Chicken Run

 

Season’s Greetings my friends!

This is going to be my only allusion to the festive season as I’m feeling a bit Ebenezer.

This, of course, is due to COVID-19 and the lack of visitors over the holidays. But we’ll plod on and look forward to 2021!

So, in the last update, we had just finished the kitchen and were cracking on with the Puppy Palace!

We had collected the wood for the frame from the sawmill but it was in enormous great lengths and needed planing and cutting to the right size. Cue Simon and his array of power tools…

Joking aside, this was a massive job and one I couldn’t really help with. I certainly couldn’t help lift the oak, and only one person could use the planer. In fact, I couldn’t really even lift the planer, so I’m a useless carpentry partner really.

Simon had to lift the beams with the digger, they were ridiculously heavy. Some of them were over 5 metres long and weighed up to 300kg. He had to pull all his woodworking skills out of the bag for this job.

First, he had to make one to be joined to the metal feet that had been attached to the concrete footings that he and Steve had made. These metal feet had a screw thread sticking out of the top and so the beam locks into them and can then be screwed up or down to ensure the beam is at the correct height, 2.6 metres, pretty heavy and awkward to manoeuvre.

For the beams to lock into the timber attached to the wall of the house, he used a mortise and tenon joint.

Which looks like this…

Obviously, he had to saw, chisel and generally apply blood, sweat and tears to make these.

Then we just had to get them into place.

To be fair, getting these in to position caused me a few tears, the whole process was slightly traumatic. The beam in the picture is strapped to a metal pole which is rammed onto the end of the tractor’s forks.

Now the tractor doesn’t move in a fluid smooth motion, it trundles and lurches, all the while I’m trying to stop this beam from swinging around like a giant Jenga piece with the black strapping you can see tied to the end of the timber.

Anyway, with Simon’s tremendous tractoring and me nearly dangling off of the end of the strap (good job I’m not a lightweight!) we managed to get the tenon part into the mortise and lift the other end into place on top of the upright beam…but how to ensure the two beams had completely locked into each other?

We had cunningly rubbed the tenon part of the beam with a good old-fashioned bar of soap! And with a final shunt from the tractor bucket the timber slotted into place!

Just the other side to do now then!

 

Whilst Simon was woodworking away to his heart’s content, I decided that the veg patch needed some attention.

We had been complete novices when we arrived in April, and with the help of the cold frame that Simon made from an old wardrobe, I had been able to get a good variety of veggies planted. When we had the mad hailstorm in June, we thought that the veg wouldn’t survive, but Mother Nature’s a lot tougher than that and everything re-flowered and subsequently fruited.

Our main mistake though had been to rotovate the veggie patch in the first place. I had spent most of the growing season hoeing the weeds that grow like wildfire!

Well I’ve got better things to be doing than unnecessary hoeing! So, I have been reading up on the No-Dig method of growing veggies.

The guru of all things No-Dig is a guy called Charles Dowding, and it basically means this “No dig leaves soil undisturbed, and you feed the masses of soil life with organic matter on the surface, as happens in nature, to maintain drainage and aeration.”

Best of all, the weeds eventually bugger off!

If anyone wants to check it out, this is a link to his website: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/start-here/

Trouble is, I have around 120 square metres of veg patch, according to this method I was going to need to cover it all in cardboard (which bio-degrades) and then cover the cardboard in soil, compost or manure.

Still Rome wasn’t built in a day so I got started…

First, I got all the cardboard I could muster from around the house, and I also asked my neighbour’s son Antoine, who luckily works at Netto for any cardboard he could bring home. I removed all the sticky tape and labels and set about searching for some extra soil…cue our friendly neighbourhood moles…

They may be Simon’s archenemy but to me, they’re very helpful little furry diggers. You see, the dirt they push up out of their runs has come from under all the grass and weed roots, so it’s gloriously weed free, sifted and generally very good soil.

 

Due to their voracious appetites for grubs and worms, they had produced many mini mountains of dirt. More than enough to cover the cardboard I had.

Trouble is, I think the moles’ little flippers will be worn to the bone if I have to rely on them for top soil.

As you can see, there’s quite a lot to cover.

