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...