Our neighbour's chick coop

The first chick has already been named, introducing Nightlight and her ISA Brown coopmates.

This is the namer with a Brown chick. I like the jaunty black marks on their heads.

This is the best coop. This used playpen previously served as a sheltie crate before it turned coop last year for a batch of 25 Cornish crosses. I really like the fact that it folds up and there aren't any rough or hard edges near the chicks.

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The first batch of chicks are here!

They're five Black Stars (Black Sex Links) and one ISA Brown. The last was because my neighbour and I swapped a chick, so she has 11 Browns with a Black Star. She looked very cute amongst the yellow fluff. I'll have to get a picture of them too.

They ended up all together for the first few hours as we didn't get the chick coop together in time. An hour or so later I had it finished, then went and collected my group.

They are very active just crashing for little power naps here and there. I've uploaded a short video in raw mov format.

Chicken coop progress

This Easter weekend was a busy one. We made good progress on the chicken coop, and had a bunch of people over for a BBQ party. The weather was gorgeous -- warm but not too hot, sunny, and NO bugs!

On Friday, I got the windows framed in and the back wall plywood put up before the people starting arriving for the party.

Then we had a BBQ party. It was the perfect time of year - the bugs weren't bad and it was warm enough to spend a lot of time on the deck.

Saturday was spent picking up materials and things, so no progress was made on the coop.

On Sunday, we put the remainder of the wall sheeting up:

And then the roof went on:

Here's the chicken-cam view:

Laura working on the roof:

And the roof is on and the tools are being put away:

So all in all, it was a great Easter weekend. We had fun, made good progress on the coop, and got some exercise and fresh air.

Here's another neat thing I've been meaning to mention for some time. Laura's Mom was once in a movie called "In Her Defense" as a courtroom artist. This movie didn't do well at the box office, and it's been very hard to find. Laura and I wanted to get the movie just to see her Mom on the screen. So thanks be to the Internet, we finally got the movie. Here's proof:

< class="MsoNormal">Of course, it wouldn't be a "proper" blog posting without cute pictures of the cat, so...

So, what is the Drawlyn anyway?

The Drawlyn is a mountain (more of a hill, really) in rural New Brunswick, Canada. It's where my family (the Tottens) hail from. There are various spellings of the name, but we've settled on this one for our blog and web site.

The nearest "community" to my family property would be Hardingville. According to the "Community Place Names in New Brunswick, Canada: Robert F. Fellows", it is a:

Settlement, 5 mi. S of Upham and 4 mi. SE of Barnesville, on road to Barnesville: Saint Martins Parish, Saint John County: first called Ryan Settlement for John, Thomas and Michael Ryan who were settlers: renamed when post office was created: PO Hardingville 1878-1909 with V. Harding as postmaster: in 1898 Hardingville was a farming and lumbering settlement with 1 post office, 1 store, 2 sawmills, 1 church and a population of 150: today it is a dispersed community.

Note the "dispersed community" comment. There's pretty much nothing there now.

If you use Google Earth (extremely cool program, by the way), then you can load this KMZ file. It will show you were Hardingville, the Red Bridge and the ruins of the Hardingville church are. Unfortunately it's in a low-resolution area, but at least it gives you a basic idea of where the property is.

There used to be a railway called the St Martins and Upham railway. It ran until 1940. I emailed with someone a couple of years ago who had made a scale model train setup that preserved that piece of history. I can't find him online, but I suspect he's a member of the Saint John Society of Model Railroaders. Note: If this describes you, please get in touch with me -- I'd like to meet up with you and take a look at your layout!

We've been into researching family history for quite a while. Laura has even put up a Tottens On The Drawlyn family-history site. Feel free to check it out.

I'll save the question of "Why do we want to get back to the Drawlyn?" for another posting.

Building a home for the hens.

As Laura mentioned in a previous post, we're starting small. We're getting a few chickens and are now building homes for them. The coop is going to be for the layers, and we'll be building an "ark" or "tractor" for the meat birds. Researching on the internet, we learned that there seems to be a million designs for these buildings. It's going to be a basic coop with a couple of windows for light and ventilation, and insulated with straw. Having never built anything more fancy than railings for our deck, this has been a fun challenge.

Each construction project has to start with some serious quality time with coffee and the cats on the deck.

First, we built a basic platform in the yard.

And Angel helped.

We then cleared the site and gave it a stable patio-stone base. As you can see, we will also need to do some roofing work this year. The poor old shed is slowly sinking into the ground.

After much measuring, cutting, nailing and cursing, we've got a basic structure up. Well, actually not a lot of measuring.

Next up: pick up a few windows from a friend and frame them in. Once the windows are in, we can finish the framing, put a roof on it, insulated walls and make a door. The weather is supposed to be nice this week, so we hope to make lots of progress in the evenings after I get home from work.

After we get the coop finished, we need to get moving on building the tractor for the meat birds.

Maybe something like this:
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Teacher Help.htm
Or something a bit smaller and easier to move: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Chicken Tractors2.htm

or http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/fowl/tractor.htm

Here's a nice little how-to page: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/ChickenTractorproj.htm

Kablooie!!!

Seedlings! Already little green bits are poking through starter mix. This is Russian Tarragon on the right. It’s taste has grown on me the last few years. I’ve already a well-established bunch in the herb garden but it’s not enough to keep up with the demand. Last year was the first time I hadn’t supplemented it with a pot of the French variety (an annual in my climate).

Beside it is one of the decorative grasses, Purple Majesty Millet, that I thought I’d try this year. I’m putting it on the south side of the deck along with some Pampas Grass. It’ll be a nice pretty addition there during the fall and winter.

Also sprouting but not above the surface yet are the Yard Long Beans I bought last year. I was very happy to see they were still viable.

Other new things being sprouted include, Dwarf Marigolds for companion planting and artichokes.