in the bracket.

Good thing it was the day AFTER the party.

A Door for the Coop

It's time for them to GO.

The chickens, that is. They've been living in a dog crate in the sewing room since the beginning of April, and it's time for them to GO!

But first, I have to get the chicken coop ready for them. And that means making a door.

Now, the opening in the coop is 2'x6', as I measure it. So we bought plywood and 2x4s, and a hinge and latch set meant for a gate. Last Sunday, with the sun beating down on my straw hat, I set to work.

We had Home Depot cut the plywood. Two pieces, supposedly identical--one is too wide, the other too narrow. We'll use the narrow one. Drink water.

I cut 2x4 for the sides. Drink. I cut the waste lengths a little shorter for cross beams. Drink. I trim a wedge from another 2x4 and make a matching cut about 4' down to make a triangular brace. Drink. I screw it all together. Drink, drink, drink.

The hinges screw into the cross beams. The handle and latch-post screw on. There is some trouble getting the screws snugged down, but it sure looks like a door to me!



Another cut from the piece of plywood, and the rest of the 2x4s, makes a 4' ramp so the chickens can strut in and out of their palace. Three scrap blocks will be used for mounting the ramp. Drink.

Altogether, I drank 3 quarts of water. It was a HOT day.

Three days later, and the weather has moderated. It's actually quite nice out this evening.

I carried the door down to the chicken coop. Using the wedge I cut 4 paragraphs and 3 days ago, I put the door at the position in the frame I want it, and mark where I will drill the holes.

The last hole runs into a nail. It's toe-nailed, which explains why I thought I had plenty of room. But what are the odds? I mean, let's look at the random variables here:

• Entry point of the nail
  
• Angle of the nail
  
• Position of the cross beam on the door
  
• Position of the hinge on the cross beam
  
• Position of the door on the wedge
  

It's so unlikely, it HAD to happen.

I had to pull the nail, which is interesting when it is toe-nailed and countersunk.

Then I screwed the hinges to the door frame. There was some trouble getting the screws snugged down. Of course, the door was now TOO WIDE.

I had to trim some of the sheathing where it wasn't cut straight. Perfect fit! (Well, for a chicken coop. They won't complain.)

I marked where the latch needed to attach. Then I found that I had used the wrong screws attaching the latch post, and the latch post screws were too large for the latch.

Out come two screws. In go two screws. There was some trouble getting the screws snugged down. Then I put on the latch.

The fourth screw is malformed. The head is at a strange angle. The Phillips cross is off center, AND filled with paint. "Three screws will hold it for now," I grumble to myself.

High up the wall, I drill through the sheathing. I will run a string from the latch through this hole to a pull ring, so I won't get accidentally locked in.

Now I just have to replace the back wall...

(I found 3 dog ticks and 1 deer tick crawling on me. How many did I miss?)

Two Months On: What's Up On Honeyhill?

Wow! It's been two months. I mean, they've been BUSY months, but it's time to update!

Well, our garden isn't likely to happen THIS year. Debbie has been having some health problems, and hasn't been able to work outside the way she wants to. That's OK, because we don't even have a working LAWNMOWER.

That's right, what we're growing in the garden is a BUMPER crop of grass.

We inherited the lawnmower with Honeyhill. It was sitting in the barn, a Kubota W5019 5.0HP OHV. My research on the web says, "This is one of the best lawnmowers EVER! If I ever find another one, I'll buy it!"

Too bad it doesn't work.

Our first efforts involved adding fuel, opening the fuelcock, choking, and pulling the starter cord. After 3 or 4 (or 6 or 7...) pulls, gasoline began pouring out of the carburetor. Closing the fuelcock seemed like a good idea, as did replacing all the seals in the carb. Now it doesn't leak, but it doesn't RUN, either.

We also went looking for a replacement spark plug, on the theory that the old one might be fouled. What, all that black crud? Fouled? Who would think that? But we haven't found one, and so we sanded the old plug clean, on the theory that would help.

It didn't. It still doesn't run.

In the meantime, we have a Ryobi weedwhacker that starts, but CHUGS to a halt when you push the throttle. And we have a scythe, which works nicely, but is giving me golfer's elbow.

On the plus side, one of our locals, Mr. Frank D., is going to be cutting our fields for hay. This is an advantage to us, because even though we don't have a garden, the land is being used for agricultural products, and we get to keep our agricultural property tax rate. But he only cuts twice a year, and DOESN'T do the lawn...

And so we're looking for our own tractor so we can PLOW our own snow, PLOW our own fields, MOW our own grass. Our neighbor Tom said, "You're going to need one of these. Get a front-end loader, 30HP, diesel, and 4WD." Everyone we've talked to has said, "Yup. That oughta do ya."

The only one we've found was a Yanmar 336D with a leaking front axle. But my research on the web says, "This is one of the best tractors EVER! If I ever find another one, I'll buy it!" I'm just not sure I'm ready to take on a 4WD axle rebuild...

The tractor will be nice when we plow our BIG garden (NEXT year, I'm sure...). But we need a tiller for the kitchen garden, and they're all smaller than I want, or more expensive than I want. I may need to adjust my priorities.

One thing we have to be careful about is mowing around the beehives.

Well, not yet. The bees arrive TOMORROW, after being delayed WEEKS. But mowing around hives can be a ticklish business. You don't want to make the bees nervous.

The bees? What about ME?

Meanwhile, our other livestock is growing nicely. Debbie has 8 chickens in a dog crate in her sewing room, and they're well past the "cute and fluffy" phase and into the "miniature velociraptor" stage. What we're NOT sure of is:

Are they all HENS?

I mean, we're pretty sure MOST of them are. But one or two are giving us cause to doubt. But they're not at the "chicken coop" size yet, which is good. Because I HAVE TO FIX UP THE COOP.

It has to be weatherproof, cat-proof, fox-proof, and hawk-proof, or I'll be the one sleeping in the coop! Meanwhile, the birds will stay inside and lay eggs.

I'm kidding, of course. The smell (mostly concentrated in the sewing room, thank God!) is enough to knock you over.

City folk think chickens are stupid. Well, I'm getting over that idea! One thing is certain, they know HUMAN==FOOD.

Nonononono, NO! They do NOT eat people!

But at first, when we walked into the room, they huddled in the farthest corner of the cage, which made it easy to change their food and water. Now, they come to the door and try to get out. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until one of them decides to try to turn carnivorous...