A re-think was in order.

I had another option, I could cover the remainder of the garden with heavy duty black plastic, to block out the light and kill the weeds over the winter, which will be removed in spring ready for a cow manure delivery from next door’s farm.

This seems a much more sensible option, plus the moles have been slacking lately, they only really send up the dirt after heavy rain and the weather’s been beautiful and dry, so the garden is woefully mole-hill free…Simon’s happy though.

In the meantime, over in the Puppy Palace, Simon had been working woodwork wonders!

 Simon made some diagonal steel tie bars for either side of where the doors will be to help reinforce the structure.

It’s going to be a huge space; in fact, I think there’s probably room for at least three dogs…

The whole frame benefitted from our homemade wood preservative treatment, diesel and old engine oil; it has really brought out the beauty of the wood grain.

Now we could crack on and get some blocks in place which will be the internal skin of the extension wall and supports for the floor joists.

With the help of Steve, our neighbour, they soon had it constructed.

And that’s where we have to stop with the extension build for now. The house’s roof is being replaced in January, due to the hailstorm damage, and the roofers need to get scaffolding up against the rear wall. So, we can’t put the floor or roof joists in…frustrating but a necessary wait, plus, it’s not like we haven’t got anything else to be getting on with.

Our attention was now directed towards the side of the house and entrance into the back garden. It was completely open to the road, and Simon was thinking ahead, as usual, to puppy proofing the garden.

He spent a few evenings internet surfing the local buying sites and finally found a five-bar wooden farm gate in our neighbouring department, Correze.

A lovely little road trip ensued to pick up the gates. Our department is absolutely beautiful and to get to our destination we had to drive through the most glorious National Forest. The trees were ablaze with Autumn colour and then, we drove through one of the most picturesque places I’ve ever seen, Ségur -le- Chateau.

Chateau is the French word for castle, and I certainly think of turrets and fairy-tale type buildings rather than fortified castles like Windsor when I hear the word chateau.

This is a drawing of the chateau; it’s been around a while.

The first castle, built in the 9th century, was home, occasionally to Henri IV of France, he probably used it like a static caravan in Skegness for a weekend away…

The architecture of the village was what we recognised as very Tudor, and when we checked the dates Henri IV was around en France when Elizabeth 1^st was on the throne in England.

We’ll definitely be taking a trip back there when Covid has done one and the weather’s a bit warmer.

Once we had the gate home and had been to a Brico for more wood supplies Simon got cracking on digging holes for the fence posts. Seemingly an easy job, unless every other hole you dig excavates a lump of granite the size of a dragon’s egg! On the bright side though, we’ll need some local stone for the external extension wall, so it’s all good really.

I wasn’t slacking in the construction department either. Armed with my handy gloves, a hammer, screwdriver and some spanners, I set about building the chicken coop!

Ok, so it’s not a ‘from scratch’ build, but I can’t be fabulous at everything, it would give Simon a complex.

All ready for the arrival of the girls…

Don’t worry, we won’t be eating any of our feathered friends, we’ll just be glad to eat lovely free-range eggs from happy chickens.

 

Due to the small-scale build of the coop and not my speedy building skills I had completed my project far quicker than Simon’s current venture. In a bid to keep myself out of trouble I decided to experiment with fermenting some veggies.

We’ve been eating loads more vegetarian meals since we’ve been here, with the glut of veg from the garden it would have been difficult not to.

I had been reading about how good fermented veg was for your digestion, much better in fact than pickling, and I happened to have a red cabbage rolling around in the salad drawer of the fridge, so I thought I’d give it a go.

This lady https://www.sarahwilson.com/2015/06/my-complete-home-fermentation-guide-part-one/

knows all there is to know about digestion, fermenting and generally eating a lot healthier.

First though I needed to get some whey, an important ingredient in the fermenting process.

After rummaging around for a suitable cloth and vessel I proceeded to make my own cream cheese, and in the process gathered the whey I needed for the fermenting.

Yes, it’s a cloth bag for life, more useful than you think!

24 hours later, natural yogurt has turned into cream cheese!

The cheese turned out great, plus Simon doesn’t even like cheese, so I get it all to myself.

