Plan "C"

Whew.  It's been a bit of a grueling winter/spring.  Cold, snowy, dark and generally miserable for a 'gardener in waiting'.  I've gone back through my garden diary and notice that we're really behind schedule this year.  Usually I've got cold tolerant veggies in the ground, flower beds edged and perennials divided.  Not so in 2014.  We've had a few lovely days adequate for outside work, but mostly I've just been staring out the window from inside.  Pining. 

Things are starting to look up though, and my to-do list is long.  Thankfully, I can finally check-off one big task.  Plan "C" Chicken Coop.  We've had several chicken setbacks over the past two years.  A dog and a coyote have infiltrated my inadequately secured coops.  Lessons were learned and plans were made.  We decided to go big on this our last try for safely keeping chickens in our little Gap Mountain Garden.

After much reading and planning, we decided to go with the chain link kennel option.  I dismantled the old set-up and carefully salvaged any materials I could...why is hardware cloth so da#n expensive??  We found a good used kennel on Craigslist and some metal roofing 'seconds' from a local roofing company.  We reused our old coop and put it directly into the run/kennel to avoid the need to attach the two safely and securely.

We then wrapped the bottom half of the kennel in leftover hardware cloth and the top half in chicken wire.  We also screwed pressure treated lumber to the door to close up large openings accessible by hungry paws. 

 
We really really hope this will do the trick.  Today is our first day away from the house with the new henettes outside.  Hopefully I won't have any future sob stories for you.  The neighbor dog really likes to eat our chickens and he/she is very motivated and persistent.  Fingers crossed.