Additions to the Family

I'm no longer the only female around! With Nick, two male cats, and a baby boy on the way, I was significantly outnumbered. Now we are even with the recent addition of 3 hens to our newly-improved coop and run! They are still too young to lay eggs, but we're happy to have gotten them at this stage so we can enjoy watching them settle into their new home and grow a bit before they begin laying. 

Chicken ladies

While my sister and niece were visiting, we arranged a trip to the 'country' with some friends who also needed to get some new chickens to add to their existing two. After some searching on Craigslist, we found people raising free range laying hens and had a large number available, since between us we needed five of them.

It was a really rainy day, so chasing hens around a muddy yard was pretty challenging and funny. It poured rain so hard right after we got there that the family invited us into the large garage nearby to wait it out. That's where they had their heat lamp and area for the young hens (pullets) that weren't yet ready to go outside. These pullets were easier to catch, and my niece was excited to get to play with and hold some of them while we waited:

After the rain let up a bit, we went back out and tried again. They had five different chicken varieties, so we had to decide what we wanted to go after them. Since they were all really good egg laying breeds, we decided to try three different kinds: a Buff Orpington, White Leghorn, and Rhode Island Red. That way we might be able to learn about differences in traits, personalities, and habits of each to take into consideration when we get more in the future, though I hope that won't be for quite awhile. As long as they stay healthy and aren't lost to predators, they should all be great layers for us for the next three years or so.

Nick and the Rhode Island Red, which our niece named "Ashlyn"

Our coop is such a great set up. I'll have to do a post soon to show some of the details and the improvements we've made. The run fencing is thickly lined with weeds on all but the west side, which they quickly got to work on scratching and eating. In addition to those greens, they also get a lot of insects flying and crawling through the weeds and the dirt, and we're giving them select food scraps as treats. All that plus the layer feed gives them a diverse and well-balanced diet. The feed ensures they get enough calcium for egg shell production. We've only had them for a few days but are loving being chicken caretakers, and the cats are enjoying their company as well:

Update: June 30th we got our first egg!

It's now July 10th and we've gotten 6 eggs from the Buff Orpington, who is still the only one old enough to lay. The other two probably have a month or two to go, but soon we'll be getting a dozen a week or more. The shells are very thick, the yolks sit tall and firm, and they are incredibly DELICIOUS!

Rain Collection Barrel for the Chicken Coop

Our property came with a barrel to collect rain water from the large covered backyard patio/roof, which we left as-is. I think it holds 55 gallons, since that seems to be the standard barrel size. It's elevated on concrete blocks and surrounded by fence planking, making it a bit more aesthetically pleasing since it's right next to our patio hangout space:

Eventually we might do something to brighten up the planks around it or something, but it's just fine for the time being. Notice the flowering bamboo/reed-like wall of plants along the patio edge in the above photo. I'll refer back to it later.

We were interested in collecting more water, so recently I picked up a free rain barrel through Craigslist for collecting rain run-off from the covered chicken run:

The free barrel and newly cleared area to the right where it will go

The barrel itself was in fine shape, being a very heavy-duty plastic. The people were giving it away because of a broken nozzle at the end of the very short hose attachment. Regardless of the hose nozzle, I found the existing set up was not very functional because the small plastic spout wouldn't allow for more than a trickle of water no matter what. So we upgraded. Nick used a 3/4 inch hollowing bit thing to drill around the existing drain hole and we installed a regular-sized spigot with an easy half-turn knob:

Concrete blocks found around the yard now have a purpose!

For us to do this meant turning the barrel on its side and me crawling into it to hold the interior piece in place with a wrench while Nick attached and screwed on the outer piece, which must have been a funny sight as I was almost 6 months pregnant at the time, almost 7 now. This is the first mention of it on the blog, so here's a recent photo of me working in the yard, which I'm still doing for several hours a day, almost every day:

Pregnant gardening!

