Remember these lil babies? They were basically housed in what amounted to a giant tupperware container we purchased from Walmart. $9. Chicks? $1.50/bird. Building a coop with each and every weekend & evening for the last two weeks to get them out of your guest bathroom which they're polluting and freaking out your mother in law?Priceless.
So why chickens? Yeah a friend of mine reasonably asked this question at a gathering at M&M's house. First time I felt self-conscious about it (thanks Rich...JK). But yes, to the reasonable person, it does seem strange that a nice professional couple [of weirdos] would move to the hood, buy a hood mansion and install a backyard flock of chickens. But of course I assume this is charming. Probably not to everyone. However, let me explain. First, anyone who loves animals, loves ALL animals, even if birds aren't initially your thing, they really grow on you. You soon become attached. You respect them for being silly & aloof. You watch them like you would the discovery channel...how they interact, the way they respond to your voice, etc. Second, you have an awareness for just how f-ed up (mm hmm, cussin like a red neck) the mass production of food is and you just don't want to participate anymore, yet you would like to have eggs for breakfast still. Third, you want to help create a magical place for the kids in your life (and maybe your future kids) appreciate where food comes from, how to be compassionate and simply to make your home magical. That's why, in a nutshell, we have a backyard flock of lovely city chickens.
Of course, we had to get them out of our bathtub in the meantime, so here is the race to finish this coop. The plans can be purchased at http://www.gardencoop.com/. We completed this thing in two weekends, which almost killed us.
BEFORE (way)
Thank you Matt Thompson/brother, expert framer/builder who helped Anthony get the structure up.
Anthony primed the whole thing. This was a big step!
Getting closer...... (there were a lot of tedious boring steps
I skipped here). A LOT.
AFTER....not bad, huh?
PS. In our punch drunk tired moments of building this thing (when we did feel like crying, literally...or at least I did) we started singing "The Crying Game" substitute "Chicken" for "Crying".
Maybe you had to be there.....
