Chicken coop expansion, Part 1

Many years ago, we took down an old barn for a woman in our church. We salvaged most of the lumber and assorted accouterments, and this resulted in a rich source of old lumber we've used for endless projects.

One of the things we salvaged was an oddly-shaped little shed.


Don retrofitted the shed with salvaged glass windows and turned it into a tiny greenhouse.


We used it in this capacity for a couple of years...


...but discovered it was easier to start seedlings indoors on a shelving unit instead.

So the greenhouse fell out of use and became a sort of catch-all for assorted garden-related stuff: planting trays, pots, bird netting, that kind of thing. A couple of windows broke. It became an embarrassment.

But the shed itself was sturdy and we didn't want to just burn it. As a fall project, Don decided to use the shed to expand the chicken coop.

To back up a bit, last summer we started raising Jersey Giant chickens. So far we're very pleased with the breed: the males are large (suitable for butchering, although since we only have two mature roosters at the moment, we haven't done that; we have some young roosters we have earmarked for the pot), the hens are prolific layers, and I have never encountered a breed more likely to go broody than these ladies.

So we're slowly transitioning to an all-Jersey Giant flock. As our older assorted ladies die off, we won't be replacing them with other breeds.

We are also interested in expanding the flock: more layers (for egg sales) and more roosters (for meat birds). This means our current coop is too small. We need extra space; not only for the upcoming young layers, but also a place to separate maturing roosters, and a "brood" area for mamas and their babies.

As part of this expansion, we decided to utilize the old greenhouse shed. It will make an excellent brood coop.

We started by chaining up the shed and moving it out to the middle of the driveway, to make it easier to work on it.

Don stripped off the plywood siding and remaining windows...

...while I got busy cleaning out the junk inside.

Then he started roofing it with OSB (oriented strand board). He also put OSB siding on the shed, making it much stronger.

One of the disadvantages of the current chicken coop is its lack of windows. The birds have no natural lighting when they're inside. For this new little coop, Don installed one of the windows which had formerly been on the roof (when it was a greenhouse). Obviously it needs cleaning, but it will provide ample light inside. He plans to put hardware cloth (metal mesh) on both the inside and outside of the window to prevent breakage, and will also make a "storm window" for winter, for better insulation.

Then he removed the window (it was just a "fitting" in the above photo) and finished retrofitting the shed with OSB.

Our plan was to snug the shed against the outer wall of the existing coop. However this couldn't be accomplished without first cleaning out all the junk which tends to accumulate on any farm. (See what I mean by "embarrassing"?)

Heavier things were lifted en masse with the tractor. Heavens, what did we ever do without this tool?

Soon the only thing left to remove were two posts, sunk deep into the ground, left over from an abandoned project years ago.

Once again, the tractor helped.

Then it was time to shove the shed into place...

...using, what else, the tractor.

First Don pushed the shed from one direction until it was just about level with the chicken coop wall.

Then he pushed it from the other direction...

...until it snugged up against the building.

We still have lots to do to make the coop extension habitable, including bolting the addition to the wall. But that will be a future blog post (Part 2). For the moment, at least, we're making progress.

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme....

I've been planting.

It's far too early to plant anything directly in the garden -- around here, June 1 is about the earliest we can expect to get things in the ground (and sometimes even that's not a guarantee) -- so a lot of stuff has to be started indoors.

We have a tiny greenhouse (a retrofitted shed) that I've tried using over the years to get seedlings started, but it has two problems: heat retention, and rodents.

Let's face it, unless it's heated, a greenhouse won't retain heat in cold temperatures. If nights drop below freezing, so does the greenhouse. So that's one problem.

The second problem -- rodents (specifically, mice and chipmunks) -- we thought we had licked two years ago when we fitted the entire inside with hardware cloth over every crack and crevice.

However I learned the hard way it didn't work. Last year I started many seedlings in the greenhouse, only to come out the next morning and find the seeds had been dug up and eaten. Grrrr.

So a greenhouse was out. We decided the only viable option was to start seedlings in the house. Next problem: where to put them. Flats of seedlings, as you know, take up a lot of room, and we can't just put them any old place -- they need sunshine.

I'm not talking about just starting a tomato plant or two. I want a proper garden, something that can feed our family. The whole purpose of transitioning to a tire garden is to be in a position to produce nearly all our fruits and vegetables.

There's a legitimate financial justification in this interest. Take a gander at this jaw-dropping graph from ZeroHedge showing how food prices have jumped a staggering 19% in 2014. Yikes.

With that in mind, I wanted to plant hundreds of seedlings... which then begs the question, where to put them? After a bit of thought and research, we made two purchases that we feel falls under the "tangible investments" category.

The first item was a lot of 1000 two-inch seedling pots off eBay. I had a number of three- and four-inch pots I've collected over the years, but those pots were too big for planting individual onions or even corn.

The second item was an industrial-strength wire shelving unit on castor wheels. This, we felt, would offer the maximum amount of storage with a minimum amount of space. We found the best price on eBay. Six shelves, 48 inches wide, 18 inches deep, 72 inches high, with wheels.

Owing to a shipping mishap, the delivery of this shelving unit was delayed by a couple of weeks, but at last the UPS truck drove up.

A couple of other smaller purchases included two dozen inexpensive gardening trays (10x20 inches) for about $1.79 each, and a couple large bags of potting soil from Costco (4 cubic feet, $10).

Knowing how anxious I was to get the seedlings started, Don took time out from work and we assembled the unit right away. It went together very easily and required no tools (except a rubber mallet to tap things into place).

While sometimes the quality of items purchased off eBay is questionable, this unit exceeded all our expectations. It's solid as a rock and very sturdy.

Don had some concerns that the wheels would be cheap and flimsy, but they're not.