Oh, and check out the patio rain barrel behind my left arm and the area along the edge where those previously-mentioned yellow-flowering bamboo/reed plants used to be. After much consideration and debate about whether or not to keep them, they are now gone. That was about a 30 hour project for me, primarily because the root system was incredibly deep and dense. I added some soil, tilled along the patio edge, and am growing two rows of peas along there on a little trellis. The patio living room area feels so much more open now with a great panoramic view of the yard instead of a wall of plants, which also extended several feet out into the usable yard space. Will make a post on that sometime.

Back to the coop rain barrel. The coop roof had an existing gutter, but it was in bad shape and was set up to empty out at an area where it would be inconvenient to have a rain barrel. We'd rather it be more hidden and out of the way instead of taking up precious yard space.

Before any of our coop improvements 

After removing the old gutter, I painted the wood frame it attached to in order to weather-proof it a little and so it matched the coop, which I'd recently painted with a second coat.

I cleaned out the old gutter to reuse some of it, and picked up a new 10-foot section plus some gutter accessories for my plan. The covered area is about 12 feet long through, so there's a section without gutter. I might add to that end eventually or just leave it as is.

Nick and I attached the new gutter in such a way to fight gravity and send the rain streaming to the north end of the coop and around the corner. Since the coop/run/land is all slightly south-sloping, the gutter needed to be angled sharply in the opposite direction to get the water to run that way, but we got it to work:

Water runs through the shiny and new gutter angled along the east side of the chicken run roof

And around the corner to the back side where I re-used a section of the old, sun-faded gutter

I still need to detach the gutter on this back end and paint the plywood and the run frame like I did to the other sections. Also in the photo above you can see that just underneath the lip of the corrugated roofing we installed a metal extension. Along several sections of the roof water would drip down between the gutter and the wood frame, so we attached this curved metal to ensure any runoff gets directed into the gutter.

And into the  barrel, where I can fill my watering can

With a 10 x 8 foot collection area, we will get almost 45 gallons, or almost a full barrel, for each inch of rainfall. We'd probably get 5 times that from the patio roof. During the periods of heavy rain, we could really use a series of barrels to collect overflow since we would really like to be able to keep enough to be able to exclusively water with rainwater during the summer, but that's a project for down the line.

Preparing for the New Countertop

We finally got around to starting the process for the new counter top. With the dishwasher in place, we knew how far the new counter edge will need to extend and get a more accurate measurement. So we had a guy over to take down dimensions and get us a couple estimates for a few different types.

Once we decided on a material (granite, Stonemark) and a color/pattern (Black Pearl), we made the order. I was really nervous, because this is probably the most important decision we've had to make about the house design so far. It's an expensive project, sure, but the pipe replacement was more. But that you can't see, while the counter top is basically the centerpiece of the kitchen and dining room. I the color wasn't right it could throw off our whole design plan.

Between making the order and having the template made, we had to decide on a new sink. We definitely wanted an undermount sink, but didn't want the standard undermount that was offered with the counter top installation package.

We looked at Home Depot and online and found the right shape, size, and features that we wanted in this Vigo undermount kitchen sink:

The thing we liked most about this was the low center divider, which you can see in the stock photo above. We never fill the sink to capacity and the lower center will make it easer for cleaning large items or moving things between the two basins. And yes, we actually bought our kitchen sink on Amazon. 

When looking at Home Depot, we really liked this drain and strainer on Elkay sinks, and were able to find and buy those separately:

Even though we had purchased a new faucet for the house last year, we agree that this was a good time to make a faucet upgrade as well. We really liked the way larger arch faucets looked and researched those, finally deciding on Moen Kleo faucet with integrated pull-down sprayer:

We had everything picked out and on site when the counter top company sent the guys to take the final measurements and make the template:

In order to get the right size template for the new counter, they removed the existing backsplash, which you can see has been done in the above photo. 

Below is a reminder of the old backsplash and also what the old counter top looked like:

Post with photos of the new counter top coming soon!