Livin' the Dream

When we first saw this house, I fell in love with the backyard and knew I wanted chickens. Flash forward three years and we were finally ready to make it happen! On the one hand, we had a lot of other things going on so it wasn't really the "perfect" year to take on a big project like building a chicken coop but I managed to convince Craig we could buy a coop - until I couldn't find one I liked :-) But by then he was as excited as I was about the chickens so it worked out nicely. Or perhaps that was my evil plan all along, ha ha ha. No really, it wasn't. And we kinda paid for it with stress the last two weeks but if you wait for the perfect time to do something it will never come.

So we bought this plan and got we got the chicks. When I last wrote about them, they looked like this:

So cute

But they don't stay cute and little for long. They start to loose those feathers and get just a tad ugly. And then poppy. I don't mind poop in their home but when they figured out how to get out and started pooping all over my basement, my chicken love was slightly diminished. I'll spare you the pictures.

Luckily, Craig was working diligently on the coop.

He had a bit of bad luck weather wise though so we were getting close to 7 weeks and still no finished coop. A few nice-ish days where the kids could play out back and I could help put up wire and paint plus the added pressure of the electricians coming to work in the basement meant that last week (and one night of Craig working in the rain and me painting a ramp at 9pm with a non-sleeping toddler on my back), it was moving day!

Granted, there was still a bit of painting to do on the outside but when the poor guy who comes to install lights in your basement is being chased around by a flock of inquisitive (but friendly!) chickens, you call it good, chase them around while trying to maintain your dignity and take them outside to their new home.

The chickens, who by the way are cute again with their new feathers and non-basement pooping habits, really seem to like their new home. The first two days, the ramp had them a bit confused so I had to manually put them up at night and lift them down in the morning but soon they had it and now the kids and I check out the window each night and just about the time the kids get their pajamas on, the chickens are starting to file into their hen house.

And we love them. Lucy loves to feed them "chicken salad" which just means she finds clover and dandelion leaves and puts them in the coop for them. Jonah loves everything about them - maybe too much at times :-) and I just get a kick out of sitting in the back yard, reading a book with the kids playing around me and the chickens roaming around pecking and exploring and occasionally coming over to visit. I'm living the dream, y'all, living the dream.