Weekend Warrior projects

The rapidly shortening days here in the Pacific Northwest, combined with being buried at work, leave me gardening in the dark (literally) while humming REM’s Gardening at Night. On the weekends, we made a radical addition to our day-ranging chicken setup with a permanent coop. The birds still have day access to the pasture through a chicken tunnel (newly named as The Chunnel), but the permanent coop solves for two issues:

1. I was losing all their valuable manure out on the pasture, where I won’t be able to take advantage of it for years until we expand the garden beds that direction.
2. I was tired of hauling their feed such long distances, and hauling water at all when you live in the rainy Northwest just seems silly.

As I’m lousy with carpentry, the talented fellow behind Saltbox Designs took my crazy sketches, ideas, and ramblings to construct a structure that won’t fall down and looks great. When Berg was finished, I added a deep litter system on top of an earthen floor, automatic feeders (gravity) and water (harvesting rainwater), while maintaining full-time access to pasture through a Pullet Shut door and the aforementioned Chunnel. I’m pleased.

Another full weekend was spent hauling and spreading 51 yards of wood chip compost.  Thank goodness for generous neighbors with tractors.