I am an alarmist. I’m in the camp of people that thinks our government might collapse in the near future, bringing the dollar down with it. It’ll be greater than the Great Depression. Okay, I might not really believe that. But the mere mention of food shortages, downward economies, lay offs, and etc, I start collecting nuts, dusting off the old sewing machine and looking up how to make my own water barrels on Bing. (yes, I am trying to conform to the culture here and instead of “googling” something, we “Bing!” it here).
Dave is very lucky that we didn’t buy a house on the other side of the street. That side of the street is all meadow, unlike this little patch of forest we own. If we lived across the street, we’d already own two pigs, two goats, two mini cows, and two sheep. It would be like a mini Noah’s ark at our house (it rains enough here). Alas, we live in the forest and I’m pretty sure livestock likes open spaces not second growth forest.
Thinking about becoming a tad more self sufficient (aka: prepared for the zombie apocalypse), I bought the most amazing book ever at Home Depot. What? You don’t buy all your books at Home Depot?
Abandoning the farm concept (for now) I have plans for a large garden and a tilapia pond (okay, a gold fish pond) and a berry patch and some fruit trees and chicken coop.
I’ve been talking to Dave for months about the garden. We’ve picked a spot but I’m not completely sure it gets enough sunshine and with this Seattle weather, it’s impossible to tell because we so very rarely have a full day of sun. I went to a gardening class, read the master gardener website, and checked out copious amounts of books on gardening in this sunless damp place we call home. (I know, I’m a walking travel brochure).
I think Dave has finally given in to the fish pond. I’ve picked the location. Just before I decided to break ground Dave took me to the pond store (yes, we actually have a store here that only sells ponds). After pricing the whole shebang, I could feed our family and the neighbors for a year and still have enough left over for a large television. For now, the pond will be an imaginary one rather than a real one.
This really only leaves the chicken coop. I think Dave thought that he could put me off long enough on building it to steer my interests elsewhere.
After scourging the whole internet for chicken coops, I decided on a chicken tractor rather than a traditional coop. I figure it’s not permanent. If chickens aren’t are thing, I can sell it on craigslist, given the chickens to my neighbor and pretend the whole ugly mess never happened.
I found some plans online and we went to Home Depot. (It turns out that the return on this investment may never happen.)
The plans I bought were made by an engineer, it was full of hypotenuses and geometry. It was written more like a novel and less like plans. It was accompanied with a google sketch file.
After lots and lots of cutting, it was finally time to start putting it together. With every helper under the age of 20, you can add an extra four hours for each hour of “help”.
Dave had told McKayla that she could decorate my coop. I imagined a neon splattered paint job which channeled 1987. I would be forced to look outside my window and see this “hip” monstrosity for the next 10 years. I vetoed her painting, splattering, or muraling my coop. I am a great mom like that. This of course meant that I had to choose paint colors for the coop. It also meant that my dad did most of the painting too.
We went through all of the left over paint in the garage. Fire engine red, army green, mustard brown, creamy sand, white, forest green, royal purple, and daisy yellow. Then we went to Home Depot for the coordinating color.
The kids helped.
You may think that many hands make light work. Really though, many hands make stressful work. Many hands also make messy work. And many hands make noisy work.
Take note of the kids “paintin clothes”. One child chose clothes too big for him. One kid clothes too small. After vetoing about 20 different outfits, I finally gave up. Please don’t take note of all the junk in my garage.
After hours and hours of painting and assembling it finally started to look like a chicken tractor. I think at this point we had to go back to home depot for different hardware, more paint and more wood. So much for the shopping list.
Overactiveovaries 