Weekend update

Finally, we had a weekend where I could get some stuff done around the house. It's been either raining or snowing the last two so not a lot of work has gotten done. I was able to get the "fallerizing" (Note: Similar to Winterizing, just the first installment.) done on the chicken coop.
What I did was to turn the coop perpendicular to the direction that it was facing. Now the side with the nesting box, which you can see sticking out in this picture, is pointing directly south. This will will allow the winter sun to shine directly on it, as well as allowing the entire roof to get sun throughout the day. It also helps me work with the natural weather patterns in my area where most of our cold winds and storms come from the south. The black pots stacked in front of the open area are filled with soil so they will heat up during the day and radiate that heat back out throughout the night. The last things I did, were to add the side rails to the open sides. This will allow me to give the birds a much deeper amount of bedding in the coop, and will cut down on the direct winds hitting the birds. I also slid the removable bottom of the hen house back in to keep it warmer inside during the winter. I will have to slide it out and clean it once a week or so over the winter, but it will keep the girls dry and warm so it's worth it.

I also was able to get a good start on the final part of our garden expansion for next year where we're "liberating" about 400 sq feet more of our backyard lawn. To begin with I had weed whacked the grass down very short a little over a month ago. I covered this with black plastic to try and kill off most of the grass, and lined up the rough fit of the concrete "urbanite" that I'll be using to construct the beds hardscaping.
Next step in the process called for me to break up the soil. I used a pitch fork for this and was able to pull up a chunk at a time and flip it over completely putting what was left of the grass roots upside down and buried. I did a little poking around to break up the big chunks of dirt, but very little. This I covered with thick cardboard that I scavenged from work, and made sure it went up the fence and under the stones.
I only got about a third of the bed finished today, but hope to have it done and filled by this weekend. I've been collecting a menagerie of compostables to fill it with too. I have coop litter with the obvious "amendments" that that comes with, also grass clippings, finished compost, leaves and straw. I'll finish it off with some finished compost in the spring when I see how much more it needs.
All in all, a very good, productive weekend. I'll keep you posted on the progress. Hope you all had a great one too!

P~