I feel like chicken tonight!

 The race is on. Saturday morning, we cut plywood like crazy. Starting at 8am. Sorry neighbours.

 Walls!

 Chicken dance for a finished coop

 We had time to spare, so I put in a last-minute perch for the girls

 The egg farm

 3,000 birds were up for adoption

 Hank John hand picked the five best layers

 In the box they went for the 30 minute ride home. We forgot to bring a weight to put on top of the box, so when one escaped, we pulled over and tried to MacGyver the lid down.

 Here they are! Four happy chickens and one camera-shy party pooper.

Note that we used only the best bedding for our hens: the packing from my brother's fancy Laura Ashley wedding dishes. Now that's reusing.

We're adopting!

Six months ago I spotted the teeny tiny ad in the newspaper, and I clipped it. I had just moved into my own place, and now with all of this space it only made sense. The clipping hung under a magnet on the fridge for months. The ad faded, but my hope and excitement did not. Finally, last week, knowing that the next adoption opportunity was coming up, I told Josh that it was time. He made the call and we were accepted as the new parents of...(it's a girl)....(five girls to be exact)....laying hens!

Unfortunately the adoption date is hard and by the time we decided that yes, we would get chickens, we only had 7 days to build them a coop. Initially this seemed like the perfect time to build a chicken mansion and start some backyard egg production. After all, less veggie farm work means more free time. And yet somehow this particular seven-day stretch seemed to be filled with meetings, overtime at work, curling and completely conflicting schedules. So what does any good Commerce student do when faced with oodles of group work and no group time? Divide and Conquer.

Each morning, during the 30 minutes of alert, overlapping time we had, we madly schemed. It didn't matter if you were still lying in bed, going to the bathroom, or rushing to make your sandwich: it was chicken coop planning time. Josh would report on the materials that he had picked up the night before, or the progress he had made on the frame, and give me instructions for the next steps, to be done in the 1.5 hours I had before racing in to work. The next day I would report on the next piece that I had built and the unremoveable nail that had stalled any further progress...or seek counselling on my fear of cutting a giant piece of plywood on a table saw, solo. And so on, back and forth. We are now at the 36 hour mark. Our ladies are to be picked up Saturday evening, and their house is in about 6 pieces, unassembled.

We also don't have food or a water trough. yet. But we will get those things too. And we will be good parents, I promise. We just need a little more time...

Bread Battle

There has been a great battle going on in my household for the past while. The stake? Chef de Patisserie. More specifically, he or she who bakes the bread. Thanks to my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, I had been holding my own as queen of the oven without a peep from the mouths that I fed. And then one day I showed Josh my secret no-knead artisan bread recipe. From that day forward, it seems, my once-perfect loaves began to deteriorate in aesthetics while Josh could turn any dough, at any air temperature into a beautiful round loaf. I knew that the end was nigh when one day, as I clicked on the oven and removed the bowl of dough from the fridge, Josh leapt up from the couch: "what are you doing? Here, let me," with that knowing look that we should do what is best for everyone and let him make the bread. I accepted a demotion to dough-maker and later stepped down from the bread process completely. I didn't even argue when Josh decided that his bread-making process wouldn't be confined by oven timers, and started removing his loaves from the oven when he felt that they were done, on his own schedule. I conceded victory. 

Thursday night. I arrive home from work, and the oven is going full steam. The Chef de Patisserie has baked a cake for his co-worker's last day of work and now has bread in the oven for sandwiches tomorrow. As we head to bed, he pulls the loaf out of the oven just enough for me to see. It's golden brown, perfectly round. Yes, he wins. Now used to these occasional bouts of gloating, I smile, nod and go brush my teeth. 

At 4am I wake up. I can't fall back to sleep. There is a smell...it takes me a while to put my finger on it, and then, cake. The smell of cake is still wafting through the house. weird. Back to sleep. At 4:45am, I wake up, this time the smell is stronger, and I can't ignore it. It takes my brain a few minutes to process what may be happening right now. "Josh, did you take the bread out of the oven?". Silence. "ummm...maybe not?" comes a guilty voice from under a pillow. I jump out of bed and find that not only is the bread still in the oven, but the dial has been left at 450F. All night long. What was a masterpiece at 10:30pm is now a big lump of coal.

Back in bed, Josh took fault for this mishap. And then, at 5am - I'm not sure whether it was because he couldn't fall back to sleep, really wanted a sandwich for lunch or felt the need to earn back some pride - he got out of bed, turned the oven back on and baked another loaf. I'm not sure where we stand now, but I did gain some bargaining power that night. First order of business? Oven timer use has been reinstated.