Friday, June 27, 2014

New Home, New Coop, New Garden.

The new (to us) house is littered with boxes. There are various utensils on the counter, furniture in various states of disassemble. There's a litter box in the closet- no, it doesn't belong there- but we're too afraid to move it lest the cat gets confused.

Bodies ache. Feet hurt. I've got cuts, scratches, bruises that I don't remember getting. Val has cracked his head an innumerable amount of times in the last 4 days. I'm not sure how he doesn't have a concussion by now.

But, we're getting close. Rio, the unfinished sailboat, will be making her journey south in three days. After that, we'll be entirely moved in.

The past few weekends have been a blur. We've been racing to build a chicken coop. Our salmon Faverolles hens have been laying religiously for us, and we've grown attached to their silly little fluffy butts, so we decided to make our grand migration along with them. (Let me tell you, a three hour car ride with stinky chickens is.. um.. quite an adventure).

Chickens were moved in yesterday. They're adjusting- the first egg was laid within 5 hours of arriving 'home.' And while we have a bunch of boxes that have yet to be unpacked, I can't stand the thought of being completely garden-less this year, so I started a small square foot garden bed.

Just a little one, mind you. 4x8. I had some leftover lumber lounging around- I think it was from cutting apart stringers for the boat. They needed a purpose.

Enough talk. Let's see the photos already!

The new coop + freshly planted garden.


(The coop design we used is called the Garden Coop- plans can be found here)

Here's the square foot garden bed layout:


And another view of the garden: 


The tarp you see in the photos is used to kill off the grass. I'll be installing more garden beds in the future (once we actually unpack, sell the other house, and really move in!).

Grow garden, grow! Curious to know what it'll be like to have a garden with actual sunlight..

5 comments:

  1. I still say it reminds me of a Minesweeper game. XD

    What's the leafy green in the second row, first column?

    Our little garden is growing nicely. We have a few flowers and a few makeshift "planting pots" (coughPLASTICCONTAINERScough). And the garden has some squashes, herbs and whatnot.

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    1. Haha!

      Said leafy green is sweet basil. I only planted two instead of the 4 the garden planner allotted. I've had horrible luck growing basil, so I'm especially excited to see it works out.

      Isn't this time of year wonderful? I love early summer! At least at this stage, my garden is all growing and doesn't require a whole lot of maintenance. It's not oppressively hot (at least not in the PNW, anyway) and we're still getting pelted with a good dose of rain.

      Fingers crossed that your garden does exceptionally well this year!

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  2. Congratulations! And a 4x8 coup is a nice size coop for three girls. Now that you have more space, could they be let out during the day?

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    1. Not without supervision. There are a lot of hawks and wandering dogs here, they probably wouldn't last a week. I planted the garden close by though so they can wander while I'm out there. :)

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  3. I deactivated my twitter and this is the only way I know to reach you now! How's things?

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