(Mis)Adventures on Huckleberry Farm: New coops!

Busy, busy, busy on the farm. Getting ready for spring and watching everything green up. We spent the week working outside, planting and dreaming. Cole and I (well, mostly Cole) planted a whole mass of fruit trees in our orchard to complement the mystery trees that are already there. Based on the blossom colors, our best guess is that they are plum and apple. We added several varieties of peach, apple, pear and plum, plus a fig. Over on Berry Hill, we planted lots of gorgeous blueberries and raspberries. We're saving room for grapes and other assorted yummies. The vegetable garden is staked off and about to be planted. Trees are getting leaves, the donkeys and goats again have green grass to munch on, and the chicks dig (literally) being outside most of the day!

If you are in the Greenwood area and need some beautiful plants and accessories, please visit my friend Bess and her nursery, Wyatt Farms. Bess is on my tennis team and her and her husband have created the most beautiful nursery. Most of our new plants and trees came from Wyatt Farms. They also have super cute garden do dads.

I received some new eggs this week. These are Silkied Cochins. These cochins will have feathers like the silkie. Since I love both silkies and cochins, how could I go wrong? So we have 23 eggs cooking and growing away in the incubator. Which led me to the uncomfortable revelation that I need another chicken coop. Yikes!

My poor husband. He already thought I was a little "chicken crazy", and now he's pretty much convinced of it. We've been working on building a chicken run for over a month. We have talked about it, thought about it, talked more about it, and actually bought a few supplies. So after a month... no chicken run. I casually mentioned that I thought we needed another coop and... I lived through it. A quick Google search for a "Coop With A Run" led me to Randy at Rooster Hill Farms up in North Carolina. Not only did Randy have the perfect coop for us, his soon-to-be-patented Hen Pen, but he promised me he would bring it down the next day. And he did. And I ended up with two new coops, instead of one. Maybe I am chicken crazy!

We put the Marans and Ameraucanas in the new coop and brought out my babies from the garage for the little coop house. I'm going to miss those sweeties greeting me every morning! The introduction of them to the Farm Silkies went very well and all had a wonderful day free-ranging. The Marans and Ameraucanas did not play well with others and had to spend the day in the coop. Chicken discipline is not my area of expertise!