Spring Fever

Each spring, Shawn and I are usually diving into this book and making big garden plans.

We dream of having a backyard garden like this one.  With rows of healthy green vegetables, thriving in the sunshine in weed free rows.

With a weekly harvest like this

Sadly, this is usually what our garden yields.  The beet on the right was from our garden last summer.  The one on the left is from Shawn's grandma's.  Hers fit nicely in the palm of your hand.  At least our beets didn't need any slicing! :)  Even if we only got enough for one meal...hmmm

So as you can see, even though we try every year, our garden never seems to measure up to our expectations.  Oh, we're not giving up!  We'll still plant a garden this year, and we'll make some changes to hopefully get a better production than in previous years.  And really, we got a lot of snap peas, lettuce, and herbs so that's not too bad.  And we can grow a lot of rhurbarb here.  So at least we found a few things that grow well in our garden.  This year, I'll have to plant the beets and carrots a bit earlier so they have more time to grow and can hopefully get bigger than the length my fingers! :)

But this spring, I don't think either one of us has even cracked a garden book.  That's because we've got a different kind of fever.  We've been pouring over this book

 

and dreaming about these.  We're particularly fond of the black and white one on the right.  I believe it's called a Barred Rock.

And we're dreaming of these....fresh eggs

So the process has already begun.  Several weeks ago, Shawn and his brother set to work on our chicken coop for our backyard flock.  Conveniently it sits next to our usual source of spring fever--our garden boxes.

Day 1 of Construction

Day 2 of Construction

Day 3 (or so)
The boys decided to turn the coop before they added more weight to it.  Now the chickens can enjoy partial shade instead of full shade.  Much better.

I believe this was Day 4.  The coop was 95% done.

This was when Shawn started bringing over friends to see his handy work.

The walk way with perch spots up to the nesting boxes.

The human side of the nesting boxes.  Nice and easy access for collecting eggs.  We may have to find something for the kids to use as a step stool though.  They won't be able to reach it without being lifted up.  And I'm not going to be lifting them up with my expanding waistline.

After Shawn made a few more final touches, we had our friend and resident chicken expert, Matt, come over for a "coop inspection".  He thought everything looked great!  Yay, we passed inspection!  (Ha, ha!)
Now we're getting ready for the arrival of our feathered friends--hopefully sometime today.

We gave in and let the kids sit up in the nesting boxes and play around in the coop yesterday. But we reminded them that they won't be able to do this once we have the chickens.  This is probably the cleanest this joint will ever be.

I believe this is her best chicken strut.

The chicken view of the nesting boxes

With a rather large chicken inside :)

The human view with a few fake eggs to let the chickens know where to go to lay the real ones.

Real ones like these

They'll be delicious and nutritious!
I'm sure we'll keep you all posted on the arrival of our new feathered friends.  Until then, I suppose we're still dreaming.