My poor little chickens have been living in a coop that was just not adequate for them. It was fine when we first got them. Then they started to grow. Then a well-meaning friend covered all but a few feet at the end with tin and upcycled campaign and advertisement signs. The result was that the chickens stood out in the tiny spot open to the sky most of the day, even when it was raining. I had to cover the run with a tarp when it was raining or really cold. Then the back door hinge broke and I had to rig a board and rock to keep out marauding critters. They were scratching around in the yard most days, until one of the little ladies got into the jaws of a neighbor's dog. She did recover, but their wanderings have been greatly curtailed. So, I've been collecting lumber, wire, and all sorts of things to improve the coop someday. Well, someday was today.
Heli Chilca is the man who takes care of my yard and helps me with projects around the property. Over the past year, I've become friends with Heli. A native of Peru, we have had many conversations about travel, language, food, chickens, kids, all in my limited Spanish and his limited English. In my earlier life, I may have been afraid to talk to him. Afraid he wouldn't understand me or that I'd look silly trying to speak Spanish. Well, you know what? When you make an effort to reach out to someone of another culture, they reach back, and you have a friend. Heli was here on Monday, helping me get my garden ready for Spring. We talked about Martin Luther King Jr. Day, potatoes and chickens. I told him about my plans to make a better chicken coop and he told me he'd like to come back and help. As he was leaving, he said "Hasta Sabado."
This morning, I carried the scavenged framing out of the basement, propped it up, arranged and rearranged it. Then there was the problem of a hill of dirt in the middle of the area where I was planning to build. Nothing a shovel and moderately strong back couldn't fix in an hour or so.
Heli and his friend, Cervando, were here at 1:00, right as I was starting to make a crude attempt at screwing the corners of two framed pieces together. We planned, measured, cut, re-cut, nailed, adjusted the plan, and had coffee. My next door neighbor, Beth, came over to check our progress. We finished the base and were pretty pleased with ourselves. Just as I was planning a Home Depot trip for three eight-foot-long 2x4's for the roof, Heli looked over and said, "Maybe that one (our chicken run) would fit on top." We measured it and, woo hoo, it did! It was just the right width, but longer than the run underneath. No problem. One end of the coop just has a "loft" and a porch. As we were putting supports on the porch part of the coop (on the front), our neighbor, Heather, walked over with a piece of lattice that was perfect to make a door. Other neighbors stopped their cars in the street to ask what we were doing and cheer us on. Finally we went around the bottom with chicken wire, donated by the guy (Ben Smolin) that we got the first coop from. Side by side, with three hammers, we nailed up the wire. Then we had to tidy up a huge pile of tools and pieces of wood that had spread across our yard and the neighbor's yard. The chickens, who had been happily scratching about were rounded up into the new house. I don't speak chicken, but I'm pretty sure they liked perching up high. We humans finished with a bowl of gumbo and rolls.
So, here's my work in progress. I'll post more pics as this comes together. I was so glad to have Heli and Cervando helping me. We kept changing ideas, trying new things, bouncing ideas off each other. The final house will have antique windows on the side facing the road, an improved roof and probably another open yard for the chickens to scratch around in. It doesn't look like that much work, but I'm tired tonight! It's a "good tired." All that dirt and wood was heavier than it seemed. Not sure how it will all turn out, but it's really fun in the middle of figuring it out!
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