The dimensions of the shelving unit were important since they fit four flats per shelf (the flats hang over the edges one inch on either side, not a big deal). This means I can fit 24 flats on this shelving unit. To appreciate how useful this is, imagine the logistics of trying to find room for 24 flats all over the house, taking up every available window space.

Then I pulled out my seeds and got to work.

The two-inch pots were purchased specifically so I could fit them 50 to a tray...

...which they did very nicely.

By the way, a few years ago I bought these little gizmos called Seed Spoons for some ridiculously low price ($1 each or something).

They're simply plastic sticks with a seed scoop at either end (I have two spoons, thus four scoops). The scoops are in various sizes.

When you're dealing with very tiny seeds, it's so much more efficient to plant one seed using a seed spoon than to waste seed by planting too many and "thinning" them later on.

All day long I potted seeds. At the end of the day I had 484 seeds planted as follows:

100 red onions
100 yellow onions
18 paste tomatoes (two varieties)
18 eating/canning tomatoes (two varieties)
18 Brussels sprouts
20 broccoli
24 oilseed pumpkins (we're trying an experiment)
28 watermelon (four varieties)
12 cantaloupe
16 honeydew melons
15 cascabella peppers
10 cayenne peppers
20 thyme
20 oregano
10 sage
10 rosemary
10 cumin
10 parsley
25 basil

And remarkably, there's still room on the shelving unit for 500 corn plants! (Planted 50 to a tray.) I won't plant the corn until about May 1.

The advantage of having the shelving unit on wheels is it allows us to move it from window to window to take advantage of both morning and evening sun. We can also move it outside when it comes time to harden off the plants.

Of course this doesn't count the veggies I'll plant directly outside when the weather permits. These include:

Potatoes
Beans (pinto, Jacob's cattle, Calypso, green)
Peas
Lettuce
Spinach
Carrots
Breadseed poppies (for seed -- another experiment)

So the old song will hopefully come true this spring.

Spring!!

Spring is inching its way forward here in north Idaho. In fact, for the last week the weather has been delightful... which always triggers in me the need to get my hands dirty.

The tulips we planted last fall are starting to come up.

The garlic, also planted last fall, is doing well.

I can also tell it's spring because the chipmunks are all over the place. And I mean we're dripping with chipmunks. They may seem awfully durn cute, but let me tell you collectively they're a terrible pest on a farm. Last spring they ate down all my seedlings in the greenhouse. They nibble through bags of chicken feed. They get into everything.

So forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy when I find the occasional critter drowned in a cow's water bucket.

In fact, last year's seedling disaster in the greenhouse meant we had to do something about it this year before attempting to plant anything.

We have grandiose plans to turn the entire south side of the barn into a lean-to greenhouse, but right now we can't afford the materials, so we'll put it off. For the time being we'll use our tiny greenhouse.

Here's our greenhouse. It's a little shed we rescued a few years ago when we took down someone's barn for scrap wood. The shed was in fairly decent shape, so we took it whole and added windows and made it a greenhouse.

(This is what the building looked like when we first brought it home.)

Anyway, over the winter I used the greenhouse as a catch-all for anything related to gardening. I would literally open the door and pitch things in, mostly milk jugs donated by friends (we're saving them for seed planters). There's also a tangle of bird netting in addition to a whole lotta other stuff. First job: clean it out.

I cut all the milk jugs in half. With holes punched, the bottoms can be used as planters. The tops can be used as miniature greenhouses to place over planted seedlings in case frost threatens.

I also paused to do something I should have done last fall: planted some acorns. Arching over our booth at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival is an enormous burr oak tree. This type of oak drops huge acorns, some of them almost two inches across. Last fall our booth managers send me a bagful of acorns for me to plant. I finally got around to it (and hope it's not too late).

I also had a bagful of regular acorns (not sure what species) that I scooped up last fall under a line of very pretty oak trees in Spokane. You can see how much smaller they are than the burr oak acorns. I planted some of these in pots as well.

When the seedlings sprout and get a little established, I'll plant them around the property in hopes some will survive.

Anyway, this is what the greenhouse looked like after it was cleaned out.

Next step: chipmunk-proofing. The floorboards are so widely-spaced that chipmunks would slip through them and devastate my seedlings.

There were also large gaps up near the roofline, perfect for chipmunks to come through.

So Don and I measured and cut some hardware cloth...

...and fitted it across the floor.

He used metal staples to hammer the hardware cloth down firmly.

By the way, this hammer belonged to Don's father, who died in a car crash when Don was a young man in the navy. He cherishes this hammer and uses it often.

We stapled smaller pieces of hardware cloth over the holes near the roofline.

Next we needed to do something about the big gaps in the door, top and bottom.

Don put boards at top and bottom to block the gaps.

In short, we plugged every hole we could find. Let's hope it works!

Next I decided to plant a few seeds. Not many, since we can't expect truly frost-free weather until the beginning of June; but onions have a 120-day maturity, so I need to plant them early. I decided to plant a few broccoli seeds, as well as two tomatoes (just for fun). Needless to say these are all heirloom-variety seeds.

First I had to make some potting soil. I always make my own out of composted manure...

...topsoil (bought last year for the strawberry beds)...

...and sand.

After mixing, I filled some pots.

First I planted onion seeds with the help of a seed spoon, which is just a plastic gizmo with a tiny depression at either end into which a single seed fits. I have two seed spoons with scoops of different sizes, for a total of four scoops.

I planted four seeds per pot, in twenty pots, for a total of eighty onions.

I also planted ten broccoli plants, one seed per pot. I'll plant more in a couple weeks, rather than planting a whole bunch at once.

For slips and giggles, I also planted two tomato seeds. I'll probably end up bringing these in the house if the weather turns cold.

I gave everything a good watering.

A nice day's work!