I got a bit carried away with the fermenting bug and branched out into Lime Pickle too.

These should all be ready in about 3 weeks!

Obviously, Simon hadn’t been idle, the new fence and gates were constructed, in place, painted and he’d also made a metal latch to keep it secure.

As you can see though, the drive was quickly turning into a quagmire.

Luckily, the local stone here is granite and we have a quarry only 15 minutes up the road. Simon hitched up the trailer and we headed off to get some gravel for the driveway.

Regular readers will be familiar with my legendary shovelling abilities. Needless to say, they were in high demand. We got one trailer full of granite gravel and proceeded to spread it around. This didn’t prove to be enough and we went back for another.

To cut along story short, 5 tonnes of gravel, shovelled off by hand and sprinkled all around, and we had a much more practical and better-looking driveway.

Better put in a picture of the newly washed and polished truck on the driveway.

Next on the never-ending agenda was making a concrete base for a garden shed.

We had decided that the chickens were going to live down the bottom of the garden where arsehole corner had been. We had cleared all the rubbish and it’s a really nice spot. There’s a stone wall on two sides, which offer some protection and it has two enormous hazelnut trees giving much needed shade in the summer. But where were we going to keep their feed, straw and other chicken related paraphernalia?  

We needed to apply some forward thinking about what our barn will be used for in the future. It currently houses all the furniture and boxes that has yet to be moved into the house. There’s no point getting it all out before the renovations have finished. It is also home to the tractor, lawn mower, motorbike and our push bikes. The resident mice have started complaining about the lack of space.

The most obvious solution was to build a shed to house the smaller of the mechanical machines and Simon could also use it as a bit of a workshop. “Hold on!” I hear you cry, “He already has The Bat Cave at his disposal” Yes, but that’s for DIY tools, not mechanics tools, clearly, they need separate sections.

Don’t worry, I’m totting up the inequality of all this, and all I can say is…. more puppies.

So, our friend Gary’s digger, was put to use yet again. The ground next to Chicken Coop Corner was scraped and dug up and levelled, ready for, you guessed it, mixing concrete and yet again more shovelling! Hooray……

First though, we had to put down some hardcore for a base….more shovelling

This was his favourite bit

I don’t actually mind making cement/concrete whatever it’s called, it’s the clearing up afterwards that’s vile. Oh, and the inability to use my arms for three days…

 

Still, once it was done, we could crack on with the shed assembly.

We had decided to buy a metal shed, less maintenance and ready to assemble.

Good job Simon liked Meccano as a boy, there were a lot of bits.

My sole role in the entire construction of this build was to hand Simon the relevant screws. Some even had washers attached to them…

As an aside to the thrill of metal shed building, I had time to puree some pumpkin.

We still have two more of these left, I’m not sure what happened, but Hagrid would have been proud of these pumpkins.

We have discovered though, that pureed pumpkin makes a fantastic base for coconut curry. Which we will be eating for the foreseeable future.

This is half, roasted and pureed…it’s ridiculous.

The open wine bottle (€1.86!) is there only for perspective purposes. Not because I’ve had enough of shovelling.

With the shed construction complete we tackled the newly acquired chicken run. The chickens will have the use of the entire garden, but until they get used to their new home and in case we pop out and need to keep them contained, we thought a ready-made chicken run would be an easy build.

It took us 3 days.

This is because Simon is a perfectionist and he didn’t really rate the quality of the chicken wire that came with the frame. We went and bought some wire made of sterner stuff and he proceeded to fix it to the frame with screws and washers.

It did make life much easier when we came to fix the chicken wire to the frame.

This is the position of the coop and run, but naturally it needed to be pimped by Simon.

He decided that the coop would be safer from predators if it was on raised legs. It would also give them full use of the run.

This meant that the ramp that had come with the run wasn’t long enough, so he built them a new one with a safety barrier in case they were a bit unsteady on their feet.

So, here it is, finished. A coop fit for a flock of feathery chooks.

We’ve just got to find some chicks now…

So, until next time we would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas wherever you are. Let’s hope 2021 can be a bit more normal for all of us.

(I’ve decided to stopped being so Scrooge-like)