Chicken coop!
Fall break's starting for me and my sister, so I was finally able to visit home and help with the mobile coop. It was nearly done when I arrived, so I was put in charge of artistic finishing touches. As I painted, Hunter finished installing the roosts. Concetta, who had already painted the whole coop and built nesting boxes, prepared the home garden for incoming creatures.
It was no easy task, but Lillian rounded up all 17 of our chickens and carried them up into the fenced garden. Our chickens lived in 2 separate coops because the eldest flock doesn't get along with the newest. Moving them all into one big, new space is a good start to socializing them for their life together on the farm. And it seems to be working: they scratched about happily in their separate families, peaceably ignoring the others.
Thanks to concentrated work and Hunter's carpentry skills, we now have a complete mobile coop. This coop will let us move the chickens around to where the land needs them. These remarkably industrious animals provide vital services such as pest consumption, fertilization, and aeration, all the while transforming material like bugs and leaves into nutritious eggs.
Our chickens will never go back to their old coops; in a few days they'll load up into their new house and head out for their new home.