Cementing Their Arrival

We are hereby officially granted permission via city-sealed permit to FARM! Well, specifically to farm chickens, but I think this means we are farmers now. Probably. For sure.

One thing the Chicken Boss noticed during inspection was our wild yard--hmm, coyote? fox? raccoon? Yup. "You're going to need to dig a trench . . ."

A what?

He went on to explain the process of building a cement moat around our coop and how to fortify the diggable spaces with a double set of boards. Whew! Thankfully, we had all the materials still available--including the 150 lbs of concrete the kids and I spent pouring on a 99 degree day. Whew, again!

Brennen took charge of the power tools--he pulled all the wood screws from the former garden boxes. Next, he awaited the boards to be dropped into the cement trenches, where he then reused the screws to secure the boards to the base of the coop.



Our next line of defense was double wiring as many coop sides as we could reach (and our supply of leftover chicken wire could cover). We bent the chicken wire over the top cemented board, locked another board in place on top of it, and boom--fortified coop!

Graysen took care of the trenching inside the back wall of the coop, because we cannot reach it given the near proximity of the barn. However, this area the Chicken Man suggested would be our most vulnerable spot for invaders. They could easily hide under the barn, sneak across the narrow gap, dig into the coop and all would be lost (and apparently disgusting). We further attempted to halt this possibility by screwing a gigantic board to the back base of the barn blocking the open section to at least ground level. I'll admit--the inspector fellow had me looking at our job with a new eye. We mostly intended to keep chickens in and owls out. I hadn't thought much about creatures that dig.












At the last minute, I decided we should shore up this section leading from the garden into the coop as well. I could already see where the dirt was eroding under the fence and since our garden is open air, I'm sure the sneakier of animals would have no trouble getting into this space to dig. And here I was worried about deer and rabbits . . .

Because our beans are growing so nicely, we decided to use a section of chicken wire as a support structure to help them climb. As soon as we find some of the missing landscape pins, we will have it all complete! We hope. Buck hasn't been home during daylight hours yet to see our work, there may be tweaks or additions to come. However, we felt it was a good afternoon's work and we are now one more (unknown) step closer to getting our birds!