Gardening is Hard Work

As anyone who has a garden will tell you, gardening is a lot of hard work. There are always weeds to be pulled, trees to be pruned (especially my wisteria), plants to be tied up, water and food to be doled out and an ever-circulating batch of seeds to plant and transfer outside when ready. In addition to the vegetable garden I have and the flower beds I am trying to maintain, I recently got chickens. My mom thinks I'm a little nuts, my husband calls me a 'true country girl' and I'm still shaking my head occasionally at my transformation from city chick to country girl.

Case in point- I spent two hours outside today trimming back the wisteria in anticipation of Jeff hanging up our twinkle lights for some summer evening glow. Oh yeah, and I weeded two flower beds. But the best part about today was concerning Tilly, Boo and Pearl. Jeff has been building a coop for them for a few weeks now and it's finally finished. Well, the hard construction part is finished.

Just look at it. And admire.

He designed and built it all from scratch. What a clever man.

Front with a little doorway. Needs a ramp still
and netting at the top.

Beautiful weatherboards from old pallets.

It's fully insulated and lined (more insulated than our house is).

Outside access for eggs

My girls in their favourite place: the silverbeet area.

So there's still a bit of work left to do before the rabbit hutch can go back to Pete and Steph (Thanks SOOOO much for letting us borrow it!). Jeff has the run to finish and netting to attach to it all. A ramp for them to get into the coop and I have to sort out a feeder and waterer. Luckily it should only take a bit of elbow grease and good old Kiwi ingenuity to sort it out (that's a benefit to being married to Jeff...he's just so clever at figuring things out on the cheap). Considering that chicken coops start at $400 for a basic one and we've managed to only spend about $50 on nails, netting and other bits, I will gladly take the longer schedule to get these chickens a nice home on the cheap.

I'll post pictures again when it's all set up in it's place and the chickens are in their home permanently. :)