Saturday, November 18, 2017

Fence-Building, chicken-coop-moving, and other autumn adventures

Our biggest house project of the fall has been to create a garden and move our chicken coop across the yard so that it's next to the garden. Nate has been putting in lots of hours to build a sturdy, deer-proof fence. Last week he was far enough along to pull the chicken coop to it's new spot. Let me tell you, those were some surprised chickens!

Our blueberry bushes finally went in the ground that we bought at the shore in September, and soon Nate will put in our fruit trees. There's still more to do, but the progress is very encouraging. We're looking forward to planting lots of delicious produce next spring! 

The garden is modeled after the Back to Eden garden, by the way, so we're using wood chips to keep the soil moist and cut down on weeding. 


This is the outline of our new garden. 
Nate's building the fence himself––a time-consuming process!


The chicken coop at it's new and improved location 
after Nate dragged it across the yard with backhoe-power.


For the first time, Rusty had complete, unfettered access to the chickens! 
Thankfully he was well-behaved (mostly).


Silas had a home-made robot costume for his Halloween parade at school. 
Nate even put a little flashing light behind the heart to make it look like it was beating.


Rowan's homeschool coop took a field trip to a farm, and he enjoyed 
picking out a small pumpkin and taking a hayride with his class.


On an unseasonably warm day in October, we went hiking at Green Lane Park. 
Allie noticed she could be as tall as Nate if she stood on a boulder.


A friend's mom taught me how to curl Allie's hair using rags. This was our first 
experiment with it. I should've take an "after" picture––they came out very cute 
the next morning. Allie was thrilled with it.


Rowan enjoyed our first real fire in the fireplace.