The BIG chicken coop aka "lawn gouger"..

So here's the finished (well, maybe..) coop, out in the side yard. With chickens inside! The feeder and waterer are underneath there, dangling from the bottom of the coop, right next to the exit door there on the lower left. Works out really well!















And here's what happens when you try to move the darned thing. Heavy!! And digs up the lawn. This 30 foot move from one spot to the next took me 15 minutes and two very torn up hands. I need some wheels on this thing in the worst way.















The chickens are getting smarter now, having been outside for 4 days now. Each day so far, one more chicken has been able to get into the box at night by herself than the night prior. And this morning, they all came out of the box by themselves, without any "help" by me pushing them. They must have been hungry!

Speaking of hungry, they appear to love the clover weeds in the lawn. They'll eat those bare and leave everything else alone for the most part.. so when I moved the coop, it left this weird rectangle in the lawn that had regular grass and a conspicuous lack of clover, which much of my lawn is made up of. Darned weeds.

Fathers Day stuff..

Happy Fathers day to me and my pops! Hi

Got a few new beers, fancy ones, for presents. Panil Sour Red Flanders style, 2006 vintage. Allagash Curieux from the current bottling, and Southern Tier Series 2 Oak aged.. all 750mL stuff. I'll take some pics and review 'em as we go.. maybe get to the Sour this coming weekend (for me..) and see how she is. Got great reviews on BeerAdvocate. We'll see.

Hit up a new breakfast place in Canton for the morning meal as well.. good stuff. The cheese in the omelet was fancy and tasty as all heck.. I'm fat now. No pics this time, sorry! Just a brief update.. more to follow.

Poultry netting.. What?

They call it poultry netting. Looks like wire mesh stuff to me. Whatever! It's up, it's over, it's covering my coop's wood frame! Ack!















Not the most elegant stuff on the planet.. but it'll keep the hawks out, I guess. Raccoons, that's another story, or so I hear. We'll see. That's why I've got a snipers nest set up in the 2d story bathroom window, I suppose... bring it, raccoons! I dare ya'!

And here's one of the beasts after her 4th birthday.. 4 weeks, that is:















Still small, the size of a pigeon. But most of the feathers are in there. I've decided to keep 'em indoors one more week.. the feathers aren't totally in place.. still some downy feathers still kicking around, and with the temps dropping into the low 50's outside, I'd just as soon not chance it. I'm ready to go, otherwise. Have all the big bird feeders.. just need to put 'em in place is all. More pics of that stuff as the days go by. What is with this June weather we're having?

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Mike

Paint on the chicken barn, and a new brew..

Hey kids!

Got some new paint on the coop, with some sweet white trim. Check it out:















..still gotta put up the mesh netting to keep the birds in and the bad things out, but that should go up pretty easy this weekend.

..and a few pics of the babies themselves, now three and a half weeks old. We're dangerously close to putting 'em out in the coop this or maybe next week. Gotta see what the weather is like and how many feathers they all got. We'll make that call in a few days or so I think.















And in other news, I killed another keg. The Rambler v1.2 that was brewed with Will is a kicked one now.. was subsequently replaced with a log of an English style Ordinary Bitter that I made with Jody. I can tell you already, this beer is fantastic! I've been loving it recently.

Since I was a little low on reserves, it was good to get a call from my boy Geoff, who came by to brew up a Dark Wheat beer with me.. not sure it was any *particular* style, but it's a wheat beer, and it's gonna be dark in color. The main ferment is over now.. just waiting on it to wind down a bit before I keg it now. Here's a shot of us in action!



















For some reason, my hops are the saddest things ever to make an attempt to grow out of the ground. No pic for you, but man.. they're hardly 4 feet out of the ground. Really sad, I tell ya'.. I think I failed when it came time to dig 'em in there and didn't do anything with mulch or compost or peat moss.. etc, etc. My mistake. We'll fix it soon, with some spiffy new chicken poop compost nutrient!

That's all for now...

The roof!

Oh snap! There's a roof right there with shingles! *Shingles* kids! Thing is starting to get out of control now.. next thing you know, they'll be installing cable TV too. Hmm..

As it stands out there now, I've just got a primer coat of paint on the thing too.. no pic of that yet, but it's there. Should be gettin' a real coat of paint on there tomorrow hopefully, and then do the trim paint up the right color, and then she'll be lookin' good. last step after that is the wire mesh netting and then it'll be ready for chicks. About a week and a half away now.. lookin' forward to seeing them out in the wild where they can really stretch out.
















OK, that's it. Just a quick update there...

A little more of the same.. updates!

Chicks are still doing well. A bit bigger now and the Barred Rocks are finally getting in their tail feathers. Here, take a look:















Lots'a feathers coming in here. Most of the wing feathers are in, and the tail feathers are pretty good too.















This is a beer my Dad gave to me. Try it, he says. Better than most German pils than I've had recently, but didn't really stand out in a crowd. Didn't have that typical corn/almost skunk that a lot of these green bottles seem to have..















Speaking of winners, though.. went to Jody's yesterday and have a pint of the One Bean Bitter that we brewed together. WOW! What a beer! He's already got his on tap.. mine is still a few weeks away from comin' up here... but man, what a brew that was! Really spectacular. I'll get a better review when I get mine online and make it official.

In chicken coop news. Big news! Check this out:
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A roof! And..















A window! Oh, snap! That window is actually a double pane of plexiglass that I stuck in there inside the plywood. the plywood is routered in to set the plexi in about 1/8th of an inch. Thanks to my boy Rob K. for the router! Couldn't have done it otherwise. Go buy lots of coffee from his shop there at Plymouth Roasting Co., eh?

Ok, I think that's all I got for the moment...

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A week and a half old now...

Here's some new pics of the babies at a week and three days old. Most of them have a good portion of wing feathers in now. One has damn near all of 'em fully in. The Barred Rocks are a little on the slow side, growing in.. but they're coming along too. I dropped their brooder temp to 90 degrees and they all seem to be really happy with it still.





























Here's a shot of my latest masterpiece of egg'n'bacon'n'bagel perfection.

Behold!















that cup of coffee is a Colombian 'Palestine' S.O. masterpiece as well.. really well done, with 26 grams in 9oz through the Aeropress. You *do* have an Aeropress, don't you?

Not much else to report, really... still stalled on the coop while waiting for a router from my boy Rob to arrive, but now that I have it in hand, I should be able to do a little something something on the window I figured out how to install in the coop. Probably be able to figure out that and get some pics in by tomorrow. Stay tuned, true believers...

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