Thanksgiving and the Chicken Coop

Thanksgiving was this week. That makes me feel obligated to talk about all the good food we made and how much we loved seeing our families, or maybe gripe about the insanity of early-morning Black Friday...

But the thing is, we got our chickens today! I'm on an emotional high from having sorta finished the coop, so I feel more like talking about chickens than about turkey.

I will try to reign in my enthusiasm long enough to talk about things that happened, gasp, two whole days ago! Thanksgiving! It's funny that I could be so excited about it for weeks but completely over it the next day. Life is so short and so fast sometimes...

Here's our beautifully set table for Turkey Day:

I was happy that I had an excuse to use the fine china and silverware, and the pretty glasses. Nate was kind enough to do some decorating last weekend (clearly I just wasn't going to make time for it) so we actually had some leaves, pumpkins, and my "Pioneer People" set up. I think I'm going to leave them up through this week, just so I can enjoy them a little longer. Besides, it feels too early to start doing Christmas things. There's still a whole week of November left! A whole week for pumpkins and pioneers!

I didn't have time to photograph the food spread before we dug in. It was standard fare (mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans, cinnamon-pineapple yams, rolls, stuffing, turkey, gravy; salad, ham, and apple pie from the PILs; pumpkin cheesecake). The baby loved eating carrots, green beans, and turkey. We've been chowing on leftovers the last couple of days.

After a full morning of cooking, we enjoyed our feast at about noon. Then the baby went down for a nap, the grownups had dessert, we cleaned up, and the PILs went home. Nate and I alternately worked on the chicken coop. When Baby Girl woke up, we hopped in the car and went to see my family for the latter part of their festivities. We got to spend a couple of hours with my side of the family, so it was a wonderfully well-rounded day!

The next day, a bit of early morning Black Friday. (Why do I do this to myself?) We tried the craft store, it was crazy busy and a bit disappointing, so we just got a couple of things and then went on to Freddy's. Sock sale! I think Fred Meyer's has to be the nicest place to go Black Fridaying; the other shoppers are relatively nice, the staff is friendly; there's free coffee and donuts; and the socks! They are all half price. It's really the only reason my mom goes out, I think. I also got a few extra things for Darling, since the prices were decent.

The rest of Friday was spent finishing up the chicken coop. Actually, that's been the focus of any and all free time during the last week. Evenings, afternoons -- any time we had a few minutes, it went to the coop.

Now I know I said we brought home chickens today, but I want to make it very clear that the shed is not completely done. As I mentioned in my October Recap post, I can't finish painting it until it the weather is sufficiently dry and warm (i.e. not until this spring), so there's a lot of painting yet to be done. We also need to add the rain gutter and hook it up to the rain barrel. Nate is less concerned about this task, but it's still high on my list! I didn't paint that rain barrel and schleck around in the mud to build it level foundation just for looks! Also, on the inside of the coop, we (Nate) would like to build a bit of shelving and storage space.

Finishing up the electrical work was a lot of fun. When you get to the home stretch and everything is coming together, it really is great. Very rewarding. When I got to turn on the breaker, flip the light switch, and go out to see the light shining brightly (and not electrocute myself, start a fire, or destroy anything in the process), I let out a whoop of joy. It gives me a bit of encouragement and motivation to work on the basement.

With that, here are some pictures...

The outside of the coop (needs more painting!)

The inside (you can see the light I wired and installed, upper right corner of this pic):

These are our chickens (Bitsy Crowing and Doreen LeWing):

The side/back of the coop, with a view of the chicken run:

Before-and-After Pictures of the back of the shed:

I'll share the before-and-after of the other side when it's actually all done... in the spring.