No going back now

I fall for it every time.

"We'll just have a look", she says.

We were chatting to some villagers after church about keeping chooks and so on when one of them mentioned that a chap was selling all sorts of breeds down at the local farmer's superstore (y'know those places - big stores selling everything from wellies, to sheep-dip, to ride-on mowers). Anyway despite my reservations, we decided to go and have a look. Fatal.

We ended up putting a deposit down on five chooks, which the guy would hold on to for a fortnight, which meant Operation Build That Bloody Chicken Run now had a two week deadline. I had to throw myself body and soul into it, with mildly disastrous results - I threw my back out in the process, so it still isn't finished.

Anyway we picked the chooks up last Monday evening, and are now parents to five little cluckers. They still don't have a fully enclosed run yet, but they at least have a secure shed, and an outer run to peck around in.

We are off until school starts again so I have a bit of extra time to get them fully secured. It's so nearly ready. But I don't want a career in stretching chicken wire, thanks, my poor handies are absolutely shredded.

Here's a (not very good) picture of the chooks taken recently, whilst they were still too shy to come out the house.

Even so they don't keep still long enough for my camera to capture them!

Since I began this entry I've had a sudden burst of energy (it's gone now) and managed to get the sides of the run all positioned and fixed together, so they now have a semi-secure run to noodle around in. I feel a bit better about that now, there was one point when I genuinely had had enough of the whole enterprise. Now I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Still got the roof to do, so still having to mess about with weird angles and more finger-shredding chicken wire, but at least I'm only working in the two dimensions, now. You'll see what I'm blathering on about when I post pictures of the completed run.

These chooks better get squirting eggs out as soon as they can - it's the least they can do now!!!

As you were

Ha! I bet you thought it was all over, huh? That the grand plan had hit the buffers and was a smoking ruin? That some of the garden was reverting to, well, garden, and that I had a goodly store of firewood for the winter? Well, turns out we were both wrong.

Project 'Home-of-the-most-cossetted-chickens-in-all-England' is back on and we are now - after three weekends of back-breaking work - proudly revelling in the position of, er, well, where we were three weeks ago. Actually that's not fair, we are a little further as the fence is all up, the gate re-hung, all the painting finished and, wait for it, we now have a rain-water harvesting system installed (that used to be called fitting guttering and a water-butt.

We still have to fit perches and other chickeny-type stuff and there's the small matter of building an enclosed day-run so the chooks can wander freely without fear of predation. I've got some idea of how to do that - which as you'll remember is why we ended up rotating the entire shed 180 degrees in the first blimmin' place.

So here's some pictures.

See how it complements the houses behind (oh for goodness sake, Ed...). The dirt area to the right of the picture will be where the run will go, probably utilising the existing wall. I'm almost frightened to say it but that blue colour doesn't quite go with the lavender and clay scheme of the coop, but the missus doesn't read this...

And a closer view:-

Ignore the runner-bean wigwam, that's just a temporary use of the space, and I couldn't be bothered to move it as it was soaking wet, but I think it adds to the ambience. (Hmm, that blue definitely clashes...)

Now onto the window boxes and bubble fountain....